is the argument of one. He appeals to the Catechism: had he known the genuine meaning of the term "faithful," he would have seen its unescapeable decision against himself: "the Body and Blood of CHRIST which are verily and indeed taken and received by communicants in the LORD's Supper."-And "spiritual," he uses as opposed to "real :" to qualify so as to destroy it whereas it increases the reality and silences all argument against the most absolute literal interpretation of the words "My Flesh, My Blood:" the HOLY SPIRIT sanctifying the Flesh and Blood as well as the elements overshadowing and dwelling in them. As CHRIST is GOD, and GOD is a SPIRIT dwelling in the heavens, we partake of GOD in a spiritual and heavenly manner; as CHRIST is Flesh and Blood, conceived of the HOLY GHOST, we partake of Him as such spiritually a spiritual faith the Divine mean in us for a spiritual and heavenly partaking of Him who is GoD and Man in heaven: GOD in Man, inseparable. As spiritual, who can decide His possibilities? who can argue of the Divine Body of CHRIST by the rules of Man? limit its capacities, locations, gifts; assign its laws, and adjust its powers. Measure the infinite by the finite! miserable folly! Debate of the Incomprehensible as though bounded by our grasp, the Omnipotent, Omniscient, by our puny notions. "It cannot be One Body cannot be in two places at once! it is contrary to the evidence of my senses," says another, and straightway forgetteth what manner of Man He was talking of Faith and knowing not of the Body of CHRIST that entered in through closed doors, that was born of a Virgin, transfigured at Tabor, ascended to the FATHER's throne,-of this great miracle and mystery he denies the Presence he cannot comprehend: readily believing all those supernatural, and superrational facts, he disbelieves this one because it is above his reason, and contrary to the laws of nature: his sight, the measure of his Faith: his sense, the criterion of GOD's power: his word, the contradiction of God's Word. "This is My Body," to his mind is a mere figure: materialising everything when he talks about spiritualising: for he knoweth not the Spirit "Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him." Spiritual indeed is the partaking of CHRIST'S Body and Blood by the worthy communicant, for, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth" that Flesh and that Blood to be life eternal: "the Spirit is life: Whoso eateth Me shall live by Me:" unspiritual to him who discerning not the LORD's Body under that bread, the LORD's Blood under that cup, receives Sacramentally the Body and Blood unto his death.

Saravia has well rebuked these unbelieving limitations to CHRIST'S Presence.

"It is said that that Presence cannot be exhibited at the same moment in many places, because this is contrary to the manner and nature

of a true body which is circumscribed locally by its own dimensions; and that if you take these dimensions therefrom, you destroy thereby the nature of a body. Now the answer to all this is that it in nowise showeth that He Who is GOD, and Who created all things from nothing, cannot make Himself Present in His Body in many places, wheresoever He willeth in a supernatural and heavenly manner. It is true such a thing cannot take place in the order of nature, but only by that Divine power which overruleth all the order of nature. Divine Mysteries may not be tried by natural laws. They are beyond the reach and grasp of the human understanding. When the LORD appeared in the way to Saul as he went to Damascus, He did not leave the place which He filleth in heaven, in order to come down to him, nor did anything take place contrary to the words of Peter Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things.' The appearances of our LORD on earth after His ascension were without any local movement of the Body of the LORD; and though the sacred Scriptures sometimes speak of GOD as moving from His place, Who since He be incomprehensible cannot be moved from His place,—yet the Scriptures say nothing of the LORD moving from His place in those appearances of which I speak. These appearances prove that the LORD, whensoever and wheresoever He willeth, can make Himself Present. . . . . When a question is raised as to what God can do, and what He cannot, I think it impossible for man to assign the limits rightly. But in truth our controversy is not so much touching the power of GOD, as touching His Will, for whatever GOD willeth, that we may not doubt He can but He doth not will whatsoever He can. When it is clear what the will of God is, we may not discuss His power."-Pp. 27, 29.

