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THE PRIMITIVE TRADITION 
 OF THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
THE PRIMITIVE TRADITION 
 
 OF THE EUCHARISTIC 
 
 BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 y BY 
 
 LUCIUS Waterman, d.d. 
 
 RECTOR OF S. THOMAs's CHURCH, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 I9I9 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1919 
 BY LUCIUS WATERMAN 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 THE-FLIHPTON-PSESS 
 NOBWOODIIASS-D'S'A 
 
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 IN the summer of the year 1880, George A. Jarvis, of 
 Brooklyn, New York, moved by his sense of the great 
 good which might thereby accrue to the cause of Christ, 
 and to the Church of which he was an ever-grateful 
 member, gave to the General Theological Seminary of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church certain securities, exceeding 
 in value eleven thousand dollars, for the foundation and 
 maintenance of a lectureship in said seminary. 
 
 Out of love to a former pastor and enduring friend, the 
 Right Reverend Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop 
 of Massachusetts, he named the foundation "The Bishop 
 Paddock Lectureship." 
 
 The deed of trust declares that — 
 
 "The subjects of the lectures shall be such as appertain 
 to the defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed 
 in the Holy Bible, and illustrated ua the Book of Common 
 Prayer, against the varying errors of the day, whether 
 materialistic, rationalistic, or professedly religious, and 
 also to its defence and confirmation in respect of such 
 central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, Justifica- 
 tion, and the Inspiration of the Word of God; and of such 
 central facts as the Church's Divine Order and Sacra- 
 ments, her historical Reformation, and her rights and 
 powers as a pure and national Church. And other sub- 
 jects may be chosen is unanimously approved by the 
 Board of Appointment as being both timely and also 
 within the true intent of this Lectureship." 
 
 Under the appointment of the Board created by the 
 Trust, the Reverend Lucius Waterman, D.D., Rector of 
 St. Thomas' Church, Hanover, New Hampshire, delivered 
 the lectures for the year 1918-1919, contained in this 
 volume. 
 
To 
 
 THE DEAR MEMORY 
 OF 
 
 JOHN HUMPHREY- BARBOUR, D.D. 
 1854- 1900 
 
 A GIFTED SCHOLAR • A DEVOUT PRIEST 
 
 A MAN OF HEAVENLY MIND 
 
 IN THE LIFE HERE THE CLOSE COMPANION OF THESE 
 
 STUDIES • ALVV^AYS CRITICAL • ALWAYS SYMPATHETIC 
 
 AND 
 
 FOR MORE THAN A QUARTER OF A CENTURY 
 
 MY FRIEND OF FRIENDS 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume contains the Lectures delivered at 
 the General Theological Seminary of the American 
 Episcopal Church, in the academic year 1918-1919, on 
 the Bishop Paddock Foundation. The view of the 
 patristic teaching which is here presented has been clear 
 before my mind for more than forty years, and has been 
 a matter of growing conviction. It will be seen that I 
 have not been in haste to put it forth. Indeed, I will 
 be entirely frank and say that I have been oppressed with 
 the thought that if I was the only person who understood 
 the patristic writings in this way, — and for long I knew 
 of no other person who entirely agreed with me, — my 
 understanding of the Fathers must obviously be a mis- 
 understanding. Also, I recall the brief popularity of 
 certain novel explanations of the Eucharistic Mystery, 
 which appeared about two generations ago, and I observe 
 that to-day the names of the authors of them are no 
 longer heard. On the other hand, I have encouraged 
 myself in noting instances here and there in which careful 
 students have ascribed to particular Fathers very much 
 such a meaning as I had seemed to find in them. If the 
 same students did not find the same teaching running all 
 through the patristic writings, I have thought that per- 
 haps that was because no one had put it into their minds 
 to enquire if it was there. I may mention, also, that on the 
 morning after I had delivered my first Lecture, I received 
 from a Bishop whose theological opinions I had never 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 known at all particularly, and who had never known 
 much of mine, a letter expressing his pleasure at my hold- 
 ing the position of Paddock Lecturer for this year, and his 
 hope that I might put forth something which would be of 
 service to the Church. He went on to say that for years 
 he had been teaching, — and then came a terse, clear 
 statement of the very point which I had been trying to 
 state, the evening before, as the apostolic and primitive 
 pre-supposition concerning our Lord's eucharistic body, 
 and with this impressive statement a plain indication 
 that my correspondent's mind had not only reached the 
 same conclusion as my own, but travelled to it along the 
 same path. The curious providence which brought me 
 that letter on that day was, of course, a great encourage- 
 ment. My correspondent's ministry and mine had been 
 carried on in widely different parts of this great country. 
 Perhaps he and I do not stand alone. I wish that I 
 might find that I have been expressing the thought of 
 many other students, who have done much quiet thinking, 
 but have not felt any call to speak. 
 
