If we enquire the Reasons and Arguments, wherewith our Adversaries maintain such incredible and extravagant assertions, we shall find them to be no other than these, That the first Reformers taught and asserted a Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament; That they maintained the Body and Blood to be verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful Communicants; That they frequently affirmed the natural and substantial Body of Christ, that very Body which was taken by him of the Virgin Mary, to be present in the Sacrament. These very expressions are at this day used by the Divines of the Church of England; whom yet our Adversaries pretend to have departed from the belief of their Forefathers in this matter: So that if they prove the first Reformers to have believed a material presence of Christ's Body, they will prove our Present Divines to believe the same. For the whole Controversy will come to this issue, Whether they believed any material Presence of Christ's Body, or any part of it, either by conversion, substitution, or union? If they positively disowned this, as most certainly they did; then whatsoever expressions they might use, they could believe no other than a figurative Presence of Christ's Body properly so called; which our Adversaries now traduce under the name of Zuinglianism. And, indeed, if we give them leave to explain themselves, they tell us, That in such expressions ⟨image 4⟩they use the terms of Real Presence, Nature and Substance, not as Philosophers, but as Divines; and that by denying the Eucharist to be a figure only, or a naked figure, they mean no more, than that it is a true and real communication of the virtues and benefits of his Body, not only a mere figurative commemoration of them, which is the true notion of Zuinglianism.
If we enquire the Reasons and Arguments, wherewith our Adversaries maintain such incredible and extravagant assertions, we shall find them to be no other than these, That the first Reformers taught and asserted a Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament; That they maintained the Body and Blood to be verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful Communicants; That they frequently affirmed the natural and substantial Body of Christ, that very Body which was taken by him of the Virgin Mary, to be present in the Sacrament. These very expressions are at this day used by the Divines of the Church of England; whom yet our Adversaries pretend to have departed from the belief of their Forefathers in this matter: So that if they prove the first Reformers to have believed a material presence of Christ's Body, they will prove our Present Divines to believe the same. For the whole Controversy will come to this issue, Whether they believed any material Presence of Christ's Body, or any part of it, either by conversion, substitution, or union? If they positively disowned this, as most certainly they did; then whatsoever expressions they might use, they could believe no other than a figurative Presence of Christ's Body properly so called; which our Adversaries now traduce under the name of Zuinglianism. And, indeed, if we give them leave to explain themselves, they tell us, That in such expressions ⟨image 4⟩they use the terms of Real Presence, Nature and Substance, not as Philosophers, but as Divines; and that by denying the Eucharist to be a figure only, or a naked figure, they mean no more, than that it is a true and real communication of the virtues and benefits of his Body, not only a meer figurative commemoration of them, which is the true notion of Zuinglianism.
