A Second part of the ENQUIRY Into the REASONS Offered by Sa. Oxon for abrogating the TEST: Or an ANSWER to his Plea for Transubstantiation; and for Acquitting the Church of Rome of IDOLATRY.  
THe two seemingly contrary Advices of the Wiseman, of Answering a Fool according to his Folly, and of not Answering him according to his Folly, are founded on such Excellent Reasons, that if a man can but rightly distinguish the Circumstances, he has a good Warrant for using both upon different occasions. The Reason for Answering a Fool according to his Folly, is, lest he be wise in his own eyes; that so a haughty and petulant humour may be subdued; and that a man that is both blinded and swelled up with self-conceit, may by so severe a Remedy be brought to know himself, and to think as meanly of himself as every Body else does. But the reason against Answering a Fool according to his Folly, is, lest one be also like unto him, and so let both his mind and stile be corrupted by so Vicious a Pattern. Since then in a former Paper, I was wrought on to let our Author see, what a severe Treatment he has justly drawn on himself, and to write in a stile a little like his own, I will now let him see, that he is the man in the World, whom I desire the least to resemble: and so if I writ before in a stile that I thought became him, I will now change that into another, which I am sure becomes myself. In the former, I examined his Arguments for abrogating the Test, in a strain, which I thought somewhat necessary for the Informing the Nation aright, in a matter of such Consequence, that the Preservation of our Religion is judged to depend upon it, by the Presumptive Heir of the Crown: but now, that I am to argue a point, which requires more of a Gravity, than of an acrimony of stile, I will no more consider the Man, but the Matter in hand.  
In a word He would persuade the World, that Transubstantiation is but a Nicety of the Schools, calculated to the Aristotelian Philosophy: and not defined positively in the Church of Rome: but that the Corporal and Real Presence of the substance of Christ's Body and Blood in the Sacrament, was the Doctrine of the Universal Church in the Primitive Times: and that it is at this day the generally received Doctrine by all the different Parties in Europe, not only the Ro. Catholics and Lutherans, but both by the Churches of Switzerland and France, and more particularly by the Church of England; so that since all that the Church of Rome means by Transubstantiation is the Real presence and since the Real Presence is so Universally received, it is a heinous thing to renounce Transubstantiation; for that is in effect the renouncing the Real Presence.  
This is the whole strength of his Argument, which he fortifies by many Citations, to prove that both the Ancient- Fathers and the Modern Reformers, believed the Real Presence; and that the Church of Rome believes no more. But to all this I shall offer a few Exceptions.  
I. If Transubstantiation is only a Philosophical Nicety concerning the manner of the Presence; where is the hurt of renouncing it? and why are the Ro. Catholics at so much pains to have the Test repealed? for it contains nothing against the Real Presence: indeed, if this Argument has any force, it should rather lead the Ro. Catholics to take the Test, since according to the Bp they do not renounce in it any Article of Faith, but only a bold curiosity of the Schoolmen. Yet after all, it seems they know, that this is contrary to their Doctrine, otherwise they would not venture so much upon a point of an old and decried Philosophy.  
II. In order to the stating this matter aright, it is necessary to give the true notion of the Real Presence, as it is acknowledged by the Reformed. We all know in what sense the Church of Rome understands it, that in the Sacrament there is no Real Bread and Wine, but that under the appearance of them we have the true substance of Christ's glorified Body. On the other hand, the Reformed, when they found the world generally fond of this phrase; they by the same Spirit of Compliance, which our Saviour and his Apostles had for the Jews, and that the Primitive Church had (perhaps to excess) for the Heathens, retained the phrase of Real Presence: but as they gave it such a sense as did fully demonstrate, that though they retained a term that had for it a long Prescription, yet they quite changed its meaning: for they always showed, that the Body and blood of Christ, which they believed present, was his Body broken and his Blood shed, that is to say, his Body, not in its glorified state, but as it was crucified. So that the presence belonging to Christ's dead Body, which is not now actually in being, it is only his Death that is to be conceived to be presented to us, and this being the sense that they always give of the Real Presence, the reality falls only on that conveyance, that is made to us in the Sacrament, by a federal rite of Christ's Death as our Sacrifice. The learned Answerer to the Oxford discourses has so fully demonstrated this from the copious explanations which all the Reformed give of that phrase, that one would think it were not possible either to mistake or cavil in so clear a point. The Papists had generally objected to the Reformers, that they made the Sacrament no more than a bare Commemoratory Feast; and some few had carried their aversion to that gross Presence which the Church of Rome had set up, to another extreme to which the People by a principle of libertinism might have been too easily carried; if the true Dignity of the Sacrament had not been maintained by expressions of great Majesty: so finding that the world was possessed of the phrase of the real Presence, they thought fit to preserve it, but with an Explanation that was liable to no Ambiguity. Yet it seems our Reformers in the beginning of Queen Elisabeth's Reign had found that the phrase had more power to carry men to Superstition, than the explanations given to it, had to retire them from it, and therefore the Convocation ordered it to be laid aside, though that order was suppressed out of prudence: and the phrase has been ever since in use among us, of which Dr. Burnet has given us a copious account, Hist. Reform. 2 Vol. 3. Book.  
