say If Christ be the Sacrifice he must be slain again at every Mass as he was once on the Cross or you can assign no destruction which you say is necessary to such a true and proper Sacrifice R. P. Do not you observe T. G.'s words that Christ is whole under either species and his Blood separated from his Body not really but Mystically only and in representation P. D. How is that Whole Christ under the bread and whole Christ under the wine and the blood separated from the Body not really but mystically only and by representation This is admirable stuff and true Mystical Divinity If the body of Christ doth remain whole and entire where is the true proper Sacrifice where is the change made if not in the Body of Christ if that be uncapable of a change how can it be a true and proper Sacrifice If the blood be not really separated from the Body where is the mactation which must be in a propitiatory Sacrifice If Christ do remain whole and entire after all the Sacrificial Acts where I say is the true and proper Sacrifice T. G. had far better said and more agreeably to Scripture Antiquity and Reason that there is no real and proper sacrifice on the Altar but only mystical and by representation R. P. But T. G. saith that Religion which admits no external visible Sacrifice must needs be deficient in the most signal part of the publick worship of God P. D. I pray remember it is an external and visible Sacrifice which you contend for and now tell me where it is in your Church Doth it lye in the mimical gestures of the Priest at the Altar in imitation of Christ on the Cross If that be it the necessary consumption of the Sacrifice will be no comfortable doctrine to the Priest Doth it lye in the consecration of the Elements which are visible But you say the essence of the Sacrifice consists in the change and we can see no visible change made in them and therefore there is no external and visible Sacrifice Besides if the Sacrifice did lye in the change of the Elements after Consecration into the Body of Christ then the Elements are the thing sacrificed and not the Body of Christ for the destructive change is as to the elements and not as to the Body of Christ. Or doth it lye in the swallowing down and consumption of the species after Consecration by the Priest But here likewise the change is in the accidents and not in the Body of Christ which remains whole and entire though the species be consumed and I think there is some difference between changing ones seat and being sacrificed For all that the Body of Christ is pretended to be changed in is only its being no longer under the species but T. G. I suppose will allow it to be whole and entire still Doth it then lye in pronouncing the words of consecration upon which the Body of Christ is under the species of Bread and the Blood under that of Wine and so separated from the Body But this can least of all be since T. G. assures us that whole Christ is under the Bread as well as under the Wine and so there cannot be so much as a moment of real separation between them and we know how necessary for other purposes the doctrine of Concomitancy is Tell me then where is your external and visible Sacrifice which you boast so much of since according to your own principles there is nothing that belongs to the essence of a sacrifice is external and visible and consequently your own Church labours under the defect T. G. complains of R. P. But what makes Dr. St. so bitter against the Sacrifice of the Altar since the most true and genuine Sons of the Church of England do allow it as Mr. Thorndike Dr. Heylin and Bishop Andrews and doth not this rather look like betraying the Church of England than defending it P. D. I see now you are wheeling about to your first Post and therefore it is time to give you a space of breathing Your great business is to set us at variance among our selves but you have hitherto failed in your attempts and I hope will do I do not think any two or three men though never so learned make the Church of England her sense is to be seen in the Publick Acts and Offices belonging to it And in the Articles to which T. G. sometimes appeals your Sacrifices on the Altar are called blasphemous Figments and dangerous Impostures But as to these three persons I answer thus 1. Mr. Thorndike as I have shewed already declares against the true proper Sacrifice defined by the Council of Trent as an innovation and a contradiction And that which he pleads for is that the Eucharist is a commemorative and representative Sacrifice about which Dr. St. would never contend with him or any one else and immediately after the words cited by T. G. he adds these It is therefore enough that the Eucharist is the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross as the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is represented renewed revived and restored by it and as every representation is said to be the same thing with that which it representeth 2. Pet. Heylins words are expresly only for a commemorative Sacrifice as T. G. himself produces them and therefore I wonder what T. G. meant in citing them at large For he quotes the English Liturgie for the Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving and S. Chrysostom calling it the remembrance of a Sacrifice and many of our learned Writers a Commemorative sacrifice What is there in all this in the least repugnant to what Dr. St. had delivered R. P. But he quotes Bishop Andrews saying Take from the Mass your Transubstantiation and we will have no difference with you about the sacrfiice P. D. Bishop Andrews calls the Eucharist a commemorative sacrifice and he saith it was properly Eucharistical or of the nature of peace-offerings concerning which the Law was that he that offered should partake of them and a little after follow those words you mention to which he adds We yield you that there is a remembrance of Christs sacrifice but we shall never yield that your Christ being made of Bread is there sacrificed Which is the very thing that T. G. is so angry with Dr. St. about And have not you bravely proved that Dr. St. hath herein gone against the sense of the genuine Sons of the Church of England If you have any thing yet left which you think material I pray let us have it now for fear lest T. G. make use of it to stuff out another Book R. P. I think we are near the Bottom P. D. So I imagine by the dregs which came last R. P. There is one thing yet left for a close which is Dr. St. saith supposing this sacrifice were allowed yet this doth not prove that we reserve any
