CHAPTER VIII. THE LORD'S SUPPER. PART I.

The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is a point in the Christian religion which requires very careful handling. I approach it with reverence, fear, and trembling. I cannot forget that I tread on very delicate ground. There is much connected with the subject which is, alike, painful, humbling, and difficult.

It is painful to think that an ordinance appointed by Christ for our benefit should have been defiled by the din and smoke of theological controversy. It is undeniable that no ordinance has called forth so much passion and strife, and has become such a bone of contention among polemical divines. Such is the corruption of fallen man, that the thing which was ordained for our peace has become an occasion of falling.

It is humbling to remember that men of opposite opinions have written folios about the Lord's Supper without producing the slightest effect on the minds of their adversaries. Cart-loads of books about it have been published during the last three centuries, and poured into the open gulf between the disputants in vain. Like the slew of despond in Pilgrim's Progress, it is a yawning gulf still. I ask no stronger proof that the fall of Adam has affected the understanding as well as the will of man. than the present divided state of Christendom about the Lord's Supper.

It is difficult to know how to handle such a subject without exhausting the patience of readers. It is difficult to know what to say and what to leave unsaid. The field has been so thoroughly exhausted by the labors of many masters in Israel. that it is thoroughly impossible to bring forward anything that is new, the utmost that I can hope to attain is the condensation of old arguments. If I can only bring together a few ancient things and present them to my readers in a portable and compact form, I shall be content.

In the present paper I shall content myself with two points and two only. One, I will show the original intention of the Lord's Supper. Two, I will show the position which the Lord's Supper was meant to occupy. One thing, at any rate, is very clear to my mind. It is impossible to overrate the importance of the subject. I own to a strong and growing conviction that error about the Lord's Supper is one of the commonest and most dangerous errors of the present day. I suspect we have little idea of the extent to which unsound views of this sacrament prevail both among clergy and laity. They are the hidden root of nine-tenths of the extravagant ritualism which, like a fog, is overspreading our Church.

Here, if anywhere, all Christian ministers have need to be very jealous for the Lord God of hosts. Our witness must be clear, distinct, and unmistakable. Our trumpets must give no uncertain sound. The Philistines are upon us. The Ark of God is in danger. If we love the truth, as it is in Jesus, if we love the Church of England, we must contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints in the matter of the Lord's Supper.

I. IN THE FIRST PLACE, WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL INTENTION OF THE LORD'S SUPPER?

This question can never receive a better general answer than that of our well-known Church catechism. Wanting in simplicity, as that famous formulary certainly is, and sadly too full of hard words and scholastic metaphysical terms, it is worthy of all honor for its statements about the sacraments. Our Sunday-school teachers may fail to understand the catechism, and complain justly that it needs another catechism to explain it, But, after all, there is a logical preciseness and theological accuracy about its definitions, which every well-read divine must acknowledge and appreciate.

Rightly used, I hold the Church Catechism to be a most powerful weapon against semi-Romanism. Fairly interpreted, it is utterly subversive of the ritualistic system.

The very first question of the Catechism about the Lord's Supper is as follows. Why was the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ordained? The answer supplied is this, for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby. This is sound speech that cannot be condemned. Founded on plain language of Holy Scripture, it contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Luke 22.19, 1 Corinthians 11.24.

The Lord Jesus Christ intended the Lord's Supper to be a continual remembrance to the Church of His atoning death on the cross.

Footnote. The doctrine of the communion service, let me remind the reader, is in precise harmony with that of the catechism. Let us remark the following expressions. to the end that we should always remember the exceeding great love of our Master and only Saviour Jesus Christ, thus dying for us, and the innumerable benefits which by His blood-shedding He hath obtained to us, He hath instituted and ordained holy mysteries as pledges of His love, and for a continual remembrance of His death, to our great and endless comfort. He did institute and in His holy gospel commend us to continue a perpetual memory of that His precious death, until His coming again. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee. Drink this in remembrance that Christ's blood was shed for thee.

The bread broken, given, and eaten was intended to remind Christians of His body given for our sins. The wine poured out and drunk was intended to remind Christians of His blood shed for our sins.

