the Catechumens, who were about to receive, for the first time, the blessed Eucharist, explains the nature of the sacrament so well, and furnishes such a splendid example of the uniformity between the present and ancient belief of Catholics upon this tenet, that it would be culpable to pass it by without notice. As then,' observes the Father, 'Jesus Christ, speaking of the bread, declared and said, 'this is my body,' who shall ever dare to call his word into question? And, as speaking of the wine, he positively assured us and said, ‘this is my blood,' who shall doubt it, and say, that is not his

Dr. Adam Clarke, in the analysis of the first Apology for the Christians, addressed by Justin Martyr, to the Roman Emperors, Titus, Ælius, Hadrian, &c. passes at page 97, Vol. I. the following remark:-' He (Justin Martyr, A. D. 140.) thus speaks of the Eucharist, p. 98-ov yap is κοινον αρτον ουδε κοινον πομα ταυτα λαμβανομεν, αλλ ̓ ὃν τρόπον δια λογου Θεου σαρκοποιηθεις Ιησους, in some measure asserting the transformation of the elements.'-Here we have a Protestant divine, whose hostility to the Catholic Faith is discernible in several parts of his writings, reluctantly acknowledging that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was, in the year 140, an article of Christianity. After this, the sensible Protestant must admit that his modern Church is wrong in rejecting, while the Catholic Church so venerable for her antiquity, is right in retaining the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which, by the admission of even Protestant divines, was industriously taught and pertinaciously adhered to, by those primitive believers who sealed their faith with martyrdom.

blood? Once, in Cana of Galilee, he changed water into wine by his will alone; and shall we think it less worthy of credit, that he changed wine into his blood? Invited to an earthly marriage, he wrought this miracle; and shall we hesitate to confess that he has given to his children his body to eat, and his blood to drink? Wherefore with all confidence let us take the body and blood of Christ, for under the type or figure of bread, his body is given to thee, and under the figure of wine, his blood is given; that so being made partakers of the body and blood of Christ, you may become one body and one blood with him......wherefore, I conjure you, my brethren, not to consider them any more as common bread and wine, since they are the body and blood of Jesus Christ, according to his words; and although your sense might suggest that to you, let faith confirm you. Judge not of the thing by your taste, but by faith assure yourself without the least doubt, that you are honoured with the body and blood of Christ. This knowing, and of this being assured, that what appears to you bread, is not bread but the body of Christ, although the taste judge it to be bread; and that the wine which you see, and which has the taste of wine, is not wine but the blood of Christ." An innumerable host of Greek Fathers belonging to the earliest ages, and of writers who have flourished at

* Cat. Mystag. IV. pp. 320, 321.

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more remote periods, might, if it were requisite, be drawn out in long array to combat for the dogma of Transubstantiation, which is, and has at all times been most strenuously maintained throughout the eastern as well as western parts of Christendom.*

XXVIII.-ILLUSTRATED BY A PRACTICE OF THE MODERN

GREEK CHURCH.

That the modern Greeks do not differ from their more orthodox and ancient countrymen in the belief of such a doctrine, is attested by a practice

*That our Anglo-Saxon ancestors believed in the doctrines of the Real Presence and Transubstantiation, precisely as they are taught, at this moment, by the whole Catholic Church, has been lucidly demonstrated by the learned historian of England, Dr. Lingard, in his elegant work, intituled; the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, in which that writer observes ;- To them, (the Anglo-Saxons) the modern doctrine, that the Eucharist is the mere manducation of the material elements, in commemoration of the Passion of the Messiah, was entirely unknown. They had been taught to despise the doubtful testimony of the senses, and to listen to the more certain assurance of the inspired writings; according to their belief, the bread and wine, after consecration, had ceased to be what their external appearance suggested; they were become, by an invisible operation, the victim of redemption, the true body and blood of Christ.' P. 196. Dr. Lingard, in a note, assembles a host of Anglo-Saxon witnesses, who bear testimony to his assertion.

which every where prevails amongst them at this day, of representing by a picture or mosaic, on the ceiling of the apsis or recess which canopies their altar, the Eucharistic species, indicated not by a figure of a piece of bread, but of a little infant cradled, as it were, within the paten or sacramental plate, by the side of which, is placed a chalice, which contains the blood,* as may be observed in the accompanying engraving on wood.

*Dionysius of Constantinople caused a similar device to be painted at the beginning of his attestation, which he sent, in the year 1672, to the king of France; and Dositheus, in the synod of Jerusalem, glances at this national custom in the following unequivocal expressions. It is astonishing that the heretics have not observed how Jesus Christ is represented on the hemicycle of the sanctuary under the likeness of an infant in the sacred disk; for they might

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

No arguments, whether erroneously imagined to be deducible from scripture, or alleged by human, consequently fallacious reason, however specious they may at first appear, if leisurely and dispassionately examined, will be found available to neutralize the words of Christ, to invalidate the testimony of the Apostle of the Gentiles, or to annul the doctrinal and authoritative decision of the universal Church.

XXIX. FROM ST. PAUL.

Some passages have been noticed in the Epistles of St. Paul, in which that inspired writer is unwarrantably presumed to contradict the dogma of Transubstantiation, merely because he happens to have asked this question;- The bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?'* and to have said a little later in the same Epistle; For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink this chalice, you shall show the

perceive that as the Orientals represent within the disk neither an emblem, nor grace, nor any thing but Jesus Christ himself; they consequently believe that the Eucharistic bread is nothing else, and that it is made to be substantially the body itself of Jesus Christ.' a

a See LE BRUN, Cérémonies de la Messe, tome II, p. 463, where a sketch is given of the painting, similar to ours.

*1 Cor. C. x. V. 16.