And Taylor in my humble judgment gives a force and extension to the words of St. John, quoted before,--'That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld, and our hands have handled of the word of life' (1 Ep.1.),--far greater than they either can, or were meant to, bear. It is beyond all doubt, that the words refer to, and were intended to confute, the heresy which was soon after a prominent doctrine of the Gnostics; namely, that the body of Christ was a phantom. To this St. John replies: I have myself had every proof to the contrary: first, the proof of the senses; secondly, Christ's own assurance. Now this was unanswerable by the Gnostics, without one or the other of two pretences; either that St. John and the other known and appointed Apostles and delegates of the Word were liars; or that the Epistle was spurious. The first was too intolerable: therefore they adopted the second. Observe, the heretics, whom St. John confutes, did not deny the actual presence of the Word with the appearance of a human body, much less the truth of the wonders performed by the Word in this super-human and unearthly 'vice-corpus,' or 'quasi corpus:' least of all, would they assert either that the assurances of the Word were false in themselves, or that the sense of hearing might have been permitted to deceive the beloved Apostle, (which would have been virtual falsehood and a subornation of falsehood), however liable to deception the senses might be generally, and as sole and primary proofs unsupported by antecedent grounds, 'præcognitis vel preconcessis.' And that St. John never thought of advancing the senses to any such dignity and self-sufficiency as proofs, it would be easy to shew from twenty passages of his Gospel. I say, again and again, that I myself greatly prefer the general doctrine of our own Church respecting the Eucharist,--'rem credimus, modum nescimus,'--to either Tran- (or Con-) substantiation, on the one hand, or to the mere 'signum memoriæ causa' of the Sacramentaries. But nevertheless, I think that the Protestant divines laid too much stress on the abjuration of the metaphysical part of the Roman article; as if, even with the admission of Transubstantiation, the adoration was not forbidden and made idolatrous by the second commandment. Ib. s. vi. p. 9. And yet no sense can be deceived in that which it always perceives alike: 'The touch can never be deceived.' Every common juggler falsifies this assertion when he makes the pressure from a shilling seem the shilling itself. "Are you sure you feel it?" "Yes." "Then open your hand. Presto! 'Tis gone." From this I gather that neither Taylor nor Aristotle ever had the nightmare. Ib. p.10.