You Church has Transubstanno authority

tiation, so she has given us whereby we can require it to be believed that the substance of Christ's Body and Blood, still less His entire person as God and man, now glorified in the heavens, is made to exist with, in, or under, the material substances of bread and wine.

"2. You will continue to teach that this sacrifice of the altar is to be regarded no otherwise than as the means whereby we represent, commemorate, and plead, with praise and thanksgiving before God, the unspeakable merits of the precious death of Christ; and whereby He communicates and applies to our souls all the benefits of that one full and allsufficient sacrifice once made upon the cross.

"3. You will continue to teach that the consecrated elements, being the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, are to be received with lowly veneration and devout thankfulness. And inasmuch as doubts have been raised with regard to the true interpretation of the rubric affixed to the Communion Office in the Book of Common Prayer, we desire to remind you of a canon which was passed by the Convocations of both provinces of the object of the Church of England in 1640, and which we are satisfied to accept meanwhile for our guidance in determining the sense of the aforesaid rubric, the matter not having been ruled by a general synod of our own Church. According to that canon it was resolved that gestures of adoration, in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, are to be performed 'not upon any opinion of a corporal presence of the Body of Jesus Christ on the holy Table, or in mystical elements, but only for the advancement of God's Majesty, and to give Him alone that honour and glory that is due to Him, and no otherwise.'

"These words of fatherly guidance and admonition, in a time of trouble and offence, we claim to offer to you all by a right essentially inherent in a provincial episcopate; a right which was constantly exercised by the bishops of the primitive Church. Whenever, in the exercise of this right-or rather in the performance of this duty-they had occasion to animadvert upon the teaching of one

of their own body, doubtless they would feel their position of responsibility doubly difficult and painful. And the same, most assuredly, has been felt by us. We would gladly, most gladly, have avoided the course now taken if we could have done so consistently with the solemn obligations under which we lie towards you all, and not least towards our brother himself.

"The reluctance we have shewn to adopt any synodal action in this case, and the calls we have made upon our brother, both privately and in Synod, and the opportunities we have given him to re-consider what he has written, are a proof of this. But tracing, as we plainly do, in the teaching of this Charge, a tendency to undermine the great foundations upon which our formularies rest, and to weaken our sense of gratitude and respect towards the holy men from whom we have derived them in their present state; and seeing also on his part an apparent determination not to surrender the position he has taken up; we have felt ourselves constrained to deal with the matter as we have now done. For this purpose we have assembled in special Synod, which a due regard to the peace and security of the Church appeared to us to require. We earnestly entreat you to join with us in prayer that the issue of our anxious and solemn deliberations may be blessed to the restoration of mutual confidence and harmony, and to the avoiding of all causes of dissension and offence for the time to come.

"Grace be with you, brethren, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

"C. H. TERROT, Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus.

"ALEXANDER EWING, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles.

"W. J. TROWER, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway.

"ROBERT EDEN, Bishop of Moray and
Ross.

"CHARLES WORDSWORTH, Bishop of St.
Andrew's, Dunkeld, and Dunblane.
"THOMAS GEORGE SUTHER, Bishop of
Aberdeen.

Edinburgh, May 27, 1858.

"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ?"-1 Cor. x. 16.

THE history of the Apostolic Church, as given in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Epistles, may be said to be a model and miniature of all that was to come after in Ecclesiastical History. In the Apostles and their associates we find patterns of the different characters and endowments of Christians down to the end of time; after ages only offering feebler repetitions of what those holy men were. In St. John, the devout and meditative Christian; in St. Paul, the extensively active and influential Christian; in St. Peter, the enthusiastic Christian, with strong will and abilities for administration; in Barnabas, the quiet and gentle Christian, whose voice soothes the mourner; in Apollos, the eloquent teacher, who kindles with his lofty theme; in Timotheus, the disciple who has imbibed the principles of true religion from a mother's precepts, combined with a mother's prayers,-are

* From "Lectures on the Holy Communion," and from "Farewell Counsels" (Rivingtons).

