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from the Apostles. Whatever be our other misfortunes, every link in our chain is safe; we have the Apostolical Succession, we have a right form of consecration: therefore we are blessed with the great Gift." Here the question rises in me, "Who told you about that Gift?" I answer, "I have learned it from the Fathers: I believe the Real Presence because they bear witness to it. St. Ignatius calls it 'the medicine of immortality:' St. Irenæus says that our flesh becomes incorrupt, and partakes of life, and has the hope of the resurrection,' as 'being nourished from the Lord's Body and Blood;' that the Eucharist is made up of two things, an earthly and an heavenly:' perhaps Origen and perhaps Magnes, after him, say that It is not a type of our Lord's Body, but His Body: and St. Cyprian uses language as awful as can be spoken, of those who profane it. I cast my lot with them, I believe as they." Thus I reply, and then the thought comes upon me a second time, "And do not the same ancient Fathers bear witness to another doctrine, which you disown? Are you not as a hypocrite, listening to them when you will, and deaf when you will not? How are you casting your lot with the Saints, when you go but half-way with them? For of whether of the two do they speak the more frequently, of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, or of the Pope's Supremacy? You accept the lesser evidence, you reject the greater."

In truth, scanty as the Ante-nicene notices may be of the Papal Supremacy, they are both more numerous and more definite than the adducible testimonies in favour of the Real Presence. The testimonies to the latter are confined to a few passages such as those just quoted. On the other hand, of a passage in St. Justin, Bishop Kaye remarks, "Le Nourry infers that Justin maintained the doctrine of Transubstantiation; it might in my opinion be more plausibly urged in favour of ConHær. iv. 18, § 5.

substantiation, since Justin calls the consecrated elements Bread and Wine, though not common bread and wine1... We We may therefore conclude that, when he calls them the Body and Blood of Christ, he speaks figuratively." "Clement," observes the same author, "says that the Scripture calls wine a mystic symbol of the holy blood... Clement gives various interpretations of Christ's expressions in John vi. respecting His flesh and blood; but in no instance does he interpret them literally His notion seems to have been that, by partaking of the bread and wine in the Eucharist, the soul of the believer is united to the Spirit, and that by this union the principle of immortality is imparted to the flesh."2 "It has been suggested by some," says Waterland, "that Tertullian understood John vi. merely of faith, or doctrine, or spiritual actions; and it is strenuously denied by others." After quoting the passage, he adds, "All that one can justly gather from this confused passage is that Tertullian interpreted the bread of life in John vi. of the Word, which he sometimes makes to be vocal, and sometimes substantial, blending the ideas in a very perplexed manner; so that he is no clear authority for construing John vi. of doctrines, &c. All that. is certain is that he supposes the Word made flesh, the Word incarnate to be the heavenly bread spoken of in that chapter."3 "Origen's general observation relating to that chapter is, that it must not be literally, but figuratively understood."4 Again, "It is plain enough that Eusebius followed Origen in this matter, and that both of them favoured the same mystical or allegorical construction; whether constantly and uniformly I need not say.' I will but add the incidental testimony afforded on a late occasion:-how far the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist depends on the times before the Nicene

1 Justin Martyr, ch. 4. 3 Works, vol. vii. p. 118–120.

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2 Clem. Alex. ch. 11. 4 Ibid. p. 121. 5 Ibid. p. 127.

Council, how far on the times after it, may be gathered from the circumstance that, when a memorable Sermon was published on the subject, out of about one hundred and forty passages from the Fathers appended in the notes, not in formal proof, but in general illustration, only fifteen were taken from Ante-nicene writers.

