Article XXVIII
Of the Lord’s Supper.
The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.
Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.
The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean, whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith.
The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.
De Coena Domini.
Coena Domini non est tantum signum mutuae benevolentiae Christianorum inter sese, verum potius est sacramentum nostrae per mortem Christi redemptionis. Atque adeo, rite, digne et cum fide sumentibus, panis quem frangimus est communicatio corporis Christi; similiter poculum benedictionis est communicatio sanguinis Christi.
Panis et vini transubstantiatio in Eucharistia ex sacris literis probari non potest; sed apertis Scripturae verbis adversatur, sacramenti naturam evertit, et multarum superstitionum dedit occasionem.
Corpus Christi datur, accipitur et manducatur in Coena tantum coelesti et spirituali ratione. Medium autem, quo Corpus Christi accipitur et manducatur in Coena, fides est.
Sacramentum Eucharistiae ex institutione Christi non servabatur, circumferebatur, elevabatur, nee adorabatur.
Section I – History
This Article treats generally of the Lord’s Supper, but more especially of the presence of Christ in that Sacrament, and of the mode in which He is received there. On this mysterious doctrine there have been four principal opinions: 1, Transubstantiation; 2, Consubstantiation; 3, The real spiritual presence; 4, The denial of any special presence altogether.
1. Transubstantiation is the doctrine of the Church of Rome. As stated by school authors, and other more subtle reasoners among them, it means that in the Eucharist after the words of consecration the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and the substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood; so that the bread and wine no longer remain, but the Body and Blood of Christ are substituted in their places. This, however, is said to be true only of the substance, not of the accidents. The accidents (such as colour, shape, taste, smell, consistence, &c.) all remain unchanged. The substance, which is interior to, and not necessarily dependent on these external accidents, is that which is converted. Yet we are not to call it a mere spiritual change (though some of their writers have allowed even this) but the change is a real and miraculous conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into the very Body of Christ, which was born of the blessed Virgin and crucified on Calvary.
2. Consubstantiation is considered to be the doctrine of Luther and the Lutherans. It differs from transubstantiation in that it does not imply a change in the substance of the elements. Those who hold this doctrine teach that the bread remains bread, and the wine remains wine; but that with, and by means of the consecrated elements, the true, natural Body and Blood of Christ are communicated to the recipients.
3. The doctrine of a real, spiritual presence is the doctrine of the English Church, and was the doctrine of Calvin and of many foreign reformers. It teaches that Christ is really received by faithful communicants in the Lord’s Supper; but that there is no gross or carnal, but only a spiritual and heavenly presence there; not the less real, however, for being spiritual. It teaches, therefore, that the bread and wine are received naturally; but the Body and Blood of Christ are received spiritually. “The result of which doctrine is this: it is bread, and it is Christ’s Body. It is bread in substance, Christ in the Sacrament; and Christ is as really given to all that are truly disposed, as the symbols are: each as they can; Christ as Christ can be given; the bread and the wine as they can; and to the same real purposes to which they were designed; and Christ does as really nourish and sanctify the soul as the elements the body.” {Jer. Taylor, On the Real Presence, sect. I. 4.}
4. The fourth opinion is that of Zuinglius, who taught that the Eucharist is a bare commemoration of the death of Christ, and that the bread and wine are mere symbols and tokens to remind us of his Body and Blood.
The subject on which we are entering is one which has produced folios of controversy; alas! what should have been for our peace becoming to us an occasion of falling. But a brief view is all that is here possible.
When we consider the language of the fathers, one or two cautions are necessary. Of course their words were not measured and guarded, as ours have been in our times of trouble. Their writings are often rhetorical, that we say not sometimes turgid. They treat such questions as these practically, not argumentatively. Now in such writings it may be very difficult to tell the exact intention of the writer when subsequent ages have drawn subtle distinctions.
Thus much we must premise as unquestionable. The whole primitive Church evidently believed in a presence of Christ in the Eucharist. All spoke of feeding there on Christ; eating His Body and drinking His Blood. But then was it a spiritual presence or a carnal presence? Did they teach a carnal eating and drinking of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood? or did they intend a spiritual manducation, – an eating spiritually and a drinking in by the soul of the life-giving efficacy of the Body broken and the Blood shed? Did they believe the bread and wine to be actually and literally transmuted into Flesh and Blood? or did they think the bread and wine still to remain bread and wine, though constituted Sacraments of Christ, means in God’s hand of conveying to us Christ’s Body and Blood, and so, after Christ’s own example, to be called by the name of His Body and Blood?
Here is the question; and it must be carefully noted. If there were no other alternative, but that the fathers must have been either Papists or Zuinglians, – must have held either a carnal presence, or none at all; then we must perforce acknowledge that they believed in a carnal presence, and were transubstantialists. For some presence they undoubtedly taught; some mode of feeding on Christ they undeniably believed in. But another alternative is possible, and has been acknowledged as possible, even by eminent scholastic and Romanist divines. They may have believed a spiritual presence. They may have thought that the Eucharist conveyed Christ really, and yet spiritually, to the recipient; and they may have taught that the soul was truly nourished by spiritually feeding on His Flesh and Blood, as truly as the body is nourished by carnally feeding upon bread and wine.
Whichever they held, a carnal or a spiritual presence, they may easily have used language which would sound like the carnal presence. There can be little doubt that their faith and feelings inclined them to the mysterious, and there was no controversy, no apparent need of caution. But then we may observe that one clear statement that the presence was spiritual, or that the substance of the bread and wine remained, must outweigh statements innumerable, which merely sound like a belief in transubstantiation or in a carnal presence. For the latter would naturally occur where people believed in a real presence, and had never learned the necessity of guarding their words, lest they should be thought to teach a carnal and natural presence; but the former could never come from the lips or pens of those who acknowledged a literal change of the elements, and that the natural Body of the Lord was actually eaten by all who communicate.
For instance, Roman Catholics will never say that the bread and wine remain unchanged, and that the feeding is only spiritual. But Protestants of many different communions have freely declared that Christ’s “Body and Blood are verily and indeed taken.” Nay! it is acknowledged by them that the Body of Christ then received is the very Body that was born of the Virgin Mary, that was crucified, dead, and buried. For there is no other Body, no other Blood of Christ. Christ’s Body is now glorified, but still it is the same Body, though in its glorified condition. It is not even denied that we receive that Body really, substantially, corporally: for although the word “corporally” seem opposed to “spiritually,” yet it is not so of necessity. And, as we acknowledge that it is a Body which we receive, so we cannot deny its presence corporally, i.e. after the manner of a Body. Only, when we come to explain ourselves, we say, that, though it be Christ’s very Body we receive in the Eucharist, and though we cannot deny even the word corporal concerning it; yet as Christ’s Body is now a spiritual Body, so we expect a spiritual presence of that Body; and we do not believe, that we naturally and carnally eat that which is now no longer carnal and natural; but that we spiritually receive Christ’s Spiritual Body into our souls, and spiritually drink His life-giving Blood with the lips of our spirit. {See this excellently laid down by Bp. Taylor, On the Real Presence, sect. I. 9–11.} Moreover, it has been abundantly acknowledged, not only by our English divines, but by Protestants of all sorts, that the elements after consecration may be called by the name of those things which they represent. But then we call them so, not because we believe them to have lost their original nature and to have ceased to be what they were, but because, being hallowed to a new and higher purpose, they may be called that which they are the means of communicating.
It was necessary to say thus much, that we might not be startled by strong terms ; and so conclude at once that we had found a doctrine, before it had yet entered even into men’s dreams. With this precaution, we shall readily see in the fathers abundant evidence that the carnal doctrine of transubstantiation had not risen in their days. Let us take one or two of the strongest expressions, and which, if not explained and qualified by other statements, would seem conclusive for transubstantiation and a natural presence.
St. Jerome and others speak of the clergy as making the Body of Christ. {“Absit ut de his quidquam sinistrum loquar, qui Apostolico gradui succedentes Christi Corpus sacro ore conficiunt, per quos et nos Christiani sumus; qui claves regni coelorum habentes,” &c. – Hieron. Ad Heliodorum, Epist. V. Tom. IV. part II. p. 10.} Yet, as the words of consecration make the bread the Sacrament of Christ’s Body, and so the means of conveying His Body to the communicant, and as it was an acknowledged mode of speech and fully sanctioned by the language of our Lord to call the consecrated bread by the name of that of which it was the type and Sacrament; it was not unnatural that the priest by his consecration should be said to make Christ’s Body and Blood, even by those who believed no more than a spiritual and sacramental communication of them to the faithful.
St. Chrysostom writes, “When you behold the Lord sacrificed and lying, and the priest standing by the sacrifice and praying, and the congregation sprinkled with that precious Blood (και πάντας εκείνω τω τιμίω φοινισσομένους αίματι) ... are you not immediately transported to Heaven, and dismissing from your soul every fleshly thought, do you not with naked spirit and pure mind see the things which are in Heaven? Oh wonderful! Oh the love of God! who, seated with the Father above, is held at that moment by the hands of all; and who gives Himself to those who desire to receive Him. And all see this by the eyes of faith.” {De Sacerdot. III. § 4.} “Behold thou seest Him, thou touchest Him, thou eatest Him. He gives Himself to thee, not only to see, but to touch, to eat, and to receive within ... How pure should he be who partakes of that sacrifice! the hand that divides His Flesh, the mouth filled with Spiritual fire, the tongue empurpled with His awful Blood!” {Ιδου αυτον ορας, άπτη, αυτον εσθίεις ... αυτος δε εαυτόν σοι δίδωσιν, ουκ ιδειν μόνον, αλλα και άψασθαι και φαγειν και λαβειν ένδον ... τίνος ουν ουκ έδει καθαρώτερον ειναι τον ταύτης απολαύοντα της θυσίας; ποίας ηλιακης ακτινος την χειρα την ταύτην διατέμνουσαν την σάρκα, το στόμα το πληρούμενον πυρος πνευματικου, την γλωσσαν την φοινισσομένην αίματι φρικωδεστάτω. – Chrys. Hom. 83 in Matt. C. 26.} Now these expressions are so strong that even believers in transubstantiation could hardly use them without a figure. The Roman Catholics allow that the accidents of the bread and wine remain unchanged; and would hardly therefore in literal language speak of the tongue as assuming the purple colour of Christ’s Blood. But hyperbolic expressions are common with St. Chrysostom and his contemporaries; and they use such language, that they may exalt the dignity of the blessed Sacrament; that they may induce communicants to approach it with devotion and reverence; that they may turn their minds from the visible objects before them to those invisible objects which they represent, and which as St. Chrysostom says, they may “see by the eye of faith”.
Still more remarkable perhaps are the expressions used by others of the Greek, especially the later Greek fathers, concerning the change (μεταβολη, μεταστοιχείωσις) in the Sacraments. So Gregory Nyssen says, “These things He gives by virtue of the benediction upon it, transmuting the nature of the things which appear.” {ταυτα δε δίδωσι τη της ευλογίας δυνάμει προς εκεινο μεταστοιχείωσας των φαινομένων την φύσιν. – Gregor Nyssen. In Orat. Catechet.} And Theophylact (the last of the Greek fathers, A. D. 1077), “Therefore the merciful God, condescending to us, preserves the form of bread and wine, but transforms them into the virtue of His Flesh and Blood.” {Δια τουτο συγκαταβαίνων ημιν ο φιλάνθρωπος· το μεν ειδος άρτου και οίνου φυλάττει· εις δύναμιν δε σαρκος και αιματος μεταστοιχειοι. – Theophyl. In Evangel. Marc. cap. CXIV.} Those who translate μεταστοιχειουν by transelementare think that we have here the very word made use of, which exactly answers to the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, namely, a change of the elements into something different from their original substance. Yet first of all transelementare is not certainly, nor probably, a right translation. { Suidas has μεταστοιχείουσα, μετασχηματίζουσα, μεταπλάτουσα. Suicer argues at length that transelementare will not properly express its sense. (See Suicer, II. pp. 363, 364.) Jer. Taylor (On the Real Presence, sect. XII. num. 5) adduces the words of Suarez, the learned Jesuit, in acknowledgment that μεταστοιχείωσις does not properly convey the meaning of transubstantiation.} Secondly, Gregory Nyssen is speaking not only of a change in the Eucharist, but in the Sacraments generally; and whatever sanctifying efficacy may have been attributed to the water in baptism, no change of its substance was ever believed to take place. Thirdly, Theophylact only says that the elements are changed into the virtue or efficacy, not into the substance of Christ’s Flesh and Blood – a very notable distinction. Fourthly, he uses the same word (μεταστοιχείωσις) of changes very unlike transubstantiation, e. g. the change of our bodies to the state of incorruption, and the change that is made in the faithful when they are united to Christ. {Theophyl. In Luc. xxiv. et in Joh. VI apud Jer. Taylor, ubi supra.} Lastly, we shall find abundant proof from Greek fathers, centuries before Theophylact, to show that a conversion of substance was not believed by the early Greek Church; and therefore, that Theophylact’s transelementation must have meant something else, or that he himself must have adopted comparatively modern views.
The same observations apply to the passages cited from St. Cyril of Jerusalem, where he speaks of Christ’s changing the water into wine, and then adds, “Let us therefore with full assurance receive Christ’s Body and Blood; for His Body is given to thee in the figure of bread, and His Blood in the figure of wine.” {εν τύπω γαρ άπτου δίδοταί σοι σωμα, και εν τύπω οίνου δίδοταί σοι το αιμα. – Cyril Heiros. Catec. Mystagog. IV. 1.} But here St. Cyril happily explains himself; for soon after he speaks of the Capharnaite Jews as offended at our Lord’s sayings in John 6:53. And this, he says, was from their carnal interpretation of His words: “They, not receiving His saying spiritually, being offended went backward, thinking that He invited them to the eating of flesh.” {εκεινοι μη ακηκοότες πνευματικως των λεγομένων, σκανδαλισθέντες, απηλθον εις τα οπίσω, νομίζοντες ότι επι σαρκοφαγίαν αυτους προτρέπεται. – Ibid.} He then compares the Eucharist to the shewbread, and says that, “as the bread is fitted for the body, so the Word for the soul. Look not therefore as on bare bread and wine, for they are, according to the Lord’s saying, His Flesh and Blood.” {Μη πρόσεχε ουν ως ψιλοις τω άρτω και τω οίνω· σωμα γαρ και αιμα Χριστου κατα την δεσποτικην τυγχάνει απόφασιν. – Cat. Myst. IV. 2} The context plainly shows the conversion to be spiritual, not as the Jews had understood our Lord, as indicating a literal σαρκοφαγία or banquet upon flesh.
