Blood Or then that of Origen that Bread which is consecrated by the Word of God as to the Matter of it goes into the Belly and is cast out by the Draught Or then that of Christ himself who said not only after the Consecration but after the finishing of the Communion Luke 22. 18. I will drink no more of the Fruit of the Vine for it is certain the Fruit of the Vine is Wine and not Blood And yet when we speak thus we do not so depress the Esteem of the Supper of the Lord as to teach that it is a meer cold Ceremony and that nothing is done in it which many falsly report of us for we assert that Christ in his Sacraments doth exhibit himself truly present In Baptism that we may put him on In his Supper that we may eat him by Faith and in the Spirit and that by his Cross and Blood we may have Life Eternal and this we say is not slightly and coldly but really and truly done for although we do not touch Christ with our Teeth and Lips yet we hold and press him by Faith Mind and Spirit Nor is that Faith vain which imbraceth Christ nor that Participation cold which is perceived by the Mind Understanding and Spirit for so Christ himself is intirely offered and given to us in these Mysteries as much as is possible that we may truly know that we are Flesh of his Flesh and Bone of his Bone and that he dwells in us and we in him 16. AND therefore in the Celebration of these Mysteries before we come to receive the Holy Communion the People are fitly admonished to lift up their Hearts and that they should direct their Minds to Heaven for there he is by whom we are to be fed and live And St. Cyrill saith that in partaking of the Holy Mysteries all gross Imaginations are to be excluded And the Nicen Council as it is cited by some in Greek doth expresly forbid us to think only on the Bread and Wine that are set before us And St. Chrysostom Writes well We say that the Body of Christ is the Carcass and we are to be the Eagles that thereby we may learn to mount aloft if we will approach the Body of Christ for this is the Table of Eagles and not of Jayes And St. Cyprian This Bread is the Meat of the Soul and not of the Belly And St. Augustin How shall I lay hold on him who is absent how shall I reach my Hand into the Heavens and touch him who sits there Send thy Faith thither saith he and thou hast him sure 17. BUT then as to the Fairs and Sales of Masses and the carrying about and adoring the Bread and a number of such like Idolatrous and blasphemous Follies which none of them dare affirm to have been delivered to us by Christ of his Apostles our Church will not indure them and we justly blame the Bishops of Rome for presuming without any Command of God without any Authority of the Holy Fathers and without any Example not only to propose the Sacramental Bread to be adored by the People with a divine Worship but also to carry it about before them upon an ambling Nag where-ever they go as the Persian Kings did heretofore their sacred Fire and the Aegyptian their Image of Isis and so have turned the Sacraments of Christ into Pageantry and Pomp that in that very thing in which the Death of Christ was to be celebrated and inculcated and the Mysteries of our Redemption ought to be piously and reverently represented the Eyes of men should only be fed with a foolish shew and a piece of Ludicrous Livity And then whereas they say and sometimes perswade Fools that they can by their Masses distribute and apply to men who very often think of nothing less and never know what is then doing all the Merits of the Death of Christ this Pretencâ— I say is ridiculous heathenish and silly for it is our Faith which applies the Death and Cross of Christ to us and not the Action of a Priest the Faith of the Sacraments saith St. Augustin justifies and not the Sacrament And Origen saith He Christ is the Priest and the Propitiation and the Sacrifice and this Propitiation comes to every one by way of Faith and therefore agreeably hereunto we say that the Sacraments do not profit the Living without Faith and much less the Dead for as to what they pretend concerning their Purgatory tho that is no very late Invention yet it is nothing but a silly old wives Story St. Augustin sometimes saith there is such a place sometimes he doth not deny but there may be such a Place sometimes he doubts if there be and at other times he positively denies there is any such place at all and thinks that men out of humane kindness to the Dead are deceived in that point And yet from this one Error there has sprung such a Crop of small Priests that Masses being publickly and openly sold in every corner they have turn'd the Churches of God into meer Shops and deluded poor Mortals into a Belief that there was no Commodity more useful and certainly as to those small Levites these Masses were very advantagious 18. WE know that St. Augustin grieviously complain'd of the vast number of impertinent Ceremonies in his time and