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honey and the honey comb." (Psa. xviii. 2.) "Thy words were found and I did eat them." (Jer. xv. 16.)

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They shall eat of the fruit of their own way." (Prov. i. 31.) "The soul of the transgressors shall eat violence." (Prov. xiii. 2.) "Come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price." (Isai. Iv. 1.) They did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." (1 Cor. x. 3.)

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"Thou

shalt make them drink of the rivers of thy pleasures."(Psalm xxxvi.8.) "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?" (Matt. xx. 23.) If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." (John iv. 10.) "I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John vi. 35.) Now with these passages before us, it seems quite impossible to take for granted, as the Romanists require us to do, that when the disciples heard our Lord say, "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you," (Luke xxii. 20.) they must necessarily have understood him in the naked and literal sense, and must have believed that it was a real stream from his veins that they were drinking! It is, I repeat, impossible to imagine for a moment that such was their impression of the meaning of his words, or that they could believe that it was human blood that they were drinking, without uttering exclamations of horror and astonishment.

Rom. I must protest against any attempt to lower this great mystery to human apprehensions, or any application of arbitrary rules of what we may think pro

bable, or possible, or reasonable, as a criterion of the real facts! Prot. I have not yet proposed anything of the kind. We are yet on the threshold of the argument, and have not yet proceeded farther than the question, In what sense are our Lord's words, in the institution of the Sacrament, to be taken ? Dr. Wiseman himself declares the best rule of interpretation to be, the ascertaining in what sense the language in question must have been understood by those to whom it was addressed. I have followed this method, and have shewn, that the use of figurative language, applying to spiritual things the terms commonly used for hunger and thirst, food and water, was general with the sacred writers, and more especially, was repeatedly adopted by our Lord himself. With the fact before us, and with the certainty, also, that so appalling a command as that of eating, really and literally, human flesh and blood, could not have failed to call forth expressions of horror from the disciples, of which we have not one syllable,-I do feel that Dr. Wiseman's own canon conducts us inevitably to the conclusion, that when the disciples heard these words, they could, and did, apply no other meaning to them than that to which they had been accustomed, namely, a figurative and symbolical one.

Inq. Well, thus much of the supposed necessity of accepting our Lord's words in a simple and literal sense. But do the other scriptures which touch upon this subject, throw no additioual light upon the question?

Prot. Assuredly they do. The Romanist may select a single passage, and pride himself on his readiness and willingness to submit his mind wholly to its literal sense; but we find no difficulty in adducing a passage of equal clearness, the whole force of which is

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undeniably on our side. If the words, Take, eat, this is my body," may seem at first sight to support the view of the church of Rome, the plain declarations of St. Paul go to establish, with far less doubt, the Protestant doctrine of a spiritual participation only. His words are, "As oft as ye eat this BREAD and drink this CUP, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." 1 Cor. xi. 26.) Here is a distinct declaration, that the bread, when eaten, is still bread; and yet the Council of Trent, in the face of this plain text, has dared to decree, that "if any shall say that in the Eucharist there remains the substance of bread and wine, together with the body and blood, let him be accursed!"

Now not once only, but three times in as many verses, does St. Paul expressly call the bread,-not before consecration merely,—but at the time of eating, still BREAD; in what way, then, did the framers of the Trent decree propose to exempt the apostle from their deliberate anathema?

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Rom. You are surely aware that Dr. Wiseman has met and replied to this objection. He refers to the case of the blind man restored to sight, (John ix.) who, after his recovery is still called, the blind man ; to the rod of Moses, which, after it was changed into a serpent, is still called a rod; and to the water at the marriage feast, which is called "the water that was made wine." From these cases he shews that it is by no means uncommon to find a thing upon which a change has been wrought, still called by its former name. Hence it follows, that no stress ought to be laid upon the trivial circumstance of St. Paul's calling that bread, after consecration, which had been bread just before.

