they received that day to do the more honour to the Memory of the Saint might be recommended to the Divine Acceptance by the Intercession of the Saint so that this Superstitious practice shews plainly that the Church had not even when it began received the Doctrine of the change of the Elements into the Body and Blood of Christ I will not pursue the proof of this point further nor will I enter into a particular recital of the Sayings of the Fathers upon this subject which would carry me far And it is done so copiously by others that I had rather refer my Reader to them than offer him a lean abridgement of their labours I shall only add that the Presumptions and Proofs that I have offered are much more to be valued than the Pious and Rhetorical Figures by which many of the Fathers have set forth the manner of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament One thing is plain that in most of them they represent Christ present in his dead and crucified state which appears most eminently in St Chrysostom so that this agreed with that notion of a Real Presence that was formerly explained Men that have at the same time all the heat in their Imaginations that Eloquence can raise and all the fervour in their heart which devotion can inspire are seldom so correct in their phrases and figures as not to need some allowances therefore one plain proof of their Opinions from their Reasonings when in cold blood ought to be of much more weight than all their Transports and Amplifications From this General view of the State of the Church during the first Centuries I come next to consider the steps of the change which was afterwards made I will not offer to trace out that History which Mr. Larrogue has done Copiously whom I the rather mention because he is put in English I shall only observe that by reason of the high expressions which were used upon the occasion of the Eutichean Controversy formerly mentioned by which the Sanctification of the Elements was compared to the Union of the humane nature of Christ with his Divinity a great step was made to all that followed during the Dispute concerning Images those who opposed the worship of them said according to all the Ancient Liturgies that they indeed acknowledged one Image of Christ which was the Sacrament those who promoted that piece of superstition for I refer the calling it Idolatry to its proper place had the Impudence to deny that it had ever been called the Image of Christ's Body and Blood and said that it was really his Body and Blood. We will not much Dispute concerning an Age in which the World seemed mad with a zeal for the Worship of Images and in which Rebellion and the Deposing of Princes upon the pretence of Heresy began to be put in practice such times as these we willingly yield up to our Adversaries Yet Damascene and the Greek Church after him carried this matter no further than to assert an Assumption of the Elements into an union with the Body and Blood of Christ But when the Monk of Corbie began to carry the matter yet further and to say that the Elements were changed into the very body of Christ that was born of the Virgin we find all the great men of that Age both in France Germany and England writ against him and he himself owns that he was looked upon as an Innovator Those who writ against him chiefly Rabanus Maurus and Bertram or Ratramne did so plainly assert the Ancient opinion of the Sacraments being the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that we cannot express our selves more formally than they did and from thence it was that our Saxon Homily on Easter Day was so express in this point Yet the War and the Northern Invasions that followed put the World into so much disorder that all Disputes were soon forgot and that in the Eleventh Century this Opinion which had so many Partisans in the Ninth was generally decried and much abandoned VI. But with relation to those Ages in which it was received some observations occur so readily to every one that knows History that it is only for the sake of the more Ignorant that I make them 1. They were times of so much Ignorance that it is scarce conceivable to any but to those who have laboured a little in reading the productions of those Ages which is the driest piece of study I know The stile in which they writ and their way of arguing and explaining Scripture are all of a piece both matter and form are equally barbarous Now in such times as the Ignorant populace were easily misled so there is somewhat in Incredible Stories and Opinions that makes them pass as easily as men are apt to fancy they see Sprights in the Night nay the more of Mystery and Darkness that there is in any Opinion such times are apt to cherish it the more for that very reason 2. Those were Ages in which the whole Ecclesiastical Order had entred into such Conspiracies against the State which were managed and set on by such vigour by the Popes that every Opinion which