A Candid Inquiry into the Controversies among Evangelicals

Nazianzen's cry for peace and the apostolic charge to cherish Protestant church peace§1

1Preface — Peaceful and Apologetic. In the name of the Lord.

Preface to the Kind Reader.

With what sighs Gregory Nazianzen — most eloquent of the Greek Fathers after Chrysostom — once panted for Peace, pouring out these words in the tenth of his Orations (which is the third On Peace): O dear Peace, you who are a good praised by all, yet kept by few! Why, I ask, have you deserted us for so long already? When will you return to us?

By the same vows and complaints — or ones like them — the Ecclesiastical Peace of the Evangelicals, long and deeply desired by all who profess the Truth in Charity, comes to be pursued by me as well in this present season, and with even greater right. For a huge throng that boasts rashly enough of the Gospel of Peace we daily find not only despising and utterly neglecting that peace (a charge that, to our heavy grief, fits even some among the Reformed), but moreover harassing certain Lutherans — who with proud and dictatorial brow claim plain Universal Orthodoxy for themselves alone and their like — with futile and sometimes infamous scenes and with the scrapings of scurrilous satires and infamous pamphlets, and ignominiously spitting even on the bare name of this Peace, as if the sound itself struck fear, with mocking words

So much so that if ever, now especially — though many nonetheless are wiser — all who love God in Christ, the supreme Prince of Christian Peace, must set themselves with steadfast mind to the promotion and defense of that Peace, and must repeat again and again, and commend again and again to each and every Evangelical of both parties, that apostolic charge: If therefore there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or from empty glory, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:1-4).

Called at Frankfurt an der Oder in 1679 to weigh controversies only by Scripture toward Protestant peace§2

Prefatio §II: From the 1687 Tract on Ecclesiastical Peace to Critica Concionatoria and the Scultetus irenic exchange§3

Prefatio §II: The 1703 threefold Pacific Writing, Lutheran approvals, and the Hexads' hostile reception§4

4And the more willingly did I prescribe this quiet acquiescence to myself, because, stirred by this same man, I was meditating other Pacific Writings, from which it would be easy for him and for other theologians of the Lutheran party to judge that the Protestant controversies had hitherto been at least unduly multiplied and exaggerated (not to say anything heavier) by certain doctors of a quarrelsome temper especially, since on the Foundation of the Faith both parties entirely agree — of which I was already then most fully convinced in conscience, and afterward more and more fully confirmed; and my whole reply to be rendered to the most distinguished Scultetus would have aimed solely at proving that very point.

Exactly according to the counsel just set out, there came forth in the year 1703 a twofold Pacific Writing: one of them, exposing Dogmatically the Consensus of Lutherans and Reformed in the Foundations of the Faith; the other, Paradigmatically, through the example of the Consensus of Sandomierz, recommending Protestant Union; and a little later a Third supervened, On the Nature and Character of the Union to Be Kept, with an annexed most gentle Response — as was appropriate — to the judgment of a certain most upright Lutheran doctor concerning the first of those three little tracts of mine, a doctor who at last in this very year has publicly professed his most celebrated name.

And although all these Three Writings of mine were also approved by the ballot of other most excellent Lutheran doctors besides the most learned Leipzig reviewers of March 1705 (as the most distinguished Cap. Calvor, known even among foreigners, most recently reports in the latest and most praised Consultation he has written On Entering into Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants, p. 439, himself also voting for the same, both in what immediately precedes and elsewhere, especially pp. 30 and 31 of his Appendix — I pass over in silence for now Johann Fabricius, distinguished alike in theological knowledge and prudence, both in his most clear-sighted Consideration of his Controversies and in his most modest Defense of that Consideration);

yet there have not been wanting others also — especially after those three writings, all pertaining to the Fundamental Consensus of Protestants, had been followed by certain most gentle Hexads of mine, published in Academic fashion and submitted to public inquiry, merely setting out the Protestant Dissensus Beyond-the-Fundamentals — who, though never injured by me with so much as a word, either directly or indirectly through others' sides, were nonetheless so stirred with passion and stung by the gadfly of anger and envy that they rushed upon me and upon all my writings indiscriminately, not once or twice but in almost countless turns and ways, without measure or end, so that they must seem to have abstained from no manner of injury whatever.

Prefatio: Three Crimina charged — Supper consensus, oral manducation as cannibalism, and Sandomierz cruelty§5

Part I Protheoria: Controversies with Augsburg Confession theologians — six shared Evangelical fundamentals§6

Part I Protheoria: Peace attempts from Marburg to Cassel, and Cassel's consensus on essentials§7

7This business of Evangelical Consociation or Tolerance was usefully attempted at times, and is certainly to be attempted as a duty: first in the Marburg Colloquy, A.D. 1529, between Luther and Zwingli and those of another opinion — the Most Serene Landgrave of Hesse promoting pious Concord as far as in him lay, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Bucer, Jonas, A. Osiander, and others also being present — with limited success, Luther with his own pressing too hard that Christ is corporally present in the Eucharist. Afterward the business was resumed in the Wittenberg Convention, A.D. 1536, Bucer and Capito then promoting it; a peace not destined to last while Luther lived, resting on Bucer's rather ambiguous Confession, Melanchthon writing the Formula. The same matter was acted, and more happily, in the Convention of Sandomierz, A.D. 1570, confirming a covenant among the associates of the Augsburg, Bohemian, and Helvetic Confessions.

Worthy of due praises in my judgment is the Cassel Convention, under the auspices of Wilhelm VI, Landgrave of Hesse, between the Marburg and Rinteln theologians, in the year 1661. There both sides agreed, in best faith, afterward repeated and confirmed, both in general concerning Consensus in the Essentials and the manner of preserving it, and in particular concerning the several Articles still in controversy.

And in general those venerable men pronounced on both sides: 1. That the Evangelicals agree on the Foundation of Faith and Salvation; that the controversial questions do not at all touch that Foundation, much less remove or overturn it; and that neither party thereafter, because of some difference, should cut the other off from fellowship or condemn them, and so on. 2. That for promoting that Consensus the remaining controversies ought either not to be treated in the churches from the pulpit, or certainly with the utmost modesty if necessity plainly required it — with no mention of dissenters, no harshness of words, no forced consequences, but only the declaration of truth from Scripture.

In particular, as to the Article of the Holy Supper, both Parties agreed that the Spiritual manducation of Christ's Body is altogether necessary to salvation and to the saving use of the Sacrament; and that otherwise the dissent between them as to the necessity of fraction and as to the oral manducation of Christ's Body, even by the mouth of an Unbeliever, is not such as would overturn the foundation of Salvation or shake the substance of the Sacrament. As to the Articles of Predestination, Grace, and Free Choice, they agreed: that after man's fall there are no residual powers left in him for spiritual good; that the whole business of human salvation depends on the Divine will, good pleasure, and grace; and that damnation is decreed to be inflicted on no one except because of sins. Controversies remained, but to be placed outside the census of fundamentals.

Prefatio: Why the three Crimina are cited — not to litigate, but to show the necessity of one defense§8

Prefatio Crimina I prior part: Fundamental Supper consensus defended from Reformed confessions and doctors§9

Prefatio Crimina I posterior J.VI: The Beza–Calvin heaven-from-earth charge answered from the Scultetus letter§10

10J. VI.

The POSTERIOR PART of the FIRST CRIMINATION — by which the accuser said I had written that Christ's Body is farther distant from the Holy Supper and from the blessed bread of the Holy Supper than the heaven of heavens is from the earth — is convicted of the most open falsehood by the mere repetition of my own words by which I am judged to have so written. For thus the words of my Letter written to Scultetus run:

I for my part take it upon myself in turn to require and solicit you, most distinguished Scultetus — you who have solicited me about many things and obtained my assent — that both you and the venerable Calixtus may judge the sincere and clear mind of the Reformed in this cause to be that which one of you adduced from blessed Calvin's Institutes, Book IV, chapter 17, section 9, in these words: Whatever can serve to express the true and Substantial Communication of the Lord's Body and Blood, which is exhibited to the Faithful by the Sacred Symbols of the Supper, I gladly receive — and that in such a way that they are understood to perceive it not with imagination alone or the intelligence of the mind, but to enjoy it in very deed as food of eternal life. Reconcile the harder voice of Calvin commonly Beza, thrust out precipitately in the Consensus with the Zurichers as Doctor Calixtus says — that the Body and Blood of our Savior are at that time, when the Sacred Eucharist is administered, distant from us by as great an interval of places as heaven is situated from earth — with the immediately recited words of the same Calvin, so that there he may be held to have spoken of the Crucified Body of Christ, and here of the Glorious. The Glorious, or Glorified, Body of Christ, according to the Sentence of Calvin and the Reformed, is in the heavens, sitting there at the right hand of the Father, to return thence to judge the living and the dead; but the Crucified Body of Christ is most present in the Eucharist. For this is the sincere and clear Sentence of the Reformed concerning the Lord's Supper which I dare to weigh in the name of them all: that All Believers who receive and manducate the blessed Bread receive and manducate the Crucified Body of Christ; and that the same account holds of the consecrated Wine; but that the Mode by which it comes about that Christ's crucified Body and His shed Blood are really present to Believers in the Sacred Supper and are in very deed received, eaten, and drunk by them, we do not know, and that that Mode is Hyperphysical.

Did I then truly assert that Christ's Body is farther distant from the Holy Supper and the blessed bread of the Holy Supper than the heaven of heavens is from the terraqueous globe? When, namely, I asserted: (1) that the Crucified Body of Christ is most present in the Supper; (2) that this is the sincere and clear Sentence of the Reformed concerning the Lord's Supper — that All Believers who receive and manducate the blessed bread receive and manducate Christ's crucified Body, and that the same account holds of the consecrated wine; (3) that the Mode alone by which it comes about that Christ's crucified Body and His shed Blood are really present to Believers in the Holy Supper, and are in very deed received, eaten, and drunk by them, we do not know; and that that Mode is Hyperphysical.

Let it be permitted to add now: even if perhaps the Lutheran Doctors universally all hold which nevertheless I would somewhat doubt that Christ's Body which is now present in the Supper is Christ's glorified Body, and therefore, as to qualities, other than that which was present to the disciples in the first Supper — that is, humbled and near to Crucifixion, or about to be crucified — called by Christ Himself given didomenon (Luke 22:19), and by Paul broken klomenon (1 Corinthians 11:24) — contrary to what I hold, who have asserted that Christ's Body, as crucified more than as glorified, is present in the Holy Supper Substantialiter nevertheless, though Spiritualiter; by that very fact, because I most clearly maintained in one and the same place that Christ's crucified Body, as crucified, is present in its Substance Spiritually, that is, and therefore Sacramentally in every Holy Supper — by what face, I ask, can I be said to have opined that Christ's Body is farther distant from the blessed bread of the Holy Supper than the heaven of heavens from the terraqueous globe? Nor does it obstruct that I meanwhile believe, led by the Apostles' Creed, that Christ's Body ascended into heaven, sits there at the right hand of God the Father, and will someday return thence to judge the living and the dead. For I believe all this, with very many Lutherans, concerning the Corporal, Local, and Dimensional Presence of Christ's Body in Heaven, having never denied the Spiritual and therefore Sacramental Presence of the same Body of Christ in the Holy Supper, but most sincerely, with God granting, ready to confess it to the last breath of life.

Prefatio Crimina II J.VII opening: The anthropophagy charge answered from the Disputation on the Supper§11

Prefatio Crimina II remainder: Anthropophagy reductio, Capernaism, and the reverse charge of making God author of sin§12

Prefatio Crimina III §.VIII opening: The Sandomierz cruelty charge and the Synod's clash with a single contradictor§13

13§. VIII.

But we hasten on to the third and greatest of all the accusations — belonging almost solely to my first and most vehement accuser — who, alas!, indulges too much his envy and his unjust and tumultuous zeal, by which he is rather often carried off into various things less becoming a Christian man, especially a theologian, so that not seldom he appears to have laid down his shield even in the most manifest distortions. He takes it ill that I set forth and recommended the Sandomierz Consensus as an Example of the Ecclesiastical Union of Evangelicals — than which none more excellent is given, and by which the Polish Evangelicals once coalesced so closely that they all but held every sacred thing in common, and neither Reformed living among Lutherans nor Lutherans living among Reformed feared, when occasion was given, to use and enjoy one another's sacred Sermons and Administrations of the Sacraments, while for the rest they proposed to one another, where need was, the most modest discriminations of beyond-fundamental Doctrines, without any party detractions, through charitable informations and conferences — persisting most amicably in such Consociation for more than half a century (as we proved by a just computation of the time from when the Consensus began to when it was afterward disrupted by certain well-known Firebrands, in the Preface vindicating the Consensus and prefixed to its repeated Edition).

Accordingly, that he might hurt me, the Adversary arraigns both the Sandomierz Consensus and me its Herald as guilty of utterly monstrous Cruelty and Tyranny, on this sole ground: that when a certain Contradictor interposed against this Consensus — and after the Synod had dealt with him both publicly and privately, as one reclaiming against the Consensus and unwilling to foster Concord with the other Churches — a certain tumult arose (as Hartknoch reports), and he experienced the threats of a certain Polish Politician, made with the scimitar after the manner of the Nation.

Yet even without my reminding him, anyone sufficiently understands that nothing can fall away from or be detracted from the Consensus of so many Evangelical Churches, unanimously entered, and from its just praises, merely because one sole Pastor reclaimed against it; nor can the whole Synod, otherwise peaceably agreeing, justly be charged with cruelty because, when a large enough handle had been given by the obstinate contradiction of one man shouting against all, some one of the Nobles — especially of the Poles, among whom liberty sometimes degenerates into Polish license — threatened him with the scimitar beyond the mind and will of the Synod.

Prefatio Crimina III defense: Ignorance of the threat, praise for Consensus itself, and abhorrence of violence§14

14Nevertheless (that, for Conscience before God Most High who searches hearts and kidneys, I may here defend even my innocence in the face of the whole Protestant Church) this must be said by me in this place:

(1.) That concerning that threatening accident which happened in the Sandomierz Synod, I knew nothing before I was preparing an Edition of that Consensus and prefacing it; nor had I read Hartknoch's History so attentively as to take account of that threatening deed — and that because, in vindicating the Sandomierz Consensus, I had to dispute not against Hartknoch, a mere Historian, but against Hornbeck's Lutheran theological Opponent, who in particular neither mentions those threats nor alleges Hartknoch or his Ecclesiastical History in a single word. Nor, if I had read and observed the fact, could I have stood safely enough on the man's credit (since more than once he has been caught by others writing from mere affections and disordered love of his Sect); nor, even if I had been free to rest securely on that Man's relations, would I have needed to attend to that accidental deed in this place, since — that very thing being left intact, posited, and even conceded — it would still remain open to me for the rest to honor the Sandomierz Consensus with due praises for many other excellent things. Just as it is also praiseworthy on this account: that by the unanimous votes of both Evangelical Parties it brought it about that Gericius, the importunate Disturber of the Consensus, was suspended from his office — Peace no less than Truth commanding him — and was also to be coerced by other Ecclesiastical penalties. So Hartknoch (remained of his opinion, and because he would not let himself be moved either by entreaty or by threatening words, he was, with the consent of all present (Lutherans equally with Reformed), suspended from office, and it was resolved that he should be taken into custody and excommunicated. That this itself was decreed by the suffrages of all present — Lutherans as well as Reformed, Clergy as well as Politicians — apart from that Man's grave insolence having merited such a censure, can seem probable to no one.

(2.) That I celebrated and raised with due praises the Sandomierz Consensus under no other name than that of the Consensus itself and of the various circumstances and qualities of this Consensus, set out in express words in my Preface — not under the name of certain intervening threats of one Noble, and he perhaps a Lutheran (since the Lutherans present in the Synod urged that Consensus no less than the Reformed). Those threats meanwhile, if they happened (let the credit rest with Hartknoch), I grieve from the heart; so far am I from approving them, much less from judging that any praise can accrue to the Synod from their having arisen.

(3.) All who know me know that I so abhor every violence and truculent mode of proceeding — even by the very nature and temperament of my body — that there is nothing I detest and turn from with my whole breast more. Especially in Christian Ecclesiastical business, which I have sufficiently understood to rest on the authority and revelation of God alone, and so not to be thrust upon an unwilling man's Conscience; and most of all in the Dissensus of Lutherans with Reformed, which I (unlike the adversary, who for that reason rushes upon all else and sacrifices me together with all Calvinists even to Satan's most cruel violence and Tyranny) hold by fully convinced conscience to be beyond-Fundamental, and toward which not merely common but fraternal love is to be kept. Hence I may Christianly boast that, having lived among Lutherans for the greater part of my life, I never had to be reconciled with any of them, but have conversed hitherto most amicably with many, both Doctors and Hearers, and as fellow-members with me of one Christian Religion may by their own right, from Christ's own law, demand of me. I invoke as witnesses both the present Inhabitants of this whole City and, by name (one who has since migrated elsewhere), the celebrated and never-suspected-by-anyone of even the least neglect of Lutheran Orthodoxy Most Rev. Dr. Wegner, most deserving Professor of Theology at Königsberg, after he already nearly three years ago wished his testimony of this kind concerning me to be copied out even in public types, through express letters written to me — to be read in the Acts of the Jubilees of our University, Part 3, pp. 79–80.

So that from all these things, with best conscience, it is open to me, with truth itself voting, to weave the following argument to oppose to the Reviler's argument: Whoever of the Reformed detests with his whole breast every violence in any Christian Ecclesiastical matter — most of all that which touches the Evangelicals' Dissensus held by him only as beyond-Fundamental — never fell out with any Lutheran, but has lived most amicably with all who became known to him, the Lutherans themselves being witnesses, and for these causes set forth and praised with many praises the Sandomierz Consensus insofar as this Consensus was most amicable, not insofar as one Man contradicted it and one Polish nobleman's threats (whether he was Reformed or Lutheran is uncertain) — that man, so far, sought the Protestants' Ecclesiastical Union by no violent Counsels, nor had it in mind to seek it so. But Strimesius etc. Therefore.

Prefatio Crimina III close: Prayer for the adversary, Cassmann's rule for disputers, and Meldenius against self-appointed judges§15

15As for what remains: I humbly beseech God that He would deign to pour into this adversary of mine (than whom no one ever experienced a more hostile man — irritated by not so much as a little letter, nor even by mention of his name anywhere) the Spirit of proving himself, by which he may understand and attain how great the sins with which he loads himself by the most petulant tearing of the fame both of me and of so many other excellent and pious Men devoted to the Lutheran Society — whether through most imprudent zeal, or through a hunt for his own fame, truly quite infamous, sought from men like himself — and may timely unload himself of them by serious repentance, lest Satan — not indeed a Calvinistic one (whom the Sacred page utterly ignores), but the infernal and first author of calumnies and contumelies — be able any longer to harm him and his soul, redeemed by the precious Blood of Christ, and be forever severed from the Evangelicals' Union, otherwise still most hateful to him.

Meanwhile let him note the following Rule spoken by someone to unjust Disputers: Not by reviling, but by entreating; not by fulminating, but by demonstrating; not by condemning, but by confirming; not by execrating, but by praying; not by striking, but by admonishing; not by dooming with dire imprecations, but by interceding with pious vows; not by attacking with curses, but by earning favor with good deeds; not by hateful windbags of words, but by unmoved testimonies of Holy Scripture; not by truculence, but by tolerance; not by agitation of minds, but by moderation of affections; not by force, but by gentleness; not by inhumanity, but by mildness; not by desire of revenge, but by will to gain the erring; not by clamor, but by love of the right — emerging from every Fanatics' Sophistry and fraud as from dense darkness, conquering Truth at last triumphs as victor, and will triumph forever, altogether to triumph at last. In Otto Cassmann, Schol. Tentat. I, p. 374.

And also the Admonition of Meldenius, a Lutheran Theologian, addressing all such Dictator-Theologians in these words: You have constituted yourselves not only Adversaries but Judges; you rashly condemn other Churches dissenting from You; you arrogate to Yourselves censure over any Theologians whatsoever, however well deserving of the Church, and over their pious labors; without blush you publicly arraign them as guilty of the foulest heresies; and thus most manifestly you affect a certain dominion over the Lord's inheritance, so that your πολυπραγμοσύνη (meddlesome busyness) becomes conspicuous to the whole World, and to all good men is rendered hateful and intolerable. Who designated You Judges of nearly all Controversies? who Censor of all books? who Aristarchuses even of all Theological phrases? as if you alone were wise, and all the rest wandered about like shadows? as if You, ignorant of every error, had been destined by God and the Universal Church to that office, that you should examine all others' sayings and writings most rigidly and with Lyncean acumen! Who finally permitted You more Right over others than others over You? why did you publicly provoke those by whom you had never been injured? If you had kept silence, you would not have betrayed yourselves like the hamster, and would have consulted best for your fame. And indeed you urge these Controversies with such bitterness of words, hauling wagons of insults from both sides and from every side, that no Apostolic gentleness can be found in you. Nay — what is far graver and least to be borne — you often violently twist even things spoken aptly, piously, and rightly into an alien and perverse sense, and thence boldly snatch occasion for shameless calumny, and fasten upon the innocent monsters of opinions of which they had never dreamed. If this license of cavilling should obtain, who at last will be innocent, who at last will be orthodox under these fault-findings? Christian Charity always hopes better things; your suspicion always thinks worse. Votive Exhortation for the peace of the Church, p. 34.

Part I Protheoria: Cassel consensus on Christ's Person, Baptism, and baptismal ceremonies§16

16III. As to the Article concerning the Person of Christ, both sides agreed (pp. 13–16): 1. That the Divine and Human Nature are truly and personally united, so that Christ is God and Man in the unity of Person; and that that Union was made ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως — without confusion, without change, indivisibly, and inseparably. 2. That the Names of the Natures are truly predicated of each other, and in the proper signification of the words: God is Man, Man is God; and that the Properties also of each united Nature are truly and really predicated of the whole Person in the concrete, but according to that Nature to which those Properties or Attributes truly belong — which the Theologians have been pleased to call the Communication of Properties (Communicatio Idiomatum). 3. That the Human Nature is not intrinsically omnipotent, nor omniscient; thus in the Union the united Natures remained distinct, and the essential Properties of each safe; that the Principle which acts is the Person, the Principle by which, each Nature, and so on. 4. That the Human Nature has truly been raised to the highest glory, sitting also itself at the Right Hand of God. 5. That on both sides the Heresies of Nestorius, Eutyches, Marcion, Arius, Photinus, Paul of Samosata, Socinus (they place them in this order), and the like, are rejected.

There remained a dissent, and one not acknowledged as essential by those Men: 1. Whether to the Human Nature in the abstract there was communicated the divine Majesty, or All power, which it would exercise through the Omnipotence everywhere present and hypostatically joined to it? 2. Whether of the same Human Nature, in the abstract, there could be predicated the divine Properties that are fitted for operating — Omnipotence, and so on.

IV. As to the Article concerning Holy Baptism, both sides consented to this (pp. 17–18): That Infants are to be baptized; that the end of Baptism is that they be grafted into Christ and spiritually regenerated; that Baptism is necessary, yet not absolutely, so that only contempt of Baptism damns; that Infants are capable of regenerating grace: and both Parties established that these things belong to the essentials of that Sacrament. Controversies remained, yet acknowledged on both sides as not essential: 1. Whether Infants are at last grafted into Christ and regenerated through Baptism by the necessity of a means — namely an ordinary means? 2. Whether, because of the danger from neglect of Baptism, in a case of necessity, even a Layman may administer Baptism if a Minister's supply is denied?

V. As to Ceremonies — for example Exorcism in the Baptismal formula — there was consent on both sides: 1. That it is not to be thought the infant is corporally possessed by Satan. 2. That that rite can be employed no otherwise than to signify the habitual inherence of Original Sin. 3. That those formulas of Exorcism can be omitted and changed into express Prayers.

And according to the norm of this Agreement, the said Theologians judged that the Academies and Churches of Germany — especially (as nearer) the Brandenburg and Brunswick ones — ought to be invited into the same fellowship. And that truly Christian Mars of Germany, Assertor of Liberty as well as of Religion, FREDERICK WILLIAM, Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, most Invincible alike in mind and in arms — as Europe is witness, and as we too once were, and not long before his death, admitted into so great a Prince's sanctuary and conversation — had for many years wholly devoted himself to this most praiseworthy zeal, according to those fires of piety and charity with which he was kindled.

Part I Protheoria: Obstacles — any error turned into heresy; verbal and private dissent§17

17They went as far as they could! It belongs to pious Theologians of every sort to lend a helping hand — not by words or writings only, but also by deeds; that is, with hearts and tongues and pens kindled by true charity, and with domestic discords composed among the partners of the same Faith and of the same Token. That latter point, as concerns all or most, is more to be wished than hoped for, so long as there is still room for human affections and infirmities.

There are already in the rank of Protestant Men those who turn any Error into Heresy, or any Dissent into something Fundamental or Essential, as their passion wills! Nevertheless that dissent has very often been merely verbal, and has turned on phrasing or on the manner of stating a thing — for example in the words realiter, oraliter, sufficienter, efficaciter, and so on. Often it has turned on the mode of the thing — for instance the manner of presence or of being-present in the Eucharist. Or on the circumstances of the thing — for instance the Breadth of Redemption, whether also for the reprobate, while the thing itself and its substance remain unmoved. Often too the dissent is not in what was truly handed down, but in things fastened on by consequences not born in the teaching but brought in from outside — and certainly rejected; for example, that the Reformed deny God's Omnipotence, that they make God the author of Sin, that they assert a Stoic necessity, and so on. Finally, the private quarrel of Theologians more than the public quarrel of Confessions has pulled Brethren apart in more than one question: as in the Supralapsarian question, now nearly laid to sleep, and in very many others of that kind.

Part I Protheoria: Sacred majesty, royal power, and private blemishes made into church marks§18

18I will add also that dispute concerning the Power of Majesty about Sacred things — more restricted by some, turned by others into an Architectonic power; or even concerning the limits of Royal Power and of passive obedience. On that argument a recent Theologian of Copenhagen has, with little modesty, branded the whole Reformed Church — twisting certain sayings or assertions of a few into whatever sense he wished — as adverse and hostile to the rights of Kings and Princes, and even to their divine origin, and indeed to their security: and with no other design than that he might shut out the French Exiles, fled into the bosom of the Most Powerful King, if not from a roof, at least from the Temple and from the liberty of Sacred things. Far be all your fury from my House! So there are sometimes brother Men who, with little Christian spirit, most eagerly snatch sayings — often spoken in the heat of disputation, often hesitatingly or as opinion, often sound in sense but awkward in wording, such as fell in countless numbers from the Writers and Fathers of the early Church — into matter for contention and for battles about words (λογομαχίαι)! There are those who abound in certain private thoughts of their own, or in their own sense, to the prejudice of Ecclesiastical tranquillity and against the laws of Christian prudence! There are those who transform the blemishes of private men into public marks of the Churches: thus taking certain sayings, for example of Zwingli, Calvin, Martyr, Beza, and others, as the judgment of the Reformed Church, and understood in a harsher sense!

Part I Protheoria: Adiaphora made necessary; charity's defect; joining hands with moderate Evangelicals§19

19There are those who of themselves order things indifferent (ἀδιάφορα) to become necessary, or order what belongs to the pattern of external discipline or of order — variable of course with the variety of Places, Nations, and Customs — to pass over into the very substance of Christianity, and as it were its soul! There are those who, theoretically immune from fundamental error (as we are ready to judge gently, ἐπιεικῶς), yet distinguish themselves practically by something far heavier: namely by a defect of charity (Matthew 5:23-24; 1 Corinthians 13:1, and so on)! It is already certain that all these things are done when our Savior's mandate, example, character, and last words are set aside (John 14:27), and when the rules and warnings of the holy Apostle of the Gentiles are despised (Ephesians 4:2-3; Philippians 3:16; 1 Timothy 6:4, and so on). The dignity and Office of their own Order are neglected as well; the pious efforts of the Greatest Princes, the most ardent vows of Theologians of either Party, and the groans and sighs of all the Good are tossed up and down as of no account; and no attention is paid to the weight of restoring Evangelical Peace.

We for our part do not cease either to lament in spirit and to grow sick at heart over the most unjust affections of men — with so great a loss to Evangelical truth, harm to the Church, joy to Enemies, offense to the Pious, and increase of Antichristian tyranny — or also to join right hands with those for whom the Divine Majesty has shaped the heart of better clay, who think more fairly and moderately of us and of our Churches, and who understand the fundamental consensus. Such men there are, by God's kindness, here and there through nearly all Germany and the Northern world; especially in these most mournful times, when the Church is already oppressed by the common Enemy and will be oppressed still further unless, with forces and minds joined under the auspices of the highest Powers, she has repressed that fury. And already we hear with joy that in the ample Dominions of the Most Powerful Brandenburg Elector studies are gradually coalescing, hatreds are departing, eristic strife is being barred, common counsel is being taken, and there are being recalled to minds formerly more stirred what men of proven piety, moderation, and prudence urged in this matter in the last century and in ours — Capito, Bucer, Melanchthon, Strigelius, Peucer, Pierius, Himmel, Palladius, Donauer, Chytraeus, Pelargus, Osiander, Calixtus, Meyfart, Matthias, Dilher, Dreier, Conring, Musaeus, Heinich, the Helmstedt men, and others.

Part I Protheoria: Origins of the Sacramentarian schism — Luther, Carlstadt, Zwingli (1524)§20

20And would that men went back to the first Origins of the dissensions, understood at length from the History of the Diffidence — first the Sacramentarian schism, born in the year 1524 between Luther and Carolostadius, otherwise Bodenstein of Carlstadt, with Huldrych Zwingli soon about to move into a middle opinion: namely, Carolostadius referring the This (τοῦτο) in the words of Institution not to the Bread but to the Body of Christ, and so removing every presence of the Body in the Eucharistic Bread; Luther on the contrary asserting a corporal presence, by the letter of the text (τοῦ ῥητοῦ); but Zwingli and Oecolampadius a Sacramental presence, under the figure of Bread and Wine. The origin of the discords is to be understood especially from the dispositions of those who were deeply involved in these contests. Luther, to be sure, was fervid, and did not easily bear an equal in doctrine or authority; Carolostadius was less prudent, led by impulse more than by doctrine and judgment; Zwingli was constant in his opinion and yielded neither to Luther's commands nor to his name; Oecolampadius was unmoved, by the authority of Augustine and of the whole early Antiquity; Melanchthon, of the gentlest temper, would so assert the proper sense of the words of Institution that he departed from Luther, not acknowledging a local coexistence or inclusion of the Body, nor an oral manducation of it. But soon there came after them the sons of Bellona — bitter and eristic tempers — that would enlarge the suits and the Controversies:

Part I Protheoria: Degrees of the schism — Ubiquitarians, Flaccians, and the Formula of Concord§21

21Such were Johann Brenz, father of the Ubiquitarians; Jakob Andreae, from the carpenter's craft called Schmidlin, who would add much to the Brentians; Tilemann Heshusius, fire and flame of so many tumults; Johann Marbach, marked by new portents and calumnies against Pezel, Zanchi, Tossanus, and others; Samuel Huber and Aegidius Hunnius, restless tempers, swollen with new births even concerning Predestination: and above all Flacius Illyricus with his party, the most unjust persecutor of Philip and of the Augsburg Confession as Melanchthon had emended it — though Luther himself had encouraged that work — from whom the Flaccians, and the Flaccio-Brentians, are most noted for their furies: and at last the Authors of the Book of Concord, or Bergen Formula, with Jakob Andreae, Selnecker, Chytraeus, Chemnitz, and others as chief captains. Concerning its Authors, Writing, Scope, Articles, Reprobation, Approbation, Apology, Sequels, and so on, Hospinian treats at length in his work Concordia Discors, and the Palatines in the Neustadt Admonition; also Heinrich Alting in his manuscript History of the Palatine Reformation, and others.

From these things it will easily be plain that a Schism of this kind was born among Evangelicals, to which rivalry between Luther and Carolostadius first gave occasion, and soon rivalry between Luther and Zwingli — men equal in learning and in zeal for reform, yet discordant in one point, the mode of Eucharistic presence. Hence first arose the unhappy Schism, a dissent about the Holy Supper lighter in its beginnings; lighter, I say, both from the Marburg Colloquy, in which Luther had enjoined silence, and from comparing Article X of the Augsburg Confession with the Elucidation Melanchthon afterward added, in which the disapproval of those who teach otherwise was omitted. But soon the sharp anger (ὀξυχολία) and vehemence of certain men fostered the divorce of minds and opinions — such as men's tempers were — and not last in that order Jakob Andreae, truly a Schmidlin or smith of contentions; Tilemann Heshusius, who somehow could not bear the fortune of General Superintendent of the whole Palatinate at the age of thirty-two; then the notorious Johann Marbach, Flacius Illyricus, and others. Soon the dogma of Ubiquity was brought to birth — asserted indeed at first on the occasion of the Eucharistic Controversy, but afterward left silent by Luther and dropped altogether, as also in the Augsburg Confession. Yet it broke out again after Luther's death, poured out by Brenz, but interpolated and promoted by Jakob Andreae, the Flaccians, the Bergen men, and others. Hence came their divorce from the Augsburg Confession as Melanchthon had reviewed and emended it, especially at Article X, and the distinction they produced between the Confession as varied and as unvaried. Hatreds, fury, force, and exacerbation followed on every side.

Part I Protheoria: Formula of Discord — Frederick III, Predestination ulcer, hardening causes§22

22through Germany — so far that they rose even against the best and most pious Princes: as when a fierce tempest was stirred against Frederick III of the Palatinate, with Jakob Andreae, Heshusius, and Bidenbach as chief firebrands, that they might shut pious Frederick out of the Peace of Religion and the Society of the Augsburg Confession — though they would fail at the Augsburg Diet of 1566. At last the Formula of Concord finished the work — first the Torgau Formula, afterward the Bergen — of which we have just spoken: in truth a Formula of Discord, and the complement of a lasting Schism. Elector Ludwig of the Palatinate protested at once, though most devoted to the Lutherans, and other Princes with him, and also the weightiest Theologians — Hospinian, Alting, and the rest already praised at length. But the unhappy Controversy concerning Predestination and its annexed Heads, born chiefly through Samuel Huber and then through Aegidius Hunnius of Wittenberg around the year 1580 — or so Georg Calixtus testifies below on the Confession of Thorn, p. 14 — drew the ulcer wider and rendered it incurable.

And at last they have hardened that Evangelical dissent down to this very day: Satan's malign craft; the hidden arts of the many-scheming Jesuits; the calculations of Politicians serving Rome or their own advantage; and among Theologians for the most part a spiteful rivalry (κακοζηλία), pride, hatreds, calumnies, prejudices, eristic and virulent writings, and private ambitions in very many cases — as it happens — and it will have no end until, by the authority of the Most Serene Princes and by a greater force if one ever intervenes, they are coerced.

Part I Protheoria: Digression — Lutheran concord not Remonstrant or Pontifical syncretism§23

23But in the matter of mutual Tolerance and of fraternal Concord sought among the Churches of Protestants, the cause of those called Lutherans must not be confused — as some would wish — with that of today's Remonstrants, concerning whose Schism the Reformed judgment was not the same, and whose Dogmas were reviewed at length above. Still less is the cause of the Augsburg Brethren, in the irenic business, to be set beside that of the Pontiffs, though today's Roman Methodists may try to compose both. Hence both parties — Remonstrants and Pontiffs alike — have long solicited us toward Syncretism in Religion, with an eye to the communion offered to the brethren of the Augsburg Confession. And the Pontiffs have done so in that Method they call Richelian, which the Gallican Clergy lately revived, as Method 1: leading us by their Missionaries into Communion with the Roman Church. In particular the same Bishop of Condom, now of Meaux, pressed it in Chapter II of his Catholic or Tridentine Exposition.

Part I Protheoria: Bossuet's pretenses answered in the 1681 Strictures§24

24The pretense was, first, that the Lutherans defend the so-called real Presence of Christ's Body in the Eucharist, from which would follow the Adoration of the Body present in the Eucharist — which we so greatly flee. Second, that they defend the dogma of Ubiquity, from which would follow altogether the destruction of Christ's Humanity: and yet the Reformed are ready to offer them their communion, because they deny that consequence of a destroyed Humanity — why then not also to Pontiffs who equally refuse the Consequences drawn from Tridentine Doctrine? But we went openly and at length against this vainest Method in our Strictures against the then Bishop of Condom, published in 1681.

There we treat at length: (1) of the reason of tolerance and of the communion offered to the brethren of the Augsburg Confession — with a retort upon Pontiffs who know nothing of tolerance, indeed of humanity, while they still deny that dissent from the Roman Church is Fundamental; (2) of the dogma of Ubiquity, how far it is held to overthrow the foundation or not — compared with the contested dogmas of the Pontiffs and with their practice, which destroy the essence of Christianity by a far other reason; (3) of real Presence in the Lutheran sense, and of the adoration they approve in the Eucharist — narrating in a long series the difference from the dogma of Transubstantiation, from the Mass Sacrifice, and from Latria of the Host shown even outside the use of the Sacrament, besides other idolatrous and intensely superstitious acts in the Pontiffs' Mass rites; (4) finally of the Consequences which the Bishop of Meaux charges the Reformed with eliciting from Tridentine doctrine not without the stain of calumny — treated by us at length in those Strictures.

Part I Protheoria: Remonstrant cause unequal to Lutheran — Luther De Servo Arbitrio§25

25Nor indeed is the Remonstrant cause and the Lutheran on equal footing, even in the business of Predestination and its annexed Heads. The points above already teach as much, where the Rinteln Theologians explained their own mind and their party's, afterward defended by them in their Apology. And in this cause we appeal to the Leipzig men, to Gerhard, to Calixtus, even to Calov in his Consideration of Arminianism, and others — but before all to Luther himself. For there was no controversy with Luther concerning Predestination, or the total Impotence of the bound Will, or God's Providence about evil actions: he strongly asserted Augustine's doctrine — which is also Paul's — in the Book on the Bondage of the Will, issued against Erasmus toward the end of 1525. For in it there occur even more dreadful things concerning the Divine Decrees and the necessity of sinning than in Calvin himself — as all candid men confess, whatever escapes Luther's grandsons may have tried to seize.

Part I Protheoria: No Predestination quarrel until Hunnius — Formula, Montbeliard, Marbach-Zanchi§26

26And afterward Luther confirmed it in a lucid Preface to the Epistle to the Romans and in other writings, even German ones. Nor was any Controversy on this argument moved against the Reformed — neither in the Torgau Formula or Book of Concord of 1577, nor in the Montbeliard Colloquy published in 1587. On the contrary, Synergists were marked in the Formula of Concord: namely those who set a certain synergy (συνεργία) of Free Will, and held the Causes of Conversion to be the Holy Spirit, the Word, and Man's Will — which error was imputed to Melanchthon. So when contention arose at Strasbourg in 1562 between Johann Marbach and Jerome Zanchi, and Zanchi's doctrine was most bitterly harassed, there was no serious remonstrance on the Predestination argument. In that doctrine the Arbiters — among them Schmidlin summoned from Tubingen — judged there was no great diversity.

Nor, Calixtus himself warns in his Animadversions on the Thorn Confession, was a sentence different from that received Augustinian view — to which the Theologians of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession had clung — brought back into Churches and Schools before Aegidius Hunnius, then teaching at Wittenberg in 1580, and Georg Mylius of Jena.

Part I Protheoria: Disparitas — ten points Lutherans still confess against Remonstrants§27

27Therefore even now today the Theologians named from Luther confess: (1) that certain persons are elected from eternity, not because of foreseen faith, but elected in faith, or through faith in Christ; (2) that Election has no impulsive cause in us, but the whole business of salvation hangs upon God; (3) that faith is foreseen in some, yet as from the grace of the Holy Spirit, as God's gift, as to its beginning, progress, and perseverance; (4) that we are dead in sins, and that there are no residual powers in fallen man toward spiritual good, toward the supernatural acts of Conversion; (5) that God's Grace truly precedes every operation of man, and that in him there are no powers toward Conversion except those prevented, excited, and moved by Grace — so that toward the first reception of Grace they have themselves only passively, as Calixtus expressly says;

(6) that that grace is not given except from a decree of giving efficacious Grace for believing; nor does God foresee anything except dependently on Himself as first cause, still less foresee spiritual good in us; (7) that Faith is trust in divine grace, or in the remission of sins, through and on account of Christ, already contradistinguished from works in the business of Justification; and that a subjective certainty of salvation is given; (8) that the Election of certain Persons is eternal and immutable, and so the Elect according to foreknowledge (κατὰ πρόγνωσιν) cannot finally fall away, on the hypothesis of divine Foreknowledge, which is infallible; (9) as to Reprobation, although they want no other than according to foresight of final Impenitence, yet they do not deny that in this way it is eternal — that the distinction of elect from reprobate is eternal, that the cause of this comparative distinction is God's good pleasure, and that Foreknowledge of the reprobate also is infallible; (10) finally that they condemn every Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism. So genuine grandsons of Luther appear to have stood far from the aim and mind of the Remonstrants.

Part I Protheoria: Ulterius confirmatur — Augustana not Remonstrant; no Socinian commerce§28

28From which things it is plain how no necessity binds together the Theologians of the Augsburg Confession with the Remonstrants, and how the men of Dordrecht had nothing to do with brethren of that sort, while these latter barred recocted Pelagianism together with us. It is also plain how ready it would be for Lutherans in the common sense to conspire fraternally with the Reformed, if from the pulpit — dropping quarrels, and dropping also unjust delations before Princes and Magistrates — those men would keep within bounds. Add that dissent in the cause of Predestination gave no cause to the Schism, nor was there contention with Luther on that matter, from what has just been said. And above all, the Brethren of the Augsburg Society have no commerce with the Socinians, as today's Remonstrants do from the history above,

So likewise among those called Lutherans there is no palliation of Fundamental errors, nor excuse, nor diminution, in the Heads concerning the Holy Trinity, the eternal Divinity and Generation of the Son, the adoration of the Holy Spirit, Original Sin, the Satisfaction of Christ, Justification by faith alone, and so on.

Part I Protheoria: Remaining dissent from Dordrecht — six heads; easy consociation§29

29So that if any consensus of the Brethren with the Quinquarticularian Theologians remains, the dissent from the men of Dordrecht consists chiefly in these: (1) In phrase, where Lutherans speak of election or reprobation (yet not from Luther) as from foresight of faith, or from foresight of unbelief — although the Formula of Concord did not distinguish πρόγνωσις from προορισμός, as Peucer long ago observed in the Confession set out by Hospinian. (2) In reviewing the order of the Decrees; namely with a conditional Decree set first — concerning the salvation of all, redemption, calling to faith, and so on — provided they are not wanting to it. (3) In the object of Christ's Death, which is all and every human being, elect as well as reprobate. (4) In asserting the mode of the operation of Grace, which with respect to all is even internal, and efficacious from God's side, yet which men resist and against which they set an obstacle — although elsewhere they confess the impotence of Free Will for the work of Conversion.

(5) In the asserted possible apostasy of the saints, which the Reformed also do not deny if the saints are considered in themselves: yet the same Brethren deny it if they are considered elect according to God's infallible foresight. (6) Finally in the Reformed sentence now and then twisted or taken in a sinister sense, and in the Predestinarian Heresy affixed to them — such as was once affixed to Augustine, to Gottschalk, and to those of like mind (ὁμοδόξοις). But once that inequity of judgments and suspicions is hereafter ordered to be of no force, in the remaining things that leave a difference either in phrase, or in the method of conceiving the Decrees, or in the mode of the matter, or its extent, or its circumstances — the substance being safe on both sides (for example Christ's Death, or preventing and confirming Grace, or justifying Faith, or Holy Baptism), overturned by the common Adversaries of Protestants — easy association will follow. Nor will anything be wanting to the complement of either party's vows, except the longed-for peace, that God the perfecter of all may complete it — who daily also fills even what is beyond oath and beyond hope, as I may speak with the Lyric poet.

