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sense_n blood_n body_n wine_n 4,504 5 8.0226 4 true
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A37245 A letter to friend concerning his changing his religion Davies, Rowland, 1649-1721. 1692 (1692) Wing D412; ESTC R5643 30,321 32

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briefly and compare our Faith and Practice in relation to the Sacrament which is the most Solemn branch of our Devotion For I shall ever acknowledge it as an obligation from you if you will be fair in this particular and communicate your own Thoughts freely without prevarication whether you can submit your Reason in this particular to that Doctrin of your Church that is so much against it Whither you can believe in your Conscience as it is openly profest that a Priest by Consecrating Bread and Wine according to the Missal can change their substance into that of God Or so Establish the Divinity in those Creatures or under the covert of their Accidents as really to make them or what you see upon the Table in their Shape to become a proper Object to be Worshipt and Adored For since nothing can be more absurd nor indeed more criminal in Religion than to apply God's Worship to any thing that is not God there is nothing less than a belief of this particular that can be pleaded by you to justifie your Practice when you Worship and Adore the Consecrated Host in the constant Exercise of your Publick Devotion Let us enquire therefore I beseech you into the foundation of this Faith and how this Notion which appears impossible to Mankind should come to have that Credit in the Church as to be made a Principle of the Christian Religion and not only be received as an Article of Faith but to be made the ground-work also of such a dangerous Practice § 8. The Church of Rome dogmatically tells us that our Blessed Saviour at the Institution of his Holy Supper changed the substance of the Bread and Wine into the substance of his own Body and Blood For saying of the Bread This is my Body and of the Wine This is my Blood and in both Expressions being literally to be understood by all Men his Expressions cannot be true except this change be really effected It being impossible in a literal Sense that the same thing at the same time can be real Bread and also the Body of Christ and therefore they believe that after the words of Consecration are pronounced Christ himself with his Body and Blood his Soul and his Divinity and not any longer Bread and Wine do really remain upon the Table and so they Adore the Consecrated Host as being really then the Person of Christ who is the Saviour God and Judge of all the World Now Sir if you will but seriously consider all those words which our Saviour Christ hath spoken on this Subject together with the end design and occasion of his speaking them it will not appear difficult to prove clearly to you First that those words of Christ are not thus literally to be interpreted but directly contrary to this Doctrin their true Sense is altogether Spiritual and Mystical And 2 ●ly That if they were literally to be understood by all Men even in the utmost Sense those words can bear yet they will neither assert what the Council of Trent Decrees nor justifie your Practice in Worshiping the Host § 9. First I say that the Words of our Saviour Christ in the Institution of this Sacrament cannot be understood in a literal Sense but must have a sigurative or mystical signification And this doth appear fully from the Nature of the thing the Design of the Institution the Occasion of the Expression and our Saviour's own Judgment as to their Interpretation As to the Nature of the thing it is a sufficient proof that any Text of Scripture is not literally to be understood by Christians if its common reading contradicts the Rules of Sense and Principles of Philosophy or destroys the ground-work of all certainty and knowledge and so roots up the foundation of Religion in general And if a Man by being a Christian is to take those words of Christ in a literal Sense and to believe that that is Flesh which by his sight touch tast and smell he fully and clearly discovers to be Bread all those recited mischiefs are the necessary consequence and there can be no Rule of any certainty in Religion In so much that no Man can be sure that there is a Bible or that any such words as these we treat of are Recorded in it or indeed that any thing else is written in order to his Salvation if he must not trust his Senses being rightly disposed in relation to a proper Object with a fit Medium If you say that this is an improper Object because it is a Substance when Accidents alone do incur the Senses I say that there is no other way to know a Substance but by the Accidents that are proper to it and if it were possible for all the Accidents that are proper to one Subject to inhere another it would be impossible to determine which is which or ever truly to distinguish any one thing from another But it is also evident that a Humane Body is the real thing we here treat of and that this is a proper Object for our Senses appears plainly to us from the practice of our Saviour in that he recurr'd unto them even after his Resurrection and made them the only Judges of his Bodily Substance Behold saies he Luke xxiv 39. my hands and my feet that it is I my self handle and see for a Spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have So that either this Body of Christ supposed in the Sacrament must be a proper Object for our Senses or it is not that Body of Christ wherewith he arose from the Dead And the Priest must create another Body such as our Saviour never had before he can adapt it to this Doctrin of the Sacrament It is therefore evidently a device of the School-Men to impose upon the Vulgar that they generally discourse thus of the Object of one Science in terms and notions that are peculiar to another and instead of Matter and Form wherein the Essence of a Body doth consist and which do evidently demonstrate that every Humane Body doth consist of Limbs hath Flesh and Bones with that Extent Shape and Dimensions that are proper to it and whereof all Mankind are equally sure and certain All their Disputations are about its Substance and its Accidents which are Metaphysical terms and may agree with a Spirit with whose Nature and Parts the wisest Men are unacquainted And therefore abstracting from the Senses wherein the least intelligent are sufficient Judges they confound our Understanding in such intricacies and quillets that even they themselves cannot explain their meaning And therefore I say that either our Senses must be Judges in this case as well as other Bodies or else that the Body of Christ is not a proper Body as Nestorius heretofore did Heretically assert it or else that God hath appointed here an irresistible deception of all Mankind continually in that which is most evident and sure to be relyed on and how agreeable these are