Tillotson for my guide. I shall sometimes use his words, and sometimes my own; but to prevent confusion, I shall give only the words which he quotes from ancient writers with marks of quotation. I request the reader to observe, that the present discussion is merely about an historical fact, of which these writers were competent witnesses. I do not appeal to their authority, or to that of Tillotson, in support of any Christian doctrine. I admit no authority in religion, but that of the word of God; but I admit the authority of certain ancient writers as to the matter of fact, whether such a doctrine was held by them, or generally believed in their time. The fathers have a way of speaking about the ordinance of the Lord's supper, which is far enough from scripture simplicity, and which of course I cannot approve; but all that I have to do with them at present is, to prove by their own words, that they had no idea of the bread and wine being converted into the real body and blood, soul and divinity, of Jesus Christ; or that they were converted into any thing which they were not before, unless it were into the substance of the bodies of the persons who ate and drank them. I begin with Justin Martyr, who expressly says, that "our blood and flesh are nourished by the conversion of that food which we receive in the eucharist." Apol. 2, p. 98, edit. Paris, 1636. I believe it formed no part of our Lord's design, in instituting this ordinance, to make provision for the support of our bodies. The bread and wine were not intended to be used in such quantities, as to make a meal; yet so far as they were used, they are represented by the above author as having the same effect as our ordinary food. It was, therefore, far from his thoughts to represent them as the real body and blood of his Saviour; and no man, I suppose, will say that these are converted into the nourishment of our bodies. The second is Irenæus, who, speaking of this sacrament, says, (Lib. 4, c. 34.) "The bread which is from the earth, receiving the divine invocation, is now no longer common bread, but the eucharist, consisting of two things, the one earthly, the other heavenly." He says it is no longer common bread, because it is set apart for a heavenly use; but the expression implies that it is still bread, and nothing else. He says farther, (Lib. 5, c. 21.) "When, therefore, the cup that is mixed, (that is, of wine and water,) and the bread that is broken, receives the word of God, it becomes the eucharist of the body and blood of Christ, of which the substance of our flesh is increased and consists." It is therefore plain bread and wine; and so far as it goes, has the same effect upon our bodies as the same substances have, when eaten or drank on other occasions. Tertullian, Advers. Marchionem, (Lib. 4, p. 571, edit. Paris, 1634,) writes as follows:- "The bread which our Saviour took, and distributed to his disciples, he made his own body, saying, This is my body, that is, the figure or image of my body." This is the very thing for which we contend, which clearly proves that the Christian writers of the early ages of the church, had no idea of transubstantiation. Arguing against the skeptics, who denied the certainty of sense, he used this argument: That if we question our senses, we may doubt whether our blessed Saviour was not deceived in what he heard, and saw, and touched. He might," says he, "be deceived in the voice from heaven, in the smell of the ointment with which he was anointed against his burial, and in the taste of the wine which he consecrated in remem brance of his blood." Here Tertullian plainly intimates that our senses are to be regarded, even in the matter of a sacrament; and therefore he knew nothing of transubstantiation. Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, ch. xv., speaking of the sacrament, says:- That food which is sanctified by the word of God and prayer, as to that of it which is material, goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught;" and he adds, by way of explication,-" It is not the matter of the bread, but the words which are spoken over it, which profiteth him that worthily eateth the Lord; and this (he says) he had spoken concerning the typical and symbolical body." I grant that such expressions as eating the Lord, are fanciful and incorrect. It is evident that Origen meant no more than eating figuratively; but his successors perverted such figurative language, and spake of literally eating the Lord, which prepared the way for transubstantiation. Notwithstanding the figurative language of this father, his words are so plainly against any thing but a figure of our Lord being in the eucharist, that Cardinal Perron rejects his testimony, because he was accused of heresy by some of the fathers, and he says he talks like a heretic in this place. That the wine in the cup merely represented the blood of Christ, was evidently the doctrine of St. Cyprian, and of Christians in his time. He wrote an epistle against those who gave the communion in water only, without wine mingled with it; and his main argument against them is this, that "the blood of Christ with which we are redeemed and quickened, cannot seem to be in the cup when there is no wine in the cup by which the blood of Christ is represented." Epist. 