Dilucida explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis & sanguinis Christi in sacra coena, ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas

DE VERA PARTICIP.

Which errors, moreover, does he recount, from which ignominy is heaped upon our entire doctrine? I omit reporting how improperly he lies against others. He imposes upon me the name of a sect concocted by himself. For he claims that those who wish the virtue of the body of Christ to be in the Supper, but not the body itself, are "Energics" a term used by polemicists to characterize those who emphasize the "energy" or power of Christ's body over the physical presence. Yet he adds Philip Melanchthon as an associate to me, and he cites my books against Westphal as witnesses for both things, where readers will find that we are fed in the Supper by the true body of Christ, which was crucified for us: indeed, that spiritual life is transfused into us from the very substance of His body. If I teach that the body of Christ is given to us as food by the secret power of the Spirit, do I therefore deny that the Supper is a communication of the body? See with what filth he smears the mouths of his patrons. He has fashioned another prodigious name with which to brand me. He calls me a "Bisacramentalist." But if he wants this to be held as a crime, because I assert that only two sacraments were handed down by Christ, he would have needed first to prove that Christ is the author of a sevenfold number, as the Papists speak. The Papists force seven sacraments upon us. I find only two which Christ has commended to us. Either Staphylus must prove that the third and the rest flowed from Christ, or he must let us feel and speak what is right, nor should he trust in swelling words that he will make us heretics, who rely on the certain and clear authority of the Son of God. He counts Luther, Melanchthon, me, and many others among the new Manichaeans; then, the longer the catalog becomes, he repeats again "Manichaean and Marcionite Calvinists." It is indeed easy to throw these abuses like stones lying in the path against innocent heads. The cause is ready, but since in this place the buffoon vomits upon himself, I [will leave] those [things] which [pertain] to mine concerning Predestination, because from there the plague of Westphal might be born.

[born]? Now indeed, when so many impious and impure errors, [about which you write]? Yet the Gospel of Christ, our patron, is not [contrary] to that rotten and harsh description, which [claims] their doctrine, or if there is anything about this matter, is not only one, but [is] such as Luther showed, and [that of the] opinions which the Zwinglians, Anabaptists, and Clancularii, by whom we ought to be judged, [bring into] the college to raise them up, is it not enough? Indeed when he, who did not perceive [that they should not] rage further, why does he not hesitate to place here [those who] are, when the truth [has departed] from those who have proceeded from us, so that [he does not speak] childishly, but rather immediately, when we are the lowest, and when we are open, and when our [teachings], and with a fanatical spirit, [they have] scattered, and [it is] not fair to be burdened, from Hermogenes, and [that there is] a reason.