## Familiar Conversations on Romanism

Eighth Conversation

Transubstantiation

J. N. Darby.

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36 D. But what do you make of the uniform teaching of the Fathers, Mr. N.?

N*. There you are, I dare say, in your element, Mr. D. The traditions and doctrines of men have all weight with those of the school you belong to. But you know it is written, "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men," and I suspect, like many who rest upon them, you have not searched them. A man's writing a thousand years ago does not make his word to be more the truth in the least. They were not inspired. We are specially taught in view of the turning away from the truth which had already begun in the apostle's days, the mystery of iniquity being already at work, and warned that evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse, so that the last days of the church would be perilous times — we are warned, I say, to hold fast by the Scriptures, to know of whom we have learned anything; that that which was in the beginning should abide in us. Hearing the apostles themselves, is made a test of truth. In a word, we are carefully warned against trusting anything but what came out first and by inspiration from God, which no one pretends was the case with those you call the Fathers, who after all were only prelates and doctors of bygone ages whose doctrine was very loose and uncertain. The Fathers generally before the Council of Nice were unquestionably unsound as to the divinity of the Lord, and, after it, the church was whatever the Emperor made it. Athanasius was excommunicated, the Luciferians who held by him were condemned as a sect by Jerome. Hosius, who presided at Nice, gave way; two popes were Arians, or consecrated by the Arians, Felix and Liberius, and the universal church displayed a scene of dispute and contention which never ended in the East till sunk under the power of the Turks, and in the West till Bernard (the last of the Fathers) declared Antichrist was sitting at Rome. But none hardly of the early Fathers were sound in the faith. As to this particular doctrine as we have seen, one whom Bellarmine calls a most learned and acute doctor did not believe it. John Scotus declares it was never known to be of faith till the fourth Council of Lateran in 1215. And all Bellarmine has to say is that it was in a Roman Council, in the case of Berengarius; that is in 1060 and 1079.

37 D. But if these Fathers were not inspired, they were nearer the fountain head; they must have known better than we do. Besides there is the uniformity of the testimony.

N*. There is no such uniformity. Even Bellarmine says it is not surprising if, before the heresy sprang up, the earlier Fathers should use expressions which may be made a bad use of (De Euch. 2, 37, 6) "in malam partem trahi"; a plain confession that they do use what denies transubstantiation. He says this in speaking of Bernard, the last of the Fathers so-called, and so late as the eleventh century, adding that if some did, we must take their other plain statements, for it is certain (constat) they must have all agreed. And this is the consent of the Fathers! But I have no need to get what is nearer the fountain head, that is, the inspired testimony of God, when I have that testimony itself. We have God's own word, and that word written save a very small part for all the faithful, and we are warned to hold fast to it, to that which was from the beginning, and that is practically a warning against the Fathers. They are just those who were not from the beginning, who lived when, as the apostle warns us, after his decease, from within and from without perverse men and wolves would arise. When I sit down to read the Scriptures, I sit down to know what God says to me; I cannot do so with these Fathers. To say the least, they must be judged like other men, human authors.

38 D. And do you feel yourself competent to judge these holy men?

N*. I do not feel the need to read them at all, any more than other books; but if I do, I am bound to judge their teaching by the word of God. If I have my father's express orders, and some one comes to tell me what he thinks, I must know if this statement accords with what my father has expressly said. Nothing can pretend to compare with the word of God.

D. But you may misinterpret it.

N*. So I may the Fathers. But, mark, I have a promise in reading the one, and none for reading the others. Besides as to a great many I do not admit that they were holy men. Cyril of Alexandria was a thorough ruffian.

R. That is strong language, Mr. N.

N*. I appeal to history. He was both at Ephesus, and heading riots at Alexandria, nothing less: and a heretic, an Eutychian as it is called, to boot.* The famous Jerome was one of the most abusive, intemperate, violent men possible. Many were respectable enough, but I cannot venture my soul on such men as these, nor on any men; I can on the word of God. But we will speak of them. Now I admit that many of them speak in the strongest way of Christ's being there after consecration, our partaking of Him whom we do not see there, and the like — speak of tremendous mysteries, and that they early fell into gross superstition; but we shall find abundant passages to shew that transubstantiation was not the faith of the church, and that even the contrary was taught and urged by the Fathers in their arguments against the Eutychians and earlier heretics.

{*He spent the property of the church of Alexandria, which was immense, in bribing the court and Empress-sister against Nestorius.}

But let us look at them. We must not confound the real presence and transubstantiation as Milner carefully does. I regret to say he is not to be trusted. He quotes a regular succession of popes, carefully concealing that there were sometimes three, at other times two, with Europe divided between them; that one drove out another, and set up himself in his place, and when there were three, all three were deposed by the Council of Constance, and another set up by it. So here he quotes English divines, who hold the real presence as though they meant the same thing as Rome; he quotes Cosins' book, which is an elaborate treatise against transubstantiation. Milner gives as his view what is wholly false: he says, "Bishop Cosins is not less explicit in favour of the Catholic doctrine: he says, 'it is a momentous error to deny that Christ is to be adored in the Eucharist we confess.'" There is no such sentence in Cosins at all. And as to Hooker the words he quotes are there, but Hooker does not use this language to make consubstantiation or transubstantiation a matter of indifferent speech, but to prove both unnecessary to the enjoyment of the promise. As to Ignatius, the passage is not found in the longer copy of the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans at all, but it is found in the shorter. Theodoret quotes it, but there is little doubt that these epistles are spurious. At any rate Milner has falsified the passage, for it looks like nonsense as it stands. What is read is, "They withdraw from the Eucharist and prayer," which last word Milner has changed into "oblations." It can have no authority, and refers to the denial of Christ's incarnation, in respect of which the Eucharist was greatly used as an argument against the Gnostics who denied that Christ had really come in the flesh, a truth so distinctly recognised in the Eucharist.

39 The testimony of Justin Martyr is against the doctrine; he says, "Then we all stand up together and make prayers, and, as we have before said, when we have ceased prayer, bread is brought, and wine, and water, and the president offers up prayers and thanksgivings as well as he is able, and the people assent, saying, Amen. And the distribution and reception of that over which thanks have been given takes place to each, and it is sent to those not present by the deacons." And a little before, more distinctly, "Then bread and a cup of water and wine brought to him who presides over the brethren. He, having received them, offers up praise and glory to the Father of all things, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and makes long thanksgiving that we are accounted worthy of these things by Him, and having finished the prayers and the thanksgiving, all the people present exclaim, saying, Amen. And the president having given thanks, and all the people assent, those who are called deacons amongst us, distribute to each of those present to receive [it] of the bread and wine and water over which thanksgiving has been made, and carry it away to the absent. And this food is called amongst us the Eucharist [thanksgiving], of which it is not lawful for any one to partake, but one who believes what is taught us to be true, and has been washed for the forgiveness of sins and the laver of the new birth, and so living as Christ taught. For we do not receive this as common bread or common drink, but as by the word of God. Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh, had both flesh and blood for our salvation; so also the nourishment over which thanks have been given of the word which is from Him, of which our flesh and blood by conversion are nourished, we have been taught to be the flesh and blood of that Jesus made flesh." Now this statement upsets the Roman Catholic doctrine entirely. First, what the deacons carry is bread and wine and water to each; Justin has no idea of any transubstantiation. They are after the thanksgiving what they were before; bread, wine, and water is what was distributed and received. Next, it is of these elements they partake, God's creatures for which they thank Him. It is not a whole Christ to each, but of the elements offered each gets a portion, and, what is a key to multitudes of statements, what is confessedly bread and wine and water, they esteem the body and blood of Christ. But, further, they nourish our body and blood. The idea of being changed and substantially Christ is totally foreign to his mind.

40 Irenaeus is formal and positive in his denial of it; he speaks (lib. 4, 17:33, 34) of offering God's creatures to Him, and explicitly as sent, created by Him, practically as Justin, for the sacrifice was always of His creatures to God before the giving of thanks. But that is not all. Recognising that we receive Christ in the partaking of the rite, he says, proving the resurrection of the body, "For as the bread which is from the earth, receiving the invocation, is now not common bread, but the Eucharist consisting of two things, earthly and heavenly: so also our bodies receiving the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, having the hope of resurrection." Now I am not answering for all Irenaeus' doctrine, for he was not sound on very important truths, but his statement is a flat denial of transubstantiation. Remark here further that this epiklesis (Irenaeus as now read has ekklesis) is that to which he attributes its not being ordinary bread, and this is wholly left out by Rome!

