Thus, when Cyril of Jerusalem writes; Whatsoever the Holy Spirit hath touched, that thing is sanctified and changed: Bp. Trevern forces him to say; All that, which has received the impression of the Holy Spirit, is sanctified and changed INTO ANOTHER SUBSTANCE. [66a]
And thus, when the old author of the Treatise on the Sacraments in the Works of Ambrose writes; They are changed into other: Bp. Trevern remorselessly compels him to say; They pass into another SUBSTANCE. [66b]
5. For our fifth specimen we are indebted jointly to Bp. Trevern and Mr. Berington.
Cyprian speaks of men being cleansed for sins through the suffering of long pain and of their being long purged in fire. [66c]
These expressions, as the whole context shews and as it was rightly observed by the honest romish commentator Rigaltius, relate simply to the allegorical fire of penitential austerities in this world: a fire, in which, by the early discipline of the Church, it was required, that the lapsed should for an appointed season be exercised.
But Bp. Trevern and Mr. Berington, wholly suppressing the context and saying not a single syllable about their respectable fellow-religionist Rigaltius, gravely adduce the passage as proof positive: that Cyprian, in the middle of the third century, held and taught the existence of a Purgatory after death in the next world. [67]
6. Our sixth specimen is afforded by Mr. Husenbeth.
The famous text in the Gospel of St. Matthew, which exhibits our Lord as saying, Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, is universally explained by the Romish Clergy, as being a grant from Christ of a monarchal supremacy in the Catholic Church, both to Peter individually, and to Peter’s alleged heirs and successors the Bishops of Rome.
Now, most unluckily for this current explanation, the primitive theologians knew nothing of it: for, while the early Fathers, Justin and Tertullian and Cyprian and Origen and Athanasius and Jerome and Augustine and Chrysostom and Hilary, differ as to the true meaning of the text (some supposing the rock to be Peter personally and exclusively; some, to be Christ himself; and some, to be Peter’s confession of Christ’s divinity); NOT ONE of them interprets it, as the Romish Clergy would now interpret it.
Yet, by way of putting to open shame every opponent of the Pope’s supremacy by divine right, Mr. Husenbeth deliberately assures his plain country readers: that, by ALL the holy Fathers and Doctors, by ALL the Councils, and by the most learned and pious men in the world in EVERY age down to the Reformation, the text in question has been UNIFORMLY understood as it is now explained by the Romish Clergy. [68a]