XXVIII.

of Chrift remains: but when they are fo far altered, that they ART. feem to be no more bread and wine, and that they are corrupted either in part or in whole, Chrift's body is withdrawn, either in part or in whole.

It is a great miracle to make the accidents of bread and wine fubfift without a subject; yet the new accidents that arise upon thefe accidents, fuch as mouldiness or fourness, come on without a miracle, but they do not know how. When the main accidents are destroyed, then the presence of Chrift ceafes and a new miracle must be fuppofed to produce new matter, for the filling up of that space which the fubftance of bread and wine. did formerly fill; and which was all this while poffeffed by the accidents. So much of the matter of this facrament.

The form of it is in the words of confecration, which though they found declarative as if the thing were already done; This is my body and This is my blood: yet they believe them to be productive. But whereas the common notion of the form of a facrament, is that it sanctifies and applies the matter; here the former matter is fo far from being confecrated by it, that it is annihilated, and new matter is not fanctified, but brought thither or produced: and whereas whenfoever we fay of any thing, this is, we fuppofe that the thing is, as we fay it is, before we fay it; yet here all the while that this is a faying till the laft fyllable is pronounced, it is not that which it is faid to be, but in the minute in which the laft fyllable is uttered, then the change is made: and of this they are fo firmly perfuaded, that they do presently pay all that adoration to it, that they would pay to the perfon of Jefus Chrift if he were vifibly prefent: though the whole virtue of the confecration depends on the intention of a Priest: fo that he with a cross intention hinders all this series of miracles, as he fetches it all on, by letting his intention go along with it.

If it may be faid of fome doctrines, that the bare expofing them is a moft effectual confutation of them; certainly that is more applicable to this, than to any other that can be imagined: for though I have in ftating it confidered fome of the molt important difficulties, which are feen and confeffed by the Schoolmen themselves, who have poifed all these with much exactness and fubtilty; yet I have pailed over a great many more, with which thofe that deal in school-divinity will find enough to exercife both their thoughts and their patience. They run out in many fubtilties, concerning the accidents both primary and fecondary; concerning the ubication, the production and reproduction of bodies; concerning the penetrability of matter, and the organization of a penetrable body; concerning the way of the deftruction of the fpecies; concerning the words of confecration; concerning the water that is mixed with the wine,

ART. whether it is first changed by natural causes into wine; and XXVIII. fince nothing but wine is tranfubftantiated, what becomes of

fuch particles of water that are not turned into wine? What is the grace produced by the facrament, what is the effect of the prefence of Christ so long as he is in the body of the communicant; what is got by his presence, and what is loft by his abfence? In a word, let a man read the shortest body of school-divinity that he can find, and he will fee in it a vast number of other difficulties in this matter, of which their own authors are aware, which I have quite paffed over. For when this doctrine fell into the hands of nice and exact men, they were foon fenfible of all the confequences that must needs follow upon it, and have purfued all thefe with a closeness far beyond any thing that is to be found among the writers of our fide.

But that they might have a falvo for every difficulty, they framed a new model of philofophy; new theories were invented, of fubftances and accidents, of matter and of fpirits, of extenfion, ubication and impenetrability; and by the new definitions and maxims to which they accustomed men in the ftudy of philofophy, they prepared them to fwallow down all this more eafily, when they fhould come to the study of divi

nity.

The infallibility of the Church that had expressly defined it, was to bear a great part of the burden: if the Church was infallible, and if they were that Church, then it could be no longer doubted of. In dark ages miracles and visions came in abundantly to fupport it: in ages of more light the infinite power of God, the words of the inftitution, it being the teftament of our Saviour then dying, and foon after confirmed with his blood, were things of great pomp, and such as were apt to strike men that could not diftinguish between the shews and the strength of arguments. But when all our fenfes, all our ideas of things rife up fo ftrongly against every part of this chain of wonders, we ought at least to expect proofs fuitable to the difficulty of believing fuch a flat contradiction to our reasons, as well as to our fenfes.

We have no other notion of accidents, but that they are the different fhapes or modes of matter; and that they have no being diftinct from the body in which they appear: we have no other notion of a body, but that it is an extended fubftance, made up of impenetrable parts, one without another; every one of which fills its proper fpace: we have no other notion of a body's being in a place, but that it fills it, and is fo in it, as that it can be no where else at the fame time: and thought we can very easily apprehend that an infinite power can both create and annihilate beings at pleafure; yet we cannot apprehend that

God

God does change the effences of things, and fo make them to ART. be contrary to that nature and fort of being of which he has

made them.

Another argument against Tranfubftantiation is this; God has made us capable to know and ferve him: and, in order to that, he has put fome fenfes in us, which are the conveyances of many fubtile motions to our brains, that give us apprehenfions of the objects, which by thofe motions are reprefented

to us.

When those motions are lively, and the object is in a due distance; when we feel that neither our organs nor our faculties are under any disorder, and when the impreffion is clear and ftrong, we are determined by it; we cannot help being fo. When we see the fun rifen and all is bright about us, it is not poffible for us to think that it is dark night; no authority can impose it on us; we are not fo far the mafters of our own thoughts, as to force ourselves to think it, though we would; for God has made us of fuch a nature, that we are determined by fuch an evidence, and cannot contradict it. When an object is at too great a distance, we may mistake; a weakness or an ill difpofition in our fight may mifreprefent it; and a false medium, water, a cloud or a glafs, may give it a tincture or caft, fo that we may fee caufe to correct our first apprehenfions, in some sensations: but when we have duly examined every thing, when we have corrected one fenfe by another, we grow at laft to be fo fure, by the conftitution of that nature that God has given us, that we cannot doubt, much less believe in contradiction to the exprefs evidence of our fenfes.