There is a famous passage which the Roman Catholic controversialists coupled with the last from St. Cyril and much insisted on as plainly in their favour. It comes from the tractDe Coena Domini, in former times attributed to St. Cyprian, but which the Benedictine editors assign to Arnoldus, of Bona Vallis, a contemporary of St. Bernard. It speaks of the bread as “changed, not in form, but in nature.” {“Panis iste, quem Dominus discipulis porrigebat, non effigie, sed natura, mutatus, omnipotentia Verbi factus est caro.” – De Coena Domini. The tract is usually printed in the Appendix of the works of Cyprian. In the Oxford edition it is in Appendix, p. 39, and the above passage, p. 40. In the edition of Venice, 1729, it is App. p. xcix. There is also a famous passage from St. Ambrose, De Myst. IX. § 52, where he speaks of Christ’s words as changing the properties of the elements: “valebit Christi Sermo ut species mutet elementorum”: and again, mutare naturas. The answer in the text to the passage from the Pseudo-Cyprian equally applies to this from St. Ambrose. See also Bp. Cosin, Hist. of Transubstant. ch. VI. 14.} The words of our own reformer shall explain that, even if the language were (as it is not) St. Cyprian’s, it would not prove him a supporter of transubstantiation. “The bread is changed, not in shape nor substance, but in nature, as Cyprian truly saith; not meaning that the natural substance of bread is clean gone, but that by God’s word there is added thereto another higher property, nature and condition, far passing the nature and condition of common bread, that is to say, that the bread doth show unto us, as the same Cyprian saith, that we be partakers of the Spirit of God, and most purely joined unto Christ, and spiritually fed with His Flesh and Blood: so that now the said mystical bread is both a corporal food for the body, and a spiritual food for the soul.” {Cranmer, Remains, II. p. 340; Defence of the Catholic Doctrine, Bk. II. ch. XI.}
We must not omit one passage from St. Hilary which contains certainly some startling expressions. He is arguing against heretics who held that the Unity of the Father and the Son was unity of will, not unity of nature. He quotes against them John 17:21, 23: “That they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.” And he contends that the unity of the Father and the Son must be an unity of nature, not merely of will; inasmuch as the indwelling of Christ in His people is not by concord of will, but by verity of nature; for He took the nature of our flesh, on purpose that He might dwell in us according to that human nature; and by His human nature He dwelleth in us and we in Him. Hence our union with Him is by unity of nature, i.e. human nature. So in like manner, His union with the Father is by unity of nature, i.e. Divine nature. In the course of this argument he says, “If Christ therefore really took flesh of our body, and He is truly that Man who was born of Mary, and we truly under the mystery receive His Flesh by means of which we shall be one; for the Father is in Him and He in us; what room is there for mere unity of will, when the natural property effected by the Sacrament is the Sacrament of perfect unity? Christ Himself says concerning the truth of His nature in us, My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood dwelleth, in me, and I in him. Concerning the truth of His Body and Blood there is no room for doubt; for now by our Lord’s witness and our own faith, it is truly Flesh, and truly Blood. And these received and taken in by us make that we be in Christ and Christ in us.”*
{*“Quisquis ergo naturaliter Patrem in Christo negabit neget prius non naturaliter vel se in Christo, vel Christum sibi inesse; quia in Christo Pater, et Christus in nobis, unum in his esse nos faciunt. Si vere igitur carnem corporis nostri Christus assumpsit, et vere homo ille, qui ex Maria natus fuit, Christus est, nosque vere sub mysterio carnem corporis sui sumimus; (et per hoc unum erimus, quia Pater in eo est, et Ille in nobis;) quomodo voluntatis unitas aperitur, cum naturalis per sacramentum proprietas, perfectae sit sacramentum unitatis: De naturali in nobis Christi veritate ipse ait: Caro mea vere est esca, et sanguis meus vere est potus. Qui edit carnem meam, et bibit sanguinern meum, in me manet, et ego in eo. De veritate carnis et sanguinis non relictus est ambigendi locus: nunc enim et ipsius Domini professione et fide nostra, vere caro, et vere sanguis est. Et haec accepta et hausta efficiunt ut et nos in Christo et Christus in nobis sit.” – Hilar. De Trinitate, Lib. VIII. § 13, p. 222. Edit. Benedict.}
The passage, strong as it is, does not stagger those who admit a true but spiritual presence of Christ’s Body in the receiving of the Eucharist, and a true but spiritual union of Christians to the human nature of their Lord. “For as concerning the word truly,” they say, “it setteth not lively forth a real and substantial presence; for Christ is truly in all His faithful people, and they truly eat His Flesh and drink His Blood, and yet not by a real and corporal, but by a spiritual and effectual presence.” {Cranmer’s Answer to Gardiner, Works, p. 254.} “And although he saith that Christ is naturally in us, yet he saith also that we be naturally in Him. And nevertheless in so saying, he meant not of the natural and corporal presence of the substance of Christ’s Body and of ours; for as our bodies be not after that sort within His Body, so is not His Body after that sort within our bodies ... And as the union between Christ and us in baptism is spiritual ... so likewise our union with Christ in His holy Supper is spiritual ... and therefore Hilarius, speaking there of both the Sacraments, maketh no difference between our union with Christ in baptism and our union with Him in His holy Supper.” {Cranmer’s Defence of the Catholic Doctrine, &c. Works, II. pp. 406, 407. N.B. Just before the passage above quoted, Hilary had spoken of the union of Christians to Christ in baptism, as he speaks afterwards of their union in the Eucharist: “Docet Apostolus ex natura sacramentorum esse hanc fidelium unitatem, ad Galatas scribens, Quotguot enim in Christo baptizati estis, Christum induistis,” &c. – De Trin. Lib. VIII. p. 218. Ed. Ben.}
Now, although such passages admit of an explanation, whether we adopt the transubstantialist theory or the doctrine of a true but spiritual presence in the Eucharist; yet it must be conceded that if all the language of the fathers was similar to the above-quoted sentences, there would be just reason to suspect that from the first transubstantiation, or something near akin to it, was the doctrine of the Church. But it is easy to bring a chain of testimonies, from the very earliest ages through many centuries which cannot be interpreted to mean transubstantiation or a carnal presence, but which declare, though plainly for a real, yet as plainly for a spiritual feeding upon Christ.
The apostolical fathers for the most part speak in terms so general that it is often almost doubtful, whether they speak of the Eucharist or of that spiritual feeding upon Christ as the bread of life, which all allow to be possible even without the Eucharist. Thus Ignatius, “I delight not in the food of corruption, nor in the pleasures of this life; I desire the bread of God, which is the Flesh of Christ, and His Blood I desire as drink, which is love incorruptible.” {Ignat. Ad Roman. VII. The passage is in the Syriac.} Again, “Let no one be deceived; if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God.” {Ignat. Ad Ephes. V.} His high esteem for the grace of this Sacrament he shows in general expressions, e. g. “breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, our antidote that we die not, but live forever in Christ Jesus.” {Ad Ephes. XX.} One passage in this early father alludes to certain sects of the Gnostics or Docetae, who not believing that the Saviour had ever taken real human flesh, refused to receive the Eucharist, because they would not acknowledge it to be the Body of Christ. “They abstain from the Eucharist and public prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the Flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father of His goodness raised from the dead.” {Ad Smyrn. VII. The passage is not in the longer epistles, but it is in the shorter (esteemed the genuine) epistles of Ignatius, and it is cited by Theodoret (Dial. 3) and is maintained to be genuine by Cotelerius, Tom. II. p. 37, note in loc. The Greek is ευχαριστίας και προσευχης απέχονται, δια το μη ομολογειν την ευχαριστίαν σάρκα ειναι του Σωτηρος ημων Ιησου Χριστου, την υπερ αναρτων ημων παθουσαν, ην χρηστότητι ο Πατηρ έγειρεν.} From which we may fairly conclude, that the fathers called the consecrated bread the Body of Christ, and that some early heretics did not admit the language, or perhaps even the Sacrament, because they disbelieved in the existence of Christ’s Body. But even Bellarmine allows that the question between Ignatius and the heretics was not the doctrine of the Eucharist, but the doctrine of the Incarnation. {De Eucharistia, I. 1, cited by Bp. Cosin, Hist. of Transubstantiation, ch. VI. 11.} Whatever may have been the belief of the Church as to the mode of receiving Christ’s Body in the Eucharist, the heretics would have been equally likely to reject the Eucharist, as not acknowledging that Christ had a body at all. For the Eucharist, which symbolizes, and is the means of receiving His Body, presupposes its reality. Another passage from Ignatius is as follows: “Hasten therefore to partake of the one Eucharist; for there is but one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for the unity of His Blood; one altar, as also one bishop,” {Σπουδάσατε ουν μια ευχαριστία χρησθαι· μία γαρ σαρξ του Κυρίου ημων Ιησου Χριστου, και εν ποτήριον εις ένωσιν του αίματος αυτον, εν θυσιαστήριον ως εις επίσκοπος, κ. τ. λ. – Ad Philadelph. IV.} &c. Here the exhortation is to avoid schism, partaking of the one Eucharist, where is exhibited to us the oneness of the Saviour we receive, and so the unity of the Church.
Justin Martyr describes the Eucharistic feast to the heathen emperor. He speaks first of the bread and wine as blessed by the presiding presbyter; and then says, “This food is called by us Eucharist, which no one is allowed to take but he who believes our doctrines to be true, and has been baptized in the laver of regeneration for the remission of sins, and lives as Christ has enjoined. For we take not these as common bread and common drink. For like as our Saviour Jesus Christ, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had flesh and blood for our salvation, so we are taught that this food, which is blessed by the prayer of the Word that cometh from Him, by conversion of which our flesh and blood are nourished, is the Flesh and Blood of Him, the Incarnate Jesus.” {ου γαρ ως κοινον άρτον, ουδε κοινον πόμα ταυτα λαμβάνομεν, αλλ ον τρόπον δια λόγου Θεου σαρκοποιηθεις Ιησους Χριστος ο Σωτηρ ημων, και σάρκα· και αιμα υπερ σωτηρίας ημων έσχεν, ούτως και την δι ευχης λόγου του παρ αυτου ευχαρισθεισαν τροφην εξ ης αιμα και σάρκες κατα μεταβολην τρέφονται ημων, εκείνου του σαρκοποιηθέντος Ιησου και σάρκα και αιμα εδιδάχθημεν ειναι. – Justin. Apol. I. p. 98. “As it appears to me, Justin in this passage does not intend to compare the manner, in which Jesus Christ being made flesh by the Word of God hath flesh and blood for our sake, with that in which the bread and wine ... became the Flesh and Blood of Christ; but only to say that as Christians were taught that Christ had flesh and blood, so were they also taught that the bread and wine in the Eucharist are the Body and Blood of Christ; ον τρόπον is merely equivalent to as.” – Bishop Kaye, Justin Martyr, pp. 87, 88, note.} There is manifestly in this passage what may be called High Eucharistic doctrine. Justin was plainly no Zuinglian. The Christians of his day took not the consecrated elements “for common bread and common wine.” But, if Justin was no Sacramentarian, neither was he a transubstantialist. Whereas he says it is not common bread, he evidently believes it to be yet bread; otherwise he would naturally have left out the epithet common, and have said, that they esteemed it no longer bread at all. Moreover, he speaks of the elements as changed into the nourishment of our flesh and blood. But he would never have said this had he believed them to have literally become the unchangeable and incorruptible Body of the Lord. It is evident, therefore, that he held no change in the elements, but a Sacramental change; although he undoubtedly declares that in the Eucharist the Christians were taught that there was a reception of the Body and Blood of Christ. Dr. Waterland argues, that consubstantiation is as much excluded by this passage as transubstantiation, {Waterland, On the Eucharist, ch. VII.} though Bishop Kaye appears to admit that it sounds not unlike the former. {Bp. Kaye’s Justin Martyr, p. 74.} Still he has justly added, that in the Dialogue with Trypho Justin states the bread to be in commemoration of Christ’s Body, and the cup of His Blood; {περι του άρτου ου παρέδωκεν ημιν ο ημέτερος Χριστος ποιειν εις ανάμνησιν του τε σωματοποιήσαθαι κ. τ. λ. – Dialog. p. 296.} and in another place applies to them the expression “dry and liquid food”; {της τροφης αυτων ξηρας και υγρας, εν η και του πάθους ο πέπονθε δι αυτου ο Θεος του Θεου μέμνηται. – Dial. p. 345.} and such language would scarcely have been used by a believer in the natural, though the language of the former passage might be readily adopted by a believer in the spiritual presence.
Our next witness is Irenaeus. “As the bread from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, earthly andheavenly; so also our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, but have hope of eternal resurrection.” {Ως γαρ απο γης άρτος προσλαμβανόμενος την έκκλησιν του Θεου, ουκέτι κοινος άρτος εστιν, αλλ ευχαριστία, εκ δύο πραγμάτων συνεστηκυια· ούτως και τα σώματα ημων μεταλαμβάνοντα της ευχαριστίας μηκέτι ειναι φθαρτα, την ελπίδα της εις αιωνας αναστάσεως έχοντα. – Irenae. Lib. IV. 32 (Lib. IV. 18. Bened.)} Here we have evidently the substance of the bread remaining, still an earthly element. Yet it is no longer common bread, for by consecration there is a heavenly or spiritual grace united to it, which makes it not mere bread, but the Eucharist.
