ceed still further and attack those fundamental truths of christianity. The right of judging having been once granted to each one, there is no longer any thing sacred, any thing firm, any thing that can stand its ground.

Thank heaven! they have not advanced so far in your Church. They have continued to believe and teach the dogmas I have mentioned, and some others connected with them. Observe nevertheless upon what different principles they are believed in your communion and in ours. The principle of the Church of England is to admit as revealed and as necessary for salvation, only the dogmas which are read in Scripture, or may be duly inferred from it. And here, Sir, speak to me, I beseech you, with candour; have you learnt these dogmas, which you believe to be essential, in Scripture? Have you examined and thoroughly searched the sacred text? have you compared the passages together? Not, assuredly, that I doubt, that with the penetration and justness of mind that I know you to possess, you would not of yourself have discovered the truth of these dogmas in the passages of Scripture, where they are established. But as for this examination, this search, I know you have never entered upon it. The nature of the business, with which you have been occupied, has given you neither time nor liberty, nor even the inclination to throw yourself into theological researches. You believe simply from the instructions you have received from your parents, from your masters, who in the same manner had received them from theirs, and so on, up to the period of the Reformation. Your belief and the belief of your countrymen in general, has not then, if thoroughly analysed, any other support than the authority of your reformers, who never pretended that they were

infallible, and have most strenuously maintained they were not so. See where you are, and how much your faith, your salvation are found to be left at hazard, upon mere human authority, and consequently wavering, perishable and faulty. But the Catholic, full of the promise, convinced that Jesus Christ, who has spoken by his apostles, will always speak by their successors, certain that he cannot go astray in the steps of guides whom he is ordered to follow, feels himself firm in faith and in the way of salvation. He knows that both are

built upon the Church, as on an immovable rock, against the foot of which the efforts of hell shall eternally be broken in pieces.

Instructed by the same authority, the Catholic admits in the number of the articles of faith and of the revealed mysteries, that of the most august of sacraments, the Eucharist; under each of the kinds of bread and wine, the substance of which no longer exists, he adores Jesus Christ veiled, but yet present whole and entire. He knows, or may easily know, that at the period when for the first time this belief was attacked in the eleventh age by Berengarius, a cry of indignation was raised on all sides against him: that the ancient faith was maintained by the teachers of christianity, among others by Lancfranc, the learned archbishop of Canterbury, and unanimously defined by many councils, as it has been since defined in the council of Trent. Here unfortunately the lists were entered between the Protestant societies and the Catholic Church, and we are about to find ourselves at variance; it having seemed good to your ancestors, after having agreed with us upon all other mysteries, to leave us and attack us upon this. Your convocation of 1562, had not the same reasons for sparing it, which had made the former

convocations respect it. From the reign of Edward the sixth, the opinions of Zuinglius had been held in esteem; they had made a melancholy progress in your country, and even your new bishops had not been able to preserve themselves from them: in their twenty-eighth article they condemn transubstantiation, reject at the same time the worship and adoration of Jesus Christ in his sacrament, as being contrary to the text of the scriptures and the institution of the Eucharist.

As to the real presence, which should be looked upon as the great article, the principal point of the mystery, they shewed themselves more reserved: they say not openly that it must be admitted or rejected: they adopt a form of expression that seems to accommodate itself to one or other of these opinions. It is plain that they were equally apprehensive of alarming those who yet held in great numbers to the real presence, and those who wished to get rid of it. M. Burnet with more than his usual candour and with his accustomed correctness of mind admires this dexterous scrupulousness of the convocation. He takes pleasure in remarking that the article was couched in such a manner as to serve each ones purpose, and that all might more easily be attracted and might thus increase the rising Church. That an insidious and weak government should adopt this mode of proceeding is quite in character: this artful method may serve the views and interests of the moment, but is it agreeable with an eternal and divine religion? Is it not unworthy of the episcopal character? Faith knows no such temporizing measures, such vagueness and indecision: its course is upright; its language simple, precise, and decided. It enters into no compacts with error, because

it can have no alliance with it. In truth, these political expedients of your spiritual lords sufficiently disclosed their secret thoughts, and a man must have been very simple indeed to let himself be deceived by such pitiful artifices: for, in fine, if all or the greater part had believed the real presence, they would have thought it a point of duty and honor to have loudly professed it, and to have warned their flocks against the heresy, by condemning with a sacerdotal vigour the opinions of Zuinglius. They did not then for the most part believe it, their silence shews they did not. Why then did they not immediately proceed openly to condemn it? What mean this embarrassment, these snares, these concerted concealments? You discover here, Sir, the inevitable march of error. At all times it has shewn itself timid and hesitating at the commencement, and its first steps have always been faltering and uncertain.

I should but use my right, were I to refuse all further discussion, and refer you, upon the Eucharist as upon all other articles of faith, to the decisions pronounced by the Church. I have established its authority: I have shewn that it received it from its divine Founder; that when he was leaving the earth he bequeathed it to his apostles, and, in their persons, to those who should succeed them in the ministry: that he had never ceased to teach by their instrumentality and would continue to the end of the world to teach by that of their successors: that, in consequence, the doctrines of the Church will always be protected from error; that, by hearing the Church, we hear Jesus Christ; and by despising the Church, we despise Jesus Christ. You have seen the proofs of all this: they have appeared to you convincing. And if the impression they have made upon you is.

weakened, read them over again: subject them, if you please, to a new examination. But when once a person is convinced of their solidity, there is no longer room for hesitation. The decision is past, every thing is said: all that remains is to accept it and submit to it. This simple, and at the same time safe, method abridges for every catholic, whether learned or ignorant, the interminable difficulties that exist in protestant societies.

But the arguments you have often heard opposed to the belief of catholics upon this mystery, those that you have read in the writings of your teachers have made a deep impression upon you. They frequently return to your mind, and balance, as you say, the force of the general inference drawn from an infallible authority. Well! then, Sir, I am willing to enter with you into the heart of this controverted point: I engage to justify to you the decrees of the Church upon the Eucharist, and to shew you their conformity with the doctrine of Jesus Christ. I foresee its full extent: I have it at one glance with all its proofs before my eyes. Oh that I could but lay it before your eyes with the same rapidity! but the dissertation must necessarily be long: : you must submit to it: it is necessary for your peace of mind: the subject is all important. I should also be apprehensive that my silence might appear to you a tacit acknowledgment of the weakness of my cause: and I ought not to give your teachers this kind of advantage in your mind.

Before we set about developing the proofs, it will be well to remove certain general difficulties, which might diminish their effect. These difficulties are produced, in some, by the false notions conjured up by a heated imagination; in others by specious

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