Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/256

 t8 TItAMSUBST,tfTIATION, [Boox II. as the infallible doctrines of truth: "Our Lord is not in the sacrament as in a place: place regards things only inasmuch as they have ma!- nitude; and we do not say that Christ is in the sacrament inasmuch as he is great or small, terms which belong to quantity, but inasmuch as he is a substance. The substance of the bread is changed into the substance of Christ, not into magnitude or quantity; and substance, it will be acknowledged, is contained in a small as well as in a large space.""The body and blood of our Lord are really and truly con- rained in the sacrament, to the entire exclusion of the substance of the bread and wine: the accidents cannot inher to the body of Christ; they must therefore, contrary to the physical laws, subsist in them- selves, inhering in no subject." To show still more fully that we do not misrepresent on this subject, we give the following extracts from Dens' Theology: "How do these accidents remain, when the substance of bread and wine does not remain ? An.river. These accidents subsist in the sacrament without any subject, by divine power. That quantity alone exists without a subject, but that the other accidents es/st in quantity, as in their irame- diate subject. The more recent philosophers say that these accidents have their subjects in the air and in our senses. no Such are the con* tradictory sentiments given by Dens, whose Theology is the class-book used for many years in the Roman Catholic college of Maynooth in Ireland, and which has received the sanction of his superiors. We ask from onr readers nothing more than a careful examination of the foregoing quotations, to convince them that the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, on the point in question, denies the evidence of the senses in the grossest manner. On the absurdity of their faith on this point of doctrine we furnish the tbllowing observations. The testimony of the senses is infallible. We allow that one or more of the senses, through disease or some other cause, may prove fallacious. But we maintain that the us/form evidence of the senses is infallible. Such evidence, then, .testifying that the bread and wine remain unchanged, must be admitted as demonstrative of the falseness of the doctrine of transubstantiation. The thing in question is not subject to the evidence of one sense on]y, but to the evidence of four of the senses, namely, ziht, taste, smell, and totwi. What was bread and wine at first, we :ee, tgste, a'awll, and el to be bread and vine still. The Almighty deals with us as with rational creatures. He never called us to believe any thing that is unreasonable, impossible, or contrary to the evidence of our senses; and whenever he conde- scended to work a miracle, the senses of men vere appealed to as the judges of the reality of the miracle. Moreover, the case now before us is not one that can be ranked among the illusions of sense. For here we have assurance by the exercise of four senses; by the senses of all men constantly; the object being at a due distance, the medium fitted, and the organ, rightly disposed. If the evidence of sense be denied, we cannot be certain of any thing. If the notices of sense may not pass for certain, then we are liable to be deceived by ten thousand impositions. A man may pass for a bat, or a whale for a winged horse, if bread and wine may be the 1
 * "Quotaode reinanent," &c. Dens Theel. Tract. de Euch., No. 6, vol. v, p. 309.

