Let me, however, remind the reader that the Romish view of the presence of Christ's Body and Blood is devoid of all mystery. Its principle is strictly rationalistic, for it is an attempt to render the whole matter intelligible, and to bring it down to the level of human thought and reason. Transubstantiation, or the doctrine of the substance of the elements no longer remaining, but giving place to the actual Flesh and Blood of the Redeemer, turns the Sacrament into a miracle, in which the Almighty power of God suddenly substitutes one thing in its natural substance in the place of the natural substance of another thing.

According to this view the Holy Sacrament is not a mystery, but a miracle. The miracle may be surpassingly great, but it is perfectly intelligible. When once you apprehend the terms which describe it, you have not to ask another question about it.

If there is any difficulty about it, that difficulty does not attach to the apprehension of it, but to this—that God should require us, after such a carnal and earthly manner, to eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of the Son of Man. If He requires such a carnal and earthly feeding, then Transubstantiation is a perfectly rational and intelligible explanation of the mode of Christ's presence to enable us to do so.1

It has been suggested to me that the remarks upon Transubstantiation in this section are insufficient; particularly as some are endeavouring to prove that there is no real difference between the Churches of England and Rome on the mode in which the Body and Blood of Christ are present in the Eucharist.

As the persons who believe in the dogma of Transubstantiation profess to hold it as being what the Church has ruled respecting the mode of Christ's presence, it will be needful to depart from the general plan of this publication (which is that of a continuous appeal to Scripture), and to show that the passages of Scripture which seem

to imply that the bread and wine remain unchanged as to their substance have been so interpreted from the first by the Fathers of the Church; and also that many expressions in the most ancient Liturgies are inconsistent with any Theory of the Presence which implies the annihilation of the elements.

But, first of all, what is Transubstantiation? It is laid down by the Council of Trent to be this, that, by the words of consecration, the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood: so that the bread and wine no longer remain in existence, but the Body and Blood of Christ take their place.

Now this is a physical explanation of what the Church of England receives as a mystery, and so as inexplicable; and being a rude and impertinent unveiling, as it were, of a deep mystery, itself requires explanations and suggests questions which tend inconceivably to lower the Christian's conception of the Eucharist.

It introduces physical conceptions into a matter which is preeminently supra-physical, and local considerations respecting what is supra-local.

It suggests the hardest metaphysical questions into what is preeminently the domain of simple loving faith: such, for instance, es the very nature of substance itself.

It introduces unreality into the domain of truth, for the elements are held to be no longer what they seem to be.

It suggests degrading questions, which the enemies of all mystery and indeed of all Divine working in the Eucharist are not slow to ask, and which those who give occasion to them by adopting this gratuitously impertinent theory are bound to answer.

To take one: What becomes of the Eucharist if an animal eats it, which is very possible when the Eucharist is reserved?

To take a second (which is actually one of the questions in the Catechism of the Council of Trent): "Are bones, nerves, and whatsoever things pertain to the perfection of man really present here together with the Godhead ?" And the answer is in the affirmative. Again, Transubstantiation requires at least three physical miracles.

The miracle by which the bread is transformed into flesh.

The miracle by which the " accidents," such as colour, taste, and sinell, of bread and wine are preserved, whilst the substance vanishes; so that there is to our eyes no change of appearance.

And a third miracle, sometimes at least, is necessitated, which is

the recreation of the substance of bread, and the withdrawal of the Body of Christ.

Now if there be any necessity laid upon those who desire to accept the words of Christ in their integrity to hold a dogma suggesting such questions and involving such consequences, then be it 30-the words of Jesus are to be believed and realised at all hazards.

But so far from there being any such necessity, the literal meaning of the words of Christ were held for above a thousand years in the Church before this mode of defining His presence was attempted to be imposed upon the consciences of believers. The reader may see in any work of any competent Anglican divine treating on this subject, a long list of passages from the Fathers (some of them reaching far into medieval times), not one passage of which would have been written if the Father in question had supposed that Transubstantiation was even an allowable opinion in the Church.

I shall now give some of these, all which the reader will find (cited for the very purpose for which I cite them) in the "Notes to a Sermon on 'The Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist,'" by Dr. Pusey, preached on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, 1853. I shall preface the extracts with the following passage from the Sermon itself:

"To receive literally, then, those words of our Lord, 'This is My body,' does not necessarily imply any absence, or cessation, or anni hilation of the substance of the outward elements. In taking them literally, we are bound to take equally in their plain sense His other words, in which He calls what He had just consecrated to be sacramentally His blood, 'this fruit of the vine;' or again, those other words of Holy Scripture, 'the bread which we break ;' 'as often as ye eat this bread;' 'whosoever shall eat this bread;' 'so let him eat that bread;' we are all partakers of that one bread;' Our blessed Lord, through those words, 'This is My body,' teaches us that which it concerns us to know,-His own precious gift, the means of union and incorporation with Himself, whereby He hallows us, nourishes our souls to life everlasting, reforms our nature, and conforms it to His own; recreates us to newness of life; binds and cements us to Himself as man; washes, beautifies, kindles our minds; strengthens our hearts; is a source of life within us, joining us to Himself our Life, and giving us the victory over sin and death. Yet He did not deny what Himself and Holy Scripture elsewhere seem in equally plain language to affirm."

