On what foundation then rests the right of Roman Catholics to appeal to tradition, and the Church, as infallible authority? Human prejudice: None from Holy Writ.

As these written Scriptures are the immediate revelations of God's will to man, they must necessarily be perfect. It must be impious not to deem them ample for their object: and it is nothing less than profane presumption to attempt to superadd to them oral tradition, which should be regarded as mere gossip ;-until it can be authenticated as the Word of God.-Until that time shall arrive, I shall regard the decision of the Council of Trent, which declared that "unwritten traditions are to be received with equal piety and reverence, as the written Word of God,"-as blasphemous.

The writings contained in the New Testament afford evident and irrefragable proofs that they were intended by their authors to be a complete record of the apostolical doctrine. This doctrine is founded on the practice and precepts of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels : and these Gospels are the oracles of GOD. Any departure from this doctrine, however sanctioned by the authority of the Fathers,-the bulls of Popes,-or the decrees of Councils, are consequently to be regarded as human alterations, as unworthy of obedience :-because corruptions of the Church of Christ.

It is truly stated in one of the Articles of the Church of England, that "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith." The following are my reasons :-I object to some of the Sacraments as administered by the Roman Catholic Church.

THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST

I cannot respect, because, as administered in the Romish Church, I regard it as a human institution. I hold it to be totally unauthorized by Scripture. No proof exists in any Greek manuscript of the New Testament that either Christ or his apostles practised the ceremonial called the celebration of the mass. This absence of authority for such ceremonial has ever been seriously felt by the Romish Church as a weak point, and various efforts have been made to sustain it when attacked. In a work recently published by a great authority among Papists, I find the following defence of this favourite practice of his Church :-" Our Divine Redeemer was the first to offer up that holy sacrifice called the mass." He assures us that "our Lord took both bread and wine, and made them his body and his blood;" and he adds, that "he deposited the victim upon the sacred table." If the pious doctor meant merely to maintain that Christ instituted the sacrament, he would have stated a fact which no Christian denies. But that was not sufficient for his object: his object was to justify and encourage the ceremony of the mass as practised by Papists, by inducing them to believe that it was practised precisely in the same manner by Christ himself. Now I ask, What is there beyond his naked assertion to prove this? What evangelist states that Christ did more than break the bread and distribute it with the wine to all his disciples? desiring them, as Saint Luke (the fullest authority on the subject)

informs us, "to do it in remembrance of him." In what passage of the New Testament do we see the elements called a victim? or that this victim was placed upon a table? What mention is made that this victim was bowed to and knelt to, and frequently incensed, and, after being put into a tabernacle, taken out again, then wrapped up in a napkin, placed in a stand, and after being adored, taken by the priest? Which of the evangelists, I repeat, records these ceremonies as having been established by Christ, or practised by his disciples and apostles ? A Mahometan would stare at them as novelties: but a Jew would perceive, to his surprise, that they were copies of the Levitical law, and he would smile at the inconsistency of such a Christian Church. A still more important question remains to be asked,-What authority is there in the Gospel for the priest taking the eucharist alone, when Christ ordained it to be taken by all? None. In spite, however, of all scriptural authority, the priest alone takes the bread and wine which contain the body and blood of Christ, both of which, he says, are "indispensable to salvation," whilst every one of the laity is limited to the bread only, which, being only a portion of what is necessary to salvation, must be inadequate to the object. Why this selfish preference? At the institution of the sacrament, both were taken by all present. It was so administered in the early ages by the Confession of the Church of Rome herself (as stated by the Council of Constance), and continued, according to the avowal of Delahogue (Class Book of Maynooth College), till the twelfth century. Why was so momentous an alteration made? Are priests alone destined to be saved? The principle they inculcate is, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life." The practice they pursue leaves every one of the laity to

be lost.

In the absence of all inspired authority for the defence of his Church, we have only the assertion of Dr. Rock,- Valeat quantùm valere potest: but it will have no weight out of his own Church. When we find him, however, solemnly stating that Christ offered up his own body and blood to himself, (for such is the eucharist,) and thus paid a homage to himself, though alive, which he intended to be fered in remembrance of him when he should be dead, he draws too deeply upon credulity to have his draft paid by any one but of his own Church. The transubstantiation that takes place at the ceremonial of the eucharist is proclaimed by the Romish Church as a miracle. It could not, however, have been a miracle at its institution, as Christ's body was visibly and palpably present with his disciples: neither is it so called by himself, nor represented as such by either of the evangelists. It is, on the contrary, recorded as a simple and natural ceremony, ordered to be observed as a remembrance, and as figurative of his being alive in their thoughts, after he should be removed from them by death. Although in a different sense, I may use Dryden's words to ask

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Why all this frantic pain,

To construe what his clearest words contain,
And make a riddle what he had made so plain ?"