III. The Difference between the notion of the Sacraments being a mere Commemoratory Feast, and the Real Presence, is as great as the value of the King's head stamped upon a Meddal differs from the current coin, or the Impression made by the Great Seal upon Wax differs from that which any carver or graver may make. The one is a mere Memorial, but the other has a sacred badge of Authority in it. The Paschal Lamb, was not only a Remembrance of the Deliverance of the People of Israel out of Egypt, but a continuance of the Covenant, that Moses made between God and them, which distinguished them from all the Nations round about them, as well as the first Passeover, had distinguished them from the Egyptians. Now it were a strange Inference, because the Lamb was called the Lords Passeover, that is, the Sacrifice upon the sprinkling of whose Blood the Angel passed over or passed by the Houses of the Israelites, when he smote the firstborn of the Egyptians, to say, that there was a change of the substance of the Lamb: or because the Real faith of a Prince is given by his Great Seal, printed on Wax, and affixed to a Parchment, that therefore the substance of the Wax is changed: so it is no less absurd to imagine, that because the Bread and the Wine are said to be the Body and Blood of Christ as broken and shed, that is, his death Really and effectually offered to us, as our Sacrifice, that therefore the substance of the Bread and Wine, are changed.  
And thus upon the whole matter, that which is present in the Sacrament is Christ Dead, and since his death was transacted above 1600. years ago, the reality of his presence, can be no other than a Real offer of his death made to us in an Instituted and federal symbol. I have explained this the more fully, because with this, all the ambiguity in the use of that commonly received phrase, falls off.  
iv As for the Doctrine of the Ancient Church, there has been so much said in this Enquiry, that a man cannot hope to add any new discoveries to what has been already found out: therefore I shall only endeavour to bring some of the most Important Observations into a narrow compass, and to set them in a good light: and shall first offer some general Presumptions, to show that it is not like, that this was the Doctrine of the Primitive times, and then some Positive proof of it.  
1. It is no slight Presumption against it, that we do not find the Fathers take any pains to answer the Objections that do naturally arise out of the present Doctrine of the Church of Rome: these Objections do not arise out of profound study, or great learning, but from the plain dictates of common sense, which make it hard (to say no more) for us to believe, that a Body can be in more places than one at once, and that it can be in a place after the manner of a spirit: that Accidents can be without their subject; or that our senses can deceive us in the plainest cases: we find the Fathers explain some abstruse difficulties that arise out of other Mysteries, that were less known, and were more Speculative: and while they are thought perhaps to  the one, it is a little strange that they should never touch the other: but on the contrary, when they treat of Philosophical matters, they express themselves roundly in opposition to those consequences of this Doctrine: whereas since this Doctrine has been received, we see all the speculations of Philosophy, have been so managed, as to keep a reserve for this Doctrine. So that the uncautious way in which the Fathers handled them (in proof of which Volumes of quotations can be made) shows they had not then received that Doctrine, which must of necessity give them occasion to write otherwise than they did.  