The Lord Jesus knew what was in a man. He knew full well the darkness, slowness, coldness, hardness, stupidity, pride, self-conceit, self-righteousness, slothfulness, of human nature in spiritual things. Therefore he took care that his death for sinners should not merely be written in the Bible, for then it might have been locked up in libraries, or left to the ministry to proclaim in the pulpit. for then it might soon have been kept back by false teachers, but that it should be exhibited in visible signs and emblems, even in bread and wine, at a special ordinance.

The Lord's Supper was a standing provision against man's forgetfulness. So long as the world stands in its present order, the thing which is done at the Lord's table shows forth the Lord's death till he comes.

The Lord Jesus Christ knew full well the unspeakable importance of His own death for sin, as the great cornerstone of scriptural religion. He knew that His own satisfaction for sin as our substitute, His suffering for sin, the just for the unjust, His payment of our mighty debt in His own person, His complete redemption of us by His blood, He knew that this was the very root of a soul-saving and soul-satisfying Christianity. Without this He knew His incarnation, miracles, Teaching, example, and ascension could do no good to man. Without this he knew there could be no justification, no reconciliation, no hope, no peace between God and man. Knowing all this, he took care that his death, at any rate, should never be forgotten. He carefully appointed an ordinance in which, by lively figures, his sacrifice on the cross should be kept in perpetual remembrance.

The Lord Jesus Christ well knew the weakness and infirmity even of the holiest believers. He knew the absolute necessity of keeping them in intimate communion with His own vicarious sacrifice, as the fountain of their inward and spiritual life. Therefore, He did not merely leave them promises on which their memories might feed, and words which they might call to mind. He mercifully provided an ordinance in which true faith might be quickened by seeing lively emblems of His body and blood. and in the use of which believers might be strengthened and refreshed.

The strengthening of the faith of God's elect in Christ's atonement was one great purpose of the Lord's Supper.

I turn from the positive to the negative side of the subject with real pain and reluctance, but it is a plain duty to do so. Ministers, like physicians, must study disease as well as health, and exhibit error as well as truth. Let me try to show what are not the intentions of the Lord's Supper.

I. IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE REGARDED AS A SACRIFICE. We were not intended to believe that there is any change in the elements of bread and wine or any corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament. These things can never be honestly and fairly got out of Scripture. Let the three accounts of the institution in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the one given by St. Paul to the Corinthians, be weighed and examined impartially, and I have no doubt as to the result. They teach that there is no sacrifice, no altar, no change in the substance of the elements, that the bread after consecration is still literally and truly bread, and the wine after consecration is literally and truly wine.

In no part of the New Testament do we find the Christian minister called a priest, and in no part do we find any mention of a sacrifice except that of prayer and praise and good works. The last literal sacrifice, we are repeatedly told in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is the once for all finished sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

No doubt it may satisfy such controversialists as the late Cardinal Wiseman, to adduce such texts as, This is my body, and This is my blood, as proofs that the Lord's Supper is a sacrifice. But a man must be easily satisfied if such texts content him. The quotation of a single isolated phrase is a mode of arguing that would establish Arianism or Socinianism. The context of these famous expressions shows clearly that those who heard the words used understood them to mean, this represents my body, and this represents my blood. The analogy of other places proves that is and are frequently mean represent in Scripture. St. Paul, in writing on the sacrament, expressly calls the consecrated bread, bread, and not the body of Christ, no less than three times, 1 Corinthians 11, 26, 27, 28.

Above all there remains the unanswerable argument that if the Lord was actually holding His own body in His hands when He said of the bread, This is My body, His body must have been a different body to that of ordinary men. Of course, if His body was not a body like ours, His real and proper humanity is at an end. At this rate the blessed and comfortable doctrine of Christ's entire sympathy with His people, as very man, would be completely overthrown and fall to the ground. Again, it may please some to regard the sixth chapter of St. John, where our Lord speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, as proof that there is a literal bodily presence of Christ in the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper. But there is an absence of conclusive proof that this chapter refers to the Lord's Supper at all. The man who maintains that it does refer to the Lord's Supper will find himself involved in very awkward consequences. He sentences to everlasting death all who do not receive the Lord's Supper. He raises to everlasting life all who do receive it. Enough to say that the great majority of Protestant commentators altogether deny that the chapter refers to the Lord's Supper. and that even some Romish commentators on this point agree with them.

