1. THAT which is one of the firmest pillars, upon which all human notices and upon which all Christian religion does rely, cannot be shaken; or if it be, all science and all religion must be in danger. Now, besides that all our notices of things proceed from sense, and our understanding receives his proper objects, by the mediation of material and sensible fantasms, and the soul, in all her operations during this life, is served by the ministries of the body, and the body works upon the soul only by sense; besides this, St. John hath placed the whole religion of a Christian upon the certainty and evidence of sense, as upon one unmoveable foundation: "That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld, and our hands have handled of the word of life. And the life was made manifest and we have seen it, and bear witness and declare unto you eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, which we have seen and heard, we declare unto you." Tertullian, in his book "De Anima," uses this very argument against the Marcionites: "Recita Johannis testationem; 'quod vidimus (inquit) quod audivimus, oculis nostris vidimus, et manus nostræ contrectaverunt, de sermone vitæ:' Falsa utique testatio, si oculorum, et aurium, et manuum sensus natura mentitur:" "His testimony was false, if eyes, and ears, and hands be deceived." In nature there is not a greater argument than to have heard, and seen, and handled.

Sed quia profundâ non licet luctarier
Ratione tecum, consulamus proxima:
Interrogetur ipsa naturalium
Simplex sine arte sensum sententia.
[Supplic. Romani Martyr. Prudent.]

And by what means can an assent be naturally produced, but by those instruments by which God conveys all notices to us, that is, by seeing and hearing? Faith comes by hearing, and evidence comes by seeing: and if a man, in his wits, and in his health, can be deceived in these things, how can we come to believe?

Corpus enim per se communis dedicat esse
Sensus; quoi nisi prima fides fundata valebit,
Haud erit, occulteis de rebus quo referenteis
Confirmare animos quidquam ratione queamus.
[Lucret. Lib. 423. Wakefield]

For if a man or an angel declares God's will to us, if we may not trust our hearing, we cannot trust him; for we know not whether, indeed, he says what we think he says; and God confirms the proposition by a miracle, an ocular demonstration, we are never the nearer to the believing him, because our eyes are not to be trusted. But if feeling also may be abused, when a man is, in all other capacities, perfectly healthy, then he must be governed by chance, and walk in the dark, and live upon shadows, and converse with fantasms and illusions, as it happens; and then at last it will come to be doubted, whether there be any such man as himself, and whether he be awake when he is awake, or not rather, then only awake when he himself and all the world thinks him to have been asleep: "Oculatæ sunt nostræ manus, credunt quod vident."

2. Now then, to apply this to the present question, in the words of St. Austin, "Quod ergo vidistis, panis est et calix, quod vobis etiam oculi vestri renunciant:" "That which our eyes have seen, that which our hands have handled, is bread; we feel it, taste it, see it to be bread, and we hear it called bread, that very substance, which is called the body of our Lord. [In Serm. apud Bed. in 1 Cor. x. Sed hæc verba citantur ab Algero, lib. i. de Sacram. c. 5. ex Serm. de verbis Domini.] Shall we now say, our eyes are deceived, our ears hear a false sound, our taste is abused, our hands are mistaken? It is answered, Nay; our senses are not mistaken: "For our senses, in health and due circumstances, cannot be abused in their proper object; but they may be deceived about that, which is under the object of their senses; they are not deceived in colour, and shape, and taste, and magnitude, which are the proper objects of our senses; but they may be deceived in substances which are covered by these accidents; and so it is not the outward sense so much as the inward sense that is abused. For so Abraham, when he saw an angel in the shape of a human body, was not deceived in the shape of a man, for there was such a shape; but yet it was not a man, and, therefore, if he thought it was, he was abused; this is their answer: and if this will not serve the turn, nothing will: this, therefore, must be examined. [Bellarm. lib. i. Euch. c. 14. Sect. Jam. ad Petrum Marcyrem.]

