that Tradition would excuse them from a Divine Law. All the instances which Monsieur de Meaux heaps up are very short of proving that and though I have examined every one of them except that pretended Jewish Tradition of Praying for the Dead which is both false and to no purpose yet it was not because there was any strength in them to the maintaining his sinking Cause but that I might take away every slender prop by which he endeavours in vain to keep it up and drive him out of every little hole in which he strives with so much labour to Earth himself when after all his turnings and windings he finds he must be run down If any instance could be found by de Meaux or others of any Tradition or any Practice of a Church contrary to a Divine Institution and to a plain Law of God they would deserve no other answer to be returned to it but what Christ gave to the Pharisees in the like case Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by your tradition ‖ Mat. 15.3 Our Saviour did not put the matter upon this issue Whether the Tradition by which they explained the Law so as to make it of none effect was truly ancient and authentic and derived to them from their fore-Fathers but he thought it sufficient to tell them that it made void and was contrary to a Divine Law. There is no Tradition nor no Church which has ever broke so plain a Law and so shamefully violated a Divine Institution as that which has set up Communion in One Kind the true reason why it did so was not Tradition no that was not so much as pretended at first for the doing of it but onely some imaginary dangers and inconveniencies which brought in a new custom contrary to ancient Tradition These were the onely things insisted on in its defence at first the danger of spilling the Wine and the difficulty of getting it in some places and the undecency of Laymens dipping their Beards in it These were the mighty reasons which Gerson brought of old against the Heresie as he calls it of Communicating in both Kinds †Tractatus Magistri Johannis de Gerson contra haeresin de communionae Laicorum sub utraque specie as if it were a new Heresie to believe that Wine might be spilt or that men wore Beards or as if the Sacrament were appointed only for those Countreys where there were Vines growing De Meaux was very sensible of the weakness and folly of those pretences though they are the pericula and the scandala meant by the Council of Constance and therefore he takes very little notice of them and indeed he has quite taken away all their arguments against the particular use of the Wine because he all along pleades for either of the Species and owns it to be indifferent which of them so ever is used in the Sacrament But I have shewn that both of them are necessary to make a true Sacrament because both are commanded and both instituted and both of them equally belong to the matter of the Sacrament and so to the essence of it and both are ordinarily necessary to the receiving the inward Grace and Vertue of the Sacrament because that is annext to both by the Institution and cannot warrantably be expected without both To conclude therefore Communion in One Kind is both contrary to the Institution and to the Command of Christ and to the Tradition and Practice of the Primitive Church grounded upon that Command and is no less in it self than a sacrilegious dividing and mangling of the most sacred Mystery of Christianity a destroying the very Nature of the Sacrament which is to represent the Death of Christ and his Blood separated from his Body a lessening the signification and reception of our compleat and entire spiritual Nourishment whereby we are Sacramentally to eat Christ's Body and drink his Bloud an unjust depriving the People of that most pretious Legacy which Christ left to all of them to wit His Sacrificial Bloud which was shed for us and which it is the peculiar priviledge of Christians thus mystically to partake of and lastly a robbing them of that Grace and Vertue and Benefit of the Sacrament which belongs not to any part but to the whole of it and cannot ordinarily be received without both kinds O that God would therefore put it into the hearts of those who are most concerned not to do so much injury to Christians and to Christianity and not to suffer any longer that Divine Majesty which is the great Foundation of all Spiritual Grace and Life to be tainted and poysoned with so many corruptions as we find it is above all other parts of Christianity And O that that blessed Sacrament which was designed by Christ to be the very Bond of Peace and the Cement of Unity among all Christians and to make them all one Bread and one Body may not by the perversness of men and the craft of the Devil be made a means to divide and separate them from each other and to break that Unity and Charity which it ought to preserve FINIS A CATALOGUE of some Discourses sold by Brabazon Aylmer at the three Pidgeons over against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil 1. A Perswasive to an Ingenuous Tryal of Opinions in Religion 2. The Difference of the Case between the Separation of the Protestants from the Church of Rome and the Separation of Dissenters from the Church of England 3. A Discourse about the Charge of Novelty upon the Reformed Church of England made by the Papists asking us the Question Where was our Religion before Luther 4. The Protestant Resolution of Faith being an Answer to Three Questions I. How far we