§ 5.-The Fifth Objection drawn ab Adoratione et Invocatione Eucharistiæ, answered. Objection. The Fathers speak of the adoration and invocation of the host: Theodoret saith, σύμβολα προσκυνεῖται, “ let the symbols be worshipped or adored."* Solution. 1. He saith so; but Ribera the Jesuit acknowledgeth that the term рoσkúvηois, or adoration, is sometimes used for worship communicable to creatures; as namely, to angels, saints, and kings; and then he meant no more, but that they should be reverently handled, as becometh so great mysteries, as is already observed. 2. Besides, Christ may be adored in the mysteries, and yet the mysteries themselves not have such honour. St. Augustine saith: "The sacrament is to be differenced and discerned from other meats; veneratione singulariter debita, (that is, properly or) singularly due (unto it).§ Contemptum solum non vult cibus ille; that meat (saith he) misliketh only contempt;" that is, either to be daily received without regard, or still refused upon pretence of unworthiness. St. Chrysostom saith, "We are to come to the sacrament, not at a venture, carelessly, or in homely manner, but μετὰ πολλὴς φρίκης καὶ εὐλαβείας, with much fear and reverence." And this reverence and veneration we yield unto it. Now, as for this term of veneration (far short of divine worship and adoration), St. Augustine ascribeth it to baptism as well as to the Eucharist, saying, "We reverence baptism wheresoever," and yet without any conceit of a corporal presence therein. 3. The Fathers used not any direct invocation of the Eucharist, but a rhetorical figure called prosopopaia; which is, when one calleth upon that which has no sense, as if it had sense: as, "Hear, O heavens, hearken, O earth" (Isa. i.) And thus the ancients called upon the element of baptism, "O aqua quæ lavas omnia, nec lavaris; O thou water that washest all other, and art not washed thyself." So saith Ambrose, "O water, which once purged the world."** So saith Optatus,Ħ without any conceit of a corporal presence in the font-water, as is already shewn in this evidence. § 6. The Sixth Classis drawn ab Effectu Eucharistiæ, answered. Objection. Bellarmine's last head is taken from the wonderful effects which the Fathers ascribe to the Eucharist: they say that we are thereby corporally united to Christ. : Solution. 1. Indeed, Cyril (one that strains it as high as any of them), makes the union and conjunction between Christ and us,* real, natural, and bodily we hold the same, in the like sense, as St. Paul said, that we are ovoowpa, con-corporal, of the same body: in the same sense as he said, that " we are all bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh;"; alluding to the making of Eve, the woman out of Adam's side; or, as the same St. Paul saith, and the Fathers from him, that we are ovμpuтoi, complantati, planted together by baptism in the likeness of Christ's death:§ all which may be done by faith and the Spirit, without partaking of the sacrament; and yet this wonderful union, wrought by faith, is sealed up unto us in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the communion of the body and blood of Christ.|| 2. And this may serve in answer to Bellarmine's Synopsis Patrum. If farther satisfaction herein be desired, it may be had in Alstedius's Supplement, annexed to Chamierus's fourth tome of his Panstratia Catholica. And more fully in the learned Bishop of Durham's accurate treatise of the institution of the blessed sacrament; ** and yet more punctually in his late learned decision of the whole doctrinal controversy about the Eucharist; where (besides other judicious determinations) he shall meet with an exact abridgment of the speeches of the ancient Fathers objected by Bellarmine and others, for proof of a corporal presence of Christ's body in the Eucharist, assoiled and satisfied by the parallels and like equivalent sayings of the same Fathers touching the sacrament of baptism. And now let the reader, after he has well weighed the allegata and probata out of the Fathers, judge, whether the Romish device of the substance of the bread and wine to be flown away and gone, and in the room thereof, a remainder of nothing else but accidents to stay behind, were known to antiquity or not. ++ Totius Doctrinalis Controversiæ de Eucharistia Decisio. Part. 3. per totum. r THE TRUE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY CHAPTER I. THE ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE IN DECIDING CONTROVERSIES, AND THE RIGHT USE OF THE FATHERS. 66 THE first thing to be settled, in the conducting of a controversy, is the ultimate authority to which the disputants will defer. This the Church of England has done, in her controversy with that of Rome, in a manner at once singularly satisfactory and full. Holy Scripture," she says, "containeth all things necessary to salvation so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."-(Art. vi.) And this statement she cautiously guards against Church authority in these words:"It is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation"-(Art. xx.); and against general councils as follows:-"Things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture."—(Art. xxi.) B After these explicit declarations, not only of the absolute sufficiency and supremacy of Scripture per se, but also of the subjection of churches and councils to its authority, there can be no suspicion that the Church of England recognizes the ipse dixit of any particular Father, or intends her children to bow to the private opinion of any individual of the ancient Church. She who can say of the whole of any age assembled together, "Forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God"(Art. xxi.), cannot give to one an authority which she denies to the whole, nor recognize in division a strength which she does not allow in combination. But we are told that the convocation which imposed subscription to the articles, prescribed this rule for the guidance of preachers, viz., "that they were not to propound anything except that which is consistent with the teaching of the Old and New Testament, and that which the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have deduced from its teaching." Now this rule appears to us not only to be a very good one in itself, but does not seem to be at all at variance with the solemn judgment of the Church, as expressed in her articles above quoted. Nay, the Church might have gone further, and have recommended the study of the ancient Fathers as of great assistance in the elucidation and understanding of Scripture, and generally helping in its exegesis. But surely this would no more have been to recognize them as an authority, than would the recommendation. of Scott's, or D'Oyly and Mant's Commentary be an exaltation of these into the place of an unquestioned arbiter. A testimonial for orders required by every bishop from three beneficed clergymen runs "Nor hath he at any time, as far as we know or believe, held, written, or taught anything contrary to the doctrine or discipline of the united Church of England and Ireland." But surely no one who signs such a document imagines that he, by such phraseology, makes the formularies of the English |