Irenaeus had to contend against the Gnostics who denied the reality of the Body of Christ. In more than one place he argues, from the real substantial character of the Eucharistic elements, that the Flesh and Blood of Christ, of which they were the representatives, must be substantial and real. This will make his language sometimes sound as though he believed in a natural presence of that Flesh and Blood; yet, if we remember his object and attentively observe his words, we shall think otherwise. “That cup,” he says, “which is a creature, He recognized to be His Blood which is shed, with which He imbues (δεύεί) our blood; and the bread which is a creature, He affirmed to be His own Body, by which our bodies grow. When, therefore, both the mingled cup and the created bread receive the word of God and become the Eucharist of Christ’s Blood and Body, and by them the substance of our flesh grows and consists, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of the gift of God, namely of life eternal, when it is fed by Christ’s Body and Blood, and is a member of Him?” {Adv. Haer. v. 2. Of this passage we may observe that if Irenaeus had meant that the elements were changed in substance into Christ’s Body and Blood, he would never have spoken of them as nourishing our bodies, which implies the idea of digestion acknowledged to be blasphemy.}
In a fragment edited by Pfaff, we have a clear explanation of Irenaeus’s view that by the Holy Spirit descending on the Eucharist, the Elements become so the Body and Blood of Christ, that though they yet remain figures or emblems, still the partakers of those emblems obtain pardon and eternal life. {και ενταυθα την πρόσφοραν τελέσαντες εκκαλουμεν το Πνευμα το άγιον, όπως αποφήνη την θυσίαν και του αρτον σωμα του Χριστου· ίνα οι μεταλάβοντες τούτων των αντιτύπων της αφέσεως των αμαρτιων και της ζωης αιωνίου τύχωσιν. – Irenaei Scripta Anecdota, fragmen. 2. p. 29.} In another fragment quoted from him by OEcumenius, we read, that during persecution some slaves had informed against their masters, having misinterpreted the language used concerning the Eucharist, and so supposing that their masters fed on human flesh. This, Irenaeus says, arose from their having heard the divine Communion called the Blood and Body of Christ; “and they, thinking it was in reality flesh and blood, gave information accordingly.” {οι δουλοι ουτοι, μη έχοντες πως το τοις αναγκάζουσι καθ ηδονην ερειν, παρ όσον ήκουον των δεσποτων, την θείαν μετάληψιν αιμα και σωμα ειναι Χριστου, αυτοι νομίσαντες τω όντι αιμα και σάρκα ειναι, τουτοεξειποντοιςεκζητουσι. – Fragmentum ab OEcumenio in Comment. ad 1Petri Epist. cap. 3, p. 498, allegatum; Irenai Op. Grabe, p. 469.} The inference obviously is that Irenaeus did not think the bread and wine to have become really Flesh and Blood. So he, like Justin Martyr, is a witness against the Roman doctrine, and yet perhaps, as Waterland observes, still more against the mere figurists or memorialists. For it is certain, that he believed the Body and Blood of Christ to be verily and indeed taken in the Eucharist; but still he gives no indication of a belief in a change of the elements, acknowledging them to be emblems(αντίτυπα), and not thinking that those who partook of them were indeed feeding upon flesh and blood. {There is an excellent chapter in Beaven’s Irenaeus on the subject of Irenaeus’s statements concerning the Eucharist.}
Tertullian says, “The petition, Give us this day our daily bread, may be spiritually interpreted. For Christ is our bread. I, said He, am the bread of Life: and just before, The Bread is the Word of the Living God, who came down from Heaven: and also because His Body is understood in Bread, This is My Body. (Tum quod et Corpus Ejus in pane censetur, Hoc est Corpus Meum.) Therefore, by asking our daily bread, we seek perpetuity in Christ and to be undivided from His Body.” {De Oratione, c. 6.} Again he writes, “Our body is fed with the Body and Blood of Christ, that our soul may be fattened of God.” {“Caro Corpore et Sanguine Christi vescitur, ut et anima de Deo saginetur.” – De Resur. Carn. c. 8.} He speaks of Christ, ascalling bread His Body. {“Christus ... panem corpus suum appellans.” – Adv. Judae. C. 10.} “Bread,” again we read, “by which He represents His very Body.” {“Panem, quo ipsum Corpus suum repraesentat.” – Adv. Marcion. Lib. 1. C. 14. “Reprasento – to exhibit as present; υποτυπόω, praesentem esse facio, ob oculos pono, refero. Repraesentare dicuntur pictores. Item oratores graphice quippiam describentes.” – Facciolati.} So also, “Having taken bread and distributed it to His disciples, He made it His body by saying, This is my Body, i.e. the figure of My Body. But there would be no figure if there were no true Body. A mere phantom, without substance, would admit no figure.” {“Acceptum panem et distributum discipulis, corpus illum suum fecit, Hoc est Corpus Meum, dicendo, id est, figura Corporis Mei. Figura autem non fuisset, nisi veritatis esset Corpus. Caeterum vacua res, quod est phantasms, figuram capere non posset.” — Adv. Marcion. Lib. IV. C. 40.} In the last passage, he is arguing, like Ignatius and Irenaeus, against those who denied a Body to our Lord. Now surely this testimony is plain. The bread is not really Christ’s Body but a figure of His Body with which however He is pleased to recall (repraesentare) His Body to His followers. In this bread His Body is understood (censetur) or accounted; and so our bodies are fed with His Body, that our souls may be nourished of God. Though the bread then is a figure; yet the feeding on Christ is not merely figurative, but real, and spiritual. He is the Bread of life; and by feeding on Him we receive perpetual and indivisible union to His Body.
Clement of Alexandria, of the same date with Tertullian, says, “The Blood of the Lord is twofold: the one natural or carnal, whereby we are redeemed from corruption; the other spiritual, whereby we are anointed; and this is to drink the Blood of Jesus, to be partakers of the Lord’s incorruptibility. Also the Spirit is the power of the Word, as the Blood is of the flesh.” {Διττον δε το αιμα του Κυρίου· το μεν γαρ εστιν αυτου σαρκικον, ω της φθορας λελυτρώμεθα· το δε πνευματικον, τουτέστιν ω κεχρίσμεθα· και τουτ έστι πιειν το αιμα του Ιησου, της Κυριακης μεταλαμβάνειν αφθαρσίας· ισχυς δε του Λόγου το πνευμα, ως αιμα σαρκός. – Paedag. Lib. II.C.2, p. 177.} He then goes on to speak of the wine mingled with water; and says that the mixture of the drink and of the Logos is called the Eucharist – “Blessed and glorious grace, by which those who partake in faith are sanctified both body and soul.” “Christ,” he says a little farther on, “partook of wine; for He was a man. He blessed it too, saying, Take, drink, this is My Blood, the blood of the vine. He thus calls allegorically the Word, who was poured forth for many for the remission of sins, the sacred stream of gladness ... He showed that what He blessed was wine, by saying to His disciples, I will not drink of the fruit of this vine till I drink it with you in My Father’s Kingdom.” {Ευ γαρ ίστε, μετέλαβεν οίνου και αυτος· και γαρ άνθρωπος και αυτός. Και ευλόγησέν γε τον οινον, ειπων, λάβετε, πίετε· τουτό μου εστι το αιμα, αιμα της αμπέλου· του Λόγον, τον περι πολλων εκχυνόμενον εις άφεσιν αμαρτιων, ευφροσύνης άγιον αλληγορει ναμα ... ότι δε οινος ην το ευλογηθεν, απέδειζε πάλιν, προς τους τους μαθητας λέγων. Ου μη πίω εκ του γεννήματος της αμπέλου ταυτης, μέχρις αν πίω αυτο μεθ υμων εν τη βασιλεία του Πατρος ημων. – Paedag. Lib. II. C. 2, p. 186.} Clement was a very mystical writer; but we can discern this much at least from the foregoing passages that whilst he attached great spiritual blessings to the Eucharist; he yet believed the substance of the wine to remain in it, and the Blood received therein to be spiritual, not natural Blood.
In Origen, as in his predecessors, we perceive at the same time deep reverence for the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist, and yet a belief that the reception of that Body was spiritual and heavenly, not carnal and natural. “When ye receive the Body of the Lord, with all caution and reverence ye preserve it; lest any, the least thereof, be lost, or any portion of the consecrated gift pass away.” {“Cum suscipitis Corpus Domini, cum onmi cautela et veneratione servatis, ne ex eo parum quid decidat, ne consecrati muneris aliquid dilabatur.” – In Exod. Hom. XIII.} “Acknowledge that they are figures, which are written in the sacred volumes ; therefore as spiritual, not carnal, examine and understand what is said. For, if as carnal you receive them, they hurt, not nourish you. Not only in the old Testament is there a letter which killeth; but also in the new there is a letter which killeth him who does not spiritually consider it. For, if according to the letter you receive this saying, Except ye eat My Flesh and drink My Blood, that letter killeth.” {“Agnoseite quia figurae sunt quae in divinis voluminibus scripta sunt, et ideo tanquam spiritales et non tanquam carnales examinate et intelligite quae dicuntur. Si enim quasi carnales ista suscipitis, laedunt vos et non alunt. Est enim et in evangeliis litera quae occidit. Non solum in veteri Testamento occidens litera deprehenditur; est et in novo Testamento litera quae occidat eum qui non spiritaliter quae dicuntur adverterit. Si enim secundum literam sequaris hoc ipsum quod dictum est: Nisi manducaveritis carnem meam, et biberitis sanguinein meum, occidit litera.” – In Levit. Hom. VII. n. 5.}
St. Cyprian, in his 63d Epistle, is very full on the subject of the cup in the sacrament. He is writing there against the Aquarii, who rejected wine as evil, and so used water at the communion. He argues that the tradition of the Lord should be preserved; and that nothing should be done but what Christ did before: that therefore “the Cup, which is offered in commemoration of Him, be offered mixed with wine. For whereas Christ says, I am the true Vine, the Blood of Christ is surely wine, not water. Nor can it appear that in the cup is His Blood, with which we are redeemed, if wine be absent, by which Christ’s Blood is represented.” {“Ut calix, qui in commemoratione Ejus offertur, mixtus vino offeratur. Nam cum dicat Christus;Ego sum vitis vera; sanguis Christi, non aqua est utique, sed vinum. Nec potest videri sanguis Ejus, quo redemti et vivificati sumus, esse in calice, quando vinum desit calici quo Christi sanguis ostenditur.” – Cyprian. Epist. LXIII; Coecilio Fratri, p. 148. Oxf.} There is much there to the same purpose. But these words alone prove that Cyprian, whilst calling the consecrated wine the Blood of Christ, and believing (as is abundantly evident through his writings everywhere) that there was in the Sacrament a real partaking of Christ, yet considered that there was still remaining the substance of the wine; for, says he, “The Blood of Christ is wine,” i.e. that cup which We drink, acknowledging it to be the Blood of Christ, is wine. Moreover, he considered the wine to be a representation or means of showing Christ’s Blood, and the cup to be offered in commemoration of Him.
St. Athanasius, quoting John 6:16–63, observes, “Christ distinguished between the flesh and the spirit, that believing not only what was apparent, but also what was invisible, they might know that what He spake was not carnal but spiritual. For to how many could His Body have sufficed for food that this might be for nourishment to all the world? But therefore He made mention of His ascension into heaven, that He might draw them from understanding it corporally; and that they might understand that the Flesh He spoke of was heavenly food from above, and spiritual nourishment given them by Him. For, says He, the things that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life. Which is as though He had said, My Body, which is shown and given for the world, shall be given in food, that it may be spiritually distributed to every one, and become to each a preservative unto the resurrection of eternal life.” {το πνευμα προς τα κατα σάρκα διέστειλεν, ίνα μη μόνον το φαινόμενον, αλλα και έ[?] λέγει ουκ έστι σαρκικα αλλα πνευματικά· πόσοις γαρ ήρκει το σωμα προς βρωσιν, ίνα και του κόσμου παντος τουτο τροφη γένηται; αλλα δια τουτο της εις ουρανους διαβάσεως εμνημόνευσε του υίου του ανθρώπον, ίνα της σωματικης εννοίας αυτους αφελκύση και λσιπον την ειρημένην σάρκα βρωσιν άνωθεν ουράνιον, και πνευματικην τροφην παρ αυτου διδομένην μάθωσιν. α γαρ λελάληκα, φησιν, υμιν πνευμα εστι και ζωή. ισον τω ειπειν, το μεν δεικνύμενον και διδόμενον υπερ του κόσμου δοθήσεται τροφη, ως πνευματικως εν εκάστω ταύτην αναδίδοσθαι, και γίνεσθαι πασι φυλακτήριον εις ανάστασιν ζωης αιωνίου. – Athanas. In illud Evangelii, “Quicumque dixerit,” Op. Tom. I. p. 979.}
We have already heard St. Cyril of Jerusalem, the contemporary of Athanasius, declare his belief, that the Body and Blood of Christ are given us under the figure of bread and wine, and that the Capharnaites were misled by interpreting our Lord carnally, as though He meant a banquet upon flesh, not, as He ought to be interpreted, spiritually. {Cyril. Cateches. Mystag. IV. 1, cited above.} So, in a former lecture, speaking of the unction, which was given with baptism, figuring the anointing of the Holy Ghost, he writes, “Beware of supposing this bare unction. For as the bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is no longer mere bread (ουκ έτι άρτος λιτος), but the Body of Christ; so also this holy ointment is no longer simple ointment, nor common, after the invocation, but the gift of Christ .... While thy body is anointed with the visible ointment, thy soul is sanctified by the Holy, life-giving Spirit.” {Cat. Myst. III. 3.} Here is a denial that the bread is mere bread, not that it still continues really bread; and a statement that it is the Body of Christ, but so the Body of Christ, as the unction was believed to be the Holy Ghost; i.e. not in a natural change of the substance, but in spirit, and power, and life.
St. Jerome clearly distinguishes between the natural Body and Blood of Christ, which were crucified and shed, and the spiritual Body and Blood of Christ, which are eaten and drunken by the faithful.* And so we must explain that language of his which, as we saw above, appeared to savour of the later doctrine of the Latin Church. St. Chrysostom too, who used such glowing terms of the real presence of Christ, elsewhere explains himself that we should look on all Sacraments not outwardly and carnally, but spiritually and with the eyes of our souls. {τί δέ εστι το σαρκικως νοησαι; το απλως εις τα προκείμενα οραν, και μη πλέον τι φαντάζεσθαι. τουτο γάρ εστι σαρκικως. χρη δε μη ούτω κρίνειν τοις ορωμένοις, αλλα πάντα τα μυστήρια τοις ένδον οφθαλμοις κατοπτεύ[?]ειν. τουτο γάρ εστι πνευματικως. – Chrysost. In Joann. c. vi.; Homil. XLVII. Tom. VIII. p. 278.} And in the Epistle to Caesarius, which is mostly esteemed to be his, and if not his, was certainly by a contemporary of his, we read that “before the bread is consecrated, we call it bread; but, when it is consecrated, it is no longer called bread, but is held worthy to be called the Body of the Lord, yet still the substance of the bread remains.”**
{*“Dupliciter vero sanguis Christi et caro intelligitur: vel spiritualis illa et divina, de quo Ipse dixit: Caro mea vere est cibus, et sanguis meus vere est potus: et, Nisi manducaveritis carnem meam, et sanguinem meum biberitis, non habebitis vitam aeternam: vel caro et sanguis quae crucifixa est et qui militis effusus est lancea. Juxta hanc divisionem et in sanctis ejus diversitas sanguinis et carnis accipitur, ut alia sit caro quae visura est salutare Dei, alia caro et sanguis quae regnum Dei non queant possidere.” – Hieronym. In Ephes. cap. i. v. 7. Tom. IV. pt. I. p. 328.}
{**“Sicut enim antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nominamus: divina autem illum sanctificante gratia, mediante sacerdote, liberatus est quidem ab appellatione panis; dignus autem habitus Dominici Corporis appellatione, etiamsi natura panis in ipso permansit, et non duo corpora, sed unum Corpus Filii praedicamus,” &c. – Chrysost. Ad Caesarium Monach. Tom. III. p. 743. On the history and genuineness of this Epistle see Cave, Histor. Literar. Tom. I. p. 315; Routh’s Scriptor. Eccles. Opuscula, p. 479; Jenkyns’s Cranmer, II. p. 325, note.}
We must now proceed to St. Augustine whom all agree to honour. He has so much to the purpose that how to choose is difficult. “Prepare not thy teeth, but thy heart.” {“Noli parare fauces, sed cor.” – De Verbis Domini, Serm. 33, Tom. V. p. 566.} “Why make ready thy teeth and thy belly? Believe, and thou hast eaten.” {“Quid paras dentes et ventrem Crede et manducasti.” – In Joann. Tract. 25, Tom. III. pars. II. p. 489.} “Our Lord hesitated not to say, This is my Body, when He gave the sign of His Body.” {“Non enim Dominus dubitavit dicere Hoc est Corpus Meum, cum signum daret Corporis sui.” – Contra Adimantum, Tom. VIII. p. 124.} “Spiritually understand what I have spoken to you. You are not to eat that Body, which you see, and drink that Blood, which they will shed, who will crucify me. I have commended to you a Sacrament. Spiritually understood, it will quicken you. Though it must be visibly celebrated, yet it must invisibly be understood.” {“Spiritaliter intelligite quod locutus sum: non hoc Corpus quod videtis mandicaturi estis, et bibituri illum sanguinem quem fusuri stint qui me crucifigent. Sacramentum aliquod vobis cornmendavi. Spiritaliter intellectum, vivificabit vos. Etsi necesse est illud visibiliter celebrari, oportet tamen invisibiliter intelligi.” – In Psalm. xcviii. Tom. IV. p. 1066.} “What you see is bread and the cup. But as your faith requires, the bread is Christ’s Body, the cup His Blood. How is the bread His Body? and the wine His Blood? These things, brethren, are therefore called Sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, another understood. What appears has a bodily form: what is understood has a spiritual fruit.” {“Quod videtis, panis est et calix, quod vobis etiam oculi vestri renunciant: quod autem fides vestra postulat instruenda, panis est Corpus Christi, calix sanguis Christi ... Quomodo est panis corpus Ejus? et calix, vel quod habet calix, quomodo est sanguis Ejus? Ista, fratres, ideo dicuntur sacramenta, quia an eis aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur. Quod videtur, speciem habet corporalem, quod intelligitur fructum habet spiritalem.” – Serm. 272 ad Infantes, Tom. V. pars I. p. 1103.} “The Body and Blood of Christ will then be life to each, if what is visibly received in the Sacrament be in actual verity spiritually eaten, spiritually drunk.” {“Vita unicuique erit Corpus et Sanguis Christi, si quod in sacramento visibiliter sumitur, in ipsa veritate spiritaliter manducetur, spiritaliter bibatur.” – Serm. 2, De Verbis Apostoli, Tom. V. pars I. p. 64.}
Theodoret may be our last witness, a witness against transubstantiation, but not against the truth of Christ’s presence, nor the real participation in His Body and Blood. “Our Saviour,” he tells us, “changed the names of things; giving to His Body the name of bread, and to the bread the name of His Body. His object was that those who partake of the mysteries should not have regard to the nature of the visible elements but, by the change of names, might believe that change which is wrought by grace. For He, who called His own Body food and bread, and again called Himself a vine, He honoured the visible symbols with the name of His Body and Blood, not changing the nature, but adding to the nature grace.”* And afterwards he says, “The mystic symbols depart not after consecration from their own nature, for they remain in the former substance; yet we understand what they have become, and believe and adore, as though they were what they are believed to be.”**
{*Ο δέ γε Σωτηρ ο ημέτερος ενήλλαξε τα ονόματα· και τω μεν σώματι το του συμβόλου τέθεικεν όνομα, τω δε συμβόλω το του σώματος. ούτως άμπελον εαυτον ονόμασας, αιμα το σύμβολον προσηγόρευσεν.
