subtlety to poison one of the greatest fountains of Christianity, and to make that which should yield the waters of life, to be the cup of destruction. That blessed sacrament which was designed to unite Christians, is made the very bone of contention, and the greatest instrument to divide them; and that bread of life is turned into a stone, and become the great rock of offence between them. Besides the lesser corruptions of the Eucharist in the Church of Rome, such as using thin wafers instead of bread, and injecting them whole into the mouths of the communicants, and consecrating without a prayer, and speaking the words of consecration secretly, and the like; there are four such great ones as violate and destroy the very substance and essence of the sacrament, and make it to be quite another thing than Christ ever intended it, and therefore such as make communion with the Roman altar utterly sinful and unlawful: these are, the adoration of the host, or making the sacrament an object of divine worship; the communion in one kind, or taking away the cup from the people; the turning the sacrament into a true and proper sacrifice propitiatory for the quick and dead; and the using of private or solitary masses, wherein the priest who celebrates communicates alone. The two former of these have been considered in some late discourses upon those subjects; the fourth is a result and consequence of the third; for when the sacrament was turned into a sacrifice, the people left off the frequent communicating, and expected to be benefited by it another way; so that this will fall in as to the main reasons of it, with what I now design to consider and examine, the sacrifice of the mass or altar, wherein the priest every time he celebrates the communion, is supposed to offer to God the body and blood of Christ under the forms of bread and wine, as truly as Christ once offered himself upon the cross, and that this is as truly a proper and propitiatory sacrifice as the other, and that it is so not only for the living, but also for the dead. The objections we make against it, and the arguments by which they defend it, will fall in together at the same time, and I shall endeavour fairly and impartially to represent them in their utmost strength, that so what we have to say against it, and what they have to say for it, may be offered to the reader at one view, that he may the better judge of those high charges which are made, he sees, on each side.

First then, we say, that the very foundation of this sacrifice of the mass, is established upon two very great errors and mistakes the one is, the doctrine of transubstantiation, or Christ's corporeal presence in the eucharist: the other is the

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opinion, that Christ did offer up his body and blood as a sacrifice to God in his last supper, before he offered up himself upon the cross : if either or both of these prove false, the sacrifice of the mass is so far from being true, that it must necessarily fall to the ground, according to their own principles and acknowledgments.

Secondly, There is no Scripture ground for any such sacrifice, but it is expressly contrary to Scripture; under which head I shall examine all their Scriptural pretences for it, and produce such places as are directly contrary to it, and perfectly overthrow it.

Thirdly, That it has no just claim to antiquity, nor was there any such doctrine or practice in the Primitive Church.

Fourthly, That it is in itself unreasonable and absurd, and has a great many gross errors involved in it.

First, We say, that the very foundation of this sacrifice is established upon two very great errors and mistakes; the first of which is the doctrine of transubstantiation, or, which may be sufficient enough for their purpose, the corporeal presence of Christ's body and blood in the eucharist, though they disclaim the belief of this without the other: but if Christ's body and blood be not substantially present under the species of bread and wine, they have no subject matter for a sacrifice, for it is not the bread and wine which they pretend to offer, nor the bare species and accidents of those, nor can they call them a proper propitiatory sacrifice, but it is the very natural body and blood of Christ, under the species of bread and wine, or together with them, for they with the species make one entire subject for sacrifice, and one entire object for adoration, as they are forced to confess; so that, according to their own principles, they must both sacrifice and adore something in the eucharist besides the very body and blood of Christ, which is a difficulty they will never get off; but I design not to press them with that now, but transubstantiation, upon which their sacrifice of the mass is founded, is so great a difficulty, that it bears down before it all sense and reason, and only makes way for Church authority to triumph over both their wisest men have given up Scripture for it, and frankly confessed, it were not necessary to believe it without the determination of the Church; and if so, then without the Church's determination, there had been

*

Panis et Corpus Domini, Vinum et Sanguis Domini, non sunt duo sacrificia, sed unum,- neque enim offerimus Corpus Domini absolutè, sed offerimus Corpus Domini in specie Panis. Bellarm. de Miss. 1. 1. c. 37. [c. 27.] [vol. 3. p. 458. col. 1. Prag. 1721.]

