them singly as for both together his most severe imposition of both Joh. 6.53 we can shew you herein the Obedience of the Catholick Church for above a thousand years who were so humble and so respectfull also as not to think themselves either wiser than our Saviour or above his express commands herein Afterwards indeed one part of the Catholick Church grew more knowing and the Council of Constance maugre our Saviour's express command to be seen in the Gospels and very particularly in St. Paul denied one half of the Communion 1 Cor. 11.24 25. the Cup to the Laity and so that Church continues ever since to do Among those several Arguments or Reasons mustered up by Gerson at the Command and for the Defence of this bold Council I do not remember one that is not either ridiculous in it self or highly reflecting upon our blessed and most wise Saviour's prudence or foresight But to pass by this and your Argument from the 6th of S. John which I shall remember when I come to that point in your Book methinks your assuring your self that if your former Faith was not right in this the Eucharist it was wrong in all controverted Particulars c. is none of the clearest Inductions and would have appeared something too bold had you not helped it out a little with what I suppose you have heard some of your new Church say that that Church hath the same Authorities and Traditions for them as for this c. which I think to be one of the greatest truths in your Book and I do assure you that I am perfectly of the same opinion that the Church of Rome hath the same neither better nor worse Authorities and Traditions for all the Points controverted betwixt the Church of England and her that she hath for Transubstantiation which I question not to shew when I come to that point to be either very bad or none at all Whether you have wrought in this your search according to the directions of the Church of England will be better seen when we come to your Proofs themselves I cannot pass the Canon of our Church you have quoted here without making two short Remarks from it The first of which is Imprimis vero videbunt ne quid unquam doceant pro Concione quod à populo religiose teneri credi velint nisi quod consentaneum sit Doctrinae veteris aut Novi Testamenti quodque ex illâ ipsâ Doctrinâ Catholici Patres Veteres Episcopi collegerint c. Liber Canon Disciplinae Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1571. Titulo Concionatores How little our Church is a favourer or encourager of the Private Spirit you talk so often about or of private Interpretations when she doth not allow the Guides of the Parochial Churches themselves to teach any thing for Faith in their Sermons which is not agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testament and the Interpretations of Catholick Antiquity 2. That it is a most false as well as a most ridiculous Assertion of your new Brethren of the Church of Rome who say our Church slights and rejects the Fathers because they are all against her and that she owns they are all against her for a clear Contradiction to which I would but desire of any Romanist to reade this short Canon of a Synod of ours in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth seriously over and to consider it and I do not question if he would but speak plainly herein as every ingenuous man ought that he would own such Assertours to be guilty of a downright Calumny For your Conditional Thanks that you seem willing to bestow on the Church of England for her Directions she can have no reason to expect any from you since I am pretty well assured that you have not observed her Directions and therefore can owe her none on that account and for your Conditional Prayers for the Teachers of her Communion c. I can assure you that they are by her Injunctions and without any conditions not behind-hand with you in such civilities since thrice a week at least they are commanded in the Litany to put up constantly a Petition for you and such as you Galatinus and his Rabbins I shall refer to their place in your Book to which I shall now pass finding nothing farther in your Preface that may not be better considered in the Answers to the Particulars of your Book CHAP. I. The Method of the Answer and a Consideration of Mr. Sclater's Reasons of doubting in our Communion BEfore I undertake the Particulars of your Book I cannot refrain the making a complaint to you that you have not put your writing into a Method becoming a Scholar but have managed your reasons so confusedly and passed so abruptly from one head to another that it is sometimes difficult to know which of your points you are then about Method and clearness and a fair transition from one part of a Discourse to another were never counted trifles nor ever thought unworthy the care of any one Writer that did desire either to instruct or to convince his Readers That I may avoid therefore my self what I am forc'd to rereprehend in another I shall in this my Expostulation confine my self to and direct my self by these Rules 1. To consider the Reasons of your doubting during your continuance in our Communion whether you were in the right way and of a true Church 2. The Method you used for the resolving your self in your doubts 3. The Reason or Reasons that convinced you so far as to leave our Communion and to espouse that of the Church of Rome I do not believe I can wrong your Book in taking such a Method or disoblige you or any one else that may read this As to the first head then the Reasons of your doubting one might with reason have expected that you would a little more have enlarged your self in a thing the right managing of which was of so infinite concern or at the least that you would have afforded the World tho' but one Reason that might have given satisfaction That which you have put down I mean the Text from S. Paul Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall I am sure cannot since that Text may as well serve against the approaching Easter as it did against the last and you may as well use it now as you did then and should a giddy mind possess you and hurry you next to Socinianism then to the Anabaptists and herd you at last among the Quakers no body could refuse you your Motto and Let him that thinketh he standeth c. would serve you in as much stead for any of them as it did now Without any satisfaction at all therefore about the reasons of your doubt which I wish we had had faithfully set down that so the World might not take that leave it does now of judging what it pleases concerning the true reasons of your