Part I Protheoria: Two classes of controversy — Melanchthonian AC vs Bergen Formula party§30

30Of the Controversies with the Theologians of the Augsburg Confession, two various Classes are to be set up. For some are with the genuine Disciples of Luther, and with those who profess the Augsburg Confession even as Melanchthon recognized it after the Wittenberg Concord, and as it was often explained, especially as to Article X. And now almost the only contested head remaining is the Lord's Supper — Melanchthon expressing the presence of Christ's Body in these words in the later Confession, which others call the Variata by Philip's private authority: That with the bread and wine the Body and Blood of Christ are truly exhibited to those who eat in the Lord's Supper. The prior edition, of the year 1530, had: That the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat in the Lord's Supper, with the disapproval of those who think otherwise added. That one thing was, while Luther lived, an apple of discord (μῆλον ἔριδος) — first with Carolostadius, from what was said before, and then also with the Swiss, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and those who joined them in the order of the Reformers.

Others intervene with the disciples of Johann Brenz, Jakob Andreae, Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Aegidius Hunnius, and others, and as many as subscribed the Torgau Articles, first written in the year 1576 — Jakob Andreae, the Tübingen Theologian, being their chief architect — soon to be referred (with few changes) into the Book of Concord, or Bergen Formula, of 1577, published in 1580 after the subscriptions had arisen. And in this the dogma of Ubiquity, or the Majesty of Christ's Human Nature, is already set in the citadel; and only the prior Augsburg Confession of the year 1530 is admitted, which they call the Unaltered! But other definitive sentences also are expressed in that Book concerning Controversies then agitated among the Lutherans themselves — for example Flaccians, Wittenbergers, Osiandrists, and so on — and likewise with those they call Calvinists. Among which is that concerning Predestination, yet explained there so that the sole cause of salvation, and therefore also of election, is placed in God, not in us.

Part I Protheoria: Who rejected the Formula of Concord — Ludwig's five charges; Ursinus§31

31It is confessed that Electors, Princes, and very many Theologians throughout Lutheran Germany protested against this temerity — and the King of the Danes himself — especially Elector Ludwig of the Palatinate, as was lately noted. And Heinrich Alting notes him in the manuscript Palatine History as having reprehended five things in that Bergen Formula: (1) That it had restricted the Augsburg Confession to the first Exemplar offered to the Emperor in 1530, excluding Editions in which some change or variation had entered for the sake of greater evidence. (2) That after introducing the names of Flaccians, Osiandrists, and Antinomians, they had left other names — such as that of the Synergists — with Melanchthon's sentence less candidly explained. (3) That to the doctrine of the Lord's Supper and of Christ's Presence in that same Supper they had subjected the doctrine of Ubiquity, which Luther had neither approved nor thought fit to be employed in this Controversy concerning the Supper. (4) That they had brought into that Formula many phrases and abstract terms outside and beyond Scripture, and not serving the edification of the Church. (5) That they condemned Zwinglians and Calvinists — not without the appearance of Pontifical tyranny — using this hard voice, even those not heard, and still less convicted of error.

Yet at length the facility of the Princes on that side, and the industry employed by those Theologians on this, won out — by which, with a Prefation written by Schmidlin and Chemnitz, consisting of tragic buskins and captious turns (so it was judged), they induced those men to subscribe. And not long afterward they composed an Apology of this Book at Erfurt, with Martin Chemnitz as standard-bearer, to be censured through the Academies and Churches, and to be published in 1583. Meanwhile among the Palatines Zacharias Ursinus was ordered by Johann Casimir, brother of Elector Ludwig, to give a refutation of the Book, which is among the Neustadt Acts — and than which, the praised Alting says in that manuscript History which we were once permitted to use at Heidelberg, nothing fuller, nothing more accurate, nothing more learned was ever written and published against these Lutherans.

Part I Protheoria: Threefold later controversy — calumnies, adiaphora, real heads§32

32From that time there have been Controversies with the Flaccians, and with the Bergen men, and with their grandsons, in nearly a threefold difference — besides that prior one concerning the Lord's Supper, or the mode of receiving Christ's Body in the Eucharist. I. Other Controversies not born from the doctrine of the Reformers, but from extortions of it — not from things handed down, but from things affixed — which are therefore not questions of right, but of fact. For example: Whether the Reformed make natural Reason the Judge of sentences of faith; or Philosophy the principle of Theological conclusions? Whether they assert an absolute necessity of human actions, a Stoic fate, a Manichaean or Predestinarian Heresy? Whether they so make God the author or cause — physical or moral — of Sin? Whether they deny God's Omnipotence, in the Chapter of Corporal presence, or His Mercy, in the other Chapter of Universal Grace? Likewise whether they divide the Natures of Christ, or think with Nestorius, because they distinguish the Natures in the unity of the Person? Whether they take away the force and efficacy of Christ's Death? Whether the Sacraments are to them bare signs, bare tokens? Whether they deny and assail every presence of Christ in the Eucharist? Whether they deny all grace to Infants, or the seed of faith, of grace, of regeneration, and so on? And these Controversies, as they are calumnious, so in the matter itself they are null — about which nevertheless Eckhard, Meisner, Musaeus, Gerhard, Hutter, Mentzer, Calov, Dorsch, Danhauer, Schlüsselburg, and others are laborious and almost wholly occupied.

II. Certain others are less principal or weighty — for example, concerning certain Adiaphorous Rites and Ceremonies around Baptism, the Eucharist, Confession, kneeling at the name of Jesus, or the adornment of Temples, the use of Images, of Feasts, and so on. Which Rites it is agreed are not equally employed by all Lutherans, having arisen partly from Luther's temper against Carolostadius in the cause of Images, and so on. III. Finally other Controversies are more real, or principal, concerning Heads of Doctrine that arose after Luther: for example concerning the Person of Christ, and the Omnipresence of the Human Nature; concerning Predestination and its annexed heads; and at last concerning Baptism. And these we chiefly attend to in this place, as also the Eucharistic Controversy, so that the State of the Controversy may be clear to our Hearers. They are to be seen more fully in Ursinus, Polanus, Zanchi, Sadeel, Beza, Danaeus, Pareus, Wendelin, Alting, Masson, Johann Crocius, Maresius, Hoornbeek, Hottinger, Arnold, Heidegger, and others.

Coena Domini: Whence the schism began — institution words literal or sacramental?§33

33THE LORD’S SUPPER — Where the schism took its start.

1. Should the words of Eucharistic institution — "This is my Body," and so on; "This is my Blood" — because they are serious, entirely true, and the words of Christ’s Testament, be taken properly and literally, plainly according to the letter? Or should they rather be taken in a metonymic and sacramental sense — the sense Holy Scripture already uses in sacramental speech and even outside the Sacraments (Genesis 17:10; 41:26; Exodus 12:11; 31:13, 16) — so that the names of the things signified (Body and Blood) are given to the signs and seals themselves (bread and wine)?

Or does the sense run this way instead: what I give you is truly and substantially my Body, that natural Body delivered for you; or else, in, with, and under this bread my Body is present without spatial distance, essentially or bodily there — so that bread is called Christ’s Body neither by Transsubstantiation nor by signification or sealing alone, but by a kind of Consubstantiation, a real and hidden inclusion?

Lutherans say yes; the Reformed say no.

Coena Domini: Brethren's hypotheses for the literal sense§34

34Our brethren’s hypotheses — enough to list them here; theologians have weighed them at length — include claims such as these: a figurative sense destroys the truth of the words; "is Body" must mean something real and substantial; Christ was bodily present at the first Supper, and therefore also in the bread and wine even while he stood outside the bread, and therefore remains bodily present after the ascension into the heavens; Christ’s Body is eaten in the Supper and so must be present without spatial distance, since a body cannot be present in a spiritual mode; sacramental eating means more than spiritual eating and therefore means oral eating of the true and natural Body; clinging to the literal sense is safer, and the Reformed leave it rashly; what these words institute is a Testament or Covenant and therefore must use proper words alone, as if clarity belonged only to proper speech — as though no sign of the Covenant or Testament were instituted, which is how we read Matthew 26:28 and Luke 22:20.

In that way they beg the question under judgment. They treat the Institution words ("This is my Body") as self-explanatory in a literal, native, proper, and clear sense, yet they paraphrase them as: in or under this — namely the composed complex of bread and Body — my Body is contained, this very Body present to you, yet illocal, and so forth.

Coena Domini: How Lutherans themselves retreat from the letter§35

35Yet the Lutherans deny (1) that the Bread is itself Christ's Body. Which is what the literal sense sounds. (2) likewise that This refers to the Bread, to what Christ was showing. Which is what the letter wants. (3) for them the word is becomes is in, is under, is contained, and so on. Against the letter. (4) they take Body as invisible and illocal. Again against the letter's will. (5) they shift the subject into the place of the predicate, for example My Body is in or under this bread, and so on. (6) they confess the way of speaking is synecdochic, by synecdoche of the contained or of the whole, and so on. Yet a figure which (they say) loses the name of figure; others call it an unusual locution, and so on. (7) they have parted far from one another in rendering these words: some take this of the bread; others complexly of bread and Body; others adverbially, Behold my Body; others actively, this whole action, and so on.

Coena Domini: Mode not presence; consubstantiation; Luther's 1519 wish§36

36What remains of the dispute is not the thing itself — whether Christ’s Body is present in the Holy Supper, or whether it is eaten — but the mode of both.

Some devised an inclusion of Christ’s Body that leaves the substance of the bread intact and treats the Body as present without spatial distance. That teaching goes by Consubstantiation, also Coexistence, and formerly Impanation. It arose in Berengarian times, or was drawn from Lombard’s Sentences, Book IV, Distinction 11, Chapter 4, and Peter of Ailly, Cardinal of Cambrai, approved it. Luther preferred it to Transsubstantiation, though his own explanations varied — Hospinian’s History of the Sacraments, Part II, from page 7 onward, treats the shifts at length.

How much better if Luther had held to what he himself said in 1519, before the Sacramentarian contest, in the German sermon On the Sacrament of the True Body of Christ (Jena, Volume I, folio 201–202 and following): three things in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body ought to be known. First, the sacrament or sign, external and visible, under the form of bread and wine. Second, the signification of that sacrament, which ought to be internal and spiritual. Third, faith, which ought to join both in the sacrament’s use. He then explains Paul’s κοινωνία in 1 Corinthians 10, of which we receive a sure sign in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.

Add Article XII of the Augsburg Confession: the Sacraments were instituted as signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us, set forth to awaken and confirm faith — faith that should believe the promises the Sacraments exhibit and show.

Coena Domini: Oral eating of the true body — Lutheran yes, Reformed no§37

37II. Next: in the use of the Sacrament, when Christ so commands in the Institution of the Holy Supper, is the true and substantial Body of Christ taken together with the Bread, and the Blood together with the Wine, truly received and eaten by the bodily mouth of every communicant — the faithful and the unfaithful alike — because they are joined physically, without spatial distance, and by co-presence, and therefore must be received by the same instrument of the mouth?

Or is it rather this way: the Symbols themselves, called Christ's Body and Blood by metonymy and figure (as the cup is called the New Testament in Luke 22:20), are eaten orally and in the proper sense; yet the reality those Symbols signify — the true Body and Blood of Christ — is eaten only spiritually and in an improper sense, namely by the mouth of faith awakened through the Sacrament and Memorial, and is perceived and laid hold of by the truly faithful alone?

Still, in those who eat rightly, the two eatings must go together: the sacramental eating of the Sacrament itself (of the symbols of Christ's Body), and the Spiritual eating of the true Body laid hold of by faith. So while they eat with the mouth the Bread of the Lord — something Unbelievers also do — they at the same moment, by a true act of faith and with the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit (John 6:63), eat the Bread who is the Lord, or become spiritual sharers (κοινωνοί) in Christ's Body crucified for us and in every Benefit that flows from it (1 Corinthians 10:16). Lutherans affirm the first alternative; the Reformed affirm the second.

Coena Domini: Precarious hypotheses for oral manducation§38

38For that first claim, precarious supporting premises have been advanced. First: that this oral mode of eating — even by Unbelievers — was set down in the Augsburg Confession, and even in the so-called Invariata, which Philip first wrote and the Princes and Theologians recognized at Wittenberg in 1531. In fact Article X speaks only indefinitely: That Christ's Body and Blood are truly present, and with Bread and Wine are distributed to those eating in the Lord's Supper. It does not express the mode of eating, nor name Unbelievers as the eaters. Underneath, rather, it is fairly plain that Christ's Body and Blood are exhibited to those who eat in the due mode and in faith.

Second: that Christ's Body is present in the Eucharist in a local way, without spatial distance. Neither the Confession, nor Luther, nor Melanchthon said that — and Melanchthon here stands farthest from any dogma of the Omnipresence or Ubiquity of Christ's Body. Third: that, for Christ's essential Body, no mode of eating can be conceived except oral eating with the bodily mouth — which cuts against what the State of the Controversy has already shown. Christ in the Institution did not say, Eat this Body with the mouth — the Body that was present and speaking. He spoke of eating the bread that way. He did not say, Drink this my Blood with the mouth — Blood not yet poured out, still to be poured out, and so not then drawn by the mouth; the Cup, rather. Spiritual eating is no less true for being figurative. Christ proves that one eating in John 6:55 and 63, and draws an argument from His ascension in verse 62. Related to the object of faith, eating can mean nothing but the act of believing — also spoken of as seeing, putting on, coming, and the like. Christ could not be food that goes into the belly (Matthew 15:17), any more than He could eat Himself at that first Supper. Spiritual eating is no harder to conceive than the other birth (John 3:3, 5), Abraham's seeing (John 8:56), the rending of the heart (Joel 2:13), putting on Christ (Romans 13:14), and union with Christ (John 6:56), and so on.

Fourth: the Lutherans likewise assume a union of Body and Bread by coexistence, as wine sits in a cup or water in a vessel. That is unwritten, and against what is written — Christ's Body then being separate from the Bread. Fifth: they assume the earthly thing and the heavenly thing are eaten by one and the same instrument — Bread and Body, sign and thing signed — as though there were no mouth of faith beside the mouth of the body.

Controversies after Luther: Providence — three Lutheran grounds that the Reformed make God author of sin§39

39CONTROVERSIES BORN AFTER LUTHER. On God's Providence, Predestination, and the heads annexed to them.

III. First: whether the Reformed make God the author of Sin — namely (1) from the will of εὐδοκία, that is of permissive good-pleasure, which Luther asserted so clearly that his own candid sons do not deny it; (2) from a hypothetical necessity, or necessity of futurition and of the event, flowing from infallible foreknowledge (πρόγνωσις), and also from that necessity of immutability which Luther pressed hardest, drawn from God's immutable and unsearchable good-pleasure, counsel, will, and disposition — even in the hardening of Pharaoh, the betrayal of Judas, and the like; (3) from the mode of that same Providence, least idle or ineffective (they call it Concurrence) around actions infected by sin, as actions, which again Luther himself treats as necessary, though not by a necessity of compulsion — On the Bondage of the Will, pages 67–68, and so on.

Providence controversy: unhappy calumny shared with Rome and the Remonstrants§40

40What comes back is not so much any true Controversy as an unhappy Calumny of a few — already shared by these men with the Papal party and with the Remonstrants. See the first falsehoods (πρῶτα ψεύδη) treated at length above in the Controversy with the Remonstrants, heads VII, XV, XVIII, XIX, and XXII.

Providence phrases that offended: efficacious providence, physical impulse, judicial acts§41

41Men took offense at certain phrases drawn from the writings of Zwingli, Martyr, Calvin, Beza, Zanchi, Rennecher, Piscator, and others. By those phrases the Theologians meant, with Holy Scripture, three things.

First: God's efficacious Providence around evils and around the wicked — spoken of in the biblical phrases of hardening, of blinding, of sending a lying spirit, of handing over into a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28), of drawing a callus over, of sending the ἐνέργεια — the working — of error (2 Thessalonians 2:11), and the like.

Second: a motion, or impulse, of sinning causes — not a merely moral one, but a physical one — seeing that in God we all are moved: as when He sent Joseph (Genesis 45:7; 50:20), drove Shimei to curse (2 Samuel 16:10), and drove Ahab's prophets to deceive and to lie (1 Kings 22:22–23), and so on.

Third: God's acts in this whole Providence around the wicked are judicial and penal — either as penalty for one's own crime, as in Pharaoh, in the unbelieving Jews, in Judas the traitor, and the like; or as penalty for another's crime, such as Absalom's incest, Jeroboam's schism, and the lying spirit that was to lead Ahab on, and so on.

Softening Luther's hard words: the same right for explaining Calvin, Beza, and the rest§42

42But there is this comfort: beside express Scripture in so many places and examples, the phrases of our Theologians can be set beside Luther's — in On the Bondage of the Will, in his work on the Epistle to the Romans, and elsewhere — or beside Philip Melanchthon's in the Common Places and on Romans, and so on.

If Lutheran brethren charge an invidious reading of those phrases, and then soften Luther's own words — as Sebastian Schmid of Strasbourg did, for example, in his Notes on the Bondage of the Will in 1664 — why should the right they claim for themselves not be allowed to us as well, when we render the phrases and explain the mind of Zwingli, Calvin, Martyr, Beza, and the rest?

That work has been done, besides Masson's German Anatomy, Parts I and II, by Pareus in the Irenicum, page 249; by Wendelin in the Theological Exercises, Exercise XXVI and following; by Hottinger in the Church History, Volume VIII, from page 640 onward; and so on. Even among the Lutherans themselves the recent Rinteln Theologians — already mentioned above — do it in their Apologetic Letter to the Wittenberg Doctors. There they excuse Calvin, because Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, by their own harsh words on Romans chapter 8, equally made God the author of sin, and so on.

Controv. IV: Whether God has a general or antecedent will to save all and each§43

43II. Is there in God a general will, or an antecedent will, to save all human beings and each one — and that not what is called the will of the sign, by which His word broadly marks the way of salvation for all, inviting all without distinction to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4)will properly so called, the will of His good-pleasure: that eternal, serious, efficacious will — yet not absolute or immutable, but ordered and conditioned, under the conditions of faith and of perseverance that human beings are to perform?

What that general will is said to do: give the Son for all and offer converting grace to all§44

44Under that will, then, two claims are put: first, that He gave His only-begotten Son so that by His death the Son would merit righteousness and life for every person, through a universal Redemption; second, that He also offers His grace to every person, excluding none, through a universal vocation, and stands ready to confer that grace on all by the ordinary means — calling all through the Word of the Gospel, and converting, regenerating, justifying, adopting, and glorifying all — if only human beings do not place an obstacle in the way.

Lutherans affirm this; the Orthodox deny it.

Unjust accusations: Leipzig and Cassel left Reformed grace standing; no illusory will toward the reprobate§45

45Unjust accusations against the Reformed. As for the Reformers' dissent on universal grace, redemption, and vocation: the Saxons at the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631 did not press it. The Rinteln theologians at the Cassel Colloquy (as already seen above) confessed that the foundation of divine grace stands unshaken among the Reformed, and that both sides agree (1) in equally condemning Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian dogmas, and (2) in pressing the practical rules that suspend justification on antecedent faith, and salvation also on perseverance.

And it was certainly laid on the Reformed as if they had asserted some illusory will in God toward the reprobate — whereas that will is always serious: as to the exacting of duty in the Word; as to the proposing of the one way to salvation, through faith in Christ; and as to the truth of that individual bond between faith and salvation. On these the perpetual truth of the saying rests: whoever believes will be saved, and so on.

On this see the Controversy with the early Arminians, IV, and afterward Controv. XXXI; and our own Biblical Vindication at Matthew 11:28.

Sufficiency and gospel vocation granted; eternal will to save the reprobate without the Spirit's special work denied§46

46It was also supposed that the Reformed deny either the sufficiency of Christ's redemption, or even its extension to all — or to the whole world. That we freely grant, but in Holy Scripture's sense: as to all who are to be brought into glory, even any at all, throughout the whole world, with no distinction under the New Testament economy.

So the Reformed do not deny the vocation that comes through the ministers of the Gospel — general, promiscuous, no one excluded. But they do deny an eternal will of God to save and redeem even the reprobate (whom the Lutherans themselves acknowledge as such according to foreknowledge) without the Holy Spirit's special and efficacious operation — which, from their own concessions, they have already granted is impossible.

Who then, unless that harsh fellow-servant, would damn forever those who deny these things in this sense?

Unstable props of grace-universality: Word-offers confused with a decretive will to save all§47

47But the hypotheses on which this universality of grace rests — though the Lutherans' reason and aim differ from the Remonstrants' — have already been pointed out in part above, under the articles controverted with the Arminians, I, II, III, IV, and so on. They are also clear from what follows.

In particular, God's commands and the promises in the Word, which gospel ministers are to set out indiscriminately, are confused with a will or good-pleasure in God to save all and each. So the universality of believers — of those who are to be saved — is confused with the universality of human beings: all humans taken collectively from Adam onward, and any humans taken distributively, as is shown at length elsewhere.

Likewise vocation through nature, by which God is manifested, and His common goodness; or vocation given at times in the greater ones; or that former Hebrew vocation, well known among some few neighboring nations; or the vocation the Apostles were to carry out every way, generally and promiscuously, and so on (Matthew 18; Mark 16). These vocations, I say, are precariously dragged into a universal vocation of all human beings and each one, and into a sufficient offering of the means of salvation, and so on.

But of that common and universal vocation even before Christ was exhibited, see at length above, Controv. With the Remonstrants XXXI.

Controv. V: Whether the decree of election is made according to foresight of faith and perseverance§48

48III. Has the decree of divine election — or of the predestination of certain human beings to salvation — been made according to a theoretical foresight of faith and perseverance, as of an impulsive cause, or rather of an antecedent condition? And is this the sense of the phrases that we are elect in Christ, in faith, through faith, not without faith — or that without faith no one pleases God (Hebrews 11:6)? Yet that very faith, foreseen, is wholly from grace and is God's gift, which they confess; but it is destined for those whom God foresaw with most certain foresight as going to use well the means granted them, and going to do what lies in them, and not going to spurn grace by themselves or in their greater ones — through whose contempt grace comes to be denied to later generations. So that this election, made thus according to foreknowledge, is nonetheless eternal, certain, and immutable? The Lutherans affirm the earlier points; the Reformed deny.

Many props assumed before Hunnius and Mylius that Luther and Melanchthon never taught§49

49Many things are assumed which neither Luther, nor Melanchthon, nor their disciples taught before Aegidius Hunnius of Wittenberg and, with him, Georg Mylius of Jena. Hence Georg Calixtus, already cited, in his Animadversions on the Thorun Confession published in 1654, p. 14: "Our fathers, adhering to the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, retained Augustine's doctrine and taught it everywhere up to the year 1580. Aegidius Hunnius, unless I am mistaken, was the first — or certainly among the first the chief — who recalled the ancient opinion (as he calls it), received in the primitive Church before Augustine," and so on. Yet not without difficulty, contradiction, and the charge of Pelagianism. From then on it prevailed among our people.

First Hunnian falsehood: faith as a prerequisite quality in those to be elect, not Augustine's means decreed with salvation§50

50The first falsehood of the Hunnians was this: as if those who follow Augustine's doctrine want an election absolute from the means — apart from any regard to faith and perseverance, which are fitting means on our side. In fact these do not deny an election founded on Christ's merit as the means of execution — that is, made with a view to Christ's merit as the meritorious cause of life and salvation. But for Hunnius and his party, faith was treated as a prerequisite condition in those to be elect, as an antecedent cause, as a quality of those to be chosen. For Augustine and those who vote with him, it is a required condition in the elect, decreed for them together with salvation, as a means to salvation and a necessary quality of those who are to be saved — whence they are said to be saved and justified through faith, in Christ, that is, through Christ.

Further props: middle knowledge, grace for all who will use the means, and man discerning himself against Paul and Luther§51

51So it is supposed that faith can be foreknown in these and those before the decree to give the grace of faith — on which see the Controversy on Middle Knowledge, with the Pontificals IX and with the Remonstrants XII.

So they suppose that God wills to work in everyone this grace which is most special to the elect, to believers; and that the same grace is destined, as to its kind, to those whom God foresees will use the means granted them and will not spurn grace, by themselves or through their greater ones, and so on.

From this it seems to follow that a human being discerns himself — against Paul — and that in the human being there is a dispositive cause toward grace, or prior dispositions toward faith — against Luther's steady teaching in On the Bondage of the Will, On the Origin of Faith, and the Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, and elsewhere.

Foresight of ancestors' contempt and unevangelized peoples cannot clear the scheme of seeming cruelty§52

52Add this: God is not cleared of the appearance of injustice or cruelty if, because the greater ones spurned the faith, He cheats their whole posterity of the means necessary for faith and salvation, and yet is said seriously to will the salvation of all of them.

And how stands it with the Americans, the innumerable island peoples, the southerners formerly out of reach — did their greater ones spurn the faith, or was the Gospel never preached to them at all?

Add what we have already said the Lutherans concede on this argument, in the Protheoria, pages 350 and 351.

Controv. VI: Whether there is an absolute a-priori decree of reprobation and preterition§53

53VI. Is there a decree of reprobation — or of passing certain people by as to grace and glory — and of divine predamnation, absolute from the first, independent of any cause outside God and His good pleasure?

In that decree God (who by most free right could have saved everyone, passed no one by, and shown only the glory of mercy, power being enough in God and in Christ's satisfaction as ransom) decided, in His eternal counsel about all that would be done or permitted outside Himself (Proverbs 16:4; Lamentations 3:37; Matthew 25:34; Acts 2:23; 15:18) — and that counsel is immutable (Romans 9:11; 2 Timothy 2:19; Hebrews 6:17) — by an act of most free good pleasure according to the good pleasure of His will (Matthew 20:15; Romans 9:15, 20–21, and the like), to leave certain people (Romans 9:13, 15, 17), and comparatively many (Matthew 7:13; 20:16), who stood level with the rest (Romans 5:12; 9:11, 21; Ephesians 2:3), in sin and misery: not electing them, not pitying them for salvation (Matthew 7:13; 24:40; John 13:18; Romans 8:29; 9:13, 15, and the like).

So He withholds grace from them — not every grace, lest they have a pretext (John 15:22; Romans 1:20) (invitation, urging to duty, kindness, forbearance, preaching of the Word — Matthew 23:37; Romans 2:4, and the like) — yet He does withhold saving grace, the grace of reconciliation through Christ (John 10:15, 26; 17:9), and with it effectual calling, faith, and justification (Matthew 11:26; 13:11; Romans 8:28–29; Ephesians 2:8, and the like).

And by the same decree, acting as a most severe Judge (Romans 1:18, 32; 9:22), has He adjudged those same people — evil and miserable by their own fault, under original misery (Romans 5:12; Ephesians 2:3) and misery gained by actual, voluntary sins against the Law (Romans 2:12) or the Gospel (Mark 16:16; John 3:18; 12:40), finally impenitent and in many ways despisers of God (Romans 2:4; 11:7; Matthew 10:15, and the like), each convicted by his own judgment and conscious of willing rebellion (Matthew 27:4; Luke 16:24, 28; Romans 2:15) — to eternal death, condemned for their own sins (Proverbs 16:4; Hosea 13:9; Matthew 25:41–42; Jude 4, and the like)?

All of it displays His liberty, power, wrath, and justice that avenges sins (Proverbs 16:4; Matthew 20:15; Romans 9:17–18, 20, 22, and the like).

Or is reprobation only by foresight of final unbelief — Lutherans deny the former, affirm the latter§54

54Or is there no reprobation at all except according to foresight of final impenitence and unbelief, treated as the one cause of reprobation inside the decree — while those so foreseen have all been granted means enough for faith and repentance, and for salvation too?

The Lutherans deny the first account and affirm this second one. The Reformed stand against that.

Luther and Melanchthon again leave no empty reprobation against eternal ordination§55

55Again with Luther and those who vote with him, the fight is not over a vacant reprobation, but over God's eternal ordination — His disposal of everything, even the damnation of the reprobate, Pharaoh's hardening, Judas's betrayal, and the rest.

See the passages from Luther and Melanchthon in the Rinteln Apology, or in Calixtus's Consultation on Tolerating the Reformed, around pages 12–14 — not to mention our own writers.

Melanchthon, for example: Judas's betrayal is no less God's work than Paul's conversion; everything falls out by divine predestination, by which the Lord has worked all things for Himself, even the wicked for the day of evil.

Luther, for his part: by His will God necessarily makes us damnable, so that He seems to take pleasure in the torments of the miserable; God does not will the sinner's death by the Word, yet He does will it by an unsearchable will; whatever is said to clear God is said in vain — lest He Himself be made the author and the blame of our hardening; if God foresaw that Judas would betray, Judas necessarily became a traitor.

Still more of this is drawn from the single book On the Bondage of the Will, volume II, first Wittenberg edition.

First falsehoods of the newer Lutherans: Stoic fate, confusing permission with efficiency, and equating damnation's cause with the decree§56

56Most of the first falsehoods of the newer Lutherans are accusations and misrepresentations of Reformers' words, though those Reformers speak with Scripture at every turn, as we have just shown in the State of the Controversy.

They fasten on us Stoic fate, Manichaean heresy, and the so-called Predestinarian heresy — and with them an absolute reprobation after the fact, with no eye to sins or unbelief.

In the same way they confuse God's permission of sin as a means that pleases Him with His sending sin in, with efficient causation, and the like.

They also argue badly: if sin and unbelief are the cause of damnation, then they must also be the cause of the decree to damn — as if God's willing, which has properly no cause outside God, worked by the same account as the things He wills, which come about through means.

So likewise with the good pleasure of grace and mercy in Christ (Ephesians 1:5, 9, and the like).

Mutual concessions on reprobation before the controversy on Christ's death§57

57Besides this, both sides concede the following.

1. Nothing takes place in time except from God's ordination, and that eternal.

2. In comparative predestination — these rather than those — the cause is God's highest good pleasure.

3. Foresight of the reprobate is infallible, and from it comes at least an infallible necessity of the event.

4. Regard to sins, unbelief, and final impenitence enters the reprobation decree; and no one is damned except for sins as the cause of his own ruin — so the State of the Controversy.

5. God is in no way the cause of sins, neither physical nor moral; no force from the decree is applied to sinners; and in the reprobate there is no necessity of sinning that destroys what is voluntary, free, and of deliberate choice — as we have argued at length above.

6. No one can know himself reprobate, unless perhaps by sinning against the Holy Spirit. So there is always room for repentance, for forgiveness of sins, and for salvation; and God by singular mercy has often worked conversion in the most lost — even in the last agony, in the final hour, in hell's very jaws — when every hope of pardon is finally cut off only after death.

7. God grants the reprobate many kinds of grace: divine forbearance, kindness, and outward invitation, from what we have said, and even inward light.

Controv. VII: Whether Christ's death is universal for all and each as to obtaining forgiveness§58

58VII. On Christ's death as universal for all and each — elect and reprobate alike — as to obtaining forgiveness of sins, righteousness, and eternal life, provided they do not themselves place an obstacle: this returns to Controversy IV.

See also the Articles with the Arminians, II, on the breadth, object, and efficacy of Christ's death, and the first falsehoods there (pp. 250–252).

Lutherans are not Remonstrants on Christ's death: no free-will application, no salvation without knowing Christ§59

59Yet the Lutherans' case is not the Remonstrants' case.

They do not make the application of Christ's death and its fruit hang on the powers of free choice — powers that are none, once original sin is granted.

Nor do they allow that anyone can be saved by the force of a universal redemption without knowing Christ.

Controv. VIII: Converting grace through the Gospel — resistible or superable, effective as man obeys or resists§60

60VIII. Next comes the controversy on converting grace through the Word of the Gospel: an operation that can be resisted or overcome, and whether that grace is effective or ineffective, as a person by the Gospel's power can obey it or by inborn malice can resist it.

At first glance this looks like the Arminian Controversy, Article IV — of which more at p. 254 and following.

Lutherans still differ from Arminians on free choice, prevenient grace, passivity, and inward effectual work§61

61Still, the Lutherans differ from the Arminians on more than one point.

1. The Augustan brethren suppose no powers of free choice in corrupted man; nor do they want that will's synergy with grace in a Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian sense — which the Book of Concord itself condemns.

2. They acknowledge prevenient grace, which goes before every human doing in conversion — as above at p. 350.

3. They profess that in the first moments of conversion a person stands merely passive and receptive toward first, converting grace.

4. They also hold that the elect according to foreknowledge never finally resist effectual grace in the event itself, and so are converted infallibly — otherwise contradiction follows.

5. Nor do they define grace's efficacy by outward moral persuasion alone, with the Remonstrants, or as what only gives a power to believe while the act hangs on the human will.

But they do acknowledge in the elect a peculiar inward work of the Holy Spirit: it produces the act of faith and conquers the will, which with full willingness has embraced Christ and is then most ready, after rebellion, to obey.

First falsehoods on grace: forced motion, denying all resistibility, and clearing the reprobate of willing rebellion§62

62So whatever is left of the controversy on whether grace can be resisted or not — and whether it is effective or ineffective — rests mostly on a false reading of the Reformed view, which was Luther's view too, from what we noted before.

They therefore assume on a shaky basis, and these are the first falsehoods:

1. That by insurmountable grace we want a forced, violent motion, like a log or a stone.

2. That we deny grace can be resisted as to corrupted nature and flesh hostile to God — which for its part resists all too much; or as to outward calling grace, or prevenient grace through the Gospel Word, which we also grant is resisted (and daily), with many examples even in Holy Scripture; or that we refuse to admit an early resistance of reluctant nature even toward inward effectual grace — we who only want nature finally overcome by grace, and flesh by the Spirit, in the elect.

3. That they would clear the reprobate — to whom this effectual grace is denied, without which they cannot be converted — of willing rebellion, stubbornness, and broad guilt on the Reformers' view; or, against us, put the cause of that stubbornness in God, not in the reprobate's malice, fault, and will.

The Confessions, the theologians, and the preachers all speak the other way — and so do we at Remonstrant Articles III and IV, and in the Controversy with R. Pajon, at his Hypothesis, sections VI and VII.

Controv. IX: Perseverance of the truly just — uncertain necessity, and possible total final fall from grace and faith§63

63IX. Next comes perseverance of the truly just — regenerate people once justified by faith and already set in grace — treated as if that standing were neither sure nor necessary, and as if the same people could leave grace and faith altogether and for good, and so lose salvation.

At that point the Arminian dispute, Article V (pages 257–258), seems to reappear.

Compare also the Socinian controversy, LXI (pages 219–220).

Even so, we refuse to lump the Lutheran brethren in with those camps.

Lutherans still differ: elect according to foreknowledge cannot finally fall, and believers have sure inward certainty of pardon§64

64Once more the gap from the Remonstrants is not a single point.

1. Lutherans grant that those elect according to God's foreknowledge cannot make a final exit from faith and grace, because that foreknowledge in God is, by hypothesis, infallible.

2. They likewise grant every believer an inward, infallible assurance that his sins are forgiven and that he will be saved. That assurance rises from what faith is — trust in God's mercy in Christ — while the Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit (Romans 8:16).

Such trust braces the soul more firmly than anything else. It is a pledge like Rahab's cord of twice-dyed thread (Joshua 2:18), buried deep in the heart; an anchor that holds us to God through the waves so that even the last crisis does not make us panic.

It is also real fuel for godliness and a spur to love God. The closer the harbor comes into view, the harder we gasp for it — with sighs and groans no speech can render.

And because this trust is born only of the regenerating Spirit, it in turn sets the spirit on fire; we treat that more fully elsewhere.

What remains against the Reformed rests on a twisted reading: of himself man can fall from faith entirely§65

65Whatever quarrel with the Reformed is left turns chiefly on a wrenching of their meaning.

Our side, as already shown against the Remonstrants, concedes this:

1. Take a person by himself and in his own strength — that is, in his frailty — and he can all too easily leave the faith, yes, leave it wholly.

Left to himself he is clay pottery, a soft infant, a defenseless lamb, nothing but flesh and blood, a bruised reed, loose sand, always apt to slide unless God holds him — vanity itself, sheer nothing.

Temporary faith often looks like rooted justifying faith until the wedding garment tells them apart§66

662. Faith that lasts only for a time (πρὸς καιρὸν) often wears almost the same face as faith that has root (ῥίζαν ἔχει) — the faith that truly justifies. Outward profession alone rarely shows who is unregenerate and who is regenerate.

The festive wedding garment (γαμική) required in Matthew 22:11, taken in the saying's closing turn, is not cloth on the body. It is the inward dress of faith, love, and repentance, when a person puts on Christ (Romans 13:14).

Still, sure marks do separate the two faiths and the two states — unregenerate from regenerate: Matthew 13; Romans 7; Galatians 5; and the rest.

Temporary lapses darken the sense of grace, but the incorruptible seed does not die, and God deals with sons not slaves§67

673. Believers also often slip in act for a season, when either enemies and temptations press from outside or the flesh's slickness works from inside (Revelation 2:4-5 and similar places). Then divine grace is not felt, and faith is not exercised — as if both were gone — the way it was with David and others.

Even then the power of that incorruptible seed (ἀφθάρτου) may be checked, yet the seed never dies or is smothered outright. The spring of grace may be dammed, yet not put out for good (1 Thessalonians 5:19). The light of grace may dim under something like earth's blocking — the world, a cloud of sins, and the like — yet it is not wholly removed and lost, as in an eclipse; or as in a sharp fever life hangs by a thread when the pulse is nearly gone, yet life itself is not thereby extinguished.

Theologians therefore say the fruit and felt sense of justification can pause; the justified state itself is not broken up or finally ruined.

Sins remain, in themselves and by the act, most serious, and by what they deserve most fit for eternal death and for grace's desertion; yet by accident they stop standing as that for God's people. He does not treat his own by bare strict right, as slaves, but with a father's gentleness (ἐπιεικείᾳ), as sons — often with Joseph's hard look toward his brothers, yet with a kinder look ready to return — because God's firm foundation stands, and so on (2 Timothy 2:19).

Controv. X: Does the hypostatic union or exaltation hand divine essential properties to Christ's human nature in the abstract?§68

68On the person of Christ the God-man (Θεάνθρωπος).

X. First question: by the force of the natures' hypostatic union in Christ's person as God-man — which both sides confess was made without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation (ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως) — or also by the exaltation that followed and by the session at God's right hand, were the essential properties of the divine nature, together with God's infinite majesty, really and properly handed over to the human nature in the abstract, through the natures' pairing (συνδύασις) or union (ἕνωσις), so as to share possession, naming, and working with the Word (Λόγος)?

That is what they call communication of majesty in the abstract — nature to nature inside the union. Take it either as the use (χρῆσις) of those properties — their employment, exercise, and energy (ἐνέργεια) given to the human nature even while it was on earth — or, with the Swabians, as acquisition (κτῆσις) and shared possession.

Ask it more narrowly still: were the operative properties (ἐνεργητικαί) that work by a second act — omnipotence and life-giving power — so communicated, yet without alteration (ἀλλοποίησις), falling away (ἔκπτωσις), transfer (μετέκβασις), confusion (σύγχυσις), or inherence (ἐνύπαρξις), and without multiplying, transfusing, or confusing the natures or either nature's properties, or lodging those properties by themselves in the human nature subjectively, formally, habitually, as the same writers keep saying? The Ubiquitarians say yes — not all by one route. The Reformed say no.

Rinteln and Cassel soften the dogma: the human nature is not itself omniscient, yet is personally so in the Word§69

69We already saw in the Protheoria (p. 319) a kinder reading of this dogma from the Rinteln theologians, and their agreement with the Cassel men at the root of the matter.

Put with other matching declarations, the sum is this: 1. Christ's human nature as God-man is not itself — and is not called — omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent, whether subjectively or inwardly by inherence (ἐνύπαρξις), or essentially by an essential property, or naturally by an act of that nature, or originally from itself, or by conversion, mixture, or confusion with the divine nature.

2. Yet it is called — and is — such personally, in the Word (Λόγος), because of the personal union with him. By an act of the person the human nature becomes sharer and partaker (κοινωνὸς καὶ μέτοχος) of every working proper to the divinity, and the like.

What is then said of that nature is said by an outward naming, through a communication as real as the hypostatic union of the two natures itself.

Swabians, Saxons, and Hessians have not stated this quarrel in one shared way§70

70So it is plain how tangled others have made the state of this quarrel, and how Lutherans have not always posed it one way.

The Swabians — Brenz, Schmidlin, and the rest who led first — wanted the divine properties poured into the human nature by the union's force, already in the womb.

The Saxons wanted communion of the divine properties of omnipotence, omnipresence, and the like in the assumed flesh, by the exaltation and the session at the right hand.

The Hessians looked more careful than the others in their Judgment on the Book of Concord (1576). Hospinian, Ursinus Wendelinus, Massonius (Anat. Germ. Part II), and others treat this at length.

First falsehoods: as if the Reformed denied the personal union, the natures' communion, or the Mediator's majesty§71

71After much debate among themselves, and mazes of words and distinctions, even inside the Book of Concord, the first falsehoods of the harsher brethren against us finally show up in this controversy.

They talk as if the Reformed deny — which they never did — the personal union and the natures' undivided bond; or the natures' communion in the person of the God-man (Θεάνθρωπος); or common possession of the properties, yet as belonging to the person as the subject-which (subjectum quod), in their phrase; or the majesty of Christ the man, and the power of the mediatorial office that is his as well (Matthew 28:18).

Communication of properties is reciprocal naming of either nature for the whole person, and is as real as the union§72

72Or even what they call the communication of properties — that is, of either nature's properties and workings in the one person where the natures are united, and that as a two-way exchange (κατὰ τρόπον ἀντιδόσεως).

By it the names, properties, and operations of either nature — say the divine — are truly and really said of the whole person, and that person is sometimes named from the humanity (John 3:13), and the other way round, as in Acts 20:28 and 1 Corinthians 2:8, examples ready in Holy Scripture.

That communication, on the account just given, is as real as the natures' union is real; though the speaking leans toward synecdoche, where what belongs to the part is given to the whole according to that part.

The theologians already named have set this out at length.

The first falsehood was bodily presence in the Supper, and from it the flight to ubiquity§73

73The first falsehood of them all was asserting a bodily presence in the Holy Supper.

From that they finally fled to this sacred anchor: that omnipresence — or ubiquity — and omnipotence too, and the rest, had been really communicated to the human nature, whether by outpouring, as the Swabians say, or by a kind of encirclement, as Chemnitz the Brunswick theologian and others say.

The wiser Hessians, Helmstedt men, Anhaltines, and the rest wanted to ground bodily presence not in the personal union or in ubiquity, but in the institution words: This is my body.

Add the places the Swabians and Saxons twist — Matthew 28:18; Philippians 2:9; Colossians 2:3, 9, and so on — and the rest of what the Palatine, Anhaltine, and Cassel theologians have defended at length.

Controv. XI: Was majestic ubiquity given to Christ's flesh by the union, the exaltation, or the institution words?§74

74Controv. XI. On the ubiquity of Christ's flesh.

II. Was majestic omnipresence — or ubiquity — specially communicated to Christ's flesh or body, whether by the union with the Word (λόγος) in the Virgin's womb, or by the exaltation to God's right hand, or at least by the truth of the institution words, so that that flesh is omnipresent, but by a personal act, as they put it?

On that account it would be no wonder if he were bodily present in the Holy Eucharist, once his omnipotence had taken away the body's locality, and with it its tangibility and visibility in the first act.

Then Christ's ascension would not have been a true local going up, but rather a vanishing of the body; and the heaven he entered would not be a created, finite, bodily place above the visible heavens, but some uncreated, boundless, bodiless heaven — God himself, or God's own majesty, and incomprehensible glory and power.

The Ubiquitarians say yes. The Reformed say no.

Melanchthon and many Lutherans deny Suevic ubiquity and put multivolitional presence in its place§75

75Melanchthon, Peucer, Heshusius, Hofmann himself, Chemnitz, Chytraeus, Selnecker, Major, and others joined the Reformed in denying the Suevic ubiquity of Christ's flesh.

