Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/248

 4 TRANSUBSTANTI&TION, [Boo II. We most cordially consent that whatever Christ said we are to believe, and likewise that he spoke 8uficiently plain to his disciples when he instituted this sacrament. But the question is, whether these words, in their most obvious sense, make any thing for trausutmtantia- tion ? T..h.ey.say they do; we say they do not: here, therefore, we come to join issue. And here we are ready to prove that the Romish sense is harsh and forced, and against all the rules of speech, and that they not only make nothing for transubstantiation, but quite overthrow it. On the contrary, that mr sense is the plainest, easiest, most natural, and proper; nay', that it is impossible these words should be understood in any othe sense. They contend for a direct literal sense. We say our Saviour speaks by a figure; but such a figure as is common, and which every person may understand upon examining the words. The figure is this; that the bread and wine are symbo/s, or c, mbs, of the broken body and shed blood of Christ. We are now to examine which of these senses comes nearer to our Saylout's meaning, the literal or the figu- rative, theirs or ours. We will therefore attempt to show, First, That their sense of the words, and by which alone they can prove transub- stantiation, is impossible, and full of nonsense and contradict(m. Secondly, That our sense is natural and oasy, and agreeable to the common way of speaking; and the only sense in which it was possi- ble for the apostles, to whom our Lord spoke, to understand them. First, The Roman gloss upon these words supposes things impos- sible and contradictory. If we take our Saviour's words in the literal sense, we must make him say to this effect: that the bread which he brake and commanded them to eat was not bread, but truly and really his dvad body--his body r/fuea? for them. This is to make our Saviour say and unsay* the same fixing at the same time. He spoke of the bread which he had blessed and broken when he pronounced the word tA/s, and they all knew i to be bread; and yet, according to them, he must be supposed to mean that it was flog bread, but merely his body. To evade the foregoing contradiction, they say what was bread fore the words of consecration became his body and blood aler these words were uttered. But this does not avoid the contradictisu; for it makes our Saviour not only to speak against the rules of grammar, but to speak an untruth. For he says, in the present tense, This bread my body, although when he began to speak so the bread was not his body, but, as they say, was presently to be turned into his body. If indeed he had said, This bread  be my body as soon as I have pro- nounced these words, he then might be supposed to have .spoken some- thing in fayour of transubstantiation. But he speaks ih the present time, tkLg Lg, not, this  be; and if their will be h&rdy enough to change the tenses, then they keep not to the/v#er of the words, but to thefsAno*e, and a figure more unusual than that for which we contend. When, therefore, our Saviour says, TA/,v/s my body, his proposition cannot properly be taken in a literal sense without making him spestk �contradiction or a falsehood. Let us suppose, however, that what he had in his hands was no longer bread, but became his very body; yet there is this question, IIow came it to be his dad body, his body gm, brvbn, or 1

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