41 But to proceed. Tertullian says in terms against the Marcionites (v. 40): "Having taken bread and distributed it to His disciples, He made that His body, saying, This is my body, that is, the figure of my body. But it could not have been a figure unless the body had been a truth." Now this is as plain as can be, and shews what these ancients mean when they speak of making it His body or its being His body. He is proving against Marcion that Christ had really a body. If it was merely a phantasm and nothing really, there could not be a figure of what was nothing. Tertullian never could have had an idea of such a thing as transubstantiation in speaking thus. Origen (Hom. 7 on Lev.) says if according to the letter you should follow this very thing which is said, "Unless you shall have eaten my flesh and drunk my blood," the letter kills . . . but if you understand it spiritually, it does not kill, but there is in it a life-giving spirit. I cannot find what Dr. Milner quotes in this Hom. 7, but just preceding what I have quoted above, Origen referring to John 6, "If you are sons of the church, if imbued with evangelical mysteries, acknowledge what we say that it is of the Lord, lest perchance he that is ignorant let him be ignorant; acknowledge that they are figures which are written in the divine volumes, and therefore examine them as spiritual, not carnal, for if you receive them as carnal, they hurt and do not nourish you." This is his whole subject. Jesus therefore because He was altogether pure, all His flesh is food, and all His blood is drink; because all His work is holy, and all His speech true, therefore all His flesh is true food, and His blood true drink, for with the flesh and blood of His word, as with pure food and drink, He gives to drink, and renovates every race of men. Again in Comm. on Matthew, tom. 2, "But if everything (Matt. 15) that enters into the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the draught, the very food also consecrated by the word of God and prayer, according to what itself consists of materially, goes into the belly and is cast out into the draught; but, according to the prayer which is added to it, it becomes useful according to the proportion of faith, and makes the mind become clear-sighted, looking on that which profits. Nor is it the matter of the bread, but the word spoken over it which helps him who eats not unworthily of the Lord, and thus far of the typical and symbolical body. But many things may be said concerning the Word which became flesh, and true food which he who eats lives altogether for ever, which no wicked person can eat; for if he could, he adds, it would never have been written that every one that eats of this bread shall live for ever." Whatever else Origen held, he did not hold transubstantiation. The dialogues against the Marcionites (attributed to him but not his it appears) are equally clear. Taking up the common argument of those days, we read: "But if as they say He was without flesh and blood, of what flesh and what body, or of what blood, giving both the bread and the cup as images, did He command His disciples to remember Him?"

42 We may next turn to Cyprian, the letter Dr. Milner refers to, "That the cup, which is offered in remembrance of Him, is offered mixed with wine." That is, what is offered is wine; he is reasoning against there being only water. "For when Christ says, I am the true vine, the blood of Christ is not water but wine, for His blood by which we are redeemed and sanctified cannot be seen to be in the cup when wine fails in the cup by which the blood of Christ is shewn forth, which is preached by the sacrament and testimony of all the scriptures." So in the same letter to Caecilius he calls after the consecration of the fruit (creatura) of the vine; "we find the cup mixed which the Lord offered, and that it was wine which He called His blood. Whence it appears that the blood of Christ is not offered if wine be wanting in the cup; but how shall we drink new wine of the fruit of the vine in the kingdom of the Father, if in the sacrifice of God the Father, we do not offer wine?" Now this, however little spiritual apprehension there may be as to the new wine of the kingdom, is clean against transubstantiation. "I wonder," he adds, "that in some places, wine is offered in the cup of the Lord, which alone cannot express the blood of Christ. So we see that in the water the people are to be understood, but in the wine the blood of Christ is to be shewn forth: if both are united, a spiritual and heavenly sacrament is celebrated." He held the sacrifice they offered to be the passion of the Lord, quoting 1 Corinthians 11:26 (Ep. 63, Caecilio). So Athanasius (Ep. 4, ad Serapionem de S. So.) on John 6:62, "For here also He speaks both of Himself, flesh and spirit, and distinguishes spirit from flesh, that, believing not only what appears but what is invisible of Him, they might learn that what He was saying was not carnal but spiritual. For, for how many men would the body suffice for food, that this should be the nourishment of the whole world? Therefore He reminds them of the ascension of the Son of man into heaven, that He might draw them away from corporeal thought, and for the rest might learn that the flesh of which He spoke was heavenly food from above and spiritual nourishment given from Himself; 'for what I have said to you,' says he, 'is spirit and life,' as much as to say what is manifested and given for salvation of the world is the flesh which I carry, but this and the blood from it of me shall be spiritually given to you as food. So that this (nourishment) may be spiritually reproduced (anadidothai) in each, and be a preservative for all for resurrection to eternal life." So earlier Clemens Alexandrinus (Paedagogus lib. I, 6 and lib. 2, 2). I cite the last as more short and simple. "He used wine, for He is a man also Himself, and He blessed indeed the wine, saying, Take, drink; for this is my blood, the blood of the vine." He did not think it was transubstantiated. He is arguing against the Encratites who would not use it.

43 Cyril of Jerusalem uses language as strong in appearance as may be, but not that the substance is changed, but that faith sees the body there, and he really uses language which shews he never thought of such a change. Thus in the very place where he uses the strongest language, he says (Cat. 22, Myst. 4), "Do not regard (proseche) the bread and the wine as merely such (psilois), for they are the body and blood of Christ according to the Lord's declaration." They were still bread and wine, but to be received as the body and blood of Christ by faith, and citing Psalm 23 (22), interpreting it as a mystical table, apprehended by the understanding (noeten). I quote this the rather because it shews how the passages which speak of Christ's flesh and blood do not contemplate any change of the substance; faith receives it; it is noeta, received by the mind. As bread suits the body, so the word the soul. So in 3, "For in the figure (tupo) of bread, His body is given to you, and in the figure of wine, His blood." They are the tupoi, figures, of the body and blood. So Gregory Nyssen: (oratio octava) in his praise of Gorgon calls them the antitypes (antitupa) of the precious body and blood. There is one passage of Gregory Nazianzen which I must read before I turn to the Latins, shewing how Christendom had sunk into Judaism, but shewing most clearly the vagueness of their thoughts. I am almost ashamed to go through the quantity of passages I collected on the subject, but I do not myself attach the smallest authority to the uncertain and superstitious thoughts of the Fathers; but for you, or at least to clear your mind from the notion that it was a settled doctrine of faith, corrupt and superstitious as Christendom had become, I go through them.

44 R. Do not, I beg you, let it weary you. I can understand that, at your point of view, it is wearisome; but for me it is still a question of what is or was the faith of the church. I have ever held it to be unchanging, and the consent of the Fathers has been held ever as the solid ground of it, as embodying the tradition of the church and authoritatively interpreting Scripture. I see strong statements in what you have quoted as to its being, when consecrated, the body of Christ, but generally as to what we receive, not exactly transubstantiation.

N*. Note then these points. They do not speak as yet of transubstantiation, though, as I have fully admitted, they use very strong language as to receiving the body; such as Protestants, many of them, the Anglican church for instance, still do. Further, supposing some declared it in terms and others stated the contrary, what is become of their authority or the consent of the Fathers? It is a mere private opinion, not the faith of the church.

R. That is true.

N*. The Council of Trent expressly takes, as you say, the ground of the consent of the Fathers, and that we have not certainty on this point. But I will quote then Gregory Nyssen: he is speaking on baptism, in the discourse, eis ten emeran ton photon, etc. "Wherefore despise not the lavatory, nor count it of little value, as if a common thing on account of the use of water, nor esteem it of light moment, for that which is wrought is great, and wonderful effects exist from it. For this holy altar also, at which we assist, is common stone according to its nature nothing different from other stone flags which build our walls,* and adorn our pavements, but since they have been consecrated to the service of God, and have received the blessing, it is a holy temple, a spotless altar, not now touched by all, but only by the priests, and these in offices of piety. The bread again is in the first place common, but when the mystery shall have sanctified it, it is called the body of Christ. Thus the mystic oil, thus the wine, being of small worth before the blessing, after the sanctification which is of the Spirit, each of them works excellently. The same power of the word makes a venerable and honoured priest, by the new [force] of the blessing, separated from the profaneness of the many. For yesterday and the day before one of the many and of the people, he is suddenly presented as a leader, a president, a teacher of piety, initiator into hidden mysteries, and these things he does, nothing changed within, in body or in form, but being according to what appears, the same as he was, but changed as to his soul for the better, by a certain invisible power and grace, and thus applying the mind to many things, what appears to the sight is contemptible, but great things are effected." Now the comparisons made here exclude the idea of transubstantiation. But the passage does more and shews that when the writers of this age speak of its becoming the body of Christ, it does not the least mean transubstantiation; and further that when they spoke of what appeared, they had no idea of a form and a totally distinct substance behind. There was nothing changed in body or in form. Chrysostom, if we are allowed to count his letter to Caesarius as genuine, is quite clear on the point. He says, reasoning against Apollinarius, "For as before the bread is sanctified we call it bread, but divine grace sanctifying it by means of the priest, it is freed from the appellation of bread, but it is held to be worthy of the appellation of the Lord's body, although the nature of bread remains in it, and we announce it not as two bodies, but as one." Now if this be not Chrysostom's it is quoted as such by John Damascene, Anastasius and the Fathers; it is an early writing of nearly the same age (the Jesuit Hardouin holds it is Chrysostom's), and plainly shews that the positive doctrine of the bread's remaining bread caused no scandal then. But Chrysostom himself at any rate, (and where pressing, as he is famous for doing, the importance of this ordinance) speaks of it as distinct from other food. "Do not look at it as bread, nor think of it as wine, for it does not as other food go into the draught. But as wax put to the fire does not lose any part nor leave anything superfluous, so also here reckon the mysteries to be consumed by the substance of the body" (De Poen. Hom 9, 2, 350). This is transubstantiating into us. How little his mind is occupied with literal transubstantiation is evident from the way he repeats word for word in the second discourse on the betrayal by Judas what he says in the first, save the last words. In the first (2, 3 and 4), after saying the words "This is my body" made it the body of Christ, etc., he compares it to "Be fruitful and multiply," which was efficient through succeeding generations; so these. And in the first discourse, he concludes by "Make it a perfect sacrifice"; in the second, "will ever increase with grace those worthily partaking of it." The wicked who partake increase their condemnation. But there is no thought of its being Christ Himself at any rate. The Homily on "Nolo vos ignorare" implies equally that it is spiritually Christ's blood, not literally. Now in Chrysostom we have the Eucharist spoken of rhetorically beyond all the Fathers, and receiving Christ's body and blood; but I find no trace of his not considering it as in fact bread and wine. "We are not to consider it such: they who receive worthily receive Christ." On its being His body, he is plain enough, and saints receiving it; but he does not seem to have thought of transubstantiation in the modern sense. He speaks of the bread and the cup, and indeed when coming to the table to be looking up like an eagle to the sun, to Christ, and there applying "where the carcase is the eagles will be"; but all is such rhetoric that as doctrine it proves little. This is Homily 24 on 1 Corinthians. Were we to take the imperfect work on Matthew as Chrysostom's, the denial of transubstantiation would be as clear and strong as possible. "In these sanctified vessels, in which the true body of Christ is not contained but the mystery of his body" (Chrys. Opera, ed. B., 6, 63, Appendix).**

