With regard to his tone, I have nothing to complain. Standing, in this particular, honourably that, even so late as the fifth century, Theodoret unequivocally testifies the reputed orthodox doctrine of the Church, at that period, to have been the PRECISE OPPOSITE to the modern Romish Doctrine of Transubstantiation. (1.) In one of his Dialogues, he introduces Orthodoxy, personified under the name of Orthodoxus, as combating the Eutychian Heretic Eranistes; who, on the score of an asserted analogy, would fain, from what he pretends to be the doctrine of the Church, establish his own peculiar speculation. As the symbols of the Lord's body and blood, argues Eranistes, are (in the judgment of the Catholic Church herself) one thing before the sacerdotal invocation, but, after the invocation, are changed and become another thing: so the body of the Lord, after its assumption to heaven, was changed into the SUBSTANCE of the Deity. Nay, replies Orthodoxus: you are caught in the very net which you yourself have woven. For the mystic or sacramental symbols, after consecration, do NOT pass out of their own nature; but they REMAIN in the former SUBSTANCE and shape and appearance: and they are seen and touched as they were before. ΕΡΑΝ. Ὥσπερ τοίνυν τὰ σύμβολα τοῦ δεσποτίκου σώματος τε καὶ αἵματος, ἄλλα μὲν εἰσι πρὸ τῆς ἱερατικῆς ἐπικλήσεως, μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐπίκλησιν μεταβάλλεται καὶ ἕτερα γίνεται· οὕτω τὸ δεσπότικον σῶμα, μετὰ τὴν ἀνάληψιν, εἰς τὴν ΟΥΣΙΑΝ μετεβλήθη τὴν θείαν. ΟΡΘΟΔ. Εάλως αἷς ὕφηνες ἄρκυσιν. ΟΥΔΕ γὰρ, μετὰ τὸν ἁγιασμὸν, τά μύστικα σύμβολα τῆς οἰκείς ἐξίσταται φύσεως ΜΕΝΕΙ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῆς προτέρας ΟΥΣΙΑΣ καὶ τοῦ σχήματος καὶ τοῦ εἴδους· καὶ ὁρατὰ ἔστι καὶ ἁπτὰ, οἷα καὶ πρότερον ἦν. Theod. Dial. ii. apud Diffic. of Roman. book. ii. chap. 4. § IV. 3. p. 364. 2d. edit. Eranistes, we see, sophistically affecting to mistake the moral change of the elements for a physical change, and not choosing distinguished from certain of his brethren with whom I have heretofore been controversially en to attend to what the Ecclesiastical Writers so frequently say in explanation of their own current language, alleges, evidently on their statements thus perverted and garbled, precisely as a modern Romanist alleges on the same statements similarly perverted and garbled: that The Church of his own day, that is to say, the Church of the fifth century, held the doctrine which is now distinguished by the name of Transubstantiation. But Orthodoxus, by flatly denying that the Catholic Church held any such doctrine as that imputed to her by his adversary, and by explicitly stating on her behalf that the eucharistic bread and wine after consecration still REMAIN physically unchanged in their original SUBSTANCE, effectually demolishes, root and branch, his perfectly groundless inference from a pretended though unreal analogy. (2.) Dr. Trevern and Mr. Husenbeth attempt to evade the tremendous force of this distinct testimony, through the medium of a translation which any decent schoolboy knows to be grammatically impossible. In their hands, Theodoret's Greek, Mév yàp ènì TÕS πрOTÉρas οὐσίας καὶ τοῦ σχήματος καὶ τοῦ εἴδους, assumes the unexpected english dress of They remain in the shape and form of the former substance. But, even if the passage were grammatically ambiguous, WHICH IT IS NOT still the very drift and necessity of the reply of Orthodoxus to the plea set up by Eranistes would alone establish its true import. The mistranslation, advocated by these two divines, is not only a grammatical impossibility, but likewise a complete stultification of the answer of Orthodoxus: for it makes him admit, instead of deny, the basis of the analogical argument of Eranistes. I need scarcely say, that, to produce the version adventured by Dr. Trevern and pertinaciously defended by Mr. Husenbeth, gaged, Dr. Wiseman has at once the good taste and the sound wisdom to shew himself a gentle the passage, according to the quite familiar idiom of the language, must have run thus : Μένει γὰρ ἐπὶ τοῦ τῆς προτέρας ουσίας σχήματος τε καὶ είδους. But the gentlemen do not understand Greek. 