Transubstantiation is another of the absurdities of papacy, which no man of sane mind can comprehend, much less receive. ‘Since Christ, our Redeemer,’ observes the Council of Trent, ‘has said that it was truly His own body which He offered under the appearance of bread, it has always therefore been believed in the Church of God, and is now again declared by this holy Council,—That, by the consecration of the bread and wine, there is effected a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is fitly and properly termed by the holy Catholic Church, Transubstantiation.’ To this proposition is annexed, in the usual spirit of that persecuting Church, ‘If any one shall deny these statements, he is accursed.’ This is advancing upon us with a vengeance. I see only one alternative here for a reasonable being. We are compelled either to take leave of our senses, or expose ourselves to eternal ruin. We are to receive a positive, palpable contradiction as confirmed truth, that a consecrated wafer, made of flour and water, is the real body of Christ; that the wine, compressed from fruit, is His real blood; and what is more, though we are sure that the bread and wine have been thus prepared, we are nevertheless called upon to believe that they were not. We are to believe that He who fills heaven and earth, and is immutable, is as small as a crumb of bread or a drop of wine, and can be eaten and drunk. In fact, we are expected to give implicit credit to impossibilities; as if religion, instead of being a reasonable service, was a tissue of absurdities, and a cunningly devised fable. The conclusion is inevitable. Transubstantiation, like most other items of popish belief, is opposed 223to reason and Scripture. It can have no other than an ideal existence; and is compounded of such stuff as dreams are made of. Hence it has been asserted, that even a century ago, several discerning persons in the Church of Rome were grown so sensible of the weakness of the doctrine, that they would be glad quietly to dispose of it; but the Council of Trent, with the purblind zeal which has ever characterized this fallen Church, have riveted it so fast to their religion, and made it so necessary and essential a part of their belief, that they cannot now disengage it. It is a millstone hung about the neck of popery, that will some day sink it; and, in the opinion of many well-informed men, it is a weight that will make the pillars of Saint Peter’s crack, and requires more volumes to make it good than would fill the Vatican.