ANIMAD VERSIONS Upon the Doctrine of Transubstantiation A SERMON PREACHED Before the Right Honourable THE Lord Mayor And the Court of ALDERMEN Octob. xix 1679. At the GUILD-HALL Chappel LONDON By JOHN TURNER Fellow of Christs-Colledge in CAMBRIDGE 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 LONDON Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishops-Head in S. Paul's Church-Yard 1679. To the Right Honourable Sir JAMES EDWARDS Kt. Lord MAYOR Of the CITY of LONDON And to the Court of ALDERMEN Right Honourable I Have presumed in Obedience to the Commands of my Superiours which are a Law to me and ought to be so to every Honest man to publish the following Discourse in which adventure I am so far from having any other Motive than that of perfect Submission to all the lawful injunctions of Authority that if I had been only to consult mine own inclination I think I should have deferred it till some farther time for otherwise I will not deny but that I did design this and somewhat more upon this Subject should appear abroad out of some hope which I have that as the Subject its self which I have undertaken will be very seasonable and suitable to the present juncture of time so also that what I have to suggest upon it may not be altogether unuseful or unacceptable to the World or at least to that part of it which has either the patience to hear Reason or the Justice to suffer themselves to be directed by it However it may be a certain Argument that I have no other Design than that of Obedience to Your Lordship and the Honourable Court that what I have now exposed to the View of the Publick is an Imperfect thing as will sufficiently appear by the perusal of the Sermon its self which leaves one of the particulars proposed in a great measure unconsidered I mean that Second Head of the Feast of Vnleavened Bread which will contain these Two Particulars First of the Time and Secondly of the Nature of that Last supper which our Saviour Celebrated with his Disciples which being a Disquisition of a Philological nature and so not altogether so proper for the Pulpit I have the confidence to hope that what I have performed upon This Occasion may seem the less defective for its want of that part Such as it is I do here in most Humble manner Present it to Your Patronage and Protection Hoping for Your kind and favourable Acceptance And am Right Honourable Your most Obedient Servant JOHN TVRNER LONDON October 27. 1679. A SERMON PREACHED Before the Lord MAYOR 1 Cor. chap. 5. vers 7 8. For even Christ our Passeover is Sacrificed for us therefore let us keep the Feast not with the old leaven neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of Sincerity and Truth FROM these words I design to speak some little of that great deal which may be urged against the doctrine of Transubstantiation a doctrine which though weak and unable to support its self yet it is of that consequence to the whole Fabrick of the Romish Church that if this be but once throughly defeated and exposed the other must of necessity fall together with it Wherefore as this Doctrine unable to maintain its self upon any bottom or foundation of its own flies for refuge to a vain pretence of an infallible Spirit that is of the Spirit of God so if it be but once granted that this Spirit cannot contradict its self or act inconsistently to its own declared revelations and then solidly proved that the revealed will of God in the Scriptures of the New Testament do plainly and directly oppose and condemn this Doctrine then is it manifest that the Catholick Church as they call themselves that is the Bishop of Rome and his followers are not only fallible but actually deceived in their main Article of Faith and in one of the most eminent marks of distinction betwixt those of That and the Reformed Communion So that to overthrow this Doctrine by unquestionable strength of Reason and by plain and undeniable testimony of Scripture is in effect to do by the Religion of Rome as she would have done by the persons of all that are not of the same grain and tincture with her self to cut it off and utterly destroy it at a blow Not that we are to expect that Faction or Prejudice or Interest will ever be disputed out of an opinion this perhaps will never wholly be brought to pass so long as there are either diverse men or diversity of Opinions and Interests in the World but I say if men would act according to the true dictates of natural conscience and reason then if it be acknowledged on both hands that the Scriptures are infallible and divinely inspired and if it be equally clear that the truth of the Scriptures cannot possibly consist with that of the doctrine of Transubstantiation then if men will not give themselves over to all manner of Imposture and delusion without measure and without end they must of necessity disclaim that doctrine as an error which is so far from being defended that it