fcibrarp of Che trheoio0ical ^eminarp PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY Dr. Hugh T. Kerr gv i&7 /tf£'? '1H ( I JAOITSYM the JAN 28 1964 MYSTICAL PRESENCE. A VINDICATION OF THE REFORMED OR CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE HOLY EUCHARIST. BY THE y REV. JOHN W. NEVIN, D. D. LATE PEOF. OF THEOL. IN THE SEMINARY OF THE REF. CHURCH. PHILADELPHIA: S. R. FISHER & CO. 1867. PREFACE. The following work has grown directly out of some contro- versy which has had place, during the past year, in the German Reformed Church, on the subject to which it relates. This stands related to it, however, only as an external occasion, and has not been permitted to come into view, in any way, in the work itself. It is not felt that any apology is needed for the publication. — This is found in the importance of its subject, which must be left of course to speak for itself. As the Eucharist forms the very heart of the whole Christian worship, so it is clear that the entire question of the Church, which all are compelled to acknowledge, the great life-problem of the age, centres ultimately in the sacramental question as its inmost heart and core. Our view of the Lord's Supper must ever condition and rule in the end our view of Christ's person and the concep- tion we form of the Church. It must influence at the same time, very materially, our whole system of theology, as well as all our ideas of ecclesiastical history. Is it true that the modern Protestant Church in this country has, in large part at least, fallen away from the sacramental doctrine of the sixteenth century ? All must at least allow, that there is some room for asking the question. If so, it is equally plain that it is a question which is entitled to a serious answer. For in the na- ture of the case, such a falling away, if it exist at all, must be connected with a still more general removal from the original plat- form of the Church. The eucharistic doctrine of the sixteenth PREFACE. century was interwoven with the whole church system of the time ; to give it up, then, must involve in the end a renunciation in principle, if not in profession, of this system itself in its radi- cal, distinctive constitution. If it can be shown that no material change has taken place, it is due to an interest of such high con- sequence that this should be satisfactorily done. Or if the change should be allowed, and still vindicated as a legitimate advance on the original Protestant faith, let this ground be openly and con- sciously taken. Let us know, at least, where we are and what we actually do believe, in the case of this central question, as compared with the theological stand-point of our Catechisms and Confessions of Faith. The relations of this inquiry to the question concerning the true idea of the Church, will easily be felt by every well-informed and reflecting mind. If the fact of the incarnation be indeed the principle and source of a new supernatural order of life for hu- manity itself, the Church, of course, is no abstraction. It must be a true, living, divine-human constitution in the world ; strictly organic in its nature — not a device or contrivance ingeniously fit- ted to serve certain purposes beyond itself — but the necessary, essential form of Christianity, in whose presence only it is possi- ble to conceive intelligently of piety in its individual manifesta- tions. The life of the single Christian can be real and healthful only as it is born from the general life of the Church, and car- ried by it onward to the end. We are Christians singly, by par- taking (having part) in the general life-revelation, which is already at hand organically in the Church, the living and life-giving body of Jesus Christ. As thus real and organic, moreover, Christianity must be historical. No higher wrong can be done to it than to call in question its true historical character ; for this is, in fact, to turn it into a phantasm, and to overthrow the solid fact-basis on which its foundations eternally rest. It must be historical, too, under the form of the Church; for the realness of Christianity demands indispensably the presence of the general life of Christ, flowing with unbroken continuity from the beginning as the me- dium of all particular union with him from age to age. Then, again, the historical Church must be visible, or in other words, PREFACE. not merely ideal, but actual. The actual may indeed fall short immeasurably of the idea it represents ; the visible Church may be imperfect, corrupt, false to its own conception and calling; but still an actual, continuously visible Church there must always be in the world, if Christianity is to have either truth or reality in the form of a new creation. A purely invisible Church has been well denominated a contradictio in adjecto $ since the very idea of a Church implies the manifestation of the religious life, as some- thing social and common. The whole conception that the externalization of the Christian life is something accidental only to the constitution of this life it- self — a sort of mechanical machinery, to help it forward in an out- ward way — is exceedingly derogatory to the Church, and injurious in its bearings on religion. An outward Church is the necessary form of the new creation in Christ Jesus, in its very nature ; and must continue to be so, not only through all time, but through all eternity likewise. Outward social worship, which implies, of course, forms for the purpose, is to be regarded as something es- sential to piety itself. A religion without externals, must ever be fantastic and false. The simple utterance of religious feeling, by which the spirit takes outward form, is needed, not for something beyond itself, but for the perfection of the feeling itself. Forms, in this sense, not as sundered from inward life, of course, but as embracing it, enter as a constituent element into the very life of Christianity. As a real, human, historical constitution in the world, the outward and inward in the Church can never be di- vorced, without peril to all that is most precious in the Christian faith. "We have no right to set the inward in opposition to the outward, the spiritual in opposition to the corporeal, in religion. The incarnation of the Son of God, as it is the principle, forms also the true measure and test, of all sound Christianity, in this view. To be real, the human, as such, and of course the divine also in human form, must ever externalize its inward life. All thought, all feeling, every spiritual state, must take body, (in the way of word, or outward form of some sort,) in order to come at all to any true perfection in itself. This is the proper, deep sense of all liturgical services in religion. The necessity here 1* 6 PREFACE. affirmed is universal. The more intensely spiritual any slate may be, the more irresistibly urgent will ever be found its ten- dency to clothe itself, and make itself complete, in a suitable ex- ternal form. Away with the imagination, then, that externals in Christianity, (including the conception of the visible Church it- self,) are something accidental only to its true constitution, a cun- ningly framed device merely for advancing some interest foreign from themselves. To think of the Church, and of Christian wor- ship, as means simply to something else, is to dishonour religion itself in the most serious manner. If the present work may serve to fix attention on the momen- tous point with which it is concerned, and thus contribute indi- rectly even to a clearer understanding of Protestant truth, I shall feel that it has not been written in vain. May God accept it, and crown it with his blessing. J. W. N. Mercersburg, April, 1846. CONTENTS. PRELIMINARY ESSAY.— Translation from Ullman. ON THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. Object and Nature of the Inquiry, . .... 13 Historical Forms of Christianity. — Parallel in the general progress of Modern Reflection on its nature, . . . . .15 Conception of Christianity as Doctrine, .... 19 Conception of Christianity as Moral Laic, . . . .23 Schleiermacher's view of it as the Religion of Redemption, . . 24 True Distinction. — Christ's Person. — Doctrine of the Divine and Hu- man in the form of Life, . . . . . .27 Kegel and the Modern Speculation, ..... 39 Actual constitution of Christianity, as the union of God and Humanity through Christ, . . . . . . . .33 Contrast with Heathenism and Judaism, .... 34 Christianity the Absolute Religion, in which all others culminate. The Religion of Humanity, ....... 37 True centre of the Christian system, from which all its parts gain their right portion and light, ...... 39 Recapitulation. — Mysticism and Reformation, . . . .43 CHAPTER I. REFORMED OR CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. Introductory R-emarks. — Importance of the Eucharistic Question. — Six- teenth Century. — Modern Protestantism. — Claims of the subject, Sect. I. — Statement of the Doctrine. 51 Authority of Calvin in the Reformed Church, ... 54 Relation of the doctrine to the view taken of Christ's union generally with his people, . . . . . . . .54 Distinctions on the side towards Rationalism ; the participation of the believer in Christ, not common relationship only to Adam; not a merely moral union; not a union in law simply; not communion with his divine nature alone or with the Holy Ghost as his representa- tive ; but a real communication with his substantial, personal, media- torial life, ........ 55 8 CONTENTS. The doctrine bounded on the opposite side. — Not transubslantiation ; nor consubstantiation. — Real conjunction with Christ, through faith, by the Spirit, ........ 58 Grace of the Sacrament objective; including the actual life of Christ, particularly in its human character, . . . . . 61 Sect. II. — Historical Evidence. Reformed doctrine gradually established. — Relation of Zuingli to the Church. — His view of the Sacrament, . . . . .63 Early Helvetic Church. — Confession of Basel. — First Helvetic Confes- sion, ......... 65 Calvin — Extracts from his Institutes. — Catechism of Geneva, . . 67 Tract De verapart ic ipatione, against Hesshuss, ... 71 Common misrepresentation of Calvin's view. — His own statement of it clear and full. — Testimony of Schleiermacher, . . .73 Farel and Beza. — Colloquy of Worms, .... 75 Beza and Peter Martyr. — Conference at Poissy, . . . .76 Gallic Confession. — Old Scotch Confession. — Belgic Confession. — Se- cond Helvetic Confession, ...... 79 Heidelberg Catechism. — Circumstances of its formation. — Extracts. — Commentary on their sense, . . . . . .S3 Ursinus, the author of the Catechism. — His sacramental doctrine as exhibited by himself, ...... 90 Hospinian. — General testimony, . . . . . .94 The Synod of Dort, ....;.. 95 Westminster Confession. — Note on Church of England, . . 96 Testimony of Hooker, ....... 98 Extracts from Owen, the oracle of the Independents, . . . 101 CHAPTER II. MODERN PURITAN THEORY. Sect. I. — Historical Exhibition. Falling away from the creed of the Reformation. — Most striking in the American Lutheran Church. — Note on the so called Lutheran Obser- ver, . ... . . . . . .105 Same evil in the Reformed Church. — Baptists — Prevalence of the bap- tistic principle. — Sect system, ...... 107 Extracts from Ridgely's Body of Divinity, .... 109 President Edwards. — Hopkins. — Bellamy, . . . .110 Extracts from Dwight's Theology, . . . . .112 Extracts from Dick's Theology, . . . . . .113 Dr. Green. — Barnes' Commentary, . . . . .115 Sect. II. — Systems Contrasted. Difference real and seriously important, . . . . .117 First point. — The Eucharist as related to other services, . . 118 Second point. — Mysteriousness of the ordinance, . . .118 Third point. — Idea of its objective value or force, . . . 120 Fourth point. — Communion vviih Christ's person, . . . 122 Fifth point. — Participation in his body and blood, . . . 124 Claims of the question to earnest attention, .... 126 CONTENTS. Sect. Ill Faith of the Early Church. First general presumption here against the Modern Puritan view, as a departure from the faith of the orthodox Church in all ages, . 127 Under all confusion and variation of views as to the mode, the idea of the fact has ever been the same ; namely, that the Eucharist involves a real communion with Christ's life, ..... 128 Only such a faith could have been carried, by abuse, into the gros3 error of transubstantiation, ...... 129 The idea of an offering for sin. — Atonement viewed as real, only as ap- prehended in Christ's person, . . . . . .130 Testimony of Ignatius. — Justin Martyn, .... 131 Irenaeus. — The view of these fathers most general, . . .132 Tertullian and Cyprian, ....... 133 Alexandrian fathers. — Clement. — Origen, . . . . .134 Cyril of Jerusalem. — Chrysostom, ..... 135 Ambrose. — Augustine, . . . . . . .135 In rejecting transubstantiation, the Reformers still acknowledged the authority of the early church, and appealed to the fathers, . 138 Sect. IV. — Rationalism and the Sects. Second general presumption against the Modern Puritan view affinity with the rationalistic tendency, theoretic and practical Socinianism of the Sixteenth Century, . Arminianism in the Seventeenth Century, Neological Rationalism in the Eighteenth Century, General want of faith in this period, Note on Storr and Reinhard, Extracts from Mursinna, Doederlein, Knapp, Henke. — Wegscheider. — Bretschneider, Rationalistic Supranaturalism. — Its end, . Sect principle. — Its affinity with Rationalism, . Hyper-spiritualism ends always in the flesh, Anabaptists. — Quakers, Baptistic principle. — Sure index of schism and heresy Association of the Modern Puritan view with this false tendency ground for jealousy, .... 139 . 139 . 140 . 141 142 . 143 144 . 145 146 . 147 148 . 149 149 , a just 151 CHAPTER III. SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. Need of some formal modification, in the statement of the doctrine, 155 Sect. I. — Preliminary Positions. The Calvinistic theory not sufficiently clear, in the conception of life as an organic law, ....... 156 Fails to insist properly on the absolute unity which belongs to the idea of person, ........ 157 Comes to no clear representation of the distinction, between life as something individual and life as generic, .... 160 These three points of great account, as it regards the apprehension of the doctrine, ........ 161 10 CONTENTS. Sect. II. — Theses on the Mystical Union. The race hopelessly lost in Adam, ..... 164 This ruin includes soul and lody, ...... 164 Human nature recovered in Jesus Christ, .... 165 The value of Christ's whole life and death, based on the generic char- acter of his humanity, ....... 166 The Christian Salvation a new Life, . . . . .166 This life in all respects Human, ...... 167 The extension of it in the Church, . . . . .167 Our union with Christ consists in oneness of life, .... 168 More intimate and deep than our union with the first Adam, . 168 Includes necessarily a participation in the entire Humanity of Christ, . 169 Embraces also the whole person of the believer, . . . 170 All the result of a single undivided process, .... 171 No material contact in the case, . . . . .172 No ubiquity of Christ's body ; no loss of his proper separate personality, 173 This union goes beyond every other that is known in the world, . . 174 Wrought only by the power of the Holy Ghost, . . . 175 Only through the instrumentality of faith, .... 176 The new life is a process, which will become complete finally in the resurrection, . . . . . . . .176 Sect. III. — Theses on the Lord's Supper. Nature of a Sacrament, . . . . . . .178 The Lord's Supper a participation in the body and blood of Christ, and so of all his benefits, ....... 179 The Lord's Supper has reference directly to the idea of atonement, as wrought out by Christ's death, . . . . . .179 As imparting however a real interest in this, it involves a real commu- nication with the life of Christ, . . . . .180 This extends to his whole person, ...... ]8l The eucharist as such the channel of this grace, . . . ]82 The communication always through the soul, in a central way, . . 182 Holds only in the case of believers, ..... 183 Excludes transubstantiation and consubstantiation, . . .184 Sect. IV. — False Theories Exposed. Every lower view of the Mystical Union more or less rationalistic and self-destructive, . . . . . . .186 The Socinian hypothesis, ....... 186 The Pelagian hypothesis, . . . . . .187 The theory of a divine " moral suasion," .... 188 Abstract legal imputation, ...... 1S9 The Spirit as a surrogate for Christ's presence ; in the way of influence only; or in the way of new creation, . . . . .193 The idea of divided personality, ..... 19S CHAPTER IV. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. Sect. I. — The Incarnation. The Incarnation the key to all God's works and ways.— .Nature and Man, 199 CONTENTS. 11 Relation of Christ to Humanity, History looks always to the same centre, . Paganism, negatively prophetical of Christ, Judaism a positive preparation for his comin 200 201 202 203 Sect. II. — The New Creation. Relation of Christianity to previous life, .... 205 Historical, and yet supernatural and new, .... 206 A divine creation in the world, ..... 207 Judaism the shadow only of what now became real in Christ, . . 207 Christianity the absolute truth, ..... 207 Christ's person the great miracle by which his mission authenticates itself, ......... 208 Sect. HI. — The Second Adam. Christ a real man, His humanity generic, Parallel between Christ and Adam. 210 210 211 Sect. IV. — Christianity a Life. Distinctive nature of Christianity, . The Ebionetic stand point, .... Testimony of the Evangelist John, Declarations of the Saviour himself, Christ the Resurrection and the Life, Testimony of the Apostle Paul, The morality of the gospel based always on this view. 213 213 214 215 216 218 220 Sect. V.—The Mystical Union. Christ the principle and ground of the entire Christian life The Spirit under the New Testament, Twofold aspect of Christ's person, as exhibited in the flesh and in the Spirit, . . His life in the Spirit flows over into the persons of his people, His presence by the Spirit involves his personal presence His existence in the Spirit includes his full humanity divinity, ..... The spiritual or pneumatic body. Proper conception of the resurrection, Nature of the mystical union, . Allegory of the vine and its branches, Allegory of the body and its members, Illustration from the idea of marriage, Striking phraseology of the New Testament. Christians complete in Christ, Olshausen on Rom. viii. 30, well bis 221 222 228 224 225 226 226 22S 229 229 230 231 233 233 234 Sect. VI.— John vi. 56—58. Importance of the passage, Christ the bread of life, Advance upon the general thought, Correspondence with the idea of the euchanst, 237 238 238 239 12 CONTENTS. Reference directly to the atonement ; but to this as comprehended in Christ's life, . 239 The life only, gives reality and force to the atonement, . . 240 All by the Spirit, not in the flesh, . . . . . .241 Bearing on the eucharistic question, ..... 242 Sect. VII. — The Lord's Supper. True method of using the Scriptures, ..... 244 Christianity a real supernatural constitution in the world. — This must be felt to judge properly of the Sacraments, . . . 246 Relation of the Passover to the Lord's Supper, .... 249 The Institution of the Lord's Supper, .... 251 The Reality of all that was Shadow, in the Jewish Sacrament, . . 252 Communion in the covenant only by communion in the sacrifice, . 253 Passage, 1 Cor. x. 16, . . ■ . • .254 Passage, Eph. v. 30-32, 254 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. In the January number of the Theologische Studien unci Kritiken, for 1845, there is an admirable article, from the pen of Dr. C. Ullmann,* Professor in Heidelberg, on " The Dis- tinctive Character of Christianity," well worthy of being carefully studied by all who take an interest in the present state of the Church. It has occurred to me, that I cannot do better in the way of introducing the present work, than to furnish here a full abstract, or a free compressed translation rather of its valu- able contents. 1. Christianity, in its substantial contents, has been always the same. The form of its apprehension however, on the part of the Church, has varied with the onward progress of its history. At the start, it was the fresh life of childhood, without reflection. The first germs of a Christian theology, its great leading doctrines separately taken, were gradually produced during the first centu- ries, in the way of apologetic controversy with surrounding errors. From the fourth century, the entire intellectual strength of the Church appears devoted to the object of settling and establishing particular doctrines ; still however only in their sepa- rate form. The Scholastic period of the middle ages, took up * The distinguished author of the work Reformatoren vor der Reformation ; for full historical knowledge, comprehensive views, clear, calm reflection, and masterly power of representation, one of the finest living writers cer- tainly of Germany. The article here noticed has been published also as a separate pamphlet, and seems to have attracted more than usual attention. A new work, I may add, is recently announced from the same writer under the interesting title, The Church of the Future, in which no doubt the same views are more fully exhibited. 2 14 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. what was thus fixed in the way of faith, and laboured to reduce all to a general system. Throughout this whole progress of theological development, however, the distinctive constitution of Christianity itself, as compared with other forms of religion, can hardly be said to have come into view. Even the Reformers of the sixteenth century, thoroughly imbued as they were with its living spirit, were too fully occupied with the work of setting it free from church oppression, to bestow much reflection on this point. The question has been reserved for the Modem Period; which has felt itself urged moreover, by its philosophical and historical cultivation in particular, to direct towards it a large measure of its attention. During the last fifty years, numerous attempts have been made to determine the characteristic nature and genius of Christianity ; of very different tendency of course, reflecting always the theological life under whose influence they were formed. Thus Storr made the distinction to consist mainly in the supernatural, the miraculous, the positive, as comprehended in the Christian religion ; Herder, in its character of universal humanity ; Chateaubriand, in its sublime and captivating beauty. But we owe it to the christological struggles of our own time in particular, that the specific nature of Christianity, and its inmost constitution, have begun to come more freely into the light, than ever before. The theological position of the present time maybe considered especially favourable, for a proper appreciation of the truth in the case of the important inquiry here brought into view. It has been too common heretofore, to proceed on some particular conception of Christianity, as Primitive, Catholic, Protestant, &c. ; by which, as a matter of necessity, a single historical sta- dium, arbitrarily bounded according to the pleasure of the inquirer, has been made to stand for the idea of the whole ; thus causing certain phases of the system, its divinity for instance, or its humanity, its doctrinal, or its ethical, or it may be its aesthetic character only, to represent the general life of which each could be said to form but a single side. Now however, as the result of our historical cultivation itself, we stand on higher ground. We are able to take a comprehensive survey of Christianity as PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 15 an organic whole, under all the aspects in which it is presented to our view, in its origin, and throughout the entire stream of its development, down to the present time. In this way, it is made much more easy than before, to reach the true life centre of the whole, and to recognize the beating heart from which all has been formed, and that still continues to animate all perpetu- ally in its several parts. When we speak of the distinctive character of Christianity, it implies the idea of something general as well as particular in its constitution. As general it is religion; as particular the Christian religion. But these two conceptions, in this case, are bound inseparably together. We cannot so abstract from Chris- tianity its particular specific character, as to leave the general idea of religion behind. It must exist under the specific form which belongs to it, or it is nothing, a mere abstraction, destitute of all reality. Christianity is not religion in the first place, with something added to it to make it Christianity ; but as religion itself, it is at the same time in its inmost ground, this particular form of religion, exclusively complete in its own nature, and dif- ferent in all its parts, by the spirit which pervades the whole, from every other religion. As thus individual and general at once, it claims to be the absolute truth itself; not a religion simply, as one among many, but the one, universal, all perfect religion of humanity in its widest sense. Essential and specific here flow together, and cannot be kept asunder. 2. It belongs to the modern period, we have said, that it has come to exercise a conscious reflection on the nature of Christianity. This reflection has its history, its regular development from one stage still forward to another. This will be found to correspond strikingly, only with vast difference as to time, with the historical conformations under which the Christian life itself has appeared, from period to period, since its first revelation in the world. The spirit of Christianity has been carried first in a real way, by an evolution of many centuries, through the same phases, that have 16 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. since been repeated, with more rapid succcession, in the modern effort to determine theoretically in what this spirit consists. It started, as before remarked, in the character of a new life. So it meets us, with full harmony and perfection, in the person of its Founder. So it is exhibited to us more inadequately in the apostles and the apostolical churches. The mere existence of this life however was not enough. It was necessary that the Church should come to a full and free apprehension of what it comprehended. This called for a separation of its elements, involving necessarily more or less confusion and conflict and one- sided action, as the only process by which it was possible, in the present state of the world, to advance from the simplicity of childhood to the consciousness of spiritual manhood. Hence the long course of development, revealed to us in Church History. In this process, the different constituent elements or forces in- cluded in Christianity could not, in the nature of the case, come in promiscuously at one time for such share of attention as they were entitled to claim. Some one interest must still take the lead of another, determined by the general character of the time ; and thus for every grand period in history we have a particular side of Christianity standing forth prominently to view as its domi- nant characteristic form ; till in the end, as the result of the whole process, all such single and separate manifestations may come to be united again in the full symmetrical perfection of that one glorious life to which they severally belong. The process now mentioned began naturally with Doctrine, which it was attempted to settle first in a general way, and then in single articles. The dogma producing period extends in par- ticular, from the fourth century on into the sixth. For this service the Grecian mind, which was then predominant in the Church, might be said to have a special vocation. With the fall of the old world, and the rise of a new life among the western nations, Christianity was required to exercise its power in a dif- ferent way. It must form the manners, and regulate the life of the rude population with which it was called to deal. The main interest now accordingly was its moral authority. It became PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 17 in the hands particularly of the Roman Church, a system of Law, a pedagogic institute for the government of the nations. In this character however, it only made room for itself to appear, with new life, as the Gospel; a change effected chiefly through the German spirit, which included in its very constitution an evangelical or free tendency, and was gradually prepared to assert its ecclesiastical independence in this way. With the Reforma- tion, the mind of the Church, no longer in its minority, forced its way back to the proper fountain-head of Christianity, and laid hold of it in the form of Redemption ; the justification of the sinner before God, and the principle of freedom for the con- sciousness of the justified subject himself in all his relations. Along with these three leading conceptions of Christianity, as doctrine, as a system of law, and as a source of redemption and spiritual freedom, we find still a fourth unfolding itself from an early period, with steadily increasing strength. It is the view, which makes religion to consist in the union of man with God, and of course finds in this the distinctive character of Christianity. It is regarded as the absolutely perfect religion, because it unites the divine and human fully as one life. This view may be traced to a remote antiquity, but comes forward more decidedly in the mysticism of the middle ages, and appears now most com- pletely revealed in the philosophical and theological speculation of the modern time. From the first however, it has exhibited itself under two divergent tendencies, one pantheistic, and the other recognizing a personal God. Of these, the first has be- come widely prevalent at the present day ; but the last must be regarded of course as the only legitimate form of thinking in the case, and may be expected in the end universally to prevail. Such are the ground types, by which the conception of Chris- tianity has been differently moulded under different circumstances. They are characteristically represented by as many several forms of Church life. The interest of doctrine finds its proper expres- sion in the Greek Church, self-styled significantly the Orthodox, the Church of Christian Antiquity. As a disciplinary institute, the Christian system has its fit character in the Roman Church, with its claim of universal authority, challenging for itself the 2* 18 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. title Catholic, the Church of the Middle Ages. To the idea of redemption and freedom answers the Church which has sprung up among the nations of German extraction, rightly denominated Evangelical, the Church of the Reformation. The Church finally in which all these stages of development are to be carried forward together to their highest truth, under a form of Christi- anity that shall actualize the conception of a full life union with God, and to which it may be trusted the ecclesiastical agitations of our own time form the transition, may be characterized as the Church of the Future, whose attributes shall be spirituality, catholicity, and freedom, joined together in the most perfect com- bination. Correspondent now we say with this historical progress through which the apprehension of Christianity has been carried in the actual life of the Church, appears the course of modern theology as concerned with the same subject in the way of reflection. It has been described successively as doctrine, as an ethical law, as a system of redemption, and ultimately, though not always in the same way, as a religion based on the idea of a real union with God. All this involves a regular advance undoubtedly from the outward to the more inward. It is most natural and obvious, to conceive of Christianity first as doctrine. Then in view of its practical ends, it seems to be essentially ethical, or as Schleire- macher terms it, Ideological, in its character. Again, its highest morality is found to spring from the fact of redemption and atonement, and thus to centre upon the person of Christ. Finally it is felt that the person of the Redeemer can have such force, only as the divine and human, God and man are in the first place reconciled and united in its very constitution, as the ground of all redemption for the race. As might be expected these different views of Christianity appear in close relation with the various forms in which the idea of religion itself has been held ; for as it is taken to be the absolute truth of all religion, it must of course participate in its essential character, whatever this may be supposed to be. Viewed as doctrine accordingly, it finds support in the conception of reli- gion as a mode of knowing God, its prevailing definition, especi- PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 19 ally among the orthodox, in the period preceding Kant. Its next character, that of law, corresponds with the theory by which, in conformity with the philosophy of Kant, all religion was resolved into a mere postulate of morality. In its evangelical form, as the power of a divine redemption, it rests on the idea of religion as a state of feeling or immediate consciousness. But the relation of man to God in religion does not spring either from his under- standing, or will, or feeling, separately considered. It includes all at once in the totality of his personal life. On this view therefore is based lastly that apprehension of Christianity which makes it to be the union of God with humanity, and under this form only the source of all light and holiness and salvation. The first three views which have been described have seve- rally their measure of truth ; but the full truth requires their comprehension, in a living way, under the last. Hence also this last, to be genuine and right, must incorporate in itself the other less perfect conceptions. Christianity can be properly regarded as the union of God and humanity, only where due account is made at the same time of its doctrinal, ethical, and soteriological character, and all is made to rest on its original, inalienable nature, according to which it is no matter of thought or logic merely in any form, but action, history, and life. No pantheistic view of course can be admitted, in the case. Chris- tianity is a revelation of the living God, by which the divine and human are historically united in the person of Christ, and which continues to bring the race subsequently into "union with God only by redeeming it at the same time from the power of sin. The proper expression to denote the fact is therefore, not '.* the unity of the divine and human," which is too general, and liable to be taken in a pantheistic sense ; but what is far more definite and concrete, " the union of God and man." The modern theology, in its course of reflection upon the nature of Christianity, resolved it first, we have said, into the idea of doctrine. This was done in two ways. Either all was taken in the 20 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. form of a positive revelation, accredited as truth by God himself, and to be received on his authority alone ; or without any regard to its historical character, the Christian system was considered to be simply the first manifestation of a theory of rational reli- gion, which it was the business of theology to divest of its original temporary covering, that its proper everlasting verity might come fully into view. Thus we have Supernatiiralism and Natural- ism. With all their opposition to each other, they were agreed in making Christianity to be essentially doctrinal in its character. Here however an important difference had place. Along with other positive elements, Supernaturalism received of course also what is said in the Scriptures concerning the person of the Re- deemer, though as a dogma simply among other dogmas, rather than in any other light. Naturalism on the other hand, with its aversion for all that is concrete and historical in religion, could not retain the idea of any significance whatever in the person of Christ. It went so far as to utter the wish even, that his name might have been wholly concealed from the Christian world, so that it could have enjoyed the full benefit of the truth he taught, without being led into a superstitious misuse of the teacher himself ! That the true nature of Christianity was not to be understood in this way, is now admitted on all hands. Naturalism is called to mind only as a spiritual curiosity, belonging to other days. But the other course also, though more conservative so far as the contents of the Gospel were concerned, was no better as to form in relation to the* point now under consideration. It failed entirely to make known the distinctive character of Christianity. This consists not, under any view, exclusively or prevailingly in doc- trine.. The true idea of religion itself, as well as the whole history of the Christian revelation, contradicts such a supposition. Religion does indeed include knowledge as one of its elements ; but to conceive of it as an intellectual apprehension only, is to mistake its true life entirely. Its inmost nature is love and reve- rence, a pervading sense of dependence on God and communion with him, a full self-surrendry to the idea of his presence and will. If religion consisted in doctrine, it might be imparted fully, like logic or mathematics, in the way of definition and demon- PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 21 stralion. But this is impossible. Instruction is called for, it is true, in its service ; but the proper creative impulse of its life is not found in the conceptions thus imparted ; it must spring from the general life of religion itself, as something already at hand, acting on the religious susceptibility of the subject. So with the individual ; so with the race. Parents and teachers, prophets and founders of religion, accomplish their commission best in the way of living representation. Compared with this, mere instruc- tion is cold and dead. It is only life, in the sphere of religion, that can create and call forth life. The notion of doctrine falls immeasurably short of what we mean by religion, viewed in its living concrete character. To make the one synonymous with the other, is a sheer contradiction. Conceptions and thoughts with regard to divine things cannot even produce any true and sound piety ; much less may they be taken for such piety itself. So it is clear, that Christianity in particular appears among men under no such character. In one view it is indeed a doc- trine. Not however in the modern sense, as a system of abstract propositions and proofs ; in this form it might have founded, per- haps, a school, but never a Church, or world-religion. It is the proclamation primarily of something that has taken place, a testimony, or joyful message. Not in the w r ay of thought, but in the way of actual occurrence and transaction, as the compre- hension of a system of glorious religious facts, has Christianity extended and filled with new life the spiritual consciousness of the world. This is its proper original force ; the doctrine follows afterwards, only as the representation of what God has done. But still the doctrine itself, even in this form, has no power as such to generate life. This springs only from the presence of a higher life, already derived in the teacher himself from Christ. His teaching is but the experimental expression, we may say, of this life. Thus the apostles and evangelists, as heralds of the Christian salvation, preceded in the beginning the proper teachers of Christian doctrine ; and so in every age, the Church has always begun with testimony, and only afterwards proceeded to instruc- tion and science; while the true power of her doctrine, at the 22 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. same time, has ever resulted from the life which belongs origi- nally to her Founder, and continues itself from him in his people. True, the actual in the case of Christianity has its significance not merely as something that has taken place, but as the realiza- tion of the highest religious ideas. These ideas may be abstract- ed from the facts, and formed into a system, either popular or scientific. Hence for theologians in particular, who are most occupied with this work, Christianity has the semblance of being itself a sum of doctrinal propositions. Only however as the idea of apprehension or science, in the case, is confounded with that of the object they embrace. Christianity must indeed be formed into doctrine for the purposes of popular and scientific instruc- tion ; but in its own nature, it still remains life, living power, a revelation of the Spirit in the form of facts. Even if Christianity be regarded as doctrine mainly, we must still ask, in what the specific distinction of this doctrine consists ? But no such distinction, it is plain, can be found in any particular religious or moral proposition, such as Christianity may have in common with other religions. It consists in what Christ speaks of himself and his relation to God, as also of the new posture towards God into which he has brought the human family ; and again in the testimony of the Apostles concerning his person and work. This however carries us at once beyond the sphere of doctrine, to that which constitutes its ground and object, the creative force of the religious life itself as revealed under its highest character in Christ. That which is most essential in the mission of Christ, is his .^//"-exhibition. This runs through his whole life. It includes, of course, his testimony concerning himself, and the account of the impression which was made by him upon others. Words and doctrines consequently belong to the representation. But what is thus partial only and indepen- dent, must not be taken for the original whole, by which alone the distinctive character of Christianity is determined. This is not the Christian doctrine, but the general life-revelation from which it springs. Only as life, is Christianity the light of men ; as the Saviour himself clearly signifies, when he says, not that PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 23 his doctrine is the truth, but, / am the truth, which is immedi- ately referred again to this, that he is also the life. The next view places the distinctive character of Christianity mainly in its ethical force, its power as a Rule of life. This stands closely connected with Kant and Rationalism, as it pro- ceeded from his school. It went along with the conviction, that the human mind can attain to no sure knowledge of the superna- tural and divine in a theoretic way, but only as it may be necessary to assume it in obedience to the demands of our moral nature. What morality requires as a postulate for its own support, may be counted certainly true, though in other respects wholly un- known. The moral law became here the absolute measure of truth. Morality in man occupied the first and highest place. Religion was something secondary and subordinate, necessary only as required by the other for its own service. Christianity then was an ethical law ; starting in the form of positive divine precepts, but identical at last, in its true and proper substance, with the demands of the practical reason itself, by which accordingly it is to be tried and interpreted. Christ was the great lawgiver for humanity.; the Church a platform, for the grand contest of good and evil in the history of the race. Faith in God and the retri- butions of a future life, resolved itself into a firm persuasion that virtue must at last prevail. It was faith in the moral order of the world. We freely allow the great importance of this ethical concep- tion of Christianity. It surpasses the doctrinal in this, that it brings into view more fully its proper dynamic nature, its teleo- logical character, the relation of the whole to a supreme moral end. It turns attention also more towards the author of the reli- gion, as being himself, though indeed only in an idealistic way, the centre of the whole system. It served powerfully moreover, one may say to its credit, to hold the age to which it belonged on good terms with Christianity, by presenting towards it that side of the system, which alone it was prepared to appreciate aud approve. Still the view is by no means sufficient. It proceeds 24 PRELIMINARY ESSAY again on a false idea of religion, and misses what is truly specific in Christianity. Piety is more than a mere support to morality, means for an end beyond itself. Christianity is not simply legislative, but creative. Its chief elements are presented to us in the words, redemption, atonement, grace, and are overlooked by this theory altogether. Christianity is not, like the moral law, a shall or must, but a fulfilment and satisfaction, a yea and amen; not a requisition in God's name, but a divine gift that of itself, when planted in the heart, impels it without command- ment to the most free morality. Duty, which with Kant is all in all, becomes in the Christian sphere nothing; since love is every thing, and fulfils of itself the whole law. The categoric imperative is struck dumb before that great word : We love him, because he hath first loved us! Viewed either as doctrine or law, the universal difference of Christianity from other religions, whether Pagan or Jewish, is not suffered to appear. As a doctrinal system merely, though it might be more perfect in its kind, it would not differ specifically from the schools of the heathen world ; as a law, though with higher and more excellent requisitions, it would be strll spe- cifically of one class with Judaism and the religion of Moham- med ; an exalted, purified Judaism only, not a new order of reli- gion, with a principle altogether its own. In both cases we should be at a loss to explain, how it could become the ground of a complete regeneration of the human life, the source of a new order of world-history altogether ; how it could give birth to characters and forms of thinking, such as we meet with in Paul and John ; how in one word it could produce the Christian Church with all that it includes, not simply in the form of thought and precept, but in the way also of actual power and effect. 5. To reach the distinctive character of Christianity then in this view, as something new, original, and different from all other religions, not merely in quantity but in quality, and for the pur- pose of doing fuller justice also to those cardinal elements of the system that are comprehended in the term Gospel, Schleierma- PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 25 Cher, more historical than the Rationalists, sought to refer all ba»k to its last ground or living root, the person of Christ himself. In doing so, he was viewed not as a teacher or lawgiver primarily, but with far more depth and comprehension as a Redeemer ; and thus Christianity was made to be, in its ground character, the world historical Religion of Redemption. He did not deny that it was doctrinal, much less that it was ethical, in which view precisely he styled it teleological. But he felt that a ihorough and full distinction of Christianity from all other monotheistic religions made it neces- sary, to single out that which has constituted it a peculiar religion from the beginning, and which may be said to form the interior unity that holds it together in the whole course of its develop- ment. This he found in the idea of redemption, and especially in the manner of its realization in the person of Jesus of Naza- reth. This idea indeed is not wanting in other religions also, and in their way, by purifications, penances, and offerings, they endeavour to make it actual. But there is this essential differ- ence in the case of Christianity. Christ does not simply order and prescribe the process of redemption, but accomplishes the whole work in himself; so that it is not merely by him, but in him, that it is made to reach the world, under the most perfect and all sufficient form ; since he stood in full union with God and was free from all sin. Thus the person of its founder, in the case of this religion, becomes identified with its whole constitu- tion, as in no case besides. Moses was the medium simply, through which a particular institute was established, for himself as much as for others. Not so Christ. The religion which he brought into the world, was not merely given by him ; it was in him, and remains in him still, as its living fountain; he is him- self its grand constituent, as being the perfect, everlasting Re- deemer, and as such the One without a fellow, over against whom all others stand as subjects for redemption. That which constitutes Christianity, as distinguished from all other forms of religion, is the reference, according to Schleiermacher, which all that belongs to it is found to include, to the consciousness of redemption through the person of Jesus of Nazareth. A most important advance certainly, in the process of reflection 3 26 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. on this subject. Doctrine regards knowledge simply ; law regards only the will; but redemption reaches out from feeling asjts centre over the whole inner man. By this view accordingly, we are brought to a more full and deep conception of religion, than before. Christianity acquires a more concrete historical charac- ter. Its dynamic nature is placed in far clearer light, as not only revealing itself in the form of imperative authority, but as im- parting also freedom and spiritual power in the way of a new creation. All this goes far beyond the previous definitions, in determining the universal peculiarity of the Christian religion. The epoch formed by the theology of Schleiermacher has at least carried us irrevocably beyond the conception of Christi- anity, as being either merely doctrinal or merely ethical. Every one, who is not in a state of absolute theological stagnation, un- derstands now that the faith of Christ has respect not only to his doctrine but to his person; and that Christianity is a divine life, the principle of a new creation, which unfolds itself conti- nually with free inward necessity by its own force and according to its own law. Every one knows too, that this new creation proceeds from Christ, in the character of a Redeemer, and that no other religion before or since has ever exhibited any thing of the same sort. But still the last point required for a complete definition of the subject is not yet reached. The general de- fect of Schleiermacher's theology, meets us also in his concep- tion of the specific nature of Christianity. The principle of redemption does by all means give character to Christianity. But to this idea, which itself with Schleierma- cher is found deficient through the want of a proper appreciation of the nature of sin, another of at least equal importance is always join- ed, the idea of atonement. Redemption supposes atonement. No one can feel himself to be redeemed, who is not reconciled with God. This of itself implies that the idea of atonement is some- thing higher and more original than the idea of redemption, which ought not therefore to be overlooked in settling the in- quiry, what is Christianity ? Again, redemption is internal, the deliverance of its subject from the power of sin; atonement carries in itself, for the subject, an outward reference, establish- PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 27 ing a right relation between, the sinner and a holy God. The first is essentially a matter of feeling, a state thus or condition of the individual man ; the other looks beyond the individual to God, and includes in this way something objective, (forgiveness of sin, justification) into which must enter necessarily also some knowledge of the divine nature. Schleiermacher, in full con- formity with the prevailingly subjective character of his theo- logical views, and his conception of religion as a form of feeling, has here also confined himself exclusively to what is matter of inward experience, the Christian salvation as carried forward in the life of the subject. But it is an inadequate view of religion to place it in feeling, to the exclusion of knowledge and action. A full, sound piety embodies the understanding and will also as original elements in its constitution. So especially, in the case of Christianity. It is a revelation indeed only as it is a system of redemption ; but it is a system of redemption also, only as it reveals the character of God in a new and perfect light, making him known as a merciful and loving Father, the source of all grace and salvation through Jesus Christ. This goes beyond the mere state of the subject himself, and calls for a conception more suitable to the objective side of the case than that of re- demption. Such is the conception of atonement. And then once more ; both redemption and atonement, as accomplished by Christ, are a work. But all spiritual activity is based on some particular form of existence or being. So eminently, in the case of Christ. All that he did, took its character from what he was. As then the work of redemption rests on that of atone- ment, so do both together again rest on that of the proper being of Christ, as distinguished from all others. To this therefore, Christ's peculiar personality, which is of force apart from all that he does, but necessarily reveals itself also in this way, we are directed as to that which is last and highest. Here we must expect to find the true fountain of Christianity, and its most fundamental characteristic distinction at the same time. 6. What now is that in the personality of Christ, by which he 28 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. is constituted a perfect Saviour, in the way of atonement and redemption ? We reply generally, his own substantial nature, at once human and divine ; his life filled with all the attributes of God, and representing at the same time the highest concep- tion of nature and man ; complete and self-sufficient in its own fulness, and yet by this fulness itself the free principle of a new corresponding life-process, in the way of self-communication, for the human world. This life itself however has again its central heart, to which especially we must look for the peculiar being of Christ. Here the whole theology of the present time, in all its different tendencies, may be said to have but one voice. That which constitutes the special being of Christ, makes him to be what he is and gives him thus his highest significance for the world, is the absolute unity of the divine and human in his person. Deity and manhood in him come fully together and are made one. This is the last ground of Christianity. Here above all we are to look for its distinctive character. All theological tendencies, we have said, are agreed on this point, so far as the general proposition is concerned. But when it comes to the particular sense and application of it, we find again a wide difference, amounting in part to full opposition. The main contradiction lies between the pantheistic speculation, which resolves the idea in question into a general fact belonging to the phenomenology of spirit, and the proper Christian view, by which all is made to rest on the acknowledgment of a per- sonal God and a positive revelation, as something historically real and individual. This difference is complete. Under either view indeed, whether the union of the divine and human be taken in an idealistic or realistic sense, the idea, where it is received at all, must always be allowed to rule and characterize the entire conception of Christianity, as the last principle of its signifi- cance and power; for no higher idea can have place in the sphere of religion, and where this elevation is reached, either by God's becoming man or by man's coming to the consciousness of his own eternal divinity as the pantheists talk, all else must take its form accordingly, and the religion thus constituted will be essentially different from every other in which this ground PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 29 principle may be wanting. Still for the whole apprehension of Christianity, we may say, not only that much, but that all de- pends on the question, which of these views shall be adopted , whether this central fact shall be regarded as a general " unity of the divine and human" realizing itself in the consciousness of the race as such, or be conceived of as a concrete " union of God and man," that actualizes itself from a definite point and only under certain moral conditions. Hegel acknowledged Christianity as the absolute truth of reli- gion. He did so, because it has its essential nature in the incar- nation, exhibiting thus the unity of the divine and human. On this ground mainly, he undertook to reconcile Christianity with philosophy, and to show their full identity in their last results. For both this unity is the highest idea ; only, what Christianity holds in the concrete form of the individual, historical God-man, is raised by philosophy into the sphere of speculative thought as something general. It belongs to the nature of the absolute or divine spirit to actualize itself in humanity, and the human spirit accordingly, as it descends into the depths of its own being, recognizes itself to be divine. It is the nature of God to be hu- man, and to be divine is the nature of man. The consciousness of this we owe to Christianity. It made known to man his inborn divinity, put an end to the opposition between eternity and time, brought heaven down upon the earth, overthrew the dualistic antagonism of finite and infinite, and laid the foundation in this way for that Mbnismus des Gedankens, as they call it, which forms the great triumph of modern speculation. AVith this however the later Hegelians, of the so called left side, were by no means satisfied. The peace made between Christianity and philosophy by Hegel, appeared to them to be hollow. It was not allowed accordingly to stand. It was denied that Christianity includes such a unity of the finite and infinite as the truth requires. Either it was held to be in direct contradiction to the speculative principle of God's immanence in the world ; or else it was said, that the unity which it allowed 3* 30 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. between God and man, as being restricted to a single individual, had no force for the general mass of humanity and nature, in the case of which accordingly the dualistic contradiction remained still unsurmounted. With this last view it was admitted indeed, that Christianity owes its world-historical power to such union of the divine and human as it exhibits, notwithstanding the iso- lated form in which it appears ; the idea at least served to stimu- late the human spirit to a new life, and places this religion high above all that had been known before. Still however the union in the case of Christ himself was not to be taken as real or his- torical; it was counted as mythical only, an idea made to take a concrete form in his person by the mere imagination of the Church. And then as it was but a transient fact for the Chris- tian faith itself, which failed at the same time to acknowledge the universal oneness of God and humanity, Christianity, it was contended, still fell short of the truth. There was still no pro- per reconciliation, save for Christ only, between God and man, the infinite and the finite, heaven and earth ; the unity allowed was not apprehended as a present divine fact, but only as something past in the Saviour himself, or as something still future in the heavenly world. We find then three ways of looking at the subject in the same school. They agree in considering the absolute identification of God with the world, (pantheism and monism), to be the highest truth. But the difference between them is very material. The first makes Christianity and speculation to be essentially the same ; the second throws them absolutely asunder ; the third allows them to come together, but only in a single point, the isolated centre of Christianity, which the modern speculation has extended into a whole world of truth not acknowledged by Christianity itself. Taking the school as a whole, it has the merit of having grasped with decision the main point in Christianity ; it finds its grand distinction, its inmost nature, in the constitution of Christ's person, and places in full view thus its true specific character. But in doing so, it reduces this central point again to a mere caput mortuum, and sinks what in Christianity is the highest form of life, a divine act, most real and full of power, into an PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 31 incomplete stage simply of speculation. For what is here styled unity of the divine and human, is not the union of God and man as different, accomplished in a real and perfect way in Christ, and taking effect also through him in the race ; but an original and eternal oneness, in virtue of which divinity and humanity are held to be essentially the same, God only the truth of man, and man the reality of God ; in such sort that man at a certain point of development, must necessarily come to the conscious- ness of his own truth, that is of his divine nature or unity with God. This point was reached in Christianity, whether in the consciousness of Christ himself, or only by means of him in the mind of the Church, would seem to be considered indifferent. In either case, the form in which the truth at first came into view, was very incomplete ; since the unity which belongs pro- perly to the race in general, was supposed to have place only in a single instance. It remained for modern philosophy to burst the bonds of this conception, and push the speculative germ con- tained in it to its proper perfection. But this was in fact to rob the conception itself of all its significance, whether retained as a symbol still or cast aside as of no farther use. Thus the system did indeed fix its eye on the centre, the very heart of Christi- anity ; but it was only to aim its deadly arrow the more surely at this vital point. Looking at the several views of the school separately, no attention whatever is due to that which regards Christianity as a religion which places God abstractly beyond the world. Every one who is at all acquainted with it must know, that while it distinguishes the one from the other, it teaches at the same time the existence of God in the world and of the world in God. It does not merge the being of God in the world, but allows him to fill it notwithstanding with his actual presence and power. The thought is in some sense correct, that Christianity has put an end to the opposition of the infinite and the finite, the divine and human. It is true at the same time however, that it acknow- ledges an absolute union of divinity and humanity only in Christ, and sees a hopeless dualism every where else. The unity in this case is not indeed restricted to Christ as a solitary, transient 32 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. instance, in the way pretended by the objection ; it proceeds from him over into the spiritual organism of which he is the head, and becomes thus a permanent constitution for the race; heaven and salvation belong not exclusively to the next world, but have place also in the present life. Still Christianity is not for this reason monistic, in the Hegelian sense. It allows by all means a dual- ism ; a dualism that is not to be speculated or ignored simply out of the way, deeply seated as it is in the inmost consciousness of the whole human world ; the dualism of sin. The existence of sin finds its evidence for every man in his own conscience. By it moreover, he feels himself to be involved in the most terrible self-contradiction, and what is still worse, in direct opposition to a holy God. This dualism can be denied, only by denying either sin or God, or else both together. That is, he who does so must sacrifice his moral or religious consciousness, or with the destruction of both at once, subvert his whole spiritual nature. In any case he must at least discard Christianity entirely, which without the acknowledgment of this dualism has no meaning whatever. Speculation sets the dualism aside in the way of logic, joining opposites that are held to have been originally one ; but by such logical redemption no conscience is quieted, no duty turned into ability, no sinner born to a new life. Christianity makes full account of the opposition as it actually exists, shows holiness and sin, God and the world lying in wickedness, in sharp contradiction. But it overcomes all this in the way of historical fact, by bringing God and humanity to a true inward union, not in thought merely, but in an actual human life ; estab- lishing thus a real power of redemption, through which the race is made to participate in the same life, not by a single stroke of consciousness, but all the more surely by means of a severe moral process. Here accordingly the ethical and redemptional interests, of which Hegelian speculation makes so little account, are allowed to stand in their full force ; and Christianity altogether retains its true character as a theistic religion, in which God and the world though not sundered are clearly distinguished, a religion that acknowledges the absolute holiness of God, and leads to rilELI311NARY ESSAY. 