believed in justification by faith alone, would describe the holy Communion as 66 an antidote against death"?* (Eph. 20). But there is, as our reviewer says, one passage on which we relied as a crucial test of the saint's belief in the Real Presence. The great heresy with which S. Irenæus had to contend was that of the Docete, who denied that our Lord took a real body. And among other charges which he brings against these heretics, he declares that "they abstain from Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, which the Father in His goodness raised."+ This passage ought to be decisive. Had the Eucharist been a mere symbol, it would have presented no difficulty to the Docetæ. As it was, it conveyed, according to Catholic belief, the true body and blood of Christ. From this they must needs abstain, because they did not confess that our Lord took a true body at all, much less that He raised it again and makes it present on the altar. To this argument our reviewer has a twofold answer. First, on the ground that "the word for Eucharist at the commencement wants the article," he affirms it to be, "in the highest degree probable," that S. Ignatius "is not speaking specially of the sacramental Eucharist at all." Accordingly, he translates: they abstain from thanksgiving and prayer because they do not confess that thanksgiving (τǹv ɛúxapıoríav) is the flesh of Christ" (!!) This version implies an imperfect knowledge of grammar. It is incorrect to say that there is anything remarkable in the use of εὐχαριστία without the article for " Eucharist.” Εὐχαριστία in this sense is definite in itself. It belongs, therefore, to the class of nouns which may be used without the article.‡ and we give in a note distinct proof that it is so used in fact. But, apart from this, even supposing that S. Ignatius could in some extremely mystical sense have called "thanksgiving" the flesh of Christ, he could not have expected others as a matter of course to confess that thanksgiving is the flesh of Christ which suffered for our sakes, unless he had taken leave of

*Or if the reviewer insists upon the most literal translation: An antidote in order not to die, but to live for ever, &c.

+ It is perhaps scarcely worth noticing that the reviewer objects to our having inserted two words in this passage, to make the construction clear, although we indicated most carefully by the use of brackets, and the absence of inverted commas, that the words were ours, and not those of S. Ignatius. He follows up this hypercriticism by quoting the passage himself, and in doing so omits several words without mark or sign of omission (p. 372).

See Winer, "New Testament Grammar" (Masson's translation), section xix., and compare the following words from Justin. He is describing the ritual and distribution of the Eucharist, and, he adds, ἡ τροφὴ αὕτη καλεῖται παρ' ἡμῖν εὐχαριστία. (Apol. i. 66.) Clem. Αl. Strom. iv. 25, says, Melchisedec's offering of bread and wine was eis TÚROV εὐχαριστίας, a type of the Eucharist. Like other anarthrous words ἐυχαριστία is employed with or without the article. Irenæus, v. 3, has yivεtai ý εὐχαριστία and γίνεται εὐχαριστία in the same chapter.

his senses. ever made. Secondly, our reviewer replies that, even supposing sixapioría means Eucharist, no Protestant need object to calling the Eucharist, in devotional and figurative language, the body and blood of Christ. He actually quotes triumphantly two verses of a hymn, written as it seems by some "Nonconformist" divine, in which the holy Communion is spoken of as a banquet of Christ's flesh and blood. Granted. But S. Ignatius is not using devotional language. He is giving the plain reason why the Docete abstained from the holy Eucharist. The reviewer has not even attempted to show how the Eucharist could present any difficulty to the Docete if it was merely a commemorative rite. Consequently he has not even touched the problem which calls so obviously and imperatively for solution.

Such a confession no human being, so far as we know,

Here we must take leave of our critic, and we do so with all goodwill. He has undertaken a difficult task, and no doubt he has done what he can to show that S. Ignatius was not, what he certainly was, a Father of the Catholic Church. And though he has failed, he may take comfort from the thought that abler men than he have made similar attempts, and have failed likewise.

Eight Months at Rome during the Vatican Council. Impressions of a Contemporary. By POMPONIO LETO. Translated from the Original. London. 1876.

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HE contributor, to whom the criticism of this book had been intrusted, has been prevented by the pressure of other occupation from finishing his paper in time for the present number. It shall appear

without fail in our next.

