judgment upon transubstantiation, and from the same quarter was inculcated a violent prejudice against the labours of the Swiss divines upon this subject. Hence the writings of these polemics were announced in vain to the majority of the English Reformers; who were anxious to shun the perusal of works, rashly pronounced alike unsound in their principles, and injurious to the cause of scriptural Christianity. At length, however, Ratramn's treatise found its way into England,

* Before this treatise is dismissed from notice it may be desirable to mention a mode of evading its testimony adopted by some of the more cautious Romanists. "Cardinal Perron tells us, that the adversaries whom Ratramnus encounters, were the Stercoranists, a sort of heretics that rose up in the ninth century, and Mauguin followeth him, with divers others. They are said to believe that Christ's body is corruptible, passible, and subject to digestion and the draught, and that the accidents were hypostatically united to Christ's body. But we read of no such errors censured by any council in that age, we do not find any person of that time branding any body with that infamous hard name. The persons whom some late writers have accused as authors of that heresy, viz. Rabanus, Archbishop of Mentz, and Heribaldus, Bishop of Auxerre, lived and died with the repute of learned, orthodox, and holy men, and are not accused by any of their own time of those foul doctrines. The first I can learn of the name is, that Humbertus, Bishop of Silva Candida, calls Nicetas, Stercoranist. And Algerus likewise calls the Greeks so, for holding that the Sacrament broke an ecclesiastical fast: which is nothing to the Gallican Church in the ninth century." (Introd. to the Book of Bertram, 97.) Both Humbert and Alger were among Berenger's opponents in the 11th century. Accordingly "F. Mabillon waives this pretence of the Stercoranists, and makes Bertram to have, through mistake, opposed an error he thought Haymo guilty of, viz. that the consecrated bread and cup are not

and few candid readers could arise from a perusal of it, without doubting the assertions of both Ro

signs of Christ's body and blood." (Ibid. 99.) Ratramn, however, was not a man to write a book under a palpable mistake, and besides, let his opponents have been whom they may, what he has written is plainly at variance with transubstantiation; which is all that English Protestants have to do with it. Hence Turrian observes," to cite Bertram, what is it else but to say that Calvin's heresy is not new?" (Bp. Jer. Taylor's Real Pres. 266.) The candid Du Pin vindicates the genuineness of Ratramn, and gives some account of the Eucharistic controversy which agitated his time. He then mentions the Stercoranists as known in the ninth century, but cites no authority. Afterwards he says, "Ratramne soutient que le corps invisible de Jesus Christ ne peut être sujet à la condition des autres alimens; mais il croit que les especes y sont sujettes. Amalarius propose la question, mais ne la decide pas, et laisse à penser si le corps de Jesus Christ est enlevé dans le ciel, ou reservé dans notre corps jusqu'au jour de la sepulture, ou exhalé en l'air, s'il sort du corps avec le sang, ou par les pores; enfin s'il est sujet aux accidens des autres alimens. Raban decide affirmativement que les especes de l'Eucharistie sont sujettes à la condition des autres alimens. d'autres auteurs se sont imaginés que cela n'etait pas convenable à la dignité du mystere, et qu'il étoit plus raisonnable de penser, ou que les especes etoit aneanties, ou qu'elles etoient conservées à perpetuité, ou qu'elles se changeoient en sang et en chair, et non en humeurs ou en excremens. C'est le sentiment de l'anonyme cité par Eriger, et Eriger le soutient comme un dogme certain. Guitmond et Alger poussent encore la chose plus loin, et pretendent que les especes de l'Eucharistie ne sont jamais ni pourries, ni alterées, quoiqu'elles le paroissent; qu'en cas que des rats les rongeassent, ou qu'un homme voulut s'en nourir, elles sont enlevées miraculeusement, et que du pain non consacré est mis en leur place. Sur ce fondement, Alger fait un procés aux Grecs, et les accuse d'être Stercoranistes, comme avoit fait Humbert à Nicetas Pectoratus, parce qu'ils croient que le jeûne etoi

Mais

manists and Lutherans as to the antiquity of a belief in the corporal presence.

