receiving the Body and Blood of our Saviour which is not performed by Faith and this is what the Catholic Church teaches The second thing granted by the Pretended Reformers is taken out of that Article which immediately follows that which I have already cited out of their Catechism Dim 52. which is That the Body of our Lord JESUS for as much as it was once offered up in Sacrifice to reconcile us to God is now given to assure us we have a part in that Reconciliation If there be any Sense in these Words if they be not an useless found and a vain amusement we ought to understand by them that JESVS CHRIST does not give us a Symbol only but his proper Body to assure us we partake of his Sacrifice and of the Reconciliation of Mankind But if the reception of the Body of our Lord assures us of our participation of the Fruits of his Death this participation of the Fruits must necessarily be distinguished from the reception of the Body seeing one is the pledg of the other From whence to proceed I say If our adversaries are forced to distinguish in the last Supper the participation of the body of our Blessed Saviour from the participation of the fruits of his Grace in his Sacrifice they must also necessarily make a distinction between the participation of this Divine Body and all kinds of Spiritual participation by Faith This latter participation will never furnish them with two distinct Actions by one of which they receive the Body of our Saviour and by the other the benefit of this Sacrifice no man being able to conceive what difference there is betwixt partaking by Faith of the Body of our Saviour and partaking by Faith of the Fruit of his Death They must therefore acknowledg that besides the Communion by which we spiritually partake of the Body of our Saviour and also of his Spirit by receiving the fruit of his Death there is also a Real Communion of the Body of the same Saviour which is to us a certain Pledg of the others being assured to us if we put no impediment to such a Grace by an evil Disposition This is necessarily included in the Principles they admit and they will never be able to explicate this Truth with the least shadow of Solidity if they return not to the Sentiments of the Church Who will not here admire the force of Truth All the consequences which follow from the acknowledged Principles of our adversaries are perfectly understood in the sentiment of the Church Catholicks the meanliest instructed without difficulty conceive that in the Eucharist there is a Communion which JESVS CHRIST which is not to be found any where else It is no difficulty for them to understand his Body is given us to assure us we partake of his Sacrifice and of his Death They distinguish clearly betwixt these two necessary manners of uniting or selves to JESVS CHRIST the one in receiving his proper flesh the other in receiving his Spirit the first of which is granted us as a certain pledge of the second But seeing these things are inexplicable in the sentiments of our adversaries tho on the other hand they cannot deny them we must necessarily conclude that errour has thrown them into a manifest contradiction I have been often astonished they did not explicate their Doctrine after a more plain manner Why did they not always without so many formalities persevere to say that JESVS CHRIST having shed his Blood for us represented to us this effusion by giving us two distinct signs of his Body and Blood that he was pleased indeed to give to these signs the name of the thing it self that these sacred signs were pledges to assure us of our partaking of the fruit of his Death and that we were spiritually nourished by the vertue of his Body and Blood After so many endeavours to prove that signs often receive the names of the things signified and that for this reason the sign of the Body might be called the Body all this connection of Doctrine obliges them naturally to fix there To render these signs efficacious it sufficed the Grace of Redemption was annexed to them or rather according to their Principles that it was in them confirmed to us They needed not have tormented themselves as they have done to make us understand we receive the proper Body of our Saviour to assure us we partake of the Grace of his Death They were well enough satisfied to have the water of Baptism a sign of the Blood which washeth us and it never entred into their fancies to say we there received the proper substance of the Blood of our Blessed Saviour to assure us his vertue is there diffused upon us If they had argued after the same manner as to the Eucharist their Doctrine would have been less embroyled But those who invent and innovate cannot express all they have a mind to They find certain truths and maxims established which incommode them and force a violence upon their imaginations The Arians would gladly have resused our Blessed Saviour the name of God or the only Son of God The Nestorians did not admit but with reluctance that kind of I know not what unity of