 I have read rather recently in a magazine article a 
 hasty phrase dropped from a pen which I greatly admire 
 and value. It spoke of a certain eucharistic theory which 
 I do not myself hold in respect as "a profane and im- 
 possible heresy." I have italicized the last word, to point 
 my criticism, and I want to plead with this esteemed 
 writer and those who think with him, and urge upon them 
 that such a phrase is quite too hasty. For the last eight 
 hundred years there has been no Catholic explanation 
 of our Lord's words, "This is My body," "This is My 
 blood." There is, I am sure, a Catholic doctrine touch- 
 ing the Holy Eucharist and it is this: "The consecrated 
 bread is our Lord's very body, and the consecrated wine 
 is our Lord's very blood." As to what is meant by those 
 words, body and blood, there has never been any ecumeni- 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 cal decision. I think that there was once an ecumenical 
 agreement. I have tried in these Lectures to show what 
 it was. I may mention that I suppose that agreement 
 to have remained, with Uttle disturbance, but with 
 a fading force of conscious memory on the part of the 
 Church, for more than seven hundred years. S. John of 
 Damascus seems to me to present it clearly and strongly 
 in the middle of the eighth century. But it has been 
 impossible for me to examine closely and fully the testi- 
 mony of the Fathers beyond the first four hundred years 
 of the Church's life. My references to that number of 
 centuries are not to be taken as meaning that I have 
 any idea that the Church's doctrine was different in three 
 or four centuries next following. 
 
 In my references Pusey stands always for Dr. Pusey's 
 volume. The Doctrine of the Real Presence as contained in 
 the Fathers, being Notes on a Sermon, etc. I have assumed 
 that if an American student had any Catena of eucharistic 
 references from the Fathers on his shelves, it would 
 probably be that one. My references have been made 
 to the edition in which the Notes were published, apart 
 from the Sermon, in 1855. I have myself been much 
 indebted to a Catena published by Rev. Charles Hebert, 
 D.D., London, 1879, in which all quotations are given 
 in the original tongues in foot-notes, along with the 
 English version. The title of the book is The Lord's 
 Supper: History of Uninspired Teaching, and the pub- 
 lishers were Seeley, Jackson and Halliday. It gives 
 only representative passages for the different centuries, 
 but covers all the centuries to the present day. I men- 
 tion the book here, but have given no references to it. 
 Stone in my references stands always for Dr. Darwell 
 Stone's History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, 
 Vol. I. For those students — May their tribe increase! — 
 who wish to look up the originals of my patristic refer- 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 ences, I have thought it best to send them to Migne's 
 Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Gracca, referred to as 
 P. L. and P. G. For writers lying outside the range of 
 the Patrologiae I have given no reference to originals, 
 not having examined the originals myself. 
 
 I owe thanks to my friends, Prof. Richard W. Husband 
 and Prof. George D. Lord, of the Dartmouth College 
 Faculty, for advice in regard to some matters of Latin and 
 Greek scholarship. Neither of them is to be held respon- 
 sible for any statement made in this book, nor for any 
 rendering given. I owe very particular thanks also to the 
 Rev. Francis J. Hall, D.D., Professor of Dogmatic Theology 
 in the General Theological Seminary, for kindly reading 
 all my Lectures, which it was impossible for him to hear, 
 and offering valuable criticisms on points of minor detail, 
 while reserving his judgment on the main lines of thought. 
 He also is not to be held responsible for anything con- 
 tained in this book. 
 
