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he, "that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." John vi. 63. Thus he told the people plainly, that he was not speaking of his flesh literally; it was not this which they were to eat; it could not profit them as food; but it was his words, that is, his doctrine, which by the divine Spirit was made instrumental in giving life to the soul of every one that believed it. But the church of Rome will have it, that Christ meant what he declared he did not mean. They deny the spiritual meaning of his words; and they profess really and literally to eat his flesh, and drink his blood, into which, they say, the bread and wine upon the altar are converted, when the priest pronounces the words of consecration.

This conversion, they say, is so entire, that nothing whatever of the substance of bread and wine remains after pronouncing the mysterious words. The form and appearance, they admit, remain as before, but the whole substance is converted into the body and blood, soul and divinity, of Jesus Christ. Therefore, whatever may have been mixed up with the bread and the wine before consecration, however deleterious in itself, can do no harm to him that receives it. The following anecdote, which many of my readers may have seen in the public journals, will illustrate what I mean:

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"A Protestant lady entered the matrimonial state with a Roman Catholic genteman, on condition he would never use any attempts, in his intercourse with her, to induce her to embrace his religion. Accordingly, after their marriage, he abstained from conversing with her on those religious topics which he knew would be disagreeable to her. He employed the Romish priest, however, who often visited the family, to use his influence to instil his popish notions into her mind. But she remained unmoved, particularly on the doctrine of transubstantiation. At length the husband fell ill, and during his affliction, was recommended by the priest to receive the holy sacrament. The wife was requested to prepare bread and wine for the solemnity, by the next day. She did so; and on presenting them to the priest, said, "These, sir, you wish me to understand, will be changed into the real body and blood of Christ, after you have consecrated them." Most certainly," he replied. "Then, sir," she rejoined, "it will not be possible, after the consecration, for them to do any harm to the worthy partakers; for, says our Lord, "my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed;" and "he that eateth me shall live by me." Assuredly," answered the priest, "they cannot do harm to the worthy receivers, but must communicate great good." The ceremony was proceeded in, and the bread and wine were consecrated; the priest was about to take and eat the bread; but the lady begged pardon for interrupting him, adding, “I mixed a little arsenic with the bread, sir, but as it is now changed into the real body of Christ, it cannot of course do you any harm." The principles of the priest, however, were not sufficiently firm to enable him to eat it. Confused, ashamed, and irritated, he left the house, and never more ventured to enforce on the lady the absurd doctrine of transubstantiation."

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Whether this anecdote be literally true, in all its circumstances, or not, is of little importance to the argument. It may be realized by any person, at any time; and it may be used very fairly to put any Papist to the test as to his belief in transubstantiation. I have no wish to get

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rid of any of my opponents, else I would advise them to make the experiment. If the priest's words, Hoc est corpus meum, should have the power of expelling the arsenic, as well as the flour and water, from the consecrated wafer, I will acknowledge a miracle; and perhaps some worthy Papist may have the courage to run the risk of being poisoned, for the sake of converting such a heretic. But I would not trust a Papist with the making of the wafer; I would have it made by such a Protestant as the lady above mentioned.

The entire substance of the wine being converted into the substance of the blood of Christ, it follows, of course, that nothing of an intoxicating quality remains; but as the priest takes the whole to himself, and drinks it off, every time he gives the sacrament, though it were fifty times in a day, there is some risk of the wine letting out the secret of its own substance, by its effects upon the brain of the priest; and this would no doubt often be the case, were it not well diluted with water.

When the priest, by the mysterious words, has produced what the council of Trent calls the wonderful conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ, the first thing to be done is, to fall down and worship. To worship what? Any man who trusts his senses, I had almost said, any man in his senses, would answer, The wafer, or bit of bread which the priest holds up for the purpose of being adored; and this leads unavoidably to the conclusion, that such worshippers are guilty of direct and gross idolatry. But Papists consider themselves greatly injured, misrepresented, and insulted, when they are accused of this; and they are incessantly accusing Protestants of bigotry and illiberality, because we will not renounce the evidence of our senses as they do theirs, and because we will not grant them, that what we see to be a wafer is the God that made us.

They maintain that God alone is the object that they worship; but they do not deny that he appears to their eyes in the form of a wafer. This is the image by which they represent their God; but they spurn at the idea of his being what he appears to be. I shall give here, in their own words, the doctrine which they disavow, together with that which they do avow. I quote from the work entitled, "The Papist misrepresented and represented," by Gother, which is a work of high authority, and in great esteem among English Papists, having been republished by the late Dr. Challoner, bishop of Debra, and vicar apostolic in the London district.