33 union with him only in the way of deliverance from the power of sin. 8. That Christ himself possessed the consciousness of entire unity with God, and that others were made to feel the presence of a divine life in his person, admits of no doubt. In one form or another this idea lay at the ground of the whole Christian faith. It wrought such world movement and world change, as no pious fiction, but a real life power only, could ever have pro- duced. Equally clear is it, that Christ's will was Xo impart his spirit and life to his people, and thus to continue and extend his existence in them as the proper life of the world. Both thoughts are exhibited in the fourth Gospel particularly, under the most manifold representation, as the highest idea of Christianity. Christ, himself first glorified of the Father, will glorify himself again in his people ; they shall eat his flesh and blood, that is, take into them his life ; cast into the ground by death, like a grain of wheat, he shall rise again as a plentiful seed in the Church, and multiply and perpetuate himself in this way through all time. All concentrates however in this, that he will draw them, through himself, to the Father, and make them one with the Father : " that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also maybe one in us" — and then again : " I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me." All that belongs to God, belongs also to Christ, and with all this divine fulness he communicates himself to his people, makes his abode with them, and sanctifies them; or as the apostle Paul expresses it, only in reversed order: "All is yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." The ground of the Christian faith then, that to which it owes its origin and character, is the unity of Christ with God ; but along with this it includes with equal necessity the assurance, that the fact thus constituted is not single, solitary and transient in its nature, but must with the spirit and life of Christ extend itself to those also who believe in him, and so by degrees to 34 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. humanity as a whole. Christ is alone, as the unity in him was original and complete ; but he is not single, since that which was in him, is to become, according to the measure of receptivity, the possession of the whole race. A living head is not to be thought of apart from the body. No redeemed Church without a Redeemer ; but just as little a perfect Redeemer without a Church. Christ is made complete in his people. There can be no deeper idea in the sphere of religion. Does it indeed reveal itself, not merely as the ground thought, but as the ground fact of Christianity, imparting to it its inmost consti- tution ? If so, three things will necessarily follow. First, the religion which includes this revelation, will carry just here its most distinctive seal and criterion as compared with other reli- gions. Secondly, it will hereby authenticate itself as the absolute religion, the faith of humanity. Thirdly, all that belongs to it will take its best form, and appear in its true light, from this centre. These several points then demand our attention. 9. All religion stands essentially in the communion of man with God. The most perfect and intense form of communion between spiritual beings, where without the loss of individual, separate personality on either side, such a mutual interpenetration of spirit and nature has place, that the one may be said to live, without let or bar, freely and sweetly in the other, we call unity. The concep- tion however will be different, as the relation to which it is applied may be that of creature to creature merely, or that of the creature to the Creator, which must ever involve infinite distance between nature and nature, in the case even of the greatest affinity. As applied to this last relation, unity denotes that position of man towards God, in which God, meeting no obstruc- tion in man, communicates himself to him in the entire fulness of his Spirit, his love, his holiness ; whilst man acting purely and fully under the impulse of God's Spirit working in him, makes the divine will absolutely his own; so that between self-con- sciousness and God-consciousness there is no distinction or PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 35 conflict, but the first is fully taken up into the second, and ruled by it, and filled with it at every point. Such a union, though in unconscious form, belonged to that state of innocence, in which man was originally formed. But this has yielded to a state of sin, bringing with it separation from God. The object of religion now is to restore what has been lost. This can be accomplished only in the way of atonement ; the last end however is always communion and perfect union with God, no longer in the form of unconscious innocence indeed, but with such ripe consciousness as springs from surmounted spiritual discord and conflict. The religions which preceded Christianity aimed also at this end. Judaism, as actuated by the idea of the Holy One and its strong sense of sin, in the way of atonement; Heathenism, with its want of moral earnestness, in the way of more outward services. But it came not to a true communion, to say nothing of unity, between God and humanity, in either direction. The constitution of both sy terns rendered this impossible. Heathenism never rose, as a religion, to the full conception of the divine, as something above nature, spiritual, holy, and in itself one. The divinity was pantheistically merged in nature, which itself came in this way to an apotheosis, and was honoured as divine. The two ideas were confounded, made to flow together. With such want of clear distinction, there was no room of course to speak of a real union. True, in its higher stages, Heathenism exhibits the divinity under the form of humanity, and seems in this way to join them together. But after all it is no true con- junction ; since we have neither a true God in such case nor a true man ; the God being subject to all sorts of human imperfec- tion, and the man having an unearthly fantastic nature that over- throws his reality. The idea of a full union of God and man, by an act of condescending love on the one side and under the condi- tion of holiness on the other, lay utterly beyond the whole sphere of thinking, which characterized the heathen world. Such an idea could have place only on the ground of a consti- tutionally ethical, monotheistic religion, in which a full distinction was made between God and the world. Judaism had this 36 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. character. But it was wanting on another side. What Heathen- ism confounded, Judaism not only distinguished but sundered. It was not indeed wholly without the conception of God's being in the world (Inweltlichkeit); but this was most imperfectly applied. According to the Jewish view, God works in the sphere of nature and humanity ; but it is outwardly upon both, rather than inwardly in them both. He works in an extraordinary, miraculous way, rather than in the quiet, orderly course of things. Hence his interpositions have the character of isolated, abrupt, transient occasions, leaving nature and man to themselves again as before ; whereas, the idea of a true and perfect union must imply always, a constant communication of the divine Spirit, a permanent indwelling of the divine nature, a fellowship on the part of man in the divine life that shall cover the whole tract of his existence. Here then we have God in his truth and man in his proper reality ; but the relation between them involves no true, full, unobstructed union. This is conceivable only on the basis of a religion, in which God and the world may be distinguished without being sundered, with a full recognition of God's grace as well as holiness on the one hand, as also of the capacity of man, according to his original human constitution, to participate in the divine nature on the other. All this now we find in Christianity, and in Christianity alone. God, in the Christian faith, is the self-existent Creator and Preserver of all things ; but all live, move and have their being also in him, and bear witness of his presence. He is the infinitely exalted, and yet the infinitely near; communicating himself in boundless love and condescension ; in such sort, that where the condition of a sinless holiness is given, as in Christ, we find humanity admitted not merely to extraordinary illapses of the Spirit in the way of trance or vision or sudden inspiration, but to the privilege of a clear, full, unbroken consciousness of union with the divine life, as the natural and proper order of its own existence. Here we have the true God, holy and boundless in his love ; a true man, representing the idea of humanity, under every view, in the most perfect form ; and a true union, as holding in the undivided and indivisible oneness of a single living person- PRELIMINARY ESSAY 37 ality. Thus is the point readied, which all previous religions struggled to reach in vain. Here is the great seal and criterion of Christianity, not merely distinguishing it from Heathenism and Judaism, but setting it high above them, and showing it to be the end in which their very nature requires them to pass away. 10. By this very fact, Christianity is shown to be the absolute religion, the faith of humanity, that form of piety in which the consciousness of an imperishable nature may take for its motto the words : " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." Religion in its very nature is Love. It starts in this character from God as love to man, and returns again in the form of human love to its source; a circling stream from God to God. Its highest manifestation on both sides, must constitute the utmost summit of the religious life. This we find in Christ. His mis- sion, by which he was given up to suffering and death, proceeds from an everlasting love, which spares not even that which it held dearest, in order to restore and save lost man. He himself enters into the will of this love, with the most perfect freedom. In every part of his life he shows a power of love, which for its sublimity and touching simplicity, its purity and invincibleness, cannot be counted in its origin and nature other than divine. And as he offers himself, through the force of this love, unreserv- edly to God, so he offers himself also, through the force of the same love, to his brethren of mankind also, in life, suffering and death, for the purpose of drawing them to God, and uniting them among themselves and with God. He is at once accordingly the most perfect expression of love in both directions, from God to man and from man to God, as well as of love to the brethren. He is a centre of love, divine and human intensely interwoven, with power to embrace the whole circle of humanity ; a fountain of love, from which all generations may draw without exhausting its fulness. No other religion exhibits any parallel, or resemblance even, to this. Hence it is only in Christianity that God is known as Love ; that the love of man to God is derived from his love as 4 33 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. first exercised towards them ; that love to brethren is made iden- tical with love to God ; and that such a deep view of the first is taken as to make even the want of it seem the sin of murder itself. Nor has the world ever gone beyond this exhibition since. Christ stands still, and must ever stand, in this view, without a parallel in history. The fairest and greatest that history has to show besides, is itself only what has sprung from the kindling power of his love. There is no room in fact to think of anything higher than this. It includes all. Nor can the work of atone- ment and redemption ever be repeated, in the same form. Chris- tianity then, even in this view, as comprehended in the person of its Founder, is the utmost summit of religion. It cannot be transcended. But on this full fellowship of love rests also that moral and spiritual union between God and man, which forms the general criterion of what is highest in the religious sphere. In Christ, the Spirit of God worked without limitation or restraint ; his will was fully pervaded by the divine will ; he and the Father are one ; the unity between God and man is shown to be com- plete, opening for the race a sure way to new life. The specu- lative philosophy tells us that the consciousness of this unity is to be considered merely a new point reached in the process of w r orld-thought, either in the mind of Christ himself or by the Church in its zeal to glorify his person. Very well. One can- not see indeed how the Church could come to this, without find- ing some sufficient ground for its idea in Christ himself. But be it so. The conception still remains one that is peculiar to Christianity, and as a conception even it cannot be surpassed by anything higher in religion. If religion consisted in thought merely, we should have here, under such view also, its crowning height. Only one thing would be more, immeasurably more indeed, than this thought — its full actualization. This the Chris- tian faith, in pointed contradiction to the modern speculative philosophy, exhibits as a fact in Christ. Speculation too indeed pretends reality for its idea. But here it is found to halt. It has no right conception, in the first place, of unity, but substi- tutes for it identity ; if man is the manifestation of God by his PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 39 very nature, there is no room to speak of his becoming one with God. And then, it comes to no true reality in the case. The reality is claimed for the race; but this is made up of individuals, or as they prefer to term it copies, in every one of which the unity in question is troubled at best and incomplete; yea, it is against the nature of the idea, we are told, to exhaust itself in one individual. How then shall it come in this way to a full, clear manifestation ? Thus speculation seeks to extinguish the sun, that is actually shining pure and bright in the moral firma- ment, and offers in its room earthly tapers, which multiplied to any extent must ever fall immeasurably short of the same glory. We say on the contrary, if this idea of union between the divine and human be true, and the actualization of it necessary to satisfy the deepest want of the human spirit; and if every idea that is to be acknowledged as true and divine, requires to become actual ; then what the race fails to furnish here, we must seek in an individual. All that the case demands, has been clearly reached in Christ. In his person then the absolute consumma- tion of the religious life is brought to view, not in thought merely, but also in reality. All that remains, is that the theanthropic life thus constituted in the Redeemer himself, should be unfolded and carried out more and more in the human world. On this ground Christianity is the absolute religion in which all other religions may be said to culminate and become complete. Re- ligion and Humanity here are one, equally universal and equally permanent. 11. Finally, it is from this point that all which is comprised in Christianity may be best arranged and understood. It serves to set each part in its true light and proper position. So in the case of Doctrine. This, as we have seen, is not an original or principal interest in Christianity, existing for itself or by itself. Its office is simply to represent and exhibit life. Like the statue of Mercury with which the Alcibiades of Plato com- pares Socrates, it is only as it were the hull, in which the real image of the deity, the person of the God-man, is enshrined. 40 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. Self-representation and self-testimony, as before said, formed the main object in Christ's work. This included doctrine, it is true; but always only in the one great relation now affirmed. Only as significant of the very life and being of Christ himself, could it have any value or force. Doctrine gives us Christianity in an outward way ; but the life of Christ is Christianity. Here also the idea of Revelation, which is more full than that of Doctrine though closely connected with it, comes to stand in its true light. Revelation is not simply an extension of the knowledge of God theoretically considered ; as it can have place, for a sinful world, only hand in hand with the removal of sin or redemption, it must unfold an actual economy of grace and power for this purpose, a real manifestation of God, as actively employed in the work of educating, enlightening, redeeming and sanctifying the human race. In this case again, the bare word is not enough. Revelation in this form stands higher indeed than the dumb, unclear revelation of mere nature ; but it falls itself again far short of revelation in the form of an act. Only in this last form by a sum of salvation acts, unfolding his mind and will, can the living God become fully revealed. In the Old Testament we find a preparatory, shadowy approximation to- wards this end. But the case required at last the personal mani- festation of grace and truth, as they have been made to dwell among us by Jesus Christ. In this sense alone is Christianity a revelation, as the whole person of Christ, including his words and works, his life and death, his resurrection and exaltation, serves to bring into actual view the will of God as concerned in the salvation of men. This required on the part of the Re- deemer a full identification of mind and nature with God. But for this very reason, he himself, his person and not his doctrine, constitutes the revelation presented in Christianity; and so, as being in him rather than through him, it must be regarded as holding, not in any separate function of his life, but in the undi- vided whole of his personality and history, his being and work- ing, doctrine, life, death, resurrection and glorification at the right hand of God, all that he was and is, as well as all that he PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 41 lias done and is doing still, as Head over all things to the Church to the end of time. Christianity is also Moral Law. If however it were law only or law essentially even, it would not have transcended the order of the Jewish religion ; it would be at best a reformed, generalized Judaism only, bringing with it no freedom or life, but leaving men still under the curse of sin and guilt. J..aw, however refined, always remains law, something over against the man, an outward shall, whose nature it is to exact, accuse, condemn, and kill. Spirit only and love can animate, and both spring only from personal life. By the all prevailing principle of love the law was fulfilled in Christ's life ; and now witli the communication of Christ's spirit, the spirit and power of the same active obedience are received at the same time. Thus the law comes to be written in the heart, and loses its character of mere outward authority in that of a spontaneous impulse be- longing to the inmost life of its subject. Christianity has by fulfilling it taken it out of the way. To look upon Christianity itself then as being of the same nature, is not indeed wholly wrong, since it has its legal, judicial side, as related to the im- penitent sinner ; but it is to come short of the true depth of what is comprehended in the gospel. Freedom, redemption from the law, is the main thing. Again, Christianity is Redemption and Atonement; but in this view also, it has its last and deepest root in the unity of Christ with God. Judaism had no power to set men free in this way. Its salvation stood mainly in symbolical provisions, that could not lake away sin itself or reach to the creation of a new spiritual life. This required the medium of an actual personality, entering freely into a communion of life with the subjects of redemption ; and could be reached, in an absolute perfect way, only where all that was to be abolished by this redemption on the one hand, and all that was to be produced from it positively on the other, might be found originally and completely abolished and actualized in this personality itself. Only one who is him- self morally free can impart freedom to others; and he that is to set all free, must necessarily be sinlessly perfect and fully 4* 42 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. united with God. Such a life however, overflowing with bles- sedness and love, would include in its very nature, by its relation to humanity, the power of a universal redemption ; for it must communicate itself, with necessity to others, whose sense of want would at the same time urge them to lay hold of it as their own, while its divine constitution rendered it impossible that its fulness could ever be in this way exhausted or impaired. But redemption, to be complete, demands atonement, pardon of sin and peace with God. Such reconciliation again can be effected only by one, in whose soul the love and grace of God are identical with the consciousness of life itself, and whose life appears in such palpable unity of blessedness with God, as to exert a sort of moral violence on men in drawing them into the same commu- nion. The original unity of Christ with the Father then, the being of God in his person, is the basis on which rests the atonement or restoration of union between man and God; and it is with good heed to the order of his words no doubt that the great apostle says: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," plainly intimating that the existence of God in Christ was and still is that which holds the first place as a cause, while the atonement flows from it as an effect. And so all besides in Christianity receives from this ground thought, or ground fact rather, its proper light and position. Here the Christian Theology and Anthropology come to their true termination and living conjunction; they are not left to de- vour each other, but find their completion in Christology. God appears in the fulness of his condescension and self-communi- cating love ; man in his highest form of dignity and grandeur. On both sides the revelation satisfies the deepest religious want of our nature, restores to the spiritual world its inward harmony, and solves the riddle of the universe. The miraculous also, with which the manifestation of the God-man is attended, be- comes natural and intelligible; since such an actual entrance of the divine into the life of the world, must necessarily involve the presence of higher powers and laws. The resurrection of Christ in particular, which has been from the first the grand prop of Christianity in its historical aspect, appears but as the PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 43 natural and necessary consequence of the divine life which filled the constitution of his person ; while it forms besides, in virtue of the life bond that unites him with his people, the ground of the whole Christian Eschatology, as connected with the resurrection of believers. 12. In the way of brief recapitulation, our view of the whole subject may be expressed as follows. That which forms the specific, distinctive character of Chris- tianity is not its doctrine nor its morality, nor even its power of redemption ; but the peculiar constitution and religious signi- ficance of its Founder, as uniting divinity and humanity, truly and perfectly, in his person. Doctrine, law and redemption rest on this as their basis. As doctrine Christianity addresses itself to the understanding of man, as law to his will; in both cases, as something outward and mechanical, rather than as having power to produce a living piety. In the character of redemption, it reaches to the heart, and unfolds in much higher degree its true life-giving, dynamic nature ; but viewed only in this light it is still but imperfectly apprehended, as an inward state or mere matter of feeling. Its complete sense and full objective value are reached, only when all is referred to the person of Christ, in which God appears united with humanity, and which by its very constitution accord- ingly carries in it a reconciling, redeeming, quickening and en- lightening efficacy. Thus apprehended, Christianity is in the fullest sense organic, in its nature. It reveals itself as a peculiar order of life in Christ, and from him as a personal centre it reaches forth towards man as a whole, in the way of true his- torical self-evolution, seeking to form the entire race into a glorious kingdom of God. From this centre all takes its full significance ; doctrine becomes power ; law is turned into life ; redemption and reconciliation find a solid objective basis, on which to rest. The natural and the human, sanctified by union 44 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. with the divine in Christ, are sanctified also for all who partake of his spirit and life. Christianity thus neither deifies the natural as such, nor yet opposes it as evil; but purifies and transfigures it, and restores it to its true divine destination. It is the religion of Humanity, in which the life of man as man is advanced to its full perfection and glory. In any case, the two highest conceptions of Christianity are those, by which it is made to be either the religion of redemption or the religion of the unity of God and humanity. These con- dition and complete each other. Redemption was possible only through this unity ; and the unity comes to its full significance only as it Works redemption. The unity is inward, the redemp- tion goes abroad ; this last the heart of Christianity, the other its head and mind. The apprehension of Christianity as re- demption rests more on Paul's way of thinking, the apprehension of it as union with God on that rather which we find in John ; the first regards chiefly the hindrances to be overcome and is more practical, the last looks chiefly to the crowning end and is more mystical and speculative ; the first has to do most with faith and hope, the last with love. Inasmuch now however as redemption starts from the unity of Christ with God and leads to the union of mankind generally with him as its ultimate scope ; inasmuch as redemption must cease when there is no more sin, while the unity it restores, like the love on which it rests, can never fail ; inasmuch accordingly as redemption belongs more to time and the present state of the world, whilst union with God is something absolutely eternal, the end thus as it is the be- ginning, the alpha and omega of the whole process; we must hold this last to be the high all ruling constituent in the nature of Christianity. And so we say, putting all together, Christianity is that religion which in the person of its author has actualized in fact, what all other religions have struggled in vain to reach, the unity of man with God ; and which as the power of a new creation organically working from this centre, by doctrine and moral energy, by redemption and reconciliation, conducts men as individuals and as a race to their true destination, to full com- PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 45 munion and union with God, whereby all life is sanctified and exalted into a higher order of existence. This view of Christianity is not absolutely new. We meet with it under a different form, in the older Mysticism, as ex- hibited in Germany during the middle ages. For this school also the union of God and man through the incarnation of the first and the deification of the second, forms the cardinal idea in the religion of Christ. In this, as well as in its whole treatment of Christianity, it shows a striking affinity with the modern speculative philosophy ; except that what is the result in this last case of thought, reflection, criticism even, springs in the other from the force of deep, inward religious fervor, and of course carries on this account a different meaning. The general point of coincidence is found in this, that Mysticism also transfers the objective forces of religion into the spirit, and allows them thus to lose their proper reality. The historical transforms itself into the inward; Christ is not so much the outward Saviour who once lived in Palestine, as he is the Redeemer that still lives, with new birth, in every pious man ; his history is accommo- dated to the spiritual life of the believer himself, and this, the Christ within us, becomes the main thing, from which the out- ward also first receives its true significance. Here again how- ever we must distinguish carefully between two tendencies ; the properly pantheistic Mysticism, whose chief representative is Master E chart, so highly lauded by the modern speculation, and the prevailingly theistic. In the view of the first, union with the divine nature is taken to be the product of thought, a point in the developement of consciousness ; Christ in the end is but the type of humanity, and his history only figure and al- legory ; he was the first who came to the sense of his sonship in the relation to God; by him we learn that we also partake of the same nature, and are in like manner sons of God. In the other case, the unity of Christ with God is regarded as the re- sult of a free act of self-communication on the part of God, conditioned by the moral character of Christ, who accordingly carries with him more weight as a historical prototype ; and so 46 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. also the union with God which is effected for men through Christ is of a far more decidedly moral nature. The first view resolves it mainly into the exercise of thinking; here it is reached by an essentially ethical or even ascetic process. There it is a matter of nature ; here, a matter of grace, made possible through the redeeming influence of Christ, by mortification and a new in- ward life. The pantheistic Mysticism is the pattern and pre- cursor of the modern speculation ; the theistic, on the other hand, by the inwardness and warmth of its religious life, pre- pared the way on one side for the Reformation. In the Refor- mation however, a new element came forward. The Mystics had more or less overlooked one thing, the dark point in human life, sin and the need of redemption and atonement. The con- sciousness of this was powerfully awakened in Luther, and wrought with vast effect in the work of the sixteenth century. Deliverance from the power of sin, and reconciliation with God, were now felt to be the main thing in Christianity; and as re- demption in this form could not be accomplished by an ideal image, but only by a real person, the historical personality of Christ was clothed again with- new authority and prominence. Thus was found once more the historico-ideal centre of Chris- tianity. Still however, on the part of the Reformers, principally under one view ; Christ as a real Redeemer and Mediator ; but not with proper regard to that quality of his nature, by which alone he has this character, his perfect unity with God, constituting him at the same lime a historical prototype and pattern for hu- manity. This refers us back again to the fundamental idea of the Mystics ; but while we appropriate this in a more ripe and better digested sense we cannot consent to lose the true and genuine acquisition which was made by the Reformation. We have endeavoured accordingly to place the subject in such a form as may serve to combine what is right in both views, the more practical of the Reformation and the more speculative of the better Mystics. Christianity, we say, is by all means, essen- tially and primarily, the religion of unity with God in its Founder and union with God in believers; but all this in its right sense, PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 47 only when the conception is' found to rest on the inalienable Christian idea of a personal God, and along with this the ele- ments of redemption and reconciliation, repentance and faith, knowledge and sanctification, are allowed to maintain their au- thority full and unimpaired, as dependent but still indispensable constituents of the new creation in Christ Jesus. THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE Ej/ ap%tj r t v u "koyo$. — 'Ev avtu> ^iorj r k v. — Kai b Xoyoj oap£ iyipsto. — Ken 9j £co^ i tyavspJi^rj- — 'O ix° iV tbv vibv, t%£i tf^v ^ior t v. — John. ©awr'co^fts fitv capxi, ^toortou^as 8s rtPtvfAo.'ti. — Peter. 'Eysvsto u tff^ar'oj 'A6a ( a fij rtpsifia £coortoiov»/. — 'O Sf xoIM.u[ievos tw xrptci, tV 7tv£V(xa teste— "EaT't crto/ua rtvev [xatixov. — "Ot^ jU£7.»; EffjUfy t'ov dio/xato^ avtov, ex ffj$ ffapxoj aaJr'oiJ, xoi ex tH>v oatiuv avtov- — To /xvatr^iov -tovto fxiya lativ. — Paul. To ysywv t^/xsvov tx tov rtvivfiatos, 7tvsv^d iafi.—— 'Eyw tlfii r L avdatafos xal rj £w-/j. — 'O tpHyuv /xov fr t v capxa, xat rtlvcov /xov to aT^ua, t££t f^co^y aMViov' xcu fyco avaotr^to avtbv ttj tcx^tiq tjfxepa, — ir Oti> iyu> £u>, xal vfxtis £r6sa§s. — Jesus Christ. CHAPTER I. THE REFORMED OR CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. The Question of the Eucharist is one of the most impor- tant belonging to the history of religion. It may be regarded indeed as in some sense central to the whole Christian system. For Christianity is grounded in the living union of the believer with the person of Christ ; and this great fact is emphatically concentrated in the mystery of the Lord's Supper ; which has always been clothed on this very account, to the consciousness of the Church, with a character of sanctity and solemnity, sur- passing that of any other Christian institution. The sacramental controversy of the sixteenth century then was nojmere war of words; much less the offspring of mere pre- judice, "passion or blind self-will, as many in their fanatical superiority to the vast problem involved in it are ready to ima- gine. It belonged to the inmost sanctuary of theology, and was intertwined particularly with all the arteries of the Christian life. This was felt by the spiritual heroes of the Reformation. They had no right to overlook the question which was here thrown in their way, or to treat it as a question of small importance, whose claims might safely be postponed in favour of other interests, that might appear to be brought into jeopardy by its agitation. That this should seem so easy to much of our modern Protest- antism, serves only to show, what is shown also by many other facts, that much of our modern Protestantism has fallen away sadly from the theological earnestness and depth of the period to which we now refer. With the revival of a deeper theology, there cannot fail to be a revival of interest also, on the part of the Church, in the sacramental question ; as on the other hand there can be no surer sign than the want of such interest, in the case of any section of the Church at any given time, that its theology is without power and its piety infected with disease. On this question, it is well known, the Protestant world split, from the very beginning, into two great divisions, which have never come since to a true and full inward reconciliation. O m £ THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. Strangely enough however both sections of the Church have seriously receded, to no inconsiderable extent, from the ground on which they stood in the sixteenth century. This fact is most broadly and palpably apparent in the modern posture of the Lutheran Church, especially as known on this side of the Atlan- tic. All who have any knowledge whatever of history, are aware that the American Lutheran Church, in its reigning character, has entirely forsaken at this point the position originally occu- pied by the same communion in the old world. Not only indeed has the proper Lutheran position been surrendered in favour of the Reformed doctrine; but even this doctrine itself, as it stood in the beginning, has come to be looked upon as altogether too high toned in the same direction; so that the very view which was denounced in the days of Joachim Wcstphal and Tilemann Hesshuss, as foul sacramentarian heresy, by which cities and na- tions were exposed to the fierce judgments of heaven, is now count- ed an extreme on precisely the opposite side, little better than the popish error of transubstantiation itself. But this falling away from the orthodoxy of the sixteenth century is not confined to the Lutheran Church. The view of the Eucharist now generally predominant in the Reformed Church also, involves a similar departure, not so broad indeed but equally material, from its pro- per original creed, as exhibited in its symbolical books. An unchurchly, rationalistic tendency, has been allowed to carry the Church gradually more and more off from the ground it occu- pied in the beginning, till its position is found to be at length, to a large extent, a new one altogether. In the nature of the case, this change must involve much more than the simple substitution of one theory of the Lord's Supper for another. The doctrine of the eucharist is intimately connected with all that is most deep and central in the Chris- tian system as a whole; and it is not possible for it to undergo any material modification in any direction, without a correspond- ing modification at the same time of the theory and life of reli- gion at other points. If it be true then, that such a falling away from the eucharistic view of the sixteenth century, as is now asserted, has taken place in the Reformed Church, it is very certain that the revolution is not confined to this point. It must affect necessarily the whole view, that is entertained of Christ's person, the idea of the Church, and the doctrine of sal- vation throughout. Not that the change in the theory of the Lord's Supper may be considered the origin and cause, properly speaking, of any such general theological revolution ; but be- cause it could not occur, except as accompanied by this general revolution, of which it may be taken as the most significant exponent and measure. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUITER. 53 Under this view, the subject presents itself to us, as one of great interest and importance. The question involved in it, is not one of historical curiosity simply, the bearings of which in a religious view may be regarded as indifferent or of only slight account. It is a question of the utmost moment for theology and religion, which at this time particularly no friend of our evangelical Protestant faith should consider himself at o liberty to overlook.* To see and feel the truth of the assertion, that the modern popular view of the Lord's Supper is chargeable with a serious defection from the-original Protestant orthodoxy at this point, it is only necessary to have some correct apprehension of what was actually believed and taught on the subject, by the Reformed Church as well as by the Lutheran, in the age of the Reforma- tion. This cannot fail of itself to reveal, in the way of contrast, the true posture of the Church at the present time. It is of course with the doctrine of the Reformed Church only, in the view now mentioned, as distinguished from the Lutheran, that the present inquiry is concerned. Our object is, to bring into view the theory of the Lord's Supper, as it stood in the general creed of this section of the Church in the sixteenth century. This requires, in the first place, a clear statement of the theory itself; in the second place, proper evidence that it was in fact of such established authority in the period just named. * " The eighteenth century came, and the same processes which were used for shutting out the invisible in every other direction were applied also in this. And yet tens of thousands of men and women in every part of Europe, would in that day have rather parted wilh their lives, or with any thing more dear to them, than with this feast. And now, in this nineteenth century, there are not a few persons, who, meditating on these different experiments, have arrived at this deep and inward conviction, that the question whether Christianity shall be a practical principle and truth in the hearts of men, or shall be exchanged for a set of intellectual notions or generalizations, depends mainly on the question whether the Eucharist shall or shall not be acknowledged and received as the bond of a universal life, and the means whereby men become partakers of it." Maurice's Kingdom of Christ. (London, 1S42.) Vol. if, p. 72. 54 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. SECTION I. STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE. To obtain a proper view of the original doctrine of the Re- formed Church on the subject of the eucharist, we must have recourse particularly to Calvin. Not that he is to be considered the creator, properly speaking, of the doctrine. It grew evi- dently out of the general religious life of the church itself, in its antagonism to the Lutheran dogma on the one hand, and the low Socinian extreme on the other. Calvin however was the theological organ, by which it first came to that clear expression, under which it continued to be uttered subsequently in the sym- bolical books. His profound far-reaching and deeply penetrating mind drew forth the doctrine from the heart of the Church, ex- hibited it in its proper relations, proportions and distinctions, gave it form in this way for the understanding, and clothed it with authority as a settled article of faith in the general creed. He may be regarded then as the accredited interpreter and ex- pounder of the article, for all later times. A better interpreter in the case, we could not possibly possess. Happily, too, his instructions and explanations here are very full and explicit. He comes upon the subject from all sides, and handles it under all forms, didactically and controversially ; so that we are left in no uncertainty whatever, with regard to his meaning, at a single point. Any theory of the eucharist will be found to accord closely with the view that is taken, at the same time of the nature of the union generally between Christ and his people. Whatever the life of the believer may be as a whole in this relation, it must determine the form of his communion with the Saviour in the sacrament of the Supper, as the central representation of its sig- nificance and power. Thus, the sacramental doctrine of the primitive Reformed Church stands inseparably connected with the idea of an inward living union between believers and Christ, in virtue of which they are incorporated into his very nature, and made to subsist with him by the power of a common life.* * Conjnnctio igitur ilia capitis et membrorum, habitatio Christi in cordibus nostris, mystica dcnique unio a nobis in summo gradu statuitur; ut Christus noster factus, donorum, quibus praditus est, nos laciat consortes. Non ergo extra nos procul speculamur, ut nobis imputetur ejus justitia : sed quia ipsum induimus, et insiti sumus in ejus corpus, unum denique nos secvm efficere dig- natus est ; ideo justitise societatem nobis cum eo esse gloriamur. Calvin. Inst. iii. 11, 10. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORDS SURFER. OJ In full correspondence with this conception of the Christian salvation, as a process by which the believer is mystically inserted more and more into the person of Christ, till he becomes thus at last fully transformed into his image, it was held that nothing less than such a real participation of his living person is involved always in the right use of the Lord's Supper. The following distinctions may serve to define and explain more fully, the nature of the communion which holds between Christ and his people, in the whole view now mentioned, as taught by Calvin and the Reformed Church generally, in the sixteenth century. 1. The union of believers with Christ is not simply that of a common humanity, as derived from Adam. In this view, all men partake of one and the same nature, and each may be said to be in relation to his neighbour bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. So Christ took not on him the nature of angels, but of men. He was born of a woman, and appeared among us in the likeness and fashion of our own life, only without sin. But plainly our relation to his nature, and through this to his medi- atorial work, as christians, is something quite different from this general consanguinity of the human race. Where we are said to be of the same life with him, " members of bis body, of his flesh and of his bones," it is not on the ground merely of a joint participation with him in the nature of Adam, but on the ground of our participation in his own nature as a higher order of life. Our relation to him is not circuitous and collateral only ; it holds in a direct connection with his person.* 2. In this view, the relation is more again than a simply moral union. Such a union we have, where two or more persons are bound together by inward agreement, sympathy, and correspond- ence. Every common friendship is of this sort. It is the relation of the disciple to the master, whom he loves and reveres. It is the relation of the devout Jew to Moses, his venerated lawgiver and prophet. It holds also undoubtedly between the believer and Christ. The Saviour lives much in his thoughts and affections. He looks to him with an eye of faith, embraces him in his heart, commits himself to his guidance, walks in his steps, and endea- vours to become clothed more and more with his very mind itself. In the end the correspondence will be found complete. We shall * Carnis et sanguinis communicationem non tan turn interpreter de eommuni natura, quod Cristus homo j 'actus jure fraternal societatis nos Dei filios secum iecerit: sed distincte alii rmo, qicam a nobis sumpsit carnem, earn nobis esse vivificam, ut nobis sit materia spiritualis vitre. Iliamque Augustini sententiam libenter amplector, Sicut ex costa Adas creata fuit Eva, sic ex Christi latere fluxisse nobis vitas originem et principium. Calvin, De Vera Partic. Opp. Tom. ix. (Amst. Ed.) p. 726. — Neque enim ossa sumus ex ossibus et caro ex carne, quia ipse nobiscum est homo ; sed quia Spiritus sui virtute nos in cor- pus suum inserit, ut vitam ex eo hauriamus. Id. Comm. on Eph. v. 30. 56 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. be like him in all respects, one with him morally, in the fullest sense. But Christianity includes more than such a moral union, separately considered. This union itself is only the result here of a relation more inward and deep. It has its ground in the force of a common life, in virtue of which Christ and his people are one even before they become thus assimilated to his charac- ter. So in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; it is not simply a moral approach that the true worshipper is permitted to make to the glorious object of his worship. His communion with Christ does not consist merely in the good exercises of his own mind, the actings of faith, and contrition, and hope, and love, the solemn recollections, the devotional feelings, the pious resolu- tions, of which he may be himself the subject, during the sacra- mental service.* Nor is the sacrament a sign only, by which the memory and heart may be assisted in calling up what is past or absent, for the purposes of devotion; as the picture of a friend is suited to recal his image and revive our interest in his person, when he is no longer in our sight. f Nor is it a pledge simply of our own consecration to the service of Christ, or of the faithful- ness of God as engaged to make good to us in a general way the grace of the new covenant; as the rainbow serves still to ratify and confirm the promise given to Noah after the flood. | All this would bring with it in the end nothing more than a moral communi- cation with Christ, so far as the sacrament itself might be concerned. It could carry with it no virtue or force, more than might be put into it in every case by the spirit of the worshipper himself. Such however is not the nature of the ordinance. It is not .simply an occasion, by which the soul of the believer may be excited to pious feelings and desires ; but it embodies the actual presence * Ubique resonant scripta mea, differre manducationem a fide, quia sit fidei efFectus. Non a triduo ita loqui incoepi, nos credendo manducare Christum, quia vere participes ejus facti inejusc orpus coalescimus, ut nobis communis sit cum eo vita. . . . Quam turpe igitur Westphalo fait, quum diserte verba mea sonent, manducare aliud esse quam credere ; quod ego fortiter nego, quasi a me profectum impudenter obtrudere lectoribus ! . . . Ejusdem larinae est quod mox attexit, edere corpus Christi tantundem valere, si verbis meis locus datur, quam promissionem fide reciperc. Sed quomodo tain flagitiose se pros- tituere audet ? Calvin. Adv. Weslph. Opp. Tom. ix.. p. 669. t Ita panis uon inanis est rei absentis pictura, sed verum ac fidele nostrae cum Christo unionis pignus. Dicet quispiam non aliter panis symbolo adum- brari corpus Christi, quam mortua statua Herculem vel Mercurium repnesentat. Hoc certe commentum a doctrina nostra non minus remotum est, quam pro- finum a sacro. Calvin. Opp. T. ix.,p. 667. — Christus neque pictor est, neque histrio, neque Archimides quispiam, qui inani tantum objecta imagine oculos pascat, sed vere et reipsa prcestat quod cxterno symbolo promitlit. lb. p. 121. 4 Panis ita corpus significat, ut vere, efficaciter, ac reipsa nos ad Christi communicationem invitet. Dicimus enim veritatem quam contmet promissio, illic exhiberi, et effectum externo signo amiexum esse. Tropus ergo signum minime evacuat, sed potius ostendit quomodo non sit vacuum. Calv. Opp. T. ix., p. 667. CALVINIST1C DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 57 of the grace it represents in its own constitution ; and this grace is not simply the promise of God on which we are encouraged to rely, but the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. We communicate, in the Lord's supper, not with the divine promise merely, not with the thought of Christ only, not with the recol- lection simply of what he has done and suffered for us, not with the lively present sense alone of his all-sufficient, all-glorious sal- vation; but with the living Saviour himself, in the fulness of his glorified person, made present to us for the purpose by the power of the Holy Ghost. 3. The relation of believers to Christ, then, is more again than that of a simply legal union. He is indeed the representa- tive of his people, and what he has done and suffered on their behalf is counted to their benefit, as though it had been done by themselves. They have an interest in his merits, a title to all the advantages secured by his life and death. But this external imputation rests at last on an inward, real unity of life, without which it could have no reason or force. Our interest in Christ's merits and benefits can be based only upon a previous interest in his person : so in the Lord's Supper, we are made to partici- pate, not merely in the advantages secured by his mediatorial work, the rewards of his obedience, the fruits of his bitter pas- sion, the virtue of his atonement, and the power of his priestly intercession, but also in his true and proper life itself. We par- take of his merits and benefits only so far as we partake of his substance.* 4. Of course, once more, the communion in question is not simply with Christ in his divine nature separately taken, or with the Holy Ghost as the representative of his presence in the world. It does not hold in the influences of the Spirit merely, enlight- ening the soul and moving it to holy affections and purposes. It is by the Spirit indeed we are united to Christ. Our new life is comprehended in the Spirit as its element and medium. But it is always bound in this element to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Our fellowship is with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost. As such it * Neque enim tantum dico applicari merita, sed ex ipso Christi corpore ali- mentum percipere animas, non secus ac lerreno pane corpus vescitur. Call). Opp. T. ix., p. 60S. — Sane non video, quomodo in cruce Christi redemptionem ac justrtiam, in ejusmorte vitam. habere se quis confidat, nisi vera Christi ipsius communione imprimis fretus. Non enim ad nos bona ilia pervenirent, nisi se prius nostrum Christus faceret. Inst. iv. 17, 11. — Satis sit monuisse lectores, Christum ubique a me vocari Baptismi CoenBeque substaniiam. Opp. T. ix., p. 671. — Plus centies occurrit in scriptis meis, adeo me non rejicere substantia nomen, ut libenter et ingenue profitear spiritualem vitam incomprehensibili Spiritus virtute ex carnis Christi substantia in nos diffundi. Ubique etiam admitto, substantialiter nos pasci Christi carne et sanguine; modo facessat crassum de locali permixtione commentum. lb. p. 725. Substantiates com. municatio ubique a me asscritur. lb. p. 732. 58 , THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. is a real communion with the Word made flesh ; not simply with the divinity of Christ, but with his humanity also; since both are inseparably joined together in his person, and a living union with him in the one view, implies necessarily a living union with him in the other view likewise. In the Lord's Sup- per, accordingly, the believer communicates not only with the Spirit of Christ, or with his divine nature, but with Christ him- self in his whole living person ; so that he may be said to be fed and nourished by his very flesh and blood. The communion is truly and fully with the Man Christ Jesus, and not simply with Jesus as the Son of God.* These distinctions may serve to bound and define the Re- formed doctrine of the Eucharist on the side towards Rational- ism. All pains were taken to guard it from the false tendency to which it stood exposed in this direction. The several con- ceptions of the believer's union and communion with Christ which have now been mentioned, were explicitly and earnestly rejected, as being too low and poor altogether for the majesty of this great mystery. In opposition to all such representations, it was constantly affirmed that Christ's people are inserted by faith into his very life; and that the Lord's Supper, forming as it does an epitome of the whole mystery, involves to the worthy com- municant an actual participation in the substance of his person under this view. The participation is not simply in his Spirit, but in his flesh also and blood. It is not figurative merely and moral, but real, substantial and essential.^ But it is not enough to settle the boundaries of the doctrine on the side of Rationalism. To be understood properly, it must be limited and defined, in like manner, on the side of Ro- manism. 1. In the first place then it excludes entirely the figment of transubstantiation. According to the Church of Rome, the ele- * Neque illi prseterea mihi satisfaciunt, qui nonnullam nobis esse cum Christo communionem agnoscenles, earn dam ostendere volunt, nos Spiritus modo participes faciunt, prceterita carnis et sanguinis mentione. Calvin. Inst. iv. 17, 7. — Christum corpore absentem doceo nihilominus non tantum Divina sua virtute, quse ubique diffusa est, nobis adesse, sed etiam facere ut nobis vivifica sit sua caro. . . . Neque simpliciter Spiritu suo Christum in nobis habitare trado, sed ita nos ad se attollere, ut vivificum carnis suae vigorem in nos transfundat. Opp. T. ix.,p. 669. — Hanc unitatem non ad essentiam divi- nam restringo, sed pertinere affirmo ad carnem et sanguinem : quia non sim- pliciter dictum sit, " Spiritus meus vere est cibus," sed caro ; nee simpliciter etiam dictum sit " Divinitas mea vere est potus," sed sanguis. lb. p. 726. Fatemur ergo corpus idem quod crucifixum est, nos in Ccenaedere. lb. p. 727. — Augustino assentior, in pane accipi quod pependit in cruce. lb. p. 729. t Convenit etiam Christum re ipsa et efficaciter implere quicquid analogic signi et rei signatre postulat ; ideoque vere nobis in Coena ofTerri communica- tionem cum ejus corpore et sanguine, vel (qod idem valet,) nobis arrham sub pane et vino proponi, qiue nos faciat corporis et sanguinis Christi participes. Calv. Opp. T. ix.,p. 743. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 59 merits of bread and wine in. the sacrament are literally trans- muted into the actual flesh and blood of Christ. The accidents, outward properties, sensible qualities only, remain the same ; while the original substance is converted supernaturally into the true body of the glorified Saviour, which is thus exhibited and received in an outward way in the sacramental mystery. This transmutation too is not limited to the actual solemnity of the sacramental act itself, but is held to be of permanent force; so that the elements continue afterwards to be the true body of Christ, and are proper objects of veneration and worship accord- ingly. This theory was rejected as a gross superstition, even by the Lutheran Church, and of course found still less favor in the other section of the Protestant communion. The Reformed doctrine admits no change whatever in the elements. Bread re- mains bread, and wine remains wine. 2. The doctrine excludes, in the second place, the proper Lu- theran hypothesis of the sacrament, technically distinguished by the title consubstantiation. According to this view, the body and blood of Christ are not actually substituted supernaturally for the elements ; the bread and wine remain unchanged, in their essence as well as in their properties. But still the body and blood of Christ are in their very substance present, where the supper is administered. The presence is not indeed bound to the elements, apart from their sacramental use. It holds only in the moment and form of this use as such; a mystery in this respect, transcending all the common laws of reason and nature. It is however a true, corporal presence of the blessed Saviour. Hence his body is received by the worshipper orally, though not in the form and under the quality of common food; and so not by believers simply, but by unbelievers also, to their own condemnation. The dogma was allowed in the end to involve also, by necessary consequence, the ubiquity of Christ's glorified body. Bread and wine retain their own nature, but Christ, who is in virtue of the communicatio idiomatum present in his human nature in all places where he may please to be, imparts his true flesh and blood, in, icith and under the outward signs to all com- municants, whether with or without faith, by the inherent power of the ordinance itself.* * Credimus, docemus et confitemur, quod in Ccena Domini corpus et sanguis Christi vere et substantialiter sint prsesentia, et quod una cum pane et vino vere distribuantur atque sumantur. — Credimus, corpus et sanguinem Christi non tantum spiritualiter per fidem, sed etiam ore, non tamen Capernaitice, sed supernaturali et ccelesti modo, ratione sacramentalis unionis,cum pane etvino sumi. — Credimus, quod non tantum vere in Christum credentes, et qui digne ad Coenam Domini accedunt, verum etiam indigni et infideles verum corpus et sanguinem Christi sumant. Form. Cone. Art. vii. Hase. Lib. Symbol, p. 599, 600, 60 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. In opposition to this view, the Reformed Church taught that the participation of Christ's flesh and blood in the Lord's Supper is spiritual only, and in no sense corporal. The idea of a local presence in the case, was utterly rejected. The elements can- not be said to comprehend or include the body of the Saviour in any sense. It is not there, but remains constantly in heaven, according to the scriptures. It is not handled by the minister and taken into the mouth of the communicant. The manduca- tion of it is not oral, but only by faith. It is present in fruition accordingly to believers only in the exercise of faith ; the im- penitent and unbelieving receive only the naked symbols, bread and wine, without any spiritual advantage to their own souls.* Thus we have the doctrine denned and circumscribed on both sides; with proper distinction from all that may be consi- dered a tendency to Rationalism in one direction, and from all that may be counted a tendency to Romanism in the other. It allows the presence of Christ's person in the sacrament, includ- ing even his flesh and blood, so far as the actual participation of the believer is concerned. Even the term real presence, Calvin tells us he was willing to employ, if it were to be understood as synonymous with true presence ; by which he means a presence that brings Christ truly into communion with the believer in his human nature, as well as in his divine nature.f The word real, however, was understood ordinarily to denote a local, corporal presence, and on this account was not approved. To guard against this, it may be qualified by the word spiritual; and the expression will then be quite suitable to the nature of the doc- * Ego Christum in coelesti sua sede relinquens, arcana spiritus ejus influentia contentus sum, ut nos came sua pascat. — Neque enim aliter Christum in Ccena statuo prassentem, nisi quia fidelium mentes, sicuti ilia est coelestis actio, fide supra mundum evehuntur, et Christus Spiritus sui virtute obstaculum, quod afferre poterat loci distantia, tollens, se membris suis conjungit. — Hsec nostra definitio est, spiritualiter a nobis manducari Christi carnem, quia non aliter animas vivificat, quam pane vegetatut corpus; tantum a nobis excluditur sub- stantias transfusio. Westphalo non aliter caro vinifica est, quam si ejus sub- stantia voretur. Hoc crimen est nostrum, obviis ulnis tale monstrum non amplecti. Calv. Opp. T. ix. p. 668, 669. t Communicari nobis Christi corpus et sanguinem, nullus nostrum negat. Qualis autem sit corporis et sanguinis Domini communicatio, qusritur. Car- nalem isti palain et simpliciter asserere quomodo audeant, miror. Spiritua- lem cum dicimus, fremunt, quasi hac voce realem, ut vulgo loquuntur, tolla- mus. Nos vero, si reale pro vero accipiant, et fallaci vel imaginario oppo- nant, barbare loqui malleolus, quam pugnis materiam praebere. . . . Placidis et moderatis hoc testatum volo, ita secundum nos spiritualem esse communi- cationis modum, ut reipsa Christo fruamur. Hac modo ratione contenti simus, ultra quam nemo nisi valde litigiosus insurget, vivificam nobis est Christi carnem, quia ex ea spiritualem in animas nostras vitam Christus in- stillat; earn quoque a nobis manducari, dum in corpus unum fide cum Christo coalescimus, ut noster fnctus nobiscum sua omnia communicet. Calv. Opp. T. ix. p. 657, 658. — Praesentiam carnis Christi in Coena urget Westphalus : nos simpliciter non negamus, modo nobiscum fide sursum conscendat. lb. p. 66S. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPriSR. CI trine, as it has been now explained. A real presence, in opposi- tion to the notion that Christ's flesh and blood are not made present to the communicant in any way. A spiritual real pre- sence, in opposition to the idea that Christ's body is in the ele- ments in a local or corporal manner. Not real simply, and not spiritual simply; but real, and yet spiritual at the same time. The body of Christ is in heaven, the believer on earth ; but by the power of the Holy Ghost, nevertheless, the obstacle of such vast local distance is fully overcome, so that in the sacramental act, while the outward symbols are received in an outward way, the very body and blood of Christ are at the same time inwardly and supernaturally communicated to the worthy receiver, for the real nourishment of his new life. Not that the material particles of Christ's body are supposed to be carried over, by this super- natural process, into the believer's person.* The communion is spiritual, not material. It is a participation of the Saviour's life. Of his life, however, as human, subsisting in a true bodily form. The living energy, the vivific virtue, as Calvin styles it, of Christ's flesh, is made to flow over into the communicant, making him more and more one with Christ himself, and thus more and more an heir of the same immortality that is brought to light in his person. Two points in particular, in the theory now exhibited, require to be held clearly in view. The first is, that the sacrament is made to carry with it an ob- jective force, so far as its principal design is concerned. It is not simply suggestive, commemorative, or representational. It is not a sign, a picture, deriving its significance from the mind of the beholder. The virtue which it possesses is not put into it by the faith of the worshipper in the first place, to be taken out of it again by the same faith, in the same form. It is not imagined of course in the case that the ordinance can have any virtue without frith, that it can confer grace in a purely mechanical way. All thought of the opus operatum, in this sense, is utterly repudiated. Still faith does not properly clothe the sacrament with its power. It is the condition of its efficacy for the com- municant, but not the principle of the power itself. This be- longs to the institution in its own nature. The signs are bound to what they represent, not subjectively simply in the thought of the worshipper, but objectively, by the force of a divine appoint- ment. The union indeed is not natural but sacramental. The * Ingenue mterea confiteor, mixturam carnis Christi cum anima nostra, vel transfusionem, qualis ab ipsis docetur, me repudiare ; quia nobis sufficit, Christum e carnis sure substantia vitam in animas nostras spirare, imo prp- priam in nos vitam diffundere, quamvis in nos non ingrediatur ipsa Christi caro. Calv. Inst. iv. 17, 32.