II. I pass on to another negative view of the subject. The Lord's Supper was never meant to confer benefit on communicates ex opera operato, or by virtue of a mere formal reception of the ordinance. We were not intended to believe that it does any good but to those who receive it with faith and knowledge. It is not a medicine or a charm which works mechanically, irrespectively of the state of mind in which it is received. It cannot of itself confer grace, where grace does not already exist. It does not convert, justify, or convey blessings to the heart of an unbeliever. It is an ordinance not for the dead, but for the living, not for the faithless, but for the believing, not for the unconverted, but for the converted, not for the impenitent sinner, but for the saint. I am almost ashamed to take up time with such trite and well-known statements as these. The Word of God testifies distinctly that a man may go to the Lord's table, and eat and drink unworthily. may eat and drink damnation to himself. First Corinthians chapter 11 verses 27 and 29. To such testimony I shall not add a word.

3. I will only mention one more point on the negative side of the subject. The Lord's Supper was not meant to be a mere social feast, indicating the love that should exist among believers. We were never intended to regard it in this cold and tame light. The notion of the author of, Ecce Homo, that, the Christian communion is a club dinner, is not only a degrading one, but one that cannot be reconciled with the language of its founder at the time of institution. Feeding on the character of Christ, I quote this notorious book, is an idea which may satisfy a Socinian, or any one who rejects the doctrine of the Atonement. But the true Christian who feeds especially on the vicarious death of Christ, and not his character, will see that death prominently exhibited in the Lord's Supper, and find his faith in that death quickened by the use of it. It was meant to carry his mind back to the sacrifice once made on Calvary, and not merely to the Incarnation, and no lower view will ever satisfy a true Christian's heart.

I have now stated the ground that I believe we are meant to take up about the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Negatively, it was not intended to be a mere social meeting, nor yet a sacrifice, nor yet an ordinance conferring grace, ex opera operato. Positively, it was intended to be a continual remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ's death, and a strengthener and refresher of true believers. This ground may seem to some very simple, so simple that it is below the truth. be it so, I am not ashamed of it. Whether men will hear, or whether they will forbear, I am convinced that this is the only view that is in harmony with Scripture and the formularies of the Church of England.

I grant most freely that a large and increasing school within our own Church entirely disagree with the view I have given of the Lord's Supper. Hundreds of clergy, both in high places and low, consider that there is not only a real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, which I hold as strongly as they do, but that there is also a real presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine after consecration, which I entirely deny.

It is extremely difficult to make some people see the immense importance of strict accuracy in stating terms in this unhappy controversy about the Lord's Supper. The point in dispute is not whether there is a real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. this we all hold. The point is not whether Christ's presence is a spiritual presence. Even Harding, the well-known antagonist of Jewel, admits that Christ's body is present, not after a corporal, or carnal, or natural-wise, but invisibly, unspeakably, miraculously, supernaturally, spiritually, divinely, and in a manner by him known.

Harding's reply to Jewel. The true point is, whether Christ's real body and blood are really present in the elements of bread and wine as soon as they are consecrated in the Lord's Supper, and independently of the faith of him who receives it. Romanists and semi-Romanists say that they are so present. We say that they are not.

Let us hear how Archdeacon Dennison, no mean authority, states this view. He says, Christ's body and blood are really present in the Holy Eucharist under the form of bread and wine, i.e., present things, though they be present after a manner ineffable, incomprehensible by man, and not cognizable by the senses. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is therefore not, as I believe it is very generally supposed to be, the presence of an influence emanating from the thing absent, but the invisible and supernatural presence of a thing present, of his body and his blood present under the forms of bread and wine.

The antagonism between these sentences of Archdeacon Denison and Bishop Ridley's views of the same subject is so singularly strong that I ask the reader not to pass on without noticing it. Bishop Ridley, in his Disputation at Oxford, says of the Romish doctrine of the Real Presence, It destroyeth and taketh away the institution of the Lord's Supper, which was commanded only to be used, and continued until the Lord himself should come. If, therefore, he be now really present in the body of his flesh, then must the supper cease, for a remembrance is not of a thing present, but a thing past and absent. And, as one of the fathers saith, a figure is vain where the thing figured is present.

