in writing, brought at last his scroll against Berengarius. The reasons and arguments used therein to convince his antagonist are not now extant, but whatever they were, Berengarius was commanded presently without any delay to recant, in that form prescribed and appointed by Cardinal Humbert, which was thus: "I Berengarius, &c., assent to the Holy Roman and Apostolic See, and with my heart and mouth do profess, that I hold that faith concerning the Sacrament of the LORD's Table which our Lord and venerable Pope Nicholas, and this sacred Council, have determined and imposed upon me by their evangelic and apostolic authority; to wit, that the Bread and Wine which are set on the Altar, are not after the consecration, only a sacrament, sign, and figure, but also the very Body and Blood of our LORD JESUS CHRIST; (thus far it is well enough, but what follows is too horrid, and is disowned by the Papists themselves ;) and that they (the Body and Blood) are touched and broken with the hands of the Priests, and ground with the teeth of the faithful, not sacramentally only, but in truth and sensibly." This is the prescript of the Recantation imposed upon Berengarius, and by him at first rejected, but by imprisonment, and threats, and fear of being put to death, at last extorted from him.

This form of Recantation is to be found entire in Lanfrank, Algerus, and Gratian; yet the Glosser on Gratian, John Semeca, marks it with this note: "Except you understand well the words of Berengarius," (he should rather have said, of Pope Nicholas and Cardinal Humbertus,) "you shall fall into a greater heresy than his was, for he exceeded the truth, and spake hyperbolically." And so Richard de Mediavilla; "Berengarius being accused, overshot himself in his justification;" but the excess of his words should be ascribed to those who prescribed and forced them upon him. Yet in all this we hear nothing of Transubstantiation.

Berengarius at last escaped out of this danger, and conscious to himself of having denied the truth, took heart again, and refuted in writing his own impious and absurd Recantation, and said, "That by force it was extorted from him by the Church of Malignants, the Council of Vanity." Lanfrank of Caen, at that time head of a Monastery in France, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Guitmundus Aversanus answered him. And though it is not to be doubted but that Berengarius, and those of his party, writ and replied again and again, yet so well did

their adversaries look to it, that nothing of theirs remains, save some citations in Lanfrank. But it were to be wished that we had now the entire works of Berengarius, who was a learned man, and a constant follower of Antiquity; for out of them we might know with more certainty how things went, than we can out of what his profest enemies have said.

This sacramental debate ceased, awhile because of the tumults of war raised in Apulia and elsewhere by Pope Nicholas the Second; but it began again as soon as Hildebrand, called Gregory the Seventh, came to the Papal chair. For Berengarius was cited again to a new Council at Rome, "where some being of one opinion and some another," (as it is in the acts of that Council, writ by those of the Pope's faction), his cause could not be so entirely oppressed but that some Bishops were still found to uphold it. Nay, the ringleader himself, Hildebrand, is said to have doubted, "whether what we receive at the LORD's Table be indeed the Body of CHRIST by a substantial conversion." But three months space having been granted to Berengarius, and a fast appointed to the Cardinals, "that God would show by some sign from heaven, (which yet He did not), who was in the right, the Pope or Berengarius, concerning the Body of the LORD;" at last the business was decided without any oracle from above, and a new form of retraction imposed on Berengarius, whereby he was henceforth forward to confess, under pain of the Pope's high displeasure, "that the mystic Bread," (first made magical and enchanting by Hildebrand,) "is substantially turned into the true and proper Flesh of CHRIST ;" which whether he ever did is not certain. For though Malmesbury tells us, "that he died in that Roman faith, yet there are ancienter than he, who say, "that he never was converted from his first opinion." And some relate, that after this last condemnation, having given over his studies, and given to the poor all he had, he wrought with his own hands for his living." Other things related of him, by some slaves of the Roman See, deserve no credit. These things happened. . . . . . in the year 1079; and soon after Berengarius died.