So did the Danes, Holsteiners, Brunswickers, Helmstedt men, Anhaltines, Hessians, the Lower-Saxon theologians, and the Nurembergers, long since.

Chemnitz led the way: instead of ubiquity — or πανταχεσία — they put a multivolitional presence.

That means a real κοινωνία or μετοχή of the divine operations in the human nature, so that it is wherever and whenever it wills to be, or can be wherever it wishes — the Hessian reading in their Judgment on the Torgau Formula (1567).

First falsehoods of the Ubiquitarians: without infinite flesh the hypostatic union supposedly dissolves§76

76Those theologians commonly called Ubiquitarians had many first falsehoods. The harsher among them — and their chiefs — were the Swabians.

One sample: they say the hypostatic union of the natures dissolves unless the human nature is stretched to match the divine — equally infinite, equally omnipresent, and so on.

Turn the charge around and it is ready: the marvel of ubiquity is what cancels that personal union.

On that path they collapsed two phrases into one: "the whole Christ," said of the person and of the subject-which (subjectum quod), and "the whole of Christ," said of the united natures or the subject-by-which (subjectum quo).

They make the session at God's right hand, and "I am with you," a local presence of the body§77

77Again: that the sitting at the right hand is about place and ubiety, and is said of the flesh in the abstract; or that this flesh sits at God's right hand everywhere, not in the heaven he entered — on that inference see our Vindication of Mark 16:19.

Likewise they take "Christ is with us" (Matthew 18:20; 28:20) as a local presence of the body, and make "I am with you" mean "my flesh is with you without interval (ἀδιαστάτως)," against Matthew 26:11 and John 17:11.

We hold the truer reading: Christ is, and always will be, with his own — that is, with his Church — by the presence of the divinity, which is common to all, and likewise by another, special providence of power, grace, assistance, and energy through the Spirit's influx, the like.

We have treated that at length in the Biblical Vindications, Book III, on Matthew 18:20.

Ephesians 4:10 does not make the flesh fill every place; Westphal's stones follow, and Brentius retreats to dispensation§78

78They read "he fills all things" (Ephesians 4:10) as if Christ's flesh itself fills every place.

Paul's point there is different: the flesh was raised by the ascension above the visible heavens, so that it is not that flesh which fills all things, but the exalted Christ who fills his whole Church with his gifts, Spirit, grace, and the rest.

Other abused proofs for the ubiquity, illocality, or invisibility of Christ's flesh — Matthew 14:25, 29; Luke 20:36; John 20:19, 26; Luke 24:31; Acts 7:55; 1 Corinthians 15:8; Revelation 1:13, and so on — we set aside; Wendelin and our side have already defended them at length.

For the inference from Matthew 14:25, 29, see our Biblical Vindications, Book II, Place XXIII.

Sharper eyes saw where that πανταχεσία of the flesh leads: Christ no less present in every place — in stones and wood, as Joachim Westphal of Hamburg put it — than in the bread, and no less before consecration than after it.

That is why Brentius fell back to this remark: the body is in the consecrated bread alone, by dispensation.

Controv. XII: Does baptism regenerate infants inwardly, bind the Spirit to the water, and admit lay or even women baptizers in necessity?§79

79Controversy XII. On Baptism. Is holy Baptism so effective that every infant washed with by that very act inwardly regenerated by the Holy Spirit — and so must have actual faith, since baptism profits nothing without faith?

Is baptism's washing only an outward means God ordained, a sacrament or symbol and seal of our regeneration (Titus 3:5; Acts 16:22), and a moral instrument of it, under the condition of faith — faith already present in adults (Mark 16:16), or faith still to come in infants who will live — and so necessary only hypothetically, as a divine command?

Or is it also a physical means and an inward efficiency without which regeneration does not ordinarily happen, and by which that regeneration is altogether worked — and so absolutely necessary, a means without which it cannot be?

On that reading, mere lack of baptism in infants, if it does not damn them outright, at least puts them in danger of damnation; and Christ's words about being born of water and Spirit are pressed that way (John 3:5).

From this they ask whether, in necessity, private persons ordinarily called laypeople — and even women — may baptize, though they may not preach (1 Corinthians 14:34–35).

The Lutherans say yes; the Reformed say no.

On what is essential to baptism the Lutherans and Reformed already agree; the leftover quarrel is slight§80

80On what is essential to this sacrament, the Lutherans and the Reformed already agree; we saw that above from the confessed points (p. 340).

What is left of the quarrel, weighed fairly, will hardly seem worth so much.

Three leftover disputes: infants' actual faith, how far baptism is necessary, and whether the Spirit's baptism is tied to the water§81

81The leftover controversy runs like this. First, about infants' actual faith. The Reformed take them as able to receive faith in its principle, seed, root, and habit — poured in by God in a way we cannot grasp — and so able to receive some grace, even inward grace: federal grace, as children taken with their parents into the covenant and sharers of the promise (Acts 2:39).

So they are capable of sacramental sanctification, as by circumcision (Romans 4:11), so by baptism (1 Corinthians 7:14; Colossians 2:14); and finally capable of the remission of original sin and of justifying grace.

Second, about how far holy baptism is necessary. On their side, bare lack of it — with no willful neglect — already works either loss of salvation, or at least danger of that loss.

Third, about the mode of efficacy: that regenerating grace is bound to the baptismal ceremony, or (in their phrase) the baptism of the Spirit is bound to the baptism of water as its effect — ordinarily, they add — yet not by the Papists' opus operatum, but by the Holy Spirit's own working.

Fourth dispute: lay baptism in necessity; antiquity less scrupulous, yet women kept from administering it§82

82Fourth and last: controversy about a layperson administering baptism in a case of necessity. On that point antiquity was not so scrupulous, as Tertullian shows, and Grotius, Salmasius, and others agree

Women, however, are constantly shut out from administering it — and not in one Tertullian passage only: On Baptism, On the Veiling of Virgins, and On the Prescription of Heretics, as G. J. Vossius cites them in Disputation XI.

So also in the African canons, Council of Carthage IV, canon c (Councils, tom. II): A woman must not presume to baptize — which some absurdly restrict to times when priests are present.

Precarious hypotheses: as if the Reformed made neglect harmless, or denied the virtue Christ and Paul tie to baptism§83

83The precarious supporting claims are these. First: that the Reformed do not count neglect of baptism as harmful. They do count it harmful — harmful to those who neglect it against Christ's command.

Second: that we deny baptism the full virtue Christ gives it (Mark 16:16) or Paul gives it (Titus 3:5), as if Christ binds salvation to holy baptism and Paul binds regeneration to it.

But Christ says nothing there about infants being regenerated by baptism. He speaks of prior faith — and so of prior regenerating grace — in adults the apostles were to baptize. Salvation hangs not on baptism but on the believer's act: whoever has not believed will be condemned.

For Paul too baptism is the washing of regeneration, set against Jewish washings — which neither seal regeneration nor serve as a moral means, under the New Testament, for beginning that regeneration in infants and carrying it on in adults.

Faith and baptism are not equal necessities; John 3:5 is not yet the later rite of water, but Spirit-washing — and if baptism, adults only§84

84Third: they assume that faith and baptism are equally necessary for salvation. But Christ nowhere said — it is plain — that whoever has not been baptized will be damned.

Faith can stand without baptism: the converted thief, the Ethiopian eunuch, Saul, Cornelius, all before they were baptized. Baptism can also stand without faith: Simon Magus, for example — an outward washing without the inward (1 Peter 3:21), as fleshly circumcision without circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:28–29).

Fourth precarious claim: that John 3:5 is about baptism in bodily, outward water properly so called — a rite not yet instituted then, but only later (Matthew 28).

More truly it concerns the necessity of the thing signified: washing by the Holy Spirit, of which alone Christ speaks in the words that follow — and which alone Nicodemus needed, already circumcised long before, and now to be raised into a new life.

Add this: even if the text were about baptism, Christ's words could aim only at adults who could use this instrument of regeneration and refused to.

Controv. XIII: May sacred images in churches be religiously used — even as necessary from the first ages?§85

85Controv. XIII. On certain rites among the Lutherans that are not plainly indifferent.

First: may sacred images stand in churches not only as a civil or political decoration for temple splendor and ornament, but as a sacred and religious use — for historical remembrance through pictures of Christ, the saints, and the martyrs, for the less learned; for moral instruction (what they call image-teaching, and books for the unlettered); and at last for greater reverence of the place, and to mark Christian temples off from Jewish and Muslim ones?

Is that use only lawful and permitted, as something indifferent in itself, nowhere forbidden under the New Testament once the old ground of the ban has ceased among Christians — the danger of idolatry that once hung over the Jewish nation (Exodus 20:4)?

Or is it even primeval, already from the first ages of the Christian church — say from Tertullian's day — and usefully, even necessarily, to be kept?

Some Lutherans affirm both; the Reformed deny.

No sober quarrel over removing images; Luther would rather not set them in the temple§86

86No quarrel worth the name has been raised by the Leipzigers, the Rinteln men, or other more sober Lutherans over the images the Reformed have taken down. In most of those churches none appear either.

Luther himself long ago judged it more useful that none stand on altars or in temples — whatever he blamed in the hotheaded iconoclasts first led on by Karlstadt without the magistrate's authority.

"Otherwise," he says, "I do not greatly love images, and I would rather they were not set up in the temple" (Annotations on Deuteronomy, Jena Latin, vol. III, fol. 99).

Wittenberg and Giessen theologians, Nic. Palladius of Copenhagen, David Chytraeus, Martin Chemnitz, and others felt the same. Massonius gathers the testimonies against Matth. Hoe (Universal Anatomy of Germany, Part III, from p. 404).

Precarious image hypotheses: Christian liberty, early practice, and images as books for the rude§87

87Theologians have long sifted precarious supporting claims here.

One: that the Second Commandment's ban on images concerns something indifferent in itself, and so Christian liberty has lifted it.

Another: early Christian practice — though Chemnitz and others admit that before Jerome's day no images stood in temples.

Another: that images are books for the unlearned. Chemnitz, answering Trent (Part IV), cuts that pretext down, and points to Christ and the apostles, who neither taught by images or statues nor ever used them, content to set the handed-down doctrine in the Scriptures.

On the practice of the earlier ages, and on Elvira canon 36, see our History of Images, Section I.

Controv. XIII.II: Is the baptismal exorcism rite useful — or even necessary — in the church?§88

88Second question under the rites head: the ceremony of exorcism in baptism.

The minister about to baptize an infant (1) asks whether the child believes, whether he renounces the world, and the like; (2) commands Satan to leave the infant — possessed by the demon not bodily, but spiritually — and give place to the Holy Spirit; (3) using the sign of the cross and a fixed form of words.

Is that rite usefully kept in the Christian church — or even necessary, and to be kept without fail? Some Lutherans affirm one or the other; most of them, with the Reformed, deny.

See the Cassel consensus on exorcism (above, p. 340). Saxons and the rest also grant that the rite is not essential to baptism, not commanded by Christ or the apostles, not a spiritual power in itself — only a sign that infants are born children of wrath and stand under Satan's power outside Christ.

True origin of baptismal exorcism: adult rite, catechesis, and energumen expulsion§89

89Its true origin is threefold.

First: the old rite around adults about to be baptized. For a time baptism was preceded by putting off clothes or shoes, solemn renunciation, turning east, anointing the whole body, and a human breath with divine power driving the demon out — a human breath with divine power driving the demon out — as Cyprian first notes at the saving water of baptism (Epistle 76 to Magnus). The baptized person himself also blew out or spat as if casting the demon — that is, wicked affections — from his own breast.

Second: the old catechetical rite, in which catechumens were breathed upon to drive off the demon of ignorance and malice (Balsamon and others on Laodicea canon 26). So exorcists and catechists were the same office, as we show more fully in the Church History — and catechizing passed over into the baptismal rite.

Third: the exorcism of energumens, the demon-possessed, which alone stood in the first and second ages outside baptism, and by force of the promise (Mark 16:17). Later every person outside Christ was treated as somehow demon-possessed.

Controv. XIII.III: Is breaking ordinary bread in the Supper required by Christ's institution — or may wafers replace it?§90

90Third: the breaking of ordinary table bread in the Holy Supper.

However they first broke it — by fingers or knife, by the consecrators themselves or left after consecration for others to break and tear into portions — and however the broken bread is put into communicants' hands for sacramental eating: is that rite only pious or useful, as they grant, or also necessary by Christ's institution, when He told us to do what He Himself did?

Not as if breaking belonged to the bare essence of the sacrament, yet as belonging to its integrity — which is why the supper was called, preeminently, the breaking of bread.

Or is the rite simply indifferent, freely dropped — so that little hosts or round wafers, placed by the minister in the communicants' mouths, may rightly replace ordinary bread?

Lutherans deny the first and affirm the second — yet not all of them, and not from Luther. The Reformed take the other side.

Fraction quarrel not fundamental; precarious readings of 'he broke' and 'do this'§91

91After the Rinteln declaration, the Cassel men grant that this dissent is not fundamental.

Yet the brethren lean on precarious props. First: that in the words of institution "he broke" means only "he distributed," as Hebrew words for breaking can also mean distributing — as if Christ had used those Hebrew words; as if a double act were not recorded, "he broke and he gave" (ἔκλασε καὶ ἐδίδου), even in the Syriac; as if "to break" of bread meant anything else in the plain New Testament places.

Second: that breaking is unnecessary because we may not know how Christ broke — which would also make blessing and giving thanks unnecessary, since the manner is not spelled out, though the act itself is stated as plainly as can be.

Third: that "Do this" carries no command to do what He did — though Luther himself tied those words to the breaking of bread (Jena Works II.25; Massonius Anatomy IV.253; Wendelin against Gerhard, Exercises I.XVII).

See also Chemnitz, Mentzer, and the Giessen consensus in Massonius at the same place. Here Controv. XIII on rites closes before the mutual-tolerance head and before the Hexades.

Controv. XV: Should the Reformed, by the rule of charity, tolerate Lutherans as brethren?§92

92Controv. XV. On mutual tolerance among Evangelicals.

By the rule of charity, should the Reformed — though they differ from the Lutherans on the chapters above — be ready to bear with them as brethren, sharers of the same faith and salvation, and members of the true church, in a holy bond of hearts and studies?

The graver consequences of those chapters need not block the way: the Lutherans neither own those consequences nor accept them. Other heads weigh less once the real state of the quarrel is set out fairly — as in the chapter on the Holy Supper. And both sides still keep the common Protestant principle and foundation of the faith, having rejected idolatry and papal doctrine.

And should Lutherans receive the Reformed as Augsburg partners — without Formula-of-Concord anathemas?§93

93And should the Lutherans, for their part, count the Reformed as brethren — even as partners of the Augsburg Confession in Melanchthon's revised form — as to the substance of what must be believed and done?

Should they keep peace and mutual correspondence with us, and join mutual leagues against the Roman Antichrist?

Not with the old rashness of damning, as in the Book of Concord and what followed; not with the appetite for baiting and tearing that brands men Nestorians, Manichaeans, Predestinarians, Sacramentarians, and the rest — in pulpits and in print.

All the more so because the Reformed themselves, with their whole heart, abhor the ugly consequences painted onto them: an unmerciful God, God as author of sin, and the like.

We affirm both sides of the question; most Ubiquitarians deny the Lutheran duty§94

94We affirm both.

Yet most Ubiquitarians have refused the second half — that Lutherans ought to receive the Reformed as brethren and partners — as sorrowful experience shows.

The exceptions are those we have already praised in the Catallactic Protheoria (pages 334–335, 343–344, and following).

Yet these are wishes only — experience proves the labor dies like water poured away§95

95And yet these are only wishes — wishes, nothing more — and so have been all the study, speech, and labor spent on that end till now.

Sad experience has shown that the work carries empty wind up to the airy clouds, and dies badly — like the old saying about three kinds of water: the stream that runs into the sea, the water mixed into wine, and the water poured on a Jew for Christian baptism.

Rome feared a Protestant confederation; hard Lutherans hated Melanchthon's circle and later irenics§96

96The history of the last age shows what Rome's curia, the Imperial court, Spain, and the French clergy under Catherine de' Medici feared most: a sacred confederation of Protestants.

How fierce, then, were the passions of the Heshusians, Brentians, Flacians, Formula men of Bergen, and Hunnians? What hatred boiled against gentle Melanchthon — not to name our own — and then against Peucer, his son-in-law, wasted by ten years in prison, against Strigel, and the rest?

They skimmed off waves of rage almost everywhere, even against the best and most moderate princes; and in our own century against the Bishop of Strängnäs, the Calixtines, Dreier's men, the Rinteln theologians, and every brother formed of better clay who would not make the schism everlasting.

To rehearse that here would be needless.

Do not reproach us for party names we suffer unwillingly — remember your own labels§97

97Nor may they cast our quarrels — or the contentious nicknames we suffer against our will and do not freely borrow from masters as if those men were demigods — more bitterly in our teeth.

Let them mind the knapsack on their own back. Let them remember the party names among themselves, and the writings that truly brand men in public, in the fights over the Lord's Supper after the Confession was amended, over predestination, ubiquity, the Formula of Concord, the communication of properties, that mode of conversion or justification, the necessity of works, the adiaphora, and the Interim — and the rest.

Hence the names common among them, so often run through with shafts or struck by anathema: Philippists, Synergists, Flacians, Brentio-Flacians, Heshusians, Formulists, Hoffmannians, Osiandrists, Majorists, Adiaphorists, Hessian-Calvinists or Zwinglians, adherents of the Variata or of the Invariata Confession, and so on.

Here Controv. XV on mutual tolerance closes before the Hexades Annotationum on Spanheim's Protheoria.

Hexades Prooemium H.I: Midway in the second millennium, is Reformation itself or its necessity more to be remembered?§98

98HEXAS OF ANNOTATIONS on the blessed Spanheim's historical and reconciling Protheoria of the chief controversies with the theologians of the Augsburg Confession, as they are called.

Prooemium. H. I.

We judge it nearly an open question whether the middle stretch of the second millennium — from Christ's birth to the end of all ages — that learned men who follow some Jewish Elijah more commonly expect (the stretch to which both the Elenchus-writer's Protheoria and our own historical-reconciling Protheoria belong) is better remembered, through every age still to come, by Christianity's Reformation itself, or by the necessity of Reformation.

Head and members alike mourned the need to reform — ruined councils, Lateran barkers, and later historians prove it§99

99The necessity of reforming the Christian Church in her head (so named, though by a striking abuse) as well as in her members was something every Christian estate of that age — spiritual and temporal, Germans and French above all — both saw clearly and mourned with heavy grief.

They pressed for amendment by humble prayers everywhere, and partly by sharper threats, against the utterly wrecked teaching and life of Popes Julius, Alexander, and Leo — after those men and their like had dodged, crushed, and even trampled the most wholesome councils (Basel, Constance, and at last Pisa, continued at Milan and finished at Lyons in France) by a thousand frauds and foul arts, and after opposite councils that barked mordantly enough — the Lateran ones above all, and other brickish assemblies they claimed as their own.

So too the most famous men of our own age, sharers in that excellent Reformation won by God's grace, have laid the same necessity out at length: among those specially called Reformed, the great Hottinger (ὁ πάνυ), in Ecclesiastical History Parts V–VI and in the Historico-Theological Analecta, Dissertation I, pages 1–82; among other Evangelicals, after Chytraeus and Celestine in the openings of their Augsburg-Confession histories, the illustrious Seckendorf in Lutheranism defended against Maimbourg, Baclerus in the Memorial of sixteenth-century affairs (p. 263 ff.), and most recently the celebrated Ulm divine Elias Viel in a special treatise.

Zwingli and Luther openly pressed a Reformation long secretly begun — the indulgence market drove them§100

100Yet the Reformation itself had already been growing in secret for many ages — Flacius's Catalog of Witnesses of the Truth and James Ussher of Armagh in his golden booklet on church succession have said much about that hidden work.

Under God's lead it broke into the open in upper and lower Germany through Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther.

Zwingli led first by public teaching and by thundering against papal doctrine; Luther led first by striking the same targets with public writings and deeds of many kinds.

What chiefly dragged both men into the fight was the shameless papal indulgence-market, midwifed in one place by a certain Samsonius and in the other by infamous Tetzel (Gerhard Theodor Mejer, History of Religion, ch. V, §29, pp. 253–254).

§.II: Tetzel sold pardons under Wimpina in our own Viadrina — Luther posted theses at Wittenberg§101

101§. II. Tetzel grew wilder still in our own Viadrina, selling under Conrad Wimpina's shield — Wimpina being the Academy's first Rector.

He hawked his wares and praised them once laid out: pay even ten shillings and receive absolution from any crime; drop a coin in the chest and souls leave Purgatory at once; buy pardon even if, by impossibles, you had violated God's Mother (Luther's Letter to Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg of Mainz, Jena Latin Tom. I, fol. 2).

That fury only hardened Luther's counterblow: at Wittenberg he had his Theses against the foul trade nailed to the church doors.

Against Leo's leonine teeth Luther burned the condemning bull and appealed to Charles V§102

102Pope Leo answered Luther's several most humble apologies and protests (Jena Latin Tom. I, fol. 69 end; fol. 192 and 210 end; finally fol. 435) with still harsher injustice and with teeth worthy of his name.

When that leonine message came, Luther burned the condemning Bull and lodged his appeal with Emperor Charles V (Wittenberg Latin Tom. II, fol. 44–45).

§.III: From Worms to the Augsburg Diet of 1530 Spanheim takes the Controversiae we now treat§103

103§. III. That clash brought imperial summons: in 1521 Charles V called Luther to Worms under safe-conduct and demanded a retractation.

Luther would not recant without first hearing his errors proved from Holy Scripture — and he held that line without wavering.

Meanwhile Frederick the Wise, Duke and Elector of Saxony, together with some other Romano-German estates, had drawn nearer to Luther's teaching. The same Emperor then set the Augsburg Diet for July 1530; Luther waited out the danger at Coburg, as Sleidan tells in Book VII.

From that Diet the blessed Spanheim, in his Elenchus, takes the title for certain chief Controversies with the so-called Augsburg-Confession theologians — the very Controversies we are to treat here.

Here the Hexades Prooemium ends; Annotatio I on the Augsburg Confession and its theologians follows.

Annotatio I: Spanheim's rubric on controversies with Augsburg-Confession theologians asks three questions§104

104ANNOTATION I. On the Augsburg Confession and its theologians and associates — keyed to these words of the Author's rubric:

Chief Controversies with the theologians of the Augsburg Confession, as they are called.

§. I. That rubric of our celebrated Author, by which he titles the Protestant Controversies, bids us press three inquiries, or settle them more sharply:

[I.] What the Augsburg Confession is, and of what kind.

[II.] Who count as its theologians, and who as its confessors or associates at large?

[III.] In what sense some men, ahead of others, are called Augsburg-Confession theologians — or rather have grown used, not without spleen, to calling themselves so, and still do.

§.II: The Augsburg Confession is Melanchthon's crafted complex of Christian faith, exhibited to Charles V in 1530§105

105§. II. If we give no play to party feeling, we must say this: the Augsburg Confession is a complex of the Christian faith in its chief heads.

Luther sketched it; Melanchthon dressed it and ordered it into the verbal and real form it now enjoys.

It was gathered and signed in the name of the chief estates of the Romano-German Empire in Lower Germany by the leading theologians of that region, then exhibited at Augsburg to Emperor Charles V in 1530 as a stand chiefly against papal heterodoxy.

It was not read in a full assembly of all the estates, but it was read publicly in the Emperor's palace. Charles rejected it by solemn decree; those estates nonetheless defended and confirmed it together; and in 1531 it was first issued into public light at Wittenberg by public authority.

§.III: Historians of every party affirm that Luther sketched and Melanchthon finished what Augsburg presented§106

106§. III. Christians of every party, and anyone who knows the history of the Augsburg Confession, will own this description as true.

The Confession itself says it is a complex of the chief articles of Christian faith — through the twenty-one articles of its first part, set beside Holy Scripture, the adequate principle of faith.

No less clearly, through the seven heads of Abuses in its second part, it shows that this complex stands chiefly against the papal side, once those heads are compared with papal confessions and catechisms.

Luther first sketched that complex more roughly in seventeen articles; Melanchthon then worked it out more carefully and signed it more distinctly. Even in that shape Luther approved it, as did Brenz, Jonas, Schnepf, and Spalatin among other theologians.

In the name of those estates, at the place, time, and manner remembered — after their hands had signed it — it was shown to the Emperor, blasted by his public decree, yet defended and confirmed by them, and the next year published in both the Latin and the German in which it had been exhibited.

So say with one mouth, and with pens agreed from every side, all who have set out to write the Confession's history and narrate these facts — a company Baclerus begins to number, though the list is not yet full, in his Memorial of sixteenth-century affairs, pages 405–406.

§.IV [1]: Even where it agrees with Scripture the Augsburg Confession is particular, not ecumenical§107

107§. IV. From this most true description of the Augsburg Confession, admitted on all sides, these points stand out at the very threshold, clearer than noon:

[1.] Even where its substance and articles of faith agree with Holy Scripture, one may call it a universal or θεόπνευσος confession only in a weakened sense — the same way any single person's confession (for example that of blessed John Sigismund, once Elector of Brandenburg) can be called universal insofar as it matches Scripture received by Christians everywhere, and any writing exactly congruent with Scripture can be called θεόπνευσον, yet not without catachresis.

But as to its form — the coherence of its words and articles — as to its authors, subscribers, and approvers, and as to its use, it must be heard as a particular confession, not a universal one, unlike every confession of the ecumenical councils.

Those council confessions, though they too have their own accidental forms, belong as ecumenical to orthodox authors of the churches universal in East and West alike, and they are received by the whole Christian Church wherever it reaches — not by Germany alone, or even by a German part. Hence they are universal.

The Augsburg Confession can no more be called universal than the Anglican, Dutch, Helvetic, or any other confession meant for one region or nation and received there.

Mentzer agrees (Exegesis of the Augsburg Confession, Prolegomena n. 11, p. 9; n. 15 at the end of p. 13), already correcting in advance Calov's Criticum, then still unborn, on its self-contradictory little pages 17–18.

§.IV [2]: It is a human writing, not θεόπνευστος — dissent is not heresy; it is not originally infallible§108

108[2.] It is a human writing, not a divine one. Formal, proper θεοπνευσία belongs only to that confession and writing which, in matter, in words, and in the order and coherence of both, flowed from the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 16:17; 2 Pet. 1:21 with 2 Tim. 3:16).

Calov agrees; and he softens the θεοπνευσία Hutter had ascribed in his Explanation of the Formula of Concord, page 1 — which Hutter himself was soon to soften in the same place.

From this two things follow. First: even if one does not assent to the Augsburg Confession in every point, the brand of heresy is not at once to be burned onto him — as it rightly is onto those who strip faith from the ecumenical confessions (see Hospinian, Concordia Discors, ch. 18, p. 163, gathering the many solid reasons of the Neustadt theologians' corollary, ch. 40, p. 352 at the end).

Second: the Augsburg Confession is not infallible with original, properly so-called infallibility — though one may call it infallible in an improper, derived sense, the sense in which anything absolutely true (even bare philosophy) or anything drawn from Holy Scripture is called infallible.

Yet because fallible human work came between, it enjoys only a diminished infallibility, and must be weighed against the absolutely infallible Word of God. It gains that lesser infallibility only insofar as, and because, it agrees with that Word.

§.IV II: Melanchthon's authority in framing and interpreting the Confession equals Luther's§109

109II. Philip Melanchthon's authority — no less than Luther's — in framing and writing the Augsburg Confession, and in explaining and interpreting it, is to be held with reverence.

Luther's reading can claim no more public right or force in the church of Lower Germany than Melanchthon's, except insofar as those German estates in whose name the Confession was made, offered, and defended prefer one reading to the other.

That matters all the more because the Apology of the Augsburg Confession — matching it part for part and article for article — was also composed in the name of the Empire's Protestant estates not by Luther but by Melanchthon. Chytraeus praises it at length in the place cited.

Yet Chytraeus distinguishes Melanchthon's shorter earlier Apology of 1530 from the later, fuller one finished in 1531. The first was dressed with the estates' consent; the second was not — for in Article X it cites certain things from Bulgarus (or Vulgarius) that lean too far toward papal transubstantiation (see Johannes Museus, Lectures on the Formula of Concord; Sohnius in the same place.

§.IV III–IV: Palace reading adds no precedence over the Tetrapolitan; authority is great yet not absolute§110

110III. That the Confession was read to the Emperor in the palace wins it no authority beyond another confession of the same age written in Upper Germany and commonly called the Tetrapolitan — likewise shown to Charles, though not read aloud to him.

Both were struck down and cast out by one and the same imperial decree, as Chytraeus narrates (History of the Augsburg Confession, Frankfurt edition 1578; and Celestine, Tom. III and Tom. IV).

IV. Meanwhile its authority on the chief dogmas of faith is great and outstanding — even much outweighing the authority of many particular confessions and of the Formula of Concord. The celebrated Wittenberg divine Philipp Ludwig Hanneken owns as much in his Theological Declaration on the true estimation of the Augsburg Confession (preliminary qq. 8–9), if I rightly catch a mind set out a little darkly.

I say, first: as to the chief Christian dogmas. The Confession does not reach to everything; so Hutter is wrong to claim it as the most ready and powerful antidote against every heresy whatever (Explanation of the Formula of Concord).

I say, second: a comparatively great and outstanding authority belongs to it, yet not an absolute one. Under that name the Neustadt theologians hint very soberly that they do not (at least principally) rest the confirmation of their doctrine on its consent or patronage, as if under that cover they might sell or force it on others.

By God's gift their faith and confession stand on better ground than to need men's testimonies or props, still less a borrowed agreement with them. So they need not fret whether the Augsburg Confession stands with them or not, provided they are sure the confession of the Prophets and Apostles does — and if they agree with that, they are free to dissent from Augsburg and from every human confession (ch. 5).

They had already protested in the preceding fourth chapter (p. 116) that they did not mean to reject or tear apart the Augsburg Confession, but rather to keep for it a fitting authority — lest, like its immoderate heralds, by giving it an unjust authority they strip away even the just one.

Here Annotatio I §.IV closes before §.V on the varied editions and the fights over autograph, apograph, and print.

§.V: What the Confession is we settled; of what kind forces a digression on varied editions — the αὐτόγραφον§111

111§. V. What the Augsburg Confession is, we have already set out in a clear description.

Of what kind it is — that inquiry is forced on us by its many and altered editions, and by the huge quarrels and pitched fights that have grown up around them.

Either it is an αὐτόγραφον, or ἀρχέτυπον: the very copy shown to the Emperor.

Chytraeus remembers that copy as Latin only, and therefore unique (History of the Augsburg Confession).

Celestine rather describes both a Latin and a German together — a pair (Tom. II).

After the Saxon chancellor Christian Pontanus had read the German aloud, Charles took both copies into his own hand.

He gave the German to his secretary Alexander Schweiß to offer to the Elector of Mainz; it later went into the Mainz archive (Celestine, Tom. I and Tom. III).

He kept the Latin himself and at last lodged it in the Brussels archive.

Both lay hidden for many years in those archives, as Bellarmine notes (Judgment on the Book of Concord, Tom. II, Controversies).

Dorsche adds that soon afterward one of them — I guess the German — was cut out of the volume of public acts gathered at the Augsburg Diet (Dissertation on Divine Providence concerning the Augsburg Confession, Rostock 1555).

So a genuine exemplar of the unvaried Confession no longer survives — Bacler rightly draws that conclusion (Memorial cited above, p. 406 at the end).

[Note: Justus Jonas writes Luther, in Chytraeus p. 74 mid-page, that the Emperor had the Confession put into Italian and French for himself; I take that to mean translated into those tongues.]

§.V: Or ἀπόγραφον hand-copies at the Diet — or τυπόγραφον print, private at Breslau and public at Wittenberg§112

112Or it is an ἀπόγραφον — an ἔκτυπον: a fair pen copy, word for word from the original.

I would not easily deny that such copies stood ready at the Augsburg Diet.

It is hardly likely that neither the theologians — Melanchthon chief among the framers — nor the imperial Estates in whose name the Confession was dressed, kept an exact copy of what was shown to Charles, and even several copies procured estate by estate, held back against every sort of chance.

Had they done otherwise, they would one and all stand convicted — if not of lazy neglect, then of a stupid want of foresight.

Or last, a τυπόγραφον — an ἔκτυπον from the press: type set from a pen apograph.

That could be by private venture: the same year a vernacular quarto came out at Breslau from Adam Dyon types. Chytraeus says it was shaped to the original Confession kept in the Mainz archive (History, p. 47), and he himself often follows it (see the author of the Ausführliche Behauptung, p. 6 at the end).

Or it could be by public authority: the next year Wittenberg printed several, German and Latin, quarto and octavo.

Among them the Latin quarto took first place, and in its preface even branded the Breslau print a spurious one — as Calov notes (Critica Sacra, p. 82).

§.V: Early prints differ from one another and from the autograph — Art. X German vs Latin; Bellarmine; Schmid; Baden collation§113

113Of all these first-two-years press copies it is certain: they often differ in wording both from one another and from the autograph.

The earlier verbal split shows not only when Wittenberg copies are set beside the Breslau one, but when Wittenberg copies are set beside each other — the Latin quarto against the German of the same size — above all on Article X, though both Wittenberg runs used the same printer, Georg Rhau (Calov, Critica, pp. 86–98).

The same is proved by the Latin and German exemplars Chytraeus and Celestine put into their histories, and by matching either author's Latin with his German.

Celestine's and Chytraeus's German both cast Article X thus: they teach of the Supper that Christ's true body and blood are truly present under the form of bread and wine, are distributed and received there, and that the contrary teaching is rejected (Tom. II, p. 53b).

But their Latin forms Article X so that the species of bread and wine are never named: they teach concerning the Lord's Supper that the body and blood of the Lord are truly present and are distributed to those who eat, and they reject those who teach otherwise (same Tom., p. 172b).

Like gaps turn up around Articles XIII and XVIII when Chytraeus's and Celestine's Latin copies are compared: Chytraeus has many additions Celestine lacks.

No wonder, then, that Papists and some Protestants have complained of discrepant copies.

Bellarmine is not far from the truth when he writes (in the place already cited) that almost every year new exemplars appeared which, though all wore the Augsburg title, differed much in words and sentences both among themselves and from the first Confession shown to Charles.

Johann Schmid, pressed by whatever truth sits in those words, answers that Bellarmine's yearly-change talk is hyperbole alone: we do not deny verbal change, but we deny change of the things and sentences; an early change we grant, yet by that pact nothing was added to or taken from the Confession's essence.

The Wittenberg edition of 1531, he says, did not dissent from the Augsburg-exhibited exemplar in substance or doctrine, though its added phrases and diction did not wholly match the prototype. For the causes of the various changes, see Calov, Critica, and p. 85.

Later, the many verbal differences among printed copies — above all the Formula of Concord insert set against the autograph — were carefully collated by the most illustrious prince Ernest Frederick, Margrave of Baden, in the Christian Reflections and Motives that kept His Princely Grace from subscribing the Formula (pp. 1–98, printed at Castle Staffort, 1599).

§.VI: Melanchthon's more polished Variata while Luther lived; repeats in 1540–42 and 1551; later public approval§114

114§. VI. In the years that followed, many other printed copies of the Augsburg Confession came after the first.

Then in 1537 and 1538 — Luther and the other original exhibitors still alive — Melanchthon, seeing how the many copies varied, took counsel to issue a more polished and corrected edition, and carried it out with no one contradicting.

Many theologians at the Altenburg colloquy (p. 404) thus prove the very point Calov says no document establishes (Critica, p. 202). See also the author of the Ausführliche Behauptung, pp. 27–28.

Melanchthon undertook the same again in 1540 and 1542.

In 1551, by order of many Protestant Estates, he finished a third and somewhat longer repeat, to be read in his Body of Doctrine — a useful writing worth reading, says Johannes Museus, in which Augsburg doctrine is set out clearly and with elegance (Lectures on the Epitome of the Formula of Concord, p. 35).

The earlier two Melanchthon editions lacked a public approval beforehand; they still won approval afterward.

Other theologians owned them — Chytraeus, Selneccer, Brenz, the Altenburg men, among them Paul Eber, the Meissen and Greifswald faculties — and Luther himself (Jena German Tom. 7, fol. 447 with 448b).

So did the imperial Estates in the diets at Worms, Regensburg, Frankfurt, and Naumburg, declaring in these words:

Nor is it our mind, by this repetition and renewed subscription of the Confession first printed, to depart even in the least from that shown in the year 40.

For in some colloquies and disputations with adversaries that later text was explained more fully in certain articles, so that heavenly truth might shine the more, and trust in the merit of our Redeemer Jesus Christ might be kept pure and uncorrupted without human traditions and handed on to posterity.

We cannot desert that enriched Confession any more than the other — especially since the 1540 and 1542 print now sits in many hands and is largely in use in our churches and schools.

§.VI: Our writers press the case; Mentzer himself owns the Variata's later public approval as same in substance§115

115Our own writers have chased all this out at more length — Hospinian, Georg Pauli, Sohn, Ursinus, and the rest.

Here I mark especially the author of the Ausführliche Behauptung (pp. 27 and 57; and the Anhang, pp. 25–36), and our own venerable Becmann under the name Orthuinus Gratius against Liebhard (ch. III §2, pp. 73–74 entire).

Becmann also brings forward causes for varying the Augsburg Confession that deserve a hearing (from p. 69), and he beats back hard the stock objections aimed at the Variata's later approval (pp. 73–81), following Crocius on Augsburg fellowship (chs. 54–56).

With Crocius he also drains and turns aside both the older Hutterian cavils (Concordia Concordi, pp. 344 and 418ff.; Anti-Peucer from p. 7) and the newer Calovian ones (Critica Sacra, pp. 203–228).

For us it is enough to note this: even Balthasar Mentzer, a sturdy enough foe of the Variata, candidly owns the later public approval for which we now argue.

In his Prolegomena to the Augsburg Confession (p. 21) he writes: those who admitted the changed Confession have publicly testified that they receive it thus far and no otherwise — insofar as in the things themselves it plainly agrees with the prototype, as the History of the Naumburg Convention shows (p. 61).

So Mentzer. How the imperial Estates themselves took that point, we saw a little earlier in their letter to Ferdinand I.

And even Mentzer's own words make plain that the Varied Augsburg Confession was held to agree with the prototype in the things themselves.

§.VII: To brand the Variata corrupt injures the Confession and Melanchthon; variation is essential or only accidental§116

116§. VII. Those who cry that the Variata is corrupt and depraved — not the same as the original Augsburg Confession, but utterly another — do injury both to the Confession itself and to Melanchthon, its near-chief theological author, in his day the phoenix and easy prince of Germany's theologians and learned men.

For that variation is either essential, and is said to strike the foundation of faith — and then Philip, together with the changed Confession, is charged with heresy — or it is only accidental, and then it plainly agrees with the original in the things themselves, as Mentzer puts it, and is therefore the same confession.

Johann Schmid's answer to Bellarmine, which we already cited in §. V., fits here; and we add what he subjoins:

If change of words, diction, and phrases took away the Confession itself, the Apostles' Creed would long ago have been done for — the monuments show church doctors set it out in one wording and another (pp. 77 end and 88).

Above all, the imperial Estates themselves drew no line between the two Confessions, but counted both one and the same (Anhang of the Ausführliche Behauptung, pp. 43–52).

Inept, too, are those who deny the Variata the name Augsburg because it was not shown at Augsburg — Mentzer's corollary (Prolegomena n. 9, p. 8), with a crowd of followers: Schmid (p. 12), Calov (p. 8), and others.

As if nothing not exhibited at Augsburg could bear an Augustan name; or as if the Augsburg Confession pointed more to the city where it was made than to the matters and articles of which it consists.

(I say it does not mark the city MORE than the articles — without denying it could take its name from that city and should still do so hereafter, even if, as we most heavily grieve has begun, that imperial city should shrink toward the shape of a village.)

Or as if the Confession published at Wittenberg in 1531, and not a few other altered prints that everyone owns suffered various change, ceased to be Augsburg even for those who scorn Philip's Variata — merely because they were not shown at Augsburg.

§.VII: Opponents nearly αὐτοκατάκριτοι — they stretch the Invariata to swallow the Formula, then Dorsche's own canons clear the Philippica§117

117Finally these opponents are caught at odds with themselves — all but self-contradictory.

(1.) They stretch the unvaried Augsburg Confession and its sense so wide that they even fold into it the Formula of Concord's household doctrines — oral manducation of Christ's body, ubiquity or omnipresence of Christ's body, and the like — of which the Augsburg Confession never so much as dreamed — yes, the whole Formula, they say, is packed inside it.

Yet they strike out the Philippica Confession where it varies in some points, so as to make room for Brentian readings and consequences while Melanchthon's are barred and shut out.

Where the finger of Johann Georg Dorsche points — otherwise among the most learned Lutheran divines, and a name I speak only with reverence — in his Secular Disputation on the more noted consequences of the Augsburg Confession, forming among others these conclusions:

Interpretation of the Augsburg Confession admits whatever is drawn from it by legitimate consequence.

Also: Augsburg religion is not to be so narrowed by interpreting that it must be said to be expressed wholly, and in all its articles, inside the Augsburg Confession itself (ch. 2, pp. 182 and 200).

In plain: whatever the Formulists have already spun, or will invent later, is to count as unvaried Augsburg doctrine — because deduced, as they see it, by legitimate consequence.

But whatever Philip added or changed in declaring the Confession he himself once framed — and he may well seem its best interpreter, as of his own words — and whatever Philippists (Pezel, Sohn, Crocius, Georg Pauli, Hoffmann, the Helmstedt men, and others) comment and draw by consequences that seem legitimate to them, that is to be held most alien from the unvaried Confession.

(2.) Or with the same Dorsche in the next, third chapter they mint canons which, if admitted as not far from the truth, show the Variata Philippica altogether genuine to anyone who weighs it with an even hand — and only odiously harassed, even by Dorsche.

Variation of the Augsburg Confession of whatever kind, says Dorsche, even substantial, ought not to have talked anyone into crossing to another religion (Canon 2).

Therefore he who holds to the Philippica, though Dorsche calls it substantially varied, still holds to the religion the unvaried Augsburg Confession professes; the Philippica does not urge a crossing to another religion, still less binds a man to one.

Again: variation that brings no change into the substance of truth set out in the Augsburg articles ought not to be odiously harassed or used to push anyone outside the peace of religion (Canon 3).

Also: variation that leaves the original exemplars their place does not block the sincerity of the Augsburg Confession (pp. 216–218).

I subsume for the Variata Philippica: it brings no change into the substance of truth — Mentzer is witness — and it leaves the original exemplars their place, if any still survive. Therefore.

§.VIII: Dorscheans with Museus — Philippica mostly useful, yet Art. X said corrupted for Calvinists; first vs later wording§118

118§. VIII. Here I may seem, even to the more modest Dorscheans, to beg the question — standing with Johann Museus, who will weigh the Philippica Confession like this:

Most of its articles, they grant, are drawn out more fully and declared more richly, and many useful things appear in that edition.

Yet some insertions later set Augsburg-Confession theologians quarreling among themselves — for example, whether the Gospel is a sermon of repentance.

Above all, they say, Article X on the Lord's Supper was corrupted to favor the Calvinists.

In Article X of the first edition the words run: Concerning the Lord's Supper they teach that the flesh and blood of Christ are truly present and are distributed to those who eat, and they reject those who teach otherwise.

In the other edition, Museus reports, the words are truly present and are distributed drop out, and this is put in their place: that the body and blood are truly exhibited, and so on.

The Calvinists, he adds, even conceded that formula of speech — yet said the exhibition is spiritual.

Then the clause And they reject those who teach otherwise is omitted in the Philippica edition; and from that, he says, the controversy over this Confession's authority arose.

So far Museus, Lectures on the Epitome of the Formula of Concord.

