me.' Therefore they who are His, when present with Him, would behold His glory; and when, after His ascension, He shall come as the Creed says, 'to judge the quick and the dead' ten thousand of His saints shall be with Him, and see His glory: for the Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honour the Son as they honour the Father.'1

16. John xx. 17.-Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.' And how could she touch Him after His ascension? just as she could eat him, spiritually, and by faith; and so Augustine explained both figures : 'Ascend and touch' Him; 'Believe, and thou hast eaten.'

17. Acts iii. 20, 21.—‘He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the restitution of all things.' This restitution of all things confessedly has not yet come: therefore the heavens still receive Him according to His manhood and therefore God does not send Him again to earth at every celebration of the Eucharist.

18. Acts vii. 48.- The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands:' and therefore He dwelleth not in wafers made with hands, and then consecrated by a few words of the priest: so that even Demetrius and his craftsmen could not make and multiply dwelling places for their God with nearly the same speed or facility.

19. 1 Cor. x. 3.- And did all eat the same spiritual meat.' This was quoted in the first part with the interpretation of Augustine, that they ate the same spiritual meat that we do; and this is confirmed by ver. 4- And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.' That is, they ate and drank the body and blood of Christ spiritually and by faith-though under an 1 John v. 22, 23.

inferior dispensation before His Incarnation, as faithful Christians now do more advantageously.

20. 1 Cor. x. 16, 17, and xi. 26-28.-By referring to these texts, the reader will find the Sacramental symbol after consecration called 'bread' five times by the Apostle in two successive chapters: therefore the substance of bread remains, as Anglican Sacerdotalists admit: and, if so, the substance or essence of Christ's body cannot possibly be in the elements, according to the most learned Roman doctors, who by the real presence understand ‘a corporal presence to the exclusion of all other substances: '1 and their ablest controversialist argues respecting the text This is my body,' 'It cannot possibly be that one thing is not changed, and yet is made another, for it would be itself and not itself:' and, 'Therefore it is impossible that the proposition be true, in which the subject is taken for bread and the predicate for the Body of Christ; for bread and the body are things most different.' 2

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21. 1 Cor. xv. 25.- He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet.' Therefore, until the final subjugation of His enemies, He must reign' in glory: and therefore He does not come to earth ten thousand times a day to be torn by the teeth of the faithful,' or literally eaten by the wicked, or possibly by dogs and vermin or to suffer indignities painful to mention, and yet discussed in the authorised Rubrics of the Mass.

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22. Phil. iii. 20, 21.- For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.' We look for Him visibly coming from heaven at the resurrection with a glorious body; and we believe that our vile body will then be fashioned like unto it: and, therefore, we believe

1 Wiseman on the Euch. p. 304.

2 Bellarm. de Euch. lib. iii. c. xix.

not that He descends from heaven daily, and is imprisoned in lifeless elements: nor will the multiplication of such explanatory epithets, as hyperlocal, ineffable, supernatural, at all remove, as we shall see more fully in the next chapter, the clear contradictions arising from supposing a real human body to be substantially in a thousand places at once, or overthrow the most evident intuitions of the senses and the mind. Our bodies, we believe, will not ever be simultaneously multipresent, invisible, impalpable, unorganical, or bereft of motion and of sense, as His glorious body-to which ours will be like-is in the elements vainly and arbitrarily supposed to be.

23. Col. iii. 1.—Seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.' Here άvw, ‘above,' means a place locally superior and remote ; and it applies not to the supposed substantial Presence of Christ's body in a wafer on the Lord's table beside us. Indeed, this is made clearer in ver. 2, by the addition of the negative, 'not on things on the earth;' even though they be consecrated elements in the Eucharist.

24. 1 John i. 1 and 3.—That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life; that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you.' The substantial presence of the Redeemer's body on the earth was from the beginning to be believed exclusively upon the evidence of the senses: and, therefore, men cannot believe the same substantial presence now in the elements, in opposition to the clearest evidence at once of the senses and understanding; without abandoning the first principles of the doctrine of Christ,' and all the evidence for the Saviour's death, resurrection, ascension, and every other article of the Christian faith.

25. 1 John iv. 3.-Every spirit that confesseth not

that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.' Before St. John wrote, the Gnostics or Docetæ denied that Christ was come really and substantially in the flesh; and, after the time of John, Marcion and many others, and even in the twelfth century the Cathari, denied it too but the doctrine of the Gnostics and other early heretics were not more plainly untrue, than that of those whom Hooker calls Marcionites by inversion;' for as Marcion thought Christ seemed to be man but was not, so they think that Christ in the elements seems not to be man and yet is. But I have dwelt sufficiently on the arguments from revelation, and shall proceed in the next chapter to consider the impossibility of the supposed Substantial Presence, upon the first principles of all our knowledge respecting body and its qualities, and even respecting revelation itself.

H

CHAPTER III.

ON THE ABSOLUTE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE SUPPOSED

ESSENTIAL PRESENCE IN THE ELEMENTS.

...

'The Catholic faith has always acknowledged in Christ, after the Incarnation, two entire and perfect natures-the divine and human . . . and that the human is, and was, of the same species with ours.'-BELLARMIN. de Christo, lib. iii. c. ii.

To declare the impossibility of an essential presence of Christ's body in the elements, I shall place in the foreground the observations of the judicious Hooker, viz. :— Nothing of Christ which is limited, nothing created, neither the soul nor body of Christ, and consequently not Christ as man, or Christ according to His human nature, can possibly be everywhere present:1 and again, The substance of the body of Christ hath no presence, but only local.' And again, 'There is no proof. . . that Christ had a true body, but by the true and natural properties of His body, amongst which properties definite or local presence is chief.' And again, If His majestical body have now any such new property, by force whereof it may everywhere really even in substance present itself, or may at once be in many places, then hath the majesty of his estate extinguished the verity of His nature.'2 Hooker also, as before said, describes the advocates of this substantial or essential presence in the elements, or of a presence therein not local, or of the simultaneous multipresence of Christ's glorified body, as 'Marcionites by

inversion!'