TO THE VERY REV. THOMAS TURTON, D.D. DEAN OF PETERBOROUGH AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. MY DEAR SIR, IN In your admirable Work on The Roman Catholic Doctrine of the Eucharist, you have so completely shewn the fallaciousness of Dr. Wiseman's mode of carrying out his Hermeneutic Principle of Philology in the case of our Lord's Discourse at Capernaum, that the subject may well be deemed altogether exhausted. But there is another aspect, under which the interpretation of that Discourse may be con b ducted, and which I cannot but think highly deserving of attention. I. The very necessity of explaining the phraseology of its earlier part, as it is universally explained both by the Romanist and by the Reformed (even to say nothing of the Catholic Church in all ages), draws after it the inevitable result, that The doctrine of Transubstantiation MUST be erroneous. Now there is no person, who has more strenuously insisted upon the universally received interpretation of the earlier phraseology of the Discourse, than Dr. Wiseman. Consequently, if my estimate of results be not wholly incorrect, that gentleman, in his elaborate Lectures on the Blessed Eucharist, has committed a sort of theological suicide, or, as we are wont familiarly to express it, has freely cut his own throat. 1. I am not quite certain, whether you yourself do not hint at something of this nature, when you write as follows. Our Lord, after mentioning the true bread from heaven, the bread of God that giveth life unto the world, describes HIMSELF as the bread of life, of which his faithful followers were to participate and thereby live for ever. When, afterward, he mentions, for the first time, his flesh, he makes a pointed reference to all that he had previously said of himself: by again declaring, that HE is the living bread, coming down from heaven, giving eternal life to those who eat of it; adding, that THE BREAD WAS HIS FLESH which he would give for the life of the world *. 2. At all events, the entire matter, so far as I have considered it, turns upon our Lord's declaration that THE BREAD WAS HIS FLESH : for, in the management of this declaration, is * Roman Cathol. Doctr. of the Euchar. part i. sect. 2. p. 55, 56. |