Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	body_n	bread_n	wine_n	4,141	5	8.0622	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38514	An epistle of a Catholique to his friend a Protestant touching the doctrine of reall presence. Or, the answer to a question propounded in these tearms What should move you, contrary to the plain testimony of your senses, to believe, that after consecration the bread and wine in the sacrament is become really Christs very body and blood.		1659 (1659)	Wing E3164AA; ESTC R222634	19,912	20

1.5 he saith that the Gospel is made known unto all Nations for the obedience of Faith that is to say that by faith and by believing all that the Gospel required of them men might shew themselves to be entirely obedient and subject unto God in their understandings no less then in their affections and wills And truly considering the way and order of God Almighties dealings with the sons of men we ought not to think it strange that he should in this particular of eating require a renuntiation of our senses We may do well to remember that when time was by following our senses contrary unto Gods command we lost Paradise and if now by obeying God contrary to our senses Paradise may be regained we shall have no great cause to murmure So that indeed this Imposition of believing and eating contrary to our senses seems as it were a certain Penance which God layes upon man for his first and great sin to the end that as by following his senses contrary to Gods express word and command Adam lost Heaven and eternal happiness as much as in him lay so by an obedient and submissive Faith in Gods word and unto his command renouncing the dictates of our own sense and all suggestions of flesh and blood the sons of Adam might through Grace recover Heaven and eternal happiness Sense and natural Reason tells Naaman that the Rivers of Damascus were as likely to cure him of his Leprosie as Jordan in Judea 2 Kings 5.12 but he found it otherwise So it was contrary to sense and contrary to all natural reason that the walls of Jericho should fall down at Israels blowing with Rams-horns yet we know they did so Joshua 6.20 Contrary to sense Moses divided the Sea by the stroak of a rod Exodus 14.16 21. And contrary to sense Jordan divided it self as soon as it was but touched by the feet of the Priests Joshua 3.15 16. And contrary to sense Iron did swimme 2 Kings 6.6 It was contrary to sense that a little meal and oyl no more then would make one cake should feed the Widow the Prophet and her Son many dayes or a long time together and not waste 1 Kings 17.12 16. It was contrary to sense that five loaves and two fishes should satisfie the hunger of five thousand persons and that there should remain twelve baskets full of broken meat after all had eaten Mat. 14.20 Mark 6.43 John 6.13 Considering the deadness of Sarahs womb as the Scripture speaketh Rom. 4.19 and also of Abrahams own body it was contrary to sense and re●son that Sarah should have a childe yet Abraham believing what God had said to him his Faith found the effect of the promise and it was counted to him for righteousnes For by believing saith the Scripture Rom. 4.20 he gave glory to God and was counted the friend of God James 2.23 So is it in this matter and mystery of the Eucharist they that believe what our Saviour hath said and accordingly trust thereupon give glory to God by this their believing yea are made thereby and esteemed the friends of God to wit so far as they do not frustrate or make void the merit of their faith by the demerit and wickedness of their lives Many other places and examples might be alledged that demonstrate Gods people alwayes to have walked with God by faith and not by sense and why not then in this Mystery as well as in others why should this Doctrine seem so strange to men of understanding and knowledge in the wayes of God considering the greatness of the Almighty and how he vails his will and mysteries oftentimes unto us Considering how terrible in the Old Testament he was to such as would pry into his wayes and secrets further then was permitted them how fearful the wiser sort of Jews were so to do and lastly how answerable the practice of the universal Church of Christ hath been in this thing and that for above sixteen hundred years namely to walk by faith rather then by sense in this business and to rest more upon the Word and Power and Truth of God then upon our own reason or understanding Consider I pray what the Prophet saith Isa 7.9 If ye will not believe surely you shall not be established By reason of unbelief was that Lord on whose hand the King leaned trodden to death in the gate of Samaria 2 Kings 7.20 A believing heart is the root of all spiritual excellency and acceptableness with God and it is the character which he gives them I take to witness saith God 2 Esdras 1.37 the grace of the people to come meaning the Christians such as should believe in the Messias that was to come whose little ones saith he rejoyce in gladness and though they have not seen me with bodily eyes yet in spirit they believe the things that I say Hitherto also comes that saying of our Lord to St. Thomas Because thou hast seen me Thomas thou believest but blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed John 20.29 Wherefore let us not dispute but rather pray to the Almighty to captivate our understandings to the obedience of Faith that we may here in reverence to his word be willing to believe what we do not see that so hereafter in the blissful vision of his glory we may be admitted to see more then we do now believe And besides all this the Prophetical Types and Shadows of the Sacrifices in the Law as also the Prophetical sayings or predictions of the Prophets concerning somewhat of greater worth and far exceeding the dignity of Mosaical Sacrifices that should be sacrificed and eaten under the Gospel are a further and undeniable argument that the Eucharist is not a figure onely of Christs Body but his very real and true Body 'T is granted by all at least by the most learned and ingenuous amongst Protestants to wit by all such as pretend any shew of respect to Antiquity that those Prophesies of the old Testament do point at the Eucharist or Sacrament of Christs Body in the new Now if the Sacramentarian opinion be true to wit that the Bread of the Eucharist remains still even after Consecration in truth and substance but a morsel of Bread and nothing else and the Wine after Consecration nothing but meer Wine how is the Sacrament of the Eucharist a more noble and excellent thing then were the Sacraments and Sacrifices of the Jews for they also were no less signs and figures of Christs Body then the Bread of the Eucharist is Yea who sees not that the Jewish Sacrifices upon this supposition viz. that the Eucharistical Bread is indeed nothing but Bread and the Eucharistical Wine nothing but Wine I say who seeth not upon this supposition that the Jewish Sacrifices far exceeded the Christians in the worth and dignity of the things sacrificed for example the Paschal Lamb was it not a more excellent Sacrifice in its own nature then a piece of

