Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/304

  WOIOHi Or THB HOST. [Book II. CHAPTER VII. WORSHIP OF THE HOST. 1. Their doctrine stated. Council of Trent quoted: 2. The primitive church lmt no such worship: 3. It is idolatry to worship that for God which is not God: 4. All the marks and reproac_hea of idolatry apply to the adoration of the host. Minutius Felix cited: �he adoration of the host is peculiarly absurd: 6. Their eating their sup!2oeed God in the wafer is notably atmurd: 7. Their plea, that they worship only Christ, is not valid: 8. They say their tood intention screens them from idolatry. Absurdity of titis: 9. Their practice in this adoration. Mode of adoration. Proces- sions. Practice in Spain. Litany of the sacrament: I0. The feast of Corpus Christi. 1. WE come now to inquire, whether Roman Catholics have not greatly erred, and are not guilty of a gross corruption, when they wor- ship the wafer in the sacrament with the same hensilt with which they worship God, and oblige all the members of their church to do the same. That ,is is their practice, none can deny; that it is the doc- trine of their church, the Council of Trent plainly declares. After that council hath declared, that after consecration the bread and wine in the sacrament are changed into our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man; and that though our Saviour always sits at the right hand of God in heaven, he is, notwithstanding, in many other places sacra- mentally present, we have the following decision: "There is, there- fbre, no room to doubt but that the faithful of Christ should adore his most holy sacrament with ,that highest worship due to the true God, according to the constant usage in the Catholic Church. Nor is it the ]ess to be thus adored, that it was instituted by Christ our Lord to be eaten." "If any one shall say that this holy sacrament should not be adored, nor solemnly carried about in procession, nor held up publicly to the people to adore it, or that its worshipperu are idolaters; let him be accursed."* This worship they give the host (the round wafer) not only at the time of receiving it, but whenever it is carried about in the streets. All persons are, by the sound of a bell, admonished to wor- ship the passing God; and if any refuse to do so, and say the practice is wwng, he is pronounced accursed. So all are accursed who do not offer supreme adoration to the host, which a mouse may run off with and eat, or the priest himself may eat and vomit, and eat again ! ! 2. The Catholic Church of Christ, in the first ages, had no such worship. That it is a novelty, not known till 1216, is plain: 1. Be- cause it was in 1215 that transubstantiation, by the Council of Lateran under Pope Innocent III., was made an article of faith, as Scotus, Tonstal, and others write. 2. In the Roman canon law we find that it was Pope Honorius wh ordered, in the following year, that the priests, at a certain part of the mass service, should elevate the host, and cause the people to prostrate themselves in worshipping it. Besides a profound silence of antiquity' concerning it, we have this + "N*ullm itaque dubitandi locus relinquitur, quin omnes Christi fideles, pro more in Cathollca Ecclesia semper recepto, latrim culttun quivero Dee debetur, huic sanc. tissimo sacramento in veneratione exhibeant; neque eniln ides minus eat adorandum, qued fuerit a Christs Domino. ut sumslur, institutum.** "Si quis dixerit non soles. niter circumgeatandum in processionibus, vel non publice ut adoretur proposehalOs, aut ejus adoratores ease idolarras; anathema sit."--Con. Trid., seas. xiii, c. 5, can. 6. 1

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