"Of the Eucharist.-The Papist misrepresented, believes it lawful to commit idolatry, and makes it his daily practice to worship and adore a breaden God, giving divine honour to those poor, empty elements of bread and wine. Of these he asks pardon for his sins; of these he desires grace and salvation; these he acknowledges to have been his Redeemer and Saviour, and hopes for no good but what is to come to him by means of these household gods. And then for his apology, he alleges such gross contradictions, so contrary to all sense and reason, that whosoever will be a Papist, must be no man: fondly believing, that what he adores is no bread or wine, but Christ really present under these appearances; and thus makes as many Christs, as many Redeemers, as there are churches, altars, or priests. When,

according to God's infallible word, there is but one Christ, and he not on earth, but at the right hand of his Father in heaven.

"The Papist, truly represented, believes it abominable to commit any kind of idolatry; and most damnable to worship or adore a breaden god, or to give divine honour to the elements of bread and wine. He worships only one God, who made heaven and earth, and his only Son Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who being in all things equal to his Father in truth and omnipotency, he believes made his words good, pronounced at his last supper; really giving his body and blood to his apostles; the substance of bread and wine being by his powerful words changed into his own body and blood, the species or appearances of bread and wine remaining as before. The same he believes of the most holy sacrament of the eucharist, consecrated now by priests; that it really contains the body of Christ, which was delivered for us; and his blood, which was shed for the remission of our sins: which being there united with the divinity, he confesses whole Christ to be present. And him he adores and acknowledges his Redeemer, and not any bread and wine. And for the believing of this mystery, he does not at all think it meet for any Christian to appeal from Christ's words to his own senses or reason, for the examining the truth of what he has said, but rather to submit his senses and reason to Christ's words, in the obsequiousness of faith: and that, being the son of Abraham, it is more becoming him to believe as Abraham did promptly, with a faith superior to all sense or reason, and whether these could never lead him," &c.—the author then goes on to argue the matter at great length; endeavouring to show that it is with this faith that we believe every mystery of religion, as the Trinity, incarnation, &c.; but the above is the substance of his faith "truly represented" in opposition to "the Papist misrepresented."

Now, let any one carefully examine both the misrepresentation and the representation, and he will find them substantially the same. The misrepresenter gives the truth according to the evidence of his own senses. He sees a Papist paying divine honour to what he sees and knows to be nothing but a piece of bread. He calls this idolatry; and he does so truly, according to the evidence of his own senses, and the authority of the Bible, which declares idolatry to be the giving of divine worship to any thing that is not God. He knows that the bread is a mere creature, the workmanship of human hands; and therefore he does, and cannot but consider the adoration paid to it as the grossest idolatry. The representer, after disclaiming idolatry as abominable and damnable, proceeds to tell us that Papists do the very thing of which we accuse them; but then it is not idolatry, because the bread and wine are not bread and wine, but the real body and blood of Christ, united to his divinity; and him they worship under the appearances of bread and wine. Now, every one who does not believe that the bread and wine are really converted into the body and blood of Christ, does, and cannot, without renouncing his own senses and reason, do otherwise than consider the Papists as worshipping the "empty elements," as Gother calls them. In short, let them say what they will, we must take them for downright idolaters unless we make them a surrender of our senses and reason, which I would be loath to do, at least till they have learned to make a better use of their own.

The argument from the faith of Abraham is nothing to the purpose. It is not said that he believed any thing contrary to his reason or his senses. He did indeed believe the word of God in relation to a thing which was out of the ordinary course of nature, as all miracles were. But the effect of divine power was made palpable to his senses at the time it was promised to be; whereas, "the Papist truly represented," believes a thing that never was, and never can be palpable, but is directly contrary to his senses.

Besides, it is not true that transubstantiation rests upon the same evidence as the real mysteries of our religion; such as the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation, &c. These are plainly revealed in the word of God, which transubstantiation is not; and there can be nothing more reasonable than to believe what God has said, though we cannot understand how it should be. In point of fact, however, God has said nothing that is contrary to our reason, or to the evidence of our senses. The Bible contains all that he has to say to human creatures till the day of judgment; and I defy the world to prove that it contains any thing contrary to sense and reason. It does, indeed, make known things which human reason cannot reach, and things which cannot be subjected to the scrutiny of human senses: but on this very account it is impossible to show that such things are contrary to reason and sense. We must have the perfect understanding of a thing before we can pronounce it contrary to sense and reason; but we have not such understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity; we cannot say it is unreasonable; and we have nothing to do but to believe what God has revealed on the subject. But transubstantiation does come within the sphere of our senses. They are as capable of judging of it as of any thing which we see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or smell; and since by the evidence of four of these five senses, we know bread to be bread, and wine to be wine, it is impossible for us to believe that they are any thing else.

