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the Lord;" and again, in another | therefore, our Saviour, and his part, for he that eateth or drink- evangelists, and apostles, and saints, eth unworthily eateth and drinketh whom he sent to convert all nations, damnation to himself, not discerning teach me, with one unanimous and the Lord's body." And here, ex- according voice, that the flesh and claimed my rev. friend, in his con- blood of our Saviour are veritably cluding speech of the last evening, received in the sacrament of the who discerns the Lord's body? Eucharist, who shall convince me, Can the Papist discern it? can the and my friends here present, that Catholic discern it? I was asto- the whole of this ineffable mystery nished to hear this, because I gave consists in eating and drinking a the earned gentleman great credit little bread and wine, reverentially for insight into the Greek and Latin in remembrance of his death and of languages. God forbid that I should his passion? If St. Paul meant be so envious as to detract from to teach me, as my learned friend, a fellow scholar! He is a man, forsooth, would teach me this evenpolished in all the learning of anti-ing, that it is but "bread and wine," quity, and you are witnesses how by what invigoration of my faculbeautiful a displayer he is of all the ties am I to discern" the body of elegances of his own language; the Lord, where it neither exists but I was literally astonished that nor is supposed to exist? But if I he should say, who can discern the am to speak as a Catholic, looking at body of our Lord; can the Papist, it steadfastly with the eye of celescan the Catholic do it ?-applying, tial faith, not with that of mere as he did, the word "discern" to terrestrial reason, I can just as the eye, whereas we know in the easily believe in Transubstantiation original that it refers to the judg- as I can believe in the incarnation ment of the mind, not to the corpo- of Christ in the womb of the Virgin! real eye; diakpivov is the word, Each of these two immortal tenets, 1 Cor. xi. 29: "For he that viewed by the narrowness of human eateth and drinketh unworthily, conception, staggers and confounds eateth and drinketh damnation to me; viewed by the calm, celestial himself, not discerning the Lord's eye of pondering faith, each of them body." Not having sufficient dis- commands most irresistibly my uncrimination of mind to apprehend qualified assent. I will not exclaim the mystery; not having the sense, with the murmuring Jew, on the the discrimination to see, as I have one hand, nor with the murmuring told you over and over again, and as Protestant on the other, How can the evangelist has told you over and this man give us his flesh to eat, over again, that it is actually "the and his blood to drink?" "this is body of the Lord"-" not discern- a hard saying, who can hear it ?" ing," "non dijudicans corpus Domini." but I will simply ask, does this Now, I would ask, how are we man, or rather, does this Man-God, guilty of eating and drinking the say-repeating it over and over body and blood of the Lord," if again-that he will give his body they be not there? Why this to eat, and his blood to drink? and dreadful denunciation against the I believe that he will give them. desecrators of mere bread and wine, His solemn and emphatic words hich there is not the remotest can no more deceive me than his de to the body and blood of power can deceive him by disapord Jesus Christ? When, pointing the fat of his divinity.

The reality, therefore, of the of "orientalism," into which my body and blood of Christ in the learned friend this evening would Eucharist is most solidly esta- willingly conduct us; here I see blished by the word of Christ an indissoluble tie to bind me to himself; it is with equal solidity the literality of the text; here I see established by St. Paul, his "vessel an explicit, a direct injunction to of election;" it is with equal soli- proceed in interpreting his words dity established by the authoritative by a straightforward way, not by testimony of the Catholic church-remote and wandering circumvoluthe Catholic church, I say-that tion. The light which illuminates church which Christ has com- this mysterious dogma is the allmanded all nations to obey, under luminous word of Him who taught pain of being considered as heathen- it; and, as to its credibility, I can men or publicans, that is, destitute just as readily believe" the body of eternal life, should they refuse and blood," that is, Christ, whole obedience, and presume, in the and entire, to be on the altar after pride of intellect, to instruct them- the words of consecration, as I selves. Yes, my friends, the dogma can believe that the water was of Transubstantiation has been pro- turned into wine at the marriageclaimed alond by this ever-speaking, feast of Cana. He who said, “Let never-changing, Catholic church, in light be," and "there was light," every age and in every clime, from said also, "this is my body, this is the days of the apostles down to the my blood," and I maintain that it times in which we live; aye, my became his body and his blood friends, in every country and in instantaneously; and I maintain, every clime, and in none more con- moreover, that it will become so, so spicuously than in the land we live often as the words of consecration in; and where the magnificent edi- are pronounced by duly consecrated fices of our Catholic ancestors still ordained priests in apostolical sucattest, by a sublimity and adaptation cession, until the end of time. of things not to be misinterpreted, the sublime purposes for which they were originally destined. If I am asked, why attach a literal and not a figurative meaning to these words? y prompt answer is, because to interpret them figuratively would be acting in express contrariety to my blessed Saviour, who prohibits me so to do. Yes, our Saviour warns us by his answer to the Jews, not to entertain the least doubt on the subject. They (the Jews) asked, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" He said, "Verily, verily, say unto you, unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you."