Rome was from the beginning reckoned a particular Church I think is as plain as that Rome is in Italy I have proved it so fully above that I almost loath such a ridiculous subject of discourse pag. 17. And your Authorities from Pacian and Cyril of Jerusalem are not one jot to your purpose if you intend them to confirm that the Church of Rome is the Catholick Church all that they say or prove being that Catholick is the Sirname of true Christians and that every one should enquire for and unite with the Catholick Church into whatsoever place he comes Now what is this to the Church of Rome here is no mention of her here not a syllable to determine that she is the Catholick Church to unite with which these two Fathers are carefull to advise These things you tell us gave you some small encouragement to betake your self to that Communion that was both Christian and Catholick c. for which very reason you needed not have left the Communion of the Church of England which is both Christian and Catholick You ought to dislike Papist upon the same ground you dislike Protestant and if Christian was too large for you you needed not to leave the Church of England to be both Catholick and Christian the Church of England denominates her self from no particular Persons good or bad but is a True Church having lawfull Pastors and a Catholick Faith. You next say you cannot imagine why Protestants should so decline the Title of Catholick you mean or suffer it with so much silence to be laid aside unless it be pag. 18. because it imports a Faith spread throughout the World which they very well know would be utterly impossible to prove their Protestant Faith ever was c. Whether this passage is more ridiculous or false I must own that upon the sudden I cannot tell if you mean here as you ought the Church of England as you must to be consistent with your self having a good while ago cast off all the other Reformed Communions nothing can be more false and ridiculous since twice a Day we use it constantly in our Service and surely you will not be so extravagantly unreasonable to say we do not Mean or Pray for our selves when we Pray for the Good Estate of the Catholick Church So that our decling the Title and suffering it with so much silence to he laid aside must be put to the account of the grosser sort of Untruths And we need not wonder that you would offer a false reason for a false thing our Faith and the Faith of all the Reformed Churches having been already proved to be Catholick and therefore your utterly impossible to prove it to be a Faith spread throughout the World must be put up on the same account Nor is there ever a Member of the Church of England of any Learning that I ever met with or heard of that either declined the Title of a Reformed Catholick or was not ready onely to profess but also to prove that by being a Son of the Church of England he was a Member of a Catholick Church As to what you add about the other Adjunct in our ours I say of the Church of England as well as yours at Rome Creed Apostolical that you saw less reason for their claim to that and to give them their due they were more modest than much to insist upon it c. This Sentence is Brass every bit of it for if you mean the Church of England here I am astonished to think you should have so little Conscience or so little Modesty to publish such a gross untruth in the face of a Church that is so far from not insisting on the Title of Apostolical that it denounces every person excommunicate that shall dare to say the Church g Whosoever shall hereafter affirm that the Church of England by Law established under the Kings Majesty is not a TRUE and an APOSTOLICAL CHURCH teaching and maintaining the DOCTRINE of the APOSTLES let him be Excommunicated â—pso facto and not restored but onely by the Arch-Bishop after his Repentance and publick Revocation of this his WICKED ERROUR Can. 3. of the Synod in 1603. of England is not an Apostolical Church and calls such an affirmation an impious Errour But if you are resolved to carry things at this rate by brazening us down 't is to no purpose to contend with you I must needs tell you that you might as well have published to the World that the Church of England hath no Creed in her publick Service nor believes a Trinity nor hath any Bishops to preside ovâ—â— her as this of her neither having nor pretending to Apostolical Faith and Succession If you include also the rest of the Reformed Churches you might easily know that there is no thing they so much insist upon as the proving their Faith and Practices to be purely Apostolical and therefore their Churches to be such so that neither are they so modest as not to insist on their being Apostolical as to the want of Succession among them that you object against 'em and they do not deny you your self have furnished them with an answer to your Party from St. Ambrose's words Non habent Petri haereditatem qui Petri Fidem non habent de Poenit. l. 1. c. 6. that they enjoy not the inheritance or Succession of Peter who have not the Faith of Peter But here you have a mind to make the Church of England to be of your opinion that is that the foreign Reformed Churches have no true Ministers because those that come out of France with the Title of Ministers are not allowed to exercise their Ministry before they receive the Orders of the Church of England pag. 19. c. It is true they are not allowed to have a Cure of Souls here without the taking of Episcopal Orders because it is expressly provided by Act of Parliament among us that no one shall have such a Cure of Souls without Episcopal Orders which Act you know was fully designed against our home Dissenters who had opportunities of Episcopal Orders at home not against them who could not have them at home with whom also we had nothing to do But since no exception was made in the Act for them the Church cannot dispense with an Act of Parliament in their favour However that she allows theirs to be true tho' imperfect Churches is hence plain because her Members in their Travels communicate with those Churches which thing she would never permit had they no Ministry it was the Practice of our Exiles in France during the long Rebellion and Dr. R. Watson hath lately put forth the most Learned and most Religious Bishop Cozin who was one of those noble exiled Confessors his Defence of their communicating there with Geneva rather than Rome So that your Argument fails you also here CHAP. XV. More of his foul Aspersions on the Church of England exposed and