— Manet tamen integer homo Christus in ccelo. Id. Opp. T. ix., p. 699. 6 02 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. grace is not comprehended in the elements, as its depository and vehicle outwardly considered. But the union is none the less real and firm, on this account. The grace goes inseparably along with the signs, and is truly present for all who are prepared to make it their own. The signs in this view are also seals; not simply as they attest the truth and reality of the grace in a gen- eral way, but as they authenticate also its presence under the sacramental exhibition itself. This is what we mean by the objective force of the institution ; and this, we say, is one point that must always be kept in view, in looking at the doctrine that is now the subject of our attention.* The other point to be steadily kept in sight is, that the invisi- ble grace of the sacrament, according to the doctrine, is the sub- stantial life of the Saviour himself, particularly in his human nature. He became flesh for the life of the world, and our com- munion with him, involves a real participation in him as the principle of life under this form. Hence in the mystery of the Supper, his flesh and blood are really exhibited always in their essential force and power, and really received by every worthy communicant. Such is the proper sacramental doctrine of the Reformed Church as it stood in the Sixteenth century. It is easy to show that it labours under serious difficulties. With these however at present, we have no concern. They can have no bearing one way or another, upon the simply historical inquiry in which we are now engaged. My object has been thus far only to describe and define the doctrine itself. It remains now to show, that it was in fact, as thus described and defined, the accredited estab- lished doctrine of the Reformed Church, in the period to which the inquiry refers. * Obtendit (Westphalus) verbo fieri sacramentum, non fide nostra. Hoc ut concedam, nondum tamen obtinet promiscue Christum canibus et porcis ita prostitui, ut carne ejus vescantur. Neque enim desinit e coclo pluere Deus, licet pluvice liquorem saxa et rupes non concipiant. Calv. Opp. T. \\.,p. 674. — Nos ita asserimus, omnibus offerri in sacramentoChristi corpus et sanguinem, ut soli fideles ineestimabili hoc thesauro fruantur : etsi autem increduliUis januam Christo claudit, ut priventur ejus beneficio qui ad Camam impure acce- dunt, negamus tamen quicquam decedere ex sacramenti natura ; quia panis semper verum est pignus carnis Christi, et vinum sanguinis, vernque utriusquc exhibitio semper constat ex parte Dei. Adversarii nostri corpus et snnguinom ita sub pane et vino includunt, ut sine ulla fide vorenturab impiis. lb. p. C99. CALVINISTIC DOCTKlNE OF THE LOlin's SUPPER. 03 SECTION II. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE. The Reformed Church, as distinguished from the Lutheran, cannot be said to have taken its rise in the person of any single man, or in the religious life of any particular country, separately considered. The great Protestant movement revealed itself from the beginning, under this general form, in different countries, independently of all merely outward historical connection. At the same time, the characteristic differences of doctrine between the two confessions were not clearly and fully developed from the start, on either side. The difference was felt, and in a cer- tain way also expressed. But time was needed to carry it out to its last, satisfactory, logical statement, for the understanding. Thus the Lutheran system, after years of controversy, appears fairly developed, under all its true and necessary distinctions, only in the Form of Concord, framed towards the close of the century. And thus also in the same way, the sacramental dogma of the Reformed Church can be understood fairly, not from the form in which it may be found exhibited at the outset of the con- troversy, but only from the terms in which we find it stated at a later period, after its true substance and contents had come to be properly apprehended and defined at every point, with proper antithesis to all the errors with which it was felt to be sur- rounded. It is not necessary then that we should trouble ourselves much, in the present inquiry, about the opinions of Zuingli, or Occolampadius, or of the Swiss Reformed Church generally in their day on the subject of the Lord's Supper. The Reformed Church, as a whole, is not historically derived from Switzerland, in any such sense that it could ever be said to be bound legiti- mately in its faith by the theological views of that country, in the precise form in which they were held and published at the birth of the Reformation. Much less may it be imagined that any such obligation has existed, as it regards the authority of the great Reformer of Zurich in a separate view. With all his merits, entitling him as they do to the respect of the Protes- tant world through all ages, the relation of Zuingli to the proper life of the Reformed Church, must be allowed to have been exceedingly external and accidental. This appears in the fact, that he has left behind him no work, which has ever been 64 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. held to be of symbolical force for any portion of the Church. In such circumstances, we are not at liberty of course to appeal to his authority, if it had been ever so clearly expressed, in the case before us, as carrying with it any decisive weight.* And just as little can we consider any judgment conclusive, which it may be attempted to derive from the Helvetic Church generally, in the first years of its history. Its views, in the nature of the case, were more or less, chaotic and contradictory. Theological investigation, and much exercise in the way of controversy, were still required to give them proper shape and form. This work was accomplished gradually with the onward course of history, and became complete especially, about the middle of the century, through the instrumentality of that vast mind, which for years served the whole Reformed Church as its central organ, in the city of Geneva. To learn the true character, then, of the eucharistic doctrine of the Reformed Church in the sixteenth century, we must have recourse to the time when the doctrine had become properly defined and settled in the Church itself The representations of this period are not to be ruled and interpreted by statements drawn from an earlier day, but on the contrary, these earlier *■ The view of Zuingli, with regard to the Lord's Supper, is not always consistent with itself. At times, he appears to take the proper ground, as afterwards more clearly established in the Reformed Church ; and it may well be doubted whether he could have been deliberately satisfied at all with the poor, bald conception, which is too often made to pass under the authority of his name at the present time. Still it must be confessed, that his theory of the sacraments, altogether, was quite too low, as compared with the doctrine of Calvin for instance, or the Heidelberg Catechism ; and in some cases he allows himself to speak of them in a way that sounds perfectly rationalistic. He tells us indeed : " Verum Christi corpus credimus in Ccena sacramentaliter et spiritualiter edi, a religiosa, fideli et sancta mente ;" but in the same con- nection resolves all into the most common moral influence. For the sacra- ments have their value and efficacy, he says, in this ; that they are venerable institutions of Christ — that they arc testimony to great facts — that they are made to stand for the things they represent and to bear their names — thattbe.se things are of vast worth, and reflect their own value on their signs, as a queen's wedding-ring, for instance, is more than all her other rings, however precious besides — that there is an analogy or resemblance between the signs and the things they signify — that they serve as sensible helps to our faith — and that they have, finally, the force of an oath. See his Clara Expos. Fidei, addressed to the King of France shortly before his death, and published afterwards in the year 1536 : quoted by Hospinian, ii., p. 239-241. " Credo, omnia sacramenta tam abesse, ut gratiam conferant, ut ne offerant quidem aul dispensent." Ad. Car. Imp. Fidei Ratio. " Sunt sacramenta signa vel ceremoniae — quibus se homo ecclesice probat aut candidatum aut militem esse Christi, redduntque ecclesiam totam potius certiorem de tua fide, quam te." De Vera et Falsa Rel. This is low enough, certainly, and in full contradiction to the true Reformed doctrine. Calvin went so far as to call it profane. See quotation from a letter to Viret, in Henry's Leben J. Calvin's, vol. i., p. 271 : Nunquam ejus (Zuin- glii) omnia legi. Fortassis sub finem vitae retractavit et correxit, qua; pri- mum invito exciderant. Sed in scriptis prioribus memini, quam prof ana sit ejus de sacramentis senlcntia. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LOUIES SUPPER. 05 statements, springing as they do from a comparatively rudimental state of Protestant theology; must be of right interpreted and ruled by the form in which the doctrine is made to appear after- wards, when the same theology had become more complete. This later form of the doctrine moreover, as developed and en- forced especially by Calvin, is the same which it is found to carry in the symbolical books of the Church generally, and in this view again must be regarded of course as of paramount and exclusive authority in the present inquiry. In what is now said, however, it is not intended to allow that the doctrine of the Reformed Church on the subject of the sacra- ment was essentially different at the start from what it came to be afterwards. The doctrine we suppose to have been substan- tially ihe same, in the consciousness of the Church, from the beginning. Calvin did not bring in a new faith at this point, to supplant that which had previously prevailed. He simply con- tributed to the right understanding, and full enunciation of the faith which was already at hand. It may be admitted that this had been held with some measure of confusion. It is difficult to say what Zuingli believed. Probably his view was by no means clear and fixed to his own mind. Uncertainty and con- tradiction too appear in the Helvetic creed, to some extent, after his death. But it is still sufficiently plain, that the creed itself was felt to include something more than the conception of a merely symbolical force in the sacrament. We see in it always an internal demand at least for a higher form of expression, such as the doctrine was brought subsequently to assume, through the influence mainly of Calvin. Earl// Helvetic Church. Thus with all their opposition to Luther's idea of a bodily presence, the old Helvetic divines teach clearly that the sacra- ments carry with them an objective force. The signs are held to exhibit in fact what they represent. And this, in the case of the Lord's Supper, is such a participation on the part of the soul in Christ, as involves a real connection with the power of his whole life, by which believers may be said to be nourished with his very body and blood. A view altogether, which is much higher certainly than that commonly entertained in our own time, by those who pretend to agree here with the faith of the original Swiss Church. In illustration and proof of what is now said, I may refer even to what is styled the First Confession of Basel; published Janu- ary, 1534, in compliance with Bucer's request; to show the world that the Swiss were not fairly liable to the reproach of 6* 66 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. " having the Supper without Christ." It is supposed to have been the production originally of Oecolampaclius, revised and improved by his successor Oswald Myconius. On the subject of the Lord's Supper, Art. VI. (Hospinian, Hist. Sacram. Pars Altera, p. 221,) it uses the following language : " In the Lord's Supper, (in which with the bread and wine of the Lord are represented and offered to us by the minister of the church the true body and blood of Christ,) bread and wine remain unchanged. We firmly believe, however, that Christ himself [ipsummet Chris- tum] is the food of believing souls unto eternal life ; and that our souls, by true faith upon Christ crucified, are made to eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ; so that we, members of his body as of our only head, live in him, as he also lives in us ; whereby we shall at the last day, by him and in him, rise to everlasting joy and bless- edness." The strength of this language, it must be added, is in some measure reduced by two or three brief qualifying explanations thrown into the margin ; by which we are reminded that it is the soul only that is thus fed and nourished, in a spiritual way, by the apprehension of Christ, and that the true, natural and substantial body of the Saviour is in no sense included in the ordinance. The whole representation too is considerably am- biguous, as compared with the statements of a later time. But still it shows the sense of something deeper in the doctrine, than could well be made intelligible by words. The elements are more than signs simply and outward pledges. They offer what they signify ; and this is, in some way, a real communication with the human Christ. More distinct and full, in this view, in some respects, is the Second Confession of Basel, more commonly known as the First Helvetic. It was framed by Bullinger, Myconius, and Grynaeus, A. D. 1536, under the appointment of an ecclesiastical conven- tion, which had assembled in the name of the different Protestant cantons at Basel for this purpose ; by whose authority also it was afterwards ratified and made public. On the subject of the sacra- ments, it speaks thus : " The signs called sacraments are two, namely baptism and the Lord's Supper. These sacraments are expressive holy signs of high secret things ; not however naked and empty signs ; but they consist of signs and real things. For in baptism the water is the sign, but the thing itself is regeneration and adoption into the family of God. In the Lord's Supper or eucharist the bread and wine are the signs, but the spiritual realities are the communion of the body and blood of Christ, the salvation procured on the cross and the forgiveness of sins. These real spiritual things are received by faith, as the signs are in a bodily way." Art. 20. CAI.VINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUITER. 67 Here we are taught expressly, that the sacraments are not simply signs, nor yet pledges merely, of a grace in no way bound to their particular constitution. But they consist of real things as well as signs. There is an actual exhibition of these real things in the ordinances themselves. They are there independently of all thought or feeling on the part of the worshipper ; although, of course, they can become his only by faith. Thus baptism is de- scribed, in the next article, as the " laver of regeneration, which the Lord extends, by a visible sign, to his elect, through the min- istry of the church." And then of the Lord's Supper, it is said again: " Concerning the mystical Supper we thus judge, that the Lord in it truly offers to his people his own body and blood, that is him- self, to the end that he may live more and more in them, and they in him. Not that the body and blood of the Lord are naturally united with the bread and wine, or locally included in them, or are made car- nally present in any way ; but that the bread and wine are, by divine appointment, symbols under wmich, by the Lord himself, through the ministry of the church, the true communication of his body and blood is exhibited, not as perishable food for the belly, but as the aliment of eternal life." Art. 23. {Niemeyer's Col. Conf. p. 112.) This Confession was afterwards submitted to the examination of Luther, by Bucer and Capito, on the occasion of the meeting held at Wittemberg the same year, through the agency of the Strasburg divines, for the purpose of effecting, if possible, a re- conciliation between the two confessions ; the result of which was the celebrated Wittemberg Concord. Strange to tell, Luther pronounced the Confession orthodox; although it contradicts palpably his own system, and falls short even of the full force of the Reformed doctrine, as afterwards more clearly and success- fully stated. Calvin. To gain a full view of the doctrine, as already intimated, we must have recourse especially to Calvin. No authority in the case can be entitled to greater respect. He was emphatically the great theologian of his age. On this point, moreover, he is clearly the organ and interpreter of the mind of the church, in whose bosom he stood. It will not do to speak of his view of the Lord's supper as the private fancy only of a single man. If there be any point clear in the history of the time, it is that the doctrine exhibited by Calvin on this subject is to be regarded as the same, in all substantial points, that was recognized in the end as of general symbolical authority, throughout the whole Reformed Church, in the sixteenth century. 63 THE MrSTICAL PRESENCE. It is not necessary to bring forward quotations in detail, for the purpose of showing the true character of the view he held, or its correspondence with the doctrine which has been already described, as the true and proper doctrine of the Reformed Church in the beginning of its history. That description has been in fact taken mainly from Calvin himself, and is supported accordingly by references to his writings at every point already. The difficulty here is, not to find proofs and illustrations, but to make choice among the multitude that are presented. Calvin has written much on the Lord's Supper; and he is always clear, always con- sistent, always true to himself. Over and over again, in all forms of expression and explanation, he tells us, that Christ's body is indeed locally in heaven only, and in no sense included in the elements ; that he can be apprehended by faith only, and not at all by the hands or lips ; that nothing is to be imagined like a transfusion or intromission of the particles of his body, mate- rially considered, into our persons. And yet that our commu- nion with him, notwithstanding, by the power of the Holy Ghost, involves a real participation — not in his doctrine merely — not in his promises merely — not in the sensible manifestations of his love merely — not in his righteousness and merit merely — not in the gifts and endowments of his Spirit merely ; but in his own true substantial life itself; and this not as comprehended in his divine nature merely, but most immediately and peculiarly as embodied in his humanity itself, for us men and our salvation. The Word became flesh, according to this view, for the purpose not simply of effecting a salvation that might become available for men in an outward way, but to open a fountain of life in our nature itself, that might thenceforward continue to flow over to other men, as a vivific stream, to the end of time. The flesh of Christ, then, or his humanity, forms the medium, and the only medium, by which it is possible for us to be inserted into his life. To have part in him at all, we must be joined to him in the flesh ; and this not by the bond of our common relationship to Adam, but by the force of a direct implantation through the Spirit, into the person of Christ himself. " That Christ is the bread of life," he says in his Institutes IV. 17, 5, " by which believers are nourished to eternal salvation, there is no man, not entirely destitute of religion, who hesitates to acknowledge ; though all are not equally agreed respecting the manner of partaking of him. For there are some who define in a word, that to eat the flesh of Christ and to drink his blood, is no other than to believe in Christ himself. But I conceive that in that remarkable discourse in which Christ re- commends us to feed upon his body, he intended to teach us some- thing more striking and sublime ; namely that we are quickened by a real participation of him, which he designates by the terms of eating and drinking, that no person might suppose the life which we receive. CALVINLSTMC DOCTRINE OF THE LORDS SUFFER. C9 from him to consist in simple knowledge. For as it is not seeing bread, but eating it, that administers nourishment to the body, so it is necessary for the soul to have a true and complete participation of Christ, that by his power it may be quickened into spiritual life. At the same time, we confess that there is no other eating than by faith, as it is impossible to imagine any other; but the difference between me and those whose opinion I now oppose is this. They consider eating to be the same thing as believing ; while I say, that in believ- ing we eat the flesh of Christ, because he is made ours actually by faith, and that this eating is the fruit and effect of faith. Or to ex- press it more plainly, they consider the eating to be faith itself; but I apprehend it to be rather a consequence of faith." Again, (IV. 17. 8,) he tells us that Christ was from the beginning that life giving Word of the Father, from which all things have de- rived their existence. " In him was life," the source and fountain of all creaturely existence, even before he appeared in our nature. But this " life was manifested," when he assumed our flesh, to restore the ruin produced by the fall. " For though he diffused his influence over the whole creation before that period, yet because man was alienated from God by sin, had lost the participation of life, and saw on every side nothing but impending death, it was necessary to his recovery of any hope of immortality, that he should be received into the communion of that Word. For what confidence can it raise in any one, to hear only that the fulness of life is comprehended in the Word of God, a great way off, whilst in himself and all around nothing but death is presented to his eyes! Now, however, since that fountain of life has come to dwell in our flesh, it is no longer thus hidden from us by distance, but open to our reach and free use. The very flesh moreover in which he dwells is made to be vivific for us, that wcmay be nourished by it to immortality. ' I am the living bread,' he says, 'which came down from heaven ; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.' (John 6 : 48, 51.) In these words he teaches, not simply that he is Life, as the everlasting Word descending to us from heaven, but that in thus descending he has infused this virtue also into the flesh with which he clothed himself, in order that life might flow over to us from it continually." Again, sect. 10 : " We conclude that our souls are fed by the flesh and blood of Christ, just as our corporeal life is preserved and sus- tained by bread and wine. For the analogy of the sign would not hold, if our souls did not find their aliment in Christ ; which however cannot be the case, unless Christ truly coalesce into one with us, and support us through the use of his flesh and blood. It may seem in- credible indeed that the flesh of Christ should reach us from such immense local distance, so as to become our food. But we must re- member how far the secret power of the Holy Spirit transcends all our senses, and what folly it must ever be to think cf reducing his immensity to our measure. Let faith embrace then what the under- standing cannot grasp, namely that the Spirit unites things which are locally separated. Now this sacred communication of his flesh and blood, by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if he pene- trated our bones and marrow, he testifies and seals also in the holy 70 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. supper ; not by the exhibition of a vain and empty sign, but by putting forth there such an energy of his Spirit as fulfils what he promises. What is thus attested he offers and exhibits to all who approach the spiritual banquet. It is however fruitfully received by believers only, who accept such vast grace with inward gratitude and trust." The following passage, sect. 11, is entitled to particular atten- tion, as bringing strongly into view some of the leading points of the doctrine, in a way not to be misunderstood or contradicted. " I say then, (what has always been held in the church, and is still taught by all of sound feeling,) 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 according to the in- firmity of our apprehension; and the spiritual truths which these sym- bols typify and exhibit. This last I am accustomed to describe in a familiar way, as including three things ; the signification, the matter answering to this, and the virtue or effect which follows from both. The signification holds in the promises, which are in some sense inter- woven with the sign. What I call the mattter 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. Moreover, though all these things have a relation to faith, I allow no room for the cavil, that, in repre- senting Christ to be received by faith, I make him an object simply of the understanding or imagination. For the promises present him to us, not that we may rest in contemplation merely and naked notion, but that we may enjoy him in the way of real participation. And truly, I see not how any one can have confidence, that he has redemption and righteousness by the cross of Christ, and life by his death, if he have not in the first place a true communion with Christ himself. For those benefits could never reach us if Christ did not first make himself ours. I say, then, that in the mystery of the Sup- per, under the symbols of bread and wine, Christ is truly presented to us, and so his body and blood, in which he fulfilled all obedience to procure our justification ; in order that we may first coalesce with him into one body, and then, being thus made partakers of his sub- stance, may experience the virtue also which belongs to him, in the participation of all blessings." The Catechism of Geneva was formed by Calvin in the year 1536, (enlarged and improved in 1541,) for the use of the Church whose name it bears. Take from it the following ex- tract on the subject of the Lord's Supper : Quest. Why is the Lord's body figured by bread and his blood by wine ? Jlns. To teach us, that such virtue as bread has in nourishing our bodies for the support of the present life, the same is in the body of the Lord for the spiritual nourishment of our souls ; and that as by wine the hearts of men are exhilarated, their strength refreshed, the whole man invigorated, so our souls receive like benefits from the Lord's blood. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 71- r Q. Do we then eat the body and blood of the Lord % Ji. We do. For since the whole hope of our salvation consists in this, that his obedience, which he rendered to the Father, may be placed to our credit as though it were our own, it is necessary that he himself should be possessed by us. He does not communicate his benefits to us except as he makes himself ours. Q. But did he not give himself to be ours at that time, when he ex- posed himself to death, that he might reconcile us, being redeemed from the sentence of death, to the Father! Ji. That is true. But it is not enough for us unless we receive him now, in order that the efficacy and fruit of his death may reach us. Q. Is not the mode of receiving him, however, by faith 1 Ji. This I allow ; but add at the same time, that this takes place, not only as we believe that he died to redeem us from death, and rose again to acquire life for us, but as we acknowledge also that he dwells in us, and that we are joined to him with such union as holds between members and their proper head ; in order that by the grace of this union, we may become partakers of all his benefits." — Sect. v. (Nic- meyer*s Coll. p. 164, 165.) One more extract from the great Reformer must suffice. It is taken from a short appendix to his tract, De vera participa- tions carnis ct sanguinis Christi in sacra coma, written against the virulent Hesshuss in the year 1561, near the close of his life. The object of the appendix is to set forth distinctly the points of agreement and disagreement, in the case of the sacramental ques- tion, with a view to ultimate concord. After stating the points with regard to which both sides were agreed, touching the sacraments in general and the Lord's supper in particular ; this among the rest, that Christ in the Supper really and efficaciously fulfils all that the analogy of the signs demands, so that there is offered to us a true communication with his body and blood ;■ he goes on to say: " It remains to notice the points with regard to which it is still un- settled, in what light they are to be viewed or represented. All however, who are possessed of sound judgment, and approach the subject at the same time, without passion, must allow that the controversy is simply on the mode of eating ; since we openly and ingenuously affirm, that Christ becomes ours, in order that he may afterwards impart to us the benefits he possesses ; that his body also was not only once offered for our salvation, when he was slain upon the cross to expiate sin, but is daily extended to us for our nourish- ment; so that while he himself dwells in us, we may have an inter- est also in all his blessings. We teach finally, that he is vivific be- cause he inspires his life into us, just as we derive strength from the nutriment of bread. It is in fixing the method of eating then, that contentions arise. Now our definition is, that the body of Christ is eaten, inasmuch as it forms the spiritual aliment of the soul. We call it aliment again in this sense, because by the incomprehensible power of his Spirit, he inspires into us his own life, so that it becomes common 72 T 11F, MYSTICAL PRESENCE. to us with himself, in the same way precisely as the vital sap from the root of a tree diffuses itself into the branches, or as vigor flows from the head of the body into its several members. In this definition, there is nothing captious, nothing 1 obscure, nothing ambiguous or de- ceitful. That some, not satisfied with this clear simplicity, require the body ©f Christ to be swallowed, is agreeable neither to the authority of Scripture nor the testimony of the ancient Church; and it is marvel- lous that men possessed of moderate judgment and learning, should contend so pertinaciously for the new comment. What the Scriptures teach is not at all called by us into question, namely, that the flesh of Christ is truly meat and his blood truly drink ; since they are truly received by us, and avail to solid life. We profess also that this com- munication is exhibited in the Sacred Supper. Whoever insists on more, certainly exceeds proper limits." Again : " It is a vain dispute moreover that is made about the twofold body. The character of Christ's, flesh was indeed changed when it was received into celestial glory ; whatever was terrene, mortal or perishable, it now put off. Still however it must be maintained, that no other body can be vivific for us, or may be counted meat indeed, save that which was crucified to atone for our sins ; as the sound of the words also indicates. The same body then which the Son of God once offered in sacrifice to the Father, he offers to us daily in the Sup- per, that it may be our spiritual aliment. Only that must be held which has been already intimated as to the mode, that it is not neces- sary that the essence of the flesh should descend from heaven in order that we may be fed by it ; but that the power of the Spirit is sufficient to penetrate through all impediments, and to surmount all local dis- tance. At the same time we do not deny, that the mode here is in- comprehensible to human thought; for flesh naturally could neither be the life of the soul, nor exert its power upon us from heaven, and not without reason is the communication, which makes us flesh of Christ's flesh and bone of his bones, denominated by Paula great mystery. In the sacred Supper then we acknowledge it a miracle, transcending both nature and our own understanding, that Christ's life is made common to us with himself, and his flesh given to us as aliment. Only let all comments be kept at a distance that are repugnant to the definition already given, such as those concerning the ubiquity of the body, or its secret inclusion under the symbol of bread, or its sub- stantial presence upon the earth. These things being disposed of, a doubt still appears with respect to the word substance ; which is readily allayed, if we put away the crass imagination of a manducation of the flesh, as though it were like corporal food, that being taken into the mouth is received by the belly. For if this absurdity be removed, there is no reason why we should deny that we are fed with Christ's flesh substantially ; since we truly coalesce with him into one body by faith, and are thus made one with him. Whence it follows that we are joined with him by substantial connection, just as substantial vigor flows down from the head into the members. The definition must stand then, that we are made to partake of Christ's flesh substantially; not in the way of any carnal mixture, or as if the flesh of Christ drawn down from heaven CALVINIST1C DOCTRINE OP THE LORD'S SUPPER. 73 entered into us, or were swallowed with the mouth ; but because the flesh of Christ as to its power and efficacy vivifies our souls, not otherwise than the body is nourished by the substance of bread and wine. Another subject of controversy is the word spiritually ,• to which many are averse, because they think that it implies something imagi- nary or empty. On the contrary however, the body of Christ is said to be given io us spiritually in the Supper, because the secret energy of the Holy Spirit causes things that are separated by local distance to be notwithstanding joined together; so that life is made to reach into us from heaven out of the flesh of Christ ; which power and faculty of vivification may be said not unsuitably to be something abstracted from his substance, provided only it be taken in a sound sense, namely that Christ's body remains in heaven, while neverthe- less life flows out from his substance and reaches to us who sojourn upon the earth." — Cain. Opp. edit. Jmstelud. Tom. ix. p. 743,744. It seems strange in view of such quotations as have now been presented, that any should think of still calling in question Cal- vin's faith in the doctrine of a real communication with Christ's life in the Lord's Supper. It will not do to talk of figurative language in the case, and to remind us that all is resolved by him constantly into ft spiritual manducation as distinguished from one that is oral and physical. This is allowed on all hands; he was no Romanist nor Lutheran. But if there ever was a clear case we have one here, when we affirm that Calvin's spiritual manducation was intended by himself to include full as much, in the case of believers, as was involved in the Lutheran hypo- thesis itself, that is a true participation of the substantial life of Christ's body and blood, according to the faith of the universal Church from the beginning. To guard against carnal miscon- struction, he was accustomed indeed to speak of this as effected by the ascent of the soul to Christ in heaven, through the power of the Holy Ghost, rather than by a proper descent of Christ's nature in the sacrament to the earth. But this affects not at all the substance of his doctrine. In whatever way it might be supposed to occur, he held and taught the fact of a real presence of the Saviour's human life, for the soul of the believer, in the sacramental transaction. Of this presence and communication too, the sacrament as such was by the Spirit the true supernatu- ral vehicle and bearer. The Lutherans have pretended indeed, that he acknowledged no inward connection between the insti- tution and the grace it represented. But this is manifestly false. He does, to be sure, say of the signs that they have no virtue or force in themselves as such. Augustine says the same thing. But both Calvin and Augustine hold the transaction to be more than what falls upon the senses. In this view, it is held to be truly and properly the form, under which and by which, through 7 74 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. the Spirit, Christ is made present. Thus on 1 Cor. x. 3, he says: "The Papists confound sign and thing; profane men, such as Schwenkfeld and others like him, rend them asunder; let us keep the middle; that is, let us hold the conjunction established by the Lord, but with proper distinction, so as not to transfer rashly to one what belongs to the other." So, still more clearly, on 1 Cor. xi. 24. " Why is the appellation body attributed to the bread? All will allow, I presume, for the same reason that John denominates a dove the Holy Ghost. Thus far it is agreed. But now the Holy Ghost was so called, because he had appeared under the form (sub specie) of a dove ; whence the name is transferred to the visible sign. And why should we deny a similar metonymy here, by which the name of the body is attributed to the bread, because it is its sign and symbol." Next comes the meaning of the metonymy itself. It is more, he tells us, than a figure or a picture. "The dove is called the Spirit, as being the sure pledge (tessera) of the Spirit's invisible presence. So the bread is Christ's body, as it assures us cer- tainly of the exhibition of what it represents, or because the Lord in extending to us that visible symbol, gives us in fact along with it his own body; for Christ is no juggler, to mock us with empty appearances. Hence it is to me beyond all controversy, that the reality is here joined with the sign, or in other words that, so far as spiritual virtue is concerned, we do as truly partake of Christ's body as we eat the bread."* * F. D. Maurice, of King's College, London, in his late work entitled The Kingdom of Christ, which has attracted some attention, falls grossly into the same error with regard to Calvin, which it is here attempted to expose. The Calvinist, he says, (vol. ii., p. 105,) " requires that we should suppose there is no object present, unless there be something which perceives it; and having got into this contradiction, the next step is to suppose that faith is nota recep- tive, but a creative power ; that it makes the thing which it believes." He admits, at the same time, "that there were characteristics in the creed of the Calvinist, which ought especially to have delivered him" from the general tendency of Protestantism to run into this false view. So far as Calvin him- self is concerned, it must be perfectly plain from the testimony which has now been presented, that the charge quoted is utterly erroneous. He taught clearly an objective presence of Christ's life in the sacramental transaction as such, which could become available only through faith, but which faith could not he said, in any sense, to create; since the very guilt of the unworthy communi- cant proceeds mainly from this, that he treats the actually present grace as though it were a mere figment, not discerning the Lord's body. That the "Calvinist" of modern date has too often fallen into the contradiction of making faith creative, in the sacrament, rather than receptive, is indeed most painfully true. But in doing so he has fallen away entirely from the stand- point of the man whose name he professes to honour. Whether this stand- point is to be held itself responsible for the apostacy, is another question, perfectly legitimate and of immense practical importance; which it becomes the friends of the Reformed Church to look steadily in the face. If Calvinism — the system of Geneva — necessarily runs here into Zuinglianism, we may, indeed, well despair of the whole interest. For most assuredly no Church can stand, that is found to be constitutionally unsacramental. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORDS SUPPER. M According to Schleiermacher (Der. chr. Glaube, § 140), the Calvinistic view of the Lord's Supper connects, not indeed with the elements as such, but with the act of eating and drinking, not simply such a spiritual enjoyment of Christ as was taught by Zuingli ; but the real presence of his body and blood to be had no where else (die nirgend sonst zu habende wirkliche Gegenwart seines Leibes und Blutes). Both views, the Luthe- ran and Calvinistic, he tells us, acknowledge a real presence of Christ's body and blood. It will hardly be pretended, that such a theologian as Schleiermacher has mistaken the sense of Calvin in this case. It deserves to be noted besides, that this great master of ratiocination, with all his cool and free spirit of theo- logical inquiry, finds no absurdity or contradiction whatever in the Calvinistic theory itself. He prefers it on the whole to the view of Luther: although he thinks the truth may require still some higher middle theory, in which both at last shall be recon- ciled and made complete. The Zuinglian doctrine he says has the advantage of being very clear and easy to be understood ; but it is quite too low for the subject. Farcl and Beza. At the Colloquy of Worms, held A. D. 1557, certain delegates presented themselves from the Reformed Gallic Churches, namely, William Farcl, pastor at the time in Neufchatel, John Budaeus, a citizen of Geneva, Caspar Carmel, minister of the Church in Paris, and Theodore Beza, then professor at Lausanne. They exhibited here a Confession of Faith, which is to be con- sidered important, as embodying not simply their own views, but the views also of the wide religious communion which they represented. In the article of the Lord's Supper it employs the following language, which will be found at once closely coinci- dent with the representation embraced in the extracts just furnished from Calvin : " We confess that in the Sapper of the Lord not only the benefits of Christ, but the very substance itself of the Son Man; that is, the same true flesh which the Word assumed into perpetual personal union, in which he was born and suffered, rose again and ascfended to heaven, and that true blood which he shed for us ; are not only sig- nified, or set forth symbolically, typically or in figure, like the me- mory of something absent, but are truly and really represented, ex- hibited, and offered for use ; in connection with symbols that are by no means naked, but which, so for as God who promises and offers is concerned, always have the thing itself truly and certainly joined with them, whether proposed to believers or unbelievers." This last clause deserves especially to be noted, as affirming 76 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. in the strongest manner the. objective force of the institution. The power which it carries, as the medium of a real communi- cation with the flesh and blood of Christ, is in no sense the product of our piety and faith. It exists in the divine constitu- tion of the ordinance itself; though it can be of no value of course, where no organ is at hand for its reception. The article proceeds : "As it regards the mode now in which the thing itself, that is, the true body and true blood of the Lord, is connected with the symbols, we say that it is symbolical or sacramental. We call a sacramental mode not such as is figurative merely, but such as truly and certainly represents, under the form of visible things, what God along with the symbols exhibits and offers, namely, what we mentioned before, the true body and blood of Christ; which may show that we retain and defend the presence of the very body and blood of Christ in the Sup- per. So that if we have any controversy with truly pious and learned brethren, it is not concerning the thing itself, but only concerning the mode of the presence, which is known to God alone, and by us be- lieved. " Finally, as to the mode in which the thing itself, that is, the natu- ral and true substance of Christ, is truly and certainly communicated to us, we do not make it to be natural, nor imagine a local copulation, or a diffusion of Christ's human nature, or that crass and diabolical transubstantiation, or any gross mingling of the substance of Christ with ours ; but we say that it is a spiritual mode, that is, such as rests on the incomprehensible energy of God's Spirit, as unfolded to us in that word of his own, This is my body. And we now beg all brethren dis- passionately to consider, whether it is proper that those who thus think and teach concerning the sacraments of Christ, should be branded as infidels and heretics." — Hosjnnian^ Hist. Sicraru. Pars Jilt, p. 433. Btza and Peter Martyr. In the year 1561 a conference was held on the subject of religion, at Poissy, in France, in the presence of the king of Navarre, and many other distinguished personages. Bcza, who was now settled as a minister at Geneva, and Peter Martyr, professor of divinity in Zurich, appeared here, by special invita- tion^to represent the interest of the Reformed faith. Beza on this occasion made a long speech, in exposition of the leading articles of the new confession, which was characterized by great eloquence and power, and filled the court and all present with the highest, admiration. On the subject of the Eucharist, he reiterates the view which we find exhibited in the extract last given; namely, that the communion of the believer with Christ in this ordinance involves a real participation in his flesh and blood. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD IS SUPPER. / 7 44 We do not say what some, through misapprehension of our lan- guage, have supposed us to teach : that there is in the holy Supper a commemoration only of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nor do we say, that we are by it partakers only of the fruit of his death and passion; but we join the ground also with the produce, (fundum cum frudibus,) which it is found to yield ; asserting with Paul, that the bread which we break by divine appointment, is the communion, that is, the communication of Christ's body for us crucified, and the cup which we drink, the communication of his true blood for us poured out; yea, in that same substance, which he took in the womb of the virgin, and which he carried up into heaven. And what is there then, I pray, which you can find in this sacrament, that we too may not seek and find V'—Hosp. II. p. 515. After this strong statement, he goes on to exclude from the doctrine, in terms equally distinct, the idea of transubstantiation in the first place, and then of every thing like a local compre- hension of Christ's body in, with or under the elements, as taught by Luther. In opposition to every such imagination he says: " We affirm that his body is as far removed from the bread and wine, as heaven is exalted high above the earth ;" though he adds immediately, that the reality of the communion is in no respect impaired by this consideration ; since by the power of faith, in a spiritual way, we still partake of his body and blood " as truly as we see the sacraments with our eyes, touch them with our hands, take them into our mouths, and are nourished and supported by their substance in our corporal life." The remark that Christ's body and the elements locally con- sidered, are as far apart as heaven and earth, caused a general murmur, we are told, in the assembly, and was made the occa- sion afterwards of no small reproach. Beza thought it neces- sary in consequence to address a letter to the queen of Navarre, craving an opportunity to explain himself more fully on this point. In this he says : 14 1 was led to the remark which has given offence, in meeting the objection of some who, through misunderstanding, charge us with wishing to exclude Christ from the sacrament ; which would be in- deed manifestly impious. Whereas the fact is we hold it sure from the word of God, that this precious sacrament was instituted by the Son of God, for the purpose of making us more and more partakers of the substance of his true body and his true blood, in order that we may thus become more closely united to him, and coalesce with him unto eternal life. If this were not the case, it would not be the Sup- per of Jesus Christ. So far are we then from saying Jesus Christ is absent from the Supper, that we of all men abhor that°blasphemy. But we say it makes a great difference here, whether we hold Jesus Christ to be present in the Supper, in so far as he gives us in it truly his own body and his own blood, or make his body and blood to be included in the bread. The first we affirm ; the second we deny, as repugnant 7 * 78 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. to the truth of Christ's nature, to the article on the ascension, and to the doctrine of the fathers." — Hasp. II. p. 516. This colloquy of Poissy was continued from the first part of September till towards the close of November. It was thought best, however, in the progress of it, to give it a private form, in place of the public character under which it was commenced. For this purpose live delegates were appointed on the part of the Romanists, including two doctors of the Sorbonne, and five on the part of the Reformed, to confer together in a free way on the various subjects in debate. The representatives of the Reformed Church were Beza, Martyr, Gallasius, Marloratus, and Espiua3us. A large share of their attention was given by these collocutors, of course, to the sacramental question. As the result of the discussion, they agreed finally in the following formula, as expressing their common belief. " We confess that Jesus Christ in the Supper offers, gives, and truly exhibits to us, the substance of his body and blood, by the ope- ration of the Holy Ghost ; and that we receive and eat, spiritually and by faith, that true body that was slain for us ; that we may be bone of his bones and flesh of his .flesh, and so be vivified by him and made to partake of all that is wanted for our salvation. And whereas faith, resting on the divine word, makes what it perceives to be present ; and we by this faith receive truly and efficaciously the true and natural body and blood of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost; we ac- knowledge in this respect the presence of the body and blood them- selves in the Supper." To this formula the delegates on the Romanist side declared themselves willing to subscribe, as well as those on the side of the Reformed Church ; and most of the prelates in attendance seemed also to be satisfied with it, when it was first submitted for their approval. But the authority of the Sorbonne led sub- sequently to its general rejection, as treasonable to the Catholic faith; and the five Romanist collocutors fell under no small reproach in consequence, as having conspired with heretics to wrong the orthodox doctrine of the Church. Hosp. II p. 519 — 521. The way is now fairly open for bringing forward the testi- mony of the several Confessions which were formed about this time, for their own use, by the different national branches of the Reformed Church. We find among them all a truly remarkable correspondence throughout; but no where is it more striking, than in the case of this very article of the Lord's Supper. The language they employ is sufficiently distinct in itself, for the most part, to exclude all doubt as to their true meaning on the point with which we are now concerned. But if any room might CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SITTER. 79 seem to be left for hesitation, it must be altogether barred surely by the view now presented of the actual state of opinion, at the tune when these symbolical books were framed. The more fully we become acquainted with the historical connections and relations under which they started into life, the more shall we feel it to be impossible that they should mean any thing less than the full strength of their language seems to mean. And it is hardly necessary to add, that their historical sense, as thus determined, must be admitted to be in the end their only true sense. The Gallic Confession. This was formed by an assembly of delegates from the Re- formed Churches of France, who were called together for the purpose, in Paris, in the year 1559. It follows closely the doc- trine of Calvin and Beza, as already presented. Some have sup- posed indeed that it proceeded from the pen of Calvin himself. But of this there is no historical evidence, and the supposition is in no respect necessary to account for the agreement just men- tioned. The agreement serves otdy to show, that the doctrine of Calvin in this case, was the doctrine in fact of the Reformed Church, which came now to be incorporated into its symbolical books accordingly, in the most distinct terms. The Confession teaches that Christ " truly feeds and nourishes us with his flesh and blood, that being made one with him, we may have with him a common life." " For although he is now in heaven, and will remain there also till he shall come to judge the world ; we believe, notwithstanding, that through the secret and incomprehensible energy of his Spirit, appre- hended by faith, he nourishes and vivifies us by the substance of his body and blood. We say, however, that this is done spiritually, not as substituting thus an imagination or thought for the power of the fact, but rather because this mystery of our coalition with Christ is so sublime, that it transcends all our senses, and so also the whole course of nature."— Art. 36. " We believe, as before said, that in the Supper, as in Baptism, God in fact, that is, truly and efficaciously, grants unto us all that is there sacramentally represented ; and so we join with the signs the true possession and fruition of what is thus ottered to us. We affirm, therefore, that those who bring to the Lord's table the vessel of a pure faith, truly receive what the signs there testify ; namely, that the body and blood of Jesus Christ are not less the meat and drink of the soul, than bread and wine are the food of the body/' — JhrU 37. (Mc/neyer Coll. Conf. p. 338.) S3 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. Old Scotch Confession. The overthrow of Popery took place in Scotland in the year 1560 ; at which time also this Confession was produced, under the auspices particularly of the distinguished Reformer, John Knox. On the point now in hand it utters itself in the following style: " We do then utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm that the sacraments are nothing else but mere naked signs. Rather, we surely believe, that by baptism we are inserted into Christ, and made partakers of his righteousness, by which all our sins are covered and remitted. And also, that in the Lord's Supper, rightly used, Christ is so united to us as to be the very nutriment and food of our souls. Not that we may imagine any transubstantiation of the bread into the natural body of Christ, and of the wine into his natural blood, as the papists have perniciously taught, and believe to their own damnation. But this union and conjunction which we have with the body and blood of Jesus Christ, in the right use of the sacrament, is effected by the operation of the Holy Ghost, who carries us by true faith above all that is seen, and all that is carnal and terrestrial, and causes us to feed upon the body and blood of Jesus Christ, once broken for us and poured out, but now in heaven, appearing for us in the presence of the Father. And though the distance be immense in space between his body now glorified in heaven and us mortals still upon the earth, we do notwithstanding firmly believe that the bread which we break is the communion of his body, and the cup which we bless the com- munion of his blood ; and so we confess that believers in the right use of the Lord's Supper thus eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus Christ, and we believe surely that he dwells in them and they in him, yea, that they become thus flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones; for as the eternal Deity has imparted life and immortality to the flesh of Jesus Christ, so likewise his flesh and blood, when eaten and drunk by us, confer upon us the same prerogatives. — Jrt,21. (Nic- meyer, p. 352, 353.) Bclgic Confession. This dates from 1563; and is of great authority and force as a standard exhibition of the faith of the Reformed Dutch Church, both in Holland and in this country. It was solemnly approved besides by the Synod of Dort, and may be said to be clothed in this way with a sort of oecumenical character, as a true exposition of the faith of the entire Reformed Church, as it stood in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its tes- timony on the subject before us is particularly strong. " The sacraments are signs and visible symbols of invisible internal realities, through which as means God himself works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. Those signs then are by no means vain or void ; nor are they instituted to deceive or disappoint us. For the truth of them is Jesus Christ himself, without whom they would be of no force whatever."— Art. 33. CALV1NTSTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. £1 " He has instituted terrene and visible bread and wine to be the sa- crament of his body and blood ; by which we are assured, that as truly as we receive and hold in our hands this sacrament, and eat the same with our mouth, to the sustentation of our natural life, so truly also do we by faith, which is as it were the hand and mouth of our soul, receive the true body and true blood of Christ, our only Saviour, in our souls, to the promotion of our spiritual life. Moreover, it is most certain that Christ commends his sacrament to us so earnestly not without cause, as himself performing in us really all that he represents to us in those sacred signs; although the mode is such as to surpass the apprehension of our mind, and cannot be understood by any ; since the operation of the Holy Spirit is always secret and incomprehensi- ble. We may say, however, that what is eaten is the very natural body of Christ, and what is drunk, his true blood; only the instrument of medium by which we eat and drink these is not the corporeal mouth, but our own spirit itself, and this by faith."-— Art. 35. (Niemcyer, p. 383,385.)