They do Perish who oppose the Catholic Faith, or forsake it. Chap. 17. But this thing we cannot pass over in silence, that all those miserable persons perish, who will not embrace the Orthodox and Catholic Faith; and those are still more heavily condemned, who forsake it when once known and condemned. CHAP. 1. Vol. ii. p. 420. Of Heresies. CHAP. | 2. Vol. ii. p. 420. Of those who reject the Authority of the Holy Scriptures. Chap. 3. Satan, the great enemy of the Christian name, mingles with the salutary seed of the Divine Scriptures, strewn in the Church of God, so pestilent a heresy, as it were, of tares and cockle, that the firebrands can scarcely be numbered by which the Church is enflamed, and has hitherto been lamentably burnt-the Devil daily accumulating the combustible matter of false opinions. We, therefore, in these our Constitutions, shall briefly touch upon such heresies, the pestilential influence of which is destructive of true religion in this our day. In this class of heretics, they are the most criminal, (and therefore first to be mentioned by us) who lay aside and cast away the Holy Scriptures, as adapted only to the weakness of the infirm, while they themselves would assume so great a superiority over others, as not to consider themselves bound by the authority of Holy Writ, but boast of a certain peculiar Spirit, by which they assert, that every thing, they are to teach or do, is imparted to them. Of those who either reject the Whole of the Old Testament, or make the Whole of it obligatory. Chap. 4. From thence, as in former times, proceeded from this source, the corruptions of the Marcionites, the Valentinians, and the Manichees, and many other similar heretics, by whom the Old Testament was discarded, as being absurd, or faulty, or inconsistent with the New; so in these our times are many to be traced, among whom the Anabaptists are especially to be ranked, who, if any one allege the authority of the Old Testament, will reply, that it is already abrogated, and altogether obsolete, referring every thing that is contained in it to the primitive times of our forefathers; and, therefore, they affirm, that nothing of it is binding upon us. There is an opposite error to this, but of equal impiety, among those who adhere so rigidly to the Old Testament, that they would carry us back even to Circumcision, and to the ceremonies originally instituted by Moses. Of the two Natures of Christ. Chap. 5. Concerning the two-fold nature of Christ, there exists much pernicious and various error. Some of the sect of the Arians so make Christ to be man, that they deny him to be God. Others so judge of him as God, that they do not acknow ledge him as man; and feign that his body, being divinely assumed from heaven, and deposited in the virgin's womb, was simply produced by Mary. Some assert that the Word changed into the nature of flesh, before that it was received into heaven after death, again returned into the divine nature and was absorbed by it. Whose folly they imitate who attribute such extensiveness to the body of Christ, as to believe that all places and numbers are invested with it at all times. But if we confess this, we take away from Christ his human nature. For even as it is an attribute of the divine nature to pervade all things, so is it ever of the human to be circumscribed by limits. Some affirm that the same body is re-created again and again. All which errors are so to be corrected by the authority of the Holy Scriptures, that Christ shall be acknowledged as eternal God in his better nature, and equal with the Father; but in his human nature as having received a body circumscribed by its proper limits, made in time, neither more than once, nor of any other material than of the true and only substance of the Virgin Mary, and in the same manner as other human bodies. CHAP. 6. Vol. ii. p. 43. 7. Vol. i. p. 137. ii. 301. 8. Vol. ii. p. 301. 9. Vol. ii. p. 207, 10. Vol. iii. 524. CHAP. 11. Vol. iii. 525. 12. Vol. i. p. 270. iii, 526. 13. Vol. iii, p. 212. 14, Vol. iii. 398. Of Oaths, and Participation in the Lord's Supper. Chap. 15. Moreover the Anabaptists do not admit the legitimate use of an oath,-in which respect they decide against the authority of the Scriptures and of the Old Testament especially, against the examples of the Fathers, of St. Paul and the Apostles, of Christ,-even of God himself, the oaths of whom are repeatedly mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. For this reason they separate themselves from the body of the Church; they refuse to come to the most holy table of the Lord, and say that they are kept from it by the wickedness either of the ministers or of other communicants; as if excommunication could be put in force against any one before the Church had passed the sentence; in which sentence it is pronounced, that he is to be avoided not less than as a heathen man and a publican. CHAP. GHAP. CHAP, 16. Vol. ii. p. 421. | 17. Vol. ii. 448. | 18. Vol. ii. 503. Of Transubstantiation in the Eucharist, and the actual Conversion, as it is called, of the Body of Christ into Bread. Chap. 19. A most dangerous error has crept in, respecting the Eucharist, amongst those who teach, preach, and contend, that by virtue of certain words which the minister mutters over the symbols. of this Sacrament, the bread is converted (or as they themselves speak)-is transubstantiated into the body of Christ, and in the same manner the wine into his blood: which doctrine unquestionably opposes the Sacred Writings, is inconsistent with the nature of a sacrament, and so degrades the true body of Christ that it either confines in it the divine nature, diffused throughout all space, or makes of it a spectre or machine. We will that this dream of papistical corruption be exploded, and that it should be acknowledged, that the true nature of bread and wine remains in the Eucharist, as the Holy Spirit bears witness in most intelligible language. Wherefore we permit that this Sacrament should neither be elevated nor carried about, nor preserved till the morrow, nor adored. In short, we attach no greater reverence to the Eucharist, than to Baptism, and the Word of God. We will that the symbols of bread and wine, except that they should retain their holy and scripturally established use in the Communion, should be held in no greater estimation than bread and wine possess in common use. Into a similar error do they fall who admit the substance of bread and wine to remain in the Eucharist, but think that by the form of consecration used by the minister, the true and natural body of Christ is added to and is mixed with the nature of the sacramental elements, and is concealed under them so that, whether they be pious or impious, all who come to the Lord's Supper take the true and natural body of Christ, and his blood poured out together with the bread and wine. But the symbols of Sacraments do not really and substan |