Substance unto which those Accidents do belong In a word had there been such a thing as Transubstantiation believed then as the Fathers could not have urged the Example of the Eucharist its continuing in the very same NATURE and SUBSTANCE it had before Consecration against the Eutychian Hereticks so it is Morally Impossible that those Hereticks should omit so home an Argument in Defence of themselves but since these are never known to have urged any such thing for themselves and we find the Greatest and most Learned Fathers urging the Example of the EUCHARIST its remaining in the TRUE SUBSTANCES of BREAD and WINE after CONSECRATION we have all the Reason in the World to conclude that the Fathers neither did nor could ever believe such a thing as Transubstantiation I might have added another Corollary from the Distinction between the Natural and the Spiritual Flesh and Blood of Christ so much insisted on by the Fathers Clemens of Alexandria (4) Paedag. L. 2. c. 2. and others and especially by Rathramn or Bertram who hath made it the Subject of the Second Part of his Book from Section 50th p. 127 by our Countreymen (5) Illa Eucharistia non est Câ—â—pus Christi CORPORALITER sed SPIRITVALITER non Corpus illud QVO passus est sed Corpus illud de quo locuâ—as est quando Panem Vinum in EUCHARISTIAM nocte unâ ante Passionem suam Consecravit Alsric apud Wheloci notas in Bed. H. E. l. 4. c. 24. Alfrick Arch-Bâ—â—â—op of Canterbury in an Epistle to Wulphin Bishop of Shirbâ—urn and by Wulphin himself (6) Hostia illa est Christi Corpus non Corporaliter sed Spiritualiter Non Corpus in quo passus est sed Corpus de quo locutus est quando Panem Vinum ea quae Passionem antecessit nocte in Hostiam Consecravit de Sacrato Pane dixit Hoc est Corpus Meum c. Wulfini Oratio Synodica apudVsser de Christ Eccl. Succes Statu c. 2. p. 44. in a Synodical Oration of his to his Clergy in the Tenth Century near a Thousand years after Christ. I might also have insisted on some more such particularly on that Account in Hesychius (7) Hesychius in Levit. l. 2. c. 8. of the Custome of the Church of Jerusalem to burn what was left of the Consecrated Elements but to avoid being tedious those I have already made are abundantly sufficient to shew that Transubstantiation was not could not be the Belief of the FATHERS that their FAITH concerning the EUCHARIST is the very SAME with the FAITH taught and embraced by the CHURCH of ENGLAND which was the Thing I undertook to evince CHAP. XXIV Two or Three Reflexions upon the Remainder of Mr. Sclater's Book The Conclusion HAving done This I shall not trouble my self with the rest of your Citations but shall wave them as not one jot to the Purpose since if they should be against OUR CHURCH I have already proved that they as are much against THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH I will onely make two or three Reflections upon the Rest of your Book and then take leave of you The First shall be upon your Great Lateran Council p. 84. That it did determine allowing what is denyed by some of your own side that things were managed fairly at this Meeting for Transubstantiation and for the PAPAL POWER of DEPOSING KINGS at the same time If it erred in Determining the LATTER why not in Determining the FIRST I am sure that TRANSUBSTANTIATION is as MUCH against the PRIMITIVE FATHERS as that DAMNABLE HERETICAL DOCTRINE of POPES POWER of DEPOSING of KINGS and DISPOSING of their KINGDOMS can be A Discourse concerning Christ's Kingdom in TWO SERMONS preached before the University of Cambridge Printed for Green 1682 p. 18 19. And we do not envy your having TRANSUBSTANTIATION determined by such a Council as FIRST Conciliarly determined that HELLISH DOCTRINE of DEPOSING of KINGS a Practice so Impious that Dr. BARNES not LONG SINCE in a SERMON before the FAMOUS UNIVERSITY of CAMBRIDGE thought it to be ONE of the most IRREFRAGABLE ARGUMENTS to use his own words to prove HIM CHRIST his PRETENDER VICAR the POPE to be THE ANTICHRIST and he goes on to tell THEM That whereas some have taken a great deal of Pains to prove HIM the POPE so from the obscure Prophecies of Daniel And others with great Labour and Difficulties have applied all the Phaenomena and Characters of the Apocalyptical falle Prophet to the POPE THIS is a most SURE and COMPENDIOUS WAY of stamping upon HIM the MARK of the BEAST This Doctor 's words and Opinion I have chosen the rather for this Purpose because I believe he doth not pass in the Rank of MISREPRESENTERS among YOU and because it was in a SERMON before an UNIVERSITY p. 18. wherein HE told them he would deal sincerely with THEM I am perswaded that those of your Party that know HIM will grant him to be none of our fiery Zealots p. 49 50. N. B. and Furioso's against Popery tho' HE doth in the second SERMON speak of JUST EXCLAMATIONS against the SUPERSTITIONS and IDOLATRIES of the CHURCH of ROME and of a COMMENDABLE INDIGNATION against the WICKED and HELLISH PRACTICES of the ROMISH EMISSARIES to ESTABLIH the POPISH RELIGION My next Reflexion is p. 75 76. that your Account of Berengarius discovers abundance of malice and of ignorance too because He could not be the first Disturber of the long Peace of the Church by teaching a Doctrine opposite to Transubstantiation since in the Century before that Berengarius lived in not to go abroad in our OWN NATION the SAME DOCTRINE that Berengarius did stand up for was the COMMON FAITH of OUR CHURCH and was publickly taught and believed as appears most evidently to a Demonstration from the Publick Authorized SAXON HOMILY for EASTER and from the Writings and SYNODICAL ORATIONS wherein a Man may most reasonably expect to meet with the genuine and publick Faith of the Church of ALFRICK ARCHBISHOP of CANTERBURY our ENGLISH PATRIARCH and of WULPHINE Bishop of SHIRBOURN as I have already observed (l) p. 73.81 N. B. and put down their words and the SAME FAITH was generally believed by almost ALL the FRENCH and ITALIANS as well as by the ENGLISH in Berengarius his time as Matthew Westminster tells us (m) Eeodem tempore Berengariuâ—in haereticam prolapsus pravitatem omnes Gallos Italos et Anglos suis jampenecorruperat pravitatibus Matth. West ad annum 1087. who was mistaken in saying it was by the Infection of Berengarius's Doctrine since it is certain THAT was the GENERAL and PUBLICK DOCTRINE here in the Century before and in FRANCE the Century before that to wit in the NINTH CENTURY as one may believe from the Writingr of Bertram and Erigena And here I cannot but observe how much you discover a gross ignorance when you make Bertram p. 76. and Scotus Erigena whom you
