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entangled in the wildernesses of an inconsistent discourse, affirms, that in Scriptures the Israelites did sometimes see; and then they were not deceived in touching or seeing a body; for there was a body assumed, and so it seemed to, Abraham and Lot; but then, suppose Jesus Christ had doue so, and had been indeed a spirit in an assumed body, had not the apostles been deceived by their feeling and seeing, as well as the Israelites were, in thinking those angels to be men, that came to them in human shapes? How had Christ's arguments been pertinent and material? How had he proved, that he was no spirit, by showing a body, which might be the case of a spirit? but that it is not consistent with the wisdom and goodness of God to suffer any illusion in any. matter of sense relating to an article of faith.

5. Secondly: It was the case of the Christian church once, not only to rely upon the evidence of sense for an introduction to the religion, but also to need and use this argument in confirmation of an article of the creed; for the Valentinians and the Marcionites thought Christ's body to be fantastical, and so denied the article of the incarnation: and if arguments from sense were not enough to confute, them, viz. that the apostles did see and feel a body, flesh, and blood, and bones, how could they convince these misbelievers? for whatsoever answer can be brought against the reality of bread in the eucharist, all that may be answered in behalf of the Marcionites: for if you urge to them all those places of Scripture, which affirm Christ to have a body, they answer, it was in Scripture called a body, because it seemed to be so; which is the answer Bellarmine gives to all those places of Scripture, which call it bread' after consecration. And if you object, that if it be not what it seems, then the senses are deceived; they will answer, (a Jesuit being bye, and prompting them), the senses were not deceived, because they only saw colour, shape, figure, and the other accidents; but the inward sense and understanding, that is, the man was deceived, when he thought it to be the body of a man; for under those accidents and appearances, there was an angel, or a Divinity, but no man: and now, upon the grounds of transubstantiation, how can they be confuted, I would fain

know.

* Lib. i. de Euch. c. 14. Sect. Respondent nonnulli. :

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6. But Tertullian', disputing against them, uses the argument of sense, as the only instrument of concluding against them infallibly: "Non licet nobis in dubium sensus› istos revocare," &c. " It is not lawful to doubt of our senses, lest the same doubt be made concerning Christ; lest, peradventure, it should be said, he was deceived when he said, ' I saw Satan, like lightning, fall from heaven;' or when he heard the voice of his Father testifying concerning him; or lest he should be deceived when he touched Peter's wife's mother by the hand; or that he smelt another breath of ointment, and not what was offered to his burial; Alium postea vini saporem, quod in sanguinis sui memoriam consecravit,' or 'tasted another taste of wine, which he consecrated to the memory of his blood."" And if the catholic Christians had believed the substantial, natural presence of Christ's body in the sacrament, and, consequently, disbelieved the testimony of four senses, as the church of Rome at this day, does, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling,-it had been impudence in them to have reproved Marcion, by the testimony of two senses, concerning the verity of Christ's body. And supposing that our eyes could be, deceived, and our taste, and our smelling, yet our touch cannot : for supposing the organs equally disposed, yet touch' is the guardian of truth, and his nearest natural instrument; all sensation is by touch, but, the other senses are more capable of being deceived; because, though they finally operate by touch variously affected, yet their objects are further removed from the organ; and, therefore, many intermedial things may intervene, and, possibly, hinder the operation of the sense; that is, bring more diseases and disturbances to the action: but in touch,' the object and the instrument join close together; and, therefore, there can be no impediment, if the instrument be sound, and the object proper. And yet no sense can be deceived in that which it always perceives alike; "The touch can never be deceived";" and, therefore, a testimony from it and three senses more, cannot possibly be refused: and, therefore, it were strange if all the Christians, for above one thousand six hundred years together, should be deceived, as if the eucha-,

1 Lib. de Animâ, c. 17.

» 'H μèv yàç aïolnois tãv idiwv aleì àḥn≈hs.- Aristot. de Animâ, lib. iii. t. 152.

rist were a perpetual illusion, and a riddle to the senses, for so many ages together: and indeed the fault, in this case, could not be in the senses: and, therefore, Tertullian and St. Austin" dispute wittily, and substantially, that the senses! could never be deceived, but the understanding ought to assent to what they relate to it, or represent: for if any man thinks the staff is crooked that is set half way in the water, it is the fault of his judgment, not of his sense; for the air and the water being several mediums, the eye ought to see otherwise in air, otherwise in water; but the understanding must not conclude falsely from these true premises, which the eye ministers for the thicker medium makes a fraction of the species by incrassation and a shadow; and when a man, in the yellow jaundice, thinks every thing yellow, it is not the fault of his eye, but of his understanding; for the eye does his office right, for it perceives just as is represented to it, the species are brought yellow; but the fault is in the understanding, not perceiving that the species are stained near the eye, not further óff: when a man, in a fever, thinks every thing bitter, his taste is not deceived, but judges rightly; for as a man, that chews bread and aloes together, tastes not false, if he tastes bitterness; so it is, in the sick man's case; the juice of his meat is mingled with choler, and } the taste is acute and exact, by perceiving it such as it is so mingled. The purpose of which discourse is this, that no notices are more evident and more certain than the notices' of sense; but if we conclude contrary to the true dictates of senses, the fault is in the understanding, collecting false conclusions from right premises: it follows, therefore, that, in the matter of the eucharist, we ought to judge that which our senses tell us; for whatsoever they say is true: for no deceit can come by them; but the deceit is, when we believe something besides or against what they tell us; especially when' the organ is perfect, and the object proper, and the medium/ regular, and all things perfect, and the same always and to all men. For it is observable, that, in this case, the senses are competent judges of the natural being of what they see, and/ taste, and smell, and feel; and, according to that, all the

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n Lib. de Animâ, c. 87, &c. S. Austin. c. 33. de Verâ Religione.

