Selected quad for the lemma: opinion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
opinion_n	church_n	council_n	trent_n	1,107	5	10.4717	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30335	A discourse concerning transubstantiation and idolatry being an answer to the Bishop of Oxford's plea relating to those two points.	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1688 (1688)	Wing B5775; ESTC R23015	24,041	38

the best Entertainment and the greatest Incouragement possible Nothing could so secure the Persons of Priests and render them so considerable as to believe that they made their God And in such Ages no Armour was of so sure a Proof as for a Priest to take his God in his Hands Now it is known that P. Gregory the 7th who condemned Berengarius laid the Foundations of the Ecclesiastical Empire by establishing the Deposing Power so P. Innocent the 3d who got Transubstantiation to be decreed in the 4th Council of the Lateran seemed to have compleated the Project by the Addition made to the Deposing Power of transferring the Dominions of the Deposed Prince to whom he pleased since before this the Dominions must have gone to the next Heirs of the Deposed Prince It is then so plain that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation was so suitable to the advancing of those ends that it had been a Wonder indeed if it being once set on foot had not been established in such times 3. Those Ages were so corrupt and more particularly the Clergy and chiefly the Popes were by the confession of all Writers so excessively vicious that such Men could have no regard to Truth in any of their Decisions Interest must have carried all other things before it with such Popes who according to the Historians of their own Communion were perhaps the worst Men that ever lived Their Vices were so crying that nothing but the Credit that is due to Writers of their own Time and their own Church could determine us to believe them 4. As the Ignorance and Vices of those Times derogate justly from all the Credit that is due to them so the Cruelty which followed their Decisions and which was employed in the Execution of them makes it appear rather a stranger thing that so many opposed them than that so many submitted to them When Inquisitors or Dragoons manage an Argument how strong soever the Spirit may be in opposing it is certain the Flesh will be weak and will ply easily When Princes were threatned with Deposition and Hereticks with Extirpation and when both were executed with so much rigour the Success of all the Doctrines that were established in those Days ought to make no Impression on us in its Favour VII It is no less plain that there was a great and vigorous Opposition made to every Step of the Progress of this Doctrine When the Eutychians first made use of it the greatest Men of that Age set themselves against it When the Worshippers of Images did afterwards deny that the Sacrament was the Image of the Body and Blood of Christ a General Council in the East asserted according to the ancient Liturgies the contrary Proposition When Paschase Radbert set on foot the Corporal Presence in the West all the great Men of the Age writ against him Berenger was likewise highly esteemed and had many secret Followers when this Doctrine was first decreed And ever since the time of the Council of the Lateran that Transubstantiation was established there have been whole Bodies of Men that have opposed it and that have fallen as Sacrifices to the Rage of the Inquisitors And by the Processes of those of Tholouse of which I have seen the Original Records for the space of twenty Years it appears that as Transubstantiation was the Article upon which they were always chiefly examined so it was that which many of them did constantly deny so far were they on both sides from looking on it only as an Explanation of the Real Presence VIII The Novelty of this Doctrine appears plainly by the strange work that the Schools have made with it since they got it among them both in their Philosophy and Divinity and by the many different Methods that they took for explaining it till they had licked it into the shape in which it is now Which is as plain an Evidence of the Novelty of the Doctrine as can be imagined The Learned Mr. Alix has given us a clear Deduction of all that Confusion into which it has cast the School-men and the many various Methods that they fell on for maintaining it First They thought the Body of Christ was broken by the Teeth of the Faithful Then that appearing absurd and subjecting our Saviour to new Sufferings the Doctrine of a Body's being in a place after the manner of a Spirit was set up And as to the Change some thought that the Matter of Bread remained but that it was united to the Body of Christ as Nourishment is digested into our Bodies Others thought that the Form of Bread remained the Matter only being changed And some thought that the Bread was only withdrawn to give place to the Body of Christ whereas others thought it was annihilated While the better Judges had always an Eye either to a Consubstantiation or to such an Assumption of the Bread and Wine by the Eternal Word as made the Sacrament in some sense his Body indeed but not that Body which is now in Heaven All these different Opinions in which the School-men were divided even after the Decision made by Pope Innocent in the Council of the Lateran shew that the Doctrine being a Novelty Men did not yet know how to mould or form it But in process of Time the whole Philosophy was so digested as to prepare all Scholars in their first Formation to receive it the more easily And in our Age in which that Philosophy has lost its Credit what Pains do they take to suppress the New Philosophy as seeing that it cannot be so easily subdued to support this Doctrine as the Old one was And it is no unpleasant thing to see the shifts to which the Partisans of the Cartesian Philosophy are driven to explain themselves Which are indeed so very ridiculous that one can hardly think that those who make use of them believe them for they are plainly rather Tricks and Excuses than Answers IX No Man can deny that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome but he that will dispute the Authority of the Councils of the Lateran and Trent Now tho some have done the first avowedly yet as their Number is small and their Opinion decried so for the Council of Trent tho I have known some of that Communion who do not look upon it as a General Council and tho it is not at all received in France neither as to Doctrine nor Discipline yet the contrary Opinion is so universally received that they who think otherwise dare not speak out and so give their Opinion as a Secret which they trust in Confidence rather than as a Doctrine which they will own But setting aside the Authority of these Councils the common Resolution of Faith in the Church of Rome being Tradition it cannot be denied that the constant and general Tradition in the Church of Rome these last 500 Years has been in favour of Transubstantiation and that is witnessed by all the Evidences by which it is

