Questions, however, of this kind can generally be set to rest within a moderate time, and as the

taining two pieces, one of the Lord's body and blood, and the other of predestination; the former one book, the latter two. The inscription and beginnings of both were thus in the manuscript: Thus begins the book of RATRANUS of the Body and Blood of our Lord &c. as in the printed books. The other book was a catalogue of the library of Lobes with this title A.D. 1049. The friars of Lobes taking an account of the library, find in it these books-Ratramnus of the Lord's body and blood, one book: the same author of God's predestination, two books: which gives us to understand that the book which contains these pieces of Ratramnus, is the very same set down in the catalogue A.D. 1049, and written before that time, and by the hand it appears to have been written a little before the end of the 9th century. And I doubt not but it is the very book which Herigerus, Abbot of Lobes, used at the end of the 10th century.—I compared the Lobes manuscript with the printed books, and the reading is true, except in some faulty places, which I corrected by the excellent Lobes manuscript. There is one word of some -moment omitted, which yet I will not say, was fraudulently left out by the heretics, the first publishers of it, in regard, as I said before, there appears not any thing of unfaithfulness in other places." (Introd. to the Book of Bertram, 61.) The omission is that of the word existit in the following passage: "Iste panis et calix, qui corpus et sanguis Christi nominatur et existit, memoriam repræsentat Dominicæ passionis, sive mortis." (Ratramn, 132.) It is evident that the omission here is of little or no importance, because the original publishers of Ratramn did not deny the spiritual presence, and therefore, if the word in question were found in the MS. which they used, it is not to be doubted that it was left out of the printed copy accidentally. "Outre le MS. de Lobe, le même Pere (Mabillon) en decouvrit un autre dans le monastere de Salem Weiler en Allemagne; et il juge par la charactère, qu'il peut avoir 700 ans d'antiquité." Dissertation sur Ratramne, prefixed to the French translation of his work. Amsterdam, 1717. p. 132.

publishers of Ratramn had no reason to shrink from the responsibility which they had encountered, the work was openly circulated without the least hesitation. It was, indeed, soon rendered accessible to the mass of the people; for Leo Judas translated it into German, and his version was sent by the divines of Zurich to the Margrave of Brandenburg, in consequence of a letter received by that prince in 1532 from Luther, in which he was exhorted to drive the Sacramentaries from his territories. Thus Ratramn's tract was brought forward in opposition to Lutheranism, and that circumstance will perhaps account for the late notice which it appears to have received in England. The Saxon correspondents of our Reformers would be likely either to pass over in silence, or to mention in a very slight manner a book which was esteemed subversive of a principal tenet adopted by their master. At length, however, the name of Ratramn was heard in every region of Western Europe, and Romish polemics, throughout the sixteenth century, in mere despair of eluding the force of such testimony, were reduced to the mortifying necessity of compromising their credit by pronouncing the book supposititious ".

• Lavather, 23.

The Book of Bertram "is a late forgery, it was written by Ecolampadius,; and published under the venerable name of an author of the 9th century. This Sixtus Senensis, and after him Possevine, with extreme impudence pretend. But for want of good memories they elsewhere tell us that the author of the book

At the time when continental theologians were first actively engaged in search of documents to

wrote under Charles the Great, A.D. 810, or the Gross, A.D. 886, and was confuted by Paschasius Radbertus. And Sixtus Senensis forgets that he hath accused Ecolampadius for rejecting St. Ambrose his books of the Sacrament, which are cited by Bertram in this work. It is withal pleasant to observe that Bishop Fisher, against Ecolampadius, names Bertram, among other Catholic writers of the Sacrament, five years before the first edition of it in 1532." (Introd. to the book of Bertram, 34.) Durant, like Possevino and Sixtus of Sienna, a writer of the 16th century, after detailing some frivolous objections, says rather cautiously "Probabile est Bertramum libellum nunquam scripsisse, cum illius ætatis auctores ejus non meminerint, nec aliquis extet qui adversus Bertramum scripserit." (De Rit. Cath. Eccl. 474.) The Roman Church, however, did not venture to tread in the steps of some among her divines. She pretended not to dispute the genuineness of Ratramn's piece: she only, by means of the inquisition at Rome, and of the council of Trent, forbad the reading of it. (Abp. Usher's Answer to a Jesuit's Challenge. Lond. 1631. p. 19.) The Spanish censors went to work in a manner still more effectual. They ordered “Deleatur tota epistola Udalrici; Epistola Augustani de cœlibatu cleri; item totus liber Bertrami presbyteri de corpore et sanguine Domini penitus auferatur." (Usser. de Success. 25.) "The King of Spain gave a commission to the inquisitors to purge all Catholic authors; but with this clause; that they should keep the expurgatory index privately, neither imparting that index, nor giving a copy of it to any. But it happened by the Divine Providence so ordering it, that about thirteen years after, a copy of it was gotten and published by Johannes Pappus, and Franciscus Junius, and since it came abroad against their wills, they find it necessary now to own it. Now by these expurgatory tables what they have done is known to all learned men. In St. Chrysostom's works printed at Basil, these words, the Church is not built upon the man but upon the faith, are commanded to be blotted out; and these There is no merit but what is given us by Christ. And

