time to lead a Christian life, or by any other punishment than exclusion from the eucharist and the other sacraments, until they repent: let him be accursed." OF CONFIRMATION. "Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that the confirmation of the baptized is a trifling ceremony, and not a true and proper sacrament; or that formerly it was nothing more than a kind of catechizing; in which young persons explained the reasons of their faith before the church: let him be accursed. "2. Whoever shall affirm that they offend the Holy Spirit, who attribute to any virtue to the said chrism of confirmation: let him be accursed. "3. Whoever shall affirm that the usual administrator of confirmation is not the bishop only, but any ordinary priest: let him be accursed." THE EUCHARIST.-The sacred, holy, œcumenical, and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled, &c., being convened under the special guidance and government of the Holy Spirit, in order to expound the true and ancient doctrine of faith and the sacraments, and apply a remedy to all heresies and other most grievous evils by which the church of God is now miserably vexed and rent in pieces-< hath from the first particularly desired to root out utterly the tares of accursed errors and schisms, which the enemy has sown in these calamitous times, respecting the doctrine, use, and worship of the most holy eucharist; which sacrament our Saviour had left in the church as a symbol of the unity and love in which he hath willed all Chris tians to be joined and knit together. Therefore, the same most holy council strictly enjoins all the faithful in Christ, that they presume not hereafter to believe, teach, or preach otherwise respecting the most holy eucharist, than is explained and defined in this present decree; in which is delivered the genuine and wholesome doctrine of the venerable and divine sacrament of the eucharist, as the Catholic church, instructed by our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles, and taught by the Holy Spirit, who constantly leadeth her into truth, hath held, and will keep to the end of the world. SESSION THIRTEENTH, WHICH WAS THE THIRD UNDER Decree concerning the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Chap. I. The real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. "In the first place, the holy council teacheth, and openly and plainly professeth, that our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained in the pure sacrament of the holy eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, and under the species of those sensible objects. Neither is it to be regarded as contradictory, that our Saviour should alway sit at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to his natural mode of existence, and yet be sacramentally present with us in his substance in many other places, according to that mode of existence which, though we cannot express it in words, we can nevertheless, when thought is illumined by faith, conceive to be possible with God, and ought most firmly to believe.-For all our ancestors who belonged to the true church of Christ, did most plainly acknowledge, in discoursing on this most holy sacrament, that our Redeemer instituted the same when, after the benediction of the bread and wine, he testified in clear and express words, that' he presented to his disciples his own body and his own blood. Which words, recorded by the evangelists, and repeated afterwards by blessed Paul, do evidently require that appropriate and clear interpretation which has been given them by the fathers; it is therefore a most heinous crime that they should be turned by certain contentious and wicked men into pretended and imaginary figures, to the denial of the truth of the flesh, and blood of Christ; contradicting therein the universal sense of the church, the pillar and ground of the truth, which detests those vain comments, devised by impious men under the influence of Satan, and thankfully acknowledges and holds in perpetual remembrance, this most excellent gift of Christ." Chap. II. Reason of the Institution of this most holy Sacrament. 66 Therefore, when our Saviour was about to depart from this world to the Father, he instituted this sacrament, in which he did as it were pour forth the riches of his divine love to men, and establish a memorial of his wonderful deeds: and he hath commanded us, in partaking thereof, to cherish his memory, and declare his death, till he shall come to judge the world. Now he intended this sacra ment to be received as the spiritual food of souls, by which those who live by his life should be sustained and strengthened, as he said, 'he who eateth me, the same shall live by me;' and as an antidote, to deliver us from daily faults, and preserve us from mortal sins. Moreover he designed it as a pledge of our future glory and everlasting bliss, and therefore as a symbol of that one body of which he is the head, and to which it is his will that we the members should be joined by the closest bond of faith, hope, and charity, that we might all speak the same thing, and no schisms be among us." Chap. III. Excellence of the most holy Eucharist above the other Sacraments. "The most holy eucharist hath this in common with the other sacraments, that it is a symbol of sacred things, a visible form of invisible grace. But herein is discovered its peculiar excellence, that while the other sacraments then first possess the power of sanctifying when they are used by any one, the very author of sanctity is in the eucharist before it is used for the apostles had not yet received the eucharist from the hand of the Lord, when he affirmed that what he was presenting to them was really his body. And this faith has always remained in the church of God, that immediately after the consecration, the true body of our Lord, and his true blood, together with his soul and divinity, do exist under the species of the bread and wine; his body under the species of bread, and his blood under the species of wine, by virtue of the words of consecration; his body also under the species of wine, and his blood under the species of bread, and his soul under each species, through that natural connection and concomitance by which all the parts of Christ our Lord, who has risen from the dead, no more to die, are closely connected together; and his divinity, through the wonderful and hypostatical union thereof with his body and soul. Wherefore it is most certain that all is contained under either species, and both; for Christ, whole and entire, exists under the species of bread, and in every particle thereof, and under the species of wine, and in all its parts. Chap. IV. Transubstantiation. "Since therefore Christ our Redeemer affirmed that it was truly his body which was presented under the species of bread, the church of God hath always held, and this holy council now renew the declaration, that by the consecration of the bread and wine, the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; which conversion is by the holy Catholic church fitly and properly called transubstantiation. Chap. V. Worship and Veneration to be rendered to this most holy Sacrament. "There is, therefore, no room to doubt, that all the faithful in Christ are bound to venerate this most holy sacrament, and to render thereto the worship of latria, which is due to the true God, latriæ cultum, qui vero Deo debetur, according to the custom always observed in the Catholic church. |