{* Trichous a rare word, if found elsewhere at all. See Valpy's Steph. under thrigkos. It is not in Suicer's Thesaurus. The sense is plain enough.}

{**These words were left out, not in the earliest editions, but in one or two early ones, and then others said they are wanting in some copies. No doubt, they had left them out. There is no doubt of their genuineness. The Benedictines own they are prave dicta.}

46 D. But you can hardly say it is, or cite it for any doctrine.

N*. Certainly not. But I cite nothing of the Fathers for any doctrine: I should not think of doing so, but the Scriptures alone. I cite them for history; and although I do not think that this work can be considered Chrysostom's, though cited for centuries as such by popes,* and in Roman church services, and though only condemned by Pope Paul IV in the copies which were full of errors; yet (all the evidence carefully weighed) from its unsound doctrine, citation of the Vulgate, and other marks, it cannot be reasonably thought to be his, or even of the same age. But it was early, and historically shews that such a doctrine as the elements not being Christ's body did not hinder popes and the Romish church services using it; and, I repeat I quote the Fathers only as history. I have only one quotation from the true Chrysostom to make; where he treats (in Hom. 82 and 83 on Matthew 26:26-28) on the institution of the Lord's supper, he explicitly calls (7, p.783, ed. Ben.) the sacrament symbols — tinos sumbola ra teloumena. Yet this is in a passage where he insists that Christ drank His own blood to make it more tolerable and easy for the disciples so to do, a point on which the ancients and ancient liturgies disagree. But we learn this, on a point treated before, that being a symbol of Christ's sacrifice according to Chrysostom, and very justly, there could not be a transubstantiation of a now glorified Christ, nor indeed of a then living one; but an actually sacrificed Christ exists only in memory.

{*Pope Nicolas I quotes it as his in the ninth century.}

47 But we may now turn to plainer statements than the rhetoric of the golden-mouthed, Theodoret in his Dialogues, Dialogue 1 (vol. 4, Paris, 1642). He had been saying that the Saviour changes the names (giving the name of the thing to the symbol, and of the symbol to the thing, calling Himself a vine), and attributes the name of blood to the symbol. Eranistes asks why? He answers: "The purport is obvious to those who are initiated into the divine mysteries. He desired that those who participate in the divine mysteries should give heed to the nature of those things which are seen; but, by the change of names, have faith in the change which is made by grace. For He who called His body natural wheat and bread, and again called Himself a vine, honoured the visible symbols with the appellation of body and blood, not changing the nature, but adding grace to nature." So what follows: "Of what thinkest thou that all-holy food to be the symbol and figure? The divinity of Christ the Lord, or of His body and blood?" This leaves no obscurity as to his thoughts; and "symbol" is the word we have seen Chrysostom use, who with Theodore of Mopsuestia were his theological masters.

But we have another, if possible, stronger passage in Dialogue 2, the more striking because it is expressly the point in discussion. His adversary Eranistes denied two natures in Christ. The Word, he said, was made flesh. There was only one nature remaining; and he insists that flesh after the ascension was absorbed into the divine substance. Not only so, but he brings in the Lord's supper to prove it. "As therefore," he says, "the symbols of the Lord's body and blood are one thing before the priest's invocation, but after the invocation are changed and become another thing, so the Lord's body after ascension is changed into the divine substance." Orth.: You are taken in the net you have woven, for neither after the consecration do the mystical symbols leave their own nature, for they remain in their previous substance (ousias), form, and kind, and are visible and tangible as they were before, but they are thought to be what they have become, and are believed and worshipped as being these things which are believed. Noeitai de apas egeneto kai pisteuetai kai proskunetai os ekeina onta apais pisteuetai. These statements of so wellknown and esteemed a father puzzled the Roman Catholic critics. Their discussions about it you may find in the fifth or posthumous volume by Garnier, a Jesuit, de fide Theodoreti (Paris, 1684, 478). The passages are in vol. 4 at the beginning. Thus was written about A.D. 446.

48 The truth is, one reading the Fathers cannot but see that, however rhetorical they may be about it, the thought of transubstantiation could not have been in their minds. I do not refer now to positive statements already quoted, but to collateral statements. Thus Cyprian writing against those who would have only water, says, If wine were not there, there was no figure of the blood; that the wine was the figure of the blood and the water of the Christian people. Who would think of transubstantiation here? So Augustine, It is said the rock was Christ; and insists that it is not said the rock signified Christ, but was Christ (Contra Adamantium 12, 5, and in sec. 3). So the Lord did not hesitate to say, in giving the sign of His body to His disciples, This is my body. And again (Er. in Psa. 3:1), when the great and admirable patience of our Lord received [Judas] to the feast in which He commended and delivered to His disciples the figure of His body and blood. But were I to cite all Augustine says on the subject I should not soon close. It is a point he insists on continually, so that Cardinal Du Perron had to write a book (Refutatio, etc., Paris, 1624) to explain away what he says. On Conc. Ad. 12, 3 he says, you must introduce "according to you," that is, the Manicheans, which is really only a confession of the force of the passage. Tertullian, Cyril, Gaudentius, and others constantly declare a figure is not the truth, but the imitation of the truth.

49 I turn to Gelasius. Baronius and Bellarmine have tried to deny that he was Pope Gelasius, as it was awkward to have a pope denying transubstantiation, and there were two other Gelasiuses. But there is no real ground to question it, nor does it change the fact that a Father of the church, so-called, taught it, if he were not pope. They have ascribed it to Gelasius Cyzicenus, but those versed in such studies have no doubt that the treatise "De Duabus Naturis in Christo" is the work of the pope. Gelasius was pope in 492. Gelasius Cyzicenus was archbishop in 476. There was another of the name a century before, but he is not in question. We must ascribe it to the pope. He says, writing against the Eutychians and using the argument common to the Fathers, "Certain sacraments which we take of the body and blood of Christ are a divine thing, on account of which and by the same we are made participators [consortes] of the divine nature; and yet it does not cease to be the substance or nature of bread and wine. And certainly the image and similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the action of the mysteries. It is therefore shewn to us evidently enough that that is to be felt by us in the Lord Christ Himself which we profess, celebrate, and are,* that as they pass, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, into this that is divine substance, remaining however in the propriety (that which was proper to them) of their own nature, so that principal mystery itself whose efficacy and virtue they truly represent" (Gel. de D. N. Ch.). Such indeed was the constant argument of the day against the Eutychians. If one only read the Dialogues of Theodoret, which I have quoted, it will be found to run through them, as we have seen in the much earlier Irenaeus arguing against other heretics.

{*Quaere if sumus be not a mistake for sumimus? Then it would be we take, as at the beginning of the quotation.}

R. This reasoning of Irenaeus and Theodoret and Gelasius seems to me, I confess, to be of great force. There is no mistaking its import; because the comparison of the two natures in Christ and the denial of them by the heretics, and in Theodoret where his Eutychian opponent sought to make good his argument of Christ being made flesh or transubstantiated, and being met by Theodoret by the contradiction of its being so in the Eucharist, as an acknowledged truth too, leaves no question what their faith was, and it is confirmed by the other statements you have quoted. I do not understand how they can say the Fathers taught it.

50 N*. I am glad you see the force of the statements of these Fathers. Indeed the argument against Eutychianism in Theodoret and Gelasius, and of Irenaeus against the Gnostics or Docetae, leaves no doubt as to the common faith of the church; while they held, some in a very strong way, the participation in a spiritual sense in Christ's body, making it as Irenaeus did effectual for the resurrection; so that Chrysostom also has to guard against its being a physical effect, or the wicked would arise with Christ's glorious body (a strange conclusion); yet that transubstantiation evidently, in the proper sense of the word, was unknown.

Bill M. Sure enough, if it was His body, and was transubstantiated into ours who partake of it outwardly, the wicked would be transubstantiated into His pure and glorious body. I do not believe that.

D. But you see that the holy archbishop and doctor guards against it.

Bill M. How can he guard against it? He sees what I never thought of: what a terrible consequence flows from it! But either it is only received spiritually by true faith, or if it be its own efficacy, it must change one as well as the other, and I cannot help saying, though it is a shocking thought, the mouse's too. They may bring judgment on a wicked man perhaps by it, but at any rate the poor mouse is innocent. I do not know what its worth really is, but none of these notions can be true.

D. I wonder so ignorant a person as you can speak so confidently about so holy a mystery, tremendous or fearful, as those holy men justly called it.

Bill M. I am an ignorant man, sir, and all this I never knew, or I might have been spared going wrong. But can you, sir, deny what we have been hearing, or can you explain how the wicked, if they really partake of it (and if it is it, they must partake of it, as I thought I did), do not get their bodies raised in glory, or what comes of it when an animal eats it?

D. I do not pretend to explain anything, but receive it by faith as the church holds and gives it; and you had confessed and received absolution before you took it.

