A recent statement comes from " The Catholic Faith," 1959, by the Rt. Rev. G. P. Dwyer: " When the priest says Mass he does what Christ did at His Last Supper. He takes bread and wine. He says: This is my body. This is my blood.' At that moment by the power of God the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ... what was bread is no longer bread, what was wine is no longer wine. It is the Body and Blood of Christ.... The change which takes place... is entirely supernatural and cannot be discerned by any natural means. That is why the Church has made a special word to describe it—Transubstantiation " (pp. 96, 99, 100).
Here we put our finger on the high-water mark of superstitious idolatry, the like of which is not surpassed by pagan rites. Well might Cardinal Manning say: " The Catholic Church is either the masterpiece of Satan or the kingdom of the Son of God " (Lectures on the Four-fold Sovereignty of God. London, 1871, p. 171).
Cardinal Newman expressed a similar idea: " Either the Church of Rome is the house of God or the house of Satan; there is no middle ground between them " (Essays 11, p. 116).
With these sentiments we fully agree, though we have come to the exactly opposite conclusion to what these princes of the Church, alas! arrived at. If Transubstantiation is true, it is a most terribly solemn thing to be outside the pale of the true Church. If it is false, this dogma makes the Church of Rome the very seat of Satan, and should be avoided at the peril of our souls.
Nor was Transubstantiation known in the apostolic era, when, if true, of all times they should have known it. The simple blessed remembrance of our Lord with bread and wine, the said bread and wine remaining unchanged, was celebrated by the Church in the apostolic era. Gradually, alas! this simplicity was corrupted more and more till full-blown Transubstantiation arrived in the 12th century.
The Apostle Paul knew nothing of this Romish dogma. We read: "The Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, Take, eat; This is My body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of Me " (1 Cor. 11:23, 2423For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: 24And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. (1 Corinthians 11:23‑24)).
Did Paul believe that the bread and wine were changed into the body and blood of the Lord though he did reproduce in his epistle our Lord's own words, "This is My body"?
It is plain he did not, for in verses 26 and 27 he refers to the Corinthian believers partaking of the Lord's supper, after "the consecration of the elements", as the Romanists would say. Twice over he says, "Ye eat this bread and drink this cup," and not "Ye eat His body and drink His blood ", as the Romanists would have us to say. It is very plain the Apostle Paul did not believe in transubstantiation, and we prefer to believe what he taught rather than the superstition of Rome.
"THIS bread ", and "THIS cup" clearly means that the elements were unchanged, and that our Lord used the words, "THIS is My body; THIS is My blood" symbolically. For instance, take the words of our Lord literally, "I AM the true Vine" (John 15:11I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. (John 15:1)) and you reduce His language to an absurdity; take the words symbolically, and they are full of beautiful meaning. We could multiply case after case where to take words literally would be confusion, but taken symbolically they are full of wisdom and beauty.
This stands in full harmony with what our Lord said at the Supper Table. We read: "Jesus took bread and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; THIS is My body. Arid He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them saying, Drink ye all of it; for THIS is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins " (Matt. 26:26-2826And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. 27And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 28For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:26‑28)).
But what follows? In the very next verse, AFTER our Lord had given thanks for the bread and wine, we read our Savior's own words: " But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of THIS fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom " (verse 29).
It is perfectly plain that our Lord, who had blessed and given thanks for the cup, recognized that its contents were unchanged, that it was the fruit of the vine when He blessed it, and that it remained the fruit of the vine after He had blessed it. The wine was unchanged.
The Author of Catholic Belief makes a very strange remark. Writing of the Lord's Supper and the first miracle of Transubstantiation, as they falsely claim it to be, he writes: " If what Jesus held in His hands was truly His Body and His Blood, it must have ceased to be the substance of bread and of wine " (p. 71).
We write most reluctantly and with utmost reverence. When our Lord said, " This is My body," " THIS is My blood," He was alive with the living flesh of a living man clothing His sacred body, and the blood of a living man coursing through His veins. Yet this Author teaches that our living Lord on the Passover night, held His dead flesh and shed blood in His hands. We can only characterize this as pure blasphemy without a tittle of Scripture to give the slightest semblance to it, manifesting the utmost confusion of thought.
The Romanists point to the following Scripture in support of this terrible blasphemy: " Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you " (John 6:5353Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. (John 6:53)).