have split into two Followers of Berengarius whenas They both lived two Hundred years before Him. Nay a man would believe almost from you that Berthram was at this present alive when you say that Berengarius's Opinion and Arguments are still urged by Bertram p. 76. lately reprinted in English You have a great deal more of such wretched stuff but I am so weary of it that I will but speak a word or two to you as to the Greeks and then pass to a sarewell request to you and your new Superiours That the present great Ignorance Poverty and Ambition of the Greek Church hath taught a great many of them leaving their own ancient Faith to embrace for lucre sake the Latin Doctrine of Transubstantiation is what we cannot now deny but that which we have to say upon this business is that those persons neither learned this new fangled Doctrine from the Fathers from their own Liturgies or from the antient Creeds or Ecclesiastical Constitutions See Dr. Smith of Oxford his Miscellanea that Gabriel of Philadelphia who studied and lived so long at Padua and Venice first broached Transubstantiation in their language since whom many Latinized Greeks have espoused it and the four Patriarchs at the Instance of Monsieur Nointel Ricaut his Preface to his Present State of the Greek Church or rather his French Mony as I hope a Gentleman who was then in Turkey will e're long make it sufficiently appear subscribed the Oriental Confession drawn up by one bred in Italy in the year 1672. not as you falsly tell us 1643. As their Ignorance which is so great that Sr. P. Ricaut says most Mechanicks among us are more learned and knowing than the Doctors and Clergy of Greece disposes them for any Doctrine whatever so their great Poverty which no body denies and their unaccountable and prodigious Ambition hurry them on to any thing for lucre sake The Dire effects of their extravagant Ambition are sufficiently seen in that they have thereby run their poor Church into such arrears with the Port that it will never be able to claw off Ricaut 's Prâ—sâ—nt State of the Greek Church Through their changing of Patriarchs whereof they a p. 102 102 c. p. 98. had six in eight years at Constantinople and their most unchristian shouldering of one another out the Poor Church was indebted in the year 1672. to the Grand Seâ—gnior three hundred and fifty thousand Dollars as Sr. Paul says he was informed by the Bishop of Smyrna This is enough to shew the miserable Humour as well as Condition of those People who to get monys to buy out the incumbent Patriarch and to place themselves tho' but for a month on the Patriarchal Throne at Constantinople would I question not subscribe a worse Doctrine than that of Transubstantiation since they have ignorance enough for any The behaviour of the Arch-Bishop of Samos to Doctor Smith of Maudlins makes me to have a very slender opinion of those sort of men See Dr. Smiths Preface to Miscellanea when he met with him in France then Children only received in the one kind and they could not digest Flesh but as soon as he had crossed the Water and breathed a little English Air then Children did undoubtedly partake in both kinds as he quickly wrote to Doctor Smith But enough of this Man and the Humour of that miserable People which is nothing to the purpose of a Consensus Veterum The Request I have now to make to you Mr. Sclater is that you would consider what a miserable mistake you have made about these things how grievously you have suffered your self to be imposed upon in leaving a Communion which is truly Catholick and Apostolical and hath not one unlawful Term of Communion and in falling to a Church which for all the Paints and Washes laid on it appears to be very deformed and hath a great many unlawful Terms of Communion If their Condition be dangerous that were bred in that Communion if they have any opportunities as all here in England have of knowing more and of better information what must be thought of yours who can pretend no want of Information have had so long a Tract of opportunities to have secured you even in old age from such a doleful Fall I do from my soul wish that you may before death surprizes recover your self and return to that true Faith from which you have swerved and that all that lye under the same guilt may in God's good time be again gathered into our Apostolical Church May God remove all Ostacles that do at present hinder such a Return And my request to your Superiours is that if ever they think fit to have another Convert appear in Print against us they would oblige us so far as to chuse one that hath a little more Modesty and a little more Learning one that can distinguish between the Presbyters of Achaia and St. Andrew between the Second General Council of Constantinople p. 72. and the reputed Seventh at Nice whence he quotes that impudent lye of Epiphanius the Deacon one that can translate what he is taught to borrow that so if ever any of our Church vouchsafe to answer him he may not have so many complaints to make as I have had in the Examination of Mr. Sclater's Book March 1st 1686 THE END
