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We will therefore briefly examine them, that it may yet more fully appear that Antiquity and all Fathers did not in the least favour the new tenet of Transubstantiation; but that, that true doctrine which I have set down in the beginning of this book, was constantly owned and preserved in the Church of Christ.
Now, almost all that they produce out of the Fathers will be conveniently reduced to certain heads, that we may not be too tedious in answering each testimony by itself.
1. To the first head belong those that call the Eucharist the Body and Blood of Christ. But I answer, those Fathers explain themselves in many places, and interpret those their expressions in such a manner, that they must be understood in a mystic and spiritual sense, in that Sacraments usually take the names of those things they represent, because of that resemblance which they have with them; not by the reality of the thing, but by the signification of the mystery; as we have been shown before out of St Austin and others. For nobody can deny, but that the things that are seen are signs and figures, and those that are not seen, the Body and Blood of Christ. And that therefore the nature of this mystery is such, that when we receive the Bread and Wine, we also together with them receive at the same time the Body and Blood of Christ, which, in the celebration of the holy Eucharist, are as truly given as they are represented. Hence came into the Church this manner of speaking, 'The consecrated Bread is Christ's Body.'
2. We put in the second rank those places that say, that the Bishops and Priests make the Body of Christ with the sacred words of their mouth, as St. Hierom speaks in his Epistle to Heliodorus, and St. Ambrose, and others. To this I say, that at the prayer and blessing of the Priest, the common bread is made Sacramental Bread, which, when broken and eaten, is the Communion of the Body of Christ, and therefore may well be called so, sacramentally. For the Bread, (as I have often said before,) doth not only represent the Body of our Lord, but also being received, we are truly made partakers of that precious Body. For so saith St. Hierom; "The Body and Blood of Christ is made at the prayer of the Priest;" that is, the Element is so qualified, that being received it becomes the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, which it could not without the preceding prayers. The Greeks call this, "To prepare and to consecrate the Body of the Lord." As St Chrysostom saith well; "These are not the works of man's
