BERENGARIANS

A denomination, in the eleventh century, which adhered to the opinions of Berenger, archdeacon of Angers, the learned and able opponent of Lanfranc, whose work has been in part recovered, and was printed a few years since at Berlin. “It was never my a ertion,” says he, “that the bread and wine on the altar are only sacramental signs. Let no one suppose that I affirm that the bread was not become the body of Christ from being simple bread by consecration on the altar. It plainly becomes the body of Christ , but not the bread which in its matter and e ence is corruptible, but in as far as it is capable of becoming what it was not, it becomes the body of Christ , but not according to the manner of the production of his very body, for that body, once generated on earth so many years ago, can never be produced again. The bread, however, becomes what it never was before consecration, and from being the common substance of bread, is to us the ble ed body of Christ .” His followers, however, did not hold to his doctrines, which, in themselves, were a Catholic protest against Romish errors.— Cave, Hist. Literar. Sæc. Hildebrand .