6.

mental wine did the Corinthians, of whom St. Paul says, "One is hungry, and another is drunken?" I am sure if it can, it is not the blood of Christ; for Mr. Bland's argument, in queen Mary's time, concluded well in this instance. That which is in the chalice, can make a man drunk; but Christ's blood cannot make a man drunk: therefore, that which is in the chalice, is not Christ's blood. To avoid this, they must answer to the major, and say that it does not supponere universaliter;' for every thing in the chalice does not make aman drunk,- for in it there are accidents of bread, and the body besides, and they do inebriate, not this; that is, a man may be drunk with colour", and quantity, and a smell, when there is nothing that smells; for indeed if there were à substance to be smelt, it might; but that accidents can do it alone, is not to be supposed; unless God should work a miracle to make a man drunk, which to say, I think, were blasphemy. But again, can an accidental form' kill a man? But the young emperor of the house of Luxemburgh was poisoned by a consecrated wafer, and pope Victor III. had like to have been, and the archbishop of York was poisoned by the chalice, say Mathew Paris and Malmsbury. And if the body be accidentally moved at the motion of accidents 3, then, by the same reason, it may accidentally become mouldy, or sour, or poisonous; which, methinks, to all Christian ears, should strike horror to hear it spoken. I will not heap up more instances of the same kind of absurdities, and horrid consequences of this doctrine; or consider how a man or a mouse can live upon the consecrated wafers; (as Aimonius tells that Lewis the Fair did, for forty days together, live upon the sacrament; and a Jew, or a Turk, could live on it without a miracle, if he had enough of it), and yet cannot live upon accidents; it being a certain rule in philosophy, "Ex iisdem nutriuntur mixta ex quibus fiunt ;" and a man may as well be made of accidents, and be no substance, as well as be nourished by accidents without substance: neither will I inquire,

Η ψόφος δὲ καὶ χρῶμα καὶ ὀσμὴ οὐ τρέφει, οὐδὲ ποιεῖ οὔτε αὔξησιν, οὔτε φθίσιν. Arist. De Anim. lib. iii. c. 12.

• Est enim hic color et sapor, qualitas et quantitas, cùm nihil in alterutro sit coloratum, et sapidum, quantum et quale. Innocent. 3. de Offic. Missæ, lib. iii. c. 21.

P Bellar. lib. iii. c. 10. de Euch. Sect. Respondeo corpus.

how it is possible, that we should eat Christ's body without touching it; or how we can be said to touch Christ's body, when we only touch and taste the accidents of bread; or, lastly, how we can touch the accidents of bread, without the substance, so to do being impossible in nature:

Tangere enim aut tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res,

said Lucretius, and from him Tertullian, in his fifth chapter of his book De Animâ.' These, and divers other particulars, I will not insist upon: but instead of them, I argue thus from their own grounds; if Christ be properly said to be touched, and to be eaten, because the accidents are so,then, by the same reason, he may be properly made hot, or cold, or mouldy, or dry, or wet, or venemous, by the proportionable mutation of accidents: if Christ be not properly taken and manducated, to what purpose is he properly there? so that on either hand there is a snare. But it is time to be weary of all this, and inquire after the doctrine of the church, in this great question; for thither at last, with some seeming confidence, they do appeal. Thither, therefore, we will follow.

SECTION XII.

Transubstantiation was not the Doctrine of the primitive Church.

CONCERNING this topic or head of argument, I have some things to premise.

1. First: In this question, it is not necessary, that I bring a catalogue of all the ancient writers. For, although to prove the doctrine of transubstantiation to be catholic, it is necessary, by Vincentius Lirinensis's rules, and by the thing, that they should all agree; yet to show it not to have been the established, resolved doctrine of the primitive church, this angíßua is not necessary. Because although no argument can prove it catholic, but a consent; yet if some, as learned, as holy, as orthodox, do dissent, it is enough to

Eichstadt, lib. i. 305. p. 15.

prove it not to be catholic. As a proposition is not universal, if there be one, or three, or ten exceptions; but to make it universal, it must be narà avròs, it must take in all.

2. Secondly: None of the fathers speak words exclusive of our way, because our way contains a spiritual sense; which, to be true, our adversaries deny not, but say, it is not sufficient, but there ought to be more. But their words do often exclude the way of the church of Rome, and are not so capable of an answer for them.

3. Thirdly: When the saying of a father is brought, out of which his sense is to be drawn by argument and discourse, by two or three remote uneasy consequences; I do not think it fit to take notice of those words, either for or against us : because then his meaning is as obscure as the article itself, and, therefore, he is not fit to be brought in interpretation of it. And the same also is the case, when the words are brought by both sides; for then it is a shrewd sign, the doctor is not well to be understood, or that he is not fit, in those words, to be an umpire; and of this cardinal Perron is a great example, who spends a volume in folio, to prove St. Austin to be of their side in this article, or rather, not to be against them.