3. Now this, instead of taking away the insuperable difficulty, does much increase it, and confesses the things, which it ought to have avoided. For, 1. The accidents, proper to a substance, are for the manifestation, a notice of the substance, not of themselves; for as the man feels, but the means by which he feels, is the sensitive faculty, so that which is felt, is the substance, and the means by which it is felt, is the accidents: as the shape, the colour, the bigness, the motion of a man, are manifestative and declarative of a human substance: and if they represent a wrong substance, then the sense is deceived by a false sign of a true substance, or a true sign of a false substance: as if an alchymist should show me brass coloured like gold, and made ponderous, and so adulterated, that it would endure the touchstone for a long while, the deception is, because there is a pretence of improper accidents; true accidents indeed, but not belonging to that substance. But, 2. It is true that is pretended, that it is not so much the outward sense that is abused as the inward; that is, not so much the eye as the man; not the sight, but the judgment: and this is it we complain of. For indeed, in proper speaking, the eye or the hand is not capable of being deceived; but the man, by the eye, or by the ear, or by his hand. The eye sees a colour, or a figure, and the inward sense apprehends it to be the figure of such a substance, and the understanding judges it to be the thing which is properly represented by the accident: it is so, or it is not so: if it be, there is no deception; if it be not so, then there is a cozenage, there is no lie till it comes to a proposition, either explicit or implicit; a lie is not in the senses; but when a man, by the ministry of the senses, is led into the apprehension of a wrong object, or the belief of a false proposition, then he is made to believe a lie; and this is our ease, when accidents, proper to one substance, are made the cover of another, to which they are not naturally communicable. And in the case of the holy sacrament, the matter, if it were as is pretended, were intolerable. For in the cases, wherein a man is commonly deceived, it is his own fault by passing judgment too soon; and if he should judge glass to be crystal, because it looks like it; this is not any deception in the senses, nor any injury to the man; because he ought to consider more things than the colour, to make his judgment whether it be glass, or crystal, or diamond, or ice; the hardness, the weight, and other things, are to be ingredients in the sentence. And if any two things had all the same accidents, then, although the senses were not deceived, yet the man would, certainly and inculpably, mistake. If therefore, in the eucharist, as is pretended, all the accidents of bread remain, then all men must necessarily be deceived; if only one or two did remain, one sense would help the other, and all together would rightly inform the understanding. But when all the accidents remain, they cannot but represent that substance, to which those accidents are proper; and then the holy sacrament would be a constant, irresistible deception of all the world, in that in which all men's notices are most evident and most relied upon,-I mean their senses. And then the question will not be, whether our senses can be deceived or no? but whether or no it can stand with the justice and goodness of God, to be angry with us for believing our sense.-;, since himself hath so ordered it, that we cannot avoid being deceived? there being, in this case, as much reason to believe a lie as to believe a truth,-if things were so as they pretend. The result of which is this; That as no-one sense can be deceived about his proper object, but that a man may about the substance lying under those accidents, which are the object proper to that sense, because he gives sentence according to that representment otherwise than he ought, and he ought to have considered other accidents proper to other senses, in making the judgment; as the birds that took the picture of grapes for very grapes, and he that took the picture of a curtain for a very curtain, and desired the painter to draw it aside; they made judgment of the grapes and the curtain only by colour and figure, but ought to have considered the weight, the taste, the touch, and the smell: so on the other side, if all the senses concur, then not only is it true, that the senses cannot be deceived about that object, which is their own, but neither ought the man to be deceived about that substance, which lies under those accidents; because their ministry is all that natural instrument of conveying notice to a man's understanding, which God hath appointed. 4. Just upon this account it is, that St. John's argument had been just nothing in behalf of the whole religion: for that God was incarnate, that Jesus Christ did such miracles, that he was crucified, that he arose again, and ascended into heaven, that he preached these sermons, that he gave such commandments, he was made to believe by sounds, by shapes, by figures, by motions, by likenesses, and appearances, of all the proper accidents, and his senses could not be deceived about the accidents, which were the proper objects of the senses; but if they might be deceived about the substance under these accidents, of what truth or substance could he be ascertained by their ministry? for he indeed saw the shape of a human body: but it might so be, that not the body of a man, but an angelical substance, might lie under it; and so the article of the assumption of human nature is made uncertain. And upon the same account, so are all the other articles of our faith, which relied upon the verity of his body and nature: all which, if they are not sufficiently signified by their proper accidents, could not be ever the more believed for being seen with the eyes, and heard with the ears, and handled with our hands; but if they were sufficiently declared by their proper accidents, then the understanding can no more be deceived in the substances lying under the accidents, than the senses can in the accidents themselves.

