Romish ecclesiastics, therefore, claim the power of presenting at all times to the senses of their congregations an incarnation of the Deity, and of exhibiting the naked qualities of things, after those things themselves have wholly disappeared". Few facts in the intellectual history of man are more remarkable, than the extensive credence attained by these pretensions. It is, however, obvious, that such pretensions are well adapted to captivate ordinary minds. Men unused to serious thought, and unacquainted with God's recorded Word, would readily allow themselves to

yet in the air; for the body and blood of Christ, and the air, be neither of that bigness, fashion, smell, nor colour, that the bread and wine be. Nor in the bread and wine, say they, these accidents cannot be; for the substance of bread and wine, as they affirm, be clean gone. And so there remaineth whiteness, but nothing is white; there remaineth colours, but nothing is coloured therewith; there remaineth roundness, but nothing is round; and there is bigness, and yet nothing is big; there is sweetness, without any sweet thing; softness, without any soft thing; breaking, without any thing broken; division, without any thing divided; and so other qualities and quantities, without any thing to receive them. And this doctrine they teach as a necessary article of our faith." Abp. Cranmer's Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, 36.

"Neque aliud forte sunt omnia accidentia, quam qualificationes seu modificationes substantiæ. Quod haud ægre faterentur plerique omnes, nisi propter Eucharistiam contrarium dicendum putaverint Papistæ, ut existere possint accidentia a subjecto suo separata. Sic Jesuita Suarez, in Metaphys. Dis. 7. Sect. 2. Numh. 10. Per mysterium, inquit, Eucharistiæ, certius nobis constat quantitatem esse rem distinctam a materia, quam per cognitionem naturalem constare potuisset." Institut. Logic. per J. Wallis, S. T. D. Oxon. 1729. p. 28.

therefore, are precluded from asserting, as to the grounds of transubstantiation, any thing more satisfactory than, that the tenet is rendered probable from Scripture, and certain from the unvarying testimony of ecclesiastical antiquity 3.

A careful examination of the most ancient theological works, undoubtedly genuine, will however overthrow this latter assertion. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who sealed his conviction with his

Gospel which enforceth any man to understand these words of Christ, This is my body, in a proper, and not in a metaphorical sense; but the Church having understood them in a proper sense, they are to be so explained: which words in the Roman edition of Cajetan are expunged by order of Pope Pius V. Cardinal Contarenus, and Melchior Canus one of the best and most judicious writers that Church ever had, reckon this doctrine among those which are not so expressly found in Scripture. I will add but one more of great authority in the Church, and a reputed martyr, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who ingenuously confesseth that in the words of the institution, there is not one word from whence the true presence of the flesh and blood of Christ in our mass can be proved." Abp. Tillotson. Sermons. Lond. 1742. II. 202. where may be found references to the particular passages cited.

The Trentine fathers, accordingly, treated the grounds of this doctrine in the following vague and indefinite manner. They professed to "deliver the doctrine which the Catholic Church, instructed by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and by his Apostles, and taught by the Holy Spirit daily suggesting to them all truth, has always preserved, and will preserve to the end of the world." (Bp. Marsh, Comp. View, 28.) Thus these divines only ventured to bottom the leading article of their distinctive creed upon bare assertions, and did not descend in this case, as they did in some others, to particularise whether the revelations referred to were preserved orally, or in the Record, or by means of both.

blood at the beginning of the second century", speaks of the Eucharist in a manner offensive to Romish ears, terming it "the bread of God."

k

Justin Martyr says, that the Eucharistic elements nourish the bodies of men; an assertion most unlikely to be made by one who believed those elements to be no other than the glorified body of Christ'. Irenæus" also speaks of the corporal nutriment derived by men from the Eucharistic elements, and says, that these consist of two things, one earthly, the other heavenly". Tertullian explains our Lord's words at the Last Supper by saying, that they mean, This is a figure of my body. Origen declares that the bread and cup are signs and images of our Saviour's body and blood', hence disposed of eventually in the same manner as other aliments which enter the human stomach". Sentiments resembling these,

He was torn in pieces by wild beasts in the amphitheatre at Rome, in the year 107, according to Archbishop Usher. Du Pin, II. 102. Abp. Wake's Apostolical Fathers, Lond. 1817. p. 55.

