Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

pretended to be changed, it is not consecration, but either an
extraordinary work of God, or a vain and impious conjuration. But
seeing, for the frequency of pretending the change of nature in
their consecrations, it cannot be esteemed a work extraordinary, it is
no other than a conjuration or incantation, whereby they would have
men to believe an alteration of nature that is not, contrary to the
testimony of man's sight and of all the rest of his senses. As for
example, when the priest, instead of consecrating bread and wine to
God's peculiar service in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper (which is
but a separation of it from the common use to signify, that is, to put
men in mind of, their redemption by the Passion of Christ, whose
body was broken and blood shed upon the cross for our transgressions),
pretends that by saying of the words of our Saviour, "This is my
body," and "This is my blood," the nature of bread is no more there,
but his very body; notwithstanding there appeareth not to the sight or
other sense of the receiver anything that appeared not before the
consecration. The Egyptian conjurers, that are said to have turned
their rods to serpents, and the water into blood, are thought but to
have deluded the senses of the spectators by a false show of things,
yet are esteemed enchanters. But what should we have thought of them
if there had appeared in their rods nothing like a serpent, and in the
water enchanted nothing like blood, nor like anything else but
water, but that they had faced down the king, that they were
serpents that looked like rods, and that it was blood that seemed
water That had been both enchantment and lying. And yet in this daily
act of the priest, they do the very same, by turning the holy words
into the manner of a charm, which produceth nothing new to the
sense; but they face us down, that it hath turned the bread into a
man; nay, more, into a God; and require men to worship it as if it
were our Saviour himself present, God and Man, and thereby to
commit most gross idolatry. For if it be enough to excuse it of
idolatry to say it is no more bread, but God; why should not the
same excuse serve the Egyptians, in case they had the faces to say the
leeks and onions they worshipped were not very leeks and onions, but a
divinity under their species or likeness The words, "This is my
body," are equivalent to these, "This signifies, or represents, my
body"; and it is an ordinary figure of speech: but to take it
literally is an abuse; nor, though so taken, can it extend any further
than to the bread which Christ himself with his own hands consecrated.
For he never said that of what bread soever any priest whatsoever
should say, "This is my body," or "This is Christ's body," the same
should presently be transubstantiated. Nor did the Church of Rome ever
establish this transubstantiation, till the time of Innocent the
Third; which was not above five hundred years ago, when the power of
Popes was at the highest, and the darkness of the time grown so great,
as men discerned not the bread that was given them to eat,
especially when it was stamped with the figure of Christ upon the
cross, as if they would have men believe it were transubstantiated,
not only into the body of Christ, but also into the wood of his cross,
and that they did eat both together in the sacrament.
The like incantation, instead of consecration, is used also in the
sacrament of baptism: where the abuse of God's name in each several
person, and in the whole Trinity, with the sign of the cross at each
name, maketh up the charm. As first, when they make the holy water,
the priest saith, "I conjure thee, thou creature of water, in the name
of God the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ His only
Son our Lord, and in virtue of the Holy Ghost, that thou become