RIGHT REVEREND FATHER,

I AM, against my resolution and proper disposition, by the overruling power of the Divine Providence, which wisely disposes all things, accidentally engaged in the question of transubstantiation, which hath already so many times passed by the fire and under the saw of contention: that, it might seem, nothing could remain, which had not been already considered, and sifted to the bran. I had been by chance engaged in a conference with a person of another persuasion, the man not unlearned nor unwary, but much more confident than I perceived the strength of his argument could warrant; and yet he had some few of the best, which their schools did furnish out and ordinarily minister to their proshluto-dektai, their emissaries and ministers of temptation to our people. I then began to consider, whether there were not much more in the secret of the question, which might not have persuaded him more fiercely than I could then see cause for, or others at least, from whom, upon the strength of education, he might have derived his confidence; and searching into all the secrets of it, I found infinite reason to reprove the boldness of those men, who, in the sum of affairs and upon examination, will be found to think men damned if they will not speak nonsense, and disbelieve their eyes and ears, and defy their own reason, and recede from antiquity, and I believe them in whatsoever they dream, or list to obtrude upon the world who hath been too long credulous, or it could never have suffered such a proposition to be believed by so many men against all the demonstration in the world. And certainly it is no small matter of wonder, that those men of the Roman church should pretend learning, and yet rest their new articles of faith upon propositions against all learning; that they should engage their scholars to read and believe Aristotle, and yet destroy his philosophy, and reason by their article; that they should think all the world fools but themselves, and yet talk and preach such things, which if men had spoken before this new device arose, they would have been thought mad. But if these men had, by chance or interest, fallen upon the other opinion, which we maintain against them, they would have filled the world with declamations against the impossible propositions and the dogmata afilosofa of their adversaries; they would have called us dunces, idiots, men without souls, without philosophy, without sense, without reason, without logic, destroyers of the very first notions of mankind. But now that they are engaged upon the impossible side, they proceed with a prodigious boldness; and seem to wonder that mankind does not receive from them all their first principles, and credit the wildness and new notions of their cataphysics: for metaphysics it is not. Their affirmatives and negatives are neither natural, nor above, nor besides, nature, but against it in those first principles, which are primely credible. For, that I may use St. Austin's words, "Nemo enim huic evidentiæ contradicet, nisi quem plus defensare delectat quod sentit, quam quid sentiendum sit invenire." But I see it is possible for a man to believe any thing he hath a mind to; and this, to me, seems to have been permitted to reprove the vanity of man's imagination, and the confidence of opinion, to make us humble, apt to learn, inquisitive, and charitable; for if it be possible, for so great a company of men, of all sorts and capacities, to believe such impossible things, and to wonder that others do not 'eandem insaniam insanire,' it will concern the wisest man alive to be inquisitive in the articles of his first persuasion, to be diligent in his search, modest in his sentences, to prejudge no man, to reprove the adversaries with meekness, and a spirit conscious of human weakness, and aptness to be abused. But if we remember that Père Coton, confessor to Henry the Fourth of France, was wont to say, "that he could do any thing when he had his God in his hand, and his king at his feet," meaning him at confession, and the other in effigy of the crucifix or in the host, we may well perceive, that they are not such fools but they will consider the advantages that come to their persons and calling, if they can be supposed to make, with pronouncing four words, bread to become God. Upon the reputation of this great thing, the priests were exempt from secular jurisdiction and violence, in the council in Dalmatia held by the legates of Pope Innocent the Third, A. D. 1199. can. 5. Upon this account Pope Urban the Second, in a council which he held at Rome, 1097, against the emperor Henry the Fourth, took from secular princes the investiture of benefices, and advanced the clergy above kings, because "their hands create God their Creator," as Simeon Dunelmensis reports, lib. 2. Chron. apud Vigner. Hist. Eccles. And the same horrible words are used in the famous book called 'Stella Clericorum:' where the priest is called 'the creator of his Creator:3 and thence also infers his privilege and immunity from being condemned. I will not, with any envy and reproach, object to them that saying of a Bohemian priest, against which John Huss wrote a book on purpose, that "before the priest said his first mass, he was but the son of God, but afterward, he was the father of God, and the creator of his body:" it was a rude kind of blasphemy, but not much more than that, which their severest men do say, and were never corrected by their expurgatory indices, and is to be seen in Biel on canon of the mass, lection. 4., and Père de Bessé in his 'Royal Priesthood,' lib. 1. c. 3. where the priest, upon the stock of his power, is advanced above angels, and the blessed Virgin herself: which is the biggest expression, which they can devise, unless they advance him above God himself. The consequent of this is a double honour, that is, an honour and maintenance in such a manner, as may serve the design of ambition, and fill the belly of covetousness.

