2. That Christ is not substantially and corporeally present in the Eucharist, but corporeally present only in heaven. 3. That true bread remains and is eaten in the Eucharist. 4. That the manducation of Christ in the Eucharist is not oral, but spiritual. 5. That the wicked do not eat or drink the proper body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. 6. That the same body cannot be in different places at one and the same time; and that this is particularly asserted of the body of Christ. 7. That a body must necessarily occupy some place and space, and be extended by parts, with longitude, latitude, and profundity. 8. That accidents cannot subsist without a subject. All which directly overthrow the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and consequently show, that the adoration which was given to Christ. in the Eucharist, was not to His corporeal presence, but His spiritual presence, or to His body as absent in heaven. On the other hand, there are most certain demonstrations, that there could be no such thing as host worship in the ancient Church, not only taken from their not believing transubstantiation and the corporeal presence, but from many other topics solidly deduced and substantially proved by two learned writers, Mr. Daillé* and Dr. Whitby, in two excellent discourses upon this very subject, to which I will commend the reader, contenting myself to mention the heads of the principal arguments, which they have more fully drawn out and proved. Mr. Daillé ranks his arguments under two heads; some general ones against the worship of the Eucharist, saints, relics, images, and crosses; and others more particularly levelled against the worship of the Eucharist. Among those of the first kind he urges this as very remarkable, that in all the ancient relations of miracles, there is never any mention made of miracles being wrought by the Eucharist, as is now so common in later ages, especially in the book called the School of the Eucharist, which is a collection of * Dallæ. de Objecto Cultus Religiosi, cont. Latinos, lib. I et 2. legends under the name of miracles wrought by the host upon sundry occasions. 2. He urges another general argument from the silence of all such writers of the Church as speak of traditions, that the worship of the Eucharist is never once named among them. 3. That among the heathen objections and calumnies which they raised against them, such as their worshipping the sun, and an ass's head, and the genitals of their priests, and a crucified and dead man, they never objected to them the worship of bread and wine, which yet had been very obvious and natural, and invidious enough to have accused them of, had there then been any such plausible ground for an accusation, as there has been in later ages. 4. The Christians used to object to the heathens, that they worshipped things that were dumb and void of life; things that must be carried upon men's shoulders, and if they fell, could not rise again; things that must be guarded by men, to secure them from thieves; things that might be carried captive, and were not able to preserve and deliver themselves; things that might be laid to pawn, as the Eucharist has been by some princes in later ages; things that are exposed to fire and weather, and rust, and moth, and corruption, and other injuries of nature; things that might be devoured by mice and other animals, and might be gnawed and dunged upon by the most contemptible creatures. All which objections might easily have been retorted by the heathen upon the Christians, had they then worshipped the Eucharist, which is liable to all the same reproaches. These are general arguments against host worship, together with the rest of that idolatrous worship which now so abounds in the Church of Rome. But there are a great many more special arguments urged in particular against the host worship by that learned man. As, 1. From the silence of all ancient writers about it. 2. From their using no elevation of the host for worship for many ages (as Bingham has showed himself out of Bona). 3. The ancients knew nothing of ringing a bell, to give notice of the time of adoration to the people. 4. There are no histories of beasts miraculously worshipping the Eucharist, which sort of fictions are so common in later ages. 5. The ancients never carried the Eucharist to the sick or absent with any pomp or signs of worship; never exposed it to public view in times of solemn rejoicing or sorrow; never adored or invoked its assistance in distress, or upon any great undertaking: which are now such common practices in the Roman Church. 6. The ancients never enjoined persons newly baptized and penitents to fall down before the Eucharist and worship it, as is now commonly done in the Roman Church. 7. The ancients never allowed non-communicants to stay and worship the Eucharist, as the practice now is; which yet had been very proper, had they believed the Eucharist to be their God. But they used it only for communion, not for adoration. 8. The ancients never used to carry the Eucharist publicly in processions, to be adored by all the people; which is a novel practice in the judgment of Krantzius* and Cassander. 9. The ancients lighted no lamps nor candles by day to the Eucharist, nor burned incense before it, as is now the practice. 