must depend on the Authority of the Church for the true Sence of Scripture II. Whether a vissible Succession from Christ to this day makes a Church which has this vissible Succession an Infallible Interpreter of Scripture and whether no Church which has not this visible Succession can teach the true Sence of Scripture III. Whether the Church of England can make out such a visible Succession 5. A Discourse concerning a Guide in matters of Faith with Respect especially to the Romish pretence of the Necessity of such a one as is Infallible 6. A Discourse about Tradition shewing what is meant by it and what Tradition is to be Received and what Tradition is to be Rejected 7. A Discourse concerning the Unity of the Catholick Church maintained in the Church of England 8. A Discourse concerning the Necessity of Reformation with Respect to the Errours and Corruptions of the Church of Rome In two Parts 9. A Discourse concerning the Object of Religious Worship or a Scripture-Proof of the Unlawfulness of giving any Religious Worship to any other Being besides the one Supream God. 10. A Discourse against Transubstantiation 11. A Discourse concerning the Adoration of the Host as it is Taught and Practised in the Church of Rome Wherein an Answer is given to T. G. on that Subject and to Monsieur Bocleau's late Book de Adoratione Eucharistiae Paris 1685. 12. A Discourse concerning Invocation of Saints 13. A Discourse concerning the Devotions of the Church of Rome 14. A Discourse concerning the Celebration of Divine Service in an Unknown Tongue 15. A Discourse concerning Auricular Confession as it is Prescribed by the Council of Trent and Practised in the Church of Rome With a Postscript on occasion of a Book lately printed in France called Historia Confessionis Auricularis 16. A Discourse concerning the Worship of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints with an Account of the Beginnings and Rise of it amongst Christians In Answer to Monsieur de Meaux's Appeal to the Fourth Age in his Exposition and his Pastoral Letter 17. A Discourse of the Communion in One Kind in Answer to the Bishop of Meaux's Treatise of Communion under both Species Lately Translated into English
Species contains both the Body and Bloud together and so conveys the whole vertue of both which is truely Superstition as having no foundation in Scripture or in the Institution of Christ which gives the Sacrament its whole vertue and and annexs it not to one but to both Species And whatever the Superstition be Gelasius declares it is Sacriledge to divide the Mystery or to take one Species without the other the reason which he gives against taking one kind is general and absolute because the Mystery cannot be divided without Sacriledge so that however our Adversaries may assoile themselves from the Superstition in Gelasius they can never get off from the Sacriledge How wide these conjectures from Pope Leo and Gelasius are from the mark which de Meaux aims at I shall let him see from one of his own Communion whose knowledge and judgement in antiquity was no way inferiour to his own and his honesty much greater who thus sums up that matter against one that would have strained and perverted it to the same use that de Meaux does Conjectura vero quam adfert ex Leonis Sermone Gelasii decreto prorsus contrarium evincit nam ex iis manifestè constat horum Pontificum temporibus Communionem non nisi in utrâque specie in Ecclesiâ usitatam fuisse Quomodo enim Manichaei hâc notâ deprehenderentur quod ingredientes Ecclesiam percepto cum reliquis corpore Domini à sanguine Redemptionis abstinerent nisi calix Dominici sanguinis distributus fuisset quomodo superstitionis convincerentur qui sumptâ Dominici corporis portione à calice sacrati cruoris abstinerent nisi calix ille sacrati cruoris omnibus 〈◊〉 Ecclesiâ fuisset oblatus non igitar ut quidam existimant novo decreto utriusque speciei usum hi sanctissimi Pontifices edixerunt sed eos qui solennem hunc receptum calicis sumendi morem neglexerunt ille ut heresis Manichaeae affines notandos evitandos bic ad usitatatam integri Sacramenti perceptionem compellendos aut ab omni prorsus Communione arcendos censuit Nam Catholicis novo decreto non opus erat qui receptam integra Sacramenta percipiendi consuetudinem religiosè servabant Cassand de Com. sub utrâque p. 1026. The Conjecture says he which he makes from the Sermon of Pope Leo and the Decrees of Gelasius does wholly evince the contrary to what he pretends for from them it manifestly appears that in the time of these two Popes the Communion was onely used in both kinds for how should the Manichees be known by this mark that when they came to the Churches they abstained from the Bloud of our Redemption after they had with others taken the Body of the Lord unless the Cup of the Lord had been distributed and how should they be convicted of Superstition who took a portion of the Lord's Body and abstained from the Cup unless the Cup of his sacred Bloud had been offered to all in the Church These holy Popes did not therefore as some imagine appoint the use of both Species by a new Decree but those who neglected this solemn and received custom of taking the Cup one of these Popes would have them avoided and markt as those who were a-kin to the Manichean Heresie the other would have them compelled to the accustomed perception of the entire Sacrament or else to be wholly kept from all Communion for there was need of no new