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great pomp, and fuch as were apt to ftrike men that could ART. not diftinguish between the fhews and the ftrength of XXVIII. arguments. But when all our fenfes, all our ideas of things rife up so strongly against every part of this chain of wonders, we ought at least to expect proofs fuitable to the difficulty of believing fuch a flat contradiction to our reafons, as well as to our fenfes.

We have no other notion of accidents, but that they are the different fhapes or modes of matter; and that they have no being diftinct from the body in which they appear: we have no other notion of a body, but that it is an extended fubftance, made up of impenetrable parts, one without another; every one of which fills its proper fpace we have no other notion of a body's being in a place, but that it fills it, and is fo in it, as that it can be no where else at the fame time: and though we can very eafily apprehend that an infinite power can both create and annihilate beings at pleafure; yet we cannot apprehend that God does change the effences of things, and to make them to be contrary to that nature and fort of being of which he has made them.

Another argument against Tranfubftantiation is this; God has made us capable to know and ferve him: and, in order to that, he has put fome fenfes in us, which are the conveyances of many fubtile motions to our brains, that give us apprehenfions of the objects, which by those motions are represented to us.

When those motions are lively, and the object is in a due diftance; when we feel that neither our organs nor our faculties are under any diforder, and when the im preffion is clear and ftrong, we are determined by it; we cannot help being fo. When we fee the fun rifen, and all is bright about us, it is not poffible for us to think that it is dark night; no authority can impofe it on us; we are not fo far the mafters of our own thoughts, as to force ourselves to think it, though we would; for God has made us of fuch a nature, that we are determined by fuch an evidence, and cannot contradict it. When an object is at too great a diftance, we may mistake; a weakness or an ill difpofition in our fight may mifreprefent it; and a falfe medium, water, a cloud, or a glafs, may give it a tincture or caft, so that we may fee caufe to correct our firft apprehenfions, in fome fenfations: but when we have duly examined every thing, when we have corrected one fenfe by another, we grow at laft to be fo fure, by the conftitution of that nature that God has given us, that we

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ART. cannot doubt, much lefs believe in contradiction to the XXVIII. express evidence of our fenfes.

It is by this evidence only that God convinces the world of the authority of thofe whom he fends to speak in his name; he gives them a power to work miracles, which is an appeal to the fenfes of mankind; and it is the higheft appeal that can be made; for those who stood out against the conviction of Chrift's miracles, had no cloak for their fins. It is the utmoft conviction that God offers, or that man can pretend to: from all which we must infer this, that either our fenfes in their cleareft apprehenfions, or rather representations of things, muft be infallible, or we must throw up all faith and certainty; fince it is not poffible for us to receive the evidence that is given us of any thing but by our fenfes; and fince we do naturally acquiefce in that evidence, we muft acknowledge that God has fo made us, that this is his voice in us; because it is the voice of thofe faculties that he has put in us; and is the only way by which we can find out truth, and be led by it: and if our faculties fail us in any one thing, fo that God fhould reveal to us any thing, that did plainly contradict our faculties, he should thereby give us à right to disbelieve them for ever.

If they can mistake when they bring any object to us with the fulleft evidence that they can give, we can never depend upon them, nor be certain of any thing, because they fhew it. Nay, we are not, and cannot be bound to believe that, nor any other revelation that God may make to convince us. We can only receive a revelation by hearing or reading, by our ears or our eyes. So if any part of this revelation deftroys the certainty of the evidence, that our fenfes, our eyes, or our ears, give us, it deftroys itself: for we cannot be bound to believe it upon the evidence of our fenfes, if this is a part of it, that our fenfes are not to be trufted. Nor will this matter be healed, by faying, that certainly we muft believe God more than our fenfes: and therefore, if he has revealed any thing to us, that is contrary to their evidence, we must as to that particular believe God before our fenses; but that as to all other things where we have not an express revelation to the contrary, we muft ftill believe our fenfes.

There is a difference to be made between that feeble evidence that our fenfes give us of remote objects, or those loose inferences that we may make from a flight view of things, and the full evidence that fenfe gives us; as when

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we fee and fmell to, we handle and tafte the fame object: this ART. is the voice of God to us; he has made us fo that we are XXVIII. determined by it: and as we fhould not believe a prophet that wrought ever fo many miracles, if he fhould contradict any part of that which God had already revealed; fo we cannot be bound to believe a revelation contrary to our fenfe; because that were to believe God in contradiction to himself; which is impoffible to be true. For we should believe that revelation certainly upon an evidence, which itself tells us is not certain; and this is a contradiction. We believe our fenfes upon this foundation, because we reckon there is an intrinfic certainty in their evidence; we do not believe them as we believe another man, upon a moral prefumption of his truth and fincerity; but we believe them, becaufe fuch is the nature of the union of our fouls and bodies, which is the work of God, that upon the full impreflions that are made upon the fenfes, the foul does neceffarily produce, or rather feel thofe thoughts and fenfations arife with a full evidence, that correfpond to the motions of fenfible objects, upon the organs of fenfe. The foul has a fagacity to examine thefe fenfations, to correct one fenfe by another; but when he has ufed all the means fhe can, and the evidence is ftill clear, fhe is perfuaded, and cannot help being fo; fhe naturally takes all this to be true, because of the neceffary connection that the feels between fuch fenfations, and her affent to them. Now, if the fhould find that fhe could be miftaken in this, even though the fhould know this, by a divine revelation, all the intrinfic certainty of the evidence of fenfe, and that connection between those sensations and her affent to them, fhould be hereby diffolved.

