r when it is the Word and the living bread, it had never been written, Whosoever shall eat this bread shall live for ever.' -So St.Hilary": "Panis qui descendit de cœlo, non nisi ab eo accipitur qui Dominum habet, et Christi membrum est:" "The bread that came down from heaven, is not taken of any but of him who hath the Lord, and is a member of Christ." "Lambunt petram," saith St. Cyprian", "They lick the rock," that is, eat not of the food, and drink not of the blood that issued from thence when the rock was smitten. They receive corticem sacramenti, et furfur carnis,' saith St. Bernard, 'the skin of the sacrament, and the bran of the flesh.'— But Venerable Bede is plain without an allegory: "Omnis infidelis non vescitur carne Christi :" "An unbelieving man is not fed with the flesh of Christ;" the reason of which could not be any thing, but because Christ is only eaten by faith. But I reserved St. Austin for the last: "So then these are no true receivers of Christ's body, in that they are none of his true members. For (to omit all other allegations) they cannot be both the members of Christ and the members of a harlot ; and Christ himself saying, 'He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him,' sheweth what it is to receive Christ, not only sacramentally, but truly; for this is to dwell in Christ and Christ in him. For thus he spoke, as if he had said, He that dwelleth not in me nor I in him, cannot say, he eateth my flesh or drinketh my blood." In which words (if the Roman doctors will be judged by St. Austin for the sense of the church in this question, and will allow him in this point to be a good catholic), 1. He dogmatically declares, that the wicked man does not eat Christ's body truly. 2. He does eat it sacramentally. 3. That to eat with effect, is to eat Christ's body truly; to which, if they please to add this, that to eat it spiritually is to eat it with effect, it follows by St. Austin's doctrine, that spiritually is really,'—and that there is no true and real body of Christ eaten in the sacrament, but by the faithful receiver: or, if you please, receive the conclusion in the words of St. Austin: "Tunc erit unicuique corpus et sanguis Christi, si quod in sacramento sumitur, in ipsâ veritate spiritualiter manducetur, spiritualiter bibatur:" "Then to each receiver it becomes the body and • Lib. 8. de Trinit. P De Cœna Dom. aut quicunque auctor est. 4 Super Exod. de Agno Pasc. s Serm. 2. de Verb. Apost. blood of Christ, if that which is taken in the sacrament, be, in the very truth itself, spiritually eaten and spiritually drunk :" which words of St. Austin, Bellarmine', upon another occasion being to answer, instead of answering, grants it, and tells that this manner of speaking is very usual in St. Austin [the truest answer in all his books]: but whether it be for him or against him, he ought to have considered. Neither can this be put off with saying, that the wicked do not truly eat Christ, that is, not to any benefit or purpose; but that this does not mean, they receive him not at all.' Just as we say when a man eats but a little, he does not eat: for as good never a jot, as never the better. This, I say, is not a sufficient escape. 1. Because St. Austin opposes sacramental receiving to the true and real, and says that the wicked only receive it 'sacramentally;' but not the thing whose sacrament it is; so that this is not a proposition of degrees, but there is a plain opposition of one to the other. 2. It is true, St. Austin does not say that the wicked do not receive Christ at all; for he says they receive him sacramentally: but he says, they do not at all receive him truly, and the wicked man cannot say he does: and he proves this by unanswerable arguments out of Scripture. 3. This excuse will not, with any pretence, be fitted with the sayings of the other fathers, nor to all the words of St. Austin in this quotation, and much less in others which I have" and shall remark, particularly this; that he calls that, which the wicked eat, nothing but signum corporis et sanguinis.'-His words are these: "Ac per hoc qui non manet in Christo, et in quo non manet Christus, procul dubio non manducat spiritualiter carnem, non bibit sanguinem, licèt carnaliter et visibiliter premat dentibus signum corporis et sanguinis*:" "He does not eat the body and drink the blood spiritually, although carnally and visibly he presses with his teeth the sign of the body and blood."-Plainly, all the wicked do but eat the sign of Christ's body, all that is to be done beyond, is to eat it spiritually. There is no other eating but these two: and from St. Austin it was that the schools received that famous distinction of 'panis Dominus,' and 'panis Domini;' Judas t Lib. 1. Euch. c. 14. sect. Respond. apud Augustinum. u De Serm. de Verb. Apost. Pauli supr. x Tract. 26. in Joh. vid. etiam. Bellarmine, lib. 1. Euch. c. 14. sect. Respondeo St. August. y Tract. 59. in Joh. received the bread of the Lord' against the Lord: but the other apostles received the bread which was the Lord,' that is, his body. But I have already spoken of the matter of this argument in the third paragraph, numb. 7., which the reader may please to add to this to make it fuller. 10. Ninthly: Lastly,-In the words of institution and consecration, as they call them, the words, which relate to the consecrated wine, are so different in the evangelists, and St. Paul respectively, as appears by comparing them together; that, 1. It does not appear which words were literally spoken by our blessed Saviour: for all of them could not be so spoken as they are set down. 2. That they all regarded the sense and meaning of the mystery, not the letters and the syllables. 3. It is not possible to be certain, that Christ intended the words of any one of them to be consecratory or effective of what they signify, for every one of the relaters differs in the words, though all agree in the things; as the reader may observe in the beginning of the fourth paragraph, where the four forms are set by each other to be compared. 