THE HISTORY OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION. CHAPTER I. 1. The real, that is, true and not imaginary presence of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is proved by Scripture. 2. and 3. Yet this favours not the tenet of transubstantiation, being it is not to be understood grossly and carnally, but spiritually and sacramentally. 4. The nature and use of the sacraments. 5. By means of the elements of bread and wine, Christ himself is spiritually eaten by the faithful in the sacrament. 6. The eating and presence being spiritual are not destructive of the truth and substance of the thing. 7. The manner of presence is unsearchable, and ought not to be presumptuously defined. 1. THOSE words which our blessed Saviour used in the institution of the blessed sacrament of the eucharist, "This is my body, which is given for you; this is my blood, which is shed for you, for the remission of sins,"* are held and acknowledged by the universal Church to be most true * Matt. xxvi. 26; Luke xxii. 19. and infallible and if any one dares oppose them, or call in question Christ's veracity, or the truth of his words, or refuse to yield his sincere assent to them, except he be allowed to make a mere figment or a bare figure of them, we cannot, and ought not, either excuse or suffer him in our churches; for we must embrace and hold for an undoubted truth whatever is taught by divine Scripture. And therefore we can as little doubt of what Christ saith, "My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed;"† which, according to St. Paul, are both given to us by the consecrated elements. For he calls the bread "the communion of Christ's body," and the cup "the communion of his blood." 2. Hence it is most evident that the bread and wine (which, according to St. Paul, are the elements of the holy eucharist) are neither changed as to their substance, nor vanished, nor reduced to nothing; but are solemnly consecrated by the words of Christ, that by them his blessed body and blood may be communicated to us. 3. And further, it appears from the same words, that the expression of Christ and the apostle is to be understood in a sacramental and * As G. Calixtus writes in some place of his learned exercitations; and before him Chemnitius, in Exam. Con. Trid. atque in Locis Theol. + John vi. 55. 1 Cor. x. 16. mystic sense; and that no gross and carnal presence of body and blood can be maintained by them. 4. And though the word sacrament be no where used in Scripture to signify the blessed eucharist, yet the Christian Church, ever since its primitive ages, hath given it that name, and always called the presence of Christ's body and blood therein mystic and sacramental. Now a sacramental expression doth, without any inconvenience, give to the sign the name of the thing signified.* And such is as well the usual way of speaking, as the nature of sacraments; that not only the names, but even the properties and effects of what they represent and exhibit, are given to the outward elements. Hence (as I said before) the bread is as clearly as positively called by the apostle," the communion of the body of Christ." 5. This also seems very plain, that our blessed Saviour's design was not so much to teach what the elements of bread and wine are by nature and substance, as what is their use and office and signification in this mystery. For the body and * Exod. xii. 21: ["Take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the passover."] 1 Cor. x. 3, 4: [" And did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ."] blood of our Saviour are not only fitly represented by the elements, but also by virtue of his institution really offered to all by them, and so eaten by the faithful mystically and sacramentally; whence it is, that "He truly is and abides in us, and we in Him."* 6. This is the spiritual (and yet no less true and undoubted than if it were corporal) eating of Christ's flesh; not indeed simply as it is flesh, without any other respect (for so it is not given, neither would it profit us); but as it is crucified, and given for the redemption of the world.† Neither doth it hinder the truth and substance of the thing, that this eating of Christ's body is spiritual, and that by it the souls of the faithful, and not their stomachs, are fed by the operation of the Holy Ghost: for this none can deny, but they who being strangers to the Spirit and the divine virtue, can savour only carnal things, and to whom what is spiritual and sacramental is the same as if a mere nothing. 7. As to the manner of the presence of the body and blood of our Lord in the blessed sacrament, we that are Protestant and reformed according to the ancient Catholic Church, do not search into the manner of it with perplexing inquiries; but, after the example of the primitive *John vi. 56. + Matt. xxvi. 26. and purest Church of Christ, we leave it to the power and wisdom of our Lord, yielding a full and unfeigned assent to his words. Had the Romish maintainers of transubstantiation done the same, they would not have determined and decreed, and then imposed as an article of faith * absolutely necessary to salvation, a manner of presence newly by them invented, under pain of the most direful curse; and there would have been in the Church less wrangling, and more peace and unity than now is. [* "As in the council of Trent." Lat.] |