is manifestly and strongly opposed by the confessedly infallible Authority of Scripture And because both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be infallibly true but the one must of necessity be infallibly true the other infallibly false there is nothing more plain than that if they acknowledge the truth of the Scriptures they must at the same time unavoidably renounce the pretended infallibility of the Church of Rome and consequently the Church its self the certainty of whose Faith and Doctrine is built upon this rotten and sandy foundation and which by consequence may under this false though specious pretence lead us into innumerable errors and mistakes and that in matters as well of Practice as Belief for when things come to be throughly examined it will be difficult to set bounds to this infallible Spirit so as to draw a line where infallibility borders upon the possibilities of error or upon downright mistake and to say thus far shalt thou go and no farther In the words therefore lately read to you there are two things worthy of your special notice First That Christ is our Passeover Secondly that we are to keep the Feast in memory of this Passeover as the Jewish Feast was a memorial Exod. 12. 14. of the Jewish Passeover with the unleavened bread of Sincerity and Truth 1. Christ is our Passeover that is he is the same thing to all mankind but in a more eminent and transcendent manner which the Jewish Passeover was to the Jews only with this difference that whereas the solemnity of the Passeover among the Jews was to be repeated every year at the stated and usual time that is See Numb 9. 5 collar cum v. 9. 10. 2 Chron 30. 13. to say on the Fourteenth day of the first or in some cases of the second Moneth Christ who was typified by it was to
be but once offered to bear the sins of many Heb. 9. 28. And we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all Heb. 10. 10. Wherefore if the eating the Body of Christ in the Sacrament and the drinking of his Bloud which is the effusion of it be a renewal of his Passion a sacrificing of and a feeding upon the Passeover afresh then I affirm that no such thing is done or at least we must be reduced to this Dilemma Either the Scriptures are not true or the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is false Now whether the determination of the Author to the Hebrews that is of an inspired writer that is in effect of God himself and of S. Peter in his first Epistle Chap. 3. ver 18. where he tells us that Christ hath once suffered for sins the just for the unjust and a man would think he was every whit as infallible as any of his pretended successors I say which of these is most to be believed and stood to judge ye nay let our Adversaries themselves be judges Again Christ being our Passeover was for this very Deut. 16. 2 5 6 7. reason among others offered up at Jerusalem because it was unlawful to kill the Passeover at any other place after such time as the Temple was built Thus those three great and solemn Passeovers which we read of in the times of Hezekiah Jesiah and Ezra were 2 Chron. 30. 2. 2 Kings 23. 23. Ezra 6. 19 Luk. 2. 41. every one of them celebrated at Jerusalem and it is said of Joseph and the blessed Virgin the Mother of our Lord that they went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passeover Now if Christ suffered at Jerusalem because the Passeover was to be killed there if Christ be our Passeover and if the Passeover could not be sacrificed any where else nay if it cannot now be offered at Jerusalem its self because the City and Temple are demolished because God hath taken his name from thence because instead of being the Metropolis of true Religion it is now the seat of the grossest Idolatry and Superstition because the law of Moses is abolished because the meaning and intention of the Passeover is completed if all these things be true as most certainly they are then is it plain that if Christ be corporeally and substantially present in the Sacrament if his Body and Bloud be truly and properly eaten and drunk by us yet he is not present neither do we feed upon him as our Passeover Wherefore it is clear that either Christ hath ceased to be our Passeover and then it will be more easie than pleasant to pronounce what will become of us we are all in a very miserable condition or else it is not lawful to feed upon him since the Passeover cannot now be eaten in any part of the world and therefore we may assure our selves from this as well as from what has been said above that he could be offered up but once that we neither do nor ought to feed upon him if we will follow his own Institution and why he should enable any Romish Priest to work a Miracle such a strange Miracle as this of Transubstantiation in contradiction both to the Law and Gospel is a most Prodigiously strange and unaccountable thing I am confident it will puzle the Ablest person