passionate desires. Pride and prejudice are the parents of misbelief, but humility and contempt of the world first bear faith upon their knees, and then upon their hands. SECTION V. OF THE PROPER AND SPECIFIC WORK OF FAITH IN THE RECEPTION OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. HERE I am to enquire into two practical questions; First, what stress is to be put upon faith in this mystery? that is, how much is every one bound to believe in the article of this sacrament before he can be accounted competently prepared in his understanding, and by his faith? Secondly, what is the use of faith in the reception of the blessed sacrament? and in what sense, and to what purposes, and with what truth it is said that in the holy sacrament we receive Christ by faith? HOW MUCH EVERY MAN IS BOUND TO BELIEVE OF THIS MYSTERY. IF I should follow the usual opinions, I should say that to this preparatory faith it is necessary to believe all the niceties and mysteriousness of the blessed sacrament. Men have introduced new opinions and turned the key in this lock so often till it cannot be either opened or shut, and they have unravelled the clue so long till they have entangled it; and not only reason is made blind by staring at what she never can perceive, but the whole article of the sacrament is made an objection and temptation even to faith itself; and such things are taught by some churches and some schools of learning, which no philosophy did ever teach, no religion did ever reveal, no prophet ever preach, and which no faith ever can receive: I mean it in the prodigious article of Transubstantiation, which I am not here to confute, but to reprove upon practical considerations; and to consider those things that may make us better, and not strive to prevail in disputation. That therefore we may know the proper offices of faith in the believing what relates to the holy sacrament, I shall describe it in several propositions. 1. It cannot be the duty of faith to believe any thing against our sense; what we see and taste to be bread, what we see and taste and smell to be wine, no faith can engage us to believe the contrary. For by our senses christianity itself, and some of the greatest articles of our belief, were known by them who from that evidence conveyed them to us by their testimony; and if the perception of sense were [1 John i. 1-3.] r Vide Real presence per totum. not finally to be relied upon, miracles could never be a demonstration, nor any strange event prove an unknown proposition: for the miracle can never prove the article, unless our eyes or hands approve the miracle; and the divinity of Christ's person, and His mission and His power could never have been proved by the resurrection, but that the resurrection was certain and evident to the eyes and hands of so many witnesses. Thus Christ to His apostles proved Himself to be no spirit, by exposing His flesh and bones to be felt; and He wrought faith in S. Thomas by his fingers' ends; the wounds that he saw and felt were the demonstrations of his faith and in the primitive church the Valentinians and Marcionites who said Christ's body was fantastical, were confuted by no other argument but of sense. For sense is the evidence of the simple and the confirmation of the wise, it can confute all pretences, and reprove all deceitful subtilties; it turns opinion into knowledge, and doubts into certainty; it is the first endearment of love, and the supply of all understanding; from what we see without, we know what to believe within, and no demonstration in the world can be greater than the evidence of sense. Our senses are the great arguments of virtue and vice; and if it be not safe to rely upon that evidence we cannot tell what pleasure and pain is; and a man that is born blind may as well have the true idea of colours, as we could have of pain, if our senses could not tell us certainly; and all those arguments from heaven by which God prevails upon all the world, as oracles, and Urim and Thummim, and still voices, and loud thunders, and the daughter of a voice, and messages from above, and prophets on earth, and lights and angels, all were nothing; for faith could not come by hearing, if our hearing might be illusion. That therefore which all the world relies upon for their whole religion, that which to all the world is the great means and instrument of the glorification of God, even our seeing of the works of God, and eating His provisions, and beholding His light, that which is the great ministry of life, and the conduit of good and evil to us, we may rely upon for this article of the sacrament: what our faith relies upon in the whole, she may not contradict in this. Tertullian" said that "it is (not only unreasonable but) unlawful to contradict the testimony