ART.

to the testimony of the senses as infallible: and even treating of the Sacrament, they say, without limitation or XXVIII. exception, that it was bread, as their eyes witnessed, and true wine that Christ did consecrate to be the memorial of his body and blood; and they tell us in this very particular, that we ought not to doubt of the testimony of

our senses.

Another presumptive proof, that the ancients knew nothing of this doctrine, is, that the Heathens and the Jews, who charged them, and their doctrine, with every thing that they could invent to make both it and them odious and ridiculous, could never have passed over this, in which both sense and reason seemed to be so evidently on their side.

They reproach the Christians for believing a God that was born, God of flesh that was crucified and buried: they laughed at their belief of a judgment to come, of endless flames, of a heavenly paradise, and of the resurrection of the body. Those who writ the first apologies for the Christian religion, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Arnobius, and Minutius Felix, have given us a large account of the blasphemies both of Jews and Gentiles, against the doctrines of Christianity.

Cyril of Alexandria has given us Julian's objections in his own words; who having been not only initiated into the Christian religion, but having read the Scriptures in the Churches, and being a philosophical and inquisitive man, must have been well instructed concerning the doctrine and the Sacraments of this religion: and his relation to the Emperor Constantine must have made the Christians concerned to take more than ordinary pains on him. When he made apostasy from the faith, he reproached the Christians with the doctrine of Baptism, and laughed at them for thinking that there was an ablution and sanctification in it, conceiving it a thing impossible that water should wash or cleanse a soul: yet neither he nor Porphyry, nor Celsus before them, did charge this religion with the absurdities of transubstantiation.

It is reasonable to believe, that if the Christians of that time had any such doctrine among them, it must have been known. Every Christian must have known in what sense those words, This is my body, and This is my blood, were understood among them. All the apostates from Christianity must have known it, and must have published it, to excuse or hide the shame of their apostasy; since apostates are apt to spread lies of them whom they forsake, but not to conceal such truths as are to their preju

ART. dice. Julian must have known it; and if he had known it, XXVIII. his judgment was too true, and his malice to the Christian religion too quick, to overlook or neglect the advantages which this part of their doctrine gave him. Nor can this be carried off by saying, that the eating of human flesh and the Thyestean suppers, which were objected to the Christians, relate to this: when the Fathers answer that, they tell the Heathens that it was a downright calumny and lie; and do not offer any explanations or distinctions taken from their doctrine of the Sacrament, to clear them from the mistake and malice of this calumny. The truth is, the execrable practices of the Gnostics, who were called Christians, gave the rise to those as well as to many other calumnies: but they were not at all founded on the doctrine of the Eucharist, which is never once mentioned as the occasion of this accusation.

Another presumption, from which we conclude that the ancients knew nothing of this doctrine, is, that we find heresies and disputes arising concerning all the other points of religion: there were very few of the doctrines of the Christian religion, and not any of the mysteries of the faith, that did not fall under great objections: but there was not any one heresy raised upon this head: men were never so meek and tame as easily to believe things, when there appeared strong evidence, or at least great presumptions, against them. In these last eight or nine centuries, since this doctrine was received, there has been a perpetual opposition made to it, even in dark and unlearned ages; in which implicit faith and blind obedience have carried a great sway. And though the secular arm has been employed with great and unrelenting severities to extirpate all that have opposed it; yet all the while many have stood out against it, and have suffered much and long for their rejecting it. Now it is not to be imagined that such an opposition should have been made to this doctrine, during the nine hundred years last past, and that for the former eight hundred years there should have been no disputes at all concerning it: and that while all other things were so much questioned, that several Fathers writ, and councils were called to settle the belief of them, yet that for about eight hundred years, this was the single point that went down so easily, that no treatise was all that while writ to prove it, nor council held to establish it.

Certainly the reason of this will appear to be much rather, that since there have been contests upon this point these last nine ages, and that there were none the first

XXVIII.

eight, this doctrine was not known during those first ART. ages; and that the great silence about it for so long a time, is a very strong presumption, that in all that time this doctrine was not thought of.

The last of those considerations that I shall offer, which are of the nature of presumptive proofs, is, that there are a great many rites and other practices, that have arisen out of this doctrine as its natural consequences, which were not thought of for a great many ages; but that have gone on by a perpetual progress, and have increased very fruitfully, ever since this doctrine was received. Such are the elevation, adoration, and processions, together with the doctrine of concomitance, and a vast number of rites and rubrics; the first occasions and beginnings of which are well known. These did all arise from this doctrine, it being natural, especially in the ages of ignorance and superstition, for men upon the supposition of Christ's being corporally present, to run out into all possible inventions of pomp and magnificence about this Sacrament; and it is very reasonable to think, since these things are of so late and so certain a date, that the doctrine upon which they are founded is not much ancienter.

The great simplicity of the primitive forms, not only as they are reported by Justin Martyr and Tertullian in the ages of the poverty and persecutions of the Church, but as they are represented to us in the fourth and fifth centuries by Cyril of Jerusalem, the Constitutions, and the pretended Areopagite, have nothing of that air that appears in the latter ages. The Sacrament was then given in both kinds; it was put in the hands of the faithful; they reserved some portions of it: it was given to children for many ages: the laity and even boys were employed to earry it to dying penitents; what remained of it was burnt in some places, and consumed by the clergy, and by children in other places, the making cataplasms of it, the mixing the wine with ink, to sign the condemnation of heretics, are very clear presumptions that this doctrine was not then known.

