BY M. D. TALBOT. 🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂🕂
LETTER I. TO THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER. cont.
I shall take this opportunity of refuting a calumny of an eminent Protestant Divine, who says, " Let the Papists go on with their dabitur, and eifundetur—shall be given, shall be shed; and it fits their notion well enough who believe that the same Body and Blood was substantially offered in the Eucharist, and on the Cross; but let Protestants stick close— to the present, giving, shedding, &c." This, my Lord Bishop, I beg leave to say, is a very ignorant or wilful misrepresentation. For Catholics are so fixed in their persuasion, that those words are to be taken in the present tense, and are therefore a proof of Christ's actually offering, giving, or sacrificing his Body, that he might have been satisfied of their opinion from Commentators, Controvertists, School Divines, and Writers of Spiritual Books.
I will be content to cite one only of each. Maldonatus, upon the words, " This is my Blood," (St. Matt, xxvi.) expressly refutes Protestants for explicating the words so as to exclude the present signification. Bellarmin, on the Mass, (Lib. 1, cap. 12,) not only proves that sense, and refutes Kemnitius's objections to the contrary, but also adds, that all these senses, is shed now, shall be shed on the Cross, and shall be shed in the Sacrifice, hereafter to be repeated in the Church, are all true, and none of them to be denied, but especially not the first, as being the most literal. Among School-men, (Coninck de Sacramentts, Tom. I,p. 83, Dub. 2, Num. 38,) having asserted Christ's sacrificing from the words, is given, is shed, adds, Heretics answer that the present tense is put for the future, and that in the Vulgata and in the Canon of the Mass, it is, shall be shed. To this he replies, that the words of Christ in their first and immediate signification (primo et per se) import the present actual immolating of his Body and Blood; though the actual immolating being intended by Christ as a representation of the future immolating on the Cross, the Church has thought fit to retain the reading of the Vulgata in the future tense, effundetur, as it is also read by St. Cyprian and others.
Kicheome, in a spiritual book, (for it is rather of that than of the controversial nature,) under the title of " Holy Pictures of the mystical Figures of the Eucharist," is so full and clear upon this point, that I will cite at large the sixth section of the Fourteenth Picture, p. 271, of the English Translation, printed Anno 1619.
"When our Saviour," he says, " made his Body present in uttering these words, this is my Body, in the same instant he offered it to his eternal Father in an unbloody sacrifice, after the form of Melchisedech, and forthwith he gave it to his Apostles in the Sacrament under the same form. This is the reason that having said, This is my Body, he addeth, given for you, now given and broken, and which shall be hereafter given and broken in the same manner, even to the end of the world, in remembrance of the unbloody sacrifice which tomorrow I will offer for you, once for all upon the Cross. So as our Saviour made not his Body only present, but present under the form of Bread, giving it a being of food, a dead being, albeit that it was in itself ever living; even as making himself man, his Divinity took a body, and a mortal being, and endured death in that body, albeit the Divinity being always immortal, and endured nothing, as we have before declared. He made himself by reason of the dead species, present as dead, and represented himself as a victim. And it imports not, as has been said before, that our Saviour uttereth no words of oblation, expressly saying, my Father, I offer thee this Body. The manner after which he makes himself present as a victim, expressed sufficiently that he offered himself.
LETTER I. TO THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER. cont.
I shall take this opportunity of refuting a calumny of an eminent Protestant Divine, who says, " Let the Papists go on with their dabitur, and eifundetur—shall be given, shall be shed; and it fits their notion well enough who believe that the same Body and Blood was substantially offered in the Eucharist, and on the Cross; but let Protestants stick close— to the present, giving, shedding, &c." This, my Lord Bishop, I beg leave to say, is a very ignorant or wilful misrepresentation. For Catholics are so fixed in their persuasion, that those words are to be taken in the present tense, and are therefore a proof of Christ's actually offering, giving, or sacrificing his Body, that he might have been satisfied of their opinion from Commentators, Controvertists, School Divines, and Writers of Spiritual Books.
I will be content to cite one only of each. Maldonatus, upon the words, " This is my Blood," (St. Matt, xxvi.) expressly refutes Protestants for explicating the words so as to exclude the present signification. Bellarmin, on the Mass, (Lib. 1, cap. 12,) not only proves that sense, and refutes Kemnitius's objections to the contrary, but also adds, that all these senses, is shed now, shall be shed on the Cross, and shall be shed in the Sacrifice, hereafter to be repeated in the Church, are all true, and none of them to be denied, but especially not the first, as being the most literal. Among School-men, (Coninck de Sacramentts, Tom. I,p. 83, Dub. 2, Num. 38,) having asserted Christ's sacrificing from the words, is given, is shed, adds, Heretics answer that the present tense is put for the future, and that in the Vulgata and in the Canon of the Mass, it is, shall be shed. To this he replies, that the words of Christ in their first and immediate signification (primo et per se) import the present actual immolating of his Body and Blood; though the actual immolating being intended by Christ as a representation of the future immolating on the Cross, the Church has thought fit to retain the reading of the Vulgata in the future tense, effundetur, as it is also read by St. Cyprian and others.
Kicheome, in a spiritual book, (for it is rather of that than of the controversial nature,) under the title of " Holy Pictures of the mystical Figures of the Eucharist," is so full and clear upon this point, that I will cite at large the sixth section of the Fourteenth Picture, p. 271, of the English Translation, printed Anno 1619.
"When our Saviour," he says, " made his Body present in uttering these words, this is my Body, in the same instant he offered it to his eternal Father in an unbloody sacrifice, after the form of Melchisedech, and forthwith he gave it to his Apostles in the Sacrament under the same form. This is the reason that having said, This is my Body, he addeth, given for you, now given and broken, and which shall be hereafter given and broken in the same manner, even to the end of the world, in remembrance of the unbloody sacrifice which tomorrow I will offer for you, once for all upon the Cross. So as our Saviour made not his Body only present, but present under the form of Bread, giving it a being of food, a dead being, albeit that it was in itself ever living; even as making himself man, his Divinity took a body, and a mortal being, and endured death in that body, albeit the Divinity being always immortal, and endured nothing, as we have before declared. He made himself by reason of the dead species, present as dead, and represented himself as a victim. And it imports not, as has been said before, that our Saviour uttereth no words of oblation, expressly saying, my Father, I offer thee this Body. The manner after which he makes himself present as a victim, expressed sufficiently that he offered himself.