§.VIII: Reply — honor the Philippica; later intra-Lutheran fights were not substance-changes; Art. X twin shift neither substantial nor more Calvinist§119

119To those more modest Dorscheans and Museans we answer:

First, we take what they have said honorably enough of Philip's Confession — and what presses hardest of all: it is not to be odiously harassed.

Second, the insertions later fought over among Augsburg-Confession theologians for example whether the Gospel is a sermon of repentance did not change the substance of the truth set out in the Augsburg articles. Had they done so, those same theologians would not have been fighting the points among themselves.

Third, we contend that Article X's twin mutation — the chief sweat in the attackers' eyes, as if Melanchthon had altered it for the Calvinists, though the article was framed solely to explode pontifical transubstantiation — neither introduces a substantial change, nor favors the so-called Calvinian sense in any part more than the unvaried Article X itself already does.

§.VIII PRIUS: Invariata 1531 vs Variata Art. X — "exhibeantur" presupposes and says more than "adsint & distribuantur"§120

120The first point is plain once you set the two forms of Article X side by side.

In the 1531 Variata — commonly called the Invariata — it runs: Concerning the Lord's Supper they teach that the body and blood of Christ are truly present and are distributed to those who eat in the Lord's Supper, and they reject those who teach otherwise.

In the Variata commonly so named it sounds: Concerning the Lord's Supper they teach that the body and blood of Christ are truly exhibited to those who eat in the Lord's Supper.

I appeal to anyone's sense: do these two propositions differ in substance?

The later wording not only presupposes the earlier — for if Christ's body and blood are truly exhibited in the Supper, then by that very fact they must be said to be truly present there and distributed — but also says more.

Body and blood can truly be present in the Supper, and truly distributed by the minister, and yet not truly exhibited to the communicants — certainly not to all.

But whenever in the holy Supper the minister truly exhibits Christ's body and blood to the communicants, they must both be present and be distributed.

§.VIII: Omitting "improbant secus docentes" is tautology-avoidance; German prototype sub specie; like omissions already in Invariata witnesses§121

121As for the other change — or rather the omission in the Variata of And they reject those who teach otherwise — we admit those exact words are not read there.

Yet in every article of any confession the same sense, or something like it, must be understood: whoever positively confesses a point always denies and rejects what stands against it.

So the omission is only an avoidance of tautology; it can introduce no substantial mutation.

I pass over this further note on the prior change: in the prototype exemplar of the Invariata as the German plainly shows, and Dorsche does not deny it page 183, the article was expressed thus — Concerning the Lord's Supper they confess that the body and blood of Christ are truly present under the species of bread and wine — which at that time could easily smell of pontifical transubstantiation by itself.

Hence the historiographers of the Augsburg Confession report that the pontificals simply admitted this article in those words.

And as for the later omission, it is no secret that a similar — indeed much longer — rejection is missing in the Invariata exemplars of Chytraeus and Caelestinus when Article XIII and XVIII are compared; yet that omission never kept Invariata theologians from treating either exemplar as genuine then or now.

In many articles besides — 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21 — no rejection of contrary teaching was added even at the Confession's first framing, and yet it was still to be heard as implied.

§.VIII POSTERIUS: The prior shift favors Calvinists no more than the invariatus — they confess true presence, distribution, and exhibiting signs§122

122The second point we must prove — that the change, especially the prior one, favors the Calvinian sense no more than the unvaried article itself does — comes clear this way.

Calvin, counted among the Reformed doctors, and with him all the Reformed churches, admit a true presence and a true distribution of Christ's body and blood in the holy Supper, no less than a true exhibition.

And because of that exhibition, which they never fail to press, they confess the sacramental signs to be not bare signs only, but also exhibiting signs.

Fair enough. But the charge runs: under the Variata's words, where body and blood are said only to be exhibited, not to be present and distributed, Calvinists can more easily hide a merely spiritual exhibition — saying truly exhibited while teaching exhibited only spiritually.

§.VIII close: Same spiritual reading fits the Invariata; its confessors allow spiritual presence; Reformed teach sacramental, not bare spiritual or corporal§123

123Answer. First, they can do the same with the Invariata's words: while it says Christ's body and blood are truly present and distributed, they may take that as only spiritual presence and distribution.

Second, even confessors of the Invariata alone do not deny spiritual presence and distribution any more than spiritual exhibition and eating — especially since they also insist that their own corporal presence, distribution, eating, and exhibition are nonetheless hyperphysical and supernatural.

Third, the Reformed do not teach a naked spiritual presence, distribution, and exhibition of Christ's body and blood, but a sacramental one as well — though not a corporal one, which neither Augsburg Confession teaches, earlier or later.

§.IX: Dorsche's remaining canons — Philippica only private authority, not subsequent public; even publicly rejected§124

124§. IX. Dorsche's remaining canons hint that the Philippica Confession rested on private authority alone — not on later public authority — and was even condemned and rejected by public authority.

§.IX: Those canons are not owned by Crocius (Comm. LVI p.746) or even Mentzer the Lutheran§125

125Besides, the authors already cited do not own those canons — least of all John Crocius (Commentary, ch. 56, p. 746), and not even Mentzer the Lutheran.

§.IX: Dorsche's own print of the Estates' letter to Ferdinand I (vernacular, his p.20) proves the canons false§126

126So Dorsche himself convicts them of falsehood: the letter already named — from the Imperial Estates to Emperor Ferdinand I — which he prints in full in our vernacular at page 20, runs as follows:

§.IX German: Estates keep the Apology printed at Wittenberg and delivered with the improved Confession at Worms 1540§127

127Likewise we hereby also hold the Apology which our ancestors — and partly we ourselves — presented at that Augsburg Diet, though it was not accepted; afterward it was printed at Wittenberg, and at the Worms Colloquy in 1540 it was delivered beside the improved Confession already named — expressly repeated, and we have confessed ourselves to it.

§.IX German: Other repeated Confessions kept in Scripture/AC sense; mild Sacrament-Mass wording is not papal agreement§128

128In the same way our mind is this: we do not reject or give up our other writings and repeated Confessions — those the Estates of our religion handed in at Imperial Diets and colloquies under His Majesty, partly published, to explain the standing, unrefuted truth and to drive out long-settled false teaching and abuse.

We mean to keep them in every way in harmony with holy Scripture and the renewed Augsburg Confession and Apology

And when our opponents twist some early, mild articles or words in that Confession and Apology — set gently, partly in German speech-habit, especially where the holy Sacrament, the Mass, and the Roman Church are named — as if we agreed with their idolatrous papal teachings and ceremonies (in which Christian changes later came anyway), and above all with the horror of transubstantiation, the papal Mass, and what hangs on it: we declare again that this is not our meaning at all.

§.IX close: No other doctrine tolerated; Confer Naumburg history via Hoennius pp.103, 105-107§129

129And afterward: on the contrary, it is not our mind or purpose to tolerate or defend in our lands, territories, churches, and schools any teaching other than what is grounded, as said above, in holy Scripture and fits the Augsburg Confession and Apology in their right sense.

We mean to confess the known truth alone, and to let nothing against it break in or be allowed.

Compare the History of the Naumburg Convention, reviewed again this very year in our vernacular by Dr. Hoennius, Ducal Saxon councillor and intimate secretary (pp. 103, 105, 106, 107).

J.X open: Variata defense was not for Reformed favor — Invariata equally dear; Leipzig Colloquy; Museus/Chemnitz on fuller Variata§130

130J. X. Anyone can see that what we have argued so far for the Variata or Philippica Augsburg Confession was not argued to favor the Reformed.

To them the Invariata is no less welcome than the Variata — clear enough from the Leipzig Colloquy alone in the last century among Saxon, Brandenburg, and Hessian theologians.

With John Museus, following Martin Chemnitz, they only add that in the later edition most articles are drawn out more fully and stated more richly, and that many useful things appear there.

J.X: Partly for Philippica fame — Reformed hold Melanchthon's name with Luther's; do not sneer at anti-idolatry Reformers as heretics§131

131Meantime the case was argued partly for Philippica fame, which the Reformed cherish as they do Luther's.

They reckon that favor owed to every Reformer who broke with papal idol-madness: do not rashly sneer at their writings and deeds, nor bait them as heretics.

J.X: Partly for any Augsburg Confession — so Pontificii cannot brand alteration and strip Protestants of Religious Peace§132

132Partly it was for the Augsburg Confession in either form: so the papal side — as they often have, and still do — cannot charge this kind of alteration, and then say Protestants deserve to lose the Religious Peace before the Emperor and the other papal Estates of the Empire.

J.X: Partly for Invariata-only party — do not cling to early wording into papal species-presence sense; Naumburg 1561 preface warned§133

133Partly it was for the Invariata in particular — and for those who hug that form alone while crushing and wiping out the Variata.

If they cling too superstitiously to the earlier wording, they can be pushed into the papal phrase about Christ's Body and Blood present in the Supper under the species of bread and wine, in the sense the Western Church alone then held when the Confession was issued.

The Imperial Estates at Naumburg in 1561 already flagged that danger in the preface they set before the Invariata and addressed to Emperor Ferdinand.

J.X: Or if they leave that sense for an obscurer one unknown to Pontificii — Jesuit-like equivocation charge (Dorsche p.183)§134

134Or when they leave that sense and take an obscurer one — one most papal doctors and Imperial Estates then did not know — Dorsche at the place cited (p. 183, end) still leaves them open to a charge of equivocation not unlike Jesuit practice.

Papal writers elsewhere often pin that charge on the Reformed, though quite wrongly.

J.X: Besides — so Hoffmann of Helmstedt and other Lutherans cannot press that the Formula Concord inserted a spurious AC exemplar§135

135Besides, so Hoffmann of Helmstedt and other Lutheran theologians cannot rightly press that the Formula of Concord slipped in a spurious Augsburg Confession exemplar.

See Hoffmann's Apology to Dr. Olearius and Paul Nicander (p. 691), cited by the author of the Appendix to the Ausführliche Behauptung (pp. 29ff.).

J.X close: Above all for Truth and Protestant peace — both sides agree on Lord's Supper substance; do not devour each other over words while Rome dances§136

136Finally — and most of all — it was for Truth and for Protestant peace.

Both Evangelical sides already agree in the matter and substance of the truth on the article of the Lord's Supper (that will be plain below).

They must not be torn apart by fights over words in either Augsburg Confession, and bite one another to pieces while Rome dances.

§.XI open: Close Variata defense with Chemnitz judgment — Lyser 1594, Bajer 1676, Hannekenius Declarat. cite the same Chemnitz words§137

137§. XI. We close this defense of the Variata — that it is not to be attacked or thrown out — with the Chemnitz judgment already cited a little above.

It is the piece On the Controversies once stirred about certain Augsburg Confession articles, edited by Polycarp Leyser at Wittenberg in 1594 and again by Bajer at Jena in 1676, praised by both.

Most recently the Wittenberg theologian Hannekenius smoothed the same saying in his Theological Declaration on the true Estimation of the Augsburg Confession (Preliminary Question 4, near the end, p. 6).

Chemnitz's words are these:

§.XI Chemnitz: Cannot rightly reject the 1542 edition — Hagenau colloquy needed a corpus; Wittenberg printed it with fuller declaration§138

138"I do not see how the edition of 1542 can rightly or usefully be rejected and condemned.

When the Hagenau colloquy was set for that year, it seemed useful to put forward the body and form of our churches' doctrine as the colloquy's matter.

So that year Wittenberg printed the edition, with a fuller declaration added in places."

§.XI Chemnitz: Same 1542 edition tabled at Worms as the AC; opposed to foes at Ratisbon — by Luther's counsel, approval, and consent§139

139"That same year the edition was laid on the table at Worms under the name of the Augsburg Confession.

At the Regensburg colloquy they set the same edition against their adversaries as the form of our churches' doctrine.

And that was done by counsel — with Luther's approval and consent."

§.XI Chemnitz: From 1546 our side used this edition in every diet as the Augustana — no error in the 1542 declarations except Art. X mutilation§140

140"So from 1546 on, in every diet and religious proceeding, our side kept turning to this edition — and they called it the Augsburg Confession.

No one can show errors or corruptions in the declarations added in the 1542 edition, save the mutilation in Article X."

§.XI Chemnitz: Cochlaeus at Worms 1540 and Pighius at Regensburg 1541 hated the fuller light — they would rather have kept the 1531 edition§141

141"Indeed Cochlaeus at Worms in 1540, and Pighius at Regensburg in 1541, took it hard that a fuller declaration on many articles let in so much light.

They saw true opinions set out more clearly, and the shame of Babylon's Thais stripped plainer still.

They would rather have kept the 1531 edition alone — their own writings say so."

§.XI close Chemnitz: The 1540 edition is in everyone's hands; 1531 scarcely known; it holds only needed declarations — reject it and you disturb the churches. Thus far Chemnitz§142

142"But the 1540 edition is in everyone's hands, while the first edition of 1531 is unknown to most and scarcely ever seen.

It contains nothing false — only some needed declarations.

I do not see how it can be thrown out altogether, or simply condemned, without disturbing the churches."

Thus far Chemnitz.

§.XII open: MEMBRUM SECUNDUM — Theologi & Socii promiscuè; first distinguish late vs strict appellandi§143

143§. XII. So far we have finished the first member of this first Annotation — the nature of the Augsburg Confession itself.

Next, under the second member, we treat briefly, as our plan requires, of that Confession's theologians and associates in the broad sense.

First we distinguish those so called loosely from those so called strictly.

§.XII late (1): Whole-AC approvers ready to subscribe — Bucer & Calvin (even outside Germany)§144

144Under the looser class we put all who, even outside Germany, either (1) approve the whole Augsburg Confession and stand ready to subscribe — as Bucer and Calvin once did.

On Bucer see Chytraeus's History at pp. 651, 656, and 659; on Calvin, the Author of the ausführlicher Behauptung 20, in the special inquiry whether the late John Calvin was counted an Augsburg Confession kinsman in his day (pp. 72–90); add Pareus, Irenicum, p. 293.

§.XII late (2): Partial assent / Art. X hardness — Tetrapolitani; refused or barred from subscription§145

145Or (2) they sincerely agree with most of the Confession, yet because of a harder phrasing in one article or another — above all the tenth — they have neither taken the whole Confession nor subscribed, whether by their own abstention or because others barred them.

Such were the so-called Tetrapolitans of Strasbourg, Memmingen, Constance, and Lindau, who once followed Zwingli on the Supper and therefore presented their own Confession at the Augsburg Diet, which the Emperor meant to reject together with the Augsburg.

Chytraeus, pp. 678–679. Our writers (Pareus, Georg Pauli, and others) show that they refused subscription; others, citing Chytraeus's History p. 130, hold that the Protestant Estates' judgment at least partly forced them not to subscribe.

§.XII late (3): Circumstantial non-subscribers — Beza & Martyr at Poissy still not unworthy of the name§146

146(3) Even those who, for local and temporal reasons, withdrew from subscription are not wholly unworthy of the wider name of Augsburg Confession theologians and associates.

They held the Confession congruent with God's word as to substance, yet feared it would become — at least by accident — a torch of many evils in this or that kingdom or principality.

Beza and Peter Martyr are said to have done this at the Colloquy of Poissy in France. See Pareus, Irenicum, pp. 294–295; Crocius on the Augsburg Confession, p. 144ff.

§.XII late close: Assertion ratio — approving associates in mind; consenters are socii by confession's nature§147

147Our reason is twofold.

Those who approve a confession are understood to have joined themselves to it in mind.

And by the very nature of a Christian confession and of Christians who confess, everyone who consents to it is customarily counted its associate.

§.XII strict: Primarily Imperial Estates + framing theologians; secondarily successors defending Invariata and/or Variata as one substance§148

148Under the stricter class, primarily and immediately — or rather first in time — all the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, in whose name the Augsburg Confession was framed and exhibited, and who subscribed it with their own hands, together with the theologians who drafted it or helped in any way.

Secondarily and mediately come all successors of those Estates (and of others who followed their example), with their theologians to this day, who defend the Augsburg Confession — the Invariata alone, the Variata alone, or both as one and the same in the substance of truth — whether under the name Lutheran or Reformed.

They are set apart, under the common name of Protestants or Evangelicals and genuinely Catholic, from the papal party that owns the Pope as infallible head of the universal church with supreme temporal and spiritual power.

It does not matter whether they read Article X of a spiritual and sacramental presence and exhibition only of Christ's body and blood, or even of a corporal presence (which the Augsburg Confession nowhere states).

§.XII strict close: Proof — Frederick Palatine Naumburg 1561 / Augsburg 1566; Philip of Hesse favoring Reformed§149

149That the Reformed no less than the Lutherans have always been held Augsburg Confession associates appears (1) from Frederick the Palatine at Naumburg in 1561 and at the Augsburg Diet in 1566.

See more fully the Author of the ausführlichen Behauptung, Appendix pp. 36–43; Pareus, Irenicum, pp. 292 and 297; Crocius's German Summarische Nachricht… (nos. 123–130; pp. 54–58), and his Comment on Augsburg Confession Society, Q.2, caps. XVIII and XXI; also our Becmann, loc. cit., p. 99ff.

(2) From Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, who steadily favored the Reformed side and with great zeal pressed the more rigid into it by speech and many letters — in Chytraeus's Acts with the Zwinglians from p. 633ff.; Calixtus, On Tolerance of the Reformed, n. 62 (Batavian) and n. 65 (newest Helmstedt); and the History of the A.C. By three theologians, written in German and Latinized by Chemnitz's son-in-law.

§.XII continue: Brandenburg Margraves & Electors undoubted AC Socii — George & Joachim II; notwithstanding Johann Sigismund Art. X§150

150Consequently the Brandenburg Margraves and Electors are likewise undoubted Augsburg Confession associates — from George (Margrave and AC subscriber) and Joachim II (Elector who brought the Confession into his lands) down to our day.

That holds even though blessed Johann Sigismund of glorious memory — great-grandfather of our most august King — with his successors forever after, by God's grace, did not attack Frederick the Palatine's reading of AC Art. X, nor did his theologians.

§.XII continue: Johann Sigismund & successors bound by oath to AC 1530 as chief Brandenburg symbol — Crocius§151

151For the rest, Johann Sigismund and his successors have bound themselves by various declarations, and their theologians through the Frankfurt theological faculty statutes, by solemn oath, to the Augsburg Confession shown to Charles V in 1530 and later more fully set out — as the chief symbolic book of the Brandenburg lands — and have devoted themselves to it with their whole heart.

See Crocius, Comment on A.C. Society, part 1 entire.

§.XII continue: Walther (Lutheran Königsberg) seeks Viadrina doctorate knowing AC oath; promoted 1702 by Strimesius as Dean§152

152Hence also Christian Walther — still a well-known Lutheran churchman, Assessor of the Holy Sambian Consistory at Königsberg in Prussia, and now fourth Ordinary Professor of Theology — once informed of our faculty oath (that after Holy Scripture we solemnly bind ourselves forever to the four ecumenical councils alone and to the Augsburg Confession as symbolic writings) did not hesitate two years ago to seek a doctorate of theology from our faculty.

After he took and signed the oath, by command of our most pious King the faculty decorated him through me (then Dean), as the 1702 printed Signification in the Viadrina theological faculty's name reports more fully.

It is not out of place here to add both our faculty oath and the royal mandate — most gracious, and warmly favoring the efforts of the Lutheran candidate and of the Reformed promoters alike. The oath runs in these words, &c.

§.XII continue: Walther oath text — sound Gospel doctrine in three Symbols & AC 1530; reject heresies§153

153I, Master Christian Walther, swear that I will hand on and defend the sound doctrine of Christ's Gospel and of the Prophets' and Apostles' word — whose chief points are contained and explained in the three Symbols and in the Confession shown to Charles V at Augsburg — knowing it rightly and keeping it diligently and faithfully.

I will carefully and as far as I can refuse and attack all false and heretical dogmas that fight the clear word of God, whether of old or new Arians or of other fanatics.

§.XII continue: Walther oath close — judge degrees; serve church/faculty; attestation 15 Apr 1702§154

154As to those admitted to theological degrees, I will judge strictly and speak with weight; I will not take this degree over again elsewhere; and with highest faithfulness and constant zeal I will do whatever seems to serve God's church, Christ's glory, and the help, honor, and growth of this faculty and school. So help me God through His holy Word.

I holy attest and promise that I will keep the oath written above, both by signing my name and by affixing my seal, 15 April 1702.

(L.S.) M. Christian Walther, Pastor of Sackheim, Assessor of the Sambian Consistory, and member of the Brandenburg Society of Sciences — in his own hand.

§.XII close: Royal rescript — Frederick orders Strimesius to declare Walther S.T.D.; Fuchs to Viadrina faculty§155

155The royal rescript runs thus: Frederick, by God's grace King of Prussia, Margrave of Brandenburg, Arch-Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Empire and Prince Elector, Duke of Magdeburg, Cleves, Julich, Berg, Stettin, Pomerania, and so on.

Reverend, most learned, beloved and faithful: Walther's uncommon learning, upright manners, and integrity of life — praised by you without ordinary compliments — were already clear to us, and we know his merits well enough that on that ground alone we would not leave him without the honors he seeks.

What moved us still more to grant his wish and your humble petitions is this rare case: a Lutheran theologian seeking a theological doctorate from Reformed doctors with as much confidence as they show readiness and mutual zeal in advancing his desire.

That can only please us, since every wholesome good for the commonwealth and the church may be hoped from it. We therefore not only consent but command you, Samuel Strimesius — dean of the theological faculty, ordinary doctor and professor, and primary pastor — to declare M. Christian Walther now Doctor of Sacred Theology in your faculty, and at the next public promotion to proclaim him such, and to admit him to all privileges and rights belonging to that highest title and to doctors of theology in the Holy Roman Empire — which may God favor. Farewell, secure of our royal grace. Given at Cologne on the Spree, 20 March 1702.

Frederick the King. Paul, Freiherr von Fuchs. To the Theological Faculty of the Viadrina University.

§.XIII open: Distinction from §.XII decides two questions — Reformati AC Socii? Religious Peace participants?§156

156§. XIII. With the distinction given in §.XII above, it is easy to settle — and to see whether the settlement was just or wicked — this pair of theological-historical questions:

Are the Reformed associates of the Augsburg Confession? And are they to be counted participants in the Religious Peace?

§.XIII: Affirmative on both — Crocius, Ausführliche Behauptung, Pauli, Faculty Senior vs Liebhard; Diet 1566§157

157On both questions — especially the second, which must presuppose and imply the first — the affirmative is true.

Joh. Crocius proved it at length in the German tract already cited and in his more detailed Commentary, question 2; so did the author of the Ausführliche Behauptung, pp. 90–111; Georgius Pauli in the Reformatus Augustanus; and the venerable Senior of our faculty against Liebhard in chapters 4 and 6 entire.

Among other proofs they lean chiefly on the Augsburg Diet of 1566 (treated most fully by Crocius, Comm. Cap. 18), Cap. 4 §.8 p. 102;

§.XIII: Peace Instrument Art. VII — Reformed expressly numbered among AC Socii; quote§158

158Further, Cap. 6 §.8 cites the famous words of Article VII of the Peace Instrument — worth noting, and celebrated — by which the Reformed are expressly counted among Augsburg Confession associates.

With that one stroke fall the hostile schemes of certain harsh theologians who, in an un-Christian way, rashly riot as if thirsting for Christian blood.

The Peace Instrument's words run: By unanimous consent of the Imperial Majesty and of all Estates of the Empire it was resolved that whatever right or benefit the other constitutions of the Empire, the Religious Peace, and this public settlement (with its decision of grievances) grant to other Catholic and Augsburg-Confession states and subjects, that same must also belong to those among them called Reformed.

§.XIII: Instrument words vindicated vs pedantic critics — gründliche Vorstellung; Arminianismum p.302§159

159Against truly pedantic critics, the newest author of the Gründliche Vorstellung (Which Is the One True Means for Uniting the Two Evangelical Religions in Germany) has finely defended these words at pp. 11 and 98.

We cited and praised that author elsewhere — namely in our Ingenua in Arminianismus Inquisitio, p. 302.

§.XIII: Reformed not self-hostile — Neostadian note that AC is not Scripture; Calovius unfair§160

160Nor are the Reformed here their own enemies when, with the Neustadt theologians (Cap. IV from p. 143) on the Augsburg Confession, they note against those who nearly equate it with Holy Scripture — which Calovius unfairly, and only by insult, reads as "Calvinian insults" (Crit. Sacr. P. 68).

They note that it was written not many years after the Reformation began, when not everything could suddenly be seen through and explained, and so on.

§.XIII close: Not tearing AC — human writing ≠ God's word; Calvin subscribed; fax furiae Gallicae restored§161

161For it is one thing to tear the Augsburg Confession with insults, or somehow to lower its due authority — which no Reformer ever set out to do — and another to refuse to let a human writing, liable to error, stand in the same rank as God's infallible word.

Crocius works the whole question through in Comm. Cap. 36 from p. 497.

As for Calvin's judgment on the Augsburg Confession: he was ready to subscribe it at other times, and in fact did subscribe it (see his 1557 letter to Martin Schalingius, pastor at Regensburg, in the Letters volume lately edited at Amsterdam with the Opera, p. 112).

When elsewhere he calls the Augsburg Confession a torch of Gallic fury, read that restored to its genuine sense — in Pareus (Fren. P. 294), in the Ausführliche Behauptung (p. 74ff.), and most fully in Crocius (Comm. Pp. 514, 515, 518).

§.XIV open: POSTREMUM MEMBRUM — in what sense some want to be saluted AC theologians; characteristic notes§162

162§. XIV. One last member of this Annotation still needs clearing: in what sense do some men — more than others — want to be greeted as Augsburg Confession theologians, and greet themselves that way?

To put it in three words, as the saying goes, we will mark them by a few characteristic notes and set them out to be seen.

They are, then, as follows.

§.XIV [1]: With Luther vs Carolstadt/Zwingli/Tigurines — force ubiquity; refuse milder Luther/Bucer/Tigurina§163

163[1.] Those who side with Luther against Carolstadt (innovating much at Wittenberg under authority that was not wholly private), against Zwingli (writing a little too spitefully and boastfully on Article XVII of his Articles' Explanation — "I began preaching the Gospel in A.D. 1516, when Luther's name had not even been heard in our regions"), and against the Zurichers (who sent Luther a Bible translation prepared under Leo Juda's lead and printed by Forschover, after Luther wanted his own published version received everywhere). On each of these see Calixtus, Judgment on Theological Controversies, nos. 48, 53, 72.

When those opponents, aiming to restore the Eucharist from papal abuses and superstitions to its old brightness, seemed to deny Christ's body and blood present in it, these men — "with all their heat, pressing adversaries on every side" (Calixtus, Judgment on Theological Controversies, number 47) — decide the bodily presence in the Supper must be pressed so hard that they push, too roughly, the new and awkward ubiquity opinion cut out for Luther in the heat of battle.

Nor will they bear at all those who follow the milder Luther, made surer by Bucer's Declarations and the Zurich Confession: that only a local, natural presence was denied in the Holy Supper, while sacramental and spiritual presence were both granted. Such people they will not treat as innocent and pure, easily freed by Christ; and they want tolerance from them too, though they themselves cannot come down into that milder view.

See the History of the Augsburg Confession by Kirchner, Selnecker, and Chemnitz, cited by Calixtus at num. 62 (end), with nums. 63–65, 69, 71, 75.

§.XIV (2): With Melanchthon hard then soft — Coena words property vs sacramental τὸ ῥητόν / Nazianzen ἀντίτυπα§164

164(2.) Those who cling with the badly informed Philip Melanchthon — harsh on Bucer's and the Swiss view in the 1522 letter to Oecolampadius and in the 1530 Epilogue of Sentences from the Fathers — so tightly to the bare property of the Supper words that they deny any tropical speech in them, even though they themselves cannot avoid figurative speech on other grounds.

And they will not follow the same Philip after better information and second thoughts (δευτέρας φροντίδας): in the 1535 letter to Urbanus Rhegius, in letters to Veit Dietrich (especially 1543), elsewhere, and in the 1559 letter to Johannes Crato the year before Melanchthon's death — where he holds that the letter (the literal meaning) of the Supper words is to be taken sacramentally, admits that the ancients spoke far otherwise than recent ages, and even recalls that Nazianzen simply called them types of Christ's body.

See Pezel, Arguments & Theological Responses VIII, pp. 175–190, and Melanchthon's letter to Crato in Letters & Judgments II, pp. 384–385 (Pezel).

§.XIV (3): With Brentius — revive ubiquity as prow/stern; yet Brentius teaches faith-eating like Calviniani§165

165(3.) Those who, with Johann Brenz, stir from the ashes the unhappy dogma of Christ's bodily ubiquity — first invented by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (Calixtus, booklet num. 38), asserted by Luther as second after Stapulensis (num. 40), then dropped by Luther with the warning that presence in the Holy Supper rests not on the ubiquity debate but on the truth of the institution (num. 44), and so put to sleep under long silence — or who inflame the ubiquity quarrel revived by Brenz and Jakob Andreae (Calixtus num. 45) and set in it the prow and stern of Christian truth, above all of their oral eating.

Yet they will not teach with the same Brenz in the Swabian Syngramma and the Exegesis on John: the Lord's body is eaten by faith and is present to faith. At John's words ("My flesh is truly food, and my blood truly drink") Brenz asks, "Whose?" and answers, "Faith's: for faith eats Christ's flesh and drinks his blood while it believes," etc. (Calixtus num. 53 mid).

Calixtus then adds (num. 56 open): these lines are such that Calvinists would scarcely explain their view in other words. Brenz is careful not to say Christ's body is chewed with the mouth; he refuses that claim; he teaches at least that it is offered to faith, received by faith, and therefore present to faith.

Calvinists press the same point, with perhaps this one difference: they hold that faith looks to and embraces the Lord's body present in heaven; Brenz teaches it is present and shown to faith here on earth.

§.XIV (4): With Flacius — flee Variata from ἀσπονδος hate of Reformed; tear seamless tunic§166

166(4.) Those who side with restless Flacius Illyricus — called quarrelsome even by Elector Augustus of Saxony himself (German Formula of Concord, appendix p. 119 end, edition of the year just past) — and with that bitter, almost raving scourge of Philip. Many theologians complained of him: the Wittenbergers throughout the Altenburg Colloquy acts; the Ausführlicher Behauptung author, pp. 64–70; the Leipzigers with them in the whole German Endlicher Bericht (Wittenberg, Hans Lufft, 1570); and Melanchthon himself, speaking calmly enough of Flacius's storms — in the letter to Johann Mathesius (Counsels & Judgments II, p. 257) and in a hand-written letter to Ulrich Mordisius, lately printed as unpublished from Adam Christoph Jacobi's library by Christian Jüncker in the Life of Luther, p. 126 — including: "Gladly will I leave both the painted deeds of the Papists and Flacian sycophancy whenever God wills me to go, dying or in exile. Dying, I go to the Son of God's school and the heavenly churches; in exile, God helping, I will find lodging with better men than Flacius, who threatens to drive me from all Germany. I pray God to rule and cover you. Farewell, 4 November 1558."

from implacable hate of Reformedy flee Philip's Variata Augsburg Confession, mainly because Article X was changed.

Yet they will not remember that, as to substance, it is the same as the Invariata: so judged the Naumburg estates already cited, and Mentzer does not deny it (Prolegomena to the Exegesis of the A.C., p. 21 mid) — that the Reformed neither seek nor can seek nor wish to seek any greater support for their view from one edition than from the other.

Nor does it become Christian theologians, for such sycophancies, to rip and tear Christ's seamless tunic — that is, his beloved church, most tenacious of Christian love by his command — into pieces.

§.XIV (5): With Bergen Fathers — Formula Concord above AC; ignore own churches/princes; Formulists keep mutated Art. X§167

167(5.) Those who with the Bergen Fathers rank the Formula of Concord — that most unhappy apple of strife (ἔριδος) and of all Protestant quarrel, notorious for bodily manducation and omnipresence of Christ's body — older than the Augsburg Confession itself, which knows nothing of those dogmas and is empty of them.

They care nothing that their own side has contradicted it with great zeal both formerly and now — churches and their most pious, learned doctors, and also princes and estates of the Romano-German Empire — and that some still contradict it today (Crocius, German tract from p. 99; Commentary on the Augsburg Confession passim, esp. P. 282).

Nor do they care that the Formula itself kept the changed Article X of the Augsburg Confession — which does not match the German of the prototype — the very change for which Formulists attack the Variata so bitterly — and that the Formula itself has suffered very frequent mutations and variations.

See the Anhang der ausführlichen Behauptung, pp. 26–36.

§.XIV close (6): Alone orthodox by these universals — damn soft AC confessors; yet invited to fraternal union§168

168(6.) Finally, those who by THESE UNIVERSALS imagine that they alone are orthodox, and that all their commentaries belong to the foundation of the faith — whether before it, with it, or after it — and who shut out and damn everyone who will not rise to the Formula of Concord (better called Discord), even when those others sincerely confess both the Invariata and the Variata Augsburg Confession in everything else.

They cut themselves off by a schism more carnal and more unhappy from syncretists and from the Reformed almost alike — worse than the cut Papists make from Protestants.

Yet from the very people they leave they are invited, and ought to be invited, as steadily as without tiring — however unwilling — not only to mutual tolerance but to a brotherly embrace and church union, through and for the sake of God and his Christ (once the fundamental consent of all Augsburg Confession associates is shown).

On that, more in the Annotations that follow next.

Decem Theses open: Francus vernacular compendium of Annotatio I — subjoined to his polemical tract§169

169Here is a short compendium of the preceding Annotation — which ran a little long — written long ago as Ten Thesesss in our vernacular by the late excellent doctor and theology professor of this University, B. Gregorius Gregorii Francus, and printed as an appendix to one of his polemical tracts.

Decem Theses I: AC exemplar 1530-1540 grew; after correction, unchanged a hundred years§170

170I. Though the Augsburg Confession text first shown in 1530 was, in places, gradually enlarged and corrected through 1540, from that time the later corrected exemplar has not changed so much as a letter for a hundred years.

Decem Theses II: Two Imperial exemplars — Wittenberg 1531 and augmented 1540/41 to Ferdinand at Naumburg 1561§171

171II. Properly speaking, two exemplars have been acknowledged and presented by the Electors, Princes, and Imperial Estates, and they stand in Luther's and Melanchthon's writings and in the Imperial Acts.

The earlier was printed at Wittenberg in 1531; the later, enlarged in 1540 and 1541, was sent with the earlier one to Emperor Ferdinand I at Naumburg in 1561 — and to this day nothing has been added to it or taken from it.

Decem Theses III-IV: One Confession in two exemplars; Formula Concord insert differs in words, not substance§172

172III. Those two exemplars are not two confessions, but one and the same: the later differs from the earlier not in the substance of the faith's articles, but only in wording and clearer explanation.

IV. The Augsburg Confession text slotted into the Formula of Concord does differ in some words from the 1531 Wittenberg printing in Luther's volumes; in substance, though, it fully matches that text.

Decem Theses V-VI: Either exemplar makes an AC Socius; Estates publicly professed the augmented as the prior§173

173V. Anyone who receives either of these Confessions is an associate of the Augsburg Confession, and cannot lawfully be shut out of the Empire's Religious Peace.

VI. Electors, Princes, and Imperial Estates have publicly professed the enlarged Confession no less than the earlier one.

Decem Theses VII-VIII: Imperial Acts name neither Variata nor Invariata; oral eating and ubiquity absent — Reformed not excludable§174

174VII. Neither Imperial Recesses nor Acts or Edicts ever mention a Variata or Invariata Augsburg Confession under those contested labels.

VIII. The recent teaching of certain Evangelicals bound to the Bergen Formula — oral eating and the ubiquity of Christ's body — is in neither the earlier nor the enlarged Confession, and still less in the Repetitio or in Philip's Corpus Doctrinae.

So the Reformed, as associates of the Augsburg Confession, cannot be shut out of the Imperial Peace for denying those two dogmas.

Decem Theses IX-X close: Tolerate ubiquitism still; Luther and Melanchthon dissented on Coena yet stayed Socii — so Reformed; Addendum Bajerus§175

175IX. Ubiquitism and whatever hangs on it may be a huge error; still, no solemn act of a general or national synod has yet condemned it, and its defenders talk about it in such different ways that one can hardly tell what they actually hold.

So it should still be tolerated, and those who approve it should nonetheless be counted among the associates of the Augsburg Confession.

X. Luther and Melanchthon were associates of the Augsburg Confession, held as such by everyone, and stayed heart-devoted to it to the end of their course, even though they disagreed on how Christ's body is exhibited in the Holy Supper.

In the same way the Reformed, no less than the Lutherans, remain associates of the Augsburg Confession, even when they do not fully agree on that point and on certain other school questions.

Addendum and correction: p. 13, line 5 — for Christianum Pontanum read Christianum Bajerum, after the Most Serene Elector obtained by petition from Emperor Charles V that the Augsburg Confession should also be read aloud in German in Germany and in the city of Augsburg. See Clar. Pipping, Einleitung zu den Symbol. Schrifften Lutherischer Kirchen.

Annotatio II open §.I: Fundamental consensus of AC Socii — fundamentals vs fundamentata; scriptural sense (Christ / 1 Cor 3:11 / Eph 2)§176

176ANNOTATION II. On the Augsburg Confession associates' fundamental consensus and their praeter-fundamental dissent — and on that dissent's origin, progress, and outcome. To the Author's pp. 332–333.

§. I. The associates' fundamental consensus looks to the foundation of the Christian religion — Christian doctrine, theoretical and practical — of which some doctrines are fundamentals and others are built on them (fundamentata).

The former, taken in the scriptural sense, are the doctrines concerning Christ, our only Saviour, God and Man: the highest, first foundation for everything else (1 Cor. 3:11: "For other foundation can no man lay," &c.).

Here "Christ" means chiefly the doctrine about Christ, not only his person — clear from what precedes and what follows. Paul as wise architect is said to have laid the foundation (Christ); what he laid was not Christ himself but the gospel-doctrine about Christ, the base on which other Christian doctrines are built.

What follows confirms it: others are to build on that foundation gold, silver, wood, stubble — many things founded on the fundamental doctrine of Christ, some precious and useful, some cheaper and futile.

Eph. 2:20 says the same in one verse: Apostles and Prophets (i.e. Their chief doctrines, not their persons) are called foundation, and Christ the cornerstone — that is, the doctrine of Christ is named the principal and most fundamental.

Annotatio II §.I cont: Theological sense — doctrines necessary to faith and salvation; God alone fixes necessity§177

177Or take fundamentals in the theological sense: doctrines wholly necessary both to constitute Christian religion or faith and to reach faith's end — the salvation of our souls.

Hence they are commonly called either fundamentals of faith (toward the object: the intrinsic, essential thing founded) or fundamentals of salvation (toward the end: the thing founded partly intrinsic/essential, partly extrinsic/extra-essential).

God alone in Holy Scripture fixes all that necessity — explicitly or implicitly, by a consequence open to anyone — and in an exclusive sense no less than a positive one: so God both names which doctrines are necessary and, by not naming others as necessary (explicitly or implicitly), exempts them from faith-and-salvation necessity, though not from usefulness of every degree.

It is neither likely nor admissible that God, sole author of all Scripture — where necessities for faith and salvation are mixed with lesser matters, and some necessities are at times marked openly — either failed to define all necessities at all (and so failed to distinguish them from the less necessary) or left that definition and distinction to human whim; especially since he handed down everything needed for salvation promiscuously, and as such. See this taught more fully in the Inquisition into the Arminians, Annotation XVII.

Annotatio II §.II: Who fundamentally consents or dissents — Socinians(juris)/Pontificii(facti); Protestants agree except domestic-necessity urgings§178

178§. II. Those finally are said to agree fundamentally in Christian religion and faith, in the theological sense, who agree in everything God has called necessary to faith and salvation — and who count as necessary neither other things, nor more, nor fewer, than God has commanded to be such in his word.

Those dissent fundamentally who either diverge from the necessaries of faith and salvation so named by God, denying all or some of them as to truth or as to necessity; or who, beyond the divine necessaries, forge and push other things as necessary apart from God's word.

Of these dissents the former is more a matter of right; the latter more of fact. Socinians dissent fundamentally from Protestants in the former way; Romanists in the latter.

Protestants, or Evangelicals, are understood to agree fundamentally among themselves in both ways — except those who still press as necessary certain personal doctrines of their own, founded neither in Scripture as to truth nor (still less) as to necessity, and who cut off and damn those who refuse them: thereby falling from the foundation, if not of faith strictly so called (Christian theory), then of charity or practice (the other part of the Christian religion, and of Christian faith in the wider sense).

Annotatio II §.III (1)-(2): A posteriori necessary heads — Scripture sole principle; Elements (Symbol, Decalogue, LP, two sacraments)§179

179§. III. That Protestants agree fundamentally among themselves has already been shown e confirmed general necessary heads of Christian doctrine.

(1.) They agree on the first and only adequate principle for knowing all Christian dogmas — at least all the necessary ones — namely Holy Scripture: held by Protestants with one voice as a rule and norm, both sufficient and perfect and clear enough, for everything Christians must believe and must do.

Other so-called Christians (synonymously or only equivocally) differ here: they either set something beside Scripture as co-principle — Traditions, the unwritten word — or put Scripture under something else, native light (reason) or fictitious light (enthusiasm).

Protestants, by contrast, explode enthusiasm and the unwritten word as hostile to Scripture; and they treat reason, however illuminated, not as a principle of proof but as a bare instrument of apprehension.

(2.) They agree in an honest, unvarnished reception and profession of the elements of Christian religion in all their parts: the Apostles' Creed, the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer, and only two sacraments — which not only signify their significates but also exhibit and seal them.

Annotatio II §.III (3)-(4): Sincere AC Invariata incl. Art. X (Lutheran species); Formula Concord except two Coena/Person modes§180

180(3.) They agree in sincere adhesion to the Augsburg Confession — and to it as Invariata — even on Article X, whether the German or the Latin is read here, provided the "species" of bread and wine in the German edition are taken not in the Roman sense (as accidents) but in the Lutheran sense (as symbols of Christ's body and blood).

Hence the Reformed colloquists at Leipzig testified they would always be ready to subscribe the Invariata Confession and cling to it with their whole heart — as we already said in Annotation I, and will quote their words below.

(4.) They agree in admitting the Formula of Concord strictly so called — both the Epitome of certain disputed articles and the Solid Declaration and Repetition of the same — as to substance and as to modes, except only two modes: one on the Holy Supper, the other on the Person of Christ.

Even that twofold modal diversity, we shall show in due place, does not touch the foundation of the Christian faith even from afar. See meanwhile our German tract on the Protestants' fundamental consensus, §§. 10–24.

Annotatio II §.IV open: All Protestant dissent praeter-fundamental — Coena words: Luther, Carlstadt, Zwingli§181

181§. IV. So every dissent among Protestants is rightly called praeter-fundamental. Its origin, progress, and peak (akme) may be sketched here in brief.

That dissent begins in the controversy over interpreting the words of the Supper — which the three first Reformers, Carlstadt, Luther, and Zwingli, each framed differently as a counter to Roman abuses, and not equally handy in every respect (Calixtus, Judgment of Controversies §. 47).

Luther kept the line drawn from his former teacher Peter d'Ailly, Cardinal of Cambrai, and still held by the fewer and better Romanists: that Christ's body is predicated of the bread so that, the bread remaining, Christ's body is joined with the bread in the Supper's use (Wittenberg Latin Tom. II, fol. 70 B) — predicated of the bread as contained in the bread, by a proposition unusual yet proper, and empty of any rhetorical trope.

Carlstadt, pressing the Romans harder, invented an identical proposition: driving the bread of the Lord's Supper out by Christ's body (much as the more common Roman view), as if Christ had given his disciples only the received, blessed, broken bread, and while giving, pointing to his own body, had said of that — not of the bread — "This is my body."

Zwingli, midway between them, meant to keep both bread and Christ's body in the Supper — the bread corporally, the body spiritually — and taught that Christ's body is improperly predicated of the bread by the impropriety common to all sacramental propositions: by metonymy the significate is said of the sign, which signifies it and exhibits it spiritually.