To all this another objection may be made from the myfteries of the Chriftian religion: which contradict our reafon, and yet we are bound to believe them; although reafon is a faculty much fuperior to fenfe. But all this is a mistake; we cannot be bound to believe any thing that contradicts our reafon; for the evidence of reafon as well as that of fenfe is the voice of God to us. But as great difference is to be made between a feeble evidence that fenfe gives us of an object that is at a diftance from us, or that appears to us through a falfe medium; fuch as a concave or a convex glafs; and the full evidence of an object that is before us, and that is clearly apprehended by us : fo there is a great difference to be made between our reafonings upon difficulties that we can neither understand nor refolve, and our reafonings upon clear principles. The one may be falfe, and the other must be true: we are Ff2

fure

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ART. fure that a thing cannot be one and three in the fame refpect; our reafon affures us of this, and we do and muft believe it; but we know that in different refpects the fame thing may be one and three. And fince we cannot know all the poffibilities of those different refpects, we muft believe upon the authority of God revealing it, that the fame thing is both one and three; though if a revelation fhould affirm that the fame thing were one and three in the fame respect, we should not, and indeed could not believe it.

This argument deferves to be fully opened; for we are fure either it is true, or we cannot be fure that any thing else whatsoever is true. In confirmation of this we ought alfo to confider the nature and ends of miracles. They put nature out of its channel, and reverse its fixed laws and motions; and the end of God's giving men a power to work them, is, that by them the world may be convinced, that fuch perfons are commiffionated by him, to deliver his pleasure to them in fome particulars. And as it could not become the infinite wifdom of the great Creator, to change the order of nature (which is his own workmanship) upon flight grounds; fo we cannot suppose that he should work a chain of extraordinary miracles to no purpose. It is not to give credit to a revelation that he is making; for the fenfes do not perceive it; on the contrary, they do reject and contradict it; and the revelation, instead of getting credit from it, is loaded by it, as introducing that which deftroys all credit and certainty.

In other miracles our fenfes are appealed to; but here they must be appealed from; nor is there any fpiritual end ferved in working this miracle: for it is acknowledged, that the effects of this facrament are given upon our due coming to it, independent upon the corporal presence: fo that the grace of the facrament does not always accompany it, fince unworthy receivers, though, according to the Romish doctrine, they receive the true body of Chrift, yet they do not receive grace with it: and the grace that is given in it to the worthy receivers, stays with them after that, by the deftruction of the fpecies of the bread and wine, the body of Chrift is withdrawn. So that it is acknowledged, that the spiritual effect of the facrament does not depend upon the corporal prefence.

Here then it is fuppofed, that God is every day working a great many miracles, in a vaft number of different places; and that of fo extraordinary a nature, that it must be confeffed, they are far beyond all the other wonders,

even of omnipotence; and yet all this is to no end, that ART. we can apprehend; neither to any fenfible and vifible XXVIII. end, nor to any internal and spiritual one. This must needs feem an amazing thing, that God should work fuch a miracle on our behalf, and yet fhould not acquaint us with any end for which he fhould work it.

To conclude this whole argument, we have one great advantage in this matter, that our doctrine concerning the facrament, of a myftical prefence of Chrift in the fymbols, and of the effects of it on the worthy and unworthy receivers, is all acknowledged by the Church of Rome; but they have added to this the wonder of the corporal prefence: fo that we need bring no proofs to them at least, for that which we teach concerning it; fince it is all confeffed by them. But as to that which they have added, it is not neceffary for us to give proofs againft it; it is enough for us, if we fhew that all the proofs that they bring for it are weak and unconcluding. They must be very demonstrative, if it is expected, that, upon the authority and evidence of them, we should be bound to believe a thing which they themselves confefs to be contrary both to our fenfe and reafons. We cannot by the laws of reafoning be bound to give arguments against it; it is enough if we can fhew that neither the words of the inftitution, nor the discourse in the fixth of St. John, do neceffarily infer it; and if we fhew that thofe paffages can well bear another fenfe, which is agreeable both to the words themselves, and to the ftyle of the Scriptures, and more particularly to the phrafeology to which the Jews were accustomed, upon the occafion on which this was inftituted; and if the words can well bear the fense that we give them, then the other advantages that are in it, of its being fimple and natural, of its being fuitable to the defign of a facrament, and of its having no hard confequences of any fort depending upon it; then, I fay, by all the rules of expounding Scripture, we do juftly infer, that our sense of those words ought to be preferred.

This is according to a rule that St. Auguftin gives to Lib. iii. de judge what expreffions in Scripture are figurative, and Doet. Chrif. what not; "If any place feems to command a crime or c. 16. "horrid action, it is figurative: and for an inftance of "this he cites those words, except ye eat the flesh and drink "the blood of the Son of man, you have no life in you: which "feems to command a crime and a horrid action; and "therefore it is a figure commanding us to communicate "in the paffion of our Lord, and to lay up in our memory "with delight and profit, that his flesh was crucified and "wounded

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