* Second Helvetic Confession. What is called the Second or Lata* Helvetic Confession, was drawn up by Henry Bnllingcr, in the year 1562; though it did not become of public authority before the year 15CG. It be- came in the end the standing, universally acknowledged expo- sition of the faith of the whole Helvetic Church, and had great credit also in foreign countries. On the subject of the Lord's * I translate from the Latin ; and there are frequent variations in the text of the Confession itself, as given in different editions. This may explain any deviations from the letter of the English version, as used by the Reformed Dutch Church in this country. For any one who is at all familiar with the view of Calvin, or with the true character of the sacramental question in the sixteenth century, the sense of the Confession is too clear to be mistaken. Christ, it is true, is held to " sit always at the right hand of his Father in the heavens ;" but notwithstanding all this, he " doth not cease to make us par- takers of himself by faith." And to guard against the idea of a mere moral communication in the case, it is added, that he conveys to us, at his table, not simply his benefits or merits, but these as inhering in his person ; " loth him- self, and the merits of his sufferings and death." Christians have a two-fold life; one natural, the other spiritual, beginning with their second birth "in the communion of the body of Christ." This last life is supported by a living bread, sent, from heaven for the purpose, " namely Jesus Christ, who nourishes and strengthens the spiritual life of believers when they eat him, that is to say, when they apply and receive him by faith in the spirit." A spiritual reception, of course, but still a real reception of Christ's true human and heavenly life; otherwise the article must be held guilty of the most egregious trifling, in the case of one of the most solemn and perilous points in theology. The Form for the administration of the Lord's Supper, in the Liturgy of the Reformed Dutch Church, corresponds fully with the doctrine of the Confes- sion. " That we may now be fed with the true heavenly bread, Christ Jesus," the service exhorts, " let us not cleave with our hearts unto the external bread and wine, but lift them up on high in hnaven, where Christ Jesus is our advo- cate at the right hand of his heavenly Father, whither all the articles of our faith lead us; not doubting but we shall as certainly be fed and refreshed in our souls, through the working of the Holy Ghost, with his body and blood, as we receive the holy bread and wine in remembrance of him." 82 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. Supper it is particularly full. Take on the point immediately before us the following extract : "Believers receive what is given by the minister of the Lord, and eat the Lord's bread and drink of the Lord's cup ; inwardly, however, in the mean time, by the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit, they partake also of the Lord's flesh and blood, and are fed by these unto eternal life. For the flesh and blood of Christ are true meat and drink unto eternal life ; and Christ himself, as delivered up for us and our salvation, is that which mainly makes the Supper, nor do we suffer any thing else to be put in his room." — Art. 21. The article then goes on, in explanation of this statement, to describe different forms of manducation. There is first a cor- poral manducation, such as the Capernaites had in their mind, when they strove among themselves saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then there is a spiritual manducation, by which Christ is so appropriated in the way of ordinary faith, that he lives in us and we in him. " By this is not meant a merely imaginary, undefinable food, but the body of the Lord itself delivered up for us, which however is received by believers, not corporally, but spiritually by faith." Still different from this lastly is the sacramental manducation, "by which the believer not only participates in the true body and blood of the Lord spiritually and internally, but outwardly also by coming to the Lord's table receives the visible sacrament of the Lord's body and blood." The sacrament adds something of its own to the ordinary life of faith. " He that partakes of the sacrament out- wardly with true faith, partakes not of the sign only, but enjoys also, as already said, the thing itself which this represents." — (Niemeyer,p. 519,520.) The occasion by which this confession became public, was as follows. A spirit of the most violent intolerance had come to prevail on the part of the rigid Lutherans, excited by such men as Westphal, Timann, and Hesshuss, against all who professed the Reformed doctrine ; but in no direction was it more active than towards the elector of the Palatinate, Frederick the Third. Fears were entertained even, that he would be excluded from the peace between the Catholics and Protestants. In these circum- stances, it became an object of great importance, to bring all the Reformed Churches into as close a connection as possible. Fre- derick especially had his heart set upon this point. Towards the close of the year 1565, he wrote to Bullinger on the subject, and begged him in particular to send him as soon as possible a confession of faith, that might serve to repress the cavils of the Lutherans, with a view to the imperial diet which was then close at hand. Bullinger forwarded him the confession which he had CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUJ TER. 83 prepared three years before ; which so pleased the elector, that he proposed at once to have it translated and published in the German tongue. It was now felt important, to make it if possi- ble of still more general authority; for which purpose it was sub- mitted to the other Helvetic Churches; and in this way, being generally approved it became known in time following as the proper Swiss Confession. The historical relation now men- tioned, in the case of this confession is important, as it serves to show the substantial harmony of Switzerland and the Palatinate on the sacramental question, at the time it was published. A harmony too that rested on the basis of the Calvinistic doctrine, as it has been already explained ; for that this doctrine formed the reigning view of the Reformed Church in the Palatinate, will soon be placed beyond all shadow of doubt. The Heidelberg Catechism. Next in order comes the venerable symbol of the German Re- formed Church, the Catechism of the Palatinate; drawn up, in obedience to an -appointment from the elector, Frederick III., by Caspar Oltvian,a disciple of Calvin, and Zaekarias Ur sinus, a friend of Melancthon ; approved and ratified by a general eccle- siastical synod called at Heidelberg for the purpose; and solemnly published as a confessional standard in the year 1503. It has been translated into all modern civilized tongues, honoured with countless commentaries, and exalted by general acknowledgment to a sort of symbolical authority for the whole Reformed Church. To place its testimony in a proper light, it is necessary to no- tice a little more particularly than has yet been done, the actual posture of the sacramental controversy in Germany at the time it was formed. Only in this way, can we come to a clear view of the circumstances in which it had its origin, by which, in the nature of the case, its character and meaning are to be interpreted. After the death of Luther, A. D. 1540, the controversy on the subject of the sacrament was allowed for some years to remain at rest. As it began to appear, however, before long, that the high ground occupied by the great Reformer was coming to be silently abandoned by many, who still considered themselves true to the Augsburg Confession, a violent movement was gradually created, antagonistically to this tendency, in the opposite direc- tion. It commenced with an assault, in the first place, upon Calvin and Peter Martyr, who had both been led to declare themselves openly upon the subject, in a way that was necessa- rily offensive to such as were still disposed to insist rigidly on the extreme view ; though no thought of giving offence, or pro- voking controversy, was entertained probably at the time; as it 84 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. was supposed the mind of the church had come to be very gene- rally inclined to the same moderate view, or that it was prepared at least to treat it with patient indulgence. But the case soon showed itself to be different. The war was opened, in the year 1552, by Joachim Westphal, preacher in Hamburg, with his Farrago ; which was intended to be at once a battle challenge to the Swiss churches, with Calvin at their head, and a call to arms upon all who could be made to feel with himself that the strong towers of Lutheran orthodoxy were in danger of being overthrown. This was followed by a second attack, the follow- ing year; and then again, the year after, by a third. Meanwhile other influences also were employed, but too successfully, to rouse the spirit of party hatred and party strife, in the same direction. Calvin found himself now compelled to take up the pen, in self-defence. Gradually the battle thickens. Other champions appear in the field. The Lutheran church is torn with dissension and distraction in her own bosom. The rigid party, " fierce for orthodoxy," have their hands full at last with the work of suppressing heresy at home. The horrible sacra- mentarian doctrine is found everywhere lifting up its head, or at least struggling to do so, under the very shadow of the Augsburg Confession itself. And what is worse still, the venerable author of the Confession, still living at Wittemberg, refuses to lift a finger in opposition to the mischief; nay, is more than suspected of being himself in league with it in his heart. No wonder that all Protestant Germany is mad with theological excitement and passion. A full account of these agitations and conflicts, may be found in Planck's " Gcscluchtc der Protestantischcn Theologie" vol. v. Second Part. They form one of the most strange and interest- ing chapters, in the church history of the sixteenth century. But what was the nature of the question, on which the parties showed themselves to be at issue in this case, with regard to the Lord's Supper? It related not at all to the reality of the sacra- mental presence, but only and wholly to its mode. The contro- versy was not at all between the high view of Luther and the low theory commonly attributed to Zuingli. The great point was conceded now on all hands, that the sacrament involves a real participation in the substance of Christ's flesh and blood, that is in his true human life itself, as the only ground of our salva- tion. With this confession however the rigid party were not satisfied. They insisted on certain definitions and admissions be- sides, which appeared to them necessary to carry out the doctrine in its true sense. They contended for the formula, "In, with, and tinder," as indispensable to a complete expression of the sacramental presence. The communication must be allowed C'ALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD S SUPPER. CO to be by the mouth. It must be granted in the case of all who eat, whether with or without faith. Finally, the ubiquity of Christ's body, and the commit nicatlo idiomatum in its full extent, must be accepted also, as the only basis on which the doctrine could find a solid foundation. It was for refusing to admit these extreme requisitions only, that the other party was branded with the title Saeramcntarian, and held up to odium in every direction as the pest of society. It was not the Zuinglian view of the Lord's Supper, but the Calvinistic view, in all its length and breadth, as already described, which was now recognized as the proper doctrine of the Reformed Church, and as such pur- sued with unrelenting hate by the high toned orthodoxy of the day. It is important to bear this continually in mind. The intestine war broke forth first in the city of Bremen ; where it soon became very violent, and gradually involved the whole country in commotion. The immediate occasion of it was furnished by the distinguished preacher, Albert Harden- berg; a man who stood in the highest credit for learning and piety, and was considered in some respects the main ornament of the place to which he belonged; but who, unfortunately for himself, was suspected of being more Reformed than Lutheran in his view of the Lord's Supper. It was not the least consider- ation in his prejudice, that he was known to be in regular cor- respondence with IVJelancthon, as one of his most intimate and confidential friends. The movement against him was com- menced in 1555, by John Timann, one of his colleagues in the ministry of Bremen, who now came forward with great zeal to the assistance of Westphal in his crusade against heresy. The other preachers were after some time fully engaged also in the process of persecution. Every effort was made to bring the man into discredit with the magistracy and the people, as an enemy of the true Lutheran faith. The pulpits, in the end, were made to ring with reproaches, hurled upon his head. Conspiracy and intrigue knew no rest for years. Timann died in the midst of the controversy; but his mantle fell upon others, who easily sup- plied his place. Other cities and slates, Hamburg, Lubeck, Lunenburg, Saxony, Mecklinburg, Wirtemburg, Denmark, were secretly engaged to interpose their mediation. In the end, Hardenberg found it necessary to retire. The controversy, however, was still continued, and came to a more favourable result ultimately than might have been expected. It lasted alto- gether thirteen years, holding the city of Bremen in violent dis- turbance the whole time. In close connection with the religious struggle of Bremen, so far as its interior history was concerned, stands the religious revolution of the Palatinate, which fell like a thunderbolt on the 8 80 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. ears of Lutheran Germany, while that struggle was still in pro- gress. It took place under the following circumstances. One of the most violent, unsettled spirits of this turbulent period, was Thiemann Hesshuss; rendered memorable if by nothing else, at least by the merciless castigation inflicted upon him by Calvin, in his last tract on the Sacrament.* He was a man of inordinate ambition, fond of money, constitutionally intolerant and overbearing; and withal, whether by conviction or accident, a perfect zealot in the cause of Lutheran orthodoxy. In the year 1558, he was appointed first professor in the Uni- versity of Heidelberg, and general superintendent of all the churches in the Palatinate. Six months, however, had not elapsed, before he had made himself here, as in all places where he had lived before, an object of very general dislike. In par- ticular, he was drawn into strong collision with one William Klebiz, who occupied the situation of a deacon at the time in Heidelberg; a man also, it would seem, of most unclerical tem- per, and but little inclined to maintain friendly relations with the new superintendent. It soon came between them to an open, violent rupture; in which the sacramental question was made the prominent subject of quarrel. Hesshuss charged Kle- biz with heresy, as favouring the Calvinistic view of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper rather than the strict Lutheran. The point of his apostacy was found mainly in this, that he affirmed the participation of Christ's body in the Supper to be by faith and not by the mouth. Hesshuss grew savage in his denunciations; and poured forth his indignation every sabbath, from the pulpit, upon the new Aruis, who had made his appear- ance in the Heidelberg Church; not sparing at the same time the university and the authorities of the city, for their supposed indifference to the portentous mischief with which they were threatened. Klebiz returned violence for violence. The whole city was thrown into commotion. In these circumstances, Frederick III. succeeded to the electorate. The moderate mea- sures he employed in the first place, to allay the strife, proved unavailing. In the end, he found it necessary to resort to more * Dilucida Explicaiio Sana Docirince. de Vera Participatione Carniset San- guinis Christi, in Sacra Caina. Ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas. Published 1561. In this tract, Hesshuss is handled, as we say, without gloves. Inscitia cum imprudent /a, stoliditas ct protervia, delirium, S,c., are charged upon him in full measure ; and such epithets as impurus scurra, epilepticus, noster Thraso, impura bestia, $c, appear plentifully sprinkled over the whole dis- cussion. In conclusion, the writer excuses himself from farther controversy with the man as being destitute of all modesty and reason, delivering him over at the same time to the discipline of Beza. " Si qua esset in bestia ingenuitas, vel docilitas, ab ejus calumniis me purgarem ; sed quia taurus est indomitus, lasciviam in qua nimis exultat, Beza? subigendam trado." Opp. ix, p. 723-742. CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 87 vigorous means. Both Hesshuss and Klebiz were dismissed accordingly from office; and in this way the public quiet was restored. Frederick was now made to feel the importance of having the subject of this controversy brought to some such settlement, in his dominions, as might preserve the peace of the country in time to come. He formed the plan accordingly of establishing a rule of faith for the Palatinate, to which all should be required to conform. To sustain himself in this object, he wrote to Me- Inncthon, asking his counsel and advice. This drew forth the celebrated response of Melancthon, which became public after his death, and involved his memory in no small reproach, with the stiff party to whose views it was found to be opposed. It approved the elector's course, in silencing the sacramental con- troversy, and also his purpose of excluding strife, by requiring all to submit to some common form of words; whilst it very deci- dedly condemned the use of any such terms for this purpose, as were pressed upon the Church by Hesshussand men of the same stamp. The elector was already decided in his own mind, in favour of the moderate or Calvinistic view of the sacrament. He found the same disposition predominant also among his people. In these circumstances, his election was soon made. It was resolved that the Palatinate should become Reformed. This event created, of course, a great sensation. Among others, the son-in-law of the elector, duke John Frederick of Saxony, was much disturbed and troubled at the tidings. He immediately took a journey to Heidelberg, carrying with him a pair of his most expert theologians, Morlin and Stossel, to rescue his relative, if possible, from the dangerous snare of Calvinism, into which he had so unhappily fallen. For this purpose a public disputation was proposed, to be held between the two theologians just mentioned, and any the elector might see fit to nominate for the defence of his own cause. The proposal was accepted ; and a disputation followed, which was continued for five full days in the presence of the two princes. It was held in the month of June, 1560. The Calvinistic cause was maintained by Peter Bocquin, one of the most distinguished theologians at the time in Heidelberg. The whole debate turned only upon the mode of the eucharistic presence. The divines of John Frederick contended for the high Lutheran doctrine of a true corporeal presence, in, with and under the bread; to be apprehended orally and not simply in a spiritual way ; for unbelievers accordingly, as well as for be- lievers. Bocquin, on the other hand, maintained the view, that Christ is present to the organ of faith only, by the power of the Holy Ghost. He allowed, however, not only " that the body is OO THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. presented with the bread," but also "that the true substance of the true body is received by believers ;" and showed convincingly, that this does not make it necessary to suppose an oral commu- nication, or to hold that the body is either in the bread or under it. The result of the whole disputation was, that the elector found himself only more confirmed than before, in his resolution to establish the Reformed doctrine in the Palatinate. In these circumstances, the Heidelberg Catechism was pro- duced, and made the public formulary of faith, in the way already stated. We may easily understand, from the nature of the case, on what view its doctrine of the Lord's Supper must necessarily be constructed. Tt occupies the Calvinistic ground, as distin- guished from the Lutheran on the one side and the Zuinglian on the other. It rejects explicitly the idea of an oral manduca- tion; but, as Planck remarks, teaches also in the clearest terms, that the soul of the believer is truly fed, in this sacrament, by an actual participation of the body and blood of Christ. But let us now hear the Catechism itself. In answer to Question 75, it is said that Christ, " feeds and nourishes my soul to everlasting life, with his crucified body and shed blood, as assuredly as I receive from the hands of the minister, and taste with my mouth, the bread and cup of the Lord, as certain signs of the body and blood of Christ." " Quest. 76. What is it then to eat the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ ? "Ans. It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the suf- ferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the pardon of sin and life eternal ; but also, besides that, to become more and more united to his sacred body, by the Holy Ghost who dwells both in Christ and in us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding, * flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone ;' and that we live and are governed forever by one spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul." " Quest. 79. Why then doth Christ call the bread his body, and the cup his blood, or the new covenant in his blood ; and Paul the communion of the body and blood of Christ ? "Ans. Christ speaks thus, not without great reason; namely not only thereby to teach us that as bread and wine support this temporal life, so his crucified body and shed blood are the true meat and drink whereby our souls are fed to eternal life ; but more especially, by these visible signs and pledges to assure us, that we are as really partakers of his true body and blood, (by the operation of the Holy Ghost,) as we receive by the mouths of our bodies these holy signs in remem- brance of him ; and that all his sufferings and obedience are as cer- tainly ours as if we had in our own persons suffered and made satis- faction for our sins to God." Here we have all the characteristic positions and distinctions CALVINISTIC DOCTRrNE OF THE LORl/s SUPPER. 89 of Calvin's theory, plainly brought into view ; and with the knowledge of this theory familiar to our minds, and the historical conditions under which the Catechism was created full in sight, we must do violence to all sound interpretation, if we can allow ourselves to understand it in any ot hi r sense. True to the gene- ral form in which the controversy stood at the time, it affirms a real communion with Christ's flesh and blood ; allows the fact ; but refuses to be bound by the Lutheran determination of the mode. The presence of Christ is not " in. with and under" the bread, but only with it ; not for the mouth, but only for faith ; and so of course, though this is not expressly mentioned, not for unbelievers but for believers only. It is however, in this way, a true presence. The believer partakes of Christ, not only in figure, but in fact; not of his benefits simply, but of his actual life ; not of his life as divine merely, but of the substance of his human life, as denoted by his body and blood. The signs not only testify to us the general truth that Christ is our life, but seal this truth to us as a fact actualized along with their exhibi- tion and use. To say that by the participation of Christ's body and blood the Catechism means only a moral union with him, by faith and an interest in the benefits of his death, is to charge it with the most wretched tautology, where with its " besides that" and its "more especially" it plainly intends a climax ; since according to this view the second proposition, in each case, must be considered an unmeaning repetition simply of the sense of the first, in terms far more obscure and hard to understand. No such poor tautology can be allowed. The Catechism counts it not enough, that we embrace the offer of salvation, as some- thing separate from Christ ; we must be incorporated with his life, we must have part in the very substance of his flesh and blood, in order that we may have part truly at the same time in all the blessings he has procured, as though "we had in our own persons suffered and made satisfaction for our sins unto God." We may be told indeed that the language of the Catechism, and of the other Confessions also which have been quoted, must be taken to some extent in a figurative sense; since it is admitted that the body and blood of Christ are not corporeally present in the sacrament, and they cannot therefore be taken literally into the believer's person. Allowing this however, in the sense of the objection itself, it by no means follows that the figure may be resolved into any such low meaning as would empty it of its force and spirit altogether. If by eating the flesh and blood of Christ the framers of these confessions meant only to express, by a strong figure, the act of believing upon him and appropriat- ing his merits, they must be allowed to have uttered themselves in a most careless way ; all the more marvellous, not to say absolutely 8* 90 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. senseless, that it was directly adapted to encourage that very superstition of a gross corpoieal presence, based upon the letter of Christ's words, which with all their force ihey continually op- posed. The thought is absurd. By flesh and blood, they mean the true body of Christ; the same that was born of Mary, and hung upon the cross, and is now enthroned in heaven. This the believer feeds upon, not carnally, but spiritually ; so however that its true and proper substance, the reality which belongs to it as life, human life, is conveyed over into his person. In this way. he " becomes united more and more to his sacred body, by the Holy Ghost," so as to be truly " flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone," even as limb and head are filled and ruled with the same life in the body physically considered. But this " sacred body" of the Saviour, we hear it sometimes said, is the Church. Allow it to be so; it only follows that the totality of Christ's life, including his substantial humanity, is in the Church, by organic derivation from himself as its head. So that we come at last to the same result. To be incorporated with the Church, in this sense, is to be incorporated with Christ at the same time in his true human life, in the way already de- scribed. But the Catechism has no reference to the Church in this case; especially not to the Church in any such external view, as the interpretation now noticed is meant to imply. The " sacred body" to which his people are more and more united, is his own proper person in human form, once crucified for our sins and now gloriously exalted for our justification in heaven.* Such was the view of the Reformed Church at this time. Such is the sense of the Catechism. Should any doubt however still linger, with regard to the sa- cramental doctrine of the Catechism, as now stated, it must be annihilated certainly by our next authority. This is the testi- mony of Ursinus himself. Ursinus. The works of this divine have been published in three folio volumes. Having unfortunately no access to these in their ori- ginal form, I can only refer to them in an indirect way. They include a good deal on the subject of the sacraments. Hospi- nian [Hist. Sacram. Pars Altera, p. 659,660) mentions particu- * Calvin expressly rejects the idea, that by the body of Christ, to which we are united in the sacrament, is to be understood merely the Church. He repels as slanderous, the attempt to fasten on his view this consequence; "quasi mysticum in Ccena corpus sumamus pro Ecclesia. Hoc certe, velint nolint, nobis principium cum ipsis commune est, designari Christi verbis verum illud corpus, cujus immolatio nos Deo reconciliavit." Opp. ix., p. 701. CALVIMSTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 91 larly a tract from his pen, which was first published, A. D. 1564, in the name of the theological faculty of Heidelberg. It. bore for its title, " The True Doctrjne of the Holy Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, faithfully expounded from the principles and sense of the divine Scriptures, the ancient and orthodox Church, and also of the Augsburg Confession." In the third chapter of this work, it is proposed to settle the true state of the question, which was the subject of controversy in the Protestant Church. This, it is declared, is not whether the flesh of Christ be eaten ; for this none of us deny; but how it is eaten." Here the Lu- therans answer, corporally and orally, by the godly and ungodly. We say, on the contrary, spiritually only by believers." The earliest commentary we have upon the Heidelberg Cate- chism, is that of Ursinus himself, published from his divinity lec- tures, after his death, by David Parens. This has been trans- lated from the original Latin into English. Not having the Latin work at hand, I can only appeal to the translation, the " Summe of Christian Religion bij Zacharias Ursinus" as pub- lished, London, 1645. The subject of the sacraments is dis- cussed in it, of course, at large. The following quotations will serve to give a fair view of the author's doctrine, with regard to the Lord's Supper. " These two, I mean the sign and the thing signified, are united in this sacrament, not by any natural copulation, or corporal and local existence one in the other ; much less by transubstantiation, or chang- ing one into the other ; but by signifying, sealing, and exhibiting the one by the other ; that is by a sacramental union, whose bond is the promise added to the bread, requiring the faith of the receivers. Whence it is clear, that these things in their lawful use, are always jointly exhibited and received, but not without faith of the promise, viewing and apprehending the thing promised, now present in the sacrament ; yet not present or included in the sign as in a vessel con- taining it ; but present in the promise, which is the better part, life, and soul of the sacrament. For they want judgment who affirm, that Christ's body cannot be present in the sacrament, except it be in or under the bread ; as if, forsooth, the bread alone, without the promise, were either the sacrament, or the principal part of a sacrament." p. 434. " There is then in the Lord's Supper a double meat and drink. One external, visible and terrene, namely, bread and wine; and another internal. There is also a double eating and receiving; an external and signifying, which is the corporal receiving of the bread and wine ; that is, which is performed by the hands, mouth, and senses of the body ; and an internal, invisible, and signified, which is the fruition of Christ's death, and a spiritual ingrafting into Christ's body ; that is, which is not performed by the hands and mouth of the body, but by the spirit and faith. Lastly, there is a double administrator and dis- penser of this meat and drink; an external, of the external, which is the minister of the church, delivering by his hand the bread and 92 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. wine; and an internal, of the internal meat, which is Christ himself, feeding- us by his body and blood." p. 470. " As therefore the body of Christ signifieth both his proper and natural body, and his sacramental body, which is the bread of the eucharist ; so the eating- of Christ's body is of two sorts ; one sacra- mental, of the sign to wit, the external and corporal receiving; of the bread and wine ; the other real or spiritual, which is the receiving of Christ's very body itself. And to believe in Christ dwelling in us by faith, is, by the virtue and operation of the Holy Ghost, to be in- grafted into his body, as members to the head and branches into the vine ; and so to be made partakers of the fruit of the death and life of Christ. Wlience it is apparent that they are falsely accused who thus teach, as if they made either the bare signs only to be in the Lord's Supper, or a participation of Christ's death only, or of his benefits, or of the Holy Ghost, excluding the true, real, and spiritual communion of the very body of Christ itself." p. 470, 471. In an appendix to this part of the work, we find the following brief summary of the leading objections, made by the " Consub- stantiaries," as they are styled, against the " sincere doctrine of the Lord's Supper" as held by those who were nicknamed " Sa- cramentaries," together with proper answers. "1st Obj. The errors of the Sacramentaries are, that there are but bare signs and symbols only in the Supper. r "Ans. We teach that the things signified are, together with the signs in the right use exhibited and communicated, albeit not corpo- rally, but in such sort as is agreeable unto sacraments. " 2d Obj. The Sacramentaries say that Christ is present only according to his power and efficacy. "Ans. We teach that he is present and united with us by the Holy Ghost, albeit his body be far absent from us ; like as a whole Christ is present also with his ministry, though diversely according to the one nature. "3d Obj. The Sacramentaries affirm that an imaginary, figurative, or spiritual body is present, not his essential body. "Ans. We never spake of an imaginary body, but of the true flesh of Christ, which is present with us, although it remain in heaven. Moreover, we say that we receive the bread and body, but both after a manner proper to each. " 4th Obj . The Saeramentaries affirm, that the true body of Christ which hung on the cross, and his very blood which was shed for us, is distributed and is spiritually received of those only who are worthy receivers ,• as for the unworthy, they receive nothing besides the bare signs, to their own condemnation. "Ans. All this we grant, as being agreeable to the word of God, the nature of sacraments, the analogy of faith, and the communion of the faithful."— P. 472. In conclusion, a statement is given of the general points CALVIN ISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 93 " wherein the churches which profess the gospel agree or dis- agree in the controversy concerning the Lord's Supper." Among the points of agreement, the third one mentioned is," that in the Supper we are made partakers not only of the Spirit of Christ and his satisfaction, justice, virtue and operation, but also of the very essence and substance of his true body and blood, which was given for us to death on the cross, and which was shed for us; and are truly fed with the self-same unto eternal life: and that this very thing Christ should teach and make known unto us, by this visible receiving of this bread and wine in his Supper." The disagreement is represented to hold in the three following particulars. " 1. That one part contendeth that these words of Christ, This is my body, must be understood as the words sound, which yet that part itself doth not prove; but the other part, that those words must be understood sacramentally, according to the declaration of Christ and Paul, according to the most certain and infallible rule and level of the articles of our Christian faith. " 2. That one part will have the body and blood of Christ to be essentially in or with the bread and the wine, and so to be eaten that together with the bread and wine, out of the hand of the minister, it entereth by the mouth of the receivers into their bodies; but the other part will have the body of Christ, which in the first Supper sat at the table by the disciples, now to be and continue, not here on earth, but above in the heavens, and without this visible world and heaven, until he descend thence again to judgment, and yet that we notwith- standing here on earth, as oft as we eat this bread with a true faith, are so fed with his body, and made to drink of his blood, that not only through his passion and blood shed, we are cleansed from our sins, but are also in such sort coupled, knit, and incorporated into his true, essential human body, by his Spirit dwelling both in him and us, that we are flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones ; and are more nearly and firmly knit and united with him than the members of our body are united with our head, and so we draw and have in him and from him everlasting life. " 3. That one part will have all, whosoever come to the table of the Lord's Supper, and eat and drink that bread and wine, whether they be believers or unbelievers, to eat and drink, corporally and with their bodily mouth, the flesh and blood of Christ, believers to life and sal- vation, unbelievers to damnation and death ; the other holdeth, that unbelievers abuse indeed the outward signs, bread and wine, to their damnation, but that the faithful only can eat and drink, by a true faith, and the fore-alleged working of the Holy Ghost, the body and blood of Christ unto eternal life." — P. 480. Calvin himself is hardly more explicit, in the statement of his own doctrine. We seem to hear, in these quotations, the very echo of the words to which we have already listened from his lips. It is the testimony, however, of Ursinus, the principal au- thor of the Catechism of the Palatinate, speaking ex cathedra of 94 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. the doctrine it was supposed to contain. Where shall we find an expositor of its sense more worthy to be trusted and be- lieved ? Hospinian. Omitting all other testimony that might still be brought for- ward from the sixteenth century as entirely superfluous, after what has been already exhibited, I present finally the authority of a single Helvetic divine, that may be said to cover at once the entire period. I refer to Rodolph Hospinian, the distinguished author of the great work on the History of the Sacrament. His theological life was passed in Zurich, and reached from the year 156S some distance over into the following century. His sym- pathies are all, of course, with the Helvetic Church. His whole work, however, in the case of the sixteenth century, proceeds from beginning to end on the assumption that the Reformed doctrine of the eucharist was always, from the very first, what we have found it to be in the authorities already quoted ; and as such not only conformable to the view of Calvin, but in harmony even with the proper sense of the Augsburg Confession itself, at least as understood by Melaucthon and a large part of the Lu- theran Church. He refers to Calvin's statements always with approbation, as a true representation of what was held and taught in the Reformed communion; and will have it, that Zuingli himself inculcated, in all substantial respects, the very same doctrine. Altogether, it must be admitted that Hospinian is wrong, in the general theory on which his work is constructed. But this does not affect, of course, the weight of his testimony, as it regards the fact with which we are now concerned. Nay, it serves only to render it the more worthy of attention. His work has the form of an apology for the sacramental orthodoxy of the Helvetic church, while the standard by which it is measured is always the Calvinistic, as distinguished from the Ubiquitarian view. He takes it for granted, that this, and nothing lower than this, was, and had been all along, the true and proper doctrine of the Reformed Church ; and it is exhibited accordingly always under this view. The controversy between the two confessions is with him one that relates, not to the question of fact, as it re- gards the power of the sacraments, but only to the question of mode. Thus, in speaking of the Augsburg Confession, he gives the article on the eucharistic presence, as presented in the Wit- temberg German text of the year 1531 ; in which it is said, " that the body and blood of Christ are truly present, and with the bread and wine distributed to them that eat, in the Lord's Sup- per;" and immediately adds, "These words contain nothing CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 95 contrary to our view." Afterwards he tells us, still more expli- citly : "Ours do not reject the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession, in its sound, true, right, pious, and catholic sense, as held by the fathers, and all the true Christian saints always in the Church ; namely, that in the Lord's Supper, along with the bread and wine, that is, while the sacrament of the Lord's body and blood is received, there is truly exhibited also the body and blood itself of the Lord, to be received by faith. For whilst the ministers distribute the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, Christ himself communicates himself to be spiritually enjoyed, that the pious may have communion with him and live by him." Hosp. Hist. Sac. Part II. p. 157, 158. The Synod of Dort. This venerable body was convened in the year 1618, with reference particularly to the errors introduced by Arminius. It was composed of delegates, not only from the United. Pro- vinces, but also from England, Switzerland, the Palatinate, Hessia, Nassau, East Friesland, and Bremen ; forming in fact an oecumenical council of the entire Reformed Church. It was not called of course to express any direct judgment on the sacramental question. It may be said to have done this indi- rectly however, by solemnly endorsing both the Belgic Confes- sion and the Heidelberg Catechism, as true and faithful exposi- tions in full of the general faith of the Church. The first having been submitted previously to a particular examination on the part of trie different national delegations, was unanimously approved in the 146th session; as containing nothing at variance with the word of God, or needing in any way to be changed. The other was afterwards laid before the body, with the request that it might be tried in the same way. As the result, a decla- ration was filed in the name of all present, that " the doctrine contained in the Catechism of the Palatinate was found to be conformable at all points to the word of God ; that there was nothing in it that needed in this view to be changed or cor- rected ; and that altogether it formed a most accurate compend of the orthodox Christian faith, being with singular skill not only adjusted to the apprehension of tender youth, but so framed also as to serve the purpose of instruction at the same time in the case of older persons." — Acta Syn. Nat. Dord. Sess. CXI VI. p. 302. Westminster Confession. This belongs to the middle of the seventeenth century. It has a different character in some respects, from that which 90 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. distinguishes the older confessions of the Reformed Church ; the result, at least in part, of the Puritanic principle, under whose influence, in some measure, it was formed. This in- volved from the beginning a tendency, that might be considered unfavourable to the idea of the objective and mystical in the life of the Church, as it prevailed with both Protestant confessions in the age of the Reformation ; and which has since in fact con- tributed largely to the production of that false form of thinking, that has come to be so general, at the present time, in the oppo- site direction. But notwithstanding all this, the doctrine of the real presence, in the form now under consideration, appears here in its full force. The testimony of course is only of secondary weight, in any view, as compared with the symbolical authorities of the sixteenth century, to which we have already referred. It is still however of special interest, as showing how deeply the old Calvinistic doctrine had lodged itself in the heart of the Church ; and how full and distinct must have been its pro- clamation in the beginning, to which at the distance of a hun- dred years, so clear an echo at least is still returned, from the very bosom of the Puritan Revolution itself. Let the Confession speak for itself. " Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this sacrament, do then inwardly also by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified and all benefits of his death ; the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine ; yet as really but spiritually present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses." Chap. 29, § 7. Compare with this, as confirming and illustrating still farther the same view, the following questions from the Larger Cate- chism. " Quest. 168. What is the Lord's Supper? ' "Ans. The Lord's Supper is a sacrament of the New Testament, wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to the appointment of Jesus Christ, his death is showed forth ; and they that worthily communicate, feed upon his body and blood, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace ; have their union and communion with him confirmed ; testify and renew their thankfulness and engage- ment to God, and their mutual love and fellowship with each other, as members of the same mystical body." " Quest. 170. How do they that worthily communicate in the Lord's Supper, feed upon the body and blood of Christ therein? "Ans. As the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or car- nally present in, with, or under, the bread and wine in the Lord's Sup- CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 97 per ; and yet are spiritually present to the faith of the receiver, no less truly and really than the elements themselves are to their outward senses ; so they that worthily communicate in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, do therein feed upon the body and blood of Christ, not after a corporal or carnal, but in a spiritual manner; yet truly and really, while by faith they receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death." This, it must be admitted, is not entirely free from ambiguity, as compared with the language of the sixteenth century. Taken by itself, it might be held to mean nothing more than such a pre- sence of Christ's body as is involved in the lively conception of it in the worshipper's mind ; though all must feel, that a strange abuse of language would be employed, in that case, to express so plain a thought. But we need only some tolerable familiarity with the Calvinistic theory of the Lord's Supper, as held before this time in the Reformed Church, to be fully satisfied that no such poor construction as that now mentioned can be entitled to any re- spect. It is not simply a real spiritual presence that is here affirmed as belonging to the sacrament, but a spiritual real pre- sence ; a communication by faith with the body and blood of Christ, which involves union and communion with his person under such view, and on the ground of this only, a full interest at the same time in all the benefits of his death. The term spiritual as here used, it must always be borne in mind, carries in it no opposition to the idea of substance; nor does it refer to the per- son of Christ simply as it is spirit, and not body. On the con- trary, it has regard to the inmost substance of his body itself. All imagination of a material intermingling of Christ's flesh with ours is indeed carefully removed; but it is only to assert the more positively a real participation in the true life of his flesh as such. The communion is with the Saviour's body and blood, the very essence of which under a spiritual form, is carried over into the believer's person. If this be not the meaning of the Westmin- ster Assembly ; if in the use of language, borrowed here so plainly from the creed of Calvin and the Reformed Church gene- rally in the sixteenth century, the Assembly intended to signify after all something quite different from that creed, a mere moral union with Christ for instance, a communication with him in his divine nature simply, or an appropriation only of the merits of his life and death ; it will be found very hard, in the first place, to put any intelligible sense whatever into their words, and more difficult still, in the second place, to vindicate the interpretation as worthy either of their wisdom or their truth.* * In appealing to the authority of the several Reformed Confessions, no notice has been taken directly of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. As this branch of the Protestant communion is considered by many 9 98 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE Hooker and Oi In conclusion, let me be allowed to refer to the authority ot two of the most eminent English divines, who lived close upon the age of the Reformation, and who may be taken as the most prominent representatives of the two great contrary tendencies, which the Reformed Church may be said to have involved in its constitution from the very start. Hooker and Owen ! How dif- ferent in their whole spiritual conformation, and yet how closely bound together, notwithstanding, in the last ground of their reli- gious life. The one stands forth to our view, the deeply earnest, most learned and most indefatigable champion, of all that is com- prehended in the idea of the Church. The other is known as the no less indefatigable champion of all that is included in the idea of religious freedom, and individual responsibility. Hooker is the great ornament of the English Episcopacy. Owen has been styled the prince, the oracle, and the metropolitan of the English Independency and Puritanism. The one belongs to the close of the sixteenth century; the other flourished amid the revolutionary storms of the period that followed. I refer to them both as witnesses merely, not as sources of authority in them- selves. Hooker was an Episcopalian, with high views of the Church; but, as a man of learning, he must be supposed to have understood the doctrine of the Reformed Church, as it stood in his own time. Owen was a Puritan, with low views of the to be somewhat tainted, in its very constitution, with the errors of Rome, it seemed best not to lay much stress upon its testimony in the present discus- sion. It is remarkable, however, that what may be styled the high sacramental doctrine, is not put forward with any special prominence in the teachings of this Church, as compared with the view held by the Reformed Church gene- rally in the sixteenth century. We find the doctrine, indeed, clearly pro- claimed. How could it be otherwise, in the period to which we refer ? " Sacraments ordained of Christ," it is said, "be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace, and God's good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and con- firm our faith in him." Art. xxv. Though only after an heavenly and spirit- ual manner, as distinguished from a mere corporeal eating, still " the body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper." Art. xxviii. So in the Com- munion Service, believers in receiving the elements are represented as partak- ing of Christ's most blessed body and blood, at the same time. Undoubtedly the doctrine of the real presence oi" Christ by the Spirit, in the Holy Eucharist, is plainly taught by the English Church ; and it is only strange that any question should ever be made with regard to the point, in the Church itself. But it is no less certain, that it has no claim to be considered a distinctively Episcopal doctrine, so far at least as the past history of the Reformed Church is con- cerned, in any sense. Among all the early Reformed [Confessions, there is hardly one in which it is not even more distinctly affirmed than it is in the Thirty-nine Articles. The Confession of the Reformed Dutch Church, in particular, is decidedly more high-toned here than the formulary of the Church of England ; and we may say as much also even of the Westminster Confes- sion itself. CALVINIST1C DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUFFER. 09 Church; but this only serves to render the more striking his re- sponse to the same truth, in a case where its last echo has ceased to be heard with the Puritans of a later day. The following passages are extracted from Hooker's great work, the Ecclesiastical Polity. " It is too cold an interpretation, whereby some men expound our being in Christ, to import nothing else, but only that the self-same nature which maketh us to be men, is in him, and maketh him man as we are. For what man in the world is there, which hath not so far forth communion with Jesus Christ 1 It is not this that can sus- tain the weight of such sentences as speak of the mystery of our co- herence with Jesus Christ. The Church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam. Yea, by grace, we are every of us in Christ and in his Church, as by nature we are in those our first parents. God made Eve of the rib of Adam. And his Church he frameth out of the very flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of man. His body crucified and his blood shed for the life of the world, are the true elements of that heavenly being, which maketh us such as him- self is of whom we come. For which cause the words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning his Church, ' flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bones,' a true native extract out of mine own body. So that in him even according to his manhood, we according to our heavenly being, are as branches in that root out of which they grow." Book V. chap. Ivi. § 7. "These things St. Cyril duly considering reproveth their speeches, which taught that only the deity of Christ is the vine whereupon we by faith do depend as branches, and that neither his flesh nor our bodies are comprised in this resemblance. For doth any man doubt, but that even from the flesh of Christ our very bodies do receive that life which shall make them glorious at the latter day, and for which they are already accounted parts of his blessed body ] Our corrupti- ble bodies could never live the life they shall live, were it not that here they are joined with his body which is incorruptible, and that his is in ours as a cause of immortality, a cause by removing through the death and merit of his own flesh that which hindered the life of ours. Christ is therefore, both as God and as man, that true vine, whereof we both spiritually and corporally are true branches. The mixture of his bodily substance wiih ours is a thing which the ancient Fathers disclaim. Yet the mixture of his flesh with ours, they speak of, to signify what our very bodies, through mystical conjunction, receive from that vital efficacy which we know to be in his ; and from bodily mixtures they borrow divers similitudes rather to declare the truth than the manner of coherence between his sacred and the sancti- fied bodies of saints." B. V. c. Ivi. § 9. " This was it that some did exceedingly fear, lest Zuinglius and (Ecolampadius would bring to pass, that men should account of this sacrament but only as of a shadow, destitute, empty, and void of Christ. But seeing that 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 100 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. means of this sacrament ; wherefore should the world continue still dis- tracted and rent with so manifold contentions, when there remaineth now no controversy saving only about the subject where Christ is 1 Yea, even in this point no side denieth but that the soul of man is the receptacle of Christ's presence. Whereby the question is yet driven to a narrower issue, nor doth any thing- rest doubtful but this, whether Avhen the sacrament is administered Christ be whole within man only, or else his body and blood be also externally seated in the very con- secrated elements themselves ; which opinion they that defend, are driven either to consubstantiate and incorporate Christ with elements sacramental, or to transubstantiate and change their substance into his; and so the one to hold him really but invisibly moulded up with the substance of those elements, the other to hide him under the only visible show of bread and wine, the substance whereof, as they ima- gine, is abolished, and his succeeded in the same room." B. V. c. Ixvii. § 2. " It is on all sides plainly confessed, first, that this sacrament is a true and a real participation of Christ, who thereby imparteth himself, even his whole entire person as a mystical Head unto every soul that receiveth him, and that every such receiver doth incorporate or unite himself unto Christ as a mystical member of him, yea of them also whom he acknowledgeth to be his own ; secondly, that to whom the person of Christ is thus communicated, to them he giveth by the same sacrament his Holy Spirit to sanctify them as it sanctifieth him which is their head ; thirdly, that what merit, force, or virtue soever there is in his sacrificed body and blood, we freely, fully, and wholly have it by this sacrament ; fourthly, that the effect thereif in us is a real transmu- tation of our souls and bodies from sin to righteousness, from death and corruption to immortality and life ; fifthly, that because the sacrament being of itself but a corruptible and earthly creature, must needs be thought an unlikely instrument to work so admirable effects in man, we are therefore to rest ourselves altogether upon the strength of his glorious power, who is able and will bring to pass that the bread and cup which he giveth us shall be truly the thing he promiseth. " It seemeth therefore much amiss that against them whom they term Sacramentaries, so many invective discourses are made, all run- ning upon two points, that the Eucharist is not a bare sign or figure only, and that the efficacy of his body and blood is not all we receive in this sacrament. For no man having read their books and writings which are thus traduced, can be ignorant that both these assertions they plainly confess to be most true. They do not so interpret the words of Christ, as if the name of his body did import but the figure of his body, and to be were only to signify his blood. They grant that these holy mysteries received in due manner do instrumentally both make us partakers of the grace of that body and blood which were given for the life of the world, and besides also impart unto us even in true and real though mystical manner the very person of our Lord himself, whole, perfect, and entire, as hath been showed." B. V. c. Ixvii. § 7, 8. Let us now turn to Dr. Owen. It is easy to feel ourselves in a different element here, from that which formed the inward life CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPrER. 101 of Hooker. The whole system of the great nonconformist tended to carry him towards an incorporeal spiritualism in religion, that might be counted particularly unfavourable to a right estimate of the sacraments. Still, however, when we contrast his lan- guage with the frigid, rationalistic style in which the same sys- tem is accustomed to express itself on this subject at the present day, we can hardly fail to be surprised with the difference. The following passages are taken from his *' Sacramental Discourses," as contained in Vol. XVII. of his Works, Russel's London edition. " Christ is present with us in an especial manner in this ordinance. One of the greatest engines that ever the devil made use of to over- throw the faith of the Church, was by forging such a presence of Christ as is not truly in this ordinance, to drive us off from looking after that presence which is true. I look upon it as one of the great- est engines that ever hell set on work. It is not a corporeal presence ; there are innumerable arguments against that ; every thing that is in sense, reason, and the faith of a man, overthrows that corporeal pre- sence." — " Christ is present in this ordinance in an especial manner in three ways : by representation ; by exhibition ; by obsignation or sealing." Disc. x. p. 209, 210. " Christ is present with us by way of exhibition ,• that is, he doth really tender and exhibit himself unto the souls of believers in this ordinance, which the world hath lost, and knows not what to make of it. They exhibit that which they do not contain. This bread doth not contain the body of Christ, or the flesh of Christ ; the cup doth not contain the blood of Christ; but they exhibit them ; both do as really exhibit them to believers, as they partake of the outward signs. Cer- tainly we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ doth not invite us unto this table for the bread that perishes, for outward food ; it is to feed our souls. "What do we think then 1 doth he invite us unto an empty, painted feast 1 do we deal so with our friends ] Here is some- thing really exhibited by Jesus Christ unto us to receive, beside the outward pledges of bread and wine. We must not think the Lord Jesus Christ deludes our souls with empty shows and appearances. That which is exhibited is himself, it is his ' flesh as meat indeed, and his blood as drink indeed;' it is himself as broken and crucified that he exhibits unto us." — " Christ doth exhibit himself unto our souls, if we are not wanting unto ourselves, for these two things, incorporation and nourishment; to be received into union; and to give strength unto our souls." lb. p. 211, 212. " As it is plain from the sign and the thing signified that there is a grant, or a real communication of Jesus Christ unto the souls of them that believe, so it is evident from the nature of the exercise of faith in this ordinance ; it is by eating and drinking. Can you eat and drink unless something be really communicated ] You are called to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man ; unless really commu- nicated, we cannot eat it nor drink it. We may have other apprehen- sions of these things, but our faith cannot be exercised in eating and 9* 102 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. drinking, which is a receiving of what is really exhibited and com- municated. As truly my brethren as we do eat of this bread and drink of this cup, which is really communicated to us, so every true believer doth receive Christ, his body and blood, in all the benefits of it, that are really exhibited by God unto the soul in this ordinance, and it is a means of communicating to faith." Disc, xxiii. p. 265. " It is a common received notion among Christians, and it is true, that there is a peculiar communion with Christ in this ordinance, which we have in no other ordinance ; that there is a peculiar acting of faith in this ordinance which is in no other ordinance. This is the faith of the whole Church of Christ, and has been so in all ages. This is the greatest mystery of all the practicals of our Christian re- ligion, a way of receiving Christ by eating and drinking, something peculiar that is not in prayer, that is not in the hearing of the word, nor in any other part of divine worship whatsoever ; a peculiar partici- pation of Christ, a peculiar acting of faith towards Christ. This par- ticipation of Christ is not carnal, but spiritual. In the beginning of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he began to instruct them in the communication of himself, and the benefit of his media- tion, to believers, because it was a new thing, he expresses it by eat- ing his 'flesh and drinking his blood, John vi. 53, ' Unless ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you.' This offended and amazed them. They thought he taught them to eat his natural flesh and blood. ' How can this man give us his flesh to eat V They thought he instructed them to be cannibals. Where- upon he gives that everlasting rule for the guidance of the Church, which the Church forsook, and thereby ruined itself; saith he, ' It is the Spirit that quickens ; the flesh p'rofits nothing. The words that I speak, they are spirit, and they are life.' It is a spiritual communi- cation, saith he, of myself unto you ; but it is as intimate, and gives as real an incorporation, as if you did eat my flesh and drink my blood."— Disc, xxv. p. 268. " The fourth thing is the mystcriousness, which I leave to your ex- perience, for it is beyond expression, the mysterious reception of Christ in this peculiar way of exhibition. There is a reception of Christ as tendered in the promise of the Gospel, but here is a peculiar way of his exhibition under outward signs, and a mysterious recep- tion of him in them really, so as to come to a real substantial incor- poration in our souls." lb. p. 270. All this, it must be confessed, is not without some measure of ambiguity, as it regards a real participation in the substance of Christ's humanity. It falls short altogether of the firm, clear utterances of Calvin and the Church of the sixteenth century. But it is full of force from such a man as Owen, in the age of Cromwell and the English Commonwealth. Here we have at least, in strong terms, the sense of an objective force, a true ex- hibition of the thing signified, in the sacrament. The commu- nion, moreover, is specific, mystical, bound to the ordinance as its medium and instrument. Then it involves a real incor- CALVINISTIC DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 103 poration into Christ; and it is plainly felt, that this includes a special respect to his human nature, his flesh and blood, as given for the life of the world. But just at this point the representa- tion is found to waver. The truth that struggles for utterance, is still embarrassed by the abstractions of the understanding, and is not permitted to come to a full, unfaltering expression. CHAPTER II. THE MODERN PURITAN THEORY. SECTION I. HISTORICAL EXHIBITION. It cannot be denied that the view generally entertained of the Lord's Supper at the present time, in the Protestant Church, in- volves a wide departure from the faith of the sixteenth century with regard to the same subject. The fact must be at once clear to every one at all familiar with the religious world as it now exists, as soon as he is made to understand in any measure the actual form in which the sacramental doctrine was held in the period just mentioned. This falling away from the creed of the Reformation is not confined to any particular country or religious confession. It has been most broadly displayed among the continental churches of Europe, in the form of that open, rampant rationalism, which has there to so great an extent triumphed over the old orthodoxy at so many other points. But it is found widely prevalent also in Great Britain and in this country. It is especially striking, of course, as has been already remarked, in the case of the Lutheran Church, which was distinguished from the other Protestant confession, in the beginning, mainly by its high view of the Lord's Supper, and the zeal it showed in opposition to what it stigmatized reproach- fully as sacramentarian error. In this respect, it can hardly be recognized indeed as the same communion. The original name re- mains, but the original distinctive character is gone. Particularly is this the case, with a large part at least, of the Lutheran Church in our own country. We cannot say of it simply, that it has been led to moderate the old sacramental doctrine of the church, as exhibited in the Form of Concord ; it has abandoned the doc- trine altogether. Not only is the true Lutheran position, as oc- cupied so violently against the Calvinists in the sixteenth century, openly and fully renounced ; but the Calvinistic ground itself, then shunned with so much horror as the very threshold of in- fidelity, has come to be considered as also in unsafe contiguity 10G THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. with Rome. With no denomination do we find the anti-mystical tendency, usually charged upon the Reformed Church, more de- cidedly developed. Methodism itself can hardly be said to make less account of the sacraments, practically or theoretically. A strange contradiction surely, which, we may trust, is not des- tined always to endure. For it is not to be imagined that such an utter abandonment of the Lutheran principle in the case of the Lord's Supper, can be confined to this single point. Cen- tral as the doctrine of the sacrament is to the whole Christian system, (so felt to be especially by Luther,) such a change neces- sarily implies a change that extends much farther. The whole life of the Church, in these circumstances, must be brought into contradiction to its own proper principle. It cannot be- true to itself. This of course we regard as a fit subject for lamentation. Never was there a time when it was more important, that this Church should understand and fulfil her own mission; and in no part of the world perhaps is this more needed than just here in America, where the tendency to undervalue all that is sacra- mental and objective in religion, has become unhappily so strong.