TRUTHFUL ARTICLES
CONCERNING THE HORRIBLE, GREAT, AND UNBEARABLE ABUSES
OF THE POPISH MASS,
INVENTED DIRECTLY
AGAINST THE HOLY SUPPER OF OUR LORD,
THE ONLY MEDIATOR AND ONLY SAVIOUR, JESUS CHRIST.
'I invoke heaven and earth in witness of the truth against that proud and pompous popish mass, for the world (if God does not apply a remedy) is and will be by it totally desolated, ruined, lost, and undone; seeing that in it our Lord is outrageously blasphemed, and the people blinded and led astray. Which ought not to be borne any longer.
'In the first place, every believing christian ought to be very certain that our Lord and only Saviour, Jesus Christ, the great bishop and pastor ordained of God, has given His body and soul, His life and blood for our sanctification, by a perfect sacrifice. To renounce this sacrifice as if it were insufficient, to replace it by a visible sacrifice, namely, the mass, as if Christ had not fully satisfied for us the justice of His Father, and as if He were not the Saviour and Mediator, would be a terrible and damnable heresy.
'The world has been, and in many places still is, filled with wretched high-priests, who, as if they were our redeemers, set themselves in Christ's place, and pretend to offer an acceptable sacrifice to God for the salvation both of the living and the dead: do not these people make the apostles and evangelists liars, and do they not even belie themselves, since they chant every Sunday at vespers that Jesus Christ is a priest for ever?...
'Yes, by the great and admirable sacrifice of Jesus Christ all outward and visible sacrifice is abolished. Christ, says the Epistle to the Hebrews (which I entreat everybody to read diligently), was offered once for all.—By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Christ offered once and not often.... If the sacrifice is perfect, why should it be repeated?... Come forward then, ye priests, and answer if ye can!
'That is not all. By this unhappy mass the whole world has been plunged into a common idolatry. Are we not given to understand falsely that under the forms of bread and wine Jesus Christ is corporeally, really, and personally contained, in flesh and bone, as long, broad, and entire as when He was alive?... And yet Holy Scripture and our faith teaches us the contrary, that Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, ascended into heaven. St. Paul writes to the Colossians, Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the Right Hand of God. Listen: St. Paul does not say: Seek Christ who is in the mass, or in the sanctuary, or in the box, or in the cupboard. He says: Seek Christ who is in heaven. If the body is in heaven, it is not on earth; and if it is on earth, it is not in heaven. A real body can never be in more than one place at a time, where it occupies a certain space of a certain size. It is impossible for a man twenty or thirty years old to be hidden in a bit of dough like their wafer.
'Augustin knew this well when he wrote: "Until the world comes to an end, the Lord is on high; but His divinity is everywhere."[206] And so did Fulgentius, when he wrote: "The Lord was absent from heaven, according to his human nature, when he was on earth; and he left the earth when he ascended to heaven. But as for the divine nature, it never quitted heaven when he came down to earth, and did not leave the earth when he ascended to heaven."[207]
'When any one of us says: Lo, here is Christ, or there! the priests say: We must believe him. But Christ says: Believe it not. At the moment of the communion they chant Sursum corda, Lift your hearts on high; but they do the contrary, and exhort us to seek Christ not on high, but in their hands, in their boxes, and in their cupboards.
'Nay, further, these blind priests, adding error to error, teach in their madness, that after they have breathed upon or spoken over the bread, which they take between their fingers, and also over the wine that they put in the chalice, there remains neither bread nor wine, but that Jesus Christ is there alone by transubstantiation.... Big and monstrous words ... doctrine of devils, opposed to all Scripture. I ask these cope-wearers, Where did they find that big word Transubstantiation?... St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. John, St. Paul, and the old Fathers never spoke of it. When they made mention of the Lord's Supper, those holy writers openly and simply called the bread and wine, bread and wine. St. Paul does not say: Eat the body of Jesus Christ; but: Eat this bread. Ah! Scripture employs no deception, and there is no pretence in it. The bread is therefore bread.
'Presumptuous enemies of the Word of God, shameless heretics, they are not satisfied with pretending to enclose the body of Jesus Christ in their wafer; but see into what absurdities their superstition leads them. They are not ashamed to say that the body of Jesus Christ may be eaten by rats, spiders, and vermin.... Yes, there it is printed in red letters in their missals, in the twenty-second Item, beginning thus: If the body of the Lord be eaten by mice and spiders, be reduced to nothing, or be very much gnawed, or if the maggot is found whole inside ... let it be burned and placed in the reliquary!