_Direct._ X. Sense must not be made the judge of matters that are above it, as the proper objects of faith and reason; nor must we argue negatively from our senses in such cases, which God in nature never brought into their court. We cannot say that there is no God, no heaven, no hell, no angels, no souls of men, because we see them not. We cannot say, I see not the antipodes, nor other kingdoms of the world, and therefore there is no such place: so we say, as well as the papists, that sense is no judge whether the spiritual body of Christ be present in the sacrament, no more than whether an angel be here present. But sense with reason is the judge whether bread and wine be there present, or else human understanding can judge of nothing. Christ would have had Thomas to have believed without seeing and feeling, and blesseth those that neither see him nor feel, and yet believe; but he never blesseth men for believing contrary to the sight, and feeling, and taste, and all that have sound senses and understandings in the world. Their instance of the Virgin's conception of Christ, is nothing contrary to this; for it belongeth not to sense to judge whether a virgin may conceive. Nor will any wise man's reason judge, that the Creator, who in making the world of nothing was the only cause, cannot supply the place of a partial second cause in generation: they might more plausibly argue with Aristotle against the creation itself, that _ex nihilo nihil fit_; but as it is past doubt, that the infallibility of sense is nothing at all concerned in this, so it is sufficiently proved by christians, that God can create without any pre-existent matter. Reason can see much further than sense by the help of sense; and yet much further by the help of divine revelation by faith. To argue negatively against the conclusions of reason or divine revelation, from the mere negation of sensitive apprehension, is to make a beast of man. We must not be so irrational or impious, as to say, that there is nothing but what we have seen, or felt, or tasted, &c. If we will believe others who have seen them, that there are other parts of the world, we have full reason to believe the sealed testimony of God himself, that there are such superior worlds and powers as he hath told us. We have the use of sense in hearing, or seeing God's revelation; and we have no more in receiving man's report of those countries which we never saw.
If they will make it the question, whether the sense may not be deceived; I answer, we doubt not by distance of the objects, or distempers, or disproportions of itself or the media, it may: but if the sense itself, and all the means and objects, have their natural soundness, aptitude, and disposition, it is a contradiction to say it is deceived; for that is to say, it is not the sense which we suppose it is. If God deceive it thus, he maketh it another thing. It is no more the same, nor will admit the same definition. But, however, it is most evident, that the senses being the first entrance or inlet of knowledge, the first certainty must be there, which is presupposed to the certain judgment of the intellect; but if these err, all following certainty which supposeth the certainty of the senses is destroyed; and this error in the first reception (like an error in the first concoction) is not rectified by the second. And if God should thus leave all men under a fallibility of sense, he should leave no certainty in the world; and I desire those that know the definition of a lie, to consider whether this be not to feign God to lie in the very frame of nature, and by constant lies to rule the world, when yet it is impossible for God to lie. And if this blasphemy were granted them, yet it would be man's duty still to judge by such senses as he hath about the objects of sense; for if God have made them fallible, we cannot make them better; nor can we create a reason in ourselves which shall not presuppose the judgment of sense, or which shall supply its ordinary, natural defects. So that the Roman faith of transubstantiation, denying the reality of bread and wine, doth not only unman the world, but bring man lower than a beast, and make sense to be no sense, and the world to be governed by natural deceit or lies, and banish all certainty of faith and reason from the earth. And after all, (with such wonderful enmity to charity as maketh man liker the devil, than else could easily be believed,) they sentence all to hell that believe not this; and decree to burn them first on earth, and to depose temporal lords from their dominions, that favour them, or that will not exterminate them from their lands, and so absolve their subjects from their allegiance, and give their dominions to others. All this you may read in the third canon of the Lateran general council under Innocent III.