person in JESVS CHRIST which we find in their writing The Pelagians who denied Original sin would also willingly have denyed that Baptism was given to little children for the remission of sins for by that means they would have been freed from the argument which Catholicks drew from this practice to prove that original defect But as I just now said those who find some truths firmly established have not the boldness or rather impudence to overthrow all Let the Calvinists ingenuously confess the truth they would have been well pleased to acknowledge in the Eucharist the Body of our Blessed Saviour only figuratively and the sole participation of his Spirit in effect laying aside those great words of Participation of his proper substance and the many others which import a real presence and serve only to perplex them It would have been more to their humour to have acknowledged in the Lords Supper no other communion with JESVS CHRIST but what is also common to Preaching and to Baptism without telling us as they have done that in the Lords Supper he is received in plentitude and every where else only in part But however this was their inclination yet the very force of the terms opposed them our Blessed Saviour having said so precisely of the Eucharist This is my body This is my Blood which he never did of any other thing nor upon any other occasion what likelihood was there of rendring that common to all the Actions of a Christian which his express word had annexed to one particular Sacrament And farther the whole order of divine providence the connexion of Doctrine and Holy Mysteries the intention of JESVS CHRIST in his last Supper the words themselves which he uttered and the impression which they
by Faith present upon this Holy Table together with these Signs of Death we unite our selves to him in this Estate we present him to God as our only Victim and our sole Propitiator by his Blood confessing we have nothing to offer up to God but JESVS CHRIST and the infinite Merit of his Death We consecrate all our Prayers by this Holy Oblation and in presenting JESVS CHRIST to God we learn at the same time to offer up our selves to the Divine Majesty in him and by him as living Sacrifices This is the Sacrifice of Christians infinitely different from what was offered up in the Old Law a Spiritual Sacrifice becoming the New Covenant in which the presence of the Victim is only perceived by Faith in which the Word of God is the Spiritual Sword which makes a Mystical separation betwixt the Body and the Blood in which by consequence the Blood is only shed Mystically and in which Death only intervenes by representation and yet however a most real Sacrifice in as much as JESVS CHRIST is there truly contained and presented to his Father under this Figure of Death But a Commemorative Sacrifice which is so far from taking away our adhesion to the Sacrifice of the Cross as it is objected to us on the contrary it fixes us the firmer to it by all its circumstances seeing it has not only an entire relation to it but in reality has neither being nor subsistence but by this relation from whence it deriveth all the Vertue contained in it This is the express Doctrine of the Catholic Church in the Council of Trent which teaches that this Sacrifice is instituted only to represent that which was once accomplished upon the Cross Sess 22. c. 1. to perpetuate the memory of it to the end of the World and to apply to us the saving Vertue of it for the remission of those sins which we commit every day So that the Church is so far from believing that something wants to perfect the Sacrifice of the Cross on the contrary she thinks it so perfect and so fully sufficient as what is added is only instituted to celebrate the memory and apply its Vertue By which the same Church acknowledges that all the merit of the Redemption of Mankind depends upon the Death of the Son of God and it ought to be understood from all we have already expounded that when we say to God in the Celebration of the Divine Mystery We offer unto you this Holy Host we pretend not by this Oblation to make or present to God a new payment of the price of our Salvation but to offer up to him in our behalfs the Merits of our Blessed JESVS there present and the infinite price which he once paid for us upon the Cross The Gentlemen of the Pretended Reform'd Religion do not think they offend JESVS CHRIST by offering him to God as present to their Faith and if they believed him to be really there what repugnance could they have to offer him up as truly present So that the whole dispute ought indeed to be reduced to the real presence alone From hence forwards all those false Ideas which these Gentlemen of the Pretended Reform'd Religion form to themselves of the Sacrifice which we offer ought to be effaced They ought freely to acknowledge Catholics pretend not to make a new propitiation to appease God anew as if he had not been sufficiently satisfied by the Sacrifice of the Cross or to make some addition