(7.) Mr. Berington contents himself with stating, as the belief of his brethren: that peculiar powers were given to St. Peter; and that the Bishop of Rome, as his successor, is the head of the whole Catholic Church '.

Such is the statement given by Mr. Berington: but I must do him the justice to say, that he is far too prudent a man to hazard the specific declaration of Mr. Husenbeth, relative to the constant testimony of ALL ecclesiastical writers, WITHOUT ONE EXCEPTION, for fifteen centuries: a declaration, so far as the three first ages are concerned, rendered imposing indeed to the careless or unlearned reader by a parade of distinct reference; but a declaration, absolutely ludicrous to the more jealous inquirer, who refuses to accept hardy assertion without actual verification.

V. The singular scantiness of Mr. Berington's evidence, from the writers of the three first centuries, for the establishment of an alleged FACT, without a belief in which (according to the Tridentine Profession) we shall doubtless perish everlastingly, will have struck all who are acquainted even with the bare names of the Antenicene Fathers. He adduces only Irenèus, Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian. With what emolument he adduces this quaternion of witnesses, we have already

seen.

clesiastical History of their contemporary and associate, Eusebius of Cesarèa.

Faith of Cathol. p. 155.

Yet why should he have omitted Clement of Rome (himself a host in attesting the familiar dominant Supremacy of his own See 1), and Barnabas, and Hermas, and Ignatius, and Polycarp, and Justin Martyr, and Tatian, and Athenagoras, and Clement of Alexandria, and Minucius Felix, and Hippolitus, and Novatian, and Theophilus of Antioch: for I will not rigidly call upon him to produce evidence out of the fragments of Caius, or Hegesippus, or Melito, or Archelaus, or Theonas, or the three Dionysii of Corinth and Rome and Alexandria?

The simple truth is, that neither Scripture nor Primitive Antiquity gives the least countenance

'The Bishop of Strasbourg has a strong inclination to enlist the venerable Clement into the service of his Church: but Mr. Berington, far more prudently, leaves him undisturbed.

His lordship's account of the transaction, whence he would deduce the plain Supremacy of Clement, is: that Fortunatus came to Rome from Corinth, for the purpose of requesting the Head of the Catholic Church and the successor of St. Peter to interpose his authority and thus to put an end to the schismati cal dissentions of the Corinthians.

Le vénérable Fortunatus-se rend à Rome pour solliciter le successeur de saint Pierre d'interposer son autorité.

The Bishop, then, gravely calls upon his english friend to note this primitive instance of an appeal to the chair of Peter. Remarquez, je vous prie, ce recours à la chaire de Pierre, dès les premiers temps. Discuss. Amic. lett. ii. vol. i. p. 43,

From what part of Clement's Epistle, or from what other authentic source, Dr. Trevern has learned, that Fortunatus requested Clement to interpose his supreme authority at Corinth, and that this is an instance of appeal to St. Peter's chair from the earliest times; I have not been able to discover.

to the childish fable, that our Lord appointed Peter the monarch of his Church, and that the Bishop of Rome is the rightful heir to the alleged universal dominant Supremacy of the Holy Apostle.

CHAPTER IV.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

THE doctrine of Transubstantiation, after having been briefly asserted by the second Council of Nice in the year 787, and after having been copiously though still imperfectly defined by the fourth Council of Lateran in the year 1215, was at length, with all its adjuncts and concomitants, fully specified and laid down, by the Council of Trent, during the course of its thirteenth session in the year 1551, and during the course of its twentysecond session in the year 1562 1.

1

may perhaps be doubtful, whether the second Nicene Council wished to inculcate Transubstantiation or Consubstanliation. At all events, it denied the bread and wine to be the image of the body and blood: and contended, that they are the very body and blood themselves.

Οὐδεὶς γάρ ποτε τῶν σαλπίγγων τοῦ Πνεύματος ἁγίων ἀποσ τόλων, ἢ τῶν ἀοιδίμων πατέρων ἡμῶν, τὴν ἀναίμακτον ἡμῶν θυσίανεἶπεν εἰκόνα τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ—Καὶ οὐκ εἶπε· Λάβετε, φάγετε, τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ σώματός μου—Οὐκοῦν σαφῶς ἀποδέδεικται, ὅτι οὐδαμοῦ οὔτε ὁ Κύριος, οὔτε οἱ ἀποστόλοι ἢ πατέρες, εἰ

In the sacrament of the Eucharist, according to this last and most complete account of the matter, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is, truly and really and substantially, contained, under the species of those sensible objects: so that, immediately after consecration, the true body and the true blood of our Lord, together with his soul and divinity, exist under the species of bread and wine: for, by the very force of the words themselves, the blood exists under the species of the wine; and the body, under the species of the bread. But, furthermore, by virtue of that natural connection and concomitance, through which the parts of the Lord, after his resurrection from the dead, are mutually joined together, the body

κόνα εἶπον τὴν διὰ τοῦ ἱερέως προσφερομένην αναίμακτον θυσίαν, ¿λλ' avrò owμa kai avrò aiμa. Concil. Nic. II. act. vi. Labb. Concil. vol. vii. p. 448, 449.

The fourth Council of Lateran, speaking more precisely than the second Council of Nice, determined, that the alleged material change in the elements, is not consubstantiative but transubstantiative: for it decided, that the bread and wine are, by virtue of consecration, transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ.

Una vero est fidelium Universalis Ecclesia, extra quam nullus omnino salvatur. In qua idem ipse sacerdos et sacrificium Jesus Christus, cujus corpus et sanguis in sacramento altaris sub speciebus panis et vini veraciter continentur: transubstantiatis pane in corpus, et vino in sanguinem, potestate divina, ut ad perficiendum mysterium unitatis accipiamus ipsi de suo quod accipit ipse de nostro. Concil. Later. iv. can. 1. Labb. Concil. vol. xi. par. I. p. 143.