Δηλος ο σκοπος τοις τα θεια μεμυημένοις. εβουλήθη γαρ τους των θείων μυστηρίων μεταλαγχάνοντας, μη τη φύσει των βλεπομένων προσέχειν, αλλα δια της των ονομάτων εναλλαγης πιστεύειν τη εκ της χάριτος γεγεννημένη μεταβολη. ο γαρ δε το σωμα σιτον και άρτον προσαγορεύσας, και αυ πάλιν εαυτον άμπελον ονομάσας, ουτος τα ορώμενα σύμβολα τη του σώματος και αίματος προσηγορία τετίμηκεν, ου την φύσιν μεταβαλων, αλλα την χάριν τη φύσει προστεθηκώς. – Dial. 1. ed. Sirmond. Tom. IV. p. 17.}
{**Ουδε γαρ μετα τον αγιασμον τα μυστικα σύμβολα της οικείας εξίσταται φύσεως· μένει γαρ επι της προτέρας ουσίας και του σχήματος και του είδους, και ορατά εστι και απτα, οια και πρότερον ην, νοειται δε άπερ εγένετο και πιστεύεται, και προσκυνειται ως εκεινα όντα άπερ πιστεύεται. – Dial. 2, ed. Sirmond. Tom. IV. p. 85.}
Space and time will not allow us a longer list of authorities. Those already adduced have been fairly chosen and should be fairly weighed. The Christian student must not argue for victory but search for truth. That search is seldom unattended by difficulties. Yet may it not in this case be safely concluded that, weighing all considerations and notwithstanding some remarkable phrases, the doctrine of the early ages was not in favour of a miraculous change in the consecrated elements, not in favour of a carnal presence of the natural Body of the Lord, but in favour of a real, effectual, life-giving presence of Christ’s spiritual Body communicated to the faith, and feeding the souls, of His disciples?
There is, perhaps, another possible alternative. The early Church held firmly Christ’s presence in His Sacraments. The tendency was for the most part not to explain but to veil such subjects in a reverential mystery. It may therefore have been that, whereas a spiritual presence was originally and generally recognized, yet some may have suffered their reverence to degenerate into superstition, and have spoken, and perhaps thought, as though there were a carnal presence. There was probably a vagueness of apprehension on the subject among some. Their very religion tended to foster this. But one thing is certain, namely, that the doctrine of a carnal presence was never the ruled doctrine of the primitive ages, was not received, or rather was emphatically denied, by many of the greatest of the fathers, and that it does not come down to us with the sanction and authority of that which was always, everywhere, and by all men, anciently acknowledged (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus traditum est). And another thing is most certain, namely, that if any of the fathers did contemplate any beside a spiritual presence, it was not in the way of transubstantiation, but rather of consubstantiation. For, let us take the example of St. Hilary, who, if any one, used language most like the language of later ages. Still the very object of his reasoning was to prove that in Christ’s Person there are two natures: one not extinguished because the other is added. He illustrates this by the bread of the Eucharist which still retains the nature of the bread unchanged, although the nature of Christ’s Body is added to it. Now, interpret this how we may, it is a plain witness against transubstantiation. It may mean consubstantiation; it may mean a spiritual presence; but transubstantiation it cannot mean: for it was an error of Eutyches, not of the orthodox St. Hilary, that the human nature of the Saviour was absorbed and transubstantiated into the Divine. {See above under Article II.}
We must now pass on to the controversies of the Middle Ages. About A. D. 831, Paschasius Radbert, a monk, and afterwards abbot of Corbie, maintained the corporal presence. {Cave places him A. D. 841.} Whether even he taught the full-grown doctrine of transubstantiation, or only consubstantiation, our divines have questioned. Certainly he speaks some things very unlike the former, and even more resembling the doctrine of spiritual feeding. {“Christus ergo cibus est angelorum, et sacramentum hoc vere caro ipsius et sanguis, quam spiritualiter manducat et bibit homo.” – De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, C. 5.} Yet he says that “after the consecration nothing but the Body and Blood of Christ are to be believed”; an expression nearly approaching, if not fully expressing, the Roman doctrine. {“Quia voluit (Dominus), licet in figura panis et vini, haec sic esse, omnino nihil aliud quam caro Christi et sanguis post consecrationem credenda sunt.” – Ibid. cap. 1. Bishop Cosin gives several specimens of his language (Hist. of Transubstantiation, ch. XXV. s. 29), and argues, that there is nothing in his whole book “that favours the transubstantiation of the bread, or its destruction or removal.” However, he quotes Bellarmine and Sirmondus as esteeming him so highly, that they were not ashamed to say that he was the first that had written to the purpose concerning the Eucharist; but there are some spurious additions to his book, which speak a stronger language than the hook itself. See also Cave, H. L. Tom. I. p. 535.}
Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mentz, a divine of the highest credit in the Church, wrote against the statements of Paschasius. The work is lost indeed; but the evidence of its former existence is strong and clear. {See Cave, H. L. p. 542.}
Johannes Scotus Erigena, who at this period lived at the court of Charles the Bald, and sometimes with our own king Alfred, and who at his death was esteemed a martyr and placed in the Roman Calendar, wrote a book by the command of the Emperor Charles, against the substantial change in the Sacraments; a book which, two hundred years afterwards, was condemned at the council of Verceil upon the ground that it made the bread and wine to be mere empty signs. {Ibid. Tom. I. p. 549.}
Bertram too, or Ratramnus, a monk of Corbie, wrote, also at the desire of Charles the Bald, concerning this doctrine which now began to agitate the Church. The book is still extant and is well worthy to be read. Its genuineness has been attacked by the Roman Catholic writers but with little success. Others have charged him with heresy; whilst others again have allowed him to be Catholic, but yet, like other Catholics, not free from some errors. {Index Expurgator. Belgic. jussu et auctoritate Philip. II., cited by Aubertin. De Eucharist. p. 930; Cosin’s Hist. of Transubst. ch. V. § 35; Bishop Taylor, On the Real Presence, § XII. 32.} The book was finally prohibited by the Council of Trent. Bertram’s statements are clear for the spiritual and against the carnal presence in the Eucharist. “The change,” he says, “is not wrought corporally, but spiritually and figuratively. Under the veil of the material bread and wine the spiritual Body and Blood of Christ exist. ... Both (the bread and wine), as they are corporally handled, are in their nature corporal creatures; but, according to their virtue, and what they become spiritually, they are the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood.”* “By all that hath been hitherto said, it appears, that the Body and Blood of Christ, which are received by the mouths of the faithful in the Church, are figures in respect of their visible nature; but in respect of the invisible substance, that is the power of the Word of God, they are truly Christ’s Body and Blood. Wherefore, as they are visible creatures, they feed the body; but as they have the virtue of a more powerful substance, they do both feed and sanctify the souls of the faithful.”**
{*“At quia confitentur et Corpus et Sanguinem Christi esse, nec hoc esse potuisse nisi facta in melius commutatione, neque ista commutatio corporaliter sed spiritualiter facta sit, necesse est ut jam figurata facta esse dicatur: quoniam sub velamento corporei panis, corporeique vini, spirituale corpus Christi, spiritualisque sanguis existit ... Secundum namque quod utrumque corporaliter contingitur, species sunt creaturae corporae; secucdum potentiam vero, quod spiritualiter factae sunt, mysteria sunt Corporis et Sanguinis Christi.” – Ratramnus, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. London, 1686, p. 24.}
{**“Ex his omnibus, quae sunt hactenus dicta, monstratum est quod corpus et sanguis Christi, quae fidelium ore in ecclesia percipiuntur figurae sunt secundurn speciem visibilem: At vero secundam invisibilem substantiam, i.e. divini potentiam Verbi, Corpus et Sanguis vere Christi existunt. Unde secundum visibilem creaturam corpus pascunt, juxta vero potentioris virtutem substantiae, mentes fidelium et pascunt et sanctificant.” – Ibid. p. 64.}
The Middle Ages, if favourable to a reverent, were not less favourable to a superstitious spirit. Hence the principles of Paschasius were more likely to gain ground than those of Bertram; yet there are not wanting testimonies for some time later in favour of the spiritual and against the carnal presence. Especially it has been observed that the doctrine of the Anglo-Saxon Church was more than others in accordance with the primitive truth. The famous AElfric was born probably about A. D. 956, and died about 1051. He was abbot, some say of St. Albans, others of Malmesbury or Peterborough; and afterwards Archbishop of York. {See Cave, H. L. Tom I. p. 588; Soames’s Anglo-Saxon Church, ch. IV. pp. 218–229. There appear to have been two AElfrics, one Archbishop of Canterbury, and the other of York. The latter, a friend and disciple of the former, is generally supposed to have been the author of the Homilies. See Hardwick, Ch. Hist. of the Middle Ages, p. 187.} Some valuable fragments of his writings remain in Latin and Anglo-Saxon, full of clear statements on the doctrine in question. “This is not,” he says, “that Body in which He suffered for us, but spiritually it is made His Body and Blood.” {“Non sit tamen hoc sacrificium Corpus Ejus in quo passus est pro nobis, ueque Sanguis Ejus, quem pro nobis effudit: sed spiritualiter Corpus Ejus efficitur et sanguis.” – AElfrici Epistola ad Wulfstanum; Routh. Opuscula, p. 520.} “That housel” (i.e. the Eucharist) “is Christ’s Body, not bodily but ghostly: not the Body which He suffered in, but the Body of which He spake, when He blessed bread and wine to housel, a night before His suffering,” {From AElfric’s Epistle to Wulfsine, Bishop of Sherburn, Routh. p. 528. The passage quoted is from the Old English translation of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Anglo-Saxon is given by Dr. Routh (loc. cit.) with the English and Latin versions.} &c.