to the Price of our Salvation as if it were imperfect All these things have no place in our Doctrine because all that is here done is intended by way of Intercession and Application after the manner which we have now explicated SECT XV. The Epistle to the Hebrews AFter this Explication those mighty Objections drawn from the Epistle to the Hebrews and so much enforced against us will appear to have little reason in them and it is in vain our Adversaries strive to prove from the sentiments of the Apostle that we annul the Sacrifice of the Cross But because the best way to prove that two Doctrines are not opposite to one another is to shew by explicating them that no proposition of the one is contrary to any of the propositions of the other I think I am bound in this place to propose in short the Doctrine of this Epistle The Apostle intends in this Epistle to teach us that a sinnner could not avoid Death but by substituting some one in his place to die for him that whilst Men substituted only Beasts to be killed in their places their Sacrifices operated nothing but a publick acknowledgment of their having deserved Death and that seeing the Divine Justice could not be satisfied by so unequal an exchange they begun again every day to slay new Victims which was a certain mark of the insufficiency of that substitution But that since JESVS CHRIST had vouchsafed to die for Sinners God being satisfied by a Person substituting of himself so condignly sufficient and nothing more to exact for the price of our Redemption From whence the Apostle concludes we ought not only to offer up no more Victims after JESVS CHRIST but that JESVS CHRIST himself ought to be but once offered up to Death for us Let the Reader then who is solicitous for his Souls Salvation and a lover of Truth reflect a little upon what we have said concerning the manner how JESVS CHRIST offers up himself to God for us in the Eucharist I am certain he will not find any Proposition contrary to those which I have here related from the Apostle or which weakens his Argument so that nothing can be objected to us but his silence upon this point But those who would but consider the wise distribution which God makes of his secrets in the several Books of Scripture would not oblige us to receive from the sole Epistle to the Hebrews all our instructions concerning a matter which was not necessary to the Subject of that Epistle seeing the Apostle intends to explicate in it the perfection of the Sacrifice of the Cross and not the different manners which God has instituted to apply it to us And to remove all equivocation if we take the word Offer in the sence it is made use of in this Epistle as implying the actual Death of the Victim we will publickly confess that JESVS CHRIST is now no more offered up neither in the Eucharist nor any where else But because this word has a larger signification in other places of Scripture where it is often said We offer up to God what we present before him the Church which forms her Language and her Doctrine not from the sole Epistle to the Hebrews but from the whole Body of the Holy Scripture is not afraid to say that JESVS CHRIST offers up himself to God whereever he appears before his Face upon our behalf and that by consequence he offers up himself in the Eucharist according to
naturally form in the minds of the Faithful give us nothing but the Ideas of his real presence Therefore it was necessary our adversaries should find out some expressions the sound of which might at least give us a confused Idea of this reality When a Man fixes himself either entirely upon Faith as Catholicks do or entirely upon humane Reason as Infidels do it is easie for him to establish a connected and uniform model of Doctrine But when a man goes about to make a composition of one and the other he always says something which he would not say and afterwards falls into opinions the sole contrarieties of which shew the manifest falsity of them This is what has hapned to these Gentlemen of the pretended reform'd Religion and God has so permitted it to facilitate their return to Catholic unity For whereas their proper experience shows them they must necessarily express themselves as we do to speak the language of Truth ought they not to judge it necessary to think as we do to understand it right If they observe in their own belief many expressions which have no sence but according to our tenets is it not sufficient to convince them that Truth is not in its full perfection but amongst us And those unconnected parts of Catholick Doctrine which are scatered here and there in their Catechisms but which as I may say require to be united to the whole ought they not to excite them to search in the Communion of the Church a full and entire explication of the Mystery of the Eucharist They would no doubt of it be brought to it did not humane Reflections trouble and perplex their Faith which has too much dependance upon Sence But having shown what Fruit they ought to reap from