4. The church of Rome, in the consecration of the chalice, uses a form of words, which Christ spake not at all, nor are related by St. Matthew, or St. Mark, or St. Luke, or St. Paul, but she puts in some things and changes others: her form is this: "Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei Novi et æterni Testamenti, mysterium fidei, qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum :" "For this is the chalice of my blood, of the New and eternal Testament, the mystery of faith, which shall be shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins:" what is added is plain, what is altered would be very material, if the words were consecratory; for they are not so likely to be operative and effective as the words of Christ recited by St. Matthew and St. Mark, This is my blood :' and if this had not been the ancient form used in the church of Rome long before the doctrine of transubstantiation was thought of; it is not to be imagined, that they would have refused the plainer words of Scripture, to have made the article more secret, the form less operative, the authority less warrantable, the words less simple and natural. But the corollary, which is natural and proper from the particulars of this argument, is, that the mystery was so wholly spiritual, that it was no matter by what words it were expressed, so the spirit of it were re tained; and yet if it had been an historical, natural, proper sense that had been intended, it ought also, in all reason, to have been declared, or (much more) effected by a natural and proper and constant affirmative. But that there is nothing spoken properly, is therefore evident; because there are so many predications, and all mean the same mystery: "Hic est sanguis meus Novi Testamenti ;" and "Hic calix est Novum Testamentum in meo sanguine;" and, "Hic est calix sanguinis mei," in the Roman missal: all this declares it is 'mysterium fidei,' and so to be taken in all senses and those words are left in their canon, as if on purpose either to prevent the literal and natural understanding of the other words, or for the reducing the communicants to the only apprehensions of faith it is mysterium fidei,'not' sanguis naturalis,' a mystery of faith,' not 'natural blood.' For supposing that both the forms used by St. Matthew and St. Luke, respectively, could be proper and without a figure; and St. Matthew's Hic est sanguis testamenti,' did signify, 'This is the divine promise' (for so Bellarmine dreams that testament there signifies), and that in St. Luke's words, 'This cup is the testament,' it signifies 'the instrument of the testament' (for so a will, or a testament, is taken either for the thing willed, or the parchment in which it is written); yet how are these, or either of these, affirmative of the wine being transubstantiated into blood? It says nothing of that, and so if this sense of those words does avoid a trope, it brings in a distinct proposition; if it be spoken properly, it is more distant from giving authority to their new doctrine; and if the same word have several senses, then in the sacramental proposition, as it is described by the several evangelists, there are several predicates, and therefore it is impossible, that all should be proper. And yet besides this, although he thinks he may freely say any thing, if he covers it with a distinction, yet the very members of this distinction conclude against his conclusion; for if 'testament' in one place be taken for the instrument of his testament,' it is a tropical locution; just as I say, 'My bible' (meaning 'my book') 'is the word of God,' that is, contains the word of God, it is a metonymy of the thing containing, for that which it contains. But this was more than I needed, and therefore I am content it should pass for nothing. * Lib. 1. de Euch. c. 11. sect. Ad tertiam dico. SECTION VIII. Of the Arguments of the Romanists from Scripture. 1. THUS I have, by very many arguments taken from the words and circumstances and annexes of the institution or consecration, proved, that the sense of this mystery is mysterious, and spiritual,—that Christ's body is eaten only sacramentally by the body, but really and effectively only by faith,— which is the mouth of the soul; that the flesh profiteth nothing,' but the words which Christ spake, are spirit and life.' And let it be considered, whether besides a pertinacious resolution that they will understand these words as they sound in the letter, not as they are intended in the spirit, there be any thing, or indeed can be, in the nature of the thing, or circumstances of it, or usefulness, or in the different forms of words, or the analogy of the other discourses of Christ, that can give colour to their literal sense? against which so much reason, and Scripture, and arguments from antiquity, do contest. This only I observe, that they bring no pretence of other scriptures to warrant this interpretation, but such which I have or shall wrest out of their hands; and which, to all men's first apprehensions, and at the very first sight, do make against them, and which, without curious notions and devices, cannot pretend on their side: as appears first in the tenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, verses 16, 17. 2. Out of which I have already proved, that Christ's body is not taken in the natural sense, but in the spiritual. But when Bellarmine a had, out of the same words, forced for himself three arguments proving nothing; to save any man the labour of answering them, he adds at the end of them these words: "Sed tota difficultas est, an corporaliter, realiter, propriè sumatur sanguis et caro, an solùm significativè et spiritualiter. Quod autem 'corporaliter et propriè' probari posset omnibus argumentis, quibus suprà probavimus propriè esse intelligenda verba illa institutionis, Hoc est corpus meum."-That is, after his arguments out of the First Epistle to the Corinthians were ended, all the difficulty of the question still remained; and that he was fain to prove by C a Sect. 5. n. 6. lib. 1. Euch. c. 12. b Sect. Sed tota difficultas. Chap. x. ver. 16. |