tended to render the persons of Churchmen Sacred and to raise their Character was likely to receive the best entertainment and the greatest encouragement possible Nothing could so secure the persons of Priests and render them so considerable as to believe that they made their God and in such Ages no Armour was of so sure a proof as for a Priest to take his God in his hands Now it is known that as P. Gregory the 7th who condemned Berengarius laid the foundations of the Ecclesiastical Empire by establishing the Deposing Power so P. Innocent the 3d. who got Transubstantiation to be decreed in the Fourth Council of the Lateran seemed to have compleated the project by the Addition made to the Deposing Power of transferring the Dominions of the Deposed Prince to whom he pleased Since before this the Dominions must have gone to the next Heirs of the Deposed Prince It is then so plain that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation was so suitable to the advancing of those ends that it had been a wonder indeed if it being once set on foot it had not been established in such times 3. Those Ages were so corrupt and more particularly the Clergy and chiefly the Popes were by the Confession of all Writers so excessively vicious that such men could have no regard to truth in any of their Decisions Interest must have carried all other things before it with such Popes who according to the Historians of their own Communion were perhaps the worst men that ever lived Their Vices were so crying that nothing but the credit that is due to the Writers of their own time and their own Church could determine us to believe them 4. As the Ignorance and Vices of those times derogate justly from all the credit that is due to them so the Cruelty which
once both body and Soul. He charges Dr. Stillingfleet as the great Founder of this and all other Anti-catholick and Anti-christian and uncharitable Principles among us and that the TEST is the Swearing to the Truth of his unlearned and Phanatick Notion of Idolatry pag. 130 135. and the result of all is That Idolatry made the Plot and then the Plot made Idolatry and that the same persons made both He has also troubled the Reader with a second impertinence to shew his second-hand Reading again upon the Notion of Idolatry but all this falls off with a very short Answer if he is of the Church of England and believes that the Homilies contain a Godly and Wholesom Doctrine all this Clamour against Idolatry turns against himself for he will find the Church of Rome charged with this almost an Age before Dr. Stillingfleet was Born and tho perhaps none has ever defended the Charge with so much Learning as he has done yet no malice less Impudent than his is could make him the Author of the Accusation It will be another strain of our Author's modesty if he will pretend that our Church is not bound to own the Doctrine that is contained in her Homilies he must by this make our Church as Treacherous to her Members as Sa. Oxon is to her for to deliver this Doctrine to the People if we believe it not our selves is to be as impudent as he himself can pretend to be A Church may believe a Doctrine which she does not think necessary to propose to all her Members but she were indeed a Society fit for such Pastors as he is if she could propose to the People a Doctrine chiefly one of so great Consequence as this is without she believed it her self So then he must either Renounce our Church and her Articles or he must Answer all his own Plea for clearing that Church of this Imputation which is so slight that it will be no hard matter even for such a trifling Writer as himself is to do it As for what he says of Stabbing and Cut-throat Words he may charge us with such words if he will but we know who we may charge with the Deeds I would gladly see the List of all that have been murder'd by these Words to try if they can be put in the Ballance either with the Massacre of Ireland or that of Paris upon which I must take notice of his flight way of mentioning Coligny and Faction and telling us in plain words pag. 45. That they were Rebels This is perhaps another instance of his kindness to the Calvinist Prince that is Descended from that Great Man. If Idolatry made our Plot it was not the first that it made but his malignity is still like himself his charging Dr. Stillingfleet who he says is the Author of the Imputation of Idolatry as if he had suborned the Evidence in our Plot. I should congratulate to the Doctor the Honour that is done him by the Malice of one who must needs be the object of the hatred of all good Men if I did not look upon him as so contemptible a person that his love and his hatred are equally insignificant If he thinks our Church worse than Canibals I wish he would be at the pains to go and make a trial and see whether these Salvages will use him as we have done I dare say they would not Eat him for they would find so much Gall and Choler in