men in the world can swear, that what they see, is bread and wine; but it is not their office to tell us, what they become by the institution of our Saviour; for that we are to learn by faith, that what is bread and wine, in nature, is, by God's ordinance, the sacrament of the body and blood of the Saviour of the world; but one cannot contradict another; and, therefore, they must be reconciled: both say true, that which faith teaches, is certain; and that which the senses of all men teach always, that also is certain and evident; for as the rule of the school says excellently, "Grace never destroys nature, but perfects it," and so it is in the consecration of bread and wine; in which, although we are more to regard their signification than their matter, their holy employment than their natural usage,-what they are by grace rather than what they are by nature,-that they are sacramental rather than that they are nutritive,- that they are consecrated and exalted by religion, rather than that they are mean and low in their natural beings,-what they are to the spirit and understanding, rather than what they are to the sense; yet this also is as true and as evident as the other: and, therefore, though not so apt for our meditation, yet as certain as that which is.

7. Thirdly: Though it be a hard thing to be put to prove that bread is bread, and that wine is wine; yet, if the argu ments and notices of sense may not pass for sufficient, an impudent person may, without possibility of being confuted, outface any man, that an oyster is a rat, and that a candle is a pig of lead and so might the Egyptian soothsayers have been too hard for Moses; for when they changed rods into serpents, they had some colour to tell Pharaoh they were serpents as well as the rod of Moses; but if they had failed to turn the water into blood, they needed not to have been troubled, if they could have borne down Pharaoh, that, though it looked like water, and tasted like water, yet, by their enchantment, they had made it verily to be blood: and, upon this ground of having different substances, improper and disproportioned accidents, what hinders them but they might have said so? and if they had, how should they have been confuted? But this manner of proceeding would be suf

P Aquin. part. 1. q. 1. a. 8. ad. 2.

ficient to evacuate all reason, and all science, and all notices of things; and we may as well conclude snow to be black, and fire cold, and two and two to make five and twenty.

8. But, it is said, although the body of Christ be invested with improper accidents, yet sometimes Christ hath appeared in his own shape, and blood and flesh hath been pulled out of the mouths of the communicants: and Plegilus, the priest, saw an angel, showing Christ to him in form of a child upon the altar, whom first he took in his arms and kissed, but did eat him up presently in his other shape, in the shape of a wafer. "Speciosa certè pax nebulonis, ut qui oris præbuerat basium, dentium inferret exitium," said Berengarius1: “It was but a Judas' kiss to kiss with the lip, and bite with the teeth." But if such stuff as this may go for argument, we may be cloyed with them in those unanswerable authors, Simeon Metaphrastes for the Greeks, and Jacobus de Voragine for the Latin, who make it a trade to lie for God, and for the interest of the catholic cause. But, however, I shall tell a piece of a true story. In the time of Soter, pope of Rome, there was an impostor called Mark'; Eidwroπoids, that was his appellative : and he πωτήρια οἴνου κεκραμένα προστ ποιούμενος εὐχαριστεῖν, καὶ ἐπὶ πλέον ἐκ τίνων τῶν λόγων τῆς ἐπικλήσεως πορφύρεα καὶ ἐρυθρὰ ἀναφαίνεσθαι ποιεῖ, 6 pretending to make the chalice of wine and water eucharistical, saying long prayers over it, made it look red or purple,' that it might be thought that grace, which is above all things, does drop the blood into the chalice by invocation. Such as these have been often done by human artifice, or by operation of the devil, said Alexander of Ales'. If such things as these were done regularly, it were pretence enough to say it is flesh and blood that is in the eucharist; but when nothing of this is done by God, but heretics and knaves, jugglers and impostors, hoping to change the sacrament into a charm, by abusing the spiritual sense into a gross and carnal, against the authority of Scripture and the church, reason or religion,-have made pretences of those things, and still the holy sacrament, in all the times of ministration, hath the form and all the perceptibilities of bread and wine: as we may believe those impostors

4 Guil. Malmesbur. de Gestis Regum Anglorum, lib. iii.

r Irenæ. lib. i. c. 9.

Sum. Theod. part. 4. q. 11. memb. 2. art. 4. sect. 3.

:

