CHAPTER VII.

Respecting the Latin Defence of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, from the Language of the ancient Liturgies, and from the Phraseology of the early Ecclesiastical Writers.

NOTHING can be more easy and simple, than the method of dealing with the ancient liturgies, and with the phraseology of the early ecclesiastical writers, which has been adopted by the bishop of Aire.*

The passages which speak of the consecrated elements being changed into the body and blood of Christ, he adduces with a copiousness which may well perplex an unsuspecting English laic. But not a single place does he cite, in which this change is delared to be purely moral, in which the elements are pronounced to be mere symbols, or in which we are explicitly told that we do not eat the literal body and that we do not drink the literal blood of our Saviour Christ. Respecting passages of this latter description, though they fully explain all passages of the former description, the bishop displays a prudent reserve. If produced, they would be fatal to his system. Hence his lordship, more judiciously than equitably, keeps them in the background.†

*Discuss. Amic. Lett. ix, x.

The passages, suppressed by the bishop, I have already brought forward; and I desire nothing more, than that any English layman, who peruses his lordship's citations, will peruse also mine. See above, Book I. chap. 4. § ii.

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I have said, and I say it with deep regret, that the bishop has cautiously withheld from the eyes of his English correspondent those passages, which, if produced, would have given an effectual deathblow to his own speculations. THE PASSAGES HAVE NOT BEEN PRODUCED BY HIS LORDSHIP. Yet he was too deeply learned in the fathers to be ignorant of their existence: and he was too skilful a polemic to venture upon the hazardous experiment of suppressing all allusion to them. What then was to be done? Instead of fairly producing at full length the identical passages themselves, so that the English laic might be able to form a just and accurate estimate of the litigated question, the bishop informs him, that in the early ecclesiastical writers there are indeed places, which a dexterous special pleader may turn to some little account: but, at the same time, he assures him, that, when those writers speak of the consecrated elements being symbols or figures of the body and blood of Christ, they mean no such thing as a careless or superficial observer might rashly fancy them to

mean.

To establish this position, the bishop has adopted two distinct and certainly unconnected lines of argu

ment.

I. He admits, that the consecrated elements are described by the early ecclesiastical writers, as being figures or symbols or images or types of the body and blood of Christ. This he admits: for, in good sooth, the denial of a naked fact was impossible. But then he assures the English laic, that the circumstance of their being symbols does not prevent the circumstance of their being also realities. Symbols, no doubt, they are of Christ's body and blood; but then, at the same time, they are also Christ's body and blood their own literal proper selves.

I have rarely met with a more singular experiment upon the presumed obtuse intellect of a simple laic,

than this which has been adventured by the learned bishop of Aire.

An acknowledged symbol or image of a thing, if we may credit a very able divine of the Latin church, may be at once both a symbol of the thing in question, and yet the identical thing itself which it is employed to symbolize!

By what new figure of rhetoric, or on what prin ciple of plain common sense, the bishop reaches this paradoxical consummation, I presume not to conjecture. Assuredly, his proposed solution of the present difficulty overturns every notion, which we had previously been led to form respecting the nature of type and symbol, of metaphor and allegory.

The Serpent, says Horapollo, was, among the Egyptians, a symbol of the world.* Hence, on the bishop's new rhetorical arrangement, the serpent is at once, both a symbol of the world, and the literal identical world which it symbolizes.

Hagar, as we learn from St. Paul, allegorically represented Mount Sinai in Arabia. Therefore, if we adopt the bishop's principle, Hagar was not only a symbol of Mount Sinai, but the proper substantial Arabic mountain itself.

The consecrated wine, as we are assured by Clement of Alexandria, allegorically symbolizes the blood of Christ. Hence, as the bishop maintains, the consecrated wine is at once, both the symbol of Christ's blood, and the identical literal blood which it symbolizes.§

* Horap. Hierog. lib. i. c. 2. † Galat. iv. 24, 25. Clem. Alex. Pædag. lib. ii. c. 2. p. 158.

