CHAPTER XVII.04

XI. In harmony, therefore, with the doctrine which has always been received in the Church, and which is maintained in the present day by all who hold right sentiments, I say, that the sacred mystery of the supper consists of two parts: the corporeal signs, which, being placed before our eyes, represent to us invisible things in a manner adapted to the weakness of our capacities; and the spiritual truth, which is at the same time typified and exhibited by those symbols. When I intend to give a familiar view of this truth, I am accustomed to state three particulars which it includes: the signification; the matter, or substance, which depends on the signification; and the virtue, or effect, which follows from both. The signification consists in the promises which are interwoven with the sign. What I call the matter or substance, is Christ, with his death and resurrection. By the effect, I mean redemption, righteousness, sanctification, eternal life, and all the other benefits which Christ confers upon us. Now, though all these things are connected with faith, yet I leave no room for this cavil; as though, when I say that Christ is received by faith, I intended that he is received merely in the understanding and imagination; for the promises present him to us, not that we may rest in mere contemplation and simple knowledge, but that we may enjoy a real participation of him. And, in fact, I see not how any man can attain a solid confidence that he has redemption and righteousness in the cross of Christ, and life in his death, unless he first has a real communion with Christ himself; for those blessings would never be imparted to us, if Christ did not first make himself ours. I say, therefore, that in the mystery of the supper, under the symbols of bread and wine, Christ is truly exhibited to us, even his body and blood, in which he has fulfilled all obedience to procure our justification. And the design of this exhibition is, first, that we may be united into one body with him, and, secondly, that being made partakers of his substance, we may experience his power in the communication of all blessings.

XII. I now proceed to the hyperbolical additions which superstition has made to this sacrament. For here Satan has exerted amazing subtlety to withdraw the minds of men from heaven, and involve them in a preposterous error, by persuading them that Christ is attached to the element of bread. In the first place, we must be careful not to dream of such a presence of Christ in the sacrament as the ingenuity of the Romanists has invented; as if the body of Christ were exhibited, by a local presence, to be felt by the hand, bruised by the teeth, and swallowed by the throat. For this was the form of recantation which Pope Nicolas directed to Berengarius as a declaration of his repentance; the language of which is so monstrous, that the scholiast exclaims, that there is danger, unless the readers be very prudent and cautious, of their imbibing from it a worse heresy than that of Berengarius; and Peter Lombard, though he takes great pains to defend it from the charge of absurdity, yet rather inclines to a different opinion. For, as we have not the least doubt that Christ’s body is finite, according to the invariable condition of a human body, and is contained in heaven, where it was once received, till it shall return to judgment, so we esteem it utterly unlawful to bring it back under these corruptible elements, or to imagine it to be present every where. Nor is there any need of this, in order to our enjoying the participation of it; since the Lord by his Spirit gives us the privilege of being united with himself in body, soul, and spirit. The bond of this union, therefore, is the Spirit of Christ, by whom we are conjoined, and who is, as it were, the channel by which all that Christ himself is and has is conveyed to us. For, if we behold the sun darting his rays and transmitting his substance, as it were, in them, to generate, nourish, and mature the roots of the earth, why should the irradiation of the Spirit of Christ be less effectual to convey to us the communication of his body and blood? Wherefore, the Scripture, when it speaks of our participation of Christ, attributes all the power of it to the Spirit. One passage shall suffice instead of many. In the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul represents Christ as dwelling in us no otherwise than by his Spirit.

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By this representation, the apostle does not destroy that communion of the body and blood of Christ of which we are now treating, but teaches that it is solely owing to the agency of the Spirit that we possess Christ with all his benefits, and have him dwelling within us.

XIII. Deterred by a horror of such barbarous impiety, the schoolmen have expressed themselves in more modest language, yet they only trifle with equal fallacy and greater subtlety. They admit that Christ is not contained in the bread and wine in a local or corporeal manner; but they afterwards invent a manner which they neither understand themselves nor can explain to others; which, however, amounts to this, that Christ is to be sought, as they express it, in the form of bread. When they say that the substance of bread is transmuted into Christ, do they not attach his substance to the whiteness, which they pretend is all that remains of the bread? But, they say, he is so contained in the sacrament, that he remains in heaven, and we maintain no other presence than that of habitude. But whatever words they employ to gloss over their notions, they all terminate in this, that, by the consecration, that which was before bread becomes Christ, so that the substance of Christ is concealed under the colour of bread. This they are not ashamed to express in plain terms; for Lombard says, “That the body of Christ, which is visible in itself, is hidden and concealed, after the consecration, under the form of bread.” Thus the figure of the bread is nothing but a veil, which prevents the flesh from being seen. Nor is there any need of many conjectures, to discover what snares they intended to lay in these words, which the thing itself plainly evinces. For it is evident in what profound superstition not only the people in general, but even the principal men, have now for several ages been involved, and are involved, at the present day, in the Papal churches. True faith, which is the sole medium of our union and communion with Christ, being an object of little solicitude to them, provided they have that carnal presence which they have fabricated without any authority from the Divine word, they consider him as sufficiently present with them. The consequence of this ingenious subtlety, therefore, we find to be this, that bread has been taken for God.