leaving us I must follow you to that wherein you are more copious the Method you used for the resolving your self in your doubts which you forgot to set down here CHAP. II. His Account of Education and Interest examined and Refuted BEfore you enter on your Method you tell us you had two very great things to conflict with which were like to prove great obstacles in this your inquiry after truth Education and Interest pag. 1. Through Education and Confidence in the Teachers you had been inured to you complain you had almost been hardened against the lissening to any thing contrary to those Precepts and Doctrines they had rooted in you c. To hear an old Man complain of Education cannot but be a little strange especially from one who hath been a Teacher himself as he disdainfully I must believe calls our Clergy perchance betwixt Thirty and Forty Years if Twenty nay Ten far too much sure for such a complaint and in a Church too which permits and encourages her Clergy in the perusing canvasing and examining all Books of Controversie betwixt her self and the Church of Rome and which is more obliges them to a perusal and diligent examination of the Primitive Fathers by that very Canon you your self quoted in your Preface which I have put down also pag. 2. 1. But this is the common voice of the Converts young or old and therefore whether to purpose or no you must for company use it tho' it be really ridiculous from one in your circumstances as I think I have made plain enough And truly the complaint would far the handsomer become you now when you are of a Church that teaches her Members the pretty knack of captivating their understanding stopping their ears and shutting their eyes against any thing that might convince them of the Errour they are in I must confess that your Church is not singular herein the Turks practise it as strictly as you that they may secure their Members in their excellent and most safe as they doubtless think it Communion and Religion of Mahomet But suppose Education might be a Prejudice and would give a man a great deal of trouble to rid himself of the Prepossessions it commonly instills into green heads yours could not give you any since Alexander like you cut the Knot that might have given you great trouble to unloose by abstracting your self when you entered on your Method from your self and Religion too which doubtless is both a quick and a sure way of ridding a mans self of the Prejudices from any Religion pag. 2. by abstracting himself from Religion and looking on himself as a Man of no Religion I cannot but applaud your Method of getting shut of the Prejudices of Education and cannot but admire it as the most clever sure short unerring way that any man could take to get rid of Education which I will now with you take leave of and pass on to Interest and see how you served it And here again you are as concise with Interest as you were before with Education if a man may credit you When I considered say you Solomon's Advice pag. 2. buy the Truth and sell it not I was easily persuaded to look upon Interest as a thing worth nothing c. And did you serve it so why then truly to give you your due you are an extraordinary Person among the Converts one to whom an Eye to worldly Interest cannot fairly be objected and I suppose you are very willing and desirous too that the World should have such an Opinion of you that you have fairly quitted all purely for Conscience sake that you had two Livings indeed but since you are convinced that you ought not to be any longer a Communicant with much less a Minister of the Church of England you have sacrificed them both to the Interest of your Immortal Soul that tho' as the World now goes it is the sure and only way to Preferments in Church or State to continue a Member at least outwardly of the Church of England so called yet you for your part have and do count all this worldly Interest as a thing worth nothing and are resolved to turn your back to it so that you may but provide for the Salvation of your Soul. This truly is the Picture of a very excellent Christian the only question to be asked now is whether it is Mr. Sclater's of Putney I am sorry that I must acquaint the World notwithstanding your speaking so contemptibly of Interest that really it is no more yours than the man 's in the Moon for to be more serious with you with what face could you write this when almost all the Kingdom knows that you hold both your Livings still tho' you disown your being so much as a Member of the Church of England and how briskly you hectored and quarrelled the Church of Worcester when they only desired to fill the Cure of Putney with a Minister of the Church of England which you denyed any longer to own your self to be A great many I am sure think you did very ill to hold those Livings in your present Condition and I do assure you it is infinitely worse to do it and yet by writing to insinuate to the World that you have not but have accounted all worldly Interest the Profits of two Livings may be so named I hope as a thing worth nothing You have not lost or delivered up any worldly concern that I can hear of on this account you stand I believe in as much probability as ever you did of getting more if this be the way of slighting and undervaluing Interest I do assure you that all the Covetous the Extortioners and the worldly Hypocrites do it as much as you CHAP. III. His Method shewn to be Vnreasonable LEaving then this false as well as disingenuous account of your setting aside and ridding your self of Interest I must begin the Examination of your Method of resolving your self in your Doubts which indeed is surprizing from a Minister and became Des Cartes as to matters of Philosophy a little better than it can do you or any one else in Matters of Religion Here say you as I had abstracted my self from my self and Religion too pag. 2. as a man of no Religion but contemplating all I must lay all before me and look studiously upon them c. If you mean by this account of your Method that you really put your self into an abstracted state and were really as of no Religion so of no Church at all during this your search for a Communion wherein you might be afterwards safe I must tell you that as your Method was most extravagant so it was of too short a duration for your looking studiously contemplating and comparing the two Communions of England and Rome together since it is as certain that you were at Mass last Easter Day 1686 as that you did give the Communion at Putney Church on Palm
