A57277:13
A brief declaration of the Lords Supper with some other determinations and disputations concerning…
A brief declaration of the Lords Supper with some other determinations and disputations concerning the same argument by the same author / written by Dr. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London during his imprisonment ; to which is annexed an extract of several passages to the same purpose out of a book entitled Diallacticon, written by Dr. John Poynet.A brief declaration of the Lords Supper with some other determinations and disputations concerning the same argument by the same author / written by Dr. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London during his imprisonment ; to which is annexed an extract of several passages to the same purpose out of a book intituled Diallacticon, written by Dr. John Poynet.
London: printed for Richard Chiswell, 1688
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
THE Doctrine of Transubstantiation maintained by our Adversaries of the Church of Rome, is so gross, and highly repugnant to the first principles of reason, and universal sense of mankind, that directly to defend it would be no less impossible than unsuccessful. Artifices therefore were necessarily to be invented, which might palliate the deformity of so monstrous an Opinion; and divert inquisitive persons from a direct examination of it, by amusing them with confident assertions and extraneous Controversies. Among these, the difference of Opinion between the first Reformers and present Divines of the Church of England hath of late been proposed and urged with the greatest vehemency; as if the first Reformers had believed somewhat equivalent to Transubstantiation; and our present Divines, by asserting no other than a figurative Presence of the material Body of Christ, had degenerated from the belief of their Forefathers.
We might justly admire the unreasonable confidence of those men, who are not ashamed to propose so manifest and gross a falsehood, and esteem it the highest folly; if we did not remember that it is taken up to defend a desperate Cause, which admits no better Remedies. Can any Man in his right wits believe that so many hundred Martyrs should suffer death, and spend their blood for so inconsiderable a nicety, as was the difference between them and their Persecutors in the Doctrine of the Eucharist, if these late Representers may be believed? That both Parties should dispute ⟨image 4⟩so earnestly and vehemently against each other, and yet after all agree in the main? That the Romish Bishops should treat the Reformers as Heretics for denying Transubstantiation; and the Reformers lay down their lives rather than acknowledge it; and yet neither the first to have defined it to be true, nor the last believed it to be false? Such crude Positions can find no entertainment, but in a mind already fitted to receive Transubstantiation it self, that is, devoid of Sense and Reason.
We might justly admire the unreasonable confidence of those men, who are not ashamed to propose so manifest and gross a falshood, and esteem it the highest folly; if we did not remember that it is taken up to defend a desperate Cause, which admits no better Remedies. Can any Man in his right wits believe that so many hundred Martyrs should suffer death, and spend their blood for so inconsiderable a nicety, as was the difference between them and their Persecutors in the Doctrine of the Eucharist, if these late Representers may be believed? That both Parties should dispute