according to the Apostolical author; and had it been the case that our Lord would have visited us in such an actual, entwining, " encircling" penetration, "transforming" "our very corruption into His incorruption" in our bodies, would He not have comforted His sorrowing Disciples with such a promise? And yet we have no hint even of it in the Sacred Writings. We must conclude, with our own Catechism, that "the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby," are "the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine." The symbols have one and an inferior use, while the souls of the due recipients gather strength from that very crucified Lord, who has ceased to be offered, and now "ever liveth to make intercession for all that come unto God by Him." The sacrificial character hath ceased, except in its effects; and the Mediatorial hath begun, and so shall continue until the Kingly shall have begun; and then shall be the restitution of all things, when from all a glorious union shall result, and every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God, the Father. We must leave to Dr. Pusey the full benefit of his literal interpretation, as far as himself is concerned; but, in pursuance of our design, we can hardly allow him to gain converts upon the supposition that our Church holds the literal interpretation. The Church service only speaks of a spiritual presence, as far as we can discover. But Dr. Pusey professes to have learned his literal mode from Andrewes and Bramhall: and what is the case as regards them? This is a point upon which Professor Lee has written; and he has shown, irrefutably, that neither of them held the literal interpretation of our Lord's words. Bramhall even has the following words: "Neither will it avail them at all, that the Fathers have sometimes used such expressions of seeing Christ in the Sacrament, of fastening our teeth in his flesh and making our tongues red in His blood. There is a great difference between a sermon to the people, and a solemn retractation before a judge." Dr. Lee remarks upon the omission of this in the sermon and notes. But we must pass on to the Homilies; and in the very passage quoted by Dr. Pusey we find the following: It is well known that the meat we seek for in this supper is spiritual food, the nourishment of our soul, a heavenly refection, and not earthly; an invisible meat, and not bodily; a ghostly substance, and not carnal; so that to think, that without faith we may enjoy the eating and drinking thereof, or that that is the fruition of it, is but to dream of gross carnal feeding, basely objecting, and binding ourselves to the elements and creatures." The opinion of the Homily is perhaps best understood by a reference to a passage immediately following the part first quoted by Dr. Pusey; for be it remarked that, although in the appendix there is no indication to that affect, yet the two paragraphs which he quotes are separated in the Homilies by a wide interval. The Homilist, after mentioning the names applied to the sacrament, declares them to be such as to inflame our hearts to covet this feast, and says, "Not as specially regarding the terrene and earthly creatures which remain, but always holding fast and cleaving by faith to the rock whence we may suck the sweetness of everlasting salvation." Words can hardly more strongly than these negative the literal, and establish the true spiritual, sense. The Homily denies any "bodily," repudiates any "carnal" presence, but maintains the "heavenly," the "invisible," and the "ghostly." Even so Dr. Pusey's second authority, Ridley. We are almost ashamed to give quotations on this point; but the character of our opponents renders it necessary. Let this be our excuse, if any are disposed to consider it useless or tedious. A show of authority has been made, and it is only a show. The question is, shall we denounce the policy as dishonest and subtle, or refute it and contradict it by a practical refutation? We prefer the latter; and although men confess that Ridley, as well as his companions, died for a figurative interpretation, and although his conferences were mainly on this point, still will we quote in proof of his opinion. One word, however, in reference to enquiring into the mode. In the index to the sermon and appendix, Dr. Pusey gives six writers as authority against such an enquiry, and we are rather anxious that there should seem no discrepancy between later writers and the Reformers, for discrepancy there is in reality none whatever. What is it, then, to which they do object? some will say; and we will answer by their own words. Hooker, in a MS. note on ch. lxvii., sec. 6, and in Keble's edition, has these words on the mode: "Not to be stood upon or contended for by them, because it is not a thing necessary, although, because it is false, as long as they do persist to maintain and urge it, there is no man so gross as to think in this case we may neglect it. Against them it is therefore said, &c." Here, then, is the whole question; and so, also, is Hooker's whole argument. He says, that Rome gains no more spiritual privileges than others. It only gains a carnal definition, an overlaying the Gospel; but