4. To the same purpose it was, that the apostles were answered concerning the article of the truth of Christ's resurrection. For when the apostles were affrighted at his sudden appearing, and thought it had been a spirit, Christ called them to feel his hands, and to show that it was he; "For a spirit hath no flesh and bones, as ye see me have:" plainly meaning, that the accidents of a body were not communicable to a spirit; but how easily might they have been deceived, if it had pleased God to invest other substances with new and stranger accidents? [Quod videtur, corpus est: quod palpatur, corpus est; S. Ambros in S. Luc. 4.] For though a spirit hath not flesh and bones, they may represent to the eyes and hands the accidents of flesh and bones;' and if it could, in the matter of faith, stand with the goodness and wisdom of God to suffer it, what certainty could there be of any article of our religion relating to Christ's humanity, or any proposition proved by miracles? To this instance the man that must answer all, I mean Bellarmine, ventures something; saying it was a good argument of our blessed Saviour, "Handle and see that I am no spirit: that which is handled and seen is no spirit;" but it is no good argument to say, This is not seen, not handled, therefore it is no body: and, therefore, the body of Christ may be naturally in the sacrament, though it is not seen nor handled.-- [Lib. i. de Euch. c, 14. Sect. Resp. ad Calvinum.] To this I reply, 1. That suppose it were true what he said, yet it would also follow by his own words. 'This is seen bread,' and 'is handled,' so therefore 'it is bread.' 'Hoc enim affirmativè colligitur.' This is the affirmative consequent made by our blessed Lord, and here confessed to be certain. It being the same collection. "It is I; for, by feeling and seeing, you shall believe it to be so;" and "it is bread; for, by feeling, and seeing, and tasting, and smelling it, you shall perceive it to be so."--To which let this be added; That in Scripture it is as plainly affirmed to be bread, as it is called Christ's body. Now then, because it cannot be both in the proper and natural sense, but one of them must be figurative and tropical; since both of the appellatives arc equally affirmed, is it not notorious, that, in this case, we ought to give judgment on that side, which we are prompted to 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 should be: but when it is equally affirmed to be bread, as to be our Lord's body, and but one of them can be naturally true and in the letter, shall the testimony of all our senses be absolutely of no use in casting the balance? The two affirmatives are equal; one must be expounded tropically; which will you choose? Is there in the world any thing more certain and expedite than that what you see, and feel, and taste, natural and proper, should be judged to be that which you see, and feel, and taste, naturally and properly, and therefore, that the other be expounded tropically? Since you must expound one of the words tropically, I think it is not hard to determine, whether you ought to do it against your sense, or with it. But it is also remarkable, that our blessed Lord did not, only by feeling and seeing, prove it to be a body; but by proving it was 'his body,' he proved it was 'himself;' that is, "by these accidents, representing my person, ye are not led into an error of the person, any more than of the kind and substance; 'see my hands and my feet,' oti autoV egw eimi, 'that it is even I myself:'" this I noted, lest a silly escape be made, by pretending these accidents only proved Christ to be no spirit, but a body; and so the accidents of bread declare a latent body, meaning the body of Christ; for as the accidents of a body declare the substance of a body, so the particular accidents of this kind declare this kind, of this person declare this person. For so our blessed Saviour proved it to be himself in particular; and if it were not so, the deceit would pass from one thing to another; and although it had not been a spirit, yet it might be John the Baptist risen from the dead, or Moses, or Elias, and not Jesus their dear Lord. Besides, if this had been all that Jesus had intended, only to prove he was no 'spectrum,' but body, he had not done what was intended. For put case it had been a spirit, and had assumed a body, as Bellarmine, in the very next paragraph, forgetting himself, or else being entangled in the wildernesses of an inconsistent discourse, affirms, that in Scriptures the Israelites did sometimes see; and then they were not deceived in touching or seeing a body; for there was a body assumed, and so it seemed to Abraham and Lot; but then, suppose Jesus Christ had done so, and had been indeed a spirit in an assumed body, had not the apostles been deceived by their feeling and seeing, as well as the Israelites were, in thinking those angels to be men, that came to them in human shapes? How had Christ's arguments been pertinent and material? How had he proved, that he was no spirit, by showing a body, which might be the case of a spirit? but that it is not consistent with the wisdom and goodness of God to suffer any illusion in any matter of sense relating to an article of faith.

