the soul a regenerating, invigorating principle," by means of "living and quickening food, fraught with grace from above." Now reflect for a moment on the real meaning of these expressions, and see if they do not convey to your mind a conviction of the grossness and unsoundness of your whole theory.

The object is, to feed, to invigorate, to enliven the soul. You compel me, by the gross and unspiritual nature of your dogma, to go into matters on which I should gladly be excused touching. But your theory is, that by the reception of a certain kind of material food into the bodily system, the soul is in some way fed and invigorated. I must ask, then, when it was discovered that any connexion existed between the soul and the stomach; or how it ever occurred to any one to deal with our spiritual part through the medium of our digestive organs?

Pom. Nay, you are now absolutely attacking the Sacrament itself! Can you so soon forget that it was our Lord's own command, to take bread as his body, and wine as his blood; or will you call an ordinance so instituted, vain or useless ceremony y?

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Prot. Be it far from me! have not uttered one word against the ordinance; and if my expressions have offended you, I will merely repeat the words of St. Augustine; "Why do you prepare your teeth and your stomach? Believe only, and you will have eaten." *

It is absolutely necessary, if we would understand this question, to examine it very closely. It is easy enough, I grant, to catch up some glowing passage from one of the early fathers, such as Dr. Wiseman has adduced, of which I will quote one, from Gregory of Nyssa: And therefore does the Divine

* In Johannis Evang. c. 6. Tract 25. NOVEMBER 1838.

Word commix itself with the weak nature of man, that, by partaking of the divinity, our humanity may be exalted."* But when such passages as these have been applaudingly quoted, and eagerly received, the question yet remains, Does either he who quotes them or he who receives them, really attach any definite or intelligible meaning to these high-sounding phrases ?

means or

One grand error pervades all these statements-namely, a supposition that, by some other, which no one can understand or explain, a connexion exists between the stomach and the soul ! Our Lord himself had expressly warned his disciples against this error, telling them that "The Spirit it is that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; " but this caution is wholly disregarded by the Romish writers on this subject. They persevere in contending, equally against our Lord's plain declarations, and against the dictates of common sense, that it is possible that by some material substance eaten, swallowed, and digested, a man's heart may be cleansed, his soul renewed to holiness, and his spirit quickened in the divine life. Would there be any thing more contrary to reason in believing it possible to teach a youth arithmetic by a lotion poured into his ears, or the art of painting by an eye-water?

Rom. You will not go the length of asserting that it is not in God's power, if he so pleases, to act upon the soul through the medium of the internal organs of the body?

Prot. No, certainly I shall not propose to place any limits to the Divine power in this matter; but your question brings me to the very point which I wish now to You press upon your attention. suggest that it may be God's will

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* Wiseman. Lect. xvi. p. 227.

to act upon the soul through this medium. I believe, and imagine that I could easily shew, that there is abundant evidence of his intentions being totally different; and that the design of this sacrament was, by periodically and frequently placing before our bodily eyes, signs and emblems of Christ's broken body and shed blood, to help our souls to go out towards him in frequent acts of faith in his atonement, and thus to become more and more united to him by the attachments of love and gratitude. But suppose we admit for a moment your supposition, that the very substance swallowed and digested, is meant to have, through the bodily organs, a beneficial operation on the soul, it must at least be admitted that this beneficial operation is altogether supernatural and miraculous?

Rom. Certainly; there can be no doubt of that.

Prot. Then we come to the next question, which is this,Bread, eaten and digested, has no sort of effect upon the soul, in the ordinary course of nature. Flesh,

whether of man or of beast, is equally without power in this respect. It will not be supposed that, had Christ's human body been actually resigned to be eaten by the disciples, instead of being rapt into heaven, it cannot be supposed, I say, that that human body, irrespective of all supernatural influence, would have exerted any beneficial influence upon their souls through that eating. In fact, no kind of substance, be it what it may, can operate through the stomach upon the soul, except by a direct miracle. This you must admit.

Rom. I do not deny your position.

Prot. Then I proceed to contend, that the alleged spiritual influence being wholly miraculous,and the substance eaten being a mere vehicle, having no necessary

or natural connection with the miracle to be performed ―it follows plainly that it must be wholly immaterial of what that vehicle consisted; and that whether it were mere bread, used as a symbol of Christ's broken body, or, by some miraculous increase and multiplication, the very body itself, the spiritual benefit, the grand thing to be considered, must remain the same. Hence it clearly follows, that your alleged miraculous transubstantiation, by which thousands of wafers are said to be changed, every Sunday, into thousands of Christ's entire body, is wholly unnecessary, without object, and without utility.

