cording to this doctrine, until eaten, the change is not wrought. Again, if faith in the receiver be necessary to the miracle, it is wrought by the believer, not by the Priest. I mean wrought by the believer in the same sense in which miracles may be said to be wrought by the Apostles. Here we may ask why need the Priest consecrate the wafer at all, if the change depend entirely upon the faith of the receiver? why may not the believer eat a piece of common bread, and believe that he is eating the body and blood of Christ? Is it said he has no warrant from Scripture for so doing? what better warrant from Scripture has he for believing that what he eats after the consecration of the Priest, is flesh and blood? does scripture teach, if the Christian believes what he eats after consecration, to be the real body of Christ, that in such case, it is the real body? if so, point us to the passage. The efficacy of faith always depends upon a promise; but there is no promise on record in the scriptures, that if a person, while he takes this sacrament, only believe he is eating the body of Christ, that on the exercise of such faith, it shall be the body of Christ which he eats. If then there be no such promise, it might be said with equal propriety that whatever we can bring ourselves to believe, is certainly true: so that if a person will endeavour to masticate a stone, and only believe that it is flesh, it will be flesh; by which means many a starving. Papist might satisfy his hunger on the way side, if it were not for this most important consideration, that it would require a vast deal more faith in this case to satisfy himself that it was true, than in the other,* *This part of our subject reminds us of an anecdote which may serve to illustrate the point in hand. When Erasmus was in England, he had a controversy with Sir Thomas More, on the very subject now before us: Sir Thomas insisted that if you really believe that you receive the body and blood of Christ in the sacramental bread, then you do actually receive it. The dis There are some questions arising out of this doctrine of transubstantiation, which I should like to have answered by those who hold it: they are such as the following: 1: If you abstract the properties of bread and flesh, does any thing remain of which you can rationally and scientifically predicate a change? 2: After their properties are abstracted, would there be any difference between the flesh and the bread? 3: If you answer these questions in the affirmative, I desire to know by what means you obtained the information, and by what means you ascertain that a change is really effected? 4: Can that which has all the properties of bread be any thing else which is not bread? By this change it is held by Romanists, that the bread becomes the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: 5: Can flesh and blood have all the properties of bread and not have one property peculiar to flesh, and yet be real, bona fide FLESH? 6: Can matter become Spirit, and yet retain all the properties of matter? 7: Abstracting the properties, what is the difference between matter and Spirit? 8: Can senseless matter become intelligent divinity? you perceive the question here is not whether putants separated without coming to an agreement in sentiment; and when Erasmus was on his return to Holland, he borrowed of Sir Thomas a small horse called a palfrey, on which he rode to the water side; and instead of sending back the palfrey with the servant who accompanied him, he shiped him on board the same vessel that took himself to Holland, and sent back by the servant, the following lines to Sir Thomas: Nonne memenisti De corpore Christi, Crede quod edis, et edis? Idem tibi scribo De tuo palfrido, Crede quod habes, et habes. which may be thus translated: "Do you not remember what you said to me about the body of Christ, believe that you eat it, and you eat it? The same I write to you in regard to your palfrey, believe that you have him, and you really have him." divinity can be infused into matter: But whether the matter ceases to be matter and becomes divinity? 9: Has the bread, after consecration, the power to create? 10: If it is divinity, has it all the attributes of divinity, viz: omnipotence, omniscience, &c. 11: Is the soul and divinity eaten? if not, what becomes of it? 12: If not eaten, why need the bread be changed into more than flesh and blood? 13: If eaten, does it ever separate from the matter? if so, when? i, e: does the consecrated host ever become senseless matter again? if so, when? 14: If not, where are all the Gods that have been thus produced? Oh! is it of my blessed Saviour that all these things are affirmed! Again, 15: Do we know any thing of matter, beyond its properties? 16: Is the change wrought in what we know nothing about? 