Bill M. That is true, but I was not a bit really changed. I tried to behave myself just at the time, and ate nothing till I partook of it, but I never thought of sin or salvation as I do now. It was only just being safe through these things being done for me, and I had my conscience easy for a moment, but I was not a really changed man at all, and if I did not receive at Easter, I was in mortal sin; so they told me. For my part, though I was not exactly a bad liver, I believe I was in mortal sin all the time.

51 D. I dare say you were, and, not having faith in the holy mystery, got no good of it.

Bill M. Excuse me, sir, I did believe it; I accepted all the priest told me, and joined the Catholics because I did, and did all they bid me. I was in earnest, but I was as to sinfulness just what I was before. I do not pretend to understand much, but that I know for certain; I have nothing to pretend to now, but I know I see the difference.

R. But, Mr. D., we are inquiring whether the views Bill M. and I myself have held are true. You who have very lately adopted them after having long utterly rejected them as blasphemies and dangerous deceits, have appealed to the Fathers, and when we examine them, though some, and especially Chrysostom, use very strong language as to the sacrifice of the Eucharist, yet, as it would seem, one after another teaches what clearly denies transubstantiation. You appealed to them: we have examined them, and do not find your assertion as to what they held, made good. Our friend, Bill M., on the other hand, declares that he was not a changed man in point of fact when he partook of the Eucharist in the Mass. Now Catholics hold that man is born again in baptism, but few or none maintain baptismal grace, and therefore penance is needed, and, perhaps, renewal of heart is called for. Now we know, alas! that multitudes who partake at Easter are not changed men in the least in their lives, nor those even who frequent the celebration of mass and receive oftener. This is notorious. It may be their own fault, but the fact is so; so that you cannot complain of Bill M., when he says it was his own case. It will not do; if we are to believe that what we all confess to be a little flour and water by consecration becomes God, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus, we can do so, scorning the convictions of one who has had his eyes, he alleges, opened as to real godliness, and this partaking of Christ producing no effect of the kind. It may be painful to have one's faith shaken, but we must find somewhere divine authority for divine faith.

52 D. But there is the church, sir.

R. The church teaches that she believes quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, and we are told to interpret Scripture by consent of the Fathers. Now this we cannot say we have as to transubstantiation. For if some did believe in it (which is not yet apparent), certainly a great many did not, and early ones; so that both rules fail. You talk of the Fathers and the church, but they do not, in primitive times at least, make good your assertion. But I confess I should like to continue our search into these ancient authorities.

N*. We will return to our quotations. I have only given such as I have found in those of these ancient authors which I myself have access to; but these are really sufficient. I will add one quoted from a collection, not having Procopius of Gaza. "For He gave the image of His own body to His disciples no longer admitting [or accepting] the bloody sacrifices of the law," and then it speaks of the purity of the bread by which we are nourished, as the whiteness mentioned in the prophecy as to Judah, a common reference in the Fathers.*

{*The original Greek is found in the margin in Albertinus from a MS.}

I go on to Eusebius in his Demonstratio Evangelica from whom Procopius draws it (lib. 1, 10, Paris, 1628, P. 37). After speaking of Christ's sacrifice supplanting all the Jewish figures of it, he says: "We who believe in him are free from the curse of Moses and justly since they daily celebrate the remembrance lupomnesin] of his body, and of his blood"; and (38) "Christ having offered for us all an offering [thuma] and sacrifice as slain [sphagion] and given to us a memorial, for (or instead of) a sacrifice [anti thusias] to offer continually to God." The sphagion, the actual sacrifice, Christ had offered to His Father (anenegke, a sacrificial term for offering up on the altar); but He delivered there to us also a memorial to be continually presented to God (prospherein the bringing up as such), in place of, to serve instead of, a sacrifice. And again (p. 39), saying how according to Psalm 45 Christ had offered Himself a sacrifice to God in place of the old Jewish sacrifices: "As therefore we have received to celebrate the memorial of this sacrifice on a table by symbols both of His body and His blood, according to the rites of the new covenant,"and then he goes on to cite Psalm 23, as a table spread in the presence of their enemies, etc. Now he speaks of unbloody and intelligent offerings, but they are for men only symbols and memorials. So in book 8 at the very end of the very first part (apo tes geneseos) after the preface (p. 380) he says, commenting partly on the blessing of Judah, which the Fathers are very fond of, and partly on the prophecy of Zechariah: "For by the wine which is the symbol of His blood, those who are baptised to His death and believe in His blood, are purged from their old evils." And after speaking of it as mystic food, and quoting the Lord's words, he adds: "for again He delivered to His own disciples the symbols of the divine dispensation to make it the image of His own body [ten eikona tou idiou somatos]." They were no longer to use bloody sacrifices, nor slain offerings [sphagia] of divers animals as under Moses; but He "taught them to use bread [as] a symbol of His own body" (Eusebius, Dem. Ev.). I have gone a little backwards in date, for Eusebius was in Constantine's time, early in the fourth century; but this does not weaken his testimony, which is plain enough.

53 I turn now to Ambrose, a pious man doubtless, but as superstitious as the most bigoted heart could wish. Our friend Dr. Milner says he passes by Tertullian, Cyprian, etc., but cannot Ambrose, and quotes, as they all do, a treatise De Mysteriis, and another De Sacramentis. But all these things have to be looked into. It is one of the painful things in these inquiries that you cannot trust such writers as Dr. Milner. In the first place, the first treatise is doubtful, and the second is very generally rejected. They both, however, take exactly the same ground as to doctrine. Bellarmine holds them to be genuine, being quoted by subsequent doctors: I will therefore take notice of them. One thing is quite certain, that according to the Romish doctrine both are heretical. There is a good deal of nonsense in them and extraordinary applications of Scripture; but this we must expect from the Fathers. The author, whoever he is, says that the angels also doubted, when Christ rose. The powers of the heavens doubted seeing that flesh ascended into heaven. At last they said: "Who is this King of glory?" and when some said, "Lift up your heads," etc., others doubted, saying "Who is this King of glory?" "In Isaiah also thou hast the virtues of the heavens doubting, saying, "Who is this that cometh from Edom?"

54 Bill M. But do you think the angels and heavenly powers doubt that way, sir?

N*. In truth, I do not. I give it only as a specimen of patristic interpretation. We read the angels came and ministered to Christ, and they told the women He was risen; but nothing is too absurd for the Fathers. However we will say no more of them. But in the first treatise, he states that the washing of baptism clears from actual sins, and refers to the Lord's word to Peter, "Ye are clean," in John 13; but that then He washed their feet, and that was what cleansed from original sin, because, as the devil had tripped him up, he wanted the soles of his feet cleansed (Cap. 5, or §32, p. 335, 2, Benedictine edition). The same is repeated in De Sacramentis. (Lib. 3, cap. 1, 9, p. 364.) Now the Romish doctrine holds distinctly that original sin is done away by baptism. In this second treatise it is noticed this was not done in Rome. The editors state that it was in various places in France.

R. But it is alleged these treatises are not genuine, so that Ambrose may not be chargeable with all this.

N*. It is possible: yet the catechism of the Council of Trent founds its doctrine on them (De Ecc. 2:32). Bellarmine and Milner quote it as particularly to their purpose, being (like Cyril's) the teaching of catechumens and thus of those admitted already. As the Lord's supper was kept a secret from others, they liked, like the heathen, to have initiation and mysteries, and used the terms. But let us see how they speak of them. In the "De Mysteriis," he does speak of changing the nature as is alleged, but it is not in a material sense; for in the next paragraph (9, 53, p. 340), though begotten miraculously, he says, The flesh of Christ is true [flesh] which is crucified, which is buried, truly therefore it is the sacrament of His flesh. But a sacrament of a thing is never the thing itself, as is urged by Augustine, Tertullian, etc. In the De Sacramentis, lib. 4, cap. 4, §15, p. 369, "If therefore such great force is in the word of the Lord Jesus, that things began to be which were not, how much more does it operate that they should be what they were, and be changed into another thing?" And the comparison which follows shews that, while they thought people received Christ, they had no thought of a corporal or physical change in insisting on its being the body of Christ after consecration. He says, referring to baptism, "There thou wast thyself, but thou wast an old creature: afterwards when thou wast consecrated, thou begannest to be a new creature: dost thou wish to know how a new creature? Every one that is in Christ is a new creature."

55 We afterwards find a direct denial (lib. 4, cap. 7, §27, 28, p. 372) of the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But this belongs to the whole doctrine of the offering of the Mass, and I will not enter farther into it. It is a fundamental question as to what Christian redemption is.

R. But it is this which troubles me in the doctrine, I am free to confess. It seems to militate against the efficacy of Christ's offering offered once for all, and the statement that there is no more offering for sins.

N*. Surely it does. I will quote for you then what I have alluded to. The words run thus. After reciting the prayer of the service of the Mass which blasphemously prays that the offering may be received like that of Abel and Melchizedec and carried by the angels to the altar on high, he says to the catechumens: "Therefore, as often as thou receivest, what doth the apostle say to thee? As often as we receive, we announce the Lord's death. If we announce death, we announce remission of sins. If, as often as the blood is shed it is shed for the remission of sins, I ought always to receive it that my sins may be always forgiven. I who always sin ought always to have the medicine." Now if we read Hebrews 10 this is in open and flagrant opposition to it. No honest mind can read the two and not see it. The whole effect of Hebrews 10 is to shew there can be no repetition of the sacrifice, and that the forgiveness is complete and full.

R. I confess I cannot reconcile them. Hebrews 10 is very strong; I do not say I realise it, but certainly I cannot reconcile it with the doctrine of the Mass.

