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
A77908	A second part of the enquiry into the reasons offered by Sa. Oxon for abrogating the test: or an answer to his plea for transubstantiation; and for acquitting the Church of Rome of idolatry	Burnet, Gilbert, 1643-1715.	1689 (1689)	Wing B5870B; ESTC R231153	11,390	8

Deliverance of the People of Israel out of Egypt but a continuance of the Covenant that Moses made between God and them which distinguished them from all the Nations round about them as well as the first Passeover had distinguished them from the Egyptians Now it were a strange Inference because the Lamb was called the Lords Passeover that is the Sacrifice upon the sprinkling of whose Blood the Angel passed over or passed by the Houses of the Israelites when he smote the first-born of the Egyptians to say that there was a change of the substance of the Lamb or because the Real faith of a Prince is given by his Great Seal printed on Wax and affixed to a Parchment that therefore the substance of the Wax is changed so it is no less absurd to imagin that because the Bread and the Wine are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ as broken and shed that is his death Really and effectually offered to us as our Sacrifice that therfore the substance of the Bread and Wine are changed And thus upon the whole matter that which is present in the Sacrament is Christ Dead and since his death was transacted above 1600. years ago the reality of his presence can be no other than a Real offer of his death made to us in an Instituted and federal simbole I have explained this the more fully because with this all the ambiguity in the use of that commonly received phrase falls off IV. As for the Doctrine of the Ancient Church there has been so much said in this Enquiry that a man cannot hope to add any new discoveries to what has been already found out therefore I shall only endeavour to bring some of the most Important Observations into a narrow compass and to set them in a good light and shall first offer some general Presumptions to shew that it is not like that this was the Doctrine of the Primitive times and then some Positive proof of it 1. It is no slight Presumption against it that we do not find the Fathers take any pains to answer the Objections that do naturally arise out of the present Doctrine of the Church of Rome these Objections do not arise out of profound study or great learning but from the plain dictates of common sense which make it hard to say no more for us to believe that a Body can be in more places than one at once and that it can be in a place after the manner of a spirit that Accidents can be without their subject or that our senses can deceive us in the plainest cases we find the Fathers explain some abstruse difficulties that arise out of other Mysteries that were less known and were more Speculative and while they are thought perhaps to over-do the one it is a little strange that they should never touch the other but on the contrary when they treat of Philosophical matters they express themselves roundly in opposition to those consequences of this Doctrine whereas since this Doctrine has been received we see all the speculations of Philosophy have been so managed as to keep a reserve for this Doctrine So that the uncautious way in which the Father 's handled them in proof of which Volumes of quotations can be made shews they had not then received that Doctrine which must of necessity give them occasion to write otherwise than they did 2. We find the Heathens studied to load the Christian Religion with all the heaviest Imputations that they could give it They objected to them the believing a God that was born and that dyed 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 therfore 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 Prosumption that they believed it not V. 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 then 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 Mss 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 S. Ambroses 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 Antient 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 Christs 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 Ephrem the Patriarch of Antioch Gelasius the Pope Theodoret a Bp in Asia the lesser and Facundus a Bp in Affrick 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 then 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 A 3d proof is taken from a practice which I will not offer to justify how Antient soever it may have been It appears indeed in the Antientest 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 to offer this up to the honour of a Saint and to pray that the Sacrifice of Christs body may be accepted of God thro 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 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 further 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 Christs 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 S. Chrysostom so that this aggreed 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 therfore 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 Eutichean 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 Antient Liturgies that they indeed acknowledged 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 Christs 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 practise such times as these we willingly yield up to our Adversaries Yet Damascene and the Greek Church after him carried this matter no further 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 further and to say that the Elements were changed into the 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