action was made and regularly used, we see at once what was the idea which the same persons had in the interchange of the consecrated elements. If other means were thought to express the same thing, which were substituted for the sacred elements after their interchange was prohibited, it is evident that the primitive Christians did not imagine that any greater gift was bestowed in the one case than in the other, though the greater sanctity of the consecrated elements would naturally add a greater sanction to the transaction than any substitute could give. It is to be feared that the causes which led to some other peculiar usages, were not so laudable or so innocent as the foregoing. The respect which ought to be given to the Eucharist was not given in the apostles' days by the Corinthian converts; but it is very apparent that excess in the other direction became common very early in the Church. tians adopted, and the "mystical" terms which they employed when referring to the Eucharist especially, gave the heathen a The foolish reserve which the Chris Irenæus, in his Epistle to Pope Victor [Ap. Euseb. lib. 5. cap. 24], when he menaced the Asiatic Churches with excommunication for their different way of observing Easter, tells him his predecessors never thought of such rough proceedings against them; but, notwithstanding this difference, always sent them the Eucharist to testify their communion with them. Valesius [Vales. in locum.] and others observe the same in the Acts [Acta Lucien. ap. Metaphrast. 7. Jan.] of Lucian the martyr, and Paulinus's [Paulin. Ep. 1. ad Severum.] epistle to Severus. This was chiefly, if not solely, done at the Paschal festival, in token of their unity, love, and charity. But the council of Laodicea [Conc. Laodic. can. 13. Περὶ τοῦ μὴ τὰ ἅγια εἰς λόγον εὐλογιῶν κατὰ τὴν ἑορτὴν τοῦ πάσχα εἰς ἑτέρας παροικίας διαπέμπεσθαι], for some inconveniences attending the practice, absolutely forbade it; ordering that the holy sacraments should not be sent from one diocese to another, under the notion of eulogiæ, or benedictions, at the Easter festival. Yet, in some places, the custom con tinued for several ages after. For Johannes Moschus [Mosch. Pratum Spiritual. cap. 29] speaks of the communion being sent from one monk to another at six miles' distance not to mention again the custom of sending the Eucharist by Paulinus, and the bishops of Rome, from the mother Church to all the other churches throughout the city in every region. But where they left off this custom of sending the Eucharist, they introduced another way of testifying their mutual love and amity to one another, by certain symbols of bread, which they blessed and sanctified also in imitation of the Eucharist, but with a different benediction. And to these, also, they gave the names of eulogic and panis benedictus (consecrated bread), which the modern Greeks call avricwpa (vicarious gifts), because they were given in many cases instead of the Eucharist." handle, and laid the foundation for many charges which were brought against them by their unscrupulous adversaries. Perhaps the very different estimate which was made of them by the heathen in Pliny's time, and subsequently, was, in some degree, due to the language and conduct of the Christians themselves. For when the governor of Bythinia wrote to Trajan respecting this "troublesome" sect, he had nothing to allege against them, as Tertullian well remarks, in his apology to Severus. "For," says he, "the second Pliny, while governor of a province, when some Christians had been condemned, some degraded, being nevertheless troubled by their very numbers, asked of Trajan (then emperor) what he should do for the future; alleging that, excepting their obstinacy in not sacrificing, he had discovered nothing else touching their religious mysteries, save meetings before day-break, to sing to Christ as God, and to form a common bond of discipline: forbidding murder, adultery, fraud, perjury, and other crimes."* Now, this clear account of a heathen contrasts strangely with the intimations contained in the passage of Tertullian, ad uxorem, to which reference is made in the "Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist," on the subject of the private partaking of the Eucharist. In that letter, having quoted the caution of our Lord, not to cast pearls before swine, he says, " Your pearls are the notes of your daily conversation. The more you take care to hide them, the more suspected wilt thou make them, and the more needful to guard against heathen (her husband's) curiosity. Wilt thou escape notice when thou signest thy bed, thy little body (corpus culum, the husband's term of endearment)? when with thy breath thou blowest away anything unclean? when thou risest even in the night to pray? and wilt thou not be thought to be working somewhat of sorcery? Will not thy husband know what thou tastest in secret before all food? and if he knoweth it to be bread, will he not believe it to be that which is reported? And will any man, not knowing the reason, simply bear with these things with Pliny's Ep. X., 97. out a groan? without a suspicious doubt whether it be bread or a charm? Some do bear with them, but that they may trample on, that they may mark such women, whose secrets they reserve for the danger which they believe will come."