A FOURTH LETTER TO A PERSON of QUALITY BEING AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENT From the PRIMITIVE Times TO THE COUNCIL of TRENT SHEWING The NOVELTY of Transubstantiation LONDON Printed for Ben. Griffin and are to be Sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall 1688. IMPRIMATUR Liber cui Titulus A Fourth Letter to a Person of Quality May 17th 1688. H. Maurice R mo in Christo P. D. Wilhelmo Archiep. Cant. Ã Sacris A FOURTH LETTER TO A Person of Quality BEING AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENT SIR I HAVE been longer in your Debt than I intended when I last engaged my Credit to you I hope now to give you satisfaction in full but you must not expect Interest to make the payment swell because the thing I am accountable to you for is so Trite and worn that I think it a kindness to you to make as short payment as is possible because 't will save you the trouble of Examining a world of small quotations which is worse than the telling of odd and broken Mony. I promised you an account of the Doctrine of the Holy Sacrament which the Church of Rome hath turned at last into the Doctrine of Transubstantiation By which they mean that upon the Priests Consecration of the Bread and Wine the Substance of them is turn'd into Christ's Natural Flesh and Blood nothing remaining but the Species and Properties of the Elements that is the Smell the Taste c. This absurd Doctrine being so repugnant to Scripture to Reason and to the very Senses of Mankind their main business is to delude poor People into an Opinion that it was the sense of the Primitive Churches of Christ We are desirous to come to a fair Tryal of this matter and that I may do my part towards it I shall endeavour to bring it to a very short issue by this Method 1. I shall shew you the Faith of the Ancient Churches from a long Controversie they had with those Hereticks the Apollinarians and Eutychians Which being undeniable and publick matter of Fact will clear up the sense of the Ancients far better than single broken passages out of the Fathers which Men of parts know how to interpret to their own advantage 2. I shall shew you when and how the sense of the Ancient Church came to be alter'd what Progress that alteration made and what strong opposition it met with for several Ages after it began And by this plain Historical Account you will easily discern what an Innovation the Doctrine of Transubstantiation is 3. And then I shall give a Summary Answer to those things which the Modern Romanists do urge out of the Fathers by shewing you the Genuine meaning of them which they by wresting or by not understanding them rightly have used to deceive the world with false Notions I. As for the Faith of the Ancient Churches it will soon appear if you do but observe this One thing and bear it carefully in your mind About the year of Christ 370. or a little before Apollinarius Bishop of Laodicea had spread about this Heretical Opinion that the humanity of Christ was turned and swallowed up into the Deity so that tho his two Natures were distinct before the Union yet by and upon the Union they became one Nature his humane part being converted or Transubstantiated into the Divine the Properties only and appearance of Humane Body remaining This indeed was not all his Heresie for he asserted too that Christ took a Body without a Rational Soul the Deity supplying the place of it and several other strange Opinions he held to the great disturbance of the Church But it is too notorious to need any proof that this was part of Apollinarius his Heresie that upon the Union of Christs two Natures his Manhood was changed into his Divinity saving only the Properties of it so that he was forced to yield that the Deity was Circumcised and suffered upon the Cross in the appearance or if you will have it in the Language of the Romanists under the Species of Humane Flesh Within the compass of Twenty Years Apollinarius his Heresie was condemned by Three Councils at Alexandria at Rome and at Constantinople But about Sixty Seven years after I mean Anno 448. it was revived by Eutyches a Presbyter at Constantinople whose positive Opinion was that the two Natures of Christ being United the substance of the one utterly ceased his Humanity being quite converted into his Divinity so that nothing was left of his Humane Nature but the Qualities and Accidents This Heresie begun by Apollinarius and promoted by Eutyches lasted a long time and 't is very well worth your Observation how nearly it resembles the Romish Doctrine of Transubstantiation in the Sacrament For as our Adversaries hold that the Substance of Bread and Wine is upon Consecration turned into the very Substance of Christ's Flesh and Blood nothing of them remaining but the Accidents so the Apollinarians and Eutychians held that the Substance of Christ's Humane Nature was upon its Union turned into the Substance of his Divinity nothing of his Humanity remaining but the Qualities and Properties As these hold that the very Substance of Christ's Body and Blood is received under the Species of Bread and Wine so those Hereticks held that the very Deity Vide Histor Council Chalced in init Leonis ep 17. ad Maxim. part 3. istius Concilii of Christ was Born and did Grow Suffer Dye and Rise again under the Species of Humane Flesh Or briefly that Christ appeared not in the Truth or