Annotatio II §.IV close: Carlstadt fades; Upper/Lower Germany split; corporeal presence+ubiquity vs spiritual session — stop before §.V§182

182Carlstadt's middle reading — fabulous, and dragging in a little story forged outside Scripture, not unlike the Socinian fable stitched onto John 1:3 "And the word was with God" (by which Socinians hostile to Christ's deity press their case) — found very few backers and soon vanished.

The other two remained, taught with all the more heat — one in upper Germany, the other in Lower — the more they first seemed to clash.

The one: a corporeal or local presence of Christ's body in the bread. The other: at first glance seeming to admit no presence at all, not even a spiritual one.

The former called in aid the ubiquity of Christ's body, unheard of in past ages; the latter, that body's session at God's right hand in the heavens into which it had ascended.

Annotatio II §.V open: Dissensus on Coena words/presence grows via Ubiquity controversy — Luther in dispute heat (Greater Confession)§183

183§. V. That same Protestant split — begun over how the Supper words are read and over the mode of Christ's bodily presence in the Holy Supper's use — then grew through the controversy on the ubiquity of Christ's body.

Luther himself, once and again in the heat of debate, had drawn it in, chiefly from two places in his Greater Confession — the ones Calixtus cites at loc. cit. nos. 41–42.

Annotatio II §.V: Ubiquity drawn to ease corporeal Coena defense — afterward neglected§184

184He brought ubiquity in so he could defend a corporeal presence of Christ's body in the Holy Supper more easily — then later let it drop.

Annotatio II §.V: Brentius & Jacob Andreae resume ubiquity — Heshusius contradicts though sharing Coena view§185

185Brentius and Jacob Andreae took it up again (as we noted in the preceding Annotation, §.14) — even though Tillemann Heshusius, who shared their Supper view, contradicted them (see Hospinian, Historia Sacramentaria, p. 40).

Annotatio II §.V: Marbach Senior confirms with harsher theses — human nature called God; Fechtius reports§186

186Marbach the Elder then confirmed and defended it with further like — and even more absurd — propositions, daring to say Christ's human nature can rightly be called God Himself.

So Fechtius reports in his Supplement to Ecclesiastical History, p. 30 (cf. Hospinian, Concordia discordans, ch. 55).

Annotatio II §.V: Torgau prior Convent 1574 Art. 4 rejects ubiquity again§187

187The Torgau assembly of 1574 rejected it again in Article 4.

Annotatio II §.V close: Torgau 1576 silent; Philippist Corpus out, Formula Concord body in; Bergen Fathers explain as potential — stop before §.VI§188

188In the later Torgau meeting of 1576 it went silent — the year the Philippist Corpus Doctrinae was set aside and today's Formula of Concord body of Lutheran doctrine took its place.

At last the Bergen Fathers explained it as potential, in the Solid Declaration and Explanation of the Controverted Articles (my copy p. 754; 4to ed. 1580).

Annotatio II §.VI open: Dissensus reaches Fastigium — Hunnius attacks Predestination sentence nearly universal since Augustine, received by first Reformers of both parties§189

189§. VI. Not long after the Formula of Concord came into print — a story already more than familiar — the Dissensus hit its peak.

Aegidius Hunnius struck at the Predestination teaching that, from Augustine onward, had been all but the rule of the Western Church, and that the first Reformers on both Protestant sides had taken over: Luther and Zwingli, as pupils of Augustine and of Thomas Aquinas.

Annotatio II §.VI: Hunnius urges embracing the opinion of Fathers older than Augustine§190

190He pressed for taking up the view held by the Fathers who came before Augustine.

Annotatio II §.VI: Most Lutherans follow Hunnius; Reformed mostly keep insisting on Augustinian doctrine§191

191From then on the greater part of the Lutherans went with Hunnius, while most of the Reformed held fast to Augustinian teaching on this point.

Annotatio II §.VI: Calixtus — our men once approved Absolute Decree, then retreated to first-four-centuries foreknowledge sentence; Hunnius labored much§192

192As the often-praised Calixtus puts it: many of our own once approved the Absolute Decree as well, then by degrees fell back to the teaching of the first four centuries — a decree framed according to foreknowledge — and Aegidius Hunnius did a great and distinguished work in that change:

Annotatio II §.VI: Hard to state without Pelagian tinge — Tossanus and Tanner accuse Hunnius; Calixtus Thorun/Gratia refs§193

193Still, it is hard to set out that teaching without seeming to shade toward Pelagianism — and Daniel Tossanus the Calvinist and Adam Tanner the Jesuit both charge Hunnius with Pelagianism (

See also the same Calixtus, Consideration of Reformed Doctrine according to the Thorun Confession, on Grace, p. 62.

Annotatio II §.VI close: Neither this nor prior Dissensus judged Fundamental — Tractatus prior refs; stop before Annotatio III§194

194And they still did not count this split — or any of the earlier ones — as Fundamental: see the earlier Tractate, nos. 23–35, no. 45, and nos. 76–82 inclusive.

Annotatio III open §.I: Landgrave Philip of Hesse tries to smother Dissensus in the bud — letters to Luther, Melanchthon, Brentius§195

195ANNOTATIO III. On the Attempts Made toward Consociation (pages 334–341).

§. I. The moment the Dissensus first broke out, Landgrave Philip of Hesse — a prince hard to praise enough — tried to choke it off in the bud.

Annotatio III §.I: Letters urge Concord and fraternity with Zwinglians before and at Augsburg — theologians refuse fundamental consensus§196

196He wrote again and again to Luther, Melanchthon, and Brentius, pressing hard for Concord — both before the Augsburg Diet and while it sat — and for fraternity with the Zwinglians that would actually be kept.

Those letters are still in Chytraeus’s Acts with the Zwinglians; and the named theologians, for their part, were angry and would not admit that the Zwinglians shared with them a fundamental consensus of faith.

Annotatio III §.I: Philip’s letter for the Zwinglians — shared articles; Coena by faith; response too hard — Chytraeus / Buddeus Luther replies§197

197So the Most Illustrious Prince argues for the Zwinglians in one letter (Chytraeus, History of the Augsburg Confession, p. 652): since they agree with you in the other articles, confess Christ as you do, grant that Christ is eaten in the Supper by faith — and that eating is needed for salvation — and do not strip God of omnipotence, but read the words by the analogy of faith according to Scripture as they take them; and since Christ’s glorified body cannot feed a stomach, so He can scarcely be eaten except by believers and through faith — your sentence and reply look harder than they need to be, and I hope God will bring you to a truer view.

For Luther’s answering letters, see the recent Buddeus Supplement, Epistle 122, pages 1024 and 102.

Annotatio III §.I: Landgrave brings both parties to Marburg 1529 — Universal Consensus except the Article on the Lord’s Supper§198

198By all of this the Landgrave at last got the theologians of both sides to come out to him at Marburg, and there in 1529, with him present, they entered a Universal Consensus — one article excepted: the Lord’s Supper.

Annotatio III §.I: Chytraeus on Zwingli/Oecolampadius follow Luther elsewhere; interim Christian love; Buddeus Luther to Agricola; wish bitterness eased§199

199On that outcome Chytraeus writes: Zwingli and Oecolampadius gladly followed Luther’s teaching in everything else; only on the Sacrament they would not follow (p. 643).

Though they had not yet agreed whether Christ’s true body and blood are corporally present in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, each side would still show the other Christian love as far as conscience allowed, and both would pray God to confirm them by His Spirit in the true teaching (p. 646).

Buddeus, the noted Halle professor, adds in his Supplement Luther’s Epistle 98 to Johann Agricola, urging that harsh words and writings stop from then on (pp. 71–72).

Chytraeus himself, opening his History of the Acts with the Zwinglians, says he and all the pious wish the bitterness of these splits and hatreds softened and eased (p. 636).

Annotatio III §.I: MARPURGENSE — first of the more perfect Consociation attempts, though lowest grade (all dogmas but one; Luther refuses right hand of fraternity)§200

200I would call this Marburg attempt the first of the more complete Consociation efforts — though still of the lowest grade.

More complete, because they agreed on every dogma but one; lowest grade, because Luther would not give the right hand of fraternity (Chytraeus, p. 647).

Annotatio III §.I close: Luther calls Zwinglians heretics; Zwingli weeps for Wittenberg unity; spiritual presence offered — stop before §.II Bucer/Wittenberg§201

201Worse: Luther called the Zwinglians heretics — Epistle 103 in Buddeus’s Supplement, p. 105, to Jakob Probst, Licentiate of Theology: they were treated most unfairly in being denied the name of brothers and forced to leave as heretics, yet so that peace might hold for a time by mutual writings, if God should open their heart.

On that footing Luther became the first author of the Protestant schism — and the more out of season, the more carefully the other side had sought Concord, as Luther himself admits in Epistles 98 and 123 in Buddeus.

He records that Zwingli, weeping openly before the Landgrave and the Estates, begged and cried out: there are no people on earth with whom I would rather be one than with the Wittenbergers (p. 105).

And again: the Zwinglians had promised they would say with the Lutherans that Christ’s body is truly present in the Supper, but only spiritually — if only they might be called brothers. Same place.

Annotatio III §.II open: More perfect Consociation attempt owed to Bucer — vies with Melanchthon for palm of theological moderation; still presses Concord after Marburg§202

202§. II. Next comes a more complete Consociation attempt — one owed to Martin Bucer, who could even vie with the gentlest Melanchthon for the palm of theological moderation and modesty.

Chytraeus tacks it onto the Marburg effort in these words: when the Landgrave’s intercession could not get the Saxons to receive the Zwinglians as brothers, Bucer still did not quit — even after our Confession had been shown — but kept pressing every path to conciliation and Concord.

Annotatio III §.II: Bucer to Luther at Coburg, then to Oecolampadius and Zwingli — delays stretch to the sixth year; Concord finally set at Wittenberg§203

203Still, a little later — before the diets closed, and with the Elector of Saxony and Bucer’s own magistrates knowing — Bucer went to Luther at Coburg to work out godly ways of settling the controversy.

For the same cause he soon went on to Oecolampadius and Zwingli.

One delay after another pushed the close of that business out to the sixth year; Concord was finally constituted at Wittenberg.

Annotatio III §.II: Second Consociation attempt ranked WITTENBERGENSE — Formula explains Coena consensus; eleven Reformed and six Lutheran subscribers; almost Interim-like pending wider approval§204

204On that account I rank this second Consociation attempt higher — the Wittenberg one — because of the Wittenberg Formula of Concord, which even spells out agreement on the doctrine of the Supper.

Eleven Reformed and six Lutheran theologians subscribed it; read it in Chytraeus, pp. 680–681.

Call it almost Interim-like if you like: those theologians (Chytraeus’s words) would not finish the Concord until they had also referred it to the other theologians and magistrates for their approval.

Annotatio III §.II: From the Lutheran side — Luther himself urges Bucer toward Concord (1535); then presses Strasbourg and Swiss approvals (1536–1538)§205

205From the Lutheran side, another mark of the Wittenberg Concord’s completeness is this: Luther himself spurred Bucer to seek it — letters to the Strasburgers, 1535 (Buddeus, Epistle 120, p. 248).

After the Formula was set, Luther pressed Strasbourg’s approval in 1536 (Epistle 223, p. 257), and the Swiss as well — 1 December 1537 (Epistle 231) and 1538 (Epistle 232).

Annotatio III §.II: From the Reformed side — Wittenberg Formula never revoked, only declared; Helvetian approval; Zurich reply dated 4 May 1538 (not 1539 typo in Werenfels)§206

206From the Reformed side: the Wittenberg Formula of Concord was never revoked — only declared (Crocius on the Augsburg Confession, p. 162).

The Swiss approved it point by point (Crocius, pp. 100 and 107).

Because some have doubted that approval, we must call the Helvetians’ own reply letters from Zurich to Luther as witnesses — written a little later, yet not as late as 1539 (the year a Berlin printing of Werenfels’s sermon assigns them, perhaps by typographical error, in this very year of my writing).

They were drawn up on 4 May 1538 — about half a year after Luther’s letter reached them — as Selneccer, Kirchner, and Chemnitz, the three most celebrated Lutheran historians of the Augsburg Confession, recount when they cite the letters in these words:

Annotatio III §.II: Zurich reply (German) — joy at Luther’s answer; Capito and Bucer’s report; Basel Confession accepted; unity on Word, Baptism, and Supper without empty signs — Hucusque Tigurini§207

207The Zurich letter opens: Honorable, highly learned friend in Christ — we received with highest joy your kind answer to the writing we sent you toward Schmalkalden, thanking our heavenly Father.

From your letter and from Capito and Bucer’s faithful report while they were with us, we can only take it that you mean this holy unity well, and that you gladly accept our Basel Confession with the Declaration that followed.

On the outward Word and Baptism you find no misunderstanding; on the holy Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood we gather you have never taught — and do not teach — a descent or ascent from the Father’s right hand that would set a presence or eating in the Supper contrary to the true incarnation and ascension.

We for our part refuse bare empty signs in the Supper: the Lord’s body and blood are received, yet truly grasped only by the believing mind, as our Confession and Declaration sent to Schmalkalden still hold.

So we now see nothing else than that — God be praised — we are one in understanding and right substance, at peace, with no dispute left between us. (Full page Hh.) Thus far the Zurichers’ words.

Annotatio III §.II close: Werenfels votes to renew the short-lived 1536 Concord; Luther’s 1 Dec 1537 letter; Strimesius joins the wish — Concord later ruptured; Luther’s bitter Jan 1546 letter before death on the Feast of Concord — stop before §.III Francofurtanum§208

208Those Zurich words seem to move Werenfels — once chief theology professor at Basel — to end his sermon with this wish, adding the Luther letter that had drawn the Zurich replies: would that the Concord made in 1536 between the evangelical theologians of both sides — alas lasting no more than three years — were renewed.

Of that Concord Luther wrote to the evangelical Swiss on 1 December 1537 (Jena Works, Volume 6, page 507): take me for one who means it from the heart; so far as I that furthers Concord shall be lacking in me.

We join Werenfels’s wish — the more warmly because, alas, it is surer still that for merely carnal causes (Calixtus the Elder, Jud. Controv. Nos. 72 and 75) the earlier Luther broke the Wittenberg Concord.

Worse: by his letter to Jakob Praepositus in the month before he died — 18 February, the holy day of Concord — Luther can seem to have died into the schism (we hope at least beside his intention and knowledge): Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the Sacramentarians, nor stood in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sits in the chair of the Zurichers. You have what I think. (17 January 1546; Buddeus, Supplement, Epistle 255, pp. 287–288.)

Stop before §. III — the third, Frankfurt attempt after Luther’s death.

Annotatio III §.III open: Third Consociation attempt FRANCOFURTANUM — after Luther’s death, Melanchthon still living; Estates and Otto Henry call twenty-five theologians (1557–1558)§209

209§. III. The third Consociation attempt of this Reformation century is the Frankfurt one.

It came after Luther’s death, while Melanchthon was still alive — in 1557 and 1558 — undertaken by the Imperial Estates and their leader, Otto Henry the Palatine.

Twenty-five theologians were called to Frankfurt; among them Johann Pistorius, Andreas Hyperius, and Nicolaus Rhodingus, Marburg professors commonly counted as rigid Calvinists.

Annotatio III §.III: Prior year — assembled theologians tell the Papists none among them foster opinions alien to the Confession; consensus stands in the foundation§210

210In the prior year, the assembled theologians tell the Papists with whom they were to confer: none among them fosters erroneous opinions alien to the Confession, and they stand in consensus on the foundation.

Annotatio III §.III: Later year — they also agree a Sacred Supper Formula (summary at p. 335): teach per Augsburg Confession that Christ is truly, vivifically, and substantially present§211

211In the later year, after comparing reasons, they also agree on a Formula for the Sacred Supper (our author summarizes it at p. 335).

On this article, they say, our churches must teach according to the Augsburg Confession: in the Lord’s ordinance of the Sacred Supper, Christ is truly, vivifically, and substantially present.

With the bread and wine he has so ordained, he exhibits his body and blood for Christians to eat and drink, testifies that we are his members, gives himself with the promise of grace, and works efficaciously in us — as Hilary says: what is taken and drunk makes Christ to be in us and us in him.

Annotatio III §.III: Formula words speak of action or use — Paul’s ‘bread we break’ is communion of Christ’s body, not bread outside the use§212

212The words clearly speak of action or use — as Paul says expressly of use or action: the bread we break is the communion of the body of Christ.

That cannot mean bread outside the use; take it this way: this bread is the thing by which communion of Christ’s body is exhibited to us — and so speak the older writers and chief Fathers in the Church.

Annotatio III §.III close: Fathers on earthly and heavenly Eucharist — substance remains; later ‘bread changed like Moses’ staff’ phrases — Crocius; stop before §.IV§213

213Irenaeus says the Eucharist consists of two things, earthly and heavenly; Epiphanius and Theodoret clearly say the nature and substance remain, yet with the bread gifts are given — namely Christ’s body and blood.

Later new phrases came in: that the bread is changed, as Moses’ staff was changed into a serpent (Crocius on the Augsburg Confession, p. 204).

Annotatio III §.IV open: Fourth Consociation attempt HEIDELBERGENSE — Otto Henry & Frederick III (1559) pursue Protestant Concord; Heshusius opposes; Melanchthon restores ancient Coena speech§214

214§. IV. To the Frankfurt attempt, by the link of years, one may join the Heidelberg one.

Its authors were Electors Palatine Otto Henry and Frederick III, in the Palatinate in 1559 — pressing hard for Protestant Concord, and opposing the very turbulent Heshusius (so Schmidlin in Hospinian, Concordia Discordans ch. 46 near the end, new Geneva ed. p. ~409).

From Philip Melanchthon’s counsel they restore the Fathers’ ways of speaking about the Sacred Supper. That counsel, given about half a year before Melanchthon’s death, stands in the later part of his Theological Counsels and Judgments supplied to Elector Frederick III (page 378f).

Annotatio III §.IV: Melanchthon to the Elector — silence quarrelers; keep one Forma of Paul’s κοινωνία words; declare the Supper’s fruit; the Son is present for man, not for bread§215

215Some of Melanchthon’s words to the Elector are worth keeping: he approves the Elector’s counsel that both sides’ quarrelers be silenced, lest the tender church split and the weak nearby be troubled — and he wishes such quarrelers gone from either party.

Second, once the contentious are removed, the rest should agree on one Forma of words; best here is to keep Paul’s: the bread we break is the κοινωνία of the body — and to speak richly of the Supper’s fruit so people love this pledge and use it often, declaring what κοινωνία means.

Melanchthon inserts: the Son of God is present in the ministry of the Gospel and efficacious in believers — present not for the bread but for the man ("Abide in me…"; "I am in my Father, and you in me…"). By these consolations he makes us his members and promises to vivify our bodies.

Annotatio III §.IV: Some call this fruit-doctrine ‘Cothurnos’ and demand body-in-bread formulas — then invent inclusion, conversion, transubstantiation, ubiquity unknown to learned antiquity§216

216Yet some brand this true, simple fruit-doctrine as Cothurnos (inflated tragic boots) and demand a yes/no: is the body in the bread, or in the species of bread — as if the sacrament were instituted for the bread and that papistic adoration.

Then they invent how to shut it into the bread; some invent Conversion, others Transubstantiation, others Ubiquity.

All these portentous inventions are unknown to learned antiquity.

Annotatio III §.IV: Heshusius refuses Origen’s σύμβολα and Clement; the same stroke would hit Augustine, Ambrose, Prosper, Dionysius, Tertullian, Bede, Basil, Nazianzen, Theodoret (pp. 379–380)§217

217Heshusius refuses assent to Origen, who calls bread and wine σύμβολα of body and blood; he calumniously rejects Clement of Alexandria.

The same verdict would fall on Augustine, Ambrose, Prosper, Dionysius, Tertullian, Bede, Basil, and Nazianzen (who speaks of an ἀντίτυπον body), and on Theodoret, who says of the bread φύσιν and μεταβαλών (pp. 379–380).

Annotatio III §.IV: Frederick III’s Testament (via Grynaeus) warns sons against turbulent ministers who spawn logomachies against churches agreed on the foundation in Christ§218

218Also worth remembering is a passage from Elector Frederick III’s Testament to his sons, taken from Johann Jacob Grynaeus and joined to his pious admonition on the duty of godly men who must live beside the cataract of anathemas against sound eucharistic teaching (pp. 47–49).

Third and above all, he warns his dearest sons to watch most carefully against turbulent ministers of churches and schools who, in religion and faith, incite disputes of every kind, word-battles, and deadly condemnations against pious churches and schools which nevertheless agree in the foundation and chief heads of the Christian religion and place their salvation with us in Christ alone.

From ambition and crooked zeal, under pretext of a ministry by which they claim the Spirit should convict the world, they introduce this without declared cause and not without scandal — trying, no less than in the cursed Papacy, to dominate magistrates’ and subjects’ consciences and raise a new primacy for themselves everywhere.

Annotatio III §.IV close: Turbulence breeds political and church division and Papal opening — princes must remove the unamendable, yet not strip pastors of moderated correction; stop before §.V Sendomiriense§219

219From such turbulence follow not only political and church distraction and ulcerated minds — disturbance and ruin of both governments — but also an opening for the Pope and his retinue to persecute our true Christian religion with iron, flame, exile, and countless other punishments, and so to fix their tyranny.

How great and miserable the resulting divisions and calamities are, even our own age shows too many examples in Electors’ and other German princes’ lands, and among neighboring peoples.

Christian princes, churches, and schools should therefore take the lesson: guard hard against these turbulent enemies of public peace; do not let them seize posts, inflame parties, or tear people apart; avoid and flee them; and if no hope of amendment appears, remove them outright — as Frederick says he and other Electors and princes have more than once agreed for these and other pious, weighty reasons.

Yet nothing in that counsel should strip godly church ministers of due daily reproof and correction of vices, or of error-refutation drawn from God’s word with Christian moderation and equity — aimed at building up, not tearing down.

Stop before §. V.

Annotatio III §.V open: Last and most perfect Reformation-century Concord attempt — SENDOMIRIENSE in Poland, 1570 (Consensus Sendomiriensis)§220

220§. V. The last Consociation attempt at Protestant Concord in that first Reformation century was not in Germany but in Poland in 1570.

It is the most perfect of all — the Sendomir attempt, celebrated under the name Consensus Sendomiriensis.

Annotatio III §.V: New Latino-German edition plus Prefatio with nine arguments prove its perfection — no need to linger on cause or praise§221

221Of this Consensus we have not only prepared a new Latino-German edition, but in a special Prefatio set out nine clearest arguments for the perfection by which it leaves every other Protestant consensus far behindd all the usual objections.

So there is no need to linger further either stating its cause or praising its excellence.

Annotatio III §.V: Rather pray imitation across Germany, neighboring northern kingdoms, and all Europe wherever both Protestant parties are found§222

222Better to pray with whole heart that Protestants in our Germany, in the neighboring northern kingdoms, and throughout Europe — wherever either party’s Protestants are found — imitate so wholesome, clear-headed, and thoroughly Christian a deed and example.

Annotatio III §.V: Rest in Hornbeck’s judgment — no better, more august, or more perfect Confession ever made; approved politically and ecclesiastically; confirmed by joyful sacramental communion§223

223For the rest we rest in blessed Hornbeck’s judgment on this Consensus — and we will always make it ours — when he says: no better, more august, or more perfect Confession than this was ever made.

It was approved politically and ecclesiastically, and they confirmed it mutually by a most joyful and illustrious communion of the sacraments.

Annotatio III §.V close: Both sides repeatedly acknowledge each other’s Confessions and churches as true and Orthodox — Bohemica/Helvetica and Augustana Socii (Misc. Sacr. I p. 703); stop before §.VI§224

224From both sides they more than once acknowledge each other’s Confessions and churches as true.

We have agreed: just as the Augsburg Confession’s associates testify that we, our churches, and our Confession published in this synod of the Brethren are Orthodox — so the Bohemian Confession’s associates speak of themselves and of the Helvetic Confession’s associates — so also we will pursue their churches (the Augsburg associates’) with the same Christian love and confess them Orthodox (Hornbeck, Miscel. Sacr. Part 1, p. 703).

Annotatio III §.VI open: Two famous post-Reformation Consociation attempts — LIPSIACUM (1631) and CASSELLANUM (1661); the prior distinguished three ways§225

225§. VI. After the Reformation century come two most famous Consociation attempts at reconciling Protestants with one another.

One is the Leipzig attempt — Saxon, Brandenburg, and Hessian theologians, 1631; the other the Cassel attempt — Hessian collocutors alone (Marburg and Rinteln), 1661.

The prior (Leipzig) is marked out in three ways.

Annotatio III §.VI (1): Reformed at Leipzig ready to subscribe the Invariata — Variata not rejected; Nauenburg 1561 precedent; Brandenburg/Hessian Relation confession§226

226(1) Right at the start the Reformed theologians did not hesitate to bind themselves to the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, and were fully ready to subscribe it whenever the other side asked — without rejecting or repudiating the Variata (Philippica), which they defended as the Imperial Estates had admitted it at the Nauenburg Convention in 1561.

Since this Leipzig Reformed act has been remembered before, it helps to bring in their own words from the German Relation of the Leipzig Colloquy.

There the Brandenburg and Hessian theologians voluntarily confessed with mouth and heart the 1530 Confession delivered to Charles V at Augsburg, and said they would subscribe it — even the Saxon Elector’s exemplar in the Augapfel — whenever and wherever asked, because they and their lords had already committed themselves to it in church and school. school. School.

Annotatio III §.VI (2): Colloquy end — both sides measure Augsburg-article agreement and hope closer union; mutual Christian love stipulated§227

227(2.) At the colloquy’s end both sides signal why they met: to see how far they agree in the Augsburg Confession’s articles, and what hope remains of a closer union later — to enlarge Christ’s true church and quench the papists’ confidence drawn from Protestant division — while stipulating Christian love to one another in the meantime.

Their Relation words put it thus: the colloquy was meant first to learn, in summary, whether and how far both parties are one in the twenty-eight Augsburg articles, and whether further conferences of peace-loving theologians, with Christian high authority, might raise a nearer holding-together; and both sides’ theologians would show each other Christian love going forward, faithfully and without deceit.

Annotatio III §.VI (3): Frankfurt Estates (third year after) approve the Leipzig Colloquy and decree Saxony and Brandenburg continue the Protestant peace work§228

228(3.) Finally, in the third year afterward the Imperial Estates gathered at Frankfurt am Main not only approved the Leipzig Colloquy, but — judging they would not be cheated of the Leipzig theologians’ hope — sanctioned by a special decree that Electors Saxony and Brandenburg be asked in the Estates’ public name to keep the Protestant peace business begun at Leipzig going through more moderate theologians’ work, and to bring it to a happy end.

Because few know that decree, we set it out here in the words printed in John Dury’s Prodromus Irenicorum, p. 1.

Annotatio III §.VI Decretum: Dury’s union proposal heard; six Circles call the work grateful and necessary, yet many lack instructions — so they will report home§229

229Decree of the Evangelical Estates made at Frankfurt.

John Dury again laid before the Evangelical Estates’ convention (Circles present, and absent princes’ legates) the business of union and fraternal reconciliation among Evangelicals inside and outside the Empire on the fundamental heads of Christian evangelical religion — a matter floated before — and in a notable deputies’ sitting he was heard by all confederated Estates, citing many leading theologians and academies of either party in Germany, France, England, and Transylvania on how that Christian unity-aim might be reached.

The six Circles unanimously judged the work grateful to the God of peace, praiseworthy, most necessary, and useful to evangelical churches — yet also a heavy business for which many deputies present had no instructions. So the present legates and deputies undertook to report home faithfully the proposal and the theologians’ opinions shared with them.

Annotatio III §.VI Decretum close: Continue the Leipzig collation; keep Christian moderation in teaching and writing; public prayers; Act Frankfurt 14 Sept. 1634 — stop before §.VII Cassellanum§230

230Some legates also offered friendly proposals: that the Circles forward at once a declaration on Dury’s proposed procedure and on a peaceable theologians’ colloquy — modeled on the Leipzig collation three years earlier among Saxon, Brandenburg, and Hessian-Cassel electoral theologians — and that the Electors invite foreign princes and kings by letters.

Others usefully proposed that, saving each Elector’s, prince’s, and Estate’s rights, Electors Saxony and Brandenburg be asked to continue that Leipzig-friendly collation and call a convention where other peaceable theologians of either party can sit or send judgments — aiming at a modest Christian consensus-confession on every salvation-foundation head, while parking scholastic fights on the rest.

Several also agreed that meanwhile both sides should use Christian moderation and mildness in teaching and writing, and that public prayers for the work be framed in both parties’ churches, committing the business to God Most High.

This recess was made in witness of that. Done at Frankfurt am Main, 14 September 1634.

Stop before §. VII (Cassellanum).

Annotatio III §.VII open: POSTERIUS — CASSELLANUM (this century’s second Protestant-peace molimen) claims three peculiarities§231

231§. VII. This century’s later Protestant-peace Consociation attempt — the Cassel one — claims three peculiarities of its own:

Annotatio III §.VII (1): Careful weighing of disputed dogmas; consensus and dissent marked without varnish; modest judgment on weight more than bare truth — consciences unhurt§232

232(1.) It carefully weighed the force of the special disputed doctrines, marked consensus and dissent everywhere openly

and only then gave a modest judgment on the weight of that consensus and dissent more than on bare truth — leaving both sides’ consciences unhurt.

Annotatio III §.VII (2a): After full examination — Evangelicals agree on the Foundation of Faith and Salvation; disputed questions do not overturn that foundation§233

233(2.) After everything was duly examined, it candidly and heartily judged that Evangelicals agree on the Foundation of Faith and Salvation:

the disputed questions touch that foundation less — and still less tear it up or overturn it;

Annotatio III §.VII (2b): Remaining controversies — not for pulpits, or only with utmost modesty; schools and academies likewise without persecution or personal naming (Autor p. 330)§234

234and lest either side next tear or damn the other for some leftover dissent, they judged it wise and agreed:

remaining controversies should not be handled from church pulpits — or if necessity plainly forced it, only with utmost modesty, naming no dissenters, using no harsh words, forging no consequences, declaring truth from Scripture alone;

and in schools and academies likewise with great moderation, without persecution, personal attacks, or name-pointing (Autor p. 330).

Annotatio III §.VII (3) close: Defense of the charitable colloquy; Rinteln Epistola Apologetica; Maresius/Hornbeck/Heidegger — stop before §.VIII§235

235(3.) Both colloquy sides vigorously and learnedly defended their charitable colloquy against detractors and every hater of Protestant peace, and won near-universal applause from foreign Protestants.

Even the Rinteln Epistola Apologetica — by that pair of high-judgment, many-sided theologians Peter Musaeus and John Hennichius — was translated into other languages.

Compare the Cassel Colloquy defenses of Maresius, Hornbeck, Heidegger, and others.

Stop before §. VIII (fruits of Lipsiacum and Cassellanum into the present age).

Annotatio III §.VIII open: Fruits of Lipsiacum & Cassellanum not small — reach into the present century§236

236§. VIII. The fruit of both those Consociation attempts — Leipzig and Cassel — was not small.

It reaches not only the age in which they were begun and finished a few years back, but even our present century, itself not long under way.

Annotatio III §.VIII: Better theologians grow milder; magistrates filled with desire for ecclesiastical peace§237

237For besides this: the better theologians on both sides grew used to thinking more mildly and kindly of one another and of their own parties, and by example led their hearers to do the same;

so they filled their magistrates more and more with love and desire for reconciling church peace.

Annotatio III §.VIII: After Leipzig — Charles Louis Palatine’s pacific institute blocked by Dannhauer (Autor p. 335)§238

238After the Leipzig Colloquy, Charles Louis of the Palatinate had a pacific project in hand — one our Author celebrates —

though Dannhauer’s virulent writings then overturned it (Autor p. 335).

Annotatio III §.VIII: After Cassel — Frederick William the Great’s many peace attempts hindered by Dannhauer’s circle§239

239After Cassel, the many peace attempts of Frederick William the Great, Elector of Brandenburg — whom our Author (p. 341) rightly calls Germany’s Mars and upholder of liberty and religion — are even publicly known;

yet other theologians near the March, Dannhauer’s disciples or fellow-initiates, blocked them out of deadly hatred of the Reformed,

and all but blasphemously prayed God to fill them ever more with hatred of Calvinists — not knowing what they asked.

Annotatio III §.VIII: David/Solomon parallel — Great Elector’s peace zeal; Differtatiuncula / Dorothea; inheritance to Solomon our King§240

240so the same seems to have befallen that prince of immortal glory — famed no less for piety toward God and sincerity of heart than for warlike fortitude, a devoted follower of St. David on both sides — as befell that Hebrew

David burned to build Jehovah a stone temple, yet was barred from the work for set causes, and the building passed to his son Solomon, for whom God had also destined it;

likewise the most glorious Achilles of the Marchers, kindled with zeal to advance day by day the Evangelical peace once sought at Leipzig with him as persuader and author,

even with tears attested as much to us when we humbly offered our little Dissertation on Ecclesiastical Peace (which by his special order was soon to be put into the vernacular and dedicated to his most serene consort Dorothea, worthy of so great a hero),

and was about, as often before, most kindly to open his then thoughts on that peace and press perpetual peace-zeal upon us with all his force —

yet God so disposing, for reasons known to the All-wise alone, he was drawn off from raising the sanctuary of Protestant peace,

and transmitted by inheritance to his son — our Solomon, everywhere pacific, now crowned by God with the royal diadem — both richer furniture collected for finishing that sanctuary and his own desire for peace.

Annotatio III §.VIII close: Prayer for the Sacred Peace building; Royal Rescript to Bishop Ursinus introduced — stop before Rescript body§241

241This is what we vow and pray from the heart for our Most Pious King:

that, with the Most High God of Peace blessing him, he may carry the building of Sacred Peace as happily as possible to its very summit — last year he again strove to lay its foundation, most kindly using our slight labor —

other kings and princes also helping as tireless promoters of kindly church peace, for God’s glory and the comfort and joy of all Evangelicals.

We judge the Royal Rescript in this business — given to his first bishop, the Most Reverend Lord Benjamin Ursinus, and turned from German into Latin — should be set before our reader here,

so anyone may judge the most sincere intention of our August King and his most fervent zeal to promote ecclesiastical peace.

Stop before the Rescript body (Nos Dei Gratia Fridericus Rex Borussiae…).

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript open: Frederick King of Prussia to Bishop Ursinus — greeting§242

242It runs thus:

We, by God’s grace, Frederick King of Prussia, etc.

Our greeting and clemency!

Most Reverend Bishop, beloved and faithful.

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript: Peace among Evangelicals our chief care; pulpits nearly free of mutual condemnations§243

243You know how, especially under Our reign, promoting peace among Evangelicals has been Our highest care —

and with God’s grace helping we have come so far that in the Kingdom and Our other subject provinces those public bitternesses, charges of heresy, and Protestants’ mutual condemnations are scarcely heard any longer from the pulpit.

So a sure hope shines on us that Our peace-counsels, God blessing them, will reach a happy end.

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript: Printed union/tolerance counsels; Collegium Theologorum erected; Ursinus named Praeses§244

244But since Evangelicals of both sides have here and there put into print various counsels on closer union — or at least on mutual and greater tolerance —

and We, moved by such public writings and by everyone’s unanimous desire ahead of other princes, have been stirred to set hand to this salutary work of restoring peace,

We have most clemently resolved to erect in Our very capital a College of Theologians who love both peace and Our salutary intent, for God’s greater glory and the increase of Christ’s kingdom.

By these presents We name You Our Bishop its President.

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript: Assessors — Strimesius, Jablonski, Lütkens, Winkler§245

245joining to You for now these Assessors:

Samuel Strimesius, Our man for sacred sermons and Ordinary Professor of Sacred Theology in Our Frankfurt Academy, and Daniel Jablonski;

also Francis Julius Lütkens, councillor of Our Consistory and Provost of Cölln; and Winkler, Archdeacon of the Magdeburg Basilica.

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript: Private colloquies and letters abroad; procure church peace at least in Our realm§246

246Yours, then, as Bishop and President of this whole assembly, will be to make those Assessors sure of Our most clement will declared in this Rescript.

Meet and confer with them first inside private walls, without noise.

See that — by colloquies and by letters to foreign theologians — solid means are found by which the church peace all Evangelical Protestants long for may be procured and settled, if not elsewhere, at least in Our Kingdom, Electorate, and other lands.

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript: External theologians by royal approval; Proto-Notary F. H. Ursinus; trust in earnest labor§247

247If You and Your Assessors judge foreign theologians should also be brought into this College and convention, invite them with fitting courtesy — yet only after Our prior most clement approval — and report to Us by word and writing all that is done among you.

And so that everything in this charitable College or convention may be recorded in better order, We join to you Our intimate secretary and librarian Frederick Henry Ursinus as Proto-Notary, and for this business most clemently free him from the ordinary library duty that binds him.

As we do not doubt this irenical work will please God and that Our royal Christian intent will share divine blessing, so we most clemently trust you all, from true zeal for truth and peace, will gladly take up this care and strain every nerve.

Then we may obtain Our most ardent vow — the long, anxiously desired peace among Evangelicals made firm.

Annotatio III §.VIII Rescript close: Royal clemency; Cologne on the Spree 25 March 1703 — stop before Annotatio IV§248

248As for the rest, take security from Our royal clemency.

Issued at Cölln on the Spree, 25 March 1703.

Frederick, King.

The Count of Wartenberg addresses Lord Bishop Ursinus.

Directed to Benjamin Ursinus, our Most Reverend First Bishop, beloved and faithful.

Annotatio IV open: De Obicibus Consociationis Ecclesiasticae (Autor pp. 341–343)§249

249ANNOTATION IV.

On the Obstacles to Ecclesiastical Consociation (Autor pp. 341–343).

Annotatio IV §.I open: After frustrated peace attempts — inquire into OBICES; general vs special§250

250§. I. After so many frustrated attempts to compose church peace, the Author not without cause turns to the OBSTACLES set against such pious efforts (p. 341ff.).

He points only at the special ones, passing the more general sources in silence — yet it is worth at least summarizing those generals too, mainly so they may be more carefully guarded against.

Annotatio IV §.I: Divide obstacles into Externos and Internos§251

251We divide them, first, into Externals — placed outside the person — and Internals — at home in the person.

Annotatio IV §.I: External obstacles — Devil’s instincts and arts; neither over-blame nor exempt him§252

252The external sort fall under the Devil’s varied instincts, tricks, and wicked arts — he being the first parent of lies, quarrels, and slanders.

We must neither exaggerate with the crowd that dumps nearly every misdeed on the Devil, nor, with the author of this fascinated world, exempt him from the community of human things and deeds.

Annotatio IV §.I: Scripture — Devil father of dissensions; lion; Judas; diabolical quarrels; tares in the wheat§253

253For the Holy Spirit Himself names the Devil father of dissensions no less than of slanders and of the murders that sprout from them (John 8:44).

He does not only gape after people like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5) and spur them to his works (James 4); God permitting by just judgment, he also works in the sons of unbelief and through them (Ephesians 2:2 with 5:6), and even entered a Judas, betrayer of Christ (John 13).

Moreover he stirs up, feeds, and pushes quarrels of that kind — so, from their first spring, they are rightly called diabolical (James 3:15) — sowing tares of lies and dissension in the wheat of truth and peace.

Annotatio IV §.I close: Who wrecked the peace molimina? The wicked / common enemy (Matt. 13:28) — stop before §.II§254

254So to anyone who asks who wrecked the peace attempts recounted above, you may aptly answer with Christ’s words:

the wicked one — our common enemy — did it (Matthew 13:28).

Annotatio IV §.II open: Internal obstacles — fountains from will’s pravity and intellect’s error; many rivulets§255

255§. II. The later obstacles you may call other fountains — arising from two common vices in the first principles of human action, intellect and will: pravity and error.

From those fountains spring still more rivulets, greater in number.

Annotatio IV §.II: First fountain — free-acting pravity of will precedes intellect-error; sacred strife by free choice§256

256Of the two fountains, the first is the free-acting pravity of the will — which, under the covenant of grace no less than of works, runs ahead of intellect’s error.

For any divine covenant with man presupposes enough light in the mind to restrain or repel malicious will-pravity.

So whoever has gone on to needless sacred quarrels and church splits — even with the Devil prodding — should know he rushed in not unwillingly, nor merely by intellect’s mistake or the Devil’s talk, but by his own free choice and προαίρεσις.

Three larger rivulets from will-pravity, well marked by the Apostle John, promote that work of dissension; we list them here in reverse order:

Annotatio IV §.II (1): Ambition / pride of life — hostile to truth and peace; Arius couplet§257

257(1.) Pride of life — or ambition — which usually clings even to the sacred order (as in the Pharisees, Matt. 23:5–7).

It is most hostile to truth and peace (John 5:44; 7:18) and most fertile of quarrels (2 Tim. 3:1–3).

That common couplet on quarrelsome Arius makes the same point: ask why the heretic (schismatic) Arius became what he was — the ready answer is, he was ambitious.

Annotatio IV §.II (2): Lust of the eyes — excessive sacred curiosity; multiplies dogmas and unhealthy novelties§258

258(2.) Lust of the eyes — meaning spiritual lusts of the soul; in a word, excessive curiosity in sacred things, born of ambition — against Romans 12:3: do not think beyond what you ought, but think unto sobriety.

For the puffed-up man languishes among questions (1 Tim. 6:3–5) that a bishop must flee (2 Tim. 2:23–24; Titus 3:9).

This breeds two evils most hostile to church peace: an extraordinary multiplication of theological dogmas, and an unhealthy doting on novelties.

Annotatio IV §.II (3): Lust of the flesh — φιλαργυρία with φιλαυτία; alien to Christian teachers§259

259(3.) Lust of the flesh — craving carnal and worldly goods — plus the love-of-money the Apostle rebukes as the mark of Pharisees and false teachers (Luke 16:14).

It sticks close to self-love (φιλαυτία, 2 Tim. 3:2), which Peter insists Christian teachers must keep far from (1 Pet. 5:2).

Annotatio IV §.II: Second fountain — Error of intellect when will-pravity is loosed; near sources of error§260

260The second fountain is error of intellect — which anyone who lets their will be uncontrolled is apt to fall into; conversely, whoever hates malice draws nearer the truth (Ps. 25:14; Matt. 5:8; John 7:17).

Error is born nearby from prejudices, passions in the saddle, warped schooling and teaching, the reading of slanderous books, and the like.

Annotatio IV §.II close: How error is perfected — bad grasp, false reconciliations, confusions, inept inferences — stop before §.III§261

261It is finished either by grasping theological things badly and weakly and measuring them by earthly standards — with Nicodemus (John 3:12) and the Capernaites (John 6) —

or by twisting apparent contradictions into harmony outside Scripture: for example Christ’s two sayings in Matt. 26:11 and 28:20, reconciled by inventing a double body of Christ, visible and invisible, though the biblical distinction of Christ’s two natures (Paul, Rom. 1:3–4; 9:5; Peter, 1 Pet. 3:18; 4:1) does it far more easily.

Or by confusing what differs and not distinguishing enough — e.g. any theological truths whatever versus the fundamental and more necessary ones;

or by inferring clumsily — e.g. that God’s omnipotence is denied when his will and revelation in some dogmas are debated; or that a dissenter holds as sure everything rightly or wrongly drawn from his opinion; and so on.

Stop before §. III (further rivulets from either fountain, noted by our Author).

Annotatio IV §.III open: Further rivulets from either Obex fountain — noted by our Author§262

262§. III. From either fountain of these obstacles still other rivulets run down, drawing the same kind of water — ones our Author notes.

Annotatio IV §.III from Prior (1): Stretch any error into heresy, or lesser dissent into fundamental§263

263From the first fountain: (1.) Stretch any error into heresy at will, or turn a lesser dissent into a fundamental one.