therefore we have cut off a great many of them because we know they were afflictive to the Consciences of Men and burthensome to the Church of God Yet we still retain and reâ—igiously use not only all those which we know were delivered to the Church by the Apostles but some others which we saw might be born without any inconvenience because as St. Paul commands we desire alâ—things in the Religious Assemblies should be done decently and in order but then as to alâ—those that were very superstitious or base or ridiculous or contrary to the Scriptures or did not seem to beâ—it sober men an infinite number of which are still to be found amongst Papists we have rejected all these I say without excepting any one of them because we would not have the Service of God any longer contaminated with such Fooleries 19. WE pray as it is fit we should in that Tongue our People do all understand that the People as St. Paul admonisheth may reap a common Advantage by the common Prayers as all the Holy Fathers and Catholick Bishops not only in the Old but in the New Testament also did ever pray and teach the People to pray least as St. Augustin saith We should like Parrots and other prating Birds seem to sound Words which we did not understand 20. WE have no Mediator and Intercessor by whom we approach to God the Father but Jesus Christ in whose name only all things are obtained But that which we see done in their Churches is base and heathenish not only because they have set up an infinite
hâ— said he saw many Causes why the Clergâ— should be denied Wives but then he saw morâ— and greater Causes to allow them Wives again 10. WE receive and imbrace all the Canonical Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament and we give our gracious God most hearty Thanks that he hath set up this Light for us which we ever fix our Eyes upon lest by humane Fraud or the Snares of the Devil we should be seduced to Errors or Fables We own them to be the heavenly Voices by which God hath reveal'd and made known his Will to us in them only can the Mind of Man acquiesce in them all that is necessary for our Salvation is aboundantly and plainly contain'd as Origen St. Augustin St. Chrysostom and St. Cyrill have taught us They are the very Might and Power of God unto Salvation they are the Foundations of the Apostles and Prophets upon which the Church of God is built they are the most certain and infallible Rule by which the Church may be reduced if She happen to stagger slip or err by which all Ecclesiastical Doctrines ought to be tried no Law no Tradition no Custom is to be received or continued if it be contrary to Scripture No tho St. Paul himself or an Angel from Heaven should come and teach otherwise 11. WE receive also and allow the Sacraments of the Church that is the sacred Signs and Ceremonies which Christ commanded us to use that he might by them represent to our eyes the Mysteries of our Salvation and most strongly confirm the Faith we have in his Blood and seal in our Hearts his Grace and we call them Figures Signs Types Antitypes Forms Seals Prints or Signets Similitudes Examples Images Remembrances and Memorials with Tertullian Origen St. Ambrose St. Augustin St. Jerom St. Chrysostom St. Basil and Dionysius and many other Catholick Fathers Nor do we doubt with them to call them a kind of visible Words the Signets of Righteousness and the Symbols of Grace and clearly affirm that in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper the Body and Blood of our Lord is truly exhibited to Believers that is the enlivening Flesh of the Son of God the Bread that comes from above the Nourishment of Immortality the Grace the Truth and the Life and that it is the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ by the Participation of which we are quickned strengthened and fed to immortality and by which we are conjoyned united and incorporated with Christ that we may remain in him and he in us 12. WE acknowledge that there are two Sacraments properly so call'd Baptism and the Supper of the Lord for so many we see were delivered to us and consecrated by Christ and approved by St. Ambrose St. Augustin and the ancient Fathers 13. AND we say that Baptism is the Sacrament of the Remission of Sins and of that Washing which we have in the Blood of Christ and that none are to be denied that Sacrament who will profess the Faith of Christ no not the Infants of Christians because they are born in sin and belong to the People of God 14. WE say that the Eucharist is the Sacrament or visible Symbol of the Body and Blood of Christ in which the Death and Resurrection of Christ and what he did in his humane Body is in a manner represented to our eyes that we may give him thanks for his Death and our Deliverance by it and that by frequenting the Sacrament we may often renew the Remembrance of it and that by the Body and Blood of Christ we may be nourished into the Hope of the