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Article on Miracles in the "Church Quarterly Review" for April, 1876. HE following comments on this article appeared in the "Tablet" of June 24th; and should be read in connection with our own articles in April, 1875, and January, 1876.

A remarkable article in the "Church Quarterly Review" has produced a considerable sensation in the literary world. A writer in the "Saturday Review" evidently thinks that its appearance forms an era in the controversy on miracles. Whilst cordially acknowledging its very excellent intention and the conspicuous ability with which it has developed a very important feature in the rationale of miracles, we are inclined to think that its exhibition of that rationale is incomplete, and incomplete precisely because its writer has allowed

himself too much license in rejecting the work of its predecessors in the same field.

He addresses himself to refute the first part of " Supernatural Religion," which consists of an attack upon the rationale of miracles. He begins by meeting the argument-miracles being the one guarantee for revelation, and, Satan being capable of working miracles, the one guarantee is no guarantee successfully certainly, but with a needless depreciation of the evidential function of miracles. Thus we fully accept the following as a statement of the actual facts (p. 14). "The miracle is only one element towards the solution of the question. In order to determine whether Christianity is really from God, we must take it into consideration as a whole in all its manifold aspects. Nor is there any difficulty when the matter is so viewed. Christianity so completely opposes the work of the devil, and is so identified with God's providential working both before and since its promulgation, that the author's (S. R.s') objection-the possibility that its miracles might have been worked by Satanic agencyis simply absurd." But when he goes on to insist that the real end of miracles, "their raison d'être, so to speak, is not evidence, but high purposes of God's providence," such as the relief of human suffering, for instance; that the resurrection was not wrought to prove the truth of Christ's words, but "plainly for quite a different end, the redemption of the world"; again, that all that our Lord's miracles guarantee is "that He was not talking at random when He professed to be the Son of God, come into the world to redeem the world," he lays himself open to serious objection. Our Lord constantly appeals to His miracles as proof of something more than that He is not speaking at random. If they are not God's testimony that Christ is of God, and, therefore, that He is nothing less than He says He is, viz., the Redeemer of the world, the most splendid amongst them do not appreciably approximate to be a verification of those tremendous claims. If the raison d'être of our Lord's miracles was beneficence, and not self-manifestation, they might as well have been wrought in secret. The same may be said of the Resurrection, the manifestation of which was certainly not necessary to the work of redemption, except as a miraculous pledge that the atonement had been accepted. No doubt there was a propriety in our Lord's working the kind of miracles He did, as our author says, and a sort of necessity that having claimed the power of working miracles He should work them, as a man who has professed to have thousands at his bankers would be required sometimes to draw a cheque; but such propriety or necessity is quite insufficient to justify his other assertion, that the absence of miracles would "be perfectly fatal to our Lord's pretensions," seeing they could do no more than guarantee "that He was not talking at random." Such language shows at least that our author has sometimes been run away with by his over-anxiety to fight with perfectly clean decks. Evidence enters into the raison d'être of miracles, evidence, at least, that God is with those by whom, or in behalf of whom, they are wrought.

He meets "Supernatural Religion's" attack upon the possibility of miracles as interruptions or suspensions of the order of nature, by boldly

throwing over all such formula as "contra," or "supra naturam," "a suspension of order of nature," &c., and substituting the following definition Miracles are "events impressed with a visible purpose lying outside the sphere of man's activity." Now, the originality of this definition does not lie so much in what it contains as in what it rejects. The notes of design and of superhuman power have been strongly insisted on by Professor Mozley and Dean Mansell, to say nothing of other writers. But no apologist for miracles has hitherto ventured so cleanly to rid himself of what is supposed to form the scandal of the scientific man, the non-naturalness of miracles. These are as natural, our author is quite ready to admit, as anything else.

