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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56393	Reasons for abrogating the test imposed upon all members of Parliament, anno 1678, Octob. 30 in these words, I A.B. do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testifie, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at, or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous : first written for the author's own satisfaction, and now published for the benefit of all others whom it may concern.	Parker, Samuel, 1640-1688.	1688 (1688)	Wing P467; ESTC R5001	62,716	138

Let this be Printed WHITEHALL Decemb. 10. 1687. Sunderland P. REASONS FOR ABROGATING THE TEST Imposed upon All Members of Parliament Anno 1678. Octob. 30. In these Words I A. B. do solemnly and sincerely in the Presence of God profess testifie and declare That I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any Transubstantiation of the Elements of Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the Consecration thereof by any Person whatsoever And that the Invocation or Adoration of the Uirgin Mary or any other Saint and the Sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome are Superstitious and Idolatrous First Written for the Author 's own Satisfaction And now Published for the Benefit of all others whom it may concern LONDON Printed for Henry Bonwicke at the Red Lyon in St. Paul's Church-yard MDCLXXXVIII REASONS FOR ABROGATING THE TEST THE TEST imposed upon all Members of Parliament October 30. 1678. ought I humbly conceive to be repeal'd for these Reasons First Because it doth not only diminish but utterly destroy the natural Rights of Peerage and turns the Birth-right of the English Nobility into a precarious Title So that what was in all former Ages only forfeited by Treason is now at the mercy of every Faction or every Passion in Parliament And therefore how useful soever the Test might have been in its season it some time must prove a very ill Precedent against the Rights of Peerage for if it may be allow'd in any Case there is no Case in which it may not be imposed And therefore I remember that in the First Transubstantiation-Test Anno Dom. 1673 the Rights of Peerage are indeed according to constant Custom secur'd by Proviso Provided always That neither this Act nor anything therein contained shall extend be judged or interpreted any ways to hurt or prejudice the Peérage of any Péer of this Realm or to take away any right power privilege or profit which any person being a Péer of this Realm hath or ought to enjoy by reason of his Péerage either in time of Parliament or otherwise And in the Year 1675. when this Test or Oath of Loyalty was brought into the House of Peers That it is not lawful upon any Pretence whatsoever to take up Arms against the King and by his Authority against his Person it was vehemently protested against as a Breach of Privilege No body could except against the Matter of the Test it self much less the Nobility who had generally taken it upon the Account of their several Trusts in the Militia So that the only Debate was Whether the very Proposal of it as a Qualification for a Right to sit in Parliament were not a Breach of the fundamental Right of Peerage And after some Debates upon the Point of Peerage it was without ever entring into the Merits of the Cause it self thrown out by an unanimous Vote of the House April 21. 1675. Before the putting of the Question this PROTESTATION is entred A Bill to prevent the Dangers which may arise from Persons disaffected to the Government The House resolv'd into a Committee to consider of it and being resum'd the Question was put Whether this Bill does so far intrench upon the Privileges of this House as it ought therefore to be cast out It was at first resolved in the Negative with this Memorandum That before the putting the abovesaid Question these Lords following desired Leave to enter their Dissents if the Question was carried in the Negative and accordingly did enter their Dissents as followeth We whose Names are underwritten being Peers of this Realm do according to our Rights and the ancient Usage of Parliaments declare That the Question having been put Whether the Bill entituled An Act to prevent the Dangers which may arise from Persons disaffected to the Government does so far entrench upon the Privileges of this House that it ought therefore to be cast out it being resolved in the Negative We do humbly conceive That any Bill which imposeth an Oath upon the Peers with a Penalty as this doth That upon the refusal of that Oath they shall be made uncapable of sitting and voting in this House As it is a thing unpresidented in former Times so is it in our humble Opinion the highest Invasion of the Liberties and Privileges of the Peerage that possibly may be and most destructive of the Freedom which they ought to enjoy as Members of Parliament Because the Privilege of Sitting and Voting in Parliament is an Honour they have by Birth and a Right so inherent in 'em and inseparable from 'em as that nothing can take it away but what by the Law of the Land must withal take away their Lives and corrupt their Blood upon which Ground We do here enter our Dissent from that Vote and our Protestation against it QVAERE How many of those Noble Lords voted for the Test in 1678. and then whether if they have preserved their Rights of Peerage they have preserv'd its Honour too But the Debate was kept up many Days till at last April 30. 