It is, in truth, difficult to imagine a phrase more plain and intel

ligible, and in itself less liable to equivocation, than that employed by Jesus, when he said, "This is* my body, and this is my blood," at the moment when he was giving bread and wine to his disciples. They partook of both, and found them to be natural substances. They understood the figure of speech, as it was agreeable to the analogy of Scripture language, and usual with the Jews; but if they had taken the words in a literal sense, whilst he was before their eyes alive and healthy, they would have been insane. Neither they nor the early Christians received the words otherwise than in a figurative sense. Saint Austin-a high authority among Romanists-declared it impious to understand and take in a literal sense the similar phrase, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life;" and Cardinal Cajetan was obliged to admit that "there does not appear in the Gospel anything to compel us to understand these words literally, namely, 'This is my body,'" and that "the presence which the CHURCH holds cannot be proved by the words of Christ, unaided by the declaration of the Church." What authority is the Church in any doctrine or discipliue unsupported by Scripture ? A body of priests styling themselves the Church, when so unsupported, are of no more authority than a body of pedlars.

In this figurative sense the Supper of the Saviour continued to be taken, till the Council of Lateran, in 1215, decreed that the eucharist contained the real presence.

But if I were to admit, in honour of his power, that Christ performed the miracle of changing the bread into his body, whilst that body was living before their eyes, and of changing the wine into his own blood, surely such a miracle, although superfluous as a testimony of his power, would have astonished the beholders more than any which he had performed, and would have been specially recorded. Does such record exist? Certainly not. And if I should go the length of admitting that he delegated such preternatural power to his apostles, am I obliged to believe that such mysterious power is possessed by every priest that officiates at a Romish altar? Holy Scripture clothes them with no such power; and human reason rejects the notion of their possessing it. We have no authority in Holy Writ to bid us believe that inspiration and power to work miracles were given to any but the apostles. * The word is, when connecting words of two different significations, means, in Scripture, to represent. The fifth chapter of Ezekiel opens with the following command:-" Thou, son of man, take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber's razor, and cause it to pass upon thy head and upon thy beard: then take thee balances to weigh, and divide the hair;" and in the fifth verse we read, "Thus saith the Lord God, This is Jerusalem." Which? The knife, the razor, or the hair? Neither. Did all three make up Jerusalem? No. But the hair represented the approaching fall of the city. In the parable of the sower, Jesus employs the word is, in the sense of representing ::-"When any one heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the wayside." He continues, "He that received the seed in stony places, the same is he that heareth the word." Throughout the parable the word is has the signification represent. St. Paul, when alluding to the rock from which water gushed in the desert, says, "This rock was Christ; and, speaking allegorically of Abraham's bond-maid, he says, "Hagar is Mount Sinai." Sufficient has been said, I trust, to prove that such phrases must be taken figuratively, because they cannot be taken literally.

At their death we must, therefore, believe them to have been withdrawn. The pretension to them since their disappearance, by any body of men, is an audacious presumption; and the belief of them pitiable superstition. I cannot consequently believe that, when any Romish priest performs the ceremony of the mass, the wafer that has been prepared by the baker is, at any particular moment, transubstantiated, by the prayers of the priest, into the body of Christ; because, although I believe that God made man, I cannot believe that man can make GOD. Before I can attain such a belief, I require, at least, a similar miracle* to that vouchsafed to Pope Urban IV., when, it is said, a consecrated wafer dropped BLOOD, to prove to a sceptic priest the real presence in the sacrament. I require such miracle; because I know (what no Catholic priest will have the hardihood to deny) that when a consecrated wafer has been left for six months in the tabernacle, it has always been found gnawed by the worms, It is not "hedg'd in" by any "Divinity," to protect it from the fate of the biscuit of the blaspheming sailor.