In these unscholastic days a definition seldom pretends to absolute precision, and frequently is little better than an epigrammatic summary of a view. But its form is at least a profession of exceptional accuracy and a challenge to exceptional criticism. Admitting then that the impression of a purpose is necessary to a miracle, and that its sphere must be superhuman, the definition is clearly obvious to the objection that many ordinary events without the sphere of human activity, such for instance as the succession of the seasons, are impressed with a purpose, or what comes of the argument from design? It is only fair to add that elsewhere our author insists upon the design in nature as a presupposition for miracles," but this is no excuse for a faulty definition. Secondly, we object that "outside the sphere of man's activity " is hardly distinct enough for a note. We desiderate some indication of what is "outside the sphere of man's activity," and this was precisely what the formula" contra naturam,” which our author discards, was meant to supply. By "contra naturam" it was intended to express an interruption of the order of nature, i.e. of the normal interaction of the natural forces in possession, man included. The question is whether this formula does not express an important truth essential to the rationale of miracles, and which therefore must be maintained in spite of its liability to misconstruction. We think it does; for what is the necessary condition of all human action upon nature? Is it not an initial submission in order to gain its ends? Its action is never "contra naturam." It serves that it may control; it invokes one force to balance, to counteract another; it is a government by parties. Our author ventures to put the invention of the submarine telegraph and the raising of Lazarus in the same category as regards the forces directly employed. They are both, he considers, results of the adaptation of natural laws, the combination of natural forces, although the one has lately been found to be within the sphere of man's activity, the other is certainly without that sphere. On the contrary, we should insist that the first is an adaptation, the second an act of absolute control involving the immediate subjugation of the whole assemblage of the natural forces in possession, not merely a fresh combination of them. Unless we can say this, what is to prevent an adversary maintaining that we may find out some day the art of raising the dead, just as we found out the other day the art of submarine telegraphing, which a hundred and fifty years ago would have looked so beyond us? Such an idea is quite alien from our

author's intention, but by getting rid of the precise note which stereotypes, so to speak, the sphere of man's activity, he has made it hard to show why the conception of this sphere should not expand with the experience of miracles.

Again, exceptionality, contrariety is necessary in order to mark this very purpose or design upon which our author lays such stress. For surely, abstracting from this exceptionality, the phenomenon of the miracle is anything but a conspicuous example of design, a bending of means to an end; such intelligent adaptation is precisely what is wanting. We have indeed the earnest expression of a wish, but the achievement is unconnected with it by any intelligent process. We require the note of contrariety to the order of nature, of abnormal exceptionality, in order to mark out the particular purpose as distinct from the general purposes of the order of nature. We should be inclined then to substitute for our author's definition one that shall combine the note of purpose with the note of "contra naturam," thus: a miracle is "an act of absolute control with a manifestly intelligent purpose, of the natural forces in possession," on behalf of certain individuals. The exceptional character, the exemption for the nonce of an individual, or collection of individuals, from the operation of a general rule we regard as essential to the idea of a miracle. The great First Cause has created and preserves in being a vast system of causalia-that is to say, of beings distinct from, and having a causative power distinct from, although in intimate dependence upon, their Creator. The interaction of these beings, man included, is in strict subordination to the natures of the whole collection of agents. This great system is impressed throughout with the Creator's purpose. Through it in many ways God speaks to the understanding: but it is of law, of necessary sequence, that He speaks; of man in his eternal relations, as an assemblage of certain qualities developing thus and thus under certain circumstances. On the other hand God speaks to the individual soul in the consciousness of freedom, in the voice of conscience, in the communion of grace, of a system of spiritual relations between the Creator and the individual in which none other partakes. The miracle holds, in a certain sense, an intermediate position between the general and the individual, the sensible and the spiritual. In the miracle the Author of both systems vindicates on the field of sense the superiority of spirit, and subordinates the sensible determinations of law to the higher, because spiritual, relations of the individual. Where there is a revelation the miracle performs the twofold function of confirming the faith of the recipient of the revelation and of promulgating the revelation; but even as the subject-matter of the miracle is individual, so is its evidential action individual also. It does not turn a private and individual relation into a public and general one, but it is an instrument for increasing the number of individuals partaking in the revelation made to one.

A miracle is the impression of a fresh purpose, but it is also an interference so far as the established order is concerned, even although it is itself a manifestation of a higher order, in which God does not merely speak by general laws to the race, but by exceptions to certain favoured