1675. it came to this Issue It was at last resolved That no Oath shall by this Bill be imposed and pass'd into a general Order by the whole House Nemine contradicente as followeth Order'd by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled That no Oath shall be imposed by any Bill or otherwise upon the Peers with a Penalty in case of Refusal to lose their Places and Votes in Parliament or liberty of Debates therein and that this Order be added to the standing Orders of this House Secondly It ought to be repealed because of its dishonourable Birth and Original it being the First-born of Oats's Plot and brought forth on purpose to give Credit and Reputation to the Perjury Now I should think that when the Villainy of that is so fully laid open to the World it should not a little concern the Honour of the Nation but very much concern the Honour and Wisdom of the House of Peers to deface so great a Monument erected by themselves in honour of so gross an Imposture It is Shame enough to the present Age to have given any publick Credit to so enormous a Cheat and the greatest Kindness it can do it self is to destroy as much as may be all the Records of Acts done by the Government to abett it What will Posterity judge of the present Nobility to see such an unpresidented Law not only enacted upon so foul an Occasion but after the Discovery of the Cheat asserted with Heat and Zeal though to the Subversion of their own fundamental Rights and Privileges Besides the Roman Catholick Peers have suffered severely enough already by their own honourable House's giving Credit to so dull an Imposture And I think it is the least Compensation that they can in Honour make them only to restore 'em to their natural Rights What will foreign Nations and

Fathers of the Council believed the Reality of the New substantial Presence under the Old Accidents yet they had more Temper and Discretion than to Authorise it by conciliar Determination and therefore use only the Word Species and no other Word is used by Nicolas II Gregory VII and Innocent III that are thought the Three great Innovators in the Argument of the Real Presence that properly signifies Appearance but nothing of Physical or Natural Reality so that tho the Presence under the Species be real yet as the Council hath defined it it is not Natural but Sacramental which Sacramental Real Presence they express by the Word Transubstantiation and recommend the Propriety of the Word to the Acceptance of Christendom This is the short History of the Real Presence in the Church of Rome where as far as I can discern the thing it self hath been owned in all Ages of the Church the Modus of it never defined but in the Schools and tho they have fansied Thousand Definitions to themselves their Metaphysicks were never admitted into the Church And so I proceed to give an Account of it as it hath been defin'd in the Protestant Churches where we shall find much the same Harmony of Faith and Discord of Philosophy as in the Church of Rome And first we must begin with the famous Confession of Ausburg that was drawn up by Melancthon and in the Year 1530 presented to Charles the Fifth by several Princes of Germany as a Declaration of the Faith of the first Reformers and as the only true standard of the Ancient Protestant Religion The Confesion consists of Two parts I. What Doctrines themselves taught II. What Abuses they desired to be reformed As to the later the Emperor undertook to procure a General Council As to the former particularly this Article of the Presence in the Sacrament they have published it in two several forms In the Latin Edition it is worded thus Concerning the Lords Supper we teach That the Body and Blood of Christ are there present indeed and are distributed to the Receivers at the Lords Supper and condemn those that teach otherwise In the German Edition it is worded thus Concerning the Lords Supper we teach That the true Body and Blood of Christ are truly present in the Supper under the species of Bread and Wine and are there distributed and received And in an Apology written by the same hand and published the Year following it is thus expressed We believe That in the Supper of our Lord the Body and Blood of Christ are really and substantially present and are Exhibited indeed with those things that are seen the Bread and Wine This belief our Divines constantly maintain and we find not only the Church of Rome hath asserted the Corporeal Presence but that the Greek Church hath anciently as well as at this time asserted the same as appears by their Canon Missae The same Author Explains himself more at large in his Epistle to Fredericus Myconius I send you says he the passages out of the Ancients concerning the Lord's Supper to prove that they held the same with us namely That the Body and Blood of our Lord are there present indeed And after divers Citations he concludes That seeing this is the express Doctrine of the Scriptures and constant Tradition of the Church I cannot conceive how by the name of the Body of Christ should only be understood the sign of an absent Body for though the Word of God frequently makes use of Metaphors yet there is a great difference to be made between Historical Relations and Divine Institutions In the first matters transacted among Men and visible to the Sence are related and here we are allow'd and often forced to speak figuratively But if in Divine Precepts or Revelations concerning the Nature or the Will of God we should take the same liberty wise Men cannot but fore-see the Mischiefs that would unavoidably follow There would be no certainty of any Article of Faith. And he gives an instance in the Precept of Circumcision to Abraham That upon those Terms the good Patriarch might have argued with himself That God never intended to impose a thing so seemingly absurd as the words sound and that therefore the Precept is to be understood only of a Figurative or Metaphorical Circumcision the Circumcision of our Lusts. So far this Learned Reformer Now the Authority of Melancthon weighs more with us of the Church of England as the learned Dr. St. very well observes that in the settlement of our Reformation there was no such regard had to Luther or Calvin as to Erasmus and Melancthon whose Learning and Moderation were in greater Esteem here than the fiery spirits of the other and yet few Writers have asserted the Substantial and Corporeal Presence in higher terms than