I found in the Acts, that the apostles saw Jesus Christ ascend on high, carried upward by a cloud which concealed him from their sight, and that two angels appeared and said unto them, “Men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?  This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”  Acts, 1:9, 11.  “There never was a priest,” said I, “there never was a Roman Catholic, administering or receiving the sacrament, that ever saw Christ descending from heaven, in this manner, to enter into the bread.  Nevertheless, the angels declared that he should descend from heaven in the same manner as he went up into heaven.”

I found, in the same book, “that the heavens must receive Jesus Christ till the time of the restitution of all things.”  Acts, 3:21.  “He is then,” said I, “no longer corporeally on the earth.”  I found, in the Epistle to the Colossians, that “Christ sitteth on the right hand of God;” chap. 3:1; from whence I drew the inference that he certainly cannot be actually present on so many altars, or in so great a number of wafers, as the doctrine of the real presence necessarily supposes.

I found, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapters 9 and 10, the strongest declarations, not only against the real presence, but against the whole system of the mass, by which it is pretended daily to renew the passion and sacrifice of our Saviour.  When the apostle says that “Christ is entered into heaven itself;” Heb. 9:24; when he says that “unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation;” ver. 28; lastly, when he says it is the will of God to sanctify us “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once made,” chap. 10:10, and that “this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down at the right hand of God,” ver. 12, having “by one offering perfected for ever them that are sanctified,” ver. 14, it appeared to me to prove, with the most unanswerable evidence, that the doctrine of the real presence, and all connected with it, was as far removed from the creed of the apostle as the east is from the west, or as heaven from hell.

Finally, my dear children, the very words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, related by St. Paul, 1 Cor. 11, and to which I paid particular and repeated attention, did not leave a shadow of doubt on my mind that the doctrine of the Romish church, on the subject of the Eucharist, is utterly devoid of any foundation in the Gospel, and must, consequently, have been derived from some other source.  In fact, all that our Saviour says on the occasion of instituting the Lord’s Supper, clearly shows that it was a memorial of himself which he established, and which he wished to leave behind him.  After having taken, blessed, and broken the bread, he commands that it should be eaten in remembrance of him. Having given them the cup to drink, he adds, “This do ye, as oft