2. We find the Heathens studied to load the Christian Religion with all the heaviest Imputations that they could give it. They objected to them the believing a God that was born, and that died, and the Resurrection of the Dead, and many lesser matters, which seemed absurd to them: they had malice enough to seek out every thing that could disgrace a Religion which grew too hard for them: but they never once object this, of making a God out of a piece of Bread, and then eating him: if this had been the Doctrine of those Ages, the Heathens, chief Celsus, and Porphiry, but above all Julian, could not have been Ignorant of it. Now it does not stand with common sense to think, that those who insist much upon Inconsiderable things, could have passed over this, which is both so sensible and of such Importance, if it had been the received belief of those Ages.  
3. It is also of weight, that there were no disputes nor Heresies upon this point during the first Ages; and that none of the Heretics ever objected it to the Doctors of the Church. We find they contended about all other Points: now this has so many difficulties in it, that it should seem a little strange, that all men's understandings should have been then so easy and consenting, that this was the single point of the whole Body of Divinity, about which the Church had no dispute for the first Seven Centuries. It therefore inclines a man rather to think, that because there was no disputes concerning it, therefore it was not then broached: since we see plainly, that ever since it was broached in the West, it has occasioned lasting Disputes, both with those who could not be brought to believe it, and with one another concerning the several ways of explaining and maintaining it.  
4. It is also a strong Prejudice against the Antiquity of this Doctrine, that there were none of those rites in the first ages which have crept in in the latter: which were such natural consequences of it, that the belief of the one making way for the other, we may conclude, that where the one were not practised, the other was not believed. I will not mention all the Pomp which the latter Ages have Invented to raise the lustre of this Doctrine, with which the former Ages were unacquainted. It is enough to observe, that the Adoration of the Sacrament, was such a necessary Consequence of this Doctrine, that since the Primitive Times know nothing of it, as the Greek Church does not to this day, it is perhaps more than a Prosumption, that they believed it not.  
V But now I come to more Positive and convincing proofs: and  
1. The language of the whole Church, is only to be found in the Liturgies which are more severely composed than Rhetorical Discourses; and of all the parts of the Office, the Prayer of Consecration, is that in which we must hope to find most certainly the Doctrine of the Church: we find then in the 4th Century, that in the Prayer of Consecration the Elements were said to be the Types of the Body and Blood of Christ, as St. Basil Informs us from the Greek Liturgies; and the Figure of his Body and Blood, as St. Ambrose Informs us, from the Latin Liturgies: The Prayer of Consecration, that is now in the Canon of the Mass, is in a great part the same with that which is cited by St. Ambrose, but with this Important difference, that instead of the words, which is the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ that are in the former, there is a petition added in the latter, that the gifts may be to us the Body and Blood of Christ. If we had so many of the Mss. of the Ancient Liturgies left, as to be able to find out the time in which the Prayer of Consecration was altered, from what it was in S. Ambroses days, to what it is now, this would be no small Article in the History of Transubstantiation: but most of these are lost; since then the Ancient Church could not believe otherwise of the Sacrament, than as she expressed herself concerning it, in the Prayer of Consecration; It is plain, that her first Doctrine concerning it, was, that the Bread and Wine were the Types and the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ.  
2. A second proof is from the Controversy, that was begun by the Apollinarists, and carried on by the Eutichians, whether Christ's humanity was swallowed up of his Divinity or not? The Eutichians made use of the General Expressions, by which the change in the Sacrament seemed to be carried so far, that the Bread and Wine were swallowed up by it; and from this they inferred, that in like manner the human nature of Christ was swallowed up by his Divinity: but in opposition to all this, we find chrysostom the Patriarch of Constantinople, Ephrem the Patriarch of Antioch, Gelasius the Pope, Theodoret a Bp in Asia the lesser, and Facundus a Bp in Africa, all within the compass of little more than an Age, agree almost in the same words, in refuting all this: asserting, that as the human nature in Christ remained still the same that it was before, notwithstanding its union with his divine Nature, even so the Bread and Wine retained still their former Nature, Substance and Form, and that they are only sanctified, not by the change of their Nature, but by adding Grace to Nature. This they do in terms plain, and beyond all exception; and Theodoret goes over the matter again and again, in two different Treatises, so that no matter of fact can appear more plainly, then that the whole Church East and West and South, did in the 5th and 6th Centuries believe that the Sanctification of the Elements in the Sacrament, did no more destroy their natures, than the union of the two natures in Christ, did destroy his humane nature.  
