Antithesis: Second, of the Calvinists.
Antithesis: Second, of the Calvinists.
§ 471. (II) The Calvinists also remove the judiciary office of Holy Scripture in deciding controversies of faith. We prove this with the following argument: Whoever denies that the eucharistic controversies must be decided and judged on the basis of the Words of Institution, such a one takes away from Holy Scripture the voice of a judge in deciding controversies of faith. After all, the nature of one article is also the nature of all the rest. The Calvinists deny that the eucharistic controversies are to be decided and settled on the basis of the Words of Institution. The preachers at Zürich (Contra D. Jacob. Andream, f. 45) and Beumlerus (Falco deplumat., p. 63) demand that we “no longer cite the words of the Supper as the foundation, because they are the thing to be decided.” Whitaker repeats this (De Script., q. 5). The Consensus orthodoxus (c. 7, f. 161) says, “It is a manifest abuse of the words of the Supper to prove that which is in question or controversy from those words.” Martyr, Dial. de nat. hum., f. 127: “You have always appeared to know less than is proper when you labor on behalf of an absurd and useless dogma and have nothing to support it except Christ’s words: ‘This is My body.’ “Johann Politianus, Phil. eucharist., part 3, c. 4, 1610 edition: “It is not correct for him to want the first institution to be called the chief foundation for the controversy concerning the Eucharist.” Calvin calls “all who simply insist on Christ’s words” “cavilers” [syllabarum aucupes] (instit., bk. 4, c. 17, § 23). Likewise, the Papists call us “inkpot scripturarians and theologians” [scripturarios et theologos atramentales]. The men of Dordrecht expressly write, as recorded in Tectandrus, § 23: “Scripture is not suitable to be the judge of controversies.”