Resurrection and of eternal Life and that we may be assured that the Body and Blood of Christ hath the same effect in the feeding of our Souls which the Bread and Wine have in the repairing the Decays of our Bodies To this great and solemn Feast the People are to be invited that they may all communicate together and may publickly signifie and testifie both their Union and Society amongst themselves and that Hope which they have in Christ Jesus and therefore if there was any one heretofore before the private Mass was introduced who would be only a Spectator and yet would abstain from the Holy Communion the Bishops of Rome in the Primitive Times and the ancient Fathers would have excommunicated him as a wicked man and a Pagan Nor was there any Christian man in those times who communicated alone in the presence of others who were only Spectators So Calixtus long since decreed that when the Consecration was finished all should communicate if they would not be deprived of the Communion of the Church and be shut out of it for so saith he the Apostles ordained and the Holy Church of Rome holds And we say that both the Parts of the Sacrament ought to be given to all that come to the Holy Communion for so Christ commanded and the Apostles instituted throughout the World and all the ancient Fathers and Catholick Bishops so practised and if any one shall do otherwise saith Gelasius he commits Sacriledge and therefore our Adversaries who exploding and rejecting the Communion defend the private Mass and a multitude of Sacraments without the authority of the Word of God without any ancient Council without any Catholick Father without any Example of the Primitive Church and without Reason and this against the express Command of Christ and also against all Antiquity in so doing act wickedly and sacrilegiously 15. WE say that the Bread and Wine are the Holy and Heavenly Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ and that in them Christ himself the true Bread of eternal Life is so exhibited to us as present that we do by Faith truly take his Body and Blood and yet at the same time we speak not this so as if we thought the Nature of the Bread and Wine were totally changed and abolished as many in the last Ages have dreamt and as yet could never agree amongst themselves about this Dream For neither did Christ ever design that the Wheaten Bread should change its Nature and assume a new kind of Divinity but rather that it might change us and that as Theophylact saith we might be trans-elemented into his Body For what can be more perspicuous than what St. Ambrose saith on this occasion the Bread and Wine are what they were and yet are changed into another thing Or what Gelasius saith The Substance of the Bread and Nature of the Wine do not cease to be Or then what Theodoret after the Consecration the mystical Symbols do not cast off their own proper Nature for they remain in their former Substance and Figure and Species Or then what St. Augustin saith that which you see is Bread and a Cup as your Eyes inform you but that which your Faith desires to be instructed in is this the Bread is the Body of Christ and the Cup is his
our Forefathers who first imbraced and professed the Name of Christ that they conspired amongst themselves against the Government and for that purpose met very early whilst it was yet dark that they murthered Male-Infants gorged themselves with Mans Flesh and in a barbarous manner drank humane Blood and at last putting out the Candles perpetrated Incests and Adulteries and that Brothers lay with their Sisters and Sons with their Mothers without any reverence to their Bloods and Families without Difference or Modesty that they were impious destitute of all Religion Atheists the Enemies of all Mankind and unworthy of the Light or Life 3. THESE things were spoken against the Jews the People of God against Christ Jesus against St. Paul St. Stephen and against all those who in the first Ages imbraced the truth of the Gospel and were called Christians a Name then hated by the Many And although none of these things were true yet the Devil thought it sufficient to his Purpose if they were believed true that so the Christians might incur the publick Hatred and be pursued by all to Ruine and Destruction And thus Kings and Princes being deceived slew all the Prophets of God to a Man they condem'd Isaiah to the Saw Jeremia to be ston'd Daniel to the Lions Amos to the Iron Bar Paul to the Sword and Christ to the Cross and all Christians to Prisons to Racks to Crosses to Rocks and Precipices to wild Beasts and Fires and burnt whole Piles of their living Bodies for nocturnal Lights and by way of Sport and Recreation and never esteem'd them better than the most vile Filth of the Earth the Off-scourings and Scorn of the World thus the first Authors and Professors of the Truth were ever treated 4. WHEREFORE all we who have now undertaken the Profession