that the bread and wine were not simple signs nor a simple representation, for that the remembrance and belief of the body offered and the blood shed for us, nourished and sustained our souls. Again, he says, "although we distinguish as we ought, betwixt the signs and the things thereby signified, yet we divide not the reality from signs, but confess, that all who by faith embrace the promises there made, do spiritually receive Christ with his spiritual gifts, and that they who were before made partakers of Christ, do continue and renew that communication." Do not these declarations then speak for themselves to the present age, and to all posterity, that the points of discrepancy are vital between Bishop Hoadly and Zuinglius, instead of their notions being exactly similar upon the death of Christ as a sacrifice. Facts themselves therefore should be first substantiated, before consequences are deduced from them:-Since, from the words just quoted, it is evident, I think, that Zuinglius did look upon the sacrament as a commemoration of a sacrifice.

The charge of inconsistency has been repeatedly thrown on Melancthon, especially concerning his doctrine of the nature and end of the sacrament, which after the death of Luther was thought to be more consonant to that of Zuinglius, than to the great oracle of his party. It may be so. Yet the learned cannot fail to recollect that this Reformer drew up the confession of Augsbourg, in which it must of course be supposed, that he not only spoke the prevalent ideas and principles of his friends, but also of his own private opinions; and unquestionably, that

6 The artful Bossuet, after placing inconsistency among the great and prominent faults of Melancthon, assigns this humiliating cause for it :-" Ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que dans la crainte qu'avoit Melancton d'augmenter les divisions scandaleuses de la nouvelle reforme ou il ne yoyoit aucune moderation, il n'soit presque plus parler qu'en termes si generaux, que chacun y pouvoit entendre tout ce qu'il vouloit." Hist. de Variations, tom. 1, p. 425, 426.

document favours consubstantiation. Perhaps this conclusion is more just, that if the virtue of consistency is not always discoverable in the sentiments of Melancthon, the true source of his occasional dereliction of former opinions is to be traced to that laudable love of peace, which rendered him so anxious to bring the discordant' views of those for whom he entertained the highest possible regard, into one simple and harmonious end.

To appear as a leader in that theological Revolution, the foundation and corner-stone of which was a liberty inseparably connected with virtue, order, and morality, is well known to have been a chief object in the principles and conduct of Calvin. From this restless desire of an overruling influence, this truly great man was led sometimes to step out of the beaten road, and not always did he step aright. In order to enlarge the circle of his fame, and to acquire new followers, he maintained a kind of middle sacramental presence between the corporeal of the Lutherans, and the spiritual of the Zuinglians, in which however some have imagined, but most erroneously, a stricter verbal conformity with the latter; for if the sentence I am now to quote, should seem to justify that conjecture, the next to it will add another proof to the many more, of the extreme folly of confining ourselves to a single passage for the meaning of an author, instead of comparing and combining the rest together.

7 He who thinks with the mind of a Christian philosopher, must deplore the inveterate hostility with which some of the Reformers acted towards each other in their disputes on the Eucharist. Willing as I am to make every allowance for this intolerant spirit, as proceeding from the strongest impulses of conscience and zeal, yet I never could read, without pain or regret, that Luther interpreted the death of Zuinglius, and the defeat of his countrymen, into a judgment upon them, for having rejected his doctrine of consubstantiation or impanation. See Seckendorff, lib. ii. p. 38.

"Bread and wine are signs which represent unto us the invisible food which we receive of the flesh and blood of Christ. Moreover they also do not satisfy me, which acknowledging that we have some communion with Christ, when they mean to express it, do make us partakers only of the spirit, without any mention of flesh and blood."

In the judgment of some, it would be construed into a culpable omission to be here totally silent on the opinions of him, who has been styled the father of rational theology, and the forerunner and auxiliary of Luther's war upon the church. But though no one at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was like Erasmus so splendidly distinguished as a scholar, yet his pretensions to the character of a reformer, especially on the subject of the sacrament, will be thought only of the negative and indirect kind. It is certainly a serious imputation upon the merits of this illustrious man, that his excessive timidity, and equally excessive dread of losing his pensions, led him to profess principles which perhaps he had never truly embraced, or which, when his judgment was matured, he had secretly renounced. Any one who is the least conversant in his writings must perceive he is constantly insinuating the truth, although he never manfully avows it. Second to none in his wishes or endeavours to oppose a barrier

10

8 Vide Institutio Christianæ Religionis per I. Calvino, translated by Thomas Norton. Lond. 1611, p. 670-673.

9 His fears for his personal safety induced him to shun the Imperial court, and to contemplate with horror a visit to the Pope. See Jortin's Life of Erasmus, vol. 1, p. 70.