Let us hear him again. Sermon 2, page 81. Let us hear him again. The act of consecration makes the real presence. O Priests of the Church of God, to us it is given to be the channels and agents whereby the Holy Ghost doth there make the Body and Blood of Christ to be really, though invisibly and supernaturally, present, under the form of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper.

TO US IT IS GIVEN, TO GIVE HIS BODY AND HIS BLOOD UNTO HIS PEOPLE. O PRIESTS AND PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH OF GOD, TO US IT IS GIVEN TO TAKE AND EAT, UNTO THE FORM OF BREAD AND WINE IN THE LORD'S SUPPER, THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST. In a devotional work lately published by the Church Press Company entitled, The Little Prayer Book, Intended for Beginners in Devotion, revised and corrected by three priests, the following passages will be found. When you enter the church, before you go to your place, bow reverently to the holy altar, for it is the throne of Christ, and the most sacred part of the church. Bow reverently to the altar before you leave the altar.

At the words, This is my body, this is my blood, you must believe that the bread and wine become the real body and blood, with the soul and Godhead of Jesus Christ. Bow down your heart and body in deepest adoration when the priest says those awful words, and worship your Saviour, there verily and indeed present on his altar.

In a Catechism on the Office of the Holy Communion, edited by a committee of clergymen, will be found the following statement. The Holy Communion is a sacrifice, an offering made on the altar of God. We offer bread and wine, these afterwards becoming the Body and Blood of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself as our High Priest, and the priests of His Church, whom He hath appointed here on earth, alone have power to offer this sacrifice. The sacrifice is the true Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and is presented as a sin offering, to obtain pardon for our offenses. The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are really and truly present on the altar under the forms of the bread and wine, and the priest offers the sacrifice to God the Father. We should worship our Lord, present in His sacrament, as we should do if we could see Him bodily.

End of footnote. It would be no less easy to show that the doctrine is substantially one and the same with that of the Romish Church, and that for refusing this very doctrine our martyred Reformers laid down their lives. But time would not allow me to do this. I shall content myself with trying to show that the doctrine of Archdeacon Denison and his school cannot be reconciled with the authorized formularies of the Church of England, and that the simpler and, as some falsely call it, lower view of the intention of the Lord's Supper is in entire harmony with these formularies.

Let me turn first to the Thirty-Nine Articles. We have no right to appeal to any formulary before these. The Church's confession of faith is the Church's first standard of doctrine. The Twenty-Eighth Article says as follows, The supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another, but rather a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death, insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the bread which we break is partaking of the body of Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ.

Transubstantiation, or the change of the substance of bread and wine, in the supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy writ, but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions. The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner, and the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance received, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

I shall make no remark in these words. I only ask plain churchmen to put them side by side with high church statements about the Lord's Supper, and to observe the utter contrariety that exists between them. I appeal to the common sense of all impartial and unprejudiced Englishmen. Let them be the judges. If one view is right, the other is wrong. If the language of the twenty-eighth article can be reconciled with the doctrine of Archdeacon Denison and his school, I can only say that words have no meaning at all.

I shall content myself with quoting the comment of Bishop Beveridge on this 28th article and pass on. He says, If the bread be not really changed into the body of Christ, then the body of Christ is not really there present, and if it be not really there present, it is impossible that it should be really taken and received into our bodies as bread is. Again he says, I cannot see how it can possibly be denied, that Christ ate of the bread whereof he said, This is my body, and if he ate it, and ate it corporally, that is, ate his body as we eat bread, then he ate himself, and made one body too, and, then crowded them into one again, putting his body into his body, even his whole body into part of his body, his stomach. and so he must be thought not only to have two bodies, but two bodies one within another. Yea, so as to be one devoured by another, the absurdity of which, and of like assertions, he that hath but half an eye must easily discover. So that it must needs be granted to be in a spiritual manner that the sacrifice was instituted, and by consequence, that it is in a spiritual manner, the sacrament must be received.