 Lectures containing much quotation and discussion 
 of authorities are apt to be very unsatisfactory to listen 
 to, and very tiresome. As I remember the generous 
 patience and unfailing kindness of my hearers, the Faculty, 
 and a good many of the students of the Seminary in 
 Chelsea Square, I feel that I must give myself the pleasure 
 of a word of grateful thanks to them. Some of them 
 must have thought my views seriously mistaken, and my 
 work wasted; but they were patiently attentive and 
 constantly kind. I trust that readers may not think 
 it amiss that I have kept the Lecture form, and am still 
 addressing myself to them as if they were hearers of the 
 spoken word. It is asking more of them, but I do ask 
 them, to trust to a writer whom they do not know, that 
 it is a mark of modesty rather than of self-assurance 
 that he should use the pronoun "I" in a way which will 
 seem to some excessive. His purpose of heart is by no 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 means to say, "I think it, and I know that I am right," 
 but rather, "I think it, and my hearers must judge, 
 every one for himself. I can give you only that vision 
 which God has given me to see. I know that God some- 
 times gives His servants visions that are misleading, 
 for their discipline and for the world's discipline. To 
 make mistakes, and work out the natural results of those 
 mistakes, is part of every man's education. Here is my 
 vision. Search it in the fear of God, to see whether it 
 be false or true." 
 
 I may add that to any critics who may show me mis- 
 takes that I have made, or misunderstandings into 
 which I have fallen, so as to make them clear to me, 
 I shall be profoundly grateful. And so, whether for 
 edification of others or for correction of myself, I commend 
 my book to the gracious providence of God. 
 
 Hanover, New Hampshire, 
 
 Commemoration of S. Anselm, 1919 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. EucHARisTic Pre-Suppositions, Ancient 
 AND Modern, and Critical Obser- 
 vations ON Some Modern Eucharistic 
 Theories 3 
 
 II. The Ephesene - Roman Tradition: Rome; 
 
 Carthage; Milan 27 
 
 III. The Use of Figurative Language in 
 
 Holy Scripture, and the Testimony of 
 THE Alexandrian School 58 
 
 IV. Bodies Identified, not Necessarily Bodies 
 
 Identical, and Examination of the 
 Testimonies of the Asiatic Schools . . 86 
 
 V. The Great Writers between the Second 
 AND Third General Councils, Constan- 
 tinople, A.D. 381, AND Ephesus, A.D. 
 431: Latin Fathers 118 
 
 VI. The Great Writers between the Second 
 AND Third General Councils: Greek 
 Fathers 146 
 
 VII. Later Theologians who Press the 
 Parallel of the Incarnation and the 
 Eucharist 184 
 
 Appendices 215 
 
 Notes 233 
 
 XV 
 
The Primitive Tradition of the 
 Eucharistic Body and Blood 
 
'The Primitive Tradition of the 
 Eucharistic Body and Blood 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS, ANCIENT AND 
 MODERN, AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON 
 SOME MODERN EUCHARISTIC THEORIES 
 
 The Excuse for the Writing of this Book 
 
 ONE who sets himself to tell anew the story of the 
 Church's Eucharistic Tradition may well begin 
 with an apology. The thought of devout students in 
 our time is so hopelessly confused; who can hope to 
 clear it? Men of decided views are so utterly divided in 
 opinions; who can dream of bringing them together? 
 The views of all the differing schools of thought have been 
 so well represented by able advocates; who can imagine 
 himself able to do better in presenting any of these 
 rival theories? Especially after the two noble volumes 
 of Dr. Darwell Stone's History of the Doctrine of the 
 Holy Eucharist, careful, candid, scholarly, and devout, 
 it seems to the present writer, at any rate, that he is 
 bound to begin his writing with presenting some excuse 
 for entering the field at all. His one excuse — an excuse 
 which will have no effect with many persons but to make 
 
 3 
 
4 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 his venture more deeply inexcusable — is simply this. 
 He thinks himself to have found in the course of Christian 
 History a shift in the Church's presuppositions in regard 
 to the great mystery of the Holy Eucharist. Certainly, 
 for eight hundred years the Church was at peace in 
 regard to this matter. Certainly, in a period of barbarian 
 invasion and oppression, when the Church's scholarship 
 was decadent, the Church's memory dimmed, the Church's 
 momentum almost at a standstill, the Church just turning 
 with tears and fears from the burial of an old civilization 
 to the baptism of a new evolution, out of which the 
 Church was faintly hoping that some civilization might 
 yet arise, — at such a time men began to think about the 
 Holy Eucharist in new ways, and in regard to the doctrine 
 of the Eucharist there has been confusion and strife among 
 Christians ever since. The present writer finds at that 
 great turning-point in the Church's history a momentous 
 change in the Church's mental attitude, an unconscious 
 shift in the Church's tradition. The object of this book 
 is to bring to view again, if it be possible, the eucharistic 
 pre-suppositions of the Church of the Apostolic Age. 
 
