Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

62

Mede. Herbert. Bramhall.

worthy receiving of the blessed Sacrament: he that defiles the King's body, and he that tears it, offend both alike; the Jews tore it, thou defilest it. Here are (saith the same Father) diversa peccata, sed par contumelia; some difference of the sin, but none of the contumely therein offered.

"Joseph and Nicodemus, their pious devotion in begging and embalming the Body of Christ, is worthily recorded and commended to all generations; Mary Magdalene in bestowing that box of precious ointment upon His holy Head hath gained to herself endless honour, instead of her former infamy: so if we receive and handle worthily this mystical Body of Christ, our portion shall be with honourable Joseph and pious Mary Magdalene; our memories shall be as theirs, blessed, and our souls as theirs, to receive unspeakable comfort: but if we come unworthily, we join with Judas and the Jews, and are guilty, as they were, of the Body and Blood of Christ." Disc. xlv. p. 254, 257, 268.

[blocks in formation]

"Having viewed all your strength with a single eye, I find not one of your arguments that comes home to Transubstantiation, but only to a true Real Presence; which no genuine

son of the Church of England did ever deny, no, nor your adversary himself. Christ said, "This is My Body;" what He said, we do stedfastly believe. He said not, after this or that manner, neque con, neque sub, neque trans. And therefore we place it among the opinions of the Schools, not among the articles of our Faith. The Holy Eucharist, which is the Sacrament of peace and unity, ought not to be made the matter of strife and contention." Works, fol. ed. p. 15.

"We find no debates or disputes concerning the Presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament, and much less concerning the manner of His Presence, for the first 800 years.

[ocr errors]

---

6

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"Yet all the time we find as different expressions among those primitive Fathers, as among our modern writers at this day some calling the Sacrament 'the Sign of Christ's Body'— 'the Figure of His Body'-' the Symbol of His Body'the Mystery of His Body' the Exemplar,' Type,' and 'Representation, of His Body,' saying, that the Elements do not recede from their first nature;' others naming it the true Body and Blood of Christ,'—' changed, not in shape, but in nature;' yea, doubting not to say, that in this Sacrament we see Christ'—' we touch Christ'-' we eat Christ,'—' that we fasten our teeth in His very Flesh, and make our tongues red in His Blood.' Yet, notwithstanding, there were no questions, no quarrels, no contentions amongst them; there needed no Councils to order them, no conferences to reconcile them; because they contented themselves to believe what Christ had said, "This is My Body," without presuming on their own heads to determine the manner how it is His Body; neither weighing all their own words so exactly before any controversy was raised, nor expounding the sayings of other men contrary to the analogy of Faith." Id. p. 16.

"So grossly is he mistaken on all sides, when he saith that Protestants (he should say the English Church, if he would speak to the purpose) have a positive belief that the Sacrament is not the Body of Christ, which were to contradict the words of Christ, "This is My Body." He knows better that Protestants do not deny the thing, but the bold determination of the manner by Transubstantiation." Id. p. 226.

"Abate us Transubstantiation, and those things which are consequent of their determination of the manner of Presence, and we have no difference with them in this particular. They who

are ordained Priests ought to have power to consecrate the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, that is, to make Them present." Ib. p. 485.

Bishop Cosin.

"Where is the danger and what doth he fear as long as all they that believe the Gospel own the true nature and the Real and Substantial Presence of the Body of Christ in the Sacrament, using that explication of St. Bernard concerning the manner, which he himself, for the too great evidence of truth, durst not but admit? And why doth he own that the manner is spiritual not carnal, and then require a carnal presence, as to the manner itself? As for us, we all openly profess with St. Bernard, that the Presence of the Body of Christ in the Sacrament is spiritual, and therefore true and real, and with the same Bernard and all the ancients, we deny that the Body of Christ is carnally either present or given. The thing we willingly admit, but humbly and religiously forbear to enquire the manner. . . . ... We confess with the Fathers, that this manner of Presence is unaccountable and past finding out, not to be searched and pryed into by reason, but believed by faith. And if it seems impossible that the Flesh of Christ should descend and come to be our food through so great a distance, we must remember how much the power of the Holy Spirit exceeds our sense and our apprehensions, and how absurd it would be to undertake to measure His immensity by our weakness and narrow capacity, and so make our faith to conceive and believe what our reason cannot comprehend.

.