Nature but by adding Grace to Nature This they do in terms plain and beyond all exception and Theodoret goes over the matter again and again in two different Treatises so that no Matter of Fact can appear more plainly than that the whole Church East and West and South did in the 5th and 6th Centuries believe that the Sanctification of the Elements in the Sacrament did no more destroy their Natures than the Union of the two Natures in Christ did destroy his Humane Nature 3. A third Proof is taken from a Practice which I will not offer to justify how ancient soever it may have been It appears indeed in the ancientest Liturgies now extant and is a Prayer in which the Sacrament is said to be offered up in Honour of the Saint of the Day to which a Petition is added that it may be accepted of God by the Intercession of the Saint This is yet in the Missal and is used upon most of the Saints days Now if the Sacrament was then believed to be the very Body and Blood of Christ there is nothing more crude not to say Prophane than to offer this up to the Honour of a Saint and and to pray that the Sacrifice of Christ's Body may be accepted of God thrô the Intercession of a Saint Therefore to give any tolerable Sense to these words we must conclude That tho these Prayers have been continued in the Roman Church since this Opinion prevailed yet they were never made in an Age in which it was received The only meaning that can be given to these words is that they made the Saints-days days of Communion as well as the Sundays were and upon that they prayed that the Sacrament which they received that day to do the more Honour to the Memory of the Saint might be recommended to the Divine Acceptance by the Intercession of the Saint So that this superstitious Practice shews plainly That the Church had not even when it began received the Doctrine of the change of the Elements into the Body and Blood of Christ. I will not pursue the Proof of this Point farther nor will I enter into a particular recital of the Sayings of the Fathers upon this Subject which would carry me far And it is done so copiously by others that I had rather refer my Reader to them than offer him a lean Abridgment of their Labours I shall only add That the Presumptions and Proofs that I have offered are much more to be valued than the pious and Rhetorical Figures by which many of the Fathers have set forth the manner of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament One thing is plain that in most of them they represent Christ present in his dead and crucified State which appears most eminently in St. Chrysostome so that this agrees with that Notion of a Real Presence that was formerly explained Men that have at the same time all the heat in their Imaginations that Eloquence can raise and all the fervour in their Heart which Devotion can inspire are seldom so correct in their Phrases and Figures as not to need some allowances Therefore one plain Proof of their Opinions from their reasonings when in cold Blood ought to be of much more weight than all their Transports and Amplifications From this general view of the State of the Church during the first Centuries I come next to consider the steps of the Change which was afterwards made I will not offer to trace out that History which Mr. Larrogue has done copiously whom I the rather mention because he is put in English. I shall only observe that by reason of the high Expressions which were used upon the occasion of the Eutychian Controversy formerly mentioned by which the Sanctification of the Elements was compared to the Union of the Humane Nature of Christ with his Divinity a great step was made to all that followed During the Dispute concerning Images those who opposed the Worship of them said according to all the ancient Liturgies that they indeed acknowleged one Image of Christ which was the Sacrament those who promoted that piece of Superstition for I refer the calling it Idolatry to its proper place had the Impudence to deny that it had ever been called the Image of Christ's Body and Blood and said that it was really his Body and Blood. We will not much dispute concerning an Age in which the World seemed mad with a Zeal for the Worship of Images and in which Rebellion and the deposing of Princes upon the pretence of Heresy began to be put in practice Such Times as these we willingly yeild up to our Adversaries Yet Damascene and the Greek Church after him carried this matter no farther than to assert an Assumption of the Elements into an Union with the Body and Blood of Christ. But when the Monk of Corbie began to carry the matter yet farther and to say that the Elements were changed into that very Body of Christ that was born of the Virgin we find all the great Men of that Age both in France Germany and England writ against him And he himself owns that he was looked upon as an Innovator those who writ against him chiefly Rabanus Maurus and Bertram or Ratramne did so plainly assert the ancient Opinion of the Sacraments being the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that we cannot express our selves more formally than they did And from thence it was that our Saxon Homily on Easter-Day was so express in this point Yet the War and the Northern Invasions that followed put the World into so much disorder that all Disputes were soon forgot and that in the 11th Century this Opinion which had so many Partisans in the 9th was generally decried and much abandoned VI. But with relation to those Ages in which it was received some Observations occur so readily to every one that knows History that it is only for the sake of the more ignorant that I make them 1. They were Times of so much Ignorance that it is scarce conceivable to any but to those who have laboured a little in reading the Productions of those Ages which is the driest Piece of Study I know The Stile in which they writ and their way of arguing and explaining Scripture are all of a piece both Matter and Form are equally barbarous Now in such Times as the ignorant Populace were easily misled so there is somewhat in incredible Stories and Opinions that makes them pass as easily as Men are apt to fancy they see Sprights in the Night Nay the more of Mystery and Darkness that there is in any Opinion such Times are apt to cherish it the more for that very reason 2. Those were Ages in which the whole Ecclesiastical Order had entred into such Conspiracies against the State which were managed and set on with such vigor by the Popes that every Opinion which tended to render the Persons of Church-men sacred and to raise their Character was likely to receive