ART. Those of Nice, how furiously soever they fell upon them for XXVIII. calling the sacrament the image of Christ, yet do no where

blame them for saying that the substance of bread and wine remained in it for indeed the opinion of Damascene, and of most of the Greek church, was, that there was an assumption of the bread and wine into an union with the body of Christ. The council of Constantinople brought in their decision occasionally, that being considered as the settled doctrine of the church; whereas those of Nice did visibly innovate and falsify the tradition: for they affirm, as Damascene had done before them, that the elements were called antitypes of Christ's body, only before they were consecrated, but not after it: which they say none of the fathers had done. This is so notoriously false, that no man can pretend now to justify them in it, since there are above twenty of the fathers that were before them, who in plain words call the elements after consecration, the figure and antitype of Christ's body: here then was the tradition and practice of the church falsified, which is no small prejudice against those that support the doctrine, as well as against the credit of that council.

About thirty years after that council, Paschase Radbert. abbot of Corby in France, did very plainly assert the corporal presence in the eucharist: he is acknowledged both by Bellarmine and Sirmondus to be the first writer that did on purpose advance and explain that doctrine: he himself values his pains in that matter; and as he laments the slowness of some in believing it, so he pretends that he had moved many to assent to it. But he confesses, that some blamed him for ascribing a sense to the words of Christ that was not consonant to truth. There was but one book writ in that age to second him; the name of the author was lost, till Mabillon discovered that it was writ by one Herigerus, abbot of Cob. But all the eminent men and the great writers of that time wrote plainly against this doctrine, and affirmed, that the bread and wine remained in the sacrament, and did nourish our bodies as other meats do. Those were Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz; Amalarius, archbishop of Triers; Heribald, bishop of Auxerre; Bertram, or Ratramne; John Scot Erigena; Walafridus Strabus; Florus, and Christian Druthmar. Three of these set themselves on purpose to refute Paschase.

Rabanus Maurus, in an epistle to abbot Egilon, wrote against Paschase for saying, that it was that body that was born of the Virgin, that was crucified and raised up again, which was daily offered up. And though that book is lost, yet as he himself refers his reader to it in his Penitential, so we have an account given of it by the anonymous defender of Paschase.

Ratramne was commanded by Charles the Bald, then emperor, to write upon that subject; which he in the beginning

of his book promises to do, not trusting to his own sense, ART. but following the steps of the holy fathers. He tells us, that XXVIII. there were different opinions about it: some believing that the body of Christ was there without a figure: others saying that it was there in a figure, or mystery: upon which he apprehended that a great schism must follow. His book is very short, and very plain: he asserts our doctrine as expressly as we ourselves can do: he delivers it in the same words, and proves it by many of the same arguments and authorities, that we bring.

Raban and Ratramne were, without dispute, reckoned among the first men of that age.

John Scot was also commanded by the same emperor to write on the same subject: he was one of the most learned and the most ingenious men of the age; and was in great esteem both with the emperor, and with our king Alfred. He was reckoned both a saint and a martyr. He did formerly refute Paschase's doctrine, and assert ours. His book is in

deed lost; but a full account of it is given us by other writers of that time. And it is a great evidence, that his opinion in this matter was not then thought to be contrary to the general sense of the church in that age: for he having writ against St. Austin's doctrine concerning predestination, there was a very severe censure of him and of his writings published under the name of the church of Lyons: in which they do not once reflect on him for his opinions touching the eucharist. It appears from this, that their doctrine concerning the sacrament was then generally received; since both Ratramne and he, though they differed extremely in the point of predestination, yet both agreed in this. It is probable that the Saxon homily,* that was read in England on Easter-day, was taken from Scot's book; which does fully reject the corporal presence. This is enough to shew that Paschase's opinion was an innovation broached in the ninth century, and was opposed by all the great men of that age.