10. They made no little images of the Eucharist, to be kissed and worshipped as the images of Christ. 11. They had no peculiar festival appropriated to its more solemn worship. This is of no longer date than Pope Urban IV., who first instituted it, anno 1264, and it is peculiar only to the Roman Church. 12. The ancient liturgies have no forms of prayers, doxologies, or praises to the Eucharist, as are in the Roman Missal. 13. The adoration of the Eucharist was never objected by the heathens to the primitive Christians; nor were they reproached, as the Romanists have been since, as eaters of their God. It is a noted saying of Averroes, an Arabian philosopher and physician, translator and commentator on Aristotle, "Quando quidem comedunt Christiani quod colunt, sit anima mea cum philosophis," since Christians eat what they worship, let my soul rather have her portion among the philosophers. This learned philosopher lived about the year 1150, Krantz. Metropol. lib. 11. cap. 39. Cassander. Consultat. scet. de Circumgestat. when the host worship began to be practised, which gave him this prejudice to the Christian religion. 14. The Christians objected such things to the heathens, as they never would have objected, had they themselves worshipped the host; as that it was an impious thing to eat what they worshipped, and worship what they eat and sacrified. Which objections might easily have been retorted upon them. 15. The Christians were accused by the heathens of eating infants' blood in their solemn mysteries, but never any mention is made of eating the blood of Christ, either in the objection or answer to it. The ground of the story arose from the practice of the Carpocratians and other heretics, and not from the Christians eating the blood of Christ. 16. Lastly, the Christians never urged the adoration of the Eucharist in their disputes with the Ebionites and Docete, which yet would have been very proper to confute their errors, who denied the reality of the flesh of Christ. To these arguments of Mr. Daillé, Dr. Whitby, with many of the same, has added these further: 1. That the Scriptures and Fathers deride the heathen deities, and say, that we may know they are no gods, because they have no use of their outward senses. 2. Because they are made gods by consecration, and by the will of the artificer, part of that matter which is consecrated into a god being exposed to common uses. 3. Because they were imprisoned in their images, or shut up in obscure habitations. 4. Because they clothed their gods in costly raiments. 5. Because they might be metamorphosed or changed from one shape to another. All which might have been retorted upon the Christians, had they worshipped the Eucharist, without any possibility of evasion. Soto and Paludanus own that the whole Eucharist, substance as species, may be vomited up again, or voided at the draught; which, to affirm of the real body of Christ, the ancients would have accounted the greatest blasphemy. For these and the like reasons we may safely conclude, that there was no such practice among the ancients, as giving divine honour to the host upon presumption of its being the real body of Christ, though they treated it, as the sacred symbol and antitype of his body, with all imaginable respect and veneration. To deduce these arguments at their full length would fill a volume; and, therefore, it is sufficient here to have hinted the heads of them in this summary account, referring the reader to those two learned authors, who have proved everything, they say, for fuller satisfaction. It might have been supposed that, with proofs such as these, which have been elaborated with all the rigidity of mathematical deduction and all the elegance of finished scholarship, no one, with any pretensions to learning and research, could have passed from Protestantism to Popery by bridging for himself or others the "great gulph" between. Such, however, we find not to be the case. The fact, that since the introduction of the doctrine of transubstantiation in the twelfth century, the case has been altered in many of the above particulars, both on the side of its advocates, by many, minute, and special instructions arising out of the doctrine and on the side of its opponents in withstanding and confuting it, ought to make any man exceedingly cautious how he receive the doctrine, if it did not lead him at once peremptorily to reject it. Nor can it be pleaded that there is not enough of ecclesiastical remains on this subject. I have alluded to what Albertine has done from the writings of Augustine alone, but the documents of later date are neither few nor unimportant. If the adoration of the host had been known to even the medieval Church, we could not possibly be ignorant of it. For it is well remarked by L'Arroque,-"If we descend yet lower than St. Austin, we may inform ourselves of what hath been practised in the Church, since his death, upon the subject of the adoration of the sacrament; for we have, in the works of St. Ambrose, two treatises touching the same matter, made in the behalf of those newly initiated-of which the latter, entituled 'Of the Sacraments,' is more ample than the other. We have that of Ecclesiastical Offices, composed by St. Isidore, archbishop of Sevile; the Book of Sacraments' of Gregory the First; that made by |