5. Secondly: It was the case of the Christian church once, not only to rely upon the evidence of sense for an introduction to the religion, but also to need and use this argument in confirmation of an article of the creed; for the Valentinians and the Marcionites thought Christ's body to be fantastical, and so denied the article of the incarnation: and if arguments from sense were not enough to confute them, viz. that the apostles did see and feel a body, flesh, and blood, and bones, how could they convince these misbelievers? for whatsoever answer can be brought against the reality of bread in the eucharist, all that may be answered in behalf of the Marcionites: for if you urge to them all those places of Scripture, which affirm Christ to have a body, they answer, it was in Scripture called a body, because it seemed to be so; which is the answer Bellarmine gives to all those places of Scripture, which call it 'bread' after consecration. And if you object, that if it be not what it seems, then the senses are deceived: they will answer, (a Jesuit being bye, and prompting them,) the senses were not deceived, because they only saw colour, shape, figure, and the other accidents; but the inward sense and understanding, that is, the man was deceived, when he thought it to be the body of a man; for under those accidents and appearances, there was an angel, or a Divinity, but no man: and now, upon the grounds of transubstantiation, how can they be confuted, I would fain know. [Lib. i. de Euch. c. 14. Sect. Respondent nonnulli.]

6. But Tertullian, [Lib. de Animâ, c. 17] disputing against them, uses the argument of sense, as the only instrument of concluding against them infallibly: "Non licet nobis in dubium sensus istos revocare," &c. "It is not lawful to doubt of our senses, lest the same doubt be made concerning Christ; lest, perad-venture, it should be said, he was deceived when he said, 'I saw Satan, like lightning, fall from heaven;' or when he heard the voice of his Father testifying concerning him; or lest he should be deceived when he touched Peter's wife's mother by the hand; or that he smelt another breath of ointment, and not what was offered to his burial; 'Alium postea vini saporem, quod in sanguinis sui menioriam consecravit,' or 'tasted another taste of wine, which he consecrated to the memory of his blood.'" And if the catholic Christians had believed the substantial, natural presence of Christ's body in the sacrament, and, consequently, disbelieved the testimony of four senses, as the church of Rome at this day does,--seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling,--it had been impudence in them to have reproved Marcion, by the testimony of two senses, concerning the verity of Christ's body. And supposing that our eyes could be deceived, and our taste, and our smelling, yet our touch cannot; for supposing the organs equally disposed, yet 'touch' is the guardian of truth, and his nearest natural instrument; all sensation is by touch, but the other senses are more capable of being deceived; because, though they finally operate by touch variously affected, yet their objects are further removed from the organ; and, therefore, many intermedial things may intervene, and, possibly, hinder the operation of the sense; that is, bring more diseases and disturbances to the action: but in 'touch,' the object and the instrument join close together; and, therefore, there can be no impediment, if the instrument be sound, and the object proper. And yet no sense can be deceived in that which it always perceives alike; "The touch can never be deceived;" [Aristot. de Animâ, lib, iii. t. 152,] and, therefore, a testimony from it and three senses more, cannot possibly be refused: and, therefore, it were strange if all the Christians, for above one thousand six hundred years together, should be deceived, as if the eucharist were a perpetual illusion, and a riddle to the senses, for so many ages together: and indeed the fault, in this case, could not be in the senses: and, therefore, Tertullian and St. Austin [Lib. de Anima, c. 87, &c. S. Austin, c. 33. de Verâ Religione.] dispute wittily, and substantially, that the senses could never be deceived, but the understanding ought to assent to what they relate to it, or represent; for if any man thinks the staff is crooked that is set half way in the water, it