10 Salmero, the famous Jesuit, pretended to say, that Transubstantiation was, according to the expression of Erasmus, "et re et in nomine veteribus ignotam," but Jortin has proved, to the entire satisfaction of the Critics, that in no edition of his works are the words just quoted to be found. From the following passage, however, in his writings, it may be safely inferred, that his

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to the inroads of ignorance and superstition, yet he would have regarded it a species of folly, little short of insanity, to have cheerfully taken his fate with the rest of the Reformers. But perhaps the best apology for his cautious temporizing conduct is to be found in his own memorable confession-" All possess not the intrepidity fit for a martyr, and I am afraid that if I were brought to the test, I should imitate St. Peter."

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So far then there is nothing to be discerned in the tenets of the foreign Reformers which at all quadrates with the notion of a simple memorial, but rather every thing which militates against it. But it may be said, for there is no wild conjecture on this point which has not been countenanced by the Socinians, that the Reformers, in order to draw after them the multitude, to whom, from a variety of early impressions and associations, the doctrine of Transubstantiation offered nothing opposite to the dictates of reason, had advanced tenets on this head, contrary to what they privately held. If the Reformers did so deceive the people, their conduct was unaccountable indeed; for to brave every peril, for the sake of a doctrine which they secretly rejected, was to inflict upon themselves a new species of martyrdom. But should we dismiss this supposition as too improbable to deserve even the support of the Socinian, it may however be asserted, that these conductors of the public mind had lived so long under the dark

prejudice in favor of the corporal presence was not very strong: "Olim satis erat credere corpus Domini adesse per consecrationem Sacerdotis; post inventa est Transubstantiatio." Tom. 9, c. 961. Martin Lydius, indeed, has affirmed, on very respectable authority, that a little before his death, Erasmus came over to the opinion of Zuinglius on the Lord's Supper. See Jortin's Life of Erasmus, vol. 1, p. 380, note (n),

11 Non omnes ad martyrium satis habent roboris; vereor autem, si quid inciderit tumultus, Petrum sim imitaturus. See this sentiment in a letter to his friend Pace, Dean of St. Paul's,

shade of Popery, and were therefore so far blinded by the prejudices of that Church, as to be unable to see at once the true sense of the Scripture in this particular case. This is plausible enough, yet I think it will not bear a near examination.

Between the introduction and final" establishment of our Reformed Church under Elizabeth, there was a space of near half a century; a space quite sufficient for those who were to fix the wavering opinions of the people, to have availed themselves of the blaze of illumination which had

12 Many have objected to this epithet, as considering the Reformation under Elizabeth far from full or complete. "It was but in her reign a mixed reformation, part evangelical in doctrine, and in part politic in worship and discipline. And that same policy which was intended to bring papists to us, hath been very near drawing us back to popery." See Somers' Tracts, vol. ♦, p. 504. To say the truth, the religious, like some parts of the political conduct of that Queen, is a problem which, at this distance of time, is hard to be solved. Her attachment to images, lighted tapers, crucifixes, and organs, and her aversion to all clerical marriages, which led her to order that no priest should marry any woman except he had the consent of his Bishop, two neighbouring Justices, and the woman's parents, (see Sparrow's Collect. cap. xxix. p. 76,) and which at last proceeded to that pitch, that she would have forbidden them entirely, if Cecil, as Strype (in his Life of Archbishop Parker, p. 107,) says, had not been stiff at this juncture, have induced many to conclude, that she was in heart a Papist. On the other hand, it may surely be alleged, that these facts by no means warrant such an inference. For though Elizabeth had renounced the Roman Catholic religion, yet she neither wished herself nor her subjects should rush like children from one extreme to another. Having purified religion from all the gross corruptions of the Papal Church, she had too much wisdom to object to retain what was proper to be retained merely from its being Popish ; I mean for having been made use of in times of popery. Upon the ground also of wishing to frame a system of doctrines, wide enough to comprehend the disagreement of Lutherans, Papists and Protestants, she may be vindicated for adopting a phraseology on certain popular points, which she applied, and not without success, to her own particular purpose. Hence, to the desire of gratifying the nation at large, may be ascribed the change of the expressions in the twenty-eighth of our present Articles, and the insisting on faith, and the spiritual eating of the Sacrament.