D. But these are the private opinions of the Fathers.

N*. No doubt, but it is, you say, by the consent of the Fathers, scripture is to be interpreted. Now, if even some Fathers teach transubstantiation, which in the modern and scholastic sense I deny, certainly many we have cited teach the contrary, and there is no consent. Strange to say, the canon Of the Mass itself calls it bread, after the consecration.

R. How is that?

N*. After the consecration, and adoration by the consecrating priest, both of the bread and of the wine, he says in the prayer, commencing, "Unde et memores," etc. — We offer to thy illustrious majesty of thy gifts (donis et datis) a pure victim, a holy victim, an immaculate victim, the holy bread of eternal life, and the cup of eternal salvation.

56 D. But this may mean Christ as the bread of life.

N*. I suppose it may be taken so, but then the blasphemy of the following prayer comes out in all its grossness; in which it is asked that God may deign to look upon it with a propitious and serene countenance, and to accept them as He had deigned to accept the gifts of His righteous servant Abel, etc. There can be little doubt that the prayer is borrowed from the ancient offerings before consecration, but as it stands it is really blasphemy.

R. It is strange and perplexing, but, Mr. N., we are not accustomed to examine these things.

N*. I am aware you are not, but when they are examined, their real and unscriptural, and here really blasphemous, character comes out at once. But Ambrose has made us wander a little from our subject. We may turn to Augustine — along with Jerome the most influential of the Latin Fathers, as to doctrine more so. But of Jerome first, as he has not much on the subject.

Jerome, as superstitious as any monk could wish, knew of no such doctrine. Referring to the corn and wine and oil of which the Psalm speaks, he says, Of which the bread of the Lord is made, and the type of His blood is filled, and the blessing of sanctification is shewn, etc. (Com. in Jeremiam, 6, 31, 4, 1063, ed. Vall.). And again when he introduces Jovinian, denouncing his antimonastic teaching, to combat it he makes him say: In type of His blood, He offered not water, but wine. It is of course said that Jovinian was a heretic, not that there is the least proof he was; but Jerome has no thought of combating this, but only the use of the wine as justifying the rejection of such asceticism. It passes with him as a matter taken for granted, with both as a matter known by all. But there is more than this. In meeting Jovinian's statement so given by him, and speaking of the abstemiousness of Christ, he says it is written, He never was a slave to His throat or to His belly, that is, abstained from drink or gluttony, the mystery excepted (that is, the Lord's supper), where He made it the type of His passion (in typum passionis expressit) — gave it that character and turned it into that.

I may turn to Augustine in his Tractatus 26; he is full of its being spiritually eaten. Many ate the manna, he says, who pleased the Lord, and are not dead. Why? Because they understood visible food spiritually, they hungered spiritually, tasted spiritually, and were satisfied spiritually. For we also at this day receive visible food, but the sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the sacrament another. So again (Sac. 15): The sacrament of the unity of the body and blood of Christ is prepared in some places daily; in some at certain intervals on the Lord's table, and is taken from the Lord's table by some to life, by some to ruin; but the thing itself of which it is the sacrament is for every man to life, to doubt to ruin whoever has partaken of it. The many receive of the altar and die, die by receiving. And after speaking of Judas, he says: See therefore, brethren, that ye eat the heavenly bread spiritually; and if forgiven, approach in security, it is bread, not poison. After referring to the unity of the body the church, he says: This therefore is to eat that food, and to drink that drink, to abide in Christ, and have Christ abide in oneself, and through this he who does not abide in Christ, and in whom Christ does not abide, beyond doubt does not eat His flesh nor drink His blood, but rather eats to his own judgment the sacrament of so great a thing. In the Tractatus 45, he is comparing Israel and Christians. The Red Sea is baptism, etc., "the same faith with different signs," and again, "See then, faith remaining, the signs varied." There the rock is Christ: for us Christ is what is placed upon the altar, and is a great sacrament of the same Christ. They drank of the water that flowed from the rock: "If you attend to the visible form, it is different: if to the intelligible signification, it is the same; they drank the same spiritual drink." This comparison of that rock was Christ with the Lord's supper, because both were a sign of Christ, he very often repeats. We have seen in Tr. 45 on St. John; again in Tr. 26, 27.

57 I will quote enough to give his thoughts. He says in general (De Civ. D., 10, 5) Sacramentum, id est sacrum signum, I cite as a key to many passages. As all things that have a signification seem in a certain way to fill the role (sustinere personas) of those things which they signify, as is said by the apostle, the rock was Christ, since the rock of which that is said signified indeed Christ. So again, Quaest. in Lev. 3:57, he refers to Pharaoh's dream, the seven ears are seven years, and "That rock was Christ", for he does not say the rock signifies Christ, but as if He was this, what substantially He was not, but by signification. Again on John, Tract. 63: As therefore Scripture is accustomed to speak, he, calling the things that signify as if they were the things signified, largely insists in the questions on Leviticus already quoted, as to the life being the blood. Referring to this principle, he says (Contra Ad. 12, 3) (besides what I have said above) that it does not belong to me to say what becomes of the soul of a beast; I may also interpret that precept as applying to it as a sign (in signo positum). For the Lord does not hesitate to say, "This is my body," when He gave the sign of His body.

58 In the treatise De Doctrina Christiana (referring to John 6) 3, 26 16) He interprets eating His flesh and drinking His blood as a figure, which is, according to the truth of the mystery, done in baptism. If a preceptive expression seems to command a crime or act of wickedness . . . it is a figure. "Unless ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you." It seems to command an act of wickedness or crime, it is therefore a figure telling us to have communion with the passion, and laying up sweetly in memory that His flesh was crucified and wounded for us. In the Enarratio on Psalm 98:9, he says, speaking of eating His flesh, "It is the Spirit that quickens. Understand what I say spiritually. You are not going to eat this body which you see, nor drink that blood which those who will crucify me are about to pour out. I have commended to you something sacramental (sacramentum aliquid): spiritually understood, it will vivify you. Although it is necessary that that should be visibly celebrated, yet it ought to be invisibly understood." I may quote one passage more from Tr. on John, Tr. 26 (on John 6), "The manna signified this bread: the altar of God signified this bread. They were sacraments; in the signs they were diverse; in the thing signified, they are alike . . . all have eaten the same spiritual food. The same spiritual indeed, for the bodily is different, for they had the manna; we another thing, but as to the spiritual what we have."

Now you know, Mr. R., that to maintain transubstantiation you have, believing that Christ is in heaven as a man, to hold that Christ is not in extension as filling space in the Eucharist. This is distinctly held and asserted, but only as substance according to the unfounded and obsolete scholastic material philosophy. But though Chrysostom and Ambrose in East and West speak in the strongest terms rhetorically, the doctrine of the ancient Fathers was not transubstantiation, but the contrary. Such a thing was never thought of as its not being bread, only they would say it was not common bread, after the epiklesis or invocation to which they attributed the change, which made it a sacramental figure of Christ's body and blood, efficacious in blessing where faith was, as Augustine diligently insists. It is historically certain, that some of the greatest scholastic doctors, as Scotus, did not hold it; that even down to the Reformation it was said by the Romish doctors and prelates that it could not be proved by Scripture, so that Bellarmine says this is probable; and that it never was decreed as a dogma till 1215. Bellarmine asserts that a local Roman council had a short time before. The contrary doctrine was used as an argument to prove that Christ had taken flesh and had two natures. Of all the Fathers, Cyril is perhaps the strongest in the Catechetical discourses which he delivered, says Jerome, when a young man. Not only he speaks of the bread and wine as Christ's body and blood, but calls them, in his lecture on the sacramental service, a sacrifice of propitiation.

59 But, after all, I do not see any sign of the thought of transubstantiation, unless in the comparisons he makes, and these have no value, because in these the form was changed as Moses' rod into a serpent, and the water into the best wine, known to be such by tasting; whereas Cyril told them they are not to mind the taste: in the form (tupo) of the bread and wine they have the body and the blood which will sanctify body and soul, and being distributed into our members, we become, as Peter says, partakers of the divine nature. "But," he says, "do not regard (proseche) [them] as mere (psilois, the word constantly so used) bread and wine."

Now Cyril teaches it is a propitiatory sacrifice, and good for souls dead in their sins or without any, and refers to intercession of saints, but I do not think that he had the thought that there was no bread and wine there. He uses the word tupos (Cat. 13, 19, as do the other Fathers constantly, for the figure, as did the Latins typus. This is used by Theodoret as equivalent to symbol, and antitupos, the word used in the Hebrews for the tabernacle compared with heaven. Procopius uses it as identical with image or effigy, on Genesis 49:12. So that far as Cyril went in the system of superstition, it is (I think) plain he did not believe in any real change of substance. The strongest term he uses is metabebletai, cap. 23, Myst. 5, 7; the Holy Spirit sanctifies and changes all it touches, but it is clear that this cannot be said of everything. W as Christ changed, transubstantiated, when the Holy Ghost came upon Him? or the hundred and twenty on the day of Pentecost? A change took place, but there was no transubstantiation, and this is so clearly the case that he uses the same language in Cat. 21, Myst. 3, as to the anointing: it is not mere (psilon) oil, but efficient for communicating the Spirit, comparing it in terms with the Eucharist. "For as the bread of the Eucharist after the invocation of the Holy Ghost is not mere bread, but the body of Christ, so this holy ointment is no longer mere [ointment] but the charisma of Christ made effectual by the presence of His divinity, and is symbolically applied to thy forehead and other senses. And while the body is anointed with visible ointment, the soul is sanctified with the holy and vivifying Spirit." (Compare 23, 7, and the language of 22, Myst. 4, 6.) He calls it tupon of bread (Cat. 13). If you desire to see the uncertainty and absurdity of the Father's interpretation, read this Cat. 13, 21. The idea of transubstantiation was foreign to Cyril; but what his language shews is that, with these Fathers, those who use the strongest do not mean transubstantiation thereby as now held at Rome.

