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
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
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
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