be not discernible, at least the doctrines designated by those expressions, 'Trinity' and 'Incarnation,' are expressly taught in Scripture, and are, therefore, to be most tenaciously maintained. Let him, henceforth, take his own solution for a similar difficulty which he raises against the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation.* To a dogma established from Scripture, it is folly, not to say presumption, to oppose arguments deduced from the senses. That the doctrine of the Eucharist is founded on the word of God, has been demonstrated. To him, therefore, who refuses to yield acquiescence because his human reason can * That terms of identical meaning have been invariably employed throughout the East and West, is attested by an author whose authority, as he was not a Catholic, will meet with more respect from our opponents. Samuel Parker, the Protestant Bishop of Oxford, thus observes :'In the first place, then, it is evident to all men that are but ordinarily conversant in ecclesiastical learning, that the ancient Fathers, from age to age asserted the real and substantial presence, in very high and expressive terms. The Greeks styled it Metabole, Metarrhuthinisis, Metaskenasmos, Metapoiesis, Metastoicheiosis; and the Latins agreeable with the Greeks,-Conversion, Transmutation, Transformation, Transfiguration, Transelementation, and at length,-Transubstantiation, by all which they expressed nothing more nor less, than the real and substantial presence in the Eucharist.'-Bishop Parker's reasons for abrogating the Test, p. 13. Oct. 30, Anno 1678. Printed 1688. not grasp the mystery, we answer in the words of a minister of the established Church. 'While arguing upon this subject, some persons, I regret to say, have been far too copious in the use of these unseemly terms,-absurdity, and impossibility. To such language, the least objection is its reprehensible want of good manners. A much more serious objection is the tone of lofty presumptuousness which pervades it, and which is wholly unbecoming a creature of very narrow faculties. Certainly God will do nothing absurd, and can do nothing impossible. But it does not therefore exactly follow that our view of things should be always perfectly correct, and wholly free from misapprehension. Contradictions we may easily fancy, where, in truth, there are none. Hence, before we venture to pronounce any particular doctrine to be a contradiction, we must be sure that we perfectly understand the nature of the matter propounded in that doctrine; for, otherwise, the contradiction may not be in the matter itself, but in our mode of conceiving it. In regard to myself, as my conscientiously finite intellect claims not to be an universal measure of congruities and possibilities, I deem it both more wise and more decorous, to refrain from assailing the doctrine of Transubstantiation on the ground of its alleged absurdity and impossibility. By such a mode of attack, we in reality quit the true field of rational and satisfactory argument. The doctrine of Tran substantiation, like the doctrine of the Trinity, is a question, not of abstract reasoning, but of pure evidence. We believe the revelation of God to be essential unerring truth. Our business, therefore, most assuredly is, not to discuss the absurdity and the imagined contradictoriness of Transubstantiation, but to enquire, according to the best means we possess, whether it be indeed a doctrine of Holy Scripture. If sufficient evidence shall appear to be the case, we may be sure that the doctrine is neither absurd nor contradictory. Receiving the Scripture as the infallible word of God, and prepared, with entire prostration of mind, to admit his declarations, I shall ever contend that the doctrine of Transubstantiation, like the doctrine of the Trinity, is a question of pure evidence."* XXXI.-RECAPITULATION. From the creation of the human race up to the present moment, sacrifice has always constituted the essential, as well as the most conspicuous part of man's external homage to the Godhead. The first society of religionists who ventured to mutilate the worship of the Deity, by the abstraction of sacrifice, the most ancient and the most essential of its rites, were the Protestants. In the law of nature, and under the Mosaic dispensation, existed a variety of sacrifices. *Faber's Difficulties of Romanism. In the gospel-covenant there is but a single sacrifice,but of a two-fold nature, of which the bloody one is that by which Christ was offered up to his Eternal Father, once, upon the altar of the Cross: the other is unbloody, and is that by which the self same Jesus is offered up daily upon our altars, but under the appearances of bread and wine,-partly to commemorate his bloody sacrifice, partly for other purposes. The unbloody sacrifice, denominated the Mass, is the same in essence, as that bloody sacrifice of Calvary, and while in many respects it coincides with, in some it differs from it. It agrees with it in three different ways. 1. In the object immolated; for in both it is Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, that is presented by way of victim. 2. In the chief offerer; for Christ, in both instances, stands the victim, is in both the principal, or great highpriest. 3. In the end; for as once upon the Cross, so now daily on our altars, Christ is offered for the sins of men. The ways in which the unbloody sacrifice, called the Mass, differs from the bloody sacrifice at Jerusalem, are not many. On the Cross our Saviour was offered up in his human form, which was discernible to the senses of the multitude around him: upon the altar, he is offered with his body veiled under the appearances of bread and wine, and in the manner of a sacrament. Two things distinct in themselves, though intimately connected with one another, are discernible in this stupen- Thus the word made flesh reposes on our altars; and no one will refuse to acknowledge that the presence of Jesus Christ is a species of intercession all-powerful with God in favour of the human race, since the Apostle assures us that Jesus Christ appears in the presence of God for us; and as Bossuet appropriately remarks:-'We believe that Jesus Christ, present upon the altar, in this figure of his death intercedes for us, and represents continually to his Father, the death which he suffered for the Church.' In this same sense we answer that Christ offers himself for us in the Eucharist. Such is the Christians' sacrifice, which so widely differs from all those peculiar to the law of nature, or celebrated in the Jewish Temple. It is a spiritual sacrifice, where the victim, though identi *Heb. C. ix. V. 24. |