life, and the bread which we eat in the Sacrament is a token of His sacrifice, whereby we sign our acknowledgment to Him, that His sacrificed body has saved us, who will partake of it spiritually, from the judgments which so justly overhang mankind.

Oh, but this will not do for us; we will not give up the substantial comfort of gorging God's flesh!-No! you wretched priests, you will not give it up, because you know that all your power consists in this your mock miracle!

But, should you, my protestant friends, be ever asked by a Romanist, why you do not believe that they take the real flesh, body, blood, bones, soul, divinity, and GODHEAD, of the Lord Jesus; how can disbelieve His words; just answer them by asking another question, why they can think of eating a door, or a vine, or a piece of a road?

you

Because the Lord said, "I am the door," John, x. 9. Also did the LORD say, "I am the true vine,” John, xv. 1.

Also did He say, "I am the way."

Are we to suppose, from these similes, which the LORD used to exemplify his meaning, that He became a wooden door, or an empty door-way, that He became a piece of stick, like a vine branch, or a Macadamized road.

He said also, in John, vi. 48, I am the bread of life. (Are we to suppose from that, that he had been kneaded and baked in an oven ?)

He said, vii. 37., if any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. (Are we to suppose from that, that the LORD converted himself into a mug, to allow

His disciples and followers to drink Him?) He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. St. Peter and the other apostles, and St. Paul and Timothy, and many millions of others did believe on Him, and thirsted for drink from His stream, but did we see these believers, who not alone thirsted, and drank copiously, did we see, I say, these men inundating the countries through which they passed, with rivers of waters flowing out of their bellies. A truce with such absurdities. No, my Romish friends; if ye believe that the LORD actually meant that the bread which He brake at the Last Supper, was really His body, because He said, This bread is my body, so must you believe all these other things in their literal, earthly sense. But, if you will but discern them all spiritually, you will find no difficulty whatever in any one of the passages; but, on the contrary, that they are not only clear and luminous, but every way worthy of the munificent Saviour of man, who spake them.

One of the many absurdities into which this transubstantiation has driven the Romish hierarchy is the following: their missal has this under other directions, "that if worms or rats have eaten Christ's body, they must be burned; and if any man vomit it up, it must be eaten again, or burned, or made a relic * ! ! !" What a wholesome sacrament!

For further particulars of the interesting ceremony called the sacrifice of the mass," see Appendix, No. V., being a reprint of an Irish tract, wherein the

* Can. 39. Glossa, in Can. c. 2. De consecratione.

strict similarity between this ceremony and the celebration of our Lord's last supper, is fully developed.

The history of transubstantiation appears to be shortly this: The doctrine was first introduced into the Romish church by Paschasius Radbertus, a Benedictine monk and abbot of Corbay, in 818. Though it appeared in the Greek church about 787. It was defended by Paschasius, in a treatise entitled "De corpore Christi," with the most gross legends; one of which was, that a priest saw the wafer become an infant Christ, and having kissed it, he then ate it. He was opposed by his cotemporary Erigena, who taught philosophy at Oxford, in a work entitled "De corpore et sanguine Domini;" also by Ratramus, a monk of his own abbey, who wrote "a famous book on" the body and blood of Christ, in which he denied the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist? (Dupin). Also by Rabamus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz, in 847, whose words are, "some of late, not having a right opinion of the sacrament of the body and blood of our LORD, have said that this is the body and blood of our LORD, which was born of the Virgin Mary; and in which our LORD suffered upon the cross, and was raised from the dead, which error we have opposed with all our might."

It was not generally received till 1059, by Pope Nicolas, and again met confirmation in an altered view under Pope Gregory VII. in 1079, and was affirmed to be an article of faith at the council of Lateran, under Innocent III. in 1215.

The celebrated Erasmus, cotemporary and opponent of Luther, than whom no man was better acquainted

with the writings of the fathers of the church, says, "That it was late before the church defined transubstantiation, unknown to the ancients in name and thing." (In first epist. ad Corinth.)

Oh! this unchangeable, infallible, apostolic church. Much did the apostles know about transubstantiation !

XVIII. I confess also, that under one kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament.

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The operation of this article is to exclude the laity from partaking of the emblem of Christ's blood, which was shed for them. The fact of the matter is this: when the monks discovered the infant Christ in the wafer, it became evident that, as in that real presence there must have been the animal blood as well as the flesh, it was argued that, to take the Lord's blood first in reality and then in emblem, would be to do a thing superfluous; and, for myself, I rather agree with them but I look upon this article to be a grand one; for we may feel assured that it would never have been concocted, if the real presence had not been discovered. Now the apostles, we must view with great compassion, when we consider the very imperfect state of their discernment, that because they were so spiritual, they could not distinguish the Lord's real presence; therefore, they were obliged to have the trouble of drinking in commemoration of their master's bloody and therefore sin-remitting sacrifice. But we, thanks to the enlightening church of Rome, have discovered that they ought not to have been apostles, because they taught unnecessary doctrines, and, for a

like reason, that our LORD himself ought not to have been our Lord, because His knowledge was not perfection, seeing that the bishop of Rome knows better what is necessary for His children to practise than our beloved Master did Himself; and though I have quoted it before in another place, I think I cannot do better than lay the following beneficent, apostolic passage again before my readers, because it is possible that they may have entered more into the spirit of this amiable religion now, than they had when perusing the first Romish article. The council of Trent declares, Con. Trent. Sess. 21. c. 1. "That whosoever thinks it necessary that the people shall receive in both kinds, is accursed!" It must be needless to transcribe those passages of Scripture here, which require us to partake of the cup; but my Romish brethren will find the express desire of Jesus our LORD, in Mat. xxvi., Mark xiv., Luke xxii., and fully confirmed to the people, not the priests-but the people. 1 Cor. xi. 25.

If the communion in both kinds be essential, and as the Lord commanded, I should conceive that none but Antichrist would oppose Him (indeed, opposition to Him being the very definition of the word), it must then be admitted, that no lay Romanist living has ever yet commemorated the LORD's death. Is not this a very dreadful consideration? Oh, my Christian friends, ought we not, from the most common principles of charity, to lay our shoulders to the wheel, to endeavour to awaken our lost fellow men out of this lethargic sleep of self-security in which the foul fiend Satan holds them spell-bound. There is only one weapon, with which we CAN oppose Satan, with the