BEVERAGE ON THE ARTICLES. OXFORD EDITION. 1846. p. 482-486.

The liturgy of the Church of England on this subject is entirely in accordance with the articles. The word altar is not to be found once in our prayer book. The idea of a sacrifice is most carefully excluded from our communion office. However much men may twist and distort the words of the baptismal service, they cannot make anything out of the communion service to prove Romish views. Even the famous non-juror, Dr. Brett, was obliged to confess that he knew not how to reconcile the consecration prayer in the present established liturgy with the real presence, for, says he, it makes a plain distinction betwixt the bread and wine and our Saviour's body and blood, when it says, grant that we, receiving thy creatures of bread and wine, may be partakers of Christ's body and blood. Which manifestly implies the bread and wine to be distinct and different things from the body and blood.

Brett's Discourse on Discerning the Lord's Body in the Communion, London 1720, Preface pages 19 to 21.

But the rubric at the end of the communion service makes it mere waste of time to say anything more on the subject of the prayer book's views of the Lord's Supper. That rubric says, Whereas it is ordained in this office of the administration of the Lord's Supper, that the communicants should receive the same kneeling, which order is well meant, for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy receivers, and for the avoiding of such profanation and disorder in the Holy Communion as might otherwise ensue, Yet, lest the same kneeling should by any persons either out of ignorance and infirmity, or out of malice and obstinacy, be misconstrued and depraved, it is thereby declared, that thereby no adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread or wine there bodily received, or unto any corporal presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood. For the sacramental bread and wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored, for that it were idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians. And the natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are in heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one.

If that rubric does not flatly condemn the teaching of Archdeacon Dennison in his school about the presence of Christ in the sacrament under the forms of bread and wine, I am very certain that words have no meaning at all.

The rubric at the end of the communion of the sick is another strong evidence of the views of those who drew up our prayer book in its present form. It says, If a man by reason of extremity of sickness, or for want of warning, in due time to the curate, or for lack of company to receive with him, or by any other just impediment, do not receive the sacrament of Christ's body and blood, the curate shall instruct him, that if he do truly repent him of his sins, and steadfastly believe that Jesus hath suffered death on the cross for him, and shed his blood for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving him hearty thanks, therefore, he doth eat and drink the body and blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth.

The Catechism of the Church of England is in direct accordance with the Articles and Liturgy. Though it states distinctly that Christ's body and blood are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper, it carefully avoids saying one word to sanction the idea that the body and blood are locally present in the consecrated elements of bread and wine. In fact, a spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper to every faithful communicant, but no local corporal presence, in the bread and wine to any communicant, is evidently the uniform doctrine of the Church of England.

But I will not pass on without quoting Waterland's interpretation of the doctrine of the Catechism. He says, The words verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful, are rightly interpreted of a real participation of the benefits purchased by Christ's death. The body and blood of Christ are taken and received by the faithful, not corporally, not internally, but verily and indeed, that is, effectually. The sacred symbols are no bare signs, no untrue figures of a thing absent, but the force, the grace, the virtue, and benefit of Christ's body broken and blood-shed, that is, of His Passion, are really and effectually present with all them that receive worthily. This is all the real presence that our Church teaches.

Waterland's Works, Oxford, 1848, Vol. 6, p. 42.

Once more I say that if Waterland's view of the Catechism can be reconciled with that of Archdeacon Dennison and his school, words have no meaning at all.

The homily of the Church of England about this sacrament is in complete harmony with the Articles, Liturgy, and Catechism. It says, Before all things this we must be sure of especially, that this supper be in such wise done and ministered as our Lord and Saviour did, and commanded to be done, as his holy Apostles used it, and the good Fathers in the Church frequented it. For, as that worthy man St. Ambrose saith, he is unworthy of the Lord that doth celebrate this mystery otherwise than it was delivered by him. Neither can he be devout that doth presume otherwise than it was given by the author.

We must then take heed, lest of the memory it be made a sacrifice, lest of a communion it be made a private eating, lest of two parts we have but one, lest applying it for the dead we lose the fruit that be alive.

