Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/441

Rh witness, true, truth and life,' so the Lord's supper is the memory (memoria) of the present and infinite and eternal of, the Only Begotten of the Father, who offers and exhibits to the elect, who apprehend the Gospel of  with true faith, Himself and His good things, His flesh and His blood, i.e. living bread and heavenly food, through (ope) the Holy Spirit, by the word of the promise of grace." Yet of the elements it says, that the "bread and wine are, in regard to their object, the memory of the death [..] , i.e. signs admonishing of the death of Christ:" and the "presence of  in His sacramental institution, or in the pouring out of the  upon the elect," is paralleled as a presence of the like kind, with that "by the union with the , or, in His promise by the word and faith, or in His dispensatorial office or intercession for the elect." Through this whole confession there runs a strange, uncouth, barbarous strain of theology, a compound of Sabellianism, Mysticism, Rationalism, such as no where else perhaps occurs in any other document, of any body of men, professing Christianity. Yet they too keep the received protest, that "the Sacraments are not empty signs," &c. (Of it Augusti says, l.c. p. 635, "the Czingerians [whose confession it is] are among all Calvinists the most vehement, and in the article of the Supper they utter so many harsh and odious things, that they can be approved of by neither party, Zuinglians or Lutherans," which is a mild sentence).

8. The Genevan Catechism expresses so precisely the doctrine and language of Calvin, that to dwell upon its statements would only be to repeat what has been already said (p. 108 sqq.): the Catechumen is told, not only that he "must not cling to the visible signs, to obtain health from them, nor imagine any power of conferring grace attached or inclosed in them, but that the sign is to be accounted as a sort of prop, whereby we may be directed straight to, to seek health and solid happiness from Him." He is told that "infants have the efficacy and substance of Baptism (so to speak) (before they are baptized), so that a manifest injustice would be done them, if the sign (Baptism), which is inferior to the reality, were denied them." It is remarkable again that in this catechism, the Sacraments are incidentally called "secondary instruments," which is a sort of approach to the ancient language of the Church, although Calvin strongly denied their being "instruments" or "channels" in the Church's sense.

9. In the confessions of the German "reformed" Church, or rather Churches, there is a great difference. The Heidelberg Catechism (as would be certain from its chief author, Z. Ursinus, with whom was united Caspar Olivianus, Augusti p. 649.) expresses (as far as it goes,) the Calvinist or Zuinglian doctrine: the use of the Sacraments is confined to teaching. "Whereby," it is asked with respect to