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stance, but of use and virtue that is produced; which yet the Fathers acknowledged with us, to be wonderful, supernatural, and proper only to God's Omnipotency; for that earthly and corruptible meat cannot become to us a spiritual and heavenly, the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, without God's especial power and operation. And whereas it is far above philosophy and human reason, that Christ from Heaven, (where alone He is locally,) should reach down to us the divine virtue of His Flesh, so that we are made one body with Him; therefore it is as necessary as it is reasonable, that the Fathers should tell us, that we ought with singleness of heart to believe the Son of God, when He saith, This is My Body; and that we ought not to measure this high and holy mystery by our narrow conceptions, or by the course of nature. For it is more acceptable to God with an humble simplicity of faith to reverence and embrace the words of Christ, than to wrest them violently to a strange and improper sense, and with curiosity and presumption to determine what exceeds the capacity of men and Angels.
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CHAPTER VII.
History of the rise of the Romish Doctrine of Transubstantiation.
We have proved it before, that the leprosy of Transubstantiation did not begin to spread over the body of the Church in a thousand years after Christ. But at last the thousand years being expired, and Satan loosed out of his prison, to go and deceive the nations, and compass the camp of the Saints about, then, to the great damage of Christian peace and religion, they began here and there to dispute against the clear, constant, and universal consent of the Fathers, and to maintain the new-started opinion. It is known to them that understand History, what manner of times were then, and what were those Bishops who then governed the Church of Rome; Sylvester II. John XIX. and XX. Sergius IV. Benedictus VIII. John XXI. Benedict IX. Sylvester III. Gregory VI. Damasus II. Leo IX. Nicholas II.
