that by the word substance the Fathers understood accidents. There is equally as much absurdity in understanding substance by the word accidents, as in understanding accidents by the word substance. If it be permitted thus to pervert the Fathers, and to understand them when they say white to mean black, there would never be any thing certain. Assuredly, if by the word substance the Fathers had meant accidents, they would have said substances in the plural. Since accidents mean more than one, our opponents must choose one out of the number, which may be called substance. But this shuffling is refuted by Theodoret, in his second dialogue, where he says, that "the bread, after consecration, remains in its first substance, form, and figure." For here he expressly distinguishes the substance from the accidents. But as the error of the corporal presence of Christ's body, under the species of bread, began to arise, in the time of Charles the Bald, about A.D. 870, a priest named Bertram, wrote a book, which is still extant, expressly against this error. On this account, Bellarmine ranks him among heretics, in his first book, c. 1, on the Eucharist; but Bertram passed his whole life in honour, and never received any reprehension upon this subject.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Confirmation of the same, by the Customs of the Ancient Church.

This truth is confirmed by ancient customs, which were different from what is now practised in the Mass, and were incompatible with Transubstantiation; for in the ancient church the service was performed in a language understood

by the auditory. Every one communicated in both species. The people offered a quantity of bread and wine upon the sacred table, and not light round wafers. The people, men as well as women, received the sacrament with the hand, which many of them carried home.* The fragments of sacred bread that remained on the table after communion were burnt,† or were given to the children returning from school, or were carried to the priests' houses, to be eaten there.‡ There were no private masses; no festival of Corpus Christi; nor was the consecrated host carried in procession. Ambrose,§ in the book concerning widows, says, that widows were employed to administer the sacrament. In the Roman Order, which is in the Bibliotheca Patrum, || the following words are found: "After a virgin hath communicated, let her reserve as much of the communion elements as will enable her to communicate during the space of eight days." The sacrament would never have been given to young women, to be kept for so long a time, had transubstantiation been then believed. It is certain that the ancient church did not adore the sacrament. There are no

doubt certain passages in the Fathers wherein it is said that we worship Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. But it is one thing to worship Jesus Christ in the action of the Sacrament, and another thing to worship the sacrament. The Father and the Holy Spirit are likewise worshipped in the Eucharist.

It is useless to quote some ancient Fathers who speak of the elevation of the sacrament. For elevation does not ne

Cyprian. Serm. de Lapsis -Euseb. Hist. lib. vii. c. 9.-Theod. Hist. lib. v. c. 18.-Nazianz. Orat. de Gorgonia.-† Hesychius, lib. ii. in Lev. c. 8.-Ivo, part ii. de Sacr. c. 59.-Burch. lib. 5, c. 12. Evag. lib. iv. c. 36.- § Ambrose, lib. de Viduis.- Editionis Parisiensis, anno 1624, colum. 161.

cessarily infer adoration; seeing that by the law of Moses the priest elevated the breast and shoulder of the victim, and a handful of the first fruits for a wave offering, without adoring them.* Besides, this elevation was in no respect like the elevation which the priest now makes of the host above his head, turning his back upon the people, and tinkling his little bell. But at that time the priest, having uncovered the bread and the wine, took the plate with both bands and held it up to shew it to the people, and that before pronouncing the words called consecration.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Explanation of the Passages of the Fathers, wherein they say that we eat the body and blood of the Lord

in the Eucharist,—that the bread is changed into the body of Christ, and is made the body of Christ,particularly of Ambrose, Hilary, and Chrysostom,that the Fathers speak of various kinds of body and blood in Christ.

There are three kinds of body of Christ mentioned in the holy Scripture, namely, his natural body, which he took in the womb of the Virgin Mary,—his mystical body, which is the Church,-and his sacramental or commemorative body, which is the bread of the Holy Supper. Imitating the style of Scripture, the Fathers, beside the mystical body of Christ which is the church, speak of two other bodies of Christ, namely, of his natural body, and of

• Exod. xxix. -4; Levit. viii. 27 and 29; Numb. v. 25.

his sacramental or symbolical body; of which last they speak as of a thing divine and full of mystery, and of a spiritual flesh formed by the ineffable power of God, by means and for purposes which we shall mention hereafter. They speak also of two kinds of blood in Christ, the one natural, the other divine and mystical, which we receive in the Sacrament.

Clemens Alexandrinus, in the second book of the Pe dagogue, ch. ii. says, "Christ's blood is of two kinds,the one the blood of the fleshly body by which we are redeemed from corruption; the other, namely, that by which we are anointed, is spiritual; and it is by drinking of this blood of the Lord that we become partakers of his incorruption.

St. Jerome, on the Epistle to the Ephesians, says, "The flesh of Christ is understood in two ways; it is either spiritual and divine, of which he himself said, My flesh is meat indeed; or it is that flesh which was crucified, and that blood which was shed by the soldier's spear." This passage is cited in the Roman Decretal, second Distinction of the Consecration in the Canon Dupliciter. A quotation from the same Father upon Leviticus is also made in the same Distinction in the Canon De Hac, in these words: "It is, indeed, lawful to eat of this host, which is admirably made in commemoration of Christ; but of that sacrifice itself which Christ offered upon the altar of the cross, it is not lawful for any to eat." And in the same place in the Canon Corpus, taken from Augustine, "We call that which was taken of the fruits of the earth, and consecrated by mystical prayer, the body and blood of the Lord." Assuredly a body of Christ taken of the fruits of the earth is not the body of Christ crucified for us.

Tertullian, in the sixth chapter of his Book on Prayer,

says, "The bread is the word of the living God which came down from heaven." Likewise, "The body which is held to be in the bread, This is my body."

Eusebius of Cesarea, in his Ecclesiastical Theology:* "The Lord did not speak of the flesh which he took, but of his mystical body and blood."

St. Augustine often calls what we receive in the Holy Supper the body of Christ; but lest we should think that what we receive by the mouth to be the body of Christ which was crucified for us, he introduces Jesus Christ as declaring: “Ye shall not eat this body which ye see, nor drink that blood which shall be shed by those who will crucify me." What then? "I have commended to you a Sacrament, which being spiritually received, shall quicken you."

Ambrose, in his Commentary upon Luke, c. 17, expounds these words of the Lord, "wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together," and marks very distinctly the difference between the two kinds of the body of Christ. First, he says, that by body may be understood the dead body of Jesus Christ; and by the eagles gathered about it, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of our Lord: then he adds, “there is also another body, of which it is said, My flesh is meat indeed."

In the Mysteries of the Mass,† Pope Innocent III. expressly distinguishes these two kinds of flesh or body of Christ, saying, "the form of bread comprehends both kinds of flesh of Christ—namely, the real and the mystical."

The Jesuit Salmeront adopts the forementioned distinction of the two kinds of Christ's blood, from the book on the Lord's Supper, attributed to Cyprian: "The reason

* Lib. iii. c. xii.—† Lib. iv. c. 36.-‡ Tom. ix. Tract. 15.