Sunday before it and therefore must have been a Minister of the Church of England on the one Sunday and a Member of the Church of Rome on the next during the time betwixt which two Sundays I am certain you are far from being able to have considered and examined the Merits of the two Churches you are not so quick a Man pag. 2. for all your pretended discovering at first sight that all other Communions were evidently confusion But allowing that during this search you onely Ex hypothesi put your self in such a state without leaving actually our Communion till your Method and Reasons were over and satisfactory it was a very odd Method for a Man that had been so long a Minister and was so old a Man and would much handsomer have become you were you coming over from Paganism or Mahometism than from one Church that evidently hath the Catholick Faith to another Whichsoever of the two Senses was that which you designed I am certain that the first was fit onely for a Madman and the other almost as much unbecoming an old Clergy Man who after Threescore as I believe you are falls to abstracting and doubting and supposing as if he had been in a Dream all the rest and best part of his Days since he was in Orders and at last when others being to dote he begins to doubt to search and to make saving discoveries CHAP. IV. The Confusion of his search and the Absurdity of it shewn NOtwithstanding the Inconsistences in this your tale which are so many as would almost ruine any ones having the least value for your Book or for the Reasons and Arguments in it I must follow and see how dexterously you managed or how well you used this your wonderous Method pag. 2 3. Vpon a reserved Principle say you that Christ hath a Church upon earth in my inquiry amongst my Brethren of the Church of England who were as much your Brethren in this state and no more than they are Hobbes's or Spinoza's I gave most attention to those teachers or writers that had most reverence for Church Authority c. I appeal to any Man of sense whether this passage does not favour much more of a Man already a Papist than of a mere Seeker but to pass that Pray Sir what did you want or what was you inquiring for was it for the Catholick Church or for a particular Communion wherein you might be safe if for the Catholick Church you needed not to be curious whom you inquired of among our Teachers and Writers since the meanest of them could readily have told you that the Catholick Church is made up of all the Particular Churches planted in the four quarters of the World holding from Christ the onely Head of her the true Faith and Catholick Vnity so that if you intended to find where she was fixed that so you might in necessity tell her your grievances she is confined to no place pag. 5. being a Diffusive Body throughout the World. If you wanted a Particular Communion a true Member of the Catholick Church wherewith to communicate and upon which to trust your Salvation the Church of England Particular as to place Catholick as to Faith and Doctrine is such so that your inquiry might here have ended since if you were a true Member of Hers you were at the same time as true a Member of the Catholick Church Here I must take occasion to tell you that you seem by your Abstracting your self from your self to have wilder'd your self and thence to have confounded the Notions of the Catholick and Particular Churches while from our Saviour's promise that the Gates of Hell should never prevail against the Catholick Church you argue the Church must be one which no Body denies that it must have one Faith which no Body denies neither and that it must by virtue of Christ's promise perpetually abide in this one Faith nor is this denied any more than the other two by any of our Church and what have you got hence onely that Christ hath and will always have a true Church upon Earth which I know no Body ever denied But here is the grand pinch and what one may easily see you aim at and that is to have this Catholick Church and the Church of Rome to be all one and the same which we shall see how you prove by and by In the mean time I must return to you where I left you quarrelling with our Church-men and see whether I can make an end of the Quarrel You say that you found that those of our Church that had most Reverence for Church Authority meant onely their own c. You had done the World a great kindness if you had told who they were you inquired of and what were the Queries you put to them I hope if you asked after the Catholick Church they did not tell you that the National Church of England was the whole Catholick Church If you asked after a Particular Church surely you cannot blame them for asserting the Authority of their own Church When you put the same Queries to the Romish Teachers or Writers did they reject their own Church's Authority did not they mean their own when they would persuade you to their Communion as much as our Men did that of our Church when you inquired among them where then is the fault what would you have had 'em to doe to please you would you have had them to say that the Church of England is the Catholick Church which no one that hath any sense can say of Her any more than of the Church of Rome would you have had 'em to say that they had a Church indeed but that either she had no Authority or that no Body need to submit to it which none but a mere Ignoramus could say This Sir is perfect Trifling this is to write a Book and yet not to know what one wants or what he would have I wish to God you had reserved when you were abstracting your self a little Logick that a Man might have known what you meant here and where one might have you that so when a Reader thinks by your Words and by Connexion that you are talking of the Catholick Church you may not come off with a Pish the Man understands me not I was speaking of Particular Churches I wish you had licked this your confused piece into a little better Method and had bestowed on it a little thing called Intelligibility but perhaps you thought such a stile fittest for a Man that was going to write about Transubstantiation You are as little pleased with them when you say they held the Scriptures in high esteem you might without a falsity have added in far greater than the Church of Rome does of which you now are though under that Notion they understood no more pag. 3. than what themselves were pleased to allow to be Canonical admitting also some Traditions but taking and refusing as
