APPENDIX C.

How far the nature of a sacrament would allow the water to represent an effect, is an important question in Christian ethics. It appears to me extremely ridiculous to suppose that a concrete substance can prefigure an abstract result. That substance should represent substance, and effects effects, is consistent with reason and every-day experience; but the inversion of these is unnatural and absurd. That the bread and wine should represent the body and blood of Christ is reasonable; to be told that the benefit received in the Lord's Supper is that we obtain "the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are (strengthened and refreshed) by the bread and wine," is natural; but to make the effects of the one representative of the agent in the other, would be manifestly incongruous in the nature of things. So, also, would it be in the other sacrament to do what Mr. Wilberforce would have us do, viz, to consider the outward symbol, a type of the inward grace.

It is quite in keeping with our judgment to compare the effects of the water on the body with the effects of the Spirit on the soul, as well as to illustrate the one agent by the other; but to connect these pictorial representations crosswise, and signify cause by effect, and effect by cause, is to outrage reason and bid farewell to common sense. There is a

natural aptness and congruity in the symbols and the things they signify according to the Protestant idea; the tractarian view, as propounded by Archdeacon Wilberforce, carries us back into the dark ages of science as well as of religion.

From a boy I have felt myself strong in the rejection of the other five so-called sacraments of the Popish Church, because they could not in any one case shew the outward visible sign" and the "inward part or thing signified." The members of the Romish Church would get half way in their proof of the seven sacraments if they could shew these, but only half way; for they would still have to shew the "institution by Christ," without which they never could be binding, as sacraments, upon the Christian Church.

APPENDIX D.

[Extract from Augustine's Commentary on the 99th Psalm.]

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What are

"AND fall down before His footstool: for He is holy.' we to, fall down before? His footstool. What is under the feet is called a footstool, in Greek, TоTótov, in Latin, Scabellum, or Suppedaneum. But consider, brethren, what he commandeth us to fall down before. In another passage of the Scriptures it is said, 'The heaven. is My throne, and the earth is My footstool,' (Isa. lxvi. 1.) Doth he then bid us worship the earth, since in another passage it is said, that it is God's footstool? How then shall we worship the earth, when the Scripture saith openly, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God?' (Deut. vi., 13.) Yet here it saith, 'fall down before His footstool,' and, explaining to us what His footstool is, it saith, The earth is My footstool.' I am in doubt; I fear to worship the earth, lest He who made the heaven and the earth condemn me; again, I fear not to worship the footstool of my Lord, because the Psalm biddeth me 'fall down before His footstool.' I ask, what is His footstool? and the Scripture telleth me, the earth is My footstool.' In hesitation I turn unto Christ, since I am herein seeking Himself: and I discover how the earth may be worshipped without impiety, how His footstool may be worshipped without impiety. For He took upon Him earth from earth; because flesh is from earth, and He received flesh from the flesh of Mary. And because He walketh here in very flesh, and gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eateth that flesh, unless he hath first worshipped: we have found out in what sense such a footstool of our Lord's may be worshipped, and not only that we sin not in worshipping it, but that we sin in not worshipping, But doth the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, It is the Spirit

that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.' Therefore, when thou bowest thyself down prostrate before the earth,' look not as if unto earth, but unto that Holy One whose footstool it is that thou dost worship; for thou dost worship it on His account wherefore he hath added here also, fall down before His footstool, for He is holy.' Who is holy? He in whose honour thou dost worship His footstool. And when thou worshippest Him, see that thou do not in thy thought remain in the flesh, and be not quickened by the Spirit; for, He saith, it is the Spirit that quickeneth the flesh profiteth nothing,' (John vi., 63.) But when our Lord praised it, He was speaking of His own flesh, and He had said, Except a man eat My flesh, he shall have no life in him,' (John vi., 54.) Some disciples of His, about seventy, were offended, and said, 'This is an hard saying, who can hear it ?' And they went back, and walked no more with Him. It seemed unto

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them hard that He said, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you:' they received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, and imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and give unto them; and they said, 'This is a hard saying.' It was they who were hard, not the saying; for unless they had been hard, and not meek, they would have said unto themselves, He saith not this without reason, but there must be some latent mystery herein. They would have remained with Him, softened, not hard: and would have learnt that from Him which they who remained, when the others departed, learnt. For when twelve disciples had remained with Him, on their departure, these remaining followers suggested to Him, as if in grief for the death of the former, that they were offended by His words, and turned back. But He instructed them, and saith unto them, It is the Spirit that quickeneth, but the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life,' (John vi., 54—64.) Understand spiritually what I have said; ye are not to eat this body which ye see; nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify Me shall pour forth. I have commended unto you a certain mystery; spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually understood. O magnify the Lord our God, and fall down before His footstool, for He is holy.'"-Oxford Lib. of the Fathers.

