version of bread into Christ's body or flesh, and of the wine into his blood; since they say the same thing of us, that we also are turned into Christ's flesh, and body, and blood. So St. Chrysostom; "He reduces us into the same mass, or lump, neque id fide solùm sed reipsâ; and in very deed makes us to be his body."-So Pope Leo: "In mysticâ distributione spiritualis alimoniæ, hoc impertitur et sumitur, ut, accipientes virtutem cœlestis cibi, in carnem ipsius, qui caro nostra factus est, transeamus."-And in his 24th sermon of the passion, "Non alia igitur participatio corporis, quàm ut in id quod sumimus transeamus:" "There is no other participation of the body, than that we should pass into that which we receive. In the mystical distribution of the spiritual nourishment, this is given and taken, that we receiving the virtue of the heavenly food, may pass into his flesh who became our flesh."-And Rabanus' makes the apology fit to this question; "Sicut illud in nos convertitur, dum id manducamus et bibimus: sic et nos in corpus Christi convertimur, dum obedienter, et piè vivimus:" "As that Christ's body is converted into us while we eat it, and drink it; so are we converted into the body of Christ, while we live obediently and piously."- So Gregory Nyssen m; τὸ ἀθανατὸν σῶμα ἐν τῷ ἀναλαβόντι αὐτὸ γινόμενον, πρὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν καὶ τὸ πᾶν μετεποίησεν. "The immortal body being in the receiver, changes him wholly into his own nature :"— and Theophylact useth the same word; "He that eateth me, liveth by me, whilst he is in a certain manner mingled with me, is transelementated (μETATOTTа or changed) into me." Now let men of all sides do reason, and let one expound the other, and it will easily be granted, that as we are turned into Christ's body, so is that into us, and so is the bread into that. 12. Twelfthly: Whatsoever the fathers speak of this, they affirm the same also of the other sacrament, and of the sacramentals, or rituals of the church. It is a known similitude used by St. Cyril of Alexandria: "As the bread of the Eucharist after the invocation of the Holy Ghost is no longer common bread, but it is the body of Christ: so this holy Homil. 38. in S. Mat. ad Cler. Const. 1 De Instit. Cler. lib. xi. c. 31. unguent is no longer mere and common ointment, but it is (χάρισμα Χριστοῦ,) the grace of Christ: χρίσμα Χριστοῦ it uses to be mistaken, the 'Chrism' for the grace or gift of Christ; and yet this is not spoken properly, as is apparent; but it is in this, as in the Eucharist:"-so says the comparison. Thus St. Chrysostom says, that "the table or altar is as the manger in which Christ was laid;" that " the priest is a seraphim, and his hands are the tongs taking the coal from the altar."-But that which I instance in, is that 1. They say that they that hear the word of Christ, eat the flesh of Christ: of which I have already given account in sect. 3. num. 10. &c. As hearing is eating, as the word is his flesh, so is the bread after consecration in a spiritual sense. 2. That which comes most fully home to this, is their affirmative concerning baptism, to the same purposes, and in many of the same expressions which they use in this other sacrament. St. Ambrose speaking of the baptismal waters, affirms "naturam mutari per benedictionem," "the nature of them is changed by blessing;"-and St. Cyril, of Alexandria, saith, By the operation of the Holy Spirit, the waters are reformed to a divine nature, by which the baptized cleanse their body."-For in these, the ground of all their great expressions is, that which St. Ambrose expressed in these words: "Non agnosco usum naturæ ; nullus est hic naturæ ordo, ubi est excellentia gratiæ:" "Where grace is the chief ingredient, there the use, and the order of nature, is not at all considered." But this whole mystery is most clear in St. Austin P, affirming; that "we are made partakers of the body and blood of Christ, when, in baptism, we are made members of Christ; and are not estranged from the fellowship of that bread and chalice, although we die before we eat that bread, and drink that cup."-" Tingimur in passione Domini;" "We are baptized into the passion of our Lord," says Tertullian;-" into the death of Christ," saith St. Paul: for by both sacraments "we show the Lord's death." 13. Thirteenthly; Upon the account of these premises we may be secured against all the objections, or the greatest part of those testimonies from antiquity, which are pretended n Lib. iv. de Sacram. et lib. de iis qui initiantur myster. c. 9. • Lib. ii. in Johan. c. 42. Ad infantes apud Bedam in 1 Cor. x. lib. de bap. for transubstantiation; for either they speak that which we acknowledge, or that it is Christ's body,' that it is not common bread,' that 'it is a divine thing,' that we eat Christ's flesh,' that we drink his blood,' and the like; all which we acknowledge and explicate, as we do the words of institution; or else they speak more than both sides allow to be literally true; or speak as great things of other mysteries which must not, cannot be expounded literally; that is, they speak more, or less, or diverse from them, or the same with us: and I think there is hardly one testimony in Bellarmine, in Coccius, and Perron, that is pertinent to this question, but may be made invalid, by one, or more of the former considerations. But of those, if there be any, of which there may be a material doubt, beyond the cure of these observations, I shall give particular account in the sequel. 14. But then for the testimonies, which I shall allege against the Roman doctrine in this article, they will not be so easily avoided. 1. Because many of them are not only affirmative in the spiritual sense, but exclusive of the natural and proper. 