of Historical Testimony whether scriptural or For these purposes, however useful in the present day of plausible deception they might be, I shall not now stop my business rather is to go on with the subject immediately before us. In answer, then, to what has been said, it may be asked: How can we NOW retrace our steps? Our course is chosen for good or for evil: and it is morally impossible for us to depart from it. I am no politician: nor do I pretend to give a solution of this confessedly difficult problem. Facilis descensus Averni : Sed, revocare gradus, seperasque evadere ad auras, The perplexity of our false position I perfectly feel: but its perplexity does not render it the more secure. In the unflattering language of Holy Writ, We have been backsliders in heart : and therefore we are filled with our own ways. Perplexing, however, as may be the position in which we have gratuitously and thanklessly placed ourselves, on scriptural grounds I am painfully constrained to believe, that nothing, save a retracing of our steps, can save us in that rapidly approaching day of God's judicial controversy, which the universal voice of Prophecy harmoniously announces, and which (as it is strongly expressed in one of the sacred oracles) shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time. We are now unhappily in such a situation, that, whatever line of action be adopted, whether we persevere in our course or whether we rescind our dangerous amalgamation with what our legislators swore to be Idolatry, either ultimate misery and trouble, or immediate rebellion and bloodshed, will be the punishment of our national apostasy in the fatal year 1829. By abandoning through ill-concealed distrust of God's aid and R ecclesiastical, I have elsewhere considered at protection the straight and ever dependable line of principle, and by following the old israelitish principle of political expediency which was even avowedly acted upon by Jeroboam and without which it is no easy matter to explain the idolatrous complaisance of Solomon to his matrimonial alliances with Egypt and Moab and Ammon and Edom and Heth and Sidon (for, that this intellectually enlightened prince really trusted in the protection of the canonised dead men and women of gentile superstition, it is passing hard to believe, however his heart or affection might be turned away from the unvarying stedfastness of his father David's exclusive adoration): we are now, in the just retributive judgment of Almighty God, made to verify the proverb Lupum auribus teneo. If we rescind what we have done; the miseries of a civil war stare us in the face, associated with bitter reproaches of our folly for adventuring upon so rash a deed: if we retain it and determinately abide by it; we link our national destiny, with no holy city as tricked out by the flattering pencil of Dr. Wiseman, but with the scripturally doomed city of destruction. : Under such circumstances, whither can the unpolitical Christian resort but to the footstool of a still merciful and still gracious God, with whom vengeance is his strange work? Prayer, unceasing prayer, must be the weapon of his warfare. We know, that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much and we humbly trust, that, in this our Zion, we have many righteous men, though the best of them be subject to like passions as ourselves. Never is the christian soldier more powerful, than when upon his knees. Let this attitude on this behalf, be assumed, morning and night, by every devout Anglican Catholic and the Lord peradventure may still be intreated. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth, if he will return, and leave a blessing behind him? Let the priests, the ministers large*. Hence, there is no occasion to pursue the matter any further in the present Treatise. Well, indeed, may I finally say: that, even in the absence of all other distinct proof, the Discourse at Capernaum alone, when its earlier part is interpreted as Dr. Wiseman and his brethren universally and very rightly interpret it, following therein the sense of the Early Church, effectually and invincibly, by an inevitable necessity of consequence, demonstrates the falsehood of the modern doctrine of Transubstantiation. Let it only be granted, that the Eating of the Bread from heaven denotes figuratively a Spiritual Believing in Christ under his character of a Sacrificed Victim self-given for the life of the world: and, from these premises, as we have seen, the conclusion unavoidably follows, that the Doctrine of Transubstantiation must be erroneous. On the signification of our Lord's Discourse as far as the forty-eighth or fifty-first verse, says Dr. Wiseman, Protestants and (Roman) Catholics are equally agreed: it refers entirely to BELIEVING IN HIM †. of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar: and let them say: Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people. * See my Diffic. of Roman. 2d. edit. T Lect. on the Euchar. lect. i. p. 39. To these, Dr. Wiseman might have added the Catholics of the Early Church and the Catholics of the Medieval Church. In short, agreeably to Christ's own explanatory words, there is, with rare harmony, only one interpretation of Eating the Bread from heaven. What, then, by no long chain of consequences, is the necessary result of this hermenuetic unanimity? Truly, through the inevitable medium of a figurative interpretation of Eating the Flesh of Christ which he himself identifies with Eating the Bread from heaven, THE DOCTRINE OF TRAN SUBSTANTIATION IS DETERMINED TO BE A FALSE HOOD. APPENDIX. THE laic author of Essays on the Church is a writer of so very different a calibre from sundry persons who have censured my Principle of ascertaining the true sense of Doctrinal Scripture, that I would not altogether pass over unnoticed the Strictures contained in the last edition of his Work which he has kindly forwarded to me. Essays on the Church, p. 193-220. edit. 1840. In saying My Principle, I wish to be understood as meaning only the Principle which I have adopted, not as meaning a Principle which I have invented. Be the Principle in question perfectly valid, as I myself think, or be it altogether invalid as the Layman thinks at all events, it is the Principle of the Church of England, as distinctly attested by Jewel and Casaubon, as recognised successively by Queen Elizabeth and King James, as formally enunciated in an express Canon, as invariably |