Answer unto a Crafy and Sophistical Cavillation, Debate · Confutation of book 3 · Section 72
Winchester.
Ambrostus.As touching S. Ambrose, this author taketh a great enterprise to wrastle with him whose playne and euident words must nedes be a rule to try his other words by, if any might be writhed. What can be more playnly spoken thē S. Ambrose speaketh, whē he sayth these wordes? It is bread consecration, but after it is Christes body. By the word consecration,Consecration. is siguified (as it is here placed) Gods omnipotent work. Wherfore in this place it cōprehendeth asmuch as Emissen said in these wordes, he conuerteth by the secret power of his word. God is the worker, and so consecratiō signifieth the whole action of his omnipotency in working the substance of this high mistery, & therefore the diffinition of the wordconsecration as it is generally taken, can not be a rule to the vnderstanding of it in this high mistery, where it is vsed to expres a singular work as the circumstāce of S. Ambrose writing doth declare. For as Philip Melancthon writeth to Decolampadius,Melancthon. S. Ambrose would neuer hauehave trauailed to accumulate so many miracles as he doth, speaking of this matter to declare Gods omnipotency, and he had not thought the nature of bread to be chaunged in this mistery. These be Melancthons very wordes. Now to aunswere the question, as it were at the word change, this author shall come with a sacramentall change which is a deuise in termes to blind the rude reader.Sacramentall chaunge. S. Ambrose doth expresse playnly what the change is, whē he writeth the wordes before rehersed.
It is bread before the consecration, but after it is the body of Christ. Can a chaunge be more playnely declared? The nere way for this author had bene to hauehave ioyned Ambrose with Clement, and called him fayned by the Papistes, rather then after the effect of consecration so opened by S. Ambrose himselfe, to trauail to proue what it may signify, if it were in an other matter. And then to admonish the reader, how the bread & wine hauehave no holines, which forme of speach not vnderstanded of the people, engēdreth some scruple that nedeth not, being no sound forme of doctrine, for S. Paul speaketh & teacheth thus,1. Tim. 4. De peccat…ne. & …e. li. 2. cap. 26. that the creatures be sanctified by the word of God & prayer, and S. Augustine writeth of sanctified bread to be geuen to them that be catechised before they be baptised. And this author himselfe expoundeth S. Cyprian in the. 35. leafe of this booke, how the diuinity is poured into the bread Sacramentally, which is a straunge phrase not expressing there Cyprians minde, and far discrepant from the doctrine here.
And in an other place this author saith,Fol. 86. pa. 2. that as hote and burning yron is yron still, & yet hath the force of fyre: so the bread & wine be turned into the vertue of Christs flesh and bloud. By which similitude bread may conceyue vertue, as yron conceyueth fyre, & then as we cal yron burning and fyry, so we may call bread vertuous and holy vnles the author would agayn resemble bread to a whetstone that may make sharp and hauehave no sharpenee in it at all. Which matter I declare thus, to shew that as this author dissenteth from truth in other, so be dissenteth from that he vttereth for truth himselfe, and walketh in a maze, impugning the very truth in this sacrament, and would hauehave that taken for a Catholick doctrine that is not one, and the same doctrine through this whole booke so farre of is it from the whol of Christiā teaching. But now let vsus consider what speches of S. Ambrose this author bringeth forth, wherewith to alter the truth of the very playne proper speech of S. Ambrose saying: It is bread before the consecration, & after it is Christes body.
S. Ambrose as this author saith in an other place sayth thus: Before the Benediction of the heauenly words, it is called an other kind of thing, but after the consecration is signifyed the body and bloud of Christ. And an other speach thus. Before the consecration it is called an other thing, but after the consecration it is named the bloud of Christ and yet a third speech where the word (call) is vsed before and after both, as thou reader maist sée in this authors booke in the 83. leafe. Now good reader, was there euer man so ouersene as this author is, who seeth not S. Ambrose in these thre latter speaches to speake as playnely as in the first. For in the last speach S, Ambrose saith, it is called bread before the consecration and called the body of Christ after the consecration. And I would demaund of this author, doth not this word (call) signify the truth that is bread in deed before the cōsecration? which if it be so, why shal not ye same word (cal) signify also the very truth added to the wordes of the body of Christ after the consecration? And likewise when he sayth, speaking of the body of Christ the word (signified) or (named) which is as much as (call). The body of Christ is signifyed there, for Christ sayd this is my body. &c. vsyng the outward signes of the visible creatures to signify the body & bloud present,Luc. …. & not absent. Was not Christ the true sonne of God, because the angell said, he shalbe called the sonne of God? But in these places of S. Ambrose, to expresse plainely what he ment by (calling) he putteth that word (call) to the bread, before the consecratiō, aswell as to the body of Christ after the consecration, thereby to declare how in his vnderstanding the word (call) signifieth as much truth in the thing where unto it is added after consecration as before, and therfore as it is by S. Ambrose called bread before consecration, signif…ing it was so indéed, so it is called signifyed or named (which thrée thus placed be all one in effect) the body of Christ after the consecration and is so in deed agreable to the playne spech of S. Ambrose, where he sayth: It is bread before consecration and it is the body of Christ after consecration. As touching the spirituality of the meat of Christes body, I hauehave spoken before, but where this author addeth it requireth no corporall presence, he speaketh in his dreame beyng oppressed with slepe of ignorance and can not tell what (corporall) meaneth as I hauehave opened before by ye authority of Cyril. Now let vsus see what this author sayth to Chrysostome.