of Their Church to give a Tolerable account of this Lastly Christ is our Passeover therefore it is unlawful to Drink his Bloud for the bloud of the Passeover as of other Sacrifices could not by the Law of Moses be either Eaten or Drunk therefore we may boldly affirm that the Priest when he pronounces those words This is my bloud or This is my bloud of the New Testament does not by this means Transubstantiate the Wine into it therefore neither is the Bread changed into the Body of Christ by his saying this is my body for the case is the same in both and it is altogether incredible that such a wonderful power should accompany those words This is my Body when those other This is my Bloud which one would imagine in all reason should be considered by themselves of equal force and validity with the former have no such virtue or efficacy at all I take the confidence to affirm that all this is absolute irresistible demonstration if there be such a thing as Demonstration in the world for Christ was not truely and literally a Paschal Lamb no he was a man born of a woman as we are though after a more divine and heavenly manner by the Overshadowing of the Holy Ghost in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin but he is called our Passeover only in respect of the Likeness or Analogy which there was betwixt his Sacrifice of himself upon the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb under the Law Now I beseech you where is the Analogy if those Paschal Lambs whose bloud was first sprinkled in that great deliverance upon the Posts and Lentils of the Jewish houses could be but once Offered and all succeeding Paschatizations were nothing else but Thankful acknowledgements and commemorations of this while all this while the same the very self same Christ may be offered every day in the Year and every hour in the day as often as ever we Receive the Sacrament and as many times told almost at the very same instant as there are people that receive it Where is the Analogy if the Mosaical Passeover could be Offered no where but at Jerusalem and cannot be Offered so much as there any more if one and the same Christ at the very same instant may be Offered in all parts of the world and all this as many times repeated as there are days and hours nay moments the most incredibly small parts the most exquisite subdivisions and as it were Atoms of time from the first Institution of the Sacrament to the end of the world Lastly Where is the Analogy if the Bloud of the Paschal Lamb were most strictly prohibited to be either Drunk or Eaten and yet there is a necessity of drinking the Bloud of Christ An Imputation which the Priest with all his Artifice and Sophistry cannot possibly avoid and the people also are affirmed to do it Collectively though they do not take the Elements in sunder and certainly this if it be not Eating and Drinking bloud yet it is at least Eating with the bloud which was as much unlawful as the other and this was the sin of the Israelites in the 14th Chapter of the first book of Samuel which I have formerly cited in what I have said elsewhere upon this subject So that it is manifest a man must have the impudence to contradict plain Texts of Scripture as well as common sense he must destroy the Analogy of Types to their Antitypes of Symbols to their Substance as well as the Agreement and Connection of things with one another before he can assert the doctrine of
Passeover for by both of these taken together our deliverance from the jaws of Death and Hell is completed and we are delivered from the bondage of corruption from the intolerable servitude of sin and Satan into the glorious liberty of the sons of God a deliverance of so high a nature that though we had not been commanded to commemorate it by our Saviour himself who with his own bloud purchased it for us yet mere gratitude and good nature nay common honesty and common sence themselves would have prompted all hearty Christians not to sit down contented with a bare narrative a cold story of such a redemption but they would certainly have found out some symbols the better to represent it as much as may be to our outward senses and fix it deeper in our minds according to that saying Segniùs irritant animas demissa per aures Quà m quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus And there could not possibly better symbols have been found out than those of eating Bread and drinking Wine by which both the manner of our Lords Passion by the rending of his Body and the spilling of his Bloud is signified and the union of the Church by the participation of the same Table which was always accounted a symbol of the strictest friendship and which was another end of this holy Feast was intended to be inviolably maintained and preserved And thus the feeding upon the Paschal Lamb under the law is more than answered by our spiritual feeding upon the Body of Christ that is by