their shepherd only, and flees from strangers: the popish church and prelates have devised a fashion of the communion, contrary to Christ's and his apostles' doings; and therefore they be worthily abhorred. Ye lie in saying, that the catholic church teaches to receive Christ's body consecrate at mass with the sign of the holy cross, or that we give nothing but bare bread and wine now. Prove where the church teaches so. I proved afore, how many diverse sorts of ministering there was of old time, and all good: therefore this your one only popish way is not decreed by the universal church, nor never was generally received throughout all the world. With what face can they say, we have no consecration, and give nothing but bare bread and wine? If they have any in their mass, if the evangelists have any consecration, or Paul, or if the apostles, we have it also. For if consecration stand in words, we have all the words that their mass, the gospel, St Paul, or the apostles had. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the eleventh to the Corinthians, what is written of the Lord's supper; and see whether our communion want any one word that is in any of them. Then if we have all (as we have indeed), why is there no consecration with us? Gregory says, the apostles Lib. vii.. consecrated only with the Lord's prayer'; and that we use as well as they. John Duns says, the words of consecrating the bread be these, "This is my body:" and those words we have Lib. iv. sentoo. Further he says: "Neither Christ nor the church has de- 8. fined which be the words of consecrating the cup;" and therefore he will not determine them3. What are we now worse than their own doctors, and why do ye lie in saying the church has defined it? Duns knew it not in his time, nor the church. Where is one

[See before, p. 498. ED.]

[De secundo dico, quia verba consecrationis corporis sunt quatuor, scilicet illud pronomen hoc, et verbum est, et in apposito corpus meum. p. 36, G. Venet. 1598.

De verbis autem consecrationis sanguinis est dubium magis, quia quantum ad duo. Primum est, quia formam, qua utimur, nullus evangelistarum recitat; ideo non videtur ex evangelio certa. Græci etiam alia forma utuntur, dicentes, Hic est sanguis, &c. Et per consequens forma nostra non est præcisa. De isto secundo articulo dico breviter, quod non est nobis traditum omnino certitudinaliter, an ad formam consecrationis sanguinis pertineant aliqua verba post illud sanguinis mei, vel an aliquod illorum sequentium usque illic, Hoc facite, &c. Imo periculosum est hoc asserere, de quo sufficiens auctoritas non habetur. Ibid. p. 36, F. 37, A. ED.]

epis. Ixiii.

tent.distinc.

[Ezek. xviii.]

Rom. x.

Matt. x.

so mad, except priests, to say that consecration stands in crossing, or that benedicite is to make a cross? Prove it, if ye can; or else hold your tongue for shame. Deceive not the people. "All ye works of the Lord, praise ye the Lord," says the psalm. Is blessing there to make a cross, or in any other place ye can find? I have seen and heard many foolish unlearned papists, but a more ass than this I have not. He says, the people which communicate with a priest that is in sin, cannot be free from sin. If the priest be a drunkard, art thou a drunkard too in communicating with him? If he be a whore-hunter, art thou one too? I trust ye can judge, how false and foolish this is. St Paul says, "He that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks his own damnation :" he says not, "thy damnation, or any other man's," but "his own." Chrysostom notes well, that he says, sibi ipsi, non tibi: "He eats it and drinks it damnation to himself, and not to thee1." God forbid the evilness of the priest should defile them that receive with him! for what priest is so clean that he has no sin in him? If the sin of the priest should defile the receiver, who would ever receive at any priest's hands, seeing all be sinners? It is a general rule and true in their own books: the unworthiness of the priest hurts not the goodness of the sacrament. God forbid that the evilness of man should hurt or defile God's holy ordinance, or that the wickedness of the priests should be imputed to them that receive the sacrament at their hand! "The father shall not bear the sin of the son, nor the son of the father, but the soul that sins shall die itself," as the prophet says. Much less shall the sin of the priest condemn the people, but every one shall answer for himself.

XI. Whether the people, compelled with fear for loss of worldly goods or temporal punishment, may receive the communion as bread and wine, not consenting to it in the heart?

St Paul says, it is requisite to our salvation with our mouths to confess the truth: also our Saviour Christ says, "he that denies him afore men, he will deny him afore his Father in heaven." And to kneel down to receive that cursed and polluted bread, ye commit idolatry: nor it is

[' Καὶ οὐχ ἕτερον ἑτέρῳ κελεύει δοκιμάσαι, ἀλλ ̓ αὐτὸν ἑαυτόν· ὁ γὰρ ἐσθίων καὶ πίνων ἀναξίως κρίμα ἑαυτῷ ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει. In 1 Corinth. Homil. xxviii. Tom. x. p. 293. Paris. 1837. ED.]

not lawful to dissemble herein; as we have example Eleazarus, which [2 Mace. vi.] rather than he would dissemble to eat swine's flesh, forbidden by the law, he was content to suffer a very cruel death. Also it is read in Tripartita Historia of a good woman, one Olympias, that rather than she would receive the communion, was content to have her paps writhen off, or any other punishment, saying, "Lay upon me more punishment; for it is not lawful for me to do that which the good priests refuse to do." Even so at this time the bishops and good priests refuse to meddle with the communion: therefore it is evident, it is not lawful for any of the laity to receive it for any cause. Also, when Constantius the emperor persecuted the church of God, such as would not receive the communion with the Arians, the bishop Macedonius put them in prison, and caused the communion to be brought unto them in prison, and opened their mouths with sticks and hot irons3. Yet for no punishment the good catholic people would in any wise receive with the Arians: much less ought we to receive the communion now used, for any punishment. For if we receive it against our conscience, we be traitors to God, and dissemblers with the queen, as Ustazadis did say to the king of Persis, lamenting that he did live; for he confessed (after the archbishop Simeon had rebuked him) that he was worthy to have a double death, for he was a traitor to God in forsaking his profession in religion, and a dissembler with the king; for to please the king, and to avoid punishment, he had done against his conscience; but utterly he did protest that he would never dissemble again, offering his whole body to make amends: and in conclusion had his head stricken off. Would to God all, that by dissimulation be traitors and dissemblers with the queen against their conscience, would follow the example of Ustazadis in earnest repentance! Our Saviour commands us "not to fear them that can but only kill the Matt. x. body, but fear him that can kill the body, and after cast the soul into the fire of hell."