Decree for the Catholics who did Religiously observe the received custom of taking the Sacrament entirely that is in both kinds There needs much better Arguments to prove the Public Communion in the Church to have been ever in one kind than such improbable Guesses and forced Conjectures whereby plain and full evidences are rackt and tortured to get that out of them which is contrary to their whole testimony sense and meaning Let us enquire then whether any particular instances can be given as matters of fact which will make it appear that the Church ever used onely one kind in its Public Communions this de Meaux attempts to shew in the last place and as the strongest evidence he can rally up for his otherwise vanquisht cause He brings both the Latine and Greek Church to his assistance though the latter he owns appears not for the most part very favourable to Communion under one Species but yet this manner of Communicating is practised however and consecrated too by the Tradition of both Churches If it be but practiced in both Churches this will go a great way to make it a Practice of the Catholic Church though neither of those Churches singly nor both of them together do make the Catholic But let us see how this is practiced in those two great though particular Churches Why in the Office of Good-Friday in the Latine Church and the Office of the Greek Church every day in Lent except Saturday and Sunday at those times it seems these two Churches have the Communion onely in one kind as appears by their public Offices if they have it so at those times at other times then I suppose they have it in both or else how come those particular times and those particular Offices to be singled out and remarked as distinct and different from all the rest then generally and for the most part the Public Communion is to be in both kinds according to the Tradition of both those Churches and then surely this Tradition which is thus consecrated by both the Churches is violated by the Roman Of the Mass on Good-Friday in the Roman Church But the Priest himself who officiates takes but in one kind in the Missa Parasceues as they call it or the Mass on Good-Friday as appears by the Office this custom then will shew that the Priest himself or the Minister Conficiens may receive onely in one kind in the Public Communion as well as the People which I think they ordinarily think unlawful and call it Sacriledge if he should ordinarily do so and if I remember Bellarmine himself says * Sacerdotibus utriusque speciei Sumptio necessaria est ex parte Sacramenti nam quia Sacramentum sub duplici specie institutum est utraque species necessariò ab aliquibus sumenda est Bellarm. de Euchar. c. 4. c. 23. The Sumption of both Species is necessary for the Priest who officiates as it is a Sacrament as well as a Sacrifice for since the Sacrament was Instituted under both kinds it is necessary that both kinds be taken by some-body to make it a Sacrament This Communion then of the Priest in one kind must be no Sacrament and the Missa Parasceues must be a very imperfect one and I think themselves are pleased so to call it it must be but equivocally call'd a Mass as Cardinal de Bona phrases it †Missam illam non nisi aequivocè ita dici Bona rer Lyturg. l. 1. c. 15. and consequently such an unusual and extraordinary
and imperfect Communion as this will be no good president nor an instance of any weight and authority to justifie the practice of Public Communion in one kind But after all perhaps there may be a great mistake and this Mass on Good-Friday though it be very different from all others yet may not be a Communion in one kind but in both and so may that in the Greek Church in the Lyturgy of the Presanctified which is used on most days in Lent and then we may relieve the Church of Rome from the difficulty of the Priests Communicating but in one kind and vindicate both the Churches in great measure from being guilty of such an irregular practice contrary to the general practice of the whole Church and to the institution of Christ this cannot to this day be laid to the Greek Church who never uses the Communion in one kind neither privately nor publickly nor could it be charged upon the Roman till long after this particular Mass on Good-Friday was used in it which it is plain it was in the eleventh Age from the Ordo Romanus Amulatius Alcuinus Rupertus Tuiriensis and others but there is no manner of proof that the Public Communion in one kind was brought into the Church of Rome till the thirteenth Century when it came by degrees into some particular Churches as Thomas Aquinas informs us and was afterwards established by a general Decree in the Council of Constance The Mass therefore on Good-Friday though it was a singular and different Office from all others they not thinking it fit for I know not what reasons to make a formal Consecration of Christ's Body on the same day he died but to Celebrate the Communion with what was thus consecrated the day before yet it was not wholly in the one species of Bread but in that of Wine too as is plain from the Office it self and from those Authors who have wrote upon it Corpus Domini quod pridiè remansit ponentes in patenam Subdiaconus teneat calicem cum vino non consecrato alter Subdiaconus patenam cum corpore Domini quibus tenentibus accipit unus Presbyter prior patenam alter calicem defertur super altare nudatum Ordo Romanus p. 75. ex Edit Hittorp The Bread which was