A DISCOURSE CONCERNING Transubstantiation AND IDOLATRY BEING AN ANSWER TO THE BISHOP of Oxford's PLEA relating to those two Points London Printed in the Year 1688. An ANSWER to the REASONS of the Bishop of Oxford c. THIS Author would perswade 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 Roman 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 Antient 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of the Presence where is the hurt of renouncing it And why are the Roman Catholicks at so much Pains to have the Test repealed For it contains nothing against the Real Presence Indeed if this Argument has any force it should rather lead the Rom. Catholicks to take the Test since according to the Bishop they do not renounce in it any Article of Faith but only a bold Curiosity of the School-men Yet after all it seems they know that this is contrary to their Doctrine otherwise they would not venture so much upon a Point of an old and decried Philosophy II. In order to the stating this matter aright it is necessary to give the true Notion of the Real Presence as it is acknowledged by the Reformed We all know in what sense the Church of Rome understands it that in the Sacrament there is no Real Bread and Wine but that under the appearance of them we have the true Substance of Christ's glorified Body On the other hand the Reformed when they found the World generally fond of this Phrase they by the same Spirit of Compliance which our Saviour and his Apostles had for the Iews and that the Primitive Church had perhaps to excess for the Heathens retained the Phrase of Real Presence But as they gave it such a sense as did fully demonstrate that tho they retained a term that had for it a long Prescription yet they quite changed its meaning For they always shewed that the Body and Blood of Christ which they believed present was his Body broken and his Blood shed that is to say his Body not in its glorified State but as it was crucified So that the Presence belonging to Christ's dead Body which is not now actually in being is only his Death that is to be conceived to be presented to us and this being the sense that they always give of the Real Presence the reality falls only on that conveyance that is made to us in the Sacrament by a federal right of Christ's Death as our Sacrifice The Learned Answerer to the Oxford Discourses has so fully demonstrated this from the copious Explanations which all the Reformed give of that Phrase that one would think it were not possible either to mistake or cavil in so clear a Point The Papists had generally objected to the Reformers that they made the Sacrament no more than a bare Commemoratory Feast and some few had carried their aversion to that gross Presence which the Church of Rome had set up to another extreme to which the People by a Principle of Libertinism might have been too easily carried if the true Dignity of the Sacrament had not been maintained by Expressions of great Majesty So finding that the World was possessed of the Phrase of the Real Presence they thought fit to preserve it but with an Explanation that was liable to no Ambiguity Yet it seems our Reformers in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign had found that the Phrase had more power to carry Men to Superstition than the Explanations given to it had to retire them from it and therefore the Convocation ordered it to be laid aside tho that Order was suppressed out of Prudence And the Phrase has been ever since in use among us of which Dr. Burnet has given us a copious account Hist. Reform 2 vol. 3d Book III. The difference between the Notion of the Sacraments being a meer Commemoratory Feast and the Real Presence is as great as the value of the King's Head stamped upon a Meddal differs from the current Coin or the Impression made by the Great Seal upon Wax differs from that which any Carver or Graver may make The one is a meer Memorial but the other has a sacred Badg of Authority in it The Paschal Lamb was not only a Remembrance of the Deliverance of the People of Israel out of Egypt but a continuance of the Covenant that Moses made between God and them which distinguished them from all the Nations round about them as well as the first Passover had distinguished them from the Egyptians Now it were a strange Inference because the Lamb was called the Lord's Passover that is the Sacrifice upon the sprinkling of whose Blood the Angel passed over or passed by the Houses of the Israelites when he smote the first-born of the Egyptians to say that there was a change of the Substance of the Lamb Or because the Real Faith of a Prince is given by his Geat Seal printed on Wax and affixed to a Parchment that therefore the Substance of the Wax is changed So it is no less absurd to imagine that because the Bread and Wine are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ as broken and shed that is his Death really and effectually offered to us as our Sacrifice that therefore the Substance of the Bread and Wine are changed And thus upon the whole matter that which is present in the Sacrament is Christ dead and since his Death was transacted above 1600 Years ago the reality of his Presence can be no other than a Real Offer of his Death made to us in an Institution and federal Symbol I have explained this the more fully because with this all the Ambiguity in the use of that commonly received Phrase falls off IV. As for the Doctrine of the Antient Church there has been so much said in this Enquiry that a Man cannot hope to add any new Discoveries to what has been already found out Therefore I shall only endeavour to bring some of the most Important Observations into a narrow
