In the dispute with Latimer about Transubstantiation, it is acknowledged by the most candid writers, that the Roman Catholics had much the advantage.  It must have been so, where quotations from the Fathers were allowed as arguments.  For what answer can be made to the following extracts?—­” What a miracle is this!  He who sits above with the Father, at the same instant, is handled by the hands of men.” [Chrysostom.] Again, from the same, “That which is in the cup, is the same which flowed from the side of Christ.”  Again, “Because we abhor the eating of raw flesh; therefore, it appeareth bread, though it be flesh.” [Theophylact.] Or to this?—­“Christ was carried in his own hands, when he said ‘this is my body.’” [Austin,] Or to this?—­“We are taught, that when this nourishing food is consecrated, it becomes the body and blood of our Saviour.” [Justin Martyr.] Or, lastly, to this? [from Ambrose]—­” It is bread before consecration, but after that ceremony, it becomes the flesh of Christ.”

Another doctrine which Paul derived from the Oriental Philosophy, and Which makes a great figure in his writings, is the notion, that moral corruption originates in the influxes of the body upon the mind.

“It was one of the principal tenets of the Oriental Philosophy, that all evil resulted from matter, and its first founder appears to have argued in the following manner:—­“There are many evils in the world, and men seem impelled of a natural instinct to the practice of those things which reason condemns.  But that eternal mind, from which all spirits derive their existence, must be inaccessible to all kinds of evil, and also of a most perfect and beneficent nature; therefore, the origin of these evils with which the world abounds, must be sought somewhere else, than in the Deity.  It cannot abide in him who is all perfection, and, therefore, it must be without him.  Now, there is nothing without or beyond the Deity but matter; therefore, matter is the centre and source of all evil, of all vice.”

One of the consequences they drew from this hypothesis was, that since All evil resulted from matter, the depravity of mankind arose from the pollution derived to the human soul, from its connexion with the material body which it inhabits; and, therefore, the only means by which the mind could purify itself from the defilement, and liberate itself from the bondage imposed upon it by the body, was to emaciate and humble the body by frequent fasting, and to invigorate the mind to overcome and subdue it by retirement and contemplation.

The New Testament, though it does not recognise this principle of the Oriental Philosophy, “that evil originates from matter,” yet coincides with it in strenuously asserting that the corruption of the human mind is derived from its connexion with the human body.