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ex quibus augetur et consistit carnis nostræ substantia: Quomodo carnem negant capacem esse donationis Dei qui est vita æterna, quæ sanguine et corpore Christi nutritur?” and, a little after, he affirms that we are "flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones; and that this is not understood of the spiritual man, but of the natural disposition or temper; quæ de calice, qui est sanguis ejus, nutritur, et de pane, qui est corpus ejus, augetur:" and again; "Eum calicem qui est creatura, suum sanguinem qui effusus est, ex quo auget nostrum sanguinem, et eum panem, &c. qui est creatura, suum corpus confirmavit, ex quo nostra auget corpora;" "It is made the eucharist of the bread, and the body of Christ out of that, of which the substance of our flesh consists and is increased; by the bread which he confirmed to be his body, he increases our bodies; by the blood which was poured out, he increases our blood;" that is the sense of Irenæus so often repeated. And to the same purpose is that of Origen: 'Eorì δὲ καὶ σύμβολον ἡμῖν τῆς πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν εὐχαριστίας ἄρτος εὐχαpioría KaλоúμEvoç. "The bread, which is called the euchaριστία καλούμενος. rist, is to us the symbol of thanksgiving or eucharist to God." So also Tertulliant: " Acceptum panem et distributum discipulis suis corpus suum fecit:" "He made the bread, which he took and distributed to his disciples, to be his body." But more plainly in his book de Coronâ Militis :' "Calicis aut panis nostri aliquid decuti in terram anxiè patimur;" "We cannot endure that any of the cup or any thing of the bread be thrown to the ground."-The eucharist he plainly calls bread;' and that he speaks of the eucharist is certain, and Bellarmine" quotes the words to the purpose of shewing, how reverently the eucharist was handled and regarded. The like is in St. Cyprian*: "Dominus corpus suum panem vocat, et sanguinem suum vinum appellat:" "Our Lord calls bread his body, and wine his blood." So John Maxentius, in the time of Pope Hormisda: "The bread which the whole church receives in memory of the passion, is the body of Christ." And St. Cyril, of Jerusalem, is earnest in this affair: "Since our Lord hath declared and said to us of bread, 'This is my body,' who shall dare to doubt it?"

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Lib. 8. adv. Celsum.

t Tertul. adv. Marcion. lib. 4. c. 40.

u Bellar. lib. 4. Euch. c. 14. sect. si rursus objicias. * Cyprian. ep. 76. Dial. 2. contr. Nestor.

y Catech. Mystag. 4.

which words I the rather note, because Cardinal Perron brings them, as if they made for his cause, which they most evidently destroy. For if, of bread, Christ made this affirmation, that it is his body, then it is both bread and Christ's body too, and that is it which we contend for. In the dialogues against the Marcionites, collected out of Maximus, Origen is brought in proving the reality of Christ's flesh and blood in his incarnation, by this argument:-If, as these men say, he be without flesh and blood, ή τίνος σώματος ή ποίου αἵματος εἰκόνας διδοὺς ἄρτόν τε καὶ ποτήριον ἐνετέλλετο, &c. "of what body and of what blood did he command the images or figures, giving the bread and cup to his disciples, that by these a remembrance of him should be made?" But Acacius, the successor of Eusebius in his bishopric, calls it' bread' and 'wine,' even in the very use and sanctification of us: "Panis vinumque ex hâc materiâ vescentes sanctificat," "The bread and wine sanctify them that are fed with this matter."" In typo sanguinis sui non obtulit aquam sed vinum," so St. Jerome ", " He offered wine not water in the type [representment or sacrament] of his blood." To the same purpose, but most plain, are the words of Theodoret": Ἔνγε τῶν μυστηρίων παραδόσει, σῶμα τὸν ἄρτον ἐκάλεσε καὶ αἷμα тò кρāμα, “In the exhibition of the mysteries he called bread τὸ κράμα, his body, and the mixture in the chalice he called blood."— So also St. Austin, 'serm. 9. de Diversis: "The eucharist is our daily bread; but we receive it so, that we are not only nourished by the belly, but also by the understanding.” And I cannot understand the meaning of plain Latin, if the same thing be not affirmed in the little mass-book, published by Paulus V. for the English priests: "Deus, qui humano generi utramque substantiam præsentium munerum alimento tribuis, quæsumus, ut eorum et corporibus nostris subsidium non desit et mentibus," "The present gifts were appointed for the nourishment both of soul and body."-Who please may see more in Macarius's twenty-seventh homily, and Ammonius in his 'Evangelical Harmony,' in the Bibliotheca Patrum: and this, though it be decried now-a-days in the Roman schools, yet was the doctrine of Scotus, of Durandusd, Ocham, Cameracen

z Acacius in Gen. ii. Græc. Caren. in Pentateuch.
• Dial. 1. ἄτρεπτα.
• Sent. 4. dist. 11. q. 3.
e Ibid. q. 6. et Centilog. Theol. con. lib. 4. q. 6.

a Lib. 2. adv. Jovin. d Ibid. q. 1.