Substance of Humane Nature but only in the outward Form and Figure of a Man his Humanity being transubstantiated as they presumed into his Divinity all but the Idea of it Now among many Arguments which the Ancients used against those Hereticks some of the Greatest Men in the Church drew One Argument from the Doctrine of the Sacrament and made use of Our principle against Transubstantiation to expose the Heresie of the Apollinarians and Eutychians which plainly shews that Our Opinion as to the Holy Sacrament was in those times the received Opinion of the Catholick Church To prove this particularly St. Chrysostome Patriarch of Constantinople writing to his old Acquaintance Caesarius to reclaim him from the Apollinarian Heresie into which he had unluckily fallen among other Arguments he used to convince him he drew a parallel from the Eucharist to shew that Christ had two distinct Natures in one Person As saith he before Consecration we call it Bread but the Divine Grace having sanctified it by the Prayer of the Priest it is no longer called Bread but is thought worthy to be called the Lords Body altho the Nature of Bread remains in it and we do not say there be two Bodies but one Body of the Son so here the Divine Nature of Christ being joyned to the Humane they both make one Son and one Person You must know that the Greek
Copy of this Epistle is not yet come to light Very probably it is supprest by those who know how to suppress many things which hurt their Cause But a Latin Copy of it was found in Archbishop Cranmer's time in a Library at Florence by Peter Martyr who brought a Transcript of it with him into England and put it into the Archbishops Library And this passage in it is such a stabbing blow to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation that the Romanists have turn'd and twin'd themselves every way to evade the force of it were it possible First they denied this Epistle to be St. Chrysostome's But this pretence has been since thrown out of doors by some learned Doctors of the Roman Church her self Stephen Gardiner that dissembling and bloudy Bishop of Winchester being somewhat conscious to himself that this Epistle was Genuine pretended Secondly that by the Nature of Bread which St. Chrysostome saith remains he meant not the Substance but the Accidents and Properties of it wherein he was followed by Bellarmine and divers others and this is pretended still by some Popish Writers here in England now But this is flatly to contradict the plainest and most natural expressions in the world And besides it utterly overthrows the great design of St. Chrysostome for his purpose was to shew Cesarius that the Substance of Christs Humanity remained after its union to the Deity for this was the thing in dispute with the Apollinarians They owned the Accidents the Properties the Qualities of Humanity to remain in Christ but affirm'd the substance of his Humane Nature to be turned into the Deity So that had St. Chrysostome meant that the Accidents only of Bread remained in the Sacrament the example would not have been to the purpose nor would the Argument have had any force at all but St. Chrysostome would have proved himself the most weak and impertinent man at reasoning that could be I will give you the words of a learned and moderate person of the Roman A Treatise of Transubstant Communion now living whose Book I hope you have by you St. Chrysostome saith plainly that the Nature of Bread abideth after consecration and this Fathers Argument would be of no validity if this Nature of the Bread were nothing but in shew for Appollinarius might have made another opposite Argument and say that indeed it might be said there were two Natures in Jesus Christ but that the Humane Nature was only in appearance as the Bread in the Eucharist is but in shew and hath only outward and visible Qualities remaining in it whereby it is termed to be Bread. One thing more I will observe to you concerning this Epistle to shew how injuriously some have dealt with St. Chrysostome and how those men speak against their own Consciences when they tell us as they have often done that this great man is on their side A few years ago the learned Mounsieur Bigotius found this Epistle at Florence and Anno 1680. printed it in his Edition of Palladius with the best Apology he could make for this passage But when the Book was now ready to be published some of the Sorbon Doctors fraudulently cut out this Epistle and Bigotins his Preface to it What an Art is this first to cut out an Authors Tongue for speaking against them and yet to pretend that he spake on their behalf Yet it was not so cunningly done but that the abuse was complain'd of and by good Providence the Leaves which were thus shamefully cut out are lately fallen into the hands of a learned man of our Church who hath given us a full and particular account of this whole matter in his excellent Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England to which I refer you for your more ample satisfaction both as to the Epistle it self and as to the strength of St. Chrysostome's Argument against the Apollinarians which utterly destroyes the Doctrine of Transubstantiation To go on now with our Historical Account Our next ancient Writer is Theodoret Bishop of Cyrus in Syria a great Man at the Council of Chalcedon Anno 451. and without controversie one of the most learned