It is a strange blemish on an argument so accurate, on an appeal so solemn for unhesitating faith in God's power whenever His will is plainly stated, that a doubt should be expressed, not to say a denial on pure rationalistic grounds, of "CHRIST bringing here upon earth, into certain limits of space, His Flesh and His Blood in that very place where the Mysteries be celebrated." Desirous of persuading to a belief in the Real Presence those whose chief difficulty was that a Local Presence was involved, and that that was contrary to their senses, instead of confining his argument to the latter fallacy, and subjecting his own intellect and theirs to the same triumphant appeal by which he demanded implicit faith in the Real Presence because " as to what GOD can do, it is impossible for man to assign the limits rightly," instead of either admitting the Local Presence as more consistent with God's word, or declining to discuss the method, reproving the sceptical and silencing all sensuous criticism by his own unanswerable rule "Divine Mysteries may not be tried by natural laws," he rather admits that a Local Presence would be impossible, and contents himself with an argument (easily refuted by his own vindication of faith) that the Real Presence cannot imply a Local Presence. The fact is, the dread of the "impicus conclusions" "blasphemous calum

nies" (as Saravia himself termed the railing of the multitude)-of being charged with transubstantiation, popery, &c., has impelled many of our wisest writers to contradict themselves. How many must have sighed over the inconsistencies of Hooker: now stating with a breadth and clearness that not the most complete believer could surpass, the actual Presence of the very Flesh and Blood of the Crucified, now protesting against reason's doubts, and now unsaying in a few sentences, the Divine doctrines, and the salutary rules he had just laid down. So it is with Jeremy Taylor, at one time, with perhaps greater distinctness than anybody, asserting that the Body and Blood of CHRIST are really Present, are actually given and received by the worthy and wicked alike-at another, reasoning away as Popish simple Catholic truths.

These and such inconsistencies never could have arisen had the test applied by Archdeacon Denison been kept in view. Allied to the Baptismal question, a spiritual participation of the elements was invented for the specially regenerate. Disbelieving that Baptism was connected with Regeneration, disbelieving that any but a small number of the Baptized or of the Communicants were regenerate, they by the same process and as a necessary result, disbelieved first that the Eucharistic elements were anything but bare elements to their unregenerate brethren, and, to account for this, denied that the words of consecration were effective, and substituted the feeling of the communicant for the operation of the HOLY GHOST. "This is My Body," "This is My Blood," were changed into "This shall be My Body, "This shall be My Blood;" yet spiritually, i.e., by your spirit, as opposed to actually, by the influence of the HOLY SPIRIT; faith, the agent instead of the means. Once in this dilemma, the light becomes more and more obscure; the way more perplexing, the newly struck-out paths more numerous, more tangled, more desperate, further and further from the one true track. Thus, if only by the regenerate is the inward part received, then before participation was it no Sacrament at all: yet, it was a Sacrament to both, they say, but a Sacrament only to the unworthy; it was a special member here and there who disbelieved CHRIST's presence in a Sacrament; and, as a reward, a special gift beside the Sacrament, viz., its inward part. By his faith was CHRIST present, and as faith was of the heart, so the Presence only by faith meant a Presence only in the heart. The Sacrament of the Body and Blood only were received by the wicked, not the Body and Blood, though to the query, "How many parts are there in a Sacrament ?" they would teach their children to answer two, Bread and Wine-the Body and Blood of CHRIST!" In reality, unworthy communicants would be "eating and drinking damnation to themselves--not discerning the LORD's Body." Believe these words of the Apostle, believe the words of our LORD, and you have the measure of a right belief, the test of heresy and truth. 66 Take, eat; this is My Body:" "Drink ye all of this:"

66

"This is My Blood of the New Testament." What Body? The Body which is given for you. No unreal,-spiritual, as opposed to material; symbolic, as opposed to corporeal-that Body which is given for you to death; death for your life. Therefore "The Bread which I will give is My Flesh; which I will give for the life of the world." What Blood? "The Blood of the New Covenant; real blood was shed under the old covenant; the blood of the lamb here is "the Lamb of GOD, that taketh away the sins of the world" but without shedding of blood there is no remission, therefore He said, "The Blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for and for you Here was for the remission of sins." many, no parabolic blood, no figurative, ideal shedding. Like as it was flesh that was broken, so was it blood that was spilled; the Flesh and the Blood of the Incarnate GOD.

This, and this in its most Divine, most literal sense, is what CHRIST bade His disciples eat and drink.

And therefore bade He, "Do this."