4. Fourthly: All those testimonies of fathers, which are as general, indefinite, and unexpounded, as the words of Scripture which are in question, must, in this question, pass for nothing; and, therefore, when the fathers say, that in the sacrament is the body and blood of Christ,' that there is the body of our Lord,'- that before consecration it is aròs apros, mere bread,' but after consecration it is 'verily the body of Christ, truly his flesh, truly his blood,' these and the like sayings are no more than the words of Christ, "This is my body;" and are only true in the same sense, of which I have all this while been giving an account: that is, by a change of condition, of sanctification, and usage. We believe that after consecration and blessing, it is really Christ's body, which is verily and indeed taken of the faithful in the Lord's supper;'-and upon this account, we shall find that many, very many of the authorities of the fathers, commonly alleged by the Roman doctors in this question, will come to nothing. For we speak their sense, and in their own words, the church of England expressing

-

this mystery frequently in the same forms of words; and we are so certain that to eat Christ's body spiritually is to eat him really, that there is no other way for him to be eaten really, than by spiritual manducation.

5. Fifthly: When the fathers, in this question, speak of the change of the symbols in the holy sacrament, they sometimes use the words of μεταβολὴ, μεταῤῥύθμισις, μετασκεύασμος, METAOTOIXEίWOIS, MEтanоinois, in the Greek church: 'conversion, mutation, transition, migration, transfiguration,' and the like in the Latin; but they by these do understand accidental and sacramental conversions, not proper, natural, and substantial. Concerning which, although I might refer the reader to see it highly verified in David Blondel's familiar elucidations of the eucharistical controversy, yet a shorter course I can take to warrant it, without my trouble or his; and that is, by the confession of a jesuit, and of no mean fame or learning amongst them. The words of Suarez, whom I mean, are these: "Licet antiqui Patres,' &c." Although the ancient fathers have used divers names, yet all they are either general, as the names of conversion, mutation, transition; or else they are more accommodated to an accidental change, as the name of transfiguration, and the like: only the name of 'transelementation,' which Theophylact did use, seems to approach nearer to signify the propriety of this mystery, because it signifies a change even of the first ele, ments; yet that word is harder, and not sufficiently accommodate for it may signify the resolution of one element into another, or the resolution of a mixed body into the elements "." He might have added another sense of μɛtaTOIXEίwσis, or 'transelementation.' For Thophylact & uses the same word to express the change of our bodies to the state of

a See article 28 of the Church of England.

• Μεταποιήσει νόμους.—Suid. Αἱ φυλακαὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων μετεποιοῦντο εἰς ἐκκλησίας. Georg. Alex. Vit. Chrys. c. 55. Οὐδείς ἐστιν ὁ διασκεδάσαι, ἢ τὴν βουλὴν μετα ποιήσαι δυνάμενος. Chrys. Vit. Auctor. Anon. Id. in μeraboλn, et reliquis observare est μεταποιέω, μεταβάλλω.— Suidas. Μεταστοιχείουσα, μετασχηματίζουσα, μεταπλάττουσα. Suidas. Πάντας πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν μεταστοιχείου μεταῤῥυθμίζων. - Auctor Vitæ Chrysost. Anon. c. 52. et de corpore Chrysostomi dixit, siç i ov φύσιν μετεσκευάσθη. ̓Αναγεννήσας ἡμᾶς, ἤτοι μεταποιήσας. — Ecumen. in 1 Pet. i. H didaxǹ μetappudμízel ròv ävdgwπov.- Clem. Alex. Strom. 4. Idem. lib. iii. Pedag. c. 2. Μετασκευάζει τὰς γυναῖκας εἰς πόρνας.

Chap. 5. in 3. disp. 50. sect. 3.

d. Theoph. in St. Luc. xxiv. et in St. John, vi.

incorruption, and the change that is made in the faithful, when they are united unto Christ. But Suarez proceeds: "But transubstantiation does most properly and appositely signify the passage and conversion of the whole substance, into the whole substance." So that by this discourse we are quitted, and made free from the pressure of all those authorities of the fathers which speak of the 'mutation, conversion, transition, or passage, or transelementation, transfiguration, and the like,' of the bread into the body of Christ; these do, or may, only signify an accidental change; and come not home to their purpose of transubstantiation; and it is as if Suarez had said, the words, which the fathers use in this question, make not for us, and, therefore, we have made a new word for ourselves, and obtruded it upon all the world. But against it, I shall only object an observation of Bellarmine, that is not ill. "The liberty of new words is dangerous in the church, because out of new words, by little and little, new things arise, while it is lawful to coin new words, in divine affairs."

6. Sixthly: To which I add this, that if all the fathers had more unitedly affirmed the conversion of the bread into Christ's body,' than they have done, and had not explicated their meaning as they have done indeed, yet this 'word' would so little have helped the Roman cause, that it would directly have overthrown it. For in their transubstantiation' there is no conversion' of one thing into another, but a local succession of Christ's body into the place of bread. A change of the 'ubi' was not used to be called 'a substantial conversion.' But they understood nothing of our present axpíßera; they were not used to such curious nothings, and intricate falsehoods, and artificial nonsense, with which the Roman doctors troubled the world in this question. But they spake wholly another thing, and either they did affirm a substantial change, or they did not. If they did not, then it makes nothing for them, or against us; but if they did mean a proper substantial change, then, for so much as it comes to, it makes against us, but not for them; for they must mean a change of one substance into another, by conversion,- or a change of substances, by substitution of one in the place of another. If they meant the latter, then it was no conversion of one into another; and then they expressed not what they