The Blunders of Dr. Ewer [pp. 813-824]

i88i.] BLUivD~Rs OF DR. EwER. 821
fled minister. Or, as we have said, the minister of the sacrament
is reduced to a mere machine; no consciousness on his part is required of the presence of the matter or of the person; all that is
required to assure the validity of the sacrament in the minds
of those concerned is evidence that the machine has done its external work correctly.
Now, Dr. Ewer is welcome to bold this view if he pleases. If
it seems to him or to any one else more worthy of God that his
minister should act as a machine rather than in a human and rational w~~, really intending (virtually, at least, that is) to do what
is expected of him (which is the Roman doctrine, as has been
shown), we have nothing to say. It is simply absurd, however, to
try to make out, as he does, that his sect, which he calls "Catholicity," alone teaches that Almighty God is the real agent i~ the
sacraments, and that this peculiar theory is necessary to make
him so; for that he is so is the most commonplace doctrine, obviously true and perfectly familiar to "Roman" ears. It may be found,
for instance, in the homily on the Gospel, in the Breviary, for the
Octave of the Epiphany, which we read, of course, a little while
agQ~ Everybody, then, knows this. But that it is in the power of
the human minfster nevertheless to prevent God's sacramental
work necessarily comes from the very idea of a sacrament, which
Dr. Ewer really seems (though we could hardly have believed it)
not to grasp. His mechanical or automatic priest will not help
him out of the difficulty. For though wound up by Dr. Ewer,
and wauanted always to go off on proper occasion like an
alarm-clock, he is a man after all; and the doctor cannot prevent
him from using some other inodorous fluid instead of water in
baptism, or saying some other w~rds instead of the right ones.
Uneducated people would never know the difference, and in some
cases no one could know it. Yes, it is evidently possible that
the minister in this and in the other sacraments should deceive
the people purposely or accidentally, and thus, as we have said,
prevent God's sacramental work as well as by want of intention.
Mind, we say his sacramental work. The Almighty can, no doubt,
effect the desired result extra-sacramentally; but the very idea of
a sacrament is his binding himsdf by a promise to accomplish a
certain work on definite conditions; and if those conditions are
not verified, of course the promise does not hold, and we cannot
be sure, but only piously hope, that the work is accomplished.
Dr. Ewer must agree to this, unless he wishes to reduce the sacraments to mere answers to prayer; that is to say, to teach that
when the faithful think that they are entitled to expect the grace