Berengarius being dead, the orthodox and ancient doctrine of the LORD's Supper which he maintained, did not die with him ; (as the Cronicus Cassinensis would have it ;) for it was still constantly retained by St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, who lived about the beginning of the twelfth century. In his discourse on the LORD's Supper, he joins together the outward form of the

Sacrament, and the spiritual efficacy of it, as the shell and the kernel, the sacred sign, and the thing signified; the one he takes out of the words of the Institution, and the other, out of CHRIST's Sermon in the sixth of St. John. And in the same place explaining, that Sacraments are not things absolute in themselves without any relation, but mysteries, wherein by the gift of a visible sign, an invisible and divine grace with the Body and Blood of CHRIST is given, he saith, "That the visible sign is as a ring, which is given not for itself or absolutely, but to invest and give possession of an estate made over to one.". . . . Now, as no man can fancy that the ring is substantially changed into the inheritance, whether lands or houses, none also can say with truth, or without absurdity, that the Bread and Wine are substantially changed into the Body and Blood of CHRIST. But in his Sermon on the Purification, which none doubts to be his, he speaks yet more plainly; "The body of CHRIST in the Sacrament is the food of the soul, not of the belly, therefore we eat him not corporally; but in the manner that CHRIST is meat, in the same manner we understand that he is eaten." Also in his Sermon on St. Martin, which undoubtedly is his also, "To this day," saith he, "the same flesh is given to us, but spiritually, therefore not corporally." For the truth of things spiritually present is certain also.

...

The thirteenth century now follows; wherein the world growing both older and worse, a great deal of trouble and confusion there was about religion.. So that now there remained nothing but to confirm the new tenet of Transubstantiation, and impose it so peremptorily on the Christian world, that none might dare so much as to hiss against it. This Pope Innocent the Third bravely performed. He succeeded Celestin the Third at thirty years of age, and marching stoutly in the footsteps of Hildebrand, called a Council at Rome in St. John Lateran, and was the first that ever presumed to make the new-devised doctrine of Transubstantiation an Article of Faith necessary to Salvation, and that by his own mere authority.

In the fifteenth century the Council of Constance (which by a sacrilegious attempt took away the sacramental cup from the people, and from the Priests when they do not officiate) did wrongfully condemn Wiclif, who was already dead, because amongst other things he had taught with the ancients, "That the

substance of the Bread and Wine remains materially in the Sacrament of the altar; and that in the same Sacrament no accidents of Bread and Wine remain without a substance." Which two assertions are most true.

By these any considering person may easily see, that Transubstantiation is a mere novelty; not warranted either by scripture or antiquity; invented about the middle of the twelfth century, out of some misunderstood sayings of some of the Fathers; confirmed by no ecclesiastical or Papal Decree before the year 1215, afterwards received only here and there in the Roman Church ; debated in the schools by many disputes; liable to many very bad consequences; rejected (for there was never those wanting that opposed it) by many great and pious men, until it was maintained in the sacrilegious Council of Constance; and at last, in the year 1551, confirmed in the Council of Trent by a few Latin Bishops, slaves to the Roman See; imposed upon all, under pain of an anathema to be feared by none; and so spread too far, by the tyrannical and most unjust command of the Pope. So that we have no reason to embrace it, until it shall be demonstrated, that except the substance of the Bread be changed into the very Body of CHRIST, His words cannot possibly be true, nor His Body present, which will never be done.

OXFORD,

The Feast of the Annunciation.

[NEW EDITION.]

These Tracts are continued in Numbers and sold at the price of 2d. for each sheet, or 7s. for 50 copies.

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1839.

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CHRISTIAN LIBERTY;

OR,

WHY SHOULD WE BELONG TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND?

BY A LAYMAN.

He that receiveth you, receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.

He that receiveth a prophet, in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward.-Matt. x. 40, 41.

JOHN EVANS was walking along the lane between his own house and the common, when just at the place where the lane makes a turning, he suddenly met Dr. Spencer, the Rector of his parish. John was not particularly pleased at thus meeting his Pastor, for several reasons. He had formerly been a most regular attendant at the parish church, from which he had lately chosen to absent himself, with his family. Not that he stayed away from idleness, or from any intentional disregard of the commands of God; he felt, as he imagined, the same reverence for the Divine Will as ever; it was, indeed, rather a mistaken zeal than any thing else, which had led to his change of conduct. He had been induced, one Sunday, by a friend who belonged to a dissenting congregation, to go with him to the meeting-house; and when he was there, there was something in the energy of the preacher's manner, in the vehement action by which his teaching was accompanied, and in his seeming earnestness in the holy cause of GOD, which, as it was quite new to John, was particularly striking to him. Compared with the fervour of this man, the quiet but sound discourses of his Rector seemed spiritless and tame; and John came out of the meeting under the influence of such enthusiastic feelings, as led him to resolve to visit it again the first opportunity. And thus he was led on to go again and again, till at last he made up his mind to become a regular attendant there. VOL. I.-No. 29.

A