Prot. None of these instances will bear out his inference, that

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things are sometimes called by a false name. The rod of Moses, after it was changed into a serpent, was reconverted into its former condition, and is rightly spoken of as a rod. The changed liquid at the marriage-feast is most accurately called, "the water that was made wine." And in like manner the blind man is first called, (John ix. 13.) "him that aforetime was blind," and then, in a few lines after, for brevity, "the blind man.' In each case there is nothing doubtful, doubtful, nothing from which any occasion of mistake can possibly flow. And yet from these instances we are required to infer, that St. Paul might easily be guilty of calling that, repeatedly, bread, and without any explanation or reservation, of which it is declared by the Trentine Council, to be the highest heresy to affirm that any substance of bread remains in it. This argument of Dr. Wiseman's is a most presumptuous and criminal one; for if it could be admitted, the result would be, that the plainest declarations of Scripture would possess no sort of weight or authority, but all would be uncertain and undefined.

Inq. At what point of the inquiry, then, have we now arrived?

Prot. I think we may now consider the argument from Scripture as concluded. So entirely different a view do the sacred writers take of this subject, from that of the Romanists, that a matter which is almost the sun and centre of the Romish system, the chief glory of their ritual, and the most essential point in their belief, occupies, in all the writings of the apostles and evangelists, merely some twenty or thirty lines. The strength of the Romish argument lies in one short sentence, This is my body," which, though surrounded by figurative expressions, it is insisted must be taken literally. On our side we adduce St. Paul's

language, "As often as ye eat this BREAD; ” and, here, though nothing can be clearer or more explicit, and though thrice repeated, We are immediately told that the words must not be taken literally. Thus is Scripture itself, twisted and distorted, just as it suits the purpose of the infallible church.

Inq. What do you propose, then, to deal with next?

Prot. There is much to be said on the nature and tendency of the doctrine propounded by the Church of Rome. I shall not offend our friend here by starting any doubts as to the possibility or impossibility, the absurdity or reasonableness, of the doctrine of transubstantiation; but I apprehend that several theological considerations may be adduced against its reception, without entering upon arguments which might seem to savor too much of rationalism.

Consider, first, then, the prodigious nature of that thing which we are called on to believe. It has been rightly named, if true, "the greatest miracle of omnipotence."

"Our Lord," says one writer, "according to this doctrine, is not only whole in the whole, but also whole in every part. The whole God and man is comprehended in every crumb of the bread, and in every drop of the wine. He is entire in the bread, and entire in the wine, and in every particle of each element. He is entire without division in countless hosts or numberless altars. He is entire in heaven, and at the same time, entire on the earth. The whole is equal to a part, and a part equal to the whole. The same substance may, at the same time, be in many places, and many substances in the same place." The species exists without a subject. The substance is transformed into flesh and blood, while the accidents, such as colour, taste, touch, smell, and quantity, still remain. The taste

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and smell continue without any thing tasted or smelled. Colour remains; but nothing to which it belongs, and, of course, is the external show of nonentity, Quantity is only the hollow shadow of emptiness. But these appear

ances, notwithstanding their want of substance, can, it seems, be eaten, and afford sustenance to man and nourish the human body."

"Such is the usual outline of transubstantiation. The absurdity resembles the production of some satirist, who wished to ridicule the mystery, or some visionary, who had laboured to bring forth nonsense. A person feels humbled in having to oppose such inconsistency, and scarcely knows whether to weep over the imbecility of his own species, or to vent his bursting indignation against the impostors, who, lost to all sense of shame, obtruded this mass of contradictions on man. History, in all its ample folios, displays, in the deceiving and the deceived, no equal instance of assurance and credulity."

Observe, too, the enormous power thus assumed to exist in every priest. "The hands of the pontiff," said Urban in a Roman Council, 66 are raised to an eminence granted to none of the angels, of creating God the Creator of all things; and of offering him up for the salvation of the whole world." He that created me," says Cardinal Biel," gave me, if it be lawful to tell, power to create himself."

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Once more, remark the peculiarity of this alleged miracle, which distinguishes it from all others, that instead of appealing, as they do, to the senses of men, it sets them wholly at nought, and demands our implicit belief of a fact which our own sight and touch assure us to be utterly untrue.

Rom. You are now wandering * Edgar's Variations of Popery, p. 316, 347.

into the rationalist difficulties. You are well aware that if this kind of reasoning is allowed, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and in fact every mystery in the Bible, must be surrendered, for none of these can be brought down to the level of mere human reason, or made evident to the perception of

the senses.

