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complex and almost incoherent system embraced by the Valentinians, he thus overthrows their hypothesis of the true and supreme Deity not being the creator of the world, and of their denial of the resurrection of the body by arguments drawn from the Eucharist. "If there' be another creator of the world than the Father of our Lord," says he, "then our offering creatures to him, evinces him to be covetous of that which is not his own, and so we reproach rather than bless him:"-While he adds, how does it арpear to any of them, that that bread over which thanks are given is the body of his Lord, and the cup of his blood, if he be not the son of his Creator." And in reply to their heresy on the latter point, he observes, "that bread which is of the earth, having had the invocation of God over it, is no more common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and an heavenly: so our bodies are no more corruptible, having the hope of resurrection."

The pious and eloquent Bishop of Constantinople, the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, delivered the sentiments of every Father of the Greek Church of the age in which he lived, and in that before him, when he said, "that the bread is at first but common bread, yet when once it is sanctified by the holy mystery, it is called the body of Christ.""3

A similar distinction is to be found in the famous Epistle of Chrysostom

"Adversus Hæreticos, Lib. 14, cap. 34. The five books of Irenæus exist only in barbarous Latin; which version, according to the probable computation of Dodwell, was not published till some time after the year of Christ 385. Vid. Diss. Iren. num. 9, 10. It is the conjecture however of Mill that it was made in the life-time of the holy Father. Vide Prologm, 605.

13 De Baptismo Christi, tom iii. p. 369.

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to the monk Cæsarius, when exposing the heretical system of Apollinaris." "As before the bread is sanctified, we call it bread," exclaims the Saint, "but when the divine grace has sanctified it by the mediation of the Priest, it is freed from the name of bread, and is thought worthy of the name of the Lord's body, though the nature of bread remain in it; but it is not said there are two bodies, but one body of the son; so here the divine nature being joined to the body, together make one son, and one body."5

""Whose master error was," says the learned Cave, "that our Lord assumed a body without a human soul, his Divinity immediately supplying the place of it; which he afterwards mollified by granting, that be had a soul, but without mind or understanding." Lives of the Fathers, vol. 1, p. 312.

15 Sicut enin antequam sanctificatur panis panem nominamus, divina autem illum sanctificante gratiâ, mediante Sacerdote, liberatus est quidem appellatione panis, dignus autem habitus est Dominici Corporis appellatione, etiamsi natura panis in ipso permansit, et non duo corpora sed unum corpus filii prædicatur, sic et hic Divina pucaos, id est inundante corporis natura, unum filium, unam personam, utræque hæc fecerunt." It is well known to the erudite, when this passage was first produced by Peter Martyr, that Cardinal Perron, and others, were so oppressed by the insuperable weight of it, that they had no other alternative but boldly to pronounce it an interpolation. Proficients, however, as they proved themselves in the science of evasion upon so many critical occasions, yet this manœuvre failed completely of success, even with those whose judgments were in other respects biassed, or rather blinded by their partialities. For Bigotius, a learned French Papist, who had twelve years before brought a copy of this passage and the whole epistle from Florence, "resolved," says Archbishop Wake, "to ruin all the endeavours of these men, by publishing the very epistle which the Cardinal had so loudly declared to be a forgery, and proving it indeed to be the genuine offspring of St. Chrysostom; and this he accordingly with great sincerity performed. Ann. 1680." But though the whole edition was suppressed by some of the Doctors of the Sorbonne, yet Le Moyne published it again in Latin among his Varia Sacra; and Archbishop Wake having procured the sheets in Bigotius's edition of Palladius, caused this memorable passage also to be published.-The curious may sec a full account of this transaction in Wake's Defence of the Exposition of the Doctrine of the Church of England, p. 142, &c. &c. Still the Papists continue to assert, that the passage in question is not genuine, though every material point in it is supported by such a mass of authentic document;

But of all the great doctors of the Greek and Latin Churches of the first six ages, none has delivered sentiments respecting the Eucharist more free from any corporal signification than St. Austin.16 In one of his homilies to those who were recently baptised, he observes, speaking of the sacrament, "that which you see is the bread, and that the cup which your eyes witness; but what your faith requires to be instructed in, is, that the bread is the body of Christ, and the cup is his blood." Then he proposes the objection how could that be? and he answers it thus. These things, my brethren, are therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, and another understood. That which is seen has a bodily appearance, that which is understood has a spiritual fruit." Again, the same luminary of the Church, in laying down rules by which we are to judge what expressions in Scripture are figurative, and what are not, proceeds to say, "If any"

for to admit it to be so, say they, is to make the good father contradict himself in many of his expressions, and particularly in that noted one," of the lips being tinged with the blood of our Lord." But between the popular discourses and the reasoning ones of the pious Archbishop of Constantinople, we must make a wide distinction. Of the latter kind is the address to Cæsarius. But, independently of this consideration, where an expression may be taken in two senses, I know of no canon of criticism which obliges us to prefer the most forced to the most natural. What acknowledgment then is there of the corporal Presence, in saying, that the lips were tinged with the blood of Christ, when it is quite obvious that if we drink the blood of Christ, our lips must necessarily be tinged by it.

