angels of the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches." Rev. i. 20. Let me ask, do these words prove that a minister is a star, or that a candlestick is a church? And how can you answer in the negative, without, at the same time, rejecting the only shadow of evidence in favour of Transubstantiation? David's friends brought him water to drink at the risk of their lives, passing through the host of the Philistines from the well at Bethlehem. But he cast it on the ground, saying, "Shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy?" 1 Chron. xi. 19. Was this water really blood because David called it so? How, then, can you believe the wine of the Eucharist blood, merely because it was said to represent blood? But wherefore multiply examples, when, according to the current phraseology of the Bible, the substantive verb to be, is employed to signify betoken, represent; and when the writers of your church so understand it throughout the Sacred Volume, the words at the Lord's supper alone excepted? Here, then, is a dogma denied by the senses, and denounced by the common-sense of mankind as revolting to the principles of reason, supported only by a forced explanation of a single passage of Scripture, interpreted on principles that con

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vert the most perspicuous language into nonsense! Can you any longer believe it? Christians are said by Paul (Eph. v. 30.) "to be members of Christ's body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Apply the transubstantiation principle of interpretation to this passage, and what will you make of it? Mark, we are not merely members of his body that might be mystically understood; "but of his flesh and of his bones." How literal! How cautiously worded-as if to obviate the possibility of a figurative explanation! Take the words "in their plain, obvious, and natural meaning." All the believers that ever lived are literally parts of the body of Christ that hung on the cross, entered the grave, and is now seated on the throne of God! Do you startle at this? "Well, but suppose the inspired Apostle intended to teach this, how could he do it more plainly than he has done it ?" «Members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Was ever truth expressed in clearer terms?

Do you shrink, my Friend, from this literal interpretation on account of the monstrous consequences it involves? Let me tell you that they are not half so monstrous as those involved in the doctrine of Transubstantiation. And I fearlessly assert, that the reasoning from this text to show that every believer constitutes part, not

of the mystical, but of the physical body of Christ, is by far more forcible than any that can be employed in favour of the conversion of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of the Son of God.*

And, therefore, on Romish principles, every communicant must swallow the whole Church of Christ!!

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LETTER XV.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

CARDINAL BELLARMINE argues that because no opposition was made to Transubstantiation during the first six centuries of the Christian era, it must have been received by the church from the beginning. But any man acquainted with the history of the church, would draw from this important fact a conclusion diametrically opposite. What! Transubstantiation remain six hundred years in the church without being opposed! The thing is impossible. Is there a single doctrine of the Gospel that was not assaulted fiercely by heretics and heathens? And think you that this dogma is so rational, so agreeable to common sense, that no body-no malicious heretic or persecuting heathen-would have ventured to expose the God-creating and God-eating practices of the sect every where spoken against? Is it credible that ARIUS and his followers, who flourished in the fourth century, would have made no mention of a tenet so obnoxious to the shafts of ridicule?

We are, however, able to tell when the doctrine obtained a footing in the church. We learn

from Justin Martyr, Origen, and Tertullian, that during the first three hundred years the Lord's Supper was administered, with some slight variations, in different churches, in the following manner :-First, the Word of God was read. Then the congregation sang the praises of God. After which followed a general prayer, consisting of petitions for divine mercy, and thanksgiving offered over the bread and wine, and other things offered by the faithful as first fruits unto God, of which they partook in commemoration of the dying love of Jesus. At the conclusion of the prayer, all the people said, Amen. None but communicants were present on these occasions, and they assembled generally at supper-time. The bread was broken and the wine poured out by the minister, and handed round by the deacons to the people, who received it sometimes standing and sometimes sitting. Thus it was for the first three hundred years the time of the church's purity and glory.*

We are tauntingly asked, where was our religion before Luther? Our reply is, that its

* See Lord King's Inquiry into the Constitution, &c., of the Primitive Churches, where the authorities are quoted at length. And Mosheim, De rebus Christian. ante Constantinum.