Thursday, was the day of the feast, and that His betrayal took place before the celebration of the Passover; e.g. the words of S. John xiii. 1, &c., Now before the feast of the Passover.... supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him;... He riseth from supper,' &c.; and especially the following words, Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas into the hall of judgment, and it was early, and they themselves went not into the judgmenthall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the 'passover."1

The difficulty is, we think, completely solved by Petavius, who is followed in his view by Mr. Neale, in his elaborate and exhaustive dissertation on the subject. He proves that there was this year the not uncommon fact of a difference of one day, arising from the variation of solar and lunar computations, the Pharisees probably heading the party which kept the feast on the Thursday, and the Sadducees those who delayed it till Friday. If so, and if any collateral testimony be required and admitted in addition to the words of our Lord Himself, of course the first Eucharist was celebrated in unleavened bread, and no blame can attach to the West for following that example. Mr. Neale has proved, we think, almost to demonstration, firstly, that the East always used leaven; and secondly, that there was in the West no uniform and unbroken custom or tradition on the subject at all, but that both leavened and unleavened bread were originally used without distinction. Mr. Palmer considers that, as the word 'leaven' bears in Holy Scripture a twofold sense, a good and a bad, and as the present rite of the Latins was not introduced to symbolize any heretical doctrine, as was the Armenian alteration of the Tpioáyiov, and perhaps also their unmixed cup, but to symbolize the same orthodox doctrine as that of the Greeks, though by a different and contrary application of the word 'leaven,'-the question is, first, whether the Pope himself, 'without an Ecumenical Council, can now vary the previously 'existing Ecumenical rite;' and second, whether, if the West refuse to admit any change, that which was irregularly intro'duced may not, in that sense in which they mean it, be, for the 'sake of peace, indulged to them; or whether the Easterns, even " on this ground, are justified in refusing, or are bound to refuse, 'their Communion till such time as the Latins return to the 'ancient and Ecumenical custom? The case,' he concludes, ' of the unlawful introduction of the Azymes, is much like that of the equally irregular introduction of Baptism by one immersion, not as rejecting the sense of trine immersion, which figured the Three equal Persons, but as varying the symbol,

! John xviii. 28.

in order to express another part of the truth, that is, the Unity 'of their common Divine Essence.' (Pp. 117, 118.) As some historical confirmation of the general view here taken, we may mention the fact, that the Council of Florence, in its twentysecond session, permitted the Holy Eucharist to be consecrated equally with or without leaven. No one, of course, can imagine that the presence or absence of leaven can affect the essence of the Sacrament or the grace it conveys; in a word, the whole question is, as Mr. Neale describes it, rather a pretence than a cause of the original separation of the Churches, and as such it has, as he says, acquired an importance in ecclesiastical history, totally unconnected with its own merits.'

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The next point that occupies Mr. Palmer's attention is that of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The most important part of his Dissertations on this great subject may perhaps be thought to be the portion that he has given to the doctrine of Transubstantiation. That the Elements of the Holy Eucharist become, after Consecration, the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour, neither has been nor ever can for a moment be denied by any branch of His Church. Such, to use Mr. Palmer's emphatic words, is the constant 'doctrine of the whole Catholic and Apostolic Church, received originally from the lips of the Lord Himself; Who said not, "This is joined with," or " This signifies," but " This is ;" and Who, having created all things, knew also how to employ 'words; nor left it to any man to modify the force of His words, or to substitute others in their stead.'-P. 204.

In the language of the Liturgies and of the Fathers,' he continues, in words which agree very closely with those of Bishop Cosin on the same subject, the "gifts" or "oblations," that is, the "species" or kinds of bread and wine, are said to be 'changed, transferred, transfigured, transformed, transmuted, ' or transelemented into the Body and Blood of Christ. And since this change is plainly not a sensible one of place, or form, or figure, and yet is believed to be real, such expressions as "transmuted" and "transelemented," which naturally im'port something deep and inward, must so far be more appro'priate, and approximate more to the truth, than such expressions as "transferred," "transfigured," or "transformed," which, in their primary and literal sense, are plainly in'appropriate.-P. 204.

The question, then, with the Church of Rome is not that of the presence' or absence of Christ's Body and Blood in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, but of the manner of it; i. e. whether there be a mystical presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the consecrated elements of bread and wine, so that

they are both received together, as we maintain; or whether the substance of the bread be changed into the substance of His Body, and the substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood, the accidents of each alone remaining,-which is the doctrine of Transubstantiation; a doctrine which, to borrow Mr. Palmer's words again, is not in fact, merely a fresh synonym added to the words in use before; but it is also con'nected with a certain scholastical theory, according to which things known to us through the senses are physically com'pounded of substance and accidents, and according to which the * physical substances of bread and wine in the Eucharist cease to exist, while their physical accidents remain miraculously sus'pended, and not inhering in any subject.' (P. 205.) A short sketch of the history of this doctrine, will, we think, suffice to show that, like so much that is purely Romish in theology, it is not only the reverse of primitive in idea, but that it has aslo been from time to time questioned, and even rejected by more than one of the doctors of the Papal Church.

It was in the beginning of the ninth century that Paschasius Radbert, a monk of Corbie, first taught a doctrine resembling that subsequently, and after many changes of opinion, adopted by Luther, that Christ was substantially present in the Consecrated Elements together with the bread; but although evidently paving the way for the system laid down at Trent, and now held by the Church of Rome, he did not teach the change of the substance of the bread into that of the substance of Christ's body. To the above dogma Bertram, by the command of the Emperor Charles the Bald, replied, denying that the Consecrated Elements are mere signs and symbols of Christ's Body and Blood and nothing more, but emphatically affirming that they are made to be the Body and Blood of Christ in figure and mystery, and not by any substantial or corporeal change, they remaining even after consecration in essence what they were before, otherwise the sacrament could not be termed, as the Church always has termed it, a mystery.'