“Fundamental,” I mean, when the dissent is wholly feigned and so none at all, or only verbal, or at most about the mode of the thing.

Annotatio IV §.III from Prior (2): Practical heresy — no room for charity’s judgment; worst-part reading§264

264(2.) Suffer under practical heresy — leave no room for charity’s judgment, and take everything dissenters say in the worst possible sense.

Annotatio IV §.III from Posterior [1]: Abound in one’s own sense; instill novelties to the church’s hurt§265

265From the second fountain: [1.] Swell with your own sense, and in good faith drip your novelties into others — to the hurt of the church and of church peace.

Annotatio IV §.III from Posterior (2): Obstinate adiaphora — even into sin and open disobedience§266

266(2.) Cling stubbornly to church adiaphora from long habit, even where sin is a real risk,

and even with open disobedience to the higher magistrate, under a zeal that is really owed to ignorance.

Annotatio IV §.III close: More in Stregensis’s Northern Olive-branch — stop before Annotatio V Limites§267

267Gather more from the Northern Olive-branch of Johannes Matthiae, Bishop of Strängnäs — berries four, six, seven, and eight.

Stop before Annotatio V (Limites Consociationis Ecclesiasticae).

Annotatio V open: De Limitibus Consociationis Ecclesiasticae (Autor pp. 347–352)§268

268ANNOTATION V.

Concerning the bounds of church Consociation — Autor pages 347 through 352.

Annotatio V §.I: Limits opposite Obstacles — by right (jure), not merely de facto§269

269§. I. Limits stand opposite Obstacles: limits are understood of right, obstacles of fact.

An unjust boundary acts like an obstacle; a just obstacle acts like a limit.

So here the limits of church consociation are not whatever happens to obtain in practice, but what by divine and church right can and ought to be set.

Annotatio V §.I: Limits taken Materially (articles) or Formally (the act of limiting)§270

270Taken that way, limits are either Material — the things or articles of the Christian religion that justly bound church consociation and keep it inside those bounds —

or Formal — the limitation itself, the act of limiting in its various degrees.

Annotatio V §.II open: What sets just bounds — Fundamental faith-dogmas, not every Christian truth§271

271§. II. What sets just bounds for church consociation is not every Christian truth whatever, but the Fundamental dogmas of the Christian faith (described in Annotation 2).

That such fundamentals exist, distinct from less fundamental dogmas, has been shown elsewhere — by our Author’s Tract on Fundamentals (Disp. 1–2) and his Specimen against the Bishop of Condom (pp. 63–70), and by us in the Dissertation on Church Peace (ch. 7) and the Inquiry into the Arminians (Annot. 17) —

and all Protestants reckon the same way, even against the Roman party,

Annotatio V §.II: Against making all dogmas hang on Roman authority — Constance / papal council can inflate the least§272

272who own no fundamentals in themselves — neither by immediate divine authority nor by their nature as founding the Christian faith —

but hang every dogma of the faith, great or small, as to truth, necessity, or fundamentality, on the authority of the Roman Church.

So what barely touches the Christian faith, or even runs against it, can still, through some Constance or papal council, become essential to that faith — even the greatest point.

Annotatio V §.II close: Tridentine anathema if one affirms bread and wine remain (1 Cor. 11) — stop before Eph. 4 proof§273

273Thus someone who affirms with Paul that in the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine remains (1 Cor. 11:26–28) is treated no milder than if he had trampled the whole foundation of the Christian faith:

Trent, Session XIII, Canon II, launches a terrible anathema in these words — if anyone says the substance of bread and wine remains with Christ’s Body and Blood, and denies that marvelous conversion of the whole substance of bread into the Body and of wine into the Blood (species alone remaining), which the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation, let him be anathema (pag. M. 130).

Stop before the proof that true divine Fundamentals make the limits — from Ephesians 4 (authoritative and ratiocinative).

Annotatio V §.II cont open: True divine Fundamentals make the limits — proved Autoritative and Ratiocinative§274

274That the same true, divine Fundamentals set the limits of church Consociation is proved two ways — by authority and by reason.

Annotatio V §.II Autoritative (Eph. 4): Keep the Spirit’s unity in the bond of peace — one body and one Spirit§275

275By authority: take Ephesians 4 as a standing commonplace for the point — covering the whole foundation, theoretical (vv. 1–17) and practical (v. 17 to the chapter’s end).

There the Apostle bids us keep the Spirit’s unity in the bond of peace (v. 3), and affirms one body and one Spirit — one spiritual body — where there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, above all, through all, and in all (vv. 4–6).

Annotatio V §.II Autoritative (Eph. 4): One Lord, faith, baptism, God — yet diverse gifts for building the body§276

276Yet afterward, and for what remains, grace is given to each — even in different measures — according to Christ’s gift (v. 7).

Some are set as apostles, others as prophets (v. 11), and that for the building up of Christ’s body (v. 12).

Annotatio V §.II Autoritative (Eph. 4): Unto the unity of the faith and the perfect man — truthing in love§277

277The aim is that we all arrive at the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man (v. 13) — not tossed by every wind of teaching (v. 14) —

meanwhile speaking truth in love, studying truth in charity (v. 15).

Annotatio V §.II Ratiocinative: Unanimous in fundamentals — one spiritual body more than not, though lesser dissent remains§278

278By reason: those agreed on the fundamental — and so necessary and chief — dogmas of the Christian religion, though they still differ on lesser points, yet press on toward fuller unity in charity.

They are more one spiritual body than not.

Or, what comes to the same, they are more held in the Consociation of one Christian church than they are shut out of it — for we name a thing from its greater part.

Annotatio V §.II Ratiocinative close: Church members who keep essentials — even amid many non-overturning errors — stop before §.IV§279

279Just as people with a body and a rational soul still count as human and as members of one society — even when the soul’s force is weak and some bodily members are badly misshapen —

so those who keep the church’s essentials, theoretical and practical, should be counted sharers in the same church Consociation,

even while they wrestle with many errors and sins that do not overturn the Christian religion.

d from the same fundamental principle).

Annotatio V §.IV open: From the same fundamental principle — judge both Consensus and Consociation§280

280§. IV. From that same principle of the Christian religion’s fundamental dogmas we must judge both Christians’ Consensus and their Consociation —

that is, both unity of mind (or Spirit) and unity of body (or Church).

Annotatio V §.IV: Else no catholic Christian consensus or Catholic Church — vain hymn of all Christendom§281

281Otherwise there will never be any catholic Christian consensus, nor any Catholic Church joined by that consensus.

Then we would believe that Church in vain, and sing falsely: “All Christendom on earth holds quite evenly in one mind.”

Annotatio V §.IV: Orthodox self-claim to the Catholic title alone — ridiculous, not even at one with itself§282

282Unless those who today brandish the Orthodox name try — how ridiculously — to claim the Catholic Church’s title for themselves alone, or snatch it without thinking.

They cannot even be reconciled with the kinds among their own people, still less with any individual within those groups — not even with one individual, that is, with none of one with himself —

once you allow for shifts of place, time, and other externals that greatly change internals.

Annotatio V §.IV: Consenters in all Fundamentals (Annot. 2) constitute one and the same Christian Church§283

283So, as in Annotation 2 above we rightly called consenters in the faith only those who agree in all Fundamentals, though they differ elsewhere,

here we hold that all who keep the same Fundamentals make up one and the same Christian Church.

Annotatio V §.IV: Exiles from Consociation — Socinians (theoretical) and Pontificii (practical anathemas)§284

284By that measure we count as exiles from church Consociation only those who fail in the Fundamentals —

theoretical failures such as the Socinians, or practical ones such as the Pontificians, who under anathemas bind any Christian conscience to their extra foundation,

against all Christian charity, which is central to the Christian faith

Annotatio V §.IV close: Evangelicals Reformed and Lutheran already one by fundamental consensus — stop before §.V§285

285Conversely, Evangelical Protestants — Reformed and Lutheran — though they dissent in some points, are already held in the same Christian Church and joined by church Consociation because of fundamental consensus.

At least those who treat the modes of dissent in about three dogmas (both sides keeping the substance) as less essential and less fundamental — and who not only refuse but abhor damning dissenters on that account.

On Arminians strictly so called we long ago gave a like judgment (Inquiry into the Arminians, Annot. §. 1. 3).

Stop before §. V (Hannekenius on truth and charity at the end of the Preliminary Questions).

Annotatio V §.V open: Only of Fundamental Truth understood — Hannekenius at end of Preliminary Questions§286

286§. V. So those remarks apply only where Fundamental Truth is understood and laid out.

Toward the end of the Preliminary Questions on the Theological Declaration for a true estimate of the Augsburg Confession, Hannekenius (cited above) treats the point this way:

Annotatio V §.V Hannekenius: No sound mystical-Body union when Truth is wounded — Charity the bond from Truth§287

287Wound Truth, and the mystical Body with its members cannot stay in sound union.

Charity — the very bond of that union — is violated the moment it loses the Truth from which it springs.

Annotatio V §.V: Vain charity with wounded Truth; empty Truth without charity — no confessor who splits Union§288

288Charity with injury to Truth is vain; Truth without the exercise of Charity is empty.

No one shows true charity without a solid profession of Truth.

Nor is anyone heard as a faithful confessor of saving doctrine who, having broken Charity, splits the Union.

Annotatio V §.V: 1 Cor. chain; epiphonema — If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus, anathema Maranatha§289

289He points to a long run of 1 Corinthians (chs. 1–3, 8–10, 12–14, and 16:13–14).

The letter’s strongest closing cry is: anyone who does not love the Lord Jesus — the one true Salvation and saving Truth — is anathema, Maranatha.

Annotatio V §.V: Salvation in knowledge of Truth so that Jesus must be loved — cannot be loved in broken Synaxis§290

290On that reading, salvation sits in knowing the Truth, and that knowledge teaches us to love Jesus.

Where the synaxis of union is already torn, that love cannot go deep.

Annotatio V §.V close: Pestilent charity without Truth; cursed Unio that does not love Jesus in Truth — stop before §.VI§291

291Charity without Truth is pestilent, and every church union that does not love Jesus in Truth is cursed (1 John 4:10–12ff., page 39

Compare our German tract: Short Sketch of the Unity of the Evangelical-Lutheran and Reformed, §. 4, pages 21–25.

d formally — Tolerance vs perfect Union).

Annotatio V §.VI open: Limits so far Material; Formaliter — the act of limitation in two grades§292

292§. VI. So far we have treated the limits of church Consociation on the material side.

Taken formally — as naming the act of drawing that limit — they show up in roughly two degrees.

Annotatio V §.VI: First grade — Tolerance alone = Consociatio partialis§293

293One degree reaches only as far as Tolerance.

That grade is rightly called partial Consociation.

Annotatio V §.VI: Second grade — perfect Union = total Ecclesiastical Consociation§294

294The other stretches out to perfect Union.

There it completes total ecclesiastical Consociation.

Annotatio V §.VI: Two grades from vulgar opinion — Political vs Ecclesiastical Tolerance confused§295

295I mark those two grades chiefly because common opinion mixes Political Tolerance with Ecclesiastical Tolerance.

That confusion is what makes the double ladder look sharp to the crowd.

Annotatio V §.VI: Ecclesiastically tolerable only if agreed with Foundation and Fundamentals§296

296Otherwise, anyone to be tolerated in the church must already agree with the Foundation of the Faith and the Fundamentals of the Christian religion.

Without that agreement, ecclesiastical tolerance does not even begin.

Annotatio V §.VI close: Agreed in Fundamentals = already to be / coupled in Consociation — stop before Annotatio VI§297

297But whoever does agree with the Fundamentals is, by that very fact that he is tolerable, also to be joined — and already joined — in the same church Consociation.

Annotatio VI open §.I: Two major classes by Authors, Number, and Mode of treating controversies§298

298ANNOTATION VI. On the classes of controversies that stand between Evangelicals (pp. 353–356).

§. I. Our author quickly splits them into two major classes, marked off by a nearly threefold difference: authors, number, and the mode of handling the disputes.

Annotatio VI §.I Prior Class: Genuine Luther disciples admitting Melanchthon’s varied Augsburg Confession (Art. X)§299

299The prior class, on his account, has as disputants Luther’s genuine disciples.

They admit Melanchthon’s milder, declared and explained Augsburg Confession — even Article X on the Sacred Supper — if not from the start, then afterward (see Annot. I. §.6).

Annotatio VI §.I Prior Class Number: Almost one point — in/with/under bread and oral manducation, not conceded spiritual presence§300

300The disputed number shrinks almost to one point.

Both sides already concede a real supernatural and spiritual presence and manducation of Christ’s body and blood in the supper.

What remains is presence in, with, and under the bread, plus oral eating by unworthy and worthy communicants alike.

Annotatio VI §.I Prior Class Mode: Peaceful treatment; less-fundamental controversy so fraternal charity remains§301

301The mode is peaceful — the kind that fits a theological fight.

Both parties treat the controversy as less than fundamental, so fraternal Christian charity still has room.

Annotatio VI §.I: Same kind as intramural Lutheran or Reformed disputes — does not derogate Ecclesiastical Union§302

302As to the matter, this class between Lutherans and Reformed is no different from disputes that still run inside each camp — Lutheran fights over the body’s omnipresence and multipresence, or Reformed fights over universal and particular grace.

While it lasts, it takes nothing away from church union.

Annotatio VI §.I: Recognized Fraternity — Marburg/Rinteln/Cassel; Sendomir; Reformeds profess; Lutherans held by fear of schism§303

303So there is no doubt: the Reformed once recognized fraternity with these Lutherans — in Germany at Cassel among Marburgers and Rintelners, and in Poland at Sendomir among Augsburg, Bohemian, and Helvetic confessionists.

They still openly profess that Christian fraternity with such Lutherans.

These Lutherans have joined heart and mind to the Reformed in brotherly love, even if more secretly — held back from an external profession by fear of schism with the rest of their own.

Annotatio VI §.I close: No fundamental error either side — stop before §.II (Posterior Class / Formula of Concord)§304

304They have long held that the Reformed differ from them by no fundamental error at all.

The Reformed, for their part, have long acknowledged and celebrated these Lutherans as free of every fundamental error.

Stop before §. II (Posterior Class — Brenz, Andreae, Hunnius, Flacius / Formula of Concord).

Annotatio VI §.II open: Posterior Class authors — Brenz, Andreae, Hunnius; Flacius mode; Formula of Concord swearers§305

305§. II. The posterior class has, on the most contentious issues, Brenz on the ubiquity or omnipresence of Christ’s body, al manducation of that body added on top, and Hunnius on predestination from foreseen faith.

For the harsher style of fight it has Flacius Illyricus’s disciples — a most restless ingenuity.

In a word: those who (if not all, then most) bind themselves to the Formula of Concord’s words — even the damnatory ones — as tightly as to Holy Scripture itself.

Annotatio VI §.II Number: Ternary principals — Supper, Person of Christ, Predestination; innumerable lesser§306

306As to principal controversies the number is a ternary: first the Sacred Supper; then, sprung from it, the Person of Christ; and third, Predestination.

The lesser ones are countless, and they grow daily by intemperate zeal — sometimes by bare authorial whim.

Annotatio VI §.II: Triple difference — nude confictae, adiaphora, and real heads (German Einigkeit tract)§307

307Our author therefore sorts this class into a threefold difference.

Some items are bare fabrications — questions of fact, not of right — that never entered any Reformer’s mind (Is God the author of sin? Is He omnipotent in bodily supper-presence? Is He merciful in the doctrine of grace?).

Others are lesser adiaphorous rites, where Lutherans would easily find the Reformed compliant.

Others again are more real and touch the three principal heads (see our German Short Sketch of Unity, §.XIII ff.).

Annotatio VI §.II Mode: Acerbic treatment — odious; prostitutes sacred order and the Protestant cause§308

308The mode of treatment is usually more acerbic.

Pious Christians and the more sober theologians alike hate it.

It foully prostitutes sacred things, the sacred order, and the Protestant cause — and nearly brands them with the worst infamy — sunk even below the quarrels, calumnies, and shameless abuse of the crowd and of old women.

Annotatio VI §.II: Damnationes of non-fundamental opinions in the Epitome — against Lutheric brethren and Reformeds§309

309It is also promiscuously joined to damnations of opposing opinions — however harmless, whether true or false, and certainly not fundamental.

In the Epitome of articles on controversies among Augsburg Confession theologians, such damnations abound — against some opinions of Luther’s own-named brethren, and against more on the Reformed side — for example these:

Annotatio VI §.II close: Epitome samples (faith/works, Supper, humanity’s capacity) — stop before §.III§310

310That faith does not justify without good works (i.e. Solitary faith does not justify); that good works are necessary to salvation; that faith in Christ is not lost and the Spirit still dwells even when someone sins knowingly in act only.

That Christ’s body is not taken corporeally with the bread but only bread and wine by mouth, the body spiritually by faith; that the faithful must look to heaven rather than seek the body in the supper elements; that unbelieving communicants receive only bread and wine.

That Christ according to the humanity is incapable of divine omnipotence and the other infinite properties; that the greatest power given to His humanity still has no communication with God’s omnipotence (Epitome antitheses to Arts. 3–4, 7–8).

Stop before §. III (if Lutherans dropped this acerbic mode / swapped damnations for bare rejections, the door to fraternity would stand open).

Annotatio VI §.III open: If Lutherans dropped acerbic mode or swapped damnations for bare rejections§311

311§. III. If today’s named Lutherans would drop this harsher way of handling controversies — or at least trade their damnations (not unlike Tridentine anathematisms) for bare rejections of opinions they judge false —

then even if those opinions may perish on their own view, the authors and favorers of them (erring, if at all, in good faith) are above all to be saved, and spiritual fraternity is to be kept with them.

Annotatio VI §.III: Reformed desire and open door to one Church — fraternity with all keeping the Foundation§312

312The Reformed would then desire it, and the door into one church with them would be judged wide open.

The condition is simple: they stand most ready to give the right hand of spiritual fraternity to everyone who keeps the Foundation of the Christian faith — practical and theoretical alike.

Annotatio VI §.III: Bergen Fathers already — Rejicimus (non damnamus) four election errors (Art. XI Negativa)§313

313The Bergen Fathers already did something like this in the Negative of Article XI.

They write: We therefore reject (but do not damn) all the errors we shall now list — that God does not will all to repent and believe; that His call is not serious for all; that some are doomed by bare counsel apart from their sins; that election’s cause lies partly in us, not only in God’s mercy and Christ’s merit (

Annotatio VI §.III: Easy to do likewise on other Antitheses — none damned in Scripture; opposites asserted§314

314Today’s doctors would be led most easily to do the same on the other antitheses named above.

They need only recall that none of those antitheses — nor many like them — is read damned in Holy Scripture, either expressly or by ready consequence.

Rather, the antitheses of those antitheses are asserted in God’s word, if not in the same words, then by legitimate consequence.

Annotatio VI §.III: Scripture for the Antitheses’ antitheses — James, Paul, Psalms, John 6, Rom. 1/9, 1 Pet.§315

315For example: solitary faith does not justify (James 2 entire); good works are necessary to salvation (1 Cor. 7:19; Gal. 5:6; Heb. 12:14).

Faith in Christ and the Spirit are not wholly lost by every partly voluntary act of sin (Ps. 51:13; 2 Sam. 7:14).

Christ’s body is taken spiritually by the mouth of faith, not corporeally with the bread by the body’s mouth — sought from heaven, received by the faithful only (John 6:35, 47–59, 63).

Omnipotence does not belong to Christ according to the humanity (John 10; Rom. 1:3–4; 9:5; 1 Pet. 3:18; 4:1).

Annotatio VI §.III close: Faxit Deus — end mutual hatreds; return to full καταλλαγή — TANTUM before Coena Hexas§316

316May Almighty God grant that, as I now end these Annotations on the Author’s Historical and Catallactic Protheoria of controversies with the Lutherans, so an end may at last be put to Evangelicals’ mutual hatreds.

Then every handle for a history of these fights may be cut off, and they may return to a full and perfect καταλλαγή — glued more and more to their common Head, Christ.

TANTUM. Stop before HEXAS Annotationum on the Prior Protestant Controversies De Coena Domini (Annotatio I).

HEXAS De Coena Domini Annotatio I open §.I: Why Priores — unde Schismatis initium§317

317Here begins the Hexad of Annotations on the earlier Protestant fights over the Lord’s Supper — the place where the schism took its start.

ANNOTATION I asks whether the Institution words of the Sacred Supper are to be taken properly or figuratively.

§. I. Our author himself shows why he calls those Supper controversies Priores when he adds the clause: whence the beginning of the Schism.

Annotatio I §.I: Not priority of Dignity or Order (Sennert) — but of Time and Acerbitas§318

318They are not “prior” by dignity — as if they alone were some fundamental article of the faith, or the chief matter Protestants hammer out among themselves.

Nor by order — as if a methodical theological system would have to put them first.

Even some Lutherans deprecate those kinds of priority (Sennert, Exercises on fundamental articles §§. 64–65, fasc. Pp. 430–431).

Annotatio I §.I Time: First mutual dissent after egress from papal Babylon was on Supper questions§319

319They are prior partly by time.

Once out of papal Babylon, Protestants first began to dissent from one another on some questions about the Lord’s Supper.

Annotatio I §.I Acerbitas: That dissent erupted into the foul beginning of the Protestant schism§320

320They are prior partly by acerbitas.

That dissent at last erupted into the nerve and gave a foul beginning to the Protestant schism.

Annotatio I §.I Calixtus: Eucharist deformed by papal abuses — reformers right, but weak foresight at the start§321

321Calixtus notes the occasion of that first priority without tastelessness: among the Pontificians the Eucharist had been deformed by foul abuses and superstitions — scarcely any other head of religion had suffered equal calamity.

They adored the blessed bread as the very Body, set it out for adoration, and offered a propitiatory sacrifice; solitary Masses without communicants were frequent.

The first Reformation leaders rightly meant to abolish those errors — yet human ingenuity is weak, and not all foresaw at the start how it would be done rightly (Judic. §.47, Dutch ed. pp. 69–70).

Annotatio I §.I close: Chytraeus — Luther at Marburg 1529 refused Zwinglians as brothers; Landgrave still sought peace — stop before §.II§322

322Even the Lutheran David Chytraeus records the cause and author of the second priority.

In his full account of the 1529 Marburg colloquy he adds: after Luther refused to acknowledge Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Bucer and their associates as brothers — because they taught differently on the true and essential presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Supper —

the Landgrave and other peace-seekers still did not stop laboring that the Supper dissent might be piously softened and Christian peace and fraternity set between both sides (p. Mihi 647).

Stop before §. II (first controversy: interpretation of the Institution words Hoc est corpus meum — literal/κατὰ the literal meaning vs proper/improper).

Annotatio I §.II open: First prior Supper controversy — Institution words Hoc est corpus meum needlessly split in two§323

323§. II. Of the earlier Protestant Supper controversies, the first is how to read the definitive Institution words: This is my body.

One party has needlessly torn that question in two: whether literally / κατὰ the literal meaning, and whether the propositions This is my body / This is my Blood are taken properly or improperly.

Annotatio I §.II: Taking κατὰ τὸ ῥητόν three ways — retain words; follow native sense; want the sense proper§324

324That one fight should not be counted as two is plain once you see that taking a proposition κατὰ the literal meaning can mean three things.

First: keep the words — formally, or by formal equipollents that do not even differ in concept.

Second: follow the words’ genuine native sense.

Third: want that sense to be proper.

Annotatio I §.II: No Protestant fight on the first two; only the third remains — is the literal sense proper or improper?§325

325On the first two meanings Protestants have no lawsuit: both sides hold the formal (and equipollent) words, and one genuine sense that fits Christ’s mind.

Only the third stays doubtful and contested.

So the disputed “literal” sense of the words in the proposition reduces to this: is that literal sense proper, or improper?

Annotatio I §.II: Literal sense wider than proper/improper — Scherzer on literal/logical sense and figures§326

326A biblical proposition’s literal sense is wider than proper vs improper, and stretches equally to both with equal clarity.

An improper predication does not make the sense less literal, less true, or less matched to the speaker’s intent — the letter is open to impropriety no less than to propriety.

Scherzer puts it best: the literal or logical sense is what the Spirit first and proximately intends, whether in proper words or figurative speech; otherwise many biblical sayings would have no literal sense at all (Syst. Theol. I.§.24).

Annotatio I §.II Schmidius: τὸ ῥητόν includes tropic acceptance — Matt. 16:16 and John 6:51 both literal; no Calvinist quarrel so far§327

327Sebastian Schmidius agrees for the Supper proposition itself: the literal sense / the literal meaning is what the words immediately yield when all circumstances are weighed.

He gladly allows that the literal meaning covers not only words taken properly but also words taken tropically.

So Peter’s You are the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16) and Christ’s I am the living bread (John 6:51) are both literal — though only the second is a trope — and thus far there is no quarrel with the Calvinists (pp. 18–19).

Annotatio I §.II close: Real dispute — propositions proper (Lutherans) or improper (Reformed/Gomarus) — stop before §.III§328

328After needless talk of word-propriety outside the proposition — which the Reformed never refuse — Schmidius himself grants that the whole Protestant fight over a retained or less-retained “literal” sense of the Supper words comes back to one question: as they complete Christ’s proposition, are This is my body taken properly or improperly?

For Lutherans the statement of This is my Body / This is my blood (as one whole sition, not the several words stripped of their own proper sense)r sense)r sense) is when every word stays in its proper signification and no trope is admitted.

The Reformed deny only that those propositions, taken in their genuine literal sense, are proper (Gomarus, Tom. 3, Disp. 35, th. 10); Lutherans contend they are — otherwise the two sides would not differ here at all.

Stop before §. III (Reformed proofs that the definitive Supper propositions are improper — generic/specific arguments).

Annotatio I §.III open: Reformed prove Hoc est corpus meum improper — GENERICA and SPECIFICA genera§329

329§. III. The Reformed argue that the definitive Supper propositions — above all This is my body — are not proper but improper.

They reduce the proofs to two genera: the GENERIC and the SPECIFIC nature of the proposition taken materially.

Annotatio I §.III GENERICA remote: Disparatum de disparato — Carlstadt Identica out; Gomarus / Bellarmine§330

330As remoter genus, the GENERIC nature shows a disparate predicated of a disparate — whether τὸ hoc is bread alone, or bread with Christ’s body besides — once Carlstadt’s Identica This Body is my body is exploded as a novel fiction both Protestant sides hate.

Body predicated of bread is disparate of disparate; disparates force improper predication and shut out the proper — otherwise no improper speech would remain, and no metonymy or metaphor could exist except among disparates.

Gomarus builds this sharply (Tom. 3, Disp. 35, th. 14–20), ending with Bellarmine: common sense suffices — if disparates may be affirmed properly of disparates, one may as well affirm nothing of something, darkness of light, Belial of Christ (p. 139).

Annotatio I §.III: Personal predications no help — Vorstius concrete-of-concrete vs sacramental abstract-of-abstract§331

331Objecting “personal” predications does not help here.

Vorstius notes that in those, a concrete is predicated of a concrete — not an abstract nature of an abstract nature

In our sacramental saying, by contrast, abstract is predicated of abstract: body of bread, hence disparate of disparate.

Annotatio I §.III vs Musaeus: Eucharistic bread still abstract; body of composite; synecdoche / improper§332

332Musaeus (§.99 vs Vorstius) claims the sacramental line somehow predicates concrete of concrete — this Eucharistic bread / Eucharist of two things is Christ’s body — citing Bajer on Impanation.

But blessing does not turn bread’s abstract nature into a concrete; and he conflates Eucharistic bread with the Eucharist itself.

Even then an abstract body is still predicated of a composite of body and bread — unlike personal propositions — so abstract of concrete remains disparate of disparate, a synecdoche, and thus improper.

Annotatio I §.III GENERICA nearer: Signatum de signo — metonymy/synecdoche when sign ≠ thing; sacramental induction§333

333(II) As nearer genus, the GENERIC view shows the sacramental proposition predicating the thing signified of the sign.

That can be proper only when sign and thing are materially the same; when they differ, the predication is metonymic or synechdochic — sign for thing, container for content, or part for whole — and so improper.

Induction from Old and New Testament sacramentals in the Supper’s own Institution confirms that a horistic sacramental proposition is improper by nature.

Annotatio I §.III close: Circumcision and Passover institutions predicate improperly — stop before Baptism/Cup§334

334(a) In circumcision’s Institution (Gen. 17:10–11) God’s covenant is predicated of circumcision only improperly — circumcision is the sign of the covenant, God Himself explaining in the next verse.

(b) In the Passover Institution (Exod. 12:11, 21, 27) passover / passage is predicated only improperly of the lamb and of its slaughter and eating — the same species of trope by which Christ is our passover (1 Cor. 5:7) and the desert rock was Christ by signification, not substance (Augustine, Quaest. Lev. 57).

Stop before §.III continuation (Baptism and Cup Institution inductions; SPECIFICA genus).

Annotatio I §.III cont: Passover instance applied to Hoc est corpus meum — same tropic hearing for the disciples§335

335Tighten the consequence by applying that Passover instance to This is my Body.

Christ was instituting the Supper right after Passover for disciples still raw in the divine mysteries.

He cannot have meant This bread is my body to be heard differently from This lamb is the passover / passage — especially with broken for you and This cup is the N.T. In my blood poured out for you — or else He would have spoken obscurely and opened John-14-style puzzles.

Annotatio I §.III (y): Baptismal definitives — signata of the sign; metonymy or synecdoche§336

336(y) In some baptismal definitives — Baptism is putting on Christ (Gal. 3:27); it is the appeal of a good conscience toward God (1 Pet. 3) — the Spirit predicates only Baptism’s signified things of the sign.

Whether the sign is bare external baptism or the whole exhibitive rite, the predication is metonymic or synechdochic; that cannot be denied.

Annotatio I §.III (d): Cup is the New Testament in Christ’s blood — many tropes; Valencia / Cajetan§337

337(d) In the other half of the Supper Institution — Luke 22:20 and 1 Cor. 11:25 — The Cup is the N.T. In Christ’s blood.

No one easily denies that one line breathes several tropes — not even Cajetan.

Gregory of Valencia grants the necessity: the cup must be taken for the contained blood, and testament/promise is predicated of that blood only figuratively (as Matthew and Mark’s blood of the New Testament shows).

Annotatio I §.III: Scultetus grants tropum in the Cup words but denies consequence for the rest — Strimesius replies§338

338Scultetus, in his recent Discussion of Reformed Universalism, grants a trope in those second-part Institution words, yet denies the consequence for the rest of the Eucharist Institution.

Proper sense, he says, is kept everywhere unless a grave cause blocks it — and in This is my body, he claims, there is none.

Strimesius notes he already agrees the Cup proposition is built of more than one trope, and all the more once Heb. 9:17, 20 shows it emulates Moses’ This is the blood of the N.T.

Annotatio I §.III close: Not all Institution words tropic from the Cup; yet sacramentals do not abhor impropriety — Disparatum as grave cause§339

339So Strimesius consents on two points: admitting Cup impropriety does not make every other Institution word tropical; and proper sense stays unless a grave cause blocks it.

(1) He does not infer from This cup is the New Testament that all Supper Institution words are improper — only that definitive sacramentals so little abhor impropriety that from all the rest (This is my body set aside for now) one may most probably infer these too are improper.

(2) That impropriety must be written onto This is my body as well, because the gravest cause blocks propriety: otherwise a Disparate would have to be predicated properly of a Disparate against nature and sound reason.

Annotatio I §.IV open SPECIFICA: Testimonies acknowledging impropriety — Fathers explicit; stop before Picherellus catalog§340

340§. IV. Arguments for the specific nature of the proposition under debate are drawn chiefly from those who acknowledge its impropriety in species — expressly, or implicitly by their interpretations.

EXPLICITLY figurative: the more ancient Church Fathers (collected by Oecolampadius and Melanchthon), the Reformed Jonstonus, and the Pontifician Picherellus (Opusc. Theol. P. 28).

Stop before the Picherellus / Tertullian catalog and further SPECIFICA testimonies.

Annotatio I §.IV cont: Picherellus — Tertullian’s quasi vere; Origen, Augustine, Cyril on figurative eating§341

341Picherellus is worth quoting: few own his Opuscula, and a Pontifician witness carries extra weight when his own side presses Christ’s words as proper.

On John 6’s Unless you eat the flesh… he reads Tertullian as taking the eating not truly — i.e. improperly — because the hearers treated the sermon as hard as if He had truly set His flesh to be eaten (quasi vere → non vere).

Origen, Augustine, and Cyril likewise mark figurative speech for that hard saying.

Annotatio I §.IV (2): Reformed doctors — Est as significat (Zwingli) or Est signum (Oecolampadius)§342

342(2.) The Reformed doctors as one interpret the Est in This is my body either with Zwingli as significat, or with Oecolampadius as Est the sign or figure of my body.

Annotatio I §.IV: Do not confuse proposition-propriety with real supernatural presence and manducation§343

343Do not mix the propriety of Christ’s Eucharistic proposition with the question of real substantial presence and manducation in the Supper.

Deny propriety of the words, and you still have not denied real presence or eating — the first fight is logical (words/terms); the second metaphysical (the thing).

This bread is my body can be improper while Christ’s body is truly present and eaten supernaturally and spiritually (John 6; 1 Cor. 10) — just as asserting propriety alone does not prove that presence.

Annotatio I §.IV (3): Many Lutherans concede tropic speech — Marbachius vs Pezelius§344

344(3.) Not a few Lutherans concede tropic speech in genus, or metonymy / synecdoche in species.

Marbachius against Pezelius allows that This is my body does not shut out every figure — only the kind that forces us off each word’s proper signification.

On that the Reformed easily rest, pressing tropic locution while caring less whether the trope sits in the words or in the predication.

Annotatio I §.IV: Synecdoche Grammar vs Rhetoric; Mansfeld’s Calvinian vs Lutheran metonymy§345

345On synecdoche, Selneccer, Luther, and countless others distinguish Grammatical from Rhetorical synecdoche — a distinction that offends proper grammar for anyone not still new to the subject.

Call it Grammatical or not: synecdoche remains a trope, like metonymy, metaphor, or irony.

Mansfeld grants metonymy in both halves of the Institution, yet under a rather ridiculous split between Calvinian sign/thing-signified metonymy and Lutheran effect-for-cause / container-for-content metonymy.

Annotatio I §.IV close IMPLICITE Pontificii: Double trope under the species — stop before Lutheran IMPLICITE§346

346IMPLICITE, whoever interprets the proposition otherwise than the Reformed also make it tropical — Pontificians and Lutherans alike — even while both fight explicitly for word-propriety as for hearth and altar.

The Pontificians’ That which is contained under the species of bread and wine is my body embeds a double trope: synecdoche (this → accidents) and metonymy of container for contained.

Swap This is my body for under these accidents is my body and you deny proper hearing in the act — subject and attribute seats flip, and This is falsely traded for under these species (Gomarus, p. 142).

Stop before Lutheran IMPLICITE readings (Luther’s in/cum/sub; Flacius’s duplex mass).

Annotatio I §.IV IMPLICITE Lutheran: Luther’s duplex — in/cum/sub hoc pane (Schwärmer sermon)§347

347The better-known Lutheran reading of This is my body is twofold.

Luther’s: This / this bread is my body means in, with, and under this bread is my body (Wittenberg Tom. II vs the Fanatics, p. 98).

Let the Schwärmer go — his nickname for those not ὁμοψῆφος with him on the sacrament — and stay with the words as they sound: IN THE BREAD Christ’s body, IN THE WINE His blood truly.

Annotatio I §.IV IMPLICITE Lutheran: Flacius’s complexum / duplex mass — both readings tropical§348

348Flacius Illyricus’s other reading: This complex / this mass of two things is my body.

Both readings are openly tropical — Luther’s as metonymy of container for contained; Flacius’s as synecdoche of part for whole.

Annotatio I §.IV: Schmidius’s exception — Hoc as complexum plus demonstrative§349

349Sebastian Schmidius tries to save Flacius’s more famous reading (or its propriety): τὸ Hoc names a complex and is demonstrative at once, so the proposition cannot turn tropical.

Strimesius will not let that exception stand.

Annotatio I §.IV: Replies (1)–(2) — complexum unproven; Luther vs King of England on hoc = bread§350

350Reply (1): the Complex is not yet proved.

Reply (2): Luther himself rejects it — hoc means nothing but bread.

Against the King of England he threads the Institution verbs (took, blessed, broke) onto the bread: This is my body = this bread is my body; the pronoun shows the subject, not the predicate — the King hid those clear words and pressed the naked proposition onto the body.

Annotatio I §.IV: Captivitate Babylonica + Paul — panis is participation; not in pane est§351

351In On the Babylonian Captivity Luther believes not only that Christ’s body is in the bread, but that the bread is Christ’s body — the Words keep him: This = this bread He took and broke.

Paul likewise: the bread we break is participation of Christ’s body — he does not say (NB.) it is in the bread, but the bread itself is that participation; common speech proves the demonstrative subject is bread when He says this is my body.

Annotatio I §.IV close IMPLICITE Lutheran: Replies (3)–(5) — part/whole, demonstration, Carlstadt; stop before §.V§352

352(3.) Grant the Complex only for argument: then a part is predicated of the whole, and the proposition is figurative.

(4.) A demonstrative does not cancel the complex — therefore not the trope either.

(5.) Sense can only point to what senses reach: the sitting body (Carlstadt), the bread in Christ’s hands (Reformed sign-for-signified metonymy), or an invisible second body — which cannot be shown to sense, doubles Christ’s bodies, and drags back both the unproved Complex Luther rejected and a propriety hardly to be conceded.

Stop before §.V (Bucer / Lutheran tropus-limits).

Annotatio I §.V open: Lutherans exclude only the tropus that exterminates substance — Bucer & Chytraeus§353

353Weighed more deeply: the Lutherans themselves want only one tropus shut out of This is my body — the kind that drives Christ’s true substance out of the Eucharist.

Bucer (Opera Anglicana p. 704 §26) and Chytraeus (p. 660 mid) attest that limit at length.

Annotatio I §.V: Bucer — Luther rejected our reading as if it removed presence; nostri deny absence-sign§354

354Bucer: Luther rejected our interpretation, so far as his writings show, because he thought it removed Christ’s presence from the Supper.

Our doctors deny that bread is a sign meaning the body is absent or not taken — and they have said so in many books.

Annotatio I §.V: Augustine’s signum corporis; contention de verbis not de re — Epist. Buceri ad Pontanum§355

355Calling bread a figure and sign of Christ’s body does not prove the body is absent — else Augustine too would be read as teaching bare bread, though he wrote against Adamantus: Christ did not hesitate to say this is my body when giving the sign of His body.

Our doctors never meant to deny presence; they only press that bread is not substantially the body, to lead people from visible bread to invisible Christ — so the fight is about words, not the thing (Bucer to Pontanus).

Annotatio I §.V: Calixtus Senior — Reformed metonymy as admissible ecclesiastical phrase§356

356Calixtus Senior points the same way (Judgment on the Controversies §81, p. 136): the Reformers’ metonymic proposition is an ecclesiastical phrase that could be admitted.

Annotatio I §.V: Hoc pacto the controversy vanishes — tropus that keeps presence vs tropus that ejects it§357

357On that pact the whole controversy ceases and vanishes.

The Reformed defend a tropus that will not let Christ’s body be absent from the Supper — still less make it so; the Lutherans fight a tropus that is less shy about moving the body out and stripping presence from the meal.

Annotatio I §.V close: Morton’s figurative proofs vs Pontificii — stop before Annotatio II§358

358For the rest, see Morton (sometime Bishop of Durham), On the Eucharist II Class 1 chs. 2–4, for figurative Institution proofs against the Pontificians.

Stop before Annotatio II (Consubstantiation history).

Annotatio II open §.I: De Consubstantiatione — from verbal fight to real-presence debate§359

359Annotatio II opens On Consubstantiation — a short history

§.I: the Eucharistic war has moved from the verbal fight over whether This is my body is proper or improper to a real debate on Christ’s bodily presence in the Supper — or rather its mode.

Annotatio II §.I: Three opinions — corporal with bread / transubstitution / spiritual to the faithful§360

360Three camps: some join a corporal presence to the bread; others put Christ’s body in place of annihilated bread-substance; others deny the corporal and credit a spiritual presence to the spirits of the faithful.

All three hunt antiquity to prove their side.

Annotatio II §.I: Triple denomination and history — Consubstantiation, Transubstantiation, Spiritual Presence§361

361From that triple opinion came a triple name and a triple history: Consubstantiation, Transubstantiation, and Spiritual Presence.

Strimesius will run them in a short compendium.

Annotatio II §.I close: Order of treatment — consub first, spiritual last, transub middle (Spanhemius); stop before §.II§362

362Order: start with Consubstantiation — the part chiefly opposed to us in this Elenchus; end with ours (Spiritual Presence) as its antithesis.

Insert Transubstantiation in the middle only for kinship with the first, as Spanhemius notes.

Stop before §.II (Consubstantiation coarser and subtler forms).

Annotatio II §.II open: Consubstantiatio — crassior vs subtilior; crass local inclusion / physical mixture§363

363§.II: Consubstantiation, by etymology, is the joining of two substances kept apart in themselves — considered in act or in state.

It comes in a crasser and a subtler form. The crasser means either local enclosure of Christ’s natural body in the bread, or an interior union like a physical mixture of altered elements.

Annotatio II §.II: Adversaries pin crassior on Luther — Carlstadt’s Gott im Brod§364

364Adversaries say Luther taught that a more physical mode after he rejected Transubstantiation.

Carlstadt pins local enclosure on him: You will not long persuade me that God is in the bread — and How can one bring Christ into bread and wine?

Annotatio II §.II: Becanus’s personal/perichoretic union; In/Cum/Sub + Verborgen → Impanation suspicion§365

365Becanus (Manual Controv. II.2.2 p. 330) charges Luther with a personal, intimate, perichoretic union of body with bread.

Luther’s own speech feeds the suspicion: In, With, and Under this bread is my body, plus his hymn line hidden in the bread so small / He gave us His body to eat — ample handle for Impanation and Companation labels.

Annotatio II §.II: Babylonian Captivity Deus est homo parallel; Musculus absolves personal union§366

366In On the Babylonian Captivity he compares bread–body union with the hypostatic union (Deus est homo), which looks personal.

Yet his Greater Confession on the Supper denies a personal mode, and the Captivity comparison is only a simple comparison of unlike thingsMusculus (among ours) absolves him from personal union of body and blood.

Annotatio II §.II: Lutherans — coexistence only; In/Cum/Sub together; Verborgen = imperceptibility; crassior not owed§367

367Lutherans say the coarser-sounding formulas only mark inexplicable coexistence — hence In/Cum/Sub used together, never apart (though Annotatio I §§.3–4 showed the contrary).

Verborgen in the hymn means only that the mode of presence is imperceptible — hidden, incomprehensible, secret.

However forced the excuses, Strimesius will not rightly pin that crasser Consubstantiation on Luther or today’s Lutherans.

Annotatio II §.II close: Subtilior coexistence; Kronmayer/Suicer; Becanus — any consub kills proper predication; stop before §.III§368

368Subtler Consubstantiation: bread and Christ’s body coexist in the Supper with an exterior, παραστατική union — substantial/corporal/local materially as to the things united, not formally as to union-mode; each keeps its own place.

Lutherans own the definition and the name Consubstantiation / συνουσία (Kronmayer; Bayer) — yet Suicer would call them ἐνουσιάσται, not συνουσιάσται.

Becanus’s sharper point: grant any Consubstantiation, even the Lutheran subtler kind, and proper predication of Christ’s words has nowhere left to stand.

Stop before §.III (history: conception / nativity / duration).

Annotatio II §.III open: Consubstantiation history — CONCEPTIO, NATIVITAS, PERDURATIO§369

369§.III: both kinds of Consubstantiation get a short history in three moments.

CONCEPTION, then NATIVITY, then DURATION.

Annotatio II §.III CONCEPTIO: Triple error of consubstantiation-pressers — PRIMUS starts in early Fathers§370

370The concept is caught in a triple error committed by those who ultimately advocated Consubstantiation.