prove the novelty of transubstantiation, it was not known that English libraries contained the

yet these words are in his sermon upon Pentecost, and the former words are in his first homily upon that of St. John, Ye are my friends, &c. The like have they done to him in many other places, and to St. Ambrose, and to St. Austin, and to them all, insomuch that Ludovicus Saurius, the corrector of the press at Lyons, shewed and complained of it to Junius, that he was forced to cancellate or blot out many sayings of St. Ambrose, in that edition of his works which was printed at Lyons in 1559.—Nay, they correct the very tables or indices made by the printers or correctors; insomuch that out of one of Froben's indices they have commanded these words to be blotted out: The use of images forbidden: The Eucharist no sacrifice, but the memory of a sacrifice: Works, although they do not justify, yet are necessary to salvation: Marriage is granted to all that will not contain: Venial sins damn: The dead saints, after this life, cannot help us: nay, out of the index of St. Austin's words by Claudius Chevallonius at Paris, 1531, there is a very strange deleatur: Dele: Solus Deus adorandus: that God alone is to be worshipped, is commanded to be blotted out, as being a dangerous doctrine. These instances may serve instead of multitudes which might be brought of their corrupting the witnesses, and razing the records of antiquity, that the errors and novelties of the Church of Rome might not be so easily reproved." (Bp. Jer. Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery. Polem. Works. 289.) "Passages refuting transubstantiation, extant in older editions, are cut out in modern ones." (Abp. Usher's Answer to a Jesuit's Challenge, 13.) “Rabanus Maurus says in his penitental published at Ingoldstadt in 1616, in a tome of ancient writers that never saw the light before, 'For some of late, not holding rightly of the body and blood of our Lord, have said, that the very body and blood of our Lord, which was born of the Virgin Mary, and in which our Lord himself suffered on the cross, and rose again from the grave Against which error, writing unto Abbot Egilus, according to our ability, we have declared what is truly to be believed concerning Christ's body.' In the margin it is said, that

means of establishing that point by decisive evidence. Such, however, proved ultimately to be the fact. Among the men of learning who flourished during the Anglo-Saxon rule, Elfric the Grammarian stands eminently conspicuous. This

there is a blank in the MS. copy, and we do easily believe him, for Possevine, the Jesuit, hath given us to understand that MS. books are to be purged, as well as printed." (Ibid. 17.) With respect to Ratramn's book, it was however printed, and had become the theme of general conversation in England, and other countries, before the original MS. could be subjected to the inquisitorial pruning knife, therefore, "the divines of Douay, perceiving that the forbidding of the book did not keep men from reading it, but gave them rather occasion to seek more earnestly after it, thought it better policy, that Bertram should be permitted to go abroad, but handled in such sort, as other ancient writers that made against them were wont to be. Seeing therefore,' say they, that we bear with many errors in other old Catholic writers, and extenuate them, excuse them, by inventing some device (excogitato commento: en Papistarum fidem! de Success. 25.) often deny them, and feign (affingamus) some commodious sense for them when they are objected in disputations or conflicts with our adversaries; we do not see why Bertram may not deserve the same equity and diligent revisal. Lest the heretics cry out that we burn and forbid such antiquity as maketh for them. Accordingly when Bertram says that the body of Christ is incorruptible, the Eucharistic elements corruptible,' the Douay divines say, 'It were not amiss, therefore, nor unadvisedly done, that all these things should be left out.'" (Usher. Answ. to a Jesuit, 19, 20, de Success. 25.) It is often a matter of astonishment with Protestants, that any serious men of sound sense, and good information can continue in the profession of Popery, but when it is known that such pains have been taken to prevent even learned Romanists from finding in libraries complete information upon their own religion, this circumstance may be accounted for easily enough.