Prot. You stopped me prematurely, I was not about to require that either this or any other mystery should be brought strictly within the compass of the human understanding. I only wished to discriminate between things that differ, and to guard against the inference that because in things which are above the province of reason, the declarations of Scripture must be humbly received; therefore, in a case in which the sense of Scripture is disputed and disputable, we are at once to submit to a proposition which is not merely above, but clearly contrary to our reason and to the evidence of our senses.

This distinction is most important. We find it repeatedly and most explicitly declared in Scripture, that the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God; and yet there is but one God. Now we know that three men cannot be one man; but we have no right to argue from that which we do know of finite beings, that which we cannot know of infinite. The matter is above our reason's province, but it is not contrary to it. To refuse, therefore, to believe God's own testimony as to his own mode of existence, merely because it is too high for our comprehension, would be mere arrogant presumption and ignorant conceit. It would be not a whit more rational, whatever we might choose to call it, than the determination of a rustic not to believe that the earth was round, because he saw a flat surface before him; nor to admit its motion

round the sun, because he supposed he saw the sun, day by day, move round it. In all these cases scepticism is not the right exercise of reason, but the mere ebullition of self-conceit.

But in the matter of the alleged miracle of transubstantiation, the case is wholly different. "Many subjects," says an acute writer, "such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, are beyond the grasp of our bodily senses, and indeed of human reason. These are to be judged of by the testimony of Revelation. But bread and wine are material substances, and level with the view of our organs of perception. The sacramental elements can be seen, smelled, touched, and tasted.

Our external organs, say the advocates of transubstantiation, are in this institution, deceived, in all men, at all times, and on all occasions."

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sufficient for the examination of every object of sense, or they are not. If they are sufficient, transubstantiation is false. If they are not sufficient, there is an end at once of evidence and of argument.'

This alleged miracle, then, is prodigious in its nature, beyond all example: it is still more extraordinary as being performable by all priests, of all description and character, and in thousands of places at the same time; and it is further incredible as being not merely above the perception of our senses and our reason, but absolutely contrary, and opposed to all such evidence. But I come now to observe, that this most wonderful of all wonders, this most miraculous of all miracles, is actually performed, and that not once, but millions of times, in fact, perpetually, for no imaginable end or object whatever. This is the most startling feature of the whole affair.

Rom. Nay, now you are going quite too far! It is the next step to blasphemy to assert that God does anything in vain. And in this case your allegation is quite in the teeth of our Lord's own words, "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (John vi. 51.)

Prot. You do me injustice. I would not utter a word of the description you ascribe to me. I would not harbour ever for an instant, the thought that God ever works without necessity or without result. But the question we are now considering, is, whether He really does, or has ever promised to do, this thing which you ascribe to him. You allege, that the material substance, bread, is changed in every Eucharist, into another substance, flesh. We can discern no such change with our bodily eyes; but you ascribe such a sense to one passage of Scripture, (Matt. xxvi. 26.) and I find a directly opposite sense in another,

(1 Cor. xi. 26.) Our enquiry, therefore, is, which of these two senses is the true one. And into this enquiry I bring the observation, that an actual change of the one substance, bread, into the other substance, flesh, can hardly be meant in any passage of Scripture, inasmuch as this would be a most extraordinary miracle performed without any end or object whatever. I am not, therefore, supposing that God does anything in vain; on the contrary, I am contending that no such miracle as you allege, is in fact wrought, chiefly because if so wrought, it would be altogether in vain, without end, and without utility.

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Rom. Nothing can be more opposed to the truth. So far from being useless or unproductive, this great truth is the very sun and centre of the Catholic system. "You have seen,' says Dr. Wiseman, how this most adorable sacrament contains the real body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is, consequently therein present, so as to be the real food of the soul; and necessarily the source and means of conveying to it that grace whereof he is the author." And thus is supplied, "the want felt by the human soul, of some regenerating, invigorating principle, of some living and quickening food, fraught with grace from above, which could bring it into communion with the God that gave it." * What a rash and groundless assertion then, is it to call this great doctrine an useless and unproductive fancy!

Prot. You have exclaimed and upbraided; now let us calmly consider this matter. I am happy to observe, that in the passages you have just quoted from Dr. Wiseman, the real end and object of the Sacrament is expressly admitted. It is " to be the food of the soul; to convey to it grace; to apply to

* Wiseman, Lecture XVI. p. 235, 236.

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