A 3d proof is taken from a practice which I will not offer to justify, how Ancient soever it may have been: It appears indeed in the Ancientest Liturgies now extant; and is a Prayer in which the Sacrament is said to be offered up in honour of the Saint of the day, to which a petition is added, that it may be accepted of God by the Intercession of the Saint. This is yet in the Missal, and is used upon most of the Saints days: now if the Sacrament was then believed to be the very Body and Blood of Christ, there is nothing more crude, not to say profane, to offer this up to the honour of a Saint, and to pray that the Sacrifice of Christ's body may be accepted of God thro' the Intercession of a Saint. Therefore to give any tolerable sense to these words, we must conclude, that though these Prayers have been continued in the Roman Church, since this Opinion prevailed, yet they were never made in an Age in which it was received. The only meaning that can be given to these words, is, that they made the Saints days, days of Communion, as well as the Sundays were: and upon that they prayed that the Sacrament which they received that day, to do the more honour to the Memory of the Saint, might be recommended to the divine Acceptance by the Intercession of the Saint: so that this Superstitious practice, shows plainly, that the Church had not, even when it began, received the Doctrine of the change of the Elements into the Body and blood of Christ.  
I will not pursue the proof of this point further, nor will I enter into a particular recital of the Say of the Fathers, upon this subject; which would carry me far: and it is done so copiously by others, that I had rather refer my Reader to them, than offer him a lean abridgement of their labours.  
I shall only add, that the Presumptions and Proofs that I have offered are much more to be valued, than the pious and Rhetorical Figures by which many of the Fathers have set forth the manner of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament. One thing is plain, that in most of them, they represent Christ present in his dead and crucified state, which appears most eminently in S. Chrysostom; so that this agreed with that notion of a Real Presence, that was formerly explained. Men that have at the same time, all the heat in their Imaginations that Eloquence can raise, and all the fervour in their heart which devotion can inspire, are seldom so correct in their phrases and figures, as not to need some allowances: therefore one plain proof of their Opinions from their reasonings when in cold blood, aught to be of much more weight than all their Transports and Amplifications.  
From this General view of the State of the Church during the first Centuries, I come next to consider the steps of the change which was afterwards made. I will not offer to trace out that History, which Mr. Larrogue has done Copiously, whom I the rather mention because he is put in English. I shall only observe, that by reason of the high expressions which were used upon the occasion of the Eutichean Controversy, formerly mentioned, by which the Sanctification of the Elements was compared to the Union of the humane nature of Christ with his Divinity, a great step was made to all that followed: during the Dispute concerning Images, those who opposed the worship of them said, according to all the Ancient Liturgies, that they indeed acknowledged one Image of Christ, which was the Sacrament; those who promoted that piece of superstition (for I refer the calling it Idolatry to its proper place) had the Impudence to deny that it had ever been called the Image of Christ's Body and Blood: and said, that it was really his Body and Blood. We will not much Dispute concerning an Age, in which the World seemed mad with a zeal for the Worship of Images; and in which Rebellion and the deposing of Princes upon the pretence of Heresy, began to be put in practice: such times as these, we willingly yield up to our Adversaries. Yet Damascene, and the Greek Church after him, carried this matter no further than to assert an Assumption of the Elements, into an union with the Body and Blood of Christ. But when the Monk of Corbie began to carry the matter yet further, and to say, that the Elements were changed into the very Body of Christ that was born of the Virgin, we find all the great men of that Age, both in France, Germany, and England, writ against him: and he himself owns that he was looked upon as an Innovator; Those who writ against him, chief Rabanus Maurus, and Bertram or Ratramne, did so plainly assert the Ancient opinion of the Sacraments being the Figure of the Body and Blood of Christ, that we cannot express ourselves more formally than they did: and from thence it was that our Saxon Homily on Easter Day was so express in this point. Yet the War and the Northern Invasions that followed, put the World into so much disorder, that all Disputes were soon forgot, and that in the 11th Century, this Opinion which had so many Partisans in the ninth, was generally decried and much abandoned.  
VI But with relation to those Ages in which it was received, some observations occur so readily, to every one that knows History, that it is only for the sake of the more Ignorant, that I make them.  