"CHRIST Our Passover is In what sense

sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast."

is CHRIST Our Passover? "CHRIST is said to be our Passover, because He was slain, and made a Sacrifice, and made Food for man upon the wood of the cross."1

A sacrificial feast is the Eucharistic Sacrament, because it is CHRIST'S Body and Blood to all; the priest on earth in CHRIST's stead, while the Great High Priest in heaven joins in and sanctifies the action, exhibits to the FATHER, and to the faithful the sacrifice of the cross.

He "does this" "as the memorial" oblation. But here again men's rationalistic scepticism creeps in; and those who would be ashamed to deny GoD's incomprehensible attributes, some of God's inconceivable mysteries, here again apply the laws of earth, the definition of time to the ways and thoughts of the Eternal. "How meanest thou? Is CHRIST exhibited in the Sacrament bleeding, and in the last agony, and His Blood bursting forth from His open wounds? Is it meant that every day, up to this hour, so often as the mysteries be celebrated, thou art prepared to place CHRIST in the same agony which He once suffered ?" We have seldom read a more lucid or triumphant argument than Saravia's reply to this: "CHRIST Our LORD, a Priest for ever, hath always and everywhere present in Himself, that His eternal sacrifice which He once offered, for since to GOD nothing is past, nothing absent, the Passion of our LORD JESUS CHRIST is alway and everywhere present to GOD,-the Passion of His Son present to GOD the FATHER. I say, that sacrifice which He once offered is eternal, it hath not passed away with time, nor hath it become feeble. The Blood hath not dried up in the lapse of ages, all those things be as recent before GOD as they were at that very moment when CHRIST suffered them on Mount Calvary. And just as those things 1 Saravia, p. 49.

be present to GOD, so be they present and exhibited to us in the Sacrament, and thus the Bread of the Eucharist is the crucified Body of CHRIST, the Wine is the Blood of the LORD, shed and flowing from His wounds, in such sort that we do in reality eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. The power of CHRIST the LORD is not now less in heaven than when He conversed with us on earth, and yet was, nevertheless, in heaven; and just so now, when He is in heaven, He doth not cease to be on earth. Then He gave to His disciples His Flesh, which was to be nailed to the cross, in that it was to be nailed to the cross, and in like manner, and in the same relation, did He give them to drink His Blood, which was to be poured out. Wherefore now also hath He power to communicate to the faithful under the same aspect and relation, His crucified Flesh to be eaten, and His Blood poured out to be drunken. Our SAVIOUR, Who after His resurrection showed Himself and His Body, which was spiritual, glorified, and immortal, and yet visible and palpable, just as it seemed good unto Him, without the wounds of the cross and with the wounds in His hands and side, that He might be seen and handled of them, and especially by Thomas, in compassion to the weakness of their faith, the same SAVIOUR can without doubt give that Body to be eaten and that Blood to be drunken, under that form and relation wherein He brought life and immortality to us. To believe these things with an unshaken and simple faith is healthful to the soul; further and more curiously to inquire is not safe."

"with

TO JEHOVAH, the I AM, "Who inhabiteth eternity," Whom is no variableness," "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," Three Persons, One GoD,-to the FATHER, Who shall assign limits of time, and object of the impossibility of a repetition, to Him with Whom all things are possible, infinite, eternal, one? To the Son, the Logos, δ ̓ οὗ πάντα ἐγένετο, ἐν ᾧ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα κατοικεῖ, who shall prescribe a space? who shall usurp His awe-enshrined prerogative, and determine His times before appointed, and the bounds of His habitation? Who measure the period of His Priesthood,-who, as Melchisedec or More, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life, "abideth a Priest continually ?" Or who presume to point a moment for the oblation of the One Sacrifice, when that Sacrifice is the Eternal GOD, "the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world?" To the HOLY GHOST, who shall dare fetter the wings or limit the flight of the Divine Dove? Who question the omnipotence or omnipresence of Him, the Author and Giver of life, Who can dwell in the beings of mortal men, and make their bodies His temples? Who can subdue even the wayward intellect, and sanctify the proud heart of man? In the Blessed Sacramental action, as in every work, spiritual or material, the Three in One,-the Eternal GOD, engage 1 Saravia, p. 53.