yet on it rests the power of Rome, and therefore they must and will defend it. But again Hooker writes, "Whereas Popish doctrine doth hold that priests by words of consecration make the real, my whole discourse is to show, that GOD by the sacrament maketh the mystical body of Christ." So, also, Bishop Cosin; and here again we have a fault to allege against Dr. Pusey. In the appendix he quotes Hooker, book v., lxvii, sections 4, 5, 7, 8, omitting the 6th, which we have been compelled to quote above. The reason of this omission we must leave for others. But this is not all; for from Bishop Cosin he also quotes selections perhaps even in a more questionable manner. We give the words which Dr. Pusey has omitted: "We believe a presence and union of Christ with our soul and body, which we know not how to call better than sacramental—that is, effected by eating; that while we eat and drink the consecrated bread and wine, we eat and drink therewithal the body and blood of Christ, not in a corporal * Ed. by Keble, vol. ii., p. 354. The real point is this: we hold that the consecration only alters the use of the elements, their "use and office," as Bishop Cosin says, ch. i., iv., &c. We refer our readers to Dr. Pusey's opinion as contrary to this on p. 547, as quoted above from his letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 44. manner, but some other way, incomprehensible, known only to God, which we call spiritual; for if, with St. Bernard and the Fathers, a man goes no further, we do not find fault with a general explication of the manner, but with the presumption and self-conceitedness of those who boldly and curiously enquire what is a SPIRITUAL presence, as presuming that they can understand the manner of acting of God's Holy Spirit." * This is the part omitted by Dr. Pusey, and it completely overturns his position. It places the whole difficulty, not in its being a spiritualised body, but in its being applied to us by the Holy Spirit. Who shall dare to explain the manner in which that Blessed Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us? And yet we do not invest all that our own Blessed Lord has given us with a form physical and corporal; and even so we deny the corporal presence in any sense, except by its effects and by grace. "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." We have no necessity to reduce all mysteries to sensuous perception. We have no need to introduce that which Bishop Cosin terms the "leprosy of transubstantiation," and the rise of which he dates from the period in which Satan, bound a thousand years, was loosed from prison.† "Thus much we say that this Roman Transubstantiation is so strange and monstrous, that it exceeds the nature of all miracles." We desire to rest upon the rock of the written word, and to draw water from the well of salvation. : To return to the question of a literal interpretation: Ridley says, "In the Lord's words whereby he instituted the sacrament of His blood, he used a figurative speech."§ He also quotes from St. Augustine, in proof of his position, the well-known passage in which he condemns a literal interpretation-" Si flagitium aut facinus videtur jubere, aut utilitatem aut beneficentiam vetare ;" and as an illustration of this, Augustine gives St. John vi., 53-"Except ye eat the flesh," &c. Ridley also quotes Origen, who, in his seventh homily on Leviticus, produces the same verse as an instance, in which "the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." And, again, he quotes Tertullian: "This is My body that is, a figure of My body." He concludes his explication of Tertullian, by saying, "This was undoubtedly our Saviour's mind, and this is Tertullian's exposition." ** St. Augustine also calls it "the figure of His body." Bishop Cosin also quotes this same passage of Tertullian.++ He, too, quotes Origen and other Fathers, and clearly shows that they held the elements to be only signs and figures. We will only give one quotation from him, and the words he uses are those of Bertram : "It is evident that that bread and wine are figuratively the body and blood of Christ. According to the substance of the elements, they are after the consecration what they were before." ‡‡ No person, reading Bishop Cosin, can honestly pretend that he held the literal sense, or that he would say, with Dr. Pusey, that he believed "the consecrated elements to become, by virtue of His consecrating words, truly and really, yet spiritually and in an ineffable way, His body and blood." Hear, also, Bishop Morton : "If all Protestants should meet at once in one synod, and should conspire together as labouring to prove a figurative sense in these words of Christ-This is My body,' I suppose that a more exact, perspicuous, copious, and ponderous proof could not be desired, than hither hath been evinced from your own confessions, grounded as well upon sound and impregnable reasons as upon direct testimonies of Holy Scriptures." * So, also, Bishop Beveridge: "So that the very words of institution themselves are sufficient to convince any rational man, whose reason is not darkened by prejudice, that that of which our Saviour said 'This is my body,' was real bread, and