did more rely upon the pretences of sense than of other arguments, and, distrusting them, did fly to these as the greater probation so we rely upon that way of probation, which they would have counterfeited, but which indeed Christ, in his institution, hath still left in the nature of the symbols, viz. that it is that which it seems to be, and that the other superinduced predicate of the body of Christ is to be understood only in that sense, which may still consist with that substance, whose proper and natural accidents remain, and are perceived by the mouth, and hands, and eyes, of all men. To which this may be added, that, by the doctrine of the late Roman schools, all those pretences of real appearances of Christ's body or blood, must be necessarily concluded to be impostures, or airy fantasms and illusions; because themselves teach that Christ's body is so in the sacrament,-that Christ's own eyes cannot see his own body in the sacrament: and in that manner by which it is there, it cannot be made visible; no, not by the absolute power of God. Nay, it can be neither seen, nor touched, nor tasted, nor felt, nor imagined. It is the doctrine of Suarez, in 3. Tho. disp. 53. sect. 3., and disp. 52. sect. 1., and of Vasquez, in 3. tom. 3. disp. 191. n. 22., which, besides that it reproves the whole article, by making it incredible and impossible, it doth also infinitely convince all these apparitions, if ever there were any, of deceit and fond illusion. I had no more to say in this particular, but that the Roman doctors pretend certain words out of St. Cyril's fourth mystagogique catechism,' against the doctrine of this paragraph: " Pro certissimo habeas," &c. "Be sure of this, that this bread, which is seen of us, is not bread, although the taste perceives it to be bread, but the body of Christ; for under the species of bread, the body is given to thee; under the species of wine, the blood is given to thee."— Here if we will trust St. Cyril's words, at least in Bellarmine's and Brerely's sense, and understand of them before you will believe your own eyes, you may. For St. Cyril bids you not believe your sense. For taste and sight tells you it is bread, but it is not. But here is no harm done. 2. For himself plainly explains his meaning in his next catechism. 'Think not, that you taste bread and wine,' saith he. No, what then? 'Annà avтíтUπа xаì σwμатоs nai aiparos, but the antitypes of the body and blood:' and in

2

this very place he calls bread τύπος, ' a type ; ἐν τύπῳ ἄρτου didoτai σa Tò owμa, and, therefore, it is very ill rendered by the δίδοται σου Roman priests by 'species,' which signifies accidental forms: for Túos signifies no such thing, but sidos; which is not St. Cyril's word. 3. He says it is not bread, though the taste feel it so; that is, it is not mere bread,' which is an usual expression among the fathers, Non est panis communis,' says Irenæus'; où yàp w5 nowòv ägтov, says Justin Martyr; just as St. Chrysostom says of baptismal water, it is not common water;' and as St. Cyril himself says of the sacramental bread, οὐκ ἔτι ἄρτος λιτός, “ it is not mere bread, ἀλλὰ σῶμα Κυρίου, 'but the Lord's body.'- For if it were not that, in some sense or other, it were still mere bread, but that it is not. But this manner of speaking is not unusual in the holy Scriptures, that restrained and modificated negatives be propounded in simple and absolute forms. "I have given them statutes which are not good "." "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." "They have not rejected thee, but mey." "It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of my Father." 66 I came not to send peace, but a sword"." "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me." And, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true"," which is expressly confronted by St. John: "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true;" which shows manifestly, that the simple and absolute negative in the former place, must, in his signification, be restrained. So St. Paul speaks usually: "Henceforth I know no man according to the flesh "." "We have no strife against flesh and blood." And in the ancient doctors, nothing more ordinary than to express limited senses by unlimited words; which is so known, that I should lose my time, and abuse the reader's patience, if I should heap up instances. So Irenæus: "He that hath received the Spirit, is no more flesh and blood, but spirit." And Epiphanius affirms the same of the flesh of a temperate man: "It is not flesh, but is changed into spirit:" so we say of a drunken and a furious person: "He is not a man, but a beast." And they speak thus particularly

man,

t Lib. iv. contr. Hæres. c. 34. Psal. xxii, homil. 16.

in the matter of the holy sacrament, as appears in the instances above reckoned, and in others respersed over this treatise. But to return to the present objection, it is observ able that St. Cyril does not say it is not bread, though the sense suppose it to be so, for that would have supposed the taste to have been deceived, which he affirms not; and if he had, we could not have believed him; but he says, 'though the sense perceive it to be bread,' so that it is still bread, else the taste would not perceive it to be so; but it is more,' and the sense does not perceive it; for it is the body of our Lord.' Here, then, is his own answer plainly opposed to the objection; he says, it is not bread,' that is, it is not mere bread;' and so say we: he says, that it is the body of our Lord, avríTUTOV, the antitype of the Lord's body,' and so say we; he says, the sense perceives it to be bread;' but it is more than the sense perceives; so he implies, and so we affirm; and yet we may trust our sense for all that it tells us, and our understanding too, for all it learns besides. The like to this are the words of St. Chrysostom, where he says, "We cannot be deceived by his words; but our sense is often deceived; look not at what is before us, but observe Christ's words. Nothing sensible is given to us, but things. insensible, by things sensible," &c. This, and many higher things than this, are in St. Chrysostom, not only relating to this, but to the other sacrament also. "Think not thou receivest the body from a man, but fire from the tongue of a seraphim;" that for the eucharist:- and for the baptism this: "The priest baptizes thee not, but God holds thy head." In the same sense that these admit, in the same sense we may understand his other words; they are tragical and high, but may have a sober sense; but literally they sound a contradiction; that nothing sensible should be given us in the sacrament; and yet that nothing insensible should be given, but what is conveyed by things sensible; but it is not worth the while to stay here: only this, the words of St. Chrysostom are good counsel, and such as we follow; for, in this case, we do not finally rely upon sense, or resolve all into it; but we trust it only for so much as it ought to be trusted for; but we do not finally rest upon it, but upon faith, and

e Homil. 83. upon St. Matt.