In any revolt against excessive priestly power, one would have expected that such a doctrine as Transubstantiation would have been the first to be attacked.
Transubstantiation has been bothering me," he wrote to a friend; "not that I lean to it, but I have seen no refutation of it.
For His Majesty clung to the doctrine of Transubstantiation closer than to any other tenet; not so much on account of his faith--did he believe anything?
He had said that if Transubstantiation were true, he had eaten “twenty Gods” in his time.
Under Henry VIII he was a schismatic and a firm believer in transubstantiation and in the wisdom of invoking saints; when Edward came to the throne he turned quasi-Calvinist.
The synod of 1405 asserted the doctrine of transubstantiation in its most absolute shape; any one teaching otherwise was pronounced a heretic, and was ordered to be reported to the archbishop for punishment.
Transubstantiation was emphatically affirmed as well as the seven sacraments.
In vain he protested that he believed in transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in polluted hands.
There was also the denial of transubstantiationand of the existence of hell, which may probably be left out of account as foreign to the recognized tenets of mysticism.
Transubstantiation is not the doctrine of God's word; neither was it the doctrine of the early Church.
Transubstantiation of the Roman Mass, the Consubstantiation of the Lutherans, and, implicitly though not explicitly, the purely commemorative theory of Hooper and the Zwinglians.
No one could have murmured against his punishment for treason two years before; but he died a martyr, for denying Transubstantiation and the Papal authority.
In view, however, of the rapid development of Luther's doctrinal conceptions, we might further ask: Did Luther still retain his belief in transubstantiation at the time when he wrote the Treatise on the New Testament?
Transubstantiation and all the abominations of priest-worship.
Just consider what tortuous logic, what wire-drawing ingenuity have been exercised to defend guilt by imputation, and righteousness by imputation—absurdities as great morally, as transubstantiation is intellectually.
The dogma excited great discussion for centuries, and produced as many theories of transubstantiation as we now observe of evolution, keeping philosophic minds and pens busy till the dawn of modern science after the Reformation.
One writer (I forget the name) inveighs against it as Popery, and a Popish stratagem to reconcile the minds of men to Transubstantiation and the Mass.
I was half converted to Transubstantiation by Tillotson's common senses against it; seeing clearly that the same grounds 'totidem verbis et syllabis' would serve the Socinian against all the mysteries of Christianity.
But of all the remainder, Impanation, Consubstantiation, and the like, I confess that I should prefer the Transubstantiation of the Pontifical doctors.
Footnote 145: The test-oath, against popery, in which transubstantiationis formally disavowed.
These two last pamphlets were afterwards thrown together in one tract, entitled, "A Discourse concerning Transubstantiationand Idolatry, being an Answer to the Bishop of Oxford's plea relating to these two points.
Unfortunately, bigoted and servile theologians had turned it into a religious mystery, almost as awful and as incomprehensible as transubstantiation itself.
The sacramental test and the declaration against transubstantiation were unknown nor was either House of Parliament closed against any religious sect.
Sir Thomas More went back to the doctrine of transubstantiation which the wisdom of his age was almost unanimous in rejecting.
The transubstantiation of Henry VIII is quite as rational as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Eucharist.
In these he defends almost everything we deem popery, such as transubstantiation (Opera Theologica, iv.
This aimed to prove that the tenet of transubstantiation had been constant in the church.
But since it is not necessary to assume a transubstantiation wrought by Divine power, it is to be regarded as a figment of the human mind, or it rests neither on Scripture nor on reason, as we shall see.
Does philosophy fathom that transubstantiation of theirs, of which they themselves admit that here all philosophy breaks down?
If that is correct, I ask: If a transubstantiation must be assumed in order that Christ's body be not predicated of the bread, why not also a transaccidentation in order that it be not predicated of the accidents?
He is no less clear for transubstantiation in his great catechistical discourse (c.
The former contains a clear profession of transubstantiationand the sacrifice of the mass.
Our holy doctor explains to his neophytes the doctrine of transubstantiation in so plain terms, that no one can doubt of its being the faith of the Church in the fourth age.
A little later Luther solemnly reaffirmed that “Transubstantiation is purely Thomistic” (1522).
Here it may be objected, that Hooker could preach against Rome and I could not; but I doubt whether he could have preached effectively against Transubstantiation better than I, though neither he nor I held that doctrine.
People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiationis difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic.
The doctrine of Transubstantiation is a great difficulty with me, as being, as I think, not primitive.
Sir Thomas More," he says, "is one of the choice specimens of wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge.
The doctrine of Bossuet, that transubstantiation is affirmed in the Gospel, and the doctrine of Tillotson, that transubstantiation is an absurdity, when put together, produced by logical necessity the inferences of Voltaire.
But when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for the doctrine of transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt whether the doctrine of transubstantiation may not triumph over all opposition.
But Sir Thomas More is one of the choice specimens of human wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge.
We are, therefore, unable to understand why what Sir Thomas More believed respecting transubstantiationmay not be believed to the end of time by men equal in abilities and honesty to Sir Thomas More.