But above all, their not adoring the Sacrament, which is not done to this day' in the Greek Church, and of which there is no mention made by all those who writ of the offices of the Church in the eighth and ninth centuries so copiously; this, I say, of their not adoring it, is perhaps more than a presumption, that this doctrine was not then thought on. But since it was established, all the old forms and rituals have been altered, and the adoring the Sacrament is now become the main act of devotion and of

ART. religious worship among them. One ancient form is inXXVIII. deed still continued, which is of the strongest kind of pre

sumptions that this doctrine came in much later than some other superstitions which we condemn in that Church. In the masses that are appointed on Saints-days, there are some collects in which it is said, that the sacrifice is offered up in honour to the Saint; and it is prayed, that it may become the more valuable and acceptable, by the merits and intercessions of the Saint. Now when a practice will well agree with one opinion, but not at all with another, we have all possible reason to presume at least, that at first it came in under that opinion with which it will agree, and not under another which cannot consist with it. Our opinion is, that the Sacrament is a federal act of our Christianity, in which we offer up our highest devotions to God through Christ, and receive the largest returns from him: it is indeed a superstitious conceit to celebrate this to the honour of a Saint; but howsoever upon the supposition of Saints hearing our prayers, and interceding for us, there is still good sense in this: but if it is believed that Christ is corporally present, and that he is offered up in it, it is against all sense, and it approaches to blasphemy, to do this to the honour of a Saint, and much more to desire that this, which is of infinite value, and is the foundation of all God's blessings to us, should receive any addition or increase in its value or acceptation from the merits or intercession of Saints. So this, though a late practice, yet does fully evince, that the doctrine of the corporal presence was not yet thought on, when it was first brought into the office.

So far I have gone upon the presumptions that may be offered to prove that this doctrine was not known to the ancients. They are not only just and lawful presumptions, but they are so strong and violent, that when they are well considered, they force an assent to that which we infer from them. I go next to the more plain and direct proofs that we find of the opinion of the ancients in this matter.

They call the elements bread and wine after the conseApolog. 2. cration. Justin Martyr calls them bread and wine, and a nourishment which nourished: he indeed says it is not common bread and wine; which shews that he thought it was still so in substance; and he illustrates the sanctification of the elements by the incarnation of Christ, in which the human nature did not lose or change its substance by its union with the divine: so the bread and the wine do not, according to that explanation, lose their proper substance, when they become the flesh and blood of Christ.

Irenæus calls it that bread over which thanks are given, ART. and says, it is no more common bread, but the Eucharist XXVIII. consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly.

says,

Hær. c. 34.

Tertullian, arguing against the Marcionites, who held Lib. iv. de two Gods, and that the Creator of this earth was the bad Lib. i. adGod; but that Christ was contrary to him; urges against ver. Marthem this, that Christ made use of the creatures: and cion, c. 14. he did not reject bread by which he represents his own body: adv. Marand in another place he says, Christ calls bread his body, cion, c. 19. that from thence you may understand, that he gave the figure of his body to the bread.

Lib. iii.

Origen says, We eat of the loaves that are set before us; Lib. viii. which by prayer are become a certain holy body, that sancti- contra Celfies those who use them with a sound purpose.

sum.

St. Cyprian says, Christ calls the bread that was com- Ep. 76. pounded of many grains, his body; and the wine that is pressed out of many grapes, his blood, to shew the union of his people. And in another place, writing against those Ep. 63. who used only water, but no wine, in the Eucharist, he says, We cannot see the blood by which we are redeemed, when wine is not in the chalice; by which the blood of Christ is shewed.

reto.

Epiphanius being to prove that man may be said to be In Anchomade after the image of God, though he is not like him, urges this, That the bread is not like Christ, neither in his invisible Deity, nor in his incarnate likeness, for it is round and without feeling as to its virtue.

Christi.

Gregory Nyssen says, The bread in the beginning is com- In orat. de mon; but after the mystery has consecrated it, it is said to Baptis. be, and is, the body of Christ to this he compares the sanctification of the mystical oil, of the water in baptism, and the stones of an altar, or Church, dedicated to God.

St. Ambrose calls it still bread; and says, this bread De Beneis made the food of the Saints.

dict. Patriarch.

St. Chrysostom on these words, the bread that we break, C. says, What is the bread? The body of Christ: What are Hom. 24. in they made to be who take it? The body of Christ. Which Ep. ad Cor. shews that he considered the bread as being so the body of Christ, as the worthy receivers became his body; which

is done, not by a change of substance, but by a sanctification of their natures.

St. Jerome says, Christ took bread, that as Melchisedec Comm. in had in the figure offered bread and wine, he might also re- Matt. c. 26. present the truth (that is in opposition to the figure) of his body and blood.

St. Augustin does very largely compare the Sacraments Cit. apud being called the body and blood of Christ, with those Fulgent. de

Baptismo.