respectively exemplified. And as it is with characters, so it is with heresies, contradictions, controversies, and movements in the Church. A little model and miniature of all these movements (very perfect and exact as models and miniatures are) is to be found in the primitive Church, while yet it was under inspired government. There was a Rationalistic party in the Sadducees. And there was a Romanising party, -Romanizing, I mean, in tendency and spirit, before the Church of Rome was ever heard of, -among the Pharisees. There was a strong Antinomian party, denounced and censured by St. James. There was a strong party who stood up for justification by human merit, demolished a thousand times over by St. Paul, so that one would think (although the event has not justified the anticipation) that they never could have held up their heads again. There was a philosophical party called Gnostics, who adulterated the faith by spurious admixtures of Rabbinical and Oriental speculations, against whom St. John, the great speculative divine of Inspiration, directed all his strength. And, finally, there was in those days the Free-grace and Free-will controversy (called in these modern times Calvinistic and Arminian), which the holy Apostles left without any logical adjustment, making statements which looked in both directions; so that the result of all Biblical research on that moot point has been well and tersely summed up thus: "Calvinists and Arminians are both right and wrong; they are right in what they assert, and wrong in what they deny."

And was there any controversy on the subject of the Eucharist in the time of the Apostles, as there has been much since? No formal controversy on this great subject even showed its head, -much less came to a crisis,-till the eighth century of the Christian Era. But still there

were the elements of Eucharistic controversy in the Apostolic Church, though they were not for a long time to receive their full development. Modern views on the subject err either in excess or defect; the Lord's Supper is either unduly exalted (which is the tendency of all Roman and Romanizing Theology), or unduly depreciated (which is the error of the Protestant sects). Now it is clear that the last of these errors found itself represented in the Corinthian Church in the time of St. Paul. Their flagrant desecration of the Ordinance could not possibly have consisted with any high view of it. Those who snatched their own portion of the common Supper, before the communicants had fully assembled, and the entertainment had been formally opened, could not have regarded with much reverence the sacred Institution, which was to form part of that supper. They looked upon it too familiarly (though one would think the very solemn words of Institution would have acted as a sufficient safeguard against desecration); the Ordinance had dropped in their estimation to the level of a very common thing. Accordingly, St. Paul sets himself to put it on a higher level in their minds, that it might be out of reach of their desecration. For before he enters on their abuse of it in the eleventh chapter, he expounds, in another connexion, the nature and dignity of the Sacrament in the tenth. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the Communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ ?" And still in the eleventh chapter he harps on the dignity of the Ordinance; he speaks of their eating and drinking unworthily, in consequence of their not discerning the Lord's Body, i. e. not appreciating the mystery of it, not distinguishing between it and a common meal. And the guilt incurred by an irreverent and undiscriminating reception is painted by him in these frightfully strong colours: "Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord." And he points out that this guilt would be, and in their case had been, followed by certain temporal judgments of God upon the offenders, sickness and death, which judgments, he says, were corrective, and designed to bring the Corinthian Church to a right mind. "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh" (the word "damnation" in our Authorised Version, which has given rise to so

much false alarm, is well known by all scholars to be a thoroughly inaccurate rendering) "a judgment unto himself." The kind of judg ment is immediately explained in the verse next following; "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep” (i. e. sleep in death.) And the merciful design of the judgment (which was in order to avert eternal condemnation) is subjoined: "But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned" (here the word "condemned" is perfectly right) "with the world."

Now this manner of writing on the part of St. Paul, the Apostle, generally speaking, not so much of Ordinance as of Faith,--gave the first impulse to a reaction in the minds of Christians on the subject of the Lord's Supper. His Apostolic word had disentangled the Eucharist from the Supper with which it was once associated; had placed it in a shrine of its own; had declared its true nature as a participation of the Body and Blood of Christ; and had pointed out the sad consequences of desecrating it. From that time forth, there arose in the Church a strong tendency to exalt the Eucharist, which, like most strong tendencies, became, as time went on, grossly exaggerated, and resulted at length in what may be rightly called the deification of the Ordinance. Thus in the Apostolic Church we find a party which irreverently derogated from the dignity of the Lord's Supper; and we also find in St. Paul's censure of this party, the origin of the tendency which resulted in an undue exaltation of it. For indeed, in that Apostolic Church, as I have said, were the seeds of all future Ecclesiastical History.