* * It is not intended, of course, to involve all connected with the Church, indiscriminately, in this censure. There are many excellent men belonging to it, no doubt, who feel and deplore the very evil which is here brought into view; and it is to be trusted, that these will yet cause their influence to be felt, in such a way as to roll off at last, in some measure at least, the reproach now resting upon the Church. For that room exists in fact for this reproach, cannot be seriously questioned by any one acquainted with the religious pos- ture of the country, and it cannot be taken amiss therefore that it should be noticed in this public way. It is notorious that the American Lutheran Church, under its principal and most influential exhibition at least, has given up altogether the sacramental doctrine of Luther, and along with this, (for the two things can never be sundered,) the original genius and life of the Lutheran Confession. It is regarded by others as an evangelical improvement in the character and state of the Church, that it has become in this respect hopefully conformed to what may be styled the Modern Puritan theory of religion, with a strong inclination even to Methodism; and the same idea would seem to be very extensively entertained in the bosom of the Church itself. We have a right to take the so called Lutheran Observer, as an index of the prevailing tone of thinking in the Church, in this case. It is not, indeed, strictly speaking, under any ecclesiastical direction and control. The editor's responsibilities are all his own. Still, however, the mere fact that the paper is allowed to represent the Church before the world, constitutes it properly the organ of the body, and the accredited interpreter of its views. But now the Observer, besides being characteristically un-Lutheran in other respects, openly derides the whole idea of a real communion with the humanity of Christ as an exploded superstition! Thus, for instance, referring to the Reformed or Calvinistic view as asserted at Mercersburg, the editor does not hesitate, in his paper of Dec. 5, 1845, to use such language as the following: "Dr. N.'s doctrine of Con-corporation, alias his semi-Romanism in relation to the Eucharist." — "The Mercersburg effort to revive the errors of by-gone ages, from which it was fondly hoped our American Churches had finally and forever escaped." — " That figment of the imagination, that poor, low, mystical, confused, carnal and antiquated doctrine, yclept con-corporation ! Only think of it — the literal communication of Christ's glorified humanity to the believer, thus confound- MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 107 But it is not the Lutheran Church only, which has fallen away from its original creed, in the case of the Lord's Supper. Though the defection may not be so immediately palpable and open to all observation, it exists with equal certainty, as was said before, on the part of the Reformed Church. It does so for the most part in Europe; and in this country the case is, to say the least, no better. Our sect system must be considered, in its very nature, unfavourable to all proper respect for the sacraments. This may be taken, indeed, as a just criterion of the spirit of sect, as distinguished from the true spirit of the Christian church. In proportion as the sect character prevails, it will be found that Baptism and the Lord's Supper are looked upon as mere out- ward signs, in the case of which all proper efficacy is supposed to be previously at hand in the inward state of the subject by whom they are received. It is this feeling which leads so gene- rally to the rejection of infant baptism, on the part of those who affect to improve our Christianity in the way of new schisms. It is particularly significant, moreover, in the aspect now con- sidered, that the Baptist body, as such, is numerically stronger than any other denomination in the country. But the baptistic principle prevails more extensively still ; for it is very plain that all true sense of the sacramental value of baptism is wanting, in large portions of the church, where the ordinance is still re- tained ; and the consequence is, that it is employed to the same extent as a merely outward and traditional form. Along with this, of course, must prevail an unsacramental feeling generally, by which the Lord's Supper also is shorn of all its significance and power. Methodism, in this way, may be said to wrong the sacraments, (as also the entire idea of the Church]) almost as seriously as the Baptist system itself. The general evil, how- ever, reaches still farther. Even those denominations among us which represent the Reformed Church by true and legitimate ins the natures of believers and of Christ, and actually predicating ubiquity of humanity! The glorified body of Christ received by the believer with the bread and wine! If this be not a corporeal presence, what meaning is there in language? if this is not equal to Puseyism, and an immense stride toward Romanism, we would like to know what is?" — "It grates upon the ear, jars the feelings, offends the understanding, and unhinges the holiest associations of many of the best and most spiritual [sic.'] men, in the most evangelic churches." — Such is the style in which, not the old Lutheran, but the old Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper, is profanely abused by the principal paper in the present American Lutheran Church ! Multitudes in that Church, of course, have been pained and mortified by such bare-faced ecclesiastical infidelity. They disclaim all sympathy with it in their hearts, and protest against it quietly as downright treason to all true Lutheranism. Still, the paper is endured, as the organ, in fact, of the Church; and until something more effectual than a mere silent protest is exhibited, we must mourn over the Church itself as being, it is to be feared, but too faithfully represented by the so-called Lutheran Observer. 108 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. descent, such as the Presbyterian in its different branches, and the Reformed Dutch, show plainly that they have fallen away, to some extent, from the original faith of the church, in the same direction. Remains of it indeed may still be found in the pri- vate piety of many, the result, in part, of their special advantage in the way of early traditional education, and in part the product of their own religious life itself;* but, so far as the general reigning belief is concerned, the old doctrine may be said to be fairly suppressed by one of a different character. It is so theo- retically, to a great extent, in our systems of theology, biblical expositions, sermons, and religious teaching generally, so far as the sacramental question is concerned. It is so practically, to an equal extent, in the corresponding views and feelings with * There is much comfort in this thought. The same reflection, only in somewhat stronger terms, is made by Prof. Tayler Lewis, of New York, in his admirable article on the Church Question, published in the Bib. Repository, for Jan., 1846. The idea of the mystical union, he says correctly, is, and ever must be, a living principle in the hearts of all evangelical Christians. He appeals, accordingly, to the devotional books of the Scottish Church, and even to the common phraseology of Wesleyan prayer meetings, as serving to show a more active sense of the truth itself in the form of life, than is to be found under all the outward display which may be made of the tenet by Rome or Oxford, as a dead relic of antiquity. " The life may be stronger than the dogma. Even in the absence of definite conceptions, the extreme fondness of a certain class of minds for this language, manifests the current of the affections in distinction from the speculative views maintained, and a con- sciousness, that even if there be a figure, it is figurative of a reality more pre- cious and glorious than was ever set forth in any form of rationalism." This is very true. Dr. Lewis, however, himself admits, that there has been a great falling away on the part of the Church at large, from the faith of the Refor- mation as well as of primitive Christianity, with regard to this point ; and that, as a dogma at least, the truth is not now generally maintained. I must be- lieve, too, that he overrates, in some measure, the extent to which it is prac- tically felt. It is to be borne in mind always, that every truth in Christianity finds its counterfeit and shadow, in the religious life contemplated under a lower view. It is the absolute reality of what we meet elsewhere, under the form of mere prophecy or nisus. Now the very idea of religion, no matter how defective, involves a demand for union with God. Of course, when pow- erfully excited, in connection with Christianity, it can hardly fail to make this thought prominent in some way. And all this certainly constitutes a strong argument for the truth itself which it is thus attempted to reach. But there is a constant tendency, within the Christian sphere as well as beyond it, to substitute here the phantasm for the reality itself; as we may see in the case of the Anabaptists and Quakers. Much of the experience of Methodist prayer meetings, it is to be feared, labors under the same defect of unreality ; and, universally, there is danger of this, where religion is suffered to run out into the simply subjective form, with little or no regard to the sacraments and the true idea of the Church. The piety of the old Scotch divines, is of a far more substantial order; and we have reason to be thankful that the life and power of it are still felt, in the case of this doctrine of the mystical union, far more extensively than the doctrine itself is either understood or acknowledged. But this want of proportion between life and doctrine, is itself a great evil ; especially now when the strong tide of rationalistic error, arrogating to itself the title of Protestant orthodoxy, is threatening to rarefy and spiritualize the whole truth into a sheer moral abstraction. MODERN PUIUTAN THF.OKY. 109 which the use of the sacraments is maintained on the part of professing Christians. Not only is the old doctrine rejected, but it has become almost lost even to the knowledge of the Church. When it is brought into view, it is not believed, perhaps, that the Reformed Church ever held or taught, in fact, any doctrine of the sort; or if it be yielded at length, that Calvin and some others maintained some such view, it is set down summarily as one of those instances in which the work of the Reformation appears still clogged with a measure of Popish superstition, brought over from that state of darkness and bondage which had just been left behind. In this view, the doctrine is considered to be of no force whatever for the Church, in her present condi- tion of gospel light and liberty. It is unintelligible and absurd: savors of transubstantiation ; exalts the flesh at the expense of the spirit. A real presence of the whole Christ in the Lord's Supper, under any form, is counted a hard saying, not to be en- dured by human reason, and contrary to God's word. Thus it stands with our churches generally. Even in the Episcopal Church, with all the account it professes to make of the sacra- ments, few are willing to receive in full such representations of the eucharistic presence, as are made either by Hooker or Calvin. To feel at once the full force of the representation now made, it is only necessary to observe the style in which it is usual, at the present time, to speak of the sacraments in general, and of the Lord's Supper in particular, as compared with the language of the Church on the same subject in the period of the Reforma- tion. The following extracts, taken from several of our popular modern theological writers, will be acknowledged, no doubt, to be a fair representation of the view, which is now too commonly entertained among us, on the subject to which they refer. " The sacraments are also said to seal the blessings that they sig- nify; and accordingly they are called not only signs but seals. It is a difficult matter to explain, and clearly to state the difference be- tween these two words, or to show what is contained in a seal that is not in a sign. Some think that it is distinction without a differ- ence." "If we call them confirming seals, we intend nothing else hereby but that God has, to the promises that are given to us in his word, added these ordinances; not only to bring to mind this great doctrine, that Christ has redeemed his people by his blood, but to assure them that they who believe in him shall be made partakers of this blessing; so that these ordinances are a pledge thereof to them, in which respect God has set his seal, whereby in an objective way he gives believers to understand, that Christ and his benefits are theirs ; and they are obliged at the same time by faith, as well as in an ex- ternal manner, to signify their compliance with his covenant, which 10 HO THE MYSTICAL 1'RESENCE. we may call their setting to their seal that God is true." — Ridgelyh Body to$ "l^OTu xal oa£xd xal ai/.ia i6i6a%$r l f.iev sivai. It must be confessed, however, that this is very obscure evidence of any such opinion. Ebrard, in the work already quoted, shows very clearly that these early fathers, in the use of such language, did not intend to assert, what their language at times might seem to imply, an actual corporealization of Christ in any way in the elements, but simply the presence of his body mystically in the sacramental transaction. The elements were constituted, by consecration, the " body and blood" of Christ, and were so styled in the general liturgical phraseology; they received a new character under the eucharistic benediction, and became the present pledge of what they repre- sented ; but still, they remained, in their own substance, bread and wine. All goes to show, however, how deep was the feeling, that the ordinance com- prehended in it a real communion with the life of Christ ; and with this life, it may be added, under its human form. For even the conception mentioned by Neander, would resolve itself at last simply into this, that Christ's humanity must extend itself, not by any division of his individual person but in the way of organic reproduction, into the persons of all whom he will thus raise up at the last day. His life, in this form, is the true tydguaxov a£aya<5iac, as he says expressly himself (John vi. 54). t Rudelbach, in his work, "Reformation, Lutherthum und Union," Leipzig, 1S39, devotes a special excursus to Tertullian's doctrine of the Lord's Supper ; in which he labours with all his might to make him out a sound Lutheran, of the old stamp. He will have it that the term figure, in the passage here re- ferred to (Adv. Marc. iv. 40), denotes the actual form of the body itself, in the 12 134 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. partake in the Supper of " the fatness of the Lord's body ;" (De pudic, cap. 9;) and that the flesh is fed with the sacramental body and blood of Christ, in order that the soul also may be fat from God." (De resur. cam. cap. 8.) While in another con- nection he makes this spiritual nourishment to be the very life of Christ himself, when he teaches, (De orat. c. 6,) that the petition for daily bread must be taken mainly in a spiritual sense; as Christ is the proper bread of life according to his own word, and as signified in the bread of the eucharist; so that, in praying, Give us our daily bread, " perpetuitatem postulamus in Christo, et individuitatem a corpore ejus." The Alexandrian fathers, Clement, and more particularly Origen, separate of course still more widely between the inward and the outward, in the case of the sacraments, as in every other case. Their tendency was always to an extreme spiritualism ; which, with Origen especially, came near to making the whole Christian revelation little better than a splendid philosophical allegory. He disparages the letter continually, for the purpose of exalting the spirit. So in the case of the eucharist, he goes so far as to make the body and blood of Christ nothing more than his word.* "His great object," says Neander, " was to withstand the idea of a magical efficiency in the Supper, sepa- rately considered — which however the other church teachers were far from holding; but his view opposed in fact every conception of any sort of higher meaning or force in the outward signs, even such as was admitted by the African Church." It is hardly necessary to say that this view found compara- tively small favour in the Church. The tendency, indeed, was already towards an extreme the other way. We cannot say, that the presence of Christ was as yet confounded with the presence of the symbols, by which it was represented; but the feeling was strong, that the two were mystically bound together, and the language employed to express this thought became always more bold and absolute; till in the end the liturgical appellation Christ's " body and blood," applied to the bread and wine, might almost seem to have been taken by many, even long before the sense of its reality ! This, however, would be nothing less than transubstan- tiation itself. Ebrard exposes the extravagance of Rudelbach with just severity, (p. 294-29S.) The whole style of Tertullian's thinking stands opposed to every such construction of his words. He, and Cyprian, and Augustin, the founders and fathers, we may say, of the whole Western Latin theology, occupy here the very same ground, so far as we can judge, that was after- wards taken by the Reformed Church, in distinction both from the Lutheran and the Church of Rome. * Nam corpus Dei Verbi aut sanguis, quid aliud esse potest, nisi verbum quod nutrit, et verbum quod laetificat cor ? — Pursuing his allegorical exegesis, he makes the body to be the word of the Old Testament, and the blood the word of the New ! See Ebrard, p. 274-277. MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 135 time of Pa?chasius Radbert, in a strictly literal and proper sense. Thus we hear Ct/ril, of Jerusalem, in the fourth century, in- sisting on the words of institution in such style as this: ''When he himself has plainly said m relation to the bread, This is my burh/, who will presume to have any farther doubt? And when he lias solemnly assured us, This is my blood, who will hesitate ever to say that it is his blood ? He changed water before into wine resembling blood, in Cana of Galilee; and shall we distrust him here as changing wine into blood?"* This sounds like transubstantiation itself in the fullest sense; and yet there is good reason to believe, that such was not the meaning of the worthy father himself, after all. Chrysostom uses very strong language too in the same direc- tion ; but he is, on the whole, more guarded, and less liable to misconstruction. He makes the sensible elements in the Sup- per to be indeed the form, under which its proper spiritual grace is brought near to the believer; as the washing with water in Baptism, is the outward exhibition of the grace of regeneration. But still the outward and inward are not made to flow absolutely together. The first is something, aia^rjf6f t for the senses; the other is vovitov, not a mere thought, certainly, but something to be received by the soul, and not simply by the mouth. "If thou hadst been without a body," he says, " the grace might have come to thee in the same naked form; but since the soul is inter- woven with the body, he gives thee the spiritual in forms of sense (iv ala^rjtols ?a vor ( td aoi rtagaSt6"to<5t)."f' Among the Latin fathers of the same period, we find Ambrose almost as bold in his representations as Cyril himself. "The sacrament you receive is wrought by the word of Christ. The word of Elias had power to bring down fire from heaven; and shall not the word of Christ avail to change the character (spe- ciem) of the elements? You have read, in relation to the whole work of creation, He spake and it was done, he commanded and it stood fast; and shall not the word of Christ, which could thus call out of nothing that which was not, be able also to change things that are into what they were not before?"! And yet he * Cateches. 4. The terms ue-taSoJ.r, f.iEtd^a7Jksa^ai, /.isTfauogfyova^ai, &c, were familiarly applied at this time to the change which was supposed to take place in the elements, by their consecration. A new character was held to be imparted to them by the influence of the Holy Ghost, which made them to be what they were not before, in a sacramental sense. Still no idea was entertained of an actual transmutation of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood. They were regarded only as having a supernatural character communicated to them, in virtue of which they served to bring those who partook of them into communion with Christ's true body and blood. t Horn. 82, in Matthaei evangelium. \ De initiandis, cap. 9. \ 136 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE says, in his exposition of Luke, again, "Tangimus Christum non corporali tactu, sed fide tantum." The change, then, which he supposed to be wrought in the bread by its consecration, was not such as to transmute it, in his view, actually into Christ's body; but served only to clothe it with a new power or virtue by the Holy Ghost, (Cyril's divine fi£taj5a7.r { ,) that made it for the recipient the true medium of an actual communication with the body it represented. We have a much better representative of the faith of the Western Church, during this period, in Augustine, the great theological successor of Cyprian in the North of Africa. He distinguishes clearly between the outward and inward, in the sacramental transaction, the form of the sacrament and its sub- stance; and says of the bread, separately considered, that it is simply the sign of Christ's body.* In the sacraments, " aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur." He will hear of no oral communi- cation ; "quia gratia ejus non consumitur morsibus." Still, as Neander remarks, Augustine held a real conjunction, in the case of the Lord's Supper, between the signs and the things signified ; in virtue of which believers, (not unbelievers,) along with the outward form, were made to partake of its proper contents, the "res sacramenti" itself. And this res sacramcnti he held to be the union of believers with their one head Christ, and their closer union thus with one another, as members of his glorious mystical body, the Church. He asserts as clearly as Calvin the local circumscription of Christ's proper body in heaven; and of course makes our communion with him to be wholly by the Spirit. Still he represents it to be always a real communion. " Habe fidem, et tecum est, quern non vides."f It is not necessary here to refer to other authorities. Nor does the subject call us to trace, even in a general way, the course of the sacramental doctrine, as corrupted by the Catholic Church, in later times.t As before remarked, the gross errors * Non enim Dominus dubitavit dicere : Hoc est corpus meum, cum signum daret corporis sui. t See Neander's Kirchengesch. Bd. 2, Abth. 3, p. 1399-1401. t This is done at length by Prof. Ebrard, in the work which has been already mentioned. The progress of error, in this case, was very slow and insidious. It may be traced particularly in the gradual differences of repre- sentation, that appear in the different ancient liturgies. In time, the false view, which existed at first only in the form of feeling, began to claim autho- rity also in the form of distinct logical expression for the understanding. This, however, called forth, even in the ninth century, a very active protest. The doctrine of Paschasius Radbert, caused at first much commotion, and was strongly opposed by the monk Ratramn, Rabanus Maurus, John Scotus Eri- gena, and many others. " They did not deny," says Knapp, {Chr. Thcol. Wood's Trans, vol. ii. p. 571,) " the presence of the body and blood of Christ; but they taught that this conversio or immutalio of the bread and wine is not MODERN 1'URITAN THEORY. 137 of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass, only serve to show more impressively the truth of the position now insisted upon; that the sacrament was felt, from the beginning, to involve not simply a memorial of Christ's sacrifice, but the very power of the sacrifice itself, as made present in his glorified life. To the consciousness of the early Church, the solemn ordinance was an exhibition immediately of the offering for sin made once for all by Christ's death; in the participation of which, the be- liever was considered to receive the full benefit of it, as of a liv- ing atonement brought before God at the time. This, however, was felt to comprehend an actual reception of the life itself, in whose presence only such living and enduring virtue could be supposed to reside. The mere recollection of the atonement as a past fact, was not enough for the Christianity of those days; it must be apprehended and appropriated as a present reality, under a living form. Christ, must himself animate the sacra- ment, and be received in it as the soul of the sacrifice it repre- sented. All this, however, according to the faith of the first centuries, in a purely spiritual way. We hear of no transub- stantiation of the elements into Christ's body and blood, as afterwards taught by the Church of Rome. They are called, indeed, his body and blood; but only in a sacramental or liturgi- cal sense. We hear of no material or local presence of his flesh, in the Lutheran sense; no tactual communication with his glori- fied body; no reception of his life in a simply oral way. But the fact of a real communication with this life, in its strictly human character, as comprehended in the sacramental transac- tion, (actio in actione,) is none the less, but only the more dis- tinctly asserted, we may say for this very reason. All Christian antiquity stands opposed here to the low rationalistic idea of a merely moral virtue in the eucharist. The faith of the Church became afterwards, it is true, the occasion of superstitious error, which had well nigh proved its own grave. The doctrine of the real presence h Ttvivtxan, degenerated into transubstantiation, or the real presence iv aa^xi. The living memorial of Christ's one sacrifice, was converted itself into the new, continually repeated sacrifice of the mass. But the corruption of a great truth, may of a carnal, but of a spiritual nature ; that these elements are not transmuted into the real body and blood of Christ, but are signs or symbols of them. In many points they approximated to the opinion of the Reformed theologians." That is, they insisted on what had been the general doctrine of the Church from the beginning, namely, that the elements were the body and blood of Christ, not literally, but mystically, as serving after their consecration to make them present in fact, though in a spiritual way, to the communicant. Any view lower than this was out of the question, as the Church then stood ; and even this was borne down at last by the force of the corruption that had now begun to usurp its place. 12* 138 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. never be urged reasonably against the authority of the truth itself. And of all forms of fanaticism, there is none more poor than the zeal, which in such circumstances seeks to rectify a gross extreme in one direction, by throwing itself blindly into the arms of an extreme equally gross in the other; and to re- venge itself upon an acknowledged abuse, is ready to demolish along with it the whole form of existence out of which it has grown. To clear ourselves of transubstantiation and the mass, is it necessary that we should strip the sacrament of all mystery, and refuse to allow it any objective force whatever ? So thought not the Reformers, as we have already seen. Not only Luther and Melancthon, but Calvin also, and Beza and Ursinus, and the fathers of the Reformed Church generally, discovered a pro- per anxiety here to save the substance of the primitive faith, while they endeavoured to rescue it from the errors with which it had become overlaid in the Church of Rome. They hon- oured, in this case as in other cases also, the authority of the ancient fathers, and the life of the early Church; and they took pains accordingly to show, as far as they could, that this testi- mony, lightly interpreted and understood, was on their side, and not on the side of Rome. It was reserved for a later time, and for a theology of different spirit from that which generally pre- vailed in the sixteenth century, to treat this whole appeal with contempt, by charging the Church with corruption and super- stition from the very start, and pretending to construct the entire scheme of Christianity tie novo from the scriptures, with- out any regard to the primitive faith whatever. 310DERN PURITAN THEORY. 139 SECTION IV. RATIONALISM AND THE SECTS. The modern Puritan theory of the Lord's Supper, as it in- volves a falling away from the general faith of the Reformation, finds at the same time no sanction whatever in the faith of the primitive Church. This of itself constitutes certainly a power- ful presumption against it. What right, we may ask, has Puri- tanism had to depart thus from the creed of the sixteenth cen- tury, and the creed of whole ancient Christianity, at the same time? The right of private judgment, it may be replied, against the authority of tradition. But is not tradition itself in this case the judgment merely, which has been entertained of the sense of the bible by the Reformers and the early Church? Why then should the particular judgment of Puritanism, as such, "be al- lowed to carry with it any such weight as is needed to bear down the judgment, of the universal Church besides from the beginning? In the very nature of the case, strong grounds and solid arguments should be exhibited, to justify this modern par- ticularity of faith, in its palpable defection from the general creed of Christendom, with regard to an article so momentous as the one now under contemplation. The presumption here, I repeat it, is against modern Puritanism. The simple statement of the case, is adapted prwta facie, when fairly understood, to create an impression unfavourable to its claims. But this is not all. A still farther presumption against the same view, is created by the fact that in departing from the faith of the Reformation, it is found to be in full harmony with the false Pelagian tendency, by which the truth under other forms, as originally held by the Reformers, has been so widely subverted in different Protestant lands. The modern Puritan view of the Lord's Supper, is constitutionally rationalistic. As a matter of course, the Socinians of the sixteenth century sunk the conception of the sacraments to the general level of their false theological system. As they denied the divinity of the Saviour, and reduced the whole Christian salvation to a mere system of morality, they could see in the sacraments naturally nothing more than external, simply human ceremonies. Their idea was, that Christianity, as a spiritual religion, had no de- pendence on forms and rites as such ; and hence in this case, they made no account whatever of any virtue or force, that 140 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. might be supposed to belong to the sacraments themselves, con- sidered as divine institutions. To attribute to them any objec- tive value, they counted mere Jewish ritualism. " For how," it is asked, "can that serve to confirm us in faith, which we do our- selves, and which though commanded of God is still our own work, including or exhibiting nothing remarkable, and having no fitness to convince or persuade us of the truth of any of those things, by which our faith is confirmed." (F. Soc. Opp. 1. p. 753.) The sacraments are made to be, " mutuse inter Deum ac homines sacrae confcederationis tesserce." The idea of a real presence of any sort in the Lord's Supper, is held to be a mere superstition; all is turned into a naked commemoration of Christ's benefits. In the Lord's Supper, we receive according to the Lord's own word, nothing from the ordinance itself save bread and wine ; but we com- memorate past favours and give thanks for them." F. Soc. Opp. I. p. 753. " Quest. What is the Lord's Supper ? "Ans. The appointment of Christ that his saints should break and eat bread and drink of the cup, in order to show forth his death ; which is to continue till his advent. " Quest. But what is it to show forth the Lord's death ? "Ans. Publicly and solemnly to give thanks to Christ, that out of his ineffable love towards us, he suffered his body to be tortured, and in a sense broken, and his blood to be shed ; and to extol and magnify the kindness he has shown to us in this way." Rac. Cat. Qu. 334, 335. " Quest. Is there no other reason for the institution? "Ans. There is no other (nulla prorsus) ; though many have been imagined, &c." lb. Qu. 337. "Quest. What is the meaning of the words, This is my body 1 "Ans. They are variously understood, for some suppose that the bread is changed really into the body and the wine into the blood ; which they call transubstantiation. Others imagine the body of the Lord to be in the bread, under the bread, with the bread. There are those finally, who believe that they partake of the Lord's body and blood in the Supper, though only in a spiritual way. But all these opinions are fallacious and erroneous." lb. Qu. 340. With the rise of Arminianism in the following century, in the bosom of the Reformed Church, we find a similar undervaluation of the sacraments, reducing them in the end again to mere signs. " We hold the sacraments to be sacred and solemn rites, by which as covenant signs and seals, God not only represents and adumbrates, but in a certain sense also exhibits and confirms, his benefits promised MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 141 especially in the gospel covenant." Confess. Rcmonst. xxiii. 1. Drawn up by Simon Episcopus A. I). 1622. " We may say that God exhibits his grace to us through the sac- raments, not as conferring it by them actually, but by employing them as clear signs to represent it and set it before our eyes. They operate upon us as signs, that represent to our mind the thing whose signs they are. Nor should any other efficacy be sought in them. — They promote piety besides on our part, as involving an obligation to duty, of the same nature with a soldier's oath." Limborch Theol. Chr. v. 66, 31, 32. " The Lord's Supper is the other sacred rite of the New Testament, instituted by Jesus Christ, on the night in which he was betrayed, for the eucharistic and solemn commemoration of his death ; in which believers, after proper self-examination and assurance of their own faith, eat sacred bread publicly broken in the congregation, and drink wine publicly poured out, to show forth with solemn action of thanks, the Lord's bloody death endured for our sake, (by which our hearts, as the body is nourished by meat and drink, are fed and strengthened to the hope of eternal life) ; and also to testify publicly before God and the Church, their living spiritual communion with Christ's cru- cified body and shed blood, (or with Jesus Christ himself as crucified and dead for us), and so with all the benefits procured by his death, as well as their love to one another." Conf. Remonst. xxiii. 4.* The triumph of Rationalism, during the eighteenth century, in Germany and throughout Europe generally, brought with it of course a still more extensive degradation of religious views. It is not necessary here to trace the rise of this apostacy and its connection with the previous state of Protestantism. f Enough to say, that it grew out of a tendency involved in the very nature of Protestantism from the beginning ; the opposite exactly of that by which the Catholic Church previously had been carried into an equally false extreme, on the other side. As Romanism had sacrificed the rights of the individual to the authority of the genera], — the claims of the subjective to the overwhelming weight of the objective; so the tendency of Protestantism may be said to have been from the very start, to assert these same rights and claims in the way of violent reaction, at the cost of the opposite interest. In the age of the Reformation itself, deeply imbued as it was with the positive life of truth and faith, this tendency was powerfully held within limits. With Luther, and Calvin, and the Reformers generally, the principle of freedom was still held in check by the principle of authority, and the rea- son of the individual was required to bend to the idea of a divine * " Hac in re," says Episcopius, " assentientes sibi habent non paucos Reformatos, inter quos Zwinglius, optimus hujus ceremonise doctor, princeps est." Limborch expressly opposes the Calvimstic theory. t For a brief but clear sketch of this, the reader is referred to Prof. Schaf's Principle of Protestantism, p. 9S-102. 142 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. revelation as something broader and more sure than itself. It came not however in all this, it must be confessed, to a true in- ward reconciliation of these polar forces. The old orthodoxy, it is now generally allowed, particularly under the form it car- ried in the Lutheran Church, involved in itself accordingly the necessity of such a process of inward conflict and dissolution, as it has since been called to pass through ; in order that the con- tradiction which was lodged in its bosom, might come fairly into view, and the way be opened thus for its reconstruction, under a form at once more perfect and more true to its own nature. The characteristic tendency of Protestantism already mentioned, burst finally through all the counteracting force, with which it had been restrained in the beginning. Religion ran out into sheer subjectivity ; first in the form of Pietism, and afterwards in the overflowing desolation of Rationalism, reducing all to the character of the most flat natural morality. The eighteenth century was characteristically infidel. As an age, it seemed to have no organ for the supernatural. All was made to shrink to the dimensions of the mere human spirit, in its isolated character. Theology of course was robbed of all its higher life. Even the supernaturalism of the period was rationalistic; and occupying as it did in fact a false position with regard to the truth, by which a measure of right was given to the rival interest, it proved alto- gether incompetent to maintain its ground against the reigning spirit. The views of rationalism may be said to infect the whole theology of this period, and also of the first part of the present century, openly heretical and professedly orthodox alike. In the nature of the case, this may be expected to show itself in low views of the sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Rationalism is too spiritual, to make much account of outward forms and services of any sort in religion. All must be resolved into the exercises of the worshipper's own mind. The subjective is every thing; the objective next to nothing. Hence the super- natural itself is made to sink into the form of the simply moral. The sacraments of course become signs, and signs only. Any power they may have is not to be found in than, but altogether in such use merely as a pious soul may be able to make of them, as occasions for quickening its own devout thoughts and feelings. Under the force of this predominant spirit, even the more sound theologians of the period now in view, are found lamenta- bly defective in their representations of the Lord's Supper, as compared with the true Protestant fathers of the Sixteenth Cen- tury. Such men as Zacharia, Mursinna, Dbderkin, Knapp, StcuchJ, &c.,* no longer venture to speak of a real communica- * Nor can any exception he made, with regard to this point, even in favor of Storr and Reinhard. They do indeed employ language, which seems at MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 143 lion with Christ's body and blood in the old sense. For the old doctrine, they substitute at best a simple prascntiam uperativam ; by which all is resolved in the end into the idea of a mere hea- venly efficacy; supernatural it is true, but still moral only, as being nothing more than an occasion to call out pious exercises on the part of the worshipper himself. Men of less pretension to orthodoxy, and for this reason more consistently rationalistic in their thinking, Henke, Eckermunn, the elder Nitzsch, Hose, De Wttte, Wegscheider, &c, discard the idea of a celestial sub- stance in the sacrament entirely, and find its whole meaning at once in the sphere of mere nature and common life. " The design of the Holy Supper is this ; that all who profess the name of Christ, while they partake of the broken bread as a sign of his crucified body, and of the wine as the symbol of his shed blood, may thankfully remember the benefits which they owe to their Re- deemer, and so be incited to fulfil all the duties to which they are bound. Along with this main end Paul mentions another also, 1 Cor. times to imply a participation in the very substance of Christ's life ; but this is so qualified and modified again by a different phraseology, that all runs out at last into the idea of mere supernatural influence or power. Reinhard pre- tends, indeed, to censure the Reformed view as too low; but he misrepresents it by charging it with the error of holding the elements to.be mere signs ; whereas they should be regarded, he says, as exhibitive also of what they represent. This, however, as we have seen, was always the true doctrine of the Reformed Church itself. Then he affirms that we receive in, with and under the bread and wine, the true body and blood of Christ; but immediately explains this to be, in other words, "that the exalted God-man Jesus works, (exerts an influ- ence,) by his body and blood, on all who make use of this ceremony." Again, by " presence," he understands simply, " nothing more than the power to exert an influence at a particular place." Dogmatik, §. 162. Storr, in the judgment of Bret Schneider, does not get beyond the same view ; and to be satisfied of this, we need only to read attentively all that he says on the sub- ject, in §. 114 of his Dogmatik. The words of institution mean, he tells us, " This bread makes you participant of my body — this wine hands over to you my blood," and argues at large against the figurative interpretation of Zuingli and CEcolampadius. But all comes at last to this, that the Lord Jesus, in whose person humanity and divinity are inseparably united, is actually present at the celebration of the Supper, and " exerts his influence there in an incompre- hensible manner." The believer derives actual nourishment from Christ, more than is comprehended in the simple exercise of his own faith and trust ; but still it is in the form of a " salutary influence," mysteriously proceeding from his person, rather than by an actual participation in his very life itself. In this respect, the doctrine of Storr and Reinhard, undoubtedly falls short of the doctrine taught by Calvin; for it is not to be questioned, that this last had in his mind always, as much as Luther himself, the idea of a true repro- duction of Christ's life in the believer, an actual extension of its very sub- stance into the believer's soul, and not simply an operation proceeding from this life, under however high a form. — Professor Schmucker, of this country, in his translation of the Biblical Theology of Storr and Flatt, 1826, has an appendix to this section on the Eucharist, in which he brings forwaid the con- current view of Reinhard, backed by the authority of Mosheim, as a fair exhibition of the proper Lutheran doctrine. And yet it was considered by many an evidence of the strong power of sectarian prejudice, that the Ameri- can Lutheran Professor should have allowed himself at the time, to go so far as to endorse, apparently, the doctrine of the real presence, even in the con- venient sense of these <{ sober and judicious" divines ! 144 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. x. 17, namely, that when we come to the table in common, we call to mind the natural love that is required of those who profess the same religion, and show ourselves ready to maintain it." — Mursinna. Lehrb. der Dogm. p. 267, 268. " Nor is it difficult to understand and show, what force this sacra- ment has in itself to affect the mind. — Its efficacy, in the way of ex- citing and quickening faith, and for the purposes of piety, is clear. — Some however may say, if the eucharist furnish nothing more than this opportunity of calling to mind Christ's benefits, as already before us in the word, it seems to be a superfluous rite. So far am I how- ever from thinking any institution to be superfluous which brings the truth, though otherwise known, with new force before the mind, it appears to me suitable to the gravity and dignity of the subject rather, that it should be presented to the understanding and memory, not in one way only, but in manifold ways — The virtue of the Lord's Sup- per, therefore, like that of Baptism, does not differ from the power of the divine word. Like this it is logico-moral, worthy thus of the divine wisdom and of the christian religion, including also the influ- ence of the Holy Spirit, who makes use of the bread and wine as in- struments to excite such affections as are pious and pleasing to God." — Doderlein. Inst. Theol. Ch. p. 691—69-1. " The Holy Spirit acts upon the hearts of men through the Supper, or through the bread and wine, and by this means produces faith and pious dispositions. But he produces this effect through the word, or through the truths of Christianity, exhibited before us and presented to us in this ordinance. The effect of the Lord's Supper is therefore an effect, which is produced by God and Christ, through his word, or the truths of his doctrine, and the use of the same. In this sacrament of the Supper, the most important truths of Christianity, which we commonly only hear or read, are visibly set before us, made cogniza- ble to the senses, and exhibited in such a way as powerfully to move the feelings, and make an indelible impression on the memory." — Knapp. Led. on Ckr. Theol., Wood's Translation, vol. ii. p. 562. " Hence it appears that the internal efficacy of the Lord's Supper, or of the word of God through the Supper, is two-fold. First. This ordinance is the means of exciting and strengthening the faith of one who worthily celebrates it, &c. — For we are reminded by it, 1st. Of the death of Christ, &c. 2d. Of the causes, &c. &c. Secondly. In this way does this ordinance contribute to maintain and promote piety among believers, &c." Ibid. p. 563. " The better way, therefore, in exhibiting either the Lutheran or Reformed doctrine, is, to avoid these subtleties, and merely take the general position, that Christ, as man and as the Son of God, may exert his agency, may act, whenever and in whatever manner he pleases. He therefore may exert his power at his table, as well as elsewhere. This is perfectly scriptural ; and it is also the sense and spirit of the Protestant theory. And this doctrine concerning the nearness of Christ, his assistance, and strengthening influence, in his present exalted state, secures eminently that proper inward enjoy- ment, which Lutheran and Reformed christians, and even Catholics, Avith all their diversity of speculation on this point, may have alike MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 145 in the Lord's Supper. Christ, when he was about to leave the world, no more to be seen by his followers with the mortal eye, left them this Supper, as a visible pledge of his presence, his protection, and love." Ibid. p. 577. " The meaning of Christ seems to have been, that the close inti- macy which had subsisted thus far between him and his friends, should not be interrupted by his death ; but that it was his desire now especially to give himself to them as he was, to be and remain wholly theirs in the most intimate conjunction. As therefore they were now taking bread and wine, so he ought to be himself received by his dis- ciples, his whole discipline, his spirit and example, with all the bene- fits about to be procured by his death, so as to be converted as it were into their very flesh and blood, &c." — Henke. Lin. Fid. Chr. p. 252. "The sacred Supper is the solemn participation of bread and wine, as symbols of Christ's death, by which such as attend upon it, being impressively reminded of this death and of the general merit of Christ, but especially of his instruction and example, are excited and engaged to true piety towards God and Christ, as also to kindness towards others, and are imbued at the same time with the hope of obtaining by their virtue the pardon of sin and everlasting felicity. Thus the bread and wine in the eucharist, are not only properly called signs significant, but also signs or symbols exhibitive ,- inasmuch as they do in a certain moral way represent to communicants the whole Christ, such and so great as that divine teacher was who sealed his doctrine with his blood, and forcibly press upon them the duty of following him with decision, so as not to shrink even from enduring death, after his example, for what is true and right. Although the rite, regarded as a manducation of human flesh and potation of human blood, whe- ther really or symbolically, is not so suitable to the views and man- ners of the modern world, as to those of antiquity ; still, even for our age, if administered with becoming regard to its advanced cultivation, it is capable of being turned to excellent moral account. Hence it is greatly to be wished, that its more frequent use might be encouraged, &c.»— Wegscheider. Inst. Theol. § 180.* * Even the more sound theologians of this period, Rcinhard, Knapp, &c, hold that the salutary influence of the sacrament does not depend at all on the view that may be taken of its nature; a judgment that may be allowed to be correct within certain limits, though not in the form, nor to the extent exactly, in which it is to be understood, probably, with these divines. Bret- schneider, according to whom the original institution was simply a solemn covenant meal, designed to proclaim, symbolically, the introduction of the new dispensation, to which other references and uses were subsequently attached, considers that the benefit to be derived from it is not suspended absolutely even on a full faith in Christ's death as the ground of our salvation. " For one who does not honour Jesus as a Mediator, but simply as a teacher of divine truth and a benefactor of mankind, who sacrificed his life to the noblest ends, may still, by the celebration of his death, be excited to like zeal for truth and virtue, to improvement, and to perseverance in the conflict with superstition and vice, and be filled thus with the presentiment also of a better world. The great design of Christianity, which is to free men from sin and to prepare them for a higher life, is in that case advanced in him as well as in others, though in a different way; and hence the Lord's Supper becomes for him too a salutary sacrament." Dos;matik, $. 200. 13 146 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. These extracts may suffice to illustrate the genius of Ration- alism, as it regards the point now under consideration. Let us rejoice, that its iron sceptre is at length broken, for the territory of theological science at least, where not a great while since all seemed to acknowledge its sway ; and that a new and brighter era has already begun to dawn auspiciously on the history of the Protestant Church. The authority of interpreters, like Paulus and Quinol, and theologians such as Amnion, Wegschcider and JBretsclmcider, God be praised, has become to the religious world like the idle wind which no man regards. Along with it, how- ever, the authority of what may be styled the relative orthodoxy of the same period has in like manner passed away. John David Michaelis is felt to be as little worthy of confidence as the un- fortunate Semler. The supernaturalism of the school of Erncsti and Mortis, cool, mechanical, external, the product of the under- standing only, is found almost as unreal and unsubstantial, as the openly infidel theology with which it waged unsuccessful war. Who now, of any true theological culture, thinks of taking the RosenmullerSf or Koppe and his continuators, for his guides in the study of the scriptures? Who that is aware at all of the true historical stand-point of the age, can sit at the feet of sucli men as Mursinna, and Doderlein, and Flatt, and Storr, and Reinhard, and Knapp, for instruction in the mysteries of the Christian faith? They are all indeed venerable names, and they are entitled to the lasting respect of the Church for their fidelity to Christ in a time of general apostacy and defection. The re- sults of their learning too will always continue to be of value for Christianity, at least in an indirect way. But they stood them- selves in a false position with regard to the truth ; and they were not able accordingly to stem the tide, which was bearing all thought and all life the contrary way. So far as any better order of religion has come to prevail, it must be referred to other in- fluences altogether. The salvation of theology has sprung from a different quarter. The very orthodoxy of the school now no- ticed was itself rationalistic ; and we may say of it, in this view, that it served only to precipitate the catastrophe which it sought to avert. For its conception of the supernatural was always external and abstract; placing it thus in the same false relation precisely to nature and humanity, which was established by Rationalism itself. This was to justify the wrong issue on which the controversy had been made to hang, and to make common cause in a certain sense with the enemy, by consenting to meet him on his own ground, the arena of the mere finite understand- ing. No wonder, that the supernatural thus defended, was found unable to sustain itself against the reigning tendency of the age. No wonder, that it yielded to this tendency more and more itself, MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 147 and went finally to swell the triumphant stream with which all was carried in this downward direction.* Parallel to a great extent with the development of the subjec- tive principle in the false form now noticed, runs the revelation also of the same tendency in the equally false form of Seetar- ism and schism. No one can study attentively the character of either, without being led to see that the two tendencies are but different phases of one and the same spiritual obliquity.f No one, in reading the history of the Church, can well fail to be struck with the many points of correspondence, which are found universally to hold between the two forms of life, in spite of the broad difference by which they might seem to be separated, in many cases, on a superficial view. The spirit of sect is charac- teristically full of religious pretension ; and professing to make supreme account of religion as something personal and experi- mental, it assumes always a more than ordinarily spiritual cha- racter, and moves in the element of restless excitement and ac- tion. Hence it is often, generally indeed at the start, fanatical and wild ; especially in the way of opposition to outward forms and the existing order of the Church generally. And yet how invariably it falls in with the rationalistic way of thinking, as far as it maj think at all, from the very beginning; and how cer- tainly its principles and views, when carried out subsequently to * It deserves to be well considered, that it is mainly the theology of this rationalistic period, which has been derived from Germany thus far into our American divinity, so far as any such importation may have taken place. Those among us who have had some acquaintance with German learning, and to whom we are indebted, it may be, for translations of German theological works, show themselves unfortunately, for the most part, at least twenty years, if not a full half century, behind the true scientific stand- point of the present time ; by exhibiting principles of interpretation and theological views, in the name of theology properly so styled, which in Germany itself are acknow- ledged to be shorn of all their force. Nor is the error helped materially, by making a supposed judicious distinction, in this case, between the orthodoxy of the period and its avowed religious infidelity. The whole posture of the time was rationalistic. Emesti, for instance, is entitled to no confidence whatever, as a guide to the true sense of God's word, as it is spirit and life. Knapp, with all his orthodoxy, comes short, perpetually, of the true depth of Christianity as a science. When we find this school of theology recognized and honoured by a wide section of the American Church, as the only valuable and only safe form of German thinking in the sphere of religion ; while the far deeper and infinitely more spiritual efforts, by which the theoloay of the present time, in the hands of such men as Dorner, G. A. Meier, Julius Mid- ler, and others of like spirit, is struggling to surmount forever the contra- dictions of the old stand-point, are superciliously condemned as transcen- dental nonsense; it is certainly not easy to possess one's soul in proper patience. Alas, it is but too plain, that with all our boasted orthodoxy, the coils of Rationalism have fastened themselves with deadly embrace on the thinking at least, (though not on the hearts we may trust,) of hundreds, who are the last to dream of any such thing. t On this subject, the reader is referred again to Schaf's Principle of Pro- testantism, p. 107-121. 148 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. their legitimate results, are found to involve in the end the worst errors of Rationalism itself. Both systems are antagonistic to the idea of the Church. Both are disposed to trample under foot the authority of history. Both make the objective to be nothing, and the subjective to be all in all. Both undervalue the outward, in favour of what they conceive to be the inward. Both despise forms, under pretence of exalting the spirit. Both of course sink the sacraments to the character of mere outward rites; or possibly deny their necessity altogether. Both affect to make much of the bible; at least in the beginning; though sometimes indeed it is made to yield, with Sectarism, to the ima- gination of some superior inward light more directly from God; and in all cases, it is forced to submit, to the tyranny of mere private interpretation, as the only proper measure of its sense. With both forms of thinking, the idea of Christianity, as a per- manent order of life, a real supernatural constitution unfolding itself historically in the world, is we may say wanting altogether. All at last is flesh, the natural life of man as such ; exalted it may be in its own order, but never of course transcending itself so as to become spirit. The sect principle may indeed affect to move in the highest sphere of the heavenly and divine; carry- ing it possibly to an absolute rupture even with all that belongs to the present world. But in this case it begins in the spirit, only to end the more certainly in the flesh. Hyper-spiritualism is ever fleshly pseudo-spiritualism ; that is sure to fall back sooner or later impotent and self-exhausted, into the low element from which it has vainly pretended to make its escape. Ana- baptism finds its legitimate, natural end in the excesses of Mini- ster; as Mormonism in the like excesses of Nauvoo. What a difference apparently between the inspiration of George Fox, and the cold infidelity of Elias Hicks. And yet the last is the true spiritual descendant of the first. The inward light of the one, and the light of reason as held by the other, come to the same thing at last. Both contradict the true conception of re- ligion. Both are supremely subjective, and in this view su- premely rationalistic at the same time. It is by no fortuitous coincidence then, that we find the spirit of sect since the Reformation, (as indeed before it also,) in close affinity with the spirit of theoretic rationalism, in its low estimate of the Christian sacraments. The relationship of the two sys- tems, in the case, is inward and real. The Anabaptists and Socinians of the sixteenth century, go here hand in hand to- gether; as do also the Mennonites and Arminians of Holland, in the century following. All hold the sacraments to be signs only for the understanding and heart of the pious communicant, without any objective value or force in their own nature. All MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 149 alike reduce them to the character of something outward and accidental only to the true Christian life. The Quakers, more consistently true than all sects besides to the spiritualistic theory out of which the sect life springs, agree with infidelity itself, in rejecting the sacraments altogether.* Not from the Christ with- out, the objective historical Christ, as revealing himself in the Church and exhibited in the sacramental symbols, but only from the Christ within, the interior spiritual life of the believer him- self, is any true salvation to be expected. " Whenever the soul is turned towards the light of the Lord within, and is thus made to participate of the celestial life that nourishes the interior man, (the privilege of the believer at any time,) it may be said to en- joy the Lord's Supper, and to partake of his flesh and blood." To insist upon the outward sacraments is to fall back to Juda- ism, and to magnify rites and forms at the cost of that spiritual worship, which alone is worthy of our own nature, or suitable to the character of God. The anti-sacramental tendency of the sect spirit is strikingly revealed under its true rationalistic nature, in the disposition so commonly shown by it to reject infant baptism. If the sacra- ments are regarded as in themselves outward rites only, that can have no value or force except as the grace they represent is made to be present by the subjective exercises of the worshipper, *it is hard to see on what ground infants, who are still without knowledge or faith, should be admitted to any privilege of the sort. If there be no objective reality in the life of the Church, as something more deep and comprehensive than the life of the individual believer separately taken, infant baptism becomes necessarily an unmeaning contradiction. Hence invariably, (as already remarked in the first part of the present chapter,) where the true church consciousness is brought to yield to the spirit of sect, the tendency to depreciate the ordinance in this form is found to prevail to the same extent; and so on the other hand, there is no more sure criterion and measure of the presence of the sect spirit, as distinguished from the true spirit of the Church, than the tendency now mentioned, wherever it may be exhibited. The baptistic principle, whether carried out fully in practice or not, constitutes the certain mark of sectarianism all the world over.t It may be controlled in many cases by outward influ- * Ci Nihil aliud haereditatis nostra; signaturam et arrhabonem nominat scrip- tura prater spiritum Dei." Barcl. Apol. The Lord's Supper, originally observed, " imbecillium causa," was only a shadow, he tells us, that is no longer needed for those who have the substance. t " Why are the Congregationalists, or Baptists, any more a sect than the German Reformed or the Episcopalians ?" Thus asks the Biblical Repertory, in its review of Schaf on Protestantism, (Oct. 1S45,) charging the author with being vague in what he says on the subject of sectarism. The question is 13* 150 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. ences, or by some remnant possibly of church feeling still pre- served, so as not to come openly into view; but it will be found then as a worm at least at the root of the institution here in view, consuming all its vigor, and turning it in fact into the powerless form for which it is unbelievingly and rationalistically taken. Where it comes, however, to a full triumph of the sect character, the baptistic principle, for the most part, asserts its authority in a more open way. Infant baptism is discarded as a relic of Roman superstition. Here again the Anabaptists and Mennonites appear in close connection with Socinians and Arminians: whose judgment at least with regard to the point in hand, though not their practice, has ever been substantially the same. According to the Racovian Catechism, the baptism of infants is without authority and without reason, and to be tole- rated only as a harmless inveterate prejudice.