we can fancy is a spiritual presence in the soul; it is nearer to us than any material object can possibly be; for our body, which is the organ of conveying to us the presence of matter, sets bounds to its approach towards us. If, then, spiritual beings can be brought near to us, (and that they can, we know, from what is told us of the influences of Divine grace, and again of evil angels upon our souls) their presence is something sui generis, of a more perfect and simple character than any presence we commonly call local. And further, their presence has nothing to do with the degrees of nearness; they are either present or not present, or, in other words, their coming is not measured by space, nor their absence ascertained by distance. In the case of things material, a transit through space is the necessary condition of approach and presence; but in things spiritual, (whatever be the condition,) such a transit seems not to be a condition. The condition is unknown.. Once more while beings simply spiritual seem not to exist in place, the Incarnate SoN does; according to our Church's statement already alluded to, that 'the natural body and blood of our SAVIOUR CHRIST are, in heaven and not here, it being against the truth of CHRIST's natural body to be at one time in more places than one.'

"Such seems to be the mystery attending our LORD and SAVIOUR; He has a body, and that spiritual. He is in place; and yet, as being a Spirit, His mode of approach-the mode in which He makes Himself present here or there-may be, for what we know, as different from the mode in which material bodies approach and come, as a spiritual presence is more perfect. As material bodies approach by moving from place to place, so the approach and presence of a spiritual body may be in some other way,-probably is in some other way, since in some other way, (as it would appear) not gradual, progressive, approximating, that is, locomotive, but at once, spirits become present, may be such as to be consistent with His remaining on God's right hand while He becomes present here, that is, it may be real yet not local, or, in a word, is mysterious. The Body and Blood of CHRIST may be really, literally present in the holy Eucharist, yet not having become present by local passage, may still literally and really be

on God's right hand; so that, though they be present in deed and truth, it may be impossible, it may be untrue to say, that they are literally in the elements, or about them, or in the soul of the receiver. These may be useful modes of speech according to the occasion; but the true determination of all such questions may be this, that CHRIST'S Body and Blood are locally at God's right hand, yet really present here,-present here, but not here in place, because they are spirit.

"To assist our conceptions on this subject, I would recur to what I said just now about the presence of material objects, by way of putting my meaning in a different point of view. The presence of a material object, in the popular sense of the word, is a matter 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 not whether or not human nature be capable of more; we know not whether or not the soul possesses anything analogous to them. We know nothing to negative the notion that the soul may be capable 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 un

known 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 practical annihilation is 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 hea

venly 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 anything; 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 Sa

crament; 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 the 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 (perniciosæ imposturæ)."

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 saw before their eyes, and knew to have been in force in time past, 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 shew, 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 shews 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 XXXIst Article, p. 482.

These sacrifices are said to be "blasphemous fables and pernicious impostures." Now the "blasphemous fable" is the teach