According to the doctrine of the Church of Rome, Transubstantiation takes place thus:-Upon the priest pronouncing the words of consecration over the bread, the body of Christ is truly present upon the altar; and upon his pronouncing the words of consecration over the wine, his blood is truly present. Can it be believed that a priest has the power to call down† CHRIST from heaven at any time he chooses, and make him obey the call, and take the place of the bread; which then is no longer bread-but the DEITY? Is there any passage in Scripture to authorize so daring a dogma? It would naturally be imagined, at any rate, that such obedience on the part of the Deity could not be interrupted by human agency. Such, however, is not the fact. The Roman Missal is obliged to own that consecration may be unavailing if the priest should omit, by accident or on purpose, any word or part of a word (such as cor instead of corpus); or if he should have no intention to consecrate the elements (through want of zeal, or conviction, from being possibly on the eve of becoming a Protestant): but this is not all that can render the Eucharist ineffectual, Transubstantiation does not take place if the wine be sour, or if the bread be not made of wheat, or be otherwise corrupted. Can it be believed that a miracle can be defeated in its operation by the trick of a Protestant baker, who should purposely make the wafer of improper materials, or by the malice of an infidel wine-grower who should take care that the wine was made of sour or unsound grapes?

The truth is, that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was unknown to the Christian Church before the beginning of the thirteenth century. It was invented when the Church was exerting herself under the sway of Innocent III., the founder of the Inquisition, to gain a supremacy over the civil power and it must be owned that a more clever artifice

* This miracle gave rise, it is said, to the ceremony of the Corpus Christi.

† Let me not be accused of blasphemy: I am using the language of no less an authority than Bourdaloue. Contemplate his assertion,-"Quoique le Prêtre ne soit dans ce sacrifice que le substitut de Jésus Christ, il est certain néanmoins que Jésus Christ, se soumet à lui, qu'il s'y assujetit, et lui rend tous les jours sur nos autels la plus prompte, et la plus exacte obéissance!”

was never devised, to show to the vulgar the paramount dignity, nay, omnipotence of the priesthood: for the power of making GOD himself, at any moment they chose, and of carrying him about the streets, whenever his presence was thought necessary by them, for public show, was a power which the greatest potentate upon earth could not boast of possessing. Thus fraud invented, and credulity swallowed, what is nothing less than folly to believe!

I may here incidentally observe, that if this Transubstantiation really takes place, no evil could arise although the wafer should be poisoned: and I therefore once ventured to ask a Romish priest, if he would take it with a knowledge of such circumstance. He hesitated in giving me a reply: when I told him that I was sufficiently answered. If he had believed the elements really changed from corruptible bread to incorruptible Deity, his reply would have been instantly affirmative; but probably he had read that, in the year 1313, the Emperor Henry VII. was poisoned by the consecrated Host, and fact seemed to have more influence on his mind than faith.

(To be continued.)

A REVIEW OF MARTIN LUTHER'S VIEWS COMPARED WITH THE ROMANISTS', ON CLOISTER VOWS, CELIBACY, POVERTY, AND OBEDIENCE TO THE RULE OF THEIR ORDER, AND DISPENSATIONS.

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ARRANGED BY REV. C. SMYTH, B.A., OXON., FROM HIS GERMAN TREATISES," 1847.

(Continued from page 285.)

THE Reformer proceeds to give the following history of the celibate, dating its origin to St. Antony, who, by all Church history, and the Christian fathers, was called the father of monks, and the inventor of the ascetic regimen; and he says, that in the days of St. Antony, the term monk, in Greek monachos, signified that which in Luther's days was understood by the terms recluse and hermit; a man who lived remote from the multitude in the forest or desert; and he declared that at the time in which he was living, he knew no such monks as St. Antony; as follows:-"I know, at this present time, no such monks; there have been none of St. Antony's stamp for above a thousand years, unless you call prisoners in dungeons by this name, who, alas are real recluses. The Papal monks are more conversant with the world, and live less retired, than any class of men you can name." St. Antony, in Luther's opinion, spoke with wisdom, and taught most scripturally, when he recommended the world by all means to avoid monastic life; since no commandment requiring celibacy and solitude could be found in Scripture. In his treatise bearing the title of "Councils and Churches," the great Reformer and opponent to all the rules of monks and nuns, exposes in the third part the "new works" which are not commanded in the sacred Scriptures, and which he VOL. IX.-October, 1847. Y New Series, No. 22.