our being more than nourished by our being saved and Eternally made happy by the merit and satisfaction of his Death After this the same Objector goes on to raise difficulties not so much against the resemblance of the Paschal Lamb to the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross as against the Sacrament its self which bears an Analogy with the Paschal Feast he demands therefore how we can be said to eat the Body and drink the Bloud of Christ in the Sacrament whether it were that he cut off pieces of his own Flesh and gave them to eat or whether his Body was made up of nothing but Bread and Wine instead of Flesh and Bloud animated with a humane Soul and the matter out of which it was taken being more than would suffice to make an entire humane Body whether the remainders of it were not that which he gave to his Disciples saying This is my Body and This is my Bloud that is it is a part of that substance or it is a substance of the same nature with that of which my Body and Bloud are composed I am pretty sure I do not wrong the Objector he that has a mind to be better satisfied may read him in his own words in the Notes of Munster upon the 26. Chapter of S. Matthew which suppositions of his the more frivolous and impertinent they are the more clearly do they show that nothing can be so absurd which a man let alone to make use of his own faculties would not rather pitch upon than this mysterious Doctrine of Transubstantiation But he goes on further to object that Body which the Disciples are said to have eat and drank whither did it go did it go through certain private passages of its own or was it mixt in the stomach and Intestines with the rest of their usual diet Which I confess against the doctrine of Transubstantiation would be no very weak or impertinent objection for upon supposition that the Elements of Bread and Wine are really and substantially changed into the Body and Bloud of Christ which cannot now be distinguished from his glorified Body it being the same Body which was once crucified and is now glorified one of these Four things must of necessity follow Either we do not really receive it in the Sacrament but only seem to do it and so there is a double cheat put upon our senses or else it passes out by some hidden and peculiar passages of its own or else the person of Christ is really united to the person of every Communicant which union is as often multiplied as we receive the Sacrament a thing not only absurd but blasphemous to suppose or else lastly which I abhor to think it is as he expresses it Mehouraf bekeebah him shear haochel and passes out by the infamis ductus into the common slime and saburra of the world The wit of man cannot think of a fifth thing I am sure whereas all this is easily taken off by saying that the true Elements taken in the Lords Supper are only a remembrance of his meritorious Death and Passion and of that blessed Feast of Happiness and Joy which all good Christians will partake with him in the world to come Whither God of his infinite mercy bring us all by the merits and mediation of the same Jesus Christ our Lord to whom with the Father and the blessed Spirit be ascribed as is most due all honour glory and praise from this time forward and for evermore Amen THE END
Transubstantiation to be a True doctrine And I doubt it is not worth our while to go thus far about this is more cost than worship certainly 't is a very hard bargain for a man to relinquish common sense to abandon his Reason to bid adieu to Revelation and stop his ears against the Voice of Heaven purely for the sake of Unintelligible Non sense Let any thing but the crafty impudence of a Romish Priest expose so hard a penny-worth as this to sale and he may count the Stars of Heaven the Sands of the Sea-shore and the minutes of Eternity quite over before he get a Chapman This is the first thing Christ is our Passeover but then secondly we are to keep the Feast in memory of this Passeover with the Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth It is Grotius his observation out of Servius Flamines Farinam fermentatam contingere non licâ—bat nimirum sayes he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 significationem habent puritatis animi subâ—issi which is a very good reason and is sufficiently confirmed by Testimony of Scripture from whence it plainly appears that Leaven was anciently looked upon as a Symbol of every thing which was bad but more especially of Pride which is a certain Leaven or puff past of the mind and the contrary to this that is Unleavened bread was a Symbol of every thing which was good and virtuous but more especially of Humility and Sincerity of mind Thus you see in the Words of my Text we are bid to keep the Feast not with the Old Leaven neither with the Leaven of malice and wickedness but with the Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth Thus our Saviour forewarned his Disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees Matth. 