Again, it says, after pressing the necessity of knowledge and faith in communicants, This is to stick fast to Christ's promise made in His institution, to make Christ thine own, and to apply His merits unto thyself. Herein thou needest no other man's help, no other sacrifice or oblation, no sacrificing priest, no Mass, no means established by man's invention.

Again it says, It is well known that the meat we seek for in this supper is spiritual food, the nourishment of our soul, a heavenly reflection and not earthly. an invisible meat and not bodily, a ghostly substance and not carnal. So that to think without faith we really enjoy the eating and drinking thereof, or that that is the fruition of it, is but to dream a gross carnal feeling, basely objecting and binding ourselves to the elements and creatures. Whereas, by the order of the Council of Nicene, we ought to lift up our minds by faith, and leaving these inferior and earthly things, there seek it where the sun of righteousness ever shineth.

Take, then, this lesson, O thou that art desirous of this table, of Emicenus, a godly father, that when thou goest up to the reverend communion to be satisfied with spiritual meat, thou look up with faith upon the holy body and blood of thy God. Thou touch it with thy mind, thou receive it with the hand of thy heart, and thou take it fully with thy inward man."

Now, it would be easy to multiply quotations in support of the view of the Lord's Supper which I advocate, from leading divines of the Church of England. But I forbear. Time is precious in these latter days of hurry, bustle, and excitement. Quotations are wearisome, and too often are not read. Those who wish to follow up this subject should study Dean Goode's unanswerable but much neglected book on the Eucharist.

Two quotations only I will give, from two men of no mean authority, though differing widely on some points. The first is the well-known Jeremy Taylor. In his book on The Real Presence, he says,

We say that Christ's body is in the sacrament really, but spiritually. The Roman Catholics say that it is there really, but spiritually. For so Bellarmine is bold to say that the word may be allowed in this question. Where now is the difference? Here, by spiritually, they mean spiritual after the manner of a spirit. We, by spiritually, mean present to our spirit only. They say that Christ's blood is truly present there as it was upon the cross, but not after the manner of all, or anybody, but after the manner of being as an angel is in a place. that's there spiritually. But we, by the real spiritual presence of Christ, do understand Christ to be present, as the Spirit of God is present, in the hearts of the faithful by blessing and grace. And this is all which we mean, beside the tropical and figurative presence.

The other divine whom I will quote is one who was a very giant in theology, and as remarkable for his soundness in the faith as his prodigious learning. I mean Archbishop Usher. In his sermon before the House of Commons he says, In the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the bread and wine are not changed in substance from being the same. with that which is served at ordinary tables. But in respect of the sacred use, whereunto they are consecrated, such a change is made that now they differ as much from common bread and wine as heaven from earth. Neither are they to be accounted barely significative, but truly exhibitive, also, of those heavenly things whereunto they have relation. As being appointed by God to be a means of conveying the same to us, and putting us in actual possession thereof, so that in the use of this holy ordinance, as verily as a man with his bodily hand and mouth receiveth the earthly creatures of bread and wine, so verily with his spiritual hand and mouth, if he have any, doth he receive the body and blood of Christ. And this is that real and substantial presence which we affirm to be in the inward part of the sacred action.

I cannot leave this part of the subject without entering my indignant protest against the oft-repeated sneer that learning, reasoning, and research are not to be found among the supporters of evangelical religion in the Church of England. The work of Dean Good, on the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, containing 986 pages of masterly argument in defense of sound Protestant views of the Lord's Supper, has now been for many years before the public. It stands to this day unanswered hitherto and unanswerable. Where is the honesty, where the fairness, of neglecting to refute that book, if it can be refuted, and yet clinging obstinately to views which it triumphantly subverts?

I unhesitatingly commend that book to the patient and diligent study of all my younger brethren in the ministry, if they want their minds established and confirmed about the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Let them read it carefully, and I think they will find it impossible to arrive at any but one conclusion. That conclusion is, that the Church of England holds that there is no sacrifice in the Lord's Supper, no oblation, no altar, no corporal presence of Christ in the bread and wine, and that the true intention of the Lord's Supper is just what the Catechism states. and neither less nor more, it was ordained for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits that we receive thereby.