him that the first bit would quite disgust them A second Part of the ENQUIRY into the Reasons offered by Sa. Oxon for Abrogating the TEST Or an Answer to his Plea for Transubstantiation and for Acquitting the Church of Rome of IDOLATRY THE two seemingly contrary Advices of the Wise man of Answering a Fool according to his Folly and of not Answering him according to his Folly are founded on such Excellent Reasons that if a man can but rightly distinguish the Circumstances he has a good Warrant for using both upon different occasions The Reason for Answering a Fool according to his Folly is lest he be wise in his own eyes that so a haughty and petulant humour may be subdued and that a Man that is both blinded and swelled up with self-conceit may by so severe a Remedy be brought to know himself and to think as meanly of himself as every Body else does But the reason against Answering a Fool according to his Folly is lest one be also like unto him and so let both his mind and stile be corrupted by so Vicious a Pattern Since then in a former Paper I was wrought on to let our Author see what a severe Treatment he has justly drawn on himself and to write in a stile a little like his own I will now let him see that he is the Man in the World whom I desire the least to resemble and so if I writ before in a stile that I thought became him I will now change that into another which I am sure becomes my self In the former I examined his Arguments for abrogating the Test in a strain which I thought somewhat necessary for the Informing the Nation aright in a matter of such Consequence that the Preservation of our Religion is judged to depend upon it by the Presumptive Heir of the Crown but now that I am to argue a point which requires more of a Gravity than of an acrimony of stile I will no more consider the Man but the Matter in hand In a word He would persuade the World that Transubstantiation is but a Nicety of the Schools calculated to the Aristotelian Philosophy and not defined positively in the Church of Rome but that the Corporal and Real Presence of the substance of Christ's Body and Blood in the Sacrament was the Doctrine of the Universal Church in the Primitive Times and that it is at this day the generally received Doctrine by all the different Parties in Europe not only the Ro. Catholicks and Lutherans but both by the Churches of Switzerland and France and more particularly by the Church of England so that since all that the Church of Rome means by Transubstantiation is the Real Presence and since the Real Presence is so Universally received it is a heinous thing to renounce Transubstantiation for that is in effect the renouncing the Real Presence This is the whole strength of his Argument which he fortifies by many Citations to prove that both the Ancient Fathers and the Modern Reformers believed the Real Presence and that the Church of Rome believes no more But to all this I shall offer a few Exceptions I. If Transubstantiation is only a Philosophical Nicety concerning the manner of the Presence where is the hurt of renouncing it and why are the Ro. Catholicks at so much pains to have the Test repealed for it contains nothing against the Real Presence indeed if this Argument has any force it should rather lead the Ro. Catholicks to take the Test since according to
26. and when his Son was Sick he sent his Wife to the Prophet Jehovah c. 14. The Story of the new Idolatry that Achab set up of the Baalim shews also plainly that the old Worshippers of the Calves adhered to the true Jehovah for Elijah states the matter as if the Nation had been divided between Jehovah and Baal 1 Kings 18.21 39. And the whole Story of Jehu confirms this 2 Kings 9.6 12 36. he was Anointed King in the Name of Jehovah and as soon as the Captains that were with him knew this they acknowledged him their King he likewise speaking of the Fact of the Men of Samaria cites the Authority of Jehovah 2 Kings 10 10 16 29. which shews that the People acknowledged it still and he called his Zeal against the worship of Baal his Zeal for Jehovah and yet both he and his Party worshipped the Calves It is no less clear that Micah who called the Teraphim his Gods Judges 18.24 was a Worshipper of the true Jehovah Judges 17.13 and there is little reason to doubt that this was the case of Gideons Ephod and of the Brazen Serpent It were needless to go about the proving that all these corrupt ways of worship were Idolatrous the Calf is expresly called an Idol by St. Stephen Acts 7.41 and the thing is so plain that it is denied by none that I know of so here we have a Species of Idolatry plainly set forth in Scripture in which the true God was worshipped in an Image and I fancy it is scarce necessary to inform the Reader that wherever he finds LORD in Capitals in the English Bible it is for Jehovah in the Hebrew XI It is very true that the great and prevailing Idolatry of all the East grew to be the worship of the