least by a Divine power, can become true, and he can take the air out from the inclosure of four walls; in this case, if you will suppose a man sitting in the midst of that room, either that man were in no place at all, which were infinitely absurd; or else (which indeed is true) circumscription or superficies were not the essence of a place. Place, therefore, is nothing but the space, to which quantitative bodies have essential relation and finition: that, where they consist, and by which they are not infinite: and this is the definition of place, which St. Austin gives in his fourth book Exposit. of Genes. ad literam, chap. viii.'

30. God can do what he please, and he can reverse the laws of his whole creation, because he can change or annihilate every creature; or alter the manners and essences; but the question now is, what laws God hath already established, and whether or no essentials can be changed, the things remaining the same? that is, whether they can be the same, when they are not the same? He that says, God can give to a body all the essential properties of a spirit, says true, and confesses God's omnipotency; but he says also, that God can change a body from being a body, to become a spirit; but if he says, that remaining a body it can receive the essentials of a spirit, he does not confess God's omnipotency, but makes this article difficult to be believed, by making it not to work wisely, and possibly. God can do all things; but are they undone, when they are done? that is, are the things changed in their essentials, and yet remain the same? then how are they changed, and then what hath God done to them?

31. But as to the particular question. To suppose a body not co-extended to a place, is to suppose a man alive not co-existent to time; to be in no place, and to be in no time, being alike possible?: and this intrinsical extension of parts is as inseparable from the extrinsical, as an intrinsical duration is from time. Place and time being nothing but the essential manners of material complete substances, these cannot be supposed such, as they are, without time and place: because quantitative bodies, in their very formality, suppose that; for place without body in it, is but a notion in logic, but when it is a reality, it is a 'ubi,' and time is 'quando ;'

P Paschasius Diaconus Eccles. Rom. A. D. 500. lib. i. de Spir. S. cap. 12.

and a body supposed abstractly from place, is not real but intentional, and in notion only, and is in the category of substance, but not of quantity. But it is a strange thing, that we are put to prove the very principles of nature, and first rudiments of art, which are so plain that they can be understood naturally, but by all devices of the world cannot be made dubitable..

32. But against all the evidence of essential and natural reason, some overtures of Scripture must be pretended. For that two bodies can be in one place appears, because Christ came from his mother's womb, it being closed; into the assembly of the apostles, "the doors being shut;" out of the grave, the stone not being rolled away; and ascended into heaven, through the solid orbs of all the firmament. Concerning the first and the last, the Scripture speaks nothing, neither can any man tell whether the orbs of heaven be solid or fluid, or which way Christ went in. Christ went in. But of the heavens opening' the Scripture sometimes makes mention. And the prophet David spake in the spirit, saying, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in."-The stone of the sepulchre was removed by an angel; so saith St. Matthew?. But why should it be supposed the angel rolled it away after Christ was risen,-or if he did, why Christ did not remove it himself (who loosed all the bands of death, by which he' was held), and there leave it when he was risen? or if he had passed through, and wrought a miracle, why it should not be told us, or why it should not remain as a testimony to the soldiers and Jews, and convince them the more, when they should see the body gone, and yet their seals unbroken? or if it were not, how we should come to fancy it was so, I understand not; neither is there ground for it. There is only remaining that we account concerning Jesus's entering into the assembly of the apostles, "the doors being shut:" To this I answer, that this infers not a penetration of bodies, or that two bodies can be in one place. 1. Because there are so many ways of effecting it without that impossibility. 2. The door might be made to yield to his Creator as easily as water, which is fluid, be made firm under his feet; for

consistence or lability are not essential to wood and water"; For water can naturally be made consistent, as when it is turned to ice; and wood, that can naturally be petrified, can, upon the efficiency of an equal agent, be made thin, or labile, or inconsistent. 3. This was done on the same day, in which the sea yielded to the children of Israel, that is, the seventh day after the passover, and we may allow it to be a miracle, though it be no more than that of the waters, that is, as these were made consistent for a time,

Suppositumque rotis solidum mare';

So the doors apt to yield to a solid body.

possint tamen omnia reddi

Mollia, quæ fiunt, aer, aqua, terra, vapores,

Quo pacto fiant, et quâ vi quomque gerantur*,

4. How easy was it for Christ to pass his body through the pores of it and the natural apertures, if he were pleased to unite them, and thrust the matter into a greater consolidation? 5. Wood, being reduced to ashes, possesses but a little room; that is, the crass impenetrable parts are but few, the other apt for cession, which could easily be disposed by God, as he pleased. 6. The words in the text are nɛnλɛioμévwv Tav Jugav, in the past tense; the gates or "doors having been shut;" but that they were shut in the instant of his entry, it says not; they might, if Christ had so pleased, have been insensibly opened, and shut in like manner again; and if the words be observed, it will appear that St. John" mentioned the shutting the doors in relation to the apostles' fear; not to Christ's entering: he intended not (so far as appears) to declare a miracle. 7. But if he had, there are ways enough for him to have entered strangely, though he had not entered impossibly. Vain, therefore, is the fancy of those men, who think a weak conjecture able to contest against a perfect, natural impossibility. For when a thing can be done without a penetration of dimensions, and yet by a power great enough

r"