if there were Errours fit to be thrown out of our Church you your self I am sure your Learned Men will grant that no Ordination can prejudice or hinder such a Rejection of Errours That there were such Errours crept in which ought to be cast out and were at our Reformation is what our Church-Men a Hundred times over have invincibly proved As to the Rule you bring from St. Ambrose that they enjoy not the Inheritance of Peter pag. 20. who receive not the Faith of Peter we are very ready to join issue with you or any of your Church upon it and I question not before you and I part on this subject to ruine the Papal and Roman Succession by your own Rule to wit by proving that they have receded from the Faith of Peter and the whole Primitive Church We readily own that a true and Apostolical Mission pag. 20. Commission and Ordination are considerable particulars and are as ready any time to assert that our Church hath them and to prove it against you at any time if you have a mind to undertake this point against her CHAP. XVI The Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the Eucharist put down Mr. Scl. 's Reasons from Scripture for Transubstantiation answered HAving traced you hitherto and found all your Attempts vain and your Reasons to no purpose which you took so much pains to scrape together to have proved that our Saviour Christ left his Catholick Church in a Monarchical State under a Particular Vicegerent and that that Vicegerent was the Bishop of Rome and his Church the Catholick Church And having shewn all your Attacks against and Remarks upon the Church of England to be very vain extremely abusive and extravagantly ridiculous I have now onely your last your great Reason to examine wherein you make an effort to prove that her Faith concerning the Eucharist is contrary to that of the Catholick Church If you could have proved this I must confess your forsaking our Communion would have been much more reasonable and therefore I question not but that as you have mustered up abundance of Authorities so you have done all you can to make them speak and declare against us but to how little purpose you have made all this noise and ado about this point also is what I shall quickly see Before I enter on your particular proofs I have a fresh complaint to make that you have not used herein that Ingenuity that would have become a Scholar one might very rationally have expected that as your Intentions were to prove against the Church of England that her Faith was as to the Eucharist false and corrupt so you would have set down what that her Faith is This would have looked like fair and ingenuous dealing first to have put down her Faith about the Eucharist and then to have shewn how contrary it was to Scripture and to the unanimous Consent of Antiquity If you reply to this my Complaint that her Faith is so well known that you needed not put it down together but that you have occasionally done it up and down these Authorities I must tell you that by the account you give of it occasionally one would be persuaded that it is far from being so well known I am sure that slender account or rather hints that you so often intersperse about it are utterly false and very foolish so that if any one should take an account of our Churches Faith from you and whom can they better take it from than one that was so lately a Minister among us they must believe that we hold the Eucharist to be mere figures mere representations and bare signs for that is the most you allow us to make of it that I can meet with in your Book all which how far it is from Truth I shall quickly shew you Well then since you had not the Ingenuity to put down an Account of the Church of England's Faith about the Eucharist I must that so I may the better examine the Proofs you bring and any one may compare the Authorities you quote and our Faith together and thereby more impartially judge and more readily discover whether Antiquity fairly laid down speak for or against us Concerning this Sacrament the Church of England in her 28th Article of Religion delivers her Opinion thus The Supper of the Lord is not onely a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death Insomuch that to such as rightly worthily and with Faith receive the same the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Bloud of Christ After which having declared her self against Transubstantiation as repugnant to plain Scripture and to the nature of a Sacrament and against any Corporal Presence of Christ's Natural Flesh and Bloud in the Declaration about kneeling at the end of our Communion-Service in our Liturgy she goes on in this Article to declare that The Body of Christ is given taken and eaten in the Supper onely after an heavenly and spiritual manner and that the Mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith which last expressions exclude the wicked from partaking of Christ's Body and allow them barely the Sign or outward part of the Eucharist In the Publick Catechism in the Liturgy having taught her Catechumens that there are two things in each of the Sacraments the outward Sign and the inward spiritual Grace she teaches them to answer that the outward part of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is Bread and Wine and that the inward part or thing signified is the Body and Bloud of Christ which are verily and indeed taken and received by the Faithfull in the Lord's Supper These passages are sufficient to shew that our Church holds a real but not carnal a Spiritual and Heavenly but not Corporal Participation of Christ's Body and Bloud which tho' locally and naturally in Heaven is yet after a Mystical and Supernatural way communicated to the Faithfull not by the mouth of the Body but by that of Faith. Thus much for her Sentiment concerning this Sacrament pag. 20. now I must try your Reasons against it You tell us that you had been a long time greatly concerned for the Interpretation of but five small words of our Saviour c. The result of your concern I suppose was that those five words I doubt we shall find more than five or double five concerned in this business are to be taken in a literal sense and that which you offer for proof of it is this First Because this Sacrament was his last Will and Testament which ought not to be worded obscurely or doubtfully to prevent quarrels and divisions Secondly Because this Will is repeated by so many of his Apostles without the least variation or caution against the