Consecrated the day before was brought by the Sub Deacon and a Calice of unconsecrated Wine by another Sub-Deacon and the Priest sets them both together upon the Altar then after some Prayers and particularly the Lord's Prayer he takes the consecrated Bread ‖ Sumit de Sanctâ ponit in calicem Sanctificatur autem vinum non consecratum per sactificatum panem communicant omnes cum silentio Ib. and puts into the Calice and so the unconsecrated Wine is sanctified by the sanctified Bread and then they all Communicate with silence They Communicated with the Bread and the Wine thus mixed together and so their Communion this day was not in one kind But this Wine says de Meaux was not truely Consecrated this Sanctification of the unconsecrated Wine by the mixture of the Body of our Lord cannot be that true Consecration by which the Wine is changed into the Bloud I cannot tell whether it be such a Consecration that does that in his sense but it may be as true a Sacramental Consecration of the Elements for all that not onely by vertue of the mixture and by way of contact as some explain it * Allter in Romano Ordine legitur ut contactu Dominici corporis integra fiat Communio Cassand de Com. sub utr p. 1027. Concil Araus primum but by the solemnity of the action and by all the Religious circumstances that attend it and especially by those Prayers and Thanksgivings which were then used as in Micrologus 't is clearly and plainly exprest †Vinum non consecratum cum Dominicâ Oratione Dominici Corporis immissione jubet consecrare Microlog de Ecclesiast Observ c. 19. in Edit Hittorp p. 742. that the Wine is Consecrated with the Lords Prayer and the Immission of the Lord's Body And why will not de Meaux allow that a true Consecration may be made by those words and prayers as well as by those formal words This is my Body when it is made out beyound all contradiction both by Dallee and Albertinus that the Primitive Church did not Consecrate by those words but by a Prayer and their own St. Gregory says ‖ Apostolos solâ Dominicâ prece praemissâ consecrasse Sacramenta distribnisse Greg. l. 7. Ep. 63. ad Syr. That the Apostles Consecrated the Sacrament only with the Lord's Prayer Which was used here and particularly observed to be so by Micrologus as that whereby the Wine was consecrated so that all Monsieur de Meaux's labour is vain to shew that the Consecration could not be without words And that it cannot enter into the mind of a man of sense that it could ever be believed in the Church the Wine was consecrated without words by the sole mixture of the Body The Consecration might be made without those very formal words now used in the Roman Missal as it was by Prayer in the Primitive Church Walafridus Strabo observes concerning this very Office on Good-Friday that it was agreeable to the more ancient and simple way of the Communion of the first Christians which was performed only with the use of the Lord's Prayer and some commemoration of Christ's Passion * Et relatio majorum est ita primis temporibus Missas fieri solitas sicut modo in Parasceue Paschae communicationem facere solemus i. e. prâmissâ Oratione Dominicâ sicut ipse Dominus noster praecepit commemoratione passionis ejus adhibita Walagrid Strabo de rebus Eccles c. 22. p. 680. Edit Hittorp and yet he did not question but the Consecration was truly made by that simple manner and it did so far enter into the minds of the men of sense that were in those times that they all did believe that the Wine was truly consecrated this way for so says expresly the Ordo Romanus the ancient Ceremonial as he calls it of that Church the Wine is sanctified and there is no difference between that and consecrated that I know of and it is plain they both mean the same thing there for it calls the consecrated Body the sanctified Body †Sanctificatur vinum non consecratumper sanctificatum panem and I know not what Sanctification of another nature that can be which is not Consecration or Sanctifing it to a holy and Sacramental use indeed this may not so well agree with the Doctrine and Opinion of Transubstantiation which requires the powerful and almighty words of This is my Body this is my Bloud to be pronounced over the Elements to convert them into Christ's natural Flesh and Blood but it agrees as well with the true notion of the Sacrament and the Primitive Christians no doubt had
suis Discipulis administraverit subutrâque specie panis vini hoc venerabile Sacramentum Et similitèr quòd licet in primitivâ Ecclesiâ hujusmodi Sacramentum reciperetur à â—idelibus sub utrâque specie Concil Constant Sess 11. and that the faithful received it under both kinds in the Primitive Church Yet to command it under one by its own power and authority and by its own Prerogative to give a Non obstante to Christ's Institution this was done like those that had a sufficient plenitude of power and were resolved to let the World see they had so and that Christ's own Institution was to give way to it they had not then found out the more sly and shifting subtilties that Christ gave the Cup to his Disciples onely as Priests and made them Priests just after the giving them the Bread this was a late invention found out since that Council by some more timerous and wary Sophisters who were afraid of setting up the Churches Power against a Divine Institution neither did they then offer to justifie the Communion in one kind by the Tradition and Practice of the Primitive Church as de Meaux