this moderate Reformer and though he may sometimes have varied in Forms of Speech he continued constant and immovable in the substance of the same Doctrine For in the Confession of the Saxon Churches at the Compiling of which he was chief Assistant drawn up in the Year 1551 to have been presented to the Council of Trent a true and substantial Presence is asserted during the time of Ministration We teach say they That Sacraments are Divine Institutions and that the things themselves out of the use desing'd are no Sacraments but in the use Christ is verily and substantially present and the Body and Blood of Christ are indeed taken by the Receivers There seems to have been one singular Notion in this Confession That the Real and Substantial Presence lasts no longer than the Ministration but that is nothing to our Argument as long as a substantial Presence is asserted In the Year 1536 an Assembly of the Divines of the Ausburg Confession on one side and the Divines of Vpper Germany on the other conven'd at Wirtemberg by the procurement and mediation of Bucer who undertook to moderate between both parties where they agreed in this form of Confession We believe according to the words of Irenaeus That the Eucharist consists of two things one Earthly the other Heavenly and therefore believe and teach That the Body and Blood of Christ are truly and substantially exhibited and received with the Bread and Wine This is subscribed by the chief Divines of both Parties and approved by the Helvetian Ministers themselves The Bohemian Waldenses in their Confession of Faith presented to Ferdinand King of the Romans and Bohemia declare expressly That the Bread and Wine are the very Body and Blood of Christ and that Christ is in the Sacrament with his Natural Body but by another way of Existence than at the Right-hand of God. In the Greek Form of Consecration this Prayer was used Make this Bread the precious Body of thy Christ and that which is in this Cup the precious Blood of thy Christ changing them by thy Holy Spirit which words are taken out of the Liturgies of St. Chrysostom and St. Basil. And Ieremias

the Learned Patriarch of Constantinople in his Declaration of the Faith of the Greek Church in Answer to the Lutheran Divines affirms That the Catholick Church believes that after the Consecration the Bread is changed into the very Body of Christ and the Wine into the very Blood by the Holy Spirit In the Year 1570. was held a Council in Poland of the Divines of the Ausburg the Helvetian and the Bohemian Confessions in which they agreed in this Declaration As to that unhappy Controversie of the Supper of our Lord We agree in the Sence of the Words as they are rightly understood by the Fathers particularly by Irenaeus who affirms that the Mystery consists of two things one Earthly and another Heavenly Neither do we affirm that the Elements and Signs are meer naked and empty Things signified to Believers But to speak more clearly and distinctly we agree that we believe and confess the substantial Presence of Christ is not only signified to Believers but is really held forth distributed and exhibited the Symbols being joined with the thing it self and not meerly naked according to the nature of Sacraments This Confession was confirmed at several times by several following Synods in the same Kingdom at Cracow 1573. at Peterkaw 1578. at Walhoff 1583. The First Man that opposed the real and substantial Presence was Carolostadius Archdeacon of Wirtenberg of whom the candid and ingenious Melancthon gives this Character That he was a furious Man void both of Wit Learning and common Sence not capable of any Act of Civility or good Manners so far from any appearances of Piety that there are most manifest Footsteps of his Wickedness He condemns all the Civil Laws of the heathen Nations as Unlawful and would now have all Nations governed by the judicial Law of Moses and embrac'd the whole Doctrine of the Anabaptists He sets up the Controversie about the Sacraments against Luther meerly out of Envy and Emulation not out of any Sence of Religion and much more to the same Purpose The Truth of all which he says a great part of Germany both can and will attest Tho the greatest Proof of his Levity is his own Writing when all that Disorder and Schism that he made in the Church of which he profess'd himself a Member was founded upon no better Bottom than this slender Nicety That when our Saviour said this is my Body he pointed not to the Bread but to himself But in this he is vehemently opposed by his Master Luther in behalf of a true Corporeal Presence especially in his Book Contra Coelestes Prophetas seu Fanaticos wherein he lays down this Assertion That by the Demonstrative Pronoun hoc Christ is declared to be Truly and carnally present with his Body in the Supper and that the Communication of the Body of Christ of which St. Paul speaks is to eat the Body of Christ in the Bread neither is that Communication Spiritual only but Corporeal as it is in the personal Vnion of Christ So we are to conceive of the Sacrament in which the Bread and the Body make up one thing and after an incomprehensible manner which no Reason can Fathom become one Essence or Mass from whence as Man becomes God so the Bread becomes the Body And in a Sermon preached by him the same Year at Wirtemberg against the Sacramentarian Hereticks as he calls them The Devil opposes us by his Fanatick Emissaries in the Blaspheming the Supper of our Lord that dream the Bread and Wine are there only given as a Sign or Symbol of our Christian Profession nor will allow that the Body and Blood of Christ are there present themselves tho the Words are express and perspicuous Take eat this is my Body In this Controversie he was engaged all his Life against Carolostadius and other Apostates from the Ausburg Confession giving them no better Titles than of Fanaticks Hereticks Betrayers of Christ Blasphemers of the Holy Ghost and Seducers of the