Not much later than AElfric was Berengarius, Archdeacon of Angers, who appears to have been a man of great piety. He strenuously maintained the doctrine, which had been taught by Bertram, Scotus, and AElfric, teaching that the bread and wine remained in their natural substance, yet not denying the invisible grace of the Sacrament. It is probable that many of the Gallican Church sided with him. He was condemned, however, and with him the writings of Johannes Erigena, by a Council at Verceil under Leo IX, A. D. 1050, on the ground. that they taught the bread and wine in the Eucharist to be only bare signs. Under Victor the Second, another Council was held at Tours, A. D. 1055, at which Hildebrand presided as legate, where Berengarius freely declared that he did not believe the bread and wine to be mere empty shadows. Under Nicholas II a new council was called at Rome (A. D. 1059); where Berengarius was forced to recant and to declare that the “bread and wine after consecration became the very Body and Blood of Christ, and that they are touched and broken by the hands of the priests, and ground by the teeth of the faithful, not sacramentally only, but in truth and sensibly.” After a time, however, he again maintained the doctrine of the spiritual presence; and Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, entered the lists of controversy against him, in whose work are fragments preserved to us of the writings of Berengarius. At length Hildebrand came to the papal chair, as Gregory VII. He summoned another council at Rome, A. D. 1078; and another A. D. 1079. At the former Berengarius acknowledged that the real Body and Blood of Christ were present at the Eucharist without saying anything of transubstantiation; and it is supposed that the Pope was satisfied with this and unwilling to proceed further. But at the latter, the enemies of Berengarius prevailed, and he was forced to declare that the bread and wine are substantially converted into the Body and Blood of Christ, which Body after consecration is present, not only sacramentally, but in verity of substance.*
{*“Corde credo et ore profiteor panem et vinum quae ponuntur in altari, per mysterium sacrm orationis et verba nostri Redemptoris substantialiter converti in veram ac propriam et vivificatricem carnem et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et post consecrationem esse verum Christi Corpus, quod natum est de Virgine, et quod pro salute mundi oblatum in cruce pependit – non tantum per signum et virtutem sacramenti, sed et in proprietate naturae et veritate substantiae.” – Concil. Tom. X. p. 378. See Cosin’s Hist. of Transubst.; also Mosheim, E. H. cent. XI. part II. ch. III.}
It is very doubtful when the term transubstantiation was first used. It is said to have been invented by Stephen, Bishop of Augustodunum, about the year 1100, in his book De Sacramento Altaris. {In B. Patrum, Tom. x. p. 412. See Jer. Taylor On the Real Presence, sect. /HI. 32.}
Under Innocent III, A. D. 1216, sat the famous Council of Lateran, by which that term and the full form of the doctrine were sanctioned and made authoritative. Seventy chapters were drawn up by Innocent himself. When proposed to the Council, they were received without debate, and silence was supposed to imply consent. The first chapter is directed against the Manichaean heresy, and among other things, declares that in the sacrifice of the Mass, “Christ’s Body and Blood are really contained under the species of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into His Body, and the wine into His Blood.” {Concil. Tom. XX. p. 117.} It has been acknowledged by the Schoolmen and Romanists that before this Council the doctrine of transubstantiation was not an article of the faith. {See Bramhall’s Answer to M. de la Milletière, pt. I. disc. I; Works, Anglo-Cath. Lib. I. p. 14; Jer. Taylor, On the Real Presence, § I. 2.} From this time, however, it became established as part of the Creed of the Roman Church. The Council of Constance, A. D. 1415, in the eighth session, condemned Wicliffe for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation and of the corporal presence. The Council of Florence, A. D. 1439, at which Greek bishops and deputies were present, left the doctrine untouched. But the instruction to the Armenians, which runs only in the name of Pope Eugenius and was not submitted to the Council, but which Roman Catholic authors often cite as a synodical decree, says that “by virtue of the words of Christ, the substance of the bread and wine is turned into the substance of His Body and Blood.” {See Cosin, On Transubstantiation, Bk. VII. § 30.} At length the Council of Trent, A. D. 1551, decreed that by “consecration there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s Body and Blood.” {Sess. XIII. cap. iv.} An anathema is pronounced against all who deny such change of the substance (the forms yet remaining), a change which the Church Catholic aptly calls transubstantiation. {Sess. XIll. De Eucharist. can. IV.} Finally in the Creed of Pope Pius IV (A. D. 1563) there is a profession of faith that the Body and Blood of Christ, together “with His Soul and Divinity, are truly and really and substantially in the Eucharist, and that there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into His Blood; which conversion the Church Catholic calls transubstantiation.” {“Profiteor pariter in missa offerri Deo, verum, proprium et propitiatorium sacrificium pro vivis et defunctis, atque in sanctissimo Eucharistiae sacramento esse vere, realiter et substantialiter corpus et sanguinem, una cum anima et divinitate Domini nostri Jesu Christi, fierique conversionem totius substantiae panis in corpus, et totius substantiae vini in sanguinem, quam conversionem Catholica Ecclesia transubstantiationem appellat.”}
The doctrine then of transubstantiation, and (as it is improperly called) the real presence, is the established doctrine of the Roman Church. There is still, however, a room for difference of statement and difference of thought upon the subject. It appears to be ruled that the substance only, not the accidents, undergo a change. Now it is almost questionable whether the accidents do not comprise all the properties of matter. If so, the change may still be spiritual rather than material. And here we get a phenomenon by no means without parallel in other Roman Catholic articles of faith. For, as in saint worship some only ask departed friends to pray for them, whilst others bow down to the stock of a tree; so in the Eucharist, the learned and enlightened appear to acknowledge a far more spiritual change than is taught to the equally devout but more credulous multitude. For the latter all kinds of miracles have been devised, and visions, wherein the Host has seemed to disappear, and the infant Saviour has been seen in its room; or where Blood has flowed in streams from the consecrated wafer, impiously preserved by unbelieving communicants. But on the other hand, by the more learned and liberal, statements have been made perpetually in acknowledgment of a spiritual rather than a carnal presence; and such as no enlightened Protestant would cavil at or refuse.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the immediate forerunner of the schoolmen (A. D. 1115), acknowledged no feeding but a spiritual feeding. {“Eadem Caro nobis, sed spiritualiter utique, non carnaliter exhibeatur.” – Sermo. De S. Martino. See Jer. Taylor, Real Presence, § I. 8; Cosin, On Transubstantiation, ch. VII. § 13, who gives several quotations from St. Bernard to this effect.} Peter Lombard, the famous Master of the Sentences (A. D. 1141), though speaking of the conversion of the bread and wine, declines to determine whether that conversion be formal or substantial, or of some other kind. {“Si autem quaeritur qualis sit illa conversio, an formaliter an substantialiter, vel alterius generis, diffinire non sufficio.” – Sent. IV. Dist. 10. See Cosin, as above, § 15.} Aquinas (A. D. 1255) spoke of Christ’s Body as present, not bodily but substantially; {See Jer. Taylor, as above, § XI. 20.} a distinction not easy to explain. Durandus (A. D. 1320) said that though we believe the presence, we know not the manner of the presence. {“Verbum audimus, motum sentimus, modum nescimus, praesentiam credimus.” – Neand. Synops. Chron. p. 203, quoted by Jer. Taylor, as above, § I. 2.} Cuthbert Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, said that “Before the Lateran Council it was free to every one to hold as they would concerning the manner; and that it would have been better to leave curious persons to their own conjectures.” {Tonstal, De Eucharist. Lib. I. p. 46; Jer. Taylor, as above.} Cardinal Cajetan writes, that “The real Body of Christ is eaten in the Sacrament, yet not corporally but spiritually. Spiritual manducation, which is made by the soul, reaches to the flesh of Christ, which is in the Sacrament.” {“Manducatur verum Corpus Christi in sacramento, sed non corporaliter, sed spiritualiter. Spiritualis manducatio, quae per animam fit, ad Christi carnem in sacramento existentem pertingit.” – Opusc. Tom. II. Tract. 2, De Euch. C. V; Jer. Taylor, as above, § VII. 8.} And Gardiner, in his controversy with Cranmer says, “The Catholic teaching is that the manner of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament is spiritual and supernatural, not corporal nor carnal, not natural, not sensible, nor perceptible, but only spiritual, the how and manner whereof God knoweth.” {Cranmer’s Works, III. p. 241, Answer to Gardiner.}
Let us now pass to the doctrines of the Reformation, merely observing by the way, that the dogma of transubstantiation, though formally decreed by the Roman Church, has never been adopted by the Greek. Luther, if not the inventor, has been esteemed the great patron of the doctrine of consubstantiation. Whilst rejecting the idea of a change in the substance of the elements, he believed in a presence with the elements, of the material substance of Christ’s Body and Blood. He appears to have had recourse to the same illustration which had been used to explain the union of the Divine and human natures in Christ; namely, that, as in red-hot iron there is the nature both of iron and fire, so in the Eucharist there is both the bread and the Body of the Lord. Strong as are his expressions in the arguments which he used with the Sacramentarians, still from his less controversial statements, we may almost be led to think that Luther did not much go beyond a faith in the spiritual presence. Controversy often produces extreme statements: and it may have been so with him. {See, for instance, De Sacramento Altaris, Opp. Tom. I. p. 82.} He does indeed say in a comparatively uncontroversial tract that there are “the real Body and Blood of Christ in and under the bread and wine.” {“Esse verum corpus et sanguinem Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, in et sub pane et vino per verbum Christi.” – Catechimus Major, Tom. V. p. 641.} But then he speaks of faith as the means whereby we obtain the benefits of the Sacrament, as that to which they are exhibited. {Ibid.}
As to the public documents of the Lutherans, the Confession of Augsburg simply declares that the Body and Blood of Christ are really given with the bread and wine. {“De Coena Domini docent quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus et sanguis Christi, vescentibus in Coena Domini.” – Confess. August. Art. X; Sylloge, p. 172.} But the Saxon Confession says that “In this communion Christ is truly and substantially present, and His Body and Blood are truly exhibited to those who receive.” {“Vere adesse Christum, et vere exhiberi sumentibus corpus et sanguine Christi” – Sylloge, p. 282.}
The great leader among the reformers, of those who took an opposite view to Luther, was Zuingle. He was not satisfied to reject a material presence; but he even denied a presence of any sort. With him the bread and wine were empty signs. Feeding on Christ was a figure for believing in Him. The Communion was but a ceremony to remind us of Him. Spiritual manducation was resting upon the mercy of God.* He probably may have modified these statements afterwards; yet they thoroughly belonged to his system.
{*“Sacramentaliter edere esse aliud non potest quam signum aut symbolum edere.” – De Vera et Falsa Religione, Opera Zuinglii, pars 2, Tom. I. fol. 215. He denies that there can be any spiritual Body of Christ, except His Church, fol. 216. Again: “Sacramentum est sacrae rei signum. Cum ergo Sacramentum Corporis Christi Domino, non quicquam aliud, quam panem, qui Corporis Christi pro nobis mortui figura et typus est, intelligo.” – De Coena Domini, Ibid. fol. 274. “Spiritualiter edere Corpus Christi nihil est aliud, quam spiritu ac mente niti misericordia et bonitate Dei, propter Christum.” – Fidei Christianae Expositio, Ibid fol. 555.}
Calvin took a middle course between Luther and Zuingle. With the former he acknowledged a real presence of Christ in His Supper; with the latter he denied a corporal or material presence. Having stated the view of the Sacramentarians that to eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of Christ is merely to believe on Him, he says, “But to me Christ appears to have intended something more express and sublime in that famous discourse of His, where He commends to us the eating of His flesh; namely, that by a real participation of Him we be quickened; which He therefore designated under the words eating and drinking, lest any should think that the life we derive from Him is received by simple cognition. For as not the sight, but the eating of the bread gives nourishment to the body, so it is needful that, for the soul to be wholly partaker of Christ, it should be quickened by His virtue to life eternal.” {Institut. IV. xvii. 5.}
The elements, according to him, receive the name of Christ’s Body and Blood, “because they are, as it were, instruments whereby Christ distributes them to us.” {“Corporis vero et sanguinis nomen eis attributum, quod sint velut instrumenta, quibus Dominus Jesus Christus nobis ea distribuit.” – Calvinus, De Coena Domini, Opuseula. Genevae, 1552, p. 133.} And, “if we believe the truth of God, we must believe that there is an inward substance of the Sacrament in the Lord’s Supper joined to the outward signs; and so, that as the bread is given by the hands, the Body of Christ is also communicated, that we be partakers of Him.”* “That Body, which you see not, is to you a spiritual aliment. Does it seem incredible that we are fed by the Flesh of Christ which is so far from us? We must remember that the work of the Spirit is secret and wonder-working, which it would be profane to measure by our intelligence.” {“Corpus, quod nequaquam cernis, spirituale est tibi alimentum. Incredibile hoc tibi videtur, pasci nos Christi carne, quae tam procul a nobis distat? Meminerimus, arcanum et mirificum esse Spiritus Sancti opus, quod intelligentiae tuae modulo metiri sit nefas.” – Calvin. In 1 Cor. 11:24, cited by Waterland, On the Eucharist, C. VII.} Thus then to receive Christ in the Eucharist is not merely to believe in Him; yet it is by faith we are enabled to receive Him. By believing we eat Christ’s Flesh, because by faith our feeding on Him is effected; and that feeding is the fruit of faith. “With them,” (i.e. the Zuinglians,) he writes, “the feeding is faith: with me the power of feeding comes as a consequence of faith.” {“Illis manducatio est fides, mihi ex fide potius consequi videtur.” – Institut. IV, xvii. 5.}
{*“Ita in communione, quam in Christi corpore et sanguine habemus, dicendum est, mysterium spirituale esse, quad nec oculis conspici, nec ingenio humano comprehendi potest. Figuris igitur et signis, quae sub oculorum sensum cadunt, ut naturae nostrae imbecillitas requirit ostenditur; ita tamen ut non sit figura nuda et simplex, sed veritati sum et substantire conjuncta ....
“Necesse est igitur nos in Coena vere corpus et sanguinem Christi recipere, cum utriusque communionem Dominus repraesentet. Quid enim sibi vellet, nos panem comedere ac vinum bibere, ut significent carnem ipsius cibum esse nostrum, et sanguinem potum, si veritate spirituali praeterrnissa, vinum et panem solummodo praeberet ....
“Itaque fatendum est si vera sit repraesentatio quam adhibet Deus, in coena substantiam interiorem sacramenti visibilibus signis conjunctam esse, et quemadmodum panis in manu distribuitur, ita Corpus Christi, ut Ejus participes simus, nobis communicari. Hoc certe etiam, si nihil aliud esset, nobis abunde satisfacere deberet, cum intelligimus Christum nobis in Coena veram propriamque corporis et sanguinis sui substantiam nobis donare – ut pleno jure ipsum possideamus, et possidendo in omnem bonorum suorum societatem vocemur.” – Ibid. pp. 133, 134.}
Melancthon, the disciple, friend, and successor of Luther, is supposed to have hesitated between a material and a spiritual presence. In the Confession of Augsburg, which is due to him, we have already seen strong words which sound like consubstantiation. He is said to have used in earlier days the word corporaliter to express the mode in which Christ communicates His Flesh and Blood in the Eucharist, but to have avoided such expressions after much intercourse on the question with OEcolampadius. {See Jer. Taylor, On Real Presence, § I. 9.} After Luther’s death, he had the chief voice and influence among the Lutherans; and through his peaceful counsels in Germany, and Calvin’s sound views in Switzerland, much greater concord prevailed on this question among the continental Protestants than had existed during the lifetime of the great reformer of Wittemberg; the Lutherans and Zuinglians both consenting to modify their views and statements. {See Mosh. E. H. Cent. SVI. sect. III. pt. II. ch. I. 27, and ch. II. 12.} Insomuch that Hooker observed concerning them: “By opening the several opinions which have been held, they are grown for aught I can see on all sides, at the length to a general agreement concerning that which alone is material, namely, the real participation of Christ, and of life in His Body and Blood by means of this Sacrament.” {Hooker, E. P. Bk. V. ch. LXVII, 2.}
From the continental Protestants, we must turn to England. Cranmer and Ridley appear to have retained the doctrines of the corporal presence and of transubstantiation throughout the reign of Henry VIII. The formularies of that reign all seem to teach it. Ridley is said to have been converted to a belief in the spiritual (instead of the natural) presence by reading the treatise of Bertram or Ratramn, probably about the year 1545. {Ridley’s Life of Ridley, p. 166.} At this time Cranmer was zealous for transubstantiation. But Ridley communicated to the Archbishop what he had discovered in the writings of Ratramn; and they then set themselves to examine the matter with more than ordinary care. {Burnet. Hist. of Reformation, pt. II. Bk. I. p. 107.} Ridley indeed refused to take the credit of converting Cranmer; {Ridley’s Life, p. 169.} but Cranmer himself always acknowledged his obligations to Ridley. {Cranmer’s Remains, (Jenkyns) IV. p. 97.} It has been thought that Cranmer went through two changes: to consubstantiation first, and then to the spiritual feeding; and most probably there may have been some gradual progress in his convictions. {The subject is discussed by Dr. Jenkyns, note to Cranmer’s Works, IV. p. 95.} Yet it was constantly affirmed by him that before he put forth the translation of the Catechism of Justus Jonas, commonly called Cranmer’s Catechism, he had fully embraced the spiritual doctrine, and that the strong phrases there used concerning the real presence and the real feeding on Christ, were intended of a spiritual presence and a spiritual feeding, not of consubstantiation. {Cranmer’s Works, II. p. 440, III. pp. 13, 297, 344.}
After this both Cranmer and Ridley, to whom we are chiefly indebted for our formularies, maintained a doctrine nearly identical with that maintained by Calvin, and before him by Bertram. With the latter Ridley expresses his entire accordance. {See Enchiridion Theologicum, I. p. 56.} He constantly declares that whilst he rejects all presence of the natural Body and Blood in the way of transubstantiation, he yet acknowledges a real presence of Christ, spiritually and by grace, to be received by the faithful in the Communion of the Eucharist.* Cranmer has by some been thought to incline nearer to Zuinglianism; yet, if fair allowance be made for hasty expressions in the irritation of controversy, it will probably appear that he, like Ridley, followed the doctrine of the ancient Church and held a real reception of Christ in the Spirit. Certainly we find him writing as follows: “I say (as all the holy fathers and martyrs used to say) that we receive Christ spiritually, by faith with our minds eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood: so that we receive Christ’s own very natural Body, but not naturally nor corporally.” {Remains, III p. 5.} “It is my constant faith and belief that we receive Christ in the Sacrament, verily and truly ... But ... you think a man cannot receive the Body of Christ verily, unless he take Him corporally in his corporal mouth ... My doctrine is that ... He is by faith spiritually present with us, and is our spiritual food and nourishment, and sitteth in the midst of all them that be gathered together in His Name; and this feeding is spiritual feeding and an heavenly feeding, far passing all corporal and carnal feeding, in deed and not in figure only, or not at all, as you most untruly report my saying to be.” {Remains, III. pp. 288, 289.} “I say that the same visible and palpable Flesh that was for us crucified, &c. &c., is eaten of Christian people at His Holy supper ... The diversity is not in the Body, but in the eating thereof; no man eating it carnally, but the good eating it both sacramentally and spiritually, and the evil only sacramentally, that is, figuratively.” {Ibid. p. 340. See also II. p. 441, IV. p. 16.}
{*“I say that the Body of Christ is present in the Sacrament, but yet sacramentally and spiritually (according to His grace) giving life, and in that respect really, that is, according to His benediction, giving life. ... The true Church of Christ doth acknowledge a presence of Christ’s Body in the Lord’s Supper to be communicated to the godly by grace and spiritually, as I have often showed, and by a sacramental signification, but not by the corporal presence of the Body of His Flesh.” – Works, Parker Society, p. 236.
