faith for being against reason. Against this, for the present, I shall oppose the excellent words of St. Austin: "Si manifestissimæ certæque rationi velut Scripturarum sanctarum objicitur auctoritas, non intelligit qui hoc facit, et non Scripturarum illarum sensum, ad quem penetrare non potuit, sed suum potiùs objicit veritati: nec quod in eis, sed quod in seipso, velut pro eis, invenit, opponit:" "He that opposes the authority of the holy Scriptures against manifest and certain reason, does neither understand himself nor the Scripture." Indeed, when God hath plainly declared the particular, the more it seems against my reasons, the greater is my obedience in submitting; but that is, because my reasons are but sophisms, since truth itself hath declared plainly against them: but if God hath not plainly declared against that which I call reason, my reason must not be contested, by a pretence of faith, but upon some other account; "Ratio cum ratione concertet."

3. Secondly; But this is such a fine device, that it can, if it be admitted, warrant any literal interpretation against all the pretences of the world: for when Christ said, "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out;"- Here are the plain words of Christ: And, "Some make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven;"-nothing plainer in the grammatical sense and why do we not do it? Because it is an unnatural thing to mangle our body for a spiritual cause, which may be supplied by other more gentle instruments. Yea, but reason is not to be heard against the plain words of Christ, and the greater our reason is against it, the greater excellency in our obedience; that as Abraham, against hope, believed in hope,' so we, against reason, may believe in the greatest reason, the Divine revelation: and what can be spoken against this?

6

4. Thirdly; Stapleton, confuting Luther's opinion of consubstantiation, pretends against it many absurdities drawn from reason; and yet it would have been ill taken, if it should have been answered, that the doctrine ought the rather to be believed, because it is so unreasonable ;'-which answer is something like our new preachers, who pretend,

b Ep. 7.

• Prompt. Cath. ser. 3. hebd. Sanet. sec. 3. in hæc verba: Hoc est corpus meum.

that therefore they are spiritual men, because they have no learning; they are to confound the wise, because they are the weak things of the world; and that they are to be heard the rather, because there is the less reason they should ;-so crying stinking fish, that men may buy it the more greedily. But I will proceed to the particulars of reason in this article; being contented with this, that if the adverse party shall refuse this way of arguing, they may be reproved by saying, 'they refuse to hear reason,'-and it will not be easy for them, in despite of reason, to pretend faith; for äτoño, and un exOrTES NÍOTIV, 'unreasonable men,' and they that have not faith,' are equivalent in St. Paul's expression".

5. First; I shall lay this prejudice in the article, as relating to the discourses of reason; that in the words of institution, there is nothing that can be pretended to prove the conversion of the substance of bread into the body of Christ, but the same will infer the conversion of the whole into the whole; and therefore of the accidents of the bread into the accidents of the body. And, in those little pretences of philosophy, which these men sometimes make to cozen fools into a belief of the possibility, they pretend to no instance, but to such conversions, in which, if the substance is changed, so also are the accidents: sometimes the accident is changed in the same remaining substance; but if the substance be changed, the accidents never remain the same individually; or in kind, unless they be symbolical, that is, are common to both, as in the change of elements, of air into fire, of water into earth. Thus when Christ changed water into wine, the substances being changed, the accidents also were altered, and the wine did not retain the colour and taste of water; for then, though it had been the stranger miracle, that wine should be wine, and yet look and taste like water,-yet it would have obtained but little advantage to his doctrine and person, if he should have offered to prove his mission by such a miracle. For if Christ had said to his guests; To prove that I am come from God, I will change this water into wine;' well might this prove his mission: but if, while the guests were wondering at this, he should proceed and say, 'Wonder ye not at this, for I will do a stranger thing

d 2 Thess. iii. 2.

than it, for this water shall be changed into wine, and yet f will so order it, that it shall look like water, and taste like it, so that you shall not know one from the other: Certainly this would have made the whole matter very ridiculous; and indeed it is a strange device of these men to suppose God to work so many prodigious miracles, as must be in transubstantiation, if it were at all, and yet that none of these should be seen; for to what purpose is a miracle, that cannot be perceived? It can prove nothing, nor do any thing, when itself is not known whether it be or no. When bread is turned into flesh, and wine into blood, in the nourishment of our bodies (which I have seen urged for the credibility of transubstantiation), the bread, as it changes his nature, changes his accidents too, and is flesh in colour, and shape, and dimensions, and weight, and operation, as well as it is in substance. Now let them rub their foreheads hard, and tell us, it is so in the holy sacrament. For if it be not so, then no instance of the change of natural substances, from one form to another, can be pertinent: for, 1. Though it be no more than is done in every operation of a body, yet it is always with change of their proper accidents; and then 2. It can, with no force of the words of the institution, be pretended, that one ought to be, or can be, without the other. For he that says, this is the body of a man, says that it hath the substance of a human body, and all his consequents, that is, the accidents and he that says, this is the body of Alexander, says (besides the substance) that it hath all the individuating conditions, which are the particular accidents; and therefore Christ, affirming this to be his body, did as much affirm the change of accidents as the change of substance: because that change is naturally and essentially consequent to this. Now if they say,' they therefore do not believe the accidents of bread to be changed, because they see them remain;' I might reply, Why will they believe their sense against faith?' since there may be evidence, but here is certainty; and it cannot be deceived, though our eyes can: and it is certain, that Christ affirmed it without distinction of one part from another, of substance from his usual accidents. "This is my body:" Hoc,' Hîc,'

