PREFACE. IN the course of the year 1836, Dr Wiseman published a volume of Lectures, "On the Real Presence of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the blessed Eucharist:" also two volumes of Lectures, "On the principal doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church." The first-mentioned volume, containing Lectures which had been several times read to the students in the English College at Rome, exhibits the argument, for "the Real Presence," in a more systematic form than we can expect it to assume, in the two volumes of Lectures, or Discourses, addressed to a mixed audience in the Roman Catholic Chapel, Moorfields. To those College Lectures, therefore, the reader's attention will be directed in the following pages; not, however, without an incidental reference to such additional observations as may be presented by the more popular method of discussion, which the learned author naturally adopted, when speaking from the pulpit. On perusing the Lectures on the Eucharist, they appeared-whatever the cause might be-to contain so many false principles-so many erroneous statements so much incorrect reasoning-so many inconsequent conclusions that I was impelled, by a sense of duty, to point out the various transgressions, in all those respects, which had occurred to me, during my progress through the work. This I have endeavoured to do; and although sufficiently sensible of the important improvements, in the treatment of the subject, which a larger portion of leisure would have enabled me to effect-I now submit my observations on the Lectures, to the judgment of the world. In the midst of continual interruptions, the greatest care cannot always prevent mistakes; but I feel, at least, the consciousness of having represented every thing faithfully. If indeed, in any part of this volume, there should appear, to an intelligent and impartial reader, a single principle purposely fallacious-a single statement designedly incorrect a single argument calculated to mislead -a single conclusion obviously unwarranted by the premises-I entreat him to close the book, and never to consider another sentence, which it contains, as worthy of the slightest notice. |