It will be wel, in endeavouring to expound the Scriptural and Church of England doctrine of the Eucharist, to state briefly and clearly the two extreme views (you may call them, for the sake of a name, the Rationalizing and Romanizing views) between which the truth lies. And may God help me, by the light of His Spirit, to a clear exposition, and you to a clear understanding of this matter, for His Son's sake!

I. What may be called the Rationalizing view of the Lord's Supper acknowledges no mystery in the transaction. It is all, according to this view, as plain as day. Just as a dying father gathers his children round his deathbed, and gives them each his blessing, and puts into the hand of each some little token by which, when he is gone, they may call him to mind, so,

it is said, the Everlasting Father, when on the eve of leaving those whom He so lovingly called His "little children," instituted a certain rite for their observance, which rite was purely and merely commemorative, answered (and was designed to answer) no other purpose towards them than that of reminding them in a lively manner, through the senses, of the Blessed Body which had been broken, and the precious Blood which had been spilled for them. No one denies, you will observe, that this commemoration is one great object of the Holy Communion. But the divines, whose views we are now representing, maintain this to have been its exclusive object, and that this account of the Ordinance exhausts the subject. With regard to the words of Institution: "This is my Body;" "This is my Blood;" it is maintained that they are to be taken figuratively; "This Bread is a figure of my Body," "This Wine is a figure of my Blood;" and instances are adduced from the Scriptures, where the substantive verb "is" has a similar meaning to that which is here imposed upon it; as for example, "The seven good kine are seven years" (that is, represent, or stand for, seven years); "The seed is the Word of God;" "The harvest is the end of the world;" (meaning that the seed and the harvest, in the parables where they occur, represent, respectively, the Word of God and the end of the world ;) and so forth.

Now, perhaps, had it not been for the Apostle Paul, we might think this view capable of a tolerable reconciliation with Holy Scripture. He, however, was appointed by God to bring out more clearly, and define more exactly, the words of Institution, which his Divine Master had employed. And be it observed, that St. Paul's style of writing is not imaginative or rhetorical, but logical, closely argued, and, generally speaking, as far removed as possible from the figurative. Thus he paraphrases (and in paraphrasing points out the true force of) the words, in which the Ordinance had been instituted. "The Cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not the Communion" (mutual or reciprocal participation) "of the Blood of Christ? The Bread which we break, is it not the Communion of the Body of Christ ?"

He does not say, "Is it not a figure or representation of the Blood and Body of Christ" (though this would have been perfectly intelligible and perfectly true); his words go far beyond this in strength and mysteriousness; he says, "Is it not a communication of, a means of

participating in, the Body and Blood of Christ ?" Now what is the utmost you could say with truth of the miniature of a deceased parent? You might say no doubt, "This miniature reminds me of my dear father and mother, and brings back especially to my mind that painful hour when they forsook me, having first committed me to His care, who is the Protector of orphans." But no man, speaking prose and scber sense, could possibly say of such a miniature; "My looking on this miniature is a means, whereby I hold intercourse with the spirit of my departed parent in Paradise." It is perhaps just conceivable that in very highflown and extravagant poetry some such idea might be insinuated; but the Epistle to the Corinthians is not poetry; and even if it were, where the Holy Ghost is the speaker, and the faith of the Catholic Church on the most important Ordinance of Religion is the thing to be determined by His verdict, His speech will surely be in all truth, and soberness, and exactitude.

Thus the view that the Eucharistic Rite is simply commemorative, and the Consecrated Elements merely figures, is excluded at once and for ever, by the plain language of the Apostle Paul.

And our Church faithfully and devoutly echoes his language, telling us in the Catechism that "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed" (not in an empty figure and barren ceremony but "verily and indeed ") "taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper;" and in the Twenty-eighth Article, that "the Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death; insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ."

2. We now come to the Romanizing view of the Eucharist, which culminates, or finds its extreme form, in the dogma called "Transubstantiation." I will represent, as shortly and plainly as I can, what well-instructed Romanists mean by that dogma, observing, first, that their views on this, and other points of Theology, aro often much misapprehended and misrepresented by Protestants.

Transubstantiation, as our Twenty-eighth