This was enough to make them willing to introduce it, and, as to them, the wonder ceases; but it is strange the world could receive it; for though men might be willing to believe a thing, that would make for their profit and reputation, yet that they should entertain it to their prejudice, as the other part must do, that, at so great a price, and with so great a diminution of their rights, they should suffer themselves to be cozened of their reason, is the stranger thing of the two. But to this also there were many concurrent causes; for, 1. This doctrine entered upon the world in the most barbarous, most ignorant, and most vicious ages of the world; for we know, when it began, by what steps and progressions it prevailed, and by what instruments. It began in the ninth age; and in the tenth was suckled with little arguments and imperfect pleadings; in the eleventh it grew up with illusions and pretence of miracles; and was christened and confirmed in the twelfth, and afterward lived upon blood, and craft, and violence; but when it was disputed by Pascasius Ratbert, the deacon, in the ninth century, the first collateral device, by which they attempted to set up their fancy, was to devise miracles; which we find done accordingly in the same Pascasius, telling a tale of Plegilus, seeing upon the altar a babe, like that which was pictured in the arms of Simeon: in Joannes Diaconus, telling a story of something in the days of St. Gregory the Great, but never told by any before him, viz. in the year 873, that is two hundred and seventy years after the death of St. Gregory; and extracted from the archives of Rome or Italy out of England, where it seems they could better tell what was so long before done at Rome, by Damianus in the year 1060, who tells two more; by Guitmond writing against Berengarius out of the Vitæ Patrum, by Lanfranck, who served his end upon the report of strange apparitions, and from him Alexander of Hales also tells a pretty tale. For they then observed, that the common people did not only then believe all reports of miracles, but desired them passionately, and with them would swallow any thing: but how vainly and falsely the world was then abused we need no greater witness than the learned bishop of the Canaries, Melchior Camus. And yet even one of these authors, though possibly apt enough to credit or report any such fine device, for the promotion of his new opinion, yet it is vehemently suspected, that even the tale, which was reported out of Pascasius, was, a long time after his death, thrust in by some monk in a place to which it relates not, and which, without that tale, would be more united and more coherent: and yet if this and the other miracles pretended, had not been illusions or directly fabulous, it had made very much against the present doctrine of the Roman church; for they represent the body in such manner, as by their explications it is not, and it cannot be: they represent it broken, a finger, or a piece of flesh, or bloody, or bleeding, or in the form of an infant; and then, when it is in the species of bread: for if, as they say, Christ's body is present no longer than the form of bread remained, how can it be Christ's body in the miracle, when the species being gone, it is no longer a sacrament? But the dull inventors of miracles in those ages considered nothing of this; the article itself was then gross and rude, and so were the instruments of probation. I noted this, not only to shew at what door so incredible a persuasion entered, but that the zeal of prevailing in it hath so blinded the refiners of it in this age, that they still urge these miracles for proof, when, if they do any thing at all, they reprove the present doctrine.

