I turn now to another form of eucharistic error which has obtained some footing among us. In what has been said above, the mind and practice of the _first ages_ have been appealed to as the absolute standard of eucharistic duty. And on this point we cannot, surely, be too solicitous, or too firm in resisting any departure from it. Such is, at any rate, the mind of the English Church. "Before all things we must be sure that this Sacrament be ministered in such wise as our Saviour did, and the good fathers in the primitive Church frequented it." The position amounts to this,--that whatever was then held to be true, and was acted upon, must be true, and ought to be acted upon still. And the converse position is no less important,--that whatever was demonstrably _not_ held nor was acted upon then, cannot be true at all, and ought not to be acted upon now. But this position has now, for some few years past, been, in practice, abandoned by some who have interested themselves in the eucharistic condition of the English Church. Doctrines have been maintained, and practices founded upon them, about which, whatever defence may be set up for them, thus much at least is certain, and can be proved to demonstration, that they find no recognition in the ritual of the primitive ages. I speak more especially of the tenet, that one purpose, and a very principal one to say the least, of the Holy Eucharist, is to _provide the Church with an object of Divine Worship, actually enshrined in the Elements--namely, our Lord Jesus Christ_; and that the Church ought accordingly to pay towards that supposed personal Presence of Christ on the altar, and towards the Elements as containing Him, that worship, which at other times she directs to Him as seated at the Right Hand of God. Such is the position laid down and acted upon. Now, it might be shewn that there are infinite objections to this tenet, and that it involves vast difficulties and perplexities. But the one answer which is _instar omnium_, and must be held to be absolutely decisive against it, is that it was evidently _unknown to the mind, because unrecognised by the Ritual, of the first ages_. The altar, we are told, is, for the time being, the Majestic Throne of Christ; His Presence there (I cite the language of the upholders of this view) is of such a nature as to demand at our hands the same worship as we commonly pay to the Holy Trinity in Heaven. Now, if this be really so, it necessitates, as a matter of course, acts of Service, of Worship, of Prayer, of Invocation, addressed to Christ so present and so enthroned. Let, then, the upholders of it produce a _single instance_ from the Ancient Communion Offices of a prayer, or even an invocation, so addressed. It cannot be done. Or if there be found such an one lurking in some remote corner of a Liturgy, its manifest departure from the whole tone and bearing of the rest of the Office stamps it at once as late and unauthoritative.