tially (as it is said) include the things which they signify. Moreover, it is declared by the Holy Scriptures that Christ carried his human nature into heaven, nor will again descend with it upon earth, till the time of the last judgment. Besides, as this feigned presence of the natural body of Christ has no greater tendency to religious edification, than the presence of Christ which is perceived by faith; and indeed carries with it many inexplicable questions, as well as false and awful assertions, we will that this absurd doctrine by which the body and blood are naturally and substantially (as they say) present in the Eucharist, and are wholly included in it, should be abolished, because it is strange and foreign to the Sacred Scriptures,-contrary to the truth of the human nature which Christ assumed,—and very incompatible with the nature of a Sacrament;-lastly, because it is the source of many corruptions introduced into the Church of God. CHAP. 20. Vol. iii. 281. Of the Roman Church, and the Powers of the Roman Pontiff. Chap. 21. Their madness also is to be restrained by the force of the laws, who think that the Roman Church is so founded on a rock that it has never erred nor can err: whereas many are its errors which might be mentioned in the remembrance of our ancestors, and be adduced even in this our t should be regulated, and partly in those by which our faith should be established. Wherefore their ambition is not to be tolerated, who desire that the universal Church of the Christian world should be placed under the dominion of the Bishop of Rome alone. For we thus define a visible Church, that it is an assembly of faithful men in which the Holy Scripture is sincerely taught, and the Sacraments, in all their essential parts, are admi, nistered according to Christ's institution. CHAP. 22. Vol. ii. 76. Epilogue. A great collection of other heresies might be alluded to; but we are willing to mention at present only those which are most prevalent in the Church in these our times: all the faithful bearing witness in the name of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, that from these most pestilent opinions they are far removed; and we earnestly urge those who administer in the State and the Church, that they should do their utmost to pluck out and utterly extirpate these heresies from our kingdom. CHAP. Of Sacraments. 1. Vol. ii. p. 449. CHAP. 6. Vol. ii. p. 421. Having now placet vein the Live To history of those works of te lewer win the Author has esteemed vation and comparsol out the degree of credit: a curr are to be attacked he has formistet i sufices decide upon the miing a user sa sent endearon, 1 reuter bedr Christian statet e mai from the best of sumon ta e themselves, that there UCTED between then-dur alt veg etwa the same sort at crew leather doctrines, as this FE TRENIN 1 be said in honour of this noble effort in the cause of true religion-the first in point of date, and perhaps too the first in excellence, of all the Protestant Confessions which were put forth between the years 1530 and 1586. Our own Reformers never, as it would seem, lost sight of the sound principles on which it was composed, while engaged in the arduous task of preparing a national Confession for the Church of England. TO MELANCTHON, the pious, the learned, the amiable Author of the Augustan Confession, our Reformers appear to have been indebted for much more than is generally supposed. They do not hesitate to express their ideas in whole pages taken from his writings, word for word and in their public declarations the Augustan and Saxonic Confessions, of both of which he was the Author, are no less freely adopted. They, indeed, followed no man servilely; they sought out their tenets in the infallible Word of God; but in their interpretation of the Divine Scriptures, and in their application of them, they but seldom differed from Melancthon. The mind of Melancthon, which was supereminently adorned by all the mild and engaging characteristics of a true disciple of the meek and lowly Jesus, and which in this re-spect distinguished him from his great compeers Luther and Calvin, seems to have shed its benignant influence over the deliberations of our martyrs, and his language to have been, almost insensibly, made their own. Our Church is not, indeed, tied down to the teaching of any human master, however celebrated as a champion of the Protestant Faith,-it accepts no name, as indicative of any peculiar doctrines-it is simply scriptural: but if it were to acknowledge its obligations to any one individual rather than another, it would surely be to him with whom it most entirely symbolizes—it would not be disgraced by being denominated Melancthonian. The Confession of Augsburg, otherwise called the Augustan Confession, was presented to the Emperor Charles the Fifth at the memorable Diet of Augsburg, by the noble Protestants of Germany, in the year 1530. It was written in the German language, but translated and published the same year in Latin. In 1538 this Confession was revised and somewhat enlarged, in order to be presented to the Diet at Worms. Both versions are given,-the latter being placed between crotchets to distinguish itwherever there is any variation between them, in order that it may be seen in what respects the latter is explanatory of the former; and they have both been carefully collated with the Latin copies contained in the edition of Melancthon's works published in 1601. |