of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ought to bear it with the less disturbance of Mind if in the same Cause we are treated after the same manner and as heretofore our Fathers so we in this Age are persecuted also with Reproaches Slanders and Lyes only because we teach and profess the Truth 5. THEY roar out in all Places that we are Hereticks that we have forsaken the true Faith and broken the Union of the Church with new Opinions and impious Doctrines 2. That we fetch from Hell and revive the old and long since condemn'd Heresies and sow the Seeds of new Sects and unheard of Broils that we are already divided into contrary Factions and Opinions and we could never yet in any manner agree amongst our selves 3. That we are wicked men and like the Gyants of old have entered into a Rebellion against God himself and live without the least regard to the Deity and without any religious Worship 4. That we despise all good Actions that we do not use any virtuous Discipline that we regard neither Laws nor good Manners nor Right nor Justice nor Equity nor Order that we let loose the Rein and suffer all sorts of Villanies and even provoke the People to all the Licentiousness and Luxury that is possible 5. That our Business and great Design is the subverting Monarchies and Kingdoms that all States may be reduced under the Dominion of the ignorant Multitude and the indiscreet Populace 6. That we have made a tumultuous Defection from the Catholick Church and have shaken the Peace of the World and disturbed the Quiet of the Church by a detestable Schism and that as heretofore Dathan and Abiram rose up against Moses and Aaron so we without any just cause have revolted from the Pope of Rome 7. That we despise the Authority of the Primitive Fathers and antient Councils That we have imprudently and insolently abrogated the antient Ceremonies which have been approved for many Ages by our Fathers and Grandfathers who had better Manners and lived in better Times and that by our own private Authority without the Consent of a Holy and General Council we have introduced new Rites into the Church and that we have not done this for the Sake of Religion but purely out of a contentious Humour that they on the contrary have changed nothing but have retained all things as they were delivered to them by the Apostles approved by the most antient Fathers and have been kept ever since through all the intermediate Ages to this day 6. AND least all this might seem to be only a Calumny and that managed by secret Whispers only with design to excite an Envy against us the Popes of Rome have suborned eloquent and not unlearned Men to undertake the Defence of this desperate Cause and to represent it to the World in Books and long Discourses in the best Colours it was possible to give it to the intent that being elegantly and copiously pleaded unskilful men might suspect there was something more than ordinary in it for indeed they saw that their Cause was every where in a declining Condition their Arts were now seen through and so were the less esteemed their Fortresses were every day undermin'd and their Case stood in need of a powerful Patronage and Defence But then as to those things which they have charged us with some of them are manifestly false and condemn'd by the Consciences of them that object them against us others though in the bottom they are false too yet they have the shew and similitude of truth so that an incautious and unthinking Reader may especially if he be surprised by any of their laboured and elegant Discourses be easily circumvented and deceived and others of the things thus charged upon us are such as we ought to acknowledge and profess and not decline the owning them as if they were Crimes but defend them as things that were well and rationally done For to speak in a word they slander whatever we do even those Actions of ours which themselves cannot deny to be rightly and well done and malitiously deprave and pervert all our Words and Actions as if it were not possible We should do or speak any thing as we ought They ought indeed to treat us with more Simplicity and Candor if they designed truth but on the other hand they do not oppose us with truth nor in a Christan Way or Manner but with Lyes in a close and crafty way and abuse the blindness and ignorance of the Rabble and the want of Learning in Princes to the inflaming their Hatred against us and the Oppression of the Truth This is indeed the Power of Darkness and the Folly of Men who trust more in the Stupidity and benighted Minds of the unpolished Multitude than in the Light of Truth or as St. Jerom expresseth it This is to contradict with shut Eyes the Truth when it is most perspicuous But we bless the great and Holy God our Cause is such that though they never so much desire to defame it yet they can fix no Reproach upon it which they may not with as much Reason and Justice imploy against the