"Yet our faith does not cause or make that Presence, but apprehends it as most truly and really effected by the word of Christ; and the faith whereby we are said to eat the Flesh of Christ, is not that only whereby we believe that He died for our sins, (for this faith is required and supposed to precede the sacramental manducation,) but more properly that whereby we believe those words of Christ, This is My Body.' Which was St. Austin's meaning when he said, "why dost thou prepare thy stomach and thy teeth? Believe, and thou hast eaten." For in this mystical eating, by the wonderful power of the Holy Ghost, we do invisibly receive the substance of Christ's Body and Blood, as much as if we should eat and drink both visibly." Hist. of Transub. p. 53, 54.

"All

Cosin. Sparrow. Hammond.

65

remains is, that we should with faith and humility admire this high and sacred mystery, which our tongue cannot sufficiently explain, nor our heart conceive." Ibid.

Bishop Sparrow.

"The Priest says, 'Lift up your hearts.' For certainly at that hour when we are to receive the most dreadful Sacrament it is necessary to lift up our hearts to God."

[ocr errors]

"Next is the Consecration. So you shall find in Chrysostom and Cyril last cited. Which Consecration consists chiefly in rehearsing the words of our Saviour's Institution, This is My Body, and This is My Blood, when the bread and wine is present upon the Communion Table. The Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,' says St. Chrysostom, which the Priest now makes, is the same that Christ gave to His Apostles &c.' Again, 'Christ is present at the Sacrament now, that first instituted it. He consecrates this also: it is not man that makes the Body and Blood of Christ by consecrating the holy elements, but Christ that was crucified for us. The words are pronounced by the words of the Priest, but the elements are consecrated by the power and grace of God.' This is,' saith He, My Body;' by this word the bread and wine are consecrated.

[ocr errors]

6

"When the Priest hath said at the delivery of the Sacrament, The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life, the communicant is to answer Amen. By this Amen, professing his faith of the Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in that Sacrament."-Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer, p. 211. 216. 220. ed. Oxford, 1840.

Hammond.

"S. You told me even now, that you would shew me how the phrase, "This is my Body, in the Gospel, interpreted by, this taking and eating is my Body," was to be understood: perhaps it may now be time for you to pay me that debt.

“C. It is a fit reason to do so; for this very phrase of St. Paul's, "The Bread which we break is the Communion of the Body of Christ," is the key to open that difficulty, and indeed perfectly all one, of the very same importance with that. This breaking, taking, eating of the Bread, this whole action, is the

F

66

Hammond. Fell.

Thorndike.

real communication of the Body of Christ to me, and is therefore by some ancient writers called by a word which signifies the participation, (communication and participation being the same, only one referred to the giver, the other to the receiver,) the very giving Christ's Body to me; that as verily as I eat the bread in my mouth, so verily God in Heaven bestows on me, communicates to me the Body of the crucified Saviour. And so all that I told you of the full sense of that phrase, “ Communication of Christ's Body," is again to be repeated here to make up the sense of those words, "This is My Body;" which being so largely enlarged on, I need not now to repeat to you." Practical Catechism, p. 354. ed. 1715.

Bishop Fell. "Paraphrase on the Epistles."

"For this Holy Ceremony was not instituted by us for eating and drinking, but by the Lord Himself, for a sacred solemn commemoration of His death, and to be approached with all reverence and great preparation, as being the Body and Blood of the Lord." On 1 Cor. xi. 23.

Thorndike.

"Upon these premises, I am content to go to issue as concerning the sense of the Catholic Church in this point. If it can any where be shewed, that the Church did ever pray that the Flesh and Blood might be substituted instead of the elements, under the accidents of them, then I am content, that this be counted henceforth the Sacramental Presence of them in the Eucharist. But if the Church only pray that the Spirit of God, coming down upon the elements, may make them the Body and Blood of Christ, so that they which received them may be filled with the grace of His Spirit; then is it not the sense of the Catholic Church, that can oblige any man to believe the abolishing of the elements, in their bodily substance; because, supposing that they remain, they may nevertheless become the instrument of God's Spirit to convey the operation thereof to them that are disposed to receive it, no otherwise than His Flesh and Blood conveyed the efficacy thereof upon earth. And that I suppose is reason enough, to call it the Body and Blood of Christ Sacramentally, that is to say, as in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is not here to be denied, that all ecclesiastical writers do,

« AnteriorContinuar »