N20568:3397
The new and complete book of martyrs; or, An universal history of martyrdom: being Fox's Book of martyrs, revised and corrected, with additions and great improvements. : Containing an authentic account of the lives, persecutions and sufferings of the holy martyrs; and the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ in all parts of the world, by pagans, Jews, Turks, papists, and others, from earliest ages of the church to the present period. ... The whole forming at once a general Christian martyrology, and a complete history of persecutions. / By the Rev. Mr. John Fox, M.A. late of Magdalen College, Oxford. ; Now revised, corrected and improved, with many additional articles, relating to the acts and monuments of the church. By Paul Wright, D.D. ; Embellished with forty elegant copper plate engravings. ; In two volumes. Vol. I[-II].The new and complete book of martyrs; or, An universal history of martyrdom: being Fox's Book of marytrs, revised and corrected, with additions and great improvements. : Containing an authentic account of the lives, persecutions and sufferings of the holy martyrs; and the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ in all parts of the world, by pagans, Jews, Turks, papists, and others, from earliest ages of the church to the present period. ... The whole forming at once a general Christian martyrology, and a complete history of persecutions. / By the Rev. Mr. John Fox, M.A. late of Magdalen College, Oxford. ; Now revised, corrected and improved, with many additional articles, relating to the acts and monuments of the church. By Paul Wright, D.D. ; Embellished with forty elegant copper plate engravings. ; In two volumes. Vol. I[-II].
New-York: printed by William Durell, 1794
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
WEST. You utter blasphemies with a most impudent face; leave off, I say, and get you to the argument.
RID. It forceth men to maintain many monstrous miracles, without any necessity and authority of God's word. For at the coming of this presence of the body and flesh of Christ, they thrust away the substance of bread, and affirm that the accidents remain without any subject, and instead thereof they place Christ's body without his qualities and the true manner of a body. And if the sacrament be reserved so long until it mould, and worms breed, some say that the substance of bread miraculously returneth again, and some deny it. Others affirm, the real body of Christ goeth down into the stomach of the receivers, and doth there abide so long only as they shall continue to be good.
BUT now (my brethren) think not, because I disallow that presence which the first proposition maintaineth (as a presence which I take to be forged, fantastical, and besides the authority of God's word, perniciously brought into the church by the Romanists) that I therefore go about to take away the true presence of Christ's body in his supper rightly and duly ministered, which is grounded upon the word of God, and made more plain by the commentaries of the faithful fathers. They that think so of me, the Lord knoweth how far they are deceived. And to make the same evident unto you, I will in few words declare what true presence of Christ's body in the sacrament of the Lord's supper I hold and affirm, with the word of God and the ancient fathers.
BUT now (my brethren) think not, because I disallow that presence which the first proposition maintaineth (as a presence which I take to be forged, fantastical, and besides the authority of God's word, perniciously brought into the church by the Romanists) that I therfore go about to take away the true presence of Christ's body in his supper rightly and duly ministered, which is grounded upon the word of God, and made more plain by the commentaries of the faithful fathers. They that think so of me, the Lord knoweth how far they are deceived. And to make the same evident unto you, I will in few words declare what true presence of Christ's body in the sacrament of the Lord's supper I hold and affirm, with the word of God and the ancient fathers.
I say and confess with the evangelist Luke, and with the apostle P••l, that the bread, on which thanks are given, is the body of Christ in the remembrance of him and his death, to be set forth perpetually of the faithful until his coming.
I say and confess the bread which we break to be the communion and partaking of Christ's body, with the ancient and faithful fathers.
I say and believe that there is not only a signification of Christ's body set forth by the sacrament, but also that therewith is given to the godly and faithful the grace of Christ's body, that i•, the food of life and immortality. And this I hold with Cyprian.
I say also with St. Augustine, that we […] life and we drink life: with Emisene, that we feel the Lord to be present in grace: with Athanasius, that we receive celestial food, which cometh from above: the propriety of natural communion, with Hilarius: the nature of flesh and benediction which giveth life in bread and wine, with Cyril; and with the same Cyril, the virtue of the very flesh of Christ, life and grace of his body, the property of the only begotten, that is to say, life, as he himself in plain words expoundeth it.
I say also with St. Augustine, that we 〈…〉 life and we drink life: with Emisene, that we feel the Lord to be present in grace: with Athanasius, that we receive celestial food, which cometh from above: the propriety of natural communion, with Hilarius: the nature of flesh and benediction which giveth life in bread and wine, with Cyril; and with the same Cyril, the virtue of the very flesh of Christ, life and grace of his body, the property of the only begotten, that is to say, life, as he himself in plain words expoundeth it.
I confess also with Basil, that we receive the mystical advent and coming of Christ, grace and virtue of his very nature; the sacrament of his very flesh, with Ambrose; the body by grace, with Epiphanius; spiritual flesh, but not that which was crucified, with Hieron; grace flowing into a sacrifice, and the grace of the Spirit, with Chrysostom; grace and invisible verity, grace and society of the members of Christ's body, with Augustine.
FINALLY, with Bertram (which was the last of all these) I confess, that Christ's body is in the sacrament ⟨p. 332⟩in this respect; namely, (as he writeth) because there is in it the Spirit of Christ, that is, the power of the word of God, which not only feedeth the soul, but also cleanseth it. But of these I suppose it may clearly appear unto all men, how far we are from that opinion, whereof some go about falsely to slander us to the world, saying, we teach that the godly and faithful should receive nothing else.
AFTER the consecration there remaineth no substance of bread and wine, neither any other substance, than the substance of God and man.
THE second conclusion is manifestly false, directly against the word of God, the nature of the sacrament, and the most evident testimonies of the godly fathers; and it is the rotten foundation of the other two conclusions propounded by you, both of the first, and also of the third. I will not therefore now tarry upon any further explication of this answer, being contented with that which is already added before to the answer of the first proposition.
IT is very plain by the word of God, that Christ did give bread unto his disciples, and called it his body.
BUT the substance of bread is another manner of substance, than is the substance of Christ's body, God and man.