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Here, then, in these plain words, I see an eternal veto upon all those fanciful excursions into the realms

And here, my friends, having mentioned the necessity of regular apostolic succession in the priesthood, in order to be able to consecrate, permit me to remind you that there is in this country but one universally acknowledged priest, and that is the Catholic one. Reflect, my friends, if a Catholic priest turns Protestant, he is immediately admitted into your pulpitshis ordination is all right! the other hand, should a Protestant clergyman turn Catholic even should it be the Archbishop of Canterbury himself-we say to him, No, no, you are no priest. Before you officiate at our altars you must come and be ordained. Now I have only one word to observe in conclusion of this subject. I wish I were

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and blood-not as the reality.

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to be applauded and crowned with all the garlands of genius by the had, I say, simply to state, had the associates of thy early wanderings! Lord's Supper, in the Protestant What is it that St. Justin says, and acceptation, been then known, that to whom is it that his words are the harmless rite consisted merely addressed? Know, then, that he is in eating bread and drinking wine, writing to the Roman emperor, in remembrance of their blessed Antoninus Pius; and that, at the Master, without indulging one single very time when he wrote it, a report thought of their being changed by was prevalent throughout the whole the words of the blessing into real Roman empire, that the Christians flesh and real blood; although, by in their sacrifices made it a part of a species of harmless misnomer, their sacred rites to murder infants (according to the Protestant docand to eat human flesh. The se- trine,) the custom was to call them crecy with which the awfully tre- by those respective names. This mendous mysteries were veiled by explanation would, methinks, have the Christians in those early ages, been amply sufficient; and had accompanied with incautious words, St. Justin thus given it, I do own sometimes uttered by true believers that the Protestant might have had in the hearing of Pagans, as well as some plausibility of argument in with confessions (sometimes extor- declaiming against the doctrine of ted by the violence of racks and Transubstantiation as being empty tortures,) that the Sacrament was and fallacious. But oh! if this was the real body and the real blood of really the intent of the holy father Jesus Christ, alone could and did in writing to a Pagan emperor upon give rise to the dissemination of so this mystery of Christian faith, what barbarous an opinion. language more mysterious in its import could he possibly have used as explanatory of the grand arcanum, than those words which are contained in the passage above quoted? How could the words, "is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus,” have been intended by St. Justin to convey to the Roman emperor the doctrine of Protestantism on this momentous subject?

What a splendid opportunity had not St. Justin upon this occasion, had the doctrine of mere bread and wine been known at that early period, of allaying all the ferment that had been excited against the professors of Christianity, on the ground of their being mere cannibals! The way to proceed was plain and obvious. He had nothing to do but, with all the mildness of a Christian utterly averse to such a ferocious practice as that of eating human flesh, to acquaint the Roman emperor with the true circumstances of the case-to account for the origin of the report that had been spread against them—namely, by assuring him that, although the priest at the sacrifice said, "This is my body," and "This is my blood," and that the people cried out "Amen!" yet that they meant it as a mere type or figure of the precious body

The answer to this question, which in the eyes of a reader of a plain ordinary capacity seems to present difficulties of a most insurmountable nature, so far from causing the least alarm in the breast of Archbishop Tillotson, furnishes, on the contrary, in his grave opinion, a most resistless argument against us. Every line with him is strictly orthodox, and easy to be accommodated to plain Protestantism, without the slightest violence or distortion of phrase. There is only

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extant in those works of his which remain, yet has been preserved by Ecumenius; and it is this: When (says he) the Greeks had taken some servants of the Christian Catechumeni (that is, such as had not been admitted to the Sacrament), and afterwards urged them by violence to tell them some of the secrets of the Christians, these servants, having nothing to say that might gratify those who offered violence to them, except only that they had heard from their masters that the divine communion was the blood and body of Christ; they, thinking that it was really blood and flesh,