* The Remon- strants of Holland, (Arminians,) much in the same way, declare the rite worthy of being continued to avoid scandal, but hold it to be of no binding authority in its own nature.f In our own country, as was remarked before, we have, at the present time, an exemplification of the sect feeling at this point, on a large scale. The Baptists, as they are called, including all the sects that reject the baptism of infants, form, it is said, the most numerous religious profession in the United States: and the baptistic principle, it is plain, prevails still more widely, where the practice, through the force of denominational tradition, re- mains of an opposite character. It appears then that the spirit of heresy, and the spirit of schis?n, in the case before us, are substantially one and the same. Both are unchurchly and anti-sacramental, to the same extent. It is not an accidental resemblance simply, that connects them together in this view; but the inward power of a common life. It belongs to the very genius of sect to be rationalistic.f certainly very striking, in view of the quarter from which it comes. Only think of Baxter, or any sound Presbyterian of the seventeenth century, asking such a question in relation even to Congregationalism ! But here the very Baptists themselves, whom the New England Congregationalists of that period could not tolerate in their midst, are exalted to the same church level with the churches of the Reformation generally. This, of itself, betrays a most low conception of the Church, and a strange confusion in relation to the idea of sect. Neither Calvin nor Luther could have endured the thought, of being associated in this way with a spirit so utterly unhistorical, unchurchly, and unsacramental, as that which is presented to us in the Anabaptist schism from beginning to end. * Errorem adeo inveteratum et pervulgatum Christiana charitas tolerare suadet. Rac. Cat. t Remonstrantes ritum baptizandi, infantes ut perantiquum haud illubenter etiam in coetibus suis admittunt, adeoque vix sine offensione et scandalo magno intermitti posse statuunt; tantum abest ut eum seu illicitum aut ne- fastum improbent ac damnent. Apolog. Remonst. X Ronge, the famous head of the " German Catholic" movement, now MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 151 And now it cannot be denied, that the modern Puritan theory of the Lord's Supper, as it has been presented to us in contrast with the old Calvinistic doctrine, is strikingly in harmony with the whole style of thinking here offered to our view. This must be apparent at once to any one, who will only take the trouble to refer again to the illustrations of the Puritan theory that have been already quoted, and to compare them with the modes of thought and language employed by the rationalistic school on the same subject. The ground on which much of our Ameri- can theology is here standing at the present time, is palpably the same with that occupied by the old rationalistic supernatural- ism of Germany; which was found so insufficient, as we have just seen, to maintain itself scientifically against the neology with which it was called to contend. It is the orthodoxy at best of such men as Ernesti and Morus, Reinhard and Knapp; only with a very small part of their learning. Its safety is found in the fact, that it has for the most part no power to perceive the contradiction it carries in its own bosom. But with all this, the false element works itself out in many practical conse- quences, alike mischievous for theology and for the religious life in general. engaging so much attention, shows here also his true theological stand-point. Christ laid down his life, according to this man, to open the way for the more rapid spread of his salutary doctrine in the world ; and the Supper was insti- tuted to keep up his memory, and to be the standing " brother-meal of humanity," in all times. See a notice of the Easter Service held last year in Berlin, by Ronge and Czersky, in the correspondence of Krummacher , s Palm- blatter, for June, 1845. How invariably the rationalistic and sectaristic spirit betrays itself just at this point, and always in the same way ! This Ronge, it will be remembered, was hailed by our religious papers generally, at first, as a second Huss or Luther. But it is in the highest degree dishonourable to the Reformation, to think of it as parallel, in any measure, with such a move- ment. Ronge is no Reformer, but a Radical only, of the worst stamp. Like Luther, he has indeed cast off the authority of Rome. But the resemblance of the two cases is merely in outward form. Luther was full of positive life; Ronge is negative wholly, and destitute of all faith in Christianity as a real life-revelation in the world. Luther stood in the element of the objective, and felt himself to be the passive organ only of the true and proper historical life of the Church itself; Ronge is supremely subjective, unhistorical, and full of blind self-xoill. Luther was himself the first, central, and in some sense fontal, product of the vast spiritual revolution in which he led the way; it came to the birth with deep, convulsive throes, in his separate personal con- sciousness, before it revealed itself in the rest of the Church, already ripe for the change. Ronge stands in no such relation to the inmost religious life of the age, in which he affects to play the spiritual hero. No world-convulsion has gone forward, in the first place, in his own soul. His vocation is evidently superficial and outward, in the fullest sense; and the movement over which he presides is as plainly distinguished throughout by the same character. God may make it indirectly subservient at last, in some way, to the advancement of his kingdom ; but, in its own nature, it belongs not at all to this kingdom, but to the world only. — See an excellent article on the whole subject, by Pro- fessor Ullmann, characterized by his usual caution, moderation, and profound historical wisdom, in the Studien und Kritiken, for the last year. 152 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. It is not necessary that we should be able to trace any out- ward connection between the two forms of theology thus com- pared, to establish their actual affinity. It is enough that they are inwardly connected, and that they belong to the same gene- ral development of a false tendency comprehended in Protest- antism itself. This tendency has shown its power from the be- ginning, as a spirit of heresy in one direction, and a spirit of schism in another ; but it may be said to have come to the fullest revelation of its bad life, during the last century and the first part of the present. That the modern Puritan theology should be deeply affected by its influence, might seem to be in the cir- cumstances precisely what was to be expected. Puritanism, as all know, involves in its original constitution a large measure of the tendency which has just been mentioned. It formed from the start, a marked advance, in this direction, upon the charac- ter of the Reformed Church, as it stood in the beginning ; showing itself more decidedly independent of all objective au- thority, and more favourable by far to a mere abstract spiritual- ism in religion. The danger to which the Reformed Church might be said to have been most liable, in its very nature, from the first, came here to be something more than danger; it ap- peared as actual ultra-protestantism itself, hostile to the proper idea of the Church, and irreverent towards all history at the same time. Nor has the history of this system of thinking since furnished any reason to suppose in its case a change of charac- ter, in the respect here noticed. On the contrary, it is clear that the wrong element which was embodied in it at the begin- ning, has been only confirmed and consolidated since, under the same character; for to this very influence must be referred, to a great extent, more or less directly, the curse of sectarism, as it has now become so widely established both in Great Britain and in this country. That some leaven of rationalism then should enter into its theology, in these circumstances, must appear, after what has already been said, a matter of course. This may be, notwithstanding the presence of a large amount of religious life in connection with the same system. Be all this as it may, however, it must at all events be re- garded as a presumption against the modern Puritan riew of the Lord's Supper, that, in departing from the doctrine of the Re- formation, it is found to fall in so strikingly with what may be styled the apostacy of Rationalism in the same direction. It might seem sufficiently startling to be sundered, in such a case, from the general faith of Christendom as it has stood from the beginning. But still more startling, certainly, is the thought of such separation in such company. This much is clear. The Reformation included in its original and proper constitution, MODERN PURITAN THEORY. 153 two different elements or tendencies; and it was felt that it could be true to itself, only by acknowledging the authority of both, as mutually necessary each for the perfection and proper support of the other. In the nature of the case, however, there was a powerful liability in the movement to become ultraistic and extreme, on that side which seemed to carry the most direct protest against the errors of the Church, as it stood before. In the course of time, undeniably, this became, as we have already seen, its general character. The simply Protestant tendency was gradually sundered, in a great measure, from its true Catholic complement and counterpoise; and in this abstract character it has run out into theoretical and practical rationalism, to a fearful extent, in all parts of the Church. The low view of the sacra- ments, which we have now under consideration, came in with this unfortunate obliquity. It belongs historically and constitu- tionally to the bastard form, under which the original life of Protestantism has become so widely caricatured in the way of heresy and schism. Its inward affinity with the spirit of Ration- alism, in one direction, and the spirit of Sect in another, (two different phases only of the same modern Antichrist,) is too clear to be for one moment called in question. In this character, it forms most certainly, like the whole system with which it is associated, a departure from the faith, not only of the Lutheran, but of the Reformed Church also, as it stood in the sixteenth century. It involves in this respect, what would have been counted, at that time, not only a perversion, but a very serious perversion of the true Protestant doctrine. Now, with this neo- logical and sectarian view, we find the modern Puritan theory of the Lord's Supper to be in full agreement. Both sink its objective virtue wholly out of sight. Both do this, on the prin- ciple of making the service spiritual and rational, instead of simply ritual. Both, in this way, wrong the claims of Chris- tianity as a supernatural life, in favour of its claims as a divine doctrine. Both proceed on the same false abstraction, by which soul and body, outward and inward, are made to be absolutely different, and in some sense really antagonistic, spheres of exist- ence. Both show the same utter disregard to the authority of all previous history, and affect to construct the whole theory of the Church, doctrine, sacraments, and all, in the way of inde- pendent private judgment, from the Bible and common sense. Both, in all this, involve a like defection, and substantially to the same extent, from the creed of the Reformation ; and would have been regarded accordingly, not only by Luther, but by Cal- vin also, and Beza, and Ursinus, and the fathers of the Reformed Church generally, as alike treasonable to the interest, which has become identified with their great names. 154 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. This much, we say, is clear. Let it carry with it such weight as may of right belong to it; and no more. The question is not to be decided, we all know, by church authority and mere blind tradition. The primitive Church may have gone astray from the very start. The fathers of the Reformation were not infallible; and it must be allowed, that the life of the Reformation, in its first form, was the product or birth spiritually of the Catholic Church as it stood before, and not of the sects that broke away from it in the middle ages. If the Reformers had sprung from this line of witnesses on the outside, it is quite likely their Pro- testantism would have been something vastly different from the gigantic new creation we find it to be in fact. The birth, it may be taken for granted, did partake largely of the character of the womb, in which it had been carried for so many centuries be- fore. These Catholic Reformers may have been wrong, in the case now before us, as in many other points. Whole Christen- dom may have been wrong, not only in the form, but in the very substance of its faith, with regard to the sacraments, for more than fifteen hundred years; till this modern view began to reveal itself in the Protestant world, partly in the form of infidelity, and partly in the form of a claim to superior evangelical piety. The coincidence in this case too may be accidental only, and not natural or necessary. With regard to all this, we utter here no positive judgment. We wish simply to exhibit facts as they stand. But in this character, they have their solemn weight. They create a powerful presumption, as I before said, against the modern Puritan view, and impose upon all an a priori obli- gation of great force, not to acquiesce in it without examina- tion. CHAPTER III. AN ATTEMPT TO PLACE THE DOCTRINE IN ITS PROPER SCIEN TIFIC FORM. It has been already admitted that the Calvinistic theory of the Eucharistic Presence, as exhibited more or Jess distinctly in all the Reformed symbols of the sixteenth century, is embarrassed with some difficulties. These however concern at last not so much the fact itself, which may be said to constitute the true and proper substance of the doctrine, as the defective form in which it was attempted to bring it before the understanding. Tt was always held indeed that the fact was in its own nature a mystery, not to be reduced to any clear explanation in this way: but still it became necessary in the controversy with Romanism and Lu- theranism on the one side and the Socinanizing tendency on the other, not only to define and describe the limits of the fact itself at every point, but also to go a certain length at least, in endea- vouring to beat down popular objections, and meet the demands of the common reason. The success of such an effort hung ne- cessarily, to a greater or less extent, on the general theological and philosophical culture of the time. As this has been in some measure superseded by later intellectual advances, it ought not to be counted strange that the doctrine now before us, as well as the entire religious system of the same period, should be found to exhibit some vulnerable points as it regards form and outward representation. This we find to be the case in fact. 15G THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. SECTION I. PRELIMINARY POSITIONS. Calvin's theory seems to labor particularly at three points; all connected with a false psychology, as applied either to the person of Christ or the persons of his people. In the first place he does not make a sufficiently clear dis- tinction, between the idea of the organic law which constitutes the proper identity of a human body, and the material volume it is found to embrace as exhibited to the senses. A true and per- fect body must indeed appear in the form of organized matter. As a mere law, it can have no proper reality. But still the mat- ter, apart from the law, is in no sense the body. Only as it is found to be transfused with the active presence of the law at every point, and in this way filled with the form of life, can it be said to have any such character; and then it is of course as the medium simply, by which what is inward and invisible is ena- bled to gain for itself a true outward existence. The principle of the body as a system of life, the original salient point of its being as a whole, is in no respect material. It is not bound of course, for its identity, to any particular portion of matter as such. If the matter which enters into its constitution were changed every hour, it would still remain the same body; since that which passed away in each case would have no more right to be considered a part of the man than it had before entering the law of life in his person, and the demands of this law would always be abundantly satisfied by the matter that might fill it at each moment. A real communication then between the body of Christ and the bodies of his saints, does not imply necessarily the gross imagination of any transition of his flesh as such into their persons. This would be indeed of no meaning or value. For how could the flesh of Christ as something sundered from the law of life in the presence of which only it can have any force, and in this form supernaturally inserted into my flesh under the like abstract view, bring with it any advantage or profit? In such sense as this, we may say, without wresting our Saviour's words, "the flesh profiteth nothing." And here pre- cisely comes into view, one of the most valid and forcible objec- tions to the dogma of the Roman Church, as well as to the kindred doctrine of Luther; in both of which so much is made to hang on a sort of tactual participation of the matter of Christ's SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 157 body in the sacrament, rather than in the law simply of his true human life. This is urged in fact by Calvin himself, with great force, against the false theories in question. This shows of course that he was not insensible to the idea of the distinction now mentioned ; a point abundantly manifest besides from his whole way of representing the subject in general. Still it seems to have been a matter of correct feeling with him, rather than of clear scientific apprehension. Hence he never brings it forward in a distinct way, and never turns it to any such account in the service of his theory, as in the nature of the case he might have done. Thus too much account is made perhaps of the flesh of Christ under a local form, (here confined to the right hand ol God in heaven,) as the seat and fountain of the new life which is to be conveyed into his people ; and the attempt which is then made to bring the two parties together, notwithstanding such vast separation in space, must be allowed to be somewhat awkward and violent. No wonder that men of less dialectic subtlety than the great theologian himself, were at a loss to make any thing out of such a seeming contradiction in terms. In this case he may be said to cut the knot, which his speculation fails to solve. Christ's body is altogether in heaven only. How then is its vivific virtue to be carried into the believer? By the miraculous energy of the Holy Ghost; which however cannot be said in the case so much to bring his life down to us, as it serves rather to raise us in the exercise of faith to the presence of the Saviour on high. The result however is a real participation always in his full and entire humanity. But the representation is confused, and brings the mind no proper satisfaction. If for the " vivific virtue" of Christ's flesh Calvin had been led to substitute dis- tinctly the idea of the organic law of Christ's human life, his theory would have assumed at once a much more consistent and intel- ligible form. For in this view, it cannot be said that local, ma- terial contact is necessary, to sustain a true and strict continuity of existence, either in the sphere of nature or in that of grace. A second point of difficulty in the case of Calvin's theory is, that he fails to insist, with proper freedom and emphasis, on the absolute unity of what we denominate person, both in the case of Christ himself and in the case of his people. Hence he dwells too much on the life-giving virtue of Christ's flesh simply ; as if this were not necessarily and inseparably knit to his soul, and to his divinity too, as a single indivisible life ; so that where the latter form of existence is present in a real way, the other must be really present too, so far as its inmost nature is concerned, to the same extent. When I travel, whether by the eye or in thought simply, to the planet Saturn, the act includes my whole person ; not the body as such of course, but just as little the soul 14 158 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. under the like abstraction ; it is the act of that single and abso- lutely one life which I call myself, as the unity of both soul and body. And if it were possible in any way that the thought which carries me to Saturn, could be made to assume there a real concrete existence, holding in organic connection with my own life, it must as a human existence appear under a human form ; which in such a case would be as strictly a continuation of my bodily as well as spiritual being, as though it had sprung immediately from the local presence of my body itself. So the acts of the incarnate Word belong to his person as a whole. Not as though his humanity separately considered could be said to exercise the functions of his divinity ; for this is a false dis- tinction in the case ; and we have just as little reason to say that the divinity thus separately considered ever exercises the same functions. They are exercised by the theanthropic Person of the Mediator, as one and indivisible. If then Christ's life be conveyed over to the persons of his people at all, in a real and not simply figurative way, it must be so carried over under a human form, including both the constituents of humanity, body as well as soul ; and the new bodily existence thus produced, must be considered, independently of all local connection, a continuation in the strictest sense of Christ's life under the same form. This point does riot appear to have been apprehended, with sufficient distinctness, by Calvin and the Reformers gene- rally. Hence more or less confusion, and at times some appa- rent contradiction, in tracing the derivation of Christ's human life into the person of the believer. Bound as he felt himself to be to resist everything like the idea of a local presence, he found it necessary to resolve the whole process into a special supernatural agency of the Holy Ghost, as a sort of foreign me- dium introduced to meet the wants of the case. Thus the view taken of Christ's human nature becomes altogether too abstract, and it is made difficult to keep hold of the idea of a true organic connection between his life in this form, and that of his people. It is not easy then of course to maintain a clear distinction be- tween such a communication of the substance of Christ's life, and an influence in the way of mere spiritual power ; to which conception Calvin's theory was in fact always made to sink by his high-toned Lutheran adversaries; although he never failed to protest against this as grossly perverse and unjust, and has taken the greatest pains indeed to save himself at this point from mis- construction.* But his theory it must be allowed, carries here * It is wonderful, with what pertinacity the view of Calvin has been mis- represented at this point. Rigid Lutherans have charged him with a sort of theological duplicity, as pretending to differ from Zuingli, while he agreed with him in fact ; and modern Calvinists, who have fallen away entirely from SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 159 a. somewhat fantastic character. So on the other hand, the re- lation of soul and body in the person of the believer appears too abstract also, according to his view. He will hear of no trans- lation of the material particles of Christ's body into our bodies. The vivific virtue of his flesh can be apprehended on our part only by faith, and in this form of course by the soul only, through the sacramental doctrine of the sixteenth century, would fain bring him down too, if it were possible, from the high position which it is acknowledged his language sometimes seems to imply. Even the Form of Concord is chargeable here with great injustice. It divides the Sacramentarians into two classes; the more gross, who openly profess what they believe in their hearts ; and the politic, who use something like Lutheran language only to cover tbe same error. These last, representing of course the Calvinistic or proper Reformed view, are made to be "omnium nocentissimi sacramentarii ;" because, it is said, they pretend themselves to allow a " true presence of the true substan- tial and living body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper," and yet declare it to be spiritual only, and by faith. Under these high sounding terms, they in fact will have nothing to be present but mere bread and wine. " For the term spiritually, signifies with them only Christ's Spirit, or the virtue of his absent body, and his merit," &c. So such writers of the present day as Guerike, (Symbolik, p. 452-458,) Rudelbach, (Ref. Luth. und Union, p. 188 ff.) and Scheibel, (Das Abendmahl, p. 331 fT.) spare no pains, in their zeal for Lutheranism, to establish the same representation. They insist upon it that Calvin only plays with words, in pretending to go beyond Zuingli in bis theory of Christ's presence in tbe Supper ; that all comes at last to the conception of mere power and effect, as it regards communion with his person, and that the sacrament is significative simply of the grace it represents, and nothing more. But it is easy to see that such judgment rests altogether, in this case, on the fixed prejudice already established, that any communion with the life of Christ's body, in order to be real, must hold in some bodily way, and not by the soul. Grant this, and Calvin's theory, of course, leaves no room for any communion of the sort. But this, Calvin, at least, did not grant. On the contrary he held, that to make the communion dependent on any merely corporeal act, considered as such only, was in the nature of the case to de- prive it of all reality or value. The more spiritual, in his view, the more real. All that Luther aimed to secure by his theory of an oral communication, (for with him too this must be hyperphysical to be of any account,) Calvin pro- posed to reach more satisfactorily by pressing the idea of a spiritual commu- nication. He declared himself of one mind with Luther as to the fact ; the only difference between them was as to the mode. This was the position taken also by the Reformed Church in general. Did not Calvin know what Luther meant by his doctrine ? And shall we not believe him when he professes to hold a sacramental union with Christ's body and blood, in the same sense, simply because he conceives it to take place in a different way ? There is no reason to question that he held and taught a real communication, not with the power and operation of Christ's body merely, but with its true substantial life itself. The elements, as such, were signs, and might be separated from the ressacramenti, as Augustine also explicitly teaches ; but the sacramental trans- action, as a whole, was no such sign or symbol only. It was held to exhibit what is represented ; as much so as the dove, to borrow his own illustration, in whose form the Holy Ghost descended upon the Saviour at his baptism. " It is perfectly plain," says Bretschneider, li that Calvin's theory includes what with Luther was the main object, namely, the true, full participation of Christ's body and blood, to the strengthening and quickening of the soul; and that the question, whether this take place under the bread, or at the same time with it, by the mouth or by the soul, does not touch the substance of the case. For unless we conceive of the body of Christ as something sensible, and thus allow a Capernaitic eating, the oral participation must become at last 160 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. the power of the Holy Ghost. Still it extends to the body also, in the end. But all this, it would seem, in a way transcending all known analogies, in virtue of an extraordinary divine power present for the purpose, rather than as the natural and necessary result of the new life lodged in the soul itself. This is not satis- factory. Christ's Person is one, and the person of the believer is one ; and to secure a real communication of the whole human life of the first over into the personality of the second, it is only necessary that the communication should spring from the centre of Christ's life and pass over to the centre of ours. This can be only by the Holy Ghost. But the Holy Ghost in this case is not to be sundered from the Person of Christ. We must say rather that this, and no other, is the very form in which Christ's life is made present in the Church, for the purposes of the chris- tian salvation. The third source of embarrassment belonging to the form in which Calvin exhibits his theory, is found in this that he makes no clear distinction between the individual personal life of Christ, and the same life in a generic view. In every sphere of life, the individual and the general are found closely united in the same subject. Thus, in the vegetable world, the acorn, cast into the ground, and transformed subsequently into the oak of a hundred years, constitutes in one view only a single existence. But in another, it includes the force of a life that is capable of reaching far beyond all such individual limits. For the oak may produce ten thousand other acorns, and thus repeat its own life in a whole forest of trees. Still, in the end, the life of the forest, in such a case, is nothing more than an expansion of the life that lay involved at first in the original acorn ; and the whole general existence thus produced is bound together, inwardly and organi- cally, by as true and close a unity as that which holds in any of the single existences embraced in it, separately considered. So among men, every parent may be regarded as the bearer not only of a single individual life, that which constitutes his own person, but of a general life also, that reveals itself in his chil- dren.. Thus especially, in an eminent sense, the first man Adam is exhibited to our view always under a twofold character. In one respect he is simply a man, to be counted as one amongst men since born, his sons. In another he is the man ; in whose nothing else than a participation through the soul, and it is not necessary that the Lord's spiritual body should be taken in by the mouth, in order to have effect upon the soul." See the judgment of Schleiermacher, with regard to the same point, as already quoted on page 75. Knapp, Reinhard, &c 5 of course, try to sink the Calvinistic theory somewhat below tho level of their own, as they pretend to uphold the Lutheran view in opposition to it. But, as we have seen, they come short, in fact, both of Calvin and Luther, in the case. SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 161 person was included the whole human race. Thus he bears the name, (in Hebrew,) of the race itself; and it is under this generic title particularly that he is presented to our notice in the sacred history of the Bible. His individual personality of course was limited wholly to himself. But a whole world of like separate per- sonalities lay involved in his life, at the same time, as a generic principle or root. And all these, in a deep sense, form at last but one and the same life. Adam lives in his posterity, as truly as he has ever lived in his own person. They participate in his whole nature, soul and body, and are truly bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. So in the case before us, the life of Christ is to be viewed also under the same twofold aspect. Not indeed as if the individual and general here, might be supposed to hold under the same form exactly, as in the cases which have been men- tioned. The relation of the single oak to its offspring forest, is not the same fully with that of the first man to his posterity. Nor is this last at all commensurate, with the relation of Christ to his Church. This will appear hereafter. Still, however, for the point now in hand, the cases are parallel. The distinction of an individual and a general life in the person of Christ, is just as necessary as the same distinction in the person of Adam ; and the analogy is at all events sufficient to show, that there may be a real communication of Christ's life to his people, without the idea of any thing like a local mixture with his person. In one view the Saviour is a man, Jesus of Nazareth, partaking of the same flesh and blood with other men, though joined at the same time in mysterious union with the everlasting Word. But in another view he is again the man ; in a higher sense than this could be said of Adam ; emphatically the Son of Man, in whose person stood revealed the true idea of humanity, under its ulti- mate and most comprehensive for-m. Without any loss or change of character in the first view, his life is carried over in this last view continually into the persons of his people. He lives in him- self, and yet lives in them really and truly at the same time. This distinction between the individual and the general in the life of Christ, Calvin does not turn to account as he might have done. That the force of it was, in some measure, present to his mind, seems altogether clear. But it is not brought out in a distinct, full way; and his system is made to labour under some unnecessary difficulty on this account. It is easy to see that the three scientific determinations to which our attention has now been directed, when taken together and clearly affirmed, must serve to modify and improve very materially the Calvinistic doctrine of Christ's union with his people, so far as the mode of its statement is concerned ; reliev- ing it in fact from its most serious difficulties, and placing it 14* 162 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE under a form with which even the abstract understanding itself can have no good right to find fault. For the positions here ap- plied to the case are in no sense arbitrary or hypothetical. They belong to the actual science of the present time, and have a right to be respected in any inquiry which has this question for its object. No such inquiry can deserve to be considered sci- entific, if it fail to take them into view. At the same time it is equally clear, that in all this the true and proper substance of the old doctrine is preserved. Here we stand divided from Rationalism and modern Puritanism. We agree with them, that the doctrine under its old form has difficulties, with which the understanding had a right to quarrel. But, to get clear of these, they have thought good to cast away the whole doctrine, sub- stance and form together. A process of pure negation and de- struction, which, in such a case, can never be right. We hold fast to the substance, while, for the very sake of doing so, we endeavour to place it in a better form. Of this none can have a right to complain ; and least of all those who have given up the whole doctrine. They are negative only, in the case. We are positive. We cling to the old ; in its life, however, rather than by slavish adhesion to its letter. So it must be indeed in the case of all religious truth, dogmatically considered. It cannot hold in the form of dead tradition. But neither can it be disjoined from the life of the past. Its true form is that of history ; in which the past, though left behind in one view, is always in an- other taken up by the present, and borne along with it as the central power of its own life. When we speak, however, of putting the doctrine in question into a form more satisfactory to the understanding, it is not to be imagined of course that we consider it to be any the less a mystery, on this account, in its own nature. The mystical union of Christ with his Church is something, that, in the very nature of the case, tfanscends all analogies drawn from any lower sphere of life; which it is vain to expect, therefore, that the finite under- standing as such can ever fathom or grasp. Still, however, much depends on the statement even of what is incomprehensible, for its being brought to stand at least in a right relation to the un- derstanding. The understanding may be reconciled, relatively, to that which it cannot comprehend absolutely. It may be set right in relation to a mystery negatively, where it has no power still to grasp it in a positive way, but can only fall back for relief at last on the reason, as a deeper and more comprehensive power. But it is much that false conceptions be taken out of the way, and that no room be given for objections that lie in the end, not against the truth itself, but only against the form of its representation. It is much also that this last be made to stand SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 163 in true correspondence with known analogies in other spheres of life, and especially with the organic idea of the new creation itself; which, with all its supernatural character as a whole, must always be regarded as a continuation still of the natural crea- tion in its highest form, and as 'such most perfectly symmetrical and self-consistent in all its parts. It is only in such view, that we may be allowed to speak of bringing the doctrine before us nearer to the understanding, by any improvement that may be possible in the mode of its exhibition. Taking advantage then of the scientific truths which have been already mentioned and which Calvin failed at least to apply to the subject in their full force, and keeping in view always the authority of God's most holy revelation, (not so much single abstract texts as the life and power of the word rather as a whole), I will now endeavour to throw the doctrine comprehen- sively into the form which the nature of the case seems to me to require. The way will then be open for the actual trial of the doctrine, by the Scriptures themselves. These form of course the last and only conclusive measure of truth in the case. But before we make our appeal to them, it is important that we should have clearly in view the precise object for which they are to be con- sulted. The subject may be exhibited, to the best advantage perhaps, in the way of successive theses or propositions, accompanied with such illustration as each case may seem to require in order to be made clear. These will have respect first to the Mystical Union, and then to the question of the Eucharist. 1G4 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. SECTION II. THE MYSTICAL UNION. 1. The human world in its present natural state, as descended from Adam, is sundered from its proper life in God by sin, and utterly disabled in this character for rising by itself to any higher position. The fall of Adam was the fall of the race. Not sim- ply because he represented the race, but because the race was itself comprehended in his person. The terrible fact of sin revealed itself in him as a world-fact, that was now incorporated with the inmost life of humanity itself, and became from this point onward an insurmountable law in the progress of its deve- lopment. The ruin under which we lie is an organic ruin ; the ruin of our nature; universal and whole, not simply because all men are sinners, but as making all men to be sinners. Men do not make their nature, their nature makes them. To have part in the human nature at all, we must have part in it primarily as a fallen nature; a spiritually impotent nature; from whose consti- tution the principle of life has departed to its very root. Not by accident or bad example only, as the Pelagians vainly dream, are we all in the same condemnation. There is a law of sin at work in us from our birth. The whole Pelagian view of life is shallow in the extreme. It sees in the human race only a vast aggregation of particular men, outwardly put together ; a huge living sand-heap, and nothing more. But the human race is not a sand-heap. It is the power of a single life. It is bound to- gether, not outwardly, but inwardly. Men have been one before they became many; and as many, they are still one. We have a perfect right then to say that Adam's sin is imputed to all his posterity. Only let us not think of a mere outward transfer in the case. Against such imputation the objection commonly made to the doctrine has force. It would be to substitute a fiction for a fact. No imputation of that sort is taught in the Bible. But the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity involves no fiction. It is counted to them simply because it is theirs in fact. They are born into Adam's nature, and for this reason only, as form- ing with him the same general life, they are bom also into his guilt. 2. The union in which ive stand with our first parent, as thus fallen, extends to his entire person, body as well as soul. He did not fall in his soul simply, nor in his body simply, but in SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 165 both at once. The man fell. So the humanity of which he was the root fell in him and with him, to the same extent. The whole became corrupt. And now as such it includes in all his posterity, a real and true perpetuation of his life under both forms on to the end of time. They partake of his body as well as of his soul. Both are transmitted by ordinary generation, the same identical organic life-stream, from one age onward always to another. We are bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, and blood of his blood. And still there is no material communication, no local contact. Not a particle of Adam's body has come into ours. The identity resolves itself at last into an invisible law; and it is not one' law for the body, and another law for the soul ; but one and the same law involves the presence of both, as the power of a common life. Where the law works, there Adam's life is reproduced, body and soul to- gether. And still the individual Adam is not blended with his posterity in any such way, as to lose his own personality or swallow up theirs. His identity with his posterity is generic; but none the less real or close on this account. We are all familiar with the case, and if we stop to think of it at all can hardly feel perhaps that it calls for any explanation. And yet of a truth, it is something very wonderful. A mystery in fact, that goes quite beyond the region of the understanding. 3. By the hypostatical union of the two natures in the person of Jesus Christ, our humanity as fatten in Adam was exalted again to a neio and imperishable divine life. That the race might be saved, it was necessary that a work should be wrought not beyond it, but in it; and this inward salvation to be effective must lay hold of the race itself in its organic, universal character, before it could extend to individuals, since in no other form was it possible for it to cover fully the breadth and depth of the ruin that lay in its way. Such an inward salvation of the race re- quired that it should be joined in a living way with the divine nature itself, as represented by the everlasting Word or Logos, the fountain of all created light and life. The Word accord- ingly became flesh, that is assumed humanity into union with itself. It was not an act, whose force was intended to stop in the person of one man himself to be transplanted soon afterwards to heaven. Nor was it intended merely to serve as the neces- sary basis of the great work of atonement, the power of which might be applied to the world subsequently in the way of out- ward imputation. It had this use indeed, but not as its first and most comprehensive necessity. The object of the incarnation was to couple the human nature in real union with the Logos, as a perlnanent source of life. It resulted from the presence of sin only, (itself no part of this nature in its original constitution,) 160 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. that the union thus formed called the Saviour to suffer. As the bearer of a fallen humanity he must descend with it to the lowest depths of sorrow and pain, in order that he might triumph with it again in the power of his own imperishable life. In all this, he acted for himself and yet for the race he represented at the same time. For it was no external relation simply, that he sustained to this last. He was himself the race. Humanity dwelt in his person as the second Adam, under a higher form than ever it carried in the first. 4. The value of Christ's sufferings and death, as well as of his entire life, in relation to men, springs wholly from the view of the incarnation now presented. The assumption of humanity on the part of the Logos involved the necessity of suffering, as the only way in which the new life with which it was thus joined could triumph over the law of sin and death it was called to sur- mount. The passion of the Son of God was the world's spiri- tual crisis, in which the principle of health came to its last struggle with the principle of disease, and burst forth from the very bosom of the grave itself in the form of immortality. This was the atonement, Christ's victory over sin and hell. As such it forms the only medium of salvation to men. But how? Only as the value of it is made over in each case to the subject, who is to be saved. This we are told is by imputation. But does the act of imputation reckon to us as ours, that which is not ours in fact? Does it proceed upon a fiction in the divine mind 1 Just as little as in the case of our relation to the sin of Adam. This last is not a foreign evil arbitrarily set over to our account. It is immanent to our nature itself. Just so here. The atone- ment as a foreign work, could not be made to reach us in the way of a true salvation. Only as it may be considered immanent in our nature itself, can it be imputed to us as ours, and so be- come available in us for its own ends. And this is its character in truth. It holds in humanity, as a work wrought out by it in Christ. When Christ died and rose, humanity died and rose at the same time in his person; not figuratively, but truly; just as it had fallen before in the person of Adam. 5. The Christian Salvation then, as thus comprehended in Christ, is a new Life, in the deepest sense of the word. Not a doctrine merely for the mind to embrace. Not an event simply to be remembered with faith, as the basis of piety in the way of example or other outward support: the sense of some, who have much to say of Chistianity as a fact in their own shallow way. Not the constitution only of a new order of spiritual relations, or a new system of divine appliances, in the case of fallen, help- less man. But a new Life introduced into the very centre of humanity itself. In this view, though bound most closely with SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 167 the organic development of the world's history as it stood before, it is by no means comprehended in it, or carried by it, as its proper product and fruit. Christianity is more than a continu- ation simply of Judaism. It claims the character of a creation, by which old things in the end must pass away, and all things become new. This indicates, however, its relation to the old order. That is not to be annihilated by it, but taken up into it as a higher life. The incarnation is supernatural ; not magical, however ; not fantastic or visionary ; not something to be gazed at as a transient prodigy in the world's history. It is the super- natural linking itself to the onward flow of the world's life, and becoming thenceforward itself the ground and principle of the entire organism, now poised at last on its true centre. In this sense Christianity is indeed a fact ; even as the first creation was a Fact ; a Fact for all time; a world-fact. (J. The new Life of which Christ is the Source and Organic Principle, is in all respects a true Human Life. It is in one sense a divine life. It springs from the Logos. But it is not the life of the Logos separately taken. It is the life of the Word made flesh, the divinity joined in personal union with our hu- manity. It was not in the way of show merely that Christ put on our nature; as many of the old Gnostics believed, and as the view that multitudes still have of the Christian salvation, would seem to imply. He put it on truly and in the fullest sense. He was Man more perfectly than this could be said of Adam himself, even before he fell ; humanity stood revealed in his person under its most perfect form. Not a new humanity wholly dissevered from that of Adam; but the humanity of Adam itself, only raised to a higher character, and filled with new meaning and power, by its union with the divine nature. The new creation in Christ Jesus appeared originally only in this form, and can hold in no other to the end of time. 7. Christ's life, as noio described, rests not i?i his separate per- son, but passes over to his people ; thus constituting the Church, which is his body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. This is involved in the view already taken of his Person, as the prin- ciple of the new creation. The process by which the whole is accomplished, is not mechanical but organic. It takes place in the way of history, growth, regular living development. Christ goes not forth to heal the world by outward power as standing beyond himself; he gathers it rather into his own per- son, that is, stretches over it the law of his own life, so that it is made at last to hold in him and from him altogether, as its root. As individuals, we are inserted into him by our regeneration, which is thus the true counterpart of that first birth that makes us natural men. We are not however set over into this new 168 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. order of existence wholly at once. This would be magic. We are apprehended by it, in the first place, only as it were at a single point. But this point is central. The new life lodges itself, as an efflux from Christ, in the inmost core of our per- sonality. Here it becomes the principle or seed of our sanctifi- cation ; which is simply the gradual transfusion of the same exalted spiritual quality or potence through our whole persons. The process terminates with the resurrection. All analogies borrowed from a lower sphere to illustrate this great mystery, are necessarily poor, and always more or less perilous. Perhaps the best is furnished in the action of a magnet on iron. The man in his natural state centres upon himself, and is thus spi- ritually dead. In his regeneration, he is touched with a divine attraction, that draws him to Christ, the true centre of life. The tendency and motion here come not of himself, grow not out of what he was before. They are in obedience simply to the magnetic stream that has reached him from without. The old nature still continues to work. The iron is not at once made free from its gravity. But a new law is producing at every point an inward nisus in the opposite direction ; which needs only to be filled with new force continually from the magnetic centre, to carry all at last its own way. " I, if I be lifted up," says Christ, " will draw all men unto me!" 8. As joined to Christ, then, we are one with him in his life, and not simply in the way of a less intimate and real union. The new birth involves a substantial change in the centre of our being. It is not the understanding or the will simply, that is wrought upon in a natural or supernatural way. Not this or that power or function of the man is it, that may be called the seat of what is thus introduced into his person. Life is not thinking, nor feeling, nor acting ; but the organic unity of all these, inseparably joined together. In this sense, we say of our union with Christ, that it is a new life. It is deeper than all thought, feeling, or exercise of will. Not a quality only. Not a mere relation. A relation in fact, as that of the iron to the magnet; but one that carries into the centre of the subject a form of being which was not there before. Christ communicates his own life substantially to the soul on which he acts, causing it to grow into his very nature. This is the mystical union ; the basis of our whole salvation; the only medium by which it is possible for us to have an interest in the grace of Christ under any other view. 9. Our relation to Christ is not simply parallel with our rela- tion to Adam, but goes beyond it, as being immeasurably more intimate and deep. Adam was the first man ; Christ is the archetypal man, in whom the true ideal of humanity has been SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 1C9 brought into view. Adam stands related to the race as a simple generic head ; Christ as the true centre and universal basis of humanity itself. Our nature took its start in Adam; it finds its end and last ground only in Christ. It comes not with us to the exercise of a free, full personality, till we are consciously joined to the person of the divine Logos in our nature. In a deep sense thus, Christ is the universal Man. His Person is the root, in the presence and power of which only all other person- alities can stand, in the case of his people, whether in time or eternity. They not only spring from him, as we all do from Adam, but continue to stand in him, as an all present, everywhere active personal Life.* In this way, they all have part in his divinity itself; though the hypostatical union, as such, remains limited of course to his own person. The whole Christ lives and works in the Church, supernaturally, gloriously, mysteriously, and yet really and truly, " always, to the end of the world." Glory be to God ! 10. The mystical union includes necessarily a participation in the entire humanity of Christ. Will any one pretend to say, that we are joined in real life-unity with the everlasting Logos, apart from Christ's manhood, in the way of direct personal mu- tual inbeing? This would be to exalt ourselves to the same level with the Son of God himself. The mystical union then would be the hypostatical union itself, repeated in the person of every believer. Such a supposition is monstrous. Those who think of it only impose upon themselves. For the conception * Personality is constituted by self-consciousness. This includes, in our natural state, no reference whatever to an original progenitor. Adam forms in no sense the centre of our life, the basis of our spiritual being. But the Christian consciousness carries in its very nature, such a reference to the per- son of Jesus Christ. It consists in the active sense of this relation, as the true and proper life of its subject. The man does not connect with Christ the self-consciousness which he has under a different form, in the way of out- ward reference merely ; but this reference is comprehended in his self-con- sciousness itself, so far as he has become spiritually renewed. Christ is felt to be the centre of his life ; or rather this feeling may be said to be itself his life, the form in which he exists as a self-conscious person. It is with reason, therefore, that Schleiermacher speaks of the communication which Christ makes of himself to believers, as moulding the person ; since he imparts, in fact, a new higher consciousness, that forms the basis of a life that was not previously at hand, the true centre of our personality under its most perfect form. In this case the person of Christ is the ground and fountain of all pro- per Christian personality in the Church. It is only as he is consciously in communication with Christ as his life centre, (which can be only through an actual self-communication — Wesensmittheilung — of Christ's life to him for this purpose,) that the believer can be regarded as a Christian, or new man in Christ Jesus. So Olshausen: "Die Persbnlichkeit des Sohnes selbst, als die umfassende, nimmt alle Persbnlichkeiten der Seinigen in sich auf, und durchdringt sie wieder mit seinem Leben, gleichsam als der lebendige Mittel- punct eines Organismus, von dem das Leben ausstrb'mt und zu dem es wieder- kehrt." Comm. John xiv., 20. 15 170 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. of a real union, they substitute in their thoughts always one that is moral in fact. The Word became flesh in Christ, for the very purpose of reaching us in a real way. The incarnation consti- tutes the only medium by which, the only form under which, this divine life of the world can ever find its way over into our persons. Let us beware here of all Gnostic abstractions. Let us not fall practically into the condemnation of Nestorius. But allowing the humanity of Christ to be the indispensable medium of our participation in his person as divine, will any dream only of his human soul as comprehended in the case? Then the whole fact is again converted into a phantom. The life of Christ was one. To enter us at all in a real way, it must enter us in its totality. To divide the humanity of Christ, is to destroy it; to take it away, and lay it no one can tell where. What God has joined together, we have no right thus to put asunder. Christ's humanity is not his soul separately taken ; just as little as it is his body separately taken. It is neither soul nor body as such, but the everlasting, indissoluble union of both. 11. As the mystical union embraces the tvhole Christ, so we too are embraced by it not in a partial but whole way. The very nature of life is, that it lies at the ground of all that may be predicated besides of the subject in which it is found, in the way of quality, attribute, or distinction. It is the whole at once of the nature in which it resides. A new life then, to become truly ours, must extend to us in the totality of our nature. It must fill the understanding, and rule the will, enthrone itself in the soul and extend itself out over the entire body. Besides, the life which is to be conveyed into us in the present case, we have just seen to be in all respects a true human life before it reaches us It is the life of the incarnate Son of God. But as such, how can it be supposed in passing over to us, to lodge itself exclusively in our souls, without regard to our bodies? Is it not a contradiction, to think of a real union with Christ's humanity, which extends at least only to one half of our nature? In the person of Christ himself, we hold with the ancient Church the presence of a true body as well as of a reasonable soul. Shall this same Christ, as formed in his people, be converted into an incorporeal, docetic, Gnostic Christ, as having no real pre- sence except in the abstract soul ? Or may his bodily nature continue to hold in this case in the soul simply, separately taken ? Incredible ! Either Christ's human life is not formed in us at all, or it must be formed in us as a human life ; must be corporeal as well as incorporeal ; must put on outward form, and project itself in space. And all this is only to say, in other words, that it must enter into us, and become united to us, in our bodies as truly as in our souls. In this way, the mystical SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 171 union becomes real. Under any other conception, it ends in a phantasm, or falls back helplessly to the merely moral relation that is talked of by Pelagians and Rationalists. 12. The mystery now affirmed is accomplished, not in the way of two different forms of action, but by one and the same singh and undivided process. Much of the difficulty that is felt with regard to this whole subject, arises from the inveterate prejudice, by which so commonly the idea of human life is split for the imagination into two lives, and a veritable dualism thus consti- tuted in our nature in place of the absolute unity that belongs to'it in fact. The Bible knows nothing of that abstract separa- tion of soul and body, which has come to be so widely admitted into the religious views of the modern world. It comes from another quarter altogether; and it is as false. to all true philoso- phy, as it is unsound in theology and pernicious for the Chris- tian life. Soul and body, in their ground, are but one life; identical in their origin ; bound together by mutual interpene- tration subsequently at every point; and holding for ever in the presence and power of the self-same organic law. We have no right to think of the body as the prison of the soul, in the way of Plato; nor as its garment merely; nor as its shell or hull. We have no right to think of the soul in any way as a form of existence of and by itself, into which the soul as another form of such existence is thrust in a mechanical way. Both form one life. The soul to be complete to develope itself at all as a soul, must externalize itself, throw itself out in space; and this externalization is the body.* All is one process, the action of * To some, possibly, this representation may seem to be contradicted by what the Scriptures teach of the separate existence of the soul between death and the resurrection ; and it must be admitted, that we are met herewith a difficulty which it is not easy, at present, to solve. Let us, however, not mistake the true state of the case. The difficulty is not to reconcile Scrip- ture with a psychological theory; but to bring it into harmony with itself. For it is certain, that the Scriptures teach such an identification of soul and body in the proper human personality, as clearly at least as they intimate a continued consciousness on the part of the soul between death and the resur- rection. The doctrine of immortality in the Bible, is such as to include always the idea of the resurrection. It is an ara^racrtj ix tu>v vtx^Zv. The whole argument in the loth chapter of 1st Corinthians, as well as the representation 1 Thess. iv., 1 3— IS, proceeds on the assumption that the life of the body, as well as that of the soul, is indispensable to the perfect state of our nature as human. The soul then, during the intermediate state, cannot possibly constitute, in the biblical view, a complete man ; and the case re- quires besides, that we should conceive of its relation to the body as still in force, not absolutely destroyed but only suspended. The whole condition is interimistic, and by no possibility of conception capable of being thought of as complete and final. When the resurrection body appears, it will not be as a new frame abruptly created for the occasion, and brought to the soul in the way of outward addition and supplement. It will be found to hold in strict organic continuity with the body, as it existed before death, as the action of the same law of life ; which implies that this law has not been annihilated, 172 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. one and the same living organic principle, dividing itself only that its unity may become thus the more free and intensely com- plete. There is no room to dream then of a bodily communi- cation with Christ on the part of believers, as something distinct from the communication they have with him in their souls. His flesh cannot enter our flesh, under an abstract form, dissevered from the rest of his life, and in no union with our souls as the medium of such translation. This would be the so called Caper- naitic communion in full ; not mystical, but magical ; incredible and useless at the same time. The process by which Christ is formed in his people, is not thus two-fold but single. It lays hold of its subject in each case, not in the periphery of his per- son, but in its inmost centre, where the whole man, soul and body, is still one undivided life. As in the case of the mind it is neither the understanding, nor the will, that is apprehended by it, so in the case of the person also it is neither the soul nor the body, separately considered, that is so apprehended ; it is the totality which includes all ; it is the man in the very centre and ground of his personality. Christ's life as a icholc is borne over into the person of the believer as a like whole. The communi- cation is central, and central only ; from the last ground of Christ's life to the last ground of ours; by the action of a single, invisible, self-identical, spiritual law. The power of Christ's life lodged in the soul begins to work there immediately as the principle of a new creation. In doing so, it works organically according to the law which it includes in its own constitution. That is, it works as a human life; and as such becomes a law of regeneration in the body as truly as in the soul. 13. In all this of course then there is no room for the supposi- tion of any material, tactual approach of Christ's body to the persons of his people. It is not necessary, that his flesh and blood, materially considered, should in any way pass over into our life, and become locally present in us under any form, to make us partakers of his humanity. Even in the sphere of mere nature, the continuity of organic existence, as it passes from one indivi- dual to another — mounting upwards for instance from the buried seed, and revealing itself at last, through leaves and flowers, in a thousand new seeds after its own kind — is found to hang in but suspended only in the intermediate state. In this character, however, it must be regarded as resting in some way, (for where else could it rest,) in the separate life, as it is called, of the soul itself; the slumbering power of the resurrection, ready at the proper time, in obedience to Christ's powerful word, to clothe itself with its former actual nature, in full identity with the form it carried before death, though under a far higher order of existence. Only then can the salvation of the soul be considered complete. All at last is one life; the subject of which is the totality of the believer's person, compre- hending soul and body alike, from the beginning of the process to its end. SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 173 the end, not on the material medium as such through which the process is effected, but on the presence simply of the living force, immaterial altogether and impalpable, that imparts both form and substance to the whole. The presence of the root in the branches of the oak, is not properly speaking either a local or material presence. It is the power simply of a common life. And why then should it be held impossible, for Christ's life to reach over into the persons of his people, whole and entire, even without the intervention of any material medium whatever — be- longing as it does pre-eminently to the sphere of the Spirit? Why should it seem extravagant, to believe that the law of this life, apart from all material contact with his person, may be so lodged in the soul of the believer by the power of the Holy Ghost, as to become there the principle of a new moral creation, that shall still hold in unbroken organic continuity with its root, and go on to take full possession of its subject, soul and body, under the same form ? 