1. They were times of so much Ignorance, that it is scarce conceivable to any but to those who have laboured a little in reading the productions of those Ages; which is the driest piece of study I know: the stile in which they writ, and their way of arguing, and explaining scripture, are all of a piece, both matter and form are equally barbarous. Now in such times, as the Ignorant populace were easily misled, so there is some what in Incredible stories and Opinions, that makes them pass as easily, as men are apt to fancy they see Sprights in the Night: nay the more of Mystery and Darkness that there is in any Opinion, such times are apt to cherish it the more for that very reason.  
2. Those were ages in which the whole Ecclesiastical Order had entered into such Conspiracies against the State, which were managed and set on by such vigour by the Popes, that every Opinion which tended to render the persons of Church men Sacred, and to raise their Character, was likely to receive the best entertainment, and the greatest encouragement possible. Nothing could so secure the persons of Priests, and render them so considerable, as to believe that they made their God: and in such Ages no Armour was of so sure a proof as for a Priest to take his God in his hands.  
Now it is known, that as P. Gregory the 7th, who condemned Berengarius, laid the foundations of the Ecclesiastical Empire, by establishing the Deposing power, so P. Innocent the 3d who got Transubstantiation to be decreed in the 4th Council of the Lateran, seemed to have completed the project; by the Addition made to the Deposing power, of transferring the Dominions of the Deposed Prince to whom he pleased. Since before this, the Dominions must have gone to the next Heirs of the Deposed Prince. It is then so plain, that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, was so suitable to the advancing of those ends, that it had been a wonder indeed, if it being once set on foot, it had not been established in such times.  
3. Those Ages were so corrupt, and more particularly the Clergy, and chief the Popes, were by the Confession of all writers so excessively vicious, that such men could have no regard to truth in any of their Decisions. Interest must have carried all other things before it, with such Popes, who according to the Historians of their own Communion, were perhaps the worst men that ever lived. Their Vices were so crying, that nothing but the credit that is due to Writers of their own time, and their own Church, could determine us to believe them.  
4. As the Ignorance and Vices of those times derogate justly from all the credit that is due to them, so the Cruelty which followed their Decisions, and which was Employed in the Execution of them, makes it appear rather a stranger thing that so many opposed them, then that so many submitted to them. When Inquisitors or Dragoons manage an Argument, how strong soever the Spirit may be, in opposing it, it is certain the Flesh will be weak, and will ply easily. When Princes were threatened with Deposition, and Heretics with Extirpation, and when both were executed with so much rigour, the success of all the Doctrines that were established in those days, aught to make no Impression on us, in its favour.  
VII. It is no less plain that there was a great and vigorous opposition made to every step of the progress of this Doctrine. When the Eutichians first made use of it, the greatest men of that Age set themselves against it. When the Worshippers of Images did afterwards deny that the Sacrament was the Image of the Body and Blood of Christ, a General Council in the East asserted, according to the Ancient Liturgies, the Contrary Proposition. When Paschase Radbert set on Foot the Corporal Presence, in the West, all the great men of the Age writ against him. Berenger was likewise highly esteemed, and had many secret Followers, when this Doctrine was first decreed: and ever since the time of the Council of the Lateran, that Transubstantiation was established, there have been whole bodies of men that have opposed it, and that have fallen as Sacrifices to the Rages of the Inquisitors. And by the Processes of those of Tholouse, of which I have seen the Original Records, for the space of twenty years, it appears that as Transubstantiation was the Article upon which they were always chief examined, so it was that which many of them did the most constantly deny, so far were they on both sides from looking on it only as an Explanation of the Real Presence.  