no foundation, it seems, for the sacrifice of the mass: for there can be none for that without transubstantiation; and it is very strange that a sacrifice should be thus founded, not upon Scripture, or a Divine institution, but only in effect upon the Church's declaration, and should have no true bottom without that, as, according to those men, it really has not. But transubstantiation is a monster that startles and affrights the boldest faith, if the Church be not by to encourage and support it; it is too terrible to be looked upon in itself, without having a thick mist of Church authority and infallibility first cast before a man's eyes, and then if there were not a strange and almost fascinating power in such principles, one would think it impossible that any man, who has both eyes and brains in his head should believe a wafer were the body of a man, or that a crumb of bread were a fleshly substance; they do not indeed believe them to be both, but they believe one to be the other, which is the same thing; there is nothing can expose such a doctrine, for nothing can be more uncouth and extravagant than itself; it not only takes away all evidence of sense, upon which all truth of miracles, and so of all revelation, does depend, but it destroys all manner of certainty, and all the principles of truth and knowledge; it makes one body be a thousand, or at least be at the same time in a thousand places, by which means the least atom may fill the whole world. Again, it makes the parts of a body to penetrate one another, by which means all the matter of the whole world may be brought to a single point; it makes the whole to be no greater than a part, and one part to be as great as the whole; thus it destroys the nature of things, and makes a body to be a spirit, and an accident to be a substance, and renders every thing we see or taste to be only phantasm and appearance; and though the world seems crowded with solids, yet according to that, it may be all but species, and shadow, and superficies. So big is this opinion with absurdities, and inconsistencies, and contradictions, and yet these must all go down and pass into an article of faith, before there can be any foundation for the sacrifice of the mass; and let any one judge, that has not lost his judgment by believing transubstantiation, what a strange production that must be, which is to be the genuine offspring of such a doctrine. It is not my province, nor must it be my present task to discourse at large of that, or to confute the little sophistries with which it is thought necessary to make it outface the common reason of mankind. There never was any paradox needed more straining

to defend it, nor any sceptical principle but would bear as fair a wrangle on its behalf. There is a known treatise has so laid this cause on its back, that it can never be able to rise again; and though after a long time it endeavours a little to stir, and heave, and struggle, yet if it thereby provokes another blow from the same hand, it must expect nothing less than its mortal wound.

I pass to the next error and mistake upon which the sacrifice of the mass is founded, and that is this: that our blessed Saviour did at his last supper, when he celebrated the communion with his disciples, offer up his body and blood to his Father as a true propitiatory sacrifice, before he offered it as such upon the cross. This they pretend, and are forced to do so, to establish their sacrificing in the mass: for they are only to do that in the sacrament, they own, which Christ himself did, and which he commanded his Apostles to do; and if this sacrifice had not its institution and appointment at that time, it never had any at all, as they cannot but grant. Let us then inquire, whether Christ did thus sacrifice himself, and offer up his body and blood to God at his last supper: is there any the least colour or shadow of any such thing in any of the accounts that are given of this in the three Evangelists, or in St. Paul? "The Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and gave thanks, or blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you, this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of this, for this is my blood of the new testament which is shed for you, and for many, for the remission of sins." Is here any mention, or any intimation of offering up anything to God? Was not the bread and the cup, and what he called his body and his blood, given to his disciples to be eaten and drank by them? and was anything else done with them? is there anything like an offering or a sacrificing of them? Yes, say they, Christ there calls it his "body which is broken, and his blood which is shed," in the present tense; therefore the one must be then broken, and the other shed; so indeed it is in the original Greek, though in the vulgar Latin it is in the future tense, and so it is also put in their Missal, Sanguis qui effundetur, “this is my blood which shall be shed ;" and is it not usual to put the present tense instead of the future, when that is so near and certain? Does not our Saviour do it more than once at

other times? "The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners," Tapadidorai, Matth. xxvi. 45, before he was so, though Judas was then nigh and coming about it. So John x. 17, I lay down my life,” τίθημι τὴν ψυχὴν, when he was ready to do so as he was to have his body broken, and his blood shed, when he was prepared as a victim to be offered the next day. So St. Paul says, 'Eyà non oπévdouaι, "I now offer up myself," 2 Tim. iv. 6, when, as we translate it, "he was ready to be offered." That Christ here used the present tense for the future, is owned by Cardinal Cajetan,* and other learned ment of the Roman Church; and Jansenius‡ says, "the pouring out of the blood is rightly understood of the pouring it out upon the cross."

Christ's body was not broke, nor his blood poured out till the next day; nor did he offer up himself as a sacrifice to his Father until then; Christ did not then command his Apostles to offer him up in the eucharist, when he bade them "do this:" Hoc facite does not signify to sacrifice, nor will it be supposed, I hope, our Saviour did then use the vulgar Latin; the phrase in Virgil, cum faciam Vitula, which is always quoted to this purpose, shews it only to be so meant, when the occasion or subject matter does require it; but in our Saviour's words, it plainly refers to those acts of taking bread and breaking it, and taking wine and blessing it, and then giving or distributing of them, as he had done just before, and as he commanded them "to do in remembrance of him ;" and that it does not relate to sacrificing, is plain from St. Paul, who applies it particularly to drinking the cup, "do this as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me," 1 Cor. xi. 25. That the Apostles were made priests by Christ at his last supper, by those words, hoc facite, "do this," is so precarious and senseless an opinion, that it only shews what wonderful straits and extremities our adversaries are driven to, who are forced to espouse this to support their ill-framed hypothesis about the holy eucharist, in those two doctrines of the communion in one kind, and the sacrifice of the mass. There is not one Father, or ancient interpreter, that gives any the least countenance to it, and many of their own authors are ashamed of it, as may be seen in a late discourse of the communion in one kind, p. 15, where this is so fully exposed, that I shall here say no more of it, but that if those words make the Apostles priests, it makes

*In Luc. 22.

+ Sa Barrad.

Concord. 131.