60 R. But Cyril's language is very strong.

N*. It is the strongest, I believe, used, and therefore I refer to it, and false doctrine I believe, if Scriptures be true, as to its being a propitiatory sacrifice. But this is the force of my argument, that the strongest language does not mean what is now taught; for he says, after the invocation, the bread is not mere bread, using the same words as to the ointment, where there can be no supposition of any sort of change, and which he makes merely efficacious in the anointed and expressly compares with the Lord's supper.

D. But why should we not take his statements simply, that it is the body? These great Fathers whom you treat so lightly use language which all those who reject the Catholic doctrine decline using.

N*. Why should a man have authority because he wrote fourteen centuries ago?

D. Because of the universal reverence of the church, and being nearer the fountain-head.

N*. In the first place they were four and five hundred years from the source, a lapse of time which disappears in the distance. They had fallen into the doctrines and commandments of men; and, remark, the early Fathers held unequivocally the contrary doctrine: replying to the Doceta and afterwards to the Eutychians that there being two things in the Eucharist proved that there was more than one in Christ.

61 R. That is true.

N*. And further if these later Fathers held it, which I do not admit, the consent of the Fathers is a fable, for it is certain that the earlier ones did not, but insisted that the bread was there. I would now shew that the doctrine was not made a matter of faith in the church till quite late in its history. I might quote a multitude of passages from the Fathers to the same purpose as those I have already brought forward, which are to be found in treatises on the subject, but what I have given is sufficient. I add some lower down in age. Thus Ephrem, archbishop of Antioch in the sixth century, quoted by Photius, Bibl. 229, to prove there was no confusion of natures in Christ, compares the case of the Eucharist (as Irenaeus had done with the Docetae, which was indeed usual in writing against the Eutychians), and says, "Thus the body of Christ, which is received by the faithful, does not put off substance known by the senses, and remains unseparated from the grace known by the thought; and baptism, while it becomes wholly spiritual and one thing, preserves what is proper to it as perceived by the senses, I mean water, and does not lose what it has become. So Facundus about the same time, "The sacrament of adoption [baptism] may be called adoption, as the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ consecrated in the bread and wine is said to be His body and His blood, not that His body be bread or His blood wine, but because the bread and wine are the sacrament of His body and blood? and therefore so called by Christ when He gave them to His disciples."* Bede, in the eighth century, is express. (Compare Luke 22 and Psalm 3.) In the last he says, "Neither did He exclude him [Judas] from the most sacred supper in which He delivered to His disciples the figure of His most holy body and blood." So in the Ambrosian office, so-called, it is said, "which is the figure of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." With this we must remember that the elements are constantly called types and antitypes. I now turn to Bernard.

{*This I quote from a collection of passages.}

62 In his sermon on the supper of the Lord which is much more one on indwelling sin, he says, however, "A sacrament is called a sacred sign or sacred secret. Many things indeed are for themselves alone, others to designate other things, and they are called signs. That we may take an example from common things, a ring is given, absolutely a ring, and has no signification; it is given as the investiture of some inheritance and it is a sign so that he who receives it can say, The ring is nothing worth, but the inheritance which I seek. In this manner therefore, the Lord, drawing near His passion, took care in His grace to give investiture to His own, that invisible grace might be afforded [praestaretur] by a certain visible sign. To this purpose all the sacraments were instituted." Then he goes through these; the partaking of the Eucharist, washing the feet, and baptism. He had said these would be enough for them. He was the last of the Fathers so-called, and was after Berengarius as to whom the question had been very rudely agitated. Aucalaurius, deacon of Metz, in the ninth century, says (De Euch. Off. 1, 29), "For sacraments are somewhat to resemble these things whereof they are sacraments . . . the sacrament of the body of Christ is in some manner the body of Christ. For sacraments should not be sacraments if in some things they had not the likeness of that whereof they are sacraments. Now by reason of this mutual likeness they oftentimes are called by what they represent," 3, 24. Yet he also uses language which is tantamount to transubstantiation, so uncertain were these men.

D. But these are very late, and can hardly be called Fathers.

N*. Exactly so, I cite them not as any authority, but to shew how late a doctrine which subverts transubstantiation passed current in Christendom as orthodox and right. Bernard is generally counted the last of the Fathers: I have already quoted him shewing that till the twelfth century the most eminent men of their day held this with impunity. Bernard had more influence in his day than any man in Christendom.

D. But it was opposed and condemned in Berengarius.

N*. It was, but that did not hinder multitudes of eminent men from holding and defending it. It was in the ninth century especially discussed, and both doctrines were held and taught. There were partial condemnations of this denial of transubstantiation, Paschasius Radbert leading the way for the doctrine. Rabanus Maurus, the most famous man of his day in the middle of the ninth century, was wholly opposed to it, as was John Scot Erigena, Ratramnus, or Bertram who wrote a little later. So we have Alfric in a homily ordered to be read in the Anglo-Saxon churches; the last in the tenth century,* Berengarius in the eleventh, and he was called up about it! All these wrote against transubstantiation; as we have seen, Bernard did too in the twelfth. Paschasius Radbert first wrote insisting on it in the ninth, Lanfranc afterwards against Berengarius. In 1215 it was established as a dogma, in the time of Innocent III, who established the Inquisition and set on foot the crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses.

{*Alfric (he lived about 990) writes thus: "After true nature that water is corruptible water, and after ghostlye mysterye hath hallowing might, so also if we behold that holye housell after bodily understanding, then see we that it is a creature corruptible and mutable. If we acknowledge therein ghostlye might, then understand we that life is therein, and that it giveth immortalitie to them that eate it with faith. Much is betwixte the invisible myghte of the holy housell, and the visible shape of his proper nature. It is naturally corruptible bread and corruptible wine, and is by the myghte of God's word truly Christ's body and hys blood. Not so notwithstanding bodely but ghostlye. Much is between the body Christ suffered in, and the body that is hallowed to housell. The body that he suffered in was borne of the flesh of Mary with blood and with bone, with skinne and with synowes in human limmes, with a reasonable soul living. And his ghoslye body which we call the housell is gathered of many cornes, without bloude and bone, without lymme, without soule and there fore nothing is to be understood therein bodily, but all is ghostlye to be understood." I might add much more: one sentence may suffice. "Thys mysterye is a pledge and a figure, Christ's bodye is truth itself . . . . And He (the Saviour) bad them not eate that bodye which He was going about with, nor that blood to drink which He shed for us, but He meant with those words that holy housell which ghostly is His body and Hys bloude." (Treatise at the end of Wm. Law's Demonstration. Testimony of 33.)}

63 Let us look a little into these cases, for this is the true epoch of the establishment of the doctrine by Rome. I may first mention the second Council of Constantinople of three hundred and thirty-eight prelates (Hard. Conc. 4, 367; 2nd Conc. of this Action 6) in 754. The Council was against images, but they say, "you could not bring the divine infiniteness of Christ in glory into a painted finite image," and adds, "he chose no other form under heaven or type to give the image (eikonisai) of His incarnation than the Eucharist which "He gave to His initiated (mustais) for a type and effectual remembrance . . . . He ordained the substance of bread to be offered having no way the form of a man that idolatry might not be brought in." They call "the bread of the Eucharist" a true image (apseude eikona) of his natural flesh (phusikes sarkos). And a good deal more; but this suffices. His flippant respondent Epiphanius objects to calling it an image after it has been consecrated, saying it has never been so called; a statement so notoriously false that the Roman Catholic annotators have corrected it and cited instances in the margin.

64 The second of Nice (787) brought in images again under the influence of Irene; put down under Leo, they were set up again under Theodora his widow, and a festival established in commemoration. In England (792) and at Frankfort under Charlemagne (794), where some eight hundred prelates were assembled, the second Council of Nice was condemned. So was the doctrine in the Council of Illiberis in Spain at the same epoch, noticed here to shew the dates of these questions. Up to 824 purity as to this was maintained. In the middle of the ninth century Paschasius Radbert introduced transubstantiation in the West, as John of Damascus some few years before the Council of Constantinople (654) in the East, just a century before Radbert. Sirmondi, in a short life prefixed to Radbert's works in the Bib. Max. Pat. says (14, 353), "He first so explained the genuine sense of the Catholic church, that he opened the way to others who in numbers wrote afterwards on the same subject." And Bellarmine says he was the first author who wrote seriously and copiously concerning the verity of the body and blood of the Lord in the Eucharist.

Paschasius Radbert does not speak of transubstantiation, but he does speak of the Eucharist being really the body and blood of Christ; and that body and blood which was born of the virgin and which suffered, as there could not be any other. That as Christ as man was created in the virgin's womb by the power of the Holy Ghost, so by the operation of the Holy Ghost it is Christ in the Eucharist — faith knows Him to be there as it would the divinity in Christ hanging on the cross. There is nothing of the school doctrine of substance and accidents, and so far from its being a church dogma, he says in his second treatise, to Frudegarde who doubted through reading Augustine, that many doubted. The whole work is the reasoning of an individual to prove his point. He fully holds it is the flesh of Christ, but speaks of eating it spiritually interiorly; and that he who is not dwelling in Christ, though he seems to receive it with his mouth, does not really.