1

i Epistle to the Ephesians. Abp. Wake's translation, 222.

* A. D. 144.

' Tillotson, 209. Joh. (Cosin.) Episc. Dunelm. Hist. Tran-. subst. Papal. Lond. 1675. p. 59.

"This testimony is so very plain in the cause, that Sextus Senensis suspects this place of Origen was depraved by the heretics. Cardinal Perron is contented to allow it to be Origen's, but rejects his testimony, because he was accused of heresy

utterly subversive of transubstantiation, occur in writers of note, throughout the first seven centuries', and among them no one is more remarkable than that of Gelasius ", because he is generally considered to have been Bishop of Rome. If such be the fact, this ancient Pope differed most widely in the leading article of their creed, from a long succession of those who have occupied his chair, for he asserts expressly, that in the Eucharist the substance, or nature of bread and wine remains. These numerous testimonies have been found by Romanists wholly unmanageable, and their writers of good information and ingenuousness have been driven to the necessity of admitting, that transubstantiation cannot be proved from the genuine remains of the fathers *.

by some of the fathers, and says, he talks like a heretic in this place." Tillotson, 213.

As Cyprian, A. D. 250. Athanasius, 330. Cyril of Jerusalem, 350. Basil, 360. Gregory of Nyssa, 370. Ambrose, 380. Chrysostom, 390. Augustine, 400. Prosper, 430. Theodoret, 440. Cyril of Alexandria, 440. Gelasius, 470. Ephrem of Antioch, 540. Facundus, an African bishop, 550. Isidore of Seville, 630. In Bishop Cosin's work may be seen the passages in which these authors discover their disbelief, or more properly, their ignorance of transubstantiation, together with his own acute remarks upon these passages. Several of these ancient testimonies against Romanism may be seen also in Archbishop Tillotson's discourse against transubstantiation, and in Bishop Stillingfleet's Rational Account.

"Sive is erat Episcopus Romanus, sive alius quispiam, Cardinalis Bellarminus fatetur, ejusdem cum illo et ævi et sententiæ fuisse." Cosin, 80.

"The English Jesuits confessed, that the fathers did not

The origin of this doctrine must probably be sought in the practice, which gained ground so early as the second century', of carrying portions of the consecrated elements away from the church for the use of the sick at their own houses. If such a practice be allowed to prevail, it is obviously no more than decent, that the hallowed substances should be preserved with a considerable degree of respect. Christians did thus preserve them, and their conduct, though becoming under the circumstances of the case, led to superstition. An opinion at length was entertained, not only, that the Eucharist ought to be consecrated at church, but also that it was desirable to consecrate it on the festival of Easter". It is obvious, that men, under the influence of such weaknesses, might be easily led in time to confound the mystical, with the substantial body of Christ. The idea of some such confusion was broached in

Suarez con

meddle with the doctrine of transubstantiation. fesseth, that the names used by the fathers are more accommodated to an accidental change. Father Barns acknowledgeth, that transubstantiation is not the faith of the Church, and that Scripture and fathers may be sufficiently expounded of a supernatural presence of the body of Christ without any change in the substance of the elements. For which he produces a large catalogue of fathers and others." Bp. Stillingfleet's Rational Account of the Grounds of Protestant Religion. Lond. 1665. p. 556.

Allix on the Albigenses, 40.

"Sacerdotes quidam Eucharistiam, quæ die Paschali consecrata fuit, per annum ægrotis reservant." Homil. Sax. ap. Wheloc. in Bed. 332.