The apology of the Church of England, and an epistle to one Seignior Scipio…

17. BUT then as to the Fairs and Sales of Masses, and the carrying about and adoring the Bread, and a number of such like Idolatrous and blasphemous Follies, which none ⟨p. 33⟩of them dare affirm to have been delivered to us by Christ of his Apostles; our Church will not endure them, and we justly blame the Bishops of Rome for presuming, without any Command of God, without any Authority of the Holy Fathers, and without any Example, not only to propose the Sacramental Bread to be adored by the People with a divine Worship, but also to carry it about before them upon an ambling Nag where-ever they go,¹ as the Persian Kings did heretofore their sacred Fire, and the Egyptian their Image of Isis, and so have turned the Sacraments of Christ into Pageantry and Pomp, that, in that very thing in which the Death of Christ was to be celebrated and inculcated, and the Mysteries of our Redemption ought to be piously and reverently represented, the Eyes of men should only be fed with a foolish show, and a piece of Ludicrous Livity. And then, whereas they say, and sometimes persuade Fools, that they can by their Masses distribute and apply to men (who very often think of nothing less, and never know what is then doing) all the Merits of the Death of Christ; this Pretence ▪ I say, is ridiculous, heathenish and silly; for it is our Faith which applies the Death and Cross of Christ to us, and not the Action of a Priest: the Faith of the Sacraments (saith St. Augustin) justifies, and not the Sacrament. And Origen saith, He (Christ) is the Priest, and the Propitiation, and the Sacrifice, and this Propitiation comes to every one by way of Faith; and therefore agreeably hereunto we say that the Sacraments do not profit the Living without ⟨p. 34⟩Faith, and much less the Dead; for as to what they pretend concerning their Purgatory, ²tho that is no very late Invention, yet it is nothing but a silly old wives Story. St.³ Augustin sometimes saith there is such a place, sometimes he doth not deny but there may be such a Place, sometimes he doubts if there be, and at other times he positively denies there is any such place at all, and thinks that men, out of humane kindness to the Dead, are deceived in that point.