is the fault of his judgment, not of his sense; for the air and the water being several mediums, the eye ought to see otherwise in air, otherwise in water; but the understanding must not conclude falsely from these true premises, which the eye ministers; for the thicker medium makes a fraction of the species by incrassation and a shadow; and when a man in the yellow jaundice, thinks every thing yellow, it is not the fault of his eye, but of his understanding; for the eye does his office right, for it perceives just as is represented to it, the species are brought yellow; but the fault is in the understanding, not perceiving that the species are stained near the eye, not further off: when a man, in a fever, thinks every thing bitter, his taste is not deceived, but judges rightly; for as a man, that chews bread and aloes together, tastes not false, if he tastes bitterness; so it is, in the sick man's case; the juice of his meat is mingled with choler, and the taste is acute and exact, by perceiving it such as it is so mingled. The purpose of which discourse is this, that no notices are more evident and more certain than the notices of sense; but if we conclude contrary to the true dictates of senses, the fault is in the understanding, collecting false conclusions from right premises: it follows, therefore, that, in the matter of the eucharist, we ought to judge that which our senses tell us; for whatsoever they say is true: for no deceit can come by them; but the deceit is, when we believe something besides or against what they tell us; especially when the organ is perfect, and the object proper, and the medium regular, and all things perfect, and the same always and to all men. For it is observable, that, in this case, the senses are competent judges of the natural being of what they see, and taste, and smell, and feel; and, according to that, all the men in the world can swear, that what they see, is bread and wine; but it is not their office to tell us, what they become by the institution of our Saviour; for that we are to learn by faith, that what is bread and wine, in nature, is, by God's ordinance, the sacrament of the body and blood of the Saviour of the world; but one cannot contradict another; and, therefore, they must be reconciled: both say true, that which faith teaches, is certain; and that which the senses of all men teach always, that also is certain and evident; for as the rule of the school says excellently, "Grace never destroys nature, but perfects it" [Aquin. part. I. q. 1. a. 8. ad. 2.] and so it is in the consecration of bread and wine; in which, although we are more to regard their signification than their matter,--their holy employment than their natural usage,--what they are by grace rather than what they are by nature,--that they are sacramental rather than that they are nutritive,--that they are consecrated and exalted by religion, rather than that they are mean and low in their natural beings,--what they are to the spirit and understanding, rather than what they are to the sense;--yet this also is as true and as evident as the other: and, therefore, though not so apt for our meditation, yet as certain as that which is.

7. Thirdly: Though it be a hard thing to be put to prove that bread is bread, and that wine is wine; yet, if the arguments and notices of sense may not pass for sufficient, an impudent person may, without possibility of being confuted, outface any man, that an oyster is a rat, and that a candle is a pig of lead: and so might the Egyptian soothsayers have been too hard for Moses; for when they changed rods into serpents, they had some colour to tell Pharaoh they were serpents as well as the rod of Moses; but if they had failed to turn the water into blood, they needed not to have been troubled, if they could have borne down Pharaoh, that, though it looked like water, and tasted like water, yet, by their enchantment, they had made it verily to be blood: and upon this ground of having different substances, improper and disproportioned accidents, what hinders them but they might have said so? and if they had, how should they have been confuted? But this manner of proceeding would be sufficient to evacuate all reason, and all science, and all notices of things; and we may as well conclude snow to be black, and fire cold, and two and two to make five and twenty.

