Page:Delineation of Roman Catholicism.djvu/260

 2), TL6SUBSTANTITION. [.Boos IL to it they teach in some of their manuals of prayer: "Herein I utterly renounce the judgraent of my senses and all human understanding." Were the doctrine of transubstantiation true, accidents may exist with- out their subjects, or the qualities of bodies without any bodies of which they are the qualities; so that there may be whiteness without any thing to be white, sweetness without any thing to be sweet, &c. A physician in France of the Roman communion, being pressed with this last difficulty, humorously said: "The fathers of Trent deserved to have been condemned to live upon the accidents of bread as long as they lived, for introducing so great a difficulty into their faith." 5. This doctrine is not only contrary to reason, but it involves abso- lute/mpo./b////es. . When Roman Catholics would attempt to make proselytes, they tell them that Protestants deny' God's omnipotence, for so they are pleased to call our denying their absurdities. This device is older than the doctrine of transubstantiation; for it was the custom of the ancient heretics, such as the Manichees, the Eutychians, the Appolinarists, the Arians, &c., to fly to God's omnipotence.* The fathers, referring to this abuse of God's omnipotence, called it the sanct of leteries. And this was older then the Arians, for it was the subterfuge of the old tragedians, as Plato asserts.l  This is explained as follows by Cicero: "Cam explicare afgumenti exiturn non potestis, cunfugitis ad aleurn." "When you cannot bring your argument to a right conclusion, you fly to the power of God.":[ When we say a thing is impossible to be done, we mean that it is naturally or ordinarily impossible. If a thing cannot naturally be so, and without a miracle cannot be so, and the miracle is nowhere affirmed, then to affirm the literal sense is the greatest folly that can be in the interpretation of Scripture. God cannot lie; he cannot deceive or be deceived; he cannot be unjust, &c. God cannot reconcile contradic- tions. And it is no part of the divine omnipotency to make the same proposition true and false at the same time, and in the same respect. It is absolutely impossible that the same thing should be and not be at the same time. When, therefore, it is said in Luke, "Nothing is impossible with God," the meaning is as we have just now been explaining. Now to apply this to the present question: our adversaries do not deny but that in the doctrine of transubstantiation there are a great many impossibilities, which are such naturally and ordinarily, but by divine power they can be done; but that they are done they have no warrant but the literal sense of the detached words, This is my body. Now ttds is so far from proving that God does work perpetual miracles to verify the sense of it, that the working of miracles ought to prove that to be the sense of it. It is therefore absurd in Roman Catholics, by continual effort and violence of interpretation, to maintain a propo- sition against reason, and involving contradictions, thinking it sufficient to oppose against it God's omnipotence; as if the cry of "a miracle" were a sufficient guard against all absurdity in the world; as if the wisdom of God were armed against his power and truth. In transub- tom. ii, p. 247. '[ In Cratylo, p. 274. :[ Cic. de Nat.-Deer., lib. i, 20. 1
 * Nazianz., erst. �Theodor., dial. arprrr. Tertul. contr. Prxm., c. x.