14. Such a relation of Christ to the Church involves no ubi- quity or idealistic dissipation of his body, and requires no fusion of his proper personality with the persons of his people. We dis- tinguish between the simple man and the universal man, here joined in the same person. The possibility of such a distinction is clear in the case of Adam. His universality is not indeed of the same order with that of Christ. But still the case has full force, for the point now in hand. Adam was at once an indi- vidual and a whole race. All his posterity partake of his life, and grow forth from him as their root. And still his individual person has not been lost on this account. Why then should the life of Christ in the Church, be supposed to conflict with the idea of his separate, distinct personality, under a true human form? Why must we dream of a fusion of persons in the one case, more than in the other ? Here is more, it is true, than our relation to Adam. We not only spring from Christ, so far as our new life is concerned, but stand in him perpetually also as our ever living and ever present root. His Person is always thus the actual bearer of our persons. And yet there is no mix- ture, or flowing of one into the other, as individually viewed. Is not God the last ground of all personality? But does this imply any pantheistic dissipation of his nature, into the general consciousness of the intelligent universe? Just as little does it imply any like dissipation of Christ's personality into the general consciousness of the Church, when we affirm that it forms the ground, out of which and in the power of which only, the whole life of the Church continually subsists.* In this view Christ is * It is not unusual to hear it objected to the view of such a comprehension of the general Christian life in the life of Christ, as is here maintained, that it 15* 174 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. personally present always in the Church. This of course, in the power of his divine nature. But his divine nature is at the same time human, in the fullest sense; and wherever his pre- sence is revealed in the Church in a real way, it includes his person necessarily under the one aspect as well as under the other. With all this however, which is something very different from the conception of a proper ubiquity in the case of Christ's body, we do not relinquish the thought of his separate human individuality. We distinguish, between his universal humanity in the Church, and his humanity as a particular man, whom the heavens have received till the time of the restitution of all things. His glorified body, we doubt not, is possessed of qualities, attri- butes and powers, that transcend immeasurably all we know or can think of a human body here. Still it is a body; a particular body ; having organized parts and outward form. As such of course, it must be defined and circumscribed by local limits, and cannot be supposed to be present in different places at the same time. 15. The mystical union, holding in this form, is more intimate and real, than any union which is known in the world besides. Even in nature, the most close connection is not that which holds in the way of mere local contact or outward conjunction. There may be an actual transfusion of one substance into another, with very little union in the end. A simply mechanical unity, one thing joined to another in space, is the lowest and poorest that can be presented to our thoughts. Higher than this is the chemical combination ; which however is still compara- tively outward. The organic union, as it holds for instance be- tween the root and topmost branches of the tree, is far more inward and close. Though they do not touch each other at all, they are one notwithstanding in a sense more true, than can be affirmed, either of the different parts of a crystal, or of the ele- leads to a sort of pantheism, in which no room is left for the idea of a sepa- rate individual consciousness on the part of the believer. But this objection, if it have any force, must hold not only against such a life union with Christ as is here advocated, but against any union with him whatever that may be considered real, and not simply moral. Then all the best old English divines, as Professor Lewis has well remarked, such as Howe, Baxter, Owen, &c, must fall under condemnation as teaching the Bhuddist doctrine of spiritual annihilation. " Such a philosopher,' 1 ' he adds, " as the author of the ' Bles- sedness of the Righteous,' would teach us that the soul's consciousness of being in Christ, and of having one life with him, might give a higher sense of a more glorious and blessed individuality, than could be derived from any other state of being. . . . Paul was not afraid of saying, that ' in God we live, and move, and are,' or of speaking of the Church as being ' the fulness of him that filleth all in all,' or of declaring that c our life is hid with Christ in God.' Neither whilst there remained in him the individual consciousness of so blessed a state, was he afraid of the declaration, £u 8s, ovx zti ETw, £V> 8s iv sfxot XPISTOS, — 1 live, not I, but Christ liveth in me." SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 175 ments that are married in the constitution of atmospheric air. Of vastly higher character still, is the union of head and mem- bers in the same human body. But even this is a poor image of the oneness of Christ with his people. There is nothing like this in the whole world, under any other form. It is bound by no local limitations. It goes beyond all nature, and transcends all thought. 16. The union of Christ with believers is icrovght by the power of the Holy Ghost. The new birth is from the Spirit. It is by the Spirit the divine life is sustained and advanced in us, at every point, from its commencement to its close. There is no other medium, by which it is possible for us to be in Christ, or to have Christ in ourselves. The new creation holds absolutely and entirely, in the powerful presence of the Holy Ghost. Hence it is said, " He that is joined to the Lord, is one Spirit ;" and the indwelling of Christ and his Spirit in believers is spoken of as the same thing. But for this very reason, we have no right to dissolve this unity again in our thoughts, by making the pre- sence of the Spirit a mere substitute for the presence of Christ himself. Where the one is, there the other is truly and really at the same time. The Spirit, proceeding from the Father and Son and subsisting in everlasting union with both, constitutes the form, in which and by which the new creation in Christ Jesus upholds itself, and reveals itself, in all its extent. It is not Nature, but Spirit. So in the Person of Christ himself, the root of this creation. The Spirit was never brought near to men before, as now through the incarnate Word. It dwelt in him without measure. Humanity itself was filled completely with its presence, and appears at last translucent with the glory of heaven itself by its means. Forth from the person of Christ, thus " quickened in the Spirit," the flood of life pours itself on- ward continually in the Church, only of course by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost; for it holds in no other form. Not however by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost, as abstracted from the presence of Christ himself; as though he were the fountain only, and not the very life-stream too, of the new creation, or could he supposed to be in it and with it by the intervention only of a presence, not involving at the same time and to the same extent his own. " The Lord is that Spirit." He reveals himself in his people, dwells in them and makes them one with himself in a real way, by his Spirit. In this view, the new life formed in them is spiritual; not natural or physical, as belonging simply to the first creation. But this does not imply at all, that it is limited to the soul as distinguished from the body. There is no absolute opposition here between the idea of body and the idea of Spirit. Here is a spiritual body, as well 176 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. as a body natural, according to the apostle. The Spirit of Christ, in his own person at least, fills the whole man, soul and body. All is spiritual, glorious, heavenly. His whole humanity has been taken up into the sphere of the Spirit, and appears transfigured into the same life. And why then should it not ex- tend itself, in the way of strict organic continuity, as a whole, humanity also, by the active presence of Christ's Spirit, over into the persons of his people? A spiritual life no more ex- cludes the thought of the body in the one case, than it does in the other. 17. Christ's life is apprehended on the part of his people only by faith. The life itself comes to us wholly from Christ him- self, by the power of his Spirit. The magnetic stream is poured upon us from abroad. If we move at all, it is only in obedience to the divine current thus brought to bear upon our souls. To live in this at all, however, it is necessary that we should sur- render ourselves spontaneously to its power. This is faith ; the most comprehensive, fundamental act of which our nature is ca- pable. The man swings himself, in the totality of his being, quite ofTfrom the centre of self, on which hitherto his conscious- ness has been poised, over upon Christ, now revealed to his view, as another centre altogether. The birth of a new life, in the strictest sense, as we have already seen. Faith, of course, is not the principle of this life. It is only the medium of its introduc- tion into the soul, and the condition of its growth and develop- ment when present. But as such it is indispensable. The process of our sanctification is spiritual, and not mechanical or magical.* 18. The new life of the believer includes degrees, and will be- come complete only in the resurrection. Only in this form could it have a true human character. All life, in the case of man, is actualized, and can be actualized, only in the way of process or gradual historical development. So in the case before us, there is the seed; and when it springs, "first the blade, then the ear; and after that, the full corn in the ear." The new life struggles with the old, like Jacob and Esau in the same womb! The Christian carries in himself two forms of existence, a "law of sin and death" on the one hand, and "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" on the other; and the power of the last is continually opposed and restrained by the power of the first. From its very start, however, the life of Christ in the believer is a whole life; and in all its subsequent progress it reveals its power continually, under the same character. From the first it includes in hseU potentially all that it is found to become at the * " Living faith in Christ," says Schleiennachcr, " is nothing but the self- consciousness of our union with Christ." SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 177 last. The life of the tree is only the same life, that was compre- hended originally in the seed from which it has sprung. So it is with all life. All that belongs, then, to the new life of the Christian, conceived as complete at the last day, must be'allowed to be involved in it as principle and process from the beginning. In every stage of its progress it is a true human life, answerable to the nature of its organic root, and to the nature also of the subject in which it is lodged. It is always, as far as it prevails, the law of a new nature for the body as well as for the soul. The full and final triumph of the process, is the resurrection ; which is reached in the case of the in- dividual, only in connection with the consummation of 'the Church as a whole. The bodies of the saints in glory will be only the last result, in organic continuity, of the divine life of Christ, implanted in their souls at their regeneration. There is nothing abrupt in Christianity. It is a supernatural constitu- tion indeed; but as such it is clothed in a natural form, and in- volves in itself as regular a law of historical development, as the old creation itself. The resurrection body will be simply the ultimate outburst of the life, that had been ripening for immor- tality under cover of the oldAdamic nature before. The winged psyche has its elemental organization in the worm, and does not lose it in the tomb-like chrysalis. Let us not be told, that this is to suppose two bodies in the person of the believer at one time. Does the new life, abstracted from the body, involve the supposition of two souls ? The cases are precisely parallel. The man is one, soul and body. But a new organic law has become lodged in the inmost centre of his personality, and is now gra- dually extending its force over the entire constitution of his na- ture as a whole. It does not lay hold of one part of his being first, and then proceed to another, in the way of outward territo- rial conquest ; as though a hand or foot could be renovated be- fore the head, or the understanding apart from the will, or the soul in no connection with the body. The whole man is made the subject of the new life at once. The law of revolution in- volved in it extends from the centre to the extreme periphery of his person. The old body becomes itself, in a mysterious way, the womb of a higher corporeity, the life-law of Christ's own glorious body ; which is at last, through the process of death and the resurrection, set free from the first form of existence entirely, and made to supersede it for ever in the immortality of heaven. 178 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. SECTION III. THE LORD'S SUPPER. 19. "A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed and applied to believers" Thus the Westminster Shorter Catechism, echoing the voice of the whole Reformed Church, as it had sounded throughout Christen- dom for a century before. The signs, as such, make not the sacrament. They are only one part of it. The other part is found in the invisible grace, that is sacramentally or mys- tically joined with the signs. To be complete, that is to be at all a true sacrament, the ordinance must comprehend both. In other words the invisible grace enters as a necessary constituent element into the idea of the sacrament; and must be of course objectively present with it wherever it is administered under a true form. Whether it shall become available to the benefit of the participant, must depend on the presence of the conditions that are needed to give it effect. All turns here at last on the exercise of faith. But the objective presence of the grace itself, as an essential part of the sacrament, is none the less certain and sure on this account. It belongs to the ordinance in its own nature; which, in this view, is not a picture or remem- brancer simply for the mind, but a true and real exhibition of that which it represents. The sign and the thing signified are, by Christ's institution, mysteriously bound together, so as to form in the sacramental transaction one and the same presence. Not as though the last were in any way included in the first, as its local or material receptacle. The conjunction is in no sense such as to change at all the nature of the sensible sign, in itself considered, or to bring it into any physical union with the grace it represents. But still the two form one presence. Along with the outward sign, is exhibited always at the same time the repre- sented grace. The union of the one with the other is mystical, and peculiar altogether to the nature of a sacrament; but it is not for this reason less real, but only a great deal more real, than it could be possibly under any natural and local form. The in- visible grace thus made present by sensible signs in the sacra- ments, is " Christ and the benefits of the new covenant." Not the benefits of the new covenant only ; but Christ himself also, in a real way, as the only medium of a real communication with the SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 179 benefits. Christ first, and then and therefore all his benefits ; as inhering only in his person, and carrying with them no reality under any different view. 20. " The Lord's Supper is a sacrament, ichcrcin, by giving and receiving bread and ivine according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth, and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of ins body and blood, icith all his benefits, to their spiritual nou- rishment and growth in grace." Thus again the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Here are sensible signs, bread and wine solemnly given and received. Here also we have the invisible grace, Christ and his benefits. To make the case clearer, it is Christ's "body and blood, with all his benefits;" the first of course as the basis and medium of the last. The visible and invisible are different, and yet, in this case, they may not be dis- joined. They flow together in the constitution of one and the same sacrament. Neither of the two is the sacrament, abstracted from the other. The ordinance holds in the sacramental trans- action; which includes the presence of both, the one materially, for the senses, the other spiritually, for faith. Christ's body is not in or under the bread, locally considered. Still, the power of his life in this form is actually exhibited at the same time in the mystery of the sacrament. The one is as truly and really present in the institution, as the other. The elements are not simply significant of that which they represent, as serving to bring it to mind by the help of previous knowledge. They are the pledge of its actual presence and power. They are bound to it in mystical, sacramental union, more intimately, we may say, than they would be if they were made to include it in the way of actual local comprehension. There is far more then than the mere commemoration of Christ's death. Worthy re- ceivers partake also of his body and blood, with all his benefits, through the power of the Holy Ghost, to their spiritual nourish- ment and growth in grace. 2 1 . The sacrament of the Lord's Supper has reference directly and primarily to the atonement wrought out by Christ's death on the cross. So in the words of institution, it is his body broken, and his blood shed for the remission of sins, that are held up to view. It is not simply of Christ but of the " body and blood" of Christ, that is of Christ as sacrificed and slain for the sins of the world, that worthy receivers are made to partake in the holy ordinance. Not as though the sacrament were itself a sacrifice, or included in its own nature any expiatory force, in the way dreamed of by the Church of Rome. It serves simply to ratify and advance the interest, which believers have already, by their union with Christ, in the new covenant established 180 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. through his blood. Only under this form, can the salvation of the gospel stand us in stead. We are sinners and as such need redemption. Only through the medium of Christ's sufferings and death, can we come to have any part in his glory. He must be our righteousness, in order that he may be our life. Hence our first relation to him as believers, is that which is formed in our justification ; that " act of God's free grace, wherein he par- doneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone." And so our whole subsequent Christian life, as it grows forth from this objective righteousness, may be said to involve a constant return to it, and dependence upon it, on to the end of our course. We need no new atonement ; but we do need to fall back perpetually on the one sacrifice for sin, which Christ has already made upon the cross, appropriating the power of it more and more to our souls, as the only ground of our sal- vation. The Lord's Supper accordingly, concentrating in itself as it does, in some sense, the force and meaning of the whole Christian life, has regard to this sacrifice always as the great ob- ject of its representation. It is the sacrament of Christ's death, the communion of his body and blood. 22. As the medium however by whieh we are thus made par- takers of the new covenant in Christ's death, the Holy Supper involves a real communication with the person of the Saviour, ?ww gloriously exalted in heaven. Our justification, as we have seen, rests on the objective merit of Christ, by whose blood alone propitiation has been made for the sins of the world. But this justification, to become ours in fact, must insert us into Christ's life. It reaches us from abroad, the " act of God's free grace ;" but as God's act, it is necessarily more than a mere declaration or form of thought. It makes us to be in fact, what it accounts us to be, in Christ. The ground of our justification is a right- eousness that was foreign to us before, but is note made to lodge itself in the inmost constitution of our being. A real life-union with Christ, powerfully wrought in our souls by the Holy Ghost, is the only basis, on which there can be any true imputation to us of what he has done and suffered on our behalf. And so, in the whole subsequent progress of our Christian life, our interest in his merits can be renewed and confirmed only in the same way. We must have Christ himself formed in us more and more in a real way, in order that " he may be made unto us of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,and redemp- tion." The eucharistic communion then, as serving to confirm our interest in the one sacrifice accomplished on the cross, must include a true participation in the life of him by whom the sacrifice was made. We can make no intelligible distinction SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. ]S1 here, between the crucified body of Christ and his body as now glorified in heaven. Both at last are one and the same life. To partake of the " broken body" and " shed blood" of the Re- deemer, if it mean a real participation in his persdh at all, must be to communicate with him as now exalted at the right hand of God. For it is not a dead contract or a dead sacrifice we have to do with in this case ; the " new covenant in Christ's blood" can hold only in the power of that indissoluble life, by which Jesus, once put to death in the flesh, is now quickened forever in the Spirit. The virtue of this covenant is not only represented but sealed also and applied, to believers; which means, not merely that they have in the sacrament a general pledge that God will be faithful to his own promises, but that the grace which it exhibits is actually made over to them, at the time, in this very transac- tion itself. The grace however, namely the merit of Christ's sufferings and death, has a real character only as rooted in a living way in Christ's person ; and it can become ours by new application, accordingly, no farther than Christ himself is made over to us at the same time. " To eat the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ" then, in the language of the Heidelberg Catechism, " is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to ob- tain the pardon of sin and life eternal; but also, besides that, to become more and more united to his sacred body by the Holy .Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us; so that we, though Christ is in heaven and we on earth, are notwithstanding flesl^of his flesh and bone of his bone; and that we live, and are governed forever, by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by one soul." 23. The real communication which believers have with Christ in the Holy Supper, extends to his whole person. To be real, and not simply moral, it must be thus comprehensive. We may divide Christ in our thoughts, abstracting his divinity from his humanity, or his soul from his body. But no such dualism has place in his actual person. If then he is to be received by us at all, it must be in a whole way. We partake not of certain rights and privileges only, which have been secured for us by the breaking of his body and shedding of his blood, but of the veri- table substantial life of the blessed Immanuel himself, as the fountain and channel by which alone all these benefits can be con- veyed into our souls. We partake not of his divinity only, nor yet of his Spirit as separate from himself, but also of his true and proper humanity. Not of his humanity in a separate form, his flesh and blood disjoined from his Spirit ; but of the one life, which is the union of both, and in virtue of which the 16 182 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE presence of the one must ever involve in the same form, and to the same extent, the presence of the other. 24. Christ communicates himself to us, in the real way now mentioned, under the form of the sacramental mystery as such. It is not as the object of thought simply or lively recollection, that he is made present in the ordinance. Nor is it by the ac- tivity of our faith merely, that he is brought nigh. His presence is identified objectively with the sacrament itself; and we re- ceive him in the sacrament as the bearer of his very life itself, in the form in which it is here presented to our view. This im- plies no opus operatum, no mechanical or magical force in the use of the elements. All is by the Spirit; and for the commu- nicant himself, all hangs upon the condition of faith. But still the grace exhibited, the action of the Spirit as here present, be- longs to the sacrament in its own nature ; and where the way is open for it to take effect at all, by the presence of the proper conditions on the part of the communicant, it serves in itself to convey the life of Christ into our persons. Such is the sound feeling of Dr. Owen, the great Puritan divine, when he tells us: " This is the greatest mystery of all the practicals of our Chris- tian religion, a way of receiving Christ by eating and drinking, something peculiar, that is not in the hearing of the word nor in any other part of divine worship whatsoever; a peculiar par- ticipation of Christ, a peculiar acting of faith towards Christ." The presence of which we speak is not in the bread and wine materially considered ; but in the sacramental mystery as a whole. This consists of two parts, the one outward and visible, the other inward and invisible. These however are not simply joined together in time, as the sound of a bell, or the show of a light, may give warning of something with which it stands in no farther connection. They are connected by a true inward bond, so as to be different constituents only of one and the same reality. This union is not mechanical nor local, but as the old divines say, mystical or sacramental ; that is peculiar to this case and altogether incomprehensible in its natuie, but only all the more real and intimately close, on this very account. 25. Christ communicates himself to us in the sacramejit only in a spiritual, central way. Not his body by one process, and his Spirit by another; but his whole life, as a single undivided form of existence, by one and the same process. Not by the mechanical transplantation of some portion of his glorified body into our persons, to become there the germ of immortality in a physical view; but by the conveyance of his life in its inmost substance, by the power of the Holy Ghost, over into the very centre of our souls. The communication is in this view wholly SCIENTIFIC STATExMENT. 183 independent of all material contact or conjunction. It holds altogether in the sphere of the Spirit. Christ reveals his pre- sence in us centrally, as the power of the new spiritual creation which is comprehended in his person ; and which in this way is made to extend itself out organically, over the entire living man ; as the life of the vine is re-produced, with all its properties and qualities, in every branch to which it extends. 26. The Lord's Supper is the medium of a real communication with Christ, only in the case of believers. The object of the institution is to confirm and advance the new life, where it has been already commenced. It has no power to convert such as are still in their sins. The grace which it exhibits, can be ap- prehended only by faith. Those who come to the Lord's table unworthily, as to a common meal, without being in a state to discern the Lord's body, eat and drink only judgment to them- selves. They receive in no sense Christ's flesh and blood ; but the bare signs only, by which they are exhibited for the benefit of those who come in a right way. Nor is it enough that the communicant be a regenerated person; he must be in the exer- cise of faith at the time. A gracious state, accompanied with gracious affections in the transaction itself, is the indispensable condition of a profitable approach to the Lord in the holy sacra- ment. And yet, as before said, it is not our faith at all that gives the sacrament its force ; nor does this consist at all in the actings of our faith, or penitence, or love, or any other gracious affection, that may be called into exercise at the time. These constitute not, and create not, the presence of Christ in the case. On the contrary, this presence forms itself the ground from which all such affections draw their activity and strength. The force of the sacrament is in the sacrament itself. Our faith is needed, only as the condition that is required to make room for it in our souls. " Thy faith hath made thee whole," said the blessed Saviour to the woman, who came behind him in the crowd, and touched the hem of his garment. But the healing virtue went forth in fact wholly from his own person; and was present there, as an ample remedy for all diseases, independently altogether of any application that might be made to him for relief. The woman's faith formed the necessary condition only on her own part, for her becoming the recipient of the grace which was thus at hand. So in the case before us. The virtue of Christ's mystical presence is comprehended in the sacrament itself, and cannot be said to be put into it in any sense by our faith. This serves only to bring us into right relation to the life, that is thus placed within our reach. Faith puts not into the sacrament, what it has power instrumentally to draw from it for our use. 184 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. 27. Christ's mystical presence in the Eucharist, as now af- firmed, leaves no room for the idea of transubstantiation or consubstantiation. According to the first of these errors, the bread and wine are changed into the actual substance of the Saviour's body and blood. According to the other, the proper Lutheran view, the Saviour's true body and blood are so con- tained and carried in the elements, that the reception of these even on the part of the impenitent and unbelieving, is supposed to involve the reception also of the other. Both these views are chargeable with the error of supposing an identification of Christ's presence in the eucharist with the elements as such. According to the Roman theory, this is permanent; the bread remains Christ's body, even when carried away afterwards to another place. By the Lutheran doctrine, the relation which binds them together holds only in the sacramental transaction itself; but while it holds, it is such that the elements in some way bear the divine life which they represent, so that it is re- ceived along with them in an oral, corporeal manner. This seems to imply a communication of the bodily life of Christ, not physically, of course, but supernaturally, to the body of the be- liever, in an immediate and direct way; in which case, the sacramental fruition, as something different from the oral recep- tion of the elements on the one hand, and the spiritual partici- pation of Christ's body and blood on the other, becomes no bet- ter than an empty word, to which we can attach no meaning, unless it be as we think of mere blind magic. But the presence here affirmed, is not such as to identify the body of Christ in any way with the sacramental symbols, separately considered. It is not bound to the bread and wine, but to the act of eating and drinking. In the service of the eucharist, and by its means, the believer is made to partake of Christ's body and blood. The outward transaction, where faith is at hand, involves this inward fruition, and forms the vehicle or channel by which it is accomplished. But the outward is not itself the form or mode in which the inward here takes place. The participation of Christ is wholly spiritual. He communicates himself, by the Spirit, to the soul of the believer, in a central way, according to the general law of the new creation to which this mystery be- longs. No room is left here for the supposition of a mere cor- poreal communication, the transference of Christ's life directly into the bodies of his people, even though conceived to be in a wholly hyperphysical way. This, it is felt, would be only a mechanical and outward union in the end ; the action at best of the power of the Spirit, on nature as such ; by which a magical character must necessarily be imparted to the ordinance, as in the Church of Rome. It would imply, besides, a dualism in our SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 185 proper life, that must overthrow its reality altogether. As the life itself is one, so it is to be renovated and sanctified through the provisions of the gospel as a single whole, from its ground or centre, and not by influences exerted in any way upon its organic volume apart from this. The new nature, to be real, must spring perpetually from the inmost being of its subject, in the form of spirit: and every fresh impulse, accordingly, which it is made to receive from its fountain in Christ, in whatever way, can be communicated to it only in this general form. So the participation of Christ's life in the sacrament, is in no sense corporeal, but altogether spiritual, as the necessary condition of its being real. It is the soul or spirit of the believer that is im- mediately fed with the grace, which is conveyed to it mystically in the holy ordinance. But this is in fact a fruition that belongs to the entire man; for the life made over to him under such central form, becomes at once, in virtue both of its own human character, and of the human character of the believer himself, a renovating force that reaches out into his person on all sides, and fills with its presence the undivided totality of his nature. In whatever sense the communication may be real at all, as dis- tinguished from figurative, imputative or simply moral, it must be real for the whole man, and not simply for a part of the man. 16* 180 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. SECTION IV. FALSE THEORIES EXPOSED. The way is now open for an appeal to the scriptures, which must be regarded, of course, as the ultimate standard of truth in this whole case. Christianity is not a philosophical theory; nor is it conveyed to us in the form of an infallible outward tradition. It exists, indeed, for itself, as a permanent supernatural consti- tution in the Church; but to be understood in this character, it must, be measured and interpreted continually by the written word of God, which has been graciously committed to the keeping of the Church for this very purpose. The mere presumptions, then, which have been established in favour of the sacramental doc- trine now stated, though of great weight certainly in themselves, are not enough to establish the doctrine itself. This can be done only by the authority of the Bible, the testimony of God's Word sustaining and confirming the testimony of God's Church. Before we pass on to this inquiry, however, this might seem to be the proper place for noticing the inextricable difficulties and contradictions with which the whole subject of the believer's union with Christ is necessarily embarrassed, where it is not admitted to hold in the form which has now been brought into view. It is an easy thing to raise objections to the church doc- trine in this case, where the objector is allowed to shift his own position at pleasure, without being required to give any properly scientific account of his faith, in its ulterior connections and relations. This is often done, through want of true theological cultivation, where all that would be needed to satisfy, or at least to silence, opposition, would be merely some general insight into the difficulties that are involved in the stand-point from which the objection proceeds. Nothing is more common than for men to deceive themselves here with conceptions, or it may be with words only, which are found on examination, to carry with them no consistency or force whatever. The Sorinian view, (Rationalism without disguise,) can never of course satisfy the Christian heart or understanding. Tt makes Christianity to be of the same order simply with other systems of religion ; only under a more perfect form ; as unfolding a clearer revelation of divine truth, a better system of ethical rules and precepts, and higher motives to virtue, particularly in the character and example of Christ himself. At last however it SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 187 comes to no red union with God, the problem towards whose satisfaction all religion, in its very nature, may be said continu- ally to struggle. In this respect, it is at best but an exalted style of Judaism, or an improvement rather on the philosophical schools of Paganism. It throws the man back always upon himself, his own separate powers and resources, the capabilities of the flesh as such, to perfect his nature and make himself meet for heaven. But against all this, the whole life of the Christian revolts. He knows that such a salvation is not what he needs; and he knows, with equal certainty, that it is not what he has found in Christ. All this too, he sees to be in full contradiction to the representations of the Bible. Christ is greater than Moses and all the prophets, and infinitely more also than Paul and the whole company of the apostles. He saves not by his doctrine and example merely, but by redemption and renovation, reach- ing to the inmost life of his people. If this be not. the case, Christianity is shorn of all its glory, and the whole gospel turned into a dream. The Pelagian affects to make more of our salvation by Christ. The miracle of the incarnation, and the great facts to which it opened the way in his history, are admitted, and allowed to have their weight in the scheme of redemption. But their power comes after all at last to this, that they serve to unfold truth under new aspects and in new relations, and to furnish new mo- tives and helps to piety in an outward way. Here is indeed a peculiar plan or method of salvation, such as the light of nature never could have reached, and involving in fact a system of wholly supernatural arrangements for its accomplishment. Still however, the whole is something external to the subject of the salvation himself. It is an admirably contrived array of facilities, provided in God's great mercy for his use, by which he has it in his power to escape the pollutions that are in the world through sin, and lay hold of glory, honour and immortality. But he is left in the end to make use of them, in the same way precisely that he might be expected, on the Socinian hypothesis, to turn to saving account Christ's precepts and example. We are thrown back again, upon the conception of a simply moral salvation, to be constructed out of such material in the way of life, as the subject of it may be found to possess in his own nature, when brought under the action of this divine process of education. But the theory may rise higher. To the force which belongs to the truth itself in its relation to the human mind, it may join the influences of God's Spirit, graciously interposed to clothe the truth with effect. Such agency we often hear attributed to the Spirit, by those who at the same time reject altogether the thought of any immediate change wrought by it in the nature of 188 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. the human soul itself. God's grace in this form, they say, is brought to bear on the soul, mediately only, by the intervention of his word, which he uses instrumentally for the purpose, in- fusing into it light and power. But surely those who talk in this way, do not stop at all to consider the exact sense of their own words. What do they mean, when they speak of the Spirit, as infusing light and power into the truth? Can he do so, (apart from a direct influence on the soul itself,) in any other way than by so ordering the presentation of the truth to the mind, that it shall be placed in the most favourable position for exerting the power which belongs to it in its own nature? But what is this more than such moral suasion, as may be exercised over the spirits of men in a merely human way, by appeals ad- dressed to the understanding and will ? The order of influence at least remains the same, though it may be exhibited under a divinely exalted form. In this view, the process of salvation, in the midst of all the high sounding terms that may be employed to describe it, falls back again to the stand-point already noticed. It is a salvation by the power simply of truth, presented in the form of doctrine and precept. This truth includes the super- natural facts of the gospel, the mission, sufferings, death and resurrection of Christ, the outward apparatus in full, if we may use the expression, of the Christian redemption ; and along with this we have the " moral suasion" of the Holy Ghost, which, ac- cording to the unintelligible hypothesis, invests the whole repre- sentation with a more than natural evidence and power. All turns at last however on the way in which the mind thus ad- dressed, may be wrought upon and moved to act, in the use of such resources and capabilities as are already comprehended in its nature. It matters not whether the facts I contemplate be natural or supernatural in their character, whether the trutli which challenges my regard be brought near to me by man or angel, or by God himself; if all hang at last on the relation of mere knowledge, and the stimulus thus imparted to my will, I am left under the dominion still of my own fallen life, in the sphere of the " flesh," and without any power to rise into the sphere of the " Spirit." The mediatorial work as something to be gazed upon and admired beyond my own person, can never reach the necessities of my case. It must be made over to me as my own in some way, or I am left to starve and perish spi- ritually in the midst of a merely moral and rationalistic redemp- tion. Here we are brought then to stand upon higher and more orthodox ground. The doctrine of imputation is introduced, to meet the demand now mentioned. The work of Christ is no longer thought of as a mere display for moral effect ; it is some- SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 18*) tiling to be appropriated and made available in the person of the believing sinner himself, for the purposes of salvation. Mere doctrine will not answer. The case calls for an actual personal participation in what Christ has done and suffered, to take away sin and reconcile man to God. But how is this to be accom- plished 1 By imputation, we are told. As the guilt and fall of Adam were reckoned to his posterity, though not theirs in fact, so the righteousness of Christ, and the benefits of his mediatorial work generally, are, in virtue of the terms of the new covenant, made over to all who believe in his name, and accounted to be theirs as truly as though all had been wrought out by them, each for himself, in truth. Their justification in this view is a mere forensic act on the part of God, which is based altogether on the work of Christ, and involves as such in their case no change of character whatever, but only a change of state. God regards them as righteous, though they are not so in fact, and makes over to them a full title to all the blessings comprehended in Christ's life. At the same time, he regenerates them by his Spirit, and puts them thus on a process of sanctification, by which in the end they become fully transformed in their own persons, into the image of their glorious Saviour. But here the question rises, How can that be imputed or reck- oned to any man on the part of God, which does not belong to him in reality? This is the old difficulty pressed against the orthodox doctrine by the Remonstrants or Arminians of Holland, (as previously also by the Church of Rome), and constantly re- peated by the Pelagianizing school from that time to the present. And it must be admitted to carry with it no small force ; or rather we may say, that for the form in which this doctrine of imputa- tion is too generally held, the objection is fairly insurmountable altogether. The judgment of God must ever be according to truth. He cannot reckon to any one an attribute or quality, which does not belong to him in fact. He cannot declare him to be in a relation or state, which is not actually his own, but the position merely of another. A simply external imputation here, the pleasure and purpose of God to place to the account of one what has been done by another, will not answer. Nor is the case helped in the least, by the hypothesis of what is called a legal federal union between the parties, in the case of whom such a transfer is supposed to be made; so long as the law is thought of in the same outward way, as a mere arbitrary arrange- ment or constitution for the accomplishment of the end in ques- tion. The law in this view would be itself a fiction only, and not the expression of a fact. But no such fiction, whether under the name of law or without it, can lie at the ground of a judg- ment entertained or pronounced by God. Can we conceive of 190 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. any constitution, for instance, in virtue of which it could have been proper or possible for the divine mind, thus to set over to the account of mankind the apostacy of the angels which kept not their first estate, the two natures being relatively to each other what they are at this time? If all depended on the arbi- trary pleasure of God, the force of a mere outward arrangement constituting one the representative of another without farther relation, we cannot see why the transfer of guilt might not take place from angels to men, as well as from Adam to his posterity. The very fact that our whole reason and feeling revolt against the thought in the first case, serves only to show that the pro- ceeding must rest upon some deeper ground in the other. So as it regards our justification by Christ. A merely outward constitution, making him to be one with us in law simply, and giving us an interest in his righteousness only as if it were our own, while it is not our own in fact, cannot satisfy our sense of truth and right. All true Christians, whatever their theory with regard to the point may be, feel that their union with Christ is something far more than this, and that their property in the benefits of his death and resurrection rests upon a basis infinitely more sure and solid. Do we then discard the doctrine of imputation, as maintained by the orthodox theology in opposition to the vain talk of the Pelagians? By no means. We seek only to establish the doc- trine; for without it, most assuredly, the whole structure of Christianity must give way. It is only when placed on false ground, that it becomes untenable in the way now stated. To relieve it from objection, it must be made to appear under its true and proper biblical form. The Bible knows nothing of a simply outward imputation, by which something is reckoned to a man that does not belong to him in fact. The fall of Adam is adjudged to be the fall of his posterity, because it was so actually. The union in law here is a union in life. The fall itself forms a certain condition or state, which supposes life as its subject. And how then could the one be imputed without the presence of the other? May an attribute or quality be made to extend in a real way, beyond the substance to which it is attached and in which only it can have any real existence? The moral relations of Adam, and his moral character too, are made over to us at the same time. Our participation in the actual unrighteousness of his life, forms the ground of our participation in his guilt and liability to punishment. 1 * And in no other way, * All mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation, according to the Westminster Catechism, " sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression." This representation, it is well known, has called forth no small reproach and sarcasm even, at the expense of the venerable symbol in SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 191 we affirm, can the idea of imputation be satisfactorily sustained in the case of the second Adam. The scriptures make the two cases, in this respect, fully parallel. We are justified freely by God, on the ground of what Christ has done and suffered in our room and stead. His righteousness is imputed to us, set over to our account, regarded as our own. But here again the relation in law, supposes and shows a corresponding relation in life. The forensic declaration by which the sinner is pronounced free from guilt, is like that word in the beginning when God said, Let there be light, and light was. It not only proclaims him righteous for Christ's sake, but sets the righteousness of Christ in him as a part of his own life. And in doing this, it sets the very life of Christ in him, in the same way. For right- eousness, like guilt, is an attribute which supposes a subject in which it inheres, and from which it cannot be abstracted without ceasing to exist altogether. In the case before us, this subject is the mediatorial nature or life of the Saviour himself. What- ever there may be of merit, virtue, efficacy, or moral value in any way, in the mediatorial work of Christ, it is all lodged in the life, by the power of which alone this work has been accom- plished, and in the presence of which only it can have either reality or stability. The imagination that the merits of Christ's life may be sundered from his life itself, and conveyed over to his people under this abstract form, on the ground of a merely outward legal constitution, is unscriptural and contrary to all reason at the same time. The legal union, to be of any force for the imputation that is here required, must be a life union. In the very act of our justification, by which the righteousness of Christ is accounted to be ours, it becomes ours in fact by our actual insertion into Christ himself. He is joined to us mysti- which it occurs. It has been charged with teaching physical depravity, and a transfer of personal character. Unfortunately, moreover, the friends of the Catechism, in their attempts to vindicate its doctrine at this point, have not always planted themselves on the proper ground for its defence. They have themselves rested on the conception of a merely external imputation, which could give its subjects at best, in the end, only a quasi interest in the real fact it represented. With such an idea of imputation, we may well say that the doctrine here proclaimed can never maintain its ground. But we meet the objection effectually, by simply descending to the proper depth of the doctrine itself. Here is no outward transfer to one, of something properly belonging only to another. The language of the Catechism is literally and strictly cor- rect. We sinned in Adam, and fell with him, in his first transgression. That transgression was ours. The person in which it took place, formed the actual complex of the entire human race. The individual existence of every par- ticular sinner, is but the historical evolution, in part, of the general life, that originally fell in this way. Original sin, accordingly, is carefully described by the Catechism, as consisting, not simply " in the guilt of Adam's first sin," but in his " want of original righteousness" also, and in "the corruption of his whole nature." So it is in fact. A fallen life in the first place, and on the ground of this only, imputed guilt and condemnation. 192 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. cally by the power of the Holy Ghost, and becomes in this way the principle of a new creation within us, which from the very start includes in itself potentially, all that belongs to it already in his own person. The life thus set over into the believer, by the creative fiat of his justification itself, is the bearer of all the new relations in which he is thus brought to stand, as well as of all the other benefits he is made to receive on Christ's account. Even if we might conceive of an imputation of what is termed the passive obedience of the Redeemer to his people, under a merely abstract character, we must find every such conception inadmissible, at least in the case of his active obedience; though in truth they cannot be disjoined in this way. Allow the possi- bility of such an outward transfer of the value of the atonement, how are we to have an interest in the new character to which humanity has been raised in his person, or the triumphs he has secured in its behalf? We need holiness as well as pardon; and the gospel clearly represents Christ to be the fountain of the first, no less than he is the author of the second. The obedience by which we are constituted righteous in both forms, is found to be at last his obedience, and not ours, except as we derive it from his person. But who can think, of a merely abstract, outward transfer of Christ's righteousness actively considered, or as com- prehended in the new character to which our nature has been positively exalted in his life? Imputation here becomes some- thing altogether unintelligible, if it be not allowed to involve in its very conception an extension of this life itself, truly and really, to those in whose favour it is supposed to hold. The ac- tive obedience of Christ, regarded as vicarious, has no meaning whatever, except on the basis of such a real life union between him and his people ; and we find accordingly, that where the idea of this last becomes obscure or confused in the consciousness of the Church, the conception of the obedience now mentioned is always lost to the same extent.* * Both forms of obedience in the end, as Ernesti and others have shown, are the same — only different aspects, at most, of the one vicarious work of Christ in behalf of his people. The value of Christ's sufferings depended on the perfect holiness of his character ; and his character, in the circumstances in which he stood, could not be complete except by his sufferings. His right- eousness, however, as a whole, has two sides ; one negative and the other positive ; the first exhibited in the way of victory over sin and death, the other as the free activity of holiness itself in the form of life. Both necessarily go together in the transfer of Christ's righteousness to the believer. In the Roman Church, the doctrine of such a participation in the active obedience of the Saviour, was of course obscured by the view commonly taken of good works. With the Reformation, it came into full credit. But for the rationalistic period again it had no meaning. Knapp, and theologians of the same stamp, con- sider it unscriptural and absurd, to speak of a vicarious obedience of Christ in this form. It contradicts, they say, the great principle in religion, that every man's character is to be determined by his own works, and not by the SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 193 Christ then must be regarded as the source, in some way, of a new life for his people. So the scriptures teach. So the na- ture of the Christian salvation plainly requires. So the orthodox faith of the Church has always held. Christ is in the believer and the believer is in Christ; not by a moral relationship simply, and not' by a legal connection only; but by the bond of a com- mon life. Any thing lower than this, is felt to be no better in the end than rationalism itself. But it may be said, this common life is nothing more than the presence and influence of Christ's Spirit in the souls of his people, carrying forward the work of grace and transforming them gradually into his own image. This ground is often taken in fact by such as claim here the highest character for orthodoxy ; and in this way, they persuade themselves that it is possible to meet, in the most satisfactory manner, all the demands of the Christian salvation as they have just been stated, with regard to the point now under considera- tion. They profess to accept the doctrine of the mystical union, as it is called, without qualification or reserve ; and speak of it perhaps, with apparently earnest respect, as one of the most vital and precious truths of the gospel. And yet all comes to this at last, that the same Spirit which dwells in Christ, and which is called the "Spirit of Christ" on this account, dwells also in us, and makes us to be of the same mind with him more and more ! This they take to be plainly the scriptural view of the case; for he that is joined to the Lord, it is said, "is one Spirit;" and Christians are represented everywhere as being under the influence of Christ's Spirit, and as filled and ruled by his presence. But here we are in great danger of being put off with mere words and phrases, to which no clear sense is attached in the minds of those by whom they are used ; so that it becomes ne- cessary to insist on some more definite statement of what pre- cisely is intended by those who make this representation. If their meaning were simply, that the presence of Christ in the Church, and his union with his people, hold through the medium of the Spirit, there would be no room for objection. This would accord with the scriptures, and satisfy at the same time the de- mands of the heart and understanding. As Christ is said to dwell in his people personally, so he is represented as dwelling works of another. This would be true, on the supposition of a mere outward imputation in the case ; but it only shows the necessity of taking a deeper view of the whole subject. Not the works of Christ, as something sundered from his life, are made over to his people, but the triumphant power of his life itself, revealing itself in them and through them as the bearer of his right- eousness in the same active form. Their virtue then is indeed their own, and yet the virtue of Christ working its proper fruits in them at the same time. 17 194 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. in them only by his Spirit ; which implies plainly that these two thoughts are in the end fully identical, and that the one presence is not only the pledge of the other, but the very form also in which it is made actually to have place. Nor is there any con- tradiction in this, but on the contrary vast relief, as it regards the apprehension of the mystery itself. For in this Way, the whole fact of the mystical union is at once lifted above the sphere of mere nature, and exhibited to us as holding in a higher order of existence altogether. We know that Christ does not dwell in his people physically, in the common sense of this term, or according to the constitution of our present natural life in any way ; and we must necessarily therefore refer the fact to a supernatural constitution, if it is to be retained in our faith at all. Such a supernatural constitution is presented to us in the new order of life, which is comprehended in the Spirit. This life springs from Christ, and reveals itself through the Spirit, as its medium, element, or form. As present himself then in the Church to the end of time, Christ dwells in his people only in this way. His presence is in the Spirit, and not in the flesh. But this is not the meaning of those, to whom we now refer. Christ, they say, dwells in his people by his Spirit: but in the way only of representation, not in the way of strict personal inbeing on his own part. They sunder the Spirit of Christ from Christ himself, and tell us that the first only, and not the last is directly joined with believers in the mystical union. Only as the same Spirit dwells likewise in the glorified Saviour, he may be regarded as the bond of a living connection also between Christ in heaven and the Church on earth ; since both parties are made thus, not directly but circuitously at least, to possess the same life. But here several difficulties come into view, which are in general overlooked by the theory before us altogether. In the first place, we are not told explicitly whether the Spirit of Christ be supposed, in the case, to be identical with the idea of his divine nature, or not. Does the actual presence of the one involve the actual presence, to the same extent, of the other. In the form in which the subject is often presented, it might seem that the whole Christ, divine and human, was held to be in the Church, and in particular believers, only by his Spirit, as an en- tirely distinct form of existence, constituting the third person of the glorious Trinity. Here is a point of some importance, that needs to be definitely explained. In any case however, Christ's divinity as joined hypostatically with his humanity, cannot be re- garded on this hypothesis as present. If the Logos be present at all, it is not in its character as incarnate, but only in the cha- racter which belonged to it before it became flesh. In any other view, the whole Christ must be held to be personally absent, and SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 195 present only by proxy or substitution, in the separate agency of the Holy Ghost. How this is to be counted a true and actual presence of the Saviour himself, answerable to his own promise, and also to the strong terms in which the mystical union is spoken of in the New Testament, it is not easy certainly to per- ceive. But again. What is there peculiar in the grace of the New Testament, under this view, as compared with the grace enjoyed by the saints under the Old ? Does all turn upon the fuller reve- lation, the new facts, the more ample privileges and opportunities, that distinguish the dispensation of the gospel ? The scriptures plainly teach, that the difference is more than this. Christ, as the angel of the covenant, was with his people under the old dis- pensation ; and we know, that there were communications of the Spirit then also, under a certain form. But it is everywhere assumed in the New Testament, that the presence of the one, and the communications of the other, have become since the in- carnation of a wholly different character. It devolves on the theory before us then, to say in what this difference consists. It seems certainly to make no account of it whatever. All would appear at least to be reduced to a difference in measure and quan- tity merely, the order of the grace being supposed to continue the same. The incarnation, it is assumed, was a fact of no force directlyexce.pt forthe Redeemer himself, separately considered. He is now in heaven, under human form, as he was in heaven before without this form ; and as he manifested himself previously to the patriarchs and prophets, in his divine nature, or by his Spirit, so he continues now to manifest himself to his Church still, only with more large and free grace, in the same way. The Spirit of Christ, by which he is said to dwell in his people, has not become different at all in this view by the fact of his incar- nation, from what the same Spirit was in relation to men before. He is not the medium of a new spiritual creation, established or constituted by the miracle of the incarnation itself — the divine life flowing forth upon the world, through the everlasting power of that fact, under its own peculiar and appropriate form ; his agency has nothing to do with the incarnation whatever, except in an outward mechanical way ; all at last resolves itself into the same abstract relation, which the Spirit of God is represented as holding to men, before Christ assumed our nature into union with himself at all. Is this what the theory means ? If so, let the thought be distinctly proclaimed and the difficulties honestly faced which it necessarily draws in its train. Let the Church know that she is no nearer to God now in fact, that is in the way of actual life, than she was under the Old Testament; that the indwelling of Christ in believers, is only parallel with the divine 196 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. presence as enjoyed by the Jewish saints, who all died in faith " not having received the promises" (Heb. 11 : 13) ; that the mys- tical union in the case of Paul or John was nothing more intimate and vital and real, than the relation sustained to God by Abraham, or David, or Isaiah. Or if this be not intended nor admitted, let the true nature of the difference be explained. And then once more; taking this presence of the Spirit for all it claims to be in this case, in what form of existence specifically must it be conceived to hold ? Under the Old Testament at least, it was always an afflatus or influence simply, exerted on the soul of the person to whom it was extended. Is this all that we are to understand by it, in the Christian Church ? So the theory would appear to mean. Christ dwells in us by his Spirit ; and the Spirit dwells in us, by his operations, influences, graces. And this, we are told, is the mystical union, in virtue of which the life of Christ, and not simply, his benefits, are made over to our per- sons? But is it the actual life of Christ that is thus conveyed into us, by this process? Let the process itself be examined for the answer. The same Spirit it is said, which works in Christ works also in us, fashioning us as we are into the same image. But how does he work ? By supernatural influence, it may be said. But is not this to fall back again to the theory of a merely moral union with Christ, by the power of the truth only ; which we have found already to be, under its highest form, but Pelagianism in disguise? Is Christ in us at last only by the divine suasion of his Spirit? It will be hard of course to acquiesce in this. The case calls for more. What then is that more ? The Spirit, it may be said, creates new life in the believer. Very well. We are now fairly beyond the sphere of mere truth and moral suasion. But what now is this new life? Something of course that was not in the man before. Whence then does it come? Is it the proper life of the Spirit himself, the life of God, directly extended to the soul? This would be to repeat the mystery of the incarnation, in the case of every new believer ; and such a thought of course is not for a moment entertained, by any who have come to make a clear distinction between the idea of life and that of mere influence. Whence then, we ask again, comes this new life by the Spirit? Is it an absolute creation out of nothing; a higher order of existence, including no organic, historical connection whatever with any law of life already at hand, whether in the man himself or beyond him, but originated in every instance as a new force altogether, superadded to the regular constitution of the world? Instead of one great miracle then in Christianity, the new creation in Christ Jesus, we should have miracles of the same order without number or end. Every believer would be a new SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT. 197 creation, not in Christ Jesus, but in himself as the absolute start- ing point of a life that had never.been known in the world before. And then, where would be after all the unity of this life, thus originated de novo'm every new case, for the Church as a whole? And in what sense lastly, might it be denominated at all the life of Christ, who is the head of the body which it is thus supposed to fill? Is a life created from nothing by the Holy Ghost, acting in the name of Christ, without any regard whatever to his media- torial nature, in any real sense the true and proper life of Christ himself as our Mediator! Is this the mystical union ? The theory destroys itself. Under every aspect, it is found to be contradictory, and unintelligible, and false. And yet this view is often exhibited, as furnishing a clear and satisfactory account of the union of Christ with believers; while the supposition of a real participation in his proper life is charged with mysticism and nonsense ! To this however it must come in the end, if the union in ques- tion is to be regarded as anything more than moral simply or legal. We have seen already that the imputation of Christ's merits to his people, requires that his life, the only real bearer of these merits, should pass over to them at the same time. And now we find, that the mere action of the Spirit upon the soul, whether in the way of suasion or creation, is not of itself this life in any true sense whatever. What is the conclusion then to which we are at last shut up? Plainly this. Christ does dwell in us by his Spirit ; but only as his Spirit constitutes the very form and power of his own presence as the incarnate and ever- lasting Word. The Spirit (which is thus truly the Spirit of Christ,) does form us by a new divine creation into his glorious image; but the life thus wrought in our souls by his agency, is not a production out of nothing, but the very life of Jesus him- self, organically continued in this way over into our persons. This the case demands. With nothing less than this, can the salvation of the gospel, as including the absolute truth of religion, in distinction from all Judaizing and Paganizing heresies, ever allow itself to be satisfied. And why should it be thought a thing incredible, for God to raise the dead to life in this way? Those at least who are willing to allow a new creation out of nothing in the case of the believer, ought not to find any diffi- culty surely in admitting a new creation from the actual sub- stance of Christ's life as it exists already, or an extension of this life, in other words, into the believer's person. If the Spirit can be supposed to create de novo in the case, it is hard to see why it should be counted more difficult to conceive of an actual for- mation of Christ in us through the same divine medium. The first conception is indeed less immediately real; it swims, with 17* 198 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. fantastic form, in the distance. Can this be the reason, why it should be counted at times more rational than the other? But allowing now that Christ does indeed dwell in his people by the real presence of his personal life, through the Spirit, and not simply by the presence of his Spirit as a surrogate for his own, is it necessary to include his whole life in this mystical union? To this question there would seem to be but one answer. It is with the mediatorial life of Christ that the Chris- tian salvation, in the form now contemplated, is concerned. In this is comprehended the entire new creation revealed by the gospel; the righteousness of Christ, and all the benefits he has procured for his people. But the mediatorial life, by the com- munication of which only all this grace is made to pass over to men, is one and undivided. To be in real union with it at all then, we must be in union with it as a whole. The presence of Christ's divinity is not enough. The mediatorial life includes his humanity also, as a necessary part of its constitution. Just as little of course are we at liberty to divide his humanity itself, by supposing his soul only to be joined with his people, but not his body. Every abstraction of this sort must become involved at last, if scientifically pursued, in inextricable embarrassment. Body and soul are alike essential to the conception of a true human life; and if Christ's life be in us at all in a real way, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that it must be in us, as such a human life, in the one form of existence as truly and fully as in the other. Both forms of existence constitute in fact but the same living nature; and the extension of this nature, by the power of the Spirit, to the soul of the believer, involves ne- cessarily the reproduction of the life as a whole in his person. CHAPTER IV. