Selected quad for the lemma: word_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
word_n	blood_n	body_n	consecration_n	6,066	5	10.8852	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30328	A collection of eighteen papers relating to the affairs of church & state during the reign of King James the Second (seventeen whereof written in Holland and first printed there) by Gilbert Burnet ...	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1689 (1689)	Wing B5768; ESTC R3957	183,152	256

heaviest Imputations that they could give it They objected to them the believing a God that was born and that died and the Resurrection of the Dead and many lesser matters which seemed absurd to them they had malice enough to seek out every thing that could disgrace a Religion which grew too hard for them but they never once object this of making a God out of a piece of Bread and then eating him if this had been the Doctrine of those Ages the Heathens chiefly Celsus and Porphiry but above all Julian could not have been Ignorant of it Now it does not stand with common sense to think that those who insist much upon Inconsiderable things could have passed over this which is both so sensible and of such Importance if it had been the received belief of those Ages 3. It is also of weight that there were no disputes nor Heresies upon this point during the first Ages and that none of the Hereticks ever objected it to the Doctors of the Church We find they contended about all other Points now this has so many difficulties in it that it should seem a little strange that all mens understandings should have been then so easy and consenting that this was the single point of the whole Body of Divinity about which the Church had no dispute for the first Seven Centuries It therefore inclines a Man rather to think that because there was no disputes concerning it therefore it was not then broached since we see plainly that ever since it was broached in the West it has occasioned lasting Disputes both with those who could not be brought to believe it and with one another concerning the several ways of explaining and maintaining it 4. It is also a strong Prejudice against the Antiquity of this Doctrine that there were none of those rites in the first Ages which have crept in in the latter which were such natural consequences of it that the belief of the one making way for the other we may conclude that where the one were not practised the other was not believed I will not mention all the Pomp which the latter Ages have Invented to raise the lustre of this Doctrine with which the former Ages were unacquainted It is enough to observe that the Adoration of the Sacrament was such a necessary Consequence of this Doctrine that since the Primitive Times know nothing of it as the Greek Church does not to this day it is perhaps more than a Presumption that they believed it not 5. But now I come to more Positive and Convincing proofs and 1. The language of the whole Church is only to be found in the Liturgies which are more severely composed than Rhetorical Discourses and of all the parts of the Office the Prayer of Consecration is that in which we must hope to find most certainly the Doctrine of the Church we find them in the 4th Century that in the Prayer of Consecration the Elements were said to be the Types of the Body and Blood of Christ as St. Basil Informs us from the Greek Liturgies and the Figure of his Body and Blood as St. Ambrose Informs us from the Latine Liturgies The Prayer of Consecration that is now in the Canon of the Mass is in a great part the same with that which is cited by St. Ambrose but with this Important difference that instead of the words which is the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that are in the former there is a petition added in the latter that the gifts may be to us the Body and Blood of Christ If we had so many of the Masses of the Ancient Liturgies left as to be able to find out the time in which the Prayer of Consecration was altered from what it was in St. Ambrose's days to what it is now this would be no small Article in the History of Transubstantiation but most of these are lost since then the Ancient Church could not believe otherwise of the Sacrament than as she expressed her self concerning it in the Prayer of Consecration It is plain that her first Doctrine concerning it was that the Bread and Wine were the Types and the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ 2. A second proof is from the Controversy that was began by the Apollinarists and carried on by the Eutichians whether Christ's humanity was swallowed up of his Divinity or not The Eutichians made use of the General Expressions by which the change in the Sacrament seemed to be carried so far that the Bread and Wine were swallowed up by it and from this they inferred that in like manner the human nature of Christ was swallowed up by his Divinity but in opposition to all this we find Chrysostome the Patriarch of Constantinople Ephraim the Patriarch of Antioch Gelasius the Pope Theodoret a Bishop in Asia the lesser and Facundus a Bishop in Africk all within the compass of little more than an Age agree almost in the same words in refuting all this asserting that as the human nature in Christ remained still the same that it was before notwithstanding its union with his Divine Nature even so the Bread and Wine retained still their former Nature Substance and Form and that they are only sanctified not by the change of their 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 fifth and sixth 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 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 prophanc to offer this up to the honour of a Saint and to pray that the Sacrifice of Christ's Body may be accepted of God through the Intercession of a Saint Therefore to give any tollerable 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