then declared it to be His Body, and then as having blessed the cup and declared it to be His Blood of the New Testament; viz. that He was the same Person of whom is told in another place, "He spake the word, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created:" putting all these things together, I cannot but think, that we have no sufficient ground for denying the whole transaction to have been miraculous; and that we shall do better to admire it in silence, than to indulge our invention by putting unauthorized glosses upon it.

All this seems so plain, that I could be well content to leave it as it is, for the consideration of all unprejudiced persons; but unhappily the subject is so beset with cavils and sophistry, that few can be found to give their minds fair play in considering it. On this, as on some other questions, men debate in certain controversial trammels; they tie themselves to a phraseology, which will not allow their thoughts to traverse freely; and having once satisfied themselves with a particular way of expressing their meaning, are as jealous of deviating from it, as if it was very Scripture. For this reason, it seems desirable to compare the opinion above expressed, with some of the approved dogmas by which its truth will be tried, and to show that it accords with these, [in] so far as they accord with reason and Scripture.

The first of these, which I shall notice, occurs in the 28th Article of the Church of England: "The

Body and Blood of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner." Now, without meddling with the question, how the words should be understood in relation to the rite we now administer, it is quite clear, that with regard to the Apostolic Eucharist, their meaning must be restricted to a simple denial that the Body and Blood of Christ are eaten after a worldly and carnal manner, or, that "this eating and drinking has its exact parallel in any other eating and drinking," and therefore that we are not to attempt to explain it, or put our own glosses upon it; but to receive the declaration of our Lord with faith and humility, as coming from One, whose words are spirit and life. In this sense, the words of the Article are just and natural; but if it is understood to imply any more than this; if it is supposed to remove any part of the mystery that hangs over the Scripture narrative, or to make the matter in any way clearer than it found it; if, instead of simply denying that the Body and Blood of Christ were received in one way, it is supposed to help us in conceiving how they may be received in another; then, in this sense, it is chargeable with exactly the same error against which, in the other sense, it is calculated to guard us, that of putting human glosses on divine words, and confining the promises of the Almighty to the limits within which we can trace their accomplishment. Heavenly and spiritual eating and drinking," if understood to mean

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any thing positive, and within the range of our apprehension, are just as meagre and inadequate expressions as worldly and carnal eating and drinking;" and the fault of both is the same; viz. that they relieve the mind from that state of prostration, which the consciousness of an idea imperfectly apprehended by it is calculated to produce; that they attempt by much speaking to make that plainer, which, doubtless, God has made as plain as it admits of being made.

Again, it is frequently laid down, that, when our Lord said, "This is My Body," He meant, "This is a sign of My Body," &c. Now this way of speaking, like the above, is true in one sense, and, in every other, gratuitous and improper. If it is intended simply to deny, that, by the words, "This is my Body," our Lord meant, "This is that very Body of Mine which you see before you sitting at the table," then indeed the sentiment is true, however awkward may be the expression of it. But if the words, "Sign of My Body," are understood to convey any idea more definite and intelligible than that which is conveyed in our Lord's own words, then most certainly that idea is unscriptural; it is a mere human invention, fabricated to set the mind at rest, where God has seen fit to leave it in uncertainty. No doubt, if the words, "Sign of My Body," had been a more accurate expression of our Lord's meaning, He would Himself have used them, and not perplexed a plain matter with lan guage unnecessarily figurative.

In this place it will not be irrelevant to notice, with regard to Scripture figures generally, that it is a great mistake to suppose figurative expressions proper to inspiration as such, and preferred on this account to a plain manner of speaking. Figures and metaphors are not chosen by inspired writers as they were by the heathen oracles, to give elevation to plain matters, but because the matters of which they speak are in themselves so elevated as not to admit of being expressed plainly. It is no part of their object to make plain things difficult, but difficult things as plain as they admit of being. Thus it is with the various names and titles, by which Jesus Christ is figured in the Bible; and which are given Him, not with a view to perplex and obscure our ideas, on a subject which might otherwise have been more clearly presented to us, but because such obscure and perplexed ideas are the nearest approaches to accuracy of which our faculties are susceptible. He tells us, that "He is the Way and the Truth and the Life," that "He is the Vine and we are the branches;" He is called in one place "the Seed of the woman," that was to bruise the serpent's head," in another, "the Lamb of God," in another, "the Desire of all nations," in another, "the Son of man," in another," the Brightness of His Father's glory," in another, "the Bread that came down from heaven," in another, the Tree of life," "the Alpha and Omega ;" and ll this, not because it is a more striking way of aying what could equally well have been said in

plainer ways, but because it is the plainest and most literal way of speaking of which the nature of the subject admits. And thus, when at the conclusion of the Last Supper our Lord took bread and blessed it and gave it to His Apostles, saying, "This is My Body," we may [be sure] He stated that which was more near the literal truth than could be expressed in any other language what

soever.

Opposed to these errors, but erroneous much for the same reason, is the Roman Catholic dogma about Transubstantiation. Unlike the Protestant glosses, this does not attempt to explain away every thing miraculous in the history of the Last Supper: but, by explaining precisely wherein the miracle consisted, and how it was brought about, it aims, like them, at relieving us from a confession of ignorance, and so far must be regarded as a contrivance of human scepticism, to elude the claims of Faith, and to withdraw from the hidden mysteries of religion the indistinctness in which God has thought fit to envelope them.

Let men take God at His own word; and since we know that He can do miracles, let us not doubt when He asserts that He has done so.

The foregoing observations, it will be noticed, turn all on the supposition that the command, "Do this in remembrance of Me," extended only to persons gifted with supernatural powers, for to such persons only would it be credible, that the thing they were commanded to do was miraculous. If