ART. other places in which the Church is called his body, and XXVIII. all Christians are his members: which shews that he

Serm. 2. in

thought the one was to be understood mystically as well as the other. He calls the Eucharist frequently our daily bread, and the Sacrament of bread and wine. All these call the Eucharist bread and wine in express words: but when they call it Christ's body and blood, they call it so after a sort, or that it is said to be, or with some other mollifying expression.

Aug. Ep.23. St. Augustin says this plainly, After some sort the Sacraad Bonifac. ment of the body of Christ is his body, and the Sacrament of his blood is the blood of Christ; he carried himself in his own hands in some sort, when he said, This is my body.

Psal. 33.

in Comm.

Chrys. Ep. St. Chrysostom says, The bread is thought worthy to be ad Cæsar.et called the body of our Lord: and in another place, reckonin Ep. ad ing up the improper senses of the word flesh, he says, the Scriptures use to call the mysteries (that is, the Sacrament) by the name of flesh, and sometimes the whole Church is said to be the body of Christ.

Gal. c. 5.

Tertul. lib. iv. adv. Marc. c.

40.

So Tertullian says, Christ calls the bread his body, and names the bread by his body.

The Fathers do not only call the consecrated elements bread and wine; they do also affirm, that they retain their proper nature and substance, and are the same thing as to their nature, that they were before. And the occasion upon which the passages, that I go next to mention, are used by them, does prove this matter beyond contradiction.

Apollinaris did broach that heresy which was afterwards put in full form by Eutyches; and that had so great a party to support it, that as they had one General Council (a pretended one at least) to favour them, so they were condemned by another. Their error was, that the human nature of Christ was swallowed up by the divine, if not while he was here on earth, yet at least after his ascension to heaven. This error was confuted by several writers who lived very wide one from another, and at a distance of above a hundred years one from another. St. Chrysostom at Constantinople, Theodoret in Asia, Ephrem Patriarch of Antioch, and Gelasius Bishop of Rome. All those write to prove, that the human nature did still remain in Christ, not changed, nor swallowed up, but only sanctified by the divine nature that was united to it. They do all fall into one argument, which very probably Epist. ad those who came after St. Chrysostom took from him: so Cæsarium. that though both Theodoret and Gelasius's words are much fuller, yet because the argument is the same with

that which St. Chrysostom had urged against Apollinaris, ART. I shall first set down his words. He brings an illustration XXVIII. from the doctrine of the Sacrament, to shew that the human nature was not destroyed by its union with the divine; and has upon that these words, As before the bread is sanctified, we call it bread; but when the divine grace has sanctified it by the means of the Priest, it is freed from the name of bread, and is thought worthy of the name of the Lord's body, though the nature of bread remain in it: and yet it is not said there are two bodies, but one body of the Son: so the divine nature being joined to the body, both these make one Son and one Person.

Bibli. Cod.

Ephrem of Antioch says, The body of Christ received by In Photi. the faithful, does not depart from its sensible substance: so baptism, says he, does not lose its own sensible substance, and does not lose that which it was before.

229.

cont. Eu

Theodoret says, Christ does honour the symbols with the Dial. 1. name of his body and blood; not changing the nature, but et 2. adding grace to nature. In another place, pursuing the tych. same argument, he says, The mystical symbols after the sanctification do not depart from their own nature: for they continue in their former substance, figure, and form, and are visible and palpable as they were before: but they are understood to be that which they are made.

Christ.

Pope Gelasius says, The Sacraments of the body and blood Lib. de of Christ are a divine thing; for which reason we become by duabus nat. them partakers of the divine nature: and yet the substance of bread and wine does not cease to exist: and the image and likeness of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in holy mysteries. Upon all these places being compared with the design with which they were written, which was to prove that Christ's human nature did still subsist, unchanged, and not swallowed up by its union with the Divinity, some reflections are very obvious: First, if the corporal presence of Christ in the Sacrament had been then received in the Church, the natural and unavoidable argument in this matter, which must put an end to it, with all that believed such corporal presence, was this: Christ has certainly a natural body still, because the bread and the wine are turned to it; and they cannot be turned to that which is not. In their writings they argued against the possibility of a substantial change of a human nature into the divine; but that could not have been urged by men who believed a substantial mutation to be made in the Sacrament: for then the Eutychians might have retorted the argument with great advantage upon them.

ART.

The Eutychians did make use of some expressions, that XXVIII. were used by some in the Church, which seemed to import that they did argue from the Sacrament, as Theodoret represents their objections. But to that he answers as we have seen, denying that any such substantial change was made. The design of those Fathers was to prove, that things might be united together, and continue so united, without a change of their substances, and that this was true in the two natures in the person of Christ: and to make this more sensible, they bring in the matter of the Sacrament, as a thing known and confessed: for in their arguing upon it they do suppose it as a thing out of dispute.

Now, according to the Roman doctrine, this had been a very odd sort of an argument, to prove that Christ's human nature was not swallowed up of the divine; because the mysteries or elements in the Sacrament are changed into the substance of Christ's body, only they retain the outward appearances of bread and wine.

To this an Eutychian might readily have answered, that then the human nature might be believed to be destroyed and though Christ had appeared in that likeness, he retained only the accidents of human nature; but that the human nature itself was destroyed, as the bread and the wine were destroyed in the Eucharist.