APPENDIX E.

THAT the authority on which the idea of Melchisedec's offering is founded, and the judiciousness and sobriety with which the superstructure is raised, may be seen and appreciated, I have thought it good here to reprint a portion of Cyprian's letter to Caecilius, wherein it is elaborately worked out. The estimation in which this letter is held by the party now given to "unprotestantize" the Church of England, is thus expressed by Dr. Pusey, the editor of Cyprian's works, in the Oxford "Library of the Fathers," in the preface to the second volume of Cyprian, No. 17 of the series:-" Of the epistles which are preserved, one, at least, which is chiefly taken up with the sacramental meanings of Holy Scripture, indicates, as well as his Testimonies,' a full possession of the system of Scriptural interpretation, which, whether by intuition or by tradition, was the heritage of the ancient Church, as he in his turn aided to fix that meaning. That epistle is like one flash from a mind we love, disclosing to us as it were a new world within it, enlarging and re-arranging all our previous thoughts of it, and deepening our reverence towards it. Of a kind, which will with many command little sympathy now, it shews a reverential contemplation and grasp of the hidden meaning of Holy Scripture in its sacramental aspect, which we must the more admire in one, whose duties, almost from the time of his conversion, were of intense and absorbing activity." It is to be hoped, for the safety and credit of the Church, that the age when such a "grasp of the hidden meaning of Holy Scripture" would be favourably received, is gone for ever. That we should have it, even with interest, if the Oxford Romanists had their way, will be seen by the portion of a note written by the same hand, which follows immediately after the extract from Cyprian :

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Although I am aware, dearest brother, that most of the bishops,

who by the Divine favour are set over the Churches of the Lord throughout the world, adhere to the method of Evangelical truth and the tradition of the Lord, and do not, by human and novel practices, depart from what Christ our master both enjoined and did; yet since some, either through ignorance or simplicity, in consecrating and administrating to the people the cup of the Lord, do not the same as Jesus Christ our Lord and God, the author and teacher of this sacrifice, did and taught; I have thought it a holy and necessary duty to write you this letter, that should any one be still held by this error, he may, having clearly seen the light of truth, return to the root and origin of the tradition of the Lord. Nor must you think, dearest brother, that I am writing my own and human opinions, or that I boldly take this on myself of my own mere will, for that I ever maintain my own mediocrity with humble and shame-faced moderation. But when anything is enjoined by the inspiration and command of God, a faithful servant must needs obey the Lord; acquitted by all of assuming anything arrogantly to himself, in that he is compelled to fear offending the Lord, unless he do what he is bidden. But you should know that I have been admonished, that in offering the cup the tradition of the Lord be observed, nor aught else be done by us, than what the Lord has first done for us that the cup which is offered in remembrance of Him, should be offered mixed with wine. For whereas Christ says, I am the true vine,' (John xv., 1;) the blood of Christ is not surely water, but wine. Nor can His blood whereby we have been redeemed and quickened, appear to be in the cup, when the cup is without that wine, whereby the blood of Christ is set forth, as is declared by the mystical meaning and testimony of all the scriptures.

"For we find in Genesis also, as to the hidden mystery in Noah, that this same was pronised, and that for them there was a figure of the passion of the Lord, in that he drank wine, (Gen. xix., 21); that he was drunken; that he was uncovered within his tent; that he was lying down with his thighs bared and open to view; that such nakedness of the father was noticed by his middle son, and told abroad; but was covered by two, the elder and the younger; and other circumstances which it is not necessary to follow out, since it suffices to embrace this alone, that Noah exhibiting a type of the future truth, did not drink water, but wine, and so pourtrayed a figure of the passion of the Lord.

"Likewise in the priest Melchisedec we see the mystery of the sacrifice of our Lord prefigured, as Holy Scripture testifies, saying, And Melchisedec king of Salem brought forth bread and wine,' (Gen. xiv., 18.) But he was the priest of the most High God,' and