Whatever figure conveys the true idea of the speaker's mind, in the liveliest manner possible, so as to paint an IMAGE on the hearer's mind, and to effect what Quintilian calls an ENARGEIA, is an elegance. This beautiful figure of rhetoric renders what is addressed to the ears an object of mental vision *. It represents things so much to the life, that they seem to be going on before the eyes, and not merely

Dublin, what places are, and what places are not, signified and meant. Why? How comes my conception to fasten upon such a city, upon the mention of such a name? Surely from no NATURAL aptness in the names to signify one city rather than another; but by Institution and consent, or custom; which is as good as a natural aptness to describe such a place. Men will so call it; and therefore such a name becomes APT to each place respectively.

Thus God. MADE Bread and Wine APT to express the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of his ordinance. Though these things have indeed some resemblance or congruity with the things signified, because one is a liquid and the other a solid, corresponding with the Blood and the Body, and because both strengthen and refresh the Body, as Grace strengthens and refreshes the Soul. The appropriation here has a natural as well as an instituted aptness to resemble the things, signified. ROGERS on the Sacrament. 1635.

* Την ακοήν οψιν ποιεί.

LONGINUS.

described

described by language. It forms a vivid picture on the retina of the mind, if I may use the expression; and not only delineates the object more clearly, but causes it to be more easily remembered. Things sensible are often not only the best but the only means of explaining, in a lively manner, things spiritual and intellectual.

It is one of the most admired kinds of the ENARGEIA not to describe a thing fully and circumstantially, but to select one or two of the most striking parts, which at once give the reader or hearer a strong and clear impression of the whole. Brevity adds to vivacity, one of the chief beauties of all eloquence *.

* «Ornatum est quod perspicuo et probabili plus est. Itaque Evagyslav, quia plus est evidentia, vel, ut alii dicunt, repræsentatio quam perspicuitas, fet illud quidem patet, hæc se quodammodo ostendit,) inter ornamenta ponamus. Magna virtus est, res, de quibus loquimur ut cerni videantur, enuntiare; non enim satis efficit, neque, ut debet, plene dominatur oratio, si usqué ad aures volet, atque ca sibi judex, de quibus cognoscit, NARRARI credit, non EXPRIMI ET OCULIS MENTIS OSTENDI." QUINTILIAN, lib. viii, cap. 3.

"Take, eat, this is my body. This is my blood; drink ye all of it."

Though these words have, in modern times, sounded strangely to the ears of some, yet they were perfectly intelligible to those who heard them, and conveyed the speaker's mind with singular force. Those who heard them expressed no surprise at them. They knew that they referred to a feast on à sacrifice; and this was an emphatic mode of ordering it to consist of the elements of bread and wine, in the place of the VICTIM, which, in this case, could not for a moment be supposed, in a literal sense, to constitute the holy repast. The idea of cannibalism would have been shocking to the feelings of humanity, and cannot even now be contemplated but with abhorrence. Those who were present saw real bread and real wine in the Institutor's hand; they took them from his hand without surprise, when told that they were his body and his blood; because they knew he meant to establish a sacrificial feast, in analogy to their passover; in which the paschal lamb was actually eaten

by

by those who were to receive the benefits of the sacrifice; and the feast was necesto complete the sacrifice *.

sary

I will,

*This reference to the customs and opinions of the times was useful by impressing on the Religion so circumstanced one INDELIBLE MARK' of truth, for the use of all ages. Had that Religion pretending to have arisen in a remote age, brought down with it no tincture of the times, we might have reason to suspect or disbelieve the traditional accounts which informed us of its high antiquity.

But when we find upon it so strong a mark ancientry; and impressed in a manner to cause no suspicion, and in a manner so sure, as to afford no handle for imposture ; we may be confident it is of the times it pretends to be.

Again this restrained peculiarity serves a still further and greater end. It is contrived to be declarative of the TRUE NATURE of the Death and Sufferings of Christ. That his Death on the Cross was a SACRIFICE for the sins of the world, has been always held a part of Catholic Faith, founded on the express declaration of Scripture. But those Sects, who oppose the doctrine of a real Redemption, have always striven to evade the notion of a real Sacrifice, as that on which the doctrine of Redemption is founded, upon pretence that the Scripture expres sions of Christ's Sacrifice, were only figurative and allusory. Now, if the Last Supper, the rite which commemorates the Death of Christ, be of the nature of the FEASTS UPON SACRIFICE, it is self-evident that the Death

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I will, with due humility, attempt to explain the terms to modern apprehensions in a liberal paraphrase.

"You and your forefathers, as well as the Gentile world, have been for ages sacrificing animals, as your most solemn act of devotion, with a hope of partaking of benefits from the propitiated Deity, by sharing in the sacrificial feast, which the victim supplied; all these sacrifices were types and adumbrations of the grand sacrifice, to be offered up for all mankind, to-morrow, by the oblation of myself on the Cross.

"In this instance, for obvious reasons, I celebrate the sacrificial feast with you before the sacrifice. I celebrate it with you in person, in order to give you my example and my command, in what manner you, and all that follow me, are to celebrate it after my death on the Cross; after my oblation of myself, when all sacrifices shall cease, and nothing shall remain but the feast on the sacrifice,

Death itself was a REAL Sacrifice, and not merely called so, by conversion of terms or accommodation of ideas." BP. WARBURTON.