 II 
 
 Some Examples of Pre-supposition 
 
 Pre-suppositions are very important forces in the 
 development of thought. Let us take the word "tradi- 
 tion," for example. There are two very different kinds 
 of tradition, both of which have done much to make his- 
 tory, — the tradition that remembers, and the tradition 
 that guesses and invents. When men discuss the value 
 of tradition, and cannot at all agree, it is sure to be, 
 partly, at least, because each of the disputants has started 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 5 
 
 with a pre-supposition, and they have not taken the 
 trouble to understand one another enough to make sure 
 of discussing the same thing. The one who praises 
 tradition is thinking of tradition as a great memory. 
 The Christian Church of the Apostles' days certainly 
 understood rightly the broad lines, at any rate, of S. 
 Paul's teaching in the Epistles, and (let us say) of the 
 teaching of the Gospel according to S. John. The Church 
 of the Apostolic Age did teach that general meaning 
 rightly to the next generation. That is an example of 
 the tradition that remembers. When we find the Church 
 of the first three or four centuries, beginning with witnesses 
 who were born before the death of S. Paul, and were 
 contemporaries of S. John, always maintaining a certain 
 broad line of religious thought as that of S. Paul, we may 
 be sure that that was a memory of what S. Paul really 
 did mean to teach. Holy Scripture, we know all too 
 well, can be made to mean anything in the hands of 
 clever controversialists of to-day. What the New Testa- 
 ment writings really did mean is found securely in the 
 general agreement of the Church's memory, as to the 
 main lines of that meaning, in the first centuries after 
 the New Testament writers died. The tradition that 
 remembers is a great and worthy thing. But the party 
 of the other part, the man who inveighs against tradition, 
 is thinking of something very different. He also has a 
 pre-supposition. To him "tradition" means a mere 
 fashion of thought, uncritical, unfounded. To him 
 tradition is synonymous with guess-work. Moreover, he 
 can point to examples of tradition, which have posed as 
 venerable monuments of the Church's memory, and 
 have been found to be specimens of pure invention after 
 all. The Forged Decretals of the eighth century are a 
 fine example. For three hundred years they have been 
 
6 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 known to be impudent forgeries, but they are still quoted 
 as authorities in the Canon Law of the Roman Com- 
 munion. 
 
 Here, then, are two pre-supposltions, which to confuse 
 must reduce argument upon their subject to a hopeless 
 tangle. The advocate of tradition (the High Anglican, 
 at any rate) assumes all through that the Church's 
 scholars will distinguish carefully between a real memory 
 from the beginning and a guess that rose to the surface 
 sometime in the course of the ages, and became fashion- 
 able. He assumes, he presupposes, that scholars of his 
 party will advance nothing under the name of tradition 
 that cannot be proved to belong to the Church's con- 
 tinuous memory of Apostolic teaching and practice. The 
 despiser of tradition, on the other hand, has his correspond- 
 ing pre-supposition. He assumes with confidence that 
 the man who values tradition must be a man to whom 
 all tradition is authoritative, and who by his belief in 
 the value of tradition is cut off from critical enquiry as 
 to whether any given tradition has a value of its own, 
 or not. Great is the power of unuttered pre-supposition 
 in the working of the human mind. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Two Natural Pre-suppositions TOUcnrNG the Holy 
 Eucharist, — the Modern and the Ancient 
 
 I have suggested the occurrence of an unconscious 
 change in the pre-suppositions of Christian minds con- 
 cerning the Holy Eucharist, at a time of very deep pros- 
 tration and enfeeblement. Let us consider a little what 
 would be the natural pre-suppositions of the Christian 
 mind, a thousand years ago, and nearly nineteen hundred 
 years ago, respectively. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 7 
 
 A. The Natural Presupposition of the Last Thousand 
 Years. 
 
 A thousand years ago, as now, a Christian thinker, 
 approaching with reverent speculation our Lord's great 
 words, "This is My body," would naturally begin with 
 the idea that here was a great, a magnificent reality, 
 mysterious, supernatural, transcending utterly all that 
 human sense could perceive. Here are two facts, an 
 earthly and a heavenly. So the Church has been teach- 
 ing through all the ages. But now to the believer's heart 
 the heavenly fact so utterly transcends the earthly fact 
 that the earthly fact, the hallowed bread, sinks out of 
 sight. To the believer's mind, then, the word "This" in 
 our Lord's great saying will stand for the heavenly fact, 
 and not for the earthly fact. 
 