in Euclid is plainer than this R. P. But I tell you we do not worship the creature but the body of Christ. P. D. I tell you again if there be a creature you do worship it for you give adoration to what is before you be it what it will if it be a creature you adore it R. P. But we say it is not a creature we worship P. D. Do not you give adoration to that which is consecrated whether it remains a creature or not after consecration At the elevation of the Host at the carrying it about at the exposing of it on the Altar you worship that which was consecrated do you not R. P. We worship that which was bread before consecration but after is no longer so but the body of Christ. P. D. But if it should remain bread after consecration what do ye adore then is it not the substance of the bread R. P. Yes but we believe it is not the bread P. D. That is not the question what you believe for they that believed God to be the soul of the world worshipped the parts of it upon a supposition which if it had been true would have justified their worship every jot as well as yours can do you and yet they were gross Idolaters for all that Nay I will say more to you there never were Idolaters in the world that did not proceed upon a false supposition and it may be not so unreasonable as yours This cannot therefore excuse you if your supposition proves false as no doubt it is that the substance of the bread doth not remain after consecration But I now ask you what your adoration is in the opinion of those persons who do firmly believe the Sacramental Elements to remain in their natural substances Is it not the giving divine worship to a creature And is not the giving divine worship to a creature Idolatry so that according to the sense of our Church the Worship of the Host must be Idolatry R. P. But what have you got by all this for we confess our selves that if the substance of bread and wine do remain after consecration we are as great Idolaters as they that worship a red cloath P. D. Upon my word you had need then to be well assured that the substance of Bread and Wine do not remain and yet I must tell you we can be certain of nothing in the world if we are not certain that the substance of bread and wine do remain after consecration For if we are certain of nothing by our senses but of the outward accidents which is all your best men do say in this case we cannot be certain of any visible substance in the world for no bodily substance can be discerned but by our senses and so all foundation of certainty by sense is destroyed Nay farther it takes away all certainty by reason for it confounds the clearest maxims of it by overthrowing all Mathematical proportions of great and small whole and parts by destroying all notions of distance and place by jumbling the notions of body and Spirit And lastly it takes away all certainty by Revelation which can never come to us but upon the supposition of the certainty of Sense and Reason R. P. O Sir I see what you would be at you would fain draw me into a dispute about transubstantiation upon principles of Reason I beg your pardon Sir This is a matter of faith and must be stoutly believed or else we are gone No more of this Sir to your business of Idolatry I pray P. D. I was only giving you some caution by the by how much you are concerned to look about you but since you are resolved to shut your eyes I return to the sense of our Church about the Idolatry of the Mass and it follows necessarily from our former discourse that since our Church believes the substance of the Elements do remain and that your worship doth really fix upon that substance whatever your intentions be it is really Idolatry R. P. However this only proves it to be material Idolatry and not formal P. D. I have often heard of this distinction but I could never be satisfied with it For what is material and formal Idolatry R. P. Material Idolatry I take to be mistaken worship i. e. I do give divine worship to a false object but I do not intend to give it to a false object of Worship but to a true one P. D. Then Formal Idolatry must be giving divine worship to a false object of Worship knowing it to be a false object And where are there any such Idolaters to be found in the world Did not the Heathens believe that to be God which they worshipped And is not God a true object of worship only they mistook that to be God which was not and so were only material Idolaters Even those that worshipped their Images for Gods were only mistaken for they had a good intention only to worship God but they unhappily took their Images for Gods And I must needs say they who took the Sun Moon and Stars for Gods and worshipped them as such were very excusable in comparison of those who take a piece of bread for God or that which appears like it R. P. You are very severe methinks but do you think there is no difference among Idolaters P. D. Yes I tell you there is but not much to your comfort The grosser mens erour is the more means to convince men of it the more wilful their blindness and continuance in it the more culpable they are in their Idolatry and consequently the less excusable R. P. But may not a man innocently mistake as if in the dark a Child should ask blessing of one that is not his Father would his Father have reason to be angry with him P. D. Not for once or if it were in the dark but if he should see him every day go very formally to a joyn'd Stool in the Hall or to a Brown Loaf in the Buttery and there very solemnly down upon his knees to them and beg their blessing tell me what you think the Father would say to such a mistake Would he excuse him saying Alas poor Child he intended all this to me only he mistook the Brown Loaf or a joyn'd stool for me R. P. Forbear such comparisons for we have divine Revelation This is my Body and we believe his word against all you can say in this matter P. D. But what will you say if by the confession of many of the best and most learned of your own Divines You have not Divine Revelation for it and that those words cannot prove that the substance of Bread doth not remain after consecration which is the thing we now enquire after and if it were not to go off from our present business I would undertake to prove this evidently to you R. P. However we have the Authority of our Church for it P. D. You had as good say you are