The first Englishman of eminence thus affected by Ratramn's piece was Dr. Nicholas Ridley. In 1544, appeared the last, and perhaps the most violent attack made by Luther upon the Swiss Reformers. In the following year these injured Christians replied to their Saxon assailant in a full statement of his opinions, and of their own. During a great part of that year, Ridley lived retired upon his vicarage of Herne, in Kent", engaged no doubt, according to his usual habit, in theological research. It is known, that he then became acquainted with Ratramn, and it appears probable, that he was induced to study that author in consequence of perusing the controversy then raging between Switzerland and Saxony. He now became convinced that those who believe that transubstantiation has ever been maintained by the Catholic Church, proceed upon an assump

rompu par la communion; cependant Nicetas et les autres Grecs ne fondoient point leur usage sur cette raison; mais sur ce que recevoir l'Eucharistie etant une action de solemnité et de joie, il ne faut pas la recevoir pendant la tristesse et le jeûne. Humbert n'imputoit pas cette erreur à Nicetas que par consequence, et l'on Be voit point qu'il y ait eu depuis de dispute là dessus entre les Grecs et les Latins." (Du Pin, III. 53.) - Thus, after asserting that the Stercoranists were known in the ninth century, but not mentioning to whom, the historian slips insensibly, as it were, into the eleventh century, and there he finds two of Berenger's opponents using this term in some controversy with the Greeks.

tion merely gratuitous, and farther enquiries did not allow him to doubt that the doctrine could be satisfactorily traced to no very remote period. Having come to these conclusions, he took an opportunity of communicating them to Cranmer ; probably some time in the year 1546. The Archbishop then, assisted by Ridley, applied himself to a consideration of the Eucharistic question, with all that cautious and persevering industry which he never failed to use in every matter of importance. At length, his mind became satisfied as to the truth, and sometime in the year 1547, he felt convinced that the carnal presence was a doctrine unacknowledged by the ancient Church . His enquiries, in fact, terminated like those of Wickliffe, in a full persuasion that no ecclesiastical authority had ventured to impose a belief in any thing like transubstantiation, as an article of faith, before the eleventh century c.

Strype, Mem. Cranm. 368.

"This I confess of myself, that not long before I wrote the said catechism, I was in that error of the real presence." Abp. Cranmer's Answer to Smyth, cited by Strype, ut supra.

"If it can be proved by any doctor, above a thousand years after Christ, that Christ's body is there (in the Eucharist) really, I will give over." (Abp. Cranmer to the Commissioners at Oxford. Foxe, 1701.) "The Papists' Church truly represented has never made any innovations in matters of faith; what she believes and teaches now, being the same that the Catholic Church believed and taught in the first three or four centuries after the Apostles. And though in most of her general councils there have been several decisions touching points of faith, yet can no one,

without an injury to the truth, say, that in any of these have been coined new articles, or Christians forced to the acceptance of novelties, contrary to Scripture, or ancient tradition. They have only trodden in the Apostles' steps, as often as they have been in like circumstances with them, doing exactly according to the form and example left to the church by those perfect masters of Christianity. And therefore, as the Apostles, in their assembly, Acts xv. determined the controversy respecting the circumcision, and proposed to the faithful what was the doctrine of Christ in that point, of necessity to be believed; of which, till that decision, there had been raised several questions and doubts, that are now no longer to be questioned, without the shipwreck of faith; so to all succeeding ages, the elders of the Church, to whom the Apostles left the commission of watching over the flock, in their councils have never scrupled to determine all such points as were controverted among Christians, and to propose to them what of necessity they were to believe for the future, with anathema pronounced against all such as should presume to preach the contrary. Thus in the year 325, the first Nicene council declared the Son of God to be consubstantial to his Father, against the Arians; with an obligation on all to assent to this doctrine, though they till then never proposed or declared it in this form. Thus in the first Ephesian council, Anno 431, Nestorius was condemned, who maintained two persons in Christ, and that the blessed Virgin was not mother of God; with a declaration, that both these his tenets were contrary to the Catholic faith. Thus in the second Nicene council, Anno 787, image-breakers were anathematised. Thus in the great council of Lateran, anno 1215, transubstantiation was declared; the sufficiency of communion in one kind in the council of Constance; purgatory in the council of Florence; and all these together, with the sacrifice of the mass, the invocation of saints, &c. in the council of Trent, against Luther, Calvin, &c." (A Papist Misrepresented and Represented, 86,) Hence it must be inferred, that articles of faith fairly deducible from the Divine Record, but above human comprehension, inasmuch as they relate to the Deity personally, were controverted in primitive times; while other articles, not so deducible, nay, even supposed