XXIII—Of Ministering in the CongregationIt is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of publick preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which be chosen and called to this work by men who have publick authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.
Meet the Puritans is a conversation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting us.
Meet the Puritans is a conversation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting us.
For previous posts in this series, see:
These volumes are currently out-of-print but used copies can be found online here. For a schedule of weekly readings, go here.
From a purely historiographical perspective, the problem of much of the theological scholarship on Protestant scholasticism lies in its neglect of the history of philosophy in the seventeenth century – not the history of philosophy writ large in the thought of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, but the history of philosophy writ small, in the thought of the many significant thinkers in the academies and the universities, whose work has all too often been ignored in the broad surveys.
Meet the Puritans is a conversation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting us.
For previous posts in this series, see:
Week 2: I.1.1.2–3 (pgs. 46–84)
Thanks to our friends at Latimer Trust we have two (2) copies of Pilgrims, Warriors, and Servants: St Antholin Lectures Volume 1: 1991-2000 edited by Lee Gatiss. This volume includes the following chapters:
Papal Errors in the Lord’s Supper
Perkins said the signs of the Supper do not change with respect to their “substance” but in their being set apart “from a common to a holy use.”[4] He refuted the doctrine of transubstantiation with these arguments: (1) How could Christ’s body literally be eaten before He was crucified? His disciples ate the bread in the first institution of the Supper. (2) The bread is broken into parts, but every communicant receives the whole body of Christ. (3) The bread is the “communion” of Christ’s body (1 Cor. 10:16) and therefore is not itself the body. (4) If this were truly Christ’s body, would that body not only be made from the substance of Mary but also “of baker’s bread”? (5) Over time, remainders of the bread will mold and leftover wine will sour, proving they retain their substance as food. (6) Transubstantiation overthrows the analogy between a sign and what it represents by replacing the sign with the reality.[5]
Transubstantiation turns bread into an idol, Perkins said, adding, “By this means, bread is exalted above men and angels, and is received into the unity of the Second Person” of the Trinity. Perkins said that this is evident in how Roman Catholics treat the bread after the Supper: “Therefore the Host (as it is called) or the bread in the box, carried in procession and worshiped, is nothing else but a wheaten or bread-god, and an idol, not inferior to Aaron’s calf.”[6] For this reason the Puritans objected to the Anglican practice of kneeling to receive the Supper, saying it implied the superstitious worship of the bread and cup.[7]
Perkins was willing to acknowledge that the Supper was a sacrifice of praise for Christ’s death on the cross and the presentation of ourselves as living sacrifices in response to His mercies, accompanied by the sacrifice of alms given to the poor (Heb. 13:15–16; Rom. 12:1). In the Supper, Christ’s sacrifice is sacramentally present in the symbols and mentally present in the believing remembrance of communicants.[8]
But Perkins rejected the notion that the minister serves as a priest who offers a real, bodily sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, for the Puritans recognized “only Christ’s oblation [offering] on the cross once offered.”[9] He presented the following arguments:
The Puritans opposed the Roman doctrine that the sacraments had inherent power from God to confer grace; Perkins said the effect of a sacrament is subject to God’s will. He wrote, “No action in the dispensation of a sacrament conferreth grace as it is a work done, that is, by the efficacy and force of the very sacramental action itself.” On the contrary, the sacraments work by addressing the mind of believers with the promises of the covenant, leading them to consider those promises rationally and so be confirmed in faith, Perkins said. He also specified that the grace conferred is not the grace of justification but an increase of sanctification. “A man of years must first believe and be justified, before he can be a meet [qualified] partaker of any sacrament,” Perkins said.[11] To make a sacrament effective by doing the work (ex opera operato) makes it an idol, for only God can give grace.[12]
[1] “Westminster Confession of Faith” (29.6), in Westminster Confession of Faith (1994; repr., Glasgow: Free Presbyterian Publications, 2003), 117–18.
[2] John Owen, “Two Short Catechisms,” in The Works of John Owen, ed. William Goold (repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 1:490–91.
[3] Jonathan Edwards, Sermons on the Lord’s Supper (Orlando, Fla.: The Northampton Press, 2007), 5.
[4] Perkins, “A Golden Chaine,” in Works, 1:71.
[5] Perkins, “A Golden Chaine,” in Works, 1:76. For further Protestant polemics against the Mass published in English, see Alexander Cooke, Worke, More Worke, and a Little More Worke for a Mass-Priest (London: Jones, 1628); David de Rodon, The Funeral of the Mass, or, The Mass Dead and Buried without hope of Resurrection, trans. out of French (London: T. H. for Andrew Clark, 1677); Owen, “A Vindication of the Animadversions on ‘Fiat Lux,’” in Works, 14:411–26; William Payne, The Three Grand Corruptions of the Eucharist in the Church of Rome (London: for Brabazon Ayler, 1688); and three sermons: Edward Lawrence, “There Is No Transubstantiation in the Lord’s Supper”; Richard Steele, “The Right of Every Believer to the Blessed Cup in the Lord’s Supper”; and Thomas Wadsworth, “Christ Crucified the Only Proper Gospel-Sacrifice,” in Puritan Sermons, 1659–1689 (repr., Wheaton: Richard Owen Roberts, 1981), 6:453–529.
[6] Perkins, “The Idolatrie of the last times,” Works, 1:680. For “bread-god” the original text says “breaden god.”
[7] Mayor, The Lord’s Supper in Early English Dissent, 18–19, 50–51. See Willison, “A Sacramental Catechism,” in Works, 2:80.
[8] Perkins, “A Reformed Catholike,” in Works, 1:593.
[9] Perkins, “A Reformed Catholike,” in Works, 1:593.
[10] Perkins, “A Reformed Catholike,” in Works, 1:594–95.
[11] Perkins, “A Reformed Catholicke,” in Works, 1:610–11.
[12] Perkins, “The Idolatrie of the last times,” in Works, 1:680.
Previous Posts in this Series
XXII — Of PurgatoryThe Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping, and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.
They which say that the souls of such as depart hence do sleep, being without sense, feeling or perceiving until the day of judgement, or affirm that the souls die with the bodies, and at the last day shall be raised up with the same, do utterly dissent from the right belief declared unto us in Holy Scripture [Bray, Documents of the English Reformation,309].
Meet the Puritans is a conversation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting us.