the Exposition of their Doctrine let us finish the explication of our own SECT XIII Of Transubstantiation and Adoration and in what sence the Eucharist is said to be a Sign IT having been convenient as it was said before that the Senses should not perceive any thing in this Mystery of Faith it was necessary nothing should be changed in respect of them in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist Upon which account being we see the same Species and feel the same Effects as before in this Sacrament we must not wonder if the same name be given to them sometimes and in some certain Sense Yet notwithstanding Faith being attentive to his word who performs what pleases him in Heaven and on Earth acknowledges here no other Substance but what is designed by the same word that is to say the proper Body and Blood of JESVS CHRIST into which the Bread and Wine are changed this is what we call Transubstantiation However That real verity which is interiorly contained in the Eucharist hinders not the exterior and sensible part from being a sign but a sign of such a Nature that it is so far from excluding the reality of the thing signified it bears it necessarily along with it seeing that in effect these words This is my Body pronounc'd upon that matter which JESVS CHRIST himself made choice of is to us a certain sign that his Body is present and though the Symbols appear always the same to our Senses yet our Mind judges otherwise of them and not according to Sense because a Superior Authority interposes So that whereas certain Species and a certain sequel of natural impressions on our Senses have been accustomed to design to us the substance of Bread and Wine the Authority of Him in whom we believe causes these same Species to begin to shew us another substance For we give ear to him who said that this which we receive and eat is his Body and such is the force of these words they hinder us from referring those exteriour appearances to the Substance of Bread and induced us to refer them to the Body of JESVS CHRIST there present Insomuch that the presence of such an adorable Object being rendered certain to us by this sign we are not afraid to pay it our adorations I will not dwell upon the point of Adoration because the most learned and the most intelligent of our Adversaries have long since granted us those who are perswaded of the real Presence of JESVS CHRIST in the Eucharist ought to pay him in it their Adorations In fine being once convinced the all-powerful words of the Son of God operate whatever they declare we believe that in the last Supper they had their effect as soon as they were pronounced by him and by a necessary Consequence we acknowledg the real Presence of his Body before our receiving of it SECT XIV Sacrifice of the Mass THese things being supposed there remains no particular difficulty about the Sacrifice which we acknowledg in the Eucharist We have observed two actions in this Mystery which cease not to be distinct the one of them has a Relation to the other The first is the consecration by which the Bread and Wine are changed into the Body and Blood and the second is the receiving by which we partake of them In the Consecration the Body and the Blood are mystically seperated because JESVS CHRIST said separately This is my Body this is my Blood which includes a lively and efficacious Representation of the violent Death he suffered So that the Son of God is placed upon the Holy Table in vertue of these words cloathed with those signs which represent his Death this is effected by consecration and this Religious action carries with it an acknowledgment of Gods Soveraignty in as much as JESVS CHRIST there present renews and perpetuates in some sort the remembrance of his being obedient even to the Death of the Cross So that there is nothing wanting to render this a true Sacrifice We cannot doubt but this Action as distinct from that of Communicating is of it self acceptable to God and makes him look upon us with a more propitious Eye because it represents to him that voluntary Death which his beloved Son has suffered for us Sinners or rather places before his Eyes that very Son of his under the signs of this Death by which his Wrath had been appeased All Christians will confess the sole Presence of JESVS CHRIST to be a most Powerful Intercession before God for all mankind according to the saying of the Apostle That JESVS CHRIST presents himself and appears for us before the Face of God Heb. 9.24 So that we believe that JESVS CHRIST being present upon the Holy Table under this Figure of Death intercedes for us and represents continually to his Father that Death which he has suffered for his Church It is in this Sense we say JESVS CHRIST offers up himself to God for us in the Eucharist it is after this manner we conceive this Oblation renders God more propitious to us and therefore we call this a Propitiatory Sacrifice When we consider what it is JESVS CHRIST operates in this Mystery and that we see him