Chapter 18
3 passages
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.
Chapter xviii.
Of the change and conversion of the signs of the sacraments into the thing signified by them, according to the usage of the ancient Church, and of the doctors of the same.
Of the chaunge and conuersion of the signes of the sacraments into the thing signified by them, according to the vsage of the auncient Church, and of the doctors of the same.
And when they speak of the change & conversion of the signs of the sacraments into •he thing which they do signify, they do understand this change of the usage of them,1 for the which cause they do also change their name, taking the name of the thing which they signify, in contemplation and in respect of this change of the use, and not at all of the change of one substance into an other, to wit, of the substance of the signs, into that of the things which they do signify. For if there were such […] change of substance, by the virtue of the ⟨image 21⟩sacramental words and of the consecration o• the signs, it should necessarily then come t• pass, that the same should be in all sacraments, […] not more in the one then in the other: fors•• much as there is none at all that may be sacraments without consecration and without sacramental words, and they have all this common together, and the like reason is in them all, concerning this point.2 Wherefore the Romayn• transubstantiators have no ground of reason to affirm that there is more transsubstanciati in the supper, by change of the substance of th signs, into the thing signified by the virtue o the consecration and of the sacramental words then in all the other sacraments. And therefore if they would that we should believe them, the must then prove their sayings by other testimonies then them selves, for so much as they do overthrow the whole nature of sacraments by their doctrine. For the bread and the wine o the Supper, can not be made the signs there of, but only by the virtue of their consecration and of the sacramental words by the which they are consecrated to that use. For as we hau already heard by Saint Augustine, the word must be always joined to the element, before that it may be made a sacrament. Now it is ther then joined, when the bread and the wine which are taken of the elements of this world, are applied