Men of that Age. The Heresie of Apollinarus had now been espoused by Eutyches of Constantinople Theodoret undertook the quarrel and wrote excellently against the Eutychians by way of Dialogue and among several other strong Arguments he drew an example from the Holy Eucharist as St. Chrysostome had done before him I think it is my best way to lay before you that part of the Dialogue which chiefly concerns us nakedly as it lies in Theodoret only you must remember that 't is between Orthodoxus and Eranistes now Orthodoxus personates the Catholick and Eranistes the Heretick the former held that Christ had two Natures in one Person the latter that his Humane Nature was absorpt and substantially changed into his Divinity Eran. It is necessary to turn every stone as the Proverb is that Truth may be found especially in Divine Matters Orthod Tell me then those mystical Symbols which are offered by the Priests at the Eucharist what are they representations of Eran. Of the Lords Body and Bloud Orthod Of a True or not of a True Body Eran. Of a True Body Orthod Right for there must be an Original of a Copy for even Painters imitate Nature and draw Pictures of things that are seen Eran. 'T is true Orthod If then the Divine Mysteries be the Similitudes or Figures of a True Body then is the Body of our Lord even now a True Body not changed into the Nature of the Divinity but filled with divine Glory Eran. You have spoken very seasonably of the Divine Mysteries or Sacrament For I will from thence shew the Conversion of our Lords Body into another Nature Answer my questions therefore Orthod I will Answer Eran. What do you call the Gift that is Offered before the Invocation of the Priest Orthod We are not to speak plainly least some should be here that are not sufficiently instructed Eran. Answer then Aenigmatically Orthod I say then it is Nourishment from certain Seeds Eran. But how do we call one of the Symbols Orthod Why it is a common Name that signifies a kind of Drink Eran. But what do you call those things after Consecration Orthod The Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ Eran And do you believe that you participate of Christ's Body and Blood Orthod Yes I believe so Eran. As then the Symbols of our Lords Body and Blood are other things before the Priests Invocation but after Invocation are changed and become other things even so was the Lords Body after its Assumption changed into the Divine Substance Orthod You are taken in the Nets which you your self have made for the Mystical Symbols do not in any wise pass out of their own Nature no not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theod. Dialogue 2. after Consecration for they remain in their own former Substance and
figure and kind and are to be Seen and Touched as they were before Nothing can be plainer than this to Men who are not obstinately addicted to an Opinion in spight of all Reason and Sense And what Theodoret saith here is very agreeable to what he told Eranistes in the First Dialogue viz. That our Saviour honoured the visible Symbols with the Appellation of his Body and Blood not changing the Nature of them but adding Grace to Nature To avoid all this our Adversaries pretend that by Substance and Nature Theodoret means the Accidents of Bread which is in effect to tell us that they are utterly resolved to believe or at least to befriend a Lie For who that really loves Truth would thus confound things so as to make Substance and Accident the same But if they will strain their parts to play tricks with words how can they make this their interpretation to come up to Theodoret's design or to reach the Argument he had in hand which was about the supposed substantial change of Christ's Humane Nature into his Divinity Theodorets purpose was to Confute this by Arguing from the Doctrine of the Sacrament and had the Church believed a Substantial change of the Bread this would have confirm'd the Eutychian in his Opinion but it could not have Confuted it For the Heretick desired no more to be granted him but this that the Nature or Substance of the Elements doth cease though the Accidents continue And this indeed would have favour'd his conceit that the Substance of Christ's Humanity did cease the Properties of it Remaining still But Theodoret could not be so weak as to yield this for then he would inevitably have lost himself in his Dispute But what think you of a Pope that disputed against the Eutychians too and that from the very same Doctrine of the Sacrament It was no less a Man than Gelasius who was Bishop of Rome Anno 492. and wrote a Celebrated Book of the two Natures in Christ Which though Bellarmine and some more about Bellarmine's time denied to be this Galasius his Book yet the Arguments against them are so strong that Cardinal Perron Petavius and other Learned and more Ingenuous Men since have yielded us that point And the moderate Writer I quoted before saith This Work is assuredly of Pope Gelasius c. In that piece of Gelasius his Book which we have extant Treatise of Transub p. 40. in the Bibliotheca Patrum he teacheth the same Doctrine which Theodoret did and for the confirmation of the same thing as Cardinal Bellarmine doth Bellarm. de Euch. lib. 2. cap. 27. confess And what can be plainer than these words of Gelasius Viz. That the Sacraments which we receive of the Body and Blood Certè Sacramenta quae