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• Αἱ μὲν ἀληθεῖς ἀεὶ, αἱ δὲ φαντασίαι γίνονται αἱ πλείους ψευδεῖς. — Arist. lib. iii. De Anim. lib. clxv. Διανοεῖσθαι δ' ἐνδέχεται καὶ ψευδῶς. - Id. ibid.

men in the world can swear, that what they see, is bread and wine; but it is not their office to tell us, what they become by the institution of our Saviour; for that we are to learn by faith, that what is bread and wine, in nature, is, by God's ordinance, the sacrament of the body and blood of the Saviour of the world; but one cannot contradict another; and, therefore, they must be reconciled: both say true, that which faith teaches, is certain; and that which the senses of all men teach always, that also is certain and evident; for as the rule of the school says excellently, "Grace never destroys nature, but perfects it," and so it is in the consecration of bread and wine; in which, although we are more to regard their signification than their matter, their holy employment than their natural usage, what they are by grace rather than what they are by nature,-that they are sacramental rather than that they are nutritive,- that they are consecrated and exalted by religion, rather than that they are mean and low in their natural beings,-what they are to the spirit and understanding, rather than what they are to the sense; yet this also is as true and as evident as the other: and, therefore, though not so apt for our meditation, yet as certain as that which is.

7. Thirdly: Though it be a hard thing to be put to prove that bread is bread, and that wine is wine; yet, if the arguments and notices of sense may not pass for sufficient; an impudent person may, without possibility of being confuted, outface any man, that an oyster is a rat, and that a candle ist a pig of lead: and so might the Egyptian soothsayers have been too hard for Moses; for when they changed rods into serpents, they had some colour to tell Pharaoh they were serpents as well as the rod of Moses; but if they had failed to turn the water into blood, they needed not to have been troubled, if they could have borne down Pharaoh, that, though it looked like water, and tasted like water, yet, by their enchantment, they had made it verily to be blood: and, upon this ground of having different substances, improper and disproportioned accidents, what hinders them but they might have said so? and if they had, how should they have been confuted? But this manner of proceeding would be suf

P Aquin. part. 1. q. 1. a. 8. ad. 2.

P

ficient to evacuate all reason, and all science, and all notices of things; and we may as well conclude snow to be black, and fire cold, and two and two to make five and twenty.

8. But, it is said, although the body of Christ be invested with improper accidents, yet sometimes Christ hath appeared in his own shape, and blood and flesh hath been pulled out of the mouths of the communicants: and Plegilus, the priest, saw an angel, showing Christ to him in form of a child upon the altar, whom first he took in his arms and kissed, but did eat him up presently in his other shape, in the shape of a wafer. "Speciosa certè pax nebulonis, ut qui oris præbuerat basium, dentium inferret exitium," said Berengarius: "It was but a Judas' kiss to kiss with the lip, and bite with the teeth."-But if such stuff as this may go for argument, we may be cloyed with them in those unanswerable authors, Simeon Metaphrastes for the Greeks; and Jacobus de Voragine for the Latin, who make it a trade to lie for God, and for the interest of the catholic cause. But, however, I shall tell a piece of a true story. In the time of Soter, pope of Rome, there was an impostor called Mark; Eidwλonoids, that was his appellative: and he πωτήρια οἴνου κεκραμένα προστ ποιούμενος εὐχαριστεῖν, καὶ ἐπὶ πλέον ἐκ τίνων τῶν λόγων τῆς ἐπικλήσεως πορφύρεα καὶ ἐρυθρὰ ἀναφαίνεσθαι ποιεῖ, ' pretending to make the chalice of wine and water eucharistical, saying long prayers over it, made it look red or purple,' that it might be thought that grace, which is above all things, does drop the blood into the chalice by invocation. Such as these have been often done by human artifice, or by operation of the devil, said. Alexander of Ales. If such things as these were done regularly, it were pretence enough to say it is flesh and blood that is in the eucharist; but when nothing of this is done by God, but heretics and knaves, jugglers and impostors, hoping to change the sacrament into a charm, by abusing the spiritual sense into a gross and carnal, against the authority of Scripture and the church, reason or religion, have made pretences of those things, and still the holy sacrament, in all the times of ministration, hath the form and all the perceptibilities of bread and wine: as we may believe those impostors

¶ Guil. Malmesbur. de Gestis Regum Anglorum, lib. iii.
Irenæ. lib. i. c. 9.

Sum. Theod. part. 4. q. 11. memb. 2. art. 4. sect. 3.

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