World. And in his last Book against the Divines of Lovain in the Year 1545 the Year before his Death he makes this solemn Declaration We seriously believe the Zuinglians and all Sacramentarians that deny the Body and Blood of Christ to be received Ore carnali in the Blessed Sacrament to be Hereticks and no Members of the Church of Christ So that hitherto it is evident That the whole Body of the true Old Protestants both in their publick Confessions and private Writings unanimously asserted the Corporeal and Substantial Presence as they use the Words promiscuously As for the Calvinian Churches Grotius hath observed very truly That the Calvinists express themselves in a quite different Language in their Confessions from what they do in their Disputations where they declare themselves more frankly In their Confessions they tell you That the Body and Blood of Christ are taken Really Substantially Essentially but when you come to Discourse'em closer the whole Business is Spiritual without Substance only with a signifying Mystery and all the reality is turned into a receiving by Faith which says he is a perfect contradiction to the Doctrine of the whole Catholick Church So they declare in the Conference at Presburg with the Lutherans That in the Sacrament Christ indeed gives the Substance of his Body and Blood by the working of the Holy Ghost And when Luther signify'd to Bucer his Jealously of the Divines of Strasburgh and Bazil as if they believed nothing to be present in the Sacrament but the Bread and Wine Bucer returns this Answer in the name and with the consent of all his Brethren This is their Faith and Doctrine concerning the Sacrament That in it by the Institution and Power of our Lord his true Body and his true Blood are indeed exhibited given and taken together with the visible Signs of Bread and Wine as his own Words declare This is the Doctrine not only of Zuinglius and Oecolampadius but the Divines of Upper Germany have declared the same in their publick Confessions and Writings So that the Difference is rather about the manner of the Absence and Presence than about the Presence or Absence themselves And the Reformed French Church in the year 1557. declare themselves much after the same manner to a Synod of Reform'd German Divines held at Wormes We confess that in the Supper of our Lord not only all the Benefits of Christ but the very Substance of the Son of Man the very Flesh and the very Blood that he shed for us to be there not meerly signify'd or Symbolically Typically or Figuratively as a Memorial of a thing absent but truly held forth exhibited and offered to be received together with the Symbols that are by no means to be thought naked which by virtue of God's Promise always have the thing it self truly and certainly conjoin'd with them whether they are given to the good or to the bad But what need of more Witnesses when Calvin himself the very Vrim and Thummim of the Calvinian

Notion singular to himself from all the other Philosophers of Greece viz. That every substance was compounded of matter and form and that these two were really distinct from one another and then that the quantity of every Body was really distinct from the substance of it and so distinct as to be separable from it And lastly That all other Qualities Accidents and Predicaments were founded not in the Substance but in the Quantity and therefore in all change of Affairs ever fol'owed its Fortunes Now the Catholick Church having in all Ages asserted the real and substantial Presence Oh say they to shew their deep new Learning That is to be understood in the Aristotelian way by separating the Form of the Bread from the Matter but chiefly by separating the inward Substance of Bread from its outward Quantity and its retinue of Qualities This was the Rise of Philosophick or Scholastick Transubstantiation that the Quantity and Accidents of the Bread are pared off from all the Substance and shaped and moulded a-new so as to cover an humane Body And after this they run into an infinite Variety of Disputes and Hypotheses among themselves so that till the Last Age it hath been the chief entertainment of all pretenders to Philosophy in Christendom Rupertus Abbot of Dentsch a Village upon the Rhine lying on the other side of the River against the City of Cologne a Man of great reputation for Learning in that Age makes out the Philosophy of the Thing by the Vnion of the Word or Divine Nature that is Omnipresent with the Bread and Wine and it is that Vnity he says that makes it one Body with that in Heaven And withal that it is as easie for our Saviour to assume or unite himself to one as the other and when that is done they are both one body because they are both his Body This was fine and curious but not Aristotelian enough for that Age in which that Philosophy was set up as the Standard of humane Wisdom by the Beaux Esprits Among these Petrus Abelardus gain'd a mighty Name and Reputation for his skill in these new found Philosophick Curiosities tho' otherwise a Man versed much beyond the Genius of that Age in Polite Learning but being of a proud and assuming Nature he soon drew upon himself the Envy of the less Learned Monks which cost him a long scene of Troubles as he hath elegantly described them in his Book of his own Persecutions But among many other singularities to maintain the separation of the matter from the form and the substance from the accidents in the Sacrament of the Altar he is forced to make use of this shift That upon the Separation of the Substance the Accidents that cannot subsist of themselves are supported by the Air. But then comes Peter Lombard Anno 1140. Grand Master of the Sentences and Father of the next race of School-men who indeed proves the real and substantial Presence out of the Ancients particularly St. Austin and St. Ambrose but when he comes to explain the manner of it whether it be a formal or material change whether the substance of the Bread and