 Secondly, this modern Christian mind, whether of 
 the ninth century or of the nineteenth, is likely to be a 
 mind to which the phrase "My body," coming from our 
 Lord's lips, suggests but one possible subject of thought, 
 — our Lord's body which rose from the grave, and as- 
 cended into heaven, and now sitteth at the right hand of 
 God. That body is a thing glorified, mysterious, en- 
 dowed with we know not what new, exalted capacities. 
 That glorious body, then, we must think, is presented to 
 our faith as the heavenly fact of the Eucharistic Feast. 
 And we fall down, and adore. Or, peradventure, the 
 revelation which these words suggest seems to us, on the 
 other hand, to be impossible, and we feel bound to ex- 
 plain it in some way which to our brethren will seem to 
 be an explaining away. 
 
 B. The Natural Presupposition of the First Disciples. 
 But in the year of our Lord's death it was different. 
 
 Let us turn our thoughts back to the scene of the Institu- 
 tion of the Blessed Sacrament. The Apostles are reclining 
 
8 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 at the table where they have been eating the Jewish 
 Passover, itself a feast upon a sacrifice, where they have 
 been taught that God's people eat the food of God. The 
 supper is nearly ended, when their Master stands before 
 them, and ofiFers them a heavenly feeding that is new. 
 First, He utters a long prayer of Thanksgiving (of Eucha- 
 rist, to use the Greek name, which since has become 
 familiar throughout the Christian world), and near the 
 close of that prayer He blesses certain portions of bread 
 and wine with words of consecration which have not 
 been made known to us.^ Then he gives of this hallowed 
 bread and wine to the Apostles with these amazing words, 
 — "This is My body," "This is My blood." I do not 
 attempt to quote the phrases fully. I am concerned now 
 to try to recover first impressions of mysterious words, 
 and in first impressions only the chief outlines stand out 
 clear. "This is My body!" What thoughts could that 
 phrase suggest at that moment to our Lord's chosen 
 followers? Plainly, their minds must have gone back 
 with a rush of memory to the strange preaching of just a 
 year before in the synagogue at Capernaum, when our 
 Lord had promised in startling (and to many of His 
 
 * It is aside from my present subject, but I cannot pass by this point 
 without remarking that the so-called "Words of Institution" are in 
 fact "Words of Distribution," and that our Lord's real "Words of 
 Institution" have not been handed down to us, not having been preserved 
 in the memory of His Church. From the example of most of the ancient 
 Liturgies we may safely assume that our Lord's form of consecration 
 consisted of a prayer to the Divine Father to send the Holy Spirit to 
 make this bread and ^ine the body and blood of the Son of His love. It 
 would be hard to say what mischief this unhappy phrase, "the Words 
 of Institution," and the unhappy (and almost impossible) assumption 
 that the words of distribution are the words with which our Lord con- 
 secrated His first Eucharist have wrought in the fields of Liturgies and 
 Dogmatic Theology. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 9 
 
 followers, repellent) language that He would give His 
 people His flesh to eat. He had vowed that they should 
 eat His flesh and drink His blood. He had refused to 
 explain. He had made it altogether clear that He had 
 some great thing to reveal to them, and that it was a 
 thing too mysterious to be capable of being explained. 
 Now He was fulfilling that promise at last. Here was no 
 more of explanation than before, but here at any rate 
 was the promised fact, "This," He said, "is My body." 
 "This," to those Apostles could have no other meaning 
 than "This bread which I hold in My hands." To 
 them, at that moment, the word "This" must refer to 
 something visible and tangible, something that was, as 
 we say, "in evidence," not (as moderns are apt to take it) 
 to a supernal, invisible fact, with which the minds of 
 these men had not yet been brought into acquaintance. 
 That is the fikst immediate pre-supposition of the 
 Apostles' minds. "This is My body" must mean "This 
 bread is My body." 
 
 The second pre-supposition of these men, just as im- 
 mediate and inevitable, must have been this: "When 
 our Lord says, 'This is My body,' He does not mean 
 that the bread which He holds in His hands is the very 
 body in which He stands before us, holding it. Evi- 
 dently, He means that this bread is somehow His body, 
 as well as the body of flesh in which He stands before us. 
 This bread is His body as much as His natural ^ body is. 
 