of our sense; lest the same question be made of Christ himself; lest it be suspected that He also might be deceived when He heard His Father's voice from heaven." That therefore which we see upon our altars and tables, that which the priest handles, that which the communicant does taste, is bread and wine; our senses tell us that it is so, and therefore faith cannot be enjoined to believe it not to be so. Faith gives a new light to the soul, but it does not put our eyes out; and what God hath given us in our nature could never be intended as a snare to religion, or engage us to believe a lie. Faith sees more in the t [See vol. v. p. 623.] ་་ [De anima, cap. xvii. p. 276.] See Real presence, sect. x. sacrament than the eye does, and tastes more than the tongue does, but nothing against it: and as God hath not two wills contradictory to each other, so neither hath He given us two notices and perceptions of objects, whereof the one is affirmative and the other negative of the same thing. 2. Whatsoever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to believe. For although reason is not the positive and affirmative measures of our faith, and God can do more than we can understand, and our faith ought to be larger than our reason, and take something into her heart that reason can never take into her eye; yet in all our creed there can be nothing against reason. If true reason justly contradicts an article, it is not of the household of faith". In this there is no difficulty but that in practice we take care that we do not call that reason which is not so: for although a man's reason is a right judge, yet it ought not to pass sentence in an enquiry of faith until all the information be brought in; all that is within and all that is without, all that is above and all that is below, all that concerns it in experience and all that concerns it in act, whatsoever is of pertinent observation and whatsoever is revealed. For else reason may argue very well, and yet conclude falsely; it may conclude well in logic, and yet infer a false proposition in theology; but when our judge is fully and truly informed in all that where she is to make her judgment, we may safely follow it, whithersoever she invites us. If therefore any society of men calls upon us to believe in our religion what is false in our experience, to affirm that to be done which we know is impossible it ever can be done, to wink hard that we may see the better, to be unreasonable men that we offer to God a reasonable sacrifice, they make religion so to be seated in the will, that our understanding will be useless and can never minister to it. But as he that shuts the eye hard and with violence curls the eyelid, forces a fantastic fire from the crystalline humour, and espies a light that never shines, and sees thousands of little fires that never burn: so is he that blinds the eye of his reason and pretends to see by an eye of faith; he makes little images of notion, and some atoms dance before him, but he is not guided by the light, nor instructed by the proposition; but sees like a man in his sleep, and grows as much the wiser as the man that dreamt of a lycanthropy, and was for ever after wisely wary not to come near a river. He that speaks against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain no man serves God with a good conscience that serves Him against his reason. For though in many cases reason must submit to faith, that is, natural reason must submit to supernatural, and the imperfect informations of art to the per See this largely discoursed of in the Rule of Conscience, lib. i. chap. 2. rule 3. fect revelations of God; yet in no case can true reason and a right faith oppose each other: and therefore in the article of the sacrament, the impossible affirmatives concerning transubstantiation, because they are against all the reason of the world, can never be any part of the faith of God. ; 3. Whatsoever is matter of curiosity, that our faith is not obliged to believe or to confess. For the faith of a Christian is pure as light, plain as a commandment, easy as children's lessons: it is not given to puzzle the understanding but to instruct it; it brings clarity to it, not darkness and obscurity. Our faith in this sacrament is not obliged to enquirex or to tell how the holy bread can feed the soul, or the calice purify our spirits; how Christ is united to us, and yet we remain imperfect even then when we are all one with Him that is perfect. There is no want of faith though we do not understand the secret manner how Christ is really present, and yet this reality be no other but a reality of event and positive effect though we know not that 'sacramental' is more than 'figurative,' and yet not so much as. 