Wine be reduced into its first matter or into nothing and the like his conclusion is definire non sufficio I presume not to determine and therefore quitting these uncertain things this I certainly know from Authorities viz. That the substance of the Bread and Wine are converted into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ but as for the manner of the Conversion we are not ashamed to confess our Ignorance But if you inquire in what subject the Accidents subsist he answers problematically mihi videtur that they subsist without any subject at all But it was agreed in all Schools That whatever became of the Substance the Accidents remained And that all outward Operations terminated there and that only they were broken and eaten But as for the substance of the Bread and Wine some were for its permanency with the Substance of the Body and Blood some for its Annihilation some for physical Conversion But then these Curiosites were kept in the Schools where witty Men for want of more useful Imployment entertained and amused themselves with these fine subtleties of thought But then they were confined within the Schools and never admitted so much as to ask the Authority of the Church In the next Age comes that young and active Pope Innocent the Third who succeeded to the See Anno 1198. in the Thirty seventh Year of of his Age having been made Cardinal in the Twenty ninth In the Eighteenth Year of his Reign he summoned the famous Fourth or great Council of Lateran at which were present above 400 Bishops Metropolitans and Patriarchs besides Embassadors from all Princes in Christendom for recovery of the Holy Land Extirpation of Heresies and for Reformation of the Church In this Council the Word Transubstantiate is first used in a Decree of the Church to express the real or substantial Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament under the species of Bread and Wine Where in the Decree against the heresie of the Albigenses who denied the Real Presence it is Enacted That the Body and Blood of Christ are really contained under the species of Bread and Wine The Bread being Transubstantiated into the Body and the Wine into the Blood by the Power of God. But though the Council used the word to Express the Mystery they did not so much as define its signification much less the nature of the thing It was a word that at that time it seems was in fashion having been made use of by some of the more Polite Writers of the Age. Some give the honour of the Invention to Paschasius Radbertus some to Petrus Blesensis and some to others but being a word in Vogue among learned Men the Council made use of it as a Term of Art instead of the old word Transelementation that had hitherto kept its possession among both Greeks and Latins It is pity the Greek Copy of this Canon is lost whereas all the rest are preserved For if we had the Greek word that answered to the Latin it might have given us some more light into the thing However this was all that was defined by Innocent the Third or by the Council of Lateran for it is much disputed by learned Men who was the Author of those Canons many contending that they were drawn up after the Council because they often quote and appeal to its Decrees This is the chief Argument of the Learned and the Loyal William Barclay and others against them But if these learned Men had considered a little further and looked back to the Third Council of Lateran they would have found all the Canons cited in this extant in that So that only some Canons of the Third Council are revived and ratified in this Fourth And after the clearing of this Objection I can see no other material

Exception against them But to proceed this word having gain'd the Authority of so great a Council and being put into the Decretals of the Church by Gregory the Ninth in honor of his Uncle Innocent the Third it soon gained universal usage among the Latins and was adopted into the Catalogue of School Terms and was there hammer'd into a Thousand shapes and forms by those Masters of Subtlety And upon it St. Thomas of Aquin erects a new Kingdom of his own against the old Lombardian Empire but long he had not Reigned when Scotus our subtle Country-man set up against him And whatever St. Thomas of Aquin asserted for that reason only he contradicted him so that they two became the very Caesar and Pompey of the Schools almost all the great Masters of Disputation from that time fighting under one of their commands and what intelligible Philosophy both parties vented about the Substantial o● Transubstantial Presence upon supposition of the real difference between Matter and Form Substance and Accidents would be both too nice and too tedious to recite only in general the Thomists maintain the Transmutation of the Elements the Scotists the Annihilation and they proceed to abstract so long till they could not only separate the Matter and Form and Accidents of the Bread from one another but the Paneity or Breadishness it self from them all and founded a new Vtopian World of Metaphysick and Specifick Entities and Abstracts Thus far I have as briefly as I can represented the Scholastick History of this Argument in which the Authority of the Church is not at all concerned having gone no farther than to assign or appropriate a Word to signifie such a thing but all along declaring the Thing it self to be beyond the compass of a Definition I know 't is commonly said that the Council of Trent hath presumed to define the Modus and learned Men I know not by what fatal over-sight take it up on trust one from another and the Definition is generally given in these Terms That Transubstantiation is wrought by the Annihilation of the substance of the Bread and Wine the Accidents remaining To the which Annihilation succeeds the Body and Blood of Christ under the Accidents of Bread and Wine So the Bishops of Durham and Winchester represent it so Mr. Alix and the Writers of his Church and not only so but