and others have done since but they plainly gave up this and onely made a late Custom which was afterwards introduced to become a Law by vertue of their present Power notwithstanding the Institution of Christ and the Practice of the Primitive Church to the contrary Here the Case truly lies though de Meaux is willing to go off from it there must be a power in the Church to void a Divine Institution and to null a Law of Christ which can be no other than an Antichristian power in the strictest sense which may by the same reason take away all the positive Laws of Christianity or else Communion in one kind is not to be maintained and this power must be in a particular present Church in opposition to the Primitive and the Universal or else this Communion is not to be maintained in the Church of Rome De Meaux must be driven to defend that post which he seems to have quitted and deserted or else he can never defend this half-Communion which is contrary as I have proved and as the Council of Constance owns to the Institution of Christ and to the Practice of the Primitive Church The new Out-work he has raised from Tradition in which he puts all the forces of his Book and the main strength of his Cause this I have not beat down or destroyed but taken from him and his cause can never hold out upon his own principles of Tradition and the Practice of the Church which is a very strong battery against it as I have largely shewn so that all that he says for Tradition is in vain and to no purpose since this Tradition he pleades for is utterly against him and if it were never so much for him yet no Tradition can take away a Divine Law. He seems to own and I think he dare not expresly deny that what is essential to the Sacraments or belongs to the substance of them cannot be taken away by Tradition or the Power of the Church but he utterly destroys this by making onely Tradition and the Practice of the Church to determine what is thus essential to the Sacraments for if nothing be essential but what is made so by them and may be known by them then they have a power to make or to alter even the very essentials of the Sacraments which are hereby made wholly to depend upon the Church and Tradition We are willing to own that nothing is unalterable in the Sacraments but what is essential to them and that all other indifferent things belonging to them may be altered by the Church or by Tradition but then we say that what is essential is fixt and known by the Institution and by a Divine Law antecedent to Tradition and if it were not so then there were nothing essential in the Sacraments at all but all would be indifferent and all would depend upon Tradition and the Churches Power and then to what purpose is it to say That the Church has power onely in the Accidentals and may alter whatever is not essential or belongs not to the substance of the Sacraments this onely shews that they are ashamed to speak out and they dare not but grant with one hand that which they are forced to take away with another they dare not openly say That the Church has power over the essentials of the Sacraments but yet they say That there are no essentials but what are made and declared to be so by the Church So the streight they are in obliges them in effect to revoke their own concessions and Truth makes them say that which their Cause forces them to unsay again and they are put upon those things in their own necessary defence which amount in the whole to a contradiction If the Bishop of Meaux can shew us that any Divine Institution was ever altered by the Jewish or Christian Church or any Law of God relating to Practice and Ceremony was ever taken away by a contrary Practice and Tradition then he says something to the purpose of Communion in one kind but if the many Instances which he brings for Tradition out of the Old and New Testament do none of them do this they are then useless and insufficient they fall short of what they ought to prove and come not up to the question in hand but are wholly vain and insignificant and to shew they are so I shall reduce them to these following heads 1. They chiefly relate to the Churches Power in appointing and determining several things which are left indifferent and undetermined by the Law of God and here we acknowledge the Church to have a proper Power and that it may oblige even in Conscience to many things to which we are not obliged by the Law of God and may determine many things for the sake of Peace and Uniformity in Divine Worship which are not so precisely determined by God himself Thus the Jewish Church might settle the time of Vespers on which their Sabbaths and Feasts were to begin the evening being to them the beginning of the next day so they might appoint also the manner of observing the new Moons thus they might also settle the times of the Three Sacrifices the Daily the Sabbatical and the Paschal when they were all to be offered the same day upon one Altar and determine which of them should be offered first though God himself had not determined it But could they take away any one of these Sacrifices which God had commanded upon a pretence that the other were sufficient without it could they have neglected either the New Moons or the Evening-Oblations which God had appointed because they might appoint what God had not done namely the manner of observing them because they could regulate several things relating to the Law and necessary to the observance of it