another place that our Lord gave to his Disciples at his Last Supper the Figure of his sacred Body and Blood. CHAP. XXV Some Corollaries against Transubstantiation HAving hitherto sufficiently answered all your pretended Proofs for Transubstantiation and shewn in part the Sense and Arguments of the Fathers against it instead of wearying my self or rather our Reader with any more of your Authors which you very irregularly place and which you your self will grant to be produced to no purpose if the former Primitive Fathers were of a contrary Faith about the Eucharist I shall here adjoyn a few Corollaries to vindicate the Faith of the Catholick and Apostolical Church of England against Transubstantiation and will make it apparently clear that her Doctrine and Faith herein is both Primitive and Orthodox and exactly the same with that of the Fathers of the Catholick Church My first Corollary shall be 1 Coroll That the Fathers gave such Titles to the Consecrated Elements of Bread and Wine as utterly exclude a Transubstantiation It was sufficiently common with them to call the Elements a Tertullian con Marcion l. 4. c. 40. Beda Comment in 3. Psalm the Figure b August de Doctr. Christi c. 7. Origen Dialog cont Marcion p. 116. Edit Wets the Sign c Basil Anaphora Cyril Hierosol Col. 4. Cat. Mys the Type d Greg. Naz. Orat. 118. Macarius Hom. 27. the antitype e August in Gratiano the Similitude f Theodoret. Dialog 2. and the Symbols of the Body and Blood of Christ g Tom. 6. Concil Edit Cossart and a whole Oecumenical Council of 338 Bishops at Constantinople A. D. 754. declare them to be the true and onely Image of our Saviour's Body and Blood. These Expressions and the like I argue to be utterly inconsistent with the Elements being Transubstantiated into the very Body and Blood of Christ since it is impossible any thing can be the Figure of a thing and the thing it self or the thing it self and yet but the figure of it he that will affirm this may without an absurdity say that the Sign of the King at a Tavern door is the King himself that the Picture of the Ship in St. Paul's Church-yard is as real a true Ship as any on the River and that the Image of the King in the Exchange is really King James 2d in his very Person In short if any thing be the Figure it cannot be the thing if it be the thing it self it cannot be the Figure of it since nothing can be the Figure of it self And therefore if Christ's Natural Body be really on the Altar that which is there cannot be the Figure of it But if as the Fathers almost unanimously speak that which is there be the Figure the Sign of it then consequently our Saviour's Natural Body it self is not This is so evident See Tertullian's 4th Book against Marcion ch 40th I think I need not say any more upon this Point I might very easily else have shewn that the Strength of one of Tertullian's Arguments for our Saviour his having a true substantial Body against Marcion depended wholly on the Eucharist its being the FIGURE of his Body but I will wave it and conclude this Corollary with that of Facundus h Et potest Sacramentum Adoptionis Adoptio nuncupari Sicut Sacramentum Corporis Sanguinis ejus quod est in Pane Poculo consecrato Corpus ejus Sanguinem dicimus Non quod propriè Corpus ejus sit Panis Poculum Sanguis Sed quod in se Mysterium Corporis ejus sanguinisque contineant Hinc ipse Dominus benedictum Panem Calicem quem Discipulis tradidit Corpus Sanguinem suum Vocavit Facund Herm. pro Defens 3. Capit. Con. Chalced. Lib. 9. c. 5. p. 404 405. Edit Sirmond 1629. Bishop of Hermiana in Africa the Sacrament of Adoption may be called by the name of Adoption as we call the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ the consecrated Elements of Bread and Wine his Body and his Blood not that the Bread is properly his Body or the Cup his Blood but because they contain the Mystery of his Body and Blood upon which very account it is that when our Lord delivered the consecrated Bread and Cup to his Disciples he called them his Body and his Blood. One thing I must not forget here that tho' these Fathers and the Church of England with them look upon the consecrated Elements as Signs and Figures onely yet they and we believe that by the Institution of Christ they are the Means of conveying all the Virtue and Benefits of our Saviour's crucifyed Body of communicating the Blood and Body of Christ unto every worthy Communicant This I could not omit to let you see the silliness of your foolish Cant up and down of meer Signs of what meer figures c. such Expressions were designed against the Church of England or what do they in your Book against her if they were I must tell you that they are sottishly ridiculous and most intolerable from a man who was I am sorry I can say it a Minister of the Church of England and therefore must so often have seen her Articles and so often have used her Communion-Service My Second Corollary is 2. Coroll That such things are attributed to the Sacramental Body and Blood of Christ by the Primitive Fathers as do altogether exclude their being transubstantiated into the Natural Body and Blood of Christ I instance in that of the Sacramental Body and Blood of Christ their being said to Nourish our Bodies That the consecrated Elements do nourish our Bodies is very apparent from a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Justin Apolog 2. St. Justin Martyr's saying that our flesh and blood are nourished by the consecrated Elements being changed into our Substance From b Quando ergo Calix Panis percipiunt â—erbum Dei fit Eucharistia Sanguinis Corporis Christi ex quibus augetur consistit Carnis nostrae Substantia S. Iren. c. Haer. l. 5. c. 18. Irenaeus and c Caro Corpore Sanguine Christi vescitur ut Anima de Deo saginetur Tert. de Resurrect c. 8. Tertullian that our Flesh is fed and nourished with the Body and Blood of Christ From d Ille Cibus qui sanctificatur per Verbum Dei perque obsecrationem juxta id quod babet materiale in ventrem abit in secessum ejicitur Orig. in 15 Matt. p. 27. Origen that the Eucharist as to its Material Part undergoes the common course of our common repasts From e Quia sicut visibilis Panis Vini substantia exteriorem nutrit inebriat hominem ita Verbum Dei qui est Panis Vivus participatione sui Fidelium recreat mentes Isidor Hispal apud Rathramni Lib. de Corp. Sang. D. p. 120. Edit Paris Boileau 1686. Isidore of Sevil that the Substance of the Visible Bread