"ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON was truly and seriously religious, but without affectation, bigotry, or superstition; his notions of morality were fine and sublime; his thread of reasoning was easy, clear and solid. He was not only the best preacher of the age, but seemed to have brought preaching to perfection: his sermons were so well heard and liked, and so much read, that all the nation proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after him."

Bp. Burnet's Hist, of his own time, vol. iv. p. 96.

A DISCOURSE AGAINST

TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

CONCERNING the sacrament of the Lord's supper, one of the two great positive institutions of the Christian religion, there are two main points of difference between us and the church of Rome. One about the doctrine of transubstantiation; in which they think, but are not certain, that they have the scripture and the words of our Saviour on their side: the other, about the administration of this sacrament to the people in both kinds; in which we are sure that we have the scripture and our Saviour's institution on our side, and that so plainly that our adversaries themselves do not deny it.

Of the first of these I shall now treat, and endeavour to show against the church of Rome, that in this sacrament there is no substantial change made of the elements of bread and wine into the natural body and blood of Christ; that body which was born of the Virgin Mary, and suffered upon the cross; for so they explain that hard word transubstantiation.

Before I engage in this argument, I cannot but observe what an unreasonable task we are put upon, by the bold confidence of our adversaries, to dispute a matter of sense; which is one of those things about which Aristotle hath long since pronounced there ought to be no dispute.

It might well seem strange if any man should write a book, to prove that an egg is not an elephant, and that a musket ball is not a pike: It is every whit as hard a case to be put to maintain by a long discourse, that what we

see and handle and taste to be bread, is bread and not the body of a man; and what we see and taste to be wine, is wine and not blood: and if this evidence may not pass for sufficient without any farther proof, I do not see why any man, that hath confidence enough to do so, may not deny any thing to be what all the world sees it is; or affirm any thing to be what all the world sees it is not: and this without all possibility of being further confuted, So that the business of transubstantiation is not a controversy of scripture against scripture, or of reason against reason, but of downright impudence against the plain meaning of scripture, and all the sense and reason of mankind.

It is a most self-evident falsehood; and there is no doctrine or proposition in the world that is of itself more evidently true, than transubstantiation is evidently false: and yet if it were possible to be true, it would be the most ill-natured and pernicious truth in the world, because it would suffer nothing else to be true; it is like the Roman Catholic church, which will needs be the whole Christian church, and will allow no other society of Christians to be any part of it: so transubstantiation, if it be true at all, it is all truth, and nothing else is true; for it cannot be true unless our senses, and the senses of all mankind be deceived about their proper objects; and if this be true and certain, then nothing else can be so; for if we be not certain of what we see, we can be certain of nothing.

And yet notwithstanding all this, there are a company of men in the world so abandoned and given up by God to the efficacy of delusion, as in good earnest to believe this gross and palpable error, and to impose the belief of it upon the Christian world under no less penalties than a temporal death and eternal damnation. And therefore, to undeceive, if possible, these deluded souls, it

will be necessary to examine the pretended grounds of so false a doctrine, and to lay open the monstrous absurdity of it.

And in the handling of this argument, I shall proceed in this plain method.

I. I shall consider the pretended grounds and reasons of the church of Rome for this doctrine.

II. I shall produce our objections against it. And if I can shew that there is no tolerable ground for it, and that there are invincible objections against it, then every man is not only in reason excused from believing this doctrine, but hath great cause to believe the contrary.

Or

FIRST, I will consider the pretended grounds and reasons of the church of Rome for this doctrine. Which must be one or more of these five. Either 1st, The authority of scripture. Or 2dly, The perpetual belief of this doctrine in the Christian church, as an evidence that they always understood and interpreted our Saviour's words, "This is my body," in this sense. 3dly, The authority of the present church to make and declare new articles of faith. Or 4thly, The absolute necesity of such a change as this in the sacrament to the comfort and benefit of those who receive this sacrament. Or 5thly, To magnify the power of the priest in being able to work so great a miracle.

1st. They pretend for this doctrine the authority of scripture in those words of our Saviour, "This is my body." Now to shew the insufficiency of this pretence, I shall endeavour to make good these two things.

1. That there is no necessity of understanding those words of our Saviour in the sense of transubstantiation.

2. That there is a great deal of reason, nay that it is very absurd and unreasonable, to understand them otherwise..

First, That there is no necessity to understand those

words of the Saviour in the sense of transubstantiation. If there be any, it must be from one of these two reasons. Either because there are no figurative expressions in scripture, which I think no man ever yet said: Or else, because a sacrament admits of no figures; which would be very absurd for any man to say, since it is of the very nature of a sacrament to represent and exhibit some invisible grace and benefit by an outward sign and figure; and especially since it cannot be denied, but that in the institution of this very sacrament our Saviour useth figurative expressions, and several words which cannot be taken strictly and literally. When he gave the cup he said, "This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins." Where first, the cup is put for the wine contained in the cup; or else if the words be literally taken, so as to signify a substantial change, it is not of the wine, but of the cup; and that, not into the blood of Christ, but into the New Testament or New Covenant in his blood. Besides, that his blood is said then to be shed, and his body to be broken, which was not till his passion, which followed the institution and first celebration of this sacrament.

But that there is no necessity to understand our Saviour's words in the sense of transubstantiation, I will take the plain concession of a great number of the most learned writers of the church of Rome in this controversy, Bellarmine,* Suarez,† and Vasquez, do acknowledge Scotus the great schoolman to have said that this doctrine cannot be evidently proved from scripture: and Bellarmine grants this not to be improbable; and Suarez and Vasquez acknowledge Durandus to have * De Euch. 1. 3, c. 23.

† In 3 dis. 49, Qu. 75, Sect. 2. In 3. part. disp. 180. Qu. 75, art. 2. c. 15. In Sent. 1. 4. dist. 11. Qu. 1. n. 15.