Quod

16" Quod ergo videtis, panis et calix, quod vobis etiam oculi vestri renunciant. autem Fides vestra postulat instruenda, panis est corpus Christi, calix sanguis Christi-Quomodo est panis Corpus ejus. Et calix, vel quod habet calix, quomodo est sanguis ejus. Ista, fratres, ideo dicuntur Sacramenta, quia in ejus aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur. Quod videtur, speciem habet corporalem; quod intelligitur, fructum habet spiritalem." This passage, though not extant now in the works of St. Austin, yet is preserved by Fulgentius and others. Vide De Bapt. Æthiopis, cap. ii. & Beda in 1 Corinth. 10.

"De Doct. Christ. lib. iii. cap. 16.

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place seem to command a horrid action, it is figurative," and as an exemplification of his meaning, he cites these words, Except you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you. "Which" adds he, seems to command some crime or horrid action; and therefore it is a figure, commanding us to communicate in the passion of our Lord, and to lay up in our memory with delight and profit, that his flesh was wounded and crucified for us." Parallel to these expressions, are those of Origen, who calls the understanding the words of our Saviour, "of eating his flesh and drinking his blood according to the letter, a letter that kills."8

It were endless, indeed, to accumulate authorities on this point. I shall therefore content myself with producing only another testimony, but which is such, that even the Papists themselves ought to pay a due regard to it, because it comes from one of the successors of St. Peter.

Pope Gelasius, who lived at the end of the fifth century, affords in the subsequent words a remarkable illustration of the truths on which I have been insisting-truths so obvious, that no plausibility' of argument could

18 Hom. 7 in Levit.

"The following passage deserves to be transcribed as a curious and highly characteristical specimen of papal ingenuity in getting rid of what many would term an insuperable difficulty. "Extat Gelasii P. R. de duabus Christi naturis contra Eutychem liber, in quo insignis habetur contra transubstantiationem locus. Cum librum veterum esse non possent negare Romani Theologi, eo confugerunt ut alterius esse quam Gelasii Romani contenderent: quod viri docti, et sui Pontificis maximam esse auctoritatem intelligerent. Primo ergo et Baronius et Bellarminus et Perronius et alii, conquisitis undique sophismatis ac strophis pugnant non esse Gelasii urbici Fpiscopi, tum miserum opusculum â vera ac genuina parentes sui familia abactum in alienum ignobilius nomen transcribunt, aliique Gennadii, alii Gelasii nescio cujus Cæsariensis, alii denique

show the superior reasonableness of the opposite system. "Doubtless the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, are a divine thing; for which reason we are made by them partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance of bread and wine does not cease to exist. And indeed the image and likeness of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the action of the mysteries. Therefore it appears sufficiently evident that we ought to think that of Christ which we profess and celebrate and receive in his image. That as by the perfecting virtue of the Holy Ghost, the elements pass into a divine substance whilst their nature still remains in its own propriety, so in that principal mystery, the union of the divine and human nature, whose efficacy and power these represent, there remains one entire and true Christ, both natures of which he consists, continuing in their properties unchangeable.” *°

20

From these citations alone, I may venture to assert without fear of

alterius Gelasii Cyziceni fœtum esse affirmant; ut incerto auctoris testimonium nullius sit apud homines fidei. Necquicquam. Vide Daillæus De Usu Patrum. Genævæ, p. 108.

20 Certe Sacramenta quæ sumimus corporis et sanguinis Christi Divina res est, propter quod et per eadem divinæ efficimur consortes naturæ, et tamen esse non desinit substantiæ vel natura panis et vini. Et certe imago et similitudo corporis et sanguinis Christi in actione mysteriorum celebrantur. Satis ergo nobis evidenter ostenditur, hoc nobis ipso Christo Domino sentiendum, quod in ejus imagine profitemur, celebramus et sumimus, ut sicut in hanc scilicet, in Divinam, transeant, S Spiritu perficiente, substantiam permanentes tamen in sua proprietate naturæ ; sic illud ipsum mysterium principale, cujus nobis efficientiam virtutemque veraciter repræsentant, ex quibus constat proprie permanentibus, unum Christum quia integrum verumque permanere demonstrant.-Lib de Duab. Nat. Christi. In the margin of this place, in the Bibliotheca Patrum, there is printed Caute, "as if," says Bishop Pearson, (see Exposition of the Creed, fol. p. 162,) "there conld be any danger in observing the sense of the Fathers, when they speak so expressly and considerately."

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