The tenth century was the blackest and most ignorant of all the ages of the church: there is not one writer in that age that gives us any clear account of the doctrine of the church: such remote hints as occur do still savour of Ratramne's doc

"Throughout the whole of this Homily, the bread and wine are stated to be understood ghostly and spiritually, as the body and blood of Christ. Quoting 1 Cor. x. They ate the same spiritual meat, and drank the same spiritual drink, it is said, "Neither was that stone then from which the water ran bodely Christ, but it signified Christ, because that heavenly meat that fed them forty years, and that water which from the stone did flow, had SIGNIFICATION of Christes bodye and his bloude, that now be offered daylye in Godes church: it was the same which we now offer not BODELY but GHOSTLY. Moyses and Aaron saw that the heavenly meat was visible and corruptible; and they understood it SPIRITUALLY and received it SPIRITUALLY. The Saviour saith, He that eateth my fleshe and drinketh my blood hath everlasting lyfe and He bade them eat, not that body which he was going about with, nor that blood to drink which he shed for us; but he MEANT by that

ART. trine. All men were then asleep, and so it was a fit time for XXVIII. the tares that Paschase had sown to grow up in it. The

popes of that age were such a succession of monsters, that Baronius cannot forbear to make the saddest exclamations possible against their debaucheries, their cruelties, and their other vices. About the middle of the eleventh century, after this dispute had slept almost two hundred years, it was again revived.

Bruno bishop of Angiers, and Berengarius his archdeacon, maintained the doctrine of Ratramne. Little mention is made of the bishop; but the archdeacon is spoken of as a man of great piety; so that he passed for a saint, and was a man of such learning, that when he was brought before pope Nicolaus, no man could resist him. He writ against Paschase, and had many followers: the historians of that age tell us that his doctrine had overspread all France. The books writ against him by Lanfranc and others are filled with an impudent corrupting of all antiquity. Many councils were held upon this matter; and these, together with the terrors of burning, which was then beginning to be the common punishment of heresy, made him renounce his opinion: but he returned to it again; yet he afterwards renounced it: though Lanfranc reproached him, that it was not the love of truth, but the fear of death, that brought him to it. And his final retracting of that renouncing of his opinion is lately found in France, as I have been credibly informed. Thus this opinion, that in the ninth century was generally received, and was condemned by neither pope nor council, was become so odious in the eleventh century, that none durst own it: and he who had the courage to own it, yet was not resolute enough to stand to it: for about this time the doctrine of extirpating heretics, and of deposing such princes as were defective in that matter, was universally put in practice: great bodies of men began to separate from the Roman communion in the southern parts of France; and one of the chief points of their doctrine was their believing that Christ was not corporally present in the eucharist; and that he was there only in a figure or mystery. But now that the contrary doctrine

word the holy Eucharist, which SPIRITUALLY is His body and His blood.

In the old law faithful men offered God divers sacrifices that had for signification of Christes body; certainly this Eucharist, which we do now hallow at God's altar is a REMEMBRANCE of Christ's body, which he offered for us: and of His blood which He shed for us."

For these extracts the Editor is indebted to Dr. Adam Clarke, who, in his 'Discourse on the nature and design of the Eucharist,' quotes them from a very rare work, intituled A Testimonie of Antiquitie, shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England, touching the Sacrament of the Body and Bloude of the Lorde here publikely preached, and also receaved in the Saxons' tyme, above 600 years ago. Imprinted at London, by John Day.' 18mo. without date, but known to have been printed in 1567. At the conclusion is an attestation signed by Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas archbishop of York, and thirteen other bishops.-{ ED.]

Dist. 11.

was established, and that those who denied it were adjudged ART. to be burnt, it is no wonder if it quickly gained ground, when XXVIII. on the one hand the priests saw their interest in promoting it, and all people felt the danger of denying it. The anathemas of the church, and the terrors of burning, were infallible things to silence contradiction at least, if not to gain assent. Soon after this doctrine was received, the schoolmen began to refine upon it, as they did upon every thing else. The Lib. iv. master of the sentences would not determine how Christ was present; whether formally or substantially, or some other way. Some schoolmen thought that the matter of bread was destroyed; but that the form remained, to be the form of Christ's body, that was the matter of it. Others thought that the matter of the elements remained, and that the form only was destroyed: but that to which many inclined, was the assumption of the elements into an union with the body of Christ, or a hypostatical union of the Eternal Word to them, by which they became as truly a body to Christ, as that which he has in heaven: yet it was not the same, but a different body.