 ^ In speaking of the body of our Lord's earthly life as "His natural 
 body," I may remind some persons of that phrase of S. Paul, so unhappily 
 rendered, even in our Revised Versions, "There is a natural body, and 
 there is a spiritual body." S. Paul's two Greek phrases indicate, as 
 I suppose, (1) a body governed by the soul (seat of feelings and desires) 
 and (2) a body governed by the spirit (seat of principles and conscience), 
 respectively. A soul-body (a-una xf/vxiKou) is contrasted with a spirit- 
 body {ffufxa TTvevnaTiKbv). It may be observed that there is no ground 
 
10 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 This new body is a continuation, an enlargement, of our 
 Lord's body which we have always known. When we 
 eat this bread of His, we are eating what He has made 
 to be His flesh, we are made one with Him, our bodies 
 are made one with His body. But this is a new embodi- 
 ment, such as our Master has not had before," 
 
 The Apostles knew how differently our Lord used 
 words from any other teacher. They remembered per- 
 haps, in a sudden flash, how He had bidden them beware 
 of the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees, and they had 
 thought, blunderingly enough, that He was talking of 
 the leaven with which people make bread. They knew 
 that they were always in danger of misunderstanding 
 Him. They may well have feared that they were mis- 
 understanding Him now. Or perhaps there was not 
 time just then for any thought that was clear enough to 
 be put into words. How much or little those Apostles 
 thought is, for us, purely conjectural. But I am sure that 
 so far as they did think, their immediate, natural pre- 
 supposition from those words, "This is My body," must 
 have been, "This also, this as well as the body in which we 
 have known Him heretofore, is the body of our Master, 
 Jesus, the Christ." 
 
 for supposing that a spirit-body is one whit less material than a soul- 
 body. The contrast of "natural" and "spiritual" in our English Ver- 
 sions has unfortunately, though very "naturally," suggested a contrast of 
 "material" and "spiritual" which cannot have been in S. Paul's mind. 
 S. Paul would have been deeply shocked and irritated, if he could have 
 foreseen our English misrepresentation of what he said. I suspect that 
 he would even have cried in his distress, 'ii Avot/ts, "Thou fool!" 
 For "body" is a word which in itself implies something material. 
 
 Of course, our Lord's body was never a "soul-body." It was always 
 "spiritual." I am using the phrase "natural body" to denote the body 
 which our Lord had by nature, what I suppose, S. Paul would have 
 called aufia 4>v(jiKbv. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 11 
 
 IV 
 
 Three Things, not One, called in Scripture the 
 Body of our Lord 
 
 I once advanced such an idea of the meaning of our 
 Lord's words to a Doctor of Sacred Theology, and he 
 answered pettishly, "There is no such thing as another 
 body. Our Lord has but one body." But that was an 
 uncareful assertion, and quite contrary to fact. Three 
 things are called in Holy Scripture by this one name, of 
 the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is (1) His 
 natural body, in which He was born, and died, in which 
 He rose from death, and went into heaven. There is 
 
 (2) His sacramental body, in the Eucharist. There is 
 
 (3) His mystical body, the Church. Surely, our Lord 
 might say of His Church on earth, "This is My body," 
 and if He did so speak, all the Church would receive the 
 saying without question, as meaning obviously, "This 
 also is My body." "This, as well as my natural body of 
 flesh and bones, is worthy to bear the great name of ' My 
 body.'" 
 
 And here perhaps one may be permitted to enter into 
 a reverent enquiry as to what is the fitness of that great 
 title, by which the Church of Christ is called "the body of 
 Christ." What, we must ask ourselves, is the essential 
 fact of body? What makes a certain mass of material 
 to be a man's body? I venture to suggest that it is the 
 fact that that material organism is the vehicle of the 
 man's life, and an instrument through which he may 
 bring his life to bear upon the world. The common man 
 has only one such embodiment. The Lord from heaven 
 has more than one. To every human being who receives 
 His Sacrament of Baptism our Lord imparts a share of 
 