With such evidence, the Ante-nicene testimonies which may be cited in behalf of the authority of the Holy See, need not fear a comparison. Faint they may be one by one, but at least they are various, and are drawn from many times and countries, and thereby serve to illustrate each other, and form a body of proof. Thus St. Clement, in the name of the Church of Rome, writes a letter to the Corinthians, when they were without a bishop; St. Ignatius of Antioch addresses the Roman Church, and it only out of the Churches to which he writes, as "the Church which has the first seat in the place of the country of the Romans;" St. Polycarp of Smyrna betakes himself to the Bishop of Rome on the question of Easter; the heretic Marcion, excommunicated in Pontus, betakes himself to Rome; Soter, Bishop of Rome, sends alms, according to the custom of his Church, to the Churches throughout the empire, and, in the words of Eusebius, "affectionately exhorted those who came to Rome, as a father his children;" the Montanists from Phrygia come to Rome to gain the countenance of its Bishop; Praxeas, from Africa, attempts the like, and for a while is successful; St. Victor, Bishop of Rome, threatens to excommunicate the Asian Churches; St. Irenæus speaks of Rome as "the greatest Church, the most ancient, the most conspicuous, and founded and established by Peter and Paul," appeals to its tradition, not in contrast indeed, but in preference to that of other Churches, and declares that "in this Church, every Church, that is, the faithful from every side must meet" or " agree

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together, propter potiorem principalitatem." "O Church, happy in its position," says Tertullian, "into which the Apostles poured out, together with their blood, their whole doctrine." The presbyters of St. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, complain of his doctrine to St. Dionysius of Rome; the latter expostulates with him, and he explains. The Emperor Aurelian leaves "to the Bishops of Italy and of Rome" the decision, whether or not Paul of Samosata shall be dispossessed of the see-house at Antioch; St. Cyprian speaks of Rome as "the See of Peter and the principal Church, whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise, whose faith has been commended by the Apostles, to whom faithlessness can have no access;" St. Stephen refuses to receive St. Cyprian's deputation, and separates himself from various Churches of the East; Fortunatus and Felix, deposed by St. Cyprian, have recourse to Rome; Basilides, deposed in Spain, betakes himself to Rome, and gains the ear of St. Stephen.

Whatever objections may be made to this or that particular fact, and I do not think any valid ones can be raised, still, on the whole, I consider that a cumulative argument rises from them in favour of the active and the doctrinal authority of Rome, much stronger than any argument which can be drawn from the same era for the doctrine of the Real Presence.

If it be said that the Real Presence appears by the Liturgies of the fourth or fifth century to have been the doctrine of the earlier, since those very forms probably existed from the first in Divine worship, this is doubtless an important truth; but then it is true also that the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries fearlessly assert, or frankly allow, that the prerogatives of Rome were derived from apostolic times, and that because it was the See of St. Peter.

Moreover, if the resistance of St. Cyprian and Fir

milian to the Church of Rome, in the question of Baptism by heretics, be urged as an argument against her primitive authority, or the earlier resistance of Polycrates of Ephesus, let it be considered, first, whether all authority does not necessarily lead to resistance; next, whether St. Cyprian's own doctrine is not more weighty than his act; thirdly, whether he was not already in error in the main question under discussion, and Firmilian also; and, lastly, which is the chief point, whether, in like manner, we may not object against the Real Presence the words of Tertullian, who explains, "This is my Body," by "a figure of my Body," and of Origen, who speaks of "our drinking Christ's Blood not only in the rite of the Sacraments, but also when we receive his discourses,"1 and says that "that Bread which God the Word acknowledges as His Body is the Word that nourishes souls,"2 -passages which admit of a Catholic interpretation when the Catholic doctrine is once proved, but which primâ facie run counter to that doctrine.

It does not seem possible, then, to avoid the conclusion that, whatever be the proper key for harmonizing the records and documents of the early and later Church, and true as the dictum of Vincentius must be considered in the abstract, and possible as its application might be in his own age, when he might almost ask the primitive centuries for their testimony, it is hardly available now or effective of any satisfactory result. The solution it offers is as difficult as the original problem.

A second hypothesis, far more widely adopted, not less plausible, and in a certain measure reconcilable with the former, is that of an early corrup tion of Christianity from external sources, Oriental, Platonic, and Polytheistic; an hypothesis which is certainly sufficient in the abstract to account both for variations which may exist in doctrine and prac2 Interp. Com. in Matt. 85.

1 Numer. Hom. xvi. 9.