17: How do I know then, that a change is wrought? does the church affirm it? How do I know that the church affirms the truth? 18: If, in repeating the form of consecration, the officiating Priest does not intend that a change shall be wrought, is it wrought? 19: Does not the change then, depend entirely upon the intention of the officiating Priest? 20: Does the bread, after consecration, become a prevalent intercessor with God? may it be worshipped as the SUPREME GOD? 21: Is this revealed in the scriptures? 22: Did the Apostles teach it? 23: Did martyrs die rather than renounce it? 24: Did the idolatrous Heathen persecute the primative Christians for believing and teaching it? 25: Does the infallible church err in holding it to be an article of faith without belief in which there is no salvation? 26: Did the Lateran council in 1215, under Innocent III. settle all the points of natural science involved in this doctrine? If so, as little as I think of their theology, I should think less of their philosophy. 27: Is there a miracle on scripture record, which is not wrought in, and predicated of the properties of matter or Spirit, 28: Do not these questions naturally arise out of the doctrine of transubstantiation. 29: Who will undertake to give such answers to them as shall not be unfavourable to this fundamental doctrine? Now the proper and necessary consequence of this doctrine, says Tillotson, is to take away all certainty, and especially the certainty of sense: For if that which my sight and taste and touch do all assure me to be a little piece of wafer, may notwithstanding this, be flesh and blood, even the whole body of a man; then notwithstanding the greatest assurance that sense can give me, that any thing is this or that, it may be quite another thing from what sense reported it to be. If so, then farewell to the Infallibility of Tradition, which depends upon the certainty of sense: and which is a worse consequence, if this doctrine be admitted we can have no sufficient assurance that the christian doctrine is a divine revelation. For the assurance of that, depending upon the assurance we have of the miracles said to be wrought for the confirmation of it, and all the assurance we can have of a miracle, depending upon the certainty of our senses; it is very plain, that that doctrine which takes away the certainty of sense, does in so doing overthrow the certainty of the christian religion. And what can be more vain than to pretend, that a man may be assured that such a doctrine is revealed by God, and consequently true, which if it be true, a man can have no assurance at all of any divine revelation? Surely nothing is to be admitted by us as certain, which being admitted, we can be certain of nothing. It is a wonder that any man who considers the natural consequences of this doctrine can be a Papist; unless he have attained to Mr. Cressy's pitch of learning, who speaking of the difficult arguments wherewith this doctrine was pressed, says plainly, "I *Exomol. c. 73, Sect. 7. P must answer freely and ingenuously, that I have not learned to answer such arguments, but to despise them." And if this be a good way, whenever we have a mind to believe any thing, to scorn fhose objections against it which we cannot solve; then the christian religion hath no advantage above the vilest enthusiasm; and a Turk may maintain Mahomet and his Alcoran (in opposition to Christ and his doctrine) against all that Grotius, or any other hath said, if he can but keep his countenance, and gravely say, I have not learned to answer such arguments, but to despise them.—Tillotson's Rule of Faith. Romanists with characteristic zeal for error, have endeavoured to press upon those protestants who hold to the divinity of Christ, the dilemma of either giving up that fundamental point, or receiving the doctrine of Transubstantiation, on the ground that there is a mystery in both. But Tillotson has well answered them on this point: in his discourse "concerning the unity of the divine nature" he says, "Before I leave this argument, I cannot but take notice of one thing which they of the church of Rome are perpetually objecting to us upon this occasion. And it is this, that by the same reason that we believe the doctrine of the trinity, we may and must receive that of transubstantiation. God forbid: because of all the doctrines that ever were in any religion, this of transubstantiation is certainly the most abominably absurd, However, this objection plainly shows how fondly and obstinately they are addicted to their own errors, how misshapen and monstrous soever; insomuch, that rather than the dictates of their church, how absurd soever, should be called in question, they will question the truth even of christianity itself; and if we will not take in transubstantiation, and admit it to be a necessary article of the christian faith, they grow so sullen and despe |