under foot, while St. Optatus relates how certain Donatists, in attempting to feed it to the dogs, were torn in pieces by the infuriated animals. According to St. Basil, to pray to the Eucharist was deemed right and proper, and not to pray to it was sinful, and St. Augustine testifies that the charge of having worshipped Ceres and Bacchus brought by the Pagans against the Christians was due to the adoration paid by the latter to the body and blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. Nothing but belief in the real presence could justify, or can explain such practices. If the primitive Church held that the consecrated species still continued to be mere bread and mere wine, it should have chosen water used for baptizing as a far more sacred object of veneration. But nowhere do we read of such a choice having been made. The Eucharist alone received the honor and adoration due exclusively to Christ and to God.
Brethren, if the Fathers of the early Church have little concerning a dogma which had not yet been called in question, the same cannot be said of the later defenders of the faith. In a.d. 1045, Berengarius first attacked the doctrine of the real presence, and thereafter we find it explicitly asserted by nine general Councils and copiously defended by all the Fathers. Now, is it reasonable to contend that that trinity of heretics, Berengarius, Wycliff, and Zwinglius, were in matters of faith a safer guide than the entire teaching body of the Church; that they alone represented the true Church of Christ, while
