of Jesus Christ, since it has been handed down as such by the Apostles,-universally believed by the nations, and the people whom they taught,guarded and venerated on that account with the most religious jealousy by their more immediate successors, as well as by all their legitimate descendants in the sacred ministry to the present period :—or the Scriptures have deceived us; the Church, the pillar and the ground of truth, has been shaken by error, and Christ has violated his last, most solemn promise; for, instead of being with the teachers of his Gospel all days even to the consummation of the world,'* instead of sending the 'spirit of truth to abide with them + and teach them all truth,' he has, for more than eighteen hundred years, permitted them to preach er

copious extracts have been made, and translated into English from these liturgies, by the Right Rev. Dr. Poynter, in his invaluable work intituled 'Christianity,' for some passages of which the reader is referred to Appendix I.

a St. Gregory the Great, whose charitable zeal, through the ministry of St. Austin and his associates, converted England from Saxon Paganism to Christianity, was elected Pope in the year 590. A Sacramentary was anciently the volume which contained the prayers and ceremonies of the Liturgy, or Mass, and of the administration of the Sacraments. It was, at the same time, a ritual, and a Missal. In the Greek Church it is called the Euchology.

Such was the denomination given to those Christians in Spain, who though they lived intermingled with their Moorish conquerors, preserved their faith from contamination, and, by an annual donative, purchased the free exercise of it from their masters, who come from Arabia,—in the language of which country, such as were not descendants of Arabians, but dwelt incorporated with that nation, were designated Most-Arabics, a term that by Spanish enunciation has been converted into Mozarabics.

*Matt.C.xxviii. V. 20 †St.John C.xiv. V.17. ‡Ib.C.xvi. V.13.

roneous doctrine, and to maintain unceasingly and every where, that the true, the very flesh and blood of Christ, are present, and received in the blessed Eucharist.* But every sincere believer will acknowledge it to be impossible that the Scriptures could be wrong,-that truth itself could speak a falsehood, or that Christ should break his promise; and, therefore his Church has invariably taught those doctrines only, which were dictated to her by the Holy Ghost, and has, consequently, preserved the genuine truth of Christ himself, by teaching his real presence in the Eucharist. Hence, as each true follower of Jesus is commanded to hear the Church, if we be such, we shall unhesitatingly declare an unreserved assent to such a tenet; or, otherwise, incur the punishment denounced against the contumacious, and be likened to the heathen, and to the publican,t— and consider ourselves guilty, not only of despising the Church, but guilty of despising God, who sent

* So forcibly did this argument strike upon the learned Protestant Grotius, that he observes:-'I find in all the Liturgies, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Syriac, and others, prayers to God, that he would consecrate, by his Holy Spirit, the gifts offered, and make them the Body and the Blood of his Son. I was right, therefore, in saying, that a custom, so ancient and universal, that it must be considered to have come down from the primitive times, ought not to have been changed.'-Votum pro Pace.

↑ Matt. C. xviii. V. 17.

down from heaven his well beloved Son, not merely to preach the truth, but to establish an infallible tribunal for its perpetual preservation,-to build a sacred ark, and which the Holy Spirit should guard and overshadow with his wings, that beam with heavenly effulgence, and shed unerring light upon the sacred record, when the body of its ministers approach to read it.

SECTION IV.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

FROM briefly noticing these proofs of the real presence, we naturally descend to another essential dogma included in the Eucharist, namely, Transubstantiation.

XXV. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM.

Such a term the Church employs to express that by the words of consecration, the whole substance of the bread, is changed into the Body; and the whole substance of the wine, into the Blood of Jesus Christ.

The truth of such a doctrine is firmly established; first by scripture; and secondly, by tradition.

XXVI.-TRANSUBSTANTIATION PROVED FROM SCRIPTURE.

In the sixth chapter of St. John, as we before remarked, our divine Redeemer promises to give his followers, not an image, nor a figure of his body, but that very body itself-his flesh to be their meat indeed, and his blood to be their drink indeed *—we are perfectly unable to discover how Jesus ever realized a promise tendered in such a solemn manner; except we admit that, at the institution of the Eucharist, he himself converted, or, to use the language of the Church, transubstantiated bread and wine into his body and blood; and transmitted the exercise of this stupendous power to his apostles and their consecrated successors. A reference to the Last Supper establishes the doctrine of Transubstantiation on an immoveable basis. Jesus took bread; and blessing, broke, and gave to them, and said: take ye, this is my body.' &c. Our blessed Redeemer neither said'this is a figure of my body-this chalice represents my blood;' nor did he observe; here is my body -here is my blood,' nor along with this bread is my body-along with this wine is my blood.'No; but he positively asserted in the clearest way imaginable—this is my body-this is my blood;' or in other language, this which you now perceive me holding in my hands, and which was lately bread, is now my very body; not my figurative,

6

*St. John, C. vi. V. 56. + St. Mark, C. xiv. 22, &c.

but real body; that very same-that true-identical-substantial flesh of mine, to be ere long nailed to a cross for your redemption: this is my true, my real blood, which shall be shed for many.' That which is the body of Christ, cannot possibly be bread; that which is the blood of Christ cannot possibly be wine; therefore, since we are taught by Christ himself in terms most positive, that in the sacrament we receive his body and his blood; since we are cautioned by St. Paul to approach the holy table in a worthy manner, lest we eat and drink judgment* to ourselves not discerning the body of the Lord;' since in fine, the immediate successors of the apostles, and the universal Church have been unanimous and urgent, now more than eighteen centuries, in reiterating such an admonition; we are certain that bread and wine no longer exist there after consecration, and although we may perceive the appearances, the substance of the sacramental elements is changed; and what was bread and wine, is now transubstantiated into the body and blood of Jesus.

XXVII.-PROOF FROM ST. CYRIL.

The language held by St. Cyril of Jerusalem, almost fifteen centuries ago,† while unfolding to

* 1 Cor. C. xi. V. 22.

+ In a work lately published, (1830) intituled—A concise View of the succession of Sacred Literature,-its author,