But

Inq. I think I perceive the drift of your argument, and can understand its force. As when Christ, on one occasion, chose to remove blindness by the application of clay, formed by spitting upon the earth: He might, if he had chosen, have transubstantiated that clay into the finest oil. neither the oil nor the clay could cure the want of eyesight, without the exertion of his almighty power. Each must remain a mere vehicle, an instrument, arbitrarily selected by Him who could work with equal ease by any means he chose, or without the intervention of means at all. In this case he determined, for wise ends, known only to himself, to use the visible medium of clay, a vehicle as simple as the bread in the last supper. And just as the clay and the oil were alike without virtue in themselves, in the one case, so are the bread and the flesh in the other. The whole efficacy, in each case, depends entirely in the virtue super naturally conveyed. And just as, in the one case, Christ did not change the clay into a medicinal drug, so, in the other, he does not change the bread into flesh. In the one case the clay was just as good a vehicle of miraculous power as oil would have been; in the

other, bread is as good a vehicle as flesh; and therefore a miracle which, on the one hand, we cannot perceive, and which, on the other, would answer no assignable end, must be rejected by us until some clear scriptural proof can be adduced in its support. But I perceive that our time is nearly gone, What remains of the present subject?

Prot. I would endeavour, before we part, to press with all possible brevity, upon the mind of our friend here, the doubt which must ever remain, whether he, or any of his brethren of the Romish church, are really able to convince their own minds of the truth of that fact which they so strongly urge upon us.

Rom. I do not quite understand you. Why do you thus uncourteously challenge our sincerity?

Prot. I will explain myself. The anecdote is a well-known one, of a lady who, having some suspicions of the soundness of the Romish creed, addressed a priest one day in the following tenor-" You have now consecrated the bread and the wine; and you are sure that the substance of the bread is converted into our Lord's body, and the substance of the wine into his blood?" 66 Certainly," was the reply. "Nothing, then, remains, except the appearances of bread and wine; the former substances having been entirely converted into a totally different thing?" that there can be no doubt." am glad of that," was her reply, for before I gave you the wine, I mingled with it an infusion of a tasteless but most deadly poison." The story goes on to say, that the priest dared not prove his own belief in the doctrine he had enunciated, by drinking that which he had just declared to be nothing else than the blood of Christ.

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Now it matters little whether this story be a fiction or a narrative of a real occurrence. The difficulty which it presents, in the

embracing your doctrine, is just the same, and can only be removed by a prompt submission to that test from which the priest is said to have shrunk. You now stand

here, avowing that whosoever denies" the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, so that only the appearance of bread and wine remain, is to be held ACCURSED." I ask you, then, will you consecrate a wafer, of the usual form, size, and colour, which I will produce to you to-morrow,and will you afterwards eat of the same; I beforehand informing you, that I purpose to make trial thereby of two things: first, your own belief in this miraculous change, and secondly, the reality of that change itself?

Rom. Assuredly I shall be no party to any profane and impious experiments on so great a mystery.

Prot. I admit that you may fairly be permitted to make that reply. But I will state the same difficulty in another form. Suppose that you were to receive information, that one of the journeymen employed in the manufacture of your wafers, harassed with doubts as to this disputed doctrine, had determined, for his own satisfaction, to try the question in this practical way, and had mingled some noxious or poisonous ingredient in the wafers you were just about to use. Suppose, too, that this circumstance only came to your knowledge after you had duly consecrated the wafer, elevated it to God as the actual body of his Son, and were on the point of taking it yourself, and of distributing it to the congregation: I put it to you, would your own belief in the doctrine of your church stand this trial? Could you quietly proceed in the service, firmly reposing in the assurance that "the whole substance of the bread had been converted into a different

substance, and that merely the appearance of it remained ?

me

Rom. You must excuse from replying to such a question at the very moment of its suggestion. I must take a short time to consider the difficulty on every side.

Prot. Do so, but remember, that if you cannot reply to it in the affirmative, you do thereby tacitly admit that of which I ventured to hint a suspicion at the outset ; namely, that your priests do, in fact, demand of their people an universal and entire belief in a miraculous change, the truth of which they find it impossible to realize in their own minds.

Rom. But there is one point of the case which we must not part without adverting to; I mean the general consent of the Fathers.