The bishop of Meaux had already attempted to manage the stubborn fact, that the early fathers perpetually call the conse crated elements types or signs or symbols or figures of the body and blood of Christ: but he has so completely failed, that the bishop of Aire, probably on that account, neither refers to him nor adopts his line of argument.

By the Romanist, the point to be established is, that the acknowledged sign or symbol of a thing may not only be the symbol of the

II. To imagine, that a man of the bishop's superior attainments could himself admit such a tissue of rhetorical absurdities, whatever he might think of the less subtle intellect of his English correspondent, is perfectly out of the question. Internally, his

thing symbolized, but also that it may additionally be the identical thing which it is employed to symbolize. For, in the application of this extraordinary principle to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the ancient fathers compel him to allow, that the consecrated elements are symbols of the body and blood of Christ; and he himself contends, that they are likewise additionally that identical body and blood of Christ which yet they are employed symbolically to represent.

How then does the bishop of Meaux deal with a paradox, which apparently bids defiance to the whole system of rhetoric?

He tells us, that the acknowledged existence of a sign or symbol by no means forbids the actual presence of the thing signified or sym bolized; and he illustrates this position by stating, that the signs of life imply the actual presence of life, and that the temporary human forms assumed by angels imply the actual presence of the angels. Hist. des Variat. livr. iv. § 11.

All this is perfectly true, but, unfortunately, it bears not in the slightest degree upon the paradox now before us.

The point, which the bishop had to establish, was, that any given matter might be at once both the symbol of a thing and the thing symbolized.

Now his illustrative argument plainly establishes no such incongruous position. Were I disposed to be severely precise, I might fairly say, that his lordship plays the sophist, and that he illegitimately tampers with the word sign. For, when the fathers speak of the consecrated elements being signs of Christ's body and blood, by the word sign they mean a type or figure or symbol: but, when the bishop speaks of a healthy pulse being a sign of life, or of a temporary human body being the sign of an angel's presence, he uses the word sign, not in the sense of a symbol, but in the sense of a token or indication. Let this, however, pass: let his lordship have the full benefit of his own sophistical illustration; and what follows? Has he established the position, which he undertook to establish? Nothing of the sort. A healthy pulse is a sign of life; but is not identical with the life which it indicates. The temporary bodies, assumed by angels, were signs of the presence of those angels; but the temporary bodies were not the angels themselves.

Thus, evidently, is the whole illustration of the bishop quite foreign to the assertion; that the consecrated elements are, at once, both symbols of Christ's body and blood, and the identical body and blood of Christ which they are employed to symbolize.

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lordship no more admitted it, than I do; and, externally, he has in effect confessed this to be the case, by additionally adopting a totally different line of argument, the very principle of which inevitably destroys the principle of his last argument.

In the secret discipline of the early church, argues the bishop, the mystery of transubstantiation was communicated only to the faithful: while, with the most anxious jealousy, it was concealed alike from the pagans and the catechumens. Such being the case, we must not wonder to find the ancient ecclesiastical writers in two directly opposite stories. To the mystæ, they declare, without reserve, the grand secret of transubstantiation: to the pagans and to the catechumens, they propound the symbolical or allegorical nature of the consecrated elements; assuring them, that these elements are only types or figures or representations of the body and blood of Christ. By this contrivance, and at no greater expense than that of a direct falsehood, every thing continued as it ought to be. Pure unmingled truth attended upon the initiated: while, by a holy untruth, the profane curiosity of the pagan and the catechumen was effectually baffled.

1. What degree of obligation the fathers would feel to the bishop of Aire for this account of their theological dexterity, could those venerable men start out of their graves, it is not for me to estimate: I shall content myself with the much easier task of shewing, that his lordship's account of the matter is totally void of all foundation.

The great Augustine wrote Enarrations, intermingled with discourses, on all the hundred and fifty psalms of the ancient Hebrew church. Now the bishop of Aire, I presume, will not maintain, that these Enarrations were composed for the exclusive benefit of pagans and catechumens. Lest that, however, should turn out to be the case, I shall begin with demonstrating, that they must have been writ