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A28850 A treatise of Communion under both species by James Benigne Bossuet.; Traité de la communion sous les doux espèces. English. Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 1627-1704. 1685 (1685) Wing B3792; ESTC R24667 102,656 385

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of this Body and this Blood coming from his death he would conserve the image of this death when he gave us them in his holy Supper and by so lively a representation keepe us alwayes in minde to the cause of our salvation that is to say the sacrifise of the Crosse According to this doctrine wee ought to have our living victime under an image of death otherwise wee should not be enlivened JESUS-CHRIST tells us also at his holy table I am living but I have beene dead Apoc. 1.11 and living in effect I beare only upon wee the image of that death which I have endured It is also thereby that I enliven because by the figure of my death once suffered I introduce those who beleeve to that life which I possesse eternally Thus the Lambe who is before the Throne as dead Apoc. 5.6 or rather as slaine do's not cease to be living for he is slanding and he sends throughout the world the seaven Spirits of God and he takes the booke and opens it and he fils heaven and earth with joy and with grace Our Reformers will not or it may be cannot yet understand so high a mystery for it enters not into the hearts but of those who are prepared by a purifyed Faith But if they cannot understand it they may at least understand very well that wee cannot beleeve a reall presence of the Body and Blood of JESUS-CHRIST without admitting all the other things wee have even now explicated and these things thus explicated is what wee call concomitancy But as soone as concomitancy is supposed and that wee have acknowledged JESUS-CHRIST whole and entire under each species it is verry easy to understand in what the vertue of this Sacrament consists John VI. 64. Cvr. lib. IV. in Joh. c. 34. Ia. Anath XI Conc. Eph. p. I. T. III. Conc. The flesh profiteth nothing and if wee understand it as Saint Cyrille whose sence was followed by the whole Council of Ephesus it profiteth nothing to beleeve it alone to believe it the flesh of a pure man but to believe it the flesh of God a flesh full of divinity and by consequence of spirit and of life it profiteth very much without doubt because in this state it is full of an infinite vertue and in it wee receive togeather with the entire humanity of JESUS-CHRIST his divinity also whole and entire and the very source or fountaine of graces For this reason it is the Son of God who knew what he would place in his mystery knew also very well how to make us understand in what he would place the vertue of it What he has said in Saint John must therefore be no more objected John 6.54 If you eate not the Flesh of the Son of man and drinke not his Blood you shall not have life in you The manifest meaning of these words is there is no life for those who seperate themselves from the one and the other for indeede it is not the eating and drinking but the receiving of JESUS-CHRIST that gives life JESUS-CHRIST sayes himselfe and as it is excellently remarked by the Councill of Trent Sess XXI c. 1. too injustly calumniated by our adversaryes He who said John 6.54 IF YOU EATE NOT THE FLESCH OF THE SON OF MAN AND DRINKE NOT HIS BLOOD YOU SHALL NOT HAVE LIFE IN YOU has also said Ibid. 52. IF ANY ONE EAT OF THIS BREAD HE SHALL HAVE LIFE EVERLASTING And he who said Ibid. 55. HE WHO EATES MY FLESH AND DRINKES MY BLOOD HAS ETERNALL LIFE Ibid. 52. has said also THE BREAD WHICH I WILL GIVE IS MY FLESH WHICH I WILL GIVE FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD And lastly he who said Ibid. 57. HE THAT EATES MY FLESH AND DRINKES MY BLOOD REMAINES IN ME AND I IN HIM has also said HE WHO EATES THIS BREAD Ibid. 59. SHALL HAVE ETERNALL LIFE and againe Ibid. 58. HE THAT EATES ME LIVES FOR ME AND SHALL LIVE BY ME. By which he obliges us not to the eating and drinking at his holy Table or to the species which containe his Body and his Blood but to his propper substance which is there communicated to us and togeather with it grace and life So that this passage of Saint John from whence as wee have said Jacobel tooke occasion to revolt and all Bohemia to rise in rebellion becomes a proofe for us The Pretended Reformers themselves would undertake to defend us if wee would against this passage so much boasted of by Jacobel seeing they owne with a common consent this passage is not to be understood of the Eucharist Calvin has said it Cal. Inst IV. c. Aub. lib. I. de Sacr. Euch. c. 30. c. Aubertin has said it every one says it and M. du Bourdieu says it also in his Treatise so often cited Repl. ch VI. p. 201. But without taking any advantage from their acknowledgements wee on the contrary with all antiquity maintaine that a passage where the Flesh and Blood as well as eating and drinking are so often and so clearly distinguished cannot be understood meerely of a communion where eating and drinking is the same thing such as is a spirituall Communion and by faith It belongs therefore to them and not to us to defend themselves from the authority of this passage where the businesse being to explicate the vertue and the fruict of the Eucharist it appeares that the Son of God places them not in eating and drinking nor in the manner of receiving his Body and his Blood but in the foundation and in the substance of both the one and the other Whereupon the antient Fathers for example Saint Cyprian he who most certainly gave nothing but the Blood alone to little infants as wee have seene so precisely in his Treatise De lapsis Test. ad Quir. III. 25.20 dos not omit to say in the same Treatise that the parents who led their children to the sacrifises of Idols deprived them of the Body and Blood of our Lord and teaches also in another place that they actually fulfill and accomplish in those who have life and by consequence in infants by giving them nothing but the Blood all that which is intended by these words If you eate not my Flesh and drink not my Blood you shall not have life in you Aug. Ep. 23. Saint Augustin sayes often the same thing though he had seene and examined in one of his Epistles that passage of Saint Cyprian where he speakes of the Communion of infants by Blood alone without finding any thing extraordinary in this manner of communion and that it is not to be doubted but the African Church where Saint Augustin was Bishop had retained the Tradition which Saint Cyprian so great a Martyr Bishop of Carthage and Primate of Africa had left behind him The foundation of this is that the Body and Blood inseperably accompany each other for although the species which