and my blood be drunken for otherwise life cannot be had if therefore this saying You must eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood offend you now and seem an hard saying to you now while he is present with you what will it do then when you shall see him leave you and ascend up in his Body into heaven where he was before how will you then think it possible to eat his flesh This I say was the effect of our Lords answer to them concerning their wondering how they should be able to eat Christs flesh and their being scandalized at it as a thing altogether impossible as you may see John 6.53 54. Whence surely it appeareth that if either our Saviour had expounded himself to mean or they had understood it that he did mean that his flesh should be eaten and his blood drunk in a sign or figure onely that speech of his what if you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before could have had no sufficient reason For doubtless the sign or figure of his Body whatsoever it were might easily enough be eaten by them after that his Body should be ascended To take Bread and to break it in token that Christs Body was broken for us upon the Cross is no such hard thing but that it may be done as well in Christs absence as in his presence yea something more properly in his absence then in his presence at least then in his visible natural and ordinary presence but now it is clear our Saviour in that place mentions his Ascension to his Disciples as a thing that should make the mystery of eating his flesh to seem more difficult to them and not less therefore he meant they should eat it more then in a bare sign or figure onely for that I say they might as easily do when he were in heaven as while he was on earth Moreover our Lord knowing that the Capernaites looked upon him as a meer man and also that while he spake of giving them his flesh to eat they understood him in a gross and carnal manner as that he should give them his flesh cut in pieces to eat or the like to extinguish and take away that gross conceit out of their mindes he telleth them that Flesh to wit according to their gross manner of understanding profitteth nothing But now first his Flesh was not meer humane flesh as they apprehended it but it was the flesh of the Son of God yea of the true God 1 John 5.20 it was flesh united to the Deity and therefore in respect of other common flesh whether of Beasts or Men Christs Body was to be accounted rather a Spiritual and Divine Body rather Spiritual and Divine Flesh then natural and common It was the Lords Body who came down from heaven and is eternally from everlasting to everlasting alwayes in heaven it was a Body full of grace and excellent vertue and also a Body full of divine and incomprehensible Mystery It was a Body Incarnate by the Holy Ghost without man and born of a Virgin without forcing or violating the Womb a Body that passed through a multitude and was not discerned Luke 4.30 compared with John 8.59 A Body that went out of the Sepulchre not forcing away the stone Matth. 28.2 5 6. That came into the room where the Disciples were gathered together the doors being shut John 20.19 it came in I say and stood in the midst of them before they ever perceived it just as if it had been a Spirit and insomuch as the Disciples Luke 24.36 37. took it verily to have been a spirit And therefore of such a Body as this and of such a Person as Christ was God even the true God bl●ssed for ever to say how can this man give us his flesh to eat or how can the Sacrament rightly consecrated be his Body is a foolish and an infidel question For he can do it well enough he can give us his flesh to eat and his bloud to drink though our sense perceive it not and though as he saith we must eat his Body yet his Body remaineth alwayes whole it is not to be cut or torn in pieces as the Capernaites imagined for he doth not say he would give us a piece of his flesh or a part of his fl●sh but his flesh entirely that is to say his whole Body the entire Humanity which he received of the Blessed Virgin this he would give to every one of us He can do all things to him nothing is impossible He was with two of his Disciples at Emmaus talking with them and conversing with them and immediately vanished out of their sight and was present with other Disciples at Jerusalem as may be gathered from Luke 24.29 31. compared with John 20.19 And though he be alwayes at the right hand of God in Heaven as appears Acts 3.22 yet is he also sometimes when he pleases upon earth to convert sinners as for example Saul Acts 9.17.27 and to comfort the faithful in their prisons as Acts 23.11 He can do all things I say he can as God do whatsoever he pleaseth in Heaven and Earth What are we then silly creatures to question how he can give us his flesh to eat seeing he hath said that we must eat it or perish But still you object and say that this Doctrine viz. that Bread should become Christs real Body in truth and substance is so strangly absurd that you cannot believe it I answer no more could the Jews nor some of his Disciples of whom therefore as taxing and noting their incredulity thereby our Lord saith John 6.64 65. That no man can come unto him and believe his words except it were given him from above and if there had been nothing that is no greater mystery in these words of Christ This is my Body c. but onely this viz. a figure or sign of my Body what needed all that contest so long so difficult about the words as was betwixt Christ and the Jews Yea then have the universal Church Councels Fathers Martyrs and all been deceived for never any of them all took the Sacrament to be onely a Figure of Christs Body But you say you cannot believe it Tell me Is it not as easie for our humane Reason to conceive that the Bread which our Lord said was his Body should be so indeed as it is to conceive that the little Babe sucking at his Virgin-Mothers breast was the Creatour of the whole Universe both of the Heavens and Earth of the Sea and of all things therein contained Is it not as easie for a Christian to believe this Doctrine as to believe that the little Babe in the Manger whom the three Sages adored was the Almighty God Faith may and must believe these things though sense and reason cannot Therefore St. Paul speaks 2 Cor. 10.5 of captivating our understanding and every thought and imagination to the obedience of Christ and Rom.