be condemned for not discerning the Lord's body, if it be not there? But does the believer discern it otherwise than by faith 2 Paul con stantly makes use of the strongest expressions. Thus (Hebe VİS v. 5, 6), those who fall away, are said to crucify again to them selves the Son of God, and to make him an open mockery. (Heb. c. x.) He who sins wilfully after a knowledge of the truth, is said to tread under foot the Son of God. (Gal. c. ii. v. 19.) · Paul says, "With Christ I am nailed to the cross." May we not ask with equal reason, how the Son of God could be crucified, trodden under foot, or nailed to the cross, in company with Paul, if he was not bodily present? No one who in an humble and docile frame of mind, and with an earnest prayer for the teaching of the Holy Spirit, approaches the sacred volume, can discover any-thing thereinto necessitate the belief of this doctrine, indeed several of the most celebrated of the Romish doctors, Scotus, Durandus, Biel, Occham, Cardinal Cameracensis, &c. have confessed, that, but for the autho rity of the church, there was nothing in the Bible to compel the belief of transubstantiation. Even Cardinal Bellarmine admits that this is not impossible. Now this is of great importance to the Protestant advocate. For when we affirm that it is most contradictory to the evidence of the senses, and to the nature of things, the Romanist accuses us of borrowing arms from the infidel, who for somewhat similar reasons rejects some of the miracles recorded in holy writ. But he forgets that for the latter we have the authority of God's word, whilst for the former we have the authority only of the church of Rome.

Sensible that there is no real groundwork for transubstantiation in the Bible, the Romish priests usually betake themselves to the seventy folios of the fathers, where few can follow them, and by a dexterous assortment of passages in which the fathers have expressed them selves figuratively, keeping carefully out of sight those passages in which they have spoken literally, they advance with great confidence,' and unhesitatingly assert that all the fathers held transubstantiation, and that it was first questioned by one Berengarius in the eleventh century. The writings of Cyril and Ambrose are doubtless tinged with this heresy, and with them the notion appears to have originated in the fourth century. Chrysostom also seems to have held con substantiation, but as he expressly states in the treatise discovered by Peter Martyr, that the nature of the bread remains, he is opposed to the council of Trent. For the adverse opinions of Augustine, Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, &c. consult part 2nd of this work. The learned Dupin acknowledges that in the ninth century, when the notion was first seriously taken up, there were violent contests. One of its chief opponents in those days was Scotus Erigena, the great luminary of the Irish church, which affords presumptive evidence that transubstantiation was unknown to the ancient British church; and we have a Saxony homily written in the tenth century, which is decidedly hostile to it; a clear proof that it was not a tenet of the ancient Saxon church. In the eleventh century Berengarius

exerted all his powers to check the rising error, and dispersed his scholars far and wide to arrest its progress. The authority of the church of Rome was then for the first time exerted in its favour. Berengarius was compelled to make three recantations at Rome, (one of which, by the way, was not orthodox,) and was condemned by four Roman councils. But was the church of Rome in those days of corruption and schism entitled to respect, and was Gregory 7th, her head, a man who was engrossed with worldly schemes, entitled to credit as a sound divine? (For the state of the Roman church at that period, see Part I.) In the thirteenth century, when the popes had succeeded in compelling kings and emperors to hold their stirrups and bridles, and to put the first dish upon their table, a general council, the fourth of Lateran, the same which recommended the extermination of heretics, and auricular confession at least once a year, confirmed a doctrine which so highly exalts the Romish priesthood in the eyes of the people, by impressing the latter with the notion that their priests can at any time work a stupendous miracle (and here is one of the uses of the doctrine of intention), and that they offer up conjointly with Christ the incarnate Jehovah. The catechism of the council of Trent does not hesitate to call them Gods upon account of this exalted privilege, as well as upon account of their power of forgiving sins. But whilst this doctrine raises to such an unchristian height the priestly dignity, what degrading ideas does it involve of the person of the glorified Redeemer! We must believe that his glorified body, blood, soul and divinity, are contained in a little box and carried about in the priest's pocket, or set up for forty hours in a church in Rome; that he bodily enters the mouths and stomachs of the wicked; that any wicked priest has it in his power to insult him at the present day, when his humiliation is past and he is for ever enshrined in glory; that if a crumb of the wafer falls to the ground he may be trampled upon; that he is in fact in the same helpless state which was so keenly ridiculed by the prophets who derided the Jewish and heathen idols, who were moved because they could not move themselves, and who, if they fell, could not raise themselves; that an animal, as it is expressed in the Roman Missal, or a mouse as was defined by Greg. 11, (Direct. Inquisit. part 1, No. 15,) may run away with him in his mouth. And lastly, that a priest may vomit up as is expressly

set forth in the Roman Missal!!!

Documents relating to Transubstantiation.

The Canons and Decrees of the
most holy and Ecumenical
Council of Trent. (Printed at
Paris, 1823.)

Session 12, on the Eucharist.

Sacrosancti et Ecumenici concilii Tridentini • Canones et Decreta. (A Paris, 1823.)

Sessio 12, de Eucharistia.

QU

sacramento non esse corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, sed tantùm in usu, dum sumitur, non autem ante vel post; et in hostiis seu particulis consecratis, quæ post communionem reservantur vel supersunt, non remanere verum corpus Domini, anathema sit.

For the interpretations by the fathers of the 54th verse of the 6th chapter of John, which are adverse to transubstantiation, see Part II. of this work. The differences of the fathers and doctors respecting its meaning, are incidentally admitted in the following decree of the council of Trent.

Cardinal Bellarmine enumerates the following Roman Catholic doctors, who give the Protestant interpretation of the 54th verse of the 6th chap. of John's Gospel.