may think, the difference between Latins and Greeks on this point can only be authoritatively settled by an Ecumenical Council. In the meantime there has actually been union at different times during 200 years, even after this controversy had commenced."

I showed him my Latin Introduction to the XXXIX. Articles, and he read over at once those parts of it which treated of the Procession, of Transubstantiation, of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and of Icons. At p. 78 (Latin), he read thus :-"As regards the faith in the Holy Ghost, like reflections may be made. For, if we were to say that He proceeds from the Father and from the Son, in such wise as that there should be two principles, and, as it were, fountains of Deity, we should be introducing a plurality of Gods: if we were to say that He proceeds from the Father only in such sense as to deny that He proceeds also from the Son, or were to say that He proceeds indeed through the Son (Sià), but so that He receives His Essence from the Father alone (Stà only meaning μera), and is derived through the Son only as through the hands of a dispenser, we should derogate from the co-equal unity of the Son with the Father."

1 [This and the quotations which follow are from Mr. Palmer's own English of his Latin work. He does not himself, in quoting his Latin, give his passages at full length, nor are they here so given from his English; nor does this omission involve any obscurity.]

Here the Archpriest interposed,-"Quomodo autem imminuetur,-how do we derogate from the co-equal unity of the Son with the Father, if the Holy Ghost receives His Essence from the Father alone, any more than it is a derogation from the co-equal unity of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son, if the Son receives His Essence from the Father alone?" N.B. -The objection is valid, but, in making it, the Archpriest seemed to accept for himself and for his Church the proposition that the Holy Ghost receives His Essence from the Father only, whereas it is the Greek doctrine, no less than the Latin, that the Holy Ghost receives His Essence from the Son as well as from the Father, inasmuch as He receives third in order that Divine Essence, which already is the Son. What the Greeks do contend for is, that what the Holy Ghost receives from the Father only, is not His Essence, but His Personality.

He continued reading :-" Nor (otherwise) should we be believing the words of Christ, who says,-'As the Father hath life in Himself, so the Son,' &c.-'I am the Resurrection and the Life,' &c. &c. Moreover, in the Mysteries of the Liturgies, it is the Father who gives the Bread of Life, it is the Son also who gives the same; we invoke the Father, we invoke also the Son, to sanctify, even to come Himself to sanctify, the gifts set before him. For it is not as any creature

that the Son has in Himself life received from the Father, but even-as the Father Himself has life in Himself, that all may honour the Son, even-as they honour the Father. Nor is grace in the Son only in passing (in transitu) as by a channel, but, as the Father is the Wellspring and Origin of life and grace, inhering in Himself and proceeding out from Himself, so the Son also is the Wellspring and Origin of the same life and grace inhering in Him as He inheres in the Father, and proceeding not separably as from two principles, but inseparably as from one principle from the Father and the Son, or, as the Greeks say, from the Father through the Son, so that a principality in originating may be ascribed to the Father, without any derogation to the indivisible equality of the Son."

As for all this reasoning, he seemed to think it quite wide of the mark; as relating only to the dispensation of the Holy Ghost in time and to the creatures. However, he ought certainly to have observed, and he did not observe, at least not distinctly, that, beyond all this, the Greek Church holds and teaches that the Holy Ghost is from all eternity the proper Spirit of the Son, not communicated, but inherent as His own by this very fact that He proceeds from the Father, and is the Spirit of the Father, third in order, the Son being already, in relative order, interposed as second.

When he came to the words "not as any creature,"

&c., he said that we ought not to make any additions by reasoning on a subject so utterly above our reach. True, I would answer, such a self-restraint may be good and pious for us individuals, nay, even for individual Saints, as St. Gregory Nyssen, or St. Cyril of Jerusalem; but neither we nor they can limit the sense of the Fathers generally, nor of the Church, or prescribe restrictions on the Holy Ghost Himself, who inspires the Church and leads her into all truth; and the Archpriest could scarcely mean to find fault with that particular sentence against which his remark was uttered.

At the words "from the Father through the Son," he said, "The Greek doctrine is more than that, and does not injure that truth, which you represent it as injuring," that is, does not injure the indivisible coequality of the Son with the Father. By "more than that" perhaps he meant "more than a Procession in time, and with "respect to the creatures."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Discussion continued: Transubstantiation, the

Mass, and Icons.

E went on reading at page 88: "The most im

HE

portant controversy is that which is carried on on both sides respecting the most Holy Mystery of the Eucharist, in which they will have it to be heresy that we deny Transubstantiation. We do deny that Transubstantiation, which taking away the natural substances of bread and wine, leave only their accidents after consecration. If any one desires that subtilty of school-men who introduce their metaphysics into religion, is he at once to be accounted a heretic? for, whether that opinion be true or false, it is joined by no necessary consequence with the integrity of the creeds ; nor, if it be denied, is any article of the necessary faith directly or by consequence affected."

"Nos vero transubstantiationem credimus et docemus," interposed the Archpriest ("we both believe Transubstantiation and teach it," referring to my denial

L