perhaps ministered to the unbelief, of our own generation. But in the conduct of this argument, the shortest way of going to work is to compare this, as well as the other doctrines proposed to be handled, with the practice of Christ, and the doctrine of the Apostles: and if they are each found opposed to these, the doctrine is then found to be new, for the best of all reasons: because it is false. Now let us, in a very few words, try the tenet before us by this test. The divine Redeemer of the world, Jesus Christ, before he suffers on the cross, in his own visible person takes bread and wine into his hand; and in the presence of his twelve Apostles calls the bread His body, the wine His blood. With his own hand he holds out these two things. And could He, the Fountain of Wisdom and Truth, expect his faithful followers to believe; could these followers dream of his wishing them to believe, or of his meaning to say, that the same body which was holding out to them the bread, the same blood which impelled the fingers to stretch out the cup, was at the same moment in every crumb of that bread, in every drop contained in that cup? Impossible. It is to insult your understandings to ask more. It is worse, it is trifling with your faith. The danger indeed in touching such a subject as this, is; lest we expose our holy Faith, and the blessed Sacrament, its main pillar, to the scoffs of the profane, and the scorn of the thoughtless. But there is one additional view of the subject, which we must not pass over before we part with it. The error before us plainly contradicts our senses. A piece of bread is not bread, but Christ's actual crucified body; a drop of wine is not wine, but Christ's actual blood as spilt from the cross. Let me dismiss this subject in few words, by a plain example of the line that the God of nature Himself points out between the respective provinces of faith and sense. Suppose I were to be told that the book I now hold in my hand was not a book; that the leaves I am now turning over were not paper; suppose, farther, that the voice telling me this claimed to be a voice from God;—what must I answer? I must pause. I must say: the God of my senses has given me those senses to judge of outward things by. He is moreover the God of truth. Can such a God deceive? When one pretends, then, to come from God, and to tell me by His order, I must disbelieve my senses! I must dismiss the messenger. He is a false one. It is a lying divination: it cometh not from God. Happily, brethren, we are exempt from this trial. It will be our own faults if we listen to such fables. Christ has spoken of His body and blood, under the figures of bread and wine; thereby to excite our faith and love to their highest, by assuring us of His real spiritual presence (that is, to our souls,) through the appointed signs wherewith, after a manner that could only have proceeded from Infinite Wisdom, He vouchsafes to connect sense and spirit. From such idle fables, therefore, let us flee to the words of St. Peter, not as the head of the Church of Rome only (for such he is not, nor ever was), but as the inspired guide of all Christ's universal Church: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Secondly, it is a new doctrine, at least new compared with Christ and his Apostles, to say that the eternal God, or God reconciled in Christ Jesus, listens either to the prayers of Christ's Virgin Mother, or to those of any other departed Saints, in behalf of any Christian man now living here below. This error did not start up so suddenly as the former one, but passed through several shades and degrees, all farther from the Christian truth than their forerunner. The most innocent shape, however, it put on was more than 400 years after Christ.* was the practice of praying to God for the sake of departed saints: a practice, it will at once be seen, widely different, and far removed in point of error, from that of praying to the saints themselves to intercede for them with the Most High. This was the next step, and soon fol * Bp. Burnet on the Articles, 332, 333. This scoffs of the profane, and the scorn of the thoughtless. But there is one additional view of the subject, which we must not pass over before we part with it. The error before us plainly contradicts our senses. A piece of bread is not bread, but Christ's actual crucified body; a drop of wine is not wine, but Christ's actual blood as spilt from the cross. Let me dismiss this subject in few words, by a plain example of the line that the God of nature Himself points out between the respective provinces of faith and sense. Suppose I were to be told that the book I now hold in my hand was not a book ; that the leaves I am now turning over were not paper; suppose, farther, that the voice telling me this claimed to be a voice from God ;—what must I answer? I must pause. I must say: the God of my senses has given me those senses to judge of outward things by. He is moreover the God of truth. Can such a God deceive? When one pretends, then, to come from God, and to tell me by His order, I must disbelieve my senses! I must dismiss the messenger. He is a false one. It is a lying divination: it cometh not from God. Happily, brethren, we are exempt from this trial. It will be our own faults if we listen to such fables. Christ has spoken of His body and blood, under the figures of bread and wine; thereby to excite our faith and love to their highest, by assuring us of His real spiritual presence (that is, to our souls,) through the appointed signs wherewith, after a manner that could only have proceeded from Infinite Wisdom, He vouchsafes to connect sense and spirit. From such idle fables, therefore, let us flee to the words of St. Peter, not as the head of the Church of Rome only (for such he is not, nor ever was), but as the inspired guide of all Christ's universal Church: Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Secondly, it is a new doctrine, at least new compared with Christ and his Apostles, to say that the eternal God, or God reconciled in Christ Jesus, listens either to the prayers of Christ's Virgin Mother, or to those of any other departed Saints, in behalf of any Christian man now living here below. This error did not start up so suddenly as the former one, but passed through several shades and degrees, all farther from the Christian truth than their forerunner. The most innocent shape, however, it put on was more than 400 years after Christ.* This was the practice of praying to God for the sake of departed saints: a practice, it will at once be seen, widely different, and far removed in point of error, from that of praying to the saints themselves to intercede for them with the Most High. This was the next step, and soon fol * Bp. Burnet on the Articles, 332, 333. |