This had been a very absurd way of arguing in the Fathers, and had indeed delivered up the cause to the Eutychians: whereas those Fathers make it an argument against them, to prove, that notwithstanding an union of two beings, and such an union as did communicate a sanctification from the one to the other, yet the two natures might remain still distinguished; and that it was so in the Eucharist; therefore it might be so in the person of Christ. This seems to be so evident an indication of the doctrine of the whole Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, when so many of the most eminent writers of those ages do urge it so home as an argument in so great a point, that we can scarce think it possible for any man to consider it fully without being determined by it. And so far we have considered the authorities from the Fathers, to shew that they believed that the substance of bread and wine did still remain in the Sacrament.

Another head of proof is, that they affirm, that our bodies are nourished by the Sacrament; which shews very plainly, that they had no notion of a change of substance made in it.

Justin Martyr calls the Eucharist, That food by which ART. our flesh and blood, through its transmutation into them, are XXVIII. nourished.

Apol. 2.

Irenæus makes this an argument for the resurrection of our bodies, that they are fed by the body and blood of Christ: When the cup and the bread receives the word of Lib. v. adv. God, it becomes the Eucharist of the body and blood of Christ, Hæres. c. 2. by which the substance of our flesh is increased and subsists : and he adds, that the flesh is nourished by the body and blood of Christ, and is made his member.

Tertullian says, The flesh is fed with the body and blood De Resurof Christ.

rect. c. 8.

Origen explains this very largely on those words of In Matt. c. Christ, It is not that which enters within a man, that defiles 15. the man he says, if every thing that goes into the belly is cast into the draught, then that food which is sanctified by the word of God, and by prayer, goes also into the belly, as to that which is material in it, and goes from thence into the draught. And a little after he adds, It is not the matter of the bread, but the word that is pronounced over it, which profits him that eats it, in such a way as is not unworthy of the Lord.

The Bishops of Spain, in a council that sat at Toledo in Con. Tol. the seventh century, condemned those that began to con- 16. Can. 6. secrate round wafers, and did not offer one entire loaf in the Eucharist, and appointed, for so much of the bread as remained after the communion, that either it should be put in some bag, or if it was needful to eat it up, that it might not oppress the belly of him that took it with an overcharging burden, and that it might not go into the digestion; they fancying that a lesser quantity made no digestion, and produced no excrement.

In the ninth century both Rabanus Maurus and Heribald believed, that the Sacrament was so digested, that some part of it turned to excrement; which was also held by divers writers of the Greek Church, whom their adversaries called, by way of reproach, Stercoranists. Others indeed of the ancients did think that no part of the Sacrament became excrement, but that it was spread through the whole substance of the communicant, for the good of body and soul. Both Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Chrysostom, Cyril. Caand John Damascene, fell into this conceit; but still they tech. Mest. thought that it was changed into the substance of our bo- ost. Hom. dies, and so nourished them without any excrement coming in Euch. from any part of it. The Fathers do call the consecrated elements the figures, de Ortho. the signs, the symbols, the types, and antitypes, the com- fide, c. 14.

Gg

5. Chrys

To. v. Damas, lib. iv.

XXVIII.

Marcion.

c. 40.

ART. memoration, the representation, the mysteries, and the sacraments of the body and blood; which does evidently demonstrate, that they could not think that they were the Lib. iv. adv. very substance of his body and blood. Tertullian, when he is proving that Christ had a true body, and was not a phantasm, argues thus, He made bread to be his body; saying, This is my body; that is, the figure of my body: from which he argues, that since his body had that for its figure, it was a true body; for an empty thing, such as a phantasm is, cannot have a figure. It is from hence clear, that it was not then believed that Christ's body was literally in the Sacrament; for otherwise the argument would have been much clearer and shorter; Christ has a true body, because we believe that the Sacrament is truly his body; than to go and prove it so far about, as to say a phantasm has no figure: but the Sacrament is the figure of Christ's body, therefore it is no phantasm.

Comm. in
Psal. iii.

St. Austin says, He commended and gave to his Disciples the figure of his body and blood. And when the Manicheans objected to him, that blood is called in the Old Testament the life or soul, contrary to what is said in the New; he answers, that blood was not the soul or life, but only the sign of it; and that the sign sometimes bears the name of that of which it is the sign: so says he, Lib. cont. Christ did not doubt to say, This is my body, when he was giving the sign of his body. Now that had been a very bad argument, if the bread was truly the body of Christ; it had proved that the sign must be one with the thing signified.

Adimant.

c. 12.

Defen.

Conc. Chalced. 1. 9.

The whole ancient liturgies, and all the Greek Fathers do so frequently use the words type, antitype, sign, and mystery, that this is not so much as denied; it is their constant style. Now it is apparent that a thing cannot be the type and symbol of itself. And though they had more frequent occasions to speak of the Eucharist, than either of baptism, or the chrism; yet as they called the water and the oil, types and mysteries, so they bestowed the same descriptions on the elements in the Eucharist; and as they have many strong expressions concerning the water and the oil, that cannot be literally understood; so upon the same grounds it will appear reasonable, to give the same exposition to some high expressions, that they fell into concerning this Sacrament. Facundus has some very full discourses to this purpose: he is proving that Christ may be called the adopted Son of God, as well as he is truly his Son; and that because he was baptized. The Sacrament of adoption, that is baptism, may be called baptism; as the