12 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 His own human life. It might be said, therefore, that 
 the body of every Christian becomes an embodiment of 
 the Christ, being what I have just now said, — "a vehicle 
 of our Lord's life, and an instrument by which our Lord 
 may bring His life to bear upon the world." But those 
 who were guided by the Holy Spirit to form the phrase- 
 ology of the infant Church did not teach us to call the 
 body of each single Christian the body of Christ. If one 
 may reverently conjecture, it would seem that our Lord 
 is not willing to call by so great a name a body which is 
 in so small a measure His own body, as that of an in- 
 dividual Christian, a body so much more largely animated 
 by the life with which it was born than by His life, a body 
 which is at times so largely the instrument of sinful desire, 
 and evil will. But the society made up of all these 
 persons whose bodies have received the indwelling life of 
 Jesus is so greatly a vehicle of our Lord's life, and is, 
 with all the sins and failures of its members, so greatly, 
 so growingly, and (in its necessary evolution) so surely 
 an instrument by which He brings His life to bear upon 
 the world, that our Lord is willing to call that society 
 by the name of His body. He rejoices to describe Him- 
 self as the Head of that body. It is, indeed, the fact 
 that He is Himself the Chief Member of the society which 
 we call the Church, which is the very greatest reason 
 why He is willing to call that society by this magnificent 
 name of His body on earth. Then, further, as He calls 
 the Church on earth His body, He is willing to describe 
 those who have been baptized into Him as members of 
 that body. Nay more, He is willing that they should 
 be known as members of His body in which He was born. 
 Certainly, the passage which we are in the habit of 
 reading from the Epistle to the Ephcsians (v. 30), "We 
 are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones," 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 13 
 
 was not so written by S. Paul. That is to say, the 
 qualifying phrase, "of His flesh and of His bones," is an 
 early gloss, and not from the Apostle. But the gloss 
 only gives expression, one may feel sure, to what was 
 really in S. Paul's mind. When one reads the Apostle's 
 words to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xii. 12), "As the body 
 is one, and hath many members, ... so also is Christ," 
 — not "so also is the Church," but "so also is Christ," — 
 and again (1 Cor. vi. 15), "Know ye not that your bodies 
 are members of Christ.'^ Shall I then take away the 
 members of Christ, and make them members of a harlot? 
 God forbid," we see that S. Paul was guided to think of 
 cm* Lord as living in an embodiment in His Church on 
 earth, which was, so to speak, an extension of the Incarna- 
 tion, the Church being an addition to that body which 
 was carried up into heaven, being in one sense another 
 body, and yet in a sense the same body manifested in an 
 enlargement of its function. Indeed, it may be said 
 that in S. Paul's theology the Church as the body of our 
 Lord is identified, yet not identical, with the body upon 
 the heavenly Throne. 
 
 If Holy Scrip tm-e thus calls something "the body of 
 Christ," which yet is not the same as the body of our 
 Lord's earthly life, but another body, and yet again is an 
 extension of that former body, in such wise as that all 
 who have part in the body, the Church, have part also 
 in the body that went into heaven, — if this be so, surely 
 it is not a suggestion to be cast aside with hasty scorn 
 that our Lord Jesus Christ, whose voice speaks to us in 
 every Scripture inspired of God, might use such a phrase 
 as "This is My body," to indicate some such fact of 
 supernatural embodiment in His Blessed Sacrament of 
 the Eucharist. How the Church of the first five cen- 
 turies did understand our Lord's words shall be con- 
 
14 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 sidered in later Lectures. At present, I am asking only 
 that you will hold your minds open to consider the possi- 
 bility that our Lord might speak of a sacramental element 
 as His body, even as He teaches us to call the Church 
 of the baptized Ilis body, without meaning necessarily 
 that this, His body, is the body of His natural flesh. 
 
 Difficulties attach to all the Theories founded 
 ON the Modern Pre-supposition 
 
 I have indicated that the Apostles must have formed 
 an instant pre-supposition, when they heard our Lord's 
 words in the upper room, that "This is My body" must 
 mean "This also is My body," "This bread is as worthy 
 to bear the name of My body, as is My natural frame in 
 which I stand before you." I freely acknowledge that 
 if our Lord wished to save them from that pre-supposition 
 by words of warning, either then or afterw'ards. He might 
 have done so, and that the fact that no such words have 
 been written for our learning is not an absolute bar to a 
 theory that such words were said. If later we shall find 
 reason for holding that the Apostles impressed upon the 
 Church's mind what I have called "the modern pre- 
 supposition," and that that is really the pre-supposition 
 of all the Christian ages, then the natural first thought of 
 the Apostles will have to be dismissed, to go along with 
 so many of their natural first thoughts, which were, I 
 further acknowledge, often altogether wrong. But I 
 press the point that they must have had this pre-supposi- 
 tion at first, and I claim to have shown from the use of 
 the phrase "Body of Christ" by inspired men in their 
 teaching about the Church that such a use of the word 
 "body" is not impossible and incredible in itself. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 15 
 
