reject him, he is a judge and avenger. Still Christ received is always health, and life, and blessing to the receiver z: and it is Christ rejected, not Christ received, who becomes to every unworthy communicant both a judge and a revenger a. This reasoning appears to be just and solid and it is worth observing, that, after the latest refinements in this article, by the help of a distinction between external and internal eating of the same enriched body b, yet the difficulty remains as before, and cannot be evaded. For unless the unworthy (who are the external eaters) are supposed externally and orally to eat both the bread and the grace, they cannot be said to eat the body, which is supposed to mean and to consist of both, and is not the enriched body, if either be wanting. All that can be made out, in that way, is, that the unworthy eat one part of the pretended spiritual body, and not the other part; they eat the gross part, viz. the bread, not the finer, viz. the grace: which, in other words, is saying, that they eat not the body; and therefore the distinction so applied destroys itself. The plain truth is, that nothing but the sign is externally eaten, and nothing but the thing signified is eaten internally: therefore to imagine an external or an internal eating both of sign and

Omnes quidem manum et os afferentes symbola recipiunt, mens vero vera fide non prædita rem Sacramenti repudiat: ac proinde reus non fit talis quispiam indigne sumpti corporis et sanguinis Domini, (nisi per corpus et sanguinem ipsa illorum symbola metonymia sacramentali intelligas,) sed corporis et sanguinis Domini contempti, et per incredulitatem repudiati.Usque adeo conjuncta sunt et connexa vita et caro Christi, quoniam caro Filii Dei est, ut neque vitæ particeps esse quisquam extra illius carnis, unici vinculi nostræ cum vita colligationis, participationem possit, neque quisquam illius esse particeps, sive in Verbo, sive in Sacramentis, qui ex ea non vivificetur: et qui contrarium statuunt, Christum dividant: de quibus quid statuendum sit, docet Spiritus Sanctus, 1 John iv. 3. Beza, ibid. p. 103. Conf. Beza contr. Pappum, de Unione hypostatica, p. 138, 139, 140.

• Christus igitur ipse, tum in Verbo, tum in Sacramentis, eos quidem a quibus sumitur, id est, fideles, vivificat: incredulos autem non receptus, sed repudiatus judicat. Beza contr. Papp. p. 140.

See Unbloody Sacrifice, part i. p. 208, 351–356.

thing, confounded in one, and called a spiritual body, is joining together incompatible ideas. But I pass on.

9. Beza takes notice how Harchius's system might lay a foundation for bread-worship, stronger and firmer than even the Popish one does, because of the union or mixture of essential Divinity with the elements, which it introduces and rests upon c. He adds, that it would go near to destroy the sursum corda, the lifting up of the heart, so much, and so justly celebrated by the ancients. For if the elements really contain such immense treasures, what need have we to look up to the natural body above? Or what have we to do but to look down to those impanated riches, to the elements ennobled with all graces and virtues, and replenished with that very Divinity which makes the humanity so considerabled?

10. When Beza came to answer on the head of sacrifice, he appeared to be much concerned at Harchius's unfair and ungenerous dealing, in reviving stale accusations against Protestants, without so much as taking notice of the strong and repeated replies. He avers solemnly, that the reformed had been so far from discarding the eucharistical sacrifice, that they only had most strictly preserved it, or rather retrieved it, fixing it upon its true and ancient basis. Therefore he resented Harchius's misreport, in this article, as a grievous calumny f upon the Protestant name, since the Protestants had not rejected all sacrifice, no nor so much as a visible sacrifice in the Eucharist 8.

This was the turn that Beza gave to that matter; and it was the right turn, made use of before by Bucer in 1546. For Bucer was so far from submitting to the inju

d Ibid. p. 147.

• Ibid. p. 152.

• Beza, p. 146, 147. ☛ Cum totidem illa constet a nobis diligenter fieri, calumniator in eo deprehendetur, quod sacrificium a nobis sublatum esse dicat. Beza, p. 153.

s Quo sensu veteres Cœnam Domini sacrificium vocarint, apertissime liquet. Ostendat autem Harchius ecquid tandem istorum in nostris ecclesiis prætermittatur; et tunc a nobis visibile sacrificium abolitum esse clamitet.

rious charge of discarding the sacrifice, that he retorted that very charge, and justly, upon the accusers themselves not merely pleading, in behalf of the Protestants against the Romanists, that we have a sacrifice as well as they, but that we only had kept it, and that they had lost it, or however had so lamentably depraved or smothered it, that what remained of it was next to noneh. This he said, and this he proved, beyond all reasonable contradiction. They must be very little acquainted with those two excellent men, Bucer and Beza, who can suspect that they admitted of no sacrifice but mental or vocal only: for they were firm and constant friends to the Christian sacrifice, rightly understood; to external sacrifice, and that principally in the Eucharist, as all the Fathers were. Had but the Protestant Divines, as many as came after them, been as careful and accurate as they were in the stating the

h Demonstrabo hæc ipsa veteris Ecclesiæ, et S. Patrum sacrificia nos vere offerre et sacrificare: vestros vero sacrificulos illa cuncta a missis suis omnique sua administratione aut prorsus removisse, aut certe pervertisse, ut autoritatibus omnibus S. Patrum extremæ impietatis convincantur et condemnentur. Bucer contr. Latom. lib. ii. p. 146.