Nunc,' and Sic.'-Now, if they think their eyes may be credited for all the words of our blessed Saviour, why shall

not their reason also? or is it nothing so certain to the understanding, as any thing is to the eye? If, therefore, it be unreasonable to say, that the accidents of bread are changed against our sense, so it will be unreasonable to say, that the substance is changed against our reason; not but that God can, and does often change one substance, into another, and it is done in every natural production of a substantial form; but that we say it is unreasonable, that this should be changed into flesh, not to flesh simply, for so it is when we eat it ;nor into Christ's flesh simply, for so it might have been, if he had, as it is probable he did, eaten the sacrament himself, but into that body of Christ, which is in heaven; he remaining there, and being whole and impassible, and unfrangible, this, we say, is unreasonable and impossible; and that is now to be proved.

6. Secondly; In this question, when our adversaries are to cozen any of the people, they tell them, the protestants deny God's omnipotency, for so they are pleased to call our denying their dreams; and this device of theirs to escape is older than their doctrine of transubstantiation; for it was the trick of the Manichees, the Eutychians, the Apollinarists, the Arians, when they were confuted by the arguments of the catholics, to fly to God's omnipotency; άò ToÚtWv ¿žeigyó, μενοι λογισμῶν καταφεύγουσι ἐπὶ τὸ δυνατὸν εἶναι Θεῷ, says Nazian zen, and it was very usually by the fathers called the sanctuary of heretics: "Potentia (inquiunt) ei hæc est, ut falsa sint vera: mendacis est, ut falsum dicat verum, quod Deo non competit," saith St. Austin: "They pretend it to belong to God's power to verify their doctrine, that is, to make falsehood truth; that is not power, but a lie, which cannot be in God:" and this was older than the Arians; it was the trick of the old tragedians; so Plato told them; zadáν тi áπogwσiv, ἐπὶ τὰς μηχανὰς καταφεύγουσι, θεοὺς αἴροντες: which Cicero rendering, says, “Cum explicare argumenti exitum non potestis, confugitis ad deum :" "When you cannot bring your argument about, you fly to the power of God."-But when we say, this is impossible to be done, either we mean it naturally

e Orat. 51. Theodor. dial. årgerr. Tertull. contr. Praxeam. c.x. 79. Vet. et Nov. Testam.

f In Cratylo, p. 274. D. Ed. Lugd.

De Nat. Deor. lib. i. 20. Creuzer, p. 88.

or ordinarily impossible; that is, such a thing which cannot, without a miracle, be done; as a child cannot, with his hands, break a giant's arm, or a man cannot eat a millstone, or, with his finger, touch the moon. Now, in matters of religion, although to show a thing to be thus impossible is not enough to prove it was not at all, if God said it was; for although to man it be impossible, yet to God all things are possible; yet when the question is of the sense of the words of Scripture, which are capable of various interpretations, he that brings an argument ab impossibili' against any one interpretation, showing that it infers such an ordinary impossibility, as cannot be done without a miracle, has sufficiently concluded, not against the words, for nothing ought to prejudice them, but against such an interpretation, as infers that impossibility. Thus when, in Scripture, we find it recorded that Christ was born of a Virgin,-to say this is impossible, is no argument against it; because although it be naturally impossible (which I think is demonstrable against the Arabian physicians), yet to him that said it, it is also possible to do it. But then if from hence any man shall obtrude as an article of faith, that the blessed Virgin Mother was so a virgin, that her holy Son came into the world without any aperture of his mother's womb, I doubt not but an argument ab impossibili' is a sufficient conviction of the falsehood of it; though this impossibility be only an ordinary and natural; because the words of Scripture, affirming Christ to be born of a virgin, say only that he was not begotten by natural generation; not that his egression from his mother's womb made a penetration of dimensions.-To instance once more: The words of Scripture are plain, that Christ is man," that Christ is God;' here are two natures, and yet but one Christ; no impossibility ought to be pretended against these plain words, but they must be sophisms, because they dispute against truth itself. But now if a Monothelite shall say, that, by this unity of nature, God hath taught an unity of wills in Christ, and that he had but one will, because he is but one person: I do not doubt but an argument from an ordinary and natural impossibility will be sufficient to convince him of his heresy; and, in this case, the Monothelite hath no reason to say, that the orthodox Christian denies God's omnipotency, and says, that God cannot unite the will