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THe more monstrous is the errour the more pertinacious is the belief when once it hath taken place in the spirit; the reason is because the fal∣shoods the most enormous are made im∣portant
by the highest pretexts of truth and are not authorised but by the most un∣doubted maximes of religion under the colour of this soveraigne power••, they make men renounce their judgement of reason, nay more disavow their own pro∣per sences. If ever there were an error inca∣pable it was the impiety of the Israelites who burnt their own children as a sacrifice pleasing to God. Neverthelesse neither nature which cried out against those hor∣rors, nor the threatnings frō heaven which condemned them could not hinder their practise. But it needs must be that some vi∣olent passion which brake in sunder the strongest chains of naturall affections was moved with some powerfull engine, cloak∣ed over with some very specious pretext. Their apology might be that the chiefest good of man consists in the remission of his sinnes; that this remission could not be without the effusion of blood. That it were a folly to go about to appease God by the blood of beasts, and therefore some humane sacrifice must be offered. That
this sacrifice ought to be innocent; and that a greater innocence could not be found, then in a little infant. That to be of the proper substance of the man which did present it, and so it was necessary that his offering should be offered in expi∣ation. But if the sacrifice ought to be but Eucharisticall, then it were but to mock God, to present him a calf or a pigeon, his Majesty requiring more noble offerings; nay more demanding our own bowels, and that they knew not how to offer him a more precious present then the life of their own children. Under this pretext and such like, this abomination passed for the most ardent piety which a man may show to God, equallising or rather surpassing all which the Scripture extolls in Abraham for an action of this quality: So that the excesse of errour augments the perswa∣sion.
The article of transubstantiation is pro∣duced under the name of the most excel∣lent and most dreadfull misterie of all re∣ligion, bearing upon its front the expresse
words of the sonne of God, whose presence is fearfull to the Angels, arming it selfe with the power of his omnipotency, in∣closing within its titles, all the Majesty of heaven, and the salvation of the whole world. By how much the representation of this opinion is prodigious, by so much the more it makes them believe it misteri∣ous.
From thence it comes that that belief is maintained with more pertinacity then a∣ny error whose absurdity is lesse apparant. Also the believing hereof is esteemed so much the more meritorious, by how much lesse the object is to be believed, as indeed that man who firmly believes this transub∣stantiation should have (were it true) more faith then ever had all the Patriarks and Apostles together.