In the middle of the eleventh century, Bertram's doctrine was repeated by Berenger, Archdeacon of Angers, who wrote to Lanfranc, then Prior of Bec, blaming him for having, as he had heard, adopted the opinion of Paschasius. This letter Lanfranc, who was then at Rome, laid before Pope Leo IX, accusing the author of heresy, and stating, in his own excuse for so unusual a course of proceeding with regard to a private and personal communication, that as copies of it had fallen into the hands of his enemies, and even into those of the Pope himself, his own orthodoxy had come into suspicion.' A Council

1 Præfat. Op. Berengarii, Berolini, 1834, p. 4.

was accordingly held at Rome A. D. 1050, and Berengarius was condemned and excommunicated. Berengarius' own opinion was not changed by these proceedings; and after having appeared before a Council held at Tours under Hildebrand, legate of Victor II, he was summoned in the year 1078 to a Council at Rome, at which he signed a form of recantation drawn up by Cardinal Humbert, asserting that the Body and Blood are touched and broken sensibly (sensualiter), not sacramentally only but in truth, by the hands of the priests, and ground ' with the teeth of the faithful.''

The condemnation of Berengarius was the turning-point in the history of the dogma of Transubstantiation. Henceforth the Church of Rome was in a manner pledged to uphold the opinion, that after the consecration there was nothing of the substance of bread and wine left in the Elements, but only their accidents, of appearance, taste, smell, &c. Thus at a Council held at Rome under Innocent III., A. D. 1215, cap. i., it was ruled that the Body and Blood of Christ are verily (ceraciter) con'tained in the Sacrament of the Altar, under the figures of bread and wine, being transubstantiated, the bread into the Body, ' and the wine into the Blood, by Divine Power; that in order 'to the perfection of the mystery of the unity we may receive of His what He received of ours.' The Council of Constance, which also took away the Cup, condemned Wicliff, firstly for having taught that the Consecrated Element was the Body of Christ in figurâ, and bread in natura, or, what amounts to the 'same thing, that it is very bread naturaliter, and the Body of "Christ figuraliter; and secondly, for refusing to receive the doctrine of an accident without a subject.' Lastly, the doctrine laid down on the subject at Trent was, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there was made a con

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' version of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the Body of Christ, and of the whole substance of the wine ' into the substance of His Blood, which conversion is fitly and properly termed by the Catholic Church Transubstantiation.'" They had taught, immediately before, their doctrine of concomitancy, i. e. that the whole and perfect Christ exists under the species of the bread, and under each particle of it, and also under the species of wine and its parts. These assertions they repeat and affirm by the following anathemas at the end of the decree on the subject: If any assert that in the most Holy 'Sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of the bread and wine together with the Body and Blood of our Lord 'Jesus Christ, and deny that wonderful and extraordinary con' version of the whole substance of the bread into His Body, and 1 Lanfranci Op, cap. ii.

2 Session xv.

Session xiii.

of the whole substance of the wine into His Blood, there remaining only the appearances of bread and wine, which con' version the Catholic Church most fitly terms Transubstan'tiation-Anathema.' If any deny in the adorable Sacrament of the Eucharist, that under each kind and under every part of each, the whole of Christ is contained-Anathema.'

But however forcible the Romish decrees may be on the subject, there is, in truth, no unity or uniformity in their system. Scarcely any two of their doctors use the same language with each other; nay, they are often inconsistent with themselves. That question which reverence would never ask, and the attempt to solve which has been so fatal to those who have asked it-producing the doctrine of Transubstantiation at Rome, and causing Luther, as Hospinian tells us, to adopt, at different times, five different opinions, and at last to settle in that which was the least tenable of any, and which led to the rejection of all mystery by Zuingle, and his still more heretical follower, (Ecolampadius, the manner, namely, in which the consecrated Elements are indeed the Body and Blood of Christ -causes also the doctors of Rome to speak hesitatingly and with variations. They force upon us a scholastic system, of which they can give no plain, uniform, or reasonable account; and when we would receive explanation, they give us an anathema. In the early Church it was held sufficient simply to say, as Mr. Palmer states, and as Bishop Cosin had stated before, that the Elements are changed, transferred, trans'figured, transformed, transmuted, or transelemented into the 'Body and Blood of Christ.' Paschasius himself, who, as we have seen, gave rise to the controversy, and who, as Bishop Cosin tells us, received the especial approbation of Bellarmine and Sirmond the Jesuit, as being the first who had writ to the purpose concerning the Eucharist,' not only, as the same great authority proves, held no such doctrine as Transubstantiation of the Consecrated Elements, but even in fact opposed it, saying, We must receive our spiritual Sacrament with the mouth of the soul and the taste of faith;' and, The Flesh and Blood of Christ are not received carnally, but spiritually.' Berenger, to whom we may add the name of S. Bernard, held the plain doctrine of the early Church. He, indeed, and his opponents do not always make quite a right use of the word verum' as applied to Christ's Body in the controversy, but his meaning undoubtedly is orthodox-not to deny the truth of the Presence, but the change of the substance in the Elements,taking 'verum' and 'vere' in a sense synonymous with substantialiter' and 'sensualiter;" his whole doctrine being not to

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1 Op. Berengarii, p. 72, and conf. p. 107, &c.