Papists, having made a god of a little flour and water, and having adored the work of their hands, the next step in the process of absurdity and impiety is to eat the idol. This, it must be allowed, has no parallel among the most savage heathen tribes, "How many gods are there?" said a popish missionary to a young heathen convert. "None," replied the youth. "None! you fool, what do you mean?" "I mean," said the raw Papist, "that there is no God, for you told me that there was only one, and I ate him yesterday." It is painful to be obliged to speak with an air of levity on such a subject: but the believers and advocates of the monstrous absurdity of transubstantiation must answer for it. I believe it is as lawful to ridicule the breaden god of the Papists, as it was for the prophet Elijah to mock the god of Jezebel and the idolatrous Israelites.

Dr. Middleton, who has traced many of the popish rites up to their heathen original, frankly confesses that he can find nothing in heathenism equal to the popish adoration of the host, and their subsequent eating of it. "As to that celebrated act of popish idolatry," says he, "the adoration of the host, I must confess that I cannot find the least resemblance of it in any part of the pagan worship: and as oft as I have been standing at mass, and seen the whole congregation prostrate on the ground, in the humblest posture of adoring, at the eleva

tion of this consecrated piece of bread; I could not help reflecting on a passage of Tully, where, speaking of the absurdity of the heathens. in the choice of their gods, he says "Was any man ever so mad, as to take that which he feeds upon for a god?" (Cic. de nat. Deor. 3.) This was an extravagance left for popery alone; and what an old Roman could not but think too gross, even for Egyptian idolatry to swallow, is now become the principal part of worship, and the distinguished article of faith, in the creed of modern Rome."

Page 179.

The above sentence from Cicero, (Ecquem tam amentem esse putas, qui illud, quo vescatur, Deum credat esse ?) is taken as a motto by a spirited writer of some letters in the Morning Post, under the signa ture of PHILOPATRIS; with the following extracts from which I shall conclude the present number:

"SIR-The great and enlightened moralist, who made the observation which I have prefixed to this, and two former letters, could never have become a Christian on the terms of popery. If he had lived in papal Rome, instead of pagan Rome, he must have suffered at the stake (as Lord Cobham, Latimer, Cranmer, Ridley, and other pious and good men did, in papal Britain) for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. What a revolution in the history of human intellect is such a declension from pagan light to Christian darkness in the same capital! But indeed, I ought not to call it Christian darkness; because the doctrine of transubstantiation is no part of Christianity.

"It is, nevertheless, one of the most distinguishing tenets of the Romish church. In Queen Mary's days, it was a test of heresy. In a Protestant church, it is a test of popery. It is the spear of Ithuriel that unmasks all disguises. A declaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation, is a much surer declaration against popery, than a simple renunciation of the term Papist; or than any verbal acknowledgment of the king's supremacy.

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The declaration against transubstantiation pronounces the doctrine to be idolatrous; and so our statute and ecclesiastical law declare it. It is the language of a Protestant country. But some liberal and charitable minds object to this language, because they say, it hurts the moral feelings of the Roman Catholics. But must we sacrifice our principles to feeling, our faith to charity, our Protestant character to libe rality? Do we find in the writings of Gandolphy, or Dr. Milner, or Dr. Drumgoold, or of the Irish bishops, or of the present pope, any such tenderness for Protestants-especially the Protestants of the church of England? Morning Post of June 7th, 1819.

"SIR-I cannot yet part with my motto, it says so much, and so well, in so small a compass. Besides, the judgment of an ancient Roman, upon the idolatry of modern Rome, in taking that for God, which is not God, is such a coincidence-such an instance of almost prophetic anticipation-as may have a providential influence on the minds of Roman Catholics, which are at all open to the dictates of right

reason.

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In a political point of view, the most decisive objections to Lord Grey's bill, for the repeal of the declaration against transubstantiation and popery, appear to be these: In the first place, the subject has been, in effect, already decided in both houses of parliament, in the present session. For, when parliament decided against the eligibi

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