of degree, and ascertained by the means of apprehending it which belong to him to whom it is present. It is in some sense a correlative of the senses. A fly may be as near an edifice as a man; yet we do not call it present to the fly, because it cannot see it; and we call it present to the man because he can. This, however, is but a popular view of the matter: when we consider it carefully, it certainly is difficult to say what is meant by the presence of a material object relatively to us. It is in some respects truer 'to say that a thing is present, which is so circumstanced as to act upon us and influence us whether we are sensible of it or not. Now this is what the Catholic Church seems to hold concerning our LORD's Presence in the Sacrament, that He then personally and bodily is with us in the way an object is which we call present how He is so, we know not, but that He should be so, though He be millions of miles away, is not more inconceivable than the influence of eyesight upon us is to a blind man. The stars are millions of miles off, yet they impress ideas upon our souls through our sight. We know but of five senses: we know no whether or not human nature be capable of more; we know not whether or not the soul possesses any thing analagous to themt We know nothing to negative the notion that the soul may be ca-* pable of having CHRIST present to it by the stimulating of dormant, or the development of possible energies.

"As sight for certain purposes annihilates space, so other unknown capacities, bodily or spiritual, may annihilate it for other purposes. Such a practical annihilation was involved in the appearance of CHRIST to St. Paul on his conversion. Such a prac

tical annihilation was involved in the doctrine of CHRIST's ascension; to speak according to the ideas of space and time commonly received, what must have been the rapidity of that motion by which, within ten days, He placed our human nature at the right hand of God? Is it more mysterious that He should 'open the heavens,' to use the Scripture phrase, in the Sacramental rite; that He should then dispense with time and space, in the sense in which they are daily dispensed with, in the sun's warming us at the distance of 100,000,000 of miles, than that He should have dispensed with them on occasion of His ascending on high? He who showed what the passage of an incorruptible body was ere it had reached God's throne, thereby suggests to us what may be its coming back and presence with us now, when at length glorified and become spirit.

“In answer, then, to the problem, how CHRIST comes to us while remaining on high, I answer just as much as this,—that He comes by the agency of the HOLY GHOST, in and by the Sacrament. Locomotion is the means of a material Presence; the Sacrament is the means of His spiritual Presence. As faith is the means of our receiving It, so the HOLY GHOST is the Agent and the Sacrament the means of His imparting It; and therefore we call It a Sacramental Presence. We kneel before His heavenly Throne, and the distance is as nothing; it is as if that Throne were the Altar close to us.

"Let it be carefully observed, that I am not proving or determining any thing; I am only showing how it is that certain propositions which at first sight seem contradictions in terms, are not so,— I am but pointing out one way of reconciling them. If there is but one way assignable, the force of all antecedent objection against the possibility of any at all is removed, and then of course there may be other ways supposable though not assignable. It seems at - first sight a mere idle use of words to say that CHRIST is really and literally, yet not locally, present in the Sacrament; that He is there given to us, not in figure but in truth, and yet is still only on the right hand of God. I have wished to remove this seeming impossibility.

"If it be asked, why attempt to remove it, I answer that I have no wish to do so, if persons will not urge it against the Catholic doctrine. Men maintain it as an impossibility, a contradiction in terms, and force a believer in it to say why it should not be so accounted. And then when he gives a reason, they turn round and accuse him of subtleties, and refinements, and scholastic trifling. Let them but believe and act on t truth that the consecrated bread is CHRIST's Body, as He says, and no officious comment on His words will be attempted by any well-judging mind. But when they say 'this cannot be literally true, because it is impossible;' then they force those who think it is literally true, to explain how, according to their notions, it is not impossible. And those who ask hard questions must put up with hard answers."

There is nothing, then, in the Explanatory Paragraph which has given rise to these remarks, to interfere with the doctrine, elsewhere taught in our formularies, of a real super-local presence in the Holy Sacrament.

§ 9.-Masses.

ARTICLE XXXI.-"The sacrifice (sacrificia) of Masses, in which it was commonly said, that the priests did offer CHRIST for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits, (perniciosa impos turæ)."

Nothing can show more clearly than this passage, that the Articles are not written against the creed of the Roman Church, but against actual existing errors in it, whether taken into its system or not. Here the sacrifice of the Mass is not spoken of, in which the special question of doctrine would be introduced; but "the sacrifice of Masses," certain observances, for the most part private and solitary, which the writers of the Articles knew to have been in force in time past, and saw before their eyes, and which involved certain opinions and a certain teaching. Accordingly the passage proceeds," in which it was commonly said," which surely is a strictly historical mode of speaking.