Planum faciam in nostris ecclesiis restituta esse cum genera omnia sacrificiorum et oblationum quæ offerre vetus Ecclesia solita est- -deinde ostendam Ecclesiæ veteris sacrificia et oblationes per vestros sacrificos aut esse omnino sublata, aut penitus perversa. Bucer, ibid. p. 246. Conf. p. 144, 261.

i External sacrifice has been owned, not only by Bucer and Beza, but by Hoper, Jewell, Bilson, Fulke, Zanchius, Chrastovius, Mornæus, Scharpius, Field, Spalatensis, Montague, Lany, Patrick, and many more, who yet admitted none but spiritual sacrifice: neither do I know that any of the old Protestant Divines ever rejected external sacrifice, but in the sense of extrinsic, in which both Scripture and Fathers reject it.

N. B. Extrinsic sacrifice means something ab extra, as a goat, a lamb, a loaf, all extrinsic to us: intrinsic is what proceeds ab intus, from within ourselves; as all our true services do, whether internal and invisible, or external and visible: and therefore if all true services are properly sacrifices, there must of consequence be some visible, external sacrifices. But we ought carefully to note, how the ancient writers used words or phrases. If I mistake not, Lactantius and Austin rejected all visible sacrifice, admitting none but invisible, under the Gospel: but then they meant by invisible, the same with intrinsic; and they call it invisible with respect to its invisible source, as it comes from within.

main question, and as constant in abiding by it, many intricate disputes which have since risen might have been happily prevented. For, indeed, the great question between the Romanists and us, is not whether the Eucharist be a proper, or a visible, or an external sacrifice, but whether it be an extrinsic sacrifice or no; and whether their Eucharist or ours is that Gospel sacrifice which our Lord instituted, and which all antiquity acknowledged. It will be found, upon just inquiry, that our eucharistical sacrifice is the true one, and that their bread-sacrifice (for it is really no better, fiction set aside) is as much a corruption, though not altogether so novel or so dangerous a corruption, as their bread-worship. But I return.

From the time of Beza's answer, Harchius and his system have been very little mentioned: both seem to have been almost buried in oblivion for a hundred and twenty years or more. Only Mr. Bayle takes noticek of some slight mention made of Harchius, by Rivet, in some letters to Militiere, alias Brachet, in the last century. Indeed the Romanists, since that time, have sometimes invidiously and insidiously charged the Protestants as interpreting the words of institution to such a sense as either to make two personal bodies of Christ, or to imagine some other fictitious body, substituted as the res sacramenti, instead of the natural. The Protestants rejected the injurious aspersion with disdain, resenting it as a great reproach, to be so much as suspected of any such thing'; but insisting upon it, in the strongest manner, that the words, this is my body, and this is my blood, could not reasonably be interpreted of any thing else but the natural body and blood, represented, and sacramentally exhibited in the holy Communion TM.

* In the Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary, or in the last French edition, in the article Harchius.

Vid. Chamier, Panstrat. tom. iv. p. 528, 529.

Quæritur ergo, quid sit corpus meum, sanguis meus. Nos candide, et libere, ac libenter respondemus, xarà cò ¡ntòv interpretandum, cum Hesychio in Levitici xxii.—est igitur corpus illud; id est, solida substantia humanæ

From the accounts now laid before you, my Reverend Brethren, I take the liberty to observe, that some late notions of the Eucharist appear to be little else but the remains of that confusion which first began in the decline of the seventh century: and the fundamental error of all lies in the want of a right notion of symbolical language, as before hinted. Hence it is that signs have been supposed either literally to be, or literally to inclose, the very things signified, viz. the Divine body, or the Divine graces, virtues, or powers. Beza cleared up what concerned the latter with great acumen and force: and the whole question has been more minutely discussed since by several able hands"; but more especially by the very acute and learned Chamier, who has in reality exhausted the question, both historically and argumentatively, in his disputes against the Romanists"..

I may note by the way, that the Romanists, from the time of the Trent Council P, have commonly maintained some kind of physical efficiency in the outward sacraments, together with inherent graces as infused into the elements: though some of their ablest Divines have scarce known what to make of the Trent doctrine on that head, but have in a manner given up the thing, contending merely for words or names. Cardinal Allen, one of the shrewdest of them, saw the absurdity of the notion, and exposed it: being aware how ridiculous it would be, to imagine any inherent or intrinsic powers to have been infused into clay and spittle, into handkerchiefs and aprons, or into St. Peter's

naturæ, quam assumptam in utero Virginis circuntulit in hypostasi sua Verbum; quam cruci affixam, et in sepulchro depositam suscitavit a mortuis—— quam denique transtulit in cœlos, inde reddendam terris postremo adventu. Chamier, Panstrat. tom. iv. p. 528.

n Hooker, vol. ii. b. 5. n. 237, 245, 326. Oxf. edit. Gasp. Laurentius, Defens. Sadeelis, p. 382, &c. Rivet. Cathol.-Orth. tom. ii. p. 5, &c. Vossius de Sacram. Vi et Efficacia. Le Blanc, Thes. p. 253. Preservative against Popery, vol. ii. tit. 7. p. 32. Albertinus, p. 503.

Chamier, Panstrat. tom. iv. p. 51-96.

P Si quis dixerit Sacramenta novæ legis non continere gratiam quam significant,anathema sit. Concil. Trident. sess. vii. can. 6.