nothing to be seen of it neither in the letters of Gregory the eleveinth Tom. XI Conc. nor in the two Councils held at London by William of Courtenay and by Thomas Arundel Archbishops of Cantorbury nor in the Councill at Oxford celebrated by the same Thomas under Gregory the XII nor in the Councill at Rome under John the XXIII Tom. XII Conc. nor in the third Councill of London under the same Pope nor in the Councill of Constance nor finally in all the Councils and all the Decrees where the condemnation of that Arch-Heritick and the Catalogus of his errors are registred by which it appears that either he did not insist upon that point or that there was no great stir made about it Calixtus agrees with Aeneas Sylvius an Author neere those times N. 24.25 an author about those times who writ this History that the first who mooved that Question was one named Peter Dresde School-Master of Prague and he made use against us of the authority of that Passage in S. John If ye eat not the flesh of the Son of Man and drink not his Bloud you shall have no life in you This Passage missed Jacobel de Misne who caused the whole Church of Bohemia towards the end of the XIV age to revolt He was followed by John Hus in the begining of the XV. age so that the contest between us about the two species has no higher an originall Moreover it must be remorked that John Hus did not presume at first to say that Communion under both species was necessary Ibid. It suffised him that they should grant it was permitted and expedient to give it but he ditermined not the necessity of it so certaine and established a thing it was there was no such necessity When any change of essentiall customes is made the spirit of Tradition always living in the Church is never wanting to make an opposition The Ministers withall there great reasonings find yet very great difficulty to accustome their people to see their children dye without Baptisme and in despite of the opinion they have infused into them that Baptisme is not necessary to salvation they are not able to divert the trouble so funest an event produces in them nor scarce restraine the Fathers who absolutely require their children should be Baptised in that necessity according to ancient custome I my self have observed it by experience and the same may be seen by what I have cited out of their Synodes so true it is that a custome which an immemoriall and universall tradition hath imprinted in their mindes as necessary hath an irrissistable power and so fare are men from being able to extinguish such a sentiment in the wholl Church that it is very dificult even to extinguish it amongst those who with a deliberate resolution contradict it If there fore the Communion under one sole species hath passed without contradiction and without noyse it is as we have said that all Christians from the infancie of Christianity were nourished in that faith that the same vertue was diffused in either of the two species and that nothing of the substance was lost when but one of them only was received It was not needfull to use any extraordinary effort to make the faithfull enter into this sentiment The Communion of infants the Communion of the sick domestick Communion the custome to communicate under one or both species indiferently in the Church it selfe and in holy assemblies and in fine those other things we have seen had naturally inspired all the faithfull with this sentiment from the first ages of the Church So when John of Pick ham Archbishop of Cantorbury in the XIII Conc. Lameth C. I. T. XI Conc. age with so much care caused his people to be taught that under that one sole species they had distributed to them they received JESUS-CHRIST whole and intire it past without the lest difficulty and not one persone in the least contradicted it It would be cavilling to say that this great care makes it appear they mett with some opposition in it because we have already seen that William Archbishop of Chalons and Hugo de Sainto Victore not to ascend any higher at present had constantly taught above a hundred yeares before him the same doctrine not one finding in it any thing either new or strange so much naturally dos it take an impression in the minde We see in all times and in all places the Pastorall charity carefull to prevent even the least thoughts which ignorance might chance to let fall into the minds of men And in fine it is de facto certain that there was neither complaint nor contradiction upon this article during many ages I doe also positively averre that not one of those who beleived the reall presence ever ingenuously called in doubt this integrity that I may so say of the person of JESUS-CHRIST under each species seing it would have been to give a dead body to give a body without blood and without soul the very thoughts of which strikes a horrour From whence it comes that in beleiving the reall presence one is carried to beleive the full sufficiency of communion under one species We see also that Luther was naturally induced to this opinion and a good while after he had made a publick revolte from the Church it is certain that he had the matter still as indifferent or at least of small importance highly censuring Carlostadius who had contrary to his advice established Communion under both kinds and who seemed Ep. Luth. ad Casp Guttol Tom. II. Ep. 56. said he to place the whole reforme in these things of nothing He also uttered these insolent words in the Treatise which he published in 1523. upon the formula of the Masse If a Councill ordained or permited the two species wee would in contempt of that Councill receive but one of them or we would neither take the one or the other and curse those whoreceive bothin vertue of that Ordinance words which shew clearly that when both he and those of his party are of late so obstinately zealous for the two species it is rather out of a spirit of contradiction then any sollid reason In effect he approoved the same year the common places of Melancton where he putts amongst things indifferent Communion under one or both species In 1528. Visit Sax. T. VI. Ihen in his visitation of Saxony he left them expressy the liberty to receive but one only and persisted still in that opinion in 1533. fiveteen years after he had erected himselfe as a Reformer The whole Lutheran party supposes that nothing either essentiall or necessary to salvation is lost when one doth not communicate under both species seeing that in the Apologie of the Confession of Ausbourge a treatise as authentique with that party as the Confession of Ausbourge it self and equally subscribed to by all those who embraced it it is expresly set downe Apol.