65. I suppose there are few of the fathers in more esteem in the church of Rome than St. Austin, who lived in the fourth century of the Christian era; and he was undoubtedly a man of singular endowments; but on many important subjects, he spoke more like a Protestant than a Papist. Popery, indeed, scarcely appeared in the world in a visible form till some ages after his time; and though many errors and corruptions had then crept into the churches, it would be easy to show that St. Austin's doctrine was more like that of Luther, than like that of the council of Trent. With regard to the point in hand, his sentiments were evidently those of the reformation. "Our Lord," says he, "did not doubt to say, This is my body, when he gave the sign of his body." Tom. 6, p. 187, Edit. Basil. 1596. He commended and delivered to the disciples the figure of his body." Tom. 8, p. 16; language which would now be condemned by the church of Rome for heresy. Austin was never accused of heresy, as Cardinal Perron says Origen was; but he talks as like one as Origen himself. Speaking of the offence which some disciples took at the saying of our Saviour, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood," &c., he brings in our Saviour (Tom. 9, p. 1105) as speaking thus to them; must understand spiritually what I have said unto you ye are not to eat this body which ye see, and to drink that blood which shall be shed by those who shall crucify me. I have commanded a certain sacrament to you, which, being spiritually understood, will give you life." I do not pledge myself for the accuracy of the saint's exposition of our Lord's words as relating to a sacrament; but his language cer "Ye tainly is not that of a man who believed in transubstantiation. Tillotson has a folio page of extracts from the same father, all to the same purpose; from which it appears that he had more Protestant-like views of the Lord's supper than even Luther had, and approached nearer to the sentiments afterwards maintained by Calvin and Knox, and which are held by most Protestant churches at this day. It is true that in the fifth century there were some heretics who taught something like transubstantiation; but then the high authorities of the church, and even the pope of that day, was against them. Thus Pope Gelasius writes against the Eutychians, (Biblioth. Pat. Tom. 4.) "Surely the sacraments which we receive of the body and blood of our Lord are a divine thing, so that by them we are made partakers of a divine nature, and yet it ceaseth not to be the substance or nature of bread and wine; and certainly the image or resemblance of Christ's body and blood are celebrated in the action of the mysteries." Here is the infallible authority of a pope against transubstantiation. Facundus, an African bishop of the sixth century writes, (page 144, edit. Par. 1676.) "And the sacrament of adoption may be called adoption, as the sacrament of his body and blood which is in the consecrated bread and cup, is by us called his body and blood: not that the bread is properly his body, and the cup his blood, but because they contain in them the mysteries of his body and blood; hence our Lord himself called the blessed bread and cup which he gave to the disciples, his body and blood." Can any man believe after this, that it was then, and had ever been, the universal and received doctrine of the Christian church, that the bread and wine in the sacrament are substantially changed into the proper and natural body and blood of Christ? These extracts, I hope, will be considered enough to show that transubstantiation was not always the doctrine of the church of Rome. Scotus himself acknowledges that it was not always thought necessary to be believed; but that the necessity of believing it was consequent to that declaration of the church made in the council of Lateran, under Pope Innocent III. (In sent. l. 4, Dist. 11, Q. 3,) that is, in plain English, the grave divine, Duns Scotus, did not believe the doctrine to rest on any higher authority than that of the said Lateran council, which was held, I believe, in the thirteenth century. And Durandus, another great authority in the Romish church, freely discovers his inclination "to have believed the contrary (of transubstantiation) if the church had not by that determination obliged men to believe it." (In sent. l. 4, Dist. 11, Q. 1, n. 15.) Tonstal, bishop of Durham, also confesses, that "before the Lateran council were at liberty as to the manner of Christ's presence in the sacrament." (De Euchar. l. 1, p. 146.) Erasmus, who lived and died in the communion of the church of Rome, than whom no man was better read in the ancient fathers, confesses that it was "late before the church defined transubstantia tion," which was "unknown to the ancients, both name and thing." In 1 Cor. c. 7. Attend now to the particular time and occasion of the coming in of this doctrine; and by what steps and degrees it grew up, and was advanced into an article of faith in the church of Rome. The doctrine of the corporeal presence of Christ was first started upon occasion of the dispute about the worship of images, in opposition to which the synod of Constantinople, about the year 750, argued thus: "That our Lord having left us no other image of himself but the sacrament, in which the substance of bread is the image of his body, we ought to make no other image of our Lord." In answer to this argument, the second council of Nice, in the year 787, did declare, that the sacrament, after consecration, is not the image and antitype of Christ's body and blood, but is properly his body and blood. So that the corporeal presence of the body of Christ in the sacrament, was first brought in to support the stupid worship of images: and indeed it could never have come in upon a more proper occasion, or have been applied to a fitter purpose. Tillotson, p. 276. The