To attempt an enumeration of all the additions made to the outward observances of religion would be hopeless. Many new rites, ceremonies, usages, holidays, and festivals were added from time to time, both by the pontiffs publicly and by the priests privately. But no priestly invention ever made such way, or produced such an impression on the popular mind, as transubstantiation. The dogma nowhere occurs in the writings of either the Greek or Latin Fathers. The first trace of it is to be found in the eighth century. In the ninth, a period of great darkness, the monk Pascasius seems to have given form and definiteness to the monster superstition. In the eleventh, it was strongly opposed by Berengar of Tours, and ably defended by Anselm of Canterbury. It continued to be a subject of contention among the doctors till the fourth Lateran council, which was held in the year 1215. It was then placed among the settled doctrines of the church of Rome. By a canon of that council it was affirmed, that when the officiating priest utters the words of consecration, the sacramental elements of bread and wine are converted into the substance of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. "The body and blood of Christ," they say, "are contained really in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread being transubstantiated into the body of Jesus Christ, and the wine into His blood, by the power of God, through the officiating priest. The change thus effected is declared to be so perfect and complete, that the elements contain Christ whole and entire—divinity, humanity, soul, body, and blood, with all their component parts."
From that period, the consecrated bread of the Eucharist received divine honors. Important changes also were introduced about the same time in the manner of administering the sacrament. The consecrated wine, it was said, was in danger of being profaned by the beard dipping into the chalice, from the sick not being able to swallow it, and from children being likely to spill it. So the cup was withheld from the laity and the sick; and infant communion discontinued altogether, at least by the Latins: the Greeks retained it and still practice it.
The most dreadful superstitions naturally followed the establishment of the doctrine of transubstantiation. At a certain part of the mass service the priest elevates the host -the consecrated sacramental wafer—and at the same instant the people fall prostrate before it in worship. On some occasions, the wafer is placed in a beautiful casket, and carried in solemn procession through the streets, every individual, as it passes him, bowing the knee in token of adoration. In Spain, when a priest carries the consecrated wafer to a person who is supposed to be dying, 'he is accompanied by a man ringing a small bell; and at the sound of the bell all who hear it are obliged to fall on their knees and remain in that posture as long as they hear its sound. The priests make the people believe that the living God, in the form of bread, resides in that casket, and may be carried from place to place. Surely this is the consummation of all iniquity, idolatry, and blasphemy; and the exposing of everything sacred to the ridicule of the profane. It was conceived and cradled in a time of great ignorance, depravity, and superstition.
Such was and is the daring wickedness of the Popish priesthood; such the pitiful but guilty blindness of the Romish church! Yet God has suffered it a thousand years; but a day of reckoning will come when He will judge the secrets of men's hearts, not by the standard of a Roman ritual, but by the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord. "For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." (Rom. 14:11, 1211For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. 12So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:11‑12).)