contrary to the sence of all other Churches they confound the Real Presence with Transubstantiation as this learned Man hath done through his whole Disputation upon it using the very words promiscuously as indeed all the modern Followers of Calvin do and charging the same absurdities upon both and imputing the first Invention of the Real Presence to Nicolas the Second and Gregory the Seventh in their Decrees against Berengarius But I cannot but wonder how so many learned Men should with so much assurance fansie to themselves such a Definition in the Trent Council of the Modus of Transubstantiation by the Annihilation of the Substance and the Permanency of the Accidents when the Fathers of that Council were so far from any such Design That they design'd nothing more carefully than to avoid all Scholastick Definitions The subtil Disputes about the Modus existendi as they termed it between the Dominicans and Franciscans in that Council are described at large by Father Paolo himself in the Fourth Book of his History But withal he says they were extreamly Displeasing and Offensive to the Fathers but most of all to the NUNCIO himself and therefore it was resolved in a General Congregation to determine the Matter in as few and general Terms as possible to offend neither Party and avoid Contentions and when notwithstanding this Decree they fell into new Disputes they are check'd by the Famous Bishop of Bitunto who was one of the chief Compilers of the Canons telling them they came thither to condemn Heresies not to define Scholastick Niceties And accordingly in the very First Chapter of the 13th Session in which this Article was defined when they determined the Real Presence they at the same time declare the Existendi Ratio to be ineffable and in the 4th Chapter where Transubstantiation is decreed the Canon runs thus That By the Consecration of the Bread and Wine there is a Conversion of the whole Substance of the Bread into the Substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole Substance of the Wine into the Substance of his Blood which Conversion is fitly and properly called by the Holy Catholick Church Transubstantiation In all which the Council only appropriates the Word Transubstantiation to express the Real Presence which it had before determined in the First Chapter not to be after a natural way of Existence as Christ sits at the right Hand of God but Sacramental after an ineffable manner Tho here some peevishly object the Inconsistence of the Council with it self when it declares that the thing is inexpressible and yet appropriates a word to express it Whereas all Christendom knows that the Procession of the Eternal Word from the Father is Ineffable and yet is expressed by the Word Generation and that the Vnion of the divine and humane Nature is ineffable and yet is called the Hypostatical Vnion and that the Vnity in the Trinity is ineffable and yet is expressed by the Word Consubstantial So that this Council seems to have defin'd no more than the Council of Nice did in the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity in expressing the Unity of the Three Persons by the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Distinction by the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which amounted to no more than this That as it is certain from the Holy Scriptures that in the Unity of the God-head there is a Trinity so the Holy Fathers to avoid the Niceties of contentious Men such as Arius was determine that for the Time to come the Mystery shall be expressed by the Terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but as for any Philosophical Notion of the Mystery the Church never presum'd to define it and this is the Definition of the Council of Trent of the Real Presence that there is a Conversion of the Substances under the Species or Appearances of Bread and Wine which the Church hath thought convenient to express by the Word Transubstantiation And yet tho the Council approve the Word yet it does not impose it it only declares it to be convenient but no where says 't is necessary And as for the Term Conversion it is much older than the Word Transubstantiation familiarly used by the Ancient Fathers and so is the Word Species I know indeed it is usual with School-men and Protestant Writers to translate the Words under Species of Bread and Wine by these Words under the Accidents of Bread and Wine as particularly the late Bishops of Durham and Winchester have done But this is to impose Philosophick Niceties upon the Decrees of the Church And tho perhaps all the

Churches declares his Sence in these express Words I affirm that Christ is indeed given by the Symbols of Bread and Wine and by consequence his Body and Blood in which he fulfilled all Righteousness for our Iustification and as by that we were ingrafted into his Body so by this are we made Partakers of his Substance by Virtue of it we feel the Communication of all good Things to our selves But as to the Modus if any Man inquire of me I am not ashamed to confess that the Mystery is too sublime for my Wit to comprehend or to express and to speak freely I rather feel than understand it and therefore here without Controversie I embrace the Truth of God in which I am sure I may safely acquisce He affirms that his Flesh is the Food of my Soul and his Blood the Drink It is to these Aliments that I offer my Soul to be nourished He commands me in his Holy Supper under the Symbols of Bread and Wine to take eat and drink his Body and Blood and therefore I doubt not but he gives it Here besides the express Words themselves if there be so much Mystery in the thing as he affirms there is much more than meer Figure And in another Passage he thus expresses himself That God doth not trifle in vain Signs but does in good earnest perform what is represented by the Symbols viz. the Communication of his Body and Blood and that the Figure conjoined with the Reality is represented by the