he standeth; from his place shall he not remove: yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble." "One cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workmen, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good." (Psalm cxv. 4-7; cxxxv. 15, etc.; Isaiah xlvi. 6,7; Jer. x. 35.) This is all banter, and would be profane in the extreme, if anything like it could be predicated of the Most High. But this raillery will equally apply to the popish god, if bread be substituted in the place of metal and timber. The gods mentioned in these texts had the human shape, and the popish god is said, to have the human body and soul connected with his divinity: he must therefore have the parts of a human body, such as the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. You may therefore jeer these bread worshippers: "Their idols are bread, the work of men's hands. They have mouths but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not;" etc. They lavish "meal" out of the bag, and hire a priest, "and he maketh it a god. They fall down, yea, they worship it. They carry him and set him in his place. From his place he shall not remove. Yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble.' They must needs be borne, because they cannot go be not afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.' Isaiah xliv. 9-20, contains a most satirical description of the process of making a god, and shows the absurdity of constructing him out of materials which are used in the ordinary affairs of life. Thus an ash is planted and grows to maturity; it is then cut down and divided. With one part the man makes a fire, warms himself, bakes bread and roasts flesh for his dinner, and he is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself and saith, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire ;" the 66 66 other part is made into a god and worshipped. Car anything be more ridiculous? So the wheat is sown, "and the rain doth nourish it;" when ripe it is cut down and trodden out, taken to the mill and ground. With part of it he maketh bread, and eateth of it, and is satisfied: "And the residue thereof he maketh a god; he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god." The one process is quite as silly as the other. In all the above instances the host answers exactly to the description of the idols; but these idols are placed in opposition and contrast to the Almighty; the host therefore is not God, but an idol. If all the characters of an idol met in the supreme Being, he could not be distinguished from it. It is remarkable too, that in determining the question as to whether a certain being be God, or not, the appeal is made to our senses. When we are told that these false gods cannot see, hear, smell, taste, feel, breathe, move, or do good or evil, etc., our senses bear witness to the truth of these affirmations, and our reason draws the inference, that a dead stock or stone cannot be the living God. But as far as we can judge by our senses, the host is as destitute as a stock or a stone of any principle of life ; and as God refers the matter to the decision of our senses, we have his warrant to bring the host, or any other pretended divinity to the same test. If the host may be alive without performing any of the functions of a living being, the same may be said of idols: like it, they may seem to be dead, and yet be alive; and if it be a virtue to believe against the senses in one case, it cannot be a sin to believe against them in the other; and then we have no means left of judging which is the true God, and which an idol. Pagan priests have as much right as popish priests have, to require their epeople to believe their god is alive, in spite of their senses, which testify that he is dead; and if you grant this, it is impossible to prove their idols are not real divinities. This plea against the senses can only serve the cause of error. We take the test which God has supplied; we bring both pagan and popish gods to it, and the former turn out to be mere blocks of metal or timber, and the latter only a crust, and we throw them all away to the moles and to the bats, and have done with them for ever. In some respects, however, the popish absurdities far exceed anything recorded in scripture of idolaters. Some heathens have made gods and then worshipped them; but these gods were never eaten: others have worshipped gods and eaten them, but these gods were the productions of nature and not of human fabrication : it was reserved for the papists to unite these monstrosities. They are the only people I have read of, who make a god, then bend the knee to him in adoration, and then pop him into their mouth and devour him. In the Missal we read, "If anything poisoned shall have touched the consecrated wafer, then let the priest consecrate another, and let him take this in the manner directed, and let the former be preserved in the tabernacle in a separate place, until it be corrupted, and after that be thrown into holy ground."* If poison shall have touched the host,-query, Is the host poisoned? Is Christ killed by it? Poisoned hosts have been sometimes administered. In the year 1313, the emperor, Henry VII., was poisoned in the host by a monk who was suborned by pope Clemens V. An Arian princess had been taken off in the same manner. If a few grains of arsenic were mixed with the bread, though the priest would venture his salvation upon it, that, by consecration, the bread is changed into the body of Christ, yet he dare not venture his life upon it, the arsenic is changed; he dare not swallow the host. Those who take a poisoned host, do not find it literally the bread of life. "If the priest vomit the eucharist, and the species appear entire, he must piously swallow it again; but if nausea prevent him, then let the consecrated species be cautiously separated, and put in some holy * Extracts, p. 10. Jortin, vol. 3, p. 370. 66 place," etc.* "The eucharist," the reader is to recollect, contains whole Christ, body, soul, and divinity;" and here, in a popish prayer book for public worship, it is supposed a priest may vomit up the divine Saviour. Then he is required, like a dog, to turn to his own vomit, and lick it up again. But it is imagined that the sight of his god may sicken him, in which case he is to be excused. Since a priest may be sick of his god, I hope the papists will not be offended if we are sick of him too: indeed such work as this is enough to sicken any beast. "If in winter the blood be frozen in the cup, let the cup be covered round with warm cloths; if that will not do, let it be put into boiling water near the altar, till it be melted; taking care that the water does not get into the cup." The blood of Christ frozen, and yet his soul and divinity are supposed to be united to that blood! Any medical man can inform you that no man can be alive when his blood is all frozen. The soul and divinity must have kept out the frost, or the frost must have expelled the soul and divinity. Here is a god frozen up in a cup! Have pity upon him, and swaddle him in warm cloths! If these do not liquify him, put the cup into boiling water, but" take care that the water does not get into the cup," or you will scald your god and saviour to death. Is it possible for protestants to represent the doctrine of transubstantiation in a more contemptible light than the papists themselves have done in these extracts? When the church of Rome began to teach the doctrine that the body and blood of Christ were literally swallowed by the faithful in the Lord's supper, the famous question was mooted as to what became of them. Amalarius had an infirmity which obliged him to spit very frequently, and a holy monk, Gontardus, was scandalized at observing him to do this soon after his receiving the eucharist, supposing he might eject some part of the Saviour's body, the fear of which caused * Ouseley's Old Chris., p. 41. + Extracts, p. 10. He other parts to avoid the practice at such a time. replies that, being a phlegmatic man, he could not long forbear spitting; and expresses a hope that God will not deprive him of the benefit of the sacrament on account of his infirmity; and ventures to suggest that, “It is needful to inquire whether our Saviour's body, after it is received with an upright intention, be invisibly raised up into heaven, or kept in our body till its burial; whether it be exhaled into the air, or issues out of the body with the blood, or through the pores; the Lord saying, that whatever enters into the mouth, goeth down into the belly, and thence into the draught." Some divines contended that it was more decent to suppose either that the species are annihilated, or have a perpetual being, or are changed into flesh and blood, than that any part of them should be evacuated as excrements. Each of these opinions had its advocates. Those who were for the latter, argued from the words of our Lord, that what goeth into the mouth, is subjected to the ordinary processes of nature. This opinion, however, was unpopular as derogating from the dignity of our Lord's body; and its abettors were stigmatised with the delicate title of Stercorists. When the question was entertained by the schoolmen, some centuries after, they determined that "the species of eucharist may be corrupted and converted into another substance; God, by his infinite power, producing another matter instead of that which is converted into the body and blood of our Saviour.* Thus the Stercorists carried the day, but it was with the help of a miracle. It seems the sacred host may be corrupted; but when this has taken place, it is no longer the body of Christ, but is changed into another substance; and it is this other substance, and not the body of Christ, that is stercorated. Here is a second transubstantiation. The first is on the altar, where the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ; the second * See this subject handled more at large in Du Pin, vol. 7, cent 9, chap. 7. |