It is by this evidence only that God convinces the world of the authority of those whom he fends to speak in his name; he gives them a power to work miracles, which is an appeal to the fenfes of mankind; and it is the highest appeal that can be made; for those who stood out againit the conviction of Christ's miracles, had no cloak for their fins. It is the utmost conviction that God offers, or that man can pretend to : from all which we must infer this, that either our fenfes in their clearest apprehenfions, or rather representations of things, must be infallible, or we must throw up all faith and certainty; fince it is not poffible for us to receive the evidence that is given us of any thing but by our fenfes; and fince we do naturally acquiefce in that evidence, we must acknowledge that God has fo made us, that this is his voice in us; because it is the voice of those faculties that he has put in us; and is the only way by which we can find out truth, and be led by it: and if our faculties fail us in any one thing, fo that God should reveal to us any thing, that did plainly contradict our faculties, he should thereby give us a right to difbelieve them for ever.

Dd 3

If

XXVIII.

ART.
XXVIII.

If they can mistake when they bring any object to us with the fulleft evidence that they can give, we can never depend upon them, nor be certain of any thing, because they fhew it. Nay, we are not, and cannot be bound to believe that, nor any other revelation that God may make to convince us. We can only receive a revelation by hearing or reading, by our ears or our eyes. So if any part of this revelation destroys the certainty of the evidence, that our fenfes, our eyes or our ears, give us, it deftroys itself: for we cannot be bound to believe it upon the evidence of our senses, if this is a part of it that our fenfes are not to be trufted. Nor will this matter be healed, by faying, that certainly we muft believe God more than our fenfes and therefore, if he has revealed any thing to us, that is contrary to their evidence, we must as to that particular believe God, before our senses: but that as to all other things where we have not an exprefs revelation to the contrary, we must ftill believe our fenfes.

There is a difference to be made between that feeble evidence that our fenfes give us of remote objects, or those loose inferences that we may make from a flight view of things, and the full evidence that sense gives us; as when we see and fmell to, we handle and taste the fame object: this is the voice of God to us; he has made us fo that we are determined by it and as we should not believe a prophet that wrought ever so many miracles, if he fhould contradict any part of that which God had already revealed; fo we cannot be bound to believe a revelation contrary to our fenfe; because that were to believe God in contradiction to himself; which is impoffible to be true. For we should believe that revelation certainly upon an evidence, which itfelf tells us is not certain; and this is a contradiction. We believe our fenfes upon this foundation, because we reckon there is an intrinfick certainty in their evidence; we do not believe them as we believe another man, upon a moral prefumption of his truth and fincerity; but we believe them, because fuch is the nature of the union of our fouls and bodies, which is the work of God, that upon the full impreffions that are made upon the fenfes, the foul does neceffarily produce, or rather feel those thoughts and fenfations arife with a full evidence that correfpond to the motions of fenfible objects, upon the organs of fenfe. The foul has a fagacity to examine these fenfations, to correct one fenfe by another; but when she has used all the means the can, and the evidence is ftill clear, fhe is perfuaded, and cannot help being fo; fhe naturally takes all this to be true, because of the neceflary connexion that the feels between fuch sensations, and her affent to them. Now, if fhe fhould find that she could be mistaken in this, even though the should know this, by a divine revelation,

XXVIII.

revelation, all the intrinfick certainty of the evidence of fenfe, ART. and that connexion between those fenfations and her affent to them, fhould be hereby diffolved.

To all this another objection may be made from the mysteries of the Chriftian religion: which contradict our reafons, and yet we are bound to believe them; although reason is a faculty much fuperior to fenfe. But all this is a mistake; we cannot be bound to believe any thing that contradicts our reafons; for the evidence of reafon as well as that of fenfe is the voice of God to us. But as great difference is to be made, between a feeble evidence that fenfe gives us of an object that is at a distance from us, or that appears to us through a false medium; fuch as a concave or a convex glass; and the full evidence of an object that is before us, and that is clearly apprehended by us: fo there is a great difference to be made, between our reasonings upon difficulties that we can neither understand nor refolve, and our reasonings upon clear principles. The one may be falfe, and the other must be true: we are fure that a thing cannot be one and three in the fame respect; our reafon affures us of this, and we do and must believe it; but we know that in different refpects the fame thing may be one and three. And fince we cannot know all the poffibilities of those different refpects, we must believe upon the authority of God revealing it, that the fame thing is both one and three; though if a revelation should affirm that the fame thing were one and three in the fame respect, we should not, and indeed could not believe it.

This argument deferves to be fully opened; for we are sure either it is true, or we cannot be fure that any thing else whatfoever is true. In confirmation of this we ought also to confider the nature and ends of miracles. They put nature out of its channel, and reverse its fixed laws and motions; and the end of God's giving men a power to work them, is that by them the world may be convinced, that fuch perfons are commiffionated by him, to deliver his pleasure to them in fome particulars. And as it could not become the infinite wisdom. of the great Creator, to change the order of nature (which is his own workmanship) upon flight grounds; fo we cannot fuppofe that he should work a chain of extraordinary miracles to no purpose. It is not to give credit to a revelation that he is making; for the fenfes do not perceive it; on the contrary, they do reject and contradict it; and the revelation, instead of getting credit from it, is loaded by it, as introducing that which deftroys all credit and certainty.

In other miracles our fenfes are appealed to; but here they must be appealed from; nor is there any fpiritual end ferved