“That heavenly Lamb is (as I confess) on the table: but by a spiritual presence, and not after any corporeal presence of the Flesh taken of the Virgin Mary.” – Ibid. p. 249.
“Both you and I agree in this, that in the Sacrament is the very true and natural Body and Blood of Christ, even that which is born of the Virgin Mary ... We confess all one thing to be in the Sacrament, and dissent in the manner of being there. I confess Christ’s natural Body to be in the Sacrament by Spirit and grace ... You make a proper kind of being, inclosing a natural Body under the shape and form of bread and wine.” – Fox, Martyrs, II. p. 1598. Lond. 1597, cited by Laud against Fisher, § 35.}
These sentiments of our reformers are undoubtedly embodied in our Liturgy and Articles. One thing indeed has been thought to savour of a tendency to Zuinglianism. The first Service Book of Edward VI, drawn up undoubtedly after Cranmer had embraced the doctrine of the spiritual presence, contained, as did all the ancient Liturgies, an invocation of the Holy Ghost to bless the bread and wine; “that they might be unto us the Body and Blood of Christ.” This was omitted in the second Service Book, probably lest the grace of the Sacrament should thus seem to be tied to the consecrated elements. But a still more remarkable departure from the ancient forms was this. Whereas in the first Service Book the words of administration were, “The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto eternal life”; in the second Service Book they were merely, “Take and eat this, in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.” {Two Liturgies of Edward VI. p. 297. Oxf. 1838.} This seemed to imply that the reformers believed in no real spiritual reception of Christ’s Body in the Eucharist, but only in a remembrance of His death and passion. Accordingly, in the reign of Elizabeth the two forms were combined together, and have ever since continued in use in the Church. But though this change looked like an inclination on the part of the earlier reformers to the doctrine of the mere figurists, yet it is by no means certain that some of the alterations in the Service Book were agreeable to our leading divines; {See above, Introduction, note on Strype’s Cranmer.} and notwithstanding this alteration, there remained numerous statements in our formularies to prove that a real but spiritual presence of Christ was and is the doctrine of the reformed Church of England.
Thus we are told in the exhortation to communion that God “hath given His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in that holy Sacrament.” It is said that “if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that holy Sacrament ... we spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ, and drink His Blood.” In what is called the “prayer of humble access”, we ask that God would “give us grace so to eat the Flesh of His dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His Blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood.” In the prayer of consecration we speak of being “partakers of His most blessed Body and Blood”; and in the post-communion we thank God that He doth “vouchsafe to feed us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.” So likewise in this Article it is professed that “to them who worthily receive, ... the bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ, and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.” All these are expressions in the second Service Book of Edward VI, and in the Articles drawn up in that reign. The latter part of the Catechism is of later date but in strict accordance with the earlier documents. Its words are that “the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”
In this XXVIIIth Article, as first drawn up A. D. 1552, there was a clause stating that Christ in bodily presence is in Heaven, and therefore that we ought not to confess “the real and bodily presence (as they term it) of Christ’s Flesh and Blood in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.” This nearly corresponds with the statement of the rubric at the end of our present communion Service.* Both the clause in the Article and the rubric were omitted in Elizabeth’s reign, lest persons inclined to the Lutheran belief might be too much offended by it; and many such were in the Church, whom it was wished to conciliate. The rubric was again restored in the reign of Charles II. The meaning of it clearly is not to deny a spiritual, but only a “corporal presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood,” “and a consequent adoration of the elements, as though they did not remain still in their very natural substances.”
{*Concerning that rubric see above, notes under Article IV.
Luther much insisted on the ubiquity of the human nature of our blessed Lord, derived to it from the union with the Divine nature. But we must not believe the human nature transubstantiated into the Divine, as Eutyches taught.
St. Augustine observes that Christ, according to His human nature, is now on God’s right hand, and thence shall come to judgment; and according to that nature He is not everywhere. “Cavendum est enim, ne ita divinitatem adstruamus hominis, ut veritatem Corporis auferamus.” – Epist. 187, Tom. II. p. 681, quoted above, note under Article IV. See this subject most admirably handled by Hooker,E. P. V. 55.}
The Homilies are very express. “Thus much we must be sure to hold, that in the Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent(Matt. 26); but as the Scripture saith, The table of the Lord, the bread and cup of the Lord, the memory of Christ, the annunciation of His death, yea, the communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord, in a marvelous incorporation, which by the operation of the Holy Ghost (the very bond of our conjunction with Christ) is through faith wrought in the souls of the faithful, whereby not only their souls live to eternal life, but they surely trust to win to their bodies a resurrection to immortality” (1 Cor. 10). {Second Book of Homilies, “First part of the Sermon Concerning the Sacrament.”}
Bishop Jewel, who perhaps was the chief writer of this Second Book of Homilies, says in his Apology: “We plainly pronounce in the Supper the Body and Blood of the Lord, the Flesh of the Son of God, to be truly exhibited to those who believe.” {“Diserteque pronunciamus in coena credentibus vere exhiberi Corpus et Sanguinem Domini, carnem Filii Dei.” – Juelii Apologia. Ench. Theolog. p. 126.} And again, after protesting against transubstantiation, he says, “yet when we say this, we do not lower the Lord’s Supper nor make it a mere frigid ceremony. We assert that Christ exhibits Himself really present in the Sacraments; in baptism that we may put Him on, in His Supper that we may feed on Him by faith and in spirit ... and this we say is not done perfunctorily, nor frigidly, but in very deed and truly.” {“Non tamen cum ista dicimus, extenuamus Coenam Domini aut eam frigidam tantum caeremoniam esse docemus. ... Christum enim asserimus, vere sese praesentem exhibere in sacramentis suis; in baptismo, ut Eum induamus, in coena, ut Eum fide et spiritu comedamus, et de Ejus cruce et sanguine habeamus vitam aeternam; idque dicimus non perfunctorie et frigide, sed re ipsa et vere fieri.” – Ibid. p. 129. Compare Noel’s Catechism, Ench. Theol. p. 320, where the same doctrine is propounded.}
It appears, then, that our reformers symbolized herein with Calvin, though it is not likely that they learned their doctrine from him. Points of difference may be discovered between them; but in the main, Calvin, Melancthon in his later views, and the Anglican divines, were at one. There have, no doubt, been different ways of explaining the spiritual presence among those who have agreed to acknowledge such a presence. But perhaps the safest plan is to say that because it is spiritual, therefore it needs must be mystical. And so Bishop Taylor concludes that our doctrine differs not from that of ancient writers, who acknowledged Christ’s presence but would not define the manner of His presence. For he observes that we say, “the presence of Christ is real, and it is spiritual; and this account still leaves the Article in its deepest mystery; because spiritual perfections are indiscernible, and the word “spiritual” is a very general term, particular in nothing but that it excludes the corporal and natural.” {Jer. Taylor, § I. 2.}
It would be endless, and it is unnecessary, to say much concerning our divines since the Reformation. Some perhaps, who have followed Calvin in his predestinarian theory, have followed, not him, but Zuingle, upon the Sacraments. And this too may have been the bent of those who afterwards more especially followed Arminius, both here and on the Continent. {There is a very pious work by one of the Arminian writers in the English Church (Horneck’s Crucified Jesus). It has much to edify and spiritualize, but if I understand it, its doctrine is purely Zuinglian.} But from the time of the Reformation to the present, all the great luminaries of our Church have maintained the doctrine which appears in the face of our formularies; agreeing to deny a corporal, and to acknowledge a spiritual feeding in the Supper of the Lord. It is scarcely necessary to recount the names of Mede, Andrewes, Hooker, Taylor, Hammond, Cosin, Bramhall, Usher, Pearson, Patrick, Bull, Beveridge, Wake, Waterland. All these have left us writings on the subject, and all have coincided, with but very slight diversity, in the substance of their belief. They have agreed, as Hooker says, that “Christ is personally present; albeit a part of Christ be corporally absent”; {Book V. lxvii. 11.} that “the fruit of the Eucharist is the participation of the Body and Blood of Christ” – but that “the real presence of Christ’s most blessed Body and Blood is not to be sought for in the Sacrament (i.e. in the elements); but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament.” {Book V. xvii. 6.}
Section II – Scriptural Proof
I. The Words of Institution.
We know that almost all the sacrifices among both Jews and Gentiles were succeeded by a feast upon the body of the sacrificed victim; the persons who thus fed upon the sacrifice declaring their interest in the sacred rite, and through it entering into covenant with the God. {See Cudworth, True Notion of the Lord’s Supper, ch. I.} Now the Passover was the most solemn and significant of all the sacrifices of the Law, the most remarkable of all the types of our redemption. In its first institution it was ordained that the lamb should be slain, evidently in the way of a propitiatory offering, {See the true sacrificial nature of the Passover proved, Cudworth, as above. ch. 11.} in order that the destroying angel, which smote the Egyptians, might not destroy those for whom this offering was made. Yet no one had a claim to exemption from the destruction except those on whose lintels and doorposts the blood of the lamb was sprinkled, and who had partaken of the feast upon the lamb slain, – they and all their households. {Exod. 12:2–13.} The feast was, as it were, the consummation of the sacrifice; the efficacy of the latter being assured only to those who partook of the former.
It is not a little observable then that our blessed Saviour, the night before He suffered, or (if we take the Jewish reckoning from evening to evening) the very day on which He suffered, superseded the typical feast of the Passover by the commemorative feast of the Eucharist. He first, according to the Law, ate the Passover with His disciples. Then, supper being ended, {μετα το δειπνησαι, Luke 22:20.} and probably after He had washed the feet of His disciples, {John 13:2, seq.} He instituted a new rite appropriate to the New Covenant, but with peculiar reference to the rite under the Old Covenant. With the Passover, by Divine ordinance, there had been always eaten unleavened bread; and by immemorial custom there had been four cups of wine poured out; over each of which thanks were offered up, “and of which the third cup was specially called the cup of blessing.” {Buxtorf, De Coena Dom. § 22; Lightfoot, H. H. on Matt. 26:26, 27.} Now the bread and the wine, thus eaten and drunk solemnly at the Passover, our Lord adopts as the signs or elements for the institution of His new Sacrament. The bread at the Passover was blessed and broken, the wine was blessed and poured out. {Lightfoot, Ibid.} These same ceremonies our Lord now uses. He breaks the bread and blesses it; He pours out the wine and blesses it. In the feast of the Passover the bread and wine had been but subordinate; the latter not even of Divine authority. Our Lord makes them now the chief. Before, the chief place had been occupied by the Paschal Lamb. It was slain and eaten in commemoration of the first Passover, in type and anticipation of the Saviour Himself. But now that the type was succeeded by the antitype, and that the feast must therefore be commemorative, not anticipatory, our Lord puts the bread and wine in place of the flesh of the Lamb; that, as the latter had been eaten as a type of Him, so the former should be eaten and drunk in remembrance of Him.
It has been observed, that the lamb, when set on the table to be eaten at the Passover, was commonly called by the Jews “the body of the Paschal Lamb”; and it seems not unnatural to suppose that our Lord, as adopting otherwise on this occasion their customs and language, should here also have alluded to their common phrase. They had spoken of eating “the body of the lamb” (הַפֶּסַח כֶּבֶש שֶׁל נּוּפוֺ), and when He blessed the Bread, He said of it, “This is My Body”; as though He would say, “Heretofore you ate the body of the Lamb, a type of Me to be delivered to death for you. Now I abrogate this forever; and instead, I give you My Body to be crucified and broken for you; and so hereafter, when you eat this bread, think not of the Paschal Lamb, which, like all types, is now done away in Me; but believe that you feed on My Body broken, to deliver you, not from Egyptian bondage, but from the far worse bondage of death and hell.” {Buxtorf, De Coena Dom. § 25; Lightfoot, H. H. on Luke 22:19.}
Again, when our Lord had broken and blessed the bread, and giving it to His disciples, had called it His Body, He then took the cup, poured it out, blessed it, and called it His Blood. And it is observable that, as when Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of the sacrifice, he said of it, “Behold the blood of the Covenant”; {Exod. 24:8; Heb. 9:20.} so our Lord and Saviour, in giving His disciples this cup to drink, said of it, “This is My Blood of the New Covenant” (Matt. 26: 27; Mark 14: 24).
In almost all respects then, the institution of the Eucharist was likened to the sacrificial feasts of the Jews; most especially to the feast of the Passover.* It had only this point of difference: that, whereas in all the ancient feasts the victim was actually killed, and then its natural body was eaten; here the feast was instituted (though on the day of His death, yet) before our blessed Lord was crucified, and bread and wine were substituted in the room of His natural Flesh and Blood. Yet the bread and wine He called His Body and Blood; even as the flesh of the lamb was called the body of the Paschal lamb. And we can scarcely fail to infer that, as the flesh of the old sacrifice was never called the Body of Christ, but (what it really was) the body of the lamb, and as on the contrary the elements in the newly founded feast were called the Body and Blood of Christ, so the new festival must have had a closer connection with the great and true sacrifice than had the slaughtered victim, which represented Him in the old festival. The bread and wine were His Body and Blood, in a sense beyond that in which the Paschal lamb was Christ; that is to say, not merely in a figure, but in more than a figure.