The first early writer cited by Dr. Pusey in support of this is

Irenæus. The extract, from the clearness of its teaching, and from the character of him who wrote it, and from the age in which it was written, seems almost to make the citing of any other witness superfluous. It runs thus :

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Our meaning is in harmony with the Eucharist-and the Eucharist again affirms our meaning. And we offer to Him His own, carefully teaching the communication and union, and confessing the resurrection of the flesh and spirit. For as the bread from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, so also our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer perishable, having the hope of the resurrection to life everlasting." (Adv. Hær. iv. 18, 5.)

The reader will notice that this assertion respecting the Eucharist -that it consists of an earthly as well as a heavenly "reality" might have been written to refute, in anticipation, medieval theories. Again, St. Chrysostom is equally explicit : "For as we call the bread, before it is sanctified, bread; but, when Divine grace has, through the intervention of the priest, sanctified it, it is set free from the name bread, and thought worthy to be called the Lord's Body, although the nature of bread remains, and we proclaim, not two bodies, but the One Body of the Son; so here, too, the Divine Nature having come to indwell in the body, they have together formed one Son, one Person." (From "Letter to Cæsarius," Opp. T. iii. p. 744, Ed. Ben.)

Again, St. Augustine, in several well-known and oft-quoted places, distinguishes between the "Sacrament" and the thing signitied or conveyed by it. Thus: "For if sacraments had not a certain resemblance to those things of which they are the sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all. But from this resemblance they receive, for the most part, the names even of the things themselves. As, therefore, after a certain manner, the Sacrament of the Body of Christ is the Body of Christ; the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ is the Blood of Christ; so the Sacrament of Faith is Faith." (Ep. 98. Ad. Bonifac.)

"That bread which ye see on the altar, sanctified by the Word of God, is the Body of Christ. That cup-rather what the cup holds -sanctified by the Word of God, is the Blood of Christ. By these things the Lord Christ willed to commend His Body and Blood which He shed for us for the remission of sins. If ye have well received, ye are what ye have received." (Serm. 227. In die l'asch.)

They [the wicked] are not to be said to eat the Body of Christ, because neither are they to be accounted among the members of Christ. For, not to mention other things, they cannot at the same time be both the members of Christ and the members of an harlot. Lastly, He Himself, when He saith, Whoso eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, abideth in Me, and I in him,' showeth what it is to eat the Body of Christ, and drink His Blood, not as to the sacrament only, but in truth: that is, to abide in Christ, so that Christ also should abide in him." (De Civ Dei, xxi. 25.) Theodoret speaks very plainly: "The object is plain to those admitted to the Divine mysteries. For He willed that those who partake of the Divine mysteries should not attend to the nature of the things seen, but through the change of name should believe in the change which takes place in them through grace. For He who called the natural (púrei) body, corn, and bread, and Himself also a Vine, honoured the symbols which are seen with the title of bread and wine, not changing the nature, but adding grace to the nature.” (T. iv. 25, Ed. Sch.)

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The last we shall give is from the writings of a Bishop of Rome-Gelasius. He writes: Certainly the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ which we receive is a Divine thing, wherefore also we are by the same made partakers of the Divine nature, and yet the substance and nature of bread and wine ceaseth not to be."

Another quotation exactly similar in its teaching is given by Dr. Pusey in the same page-page 88 of "Notes to a Sermon," &c.

We now turn to the Ancient Liturgies. In the Clementine there are, long after consecration, at least two prayers which could not have been composed by any one holding anything like the modern Roman view. The first is: "Let us farther pray to God through • His Christ, in behalf of the gift that is offered to the Lord God (i.e., the consecrated elements), that the good God will receive it, through the mediation of His Christ, at His heavenly altar for a sweetsmelling savour." A very insufficient way indeed, the reader will allow, of pleading the real presence of the Eternal Son.

Again: "Sanctify us in body and soul, and grant that we, being purified from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, may partake of the mystic blessings now lying before Thee."

Again, in the Liturgy of St. James, also long after consecration: "Thou hast received the gifts, oblatious, and sacrifices offered to Thee for a sweet-smelling savour, and out of Thy goodness hast