ten for the edification of the baptized or the mystæ or the initiated. From Jerome and Origen and Cyril of Jerusalem we learn, that the high doctrines of Christ's godhead and the Holy Trinity were not revealed to the catechumens until the forty days which immediately preceded their baptism; when they passed, from the lower class of the junior catechumens, to the upper class of the competentes or illuminated.* Now Augustine's Enarrations on the Psalms explicitly and unreservedly set forth those high doctrines.t Therefore Augustine's Enarrations must have been written for the benefit of the mystæ, who had been initiated into all the arcane doctrines of the secret discipline, and who consequently must have well known the doctrine of transubstantiation, had it really been numbered among those arcane doctrines. Augustine's Enarrations, then, were assuredly written for the benefit of the mystæ. Consequently, even on the bishop's own statement of the matter, we may be certain, that, whatever he says in his Enarrations respecting the Eucharist, is the true and unveiled doctrine of the early catholic church. Now it is in these identical Enarrations, clearly written for the benefit of those who had been initiated into the mysteries, that Augustine not only calls the consecrated elements the FIGURE of our Lord's body and blood; but also unambiguously declares, that in the Eucharist we do NOT eat and drink the literal body and blood of Christ, for the words of the Saviour in the institution of that sacrament are to be SPIRITUALLY understood.‡ 2. What then, it may be asked, is the meaning of those various strong passages, which the bishop has See above, Book I. chap. vi. § I. 2. August. Enart. in Psalm. xliv. vulg. xlv. Oper. vol. viii. p. 144, 145. + August. Enarr. in Psalm. iii. Oper. vol. viii. p. 7. Enarr. in Psalm. xcviii. Oper. vol. viii. p. 397. produced with such learned copiousness from the ancient liturgies and the early fathers? The key to such passages is furnished by the fathers themselves; and I have already produced it with quite sufficient evidence. While Augustine tells us, that the consecrated elements are only the figure of Christ's body and blood; and while he assures us, that we do not eat the Lord's literal flesh, and that we do not drink the Lord's literal blood in the blessed Eucharist: the early ecclesiastical writers intimate, after a manner which cannot be mistaken, that the change in the consecrated elements, whereof they speak so repeatedly and so strongly, is a change, not physical, but moral.* * See above, Book I. chap. iv. II. 1, 2. CHAPTER VIII. Respecting the Rise and Progress, and Final Establishment of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. I HAVE shown that the early fathers, from the very necessity of the illustrations which they employ, could have recognized no change in the consecrated elements, save a moral change: I shall now show, that the same conclusion must inevitably be drawn from the nature and purport of their arguments; for they actually argue against the doctrine of a physical change, in favour of the doctrine of a moral change. This very curious part of my subject I the rather take up, because it gives me an opportunity of briefly stating the rise and progress, and final establishment of the novelty denominated transubstantiation. I. In the course of the fifth century, sprang up the heresy, which owed its birth to the fertile brain of Eutyches. Availing himself of the language, which, though with abundant explanation of its real meaning, had been employed in the ancient liturgies and by the earlier fathers, this speculatist ingeniously contrived to make it the basis of the doctrine which he wished to introduce. The language in question he chose to interpret, as it had never been previously understood, in the sense of its teaching the doctrine of a physical change in the consecrated elements. Whence, according to Theodoret, his argument, in favour of the heresy from himself denominated Eutychianism, ran in manner following: As the symbols of the Lord's body and blood are one thing, BEFORE their consecration by the priest; but, AFTER their consecration, are physically changed and become quite another thing: so the material body of the Lord, AFTER its assumption, was physically changed into the divine substance.* Thus ran the argument of Eutyches, as placed by Theodoret in the mouth of Eranistes, an imaginary Eutychian speaker in one of his dialogues. 1. Now, against this same Eranistes, by way of exhibiting orthodoxy as orthodoxy stood in the fifth century, Theodoret brings an opponent, whom he characteristically denominates Orthodoxus. Eranistes propounds his argument, as I have given it above, built professedly on the alleged physical change in the consecrated elements: but Orthodoxus immediately demolishes it by an explicit denial of the premises on which it is founded. "You are caught," says he, "in the net which you 'yourself have woven. For the mystical symbols, after consecration, pass not out of their own 'nature: inasmuch as they still remain in their 'original substance and form and appearance; and they may be seen and touched, just as they were before consecration. But they are understood 'to be what they become: and they are venerated, as being those things which they are believed to be. Compare, therefore, the image with the archetype; and you will perceive their resemblance: for the type must needs be similar to the truth."† 6 Such is the replication of Orthodoxus, propounded, as his very name implies, on behalf of the orthodox catholic church of the fifth century: and I wholly * Theod. Dial. ii. Oper. vol. iv. p. 84. Lut. Paris, 1642. mistake its purport, if, while Eutychianism is defended on the principle of a physical change in the consecrated elements, orthodoxy be not defended on the directly opposite principle of a moral change alone in the consecrated elements. I am the less fearful of misapprehending the import of the rejoinder framed by Orthodoxus, because I find the doctrine of a moral, as contradistinguished from a physical, change, expressly maintained by the same speaker in yet another of Theodoret's dialogues. "Jacob," says Orthodoxus, "called the blood of the Saviour the blood of the grape. For, if the 'Lord be denominated a vine, and if the fruit of the 'vine be called wine, and if from the side of the 'Lord fountains of blood and water circulating through 'the rest of his body passed to the lower parts; well ' and seasonably did the patriarch say, He washed his 'garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. As we then call the mystic fruit of the 'vine, after its consecration, the blood of the Lord: Iso he called the blood of the true vine the blood of the grape.-Our Saviour, indeed, changed the names: for to his body he gave the name of the symbol, while to the symbol he gave the name of 'his blood; and, having called himself a vine, he "thence consistently applied the appellation of his 'blood to the symbol.-But the scope of such language is perfectly familiar to those who have been 'initiated into the mysteries. For our Lord required, 'that they who partake of the divine mysteries should 'not regard the nature of the things which they see, 'but that in the change of names they should be'lieve that change which is wrought by grace. In'asmuch as he, who called his own natural body wheat and bread, and who further bestowed upon ' himself the appellation of a vine: he also honoured 'the visible symbols with the name of his body and |