{*A question has been raised whether our Saviour and His disciples had been eating the Paschal lamb or not, before He instituted the Eucharist; the ground for the question being that other well-known doubt, namely, Was the Thursday or the Friday the day on which the Passover ought to be eaten? However this latter may be solved, there seems no possibility of evading the force of Luke 22:15: “With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Comp. Matt. 26:17–19; Mark 14:12–16). The true solution of the difficulty has always appeared to me to be this. The commandment was that the Passover should be slain on the 14th day of the month, “between the two evenings,” בֵּיןהָעַרְבַּיִם (Exod. 12:6); that is to say, from the evening of the 14th to the evening of the 15th day of the month, according to the common Jewish mode of counting time. Thus our Lord ate the Passover on the right day, i.e. on the evening of the 14th; yet He was crucified on the same day; for from evening to evening was but a single day. And this will solve all the difficulty in John 18:28; for many of the Jews may not have eaten the Passover on the morning of the Friday, though our Lord had eaten it on the evening of the Thursday. See Duty of Observing the Christian Sabbath, by Samuel Lee, D. D.. &c. note 16; where he quotes the Gemara on the Jerusalem Talmud in confirmation of this interpretation of Exod. 12:6.}
Now this the very nature of the case would lead us to expect. Under the Law were mere lifeless ceremonies; but under the Gospel there is substance, instead of shadow. Under the Law there were sacrifices of slain beasts; and the feast was therefore on the flesh of slain beasts. But under the Gospel there is no sacrifice, but of the Lamb of God; and a feast upon the sacrifice must therefore be a feeding upon Him; and we may add, that though the Law were true as coming from God, yet emphatically and peculiarly the Gospel is the truth. Hence, if in the legal ceremony there was a true feeding upon the victim, we cannot doubt that in the Gospel Sacrament there is a true feeding on the Saviour. And yet once more, the Law was carnal, but the Gospel is spiritual. And so, whereas the Paschal festival involved a carnal eating of the typical sacrifice, we infer that the Eucharistic festival would involve a spiritual eating of the true Sacrifice. And hence, as in all respects the Passover squared well with the place it occupied in its own dispensation, the Eucharist would fall into its place in the higher dispensation. The one a feast on a sacrifice; the other a feast on a Sacrifice. The one on the lamb; the other on the Lamb of God. The one true; the other true. But the one carnally true; the other spiritually, and therefore even more true.
There are three things especially to be observed in the form of institution: 1, the blessing; 2, the declaration; 3, the command.
1. The blessing. “Jesus took bread and blessed it”: so say St. Matthew (26:26) and St. Mark (14:22). This was the custom with the Jews. The master of the house pronounced over the bread a form of benediction, placing both his hands upon it. And this blessing, we are told, was by them called קִדּוּשׁ i.e. sanctification. {Buxtorf, as above, § 46.} Whether or not our Lord adopted the common form of words, we cannot tell. At all events, He gave utterance to some words of blessing, whereby He set apart the bread from its common use to a new, sacramental and sacred purpose.
For blessed (ευλογήσας) St. Luke (22:17) and St. Paul (1 Cor. 11:24) have gave thanks (ευχαριστήσας). The words seem nearly synonymous. They are so used concerning the blessing of the bread, when our Lord fed the four thousand with the seven loaves (Mark 8:6, 7): the Vulgate translates (ευχαριστια) by benedictio (1 Cor. 14:16): and the Hebrew wordבֵּרֵדּ to bless, is rendered indifferently by words which signify either blessing or thanksgiving. And so, no doubt, our Lord and Saviour, when consecrating this bread to a sacred ordinance, gave thanks to God His Father, and with the thanksgiving joined a blessing; which changed the bread, not in substance, not in quantity, not in quality – but in use, in purpose, in sanctity; so that what before was common, now became sacramental bread; even the sacrament and mystery of the Body of Christ. {Ibid. § 48. Compare Waterland, On the Eucharist, ch. V. 3.}
2. From the blessing we pass to the declaration: –
“Take, eat; this is My Body.” So St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, St. Paul. St. Luke adds, “which is given for you” (22:19). St. Paul, “which is broken for you” (1 Cor. 11:24).
There is a little more difference in their account of the cup. St. Matthew and St. Mark say, “This cup is My Blood of the new Testament which is shed for many.” St. Luke and St. Paul say, “This cup is the new testament in My Blood.”
We have already compared these phrases with the Jewish form of speech, and have seen how the one throws light upon the other. We have seen also reason to infer, that the ordinance thus instituted was for the purpose of a spiritual feast upon the one true Sacrifice, a feeding on the Body and the Blood of Christ. But we have now come to a point, where those who believe in the verity of the feeding upon Christ, branch off from each other into two opposed and unhappily hostile divisions. The Protestant admits that the words of institution assure us of the blessing of feeding upon Christ, and give us ground to call the consecrated elements Christ’s Body and Blood. But the Romanist maintains that they moreover assure us that the bread, when blessed, no longer remains bread, but has become the very natural Flesh of Christ, and in a like manner the wine His natural Blood. The Romanist reasons from the plain meaning of the words and the duty reverently to believe what Christ has spoken. “This is My Body”; therefore it is no longer bread. And to make it clearer, they say that whereas the substantive “bread” (άρτος) is masculine, the relative “this” (τουτο) is neuter; and that therefore the word this means not, “This Bread is My Body”; but on the contrary means, “This, which is no longer bread, is My Body.” {Bellarmine, Lib. I. De Eucharistia, ch. X.} The grammatical argument is too futile to keep us long. Bread, being a thing without life, though in Greek and Latin it is expressed by a masculine substantive, in well-nigh all languages might be referred to by a neuter pronoun; and though we could not sayHoc est frater meus; yet we may say Hoc est aqua, or Hoc est panis. Nay! would it not have been a more singular mode of speech, if our Lord, when He took the bread in His hand, instead of saying concerning it, τουτο, hoc, this thing, had said, ουτος, hic, he?
But more weight lies in the verb εστι, is; and yet, if no better argument than its use could he adduced, we must admit that the mere figurists have almost as strong ground as the transubstantialists. If the simple use of the substantive verb proves an absolute change of substance, how are we to interpret “The seed is the word; the field is the world; the reapers are the angels; the harvest is the end of the world; I am the door; I am the vine?” {See Taylor, Real Presence, sect. VI.} We cannot here understand a substantial change, but must admit a figure of speech. And so, in truth, we must admit in the Eucharist; for though we acknowledge Christ’s presence, and not only acknowledge but rejoice in it; yet we hold not that presence to be in the material bread; nor can these words prove that it is there. The passage which perhaps most nearly corresponds to this is that wherein St. Paul says that “That Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). It is indeed generally contended that the Rock was Christ by a mere figure of speech; and hence the illustration is urged to support the doctrine of the figurists. But this is scarcely true. If the illustration be correctly interpreted, it will prove the real but the spiritual presence of the Body of Christ. The Apostle’s argument is strictly this: The Israelites, in their pilgrimage in the wilderness, were like Christians, subjects of grace. Christ followed, and Christ fed them. They had bread from Heaven, and drank out of the rock; and as the literal manna fed their bodies, so there was a heavenly manna prepared for their souls. And as from the rock of stone Moses called forth the stream of water; so there was with them also a spiritual Rock, by which their souls were watered; and that spiritual “Rock was Christ.” It was not then, we may observe, that the spiritual Rock was a figure of Christ. The rock of stone was a figure of Christ; but the spiritual Rock – “that Rock was Christ”. So it is in the Eucharist. The bread in the Eucharist is an emblem of the Bread of life: but that Bread is Christ. As with the natural rock in the wilderness there was present the Spiritual Rock, which is Christ: so with the natural bread in the Sacrament there is present the Spiritual Bread, which is Christ’s Body.
And next for the cup. Our Lord calls it, “My Blood of the new Covenant”; or, according to St. Luke, “The new Covenant in My Blood {I unhesitatingly translate Covenant, not Testament, believing that διαθήκη should always in the Bible be rendered Covenant. The only apparent exception is in Heb. 9:15–20. Even here, however, Covenant will probably make the more pertinent sense. See Professor Scholefield’s Hints for a New Translation, ad h. l.} which is shed for you.” The reference here to the language of the old Testament and to the rites of sacrifice has been already noticed. {τουτο το ποτήριον η καινη διαθήκη εν τω αιματί μου, το υπερ υμων εκχυνόμενον (Luke 22:20). The participle properly agrees with ποτήριον, though it may by a solecism refer to αιμα. Lightfoot H. H. in loc. says, “This seems to have reference to that cup of wine which was every day poured out in the drink offerings in the daily sacrifice, for that also was poured out for the remission of sins. So that the bread may have reference to the body of the daily sacrifice, and the cup to the wine of the drink offering.”} If we take the words as recorded by St. Matthew and St. Mark, “This is My Blood of the new Covenant,” they will mean, “As in the old dispensation God made covenant with Israel with the blood of beasts, so now He makes covenant with Christians through the Blood of Christ; and this wine is the emblem of that Blood, and the means of partaking of its benefits.” If we take St. Luke’s version (which is also St. Paul’s), then we must understand, “The blood of old was the sign and pledge of the Covenant, the medium of its ratification. This cup is the sign and pledge of the new Covenant, which is now to be ratified in My Blood.”
In either case we see obviously in the Eucharist a federal rite. As sacrifices, and especially feasts on sacrifices, were the means of ratifying covenants between man and man, or between man and God; so the Eucharistic feast upon the Sacrifice is the means of ratifying the covenant between the Lord and His people. The Blood of the covenant was shed upon the cross. So peace has been made. But the peace is accepted, and the covenant assured by this sacred banquet; where we are God’s guests, and where the spiritual food spread for us is the Lamb slain for our sins, and where our souls may be washed by His most precious Blood. {See Cudworth, as above, ch. VI.}
3. The third thing to be observed in the institution of the Eucharist is the command, “This do in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24, 25).
This do, τουτο ποιειτε. Hoc facite. Do what? Make My Body? Sacrifice Me? If our Lord had commanded them to make His Body, why did He say “in remembrance of Me”? Remembrance and actual bodily presence are scarcely compatible ideas. Besides, did our Lord then sacrifice Himself? Surely not. It was the next morning that He offered up Himself a Sacrifice; not then, when He sat with them at meat. But, just as when the first Passover was instituted the Israelites were commanded “to keep this feast by an ordinance for ever” (Exod. 12:14, 13:10), – to sacrifice the lamb and eat it, as they had been instructed by Moses: so the disciples are commanded to observe this new feast, even as they were instructed by their Master and Lord. “Do this,” i.e. “Do what you now see Me do.” Break the bread, bless it, and consecrate it; then distribute among yourselves, and eat it; and likewise with the wine. And this all is to be done “in remembrance of Me”. The Passover was in remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt and from the destruction of the first-born; and when it was kept, the Israelites were to tell their children what the ordinance meant (Exod. 13:8). But this Sacrament is a remembrance of greater deliverance, and of that gracious Master who wrought the deliverance; and “as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we do shew the Lord’s death till He come” (1 Cor. 11:26). In all ways therefore it may be a remembrance of Christ; but specially it is a remembrance of His death. It is a memorial, a showing forth of that sacrifice which He offered on the cross, and which we feed upon in our souls. As it is a commemoration of the sacrifice, so may it be called a commemorative sacrifice. But, as Christ was Himself present alive when He instituted the ordinance, and as He did not then offer up Himself a sacrifice on the cross, nor hold in His own sacred hands His own crucified Body; so we believe not, that we are commanded to offer Him up afresh, or that we are to expect to feed upon His natural Flesh and Blood. His Body has been offered up once for all, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice. We may present the remembrance of that sacrifice to God, may tell it out to the world, may believe that whilst we eat the symbols with our mouths, we feed upon the Saviour in our spirits; but we have no warrant to believe, and we could find no greater comfort in believing, that Christ was to be newly sacrificed every day, and His very Flesh and Blood to be eaten and drunk by our bodily mouths.
II. Our Lord’s Discourse at Capernaum. John 6.
A great many, both of the Roman Catholic divines and of the mere figurists, have denied that the discourse in the sixth chapter of St. John has any reference to the grace of the Eucharist. The motive of such denial is obvious; for it is next to impossible to admit that the Eucharist is there referred to, without also admitting that no material presence is tenable, and at the same time that some real spiritual feeding of the soul is promised. It is said indeed that the discourse was delivered before the Eucharist was instituted, and therefore could not have applied to it: an argument which must surely seem very strange if we consider how very much our Lord’s discourses are anticipatory and prophetic. Indeed almost all His teaching seems suitable to instruct His followers in “the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God,” the things that were to be in His Church and reign upon earth, rather than suitable to the time of His bodily presence. So His discourse with Nicodemus was as much anticipatory of the institution of baptism, as this discourse at Capernaum was of the institution of the Holy Communion. And, to bring but one more example, if our Lord be never supposed to speak and to teach but concerning things already revealed and manifested, what could have been His meaning in His many declarations that Christians “must take up their Cross, and follow Him”; {See Matt. 10:38, 16:24; Mark 8:34, 10:21; Luke 9:23, 14:27.} when as yet all those who heard Him knew not for certain that He would die at all, and most assuredly understood not “what death He should die”?
It is quite clear then, that the mystery of the discourse in St. John 6 required something to make it intelligible. Many even of our Lord’s disciples were so offended at it that they at once “went back, and walked no more with Him” (ver. 66). What so sorely puzzled them must doubtless have sunk deep into their memories; and when next our blessed Saviour used the same language as He had used on this memorable occasion, is it not certain that His first words would recur with all their force, and that the teaching of the first discourse would be coupled with that of the second? Now the only occasions on which we read that Jesus said anything about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood were first in this instance at Capernaum, secondly at the last Passover when He instituted the Eucharist. How the disciples who heard both discourses could fail to couple them together it is hard to conceive. In the former, inestimable blessings were said to accompany the eating and drinking of Christ’s Body and Blood: in the latter, a special mode appeared to be pointed out by which His Body and Blood might be eaten and drunken. Both, no doubt, sounded strange and wonderful. Those who wondered at them both would naturally compare the one with the other to see if the one would not explain the other.
And surely the one does explain the other. In the sixth chapter of St. John we read that our Lord had just fed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes. They who had seen the miracle on the next day followed Jesus; but as He well knew, not for spiritual blessing, but that they might again be fed and be filled (v. 26). To this carnal and unbelieving multitude He enjoins “that they should labour not for earthly, but for spiritual food, which endureth unto everlasting life” (v. 27); and taking occasion of their own reference to the manna in the wilderness (v. 31), He tells them, that, as God gave their fathers manna, so now He would give them “true bread from Heaven” (v. 32). He then declares Himself to be “the Bread of life”: and adds, “he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst” (v. 35), i.e. neither hunger nor thirst, because, thus coming and believing, he shall be fed upon the Bread of life. The Jews who were present now begin to murmur. They disbelieve the Saviour’s saying that He had come down from Heaven, supposing that they knew both His father and His mother. He then goes on, not to explain His statements, but to enforce, and rather put them with more mystery and difficulty. He tells them that, not only had He come down from Heaven, that not only was He the Bread of life, but that, whereas the fathers ate manna and died, yet those who should eat that Bread should never die. And then most startling words of all, He says that the bread which He should give was His Flesh, which he would give for the life of the world (v. 51). And when this saying caused fresh striving amongst them, He adds, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you. ... My Flesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. ... As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me “ (vv. 53–57).