Bread and the Body of Christ is offered and exhibited with it the true Substance is given us the Reality conjoined with the Sign so that we are made Partakers of the Substance of the Body and Blood. This is express enough But yet in his Book de Coena Domini he declares his Sence much more fully If notwithstanding saith he it be enquired whether the Bread be the Body and the Wine the Blood of Christ I answer that the Bread and Wine are the visible Signs that represent the Body and Blood and that the Name of the Body and Blood is given to them because they are the Instruments by which our Lord Iesus Christ is given to us This form of Speech is very agreeable to the thing it self for seeing the Communion that we have in the Body of Christ is not to be seen with our Eyes nor comprehended by our Vnderstandings yet 't is there manifestly exposed to our Eye-sight of which we have a very proper Example in the same case When it pleased God that the Holy Ghost should appear at the Baptism of Christ he was pleased to represent it under the appearance of a Dove and John the Baptist giving an Account of the Transaction only relates that he saw the Holy Ghost descending so that if we consider rightly we shall find that he saw nothing but the Dove for the Essence of the Holy Ghost is invisible But he knowing the Vision not to be a vain Apparition but a certain Sign of the Presence of the Holy Ghost represented to him in that manner that he was able to bear the Representation The same thing is to be said in the Communion of our Saviour's Body and Blood That it is a Spiritual Mystery neither to be beheld with Eyes nor comprehended with humane Understanding and therefore is represented by Figures and Sings that as the weakness of our Nature requires fall under our Senses so as 't is not a bare and simple Figure but conjoin'd with its Reality and Substance Therefore the Bread is properly called the Body when it doth not only represent it but also brings it to us And therefore we will readily grant That the Name of the Body of Christ may be transferr'd to the Bread because it is the Sacrament and Emblem of it but then we must add that the Sacrament is by no means to be separated from the Substance and Reality And that they might not be confounded it is not only convenient but altogether necessary to distinguish between them but intolerably absurd to divide one from the other Wherefore when we see the visible Sign what it represents we ought to reflect from whom it is given us for the Bread is given as a Representation of the Body of Christ and we are commanded to eat it It is given I say by God who is infallible Truth and then if God cannot deceive nor lye it follows that He in reality gives whatever is there represented And therefore it is necessary that we really receive the Body and Blood of Christ seeing the Communion of both is represented to us For to what purpose should he command us to eat the Bread and drink the Wine as signifying his Body and Blood if without some spiritual Reality we only received the Bread and Wine Would he not vainly and absurdly have instituted this Mystery and as we Frenchmen say by false Representations Therefore we must acknowledge that if God gives us a true Representation in the Supper that the invisible Substance of the Sacrament is joined with the visible Signs and as the Bread is distributed by hand so the Body of Christ is communicated to us to be Partakers of it This certainly if there were nothing else ought abundantly to satisfy us when by it we understand that in the Supper of our Lord Christ gives us the true and proper Substance of his Body and Blood. Thus far Calvin And I think it is as high a Declaration of the real and substantial Presence as I have met with in any Author whatsoever And if in any other Passages the great Dictator may have been pleased to contradict himself that is the old Dictatorian Prerogative of that Sect as well as the old Romans That whatever Decrees they made however inconsistent they were always Authentick Neither doth Beza at all fall short of his adored Master in the Point of substantial Presence In his Book against Westfalus a Sacramentarian de Coena Domini He declares freely that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or grammatical Sence of our Saviour's Words This is my Body cannot be preserved without Transubstantiation and that there is no Medium between Transubstantiantion and a meer Figure And yet the whole Design of the Book is to prove the real Presence in the Sacrament in opposition to the Figurative And in the Year 1561 The Protestant Churches of France held a Synod at Rochel and the Year following at Nimes in both which Beza sat as President where the substantial Presence was maintain'd and defin'd with great Vehemence against the Innovators as they were then esteemed for when Morellus mov'd to have the Word Substance taken out of their Confession of Faith Beza and the Synod not without some Indignation decree against them This Decree Beza declares in his Epistle to the Ministers of Zurick dated May the 17th 1572 to extend to the Protestants of France only least they who were Zuinglians should take Offence at it as a Censure particularly