But, besides this device, they enticed the people forward by institution of the solemn feast of Corpus Christi day, entertained their fancies by solemn and pompous processions, and rewarded their worshippings and attendances on the blessed sacrament, with indulgences granted by Pope Urban the Fourth, inserted in the Clementines, and enlarged by John the Twenty-second, and Martin the Fifth, and for their worshipping of the consecrated water they had authentic precedents, even the example of Bonaventure's lamb, St. Francis's mule, St. Anthony of Padua's ass; and if these things were not enough to persuade the people to all this matter, they must needs have weak hearts and hard heads; and because they met with opponents at all hands, they proceeded to a more vigorous way of arguing: they armed legions against their adversaries; they confuted, at one time, in the town of Beziers, sixty thousand persons,--and in one battle disputed so prosperously and acutely, that they killed about ten thousand men that were sacramentaries: and this Bellarmine gives as an instance of the marks of his church; this way of arguing was used in almost all the countries of Christendom, till, by crusadoes, massacres and battles, burnings and the constant carnificia, and butchery of the Inquisition, which is the main prop of the Papacy, and does more than 'Tu es Petrus,'--they prevailed far and near; and men durst not oppose the evidence whereby they fought. And now the wonder is out, it is not strange that the article hath been so readily entertained. But in the Greek church it could not prevail, as appears not only in Cyril's book of late, dogmatically affirming the article in our sense, but in the answer of Cardinal Humbert to Nicetas, who maintained the receiving the holy sacrament does break the fast, which it could not do, if it were not, what it seems, bread and wine, as well as what we believe it to be, the body and blood of Christ.

And now in prosecution of their strange improbable success, they proceed to persuade all people that they are fools, and do not know the measures of sense, nor understand the words of Scripture, nor can tell when any of the fathers speak affirmatively or negatively; and. after many attempts made by divers unprosperously enough (as the thing did constrain and urge them),--a great wit, Cardinal Perron, hath undertaken the question, and hath spun his thread so fine, and twisted it so intricately, and adorned it so sprucely with language and sophisms, that although he cannot resist the evidence of truth, yet he is too subtile for most men's discerning; and though he hath been contested by potent adversaries, and wise men, in a better cause than his own, yet he will always make his reader believe that he prevails; which puts me in mind of what Thucydides told Archidamus the king of Sparta, asking him, 'whether he or Pericles were the better wrestler?' he told him, that 'when he threw Pericles on his back, he would, with fine words, persuade the people, that he was not down at all, and so he got the better.'--So does he; and is, to all considering men, a great argument of the danger that articles of religion are in, and consequently men's persuasions, and final interest, when they fall into the hands of a witty man and a sophister, and one who is resolved to prevail by all means. But truth is stronger than wit, and can endure when the other cannot: and I hope it will appear so in this question, which although it is managed by weak hands, that is, by mine, yet to all impartial persons it must be certain and prevailing, upon the stock of its own sincerity, and derivation from God.

And now, Right Reverend, though this question hath so often been disputed, and some things so often said,--yet I was willing to bring it once more upon the stage, hoping to add some clearness to it, by fitting it with a good instrument, and clear conveyance, and representment, by saying something new, and very many which are not generally known, and less generally noted; and I thought there was a present necessity of it, because the emissaries of the church of Rome are busy now to disturb the peace of consciences by troubling the persecuted, and ejecting scruples into the unfortunate, who suspect every thing, and being weary of all, are most ready to change from the present. They have got a trick to ask, Where is our church now? What is become of your articles of your religion! We cannot answer them as they can be answered; for nothing satisfies them, but being prosperous, and that we cannot pretend to, but upon the accounts of the cross; and so we may indeed "rejoice and be exceeding glad," because we hope that "great is our reward in heaven." But although they are pleased to use an argument, that, like Jonah's gourd or asparagus, is in season only at some times, yet we, according to the nature of truth, inquire after the truth of their religion upon the account of proper and theological objections; our church may be a beloved church and dear to God though she be persecuted, when theirs is in an evil condition by obtruding upon the Christian world articles of religion, against all that which ought to be the instruments of credibility and persuasion, by distorting and abusing the sacraments, by making error to be an art, and that a man must be witty to make himself capable of being abused, by outfacing all sense and reason,--by damning their brethren for not making their understanding servile and sottish,--by burning them they can get, and cursing them that they cannot get,--by doing so much violence to their own reasons,--and forcing themselves to believe, that no man ever spake against their new device,--by making a prodigious error to be necessary to salvation,--as if they were lords of the faith of Christendom.