Stephen bishop of Autun was the first that fell on the De Saword transubstantiation. Amalric, in the beginning of the cram. Althirteenth century, denied in express words the corporal pre- taris, c. 13. sence: he was condemned in the fourth council of the Lateran as an heretic, and his body was ordered to be taken up and burnt and in opposition to him transubstantiation was decreed. Yet the schoolmen continued to offer different explanations of this for a great while after that: but in conclusion all agreed to explain it as was formerly set forth. It appears, by the crude way in which it was at first explained, that it was a novelty; and that men did not know how to mould and frame it: but at last it was licked into shape; the whole philosophy being cast into such a mould as agreed with it. And therefore, in the present age, in which that philosophy has lost its credit, great pains are taken to suppress the new and freer way of philosophy, as that which cannot be so easily subdued to support this doctrine, as the old one was. And the arts, that those who go into the new philosophy take to reconcile their scheme to this doctrine, shew that there is nothing that subtile and unsincere men will not venture on: for, since they make extension to be of the essence of matter, and think that accidents are only the modes of matter, which have no proper being of themselves, it is evident, that a body cannot be without its extension, and that accidents cannot subsist without their subject; so that this can be in no sort reconciled to transubstantiation: and therefore they would willingly avoid this special manner of the presence, and only in general assert that Christ is corporally present. But the decrees of the Lateran and Trent councils make it evident, that transubstantiation is now a doctrine that is bound upon

ART them by the authority of the church and of tradition; and XXVIII. that they are as much bound to believe it, as to believe the corporal presence itself. Thus the going off from the simplicity in which Christ did deliver the sacrament, and in which the church at first received it, into some sublime expressions about it, led men once out of the way, and they still went further and further from it. Pious and rhetorical figures, pursued far by men of heated imaginations and of inflamed affections, were followed with explanations invented by colder and more designing men afterwards, and so it increased till it grew by degrees to that to which at last it settled on.

But after all, if the doctrine of the corporal presence had rested only in a speculation, though we should have judged those who held it to be very bad philosophers, and no good critics; yet we could have endured it, if it had rested there, and had not gone on to be a matter of practice, by the adoration and processions, with every thing else of that kind, which followed upon it: for this corrupted the worship.

The Lutherans believe a consubstantiation, and that both Christ's body and blood, and the substance of the elements, are together in the sacrament: that some explain by an ubiquity, which they think is communicated to the human nature of Christ, by which his body is every where as well as in the sacrament: whereas others of them think, that since the words of Christ must needs be true in a literal sense, his body and blood is therefore in the sacrament, but in, with, and under the bread and wine. All this we think is ill grounded, and is neither agreeable to the words of the institution, nor to the nature of things. A great deal of that which was formerly set forth in defence of our doctrine falls likewise upon this. The ubiquity communicated to the human nature, as it seems a thing in itself impossible, so it gives no more to the sacrament than to every thing else. Christ's body may be said to be in every thing, or rather every thing may be said to be his body and blood, as well as the elements in the sacrament. The impossibility of a body's being without extension, or in more places at once, lies against this, as well as against transubstantiation. But yet, after all, this is only a point of speculation, nothing follows upon it in practice, no adoration is offered to the elements; and therefore we judge that speculative opinions may be borne with, when they neither fall upon the fundamentals of Christianity, to give us false ideas of the essential parts of our religion, nor affect our practice; and chiefly when the worship of God is maintained in its purity, for which we see God has expressed so particular a concern, giving it the word which of all others raises in us the most sensible and the strongest ideas, calling it jealousy; that we reckon we ought to watch over this with much caution. We can very well bear with some opinions, that we think ill grounded, as long as they are only matters