sumimus Corporis Sanguinis Domini divina res est propter quod per eadem divinae efficimur consortes naturae tamen esse non desinit Substantia vel Natura Panis Vini c. of the Lord is a Divine thing because by them we are made partakers of the Divine Nature and yet the Substance or Nature of the Bread and Wine doth not cease to be And truly the Representation and Similitude of Christ's Body and Blood is Celebrated in the Ministration of these Mysteries and therefore it is plain that we must think that of Christ himself which we profess and Celebrate in this Representation of him His meaning evidently is that we must believe the Permanency of Christ's Humane Nature though united to the Divine because in the Holy Eucharist which is the Representation of Christ the Nature and Substance of Bread and Wine remaineth though Consecrated by the Minister And yet we have another eminent Writer on our side no less a Man than Ephram who was Patriarch of Antiâ—ch about Anno 540. He disputed too against the Eutychians and drew the very same Argument from the Sacrament which others had used before him shewing that the Humanity of Christ did not Cease in its Substance by being united to the word no more than the Bread ceaseth in its Substance by the Addition of Spiritual Grace That says he Phetii Bibliothee cod 229. which is received by the Faithful doth not depart out of its own sensible Substance and yet continues undivided from the intelligible Grace And least it should be replyed though 't is strange it should that by Substance he means the Species and Accidents of the Bread he says the same thing of the Sacrament of Baptism where no Romanist ever affirmed any Transubstantiation to be His words are these Baptism also which becomes entirely a Spiritual thing and is One doth conserve still the propriety of the sensible Substance I mean Water and loseth not what it was Whence 't is clear that Ephram lookt upon the case in both Sacraments to be the same an Addition of Spiritual Grace to be in both but a loss of Substance to be in neither nor any other change to be in the Eucharist than what is in Baptism Sir I have instanced in those four Writers particularly not only because they were all Great Men in their Times Three of them Patriarchs nay one of them Patriarch of Rome but because they all argued against the same Heresie after the same manner which to me seems very observable and providential For tho the Eutychian Heresie prevailed so long and did spread so far that it did vast mischief yet God directed the issues of it so that 't was an occasion of shewing us what the Catholick Faith was both in the Greek and Latin Churches in those most Learned and flourishing times of Christianity concerning that great point which in these latter Ages hath made so many distractions in Christendom For it is not to be imagined but that these Eminent Bishops spake the sense of the whole Catholick Church over which they presided For having to do with obstinate Hereticks they were obliged to encounter them upon principles which all Christians consented to and were agreed otherwise the Disputations would have been Endless had they argued from principles of their own and which they were still to prove It was necessary for them to proceed upon some common Foundation whereon both Hereticks and Catholicks did stand and such was this Doctrine of the Sacrament for which Reason the Learned Doctors of the Church chose to insist upon it nor do I find that the Hereticks did contradict it or endeavour to destroy it which they would most certainly have done considering how much it made against them had they not known it to have been a principle universally receiv'd that the Bread and Wine are not Transubstantiated but remain still in their own Nature and Substance even after Consecration For this Reason I have omitted an hundred other quotations out of the Ancients and have taken notice only of this their common Argument against the Eutychians because I think it a plain and concise way of confuting the Popish pretence
comply with it For how can you think that such Men in such an Age would resist the strong Temptations of a Court and not resign up Truth and their own Consciences as a composition for their Crimes or as a price for their Preferments the Popes having now got so much power into their hands Besides the Priests might easily foresee what a prositable Errour this would prove in time what Authority they would hereby gain over people and how easily they might have their Purses and Consciences at Command For what will not Men do to have the very Body of their Saviour put into their Mouths And when a Priest hath his Penitent at his knee he must needs have full power over him if he can make him believe that he hath his God in his hand too For these and the like Reasons the Paschasian Opinion of the Corporal Presence stole about without meeting with any publick opposition in this Age wherein there was such a great scarcity of Writers and a greater of Scholars Yet in all this time I do not find any footsteps of Transubstantiation That Doctrine was grafted afterwards upon the wild conceit of Paschasius to the great mischief of the World that hath been poyson'd since with its very unsavoury and deadly Fruit somewhat like that which grew upon the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil the occasion of Mans Fall. I will not