Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/301

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UNBELIEF IN ERROR NOT THE ROAD TO TRUTH.
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annexed the penalty that it should never lead to entire or full truth. He abandoned the Popish doctrine of transubstantiation; but having lost the link, which bound him to the old Catholic truth of direct spiritual influence, conveyed through the medium of the Sacraments, they became to him mere signs or symbols. He had in his mind constantly the two truths, that the Sacraments, could not in themselves convey grace, and that Christ alone was the author of all grace and spiritual influence, and he could not find the central point, wherein the old Catholic doctrine might yet hold good with both these truths; namely, that Christ conveyed His grace through His Sacraments. Here his rationalistic tendency interfered. He could understand, how whatever strengthened faith, was a mean of greater grace: and also, how faith might be strengthened by these external symbols, as well as by preaching,—by the visible announcement, as well as by spoken word—and for this he could refer to experience[1]: but he could

    his own incredulity, that it might not presume to make its murmers heard; although the citadel of faith never in such degree yielded to us, that any one could without hypocrisy believe that they in that bread ate any thing of that sort which we dreamed of." (Subsidium de Eucharistia, 0pp. t. ii. f. 255.) And again at the beginning of the same work, quoted also by Hospinian, Hist. Sacram. P. ii. p. 46, "We have been of this opinion of the Eucharist for more years than it now suits to say." Hospinian would defend this by a parallel history of Luther: the history is this.—"M. A. Musa once heavily complained to Luther, and mourned, that he himself could not believe what he taught others: to whom Luther said, 'God be praised that what befell me did not befall me alone.' Musa forgot not this consolation his whole life through." But the difference is immense between this earnest burst of feeling, wrung from Luther by the sight of similar suffering, and implying that he had hitherto thought himself therein a sinner more than other men, and the coarse and insulting statement of Zuingli of their common unbelief.

  1. Thus, against the theory that the Sacraments were signs, which, while they took place, assured a man of that which takes place within, he says, "Yet in vain have they invented this: as if, while a man is dipped in water, any thing took place in him, which he could not by any means know, unless he were at the same time bathed with water. Let not any one be offended, but they know not what faith is, or how it has its birth in man." De vera et falsa relig. 0pp. t, 2. f. 198.