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into His Body and Blood. But Protestants who scorn to play the sophisters, interpret these and the like passages of the Fathers, with candour and ingenuity, (as it is most fitting they should.) For the expressions of Preachers, which often have something of a paradox, must not be taken according to that harsher sound wherewith they at first strike the auditor's ears. The Fathers spake not of any transubstantiated bread, but of the mystical and consecrated, when they used those sorts of expressions; and that for these reasons; 1. That they might extol and amplify the dignity of this mystery, which all true Christians acknowledge to be very great and peerless. 2. That communicants might not rest in the outward Elements, but seriously consider the thing represented, whereof they are most certainly made partakers, if they be worthy receivers. 3. And lastly, that they might approach so great a mystery with the more zeal, reverence, and devotion. And that those hyperbolic expressions are thus to be understood, the Fathers themselves teach clearly enough, when they come to interpret them.
5. Lastly, being the same holy Fathers who, (as the manner is to discourse of Sacraments,) speak sometimes of the Bread and Wine in the Lord's Supper, as if they were the very Body and Blood of Christ, do also very often call them types, elements, signs, the figure of the Body and Blood of Christ; from hence it appears most manifestly, that they were of the Protestants, and not of the Papists' opinion. For we can without prejudice to what we believe of the Sacrament, use those former expressions which the Papists believe, do most favour them, if they be understood, as they ought to be, sacramentally. But the latter none can use, but he must thereby overthrow the groundless doctrine of Transubstantiation; these two, the Bread is transubstantiated into the Body, and the Bread also is the type, the sign, the figure of the Body of Christ, being wholly inconsistent. For it is impossible that a thing that loseth its being should yet be the sign and representation of another; neither can any thing be the type and the sign of itself.
But if without admitting of a sacramental sense the words be used too rigorously, nothing but this will follow; that the Bread and Wine are really and properly the very Body and Blood of Christ, which they themselves disown, that hold Transubstantiation. Therefore in this change, it is not a newness of sub-
