work of our argument, we require nothing, beyond the cheap ordinary faculty of drawing, from divinely enunciated premises, their logically necessary conclusion.

Christ declares the bread from heaven to be his flesh.

Here we have the undeniable premises.

THEREFORE, the Eating of the flesh must unavoidably be the same as the Eating of the bread.

Here we have the logically necessary conclusion.

Dr. Wiseman, through a very extraordinary medium, as you well know, contends that the two phrases, Eating the Bread and Eating the Flesh, although thus inseparably connected, bear two entirely different meanings. But no efforts of ingenuity can avail him. When the fifty-first verse of the chapter is, as it must be,

taken into the account, the fatal syllogism will still run as before.

Christ declares the bread from heaven to be his flesh and he, furthermore, speaks alike of Eating the bread and of Eating the flesh. Therefore, since the Bread is his Flesh, the Eating of his flesh must inevitably be the same as the Eating of the bread.

From this syllogism, based upon premises divinely laid down by Christ himself, I venture to think, that Dr. Wiseman cannot possibly escape. For, let the two phrases, Eating the bread and Eating the flesh, mean concretely what they may, their import, abstractedly, must needs be identical. And thus, without the calling in of extraneous attestation to propriety of interpretation, the Discourse of Christ at Capernaum, nakedly and just as it stands, is, according to the confessedly universal understanding of the phrase Eating the Bread from heaven,

fatal to the Romish doctrine of Transubstan

tiation.

4. But, while such is the case, it is still, even though here a work of supererogation, satisfactory to consult ancient expositors as to how they understood the entireness of the Dis

course.

This, accordingly, I have done: and, if the process adds nothing to the independent force of the argument, it nevertheless may usefully serve to shew, that the interpretation advocated by Dr. Wiseman is not the interpretation delivered by the Early Catholic Church.

II. The somewhat wide field of Dr. Wiseman's Lectures on the Doctrines and Practices of the (Roman) Catholic Church, as delivered, apparently to a mixed congregation of Romanists and Anglicans, in the chapel at Moorfields, you have left, for the occupation and exercise of inferior labourers, almost wholly unreaped.

To write a regular Answer to this very plausible and ingenious Performance, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end, would not only be intolerably wearisome to the undertaker of such a task, but would likewise be attended with the manifest disadvantage of driving off, in huge dismay, all save inquirers of a stubborn patience, not very common, alas, in these days of little books and railway velocity. Dogged perseverance, no doubt, might produce an Answer of this description; a theological Gemino bellum trojanum orditur ab ovo: but, I suppose, it would be read pretty much about extensively as the Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum of the indefatigable scriptor cyclicus.

My remarks, therefore, on these Lectures, are incidental and detached and any thing rather than painfully cyclical: chiefly, in fact, confined to my Introduction and to somewhat long notes appended appended to my Introduction. Here, an occasional appeal to Antiquity was of

considerable use: and, in truth, albeit no great admirer of the Tractarian School, I must needs say; that those modern Ultra-Protestants, who would liberally throw aside such an appeal on the unexpected ground of its being an introduction of another Rule of Faith beside that which all we of the Reformed Churches hold to be the SOLE Rule, gratuitously undertake to encounter Rome with one arm tied up.

I mean not to assert, that these gentlemen may not be themselves satisfied without any such appeal: but this, I take it, is not exactly the point. The Romanist, who, like Dr. Wiseman, is dexterously attempting to make proselytes, must be met in a fashion, which may at once shew the invalidity of latin claims, and convince the wavering protestant that he is assailed with nothing more respectable than ingenious sophistry built upon daring assertion.

I need scarcely say, my dear Sir, that, in