τ Αμα γὰρ ὑπεξιέναι, ἀλλήλοις ἐνδέχεται, οὐδενὸς ὄντος διαστήματος χωριστοῦ παρὰ τὰ σώματα τὰ κινούμενα· καὶ τοῦτο δῆλον καὶ ἐν ταῖς τῶν συνεχῶν δίναις, ὥσπερ καὶ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὑγρῶν. Αrist. lib. 4. φύσικ, ἀκροασ. c. 8. Casaub. p. 23. C.

s Juv, x. 176. Ruperti.

"Chap. xx. 19.

t Lucret. i. 570. Eichstadt, p. 25.

to beget admiration, though without contesting against the unalterable laws of nature, to dream it must be this way, is to challenge confidently, but to be careless of our warrant; I conclude, that it hath never been yet known, that two bodies ever were, at once, in one place.

33. I find but one objection more pretended, and that is, that place is not essential to bodies; because the utmost heaven is a body, and yet is not in a place; because it hath nothing without it, that can circumscribe it. To this I have already answered in the confutation of Aristotle's definition of a place. But besides; I answer, that what the utmost heaven is, our philosophy can tell or guess at; but it is certain that beyond any thing that philosophy ever dreamed of, there are bodies. For Christ" is ascended far above all heavens ;" and, therefore, to say it is not in a place, or that there is not a place where Christ's body is, is a ridiculous absurdity. But if there be places for bodies above the highest heavens, then the highest heaven also is in a place, be for aught any thing pretended against it. "In my Father's house are many mansions," said Christ, many places of abode;' and it is highly probable, that that pavement, where the bodies of saints shall tread to eternal ages, is circumscribed, though by something we understand not. Many things more might be said to this. But I am sorry, that the series of a discourse must be interrupted with such trifling considerations.

or may

34. The sum is this; as substances cannot subsist without the manner of substances; no more can accidents, without the manner of accidents; quantities, after the manner of quantities; qualities, as qualities; for to separate that from either, by which we distinguish them from each other, is to separate that from them, by which we understand them to be themselves. And four may as well cease to be four, and be reduced to unity, as a line cease to be a line, and a body a body, and a place a place, and a 'quantum' or 'extensum' to be extended in his own kind of quantity or extension: and if a man had talked otherwise, till this new device arose, all sects of philosophers of the world, would have thought him mad; and I may here use the words of Cotta in Cicero:

* Num. 28.

y Vide Boeth. in Prædicam. Aristot.

"Corpus quid sit, sanguis quid sit, intelligo: quasi corpus, et quasi sanguis, quid sit, nullo prorsus modo intelligoz." But concerning the nature of bodies and quantities, these may suffice in general. For if I should descend to particulars, and insist upon them, I could cloy the reader with variety of one dish.

35. Tenthly: By this doctrine of transubstantiation, the same thing is bigger and less than itself: for it is bigger in one host, than in another; for the wafer is Christ's body, and yet one wafer is bigger than another; therefore Christ's body is bigger than itself. The same thing is above itself, and below itself, within itself, and without itself: it stands wholly upon his own right side, and wholly, at the same time, upon his own left side; it is as very a body, as that which is most divisible, and yet is as indivisible as a spirit; and it is not a spirit but a body; and yet a body is no way separated from a spirit, but by being divisible. It is a perfect body, in which the feet are further from the head, than the head from the breast; and yet there is no space between head and feet at all: so that the parts are further off and nearer, without any distance at all; being further and not further, distant, and yet in every point. By this also here is magnitude without extension of parts; for if it be essential to magnitude to have 'partem extra partem,' that is, 'parts distinguished, and severally sited,' then where one part is, there another is not; and, therefore, the whole body of Christ is not in every part of the consecrated wafer; and yet if it be not, then it must be broken into parts, when the wafer is broken, and then it must fill his place by parts. But then it will not be possible, that a bigger body, with the conditions of a body, should be contained in a less thing than itself;— that a man may throw the house out at the windows: and if it be possible, that a magnitude should be in a point, and yet Christ's body be a magnitude, and yet in a point, then the same thing is in a point, and not in a point; extended, and not extended; great and not divisible; a quantity without dimension; something and nothing. By this doctrine, the same thing lies still and yet moves; it stays in a place and goes away from it; it removes from itself, and yet abides

z De Nat. Deor. i. 26. Creuzer, p. 118.