The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

eternity, the God of omnipotence, the God of the unity in trinity, has a
human nature, forming one person with His own, may be, we are bound to
accept it, if His word teaches it; and we have seen that His word does teach
it.
Onus probandi.
There has been great disingenuousness among some of the opposers
of the Scripture doctrine of the Lord's Supper. They have first urged the
speculative difficulties of natural reason against the direct sense of the text;
then professing to be willing to bow before the Word of God with absolute
submission, they yet claim to have shown, on the ground of natural reason,
that the Word does not teach the doctrine for which we here contend. Now
the true mode of Scripture interpretation is: First. To fix the direct and
literal sense of the words by the laws of language. Second. To adhere to
that sense, unless, under a law acknowledged by God's Word itself, we are
bound to accept a figurative sense. Those who depart from the literal sense
in a disputed case are always by that fact thrown upon the defensive. He
who has the literal sense of the text with him, is under no obligation to
argue for his doctrine until it shall be shown that the literal sense is not
tenable. On the main point of the objective presence, proven by taking the
words in the literal sense, the immense majority of Christendom has been
and is a unity. Those who deny the doctrine are bound to show that the
literal sense cannot (not simply may not) be the true one. To say the literal
sense cannot be the true one, because a small minority in the Christian
Church think that sense involves something in conflict with their reason, is
not only rationalistic, but egotistic and conceited in the last degree. Those
who accept the literal sense have quite as much natural reason, quite as
much power of seeing the difficulties it suggests, as the rationalizing
minority. The question can never be settled on that ground. The attempt to
do it has only wrought division. It has made chaos where Christendom
before had order. The Reason, which has rejected the literal sense, has
never been able to fix another. It has dropped pearl after pearl of truth into
its vinegar, and the total result is spoiled vinegar and ruined pearls. The
Reason has been injured by the abuse of the truth, and the