the best Entertainment and the greatest Incouragement 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 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 4th 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 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 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 followed their Decisions and which was employed in the Execution of them makes it appear rather a stranger thing that so many opposed them than that so many submitted to them When Inquisitors or Dragoons manage an Argument how strong soever the Spirit may be in opposing it is certain the Flesh will be weak and will ply easily When Princes were threatned with Deposition and Hereticks with Extirpation and when both were executed with so much rigour the Success of all the Doctrines that were established in those Days ought to make no Impression on us in its Favour VII It is no less plain that there was a great and vigorous Opposition made to every Step of the Progress of this Doctrine When the Eutychians first made use of it the greatest Men of that Age set themselves against it When the Worshippers of Images did afterwards deny that the Sacrament was the Image of the Body and Blood of Christ a General Council in the East asserted according to the ancient Liturgies the contrary Proposition When Paschase Radbert set on foot the Corporal Presence in the West all the great Men of the Age writ against him Berenger was likewise highly esteemed and had many secret Followers when this Doctrine was first decreed And ever since the time of the Council of the Lateran that Transubstantiation was established there have been whole Bodies of Men that have opposed it and that have fallen as Sacrifices to the Rage of the Inquisitors And by the Processes of those of Tholouse of which I have seen the Original Records for the space of twenty Years it appears that as Transubstantiation was the Article upon which they were always chiefly examined so it was that which many of them did constantly deny so far were they on both sides from looking on it only as an Explanation of the Real Presence VIII The Novelty of this Doctrine appears plainly by the strange work that the Schools have made with it since they got it among them both in their Philosophy and Divinity and by the many different Methods that they took for explaining it till they had licked it into the shape in which it is now Which is as plain an Evidence of the Novelty of the Doctrine as can be imagined The Learned Mr. Alix has given us a clear Deduction of all that Confusion into which it has cast the School-men and the many various Methods that they fell on for maintaining it First They thought the Body of Christ was broken by the Teeth of the Faithful Then that appearing absurd and subjecting our Saviour to new Sufferings the Doctrine of a Body's being in a place after the manner of a Spirit was set up And as to the Change some thought that the Matter of Bread remained but that it was united to the Body of Christ as Nourishment is digested into our Bodies Others thought that the Form of Bread remained the Matter only being changed And some thought that the Bread was only withdrawn to give place to the Body of Christ whereas others thought it was annihilated While the better Judges had always an Eye either to a Consubstantiation or to such an Assumption of the Bread and Wine by the Eternal Word as made the Sacrament in some sense his Body indeed but not that Body which is now in Heaven All these different Opinions in which the School-men were divided even after the Decision made by Pope Innocent in the Council of the Lateran shew that the Doctrine being a Novelty Men did not yet know how to mould or form it But in process of Time the whole Philosophy was so digested as to prepare all Scholars in their first Formation to receive it the more easily And in our Age in which that Philosophy has lost its Credit what Pains do they take to suppress the New Philosophy as seeing that it cannot be so easily subdued to support this Doctrine as the Old one was And it is no unpleasant thing to see the shifts to which the Partisans of the Cartesian Philosophy are driven to explain themselves Which are indeed so very ridiculous that one can hardly think that those who make use of them believe them for they are plainly rather Tricks and Excuses than Answers IX No Man can deny that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome but he that will dispute the Authority of the Councils of the Lateran and Trent Now tho some have done the first avowedly yet as their Number is small and their Opinion decried so for the Council of Trent tho I have known some of that Communion who do not look upon it as a General Council and tho it is not at all received in France neither as to Doctrine nor Discipline yet the contrary Opinion is so universally received that they who think otherwise dare not speak out and so give their Opinion as a Secret which they trust in Confidence rather than as a Doctrine which they will own But setting aside the Authority of these Councils the common Resolution of Faith in the Church of Rome being Tradition it cannot be denied that the constant and general Tradition in the Church of Rome these last 500 Years has been in favour of Transubstantiation and that is witnessed by all the Evidences by which it is
possible to know Tradition The Writings of Learned Men the Sermons of Preachers the Proceedings of Tribunals the Decisions of Councils that if they were not General were yet very numerous and above all by the many Authentical Declarations the Popes have made in this matter So that either Tradition is to be for ever rejected as a false Conveyance or this is the received Doctrine of the Church of Rome from which she can never depart without giving up both her Infallibility and the Authority of Tradition X. There is not any one Point in which all the Reformed Churches do more unanimously agree than in the rejecting of Transubstantiation as appears both by the Harmony of their Confessions and by the current of all the Reformed Writers And for the Real Presence tho the Lutherans explain it by a Consubstantiation and the rest of the Reformed by a Reality of Vertue and Efficacy and a Presence of Christ as crucified yet all of them have taken much Pains to shew that in what sense soever they meant it they were still far enough from Transubstantiation This demonstrates