VIII. The Novelty of this Doctrine appears plainly by the strange work that the Schools have made with it, since they got it among them, both in their Philosophy and Divinity, and by the many different methods that they took for explaining it, till they had licked it into the shape, in which it is now: which is as plain an Evidence of the Novelty of the Doctrine as can be imagined. The learned Mr. Alix has given us a clear Deduction of all that confusion, into which it has cast the Schoolmen, and the many various Methods that they fell on for maintaining it. First, they thought the body of Christ was broken by the Teeth of the Faithful: then that appearing absurd, and subjecting our Saviour to new sufferings; the Doctrine of a Bodies being in a place after the manner of a spirit was set up. And as to the change, some thought, that the Matter of Bread remained, but that it was united to the Body of Christ, as nourishment is digested into our Bodies: others thought, that the Form of Bread remained, the Matter only being changed: and some thought, that the Bread was only with-drawn to give place to the Body of Christ, whereas others thought it was Annihilated. While the better Judges had always an eye either to a Consubstantiation, or to such an Assumption of the Bread and Wine by the Eternal Word, as made the Sacrament in some sense his Body indeed; but not that Body which is now in Heaven. All these different Opinions, in which the Schoolmen were divided, even after the Decision made by Pope Innocent, in the Council of the Lateran, show, that the Doctrine, being a Novelty, men did not yet know how to mould or form it: but in process of time the whole Philosophy was so digested, as to prepare all Scholars in their first formation to receive it the more easily. And in our Age, in which that Philosophy has lost its credit, what pains do they take to suppress the New Philosophy, as seeing that it cannot be so easily subdued to support this Doctrine as the Old one was. And it is no unpleasant thing to see the Shifts to which the Partisans of the Cartesian Philosophy are driven, to explain themselves: which are indeed so very ridiculous, that one can hardly think that those who make use of them, believe them: for they are plainly rather Tricks and Excuses than Answers.  
IX. No man can deny, that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome; but he that will dispute the Authority of the Councils of the Lateran and Trent: now though some have done the first avowedly, yet as their number is small, and their Opinion decried, so for the Council of Trent, though I have known some of that Communion, who do not look upon it as a General Council, and though it is not at all received in France, neither as to Doctrine nor Discipline, yet the contrary opinion is so universally received, that they who think otherwise, dare not speak out: and so give their Opinion as a secret, which they trust in confidence, rather than as a Doctrine which they will own. But setting aside the Authority of these Councils, the common Resolution of Faith in the Church of Rome being Tradition, it cannot be denied, that the constant and general Tradition in the Church of Rome, these last 500 years, has been in favour of Transubstantiation, and that is witnessed by all the Evidences by which it is possible to know Tradition. The Writings of Learned Men, the Sermons of Preachers, the Proceed of Tribunals, the Decisions of Councils, that if they were not general, were yet very numerous, and above all by the many Authentical Declarations that Popes have made in this matter. So that either Tradition is to be forever rejected as a false conveyance, or this is the received Doctrine of the Church of Rome, from which She can never departed, without giving up both her Infallibility, and the Authority of Tradition.  
X. There is not any one point, in which all the Reformed Churches do more unanimously agree, than in the rejecting of Transubstantiation: as appears both by the Harmony of their Confessions, and by the current of all the Reformed Writers. And for the Real Presence, though the Lutherans explain it by a Consubstantiation, and the rest of the Reformed, by a Reality of Virtue and Efficacy, and a Presence of Christ as crucified, yet all of them have taken much pains to show, that in what sense soever they meant it, they were still far enough from Transubstantiation. This demonstrates the Wisdom of our Legislators, in singling out this to be the sole point of the Test for Employments: since it is perhaps the only point in Controversy, in which the whole Church of Rome holds the Affirmative, and the whole Reformed hold the Negative. And it is as certain, that Transubstantiation is the Doctrine of the Church of Rome, as that it is rejected by the Church of England; it being by name condemned in our Articles.  
And thus I hope the whole Plea of our Author in favour of Transubstantiation is overthrown, in all its three Branches: which relate to the Doctrine of the Primitive Church, the Doctrine of the Church of Rome, and the Doctrine of the Church of England, as well as of the other Reformed Churches. I have not loaded this Paper with Quotations: because I intended to be short: but I am ready to make good all the matters of fact asserted in it, under the highest pains of Infamy if I fail in the performance: and besides, the more Voluminous Works that have been writ on this subject, such as Albertines, Claud's Answer to Mr. Arnaud, and F. Nonet, Larrogues History of the Eucharist, there have been so many learned Discourses written of late on this Subject, and in particular two Answers to the Bishop's Book, that if it had not been thought expedient that I should have cast the whole matter into a short Paper, I should not have judged it necessary to trouble the world with more Discourses on a subject that seems exhausted. I will add no more, but that by the next I will give another Paper of the same Bulk upon the Idolatry of the Church of Rome.  
FINIS.