If any testimony is necessary in aid of what is so plain from the wording of the Article itself, it is found in the drift of the following passage from Burnet :—

"It were easy from all the rituals of the ancients to show, that they had none of those ideas that are now in the Roman Church. They had but one altar in a church, and probably but one in a city ; they had but one communion in a day at that altar: so far were they from the many altars in every church, and the many masses at every altar, that are now in the Roman Church. They did not know what solitary masses were, without a communion. All the liturgies and all the writings of ancients are as express in this matter as is possible. The whole constitution of their worship and discipline shows it. Their worship always concluded with the Eucharist: such as were not capable of it, as the catechumens, and those who were doing public penance for their sins, assisted at the more general parts of the worship; and so much of it was called their mass, because they were dismissed at the conclusion of it. When that was done, then the faithful stayed, and did partake of the Eucharist; and at the conclusion of it they were likewise dismissed, from whence it came to be called the mass of the faithful.-Burnet on the XXXst Article, p. 482.

These sacrifices are said to be "blasphemous fables and pernicious impostures." Now the "blasphemous fable" is the teaching that there is a sacrifice for sin other than CHRIST's death, and that masses are that sacrifice. And the "pernicious imposture" is the turning this belief into a means of filthy lucre.

1. That the "blasphemous fable" is the teaching that masses are sacrifices for sin distinct from the sacrifice of CHRIST's death, is plain from the first sentence of the Article. "The offering of CHRIST once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual. And there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, &c." It is observable too that the heading of the Article runs, " Of the one oblation of CHRIST finished upon the Cross," which interprets the drift of the statement contained in it about masses.

Our Communion Service shows it also, in which the prayer of consecration commences pointedly with a declaration, which has the force of a protest, that CHRIST made on the cross" by His one oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole

world."

And again in the offering of the sacrifice: "We entirely desire thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, most humbly beseeching Thee to grant that by the merits and death of Thy SON JESUS CHRIST, and through faith in his blood, we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins and all other benefits of His passion."

[And in the notice of the celebration: "I purpose, through God's assistance, to administer to all such as shall be religiously and devoutly disposed, the most comfortable Sacrament of the Body and Blood of CHRIST; to be by them received in remembrance of His meritorious Cross and Passion; whereby alone we obtain remission of our sins, and are made partakers of the kingdom of heaven."]

But the popular charge still urged against the Roman system as introducing in the mass a second or rather continually recurring atonement, is a sufficient illustration, without further quotations, of this part of the Article.

2. That the" blasphemous and pernicious imposture" is the

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turning the Mass into a gain, is plain from such passages as the following:

"With what earnestness, with what vehement zeal, did our SAVIOR CHRIST drive the buyers and sellers out of the temple of GOD, and hurl down the tables of the changers of money, and the seats of the dove-sellers, and could not abide that a man should carry a vessel through the temple. He told them, that they had made His FATHER'S house a den of thieves, partly through their superstition, hypocrisy, false worship, false doctrine, and insatiable covetousness, and partly through contempt, abusing that place with walking and talking, with worldly matters, without all fear of GOD, and due reverence to that place. What dens of thieves the Churches of England have been made by the blasphemous buying and selling the most precious body and blood of CHRIST in the Mass, as the world was made to believe, at dirges, at months minds, at trentalls, in abbeys and chantries, besides other horrible abuses, (GOD's holy name be blessed for ever,) which we now see and understand. All these abominations they that supply the room of CHRIST have cleansed and purged the Churches of England of, taking away all such fulsomeness and filthiness, as through blind devotion and ignorance hath crept into the Church these many hundred years."—On repairing and keeping clean of Churches, pp. 229, 230.

Other passages are as follows:

"Have not the Christians of late days, and even in our days also, in like manner provoked the displeasure and indignation of ALMIGHTY GOD; partly because they have profaned and defiled their Churches with heathenism and Jewish abuses, with images and idols, with numbers of altars, too superstitiously and intolerably abused, with gross abusing and filthy corrupting of the LORD's holy Supper, the blessed sacrament of His body and blood, with an infinite number of toys and trifles of their own devices, to make a goodly outward show, and to deface the homely, simple, and sincere religion of CHRIST JESUS; partly, they resort to the Church like hypocrites, full of all iniquity and sinful life, having a vain and dangerous fancy and persuasion, that if they come to the Church, besprinkle them with holy water, hear a mass, and be blessed with a chalice, though they understand not one word of the whole service, nor feel one motion of repentance in the heart, all is well, all is sure?"-On the Place and Time of Prayer, p. 293.

Again :

"What hath been the cause of this gross idolatry, but the ignorance hereof? What hath been the cause of this mummish massing, but