* Now, in this passage, it is remarkable what use is made of secresy on all sides. Tertullian deems it necessary-the wife religiously observes-the husband misinterprets it. It was this secresy, joined with an exaggerated estimate of the sanctity or virtue of the consecrated elements, which led to the charges of magic and charms, so constantly alleged against the Christians in early ages. This practice of reservation and private communion (if the terms be not a contradiction), having originated, as we have seen, in the sending of the elements to the absent and sick. members of a Church, and also to others more distant, as a bond of brotherhood, and a token of communion, was abolished at last, on account of the many abuses which grew out of it. It was a superstitious feeling which lay at the bottom of this practice, and not the idea that the elements were the veritable body and blood, soul and divinity, of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mr. Wilberforce says," all these circumstances imply that the elements themselves were supposed to gain a sanctity, which made them the means of communicating the gift, which was sought for in the Holy Eucharist; and, therefore, that the blessing was believed to be bound up with the thing itself, and not to depend merely upon the coincident action of the parties." This language is indefinite, and, therefore, ambiguous. There are few Christians who think other than that the elements gain a sanctity-relative sanctity-from the consecration, and are made "a means" of communicating what they signify to the worthy recipient; but that this should be made a basis for the belief of a substantial change in the bread and wine is certainly astonishing. With the idea that this change brings the true body of Christ into the elements, the "usages" are altogether at variance. For, however much * Ad uxorem, ii., 5. respect men paid, or virtue they attributed, to the reserved portion of the Eucharist, yet the mode in which they dealt with it shews plainly that they had not the transubstantiated idea of it. This is manifest enough, not only from the consideration of the usages per se, but also demonstrably so, when compared with the totally different ones of the modern Church of Rome. Now, those usages to which I have referred, were such as the following:-In the case of Gregory Nazianzen's sister, Gorgonia, to which the Archdeacon makes reference, as proving reservation and private participation, we are told that she made a plaster, or salve, of the consecrated elements, with which she anointed her body, as a cure for her corporeal malady. Here, certainly, we have evidence of superstition, but none whatever of the impression which it is suggested must have prevailed from the former part of this transaction. A similar case is mentioned by St. Augustine, who tells us that, when a physician proposed to use mechanical means to open theeyelids of a boy, whose eyes were thought to be perfect, "his pious mother would not suffer it; but what the physician would have done with his lancet, she effected with a plaster made of the sacrament; the child, being then five years old or upwards, said that he remembered it very well.' "'* The practice of burying the Eucharist with the dead was also a custom savouring of superstition, and shewing that some idea of its acting as a charm was prevalent, but not that it was deemed what the Papists deem it now. In the "Life of St. Basil," attributed to Amphilochius, bishop of Iconia, we read that "St. Basil, dividing the bread into three parts, took one with great fear, and that he reserved the other to be buried with him; and that, having put the third parcel upon a golden pigeon, he waved it upon the altar, or, as it is said afterwards, upon the holy table." A Council of Carthage, assembled in the year 419, condemned this practice in one of its canons, which is the eighteenth in the code of canons of the Church of Africa. "It hath been Aug. Oper. imperf. contr. Julian., 1. iii, c. 164. + Vita Basil, c. 8, in Vit. Pat., 1. i. resolved, not to give the Eucharist unto dead bodies; for it is written, Take and eat;' now dead bodies can neither take nor eat."* Gregory the First, in his dialogues, relates the following story of a youth that was a friar, and that having gone out of the monastery to see his parents, without the benediction, died the same day that he came home; and, after he had been buried, next day the body was found cast out of the grave; and, having been buried a second time, the same accident happened again: then the friars speedily went unto S. Bennet, and prayed him with tears to shew favour unto the deceased party, unto whom, saith Gregory, the man of God, with his own hands gave the communion of the body of the Lord, saying, Go and lay this body of the Lord with reverence, upon his breast, and so bury him; which being done, the earth received and retained his body, and cast it out no more."+ 66 In some churches, the practice was to burn the sacramental remains. This was the custom of the Church of Jerusalem, as Hesychius, a presbyter of that Church, testifies in his "Lectures on Leviticus." In other churches, as Evagrius tells us in his history, a different course was adopted. He says "It was an ancient custom in the Church of Constantinople, that when several parcels of the immaculate body of Christ our God remained, young children were sent for from school, unto whom they were given to eat."‡ To obviate which not quite seemly proceeding, several decrees were made, that no more should be consecrated than could be consumed, if not in the ordinance, at least by the communicants immediately afterwards, before parting.§ Another custom which existed, wholly inconsistent with the idea of transubstantiation, was the mixing the ink, wherewith solemn documents were written, with some consecrated wine, as was done by Pope Theodore, in the seventh century, when he signed the condemnation and deposition of Pyrrhus, a Monotholite, as is * Cod. can. Eccles. Afric. just. 1. c. 18. T. 1. Concil. Gall. c. 12. Evagr. Hist., 1. iv., c. 35. § See Clement's Ep. 2. Conc. Toled. xvi., c. 6. |