dissemble with you The most Learned and impartial Men about this time both before and after the Tenth Century did speak of the presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament in very high terms But their Opinon was this that the consecrated Bread becomes Christs Body not by a Substantial change of the one into the other nor by an Identity of Nature in Both for they all held the True Body of Christ to be still in Heaven and in Heaven only But they conceived the Bread and the Body to be United by means of a Third Thing that is by the Holy Spirit whereby the Bread and the Body were United by a mysticall Consociation and by an ineffable Conjunction both Bread and Body remaining still distinct in their own proper Natures I pray observe it They believed as very many of the Ancient Fathers did that upon the Priests blessing that Divine Spirit which replenisheth and dwelleth in Christ's glorified Body in Heaven doth also replenish the Bread and Wine at the Eucharist and that by this mediation of the Spirit the Holy Elements are joyned to Christ's Body by a Divine and Spiritual coadunation Now this is a quite different thing from Transubstantiation for that supposeth the matter of the Elements to be annihilated or to pass into another Substance whereas the Divines of former Ages believ'd no more but a Mystical and Spiritual Union And howsoever they exprest themselves about the Conversion Transmutation and Transfusion of the Elements 't is evident they meant only the transferring of them from a Common to a Sacramental Use and the raising of them up from the meer condition of Earthly Creatures to an high degree of Divine Dignity and Excellence being now no longer bare Bread and bare Wine but things of a sublime Quality and Condition the venerable Means and Instruments of Communicating Christ's Body and Blood to us through the secret Operation of the Holy Ghost All which is very consistent with the Church of England's Notion of Christ's Real Spiritual Presence but is opposite to the Paschasian conceit of a gross Corporal Presence and utterly Destructive of the later conceit of Transubstantiation But to go on In the beginning of the Eleventh Century the Paschasian Doctrine met with fresh Opposition For the Romish Writers themselves confess that Leuthericus who was Archbishop of Sens in France Anno 1004 was a Great Stickler against it Baronius tells us that he fell under King Roberts displeasure for that Reason The Writer of the Life of Pope John the Seventeenth in one of the Tomes of the Councils would have it that this Leuthericus scatter'd Hujus tempore Leuthericus Senonensis Archiepiscopus hoeresis Berengarianae primordia semina sparsit the Seeds of the Berengarian Heresie And Spondanus insinuates that Fulbertus in his Epistles to Leuthericus reprehended him for dissenting from the Catholicks in this point But upon perusing those Epistles as they are set out by Carolus de Villiers in the Bibliotheca Patrum I find no such thing Some hard words indeed past upon the score of Ecclesiastical Discipline but as to this matter I can see nothing Nor can I conceive how it should be so not because Fulbertus was Berengarius his Instructor but because his Writings shew him to have been of an Opinion quite different from nay contrary to that of Paschasius though indeed the Romanists would fain pull him on their side because he was of such Authority and Eminence in his time so greatly admired that some Dreaming Monks devis'd this pleasant Romance of him which some Learned Writers too have been willing to report that when he was Sick the Virgin Mary was seen to come and Suckle him with Milk out of her own Breasts But let us be serious This Fulbertus was Bishop of Chartres in the Province of Leuthericus Anno 1007. And the first thing to our purpose which I find in his Epistle to Adeodatus is very remarkable For having mentioned Three Things necessary to be understood whereof this is the Third viz. what the two Sacraments of life that is of the Lords Body and Blood do consist of presently he saith that many looking on this and other things too Carnally while they gazed on a Carnal Sense or meaning more than on the secret Mysteries of Faith they tumbled down the precipice of a pernicious Errour And is not this directly against the Carnal opinion of Paschasius as well as against those who lookt upon these Mysteries as Empty things And after he saith because Christ was to take away into Heaven that Body which he offer'd up for us that we might not want the help of his Body so taken away he left us this Pledge of his Body and Blood not the Symbol of an empty Mystery but that which a secret Vertue invisibly works in under the visible Form of a Creature the Holy Ghost joyning the True Body of Christ to it You see Fulbertus runs clearly upon that Mystical ' Compaginante Spiritu Sancto Corpus Christi verum Union I spake of before which supposes the Substance and Nature both of Bread and Body to remain still in themselves distinct In his Epistle ad Finardum he plainly distinguisheth that Body which Christ took in the Virgin 's Womb from that which is in the Sacrament And at the End of his Sermons he tells us that some Eat to Life and others to Destruction but that the Thing represented by the Sacrament is to every Man for Life only so that he who Eateh to his Condemnation Eateth not the Flesh of Christ nor Drinks his