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. SECTION I. THE INCARNATION. " The Word became jlcsh /" In this simple, but sublime enunciation, we have the whole gospel comprehended in a word. From the glorious orb of light which is here made to burst upon our view, all that would else be dark and chaotic becomes at once irradiated with the bright majesty and everlasting harmony of truth itself. The incarnation is the key that unlocks the sense of all God's revelations. It is the key that unlocks the sense of all God's works, and brings to light the true meaning of the universe. The world, and especially Man, who may be said to gather into his person at last all lower forms of existence, himself the summit of the vast organic pyramid, is a mystery that is solved and interpreted finally only in this fact. Nature and Revelation, the world and Christianity, as springing from the same divine Mind, are not two different systems joined together in a merely outward way. They form a single whole, harmonious with itself in all its parts. The sense of the one then is necessarily included and compre- hended in the sense of the other. The mystery of the new cre- ation, must involve in the end the mystery of the old; and the key that serves to unlock the meaning of the first, must serve to unlock at the same time the inmost secret of the last. The incarnation forms thus the great central fact of the world. It is a magnificent thought on which Heinrich Steffens bases his system of Anthropology, that Man is to be viewed, " as the end of a boundless Past, the centre of a boundless Present, and the beginning of a boundless Future." In the most eminent sense may we say this, of Him who is the centre of Humanity itself, the Son of Man, as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. All nature and all previous history unite, to form one grand, 200 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. universal prophecy of his presence.. All becomes significant and complete at last, only in his person. Nature, through all lower forms of existence, looks upwards continually to the idea of man. The inorganic struggles to- wards the organic; the plant towards the animal; and the ani- mal nature, improving upon itself from one order of life to another, rests not till it is superseded finally by the human. Thus all converge towards the same end ; each inferior nature foreshadowing that which is to follow, till the vast system be- comes symmetrical and full, in a form of perfection which may be said to include at last and mirror the true sense of the whole.* Without man the entire world would be shorn of its meaning. It is by the medium of his personality only, that it becomes transparent with thought and is made to utter any intelligible sound. The world finds itself, comes to the knowledge of itself, in man. All is dark till it has made its way up to the sphere of human consciousness. There all becomes light. Man is the centre of nature; the key to all its mysteries; the idea, which binds its manifold parts into one, and makes them com- plete as a single organic whole. But what man is to nature in this way, Christ may be said to be in some sense to man. Humanity itself is never complete, till it reaches his person. It includes in its very constitution a struggle towards the form in which it is here exhibited, which can never rest till this end is attained. Our nature reaches after a true and real union with the nature of God, as the neces- * It is hardly necessary to say, that the idea here presented implies no pos- sibility whatever of a regular development, on the part of any lower form of existence, upwards to the sphere of that which stands above it. This thought, which has been exhibited with no small measure of plausibility by the author of the little volume entitled Vestiges of Creation, has been justly repudiated by the Christian world as contrary to all revelation and religion. It contra- diets, besides, all sound philosophy. The process of growth and historical development can never, as such, evolve from any form of existence more than was actually involved in it from the beginning. But who can imagine at all, that the life of the animal is ever potentially present in the life of the plant. To say that the law of existence in the one case, is made to include at a certain point more than was comprehended in it before, is only to play with words ; for the more which appears in that case must be considered in all respects a new creation, and in no intelligible sense whatever the product or birth of what existed previously. The difference between the animal and man, is just as broad as that between the animal and the plant. There is an impassable gulph between the two forms of existence, which nothing short of a new creation can ever surmount in the case of the lower. But all this has nothing to do with the view presented in the text. It is affirmed here, sim- ply, that the lower forms of existence look prophetically towards those which are above them. They cannot be said to carry these in their womb, in any sense ; but they foreshadow their presence, and in this way find their own full meaning always in something beyond themselves. The evidence of this is so plain, that the fact will not be called in question by any who have even the most general acquaintance with the actual constitution of the world. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 201 sary complement and consummation of its own life. The idea which it embodies can never be fully actualized, under any other form. The incarnation then is the proper completion of hu- manity. Christ is the true ideal Man. Here is reached ulti- mately the highest summit of human life, which is at the same time of course the crowning sense of the world, or that in which it finds its last and full signification. Here the human consci- ousness itself, the medium of order and light for the sphere of mere nature, is raised into a higher sphere, from which a new life is made to pour itself forth again over the whole world. Man finds himself in God, and wakes to the full sense of his own being, in being„enabled thus to fall back, in a full, free way, on the absolute ground of his life. The one only medium of such inward, living communication with the divine nature, is the mystery of the incarnation, as exhibited in the man Christ Jesus. This forms accordingly, without a figure, the inmost and last sense of all God's works. The world, from its extreme cir- cumference, looks inward to this fact as its true and proper centre, and presses towards it continually, from every side, as the end of its entire constitution. All is one vast prophecy of the coming of Christ. History too converges, from the beginning, always towards the same point. Not only here and there, have we solitary an- nunciations, more or less obscure, of the glorious advent of the Messiah. History, like nature, is one vast prophecy of the incarnation, from beginning to end. How could it be other- wise, if the idea of humanity, as we have seen, required from the first such a union with the divine nature, in order that it might be complete? What is history, but the process by which this idea is carried forward, according to the immanent law of its own nature, in the way of a regular development towards its appointed end 1 The introduction of sin — itself a world-fact, inseparably incorporated with this process almost from its start, and turning all violently into a false direction — only served to add a deeper emphasis to the meaning of life, in the view now noticed. The necessity of a real union with the divine nature, became a necessity at the same time of redemption, the loud cry of suffering humanity after an atonement for sin. The development of this want, might be said to form thus the great burden of history, onward from the fall. All of course, in this view, had a reference prophetically to the coming of Christ. The whole creation groaned and travailed in pain together, reach- ing forward, as it were, with earnest expectation, to the hour of this deliverance Not # only Judaism, but Paganism too, preached beforehand the great event. Both looked, from dif- ferent sides, in the same direction and towards the same end. 202 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. Both found their inmost meaning verified at last and explained in Christ.* Paganism must ever be of course essentially false, under all its forms. But all falsehood involves some truth, of which it is the caricature, but from which at the same time it draws its life. The time has been, when a superficial infidelity sought to bring the mysteries of Christianity into discredit, by comparing them with the mythological dreams and speculations of the heathen world. But that time, it may be trusted, has come to an end. Christianity as the absolute religion, must in the nature of the case, take up into itself, and exhibit in a perfect form, the frag- ments and rudiments of truth contained in all relative religions. It is not a doctrine, but a divine fact, into which all previous religious tendencies and developments are ultimately gathered as their proper end. As in Nature, all lower developments of life, however defective or seemingly monstrous, find their true mean- ing and value, only as analogies and relative approximations to the nature of man — whose perfection and dignity in this way they serve, not to disparage, but to authenticate and magnify ; so do the ancient religions, both of the Orient and West, con- spire to bear testimony in favour of Christ, falling down as it were before him, and presenting unto him gifts, l< gold and frankincense and myrrh." Brahmanism, Buddhism, Parsism, the religion of Egypt and the religion of Greece, each in its own way, look ever in the same direction, and are heard to utter in the end the same voice. All prophesy of Christ ; for all proclaim the inmost want of humanity to be a true union with God, and their character is determined simply by the form in which it is attempted in each case to bring this great life problem to its proper resolution. These attempts of course destroy themselves, and end in gross contradiction. The Tri- murti, or pantheistic triad of India, falls immeasurably short of the Christian Trinity. The incarnation of Vischiu goes not beyond the character of a transient phantasm. Mithras, Osiris, the idea of a wrestling, suffering, redeeming god, Apollo among the Greeks, or Hercules, forcing his way to Olympus; all are found to be utterly helpless conceptions, as it regards the pur- pose they are brought forward to serve. The representation remains always inadequate and disproportionate, in the highest * Unus Christus Jesus dominus noster veniens per universam dispositionem, et omnia in se recapitulans. Irenceus. — Interesting on this point is Dorner, in the Introduction to his "Christologie," or History of the Doctrine of Christ's Person. Also, the Introduction to the Doctrine of the Trinity in its Historical Development, by G. A. Meier — a most able and excellent work, published in 1S44; with which maybe compared advantageously the Intro- duction to the large, very learned, but less orthodox work of Baur on the same subject. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 203 degree, to the idea it struggles to reach. All ends in an insur- mountable dualism. An" impassable gulph continues still to divide the nature of man from the nature of God. But the sig- nificance of all, in the view now considered, becomes thus only the more clear and full. Under all its manifestations, Pagan- ism may be regarded as the unsuccessful effort of humanity, cast upon itself, to solve the problem, whose full solution is revealed at last only in the person of Christ. Christianity is the key that interprets its mysterious sense, and establishes thus its own divine character at the same time. All false religions prepare the way prophetically for the presence of the true, and serve to authenticate its mission when it has come. Judaism, we all know, had respect to the coming of Christ, from the beginning. The preparation which in the case of the heathen world was negative only, assumed here a positive character. The religion of the Old Testament, from the time of Adam down to the time of John the Baptist, stood through- out on the ground of a supernatural revelation that might be said not only to foreshadow the great, fact of the incarnation, but directly to open the way also for its manifestation. It is not simply the necessity of a union with God on the part of man, the cry for redemption and salvation, which it is felt can be reached only in this way, that is here made to reveal itself in the world's history; a real approximation to men on the part of God, in the way of a movement to meet this want, is ex- hibited at the same time. Heathenism might be said to run out in a helpless attempt violently to deify humanity itself; a process that must ever fall back, with new despair, to the point from which it started. In the religion of the Old Testament, God descends towards man, and holds out to his view in this way the promise of a real union of the divine nature with the human, as the end of the gracious economy thus introduced. To such a real union it is true, the dispensation itself never came. By a series of condescensions, that grew always more significant and full of encouragement as the dispensation ad- vanced towards its proper end, God drew continually more and more near to men in an outward way. But to the last it con- tinued to be only in an outward way. The wall of partition that separated the divine from the human, was never fully broken down. The tabernacle of the Most High was among men ; but he dwelt notwithstanding beyond them, and out of them, be- tween the cherubim and behind the veil. He spake by dreams, and visions, and clear words of prophecy, that became always more full and distinct; but the revelation to the end, was a reve- lation of God to man, and not a revelation of God in man — the only form in which it was possible for him to become truly 204 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. known. Towards this ultimate point however the whole pro- cess of condescension constantly teritled, as its necessary con- summation. The meaning of the entire system lay in its reference to Christianity. Not only did it contain particular types and particular prophecies of the incarnation ; it was all one vast type, and throughout one continuous prophecy, in this direction. We may say of the Old Testament as a whole, what is said of its last and greatest representative in particular. It was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God ! It might be said in some sense to carry the Gospel in its womb. All the great truths which were afterwards brought to light by Christ, lay more or less undisclosed in its revelations, growing and ripening gradually for the full birth towards which they struggled, and to which they attained finally in his person. Without Christianity, Judaism would have no meaning, no pro- per reality. It becomes real, only by losing itself, and finding itself at the same time, in the new dispensation. The law, as such, made nothing perfect. All served only to harbinger the advent of the Messiah, and to proclaim his presence when he came. All foreshadowed and foretokened the mystery of the incarnation. Here then, as before said, we reach the central fact, at once ultimate and primal, in the constitution of the world. All na- ture and all history flow towards it, as their true and proper end, or spring from it as their principle and ground. The in- carnation, by which divinity and humanity are joined together, and made one, in a real, inward and abiding way, is found to be the scope of all God's counsels and dispensations in the world. The mystery of the universe is interpreted in the person of Jesus Christ. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 205 SECTION II. THE NEW CREATION. Christianity stands, as we have seen, in close connection with the order of the world as it existed before. Some of the early heresies pretended to magnify it, by denying all connection of this sort. They would have it, that the whole state of the world as it stood previously had been bad, and bad only; and that it was derogatory to the glory of the Gospel, to suppose any affinity whatever between it and any older form of life. It must be viewed as an entirely new order of existence, suddenly intro- duced from heaven, in broad, plump opposition, not only to na- ture, but also to the whole previous course of history. Even Judaism must be disowned, not simply as a lower dispensation, but as a false system unworthy of the true God as revealed by Jesus Christ, and at war with the great object of Christ's mis- sion into the world. This was in fact to overthrow the incarna- tion itself, and to reduce it in the end to a mere phantasm, that involved no real union whatever between the divine nature and the human. To be real and true, and to solve at all in this way the great problem of life, the mystery must connect itself with the constitution and course of the world in its previous state. This we have seen to be the case in fact. Christianity forms no violent rupture, either with nature or history. It fulfils, and in doing so interprets, the inmost sense of both. Neither could be complete without its presence. Both flow over into it naturally, as their own true consummation and end. But the Gnostic error just referred to, like all error, included also its truth ; in this case a great truth. There was another error of the same period ; one to which the Jewish mind espe- cially always showed a strong tendency in the early Church. It saw in the person of Jesus only a continuation of the old crea- tion ; in the high form particularly which it was made to carry in the religion of the Old Testament. Thus, on the other side, the mystery fell to the ground. The old chasm between the di- vine and human was left to yawn as before. Christ sunk into a mere man. Against this Ebionitic heresy, the heresy of the Gnostic had its right; though maintained in a false way. Christ is not only the end of the old creation, its necessary comple- ment and completion ; he is the principle also of a new creation, in which the old is required to pass away. 18 206 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. " The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us — full of grace and truth." This is more a great deal than the simple continua- tion of the old order of the world, in the way of regular histori- cal development. Here is a fact, which differs from all ordinary facts and events, not simply as transcending them in importance, but as being of another order altogether. It stands before us, not as the result or product strictly speaking of any powers or tendencies, that were comprehended in the constitution of the world before its manifestation ; but as the introduction of a new power entirely, which was to form from that time onward the central force in the progress of the world's history. This de- serves to be well considered. Let the case be compared with some other fact of true world-historical moment ; the rise, for instance, of Aristotle and his philosophy. How much hung on the mind of that single man ! It gave birth to an empire, which for extent and duration may be said to have thrown the magni- ficence of all the Caesars into the shade. But here was no new creation, in the strict sense of the term. Aristotle was in all respects the product of previous history. The philosophy that revealed itself through his person, was nothing more at last than the development of powers that lay involved in the life of the world as it stood before, and that waited only for the proper time to show themselves in this form. Aristotle added nothing to humanity as such; he was the medium only, by which it found itself advanced to the position secured for it in his person. But Jesus Christ was no such product of the past. It prophe- sied of his coming, and threw open the way for his approach. To the mystery of the incarnation itself, however, it had no power to rise. Here was a fact, for the evolution of which all its capabilities must have remained forever inadequate. Here was a fact, which even the religion of the Old Testament itself had no sufficiency to generate, and to which all its theophanies and miracles could furnish no proper parallel. For the revela- tion of the supernatural under the Old Testament, as already remarked, was always in an outward and comparatively unreal way. It never came to a true inward union, between the hu- man and the divine. The supernatural appeared above nature and beyond nature only. It never entered into it, and became incorporated with it, as the same life. However it might be made to influence the process of history, the development of humanity, in the way of instruction, or occasion, or motive, it could not be said to bring a new element into the process itself. But in the person of Christ, all is different. The supernatural is brought not only near to nature, but into its very heart; not as a transient wonder, but to remain in union with it forever. The everlasting Word, in a way wholly unknown before, descends UIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 207 into the actual process of human history, and becomes within it the principle and law of a second creation immeasurably more glorious than the first. It is by no mere figure of speech, that Christ is represented to be the author of a new creation. Nor may we say of this creation, that it is moral simply, consisting in a new order of thought and character on the part of men. It is no revolution of the old, no historical advance upon the past merely, that is here brought into view ; but the introduc- tion, literally and strictly, of a new element, a new divine force, into the very organism of the world itself. The incarnation, in this view, is fully parallel with the work, by which in the begin- ning " the worlds were framed by the word of God ;" and in the case of which, we are told " things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." As the formation of man on the sixth day, was necessary to perfect in a higher sphere, the organization already called into being in a lower ; of which at the same time it could not be said to be, in any sense, the pro- duct or result; so in the end, to crown all with a still higher perfection, the Word itself, by which the heavens and the earth were created before, became permanently joined with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, as the principle of a new earth and new heavens — the continuation and necessary complement of the previous organization, but in no sense again its historical product or birth. On the ground of the general fact here affirmed, we ascribe to Christianity, as compared with the world in any other view, the character of absolute reality and truth. Nature itself is only relatively true and real. It finds its actual sense, as we have seen, only in the idea of humanity ; and in this idea at last, only as actualized in the mystery of the incarnation. It is all a shadow and type of the real; but for this very reason, not the real itself. All flesh is grass; only the word of the Lord is en- during. The fashion of the world is ever passing away, like a scenic show ; only Jesus Christ is " the same, yesterday, to-day, and forever." There is no other principle of reality or stability in God's creation. So all history becomes true at last only in Christ. This is exemplified, most instructively, in the religion of the Old Testament. It was altogether of God. To it per- tained " the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." Of it were the fathers, and from it as concerning the flesh, Christ sprang, who is over all, God blessed forever. But still, we are expressly taught, that it stood related to the gospel throughout, only as a shadow to the substance it represents. And this is to be understood, not simply of its types and cere- monies as such. It holds in full force of its whole constitution, 208 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. moral as well as ceremonial. Its truth was not in itself, but in a different system altogether to which it pointed. Its reality was in no respect absolute, but in all respects relative only. It made nothing perfect. It was the picture merely of good things to come. The Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle to the He- brews, each in its own way, are full of this thought. We have no right to say, that the New Testament is a mere extension or enlargement of the Old, under the same form. " The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John i. 17). Among all the prophets of the old dispensation, there had not risen one greater than John the Baptist; and yet we are assured, (Luke vii. 28.) that the " least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." All previous revelations were but an approach to the truth, as manifested in Christ. " God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son — the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person" (Heb. i. 1-3). All before was relative only; here we have God absolutely " manifest in the flesh." Christ is the only absolute Prophet, (Deut. xviii. 18, 19. Actsiii. 22, 23.) as he is the only absolute Priest (Heb. viii. 4, 5). The relation of God to the patriarchs and saints generally of the Old Testa- ment, was something that came short wholly of the relation in which he now stands to his people, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Their spiritual life, their union with God, their covenant privileges, all had an unreal, unsubstantial character, as compared with the parallel grace of the gospel, and constituted at best but an approximation to this grace, rather than the actual presence of it in any sense itself.* That which forms the full reality of religion, the union of the divine nature with the human, the revelation of God in man and not simply to him, was wanting to the Old Testament altogether. Of course all its doctrines and institutions, all its prerogatives and powers, had a shadowy, simply prophetic nature, to the same extent. Its sacraments were types only, not counterparts of the sacraments of the New Testament. Its salvation was in the form of promise, more than present fact. It became real ultimately, only in Christ ; for before his appearance, we are told the patriarchs of the law could not be made perfect (Heb. xi. J 3, 39, 40). The dispen- sation of the Spirit has its origin wholly in the person of Christ, (Luke i. 35, iii. 22. John iii. 34,) and could not reveal itself in the world till he was glorified (John vii. 39). The great argument for the truth of Christianity, is the person of Jesus himself, as exhibited to us in the faith of the Church. * " Christianity is nothing, if it be not the actualization and substantiation of a union, which was before, to a great extent, prophetical and ideal." F. D. Maurice. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 209 The incarnation is the fact of all facts, that may be said itself to authenticate all truth in the world besides. The first miracle, and the only miracle, we may say, of Christianity, is the new creation in which it starts. All else is but the natural product and expression of the life, thus introduced into the world. Nothing so natural, as the supernatural itself in the Saviour's person. Jesus Christ authenticates himself. All foreign, external cre- dentials here, can have, in the very nature of the case, only a subordinate and secondary value. He is himself the principle and ground, the alpha and omega of all truth. 18* 210 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. SECTION III. THE SECOND ADAM. Christ is the principle of a new creation. To be so in truth, he must be incorporated, under this character, with the inmost life of humanity. For, as we have seen, the world centres in man ; and out to its extreme physical circumference, all takes its form and complexion from the nature which thus constitutes its living, spiritual heart. To descend into the world at all then, so as to become united to its constitution as a principle of organic renovation, it was necessary that the Word should become flesh. The new creation reveals itself in man. Christ is the second Adam. His manhood was real. The incarnation was no mere the- ophany; no transient wonder ; no illusion exhibited to the senses. "Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her sub- stance, and born of her, yet without sin." John makes it the mark of Antichrist to call this in question. (1 John iv. 1-3. 2 John 7.) The nature which he took upon him was truly and fully the nature of Adam ; and it was not joined to him in the way of an outward accident or appendage merely. The union was inward and complete; two natures, but one single undi- vided person. Christ, however, was not simply a descendant of Adam, and a brother thus of the human family, as standing in the same rela- tion. To his natural birth must be joined his supernatural con- ception. He took our nature upon him; but, in doing so, he raised it into a higher sphere, by uniting it with the nature of God, and became thus the root of a new life for the race. His assumption of humanity was something general, and not merely particular.* The Word became flesh ; not a single man only, as one among many; but Jlcsh, or humanity in its universal con- ception. How else could he be the principle of a general life, * " The justice of God requires that the same human nature which hath sinned, should likewise make satisfaction for sin." Heidelberg Catechism, Quest. 16. To be valid at all, the redemption must go as deep as the curse. But this last attaches to our nature as such. Men are sinners, because the general life of humanity has become corrupt. Their nature then must be restored, as the only ground on which it is possible for them to be saved indi- vidually. This is done in Christ. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 211 the origin of a new order of existence for the human world as such ? How else could the value of his mediatorial work be made over to us in a real way, by a true imputation, and not a legal fiction only? The entire scheme of the Christian salvation re- quires and assumes throughout, this view of the incarnation and no other. To make it a merely individual case, a fact of no wider force than the abstract person of Jesus himself, thus re- solving his relationship to his people into their common relation- ship to Adam, is to turn all at last into an unreal theophany, and thus to overthrow the doctrine altogether.* Christ became man, not for himself, but for the race; that he might take our burden upon him as his own ; that he might conquer death for us in our room and right ; that he might lift thus our fallen nature, as such, into everlasting union with God. He gathered hu- manity into himself as a whole, and was constituted thus its head and sum, (avax^a'kaiJi^L^ tv Ttdvtuv,) in a more full and compre- hensive sense than this could ever be said of Adam. Paul in particular is very clear and very strong, in the repre- sentation of this federal or generic character on the part of Christ. He makes his relation to the human race parallel in full to that of its natural head. Adam is tv7to$ tov pWuo^pj, (Rom. v. 14,) and Christ is b lazatos 'A6a,a (1 Cor. xv. 45). In Rom. v. 12-19, they are compared together at length, under this view. Adam is exhibited, on the one hand, as the head of our race in its fallen character. " By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." They were constituted sinners by that first act of disobedience itself. They sinned in Adam, and fell with him, in his first transgression. He stood in the case as their federal head, because he was their true organic head. In Adamo, ac- cording to the just affirmation of Augustine, omnes tunc peccavc- runt, quando in ejus natura adhuc omnes ille unus fuerunt. In * " If Christ were only a man, as one along with and among many others, it would be indeed incomprehensible, how what he has suffered and done could be of any essential weight for mankind in general ; he could only exert an influence by his doctrine and example. But he is to be viewed in fact, apart from his divine nature, as the man, that is, as realizing the absolute idea of humanity, and thus carrying it in himself potentially in the way of the spirit, as truly as Adam did in a corporeal way. This character of Christ's human nature is designated in divinity by the term impersonal it as ; and we find even Philo, with an inward feeling of the deep truth, describing the Logos as tbv xat 1 aKr^eiav av$gu>rtov, that is the idea of man, the human ideal. In this general view, the Redeemer bears a twofold representative character ; first, as he takes the place of sinful men, carrying their grief in his grief, as an offering for the sins of the world ; and then again as fulfilling absolute righteousness and holiness in himself, so that the believer has not to produce them afterwards anew, but receives them in germ along with the Spirit of Christ. The first is the obedientia passiva of theology, the last the obedientia activa. ,, Olshausen Comm. in Rom. v., 15. 212 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. all this, the apostle tells us, he was the " figure of him that was to come." The gift of life by Christ is in certain respects, in- deed, more than commensurate with the death and condemna- tion introduced by Adam. But the general nature of the relation in the two cases, is the same. Christ too is the federal head and representative of humanity as a whole. "As by one man's dis- obedience many were made sinners, even so by the righteousness of one shall many be made righteous." Not in the way of a mere outward imputation, of course, in the last case, more than in the first; for this would destroy the parallel; but on the ground of a real community of life. As the world fell in Adam organi- cally, so it is made to rise in Christ in the same way, as the principle of a new spiritual life. Strange, that any who hold the Augustinian view of Adam's organic union with his posterity, as the only basis that can properly support the doctrine of ori- ginal sin, should not feel the necessity of a like organic union with Christ, as the indispensable condition of an interest in his salvation. Pelagianism, which sees only an outward connection between the first man and his posterity, and recognizes in the race but an aggregation of single and separate units, mechani- cally brought together, may consistently join hands with Ration- alism in resolving the relation of Christ to his Church, also into a mere moral connection. But in doing so, it shows itself to be just as superficial and false in the one case, as every earnest ob- server of life must feel it to be in the other. The same parallel, under a somewhat different reference, is presented to us again, in 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45-49. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." The reference is immediately to natural death and the resurrection of the body ; which, however, are only one aspect of the death and life contrasted in the other case. "The first man Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam a quickening spirit." By our natural birth, we are inserted into the life of the one; our spiritual birth secures us a like insertion into the life of the other. In both cases, the connection is inward and real. The root of righteousness in the one case, corresponds with the root of sin in the other. The mystery of Adam, to quote an old Rabbinic saying, is the mystery of the Messiah. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. SECTION IV. CHRISTIANITY A LIFE. 213 Christ then was not the founder simply of a religious school ; of vastly greater eminence, it might be, than Pythagoras, Plato, or Moses, but still a teacher of truth only in the same general sense. Christianity is not a Doctrine, to be taught or learned like a system of philosophy or a rule of moral conduct. Rationalism is always prone to look upon the gospel in this way. As Moses made known more of the divine will than the world had under- stood before, so Christ is taken to be only a greater prophet in the same form. But this is to wrong his character altogether. Judaism was indeed only an advance upon previous revelations; no more in fact, we may say, than a vast expansion of the sys- tem of truth exhibited through the medium of nature itself. The order of revelation, in both cases, was substantially the same. It went not beyond the character of a " report," to be received only by " the hearing of the ear." The revelation was always relative only, never absolute. It came not in any case to a full mani- festation of the truth in its own form. But in the Church of the New Testament, all is different. A new order of revelation en- tirely bursts upon the world, in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the absolute truth itself, personally present among men, and incorporating itself with their life. He is the substance, where all previous prophecy, even in its highest forms, had been only as sound or shadow. Unitarians affect to make much of Christ's holy Example. He redeems us from our sins, they say, partly by his heavenly in- structions, and partly by exhibiting himself to us as a pattern of piety, in his life and death. This, however, is to rob him still of his proper glory. It is to fall back at best into the sphere of Judaism. Christianity is more than a model merely of goodness and virtue, though allowed to be, in this view, of the most per- fect construction, nay, the very mirror of the divine will itself. Nor will it change the case materially to make the gospel an array of merely outward or moral power, in any other view. Many who count themselves orthodox, it is to be feared, come short of the truth here altogether. They get not beyond the old Ebionitic stand-point ; but see in Christianity always an ad- vance only on the grace of the Jewish dispensation, under the same form, and not a new order of grace entirely. Greater 214 THE MYSTICAL I'RESENCE. light, enlarged opportunities, more constraining motives, a new supply of supernatural aids and provisions; these are taken to be the peculiar distinction of the New Covenant, and constitute its supposed superiority over the Old. But is not this to resolve the Christian salvation as before, into a merely moral institute or discipline? If the whole evangelical apparatus — including Christ's priestly work, the atonement, his intercession in hea- ven, and the gracious influences of his Spirit — be regarded as an outward apparatus simply, through the force of which as lying beyond himself the sinner is to be formed to righteousness, the case is only parallel at best with the theory, that turns the work of redemption into a mere doctrine or example. We should have at most, in this view, an exaltation only of the reli- gion of the Jew. Christ would be to us of the same order with Moses; immeasurably greater of course ; but still a prophet only in the same sense. In opposition to all this, we say of Christianity that it is a Life. Not a rule or mode of life simply; not something that in its own nature requires to be reduced to practice; for that is the character of all morality. But life in its very nature and constitution, and as such the actual substance of truth itself. This is its grand distinction. Here it is broadly separated from all other forms of religion, that ever have claimed, or ever can claim, the attention of the world. " The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ." Such is the view presented to us in the beginning of his gos- pel, by the evangelist John. The Word, that existed eternally with the Father, that created the world, that had illuminated all the prophets — drawing always nearer to men as the fulness of time approached for this last revelation — now at length, in the person of Jesus, became flesh (John i. 1-18). He that spake to men mediately before, as from a distance, by the prophets, now spake to them immediately, and as it were face to face, by his Son (Heb. i. 1, 2). " In him was life," not relatively, but absolutely. It dwelt in him as an original and independent fountain, (John v. 26). "And the life was the light of men." In this character, it had revealed itself indi- rectly, in the human consciousness as such, and by means of partial and relative representations of truth from without, since the beginning of the world. The light shined, however, in dark- ness, (the result of sin,) and the darkness comprehended it not. All this was preparatory only for the mystery of the incarnation; pointing towards it, and showing its necessity. Here, in the end, the self-subsisting life itself enters into the sphere of hu- manity. The cry of ages, " O that thou wouldest rend the hea- vens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 215 flow down at thy presence/' is met with a full, all-satisfying response. The heavens do bow. The everlasting doors fly open. The tabernacle of God is with man, as never before. Humanity itself has become the Shechinah of glory, in the per- son of Immanuel. The Truth, in its absolute substance, stands revealed and accessible to all men, in the incarnate Word. " We have seen his glory," says the apostle, " the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father." The revelation is real, commensurate with the nature of Truth itself. " No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him" (John i. 18). All former reve- lations, as relative only and remote, are here overwhelmed by the presence of that "True Light" itself, of which they were but broken and scattered rays. " He that hath seen me," says Christ himself, "hath seen the Father" (John xiv. 9). What an infi- nite contrast this, with the idea of a mere teacher, or prophet in the common sense. Only think of such language from the lips of Moses! "The life was manifested," says John, "and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (I John i. 1,2). Christ does not exhibit himself accordingly as the medium only, by which the truth is brought nigh to men. He claims always to be himself, all that the idea of salvation claims. He does not simply point men to heaven. He does not merely profess to give right instruction. He does not present to them only the promise of life, as secure to them from God on certain conditions. But he says, " I am the \\ 'ay, and the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me" (John xiv. 6). Men are brought to God, not by doctrine or example, but only by being made to participate in the divine nature itself; and this participation is made possible to us only through the person of Christ; who is therefore the very substance of our salvation, as here affirmed. " God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life ; and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life" (1 John v. 11, 12). " Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life!" (John v. 24). Here again we have the idea of a present salvation, not in the way of promise and hope only, but in the form of actual possession. The believer hath everlasting life. Already, fjLEtafiifiijxsv ex tov ^avdrov h$ try £u>rv. It has been made a subject of controversy, whether the whole passage (John v. 19 — 30). from which this declaration is taken, refers to the spi- ritual or to the bodily resurrection. Clearly, however, it refers '216 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. to both ; and in this way serves to bring into view the relation in which the one stands to the other. The spiritual resurrection includes in the end the resurrection of the body. It is all, we may say, but a single process, reaching from the point of the new birth onward to the full restoration of the whole man at the day of judgment. As such, it constitutes the true idea of ever- lasting life: which of course, then, must be lodged in the be- liever's person here, as an organic principle and incipient de- velopment, if it is to unfold itself in the complete glory of heaven hereafter. The ground of this life is wholly in Christ. He came not to tell men of itjmt to reveal it in his own person for their use. To believe on him, is to be brought into sub- stantial communication with what he is in this form. It is to pass from death to life. Of such an one it is said, " He shall never see death" (John viii. 51). The new life of which he is the subject in his union with Christ, and which now forms his central being, cannot perish. It is everlasting and indestructible in its very nature. When the man dies, his true life thus rooted in Christ, surmounts the catastrophe, and in due time displays its triumph in the glories of the resurrection. " I am the Resurrection and the Life! He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." (John 11 : 25, 26). The resurrection and life here named, are only different aspects of the same idea. The first is the form simply in which the last reveals itself, in its victorious struggle with death. Both reveal themselves together in Christ. It is in him personally, as the bearer of our fallen humanity, that death is swallowed up in vic- tory, by the power of that divine life of which he was the incar- nation. From him, the same life flows over to his people, in the way of real communication. He does not merely preach the resurrection. It is comprehended in his person. He hath in himself abolished death, and thus brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Tim. i. 10.) The revelation does not consist in this, that he has removed all doubt from the doctrine of a future state, and made it certain that men will live hereafter. It is not the doctrine, but the fact itself, that is brought to light. Immortality, in its true sense, has been intro- duced into the world only by Christ. Christ leads the way to his people, in the triumph of the re- surrection. He is the captain (u d^yoj) of the Christian salva- tion (Heb. ii. 10. xii. 2.) by whom God conducts many sons to glory. He is the first-fruits of the resurrection, (drtap^ iw xsxoc/xtifxsvcov, 1 Cor. xv. 21, 23); the first-born among many brethren (Rom. viii. 29), to whose image all must be conformed.; the beginning, the first-born from the dead (65 Ustw 04x^1 ttQwtittmt BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 217 lx t Zv vi xgu>v, iVa yivqtai iv rcacav avtoj Ttgcotsvuv. Col. i. 18). Super- ficially considered, this representation might seem to imply, according to the old Arian hypothesis, that the relation of Christ to his people in the way of salvation is one of mere precedence in time only, constituting him at best the great pioneer and pat- tern simply, whom others are called to follow through death and the resurrection into eternal life. But the representation carries evidently a far deeper sense. The captain here, is the author also and finisher of the Christian faith. The first fruits are the life and power of the harvest itself, that follows in their train. In the first-born of the Church, Christ is at the same time the fountain of the entire new order of existence which it compre- hends. This is very plain from the passage in Colossians. In the first place the apostle styles him slxuv rol $io v tov dogdtov, Tt^to-toxoi TtdoYjs xtifcW, not to place him in the same order with the creation, as the eldest product merely of God's power : but because iv uvtu ixtla^vj td Ttdvta, the whole creation sprang from him as the everlasting Word, in whom all was originally com- prehended (John i. 3 ; Heb. i. 2), and by whom still all things consist (t<* ridvra iv av*>Z awkatrixs. Col. i. 17).* And parallel ex- actly with this relation to the natural creation, only in a far higher order of life, the apostle now declares his relation to be also to the supernatural constitution revealed in the Church. The creation itself becomes complete only in the Church, the life of nature in the life of the Spirit ; as the principle of the first then, it was necessary that the Logos should be the princi- ple also of the second, through its relation to which alone, as shadow, apparatus and prophecy, the first can be said to have any proper significance or reality. He is head over all things to the Church (Eph. i. 22). As the Church is the crown and complement of the whole world, so he from whom the world proceeds reveals his inmost life in the same as his proper body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all ; and so he is " the be- ginning, the first-born from the dead," not only the point from which the new creation starts, but the principle also out of which all is derived ; " that in all things he might have the pre-emi- nence (tVa yivritoL iv jtaiatv avfoj ytgco-m-cor'.)" He is the first-born of the dead then, in a sense correspondent with that in which he is the first-born of the creation ; because the resurrection, that is the entire life of the Church, flows forth from his person, and has its reality in him only, (** avtu,) to the end. He is not in * Non ideo tantum primogenitus, quod tempore praecesserit omnes crea- turas, sed quia in hoc a Patre sit genitus, ut per ipsum conderentur ; sitque veluti hypostasis, aut fundamentum omnium. Calvin in loc. So he is the d^xh °f the second or new creation, it is said afterwards, as the resurrection commencing in his person is rerum omnium instauratio. 19 218 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. the creation however, as he is in the Church ; it forms at best but a relative revelation of life; whereas in this last the absolute life which he has in himself (If cwtoui ^u>rjr t v, John i. 4. v. 26), is made to reach forth into the world in a real way 0?^ s>aw^^, 1 John i. 2). Thus " it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness (nav tb 7i:x»£M|ua) dwell ; and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself," (Col. i. 19, 20). The divine reconciliation (xo.taVkoyyfi is accomplished for all in his person, (h *$ cto^uart tr t s cagxbs avtov 6ta tov ^avdtov,) by the blood of his cross; and be- comes available only h avtu, as the life in which it is compre- hended is carried over to others, and made to include them as the power of a new creation in the Church. Christianity then is a Life, not only as revealed at first in Christ, but as continued also in the Church. It flows over from Christ to his people, always in this form. They do not simply bear his name, and acknowledge his doctrine. They are so united with him as to have part in the substance of his life itself. Their conversion is a new birth; "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 12, 13). "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh." As such, it can never rise above its own nature. No cultivation, no out- ward aid, no simply moral appliances, can ever lift it into a higher sphere. This requires a new life. " That which is born of the Spirit, is spirit ;" all else necessarily comes short of the distinction. All else accordingly is something lower than Christianity (John iii. 1-8). Paul is full of the same general view. Religion is always with him, as it holds under the gospel, a divine life; not simply the ordinary moral life regulated by a divine rule, but the pro- duct truly and wholly of a new element or principle, carried over into the soul from Christ, by the power of the Holy Ghost. " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (xaivr t zn'otj) ; old things are passed away ; behold all things are become new" (2 Cor v. 17). The doctrine of free justification is vindicated from the objection of being favourable to sin, (Rom. ch. 6-8,) on the ground that it involves an organic change in the subject, the presence of a new order of existence, which carries the guaranty of holiness, so far as it prevails, in its own constitution. " How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" Bap- tism into Christ is baptism into his death, and so at the same time into his resurrection — the translation of the subject out of the sphere of the flesh into the sphere of the Spirit (Rom. vi. 1-7). Under the law, (chap, vii.) righteousness is impossible. But, thanks be to God, " there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." They are made " free from the law BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 219 of sin and death" by the " law of the Spirit of life" revealed through his person. Thus what was impossible for the law, " through the weakness of the flesh," is accomplished by the grace that uuites us with the life of Jesus." "The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us" — not forensically merely in the way of imputation, but as the power of a new life also in our own nature— ''who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (R° m - viii. 1-4). Christians are " not in the flesh, but in the Spirit" — the new life sphere revealed in Christ. The resurrec- tion power of Jesus dwells in them, at once the principle and pledge of a salvation, that will not rest till in their case too it shall have quickened the whole man into life and immortality (Rom. viii. 9-11). Christ is the substance, and not merely the source, of this salvation. So completely indeed is this view interwoven with the whole style of thinking in the New Testament, that we often fail for this very reason to notice the extent to which it is car- ried. But only think of the like representations being employed with regard to Moses, the great apostle of the old dispensation. Let him be exhibited as " the wisdom of God and the power of God" (1 Cor. i. 24) ; " made of God unto us wisdom, righteous- ness, sanctification, and redemption" (I Cor. i. 30) ; the sub- stance of truth and life, in whom all God's promises are yea and amen (2 Cor. i. 20) ; the counterpart of the light that " shined out of darkness in the beginning," by which the true knowledge of the glory of God is now revealed in the souls of men (2 Cor. v. 4, 6) ; the absolute principle of unity for the world, more deep and comprehensive than all forms of existence besides (Gal. iii. 27, 23; v. 15. Eph. ii. 13—22; iv. 14—16. Colos. i. 20; iii. 10, 11). Let these, and other representations of parallel import, which are of such familiar character as applied to Christ, be transferred in imagination to Moses, or any other ancient man of God, and the full weight of the difference that holds between him and all other prophets, must at once make itself felt. " I am crucified with Christ," says Paul ; " nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. ii. 20). The process of the new creation in the believer finds its proper analogy, only in the all victorious resurrection of the Saviour himself— of which indeed it is but the organic continuation in the Church (Eph. i. 18 — 23; ii. 1 — 7). We are God's workmanship, " created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (Eph. ii. 10). All Christianity is compre- hended in a living apprehension of Christ, in " the power of his resurrection and fellowship of his sufferings," in comparison with which every moral advantage is to be held of no account (Philip. 220 THE MYSTICAL PRESENCE. iii. 7 — 11). " Ye are dead," the apostle says, " and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with hirn in glory" (Col. iii. 3—4.) The whole morality of the gospel is made to root itself in the presence and power of the new life, thus derived from Christ. This forms its grand characteristic distinction, as compared with the so called virtue of the common world. All duties are enforced, on the ground of what the christian has become by his heavenly birth, as the subject of the christian salvation. All relations hold in Christ Jesus. The motives to every virtue are drawn from the grace of the gospel itself, as already constituting the actual state of those on whom they are urged. The virtues are all fruits of the Spirit; which in this case serves only to express that higher order of life, (in contrast with the flesh,) into which believers are raised by their union with Christ. All mo- rality is comprehended in the rule, " Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh" (Gal. v. 16). It is as the dear children of God, already quickened into life and sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, that believers are urged to put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the dec^tful lusts, and to put on continually more and more the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. i. 1 3, 14 ; ii. 1—6 ; iv. 1, 17—32 ; v. 1—33 ; vi. 1—9. Col. chap. iii., iv. I Thess. ii. 12; iv. 1—12; v. 4—23. Tit. ii. 9—14. 1 Pet. i. 13 — 23; ii. 1 — 3, 9 — 12). " Ye were sometimes dark- ness, but now are ye light in the Lord ; walk as children of light" (Eph. v. 8). "Put on as the elect of God, holy and be- loved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meek- ness, long-suffering" (Col. iii. 12). " If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above" (Col. iii. 1). " Every man that hath this hope in him,purineth himself even as he is pure" (I John iii. 3). Such is the tenor throughout of the Christian morality. Its superiority to other ethical systems does not con- sist, in its being simply a more full and accurate statement of the duties God requires of man, than can be found elsewhere; but in this rather, that it reveals the true ground of all moral relations in Christ, and refers every duty in this way to a prin- ciple, which it could not have in any other form, and which infuses into it accordingly a new character altogether. The whole structure of life, ethically viewed, becomes a new creation in Christ Jesus. BIBLICAL ARGUMENT. 221 SECTION V. THE MISTICAL UNION. Christ is the principle of the whole Christian salvation. From him it flows over, as the power of a divine life, into the persons of his people. This implies of course the most close and inti- mate connection. The union however which exists in this case, is more than that of simple derivation. Here the parallel of the first Adam fails to represent fully the mystery of the second. The order of existence in the one case transcends immeasurably the order of existence in the other. The first man was made sis ^v%r t p £