8. But, it is said, although the body of Christ be invested with improper accidents, yet sometimes Christ hath appeared in his own shape, and blood and flesh hath been pulled out of the mouths of the communicants: and Plegilus, the priest, saw an angel, showing Christ to him in form of a child upon the altar, whom first he took in his arms and kissed, but did eat him up presently in his other shape, in the shape of a wafer. "Speciosa certè pax nebulonis, ut qui oris præbuerat basium, dentium inferret exitium," said Berengarius: [Guil. Malmesbur. de Gestis Regum Anglorum, lib. iii.] "It was but a Judas' kiss to kiss with the lip, and bite with the teeth."--But if such stuff as this may go for argument, we may be cloyed with them in those unanswerable authors, Simeon Metaphrastes for the Greeks, and Jacobus de Voragine for the Latin, who make it a trade to lie for God, and for the interest of the catholic cause. But, however, I shall tell a piece of a true story. In the time of Soter, pope of Rome, there was an impostor called Mark [Irenæ. lib. i.c. 9.]; EidwlopoioV, that was his appellative: and he pothria oinou kekramena prospoioumenoV eucaristein, kai epi pleon ek tinwn twn logwn thV epiklhsewV profurea kai eruqra anafainesqai poiei, 'pretending to make the chalice of wine and water eucharistical, saying long prayers over it, made it look red or purple,' that it might be thought that grace, which is above all things, does drop the blood into the chalice by invocation. Such as these have been often done by human artifice, or by operation of the devil, said Alexander of Ales. [Sum, Theod. part. 4. q. 11. memb. 2. art. 4. sect. 3.] If such things as these were done regularly, it were pretence enough to say it is flesh and blood that is in the eucharist; but when nothing of this is done by God,--but heretics and knaves, jugglers and impostors, hoping to change the sacrament into a charm, by abusing the spiritual sense into a gross and carnal, against the authority of Scripture and the church, reason or religion,--have made pretences of those things, and still the holy sacrament, in all the times of ministration, hath the form and all the perceptibilities of bread and wine: as we may believe those impostors did more rely upon the pretences of sense than of other arguments, and, distrusting them, did fly to these as the greater probation: so we rely upon that way of probation, which they would have counterfeited, but which indeed Christ, in his institution, hath still left in the nature of the symbols, viz., that it is that which it seems to be, and that the other superinduced predicate of the body of Christ is to be understood only in that sense, which may still consist with that substance, whose proper and natural accidents remain, and are perceived by the mouth, and hands, and eyes, of all men. To which this may be added, that, by the doctrine of the late Roman schools, all those pretences of real appearances of Christ's body or blood, must be necessarily concluded to be impostures, or airy phantasms and illusions; because themselves teach that Christ's body is so in the sacrament,--that Christ's own eyes cannot see his own body in the sacrament: and in that manner by which it is there, it cannot be made visible; no, not by the absolute power of God. Nay, it can be neither seen, nor touched, nor tasted, nor felt, nor imagined. It is the doctrine of Suarez, in 3. Tho. disp. 53. sect. 3., and disp. 52. sect. 1., and of Vasquez, in 3. tom. 3. disp. 191. n. 22., which, besides that it reproves the whole article, by making it incredible and impossible, it doth also infinitely convince all these apparitions, if ever there were any, of deceit and fond illusion. I had no more to say in this particular, but that the Roman doctors pretend certain words out of St. Cyril's fourth 'mystagogique catechism,' against the doctrine of this paragraph: "Pro certissimo habeas," &c. "Be sure of this, that this bread, which is seen of us, is not bread, although the taste perceives it to be bread, but the body of Christ: for under the species of bread, the body is given to thee; under the species of wine, the blood is given to thee."--Here if we will trust St. Cyril's words, at least in Bellarmine's and Brerely's sense, and understand of them before you will believe your own eyes, you may. For St. Cyril bids you not believe your sense. For taste and sight tells you it is bread, but it is not. But here is no harm done. 2. For himself plainly explains his meaning in his next catechism. 'Think not that you taste bread and wine,' saith he.