65 D. But you do not mean that Radbert did not believe in transubstantiation?

N*. I do not say that exactly. That he believed the Eucharist was the true body and blood of Christ is quite clear. But the scholastic view, brought in later by Lombard, was not yet established. He was the first that spoke as plainly as he did, but he does not bring it out as it was brought out afterwards, and has no thought of it being a dogma of the church, but twice over in his second letter says many doubted it. And he puts baptism, the chrism, and the Eucharist on the same ground, but he holds that it was the same body that hung upon the cross. He calls it a figure, but says it was the truth of the thing too as Christ was as to God. What I insist on with Sirmondi and Bellarmine is that he was the first that propounded the doctrine; and this tells the whole story: it is a doctrine which came in quite late and was opposed, as we shall now see, by the greatest men of the age.

Bertram or Ratramnus I need hardly quote. The Emperor Carolus Calvus had asked him the question whether it was literally or figuratively Christ's body, and the book is to shew it was the latter. His doctrine is the usual doctrine of the Fathers, that by faith they partook of Christ's body and blood in spiritual efficacy, but that literally it was bread and wine as before, and as we have seen others do, he refers to baptism and anointing as a similar case, nobody pretending the water or oil was changed, only it became spiritually efficacious. In the preface, London, 1688, a list of those who taught the same doctrine at the same time, beginning with Charles the Great to Alcuin, is given. Alfric, whom I have named, is a proof how Ratramn was received, as his statements are taken from Ratramn. The whole history of the writers of this age shews it was now first introduced, and at once called in question. Rabanus Maurus, the greatest man of his day, opposed it He says (De Institutione Clericorum, 1, 31), "Because the sacrament is one thing, the virtue of the sacrament another; for the sacrament is received by the mouth; by the virtue of the sacrament the inward man is satiated; for the sacrament is reduced into an aliment of the body, but by the virtue of the sacrament the dignity of eternal life is obtained." And just before, "and as the invisible God appeared in visible flesh, so also He demonstrated an invisible thing by visible matter," and again as Melchisedec offered bread and wine, the great high priest should do the same. He says (Penitential, 6, 33), "For some of late, not thinking rightly of the sacrament of the body and blood of our Lord, have said that the very body and blood of our Lord which was born and in which the Lord Himself suffered on the cross and rose out of the sepulchre . . . [in opposition] to which error as far as we could in writing to the Abbot Egilus, we have opened up what is really to be believed about His body"; where, for what specifically was spoken, a blank was left in the copy, but plenty is left. In my copy of Rab. Maur. (lib. 6 on Matt.) he tells us He (Christ) "substituted the sacrament of His body and blood for the flesh and blood of the Lamb and breaks the bread which He handed to the disciples, to shew that the fraction of His body was not without His own voluntary act." "Because therefore the bread strengthens the body, and wine produces blood in the flesh, that refers mystically to the body of Christ, this to His blood." There is no doubt that Rab. Maurus was wholly opposed to the doctrine, though held to be the greatest light in his day. There is a curious circumstance, shewing how we have to be on our guard in these inquiries. The works of Fulbert of Chartres were published in Paris. Referring to eating Christ's flesh, it is said, "It seems to command a crime or atrocity. It is therefore a figure, saith the heretic, commanding only communion with the passion of the Lord." But some one reminded the publisher that the words were Augustine's own. Unless the fraud was still more wilful, in the hope nobody would look to the errata, he puts in the errata that the words: "the heretic saith," were not in the MS.

66 R. But do you mean that the text was wilfully changed?

N*. Judge for yourself. He tells us the words were not in the MS.

R. This is very bad.

N*. Surely it is, but they changed Ambrose in the same way. He writes, speaking of the elements, that "they should be what they were, and be changed into another thing," they published it as "what they were should be changed into another thing." They changed passages in the imperfect work on Matthew, ascribed to Chrysostom, from a direct testimony against transubstantiation to the contrary; leaving the part out or boldly changing it. The Benedictine edition has restored in Ambrose what flatly, in terms, contradicts transubstantiation. John Scot Erigena at this time also wrote clearly against this new doctrine. His book was not condemned for two hundred years. But the Emperor Charles asked Ratramn, a man much looked up to, to write his well-known book against the new notion. No Roman Catholic denies this, though they at one time attempted to father it on others. It only proves, says a Jesuit, "that the heresy of Calvin was not new."

67 Thus what history clearly shews is that the introduction of this doctrine in the West was in the ninth century. But it was then and afterwards strenuously resisted by doctors, prelates, and emperors; it was then in no sense a doctrine of the church. But it gradually prevailed; and controversy broke out afresh when Berengarius maintained the ancient doctrine, and appealed to Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, etc. He was brought before several Councils under Leo IX, Victor II, and Nicholas II. In one he was made to sign a confession prepared by Cardinal Humbert, which says at the end, that the body and blood of Christ are handled and broken by the hands of the priests and ground with the teeth of the faithful and sensible (sensualiter), not sacramentally only but in truth. The marginal gloss warns us to apply d is only to the visible form, or we should be worse heretics than Berengarius. (Corp. Jur. Can. Decr. tertia pars, Dis. 2, cap. 42; Lyons, 1671, pp. 19, 31.) He speaks in the beginning of having held it was only sacramentally. (Bar. 1059, 13, 14, 17, 152-3.) John Erigena was also condemned: this was at Rome by the Pope and a hundred and thirteen prelates. Berengarius yielded to fear, but went on afterwards with his doctrine, and wrote against his recantation and denounced the Council. He was again cited by Pope Hildebrand, the most violent of popes who forced celibacy on the clergy. In this Council, Rom. 6 (Hard. 6, 1583), it is declared that the major part held the literal body and blood were there, but that many thought thus, and others thus, and a fast appointed and three months given to Berengarius, having had three days discussion in the synod. Berengarius signed a confession that the bread was substantially changed. As some state, he sold all he had and worked for his livelihood. Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote against him and brought the doctrine to England. But at the time, as the English historians of the middle ages declare, almost all the English, French, and Italian bishops agreed with Berengarius; he had been acquitted at Tours, signing a confession which is not extant that I know. Lanfranc was his great opponent, and we have to learn all relating to him chiefly in Lanfranc's abusive statements. In the Council of Vercelli (1050), where Lanfranc was and Berengarius sent two, John Erigena was condemned, and Berengarius. I should have noticed that Erigena was murdered by the students where he taught, it is said at the instigation of the monks.

68 D. But Berengarius was a worthless man, denying his own oath, and teaching the contrary of what he had sworn to.

R. I do not see that this proves much as to the history of the doctrine, Mr. D.; it proves his weakness.

N*. Berengarius was reputed both a holy and learned man. His denial at Rome of what he held proved his weakness assuredly, but we have never been tried or we might have to put our hand in the fire as Cranmer, for signing a confession he was gradually drawn into. It appears the prelate of Angers, where he was archdeacon, agreed with him, and he was defended by many of the French clergy; no doubt when he got back among them his courage, which had failed when alone among his enemies, revived. Lanfranc, then a monk in France, pursued his point with relentless and abusive violence.

But the question is not the character of Berengarius but the history of transubstantiation, and I hardly know how it would be made clearer than by the facts we have been surveying. The Roman historian admits there was only a majority in the Roman council, and decided after three days' discussion. It was not then a dogma of the church. That the doctrine at length prevailed in the Roman church we all know. I quote a summary (from Gieseler, 3rd Div. chap. 5, sec. 77) by Algenis of the current opinions about 1130. "Some think the bread and wine are not changed, but that it is only a sacrament, as the water of baptism and oil of the chrism; they say that it is called the body of Christ not truly but figuratively. Others say that the bread is not only a sacrament but that Christ is, as it were, embodied in the bread [impanatum] as God was personally incarnate in flesh. Others that the bread and wine are changed into flesh and blood, but not that of Christ, but of some son of man holy and accepted of God, that what Christ said may be fulfilled, 'unless ye eat the flesh of [a] Son of man [carnem filii hominis] ye will not have life in you.' Others, that evil in the consecrator annulled the invocation of the divine name. Others, that it was really changed; but by evil in recipients it returned into a mere sacrament." Now it is perfectly impossible a person, presbyter and afterwards monk, could write in this way if it had been a fixed dogma of the church. I have already referred to Bernard in the middle of the twelfth century (Sermo I, in Coena Dom. 2). Indeed the mystics generally took the spiritual as contrasted with the material side. Finally in the fourth Council of Lateran under Innocent III in 1215, it was decided to be the faith of the church.

69 Other circumstances confirm this. It was then the giving the communion to children began to be set aside, it continued locally for two or three centuries; the cup began to be withheld from the laity, although by many such a practice was entirely condemned. Gratian (De ret p. 3, Dist. 2, 5, 12) quoting Pope Gelasius that they should take it in both species or not at all. And this was general, but the withdrawal of the cup began now. Alexander Hales (whose works I have not) discusses it at large. In two centuries the cup was universally refused to the laity. On all these things I do not insist for their own sake, but as a testimony to the epoch of establishing transubstantiation. It was when the Bible was forbidden in the Council of Toulouse and the Inquisition established to root out the Albigenses, and the celibacy of the clergy insisted on to the universal ruin of morals; when the papacy was at the height of its power and morality at its lowest ebb, and when as Bernard says Antichrist was seated at Rome.