'natural,' but greater in another kind. It is not a duty of our faith to discern how Christ's body is broken into ten thousand pieces and yet remains whole at the same time; or how a body is present by faith only, when it is naturally absent, and yet faith ought to believe things to be as they are, and not to make them what of themselves they are not. We need not to be amazed concerning our faith, when our over-busy reason is amazed in the article; and our faith is not defective though we confess we do not understand how Christ's body is there incorporeally, that is, a body after the manner of a spirit; or though we cannot apprehend how the symbols should make the grace presential, and yet that the grace of God in the receiver can make the symbols operative and energetical. The faith that is required of those who come to the holy communion is of what is revealed plainly, and taught usefully; what sets devotion forward, not what ministers to curiosity; that which the good and the plain, the easy and the simple man can understand. For if thou canst not understand the reciprocations and pulses of thy own arteries, the motion of thy blood, the seat of thy memory, the rule of thy dreams, the manner of digestion, the disease of thy bowels, and the distempers of thy spleen, things that thou bearest about thee, that cause to thee pain and sorrow; it is not to be expected that thou shouldest understand the secrets of God, the causes of His will, the impulses of His grace, the manner of His sacraments, and the economy of His spirit. God's works are secret, and His words Ubi ad profunditatem sacramento- caligavit subtilitas.-S. Cyprian. [pseurum ventum est, omnis Platonicorum do-Cypr.] de Spir. S. [append. p. 61.] J exigua est vis Humani ingenii, tantoque angusta labori: Quippe minor natura aciem si intendere tentet are deep, and His dispensations mysterious, and therefore too high for thy understanding. S. Gregory Nazianzen says of God, "The more you think you comprehend of Him in your understanding, the less He is comprehended;" like the sand of the glass, which the harder you grasp the less you can retain; or like the sand of the sea, which you can never number; but by going about it, you are confounded, and by doing something of it, you make it impossible to do the rest. Curious enquiries are like the contentions of Protogenes and Apelles, who should draw the smallest line; and after two or three essays they left this monument of their art, that they drew three lines so curiously that they were scarcely to be discerned. And therefore since faith is not concerned in intrigues and hard questions, it were very well if the sacrament itself were not disguised, and charity disordered by that which is not a help but a temptation to faith itself. In the holy communion we must retain an undoubted faith, but not enquire after what manner the secrets of God are appointed. Whether it be or no, that is the object of faith to enquire, and to accept accordingly: what it is, he that is to teach others and speaks mysteries may modestly dispute: but how it is, nothing but curiosity will look after. The Egyptians used to say, that unknown darkness is the first principle of the world; not meaning that darkness was before light; but by darkness they mean God, as Damascius the Platonist rightly observes; saying, "This darkness or obscurity is the beginning of every intellectual being, and every sacramental action and therefore in their ceremonies they usually made three acclamations to the unknown darkness;"" that is, to God, whose secrets are pervious to no eye, whose dwelling is in a light that is not to be discerned, whose mysteries are not to be understood by us, and whose sacraments are objects of faith and wonder, but not to be disordered by the mistaking, undiscerning eye of people that are curious to ask after what they shall never understand. : Faith is oftentimes safer in her ignorance than in busy questions; and to enquire after the manner of what God hath plainly and simply Quis dubitet victo fragilem lassescere visu, Prudent. in Symmach. 1. ii. [lin. 97.-tom. ii. p. 773.] • Υποχωρεῖ ἀεὶ τοσοῦτον, ὅσον καταλaußáverai.—Orat. i. [vid. orat. xxviii. cap. 12.-tom. i. P. 504 E.] a [Plin., nat. hist. lib. xxxv. cap. 36. n. 11.-tom. ii. p. 695] • Oportet igitur nos in sumptionibus divinorum mysteriorum indubitatam retinere fidem et non quærere quo pacto. S. Bernardus. [see vol. vi. p. 12.]—An sit, fidei est inquirere; quid sit, philosophi: quomodo sit, curiosi. • Πρώτην ἀρχὴν νομίζουσι, . . σκότος ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν νόησιν, . . σκότος ἄγνωστον, τρὶς τοῦτο ἐπιφημίζοντες. [Quæstt. de primis princip. vid. p. 138. ed. Kopp, 8vo. Francof. ad Mon. 1826.] d Multa etenim bene tecta latent, nescitaque prosunt, Prosper, advers. ingrat. c. xxxv. [p. 109 B.] |