guidance of the Holy Spirit. Of the first four general councils, the decrees are to be respected as speaking the sense of the early church: as the waters of a stream are purest near its source. With respect to later councils, they were often disorderly, and hostile to the papal power; sometimes convoked not to argue points, but to overbear, by pretended consultations. Bishops are frail and fallible men, both individually, and when assembled in council: and therefore the Rhemish Testament, on Acts, xv. 28, speaks falsely in saying that councils cannot err." Bishops cannot go into other dominions, and therefore cannot assemble, without the will of their respective princes: see Rom. xiii. 1. Lastly, Scripture alone is a rule, containing all that is necessary to salvation. (2 Tim. iii. 15, 16, 17.) As to the interpretation of Scripture, the preaching of God's ministers, like the writings of other interpreters, is no doubt to be attended to; but they ought not to advance a claim of perfect infallibi.lity: "not that we have dominion over your faith; but are helpers of your joy.” (2 Cor. i. 24.)

Christ, to use the words of our Catechism, hath ordained only TWO SACRAMENTS in his church: baptism, and the supper of the Lord. Thus we positively deny that Catholic doctrine, which assigns the name of Sacraments to five other ordi(nances; viz. CONFIRMATION, PENANCE, orders, MATRIMONY, and EXTREME UNCTION. A sacrament

is an outward sign of a covenant between God and man, instituted by God himself, for a pledge of our justification, and a means of grace. Now since to institute the sign can belong to Him only, who has power to accompany it with grace, there can be no more sacraments, in the full and proper extent of the definition, than he hath appointed. That he hath appointed two, corresponding with the above-mentioned definition, is a point on which Catholics and Protestants are agreed. In Matt. xxviii. 19, an account is given of the institution of baptism: "Go ye, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" while its meaning and efficacy are described in Acts, ii. 38; " Repent and be baptized, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." In like manner the institution and design of the other sacrament may be seen in 1 Cor. xi. 23, 24, 25, 26: "Jesus took bread, &c.; and after supper the cup; saying, This do in remembrance of me;" compared with 1 Cor. x. 16: "The cup of bless-ing which we bless, the bread which we break, are they not the communion of the blood and body of Christ?" Justin Martyr, A. D. 155; Tertullian, A. D. 198; Cyril, Augustine, and Chrysostom, join the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, and speak of no other. Peter Lombard, in the twelfth century, was the bold innovator, who first asserted the sacraments to be seven: a doc

trine likewise taught by Eugenius IV. A. D. 1459.
The council of Trent confirmed it by a decree;
and Pius IV. inserted it in his new creed. In
considering the other rites, we must distinguish
betwixt an allowable ordinance, promoting the
more decent performance of devotion; and a
federal act attended with an ordained and external
sign of inward grace. Now it is contended that
the five rejected sacraments are not regular insti-
tutions of Christ and his Apostles, accompanied
with a command for their being continued, and
a promise of annexed grace *. Imposition of
hands (Acts, viii. 14, &c.) was not peculiar to con-
firmation (Matt. xix. 13, &c.); and no efficacy is
ascribed to it distinctly from the accompanying
prayers. As to extreme unction, as mentioned in
Matt. vi. 13; and James, v. 14; it was a symbo-
fical act, accompanying a miraculous cure, per-
formed by the Apostles, on the body; not for the
good of the soul in the moment of its separation:
nor is it mentioned among the canons of councils,
or lives of saints, in the first six centuries of the
church.

In the doctrine of TRANSUBSTANTIATION, which
expressly asserts the bodily, real presence of
Christ in the sacrament, the Roman Catholics are
at variance with the members of the English
church, by whom only a spiritual presence, dis-

See the homily on prayer and sacraments, octavo,
p. 276-277.

coverable by faith, is admitted. It was not until the eighth century that the doctrine of the real presence was advanced by preachers having more zeal than sober judgment, who imposed a literal interpretation on the words, "This is my body, and blood." It was first publicly avowed by the Romish church A. D. 1215, before which time it had been promulgated by Lanfranc in England: although the word transubstantiation had not then been coined. Luther, and, it is thought, Melancthon likewise, softened the doctrine into consubstantiation, or the combined presence of the bodily substance of Christ, with the bread and wine, in the eucharist. (Fox's Martyrology, vol. ii. page 457.) Zuinglius, the chief opponent of Luther in the reformed church, considered the sacramental elements, as symbols and signs: "but it does not appear to me," says Professor Hey, "that he did not look upon the sacrament as a commemoration of a sacrifice." Transubstantiation was taught and generally held during the whole reign of Henry VIII. but rejected in the article of 1552. Elizabeth, wishing to comprehend both Lutherans and moderate Papists within the pale of the English church, made some alteration in the expression of the twentyeighth article; and spoke of incorporation, and spiritual eating of the sacrament, in the second book of Homilies. According to Bishop Hoadly, it is a barę memorial, like a solemn anniversary dinner; of which good and bad might partake: to Bishops

Warburton and Cleaver, a spiritual feast upon a commemorated sacrifice; of which the benefits are present to the faithful and appropriated by faith *.

Transubstantiation is contradicted by reason and the senses. The sacrament of the eucharist was instituted and partaken of, previously to the death of Christ; Christ was himself the person who distributed the tokens of his body and blood; how impiously absurd to believe or to say, he brake and distributed himself, and was really present in each part of the bread and wine taken by the Apostles, while he sate at meat with them! A thing, when once changed, retains no longer its former appearance, but Christ's body did. did. Can the body of Christ be compressed into a small wafer: and can, thousands of these be all bodies of Christ? can the body of Christ be at once at the right hand of God, and at the right hand of the priest? "Before any one can believe this," says Secker," he must comply with the direction in the English manual of prayers before mass, 1725, p. 409: Herein I utterly renounce the judg❝ment of my senses, and all human understand'ing." The Apostles were forbidden by the Jewish law, which Christ and they had ever observed, to drink blood of any kind: can Christ be supposed, then, to have commanded them to drink HIS, in a literal sense? In fact, as the * See Church Catechism, the two answers before the last.