two grand singularities of his History and the main things that gave it popular Vogue and Reputation with his Party and were these two blind Stories and the Reasons depending upon them retrench'd it would be like the shaving of Samson's Hair and destroy all the strength peculiar to the History The Design was apparently laid before the Work was undertaken that industriously warps all things into Irenical and Erastian Principles and the vain Man seems to have been flattered by his Patrons into all that Pains to give Reputation to their Errors And here lay the Fondness for the Stillingsteetian Manuscript that it so frankly and openly asserted Erastian and Sacramentarian Principles as the Bottom of the Reformation But if such an unprov'd and unwarrantable piece of Paper without any certain Conveyance or Tradition without any Notice of so publick a Transaction in any contemporary Writer without any other Evidence of its being genuine than that it was put providentially into the Hands of Dr. St. when he wrote his Irenicum must be set up for undoubted Record against all the Records of the Churches our great Historian would be well advis'd to employ his Pains in writing Lampoons upon the present Princes of Christendom especially his own which he delights in most because it is the worst thing that himself can do than collecting the Records of former times For the First will require Time and Postage to pursue his Malice but the Second is easily trac'd in the Chimney Corner And therefore I would desire these Gentlemen either to give a better Account of the Descent and Genealogy of the Paper than that it came to Dr. St. by Miracle or else to give it less Authority But to proceed a new Office for the Communion-Service was drawn up in the same Year by the Bishops in compiling of which Cranmer had the chief hand and by his great Power over-ruled the rest at Pleasure in this Service he retains the old Form of Words used in the ancient Missals when there was no Zuinglianism or Doctrine of figurative Presence in the Christian World and the real Presence was universally believed as appears by the very Words of Distribution The Body of our Lord Iesus Christ which was given for thée preserve thy Body and Soul unto everlasting Life And the Blood of our Lord Iesus Christ which was shed for thée c. This was the Form prescribed in the First Liturgy of Edward the 6th and agreeable to this are the King 's own Injunctions published at the same time where the Eucharist is call'd the Communion of the very Body and Blood of Christ by which Form of Words they then expressed the real Presence as oppos'd to Zuinglianism This Liturgy being thus established and withal abetted by Act of Parliament for some time kept up its Authority in the Church against all Opposition though it was soon encountred with Enemies enough both at Home and abroad out of the Calvinian Quarters At the end of the Year ensuing Peter Martyr a rank Sacramentarian came over and after much Conversation with Cranmer he was plac'd Regius Professor in Oxford where he soon raised Tumults about the Zuinglian and Sacramentarian Doctrines But Bucer that prudent and moderate Reformer came not till some time after though invited at the same time And so either came too late or departed too soon for as he came over in Iune so he dy'd in Ianuary so that tho he were a great Assertor of the real Presence as our Church-Historian himself often observes he had not a Season to sow his Doctrine and Martyr reigning alone and being a furious Bigott in his Principles it is no wonder if Zuinglianism spread with so much Authority But the most fatal Blow to the Reformation of the Church of England was given by Calvin's Correspondence with the Protector and afterwards with Dudley taking upon him to censure expunge reform impose at his own Pleasure the Malignity of whose Influence first discovered it self in the Ceremonial War against a Cap and a Tippet but soon wrought into the Vitals of the Reformation especially as to the Liturgy and the Eucharist both which must be removed to give way to the Zuinglian Errors This Alteration was made in the 5th Year of the Kings Reign tho precisely when and by what Persons is utterly unknown only it is remark'd by our Church-Historian to have followed immediately after the Consecration of Hooper When as he observes the Bishops being generally addicted to the Purity of Religion spent most of this Year in preparing Articles which should contain the Doctrine of the Church of England Among which the 29th condemns the real Presence as the new Liturgy to which they are annexed had before almost run it up to the Charge of Idolatry For they were not content to abolish the old Missal Form of Distribution The Body of our Lord Iesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy Body and Soul unto everlasting Life Take and eat this c. But instead of it appoint this Zuinglian Form Take and eat this without any mention of the Body and Blood of Christ in remembrance that Christ died for thée c. Neither were these Innovators whoever they were satisfied with the Alteration of the old Form but add a fierce Declaration to bar the Doctrine of Real and Essential Presence Whereas it is ordered in this Office of the Administration of the Lord's Supper that the Communicants should receive the same Kneeling which order is well meant for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy Receivers and for avoiding such Prophanation and Disorder in the Holy Communion as might otherwise ensue Yet least the same Kneeling should by any Persons either out of Ignorance and Infirmity or out of Malice and Obstinacy be misconstrued and deprav'd it is here declared that no Adoration is intended or ought to be done unto any real or essential Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood for the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural Substances and therefore may not be ador'd for that were Idolatry to be abhorr'd by all faithful Christians and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven and not here It being against the Truth of Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more places than one And whereas a body of Articles was composed at the same time it is declared in the 29th Article That since the very being of humane Nature doth require That the Body of one and the same Man cannot be at one and the same time in many places but of necessity must be in some certain and determinate place therefore the Body of Christ cannot be present in many different places at the same time And since as the Holy Scriptures testifie Christ hath been taken up into Heaven and there is to abide till the end of the World it becomes not any of the Faithful to