the same archdeacon set forth in 1854 a fifth, which appears to be necessarily connected with the said real or essential presence in the elements, viz. 'that the Sacrament, that is, the outward part or sign, and the inward part or thing signified, is given to and received by all who communicate:' and in a sermon upon the Real Presence, preached in or before the said year, he says, that the body and blood of Christ, being really present in the Sacramental bread and wine, are given in and by the outward sign to all, and are received by all:' and he also says that this proposition is, strictly speaking, not a deduction from the doctrine of the Real Presence, but a part of the doctrine itself;' and, therefore, he 'proposed it to candidates for holy orders . . . as a test of truth of doctrine and soundness of faith,' adding that it is affirmed by Archdeacon Wilberforce in at least twenty passages of his work; and he submits that this test is superior, as a test, even to that of the adoration of Christ as really present in the Holy Eucharist.'

Indeed, the necessary connection between the Sacerdotal doctrines of Real and Essential Presence, and of Universal Reception by Communicants, is so manifest, that the ablest advocates of the Essential Presence, such as Thomas Aquinas and Gerson, with a multitude of their followers maintain, that a mouse, or dog, or brute beast, must receive the body of Christ if it eat the Sacrament : which conclusion again the authorised gloss on the Roman Canon Law denies to be inconvenient.

And this necessary and manifest connection between the two doctrines will furnish us with one proof additional, that the Anglican Church utterly repudiates the doctrine of the said Real and Essential Presence in the elements; because of wicked and unbelieving communicants it says expressly,' in no wise are they partakers of Christ;'1 as it

1 Article XXIX.

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also testifies more directly against such essential presence -in a passage which no sophistry can ever really answer -by declaring, that the natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ' (and he has no other body and blood than one) are in heaven, and not here: it being against the truth of Christ's natural body (i.e. of his actual and only body) to be at one time in more places than one: or, in other words, that the said doctrine of Real and Essential Presence is a fundamental or anti-Christian heresy, denying the truth of our Lord's body, on which rests our salvation.1

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All the five Sacerdotal doctrines were again maintained in a London newspaper of this year,2 with the following addition respecting them, and especially respecting the Real and Essential Presence on which the rest depend:This I have been taught by the Church of England to receive and believe most firmly. Take from me my faith in God's Word incarnate present in the Sacrament, and with it I lose God's Word written in Holy Scripture. The two go together. Take from me this faith, and with it you rob me of the Prayer-Book and Articles of the Church of England, by robbing them of their claim to be understood in their full grammatical sense.' Such is a specimen of assertions as imposing as they are utterly baseless, by which the faith of simple and credulous members of the Church is beguiled, in direct opposition at once to the teaching of the Church and of Scripture.

3

Again with respect to the supposed essential or substantial presence in the elements, which is affirmed in the two first doctrines of the 'Charge,' 3 the archdeacon aforesaid, about 1854, gave a definition of it as 'spiritual,' thus: Spiritual, as opposed to carnal, material, i. e.

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1 1 John iv. 3.

2 Letter of Rev. A. M. Mackonochie, in the Guardian of Jan. 9, 1867, Pp. 49, 50.

3

cognizable by the senses:' and after a judgment in an Ecclesiastical Court pronounced against his doctrines, a protest was published in 1856, bearing the signatures of Rev. Drs. or Messrs. Pusey, Keble, Neale, Bennett, Williams, Heathcote, and many others, saying 'that the doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of our Saviour Christ under the form of bread and wine has been uniformly held as a point of faith in the Church from the Apostolic times; and was accepted by general councils, as it is also embodied in our formularies'—which statement I meet, as before in Chapter VIII., by saying that we have in our hands all the points of faith professed in and from the Apostolic times, whether by general councils or by the Church Catholic, or by the three principal Churches in the three great districts of Asia, Africa, and Europe: and amongst them all this so-called 'point of faith,' or anything at all resembling it, does not once appear. It is not, as was before said, in the Apostolic faith of the Church of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, or of ancient Rome; nor in that of the first four general councils, of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon-which latter two councils indeed, in accepting the faith of the two former, peremptorily forbade any future addition to it, such as this new and imaginary 'point of faith' would be.

And although the doctrine of the essential presence in the Sacrament was dictated-virtually by his sole authority to the fourth Lateran Council by Pope Innocent III., A.D. 1215-in canons which were not published for centuries; it was still not publicly admitted into the faith professed by any one Church in the world, till at length in the year 1564 it was imposed as 'a point of faith' upon the Roman Church by a second pope, in a new creed or composition of his own. And not only does the Anglican Church directly deny the doctrine of such presence in the

elements as a heresy-in the Rubric aforesaid-but in her three creeds she virtually denies it, by affirming that Christ 'ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God, and from thence shall come again—not to all communion-tables at the consecration of the elements, but-to judge the quick and the dead;' for, as the Apostle teaches, the heavens must receive Christ until the times of restitution of all things.' And one main design of the Eucharist in the meantime is to show the Lord's death till he come."

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This Catholic faith of the Church, and of the holy Apostles, Martyrs, Fathers, and faithful, for above 1,500 years, rested upon the infallible testimony not only of Scripture, but of the reason and senses of mankind; upon which latter exclusively is built our faith in the incarnation: and when heresies analogous to this of the essential presence in the elements arose from time to time in the early Church, the orthodox fathers opposed them on the fundamental principle, that the Incarnate Saviour was perfect man, as well as perfect God; and that the properties of his manhood and of his Godhead were essentially and inexchangeably distinguished.

1 Acts iii. 21.

2 1 Cor. xi. 26.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE RESPECTING THE SUPPOSED ESSENTIAL PRESENCE IN THE ELEMENTS.

'If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.' Matt. xxiv. 23.

In the First Part, we proved from a wide examination, that no such doctrine as the substantial or essential presence of Christ's body in the elements-on which hang all the other Sacerdotal doctrines of the Lord's Supper-can be proved by Holy Scripture: a position admitted even by the most learned and acute doctors in the Roman Church, who confess that the Scriptures alone, without the declaration of the Church, cannot enforce the admission of their doctrine: and this,' says their greatest controversialist, 'is not altogether improbable;' of which he gives himself a very striking illustration, for in attempting the proof from the word of God, in a whole chapter, he saysThe first argument is taken from those words of the Lord, "Take, eat; this is my body;"' and this first argument is followed by no second, in the whole and only chapter on the subject consisting of five columns folio! 1

The Scriptures indeed confessedly abound in figurative language, like the text just quoted: for all Biblical readers must remember the figures of the Good Shepherd, the Way, the Vine, the Door; and the good seed, the field, the tares, the reapers; and the salt of the earth, the city

1 Bellarmin. de Euchar. lib. iii. c. 23 and 19.