Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	blood_n	body_n	shed_v	4,580	5	9.5800	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A77908	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	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1689 (1689)	Wing B5870B; ESTC R231153	11,390	8

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 Wiseman 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 petulent 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 Christs 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 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 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 the Bp they do not renounce in it any Article of Faith but only a bold curiosity of the Schoolmen 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 Christs 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 Jews 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 Christs dead Body which is not now actually in being it 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 rite of Christs 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 extream 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 Elisabeth'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. 3. 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 Kings head stamped upon a Meddal differs from the current coyn 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 badge 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 Passeover had distinguished them from the Egyptians Now it were a strange Inference because the Lamb was called the Lords Passeover 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 Great 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 imagin that because the Bread and the 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 therfore 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 Instituted and federal simbole 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 Ancient 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 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 quotations 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 dyed 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 Julian 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 has so many difficulties in it that it should seem a little strange that all mens understandings should have been then so easy 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 therfore inclines a man rather to think that because there was 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 Prosumption 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 4th 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 Latine 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