above refers to the introduction of the doctrine of the real presence into the Greek church; and in the Latin or Roman church, it was first broached by the monk, Paschasius, afterwards abbot of Corbey, in the year 818. In reference to whom, Bellarmine writes, (De Scriptor Eccles.) "This author was the first who hath seriously and copiously written concerning the truth of Christ's body and blood in the eucharist." Thus, by the confession of the great and learned cardinal, it was about 800 years after Christ, before any author wrote seriously and copiously about the real presence. This must have been because, before that period, no author seriously believed it, or ever thought of it; for long before that period there were many voluminous authors upon every subject connected with religion. But the doctrine was not generally received for a long period after it was broached. Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz, about the year 847, reciting the very words of Paschasius, wherein he delivered the doctrine of the real presence, says concerning the novelty of it ;— "Some, of late, not having a right opinion concerning the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord, have said, that this is the body and blood of our Lord, which was born of the Virgin Mary, and in which our Lord suffered upon the cross, and rose from the dead; which error we have opposed with all our might." (Epist. ad Heribaldum, c. 33.) In the year 1059, great opposition was made to the doctrine in France and Germany, by Berengarius; who was compelled to recant his opposition, and profess his faith, in these words:"That the bread and wine which are set upon the altar, after the consecration, are not only the sacrament, but the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and are sensibly, not only in the sacrament, but in truth, handled and broken by the hands of the priest, and ground or bruised by the teeth of the faithful." But it seems the pope and his council were not then skilful enough to express themselves rightly in this matter; for the gloss upon the canon law says expressly, "That unless we understand these words of Berengarius, (that is, the words which the pope and his council compelled him to speak,) in a sound sense, we shall fall into a greater heresy than that of Berengarius; for we do not make parts of the body of Christ." The meaning of which gloss, says my author, I cannot imagine, unless it be this, that the body of Christ, though it be in truth broken, yet it is not broken into parts, but into wholes. Now, this new way of breaking a body, not into parts, but into wholes, (which in good earnest is the doctrine of the church of Rome,) though to them that are able to believe transubstantiation, it may, for any thing I know, appear to be sound sense, yet to us who cannot believe so, it appears to be solid nonsense. About twenty years after, in the year 1079, Pope Gregory VII. began to be sensible of this absurdity; and therefore in another council at Rome, made Berengarius to recant in another form, viz. That the bread and wine which are placed upon the altar, are substantially changed into the true, and proper, and quickening, flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, after consecration, are the true body of Christ, which was born of the virgin, and which being offered for the salvation of the world, did hang upon the cross, and sits at the right hand of the Father. So that, from the first starting of this doctrine in the second council of Nice, in the year 787, till the council under Pope Gregory VII. in 1079, it was almost three hundred years that this doctrine was contested, and before the misshapen monster of transubstantiation could be licked into that form in which it is now settled and established in the church of Rome. Here, then, is a plain account of the first rise of this doctrine, and of the several steps whereby it was advanced by the church of Rome into an article of faith. I recommend the whole discourse of the worthy primate to all who have access to it. It contains the best exposure of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the most condensed history of it, that has come in my way. He and his colleagues, Chillingworth and Stillingfleet, were such great literary and controversial giants, as to make all the mighty men of Rome appear as mere children when they came into contact with them. If the church of England, in the present day, possessed many such worthies, I should have fewer fears of her falling away towards Rome: but where shall we find champions equal to this first three? I hope it will appear from the preceding, that I have proved the point with which I set out in the present number, that the holy council of Trent were guilty of a barefaced falsehood, in asserting that transubstantiation was always believed in the church. It is, in fact, a mere mushroom novelty of the dark ages, which would never have taken root, or grown to maturity, but in a rank and filthy soil, on which the light of truth was not permitted to shine. CHAPTER LVIII. THE FAITH OF A PRIEST INGENIOUSLY PUT TO THE TEST BY A LADY. ABSURDITY OF SATURDAY, August 21st, 1819. WHEN Christ spoke of his flesh being "meat indeed, and his blood drink indeed," he evidently meant the doctrine concerning his death as an atoning sacrifice for sin. Some of his followers, affecting to understand him to speak of literally eating his flesh, were offended by it; and he, knowing that they had taken offence, and the cause of their doing so, condescended to explain his meaning. "It is the Spirit," said m |