4. It is worthy of our especial observation, that the doctrine, propounded by the divines of the fourth and fifth centuries, and adopted by Bertram in the ninth century; namely, that the con

quod, in mysterio dominici corporis et sanguinis, quotidie credentibus PRÆSENTATUR: ut, quisquis ad illud accesserit, noverit se passionibus ejus sociari debere, quarum IMAGINEM in sacris mysteriis præstolatur-Quod semel fecit, nunc quotidie frequentatur. Semel enim, pro peccatis populi, se obtulit. Celebratur tum hæc eadem oblatio singulis per fideles diebus : sed IN MYSTERIO: ut, quod Dominus Jesus Christus semel se offerens adimplevit, hoc in ejus passionis MEMORIAM quotidie geratur per mysteriorum celebrationem. Nec tamen falso dicitur, quod, in mysteriis illis, Dominus vel immoletur vel patiatur: quoniam illius mortis atque passionis habent SIMILITU DINEM, quarum existunt REPRESENTATIONES. Unde dominicum corpus et sanguis dominicus appellantur: quum ejus sumunt appellationem, cujus existunt sacramentum. Hinc beatus Isidorus, in libris Etymologiarum, sic ait: Sacrificium dictum, quasi sacrum factum; quia prece mystica consecratur, in MEMORIAM dominicæ passionis. Bertram. de corp. et sang. dom. p. 197-200.

Isidore Hispalensis flourished in the seventh century. Bertram has fortunately preserved a remarkable passage in this old writer's Book on Etymologies, which the emendatory care of the Roman Priesthood (EMENDATUS tolerari queat, as the Douay divines speak) has carefully excluded from its proper place (Isid. Etymol. lib. vi. c. 19.) in the printed copies of his Works. I subjoin it, on the principle of gathering up the fragments that nothing may be lost. See Cosin. Histor. Transub. Papal. c. v. § 26. p. 85.

Sicut visibilis panis et vini SUBSTANTIA exteriorem nutrit et inebriat hominem: ita Verbum Dei, qui est panis vivus, participatione sui, fidelium recreat mentes. Isid. Hispal. Etymol. apud Bertram. de corp. et sang. dom. p. 200, 201.

secrated elements are an unbloody sacrifice, because they are the memorial and representation of the one only true sacrifice upon the cross; shewed itself, under the sanction of a great Latin theologian, even so late as the middle of the twelfth century: in other words, that doctrine shewed itself, only about some sixty or seventy years before the time, when the transubstantialising decree of the fourth Council of Lateran stamped, upon the word UNBLOODY, as then and since applied to the sacrifice of the Mass, the character of utter absurdity and hopeless incongruity.

In the year 1150, the famous Peter Lombard, commonly called the Master of the Sentences, was made Archbishop of Paris: and, in the year 1215, Pope Innocent III and his packed Conventicle (which is rated as the twelfth Ecumenical Council) first decreed by name the orthodoxy of the tenet of Transubstantiation.

Let us now hear this great theologian's resolu+ tion of a regularly propounded question.

Can that, which the priest transacts, be rightly called a sacrifice or immolation: and is Christ daily sacrificed, or was he only once sacrificed?

That, which is offered and consecrated by the priest, is called a sacrifice and oblation, because it is the MEMORIAL and REPRESENTATION of the true sacrifice and holy immolation accomplished upon the altar of the cross. And Christ died once upon the cross, and was there IN HIMSELF sacrificed: but he is daily sacrificed IN A SACRAMENT; because, in the

sacrament, a coMMEMORATION is made of that which WAS DONE only once'.

5. The following, then, is the sum of the present branch of evidence.

When the sacrament of the Eucharist, about the end of the third or the commencement of the fourth century, began, analogically with the character of the prechristian levitical oblations, to be esteemed a symbolical and commemorative sacrifice that alleged mere imitative and shadowy sacrifice was, consistently and accurately and in truth contradistinctively, styled UNBLOODY; for obviously, in such a sacrifice, no blood was either shed or present.

But, when, in the same sacrament, the substance of the bread and wine was, in defiance of all antiquity, determined to be materially changed into the substance of Christ's body and blood; and when, consequently, the celebration of the Eucharist was deemed a literal sacrifice of the literal body and blood of the Saviour: nothing

Si, quod gerit sacerdos, proprie dicatur sacrificium vel immolatio: et si Christus quotidie immoletur, vel semel tantum immolatus sit?

Et

Illud, quod offertur et consecratur a sacerdote, vocari sacrificium et oblationem, quia MEMORIA est et REPRÆSENTATIO veri sacrificii et sanctæ immolationis factæ in ara crucis. semel Christus mortuus est in cruce, ibique immolatus est IN SEMETIPSO quotidie autem immolatur IN SACRAMENTO; quia in sacramento RECORDATIO fit illius, quod FACTUM EST semel. Pet. Lombard. Sentent. lib. iv. distinct. 12. apud Usser. de' Success. p. 98.

D d

could be more flagrantly absurd, than to continue to bestow the epithet of UNBLOODY upon what the innovating transubstantiative decree of the fourth Lateran Council had plainly metamorphosed into a BLOODY sacrifice.

Custom, however, not unfrequently prevails over fitness and propriety: and, through the oversight of innovators, ancient formulas, those grievous and provoking telltales, are not always made to square with new speculations. The old epithet UNBLOODY was carelessly retained, though the reason for its adoption had ceased'. And thus the very retention of the epithet betrayed the innovation, while it evinced the prior existence of a more ancient and a very different scheme of doctrine.

VI. Bellarmine, I believe, was the first or one of the first, who adduced the ancient Christian Mysteries as an evidence for the primeval reception of the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

1 So versed are the Roman Priesthood in the avowed tortuous Douay policy of the Extenuemus, excusemus, excogitato commento persæpe negemus, et commodum sensum eis affingamus; that Dr. Trevern and his ingenious brethren will doubtless be able to shew, in the clearest possible manner: how A sacrifice, in which literal substantial BLOOD is poured out from the chalice, may, nevertheless, be properly denominated an UNBLOODY sacrifice. They have only, according to their wont, to affix a commodious sense to an old inappropriate epithet: and the business will be so completely done, that no one, savé an obstinate Protestant, will ever dream of disputing the strict philological accuracy of the criticism.

The Eucharist, he argued, was one of the secrets of the Mysteries. But it could only have been made a secret on account of its involving the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Therefore, from the very beginning, the doctrine of Transubstantiation was a principal secret of the ancient Mysteries.

Thus notably reasoned Bellarmine: but Schelstrate, in his Disciplina Arcani, seems to have advanced a step even beyond the sufficiently adventurous Cardinal.

The wretched scantiness of any thing, which the most dexterous management could construe to resemble historical demonstration, in the ecclesiastical writings of the three first centuries, must inevitably strike every person who has paid the least attention to the subject.

This glaring want of early evidence (the only evidence, which, in historical research, can be deemed of any value) was naturally alleged, by the reformed Catholics, against those who still adhered to the innovations of the Church of Rome. The FACT itself was indisputable: and the question was, how its inconvenient stubbornness could best be managed. Here, with Bellarmine's speculation strapped upon his shoulders (meet burden for meet back), stepped in the ingenious Schelstrate; fully satisfied, that the somewhat late discovery of the learned Cardinal and his associates might now be turned to a specially good account.

The doctrine of Transubstantiation (thus com