But these men are grown to that strange triumphal gaiety, upon their joy that the church of England, as they think, is destroyed, that they tread upon her grave, which themselves have digged for her, who lives and pities them; and they wonder, that any man should speak in her behalf, and pose men do it out of spite and indignation, and call the duty of her sons, who are by persecution made more confident, pious, and zealous, in defending those truths for which she suffers on all hands, by the name of 'anger,' and suspect it of 'malicious, vile purposes.' I wondered when I saw something of this folly in one, that was her son once, but is run away from her sorrow, and disinherited himself, because she was not able to give him a temporal portion, and thinks he hath found out reasons enough to depart from the miserable. I will not trouble him, or so much as name him, because if his words are as noted as they are public, every good man will scorn them; if they be private, I am not willing to publish his shame, but leave him to consideration and repentance; but for our dear afflicted mother, she is under the portion of a child, in the state of discipline, her government indeed hindered, but her worshippings the same, the articles as true, and those of the church of Rome as false, as ever, of which I hope the following book will be one great instance. But I wish that all tempted persons would consider the illogical deductions, by which these men would impose upon their consciences: if the church of England be destroyed, then transubstantiation is true; which indeed had concluded well, if that article had only pretended false, because the church of England was prosperous. But put the case the Turk should invade Italy, and set up the Alcoran in St. Peter's church, would it be endured that we should conclude that Rome was antichristian, because her temporal glory is defaced? The Apostle, in this case, argued otherwise. The church of the Jews was cut off for their sins; 'Be not high-minded, O Gentile, but fear,' lest he also cut thee off; it was counsel given to the Romans. But though, blessed be God, our afflictions are great, yet we can and do enjoy the same religion, as the good Christians in the first three hundred years did theirs; we can serve God in our houses, and sometimes in churches; and our faith, which was not built upon temporal foundations, cannot be shaken by the convulsions of war and the changes of state. But they who make our afflictions an objection against us, unless they have a promise that they shall never be afflicted, might do well to remember, that if they ever fall into trouble, they have nothing left to represent or make their condition tolerable; for by pretending religion is destroyed when it is persecuted, they take away all that, which can support their own spirits and sweeten persecution; however, let our church be where it pleases God it shall, it is certain that transubstantiation is an evil doctrine, false and dangerous; and I know not any church in Christendom, which hath any article more impossible, or apt to render the communion dangerous, than this in the church of Rome: and since they command us to believe all, or will accept none, I hope the just reproof of this one will establish the minds of those who can be tempted to communicate with them in others. I have now given an account of the reasons of my present engagement; and though it may be inquired also, why I presented it to you, I fear I shall not give so perfect an account of it; because those excellent reasons, which invited me to this signification of my gratitude, are such which, although they ought to be made public, yet I know not whether your humility will permit it; for you had rather oblige others than be noted by them. Your predecessor in the see of Rochester, who was almost a cardinal, when he was almost dead, did, publicly, in those evil times, appear against the truth defended in this book,--and yet he was more moderate and better tempered than the rest; but be-cause God hath put the truth into the hearts and mouths of his successors, it is not improper, that to you should be offered the opportunities of owning that which is the belief and honour of that see, since the religion was reformed. But lest it be thought that this is an excuse, rather than a reason of my address to you, I must crave pardon of your humility, and serve the end of glorification of God in it, by acknowledging publicly that you have assisted my condition by the emanations of that grace, which is the crown of martyrdom: expending the remains of your lessened fortunes, and increasing charity upon your brethren, who are dear to you, not only by the band of the same ministry, but the fellowship of the same sufferings. But indeed the cause, in which these papers are engaged, is such that it ought to be owned by them, that can best defend it; and since the defence is not with secular arts and aids, but by spiritual; the diminution of your outward circumstances cannot render you a person unfit to patronise this book, because where I fail, your wisdom, learning, and experience, can supply: and therefore, if you will pardon my drawing your name from the privacy of your retirement into a public view, you will singularly oblige, and increase those favours, by which you have already endeared the thankfulness and service of,

Right Reverend,
Your most affectionate
And endeared Servant in the Lord Jesus,

JER. TAYLOR.

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