D. But the decree was founded on the church's authority by the consent of the Fathers.

N*. We can read the Fathers for ourselves and see if that is true, without blasphemously discussing, as Innocent and Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura and others do, what becomes of the Lord if a mouse eats Him or any other accident happens to the helpless elements, though His Godhead (they say) is there. And we have cited them; and though superstition grew apace, it is not true that there was any consent of Fathers. Many taught exactly the contrary, as we have seen in their controversy with the Docetae and Eutychians; in fact, Cyril of Jerusalem is the only one who at all draws near it; and a vast array of the doctors of the previous centuries opposed the doctrine. The first who really held it was a Greek Father, John Damascene, and there it was identified with the re-establishment of image worship. This was in the seventh century, but a few years after him the Council of Constantinople declared the bread to be the only image of Christ. Damascene says that if Basil calls it a figure (antitupon) he must mean before consecration,* he adds it was not by the body in heaven coming down, but by a conversion of the elements. That it was called so before as well, we have already seen; so that the only effect of this testimony is to recognise the force of the word, and to prove that he was conscious that the word was used and meant to be as a figure. Though thus taught practically by Damascene in the eighth century in the East, it was never made a dogma there till Peter the Great in 1725, though prevailing gradually. In the West, we have seen that it was introduced by Radbert a century after Damascene, and made a dogma of Rome in the thirteenth century; the earlier Fathers being clearly against it, and in the ninth century it was discussed and combated, and not only privately but in a Roman Council.

{*In Basil's liturgy it is expressly called bread, "this holy bread" after consecration.}

70 The progress of superstition is seen indeed in John Damascene, he refers, as we have often seen in the Fathers, to the oil of the chrism and the water in baptism,* to which divine grace was added by means of the invocation of the Holy Ghost, which was, and in the Greek church is still, what consecrates the elements. These are only set apart by the words, This is my body, as a preparatory service in what is called the prothesis, and then carried in procession to be consecrated on the altar. But the language of John Damascene does shew the progress of superstition, for the strongest part of his statement is, as the editor annotator of his works, Lequien, a Roman Catholic of the order of preachers (Paris, 1712) remarks, and as is easily seen, is taken from the letter to Caesarius attributed to Chrysostom, and of that epoch, though not probably his. Now this says, "Divine grace sanctifying it [the bread] by means of the priest, it is indeed freed from the appellation of bread, but is esteemed worthy of the appellation of the Lord's body even though the nature of bread has remained in it, and it is called not two bodies, but one body of the Son," whereas in Damascene we have, "By the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit they are supernaturally transformed (uperphos metapeiountai) into the body of Christ and the blood, and they are not two, but one and the same thing." This, "although the nature of bread remains in it" has passed away, but so had some 400 years time. A century later Paschasius Radbert first publicly introduced it in the West as we have seen. But Damascene's views were not then publicly adopted. Some six years before his death, the Council of Constantinople (754) called as general, but not received in the West, nor in the East beyond the Emperor's rule, declared the elements in the Lord's supper to be the only image of Christ.** Still; though never dogmatically established, the superstitious feeling grew. I may add that in the Russian part of the Greek church, it is since Peter the Great's time in a certain sense established by law. It seems that through the efforts of Rome and the propaganda, persons from Eastern countries who had received their education there had widely propagated the views with which they had been imbued at Rome. Peter the Great brought many clergy in from the Ukraine, where Romish influence was considerable, and only then 1725) imposed on everyone consecrated bishop, an oath "that he believes and understands that the transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ in the holy supper as taught by the Eastern and ancient Russian doctors is effected by the influence and operation of the Holy Ghost when the bishop or priest invokes God the Father in these words, 'and make this bread the precious body of Christ.'" Thus since Peter the Great's reign there has, at least by the prelates, been a positive profession of transubstantiation in Russia; but by invocation of the Holy Ghost and not as at Rome, but this is only since the beginning of the eighteenth century; that was rather late in the day. The way it came about was this: It seems Rome had been very active in seeking to win and influence the Greek church, which though itself corrupt enough, was a standing witness against her pretended catholicity, and against some of her doctrines. It had had to do with the struggles in the case of Cyril Lucaris, who had embraced evangelical doctrine and was strangled by the Porte, as was the Cyril of Berrhoea who supplanted him. By like intrigues the Ukraine or Little Russia, and the provinces at the mouth of the Danube and neighbourhood in what had once been Polish, had been very much Romanized, at the same time the clergy had at least received some education at Rome. Peter the Great, who was the ecclesiastical reformer of Russia and remodelled the whole church and monastic system, brought in thence (the Russian clergy being utterly brutish), at least educated men, and then (1725) introduced the oath as to transubstantiation. Mogilas, Metropolitan of the Ukraine, had made a catechism, confirmed in 1643 by the patriarchs, and in vogue till the Synod's Catechism by the Archbishop of Novgorod in 1766 supplanted it. I do not question that the superstition insisted on by John Damascene had borne its fruits. At the time of the Reformation, the Wurtemberg divines wrote to the patriarch Jeremias, sending the confession of Augsburg, and in his answer he quotes the words of John Damascene; he says it is the body of Christ, not a type, he calls it bread when consecrated; nor is there a hint of substance and accidents. The best account perhaps of transmutation in the Greek church will be found in Covel (p.122, C.5, Camb., 1782). But as is evidently quite modern. I thought I might notice the Greek church to complete our review.

{*His words as to the Eucharist are that the divinity being added to the bread, makes it the body of Christ (de Fid. Orth. lib. 4, 112), certainly not the Romish doctrine.}

{**Image worship was restored in the East under Irene (787), but put down for a time by Leo Armenius, refuted in the Caroline books and by the Synod of Frankfurt (794), and Paris (825).}

72 This much I think we have seen: first in searching Scripture, it cannot be said that Christ, in giving the bread and the wine, was present a glorified Christ as actually existing, for then there can be no shed blood, as is evident, and He was not yet so glorified: nor would it be what He was then, for His blood was not shed. Its being done after He was gone and glorified, in remembrance of Him and His sacrifice, is as simple as it is blessed. Next, in the Fathers, we have found that many of them, though speaking in the highest terms of the Eucharist, insist earnestly on the exact contrary of transubstantiation. And this is true of the very early ones reasoning against the Doceta; and then, somewhat later, others in writing against the Eutychians, say things which modern Roman Catholics hold to be 'prave dicta,' and others excuse, saying, when the dogma was not settled they spoke in a way liable to be abused, 'in malam partem trahi.' We have seen that in the West, Paschasius Radbert was the first who positively and clearly expounded the doctrine, that is, in the ninth century, and that it was never formally decided to be the doctrine of the church till 1215. There was a great deal of intriguing of the Western powers at Constantinople on this subject to augment their influence, but into this I need not enter. I may note, however, that in Peter the Great's bishops' oath (and which is indeed its object), and all the Eastern documents I have come across, the change, as in ancient liturgies, is invariably attributed to the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and distinctively to that, the epiklesis of the early Fathers. This is wanting wholly in the Roman missal, so that an orthodox Greek does not hold the elements to be consecrated at Rome at all. In the Romanized liturgies of other bodies, as Armenians and Ethiopians united to Rome, in the former we find in the invocation bread changed into consecrated bread. The Ethiopic goes further, and says, "This bread, that is, the body of Christ." They have not taken away the invocation, but changed it so as to make it an already consecrated bread. In the ancient liturgies, the oblation was before the consecration, from the very ancient habit of bringing the fruits of the earth in kind before the celebration of the Lord's supper. In all, we find the virgin Mary prayed for, not doing which Epiphanius notices as the distinction of a divine Person, as Christ, and many other traces, not of what was primitive then came in. In Justin Martyr's time, the president prayed and thanked as best he could, but at any rate of early times. The change in praying to instead of for saints is noticed in a question in the Corpus Jur. Can., and puzzled the Pope who could not account for it; only saints, could not, he said, be prayed for. But of this we have spoken. But as Scripture really cannot honestly be tortured to mean it, so that the Fathers shew that transubstantiation was not the doctrine of the early church, no honest man who has read them can deny, rapidly as superstition and immorality grew, and dark and ignorant as the so-called Fathers were.

73 R. It is distressing. I do not see how it is possible that Christ could have held Himself in His own hand, and broken Himself, and had His blood shed, it being truly and really Himself, when He was sitting there, and assuredly now His blood cannot be shed. I see too that Milner's statement cannot be trusted, and that the early Fathers, whatever we may think of the authority of their views, did not hold transubstantiation as we do, and that it was made a dogma very late indeed, and yet I may say all our system depends on it.

N* I might add as a confirmatory fact historically, that the feast of Corpus Christi never existed till after the dogma was established: first instituted in the diocese of Liege, dropped for a while, and then re-established in 1311. Other fables are connected with it, but the vision of a certain Juliana appears to have been its origin. At any rate the festival of Corpus Christi was not established before this.

74 R. My heart still clings to my old belief, yet I see I have no adequate ground for it.

N*. Trust God, Mr. R. He helps infallibly those that look to Him. It is written, "They shall be all taught of God," and "if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Search the word of God. You have ever a glorified Christ above, one who once hung upon the tree for us in love, the one real sacrifice of never-ending nor changing value, always before God accepted of Him, and on which true faith ever rests, while it feeds daily upon it, and of which the Lord's supper is the special memorial and presentation, where we discern the Lord's body, and are united as one body in Him. I commend you to Him and His grace.

R. Thank you. I must search the word and count on His goodness to guide me. We have to thank our kind friends here for receiving us and allowing us to occupy their house and time.

James. It is I that thank you, sir, and Mr. N. for coming here to my poor cottage. I have learnt much I never knew, though through grace I confided in Christ and His blessed work. My part was naturally to learn, but all is clearer to me than ever it was.

Bill M. I am sure I am thankful. Why I never thought of such things, and I see my salvation in Christ much better than I did.

N*. Well, we will commend each other now heartily to God. We all need His constant grace; and let us remember one another before Him and look to the faithful Saviour to help us on.

{The reader is referred for other Dialogues on Romanism to Doctrinal, Vols. 5, 6 and 8.}

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