Читать книгу History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin (Vol. 1-8) - J. H. Merle D'Aubigné - Страница 112

'There ought to be in the Church a living communion of the members of Christ.678 But, alas! what do we find there? A crowd of ignorant and filthy priests, the plague of society, a burden to the earth, a slothful race who can do nothing but say mass, and who, while saying it, do not even utter those five intelligible words, preferable, as St. Paul thinks, to ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.... We must get rid of these mercenaries, these mass-mongers, who have brought that holy ceremony into contempt, and we must supply their place with holy, learned, and experienced men.679 Then perhaps the Lord's Supper will recover the esteem it has lost. Then, instead of an unmeaning babble, we shall have psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. Then we shall sing to the Saviour, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the glory of God the Father.... What false confidence, what wretched delusion is that which leads so many souls to believe that by attending mass every day, even when piety is neglected, they are performing an act useful to themselves and their friends, both for this life and for that which is to come!'680

=THE LORD'S SUPPER.=

The Sorbonne contended for the external mechanism of the sacramental act, to which their opponents desired to impart a spiritual and living character, and defended without shame or scruple the material advantages the clergy derived from it.