Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/404

384 Fridays, Saturdays, the eves of saints' days, Ember days, and Lent, were ordered to be observed in the usual manner, under penalties for each offence of a fine of ten shillings and ten days' imprisonment. It was undesirable to allow the fishermen to be thrown suddenly out of employment till a natural demand had taken the place of an artificial one; it would have been better if, in other respects as well as here, ancient customs had been allowed to wear themselves out, and to die of disuse.

But the question of the session was the Prayer-book and the Act of Uniformity; and in the Prayer-book the service for the communion. The change of substance in the elements at the eucharist, the material incorporation of the believers in the body of Christ by the reception of those elements, was and is the essential and central doctrine of the Catholic Church. That body when it left the grave was subject no longer to the ordinary conditions of matter. It ascended to heaven, that it might fill all things. In the sacrament it became flesh of man's flesh, and not in metaphor, but in literal truth, was the mechanical instrument of man's salvation. So the Catholic believed; so more vaguely, yet not less positively, the Lutheran believed. The mystic words spoken by the priest in the consecration formed the keystone of the arch which joined the visible and the invisible worlds; and round these words and their accessories the controversy between Catholic,