Church, on this principal subject of modern controversy, is evidently to be ascribed to the perspicuity and force of the declaration of Holy Scripture concerning it. As to the Holy Fathers, they received this, with her other doctrines, from the Apostles, independently of Scripture: for, before even St. Matthew's Gospel was promulgated, the sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated, and the body and blood of Christ distributed to the faithful throughout a great part of the known world.

In finishing this letter I must make an important remark on the object or end of the institution of the Blessed Sacrament. This, our Divine Master tells us, was to communicate a new and special grace, or life, as he calls it, to us his disciples of the New Law. The bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same shall also live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth this bread shall live for ever. John vi. 52, 58, 59. He explains, in the same passage, the particular nature of this spiritual life, and shews in what it consists, namely, in an intimate union with him; where he says, He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. ver. 57. Now the servants of God, from the beginning of the world, had striking figures and memorials of the promised Messiah, the participation of which, by faith and devotion, was, in a limited degree, beneficial to their souls. Such were the tree of life, the various sacrifices of the Patriarchs, and those of the Mosaic Law; but more particularly the Paschal Lamb, the Loaves of Proposition, and the Manna

of which Christ here speaks: still, these signs, in their very institution, were so many promises, on the part of God, that he would bestow upon his people the thing signified by them; even his incarnate Son, who is at once our victim and our food, and who gives spiritual life to the worthy communicants, not in a limited measure, but indefinitely, according to each one's preparation. The same tender love which made him shroud the rays of his Divinity, and take upon himself the form of a servant, and the likeness of man, in his Incarnation; which made him become as a worm and not a man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people, in his immolation on Mount Calvary; has caused him to descend a step lower, and to conceal his human nature also, under the veils of our ordinary nourishment, that thus we may be able to salute him with our mouths and lodge him in our breasts; in order that we may thus, each one of us, abide in him, and he abide in us, for the life of our souls. No wonder that Protestants, who are strangers to these heavenly truths, and who are still immersed in the clouds of types and figures, not pretending to any thing more in their sacrament, than what the Jew possessed in their ordinances, should be compara tively so indifferent, as to the preparation for re ceiving it, and, indeed, as to the reception of it a all! No wonder that many of them, and amongst the rest Anthony Ulric, Duke of Brunswick (1), should have reconciled themselves to the Catholic Church, chiefly for the benefit of exchanging the figure for the substance; the bare memorial of Christ, for his adorable Body and Blood. I am, &c.

J. M. (1) Lettres d'un Docteur Allemand, par Scheffmacker, Vol

p. 393,

LETTER XXXVIII.

To the Rev. ROBERT CLAYTON, M.A.

REV. SIR,

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

THOUGH I had not received the letter with which you have honoured me, it was my intention to write to Mr. Brown, by way of answering Bishop Porteus's objections against the Catholic doctrine of the Blessed Eucharist. As you, Rev. Sir, have in some manner adopted those objections, I address my answer to you.

You begin with the Bishop's arguments from Scripture, and say, that the same Divine personage who says: Take, eat, this is my body, elsewhere calls himself a door and a vine: hence you argue, that, as the two latter terms are metaphorical, so the first is also. I grant that Christ makes use of metaphors, when he calls himself a door and a vine: but then he explains that they are metaphors, by saying, I am the door of the sheep; by me if any man enter he shall be saved, John x. 9.; and again, I am the vine, you the branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, beareth much fruit; for without me you can do nothing. John xv. 5. But, in the institution of the Sacrament, though he was then making his last will, and bequeathing that legacy to his children, which, in his promise of it, he had assured them should be meat indeed and drink indeed; not a word falls from him, to signify that his legacy is not to be understood in the plain sense of the terms he makes use of. Hence those incredulous Christians, who insist on allegorizing the texts in question, (professing at the same time to make the

plain, natural sense of scripture their only rule of faith) may allegorize every other part of Holy Writ, as ridiculously as Luther had translated the first words of Genesis; and thus gain no certain knowledge from any part of it.

His Lordship adds, that the Apostles did not understand this institution literally, as they asked no questions, nor expressed any surprise concerning it. True, they did not; but then they had been present on a former occasion, at a scene in which the Jews, and even many of the disciples, expressed great surprise at the annunciation of this mystery, and asked, Hon can this man give us his flesh to eat? On that occasion, we know that Christ tried the faith of his Apostles, as to this mystery; when they generously answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.

1

་

You may quote, after Dr. Porteus, Christ's answer to the murmur of the Jews on this subject, Doth this offend you? If then you shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothingThe words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. John ví. 63, 64. To this I answer, that if there were an apparent contradiction, between this passage and those others in the same chapter, in which Christ so expressly affirms, that his flesh 19 MEAT INDEED, and his blood DRINK INdeed, it would only prove more clearly the necessity of inquiring into the doctrine of the Catholic Church concerning them. But there is no such appearance of contradiction: on the contrary. our controvertists draw an argument from the first part of this passage, in favour of the Real Presence (1). The ut

(1) Verité de la Relig. Cat prouvée par l'Ecriture, par M. Des Mahi). p. 163.

most that can be deduced from the remaining part is, that Christ's inanimate flesh, manducated, like that of animals, according to the gross idea of the Jews, would not confer the spiritual life which he speaks of: though some of the Fathers understand these words, not of the Body and blood of Christ, but of our unenlightened natural reason, in contradistinction to inspired faith; in which sense Christ says to St. Peter, Blessed art thou, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. Matt. xvi. 17. You add in the very institufrom St. Luke, that Christ says tion, Do this in memory of me. Luke xxii. 19. I answer, that neither here is there contradiction: for the Eucharist is both a memorial of Christ and the Real Presence of Christ. When a person stands visibly before us, we have no need of any sign to call him to our memory; but if he were present, in such manner to be concealed from all our senses; we might, without a memorial of him, as easily forget him, as if he were at a great distance from us. These words of Christ then, which we always repeat at the consecration, and the very sight of the sacramental species, serve for this pur

pose.

any

The objections, however, which you, Rev. Sir, and Bishop Porteus, chiefly insist upon, are the testimony of our senses. You both say, the bread and wine are scen, and touched, and tasted in our If we cannot Sacrament, the same as in your's. believe our senses,' the Bishop says, lieve nothing. This was a good popular topic for Archbishop Tillotson, from whom it is borrowed, to flourish upon in the pulpit; but it will not stand the test of Christian theology-it would undermine

we can be