2. Thus, even to omit a mass of other testimonies: thus clear and distinct was the attestation of the Early Orthodox Church to the true sense of Scripture touching the doctrine of the Eucharist. With respect to Scripture viewed simply and independently, our Lord's Discourse at Capernaum, if (what Dr. Wiseman will not deny) we admit the universal interpretation of its first part to be correct, is ALONE, by an inevitable consequence from that interpretation, sufficient to demonstrate the utter falsehood of the mere novel and intrusive dogma of Transubstantiation. III. I have said, that I myself reject the doctrine of Transubstantiation, solely because, instead of its resting upon any sufficient testimony, we have, from the beginning, the very strongest testimony against it: and this, I apprehend, is both the safest and the most satisfactory ground to take up. Yet the celebrated argument of Archbishop Tillotson, whether intrinsically solid or not, must, I should think, be at least somewhat perplexing to those persons, who hold the doctrine of an invisible Transubstantiation, of the apparently unchanged elements of bread and wine, into the literal and material body and blood of our Saviour Christ. He, that can once be brought to contradict or deny his senses, is at an end of certainty: for what can a man be certain of, if he be not certain of what he sees? In some circumstances, our senses may deceive us; but no faculty deceives us so little and so seldom: and, when our senses do deceive us, even that error is not to be corrected without the help of our senses. Supposing the doctrine of Transubstantiation had been delivered in Scripture in the very same words that it is decreed in the Council of Trent: by what clearer evidence or stronger argument could man. But I doubt, whether his argumentative treatment of me be quite as satisfactory as the tone of his language any man prove to me that such words were in the Bible, than I can prove to him that bread and wine after consecration are bread and wine still? He could but appeal to my eyes to prove such words to be in the Bible: and, with the same reason and justice, might I appeal to several of his senses, to prove to him, that the bread and wine after consecration are bread and wine still. Serm. xxvi. vol. ii. p. 184, 185. 1. However this may be (and, in all equity, I will fairly own, that, were I a Romanist, the learned Prelate's argument would rather puzzle than convince my altogether castrense ingenium), an invisible Transubstantiation stands directly opposed to every one of our Lord's Miracles, which are all invariably cognisable by the senses. 2. In the New Testament, a single instance of indubitable Transubstantiation is expressly and unequivocally recorded: that of the water into wine. But it differs from the alleged Transubstantiation of Roman Theology, on the very point which constitutes the force of the Archbishop's argument. (1.) The recorded Transubstantiation at Cana was verified both by sight and by taste and by smell. (2.) The asserted Transubstantiation of Roman Theology is contradicted both by sight and by taste and by smell. * This acknowledgment, however, of Dr. Wiseman's politeness, must, I am sorry to say, be confined to his Lectures on the Eucharist. In them, he is pleased to describe me, as doubtless one of the most strenuous and most ingenious of our modern antagonists and, immediately after his citation of the passage which I have just given in the last note, he very handsomely compliments me with denominating it a clear and manly acknowledgment. Lect. on the Euchar. lect. v. p. 177. lect. vi. p. 202. Mr. Faber, says he, has chosen one text out of the mass of passages commonly collected, as particularly to the purpose in proving, that the eucharis But, in his Lectures on the Doctrines and Practices of the (Roman) Catholic Church, addressed to the apparently mixed Congregation assembling in the chapel at Moorfields, though published in the same year as his Lectures on the Eucharist which were delivered to theological students in the English College at Rome, namely the year 1836 his tone, for whatever reason, is considerably changed. He there holds me up, to the invited reprobation of his hearers, as a person: who has been, not merely the most persevering, but also (for the expression is not too harsh) one of the most VIRULENT of our adversaries; and who, particularly on this subject of the Eucharist, has taken extraordinary pains to overthrow our belief. Lect. on the Doctr. and Pract. lect. xvi. vol. ii. p. 203. I. With respect to what I have said of the Eucharist, which seems to be the head and front of my offending, I must, in self-vindication, refer the cautious reader to two several and antithetical chapters in my Difficulties of Romanism. Diff. of Rom. book. i. chap. 4. book ii. chap. 4. 2d. edit. See 1. In the former of these chapters, I fairly give, as detailed by themselves, the evidence, which Dr. Trevern and Mr. Berington and Mr. Kirk have adduced in favour of Transubstantiation: and then I shew its total insufficiency to establish any such doctrine. : 2. In the latter of these chapters, I take up the matter conversely and then, by citation upon citation from the early Ecclesiastical Writers, I shew, that neither the Primitive Church nor even the Medieval Church held any such tenet as that of Transubstantiation, but that by accidental anticipation the Church of each period alike ever formally disowned and rejected it. II. A fairer line of discussion than this, I confidently |