Host of Heaven which seems to have risen very naturally out of the other Idolatry of the Teraphim which probably was the Ancienter of the two For when men came to think that Divine Influences were tied to such Images it was very natural for them to fancy that a more Soverain Degree of Influence was in the Sun and by consequence that he deserved Divine Adoration much more than their poor little Teraphim But it is also clear that this Adoration which they offer to the Sun was not with Relation to the matter of that shining Body but to the Divinity which they believed was lodged in it This appears not only from the Greek writters Zenophon and Plutarch but from the greatest Antiquity that now is in the VVorld the Bas reliefs that are in the ruins of the Temple of Persepolis which are described with so much cost and care by that Worthy and Learned Gentleman Sir John Chardin and which the World expects so greedily from him He favoured me with a sight of them and in these it appears that in their Triumphs of which a whole Series remains entire they carried not only the Fire which was the Emblem of the Body of the Sun but after that the Emblem of the Divinity that it seems they thought was in it under the Representation of a Head environed with Clouds which is the most natural Emblem that we can fancy of an Intelligent and an Incomprehensible Being It is true as Idolatry grows still grosser and grosser the Intelligent Being was at last forgot tho it seems it was remembred by their Philosophers since the Greeks came to know it and all their Worship was paid to the Sun or to his Emblem the Fire so that even this Idolatry was most probably the Worship of the true God at first under a visible Representation And that this was an effect of the former Idolatry is confirmed from what is said by Moses Deut. 4.14 to 19. where he plainly intimates the progress that Idolatry would have if they once came to worship graven or molten Images or make any sort of Similtude for the Great God this would carry them to lift up their Eyes to Heaven and Worship and Serve the Host of them XII The next shape that Idolatry took was the worshipping some subordinate Spirits their Genii which were in effect Angels or departed Men and Women and this filled both Greece and Rome and was the prevailing Idolatry when the New Testament was writ But that all these Nations believed still one Supream God and that they considered these just as the Roman Church does now Angels and Saints mutatis mutandis has been made out so invincibly by the Learned Dr. Stillingfleet that one would rather think that he had over charged his Argument with too much proof than that it is any way defective And yet this Worship of those secondary Deities is charged with Idolatry both in the Acts and in the Epistles so often that it is plain the Inspired Writers believed that the giving any degrees of divine worship to a Creature tho in a subordinate Form was Idolatry and St. Paul gives us a Comprehensive Notion of Idolatry that it was the giving Divine Service the word is Dulia to those that by nature were not Gods Gal. 4.8 and he throws off all Lords as well as all the Gods of the Heathen as Idols and in opposition to these reduces the VVorship of Christians to the Object of one God the Father and of one Lord Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 8.5 6. So that the Greek and Roman Idolatry being strictly that which is condemned in the New Testament of which we have such a copious Evidence from their writings it is plain that even inferior degrees of worship when offered up to Creatures tho Angels is Idolatry and tho the Heathens thought neither Jupiter nor Mercury the Supream Deities yet the Apostles did not for all that forebear to call them Idols Acts 14.15 XIII Our Author pretends to bear a great respect to Antiquity And therefore I might in the next place send him to all that the Fathers have writ against the Greek and Roman Idolatry in which he will find that the Heathens had their Explainers as well as the Church old Rome has They denied they worshipped their Images but said they made use of them only to raise up their Minds by those visible Objects yet as St. Paul begun the charge against the Athenians of Idolatry Acts 17.29 for their Gods of gold and silver wood and stone so it was still kept up and often repeated by the Fathers tho the Philosophers might have thrown it back upon them with all that Pomp of dreadful words which our Author makes use of against those that fasten the same Charge upon the Church of Rome The same might be said with relation to the Fathers accusing them of Polytheism in worshipping many Gods and of Idolatry in worshipping those that had been but Men like themselves For it is plain that at least all the Philosophers and wise Men believed that these were only deputed by the Great God to govern some Countrys and Cities and that they were Mediators and Intercessors between God and Men. But