FIRST error: early Fathers badly read — as if the Eucharist were two substances (earthly + celestial), or one earthly substance plus some celestial accident of external holiness or intrinsic divine virtue.

Annotatio II §.III (1): Irenaeus — Eucharist of earthly and celestial; restricted to use§371

371(1) Irenaeus (A.D. 160) is the stock witness for two things, earthly and celestial, in the Eucharist after invocation.

But bk. 5 restricts the saying to use: celestial souls feed on celestial substance; earthly bodies on earthly — the creature-cup and creature-bread confirmed as His blood and body when they receive God’s word.

Annotatio II §.III (2): Justin & Gregory Nyssen — earthly substance with external holiness§372

372(2) Justin (near Irenaeus’s senior) describes deacons giving bread and wine called Eucharist — not taken as common bread or cup.

Gregory of Nyssa: bread starts common, then consecrated is called Christ’s body — both mean bare external holiness (set apart by word and prayer; like oil, baptismal water, temple stones), not a second metaphysical substance.

Annotatio II §.III (3): Clement/Theodoret, Victor, Mark liturgy, Cyprian — Spirit’s virtue; spiritual presence only§373

373(3) Clement (via Theodoret’s Stromata epitome): bread and oil change by the power of the names into spiritual power — not same in appearance.

Victor of Antioch, the Liturgy of St. Mark, and Cyprian speak of the Spirit sending life-virtue into the species — yet all introduce only a spiritual presence of Christ’s body, by the Spirit’s authorship and effect.

Annotatio II §.III close CONCEPTIO error 1: Fathers twisted toward corporal union ante usum; stop before §.IV§374

374Those Father-sayings meant legitimate use: the worthy receive earthly and celestial; 1 Tim. 4 sanctification; Spirit’s virtue toward communicants, not a changed bread-substance.

Rhetorical, not metaphysical — yet consubstantiation-pressers twist them as if the Fathers taught corporal bread–body union before and outside faithful use, ex opere operato to any eater.

Stop before §.IV (SECOND error — middle-ages Fathers after Chalcedon).

Annotatio II §.IV open: CONCEPTIO error 2 — middle-ages Fathers vs Eutyches absorption§375

375§.IV: after the first error comes a SECOND — middle-ages Fathers after Chalcedon, read askew.

Fighting Eutyches they said Christ’s exalted human nature is not absorbed by the divine more than bread is absorbed by Christ’s body in legitimate Eucharistic use.

Annotatio II §.IV: Chrysostom & Theodoret — bread remains after sanctification (Burnet / Picherellus)§376

376Burnet (39 Articles p. 330) and Picherellus (Opusc. Theol. P. 176) stack the same loci.

Chrysostom to Caesarius: after sanctification the bread is worthy of the Lord’s-body name, yet the bread-signature remains.

Theodoret’s Dialogue II: the mystical signs keep prior substance, figure, and form — still bread to sight and touch, understood as believed.

Annotatio II §.IV: Gelasius & Prosper — divine thing, yet bread/wine nature; sacrament and res§377

377Gelasius against Eutyches: what we take is a divine thing, yet does not cease to be the substance and nature of bread and wine.

Prosper: Eucharist = visible element-species + invisible Lord’s flesh and blood (sacrament and res), as Christ’s person is God and man.

Annotatio II §.IV: Primary anti-absorption intent twisted into ante-usum hypostatic-style union§378

378Those texts first meant to block belief that after spiritual bread–body union the bread is abolished or absorbed.

Consubstantiation-seekers bend them instead: after consecration, even before use, they imagine union like the divine person joining Christ’s human nature in Mary’s womb into one hypostatic union.

Annotatio II §.IV close: CONCEPTIO error 3 — Bertram/Ratramnus & Berengar; embryo into public light; stop before §.V§379

379THIRD error (9th–11th c.): crudely heard Bertram/Ratramnus on the figure of Christ’s body (to Charles the Bald), plus Berengar’s figure-sayings taken too raw.

Opponents denied figure so hard they urged corporal union — and so forced the long-fostered Consubstantiation embryo, crass or subtle, into public light.

Stop before §.V.

Annotatio II §.V open: Burmann & Bayer name Paschasius Radbertus first Consubstantiation author§380

380§.V: Reformed Burmann (Synopsis Theol. II p. 401) and Lutheran Bayer (Theol. Histor. P. 593) both cast Paschasius Radbertus, Abbot of Corbie — Bertram’s coeval adversary — as Consubstantiation’s first author and father.

They point to his book under the same title as Bertram’s.

Annotatio II §.V: Bellarmine — conversion/transubstantiation propagator; Cave seconds; Rhadebert’s own sayings§381

381Bellarmine is nearer the mark: Paschasius propagates Conversion, the seed of Transubstantiation (Eucharist Controversies; Ecclesiastical Writers).

Cave adds his vote; Paschasius’s own On the body and blood of the Lord ch. 20 props that reading.

Annotatio II §.V: Bertram knows only two opinions — spiritual vs corporal-by-conversion; no silent third§382

382Bertram nearly settles it: in his day he knows only two opinions — spiritual presence (his own, with the Fathers of every age) versus corporal presence by conversion of the bread (Paschasius), which he attacks.

Had there been a novel third (consubstantiation), he would not have passed it in silence — least of all in his adversary.

Annotatio II §.V: Bayer concession — first oral reception of the proper body, yet for the faithful only§383

383Concede to Bayer this much: Paschasius is first to teach oral reception of Christ’s proper body in the Supper without tooth-laceration.

Even then he restricts oral reception to the faithful alone — that food only for Christ’s friends and brothers.

Annotatio II §.V close: Burmann concession — spiritual manducation too; stop before Berengar-confuter inventors§384

384Concede to Burmann likewise: Radbertus also teaches spiritual eating of the flesh and spiritual drinking of the blood in the Supper sacrament.

Stop before Berengar’s confuters as inventors of crassior/subtilior (Rupert of Deutz &c.).

Annotatio II NATIVITAS open: Inventors among Berengar’s confuters — PRIORIS Rupert of Deutz§385

385Among Berengar’s confuters you easily find inventors of both more crude and more refined forms of Consubstantiation.

Of the crasser: Rupert, Abbot of Deutz — Gerhard owns him; Forbes and Bayer list him only as insult — because Rupert’s own exposition brands him a crass Impanator.

Annotatio II NATIVITAS: Rupert’s Genesis gold/fire analogy — bread still bread, yet truly Christ§386

386Genesis commentary (VI.32): how is visible bread Christ? Like gold in strong fire — still gold to sight, yet truly called and is fire.

So bread brought into Christ’s passion-mystery still seems bread, yet in truth is Christ — a similitude Augsburg brothers later use of iron.

Annotatio II NATIVITAS: Rupert’s Exodus — bread/wine substance joined, not destroyed, into body-unity§387

387Exodus commentary (II.10): as God did not destroy human nature when joining it into personal unity from the virgin’s womb, so He does not destroy bread-and-wine substance when joining it to the Word into unity of the crucified body and shed blood.

What we take from the altar we truly call Christ, the Lamb of God — as we confess the virgin-born man on the cross to be God.

Annotatio II NATIVITAS: Cuno of Siegburg — accomplice and patron of Rupert’s sentence§388

388Rupert names Cuno, Abbot of Siegburg, accomplice and patron of his sentence.

In the Genesis/Exodus preface Christ stood by him through Cuno alone against those who roared at the work — Cuno a peg in a faithful place for the vessel of his hope.

Annotatio II NATIVITAS: Guitmund — PANI ET VINO COMMISCENTES; Impanent et Invinent heresy§389

389Same eleventh century, the other way: Guitmund of Aversa calls the sentence a heresy to smother in the blade.

Beaten from denying Christ’s body in the Lord’s food, some mix Christ with bread and wine and found another heresy — Impanate and Invinate by their own authority.

No prophet, Christ, apostle, or world taught Impanation; the Lord kills Impanators with This is My Body — not In this lies My body.

Annotatio II NATIVITAS close crassior: Alger vs personal Impanation; stop before §.VI Ascelinus subtilior§390

390Alger joins Guitmund: some erring readers make Christ personally Impanated as God is personally Incarnate — a new absurd heresy to root out by reason and authority.

Stop before §.VI (SUBTILIOR inventor Ascelinus).

Annotatio II §.VI open: SUBTILIOR first author — not Berengar but Ascelinus (Cave vs Bayer/Guitmund)§391

391§.VI: first author of the subtler Consubstantiation is not Berengar — Guitmund guessed that from hearsay, and Bayer followed him blind.

It is Ascelinus, a monk Cave remembers and Bayer (with many) never knew.

Annotatio II §.VI: Ascelinus follows Paschasius on corporal presence, yet defends coexistence not conversion§392

392Ascelinus’s letter to Berengar (Dacherius, from Casale Benedicti membranes) owns Paschasius on corporal presence of Christ’s flesh in the sacrament.

On consecrated bread and the mode of presence he writes far otherwise: not conversion of bread into body, but at least coexistence of the Body with the blessed bread.

Annotatio II §.VI: Letter to Berengar — altar bread/wine UNIATUR to the virgin-born body§393

393His words: do not marvel that God can make altar-consecrated bread and wine, by Spirit and priest, be united to the body our Redeemer took from Mary.

Both are corporeal substance; both visible.

Annotatio II §.VI close: Union similitudes; Asceliniana egg-to-egg with modern Lutheran; stop before §.VII§394

394Similitudes illustrate the union of two substances, not the mode: we are made of both corporeal and incorporeal, and of mortal and immortal; in Christ divine and human meet in one person. one person. One person.

Letter at Dacherius on Lanfranc (Paris 1648); Otrokocsi cites it.

These Asceliniana — union of bread and body without pious/impious distinction — match modern Lutheran sentence as egg to egg.

Stop before §.VII (Nativitas summary / Lateran XIII).

Annotatio II §.VII open: Nativitas of both Consubstantiations reborn — Lateran XIII under Innocent III§395

395§.VII: both Consubstantiations have their Nativity reborn in the 13th century — Lateran Council under Innocent III.

That council already treats Consubstantiation as an exploded, antiquated opinion, and names it thus:

Annotatio II §.VII: Lateran names Consubstantiation as already exploded — true accidents and true substance remain§396

396Some said: after consecration, as true bread-accidents remain, so true bread-substance remains.

For a subject cannot stand without accidents, nor accidents without a subject.

Annotatio II §.VII: Under remaining substances — BODY AND BLOOD; sense proves bread/wine, faith the rest§397

397With bread and wine substances still there, at Body and Blood of Christ those start to be under them.

Under the same accidents, both are truly received — bread and flesh, wine and blood — sense proves one, faith the other.

Annotatio II §.VII close: After Berengar’s public censure; consub born from over-fighting him; stop before §.VIII§398

398By then Berengar’s sentence had already taken public censure in his person.

Consubstantiators had openly fought him — and in over-fighting him had begotten their own Consubstantiation.

More on that in the Annotations that follow.

Stop before §.VIII (PERDURATIO / revival after apparent extinction).

Annotatio II §.VIII open PERDURATIO: Seemed extinct — Waldenses not consub; revived by John of Paris§399

399§.VIII PERDURATIO: Consubstantiation looked extinct — short-lived, few teachers; Waldenses (some claim) keep a subtler line, but they actually teach something else (see Annotatio IV).

Yet it rose again near the end of the 13th century through John of Paris, Dominican.

Annotatio II §.VIII: Scotus and Durandus (1320) tolerate revival; Aquinas not to be dragged in§400

400Some Scholastics did not reject the revival — Scotus early in the 14th century, and Durandus in 1320 (Otrokocsi, Irenicum VI.27ff.).

Aquinas is not to be dragged into this consent by Dorsche, even if he grants Transubstantiation is not proved from the Institution words alone.

Annotatio II §.VIII: Peter d’Ailly of Cambrai (1414) favors it — Luther admits drawing from him§401

401Peter d’Ailly, Cardinal of Cambrai, at Constance (1414) began to favor it more openly — the same whose hand and counsel saw Huss and Jerome of Prague perish.

Luther himself confesses he drew that line from Cambrai (Babylonian Captivity, Jena Latin II fol. 263).

Annotatio II §.VIII: Luther’s Captivity — true bread and wine; Thomist opinions are not articles of faith§402

402Luther: Cambrai’s Sentences IV gave him leave to think true bread and wine on the altar likelier than bare accidents — unless the Church had ruled otherwise.

Seeing that Church was Thomist/Aristotelian, he fixed his conscience: true bread and wine, with Christ’s true flesh and blood no less than under accidents.

Thomist opinions stay opinions, not articles of faith — even if an angel from heaven said otherwise; without Scripture or proven revelation, opinion is free, belief not owed.

Annotatio II §.VIII close: Bayer wastes oil proving Luther ≠ Cambrai; stop before §.IX Marburg§403

403So Bayer wastes oil and labor trying to prove Luther both differed from Cambrai and shared a wider common opinion (Disput. De Impan. §50).

lties of corporal-in-bread presence).

Annotatio II §.IX open: Cameracensis opinion not charged to today’s Lutherans — they refuse it§404

404§.IX: whatever one makes of Luther versus Cambrai, today’s Lutherans will not wear Cambrai’s opinion as theirs.

That refusal is enough — we do not impute it to them.

Annotatio II §.IX: Marburg determination does not free Luther from corporal-in-bread / subtilior consub§405

405Marburg’s determination (we have not agreed whether the true body and blood are corporally present in the bread and wine) does not free Luther from corporal presence in or with the bread — nor from subtler Consubstantiation.

Those words confess not presence alone but a corporal mode in the bread itself.

Colophon: watch the difficulties that press corporal-in-bread presence for crassior or subtilior (at least Luther’s) Consubstantiation.

Annotatio II §.IX (1): Scripture — bread is called body, not body corporally present in the bread§406

406(1) Scripture and Institution say the bread is Christ’s body — not that the body is present to the bread, less corporally present to it, least of all corporally present in it.

Call presence corporal and you import locality and inclusion; then the bread is not the body, because the body is only said to exist corporally present in the bread.

Annotatio II §.IX (2): First Institution — body at table, not in bread; else two bodies / self-eating§407

407(2) At the first Institution Christ’s body was corporally at the table — so not corporally in the bread.

If it was in the bread while He Himself ate with the disciples (Matt. 26:29; Mark 14:25), He ate His own flesh in and under the bread — whole body and soul in His mouth — hence either multiplication of one body, or two bodies (one eating, one eaten).

Annotatio II §.IX (3): Sacraments are signs, not δοχεῖα containers — Augustine; baptism analogy§408

408(3) No sacrament is a sign that contains the thing signified in its essence — sacraments are not containers enclosing what they signify (cask, purse, cradle), though Luther and Maulbronn use such likenesses.

Augustine: visible signs of invisible grace — a sign signifies; it does not contain corporally.

Hence Lutherans dare not say Christ’s blood is corporally in baptismal water.

Annotatio II §.IX (4): Body corporally in one place — heaven now; Vigilius; Luther’s Bible preface§409

409(4) Christ’s body is corporally in one place only — at the Institution at the table, not also in the bread in His hands; now corporally in heaven (Acts 3:21; Matt. 26:29; 1 Cor. 11:26).

Vigilius: as when on earth it was not in heaven, so now in heaven it is not on earth.

Luther’s Bible preface: we dwell on earth with the body before Christ seated in heaven, and are with Him only spiritually by faith — three points Strimesius marks.

Annotatio II §.IX close (5): Determination aporiae — spiritual presence in the believer’s soul, not in bread; stop before Annotatio III§410

410(5) Consubstantiation cannot settle the body’s internal quality or external condition if it is corporally in the bread — emptied or exalted? with soul or without? bloody or bloodless? whole in each species or part?

The doubt ends only if we confess the body present in the Supper supernaturally and spiritually — not in the bread, but in the soul of the true-faith eater alone.

Stop before Annotatio III.

Annotatio III open §.I: Transsubstantiation — if not by name, by rem older than Consubstantiation; absurd rem, late apt term§411

411Annotatio III opens on Transsubstantiation (to p. 36 end): a short History-compendium.

§.I: as rem (if not yet as name) it is older than Consubstantiation; the rem it names is most absurd; the term itself came late but fits the generic concept.

Annotatio III §.I: Definition — one substance into another under residual accidents; ORTUS / PROGRESSUS plan§412

412Transmutation reshapes form; Transsubstantiation turns one substance into another while the sensible accidents of the former remain and those of the latter are absorbed — a mutation without precedent.

Plan: ORTUS (causes) then PROGRESSUS (modes and degrees), treated here only for kinship with Consubstantiation.

Annotatio III §.II: Occasional cause of Ortus — GENERALIOR = hyperbolic / catachrestic Fathers on Eucharistic symbols§413

413§.II Ortus causes: also the Occasional (cause by accident).

GENERALIOR: hyperbolic — sometimes even catachrestic — Father-speech on Eucharistic symbols; mishandled, it leads the unwary into error.

Annotatio III §.II: Chrysostom samples — immolated Lord handled; teeth fixed in His flesh (Hom. Matt. / Cor. / John)§414

414Chrysostom (Eastern Fathers’ most eloquent): in the Eucharist you behold the immolated Lord — seated with the Father yet handled, seen, touched, eaten; blood from His side stains the tongue (Hom. Matt. / 1 Cor.).

Again: He knits us into one mass with Himself; teeth are fixed in His flesh so that by the food given we are turned into His flesh (Hom. 45 on John).

Annotatio III §.II close: Augustine / Prosper ‘carried in His hands’; QUASI / QUODAMMODO; Picherellus; de Marca / Whitaker§415

415Augustine (Serm. 1 on Ps. 33): Christ was carried in His own hands when He said ‘This is My Body’; Prosper parallels Him bearing His body in the sanctified bread.

Such hyperboles aimed to exalt the mystery and turn communicants from outward symbols to the things signified — yet some took them too properly, missing the softening of 'as if' or 'in a way' (Picherellus).

More samples: de Marca’s posthumous Eucharist dissertation (pontifical abuse) — vindicated by Whitaker.

Annotatio III §.III: SPECIALIOR ansa — Greek emphatic μεταβολή-terms for relative / mystic mutation, not substance§416

416§.III SPECIALIOR handle: Greek emphatic change-terms (metabole, metamorphosis, metapoiesis, metastoicheiosis, metatyposis, metarrhythmismos, metaskeuasis) for a mutation relative to the thing signified and mystic for communicants — cited via our Author, Salmasius, Johnston.

Fathers meant moral and schetic (relative) change; later readers bred a substantial-mutation opinion from those words.

Annotatio III §.III close: Four reasons Fathers meant moral / σχετική mutation; Dunelm; stop before §.IV vera causa§417

417Four proofs Fathers meant no mutation beyond that: (1) consecrated breads remain what they were; (2) they are still called signs/figures/symbols/types — so conversion into Christ’s body is implicitly denied (Johnston).

(3) Same terms describe the faithful’s union with Christ by due Eucharist use; (4) same terms on other things no one takes as substantial conversion — Dunelm on that metabole vocabulary.

Stop before §.IV vera causa (idolatry and tyranny of Papism).

Annotatio III §.IV open: From non-cause to VERA ORTUS CAUSA — Idololatria & Tyrannis of Papism§418

418§.IV: leave the non-cause; the true cause of Transsubstantiation’s origin sits in Idolatry and Tyranny...

That pair is Papism’s true soul, and will win it Antichristianism’s highest disgrace.

Annotatio III §.IV: Sixth century — sacred image use and cult arise in temples; once unheard-of and hated§419

419When the Apostolic / Episcopal / Patristic centuries were spent (or nearly ended), about the sixth century sacred-image use and cult began to strengthen in temples.

Earlier ages had never heard of it; Protestant public Confessions hate it still more.

Annotatio III §.IV: Constantinopolitanum IV (Leo Isaurus / Copronymus) — 380 Fathers ban temple images§420

420Opponents of the new idolomania gathered in Constantinopolitanum IV (popularly ‘Seventh Oecumenical’) under Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus.

380 Fathers unanimously: tolerate no temple images — least of all figures of God and of Christ.

Annotatio III §.IV: Sole known figure of Christ — that given in the Sacred Eucharist / consecrated bread§421

421Annexed reason, most express: the true Church never knew any other Figure of Christ than the one given in the Sacred Eucharist and seen in the consecrated Bread.

Sagittarius (council epitomator) reports the Constantinopolitans’ mind and constitution so.

Annotatio III §.IV: Sagittarius — painters’ insane opinion; flesh-image apology = Nestorian diabolic invention§422

422Sagittarius’s quote: what insane painters’ opinion — for base gain they try to figure with impious hands what mouth and heart alone confess?

Condemned for painting Christ’s incomprehensible, uncircumscribable Divine nature, they invent a flesh-only image apology — impious, and a Nestorian diabolic invention.

Annotatio III §.IV close: True image = Eucharistic bread as type; substance commanded vs human-effigy idolatry; stop before §.V§423

423The true image of Christ they honor is what the High Priest Himself handed at the passion as type and efficacious remembrance: blessed, broken bread — ‘This is My body’.

As the assumed humanity is material substance (lest Divinity get an addition), so He commanded bread’s substance as the whole chosen image — lest a human effigy breed idolatry; Eucharist bread, Spirit-sanctified true image of natural flesh, He willed a divine body (

Stop before §.V (Nicaea II overturn).

Annotatio III §.V open: Constantinopolitan judgment barely heard — image patrons’ rage ~30 years to Nicaea II§424

424§.V: the Constantinopolitans’ salutary, Word-congruent judgment was barely heard before image-patrons grew angry.

After ~30 years their indignation forced Nicaea II — called Second Nicene from the city, but by pontiffs ‘Seventh Oecumenical’ (as the Orthodox had styled Constantinopolitanum) — and an adverse decree contradicted those Fathers.

Annotatio III §.V: Nicaea II (pontiffs’ ‘Oecumenical 7th’) — temple image use/cult not to be despised§425

425Nicaea II: temple image use and cult are not to be despised.

In particular, images of Christ crucified for us revive His memory.

Annotatio III §.V: Eucharist-‘figure’ reason overturned — consecrated bread said to be the body itself, not a figure§426

426The counter-reason from the Eucharist as image/figure was judged so false that consecrated supper-bread must be held not a Figure of Christ’s body but the body itself.

Annotatio III §.V: Implies Conversion — Transsubstantiation’s chick under the egg-shell, soon to be named§427

427Taken properly that cannot stand: bread’s substance remains wholly diverse in species from Christ’s body, and neither disparate shares the other’s specific essence.

So it implicitly fostered Conversion — Transsubstantiation’s chick under the egg-shell, soon to emerge and be named after an octave

Annotatio III §.V: Bellarmine — from Nicaea II Greeks often: Eucharist not figure but body; mode unknown ~200 years§428

428Bellarmine: from Nicaea II (not sooner) Greek Fathers often — not always — warned the Eucharist is not a figure but Christ’s body (Tom. 3 de Eucharist. P. 579 Ingolstadt); they did not expressly inculcate it.

For ~200 years they still left the mode wholly unknown, in the middle.

Annotatio III §.V: Paschasius (IX) vs Bertram — conversion asserts; Otrokocsi on crassior substantial sense§429

429Ninth century: Paschasius Radbertus rises against Bertram (who with the Ancients kept the bread a Figure) and expressly professes conversion — under visible bread-species only Christ’s flesh is offered; bread into flesh, wine into blood (De corp. & sang. Dom. 10 & 20).

Otrokocsi: Paschasius means a crasser substantial conversion, unlike ancients/Bertram’s sacramental-mystic speech.

Annotatio III §.V close: Paschasius nuances (faithful only; not by teeth) vs Lombard; Hucusque Otrokocsi; stop before §.VI§430

430Paschasius quirks: flesh and blood under the species, yet received only by a true believer; not chewed by teeth — marvels that already distance him from later followers.

Hands may handle and mouth receive under bread-species, but teeth do not wear the flesh; he had not yet spun Lombard’s accident-only fraction/attrition subtlety. Hucusque Otrokocsi.

Stop before §.VI (public Ortus / Berengar XI).

Annotatio III §.VI open: Ortus gained but obscure/private — public light only in the eleventh century§431

431§.VI: Transsubstantiation has its Ortus — but still obscure and private.

Public authority will push it into public light only in the eleventh century.

Annotatio III §.VI: Berengar follows Bertram’s orthodox Eucharist opinion — yet crudely, almost a naked figure§432

432Berengar follows Bertram’s orthodox Eucharist opinion (with many allies).

Yet he seems to speak crudely: consecrated bread almost a naked Figure of Christ’s body.

Annotatio III §.VI: Lanfranc and doctors pierce him — Leo IX (1049) & Nicholas II (1059): judgment, prison, recantation§433

433Private and public doctors — Lanfranc of Canterbury foremost — pierce him with their pens.

Leo IX (1049) and Nicholas II (1059) haul him to judgment, prison, and a forced recantation.

Annotatio III §.VI: Recantation publicly confirms Paschasius’s conversion — and solemnly introduces dental laceration§434

434That recantation publicly confirms Paschasius’s conversion of bread into Christ’s body.

It also solemnly introduces the dental laceration of Christ’s body — which Paschasius himself had found most absurd.

Annotatio III §.VI: Ego Berengarius — sensualiter handled, broken, worn by the faithful’s teeth (Gratian)§435

435Ego Berengarius: after consecration the altar bread and wine are not only sacrament/symbol/figure but the true body and blood.

And SENSUALLY — in truth, not only in sacrament — priests’ hands handle and break them, and the faithful’s teeth wear them (Gratian De Consecr. Dist. 2 c. 42).

Annotatio III §.VI: Berengar revokes the forced palinode — Hildebrand/Gregory VII beats him into a new substantial-conversion formula§436

436Berengar, conscience-struck, published a revocation of that forced palinode as absurd and impious, calling the council a church of the malignant and of vanity.

Hildebrand (Gregory VII) summoned him to Rome, beat him with rods, and after a three-month truce forced a new formula: mystic bread substantially converted into Christ’s true proper flesh.

Annotatio III §.VI close: Walden / Uspergensis / Ussher / Dunelm on Berengar; stop before §.VII (public monster / Lateran name)§437

437Recantation formula: Thomas Walden Tom. 2 ch. 24; Abbot of Ursperg Chronicle at 1080.

Full Berengar history: Ussher De successione Ecclesiarum ch. 7 §§28–end, summarized in John of Durham’s Historia Transsubstantiationis ch. 7 §.4 ff. Pp. 134–143.

Stop before §.VII (public monster seated by papal decrees / Lateran name).

Annotatio III §.VII open: Transsubstantiation’s monster thrust into public light — still unnamed; seated by papal decrees§438

438§.VII: by this path the horrible Transsubstantiation-monster is thrust into public light — yet still without its proper name.

Papal decrees from Peter’s Roman seat plant it firmly enough on a throne.

Annotatio III §.VII: After Lombard and the Scholastics dispute the true Conversion-mode — subtle and sharp§439

439That the dispute follows Scholastic discussion on the true Conversion-mode in the Eucharist. Eucharist. Eucharist.

Lombard (bk. 4 dist. 11 pp. 311–313) leads — subtle and sharp alike.

Annotatio III §.VII: Mid-XII — Transsubstantiation’s name invented (Peter of Blois / Stephen of Autun)§440

440Mid-twelfth century: the name Transsubstantiation is invented.

Cave points to Peter of Blois Ep. 140; others to Stephen of Autun On the Sacrament of the Altar (Bibliotheca Patrum — author and date very uncertain).

Annotatio III §.VII: 1215 — Innocent III canonizes the name in his Lateran Council§441

441Next century, 1215: Pope Innocent III canonizes that name in his Lateran Council.

So the invented term Transsubstantiatio becomes a canon of the faith under Lateran IV.

Annotatio III §.VII: Innocent’s allocution — Dunelm: rival of Christ, not mere Vicar, when the article is thrust§442

442Innocent betrays the author of the canonization in his own sermons — ‘To me it is said in the Prophet: I have set you over nations and kingdoms…’ (as a shrew by its voice).

Dunelm: commemorate this already Rival of Christ, not mere Vicar, to see the Latin Church’s face when Transsubstantiation was thrust as an article of faith.

Annotatio III §.VII close: Firmiter canon — TRANS SUBSTANTIATIS bread into body; Sagittarius; stop before §.VIII§443

443Firmiter (Extravag. De Fide & summa Trinitate): one universal Church; Christ’s body and blood truly under bread and wine species.

Key clause: bread TRANSUBSTANTIATED into body and wine into blood by divine power — only a duly ordained priest may confect (Sagittarius p. 495).

Stop before §.VIII (still on the Scholastic anvil after canonization).

Annotatio III §.VIII open: Even canonized — Transsubstantiation still on the Scholastic disputation-anvil§444

444§.VIII: even after canonization, Transsubstantiation is not past concussion or overthrow.

Scholastic standard-bearers still hammer the genuine Conversion-mode on a licentious disputation-anvil — every part, every which way.

Annotatio III §.VIII: Antesignani probe Conversion-mode every way — John of Paris joins; many opinions cited§445

445John of Paris joins those Antesignani.

From his pages 30 and 50–77 a more copious heap of opinions is adduced.

Annotatio III §.VIII: Werenfels reduces their opinions to a dozen (German Concio on the Sacred Supper)§446

446Our Werenfels trims that heap to a dozen.

Source: his German Concio on the Sacred Supper, p. 30.

Annotatio III §.VIII: XIV–XV reformers — Rupert/Ascelinus consub, or ancient supernatural/spiritual presence kept§447

447Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century reformers of pontifical idolomania also rose.

Some restore Rupert of Deutz and Ascelinus on Consubstantiation (crasser or subtler); others restore the pristine Church’s supernatural and spiritual presence of Christ’s body in the Supper — and keep it to this day, undeterred by Trent’s brute thunderbolt.

Annotatio III §.VIII: Not deterred by Trent Sess. XIII cap. 4 Can. 2 — TRANSSUBSTANTIATIO defined§448

448Trent Session XIII, Canon 4: because Christ said what He offered under bread-species was truly His body, consecration converts the whole substance of bread into His body and of wine into His blood.

That conversion the holy Catholic (Roman) Church conveniently and properly calls TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

Annotatio III §.VIII: Anathema if bread-substance remains — Pius IV profession/oath names Transsubstantiation§449

449Anathema if anyone says bread and wine substance remain with body and blood, or denies that singular conversion with species alone remaining.

Nor do they delay the Pope’s definition and the Council’s unjust confirmation: profession and oath must follow this Transsubstantiation form — Ego N. … truly, really, substantially body and blood; conversion of whole substances — Pius IV’s bull on the Trent faith-oath.

Annotatio III §.VIII close: Pius IV bull curse (Rome, 13 Nov 1564); stop before §.IX Form from Lombard/Aquinas§450

450That thirteenth Roman-Symbol article closes with Pius IV’s threat: none may infringe this page; presumers incur God’s and Peter and Paul’s indignation.

Dated Rome at St. Peter’s, 13 November 1564

Hoc est corpus meum).

Annotatio III §.IX open: Historia’s Form — Lombard Sent. IV Dist. VIII and Aquinas ST 3 q.78 a.1§451

451§.IX: so the History stands; they lodge its Form in Lombard Sent. IV Dist. VIII (p. 307).

Chief commentator: Aquinas ST 3 q.78 a.1 (p. 292).

Annotatio III §.IX: Form in Hoc est Corpus meum / Hic est sanguis — priest’s enunciation confects Transsubstantiation§452

452Form = enunciation of Christ’s words: Hoc est Corpus meum; Hic est sanguis meus; or Hic est calix sanguinis mei.

By the priest’s speaking those words, they say, the Sacrament of Transsubstantiation is confected.

Annotatio III §.IX: Some require inserting causal ENIM (Matt. 26:28) under both Eucharist parts§453

453Some insist on inserting the causative conjunction ENIM into those words.

It stands in Matt. 26:28, so they would have it understood under both Eucharist parts everywhere.

Annotatio III §.IX: ENIM partly aetiological, partly promissive — baptism parallel (Mark 16:16)§454

454ENIM is partly aetiological — why what was offered was to be eaten and drunk.

Partly promissive — like Baptism’s own promise: whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved.

Annotatio III §.IX: Without ENIM some call the Form incomplete — Transsubstantiation not fully confected (Picherellus)§455

455Picherellus (Opusc. Theol. §.8) is cited on this.

Others press the little word so hard that without adding ENIM they call the Form incomplete — Transsubstantiation not fully done.

Annotatio III §.IX close: Stillingfleet vs White before James II — Mass without Enim still latria = material idolatry; stop before §.X§456

456Stillingfleet, disputing with Jesuit White before James II, used that to warn: standers at a Mass that omits Enim, adoring the ‘venerable,’ cannot escape even material idolatry on their own hypothesis.

By latria they would worship what — for want of enim — has not yet become Christ’s true body (Israel-in-the-desert parallel).

Stop before §.X (Transsubstantiation unworthy of Christ’s banquet; eliminate from the Church).

Annotatio III §.X open: Whatever of the Form — Transsubstantiation unworthy of Christ’s banquet; eliminate it§457

457§.X: leave the four- or five-word Form fight — rashly pinned on without Scripture’s authority.

Transsubstantiation itself, taken in full scope, is utterly unworthy of Christ’s instituted banquet and most worthy to be wiped from Christ’s whole Church.

Annotatio III §.X: Else it turns the Church Antichristian — tyrannizing Revelation, Reason, and the Senses§458

458Otherwise it remakes the Church truly Antichristian — especially by staking its own Necessity on many Anathemas.

It tyrannizes divine Revelation (belief and practice), human Reason, and all the Senses, trying to break and abolish their force.

Annotatio III §.X (1): Adversatur Scripture — Institution antithesis; Hottinger’s dozen-plus§459

459(1) It is adverse to Holy Scripture — overthrown elsewhere and above all where the Sacrament’s Institution is given.

Hottinger (Eucharist Defense VIII, pp. 79–84) shows that from an antithesis denser than a dozen.

Annotatio III §.X (1) cont.: Forbes points to Picherellus and Spalatinus among Pontificians themselves§460

460Forbes, with many learned Protestants, has shown the dogma adverse to Scripture.

He also begs readers to weigh Pontificians against themselves: Picherellus on the Institution-words and the Mass, and Spalatinus De Republ. Eccles. 5.6 (Fabricius p. 600) refuting it at length.

Annotatio III §.X (2): Adversatur Analogia fidei — body-nature articles; forged miracles worsen the clash§461

461(2) It clashes with the divine Analogy of faith — Creed articles and Scripture on Christ’s body as substantially like ours.

Forged miracles here do not heal that contradiction; they worsen it, tearing also the analogy of faith about what miracles are for.

Annotatio III §.X (2) close: Daily Mass-‘miracles’ vs the senses; Tillotson; Melchior — credible only by Enthusiasm; stop before (3)§462

462Miracles should be rare, not rash, to convince the senses of what is hard to believe; the papistic Mass instead commands the same ‘miracle’ daily in countless places against the senses’ clearest contrary witness (Tillotson Sermons 3, pp. 364–365).

Melchior of Herborn ingeniously showed Transsubstantiation credible only by Enthusiasm (Opera Theol. 2, pp. 467–840).

e / latria; cup withheld).

Annotatio III §.X (3)(a): Praxis Christiana — first table; latria of what every sense calls bread and wine§463

463(3)(a) Christian praxis vs the first table: religious worship of the Triune God.

In the Mass what every sense calls bread and wine (accidents showing and composing the thing) is believed and preached as the highest God, and commanded to communicants and bystanders under latria — the cult Pontificians themselves wall off from every lesser cult.

Annotatio III §.X (3)(a) cont.: Highest idolatry species — even without their Transsubstantiation hypothesis; God’s definition, not ours§464

464That is the highest species of idolatry — which even Pontificians never deny if Transsubstantiation is not supposed, and must not deny without that hypothesis.

They cannot make their hypothesis certain by Revelation or Reason; and idolatry turns on God’s definition, not on whether a human opinion is true or false — whenever what is not the highest God is estimated, saluted, or given highest cult as if it were.

Annotatio III §.X (3)(b): Instituted praxis — cup as well as bread; Mass/Transsubstantiation snatches the cup from the laity§465

465(3)(b) Instituted praxis from Christ binds every communicant to the cup and wine no less than to the bread.

Mass and Transsubstantiation’s rationale snatch that cup from all the laity — so it also hits the second table, withdrawing from the neighbor what Christ ordered by ‘Do this.’

Annotatio III §.X (4): Faith of the first centuries — if they taught Transsubstantiation, Jews and Gentiles would have hissed at once§466

466(4) Faith and praxis of the first centuries: if the earliest Christians had professed Transsubstantiation, none then mistook ‘This is my body / blood.’

That dogma’s rumor would have flown at once to neighboring Jews and Gentiles and met not only contradiction but every hiss — from such fervent mystery-defenders it could not have stayed quiet.

Annotatio III §.X (4) cont.: No such sneer in Trypho/Celsus/Julian/Porphyry — nor in Justin, Tertullian, Origen, Arnobius, Minucius§467

467Yet we nowhere read that even once from the fiercest enemies — Trypho, Celsus, Julian, Porphyry — who hunted every handle to calumniate Christian dogmas.

Nor from the careful apologists Justin, Tertullian, Origen, Arnobius, Minucius Felix.

Annotatio III §.X (4) close: Thyestean charges hit Gnostics only; ancients lack Adoration/Elevations/Circumgestations; stop before (5)§468

468Thyestean banquet charges stuck to Gnostics alone (maliciously counted as Christians); true Christians never even mentioned the Eucharist there, much less explained or defended this mystery — mere calumny, exploded.

And the ancients’ constant lack of later Transsubstantiation-rites (Adoration, Elevation, Circumgestation) amply shows they utterly ignored Transsubstantiation.

Stop before (5) Natura Sacramentorum.

Annotatio III §.X (5): Natura Sacramentorum — at least a triple assault on sacrament-nature§469

469(5) Transsubstantiation assaults the Nature of the Sacraments under at least three heads.

Strimesius marks the assault as at minimum triple — three named wounds to what a sacrament is.

Annotatio III §.X (5)(1)–(2): Removes the material Sign; turns Signatum into the Sacrament of Signatum itself§470

470(1) It removes the material Sign — bread and wine — leaving only accidents, void of substantiality and (on their view) of materiality too.

(2) It turns the Signatum (Christ’s body and blood) into the sacrament of that Signatum itself — sign and thing collapse.

Annotatio III §.X (5)(3): Eliminates the sacramental proposition — bread gone when the priest says Hoc est Corpus meum§471

471(3) By the priest’s pronunciation it kills the sacramental proposition.

Bread no longer survives while he finishes saying 'bread'bread'bread': ‘This, or this bread, is My Body.’

Annotatio III §.X (6): Ratio / Philosophy theoretical — overturns substance, accident, spirit, body, place, penetration§472

472(6) Cleaner Reason / Philosophy — theoretical first.

It overturns essential ideas of substance and accident, spirit and body, penetrability, extension, locality: strips finite substance of essential accidents, frees accidents from inherence, spirits Christ’s body by denying extension, impenetrability, and place — which even omnipotence will not admit as contradictories via miracle.

Annotatio III §.X (6) cont.: Admits sign-accidents that must enter the substances; practical enmity — oral God-eating (Cicero / Averroes)§473

473It also admits bread/wine species that must enter those substances (bread’s quantity not really other than the bread; wine’s motion in the cup unfit for bare accidents, yet seen in exhalable particles that shrink the wine-mass).

Practical philosophy too: it butts natural piety — oral God-eating. Cicero: who is mad enough to think what he eats is God? Averroes: no worse race than Christians, who devour with teeth the God they adore (Hottinger pp. 214ff).

Annotatio III §.X (6) close: Natural humanity — corporal chewing of Christ’s flesh vs Lev. blood ban; stop before §.XI (7) Sense§474

474It also butts natural common humanity: commanding Christ’s human flesh chewed and His blood drunk with the corporal mouth — acts unfallen human nature spontaneously abhors.

God once expressly barred the Jewish people from all animal blood (Lev. 7:27; 17:14) so that abhorrence would be the surer.

Stop before §.XI (7) Sense.

Annotatio III §.XI open (7): Sense — bread and wine not annihilated; body and blood not corporally substituted§475

475§.XI (7): cleaner Sense — not one only but several.

Sight, touch, taste, and smell distinctly prove bread and wine are not annihilated in the Eucharist, nor Christ’s body and blood corporally put in their place; their joint distinct testimony is not to be doubted.

Annotatio III §.XI (7): Scripture backs multi-sense testimony — reading/hearing; Reason’s empire over senses§476

476Revealed Scripture itself backs that: (1) it trusts itself to our senses in reading and hearing — rash if senses deserve no faith.

(2) it gives Reason empire over the senses within limits — pointless if sense-acts are fallible.

Annotatio III §.XI (7) cont.: Christ and John appeal to sense (Luke 24:39; 1 John 1:1) — many senses surer than one§477

477(3) Christ and John appeal to sense to confirm truth: Luke 24:39 (handle me; a spirit has not flesh and bones); 1 John 1:1 (that which was from the beginning).

If one well-constituted sense deserves faith, how much more several conspiring species — all men trust many senses more than one.

Annotatio III §.XI (8): Nomenclature — ‘Transsubstantiation’ misfits; nearer annihilation of one substance and creation of another§478

478(8) By its own name: it wants ‘Transsubstantiation’ = conversion of substance into substance.

But if nothing of bread and wine remains, the truer name is annihilation of one substance and creation of another — not Transsubstantiation.

Annotatio III §.XI (8) cont.: Wren — bread-substance flees at Hoc est corpus meum, leaving accidents behind§479

479Wren (Increpatio Bar Jesu / Racovian Catechism refutation p. 342), on those who alone know these ‘depths’: bread-substance did not pass into body-substance.

Terrified at ‘This is my body,’ it vanished so fast it dared not even pack its accidents and drag the poor species along — still less did divine-body substance pass into that vanished bread-substance.

Annotatio III §.XI close: Translocation / Transfiguration, not Transsubstantiation — ask for Vicesubstantiation; stop before Annotatio IV§480

480So where is the Trans? This is translocation (body from heaven into bread’s place) and transfiguration (holy body under the fugitive bread’s leftover figure) — not Transsubstantiation.

Ask the Roman correctors to fix Autun’s misnomer: if error must breed error, start from another letter and call it Vicesubstantiation.

Annotatio IV open: De Vera circa Eucharistiam S. Sententia through all Christian ages to this day§481

481ANNOTATIO IV opens: On the True Sentence concerning the Sacred Eucharist.

It is the sentence taught through every age of the Christian era down to this day (Autor p. 37).

Annotatio IV §.I open: History of the true Eucharistic sentence — foundation in Institution words§482

482§.I: we now briefly write the history of that true Eucharistic sentence.

Its beginning and foundation sit in the Institution words themselves — This is my body, This is my blood — placed there by Christ.

Annotatio IV §.I: Institution propositions include a trope — not one that eliminates body and blood§483

483Those words (bread taken, blessed, broken, given; cup blessed and offered) do include a trope as full propositions — Annotatio I’s reasons; even Lutherans must admit it, a few explicitly, all implicitly.

But no Orthodox — Lutheran or Reformed — will say the trope is the kind that eliminates Christ’s body and blood from the Sacred Supper.

Annotatio IV §.I: Soul of the orthodox sentence — true real presence and participation of body and blood§484

484The soul of the true, genuine, orthodox Supper sentence is this:

Christ’s Body and Blood are truly and really present in the Eucharist — properly, not by bare figure — and are participated in by all who use the Supper per Christ’s Institution.

Annotatio IV §.I cont.: Cosinus opens papal Transsubstantiation history with infallible Institution words§485

485Cosinus (Most Reverend) rightly opens his History of papal Transsubstantiation with the Institution words: This is my body given for you; This is my blood poured out for you — the whole Church confesses them infallible and most true.

Anyone who twists them into a fiction and bare figure, denying Christ’s truthfulness, we neither can nor ought to tolerate or excuse in our churches.

