§. X.
Nevertheless I doubt not but many, whose Understandings have been clouded with these Ceremonies, have notwithstanding, by the Mercy of God, had some secret Sense of the Mystery, which they could not clearly understand, because it was sealed from them by their sticking to such outward Things; and that through that secret Sense diving in their Comprehensions they ran themselves into these carnal Apprehensions, as imagining the Substance of the Bread was changed, or that if the Substance was not changed, yet the Body was there, &c. Calvin’s ingenuous Confession commended.And indeed I am inclinable very favourably to judge of Calvin in this Particular, in that he deals so ingenuously to confess he neither comprehends it, nor can express it in Words; but yet by a feeling Experience can say, The Lord is spiritually present. Now as I doubt not but Calvin sometimes had a Sense of his Presence without the Use of this Ceremony, so as the Understanding given him of God made him justly reject the false Notions of Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation, though he knew not what to establish instead of them, if he had fully waited in the [134]Light that makes all Things manifest, and had not laboured in his own Comprehension to settle upon that external Ceremony, by affixing the spiritual Presence as chiefly or principally, though not only, as he well knew by Experience, there, or especially to relate to it, he might have further reached unto the Knowledge of this Mystery than many that went before him.
[134] Ephes. 5. 13.