Now, touching the adoration of the Sacrament, M. Harding is not able to show neither any commandment of Christ, nor any word or example of the Apostles or ancient Fathers, concerning the same. It is a thing very lately devised by Pope Honorius, about the year of our Lord 1226; afterward increased by the now solemn feast of Corpus Christi Day, by Pope Urbanus, anno 1264; and last of all confirmed for ever by multitudes of pardons in the Council of Vienna by Pope Clement V., anno 1316. The Church of Asia and Græcia never received it until this day. The matter is great, and cannot be attempted without great danger. To give the honour of God to a creature that is no God, it is manifest idolatry."-BP. JEWEL. "Adorari ubique Deum, ac presertim in sacris mysteriis oportere dubium non est. Neque ullam esse Ecclesiam arbitror, in qua non adhibeatur solennis quædam ut gratiarum actio, ita etiam et interior et exterior adoratio quum hæc mysteria tremenda, quasi in cœlis potius quam in terris, celebrantur."-BEZA. "In adoratione Sacramenti, ad limen ipsum turpiter impingit. Sacramenti ait, id est Christi Domini in Sacramento, miro, sed vero modo præsentis. Apage vero. Quis ei hoc dederit? Sacramenti, id est, Christi in Sacramento. Imo Christus ipse Sacramenti res, in, et cum Sacramento; extra, et sine Sacramento, ubiubi est, adorandus est. Rex autem Christum in Eucharistia vere præsentem, vere et adorandum statuit, rem scilicet Sacramenti; at non Sacramentum, terrenam scilicet partem, ut Irenæus ; visibilem, ut Augustinus. . . . . Nec carnem manducamus, quin adoremus prius, cum Augustino. Et Sacramentum tamen nulli adoramus. Fiat, quod fieri voluit Christus cum dixit, Hoc facite; nihil reliqui fiet, quod monstret Sacerdos, quod adoret populus, de pyxide."-BP. ANDREWES. "I may ask any ingenuous man whether he ever heard (I do not say our Church, but) any approved Doctor therein, teach, that we do, or ought to kneel before the Sacrament; that by it, or in it, we may personally worship Christ, as if He were really present." (Bp. Morton's Defence of the Ceremonies, p. 285, London, 1619: "Published by Authority.") INTRODUCTION. IN sending forth this, the last of this series of papers on the Doctrine of the English Church, I have been influenced not so much by the solicitation of others, as by my own strong conviction that, notwithstanding the recent publication of valuable works on kindred subjects (to which I owe many obligations), some such manual is one of the great wants of our Church at this time. Those among us who know enough of what is passing in the minds of the younger generation of educated and serious-minded Englishmen to enter somewhat into their peculiar difficulties and trials, can hardly be altogether without a feeling of sympathy with those among them who speak sadly of the want of anything like fixedness and certainty which seems to characterise so much of the religious teaching of our times. They tell us that they have been brought to witness a review of the so-called Protestantism of our day, which, with its tendencies to various forms of neologian development-unlike the Protestantism of our fathers— is too often willing to break with the past and strike new lights for the future; and they have turned away, they say, in disgust from the miserable march-past of a mere battalion of negations-in undisciplined disorder, yielding little obedience to the hesitating command of that which is merely subjective in religion, and recognising little of authority in the Divine and Scriptural dogmas of our most holy faith-the unchanging faith once for all delivered unto the saints. There are many such now asking for help in inward conflicts; seeking guidance in the terrible perplexities which surround them, as they weary in the attempt to work out for themselves difficult problems of religion and faith. To such minds it is no marvel that there is found a speciousness in the claims of Romish teaching: an attractiveness in the dogmas propounded by Romanisers as Catholic truth, which is apt to have a very blinding influence on the examination of controverted questions. |