Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/717

 and order of the universal chuch, you that have that use and custom, shall communicate still, by the authority of the church, under both kinds; and this article shall be discussed fully in the sacred council, where you shall see what, as touching this article, is to be holden as a universal verity, and is to be done for the profit and salvation of the christian people: and all things being thus throughly handled, then, if you persevere in your desire, and your ambassadors do require it, the sacred council will grant license in the Lord unto your ministers, to communicate unto the people under both kinds; that is to say, to such as be of lawful years and descretion, and shall reverently and devoutly require the same: this always observed, that the ministers shall say unto those who shall communicate, that they ought firmly to believe, not the flesh only to be contained under the form of bread, and the blood only under the wine, but under each kind to be whole and perfect Christ.

Thus, hitherto, we have declared the decree of the council. As touching the other doubts and questions which were afterwards moved by the masters and prelates of Bohemia, the ambassadors of the council answered thus:

First they said, That it was not the meaning of the sacred council, to suffer the communion under both kinds by toleration, or as the libel of divorcement was permitted to the Jews; forasmuch as the council, intending even to open the bowels of motherly charity and pity unto the Bohemians and Moravians, doth not mean to suffer it with such kind of sufferance, which should not exclude sin, but so to grant it, that by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his true spouse the church, it may be lawful, profitable, and healthful, unto those who worthily receive the same.

Also, as touching that which was spoken by the said Bohemians, of the punishing of offences, that it is in the Scriptures, how that God offences oftentimes stirreth up the hearts of private persons to the correcting and punishing of sins, and so it should seem lawful unto the inferiors to correct and punish their superiors: they answered, alleging the text of St. Augustine in the thirty-third decree, "He that striketh wicked men in that they are wicked, and hath cause of death against them, is the minister of God: but he who, without any public administration or office, murdereth or maimeth any wicked thief, sacrilegious, punished, adulterous, or perjured person, or any other offender, shall be judged as a homicide; and so much the more sharply, in that he feared not to abuse and usurp the power not granted him of God." And truly this city would take it much more grievously, if any private man should attempt to punish an offender, and set up a gallows in the street and there hang him, than if one man should kill another in brawl or quarrel. They alleged, also, other texts of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, agreeable to the same. They said that no man doubteth that the law of God is duly and holily appointed, and therein is simply written, "Thou shalt not steal;" and, notwithstanding, by the commandment of God, the children of Israel carried away the goods of the Egyptians, which they had borrowed of them. Also, in the same law it is plainly written, "Thou shalt do no murder." Whereupon St. Augustine, in his first book 'De Civitate Dei,' proveth that it is not lawful for any man to kill himself; and when he maketh example of Samson, he answereth with these words: "When God commandeth, and doth affirm himself to command, without any doubt, who is he that will call obedience sin? or who will accuse the obedience to God? Here,