sis', and Biels, and those men were for consubstantiation; that Christ's natural body was together with natural bread, which although I do not approve, yet the use that I now make of them, cannot be denied me; it was their doctrine, that after consecration bread still remains; after this let what can follow. But that I may leave the ground of this argument secure, I add this, that, in the primitive church, eating the eucharistical bread was esteemed the breaking the fast, which is not imaginable any man can admit, but he that believes bread to remain after consecration, and to be nutritive as before: but so it was, that, in the second age of the church, it was advised, that either they should end their station, or fast, at the communion, or defer the communion to the end of the station; as appears in Tertullian, de Oratione,' cap. 14.: which unanswerably proves, that then it was thought to be bread and nutritive, even then when it was eucharistical: and h Picus Mirandula affirms, that if a Jew or a Christian should eat the sacrament for refection, it breaks his fast. The same also is the doctrine of all those churches who use the liturgies of St. James, St. Mark, and St. Chrysostom, who hold that receiving the holy communion breaks the fast, as appears in the disputation of Cardinal Humbert with Nicetas about six hundred years ago. The sum of all is this; If of bread Christ said, This is my body,' because it cannot be true in a proper natural sense, it implying a contradiction that it should be properly bread, and properly Christ's body; it must follow, that it is Christ's body in a figurative improper sense. if the bread does not remain bread, but be changed by blessing into our Lord's body; this also is impossible to be in any sense true, but by affirming the change to be only in use, virtue, and condition, with which change the natural being of bread may remain. For he that supposes that by the blessing, the bread ceases so to be, that nothing of it remains, must also necessarily suppose, that the bread being no more, it neither can be the body of Christ, nor any thing else. For it is impossible that what is taken absolutely from all being, should yet abide under a certain difference of being, and that that thing which is not at all, should yet be after a certain manner. Since therefore (as I have proved) the bread remains, and of bread it was affirmed This is my body,' it h Apol. 4. 6.

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Ibid. q. 6. ar. 1.

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Canon. Missæ, leet. 40. H.

But

follows inevitably, that it is figuratively, not properly and naturally spoken of bread, that it is the flesh or body of our Lord.

SECTION VI.

Est Corpus meum.

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1. THE next words to be considered are, Est corpus,' This is my body;' and here begins the first tropical expression; 'est,' that is, significat' or 'repræsentat, et exhibet corpus meum,' say some. This is my body,' it is to all real effects the same to your particulars, which my body is to all the church: it signifies, the breaking of my body, the effusion of my blood for you, and applies my passion to you, and conveys to you all the benefits; as this nourishes your bodies, so my body nourishes your souls to life eternal, and consigns your bodies to immortality. Others make the

trope in corpus;' so that est' shall signify properly, but 'corpus' is taken in a spiritual sense, sacramental and mysterious; not a natural and presential; whether the figure be in' est' or in corpus,' is but a question of rhetoric, and of no effect. That the proposition is tropical and figurative, is the thing, and that Christ's natural body is now in heaven definitively, and no where else; and that he is in the sacrament as he can be in a sacrament, in the hearts of faithful receivers, as he hath promised to be there; that is, in the sacrament mystically, operatively, as in a moral and divine instrument, in the hearts of receivers by faith and blessing; this is the truth and the faith of which we are to give a rea-> son and account to them that disagree. But this, which is to all the purpose, which any one pretends can be in the sumption of Christ's body naturally, yet will not please the Romanists, unless' est,'' is,' signify properly without trope or metonymy, and corpus' be corpus naturale.' Here then I join issue; it is not Christ's body properly, or naturally : for though it signifies a real effect, yet it signifies the body figuratively, or the effects and real benefits.

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2. Now concerning this, there are very many inducements to infer the figurative or tropical interpretation. 1. In the language which our blessed Lord spake, there is no word that can express significat,' but they use the word 'is;' the

VOL. IX.

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21

Hebrews and the Syrians always join the names of the signs with the things signified: and since the very essence of a sign is to signify, it is not an improper elegancy, in those languages, to use 'est' for 'significat.' 2. It is usual in the Old Testament, as may appear, to understand 'est,' when the meaning is for the present, and not to express it: but when it signifies the future, then to express it; "the seven fat cows, seven years; the seven withered ears shall be seven years of famine." 3. The Greek interpreters of the Bible supply the word 'est,' in the present tense, which is omitted in the Hebrew, as in the places above quoted: but although their language can very well express signifies,' yet they follow the Hebrew idiom. 4. In the New Testament the same manner of speaking is retained to declare, that the nature and being of signs, is to signify they have no other 'esse' but 'significare,' and therefore they use' est' for 'significat.'-"The seed is the word: the field is the world: the reapers are the angels: the harvest is the end of the world: the rock is Christ; I am the door: I am the vine: my Father is the husbandman: I am the way, the truth, and the life: Sarah and Agar are the two Testaments: the stars are the angels of the churches: the candlesticks are the churches:" and many more of this kind; we have therefore great and fair and frequent precedents for expounding this 'est' by 'significat;' for it is the style of both the Testaments, to speak in signs and representments, where one disparate speaks of another, as it does here: the body of Christ, of the bread, which is the sacrament; especially since the very institution of it is representative, significative, and commemorative: for so said our blessed Saviour, "Do this in memorial of mek;" and "This doing, ye shew forth the Lord's death till he come," saith St. Paul.

3. Secondly: The second credibility that our blessed Saviour's words are to be understood figuratively, is because it is a sacrament': for mysterious and tropical expressions are very frequently, almost regularly and universally, used in Scripture, in sacraments, and sacramentals. And therefore, i Gen. xli. 26, 27. xl. 12. 18. xvii. 10. Exod. xii. 11.

k Nemo recondatur nisi quod in præsentiâ non est positum: St. August. in Psal. xxxvii.

1 Hæc enim Sacramenta sunt, in quibus non quid sint, sed quid ostendant, semper attenditur, quoniam signa sunt rerum aliud existentia, aliud significantia. August. lib. 3. contr. Max. c. 22. Sacramentum dicitur sacrum signum, sive sacrum secretum. Bern. Serm. de Cœn. Dom.

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