XII. How should the people do, that cannot have the sacrament ministered to them according to the ordinance of Christ's church?

[ Olympias autem, injustum credens malitiæ satisfacere, dixit, “Adjice mihi calumniatores, et violentiam majorem impone: mihi vero fas non est communicare, et ea facere quæ piis non licet perpetrare." Quam cum nequisset flectere præfectus, ut communicaret Arsatio, tum dimissam, et paulo post tentam, multo nudavit auro, hoc modo credens ipsius frangi constantiam. Hist. Eccles. Tripart. Lib. x. cap. 21.—The original is in Sozomen, Lib. VIII. cap. 24. ED.]

[Plurimi vero insignes viri detenti, nolentesque ei communicare, puniti sunt: qui post tormenta violenter communionem ore suo suscipere et tenere compellebantur. Ligno namque ora hominum aperientes, eis sacramenta inserebant. Histor. Eccles. Tripart. Lib. v. cap. 31. p. 388. See Socrat. Eccl. Hist. Lib. 11. cap. 38. ED.]

[The story is in the Historia Tripartita, Lib. III. cap ii. p. 325-6. of Auctores Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ. Basil. 1535. ED.]

In no wise they ought to receive the communion, but to commend their minds and good wills to God with devout prayer, firmly continuing in that faith that they were christened in; which sith the apostles' time has ever been taught by blessed fathers in Christ's catholic church. And so being in will to receive the blessed sacrament, if he were in place where it is ministered according to the ordinance of Christ's church, God will accept your will and good intent, as if you did receive it corporally and by that will and intent ye be partakers of the sacraments and prayers of the universal church of Christ in all christian countries and nations, as well as if you were present bodily. But if you receive this communion, ye separate and divide yourselves from the sacraments and prayers of all the universal church of Christ, and so wander in the way of perdition.

The Answer to the Eleventh and Twelfth Questions.

To receive the communion dissemblingly, we grant to be damnable, as well as he: and therefore we exhort all men with an earnest faith and pure love, sorrowful repentance, and full purpose of a new life, to resort unto the Lord's table devoutly, without all hypocritical dissimulation. God will confound such blasphemers, as open their filthy mouths to rail against his holy sacraments, as this wicked Morian does here, calling it “cursed bread." Eleazarus did well in obeying God's law; and papists be God's enemies in their doings contrary to God's law. The Arians were heretics and enemies to the truth, denying Christ our Lord to be God equal with his Father, and saying he was but a weak simple man as we be. So the papists be, saying Christ's death is not a sufficient sacrifice for the whole world, except their sacrifice be joined to. They do both err in the chief article of our faith and salvation; and surely to communicate with such is to deny our faith and salvation: therefore Olympias and other well abhorred them. He that has not a right faith of Jesus Christ that instituted the sacrament, he cannot have the true use of the sacraments which Christ ordained. It is well that he wishes all dissembling papists, which have turned with every world, to repent as Ustazadis did; and God grant that they may! if they will not, if their reward were like his, they had no wrong. And thus, as all dissembling papists, receiving the communion against their consciences, are worthily condemned; so surely are all dissembling protestants, resorting to mass for fear of worldly losses. God grant us all

uprightly to walk, not feigning a conscience to ourselves of man's device, but following the rule of scripture without halting, whatsoever the world say of us!

If this counsel that he gives for not receiving the communion now used were turned and applied against their mass, it were well and truly applied. We were never christened in any faith of the mass, but in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who in the holy scriptures condemn all sacrificing massers: and surely to communicate with mass-mongers is to forsake God's institution, and follow the pope; to forsake Christ, the head of his church, and join himself to papists, and become a member of his synagogue, robbing Christ of his glory, and preferring man's dreams and doctrine, devised of late years by popes, as was proved afore, afore the infallible truth of the gospel, which Jesus Christ himself brought from heaven, preached it, and commanded us all diligently to follow it. To be partaker of prayers made in other countries is true that we may, and to be wished of God that it were diligently used: but unto he have proved that we be partakers of sacraments, wise men will not believe it. No man is christened one for another, nor receives the communion one for another. This doctrine comes from the pope, and fed his chaplains fat, when they taught, that it was sufficient to come and see the priests lift up their sacrament, offer it for the dead and quick, and eat all up when they have done.

XIII. Whether is not every one, as well the priests as laity, bound to obey the queen and her laws?

Both priests and the laity be bound to obey the queen and her laws, as far as God's law will permit: but no man ought to obey the queen and her laws against God and his laws. For lands, goods, and body, every one is bound to obey the queen and her laws, and no man ought to disobey or resist her or her laws: for God in the scripture commands. But for matters of faith and religion, pertaining to our soul health, she hath nothing ado to meddle: for Christ himself hath dearly bought our souls with his precious blood-shedding, and committed them to the rule and government of the bishops, which watch as to give an account for our souls. Therefore the scripture commands us to obey the bishops in matters of faith and religion pertaining to our souls' health, and the queen in temporal causes concerning lands, and goods, and body.