Now those who tell us that this had no reference to the Eucharist say that nothing is here meant but that faith in the death of Christ is the great means of union to Christ, and that which raises us to life and immortality. But surely Calvin’s belief that something more express and sublime is intended by such striking language must commend itself to our reason. It is not the way of Scripture to expound to us simple doctrines by such mysterious language; but rather by simple figures and analogies to bring down deep doctrines in some degree to the level of our capacities. Yet, if all this discourse be merely to teach us that we must believe in the death of Christ, we have an example of most difficult language, and, we may add, language most likely to give offence, in order to express what requires no figures to make it intelligible when simply and plainly stated. But if it be true that to those who believe in Christ, to those who come to Him believing, He in some manner far above our comprehension so communicates His blessed Self, so joins them to Him by an ineffable union, that they may be said to be one with Him, and He with them, that He dwelleth in them and they in Him, that as He liveth by the Father so they live by Him; – if this and the like of this be true, then can we understand that some deep language, some strong metaphors, may be needful to express the doctrine, and that the greater and more mysterious the blessing, the stranger and more hard to understand may be the language.
Now, certainly it is true that the faithful Christian lives by union to the glorified, divine humanity of His Lord. Christ, who is one with the Father by His Godhead, becomes one with His disciples by His manhood: and by an union with us, which is ineffable, and to be comprehended only by a devout and reverent believing, He supports, sustains, and feeds that spiritual life which He creates in us. That this is one chief fruit of His incarnation, all Scripture bears witness. That this, and perhaps much more than this, is taught in the chapter we are considering, there can be no reasonable question. And, although faith is an essential instrument for enabling us to receive such blessing (see v. 35), yet something much deeper and sublimer than the mere act of believing is plainly intended by it, – even that in spirit we are truly joined to the Man Christ Jesus, our great Head and Lord; that our whole spiritual man is sustained and nourished by Him; that by His life we live; by His might and power our weakness is upheld and strengthened. We do not presume to say that this is all the mystery conveyed to us by the language of our Lord. But this we may boldly affirm is the character, though it be not the sum of the mystery. And when we come to find the like language used by Him concerning the holy ordinance which He established at His passion, can we fail to infer, that with that ordinance, rightly and faithfully partaken of, are communicated those very blessings which in the discourse at Capernaum are so marvelously expressed?
Such thoughts must free us from the frigid notions of the disciples of Zuinglius; but will they lead us to the carnal notions of the transubstantialists? Most surely, No! There are two statements in the chapter we are considering quite fatal to the doctrine of the material presence. One is, where our Lord tells us that whosoever eats of the bread of life shall “not die” (ver. 51), “shall live for ever” (ver. 58): that “he who eateth His Flesh and drinketh His Blood, hath eternal life” (ver. 54). Now, if the bread and wine in the communion are changed into the substance of the Body and Blood, then every unworthy partaker, notwithstanding his unworthiness, partakes of Christ’s Body and Blood; and hence, according to this chapter, eating the bread of life shall “not die” – “shall live for ever” – “hath eternal life.” He cannot, as St. Paul says, eat to condemnation, but must eat to salvation. The other statement is stronger still. When those who heard murmured at our Lord’s promise to feed them with His Flesh and Blood, Jesus said unto them, “Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see (εαν ουν θεωρητε) the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (vv. 61–63). Do my words offend you? If ye see Me ascend where I was before, how then will ye judge? Will ye then be still more offended, thinking my words still more impossible? Or will ye then begin to understand the truth, and to know that they must be spiritually interpreted? The mistake ye have made, is that ye have interpreted them carnally. But it is the spirit which profiteth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. Such was the obvious meaning of our Lord’s reply; and it penetrates to the very depths of the difficulty. The meaning of the discourse was all spiritual. The feeding on Christ’s Body and Blood is a spiritual feeding. No other feeding profits. It would do no good. To eat the material substance of His Flesh and drink the material substance of His Blood would be useless. It is the spirit only which gives life, and the words which He had spoken were spirit and life. And be it noted, whether the discourse did, by anticipation, concern the Eucharist, or whether it did not, yet this much is clear: we have it revealed in the unfailing and unerring words of our Redeemer, that carnally to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood would profit us nothing; and therefore we may be assured infallibly, that such a carnal feeding, being profitless, would never have been ordained by Him in a Sacrament for His Church.
III. The statements of St. Paul.
These occur in 1 Cor. x. and 1 Cor. xi.
The argument from the former chapter (1 Cor. 10) is of this nature. The Christians of Corinth, living among idolaters, were tempted to join in idol-feasts, at which meats that had been offered in sacrifice were solemnly and religiously eaten. However innocent it may be to eat meat of any kind, St. Paul points out that it is no longer innocent when the eating it implies a participating in an idolatrous ceremony, especially an idolatrous sacrifice. He that partakes of a sacrificial feast declares thereby his respect for the sacrifice, and his interest in it. He claims to be a partaker of the sacrifice. The Apostle illustrates this in three ways: first, by our participation of the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist (vv. 16, 17); secondly, by the Jews’ participation in the sacrifices of which they eat; thirdly, by the heathen’s participation of the sacrifices of demon gods. To take the last two illustrations first. He observes with regard to “Israel after the flesh,” that “they which eat of the sacrifices are partakers (κοινωνοι) of the altar.” That is to say, by eating of the meat of the sacrifice they have a share, a participation in the benefit of that which is offered on the altar (v. 18). As for the Gentiles, he says, that they offer sacrifice, not to God, but to demon gods (δαιμονίοις); and it is unbecoming in Christians to be partakers or communicants (κοινωνοι) of demon gods. Nay! it is altogether inconsistent to drink of the cup of the Lord, and of the cup of demon gods; to partake of the Lord’s table, and the table of demon gods (vv. 20, 21); the “table of demon gods” here meaning the feast upon the heathen sacrifices, “the table of the Lord” meaning the banquet of the Holy Communion, and probably alluding to Malachi 1:7, 12; where the expression “table of the Lord” is used in immediate connection with the word “altar,” and refers to the sacrificial feasting connected with the Jewish sacrifices. In juxtaposition then, and immediate comparison with these feasts on Jewish and heathen offerings, St. Paul places the Christian festival of the Eucharist; and as he tells the Corinthians, that the Israelites in their feasts were partakers of the altar, and the heathen partook of the table of devils, so he says, Christians partake of the Lord’s table. But more than this, he asks, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a joint partaking (κοινωνία) of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a joint partaking of the Body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread” (vv. 16, 17). The natural signification of the word κοινωνία, and the sense deducible from the context, require that it should be rendered, as above, joint partaking or joint participation. {κοίνοςcommon, κοινόω to make common, impart, κοινωνος a partaker, κοινωνία participation. This is the natural meaning. κοινωνία means also close communion or joint partnership. St. Paul ordinarily uses κοινωνίαfor partaking. See 2 Cor. 8:4, 9:3. Comp. κοινωνοι 9:18. In Rom. 15:26, Heb. 13:16, κοινωνία is communication.} The parallel is between partaking of idol sacrifices, partaking of Jewish sacrifices, and partaking of the Christian Sacrifice, i.e. Christ. And the 17th verse is added to show, that by such participation there is a joint fellowship, not only with Christ, the Head, but with His whole Body the Church.
Now, what must we infer from this teaching? Does it not plainly tell us that the feeding at the Lord’s table corresponds with the feeding at the Jewish altar and the heathen idol feasts. That, as the latter gave them participation in their sacrifices and their demon gods, so the former gives us participation of Christ’s Body and Blood! This much we cannot, and we would not deny. The bread and wine are to us means or instruments whereby through God’s grace we become partakers of the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ. But, on the other hand, must we therefore infer that we partake of Christ’s Body, naturally and materially? The very words appear to teach us otherwise. If there were a real change of the elements into Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood, it seems altogether unaccountable that the force of the argument should have been weakened by the introduction of the word κοινωνίαparticipation. If the bread be literally and substantially the Body, it would have been more natural to say, “Is not the bread which we break, Christ’s Body?” And the inference would be immediate; Can we eat Christ’s Body and demon sacrifices together? The word κοινωνία, on which the peculiar strength of the passage depends, whilst it clearly points to the Eucharistic elements as ordained means to enable us to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet shows too that they are means of partaking, not themselves changed into the substance of that which they represent. They are ordained that we may partake of Christ; but they are not Christ themselves.
The other passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. 11:19–30) has the same object as that which we have just considered; namely, to increase our reverence for “the dignity of this holy mystery.” The early Christians appear to have joined with the reception of the communion an agape or love feast. In such a feast it was seemly that the rich should provide for the poor, and that all things should be in common. But in Corinth, a city long famous for luxury, the richer Christians appear to have overlooked the Christian principle, and to have made their feasts of charity minister to their own indulgence, rather than to their poor neighbours’ wants. This was in itself wrong; it was not, as the Apostle says, to eat the Lord’s supper;* and it was despising the church of God, – shaming those who had no houses to feast in. And what made it worst of all was this, that with these feasts of charity was joined a reception of the Holy Communion; and to receive that at a time when some were feasting gluttonously, and others suffering from hunger, was to treat contemptuously the most sacred and blessed ordinance of the Lord. It was receiving that Sacrament unworthily. It was not only treating the agape as a private feast, and one in which self-indulgence was permissible, but it was making the Eucharist itself a common thing.
{*κυριακον δειπνον φαγειν, v. 20. This probably does not refer to the Eucharist, but to the Agape, the feast of charity, which was joined with it. See Hammond and Whitby, in loc.; Waterland,On the Eucharist, ch. I. 3; Suicer, s. v. Αγαπαι; Cave, Primitive Christianity, pt. I. ch. II; Bingham, E. A. Bk. XV. ch VII. §§ 6, 7, 9.}
To enforce his lesson on this subject, the Apostle reminds the Corinthians of the mode and the words in which our Lord had instituted the Eucharist. This part of his teaching we have already considered. But he goes on to reason that as our Lord had instituted bread and wine as Sacraments of His Body and Blood, “therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord,” ver. 27. He then exhorts to self-examination, ver. 28, and adds, ver. 29: “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh to himself condemnation, not setting apart as holy the Body of the Lord” (κρίμα εαυτω εσθίει και πίνει, μη διακρίνων το Σωμα του Κυρίου). {διακρίνων, discernens, separating, setting apart as holy. So the Syriac, [letters uncertain]. To discern, as we in modern English use that word, is only a secondary and improper sense of διακρίνειν, as it is also of discernere. The natural meaning is to separate, to make a distinction of one thing from another. It is used in classical as well as in Hellenistic Greek, with the sense of to set apart for holy purposes. So Pinder, Olymp. X. 54–56: Περι δε πάξαις άλτιν μεν όγ εν καθαρω διακρίνει. The plain meaning therefore of St. Paul is, that people who mixed up the Eucharist with a profane feast, treated the Lord’s Body, which is given us there, as no better than a common thing, not as sacred and holy.} The Lord’s own words of institution pointed to this Sacrament as the means of participating in His Body and Blood; he therefore who received that Sacrament, not as a thing most sacred and venerable, but as part or adjunct of a common feast, was guilty of great and heinous impiety, because he did not set apart as a holy thing the Body of the Lord. This is the plain meaning of the passage, according to the obvious rendering of the original; and it certainly teaches a lesson of deep reverence, and speaks home plainly to our faith. It seems an unanswerable argument against those who esteem the Eucharist as “a bare sign of a thing absent”. We of the Church of England who believe Christ really present in His Sacraments and spiritually there feeding our souls, as much as those who look for a natural reception of Him, can feel the truth and awfulness of such apostolic warnings. We do not differ with the believers in transubstantiation, so far as their statement goes, that in the Eucharist there is a real presence of the Lord. And therefore we feel, as they do, that to receive unworthily is to do dishonour to the Body of Christ. Our difference with them is not concerning the truth of Christ’s presence, which the Apostle’s words seem forcibly to teach us; but we differ with them only concerning the mode. That they define carnally, whilst we believe it mystically. And herein we can scarcely use words more apposite than the words used long ago by Calvin: “If any ask me concerning the mode, I am not ashamed to confess the mystery to be more sublime than my intellect can grasp, or than words can tell; and, that I may speak more openly, I essay rather than understand. Therefore here I embrace without controversy the truth of God, in which I may safely acquiesce. He pronounces His Flesh the food of my soul, His Blood the drink. I offer my soul to be fed with such aliments. In His sacred Feast He bids me, under symbols of bread and wine, to take His Body and Blood, to eat and to drink. I doubt not but that He really offers, and that I receive. All I reject is what is in itself absurd, unworthy of the heavenly majesty of Christ, or alien from the verity of His nature as man.” {Institut. IV. xvii. 32.} So Calvin; and so our own Hooker: “What these elements are in themselves it skilleth not. It is enough that unto me that take them they are the Body and Blood of Christ. His promise in witness hereof sufficeth. His word He knoweth which way to accomplish. Why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant; but, O my God, Thou art true: O my soul, thou art happy?” {E. P. Bk. V. ch. LXVI. 12.} It is in this way that the Scriptures have left it: so the devout soul has ever embraced it: and so we may safely and thankfully receive it, – not speculate curiously, nor expound carnally; but believe and live.
NOTE.
I have confined myself in this Article almost wholly to the presence in the Eucharist, and the mode of receiving Christ’s Body and Blood. The latter part of the Article has thereby been deprived of its due attention. It is, however, but a simple corollary. Elevating the host resulted from a belief in transubstantiation. If that doctrine be rejected, we shall not believe the water to have been really transformed into Christ’s Body, and so shall not worship it, nor elevate it for worship. There is evidently no Scriptural authority for the elevation of the Host, the command being, “Take, eat.” The Roman ritualists themselves admit that there is no trace of its existence before the 11th or 12th centuries; and no certain documents refer to it till about A. D. 1200. See Palmer, On the Church, Vol. I. part I. ch. XI. p. 311.
[Two particulars of the Tridentine doctrine of Transubstantiation are especially to be noted for their contrast to the Anglican doctrine of the real Spiritual Presence in the Eucharist.
(1) The annihilation of the elements. With regard to which, remember:
(a) The absence of Scriptural proof.
(b) The patristic teaching that the elements remain in their original substance; especially the use by Gelasius and others of the accepted Eucharistic doctrine as an argument against the Eutychians. See Pearson On the Creed, p. 247, and note.
(c) That if this view is correct, it is a solitary instance of a miracle which contradicts the senses, instead of appealing to them.
(2) The identification of the consecrated elements not with the Body and Blood of Christ, but with His entire Personality by affirming the presence in them of His Human Soul. With regard to which, remember: –
(a) The absence of Scriptural proof. The language is, “this is my Body,” “this is my Blood,” not “this is I-myself”; the sole exception being St. John 6:57: “He hat eateth me, even he shall live by me,” where the manner of feeding upon Christ had been explained in the preceding verse to be the eating of His flesh and drinking of His Blood.
(b) The language of the Fathers is similar.
(c) So also is the statement of the Orthodox Eastern Church, Guettée, Exp. a la Doctrine, p. 135.
On the subject of the Eucharistic Presence, see the invaluable Introduction to Part II of the Principles of Divine Service by Archdeacon Freeman. – H. A. Y. – J. W.]
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