"When Jesus Christ said, this is my body, this is my blood; he was neither propounding a parable, nor explaining an allegory. The words, which are detached and separate from all other discourse, carry their whole meaning in themselves. The business in hand was the institution of a new rite, which required the use of simple terms; and that place in scripture, is yet to be discovered, where the sign hath the name of the thing signified given to it at the moment of the institution of the rite, and without any leading preparation."

Such is the imposing argument of Bossuet; and which even to the mind of Warburton presented so great a difficulty, that he thought he could not answer it, but by resorting, as he has done, to the hypothesis which represents the Lord's supper as a feast upon a sacrifice. A more patient and thorough investigation of the point, might have enabled the English bishop to have returned the following scriptural answer to the sophistical argument of the French prelate, without casting any obscurity upon the simple character of the christian ordinance in question.

The bishop of Meaux says, "that place in scripture is yet to be discovered," &c. "Whether any such instance has yet been observed or not, certain it is, that scripture will supply us with one. The passover is an instance of exactly the same nature, with that here required; and the unquestionably figurative form of the institution answers exactly to that of the Lord's

supper figuratively understood. At the very first institution of it, the Lord, having instructed Moses in what manner to direct the people to choose out, kill, dress and eat, a lamb,* immediately declared, without any leading preparation, It is the Lord's passover; and then added the reason, on account of which the rite was instituted and distinguished by this name.t

"This is certainly a case in point. When the Lord said, on this occasion, It is the Lord's passover, he was neither propounding a parable, nor explaining an allegory. The words, It is the Lord's passover, in the institution of this rite, were as much detached and separate from all other discourse, and did as much carry their whole meaning in themselves, as the words this is my body, this is my blood, did in the institution of the Lord's supper. The business in hand was here likewise the institution of a new rite; and if that circumstance would have required the use of simple terms, as opposed to figurative, in the institution of the Lord's supper; it must equally have required the use of simple terms, as opposed to figurative, in the prior institution of the passover. And evident it is, that in this instance the sign, the lamb killed and dressed, &c. as commanded, had the name of the thing signified, the action of the Lord's passing over the houses of the Israelites, given to it at the moment of the institution of the rite; and as much without any leading preparation, as the bread and wine had

*Exodus xii. 3-11. +Ibid. 11-14. see the passage.

the name of the body and blood of Jesus given to them, in the institution of the eucharist.

"Here, therefore, we have a direct and complete refutation of the argument before us, which will admit of no reply. Not even the bishop of Meaux himself would have allowed, much less contended, that the words of the institution of the Jewish passover ought to be understood, literally; though he contends for disgracing the religion of Christ with all the absurdities of a real presence and transubstantiation in the Lord's supper. And yet the instituting forms of words in both these rites are so exactly similar, in the point concerned, that the same mode of interpretation must of necessity be applied to both. If the declaratory words of the institution of the passover must be figuratively understood, so must those of the Lord's supper; and vice versa, if the declaratory words of the institution of the Lord's supper must be literally understood, so must those of the passover likewise. The necessary consequence of which would be, that what the Jews ate at the paschal supper, and that as often as they celebrated it, was not really the lamb itself, that they had killed and dressed, in the manner they were commanded; but was actually the Lord himself; and not only so, but it was the Lord, employed at the very time in the act of passing over the houses of the Israelites, and that in Egypt; and smiting the first born both of man and beast in those of the Egyptians.

"These are such extravagant absurdities as even they who contend for a real presence and transubstantiation in the Lord's supper, will by no means admit the possibility of in the passover; and yet the principles of the argument in question would force them to receive the one as well as the other; for if the Lord's supper must be understood literally, because a new rite cannot be instituted in figurative terms, the passover must likewise be understood literally for the self same reason. And if the sign could not have the name of the thing signified given to it at the moment of the institution, without any leading preparation in the Lord's supper, neither could it in the passover.

This monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation, a belief of which the church of Rome enforces by the threat of eternal damnation against all who reject it, and for a denial of which multitudes of holy men were, about the period of the reformation, inhumanly burnt at the stake, is not only entirely unauthorised by the

*"It is a fact worthy of remark, and such as deserves the most serious reflection of all whom it concerns, that while a very great proportion of the christian world have been required to believe, and actually have believed a real presence and transubstantiation in the Lord's supper, no Jew was ever yet wild enough to conceive the thought, or dishonest enough to inculcate the belief, of a real presence or transubstantiation in the passover."—Wm. Bell, Prebendary of St. Peter's, Westminster.

scriptures, but unsupported by the authority of the early fathers of the Christian church.*

But how can the fact be accounted for, that such an error should ever have crept into the church, and have been so generally received in the christian world for several ages prior to the reformation? Archbishop Tillotson gives the following history of the introduction and growth of this error.

"The doctrine of the corporeal presence of Christ was first started upon occasion of the dispute about the worship of images, in opposition whereto the Synod of Constantinople, about the year 750 did argue thus, that our Lord having left us no other image of himself but the sacrament, in which the substance of bread is the image of his body, we ought to make no other image of our Lord. In answer to this argument, the second council of Nice, in the year 787, did declare, that the sacrament, after consecration, is not the image and anti-type of Christ's body and blood, but is properly his body and blood. So that

*To enter at large upon the proofs of this assertion, would be inconsistent with the design of the present work. The reader who desires full satisfaction upon the point, is referred to "Faber's Difficulties of Romanism,” a work no less distinguished for the christian mildness and urbanity of the spirit which pervades it, than for the conclusiveness of the arguments it presents in support of the doctrines of the reformation, as opposed to the errors of the church of Rome.