--No, what then? Alla antitupa kai swmatoV kai aumatoV 'but the antitypes of the body and blood:' and in this very place he calls bread tupoV, 'a type;' en tupw artou didotai soi to swma, and, therefore, it is very ill rendered by the Roman priests by 'species,' which signifies accidental forms: for tupoV signifies no such thing, but eidoV; which is not St. Cyril's word. 3. He says it is not bread, though the taste feel it so; that is, 'it is not mere bread,' which is an usual expression among the fathers, 'Non est panis communis,' says Irenasus [Lib. iv. contr. Hæres. c. 34. Psal. xxii. homil. 16.]; ou gar wV koinon arton, says Justin Martyr; just as St. Chrysostom says of baptismal water, 'it is not common water;' and as St. Cyril himself says of the sacramental bread, ouk eti artoV litoV, 'it is not mere bread,' alla swma Kuriou, 'but the Lord's body.'--For if it were not that, in some sense or other, it were still mere bread, but that it is not. But this manner of speaking is not unusual in the holy Scriptures, that restrained and modificated negatives be propounded in simple and absolute forms. "I have given them statutes which are not good." "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." "They have not rejected thee, but me." "It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of my Father." "I came not to send peace, but a sword." "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me." And, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true," which is expressly confronted by St. John: "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true;" which shows manifestly, that the simple and absolute negative in the former place, must, in his signification, be restrained. So St. Paul speaks usually: "Henceforth I know no man according to the flesh." "We have no strife against flesh and blood." And in the ancient doctors, nothing more ordinary than to express limited senses by unlimited words; which is so known, that I should lose my time, and abuse the reader's patience, if I should heap up instances. So Irenaeus: "He that hath received the Spirit, is no more flesh and blood, but spirit."--And Epiphanius affirms the same of the flesh of a temperate man: "It is not flesh, but is changed into spirit:" so we say of a drunken man, and a furious person: "He is not a man, but a beast."--And they speak thus particularly in the matter of the holy sacrament, as appears in the instances above reckoned, and in others respersed over this treatise. But to return to the present objection, it is observable that St. Cyril does not say 'it is not bread,' though the sense suppose it to be so, for that would have supposed the taste to have been deceived, which he affirms not; and if he had, we could not have believed him; but he says, 'though the sense perceive it to be bread,' so that it is still bread, else the taste would not perceive it to be so; but 'it is more,' and the sense does not perceive it; for it is 'the body of our Lord.' Here then is his own answer plainly opposed to the objection; he says, 'it is not bread,' that is, 'it is not mere bread;' and so say we: he says, that 'it is the body of our Lord, antitupon, the antitype of the Lord's body,' and so say we; he says, 'the sense perceives it to be bread;' but it is more than the sense perceives; so he implies, and so we affirm; and yet we may trust our sense for all that it tells us, and our understanding too, for all it learns besides. The like to this are the words of St. Chrysostom where he says, "We cannot be deceived by his words; but our sense is often deceived; look not at what is before us, but observe Christ's words. Nothing sensible is given to us, but things insensible, by things sensible," &c. [Homil. 83. upon St. Matt.] This, and many higher things than this, are in St. Chrysostom, not only relating to this, but to the other sacrament also. "Think not thou receivest the body from a man, but fire from the tongue of a seraphim;" that for the eucharist:--and for the baptism this: "The priest baptizes thee not, but God holds thy head." In the same sense that these admit, in the same sense we may understand his other words; they are tragical and high, but may have a sober sense; but literally they sound a contradiction; that nothing sensible should be given us in the sacrament; and yet that nothing insensible should be given, but what is conveyed by things sensible; but it is not worth the while to stay here: only this, the words of St. Chrysostom are good counsel, and such as we follow; for, in this case, we do not finally rely upon sense, or resolve all into it; but we trust it only for so much as it ought to be trusted for; but we do not finally rest upon it, but upon faith, and look not on the things proposed, but attend to the words of Christ, and though we see it to be bread, we also believe it to be his body, in that sense which he intended.

Project Canterbury