2. Because it is easy to suppose that they may speak hyperboles, but never that which would undervalue the blessed sacrament: for an hyperbole is usual, not a μeiweis, or the 'lessening' a mystery; that may be true,-this, never; that may be capable of a fair interpretation, this can admit of none; that may breed reverence,-this, contempt. To which I add this, that the heathens, slandering the Christians to be worshippers of Ceres or Liber, because of the holy bread and chalice (as appears in St. Austin, book xx. chap. 13. against Faustus the Manichee), had reason to advance the reputation of sacramental signs to be above common bread and wine, not only so to explicate the truth of the mystery, but to stop the mouth of their calumny: and therefore for higher expressions there might be cause, but not such a cause for any lower than the severest truth; and yet let me observe this by the way: St. Austin answered only thus: "We are far from doing so, Quamvis panis et calicis sacramentum ritu nostro amplectamur." St. Austin might have further removed the calumny, if he had been of the Roman persuasion; who adore not the bread, nor eat it at all in their synaxes, until it be no bread, but changed into the body of our Lord. But he knew nothing of that. Neither was there ever any scandal of Christians upon any mistake, that could be a probable excuse for them to lessen their expressions in the matter eucharistical. Indeed Mr. Brerely hath got an ignorant fancy by the end, which I am now to note, and wipe off. He says, that the primitive Christians were scandalized by the heathen to be eaters of the flesh of a child, which, in all reason, must be occasioned by their doctrine of the manducation of Christ's flesh in the sacrament; and if this be true, then we may suspect, that they, to wipe off this scandal, might remove their doctrine as far from the objection as they could, and therefore might use some lessening expressions. To this I answer, that the occasions of the report were the sects of the Gnosticks, and the Peputians. The Gnosticks, as Epiphanius reports, bruised a new, born infant in a mortar, and all of them did communicate, by eating portions of it; and the Montanists, having sprinkled a little child with meal, let him blood, and of that made their eucharistical bread; and these stories the Jews published to disrepute, if they could, the whole religion; but nothing of this related to the doctrine of the Christian eucharist, though the bell always must tinkle, as they are pleased to think, But this turned to advantage of the truth, and to the clearing of this article. For when the scandal got foot, and run abroad, the heathens spared not to call the Christians cannibals, and to impute to them anthropophagy, or the devouring human flesh, and that they made Thyestes's feast, who, by the procurement of Atreus, ate his own children. Against this the Christian apologists betook themselves to a defence. Justin Martyr says, the false devils had set on work some vile persons, to kill some one or other to give colour to the report. Athenagoras", in a high defiance of the infamy, asks, "Do you think we are murderers? for there is no way to eat man's flesh, unless we first kill him."-Octavius, in Minutius Felix, confutes it upon this account: "We do not receive the blood of beasts into our food or beverage; therefore we are infinitely distant from drinking man's blood.”—And this same Tertullian, in his Apologetick', presses further, affirming, that "to discover Christians, they use to offer them a black pudding, or something in which blood remained," and they chose rather to die, than to do it; and of this we may see instances, in the story of Sanctus and Blandina, in the ecclesiastical histories. Concerning which it is remarkable, what Oecumenius, in his Catena upon the 2d chapter of the first epistle of St. Peter, reports out of Irenæus; 'The Greeks, having taken some servants of Christians, pressing to learn something secret of the Christians, and they having nothing in their notice to please the inquisitors, except that they had heard of their masters, that the divine communion is the blood, and body of Christ; they supposing it true according to their rude natural apprehensions, tortured Sanctus and Blandina, to confess it. But Blandina answered them thus: 'How can they suffer any such thing in the exercise of their religion, who do not nourish themselves with flesh that is permitted?' All this trouble came upon the act of the forementioned heretics; the report was only concerning the blood of an infant, not of a man, as it must have been, if it had been occasioned by the sacrament; but the sacrament was not so much as thought of in this scrutiny, till the examination of the servants gave the hint to him in the torture of Blandina.-Cardinal Perron, perceiving much detriment likely to come to their doctrine by these apologies of the primitive Christians, upon the eleventh anathematism of St. Cyril, says, that they deny anthropophagy, but did not deny theanthropophagy,-saying, that they did not eat the flesh, nor drink the blood of a mere man, but of Christ, who was God and man:'-which is so strange a device, as I wonder it could drop from the pen of so great a wit. For this would have been a worse, and more intolerable scandal, to affirm that Christians eat their God, and sucked his blood, and were devourers not only of a man, but of an immortal God. But, however, let his fancy be confronted with the extracts of the several apologies, which I have now cited,—and it will appear, that nothing of the Cardinal's fancy can come near their sense, or words: for all the business was upon the blood of a child, which the Gnostics had killed, or the Montanists tormented; and the matter of the sacrament was not in the whole rumour so much as thought upon. 15. Lastly unless there be no one objection of ours, that means as it says, but all are shadows, and nothing is awake but Bellarmine, in all his dreams; or Perron, in all his labo |