Prot. I am about to pass on to that; but before we quit the main question, let me propose one other difficulty to your mind. I observe that Dr. Wiseman closes his review of the question, by charging upon Protestants "the neglect of a sovereign command, a neglect to which is attached a fearful penalty, "Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." Now if I rightly understand his meaning, he clearly implies, that to take this sacrament rightly, the miracle of transubstantiation having been duly performed, is “to eat the flesh of the Son of man," and thus "to have life;" while to be without it, is to be without Christ. Is not this your doctrine?

Rom. Certainly; we do not imagine that Christ condescends to pass into every eucharistic sacrifice, without thereby conveying any certain benefit. We have no doubt that he who partakes of that awful sacrifice, is a partaker of Christ, and is mystically joined to him.

Prot. Such an one, then, is, at least for the time, in a state of safety, while all who are destitute

of this great gift, are in a state of reprobation? Now let me offer to your mind, in disproof of this notion, the striking fact, that Judas, the betrayer of Christ, was one of those who took from the Saviour's own hand the first eucharist, over which the Lord himself had just pronounced the awful words,

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Take, eat, this is my body.” Yet Judas, only a few hours before, had covenanted to betray Christ, and within a few hours after, he actually perpetrated that crime! What benefit then, will you tell us that his soul had received by that eating? Again, the dying thief, we know, had never participated in this or any other sacrament; yet he was a saved man, and was removed from the cross to paradise, into the immediate presence of his Saviour, unbaptized, unanointed, without having eaten of this bread, or drank of this cup, which is made, in your church, the very palladium of salvation!

Ing. The difference must surely have been, that the one merely, in form and without any faith, or spiritual intention, ate the bread and drank the cup,-while the other, wanting the external observances, exercised that spiritual affiance which is the essence of the real communion. Faith, I suppose, in the one,and the absence of it in the other, constituted the grand difference.

Prot. Exactly so, as Augustine's words, which I have already quoted, declare. Why do you prepare," says he, "your teeth and your stomach? Believe only, and you will have eaten." And in strict accordance with this statement, are the decisions of the English church. "To such," says the XXVIIIth Article, "as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ; and the cup of blessing a partaking of the blood of Christ." But the body of Christ is given,

taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby" it is so received and eaten in the

Supper, is Faith." Therefore, "such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth, as Augustine saith, the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing."

Here, then, lies the distinction between the Protestant and the Romish doctrines. We hold, that after a heavenly and spiritual manner, the body and blood of Christ are received by the real Christian in the Sacrament, through the medium of faith, But we deny that the ungodly receive Christ in any wise in that Sacrament. Consequently we deny that when the consecrated bread and wine lie upon the table, there exists, under the appearance of bread, the actual body and blood of Christ. Your church, on the other hand, declares 66 every one ACCURSED," "who denies that a whole and entire Christ is contained in every particle of what appears to be bread, and also in every particle of what appears to be wine." Consequently, both Judas and every other traitor to Christ who has partaken of this Sacrament since his time, must have actually received Christ himself, as certainly as the thief on the cross was left without the power of receiving him. I leave this reflection on your mind, and shall now proceed to consider the testimony of the Fathers. But we must pass very rapidly over this part of the subject, for our time has expired.

Rom. I only alluded to it, in order to remind you of a fact, which you surely will not deny, that in almost every period of the Church, we have the most illustrious witnesses, who testify that

in successive ages this great doctrine was held as firmly by the Universal Church, as it is now by those who remain in the communion of the sovereign pontiff. Dr. Wiseman has referred to the writings of Chrysostom, Justin Martyr, Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa, Irenæus, Augustine, Isaac of Antioch, and Amphilochius, and he might have quoted many others, had his space allowed. What is your expedient, for getting rid of the force of their combined testimony?

Prot. I have no desire to get rid of them, for although they make some show upon paper, the least examination shews these quotations to be quite beside the argument. Scarcely any of them do more than merely paraphrase or vary our Lord's own expression, "Take, eat, this is my body." When, therefore, we have satisfied ourselves that our Lord's own words were merely figurative, what difficulty can we find in classing the glowing language of the Fathers under the same head?

In fact, so overladen with figure and hyperbole did the theology of the Fathers become, that it is almost wonderful that we can at all see our way through the mazes of all their exaggerations. A careful examination, however, of their usual modes of expression, will soon remove all danger of a too literal interpretation of their terms.

Cyril, for instance, who is greatly relied upon as a witness for transubstantiation, thus speaks of another rite. He represents "the oil of baptism, after consecration, not as mere oil, but as the grace of Jesus: as the bread is not mere bread, but the body of our Lord." * Thus we have transubstantiated oil, as well as transubstantiated bread and wine.

Many of the fathers declare the water of Baptism to be Christ's blood. Chrysostom describes the * Cyril, 292,