the Wisdom of our Legislators in singling out this to be the sole Point of the Test for Imployments Since it is perhaps the only Point in Controversy in which the whole Church of Rome holds the Affirmative and the whole Reformed hold the Negative And it is as certain that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome as that it is rejected by the Church of England it being by Name condemned in our Articles And thus I hope the whole Plea of our Author in favour of Transubstantiation is overthrown in all its three Branches which relate to the Doctrine of the Primitive Church the Doctrine of the Church of Rome and the Doctrine of the Church of England as well as of the other Reformed Churches I have not loaded this Paper with Quotations because I intended to be short But I am ready to make good all the matters of Fact asserted in it under the highest Pains of Infamy if I fail in the performance And besides the more Voluminous Works that have been writ on this Subject such as Albertines Clauds Answer to Mr. Arnaud and F. Nonet Larrogues History of the Eucharist there have been so many learned Discourses written of late on this Subject and in particular two Answers to the Bishops Books that if it had not been thought expedient that I should have cast the whole matter into a short Paper I should not have judged it necessary to trouble the World with more Discourses on a Subject that seems exhausted I will add no more but that by the next I will give another Paper of the same Bulk upon the Idolatry of the Church of Rome AN ANSVVER To that Part about IDOLATRY c. THE words of the Test that belong to this Point are these The Invocation or Adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint and the Sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome are superstitious and idolatrous upon which our Author fastens this Censure That since by this the Church of Rome is charged with Idolatry which both forfeits Mens Lives here and their Salvation hereafter according to the express words of Scripture It 's a damnable peice of Cruelty and Uncharitableness to load them with this Charge if they are not guilty of it and upon this he goes to clear them of it not only in the two Articles mentioned in the Test the Worship of Saints and the Sacrifice of the Mass but that his Apology might be compleat he takes in and indeed insists chiefly on the Worship of Images tho that is not at all mentioned in the Test he brings a great many Quotations out of the Old Testament to shew the Idolatry prohibited in it was the worshipping the Sun Moon and Stars or the making an Image to resemble the Divine Essence upon which he produces also sōme other Authorities And in this consists the Substance of his Plea for the Church of Rome But upon all this he ought to have retracted both the License that himself gave some Years ago to Dr. Stillingfleet's Book of the Idolatry of the Church of Rome and his own hasty Assertion in condemning both Turk and Papist as guilty of Idolatry the one for worshipping a lewd Impostor and the other for worshipping a sensless piece of matter It seems he is now convinced that the latter part of this Charge that falls on the Papists was as false as the former that falls on the Turks certainly is for they never worshipped Mahomet but hold him only in high Reverence as an extraordinary Prophet as the Iews do Moses It 's very like that if the Turks had taken Vienna he would have retracted that as he has now in effect done the other for I believe he is in the same disposition to reconcile himself to the Mufti and the Pope but the Ottoman Empire is now as low as Popery is high so he will brave the Turk still to his Teeth tho he did him wrong and will humble himself to the Papist tho he did him nothing but right But now I take leave of the Man and will confine my self severely to the matter that is before me And 1. How guilty soever the Church of Rome is of Idolatry yet the Test does not plainly assert that for there is as great a difference between Idolatrous and Idolatry as there is in Law between what is treasonable and what is Treason The one imports only a Worship that is conformable to Idolatry and that has a tendency to it whereas the other is the plain Sin it self There is also a great difference between what is now us'd in that Church and the Explanations that some of their Doctors give of that usage We are to take the usage of the Church of Rome from her Publick Offices and her authorised Practices so that if these have a Conformity to Idolatry and a tendency tō it then the words of the Test are justified what Sense soever some learned Men among them may put on these Offices and Practices therefore the Test may be well maintained even tho we should acknowledg that the Church of Rome was not guilty of Idolatry 2. If Idolatry was a Crime punishable by Death under the Old Testament that does not at all concern us nor does the Charge of Idolatry authorize the People to kill all Idolaters unless our Author can prove that we believe our selves to be under all the Political and Judiciary Precepts of the Law of Moses and even among the Jews the Execution of that severe Law belonged either to the Magistrate or to some authorized and inspired Person who as a Zealot might execute the Law when the Magistrate was wanting to his Duty so that this was writ inviduously only as it seems to inflame the Papist the more against us But the same Calvinist Prince that has exprest so just an Aversion to the
