Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/259

 CHAP, I.�.] TRANSUBSTAlqTIATION. :251 answer, that Christ in no place has properly said so, but his words 'mean quite the contrary, as we have already sufficiently proved. We will now, however, add the following: That in Scripture it is as plainly ,tilrmed to be bread, as it is called Christ's body. And as it cannot be both in the proper and natural sense only, one of them must be figura- tive; we ought to give judgment on the side to which we are prompted by common sense. If Christ had said only, This is my body, and no apostle had told us also that it is bread, we had reason to suspect our senses to be deceived, if it were possible they could be. But when it is equally affurned to be .bread, as to be our Lord's body, and but one of them can be true, shall the testimony of our senses be of no use in deciding ? Can any thin be more certain than that what you see, and feel, and taste, should be judged to be what you see, feel, and taste, and therefore that the other be taken tropically ? 4. The doctrine of transubstantiation is contrary to reason, and in- volves the plainest contradictions and absurdities. If this doctrine be true, we must believe that Christ's body is both e and may at the same time, and in the same manner. To assert the presence of Chr/st's body in several places at once is to 9tuL'/pl/or divide, a consequence which Roman Catholics deny, but to no purpose, seeing they allow of an endless muhiplication of wafers in as many separate places as there are wafers. So that, according to them, a body may be divided without divis/on; it may be here and there, and not here and there; that it is one, and yet not one; that it is many, and yet not many; that it is divided, and yet not divided. If these things can be truth, falsehood can be true, and truth may be falsehood; or, rather, truth and falsehoo(l are but empty n:mes. To believe that our Saviour took his own body in his own hands, and gave the whole of that body to each of his apostles, and that each of them swallowed him down their throats, though all the time he continued sitting at the table before their eyes; to believe that the very same body which is now in heaven is in many thousand of different places on the earthru in some standing still upon the altar, in others carrying along the streets, and se in motion and not in motion at the same time; to be- lieve that the same body can come from a great distance, and meet itseft, as the sacramental bread doth in their processions, and then pass by itself, and go away from itself to the same distance again; is to believe the most absolute impossibilities and contradictions. That a human body should be contained in an inch or two; that the substance of bread should not be in the sacrament, where they own all the pro- perties of bread are; and that the substance of flesh should be there, and not one of the properties of it appear, is very monstrous. To be- lieve that the body of Christ, which was born of a virgin, suffered, died, arose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, and is now there, should at the same time be on earth in the hand of the priest, lying on the altar, carried about, eaten by vermin, vomited from the stomach, changed by corruption, or the process of digestion, burned in the fire, &c., &c., and under all these various changes multiplied or divided into thousands, is among those things which no faith can reach, nor can a moderate share of presumption profess to believe. If such things can be true, nothing can be false. Roman Catholics may say these things if they will, and believe them if they can. And in order 1 ,Goocle

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