16. 6. which in the twelfth verse is expounded of their doctrines and the reason why false doctrines are called by the name of Leaven is because they are naturally corruptive of the mind and fill it commonly as full of Pride as Error neither is there any man for the most part so positive so seemingly infallible so full of arrogance and self conceit so great an admirer of himself and his own sect or party and so great a despiser of all other men besides as he that labours under a religious mistake he that consecrates error by making it an Article of his Creed and upholds by the strength of Impudence and the strength of a strangâ—â—nd of obstinate Faith the discriminative non-sence 〈…〉 rty which cannot be defended by the strength of Rea 〈…〉 But if a false doctrine which is commonly 〈◊〉 more than a mistake in the greatest part of them that eâ—â—race it though it may be and is usually Knavery in their Teachers if this be called by the name of Leaven then certainly a bad life and a vicious practice ought much more to be branded with this hateful name From whence â—t is that in the Twelfth Chapter of S. Lukes Gospel at the first Verse our Saviour bids his disciples beware of the leaven of the Pharisees which is Hypocrisie and in this very Chapter from whence the Text is taken Fornication Pride Idolatry Covetousness Extortion and in a word every thing almost that is but bad are manifestly compared to Leaven and it is of all these as well as of that glorying which is not good that the Apostle says Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump as ye are unleavened He speaks chiefly of one of the Church of Corinth who had taken to himself his Fathers wife and consequently was guilty of such Fornication as was not so much as to be named amongst the Gentiles for fear of giving occasion of scandal to the Gospel of Christ He exhorts them with great earnestness to deliver such an one unto Satan to the destruction of the flesh that the Spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus and the reason he gives why he would have this done is taken from the necessity of it Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump that is a wicked man in a Party or Society is the same thing as Leaven in the kneaded lump they both communicate their own bad qualities to the whole masse and the whole Society is in equal danger of being infected by the pernicious example of a bad man as the whole lump of being seasoned by a small quantity of leaven Wherefore leaven has a double symbolical meaning First it is a symbol of spreading and propagation Secondly it is a symbol of wickedness and of every naughty habit of the mind In the first respect the Kingdom of Heaven that is the miraculously strange propagation of the Gospel of Matth. 13. 3â— 32 33. Mark 4. 31 32. Luke 13. 18 ad 21. Christ notwithstanding all the opposition of its professed enemies is likened to Leaven and a grain of Mustardseed by our Saviour himself and upon account of both these respects taken together it was that Leaven was in all kind of sacrifices whatsoever forbidden Levit. 2. 11. no meat-offering Sâ—e also Exod. â—4 25. Levit 6. 17. which ye shall bring unto the Lord shall be made with Leaven for ye shall burn no Leaven nor any Hony in any offering of the Lord made by fire and offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving with Leaven is mentioned by the Prophet Amos as one of the highest instances of the Jewish Amos 4. 5. abominations Ye shall burn no Leaven nor any Hony in any offering of the Lord made by fire what was the reason of this why the reason is plain because the fire would agitate and provoke the fermenting nature of the Leaven and Hony and by that means render them more effectual symbols of those bad habits and qualifications of mind which the Jews by this prohibition were symbolically commanded to avoid Let us keep the Feast with the unleavened bread of Sincerity and Truth From these words we may observe these three things First it is manifest that this was a real Feast and therefore could not be kept with Metaphors and Allegories now the only thing here mentioned with which we are to keep it is unleavened bread which was as has been shown a symbol of Sincerity and Truth so that to keep the Feast after this manner was in effect to enter upon new resolutions of a Holy and Virtuous life Secondly This Feast is the Feast of Christ our Passeover therefore there is no doubt at all but there is here a plain allusion made to that unleavened bread which was made use of at the solemnity of the Passeover and other Sacrifices but this bread was not the very Paschal Lamb which was offered up for sacrifice and to which it was annext therefore neither is this bread the same thing in its self or by any means changed into it with that sacrifice of Christ by which he offered up himself