compass and to set them in a good Light and shall first offer some general Presumptions to shew that it is not like that this was the Doctrine of the Primitive Times and then some positive proof of it 1. It is no slight Presumption against it that we do not find the Fathers take any pains to answer the Objections that do naturally arise out of the present Doctrine of the Church of Rome These Objections do not arise out of profound Study or great Learning but from the plain Dictates of common Sense which make it hard to say no more for us to believe That a Body can be in more places than one at once and that it can be in a place after the manner of a Spirit That Accidents can be without their Subject or that our Senses can deceive us in the plainest cases We find the Fathers explain some abstruse Difficulties that arise out of other Mysteries that were less known and were more speculative And while they are thought perhaps to over-do the one it is a little strange that they should never touch the other But on the contrary when they treat of Philosophical Matters they express themselves roundly in opposition to those Consequences of this Doctrine Whereas since this Doctrine has been received we see all the Speculations of Philosophy have been so managed as to keep a reserve for this Doctrine So that the uncautious way in which the Father 's handled them in proof of which Volumes of Quotatations can be made shews they had not then received that Doctrine which must of necessity give them occasion to write otherwise than they did 2. We find the Heathens studied to load the Christian Religion with all the heaviest Imputations that they could give it They objected to them the believing a God that was born and that died and the Resurrection of the Dead and many lesser matters which seemed absurd to them They had Malice enough to seek out every thing that could disgrace a Religion which grew too hard for them But they never once object this of making a God out of a piece of Bread and then eating him If this had been the Doctrine of those Ages the Heathens chiefly Celsus and Porphiry but above all Iulian could not have been ignorant of it Now it does not stand with common Sense to think that those who insist much upon inconsiderable things could have passed over this which is both so sensible and of such importance if it had been the received Belief of those Ages 3. It is also of weight that there were no Disputes nor Heresies upon this Point during the first Ages and that none of the Hereticks ever objected it to the Doctors of the Church We find they contended about all other Points Now this hath so many Difficulties in it that it should seem a little strange that all Mens Understandings should have been then so easie and consenting that this was the single Point of the whole Body of Divinity about which the Church had no dispute for the first seven Centuries It therefore inclines a Man rather to think that because there were no Disputes concerning it therefore it was not then broached Since we see plainly that ever since it was broached in the West it has occasioned lasting Disputes both with those who could not be brought to believe it and with one another concerning the several ways of explaining and maintaining it 4. It is also a strong Prejudice against the Antiquity of this Doctrine that there were none of those Rites in the first Ages which have crept in in the latter which were such natural Consequences of it that the belief of the one making way for the other we may conclude that where the one were not practised the other was not believed I will not mention all the Pomp which the latter Ages have invented to raise the lustre of this Doctrine with which the former Ages were unacquainted It is enough to observe that the Adoration of the Sacrament was such a necessary Consequence of this Doctrine that since the Primitive Times know nothing of it as the Greek Church does not to this day it is perhaps more than a Presumption that they believed it not V. But now I come to more positive and convincing Proofs And 1. The Language of the whole Church is only to be found in the Liturgies which are more severely composed than Rhetorical Discourses and of all the parts of the Office the Prayer of Consecration is that in which we must hope to find most certainly the Doctrine of the Church We find then in the fourth Century that in the Prayer of Consecration the Elements were said to be the Types of the Body and Blood of Christ as St. Basil informs us from the Greek Liturgies and the Figure of his Body and Blood as St. Ambrose informs us from the Latin Liturgies The Prayer of Consecration that is now in the Canon of the Mass is in a great part the same with that which is cited by St. Ambrose but with this important difference that instead of the words which is the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that are in the former there is a Petition added in the latter that the Gifts may be to us the Body and Blood of Christ. If we had so many of the MSS. of the ancient Liturgies left as to be able to find out the time in which the Prayer of the Consecration was altered from what it was in St. Ambrose's days to what it is now this would be no small Article in the History of Transubstantiation But most of these are lost since then the antient Church could not believe otherwise of the Sacrament than as she expressed her self concerning it in the Prayer of Consecration it is plain that her first Doctrine concerning it was That the Bread and Wine were the Types and the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ. 2. A second Proof is from the Controversy that was began by the Apollinarists and carried on by the Eutichians Whether Christ's Humanity was swallowed up of his Divinity or not The Eutychians made use of the general Expressions by which the change in the Sacrament seemed to be carried so far that the Bread and Wine were swallowed up by it and from this they inferred that in like manner the Human Nature of Christ was swallowed up by his Divinity But in opposition to all this we find Chrysostome the Patriarch of Constantinople Ephrem the Patriarch of Antioch Gelasius the Pope Theodoret a Bishop in Asia the less and Facundus in Africk all within the compass of little more than an Age agree almost in the same words in refuting all this asserting That as the Human Nature in Christ remained still the same that it was before notwithstanding its Union with the Divine Nature even so the Bread and Wine retained still their former Nature Substance and Form and that they are only sanctified not by the change of their