one oversight in this the learned The next astounding objection Archbishop's powerful attempt to of Archbishop Tillotson against overturn the ever-flourishing dogma Transubstantiation is as follows:of Christianity in question, of which "There is," says his lordship, his lordship appears to have been other remarkable testimony of Ireguilty-and that is, of not present-næus, which, though it be not now ing to his Protestant reader the passage of St. Justin at full length, instead of the two or three hors d'autre expressions calculated to answer the purpose which he had in view. This, to be sure-and herein he perfectly coincides with all the divines of the Church of England since its foundation-would have been a very dangerous experiment. What, indeed, could all arguments have availed to those who have hitherto given up their understandings to be guided by the learning of such a divine as Tillotson, had he been candid enough to give in the same page which was graced with his sonorous periods against the doc-declared as much to those that questrine of Transubstantiation, as being tioned them. The Greeks taking this repugnant to the doctrine of the as if it were really done by the Chrisfathers, merely one milesimal part tians, discovered it to others of the of what those said fathers had de- Greeks, who hereupon put Sanctus livered in testimony of its eternal and Blandina to the torture, to make truth? What would have become them confess it' To whom Blanof the ductility of the scholar at dina boldly answered. How could Oxford and Cambridge for nearly they endure to do this who by way of three centuries past, had such a exercise (or abstinence) do not eat that practice been unanimously adopted flesh which may lawfully be eaten?" by their Professors of Theology?"By which it appears," says ArchWhy, the manifest result would have bishop Tillotson very gravely, "that been most unquestionably to place this which they would have charged in substitution upon those very shelves, where the fathers now repose in their libraries covered with the dust of ages that profusion of neverending volumes which have issued from the British press every year since the days of the Reformation, for the express purpose of misrepresenting the doctrine contained in them. "Good God!" would the astonished pupil have exclaimed to his instructor, "is it possible that the fathers could have thus written, and that you could have thus taught ?"

upon Christians, as if they had literally eaten the flesh and drank the blood of Christ in this Sacrament, was a false accusation which these martyrs denied, saying they were so far from that, that they, for their part, did not eat any flesh at all."

Such, reader, is the very skilful refuge by which the learned Archbishop, in quoting this memorable extract from St. Irenæus, endeavours to evade the force of those pregnant words contained in it, namely, that they (the slaves) had heard from

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But neither did St. Irenæus nor St. Augustine mean to inculcate that the flesh and blood of our Saviour was not to be really eaten and drunk in the sacramental manner in which they are received by the Catholic: to prove which look to the words of St. Irenæus, cited above, and attend to the following passage from St. Augustine :

Conversi sunt ex ipso populo Judæorum, conversi sunt et baptizati sunt; ad mensam Domini accesserunt, et sanguinem quem sævientes fuderunt, credentes biberunt.”

their masters, that the divine communion was the body and blood of Christ. Now hear the answer, and let me obtain the command of your full attention whilst I give it. The question expected to be spoken to by Sanctus and Blandina, was whether they ate human flesh, of course according to a human mode of eating, namely, being sensible that it is flesh whilst one is eating it; and the answer of the martyrs was precisely that which a Catholic in the present century would be obliged to give to a torturer who should have the power of putting such a question-namely, that he did not; and moreover would he add, that he shuddered at such an action. St. Augustine, indeed, has rejected from the Catholic faith such a mode of eating, in describing that which the first Protestants, the The answer, therefore, of those carnal-minded Jews, who rose against blessed martyrs,-to express myself the words of our Saviour, conceived by this passage of the same St. that the meaning of his words tended Augustine,-was given to men who, to inculcate. "Quid est ergo, Non in regard to the question, “spiriprodest quidquam caro? Non prodest tualia carnaliter sapiebant" (vol. iii. quidquam, sed quomodo illi intel-par. 2,) had ever conceived of spilexerunt, quomodo in cadavere dila- ritual things in a manner wholly niatur, aut in macello venditur, non gross and temporal, and the answer quomodo spiritu vegetatur."-Tract. was, therefore, precisely that which 27, vol. iii. p. 503. ought to have been given.

They [some of the Jews,] were converted; they were converted and baptized; they approached to the table of the Lord; and now, believing, they drank that blood which in their ungovernable fury they themselves had shed."

What, therefore, means that And here let me ask, Had the phrase, The flesh profiteth nothing? learned Archbishop, in bringing It profiteth nothing in the manner forth this passage of St. Irenæus, in which they understood it; for had nothing else in view but to disthey understood it to mean flesh as it charge a duty to his conscience, and is mangled in a dead body, or as it is to his God, by explaining the real docsold in the market, not as it is quick-trine of primitive Christianity on this ened by the animating spirit of life." contested point, would it not have Now is it not precisely in this been natural for him to observe, manner that they (the Greeks) con- that Ecumenius, instead of drawing ceived the Christians to eat human the same inference with himself (the flesh? And was not the answer of Archbishop) from the extract which Sanctus and Blandina, with the he gives from Irenæus, actually utmost accuracy, correspondent to declares himself a true Papist, when, the intention of those who put the in his own words, he attempts to question, as to the mode in which elucidate the same subject? Exit was to be answered, viz. Yes, or plaining the meaning of those words No, as to the carnality of the eating? of St. Paul, "He that eateth and