the Reformation. In justice, then, to ourselves, as well as to the Romanists, we must bear in mind that the unhappy and fatal Canons of the Council of Trent, were directed, in part, against actual error, such as had mixed itself with the then, as well as with former, attempts at reformation. And we should do well to recollect that, though bound to thank God for all those, through whom the light of the Gospel shone more clearly, we always were regarded by them as a distinct and peculiar Church, and are not to identify ourselves with them. The Calvinist writer[1], so often quoted, says, very appositely to these times, (in answer to the charge of Popery, for holding Baptismal regeneration, even of Elect Infants,) "I like not that vain conceit that we should in all points goe as far from Papists and other Heretics as possibly we can. This is that which never did good: ever did and ever will do hurt: when men will take that to be truth only, which standeth in most direct opposition to that which is knowne and confessed to be a grosse error." In the present instance, our Church, which, under the influence of Reformed Divines, in the Articles of Edw. 6., declared[2] against the doctrine of the opus operatum, has omitted this censure of it in our
- ↑ Burges l.c. p. 325, 6. comp. Hooker's golden observations B. iv. particularly c. 8.
- ↑ In what is now Art. 25, after "in such only as worthily receive the same, they have a wholesome effect and operation;" there followed, "and that not ex opere operato, 'the work wrought,' (as some speak,) which word, as it is strange and unknown to Holy Scripture, so it engendereth no godly, but a very superstitious sense." Articles A. 1552. (Sparrow's collection, p. 48.) At the same time some other Zuinglian expressions were omitted in the 25th Article, as also the somewhat rationalistic argument against the ubiquity of Christ's body, "because our bodies could not be in two places at once;" and again the denial of the real and corporeal presence of His body and blood. (The real and the corporeal presence are always confused by the school of Zuingli). In our Thirty Nine Articles is also added, for the first time, the sentence, that "the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten," &c. which is decisive against any Zuinglian view of the Sacraments. These are so many indications of a return to the original views of our first most distinguished reformers, which were neither Romanist, Lutheran, nor Zuinglian, but those of the primitive Church.