found it above a hundred years before in the Liturgie of Edw. 6. To which T. G. answers That the various fate of this Rubrick first in not being annexed till the second Liturgie of Edw. 6. and being cast out again in the year 1562. and then admitted again almost a hundred years after is no eviction to him that the charge of Idolatry is the dogmatical doctrine of the Church of England P. D. If this were all the declaration our Church had made of her sense and the intention of this Rubrick were only to declare this point of Idolatry there were some probability in what T. G. suggests But I have shewed already how fully our Church hath declared her sense about Romish Idolatry by other wayes and the design of this Rubrick was not to express her sense of Idolatry so much as to give satisfaction to those who scrupled the lawfulness of kneeling For which cause it was first put in and afterwards not thought necessary to be continued when persons were better satisfied about the intention of our Church But when after long disuse and violent prejudices the dissenters were grown unacquainted with the design and intention of our Church there was the same reason for inserting it again which held at first for putting it in And what now hath T. G. gained by this observation If it had been as he imagined what he had gotten in one point he had lost in another for then it would appear that there was no such heat in the beginning of Q. Elizabeths dayes if they were willing to leave out such a declaration of the Idolatry of the Church of Rome at that time when Q. Elizabeths Title was the most disputed at Rome so that from hence appears the vanity of T. G.'s former observation and how far they were from taking things into our Liturgie out of spite to the Pope nay so far were they from this that in the first year of Q. Elizabeth that petition in the Letany was left out which had been inserted by Henry 8. and continued in both Liturgies of Edw. 6. From the Tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities Good Lord And this he might have found in the same Historian And was not the title of Head of the Church taken by her Father and Brother so qualified and explained then as might prevent any occasion of quarreling at it by the most captious persons Do these passages look like doing things on purpose to provoke and exasperate and out of pure spite to the Pope or like putting in things on purpose to heighten the differences when T. G. himself confesses they left out this Rubrick and it is evident they did leave out some of the most provoking expressions R. P. I see you cannot bear the charge of intemperate heat on the beginning of the Reformation P. D. I cannot bear such an unreasonable and unjust imputation as this is and I have a particular esteem for the Wisdom Learning and Piety which was shewed in the Ecclesiastical part of our Reformation But how doth T. G. take off the charge of Idolatry in this Rubrick R. P. He saith he takes the meaning of it not to be the denying adoration to be due in regard of Christs Body being present spiritually but truly in the Sacrament but only that no adoration ought to be done to any corporal presence of Christs natural flesh and blood as the word Corporal is taken to signifie the natural manner of a bodies being present For which he gives these reasons 1. Because those words in the second Liturgie of Edw. 6. No adoration ought to be done to any real or essential being of Christs natural flesh and blood are now changed into any corporal presence of Christ natural flesh and blood 2. Because the Protestant Divines do yield the real presence of Christs Body for which he quotes Bishop Taylor and Bishop Cosins and he desires Dr. St. so to explain these words as not to undermine the constant doctrine of the Church of England concerning the real presence and leave us nothing but pure Zuinglianism in the place of it P. D. I am so much his Friend that at this time I will undertake this task for him First We must consider the words of the Rubrick 2. How this sense of it can be reconciled with the real presence as owned by the Church of England 1. For the meaning of the Rubrick We are to consider that the Rubrick denies adoration to be intended either unto the Sacramental bread and wine or unto any corporal presence of Christs natural flesh and blood And after it gives two distinct reasons for denying adoration to either of these 1. To the Sacramental bread and wine for this reason because they remain still in their very natural substances and therefore may not be adored for that were Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians 2. To the corporal presence of Christs natural flesh and blood because the natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in heaven and not here it being against the truth of Christs natural Body to be at one time in more places than one You see here are two plainly distinct reasons given for denying adoration to the elements and to the Natural Body of Christ. The former is said to be Idolatry the latter to be absurd and unreasonable it being repugnant to the truth of Christs body to be in more places than one at one time So that the sense of the Rubrick lyes in these two propositions 1. That it is Idolatry to give adoration to the elements remaining in their natural substances 2. That it is absurd to believe Christs natural body to be present because then it must be in more places than one which is repugnant to the truth of a body These things to my apprehension are the plain and natural sense of this Rubrick R. P. But we do not give adoration to the Sacramental elements but to the Body of Christ. P. D. I do believe I can prove that you give adoration to the Sacramental Elements as they make up one entire object of adoration with the body of Christ but that is not my present business which is to shew the sense of our Church which lyes in these particulars 1. That the Sacramental Elements do remain in their natural substances after consecration 2. That to adore them so remaining is Idolatry and to be abhorred of all faithful Christians No one questions the former to be the sense of our Church the only question lyes in the later whether that be Idolatry or no It is no question that to give divine adoration to any creature is Idolatry and it is so acknowledged on all sides the only question then can be whether the substance of bread and wine be a creature or not and this is no question with any man in his wits therefore to give adoration to the substance of bread and wine is Idolatry No demonstration