We have three things to say as to this verse. (1) Our Lord was alive when He said it, so the eating and drinking could not be literal. (2) He clearly turns attention to the spiritual and non-material meaning of His words in verse 63: " flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." (3) When He spoke these words the Lord's Supper was not yet instituted, and therefore at that moment it could not refer to it. The words were symbolic of what? Eating and drinking are the two most thorough ways of appropriating. For instance, we might find a wallet in the street, and of course would pick it up. We appropriate it. But not for long. Someone runs after us and asks with anxiety, Have you picked up a wallet in the street? The wallet is returned to the owner. But who can take from us the food and drink we partook of yesterday? Not all the Acts of Parliament, not all the emetics administered by doctors or chemists, not all the clever operations of the skilled surgeons, could take from us this food. It has been appropriated, gone into the system to build it up in all its parts. It has become part of us. So with this mystic eating and drinking. The Lord was alive upon the earth. His death had not taken place, but He told His disciples of His coming death, and that death being for their life and blessing. He showed how appropriating this death in all its personal meaning and power was the only way of life for them.
Even the Romanists, one would think, could scarcely take these words literally, but as symbolically indicating the appropriation of the very words of Jehovah, so that they become spiritual food and blessing to the soul. Thus it is with eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man.
Nor does this exhaust the tale of Rome's ignorant and terrible sacrilege. Not only does Rome claim that the bread and the wine becomes the very body and blood of our Lord; that is, it becomes a " whole. Christ ", but that it is a propitiatory offering to God. The Council of Trent (Session 22) states: "Forasmuch as in the Divine Sacrifice, which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained, and immolated in an unbloody manner, who once offered Himself in a bloody manner, on the altar of the cross, the holy synod [note well, the holy synod, not Scripture] teaches that this sacrifice is truly propitiatory, and that by means thereof, this is effected—that we obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid, if we draw near unto God, contrite and penitent, with a sincere heart and upright faith, with fear and reverence." This is in complete opposition to Scripture. It denies that the Lord Jesus completed the work of atonement on the cross once and for all. We read: " Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's; for this He did ONCE, when He offered up Himself " (Heb. 7:2727Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself. (Hebrews 7:27)). " But this Man, after He had offered ONE sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God " (Heb. 10:1212But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; (Hebrews 10:12)). "For by ONE OFFERING HE hath perfected forever them that are sanctified " (Heb. 10:1414For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. (Hebrews 10:14)). " In that He died, He died unto sin ONCE: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God " (Rom. 6:1010For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (Romans 6:10)). Will the Romanists refuse to listen to Peter? Will they believe their corrupt and blasphemous tradition rather than the pure word of God?
The Apostle Peter writes as clearly and decisively as the Scriptures just quoted. " Christ also hath ONCE SUFFERED FOR SINS, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God " (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)). Finally our Lord uttered these words on the cross in a loud voice, "IT IS FINISHED " (John 19:3030When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30)). God Himself in high heaven answered that cry by rending the veil of the Temple in twain from the top to the bottom, the very earth quaked and the rocks were rent, and the graves opened and the bodies of the saints that slept arose—all testifying that Divine righteousness was once and for all infinitely and divinely satisfied by our Lord's grand propitiatory sacrifice on the cross, never to be repeated, but to stand in all its complete efficacy forever.
What sacrilege for Romish priests to dare to say, when they pronounce the words at the celebration of the mass, Hoc est enim corpus meum (" This is My body "), that they are offering a propitiatory sacrifice, and anathematize and curse all who do not acknowledge this. Furthermore they are not consistent. With one breath they tell us that the wine at the Lord's Supper is turned into the blood of our Lord, and yet on the other hand tell us it is " a bloodless sacrifice ". We can only say the holy synod is crassly ignorant of Holy Scripture, which says emphatically: " WITHOUT SHEDDING OF BLOOD IS NO REMISSION " (Heb. 9:2222And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9:22)). "IT IS THE BLOOD THAT MAKETH AN ATONEMENT FOR THE SOUL" (Lev. 17:1111For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11)).
Where then is their bloodless propitiatory sacrifice?
Finally the very peak of superstitious mummery is reached when the priest holds up the Host, a piece of dough baked into a wafer, oftentimes made by the priest's little servant maid in the kitchen of the presbytery, on which are engraved a cross and the following letters: I.H.S.
We read: "The Host, then, is to be worshipped: and how? Not as images are worshipped; not as saints are worshipped; but as the eternal Creator Himself is worshipped. The Church of Rome does not teach that God is worshipped through the host: she teaches that the host is God—is the flesh, the blood, the soul and divinity of Christ—therefore the worship is given to the host, and terminates on the host " (The Papacy, Dr. Wylie, p. 319).
Can anything exceed this in gross and blasphemous superstition? Doubtless many of the priests do not inwardly believe what they outwardly profess; and many totally unchristian priests, often leading immoral and drunken lives, as can be proved up to the hilt by many testimonies, are devoid of any pretense of believing in this mummery.