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doctrines were always in the Word of God, to which we confidently appeal, and that they were professed by the church of Christ, wherever it prevailed, during the best ages of its history. Well may we retort the question, and ask, where was the present system of the Church of Rome during 1200 years of the Christian era? We challange all your learned men to produce the word Transubstantiation in any book written before the year 1215, when Innocent III. invented the name and established the doctrine in the 4th Lateran council! Thus you perceive it is a novelty, "both name and thing."

PASCASIUS, who flourished more than eight hundred years after Christ, was the first author that wrote a formal defence of this doctrine. The idea, indeed, had been started before, incidentally, in the controversy about the worship of images. The Synod of Constantinople had argued that there was no image of Christ allowed by Scripture but the elements in the Eucharist, to which the second Council of Nice, assembled in 787, replied, that the sacrament was not the image of Christ's body, but the body itself. The monk Pascasius Radbertus, published his defence, already mentioned, in the year 818. Even Bellarmine admits that he was the first, who, in an express and copious manner, wrote

on the truth of the Lord's body and blood.” What! one of the principal doctrines of the Bible- —a doctrine of which the faithful were reminded weekly by the elements of the Eucharist -was never taken up and formally expounded for eight hundred years, until, after the long lapse of ages, a monk in his cell bethought him of the praiseworthy undertaking! None of the "Fathers," prolific as were their pens, numerous and ponderous as were the tomes they left behind, ever wrote a single tract upon this most wonderful of all the mysteries of the Christian system! And, notwithstanding, this unaccountable silence, the doctrine of Transubstantiation has been firmly believed by the Church of Christ in all ages! You may believe this if you please; but if you do, you will "believe it because it is impossible !"

The arguments of Pascasius were soon refuted by the learned and accomplished RABANUS MAURUS, archbishop of Mentz, who was accounted the glory of Germany. "Some, of late," said he, "not having a right opinion concerning the body of Christ, which was born, suffered, and rose from the dead, have asserted that it is received in the Eucharist; which error we have opposed with all our might!"

He stood not alone in his opposition to the

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monstrous novelty. All the great theologians of the age rose up in arms against it, among whom it is sufficient to mention ScOTUS and BERTRAM, whose works circulated for many ages throughout the Christian world without any censure for heresy.* The controversy was again revived by BERENGARIUS, an archdeacon, in 1050, after it had slept for about two hundred years, during which the tenet silently gained ground among the ignorant clergy, whose privileges and power it was so well fitted to enhance. Berengarius, therefore, received worse treatment than his predecessors, having been several times compelled to recant. But he no sooner obtained his liberty each time, than his recantation was recanted. He was, nevertheless, very leniently dealt with by Pope Gregory VII., whose conduct, on this occasion, is both amusing and instructive. He appointed a fast of thirty days, with a view to obtain a divine revelation as to the truth or falsehood of this doctrine. Does this show that the head of the church then firmly believed this dogma? Does it not betray his ignorance and doubts on this vital question? Just think of the present Pope Gregory XVI. proclaiming a fast in order to ascertain the truth

* Du Pin, ii. 81, 87.

Q

of Transubstantiation-the test of orthodoxythe great "burning article" of the church!!

Well, Gregory had a conference with the blessed Virgin, (" who alone destroys all heresies,"*) and she gave him a gracious answer! Now, what think you, my dear Friend, was the purport of this answer? Why, that they should leave the matter just as the Scriptures had left it! "Nothing," said she, "should be acknowledged on this subject, but what is contained in authentic Scripture, against which Berengarius has no objection." Here we have the Virgin Mary a convicted heretic. But the truth is, the Pope invented this answer himself, that he might, by a pious fraud, rescue the champion of truth from the fangs of persecution. A council assembled at the Lateran, over which Pope Nicholas presided, compelled Berengarius to declare that "the body of Christ is in a sensible manner broken by the hands of the Priest, and ground or bruised by the teeth of the faithful." Wo to the man that would dare to grind the body of Christ (i. e. the wafer) with his teeth at the present day! He would be cast from the altar as

a fiend incarnate. mutamur in illis!"

"Tempora mutantur et nos Even the Church of Rome

* Gregory XVI.

† Mabillon, 5. 140.

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A subse

changes with the changing times! quent council, with Gregory at its head, set aside this declaration for a statement less gross and revolting. It was this Gregory that first ordered a bell to be rung at the Mass. I have consulted several authorities, with a view to learn when the Host was first elevated to be adored by the people. This point I have not yet precisely ascertained. I think that it soon followed the ringing of the bell; for it is not at all probable that Gregory, with his views of the matter, would have encouraged the worship of the ele

ments.

"Transubstantiation, after the death of Berengarius, advanced by slow and gradual steps to maturity. Some continued to resist its inroads on the simplicity, truth, and beauty of Christian theology. But the majority of the clergy and laity, in the spirit of perversity, and the phrensy of superstition, adopted the deformity. Its patrons, however, found great difficulty in moulding it into form. Many editions of the novelty were circulated through Christendom; and all exhibiting the changes of correction and the charms of variety. The council of Lateran, in 1215, enrolled it among the canons of the Romish communion; and the Lateran decision was con