so his body only in a figurative or sacramental sense." + And, again, in the Catechism, he says, "So when He saith of that which He gives us in this sacrament to eat and drink, This is My body and This is My blood, He means it in a spiritual sense, not as food for our bodies, but for our souls, which are strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood of Christ, the inward and spiritual grace, as our bodies are," &c. Archbishop Wake, also, on the Catechism, in answer to the question, "Can the same thing be Christ's body and bread too?" explains it thus: "I have before shown you not only that it may be so, but that it truly and really is so: Bread in substance; the Body of Christ by signification, by representation and spiritual communication of his crucified body to every faithful and worthy receiver." Hammond, in his "Practical Catechism," has the following words: "Not that the bread was His body, and the wine His blood, in strict speaking," (what is strict speaking but literal speaking?) "for He was then in His body when He so spake; and when the disciples distributed it among themselves, He was not bodily in every of their mouths. And now His body is in heaven, and there to be contained till the day of 'restitution of all things,' and is not corporally brought down to every sacrament, either to be joined locally with the elements, or for the elements to be changed into it. Many contradictions and barbarisms would be consequent to such an interpretation." ‡ Let us, readers, remember that these writers, decisive as they are, figure in the appendix of Dr. Pusey in support of his literal view and interpretation. But we must pass on to Archbishop Secker: "To believe that our Saviour took His own body, literally speaking, in His hands, &c., is to believe the most absolute impossibilities and contradictions." Such is the classification under which he places the literal * On the Sacraments, chap. ii., 5, p. 115. So, also, p. 146. P. 402. London, 1683. So, also, p. 416. He identifies body with benefits derived therefrom. interpretation, or Dr. Pusey's adopted system. "Though, in one sense, all communicants equally partake of what Christ calls His body and blood—that is, the outward signs of them; yet, in a much more important sense, the faithful only, the pious and virtuous receiver, eats His flesh and drinks His blood; shares in the life and strength derived to men from His incarnation and death; and, through faith in Him, becomes, by a vital union, one with Him; a member, as St. Paul expresses it, of His flesh and of His bones; certainly, not in a literal sense, (which, yet, the Romanists might as well assert, as that we eat His flesh in a literal sense,) but in a figurative and spiritual one.”* His But, still further, even Kettlewell speaks of Christ's body as meaning the effects of Christ's death, or the "blessings which the piercing of His body and the shedding of His blood procured for us." flesh, which all must eat, is not in its natural substance, but in its effects, or those blessings which were purchased by it."+ Waterland, also, abounds in refutations of a literal view: "It is right and just to argue that the sign or memorial of a thing is not the very thing signified or commemorated, but is distinct from it. Bread and wine, the symbols of Christ's natural body and blood, are not literally that very natural body and blood." Waterland uses the words "in just construction," as explaining the sense in which the bread and wine are the body and blood of our Lord.§ Bishop Patrick shows clearly what he understood by the words body and blood. "The body and blood of Christ," says he, are verily and indeed received of the faithful-that is, they have a real part and portion given them in the death and suffering of the Lord Jesus, whose body was broken, and blood shed, for the remis sion of sins. They truly and indeed partake of the virtue of His bloody sacrifice, whereby He hath obtained eternal redemption for us." There is no actual body but in its effects, in its virtue; not in its sensuous properties, but in its real, true, and lasting—yea, even eternal effects. Perhaps the most decisive opposition to the very words of Dr. Pusey will be found in Jeremy Taylor. Dr. Pusey, as we have seen, receives in their literal sense the words, "This is My body," and by virtue of these words believes a change to occur in the elements. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, however, says, "By what argument will it be so much as PROBABLY concluded, that these words, "This is My body,' should be the words effective of conversion and consecration?” That Christ used these words is true; and so he used all the others; * On the Catechism. + Kettlewell, the Non-juror, "on the Holy Sacrament," part i., chap. i., pp. 24, 25. London, 1713. Waterland's Review, p. 112, chap. iv. If our readers desire more references, we refer them especially to pp. 215, 223, 239, 259. § P. 203, chap. vii., 3. Waterland quotes it p. 284, chap. viii. : "Christian Sacrifice." Waterland quotes Thorndike, who evidently held the "spiritual use,” not “corporal substance," in the elements. And so, also, Cranmer. Waterland's Review p. 403, note, chap. x. |