[The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old by George Bethune English]@TWC D-Link book
The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old

CHAPTER XIII
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As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, (here is an oath) so he likewise that eateth me shall live by me." This strange doctrine was the faith of the Primitive Christians, as is well known to the learned Protestants, though they do not like to say so to their "weaker brethren." Ignatius says, "There is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the unity of his blood;" and of certain heretics he says, "they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ." Justin Martyr, in his Apology, asserts that the consecrated bread "is, some how or other, the flesh of Christ." In the dispute with Latimer about Transubstantiation, it is acknowledged by the most candid writers, that the Roman Catholics had much the advantage.

It must have been so, where quotations from the Fathers were allowed as arguments.

For what answer can be made to the following extracts?
--" What a miracle is this! He who sits above with the Father, at the same instant, is handled by the hands of men." [Chrysostom.] Again, from the same, "That which is in the cup, is the same which flowed from the side of Christ." Again, "Because we abhor the eating of raw flesh; therefore, it appeareth bread, though it be flesh." [Theophylact.] Or to this?
--"Christ was carried in his own hands, when he said 'this is my body.'" [Austin,] Or to this?
--"We are taught, that when this nourishing food is consecrated, it becomes the body and blood of our Saviour." [Justin Martyr.] Or, lastly, to this?
[from Ambrose]--" It is bread before consecration, but after that ceremony, it becomes the flesh of Christ." Another doctrine which Paul derived from the Oriental Philosophy, and Which makes a great figure in his writings, is the notion, that moral corruption originates in the influxes of the body upon the mind.
"It was one of the principal tenets of the Oriental Philosophy, that all evil resulted from matter, and its first founder appears to have argued in the following manner:--"There are many evils in the world, and men seem impelled of a natural instinct to the practice of those things which reason condemns.

But that eternal mind, from which all spirits derive their existence, must be inaccessible to all kinds of evil, and also of a most perfect and beneficent nature; therefore, the origin of these evils with which the world abounds, must be sought somewhere else, than in the Deity.

It cannot abide in him who is all perfection, and, therefore, it must be without him.


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