Annotatio IV §.I close: Scripture true — Caro mea / Paul communion; stop before §.II (John 6 & Paul on mode)§486

486Whatever Holy Scripture teaches must be true and undoubted for us — so also Christ’s My flesh is truly food and my blood drink, communicated through bread and cup per Paul.

Paul called the bread the communion of Christ’s body and the cup the cup of His blood.

Stop before §.II (John 6 and Paul as the mode-commentaries on Institution).

Annotatio IV §.II open: Cosinus mentions John 6 and Paul as mode-commentaries§487

487§.II: Cosinus, the Most Learned Bishop, aptly brings in two discourses here.

John 6 — eating Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood; and Paul — communion of Eucharistic bread and cup with Christ’s body and blood.

Annotatio IV §.II: Institution shows presence and participation — special Mode from Christ & Paul§488

488Institution words clearly enough hint presence and participation of body and blood — but decide nothing about the special Mode of either.

That whole Mode must be sought from Christ’s and Paul’s discourses as the only, fullest, most lucid commentaries.

Annotatio IV §.II: Dispute on John 6 — is it about the Lord’s Supper? Both sides true§489

489Long sharp fight even within the same Christian camp: does John 6 treat the Lord’s Supper and sacramental eating/drinking of Christ’s flesh and blood?

Some yes, some no — both sides can be true once the dispute is composed.

Annotatio IV §.II cont.: Not full (no bread/wine) but semi-full (flesh eaten / blood drunk)§490

490Supper-talk can be full (the whole) or partial (a part).n 6 is not full: no Eucharistic bread and wine, which are essential integrating parts of the sacrament.

It is semi-full: it does treat eating flesh and drinking blood — the Supper’s chief nearest object and the commanded sacramental action.

Annotatio IV §.II: John 6 = antecedent most lucid commentary on the Institution words§491

491So read, John 6 specially exposes what the sacramental Mode of presence and participation is — the antecedent, most lucid commentary on the Institution words.

Not on a Supper already instituted then, but on the one soon to be: torch and light for ‘This is my Body’ / ‘This is my blood,’ clearing the disciples’ scruples.

Annotatio IV §.II close: Mode merely Spiritual / Supernatural / Celestial — stop before §.III§492

492That Mode of presence and participation is merely Spiritual, Supernatural, Celestial.

It stands against corporal, natural, carnal, local presence — Capernaite in greater or lesser degree.

Stop before §.III (four proofs that John 6 inculcates the spiritual mode).

Annotatio IV §.III open: Four proofs that John 6 inculcates Spiritual / Supernatural / Celestial Mode§493

493§.III: four proofs that in John 6 Christ inculcates the Spiritual, Supernatural, Celestial Mode of presence and participation of His body and blood.

Not any other mode — certainly not the Corporal, Natural, Earthly one.

Annotatio IV §.III (1): Presence whose partakers come by spiritual access — true living faith§494

494(1) The only presence of body, blood, and whole Christ that is recommended is the one we share by spiritual access — true living faith (John 6:35, 47–51).

By that faith we partake spiritually rather than corporally — even outside the Sacred Supper.

Annotatio IV §.III (2): Spiritual effects follow only spiritual presence — not corporal or oral§495

495(2) The presence and participation recommended are those which spiritual union with Christ, eternal life, and the last-day raising infallibly follow (John 6:53–56).

Those heavenly effects cling only to spiritual presence and participation — not corporal or oral; even on the Lutheran view the unworthy’s oral eating is spiritually empty.

Annotatio IV §.III (3): Mode compatible with ascension — Athanasius draws from corporal intellect§496

496(3) The recommended presence must also stand with Christ’s bodily ascent into heaven (John 6:62) — so from the ascent one gathers spiritual presence on earth, not corporal.

Athanasius: He named the ascension to pull them off corporal intellect and teach His flesh as heavenly spiritual food.

Annotatio IV §.III (4): Carnal / corporal participation profits nothing — Spiritus est qui vivificat§497

497(4) Carnal or corporal participation of Christ’s flesh is of no use at all (John 6:63): the Spirit quickens; the flesh profits nothing; His words are spirit and life.

Augustine and Paschasius: without the Spirit neither flesh nor sacrament profits; Lutherans admit Christ without faith harms; Brentius: Capernaite tooth-tearing profits nothing — faith’s heart-teeth do.

Annotatio IV §.III close: Words Spirit and life — mystical nutrition; stop before §.IV (Pauline commentary)§498

498Second half of (4): understand the flesh-and-blood words mystically and spiritually — Spirit and life — not as bodily food of a body-part, but spiritual nutrition joining members to the Head, eternal life and last-day raising.

Spiritually taken sense quickens; carnal coarse hearing profits nothing — why fasten a thick carnal sense on spiritual speech?

Stop before §.IV (antecedent Institution commentary hands off to the Pauline / Apostolic successor).

Annotatio IV §.IV open: Antecedent Institution commentary succeeded by Pauline 1 Cor. 10–11§499

499§.IV: Christ’s antecedent Institution commentary (origin and foundation of the true sentence) is succeeded by the Apostolic / Pauline commentary — specially 1 Cor. 10 and 11.

Chapter 10 supplies many arguments for spiritual presence and participation of body and blood — none for the corporal.

Annotatio IV §.IV: First argument — OT spiritual food and drink; the Rock was Christ§500

500First argument: OT believers already shared Christ’s communion — the same spiritual food and drink (1 Cor. 10:1–4); the Rock was Christ.

We NT Christians drink His blood spiritually and share the same spiritual food — Christ and His body — with the Fathers; signs differ, significata are the same (Augustine; Acts 15:11).

Annotatio IV §.IV cont.: Same significata; Petrus Martyr — death and flesh always present to God§501

501Objection: how could ancients receive Christ sacramentally before flesh assumed and blood shed? Petrus Martyr: before God (and for faithful spiritual eating) death, blood-shedding, and flesh-assumption were always present and accepted — Lamb slain from the world’s foundation; Christ yesterday and forever; Abraham saw His day.

Flesh not yet in nature corporally could still save the Fathers spiritually; they held the Son by faith under promise of the nature to be assumed — we confess what they foresaw as already done. Martyr also answers two further specious objections solidly.

Annotatio IV §.IV: Second argument — cup and broken bread communion (1 Cor. 10:16–17) is spiritual§502

502Second argument (1 Cor. 10:16–17): communion of the cup of blessing with Christ’s blood and of the broken bread with His body is like becoming one body of those who partake of the one spiritual bread — Christ Himself.

That union into one body is not corporal but Spiritual.

Annotatio IV §.IV: Third & Fourth — Israel’s altar and Gentile demons: real spiritual communion§503

503Third (v. 18): Israel’s sacrificers eating peace-offerings are partners of the altar with God — a spiritual, yet most real and substantial, communion.

Fourth (vv. 20–21): Gentile demon-sacrificers share the demons’ table — likewise spiritual, not corporal, yet real; Paul will not have us partners of demons.

Annotatio IV §.IV close: 1 Cor. 11 — Institution tropes; two things celestial & terrestrial; stop before §.V§504

5041 Cor. 11 chiefly founds the true Supper sentence: Paul repeats Institution from Christ’s mouth with emphasis — bread as body broken for us (v. 24); cup as the New covenant through His blood (v. 25) — tropical propositions, without denying spiritual presence and participation.

Vv. 26–28: the sacrament is two things, celestial and terrestrial, after consecration as before — bread and wine are not converted into body and blood; he keeps saying this bread / this cup.

Stop before §.V (Pauline true sentence lasting through the Apostolic first age).

Annotatio IV §.V open: Pauline true sentence endured through the Apostolic first age§505

505§.V: the Pauline true Supper sentence — matching Institution and the John 6 antecedent commentary — lasted through the whole Apostolic first age.

All the Apostles and their disciples (Polycarp among them, John’s disciple) may fairly be read as approving it.

Annotatio IV §.V: Acts 2 — new converts devoted to Apostolic teaching and koinonia§506

506Acts 2:42: Jews newly converted by Peter’s sermon — the first of all — kept attending assiduously (proskarterountes).

Not only to the Apostles’ teaching (didachē), including on the Supper, but also to the koinōnia Paul sets out in 1 Cor. 10:16–20.

Annotatio IV §.V cont.: Koinonia = spiritual communion with Christ and one another + bread-breaking§507

507That koinōnia is spiritual communion with Christ and His body and blood, and among themselves.

Joined to it is the breaking of bread — always prefiguring the body broken for you (1 Cor. 11:24).

Annotatio IV §.V: First Christians’ koinonia with Apostles = communion with Father and Theanthropos Son — spiritual§508

508So the first Christians’ communion with the Apostles — and of every rightly communicating person through all ages — is at once communion with the heavenly Father and with His Son the God-man Jesus Christ (1 John 1:3), always to remain...

Yet it is Spiritual: Christ came not by water only but by water and blood.

Annotatio IV §.V: Spirit witnesses — Spirit is truth; Spirit quickens; words are Spirit and life§509

509He did it so that the Spirit should bear witness that the Spirit is the truth (1 John 5:6 with John 6:63).

The Spirit is Truth; the Spirit quickens; Christ’s words on participating His Body and Blood are Spirit and life.

Annotatio IV §.V close: On to later ages via early Fathers; both sides cite two things, spiritual mode only — stop before §.VI§510

510Doctrine now traced from the origin through the whole first Christian age — we may step on to later ages with early Fathers to confirm it.

Protestant collectors (Oecolampadius, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, Chamier, Cosin, Baier) already demolished Pontifical novelties; we still take two or three witnesses per purer age from them.

Both sides cite nearly the same from the first five ages: presence of two things (celestial & terrestrial / Signified & Sign) with only the spiritual mode of the Signified conceded. Stop before §.VI (second century: Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus).

Annotatio IV §.VI open: Second century — Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus on the true Eucharistic sentence§511

511§.VI: in the SECOND Christian age after the Apostolic, the leading martyrs openly professed the true Eucharistic sentence from Christ and the Apostles.

Ignatius (start) turns the mind to the chief part held by faith alone; Justin (middle) to the lesser part not to be turned into the chief; Irenaeus (end) to both — presence, participation, and their mode.

Annotatio IV §.VI: Ignatius to Smyrna — Eucharist is the Savior’s flesh; Theodoret still cites it§512

512Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans: the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father raised.

Not to be written off as weak faith or among interpolated Ignatian writings — Theodoret in the fifth century still cites them in Dialogue 3 (apathēs / Impassible).

Annotatio IV §.VI: Justin Martyr — Eucharistic bread remains after consecration; Cosinus epiphonema§513

513Justin (Apol. 2): after consecration the Eucharistic bread remains the same and feeds our flesh — no longer common, yet the food ‘changed’ that nourishes our flesh and blood we have learned is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.

Cosinus of Durham: therefore bread-substance remains after consecration as truly corruptible food — Christ’s immortal body does not nourish or change into our flesh; this food is sacramentally called Christ’s Flesh, which nourishes unto eternal life.

Annotatio IV §.VI: Irenaeus — Eucharist of two things, terrestrial and celestial (observations 1–2)§514

514Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 4.34) more fully: the Sacred Eucharist consists of two things — earthly and heavenly. Bread from earth receiving God’s invocation is no longer common bread but Eucharist.

(1) After consecration it is still bread, only severed from common use. (2) That separated bread is not itself Christ’s body as if transmuted — it is Eucharist: bread destined and consecrated for the sacrament.

Annotatio IV §.VI cont.: Irenaeus (3–4) — two things of the Eucharist; celestial = supernatural presence mode§515

515(3) The two things belong to the Eucharist, not to the bread alone — lest Christ’s body be joined to bread even outside lawful use. (4) Earthly = bread from earth; heavenly is not Christ’s body naturally/corporally present (that body is an earthly thing from Mary’s mass, like us except sin).

It is called heavenly for the solely supernatural presence in the Eucharist — genuine food of faithful souls from the Spirit, someday serving even their bodies toward blessed resurrection.

Annotatio IV §.VI close: Irenaeus Lib. 5 — nourished by creature, not natural body; stop before §.VII§516

516Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 5.12: as wheat falls, dissolves, and rises manifold into Eucharist (body and blood of Christ), so faithful bodies nourished from it shall rise. We are nourished by the Creature He supplies — cup and bread as creature confirmed as His blood and Body.

When cup and bread receive God’s word there is made the Eucharist of His blood and body — not the blood and body themselves — from which our flesh’s substance increases. To say our bodies grow from Christ’s natural incorruptible body would be absurd and blasphemous.

Stop before §.VII (third century: Tertullian).

Annotatio IV §.VII open: Third century — Tertullian first professor of Eucharistic truth§517

517§.VII opens the THIRD century with Tertullian as first professor of Eucharistic truth — in flower at the age’s start.

In one sentence he both confesses the impropriety of Christ’s words ‘This is my body’ and attests the true presence of Christ’s true body in the supper.

Annotatio IV §.VII: Tertullian Contra Marcionem — Hoc est corpus meum = figure of my body§518

518Contra Marcionem 4.40: Christ made the bread taken and given to the disciples His Body by saying ‘This is my body’ — that is, the FIGURE OF MY BODY.

It would not be a figure unless it were a BODY OF TRUTH: an empty phantasm cannot take a figure.

Annotatio IV §.VII cont.: De Resurrectione Carnis nearly corporal — counted among his errors§519

519Elsewhere (De Resurrectione Carnis) Tertullian seems to push a nearly corporal presence: our flesh is fed with Christ’s body and blood so the soul may be fattened from God.

Count that among his otherwise venerable errors — even Transsubstantiators wholly abhor proper nutrition of our flesh by Christ’s body taken in the supper.

Annotatio IV §.VII: Origen — impropriety and real presence; presence and participation merely spiritual§520

520Next, Origen (same century): with Tertullian he stabilizes the impropriety of ‘This is my body’ and real presence — then urges that presence and participation are merely Spiritual.

Against Marcionites: if Christ had no flesh and blood, of what flesh and blood did He minister bread and cup as signs and IMAGES?

Annotatio IV §.VII cont.: Origen Hom. Lev. 7 — figures; spiritual not carnal; the letter kills§521

521Origen Hom. Lev. 7: recognize they are figures — examine them as spiritual, not carnal; taken carnally they hurt and do not nourish.

The Gospel letter kills whoever does not hear spiritually: if you follow ‘Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood’ according to the letter, that letter kills.

Annotatio IV §.VII close: Cyprian — invade the Lord’s body only spiritually; stop before §.VIII§522

522Cyprian, later in the century, most expressly teaches true spiritual presence and participation — in rhetorical style (On the Lapsed) against the unprepared who still reek of idol foods yet invade the Lord’s Body.

They can invade Christ’s body and do violence to His blood only in a Spiritual mode — by taking bread and wine, which the impious handle only by sacrilege.

Stop before §.VIII (fourth century: Nicene Fathers).

Annotatio IV §.VIII open: Fourth century — Nicene Fathers’ complexus and the Marchic Reformed formula§523

523§.VIII: stepping into the FOURTH century, first remember the Nicene Fathers’ complexus — opening the whole Church’s sentence on the Sacred Supper.

Our Marchic Reformed administration formula seems drawn from it: communicants must not cling to the sensed symbols, but lift the mind’s eyes to heaven and by divine faith hold that souls are fed by Christ’s true substantial body and blood no less than the mouth takes the symbols.

Annotatio IV §.VIII: Nicene words — lift the mind to heaven; Lamb of God; little for sanctification§524

524Nicene words (Gelasius of Cyzicus / Scultetus): do not stay humble-eyed on the set bread and cup — by faith see the Lamb of God on that Table, truly receiving His precious body and Blood as symbols of our resurrection unto eternal life.

We take little, not much — not for satiety but for sanctification. Athanasius most exactly follows these Council footprints.

Annotatio IV §.VIII: Athanasius — spiritual presence and participation; exclude the corporal§525

525Athanasius (on John 6) builds spiritual presence and participation of body and blood in the Supper — corporal presence and participation shut out.

The Lord separated Spirit from flesh so we know His speech is spiritual not carnal; He named the ascension to pull them off corporal intellect toward heavenly spiritual food (pneumatikēn trophēn).

Annotatio IV §.VIII cont.: Athanasius — heavenly spiritual food; Spirit and life distributed spiritually§526

526‘What I have spoken to you are Spirit and life’ — as if to say: my body shown and given for the world will be given as food so it is distributed to each spiritually (pneumatikōs).

It becomes for each a preservation unto the resurrection of eternal life.

Annotatio IV §.VIII: Ambrose — consecration’s change in the symbols is only spiritual§527

527Ambrose (De Sacr. 4.4), late in the century, agrees: every change that consecration works in the Supper’s symbols is only spiritual.

You yourself were an old creature; after consecration you begin to be a new one. Ordinary bread before the blessing-words; when consecration comes, from bread is made Christ’s body.

Annotatio IV §.VIII close: Ambrose — after consecration it is Christ’s body; old creature made new — stop before §.IX§528

528How can what is bread be Christ’s body by consecration? By the Lord’s words the sacrament is made — Christ’s speech is operative.

If bread and wine begin to be what they were not and are changed into another, then it was not Christ’s body before consecration, but after it is. He spoke and it was done: you were an old creature; after consecration you begin to be a new one.

Augustine).

Annotatio IV §.IX open: Fifth century — Chrysostom and Augustine as chief witnesses§529

529§.IX: for the FIFTH century — last of the purer Evangelical ages — many Fathers could be cited, but two snatch the palm.

East and West’s doctors par excellence: Chrysostom and Augustine.

Annotatio IV §.IX: Chrysostom Hom. 45 — mysteries spiritually; intelligible gift of body and blood§530

530Chrysostom (Hom. 45 on John) strips carnality from the mysteries and from the Supper’s carnal presence and participation.

Mysteries are for interior eyes — spiritual. As baptism’s sensible water carries an intelligible regeneration-gift, so the intelligible gift of body and blood is received by faith’s spiritual intelligence, not by bodily action.

Annotatio IV §.IX: Augustine (1) — Institution words figurative; metonymy; Doctr. Chr. 2.16§531

531Augustine (1): the essential Institution words (‘Take, eat, This is my Body’) are figurative — not without metonymy (Against Adimantus 12; Doctr. Chr. 2.16).

If a command seems to order a crime, it is figurative: ‘Unless you eat my flesh…’ seems criminal — therefore it is a FIGURE commanding communion in the Passion and memory of the crucified flesh.

Annotatio IV §.IX: Augustine (2–3) — figure does not remove true presence; presence and participation spiritual§532

532Augustine (2): the figure does not remove true presence or participation — Christians celebrate with sacred offering and participation of Body and blood (Against Faustus 20.18).

(3) Presence and participation are spiritual: understand spiritually; the sacrament understood spiritually quickens (Ps. 98). Tract. 25 John: Why prepare teeth and belly? Believe, and you have eaten.

Annotatio IV §.IX: Augustine (4) — exclude local presence and oral handling; body in one place§533

533Augustine (4): local presence and oral handling shut out — until the age ends the Lord is above, yet His Truth is here with us.

The Lord’s risen body must be in ONE PLACE; His truth is everywhere. Absent yet present: body in heaven, Majesty not withdrawn. We cannot handle Him in heaven with hand or mouth — only touch by Faith.

Annotatio IV §.IX close: Augustine (5) — unworthy excluded; disciples ate the Lord, Judas the Lord’s bread — stop before §.X§534

534Augustine (5): the unworthy (impenitent, unbelieving) are excluded from participation of the Body.

Disciples ate the bread the Lord; Judas ate the Lord’s bread against the Lord (Tract. 59 on John).

Stop before §.X (sixth century onward — decline; Gelasius still holding).

Annotatio IV §.X open: Sixth century — end of better ages; Christian truth begins to decline§535

535§.X: we have reached the end of the better ages and the start of the worse — the sixth — when Christian truth began to rush downhill.

Mejerus opens his sixth section (Christian Religion of the sixth age, p. 164) with that framing.

Annotatio IV §.X: Mejerus — six ages; sixth accelerates errors and superstitions§536

536Mejerus: Age V still good; IV better; the first three best — then ages follow in which Christianity puts on a new, worse face.

Six ages from the Church’s beginnings to the Reformation: errors creep in the first five; in the sixth they rush in faster and openly.

Annotatio IV §.X: Yet some hold Eucharistic truth — Gelasius (near-first papal name)§537

537Yet even in this age some clung more constantly to Eucharistic truth.

Among them GELASIUS — almost first of the papal name and dignity — in a writing against Eutyches and Nestorius (Gratian, de Consecrat. Dist. 2 c. 12), for truth and against Transubstantiation.

Annotatio IV §.X: Gelasius — divina res; bread and wine substance remains; imago et similitudo§538

538Gelasius: the Sacraments of Christ’s body and blood that we take are a DIVINE THING — through them we share the divine nature.

Yet bread and wine do not cease to be in substance and nature; in the Mysteries’ action the IMAGE AND LIKENESS of body and blood are celebrated.

Annotatio IV §.X: Foecundus Hermianensis — improper speech; spiritual presence; mystery contains§539

539Foecundus of Hermiane (same age; Justinian’s time) seconds Gelasius: Christ’s words are improper speech; presence in the Eucharist is spiritual.

We call the sacrament in consecrated bread and cup His body and blood — not that bread is PROPERLY body or cup blood, but that they contain the MYSTERY — following Vigilius of Trent on the body’s natural local absence on earth.

Annotatio IV §.X close: Vigilius — natural local absence; two natures — stop before §.XI§540

540Vigilius (against Eutyches and Nestorius) states the Reformers’ sentence: according to humanity the Son withdrew; according to divinity He is with us.

By the servant-form taken into heaven He is ABSENT; by the form of God He is present on earth. Flesh once on earth was not in heaven; now in heaven it is NOT ON EARTH. One Christ of BOTH NATURES — everywhere by divinity, place-bound by humanity.

Stop before §.XI (seventh century; Isidore).

Annotatio IV §.XI open: Seventh century — Mejerus; few truth-witnesses; sterile age§541

541§.XI: what hope for the seventh age confirming Eucharistic truth? Mejerus puts it in the open.

Protestant doctors refer Anti-Christ’s beginnings (East and West) to this age — East: ruin of whole religion; West: Rome drives the Church toward servitude. Truth-witnesses few; Age VII sterile of good writers.

Annotatio IV §.XI: Isidore de Offic. — bread/wine called body/blood; into sacrament not substance§542

542So Strimesius summons one alone: ISIDORE of Seville (de Offic. Eccles. 1.8).

Bread is called Christ’s body because it confirms ours; wine referred to His blood because it works blood in the flesh — visible things that, sanctified, pass INTO THE SACRAMENT OF THE DIVINE BODY (not into the substance of body and blood).

Annotatio IV §.XI: Isidore Etymolog. — participation of faith; words expunged, Bertram preserved§543

543Clearer still (Etymolog. 6.12): visible bread and wine nourish the outer man; Christ’s word, the living bread, recreates faithful souls THROUGH THE PARTICIPATION OF FAITH.

Those words are struck from today’s printed Isidore — preserved by Bertram the Presbyter (John of Durham notes).

Annotatio IV §.XI: Bede — sacrament in FIGURE of bread and wine; figure at the Supper§544

544Next to Isidore: the VENERABLE BEDE (British Isles’ doctor; name famous mainly in the eighth age).

On Ps. 22: in place of the lamb’s flesh and blood Christ put the Sacrament of His flesh and blood in the FIGURE of bread and wine. On Ps. 3: at the Supper He gave the disciples the FIGURE of His sacrosanct body and blood.

Annotatio IV §.XI: Bede — left church CORPORALITER; goes as man, remains as God§545

545Bede also seriously detests the falsehood of a corporal presence of Christ or His body — on earth or in the Sacred Supper.

Ascending Victor after the resurrection He left the Church CORPORALLY, yet never without divine presence. As man He went; as God He remained — going as in one place, remaining as everywhere (Mark 4.13; John 14).

Annotatio IV §.XI close: Bede John 6 — eat SPIRITUALLY spiritual food — stop before §.XII§546

546On John 6: whoever would live, believe in Christ and eat SPIRITUALLY the SPIRITUAL FOOD — the incorporeal of Christ’s body — and not be a putrid member.

e-age).

Annotatio IV §.XII open: Eighth century — Mejerus age of wrath; images and Eucharistic mutation§547

547§.XII: Eighth century — the age of Mejerus, of divine wrath, notorious for changing Eucharistic truth into falsehood.

Bread and wine into Body and Blood, each propped on false reason and human wisdom, plus many mortal inventions in doctrine and rites (Spanheim, Hist. Imag.).

Annotatio IV §.XII: Rom 1 applied — glory of God exchanged for images and bread-foam§548

548So far that Paul’s charge against the Gentiles (Romans) fits most of this age’s Christian Church:

Knowing God they did not glorify Him; claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for fashioned images of every kind — and the foam of bread for posterity to adore.

Annotatio IV §.XII: Damascene — images champion; bread/wine COMMUTANTUR into body and blood§549

549John of Damascus, that age’s chief Doctor of Orthodoxy, fought sharply for images (note by Calvisius and Helvisus (~728–730)~728–730)~728–730)) — and turned toward (or rather preluded) Pontifical errors on the Eucharist.

Orthodox Faith 4.4: as bread and wine naturally change into the eater’s body, so the bread, wine, and water of the proposition are supernaturally CHANGED into Christ’s body and blood — Theophylact must emend him (Whittaker).

Annotatio IV §.XII: Mejerus — Damascene author of new scholastic method; simple doctrine mutated§550

550Guilty also of many later ‘scholastic’ terms rashly thrust into sacred theology — Mejerus names Damascene author of a new scientific method of treating Christian doctrine.

Thorny useless questions; new opinions as dogmas; rare appeal to Scripture; philosopher-formulas over sound words — and followers gradually turned the ancients’ simple doctrine into scholastic disputations.

Annotatio IV §.XII: Orthodox opposition — Constantinople; FIGURE OF CHRIST’S BODY vs all images§551

551Meanwhile truly Orthodox (Scripture-clinging) opposed Damascene’s flood of errors in the same Eighth age.

Gathered at Constantinople (fifth / Greeks’ seventh Oecumenical; Copronymus and Leo Isaurian — Spanheim vindicates them): by the figure of Christ's body they set in the Supper they tried to abolish every sacred use of images.

Annotatio IV §.XII close: Irene’s Nicaean iconolaters — bread itself body by conversion — stop before §.XIII§552

552Under worst Irene they met heaviest contradiction from Nicaean Iconolaters, who contend the Supper bread is not the Figure of the Body but Christ’s body itself by Conversion (see Annotat. 3 §.3).

Stop before §.XIII (ninth century; Charlemagne / Bertram reclaiming).

Annotatio IV §.XIII open: Ninth century — reclaimers against both Transubstantiations; Charlemagne FIGURE§553

553§.XIII: though Nicaean sentences on image-transmutation and bread-into-Body held first place until the Reformation, the NINTH age still found reclaimers against both Transubstantiations.

Around its entrance CHARLES THE GREAT restrained image-veneration (Frankfurt 794) and, to Alcuin, said Christ gave bread and cup in the FIGURE of His body and blood — a great Sacrament for our profit.

Annotatio IV §.XIII: Charles the Bald commissions Bertram and Erigena on Lord’s body and blood§554

554Mid-century: CHARLES THE BALD, eager for Evangelical truth on the Eucharist, ordered Bertram the Presbyter and Erigena the Scot to write treatises on the Lord’s body and blood.

Bertram’s still circulates among the learned — Strimesius draws propositions that illustrate the Eucharistic truth.

Annotatio IV §.XIII: Bertram (1) — Institution words improper; bread and wine exist FIGURATE; memory of Passion§555

555Bertram (1): Institution words are improper — bread and wine exist FIGURATIVELY as Christ’s body and blood.

Named body and blood, they represent the memory of the Lord’s Passion; set on the altar in the FIGURE or memory of His death, so present memory of what was done may make us partakers of the divine gift.

Annotatio IV §.XIII: Bertram — natural body not corporally present; SIGNUM and SPECIES vs truth; deny oral eating only§556

556Bertram (II): Christ’s natural body is not present in the Supper in a corporal mode — what ministers handle differs from the glorified body; the Eucharistic bread is a sign and a representation, that is the truth itself (pledge vs thing; image vs reality).

He does not deny truth taken in the sacrament — souls are fed with Spiritual food and drink — he denies only that the true natural body is eaten with the body’s Mouth.

Annotatio IV §.XIII: Bertram — not corporal/oral eating; spiritual presence and participation (SPIRITUALE CORPUS)§557

557Bertram (III): the body born of Mary, dead, risen, at the Father’s right, is not what teeth press and throats swallow daily — that corporal intake does not supply eternal life.

(IV) Yet he confesses Spiritual presence and participation: bread and wine pass into something better not in a physical way but in a spiritual way — under corporal covering the SPIRITUAL BODY AND BLOOD are actually present; SPIRITUAL FOOD and DRINK.

Annotatio IV §.XIII close: Erigena coeval truth; Amalarius / Rabanus / Walafrid — stop before §.XIV§558

558Erigena, Bertram’s coeval fellow summoned by Charles the Bald, stated the same Eucharistic truth — his treatise lost (or burned by hostile zeal), but On the Division of Nature (Oxford recovery) and other writings make faith.

See also Amalarius, Rabanus Maurus, Walafrid Strabo, and Bertram himself vindicated in Durham pp. 88–97. Stop before §.XIV (tenth century).

Annotatio IV §.XIV open: Tenth century — Baronius/Bellarmine dark age; yet genuine Supper witnesses§559

559§.XIV: Baronius marks the tenth age with black coal — iron for sterility of good, leaden for overflowing evil, obscure for want of writers.

Bellarmine’s cry: unhappy age — no illustrious writers, no councils, pontiffs little solicitous for the ecclesiastical republic.

Annotatio IV §.XIV: Cosin — Erigerus’s witnesses; English homilies parallel to Bertram§560

560Yet it still had professors and witnesses of a genuine Supper explanation, collected by Erigerus of Louvain.

Cosin (English bishop) brings into the midst English homilies once read publicly in churches — words at page 98 exactly parallel to Bertram.

Annotatio IV §.XIV: Paschal Homily — suffered body vs host; SPIRITUALE CORPUS; pledge and FIGURE§561

561Paschal Homily: much difference between the body in which Christ suffered and the body consecrated in the host.

The suffered body has Mary’s flesh, blood, bones, soul; the SPIRITUAL BODY we call Host is from many grains, without blood or soul — temporal, chewable; the Mystery is pledge and FIGURE; Christ’s body is the truth itself.

Annotatio IV §.XIV: Paschal Homily — what is seen is bread; spiritually understood is Life§562

562The Homily hinge: eyes meet bread.

Faith understanding meets Life — spiritual reading of the same host.

Annotatio IV §.XIV: Wulfinus Homily — host Christ’s body not CORPORALITER but SPIRITUALITER§563

563Bishop Wulfinus’s Homily, brief but sinewy: the sacramental Host is Christ’s body not in a physical way but in a spiritual way.

Not the body in which Christ suffered, but the body of which He spoke when He consecrated bread and wine into the host.

Annotatio IV §.XIV close: true real presence in spiritual mode (John 6) — stop before §.XV§564

564These words inculcate both true real presence in the Sacred Supper and the sole genuine mode Christ defined in John 6 — the spiritual.

The Homily’s close does not deny real presence of the suffered body — only corporal presence opposed to the spiritual. Stop before §.XV (Hildebrandine / Berengar).

Annotatio IV §.XV open: Eleventh century — Hildebrandine age; papal tyranny at its summit§565

565§.XV: the ELEVENTH age is commonly called Hildebrandine — most notorious for Pope Hildebrand (Gregory VII)'s malice and tyranny.

Papal dominion, born full under Boniface III (Phocas, Age VII), was driven to its summit by Hildebrandine arts and his insolent Dictates.

Annotatio IV §.XV: Hildebrand involves Berengar of Tours, century’s chief Eucharistic confessor§566

566As Hildebrand’s tyranny raged against the Emperors — especially Henry IV — so it also involved that age’s most celebrated Eucharistic confessor.

BERENGAR OF TOURS — though for another cause.

Annotatio IV §.XV: Writings destroyed — figure/type/sign language under pressure; yet adhered to truth§567

567His exact modes of speaking on the Sacred Supper are hard to pin down: enemies thoroughly suppressed and deleted his writings.

Under Transubstantiators’ pressure he more often stressed Figure, Type, and Sign than Antitype and Christ’s most-present Body — yet as to the thing and substance he firmly held the truth, even if adversaries’ cruelty sometimes made him look merely human.

Annotatio IV §.XV: Fulbert of Chartres — mystery by SPIRIT OF FAITH; interior taste of bread of life§568

568Consensus with the truth is clear from his teacher Fulbert of Chartres and from writings that oppose and review his sentence.

Fulbert to Adeodatus: look on the Eucharist’s faith-mystery not with bodily sight but by the SPIRIT OF FAITH — outwardly bread and wine, inwardly Body and Blood; taste by interior affection; take the bread of life as the interior man’s food.

Annotatio IV §.XV: Lanfranc quotes Berengar — sacrament does not cease what it was; visible sign, invisible res§569

569Among opposing books, Lanfranc of Canterbury On the Truth of the Lord’s Body stands out — and repeats Berengar’s own words.

By altar consecration bread and wine become a Sacrament of Religion yet do not cease what they were; the Church’s sacrifice is visible sacrament plus invisible res (Christ’s body); sacraments are visible seals — the invisible things are what is honored.

Annotatio IV §.XV close: not consubstantiation patron — Rupert charges bare sign; more in Annot. 3 — stop§570

570Some wrongly make Berengar a consubstantiation patron — even Rupert of Deutz (the main proponent of a more extreme form of consubstantiation) refuses that and instead charges him with wanting a bare sign of the sacred thing.

Rupert attacks truth-confessors as having no argument but that bare-sign claim (ascribed also to Augustine). Rest on Berengar: see above, Annot. 3. Stop before §.XVI / next extract.

Annotatio IV §.XVI open: Bernard of Clairvaux follows Berengar — food of mind; spiritual exhibition§571

571§.XVI: near the opening of the XIIth age, BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX — then prince of ascetic writers — walks Berengar’s footsteps on the Sacred Supper.

Two sermons (Purification of Mary; S. Martin): Christ’s body in the Mystery is food of the mind, not the belly — not eaten corporally; the same flesh is exhibited spiritually, not corporally.

Annotatio IV §.XVI: Bernard’s triple — spiritual food, spiritual presence, spiritual eating by faith§572

572Bernard’s sinewy triple on the Supper: (1) food of the mind = Spiritual food; (2) present and exhibited spiritually, not corporally;

(3) therefore eaten spiritually — eating matches the food’s nature: corporal food for the body, spiritual food received by faith for the faithful soul’s increase of faith and communion with Christ (cf. John 6:56).

Annotatio IV §.XVI: Peter de Bruis, Waldo, Arnold — true Supper doctrine disseminated; Waldenses named§573

573Later in the age PETER DE BRUIS and Henry the Monk, then PETER WALDO of Lyons with Arnold, preached the true Supper doctrine across Gaul — Lyons and Albi.

Followers called Petrobrusians, Arnoldists, Waldenses, Poor of Lyons, Albigenses — buried under papal flatterers’ calumnies that Our writers (Armachanus among the ablest) repeatedly washed off.

Annotatio IV §.XVI: Waldenses via Lombard/Rainerius — Institution as figure/sign (rock was Christ)§574

574Even Pontifical reporters preserve the Waldenses’ genuine reading of the Institution words.

Lombard: some say Christ’s body is not corporally on the altar — ‘This is my Body’ as ‘the Rock was Christ’; body only in the Sacrament/Sign. Rainerius: blessed bread called body in a Figure, as the rock was Christ.

Annotatio IV §.XVI: yet true presence asserted — confession ~1200; who does not eat Christ’s body is not saved§575

575Yet they also assert true presence of Christ’s body in the Sacred Supper.

Ancient confession ~1200 (Hoveden, fol. 31999): We believe he is not saved who does not eat the body of Christ.

Annotatio IV §.XVI close: Transubstantiation in spiritual sense — exhibitivum in worthy mouth — stop before §.XVII§576

576They do not flee the word Transubstantiation (Rainerius) — but take it spiritually: not in the consecrator’s hand, but in the worthy receiver’s mouth.

Not bread converted into substance there, but the Sacrament exhibitive (not only significative) of the Lord’s body and blood — symbols in the body’s mouth, the thing signified perceived by faith’s taste. Stop before §.XVII.

Annotatio IV §.XVII open: Ages XII–XIII+ — Waldenses first Reformers against Innocent’s Transubstantiation§577

577§.XVII: in Ages XII and XIII and after, the famous Waldenses steadily rejected papal life and doctrine — above all Transubstantiation fixed by Innocent III.

For that they hold a chief place among Christian-truth witnesses and deserve to be called the Roman Church’s first Reformers.

Annotatio IV §.XVII: Rome persecutes them as Bulgars/Albigenses — Armachanus narrates; Morneus digests§578

578Because they opposed the Papacy with generous courage, the Roman Curia hunted them to extermination with every art and force.

Armachanus narrates the cruellest persecutions under the names Bulgars and Albigenses; Morneus digests it and appends their summary Confession on the Sacred Supper.

Annotatio IV §.XVII: Innocent III Lateran 1215 — Firmiter credimus; Transsubstantiatis names the monster§579

579Morneus first notes Innocent III’s Lateran decretal of 1215: Firmiter credimus…

It defines Conversion’s form and names the monster: Christ’s body and blood truly contained under bread and wine species — bread Transsubstantiated into body, wine into Blood by divine power.

Annotatio IV §.XVII: Albigenses rise by Scripture and Fathers — crusade diverted; pure doctrine scattered§580

580Same age: Albigenses in Dauphiné, Narbonne, Occitania, Aquitaine are offended and rise against the pontifical doctrine by Scripture and the older Fathers’ use.

Innocent, keener to overthrow than convert, sends Dominic for show but Montfort and Leopold with armies — crusade money turned on them; fire and iron only scatter the purer doctrine across Europe.

Annotatio IV §.XVII: Waldensian Confession — true body and blood by faith; bread and wine substance unchanged§581

581Morneus: consult the Waldensian Confession — it solidly answers most Transubstantiators’ arguments for its time.

Sum: in the Supper per Christ’s Institution the faithful receives Christ’s true body and blood; bread and wine nature/substance are not changed — His words induce no Conversion; if the element ceased, there would be no Sacrament.

Annotatio IV §.XVII close: not corporal under species but SPIRITUALLY; receive not sacrifice — stop before §.XVIII§582

582Christ is not said to exist under the species — not in, from, or with the bread — not there corporally by natural abiding, but SPIRITUALLY, powerfully, blessedly, in truth, dwelling in His people’s hearts.

Only those inwardly vivified by His Spirit receive Christ in the Sacraments; body and blood are to be perceived by the Faithful — not sacrificed, elevated for veneration, or carried about. Stop before §.XVIII.

Annotatio IV §.XVIII open: From Gaul Waldenses — English Waldenses / Wycliffites (Age XIV)§583

583§.XVIII: from the Waldenses so called par excellence — born in Gaul in the 12th century, spread in the 13th — came the ENGLISH WALDENSES of Age XIV.

One name: Wycliffites, from John Wycliffe (English doctor, ~1370). Otrokocsi gathers his theses against both Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation from Constance (where condemned) and the Trialog.

Annotatio IV §.XVIII: Wycliffe vs Transubstantiation — bread substance remains; naturally bread, sacramentally body§584

584Wycliffe against Transubstantiation: after consecration the bread’s substance remains on the altar — it does not cease to be bread.

The consecrated Host is naturally true bread and sacramentally Christ’s body — at once body and true bread, as Christ is at once God and man: the Lord’s body IN FIGURE, true bread IN NATURE.

Annotatio IV §.XVIII: Wycliffe — body IN FIGURE, true bread IN NATURE; figurative speech (John = Elijah)§585

585As John the Baptist was figurally Elijah, not personally, so the altar bread is FIGURALLY Christ’s body.

Without ambiguity this is FIGURATIVE speech — like ‘John himself is Elijah.’

Annotatio IV §.XVIII: Luke 22 commemoration seals figurative reading of Institution§586

586Heretics who deny any figurative Gospel speech are not to be heard — Luke 22 at once adds ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’

As if: this sacramental bread is for efficacious memory of me; the Catholic mind grasps bread as Christ’s body only by understanding FIGURATIVELY.

Annotatio IV §.XVIII: Wycliffe vs Consubstantiation / Impanation — impossible and heretical§587

587Against Consubstantiation / Impanation Wycliffe is certain: the sentence is impossible and heretical.

Otherwise Christ’s body would be made not only by the celebrating priest but by the baker — and the celebrant would break Christ’s neck and all His members.

Annotatio IV §.XVIII close: Ambrose — efficacious FIGURE; figurative words + real presence — stop before §.XIX§588

588On the Eucharist ch. 4: Ambrose does not mean bread becomes identically Christ’s body, but His EFFICACIOUS FIGURE.

So Wycliffe holds both: Institution words figurative, and the most real presence of Christ’s body — source of all Eucharistic efficacy — fully acknowledged. Stop before §.XIX.

Annotatio IV §.XIX open: English Waldenses XIV under Wycliffites — succeeded by Bohemian Hussites XV§589

589§.XIX: the Waldenses celebrated in England under the Wycliffites’ name in the fourteenth century are succeeded in the fifteenth century by the BOHEMIAN WALDENSES.

Surnamed HUSSITES from John Hus — Wycliffe’s disciple — taught the true anti-papal sentence through Wycliffe’s writings brought from England by Jerome of Prague.

Annotatio IV §.XIX: Hus like Luther — utraque first; Transubstantiation left with Consubstantiation§590

590Hus, like Luther a century later, could not cast off the whole Papacy at once — he focused labor on Communion under Both kinds, as Luther first on Indulgences.

Transubstantiation he dismissed no less than Luther, and even set with Consubstantiation (prison Tract at Constance in the year 1415). year 1415). Year 1415). He had foretold a swan rising from the goose’s ashes uther.

Annotatio IV §.XIX: Taborites closer — tropical Institution; spiritual not natural presence; faith’s mouth§591

591Hus’s followers — Bohemian Brethren / Taborites — came nearer Supper truth.

They recognize tropical Institution speech and Christ’s presence in the Supper — Spiritual only, not natural/corporal — eating by faith’s mouth, for the faithful not the unbelieving (Lydius’s collected confessions in the year 1616).year 1616).year 1616).

Annotatio IV §.XIX: Lucawitz — true bread in nature; body sacramentally, really, SPIRITUALLY§592

592Lucawitz (chief Taborite doctor): the Supper bread is in its nature true bread — the ‘This’ of ‘This is my body’ points to that bread.

With it is Christ’s true body from the Virgin — not material identity, but sacramentally, really, and SPIRITUALLY; reverence for the habitude to Christ’s body, not for bread’s substance as such; not with all essential and accidental properties.

Annotatio IV §.XIX: Taborite confession 1432 — whole Jesus spiritually; bread and wine substance remains§593

593Those words also form article 1 of the 1432 Taborite Confession on presence and adoration.

Response to the Prague Synod: believe and confess the whole Jesus — true body and blood — in the altar sacrament truly, sacramentally, SPIRITUALLY, bread and wine substance remaining, without all following properties of the body in heaven.

Annotatio IV §.XIX close: Vladislaus confession — four Scripture heads; neither corporal nor bare sign — stop before §.XX§594

594Waldenses to Vladislaus (part 2): Scripture proposes four heads — (1) the Sacrament is bread and wine; (2) that bread/wine are Christ’s true body and Blood; (3) New Testament/covenant; (4) participation of body and blood.

Beware two ditches: lifting too high into CORPORAL/personal presence to our bodies, or sinking to a BARE bloodless Sign — they inculcate Spiritual eating, corporal shut out. Stop before §XXLutheran comparison).

Annotatio IV §.XX open: Danhauer and Strauch try to claim Waldenses as Lutheran Supper allies§595