 I must ask your attention now to certain difficulties 
 which seem to me to attach to the various theories con- 
 cerning the Holy Eucharist which have grown up out of 
 what I have ventured to call "the modern pre-supposi- 
 tion." This pre-supposition includes, I here repeat, 
 these two points, — that "This" points to the great 
 heavenly Reality, not to the bread, and that "My body," 
 spoken by our Lord, must mean "My body of My natural 
 life," and cannot mean anything else. 
 
 1. Of modern theories I take up first that which is 
 often called the Zwinglian, from the name of the Swiss 
 reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. It starts out with the pre- 
 supposition which I have indicated, and says, "Taken 
 literally, this is impossible. The glorified body of our 
 Lord cannot be in heaven and here at the same time, and 
 on a thousand altars at once. Evidently, then, this 
 utterance is simply figurative. 'This is My body' means 
 'This is a figure of My body.' Sacraments are pictures. 
 They are symbols, — parables, if you will, — of great 
 heavenly facts. But in the Sacrament itself is no great 
 heavenly fact at all." I shall not spend much time in 
 criticism of this theory. It has no standing in the Church 
 to which I belong. It is, confessedly, the farthest re- 
 moved of all possible eucharistic theories from the mind 
 of the primitive Church. It is sufficient to say of it that 
 it evacuates the Holy Eucharist of everything in the way 
 of mystery. And if any one thing is more conspicuously 
 manifest than another in regard to this Sacrament, it is 
 this, that the subject is a mysterious subject. When 
 our Lord predicted, a year before His death, that He 
 would give His followers His flesh to eat, and His blood to 
 drink. He shocked men so terribly that even His close 
 followers fell away from Him in such numbers as to 
 shock Him terribly in turn. Surely, it is manifest that 
 
16 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 they regarded Him as having said something very mys- 
 terious. Surely, also, if what He really meant was 
 something quite simple and un-mysterious, a mere com- 
 monplace of Oriental figurative speech, He would have 
 explained His meaning at once. If the Zwinglian view 
 of the Christian sacraments were indeed the truth of the 
 Christian sacraments, a few words from our Lord would 
 have prevented all that dreary loss of personal following 
 then, and would have fastened that same simplicity of 
 explanation upon the minds of His Apostles, and upon 
 the mind of His Church for all time. But no! S. John 
 evidently presents the subject of this feeding as a highly 
 mysterious subject. So does S. Paul present both of 
 the two chief Sacraments as effective powers, and mysteri- 
 ous powers. "As many of you as were baptized into 
 Christ, did put on Christ" (Gal. iii. 27). "The bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion of the body of 
 Christ?" (1 Cor. x. 16) A theory which describes the 
 greater Sacraments as mere ineffective symbols of great 
 truths is not consistent with the religion actually founded 
 by our Lord.'^ 
 
 2. Turning to the opposite extreme, we have the 
 theory which the Roman Communion has formulated, 
 
 * Careful readers of our Lord's discourse recorded in S. John vi. 26-65, 
 will observe that our Lord does not first bid men eat His flesh, and 
 drink His blood, and then explain by saying, "I am the bread of life." 
 On the contrary. He first directs men's attention to the need of a heavenly 
 feeding, then declares Himself to be the bread of life, the bread which 
 Cometh down from heaven, and then proceeds to define the particular 
 kind of approach by which men are to come into touch with Him as the 
 source of supernatural feeding. They are to come into touch with Him 
 by way of His flesh. "The brciid which I will give is My flesh." He 
 does not explain words about flesh and blood in terms of spirit. He 
 explains words of spirit in terms of flesh and blood. He insists, it may 
 be said, on the sacramental method, — the approach to the spiritual 
 through the material. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 17 
 
 and has laid on all its followers as a matter of necessary 
 faith. 
 
 The Zwinglian theory says that there is in our conse- 
 crated elements of bread and wine no supernatural fact 
 at all. The Roman theory, of Transubstantiation, holds 
 that these consecrated elements are so entirely taken up 
 into the realm of the supernatural that there remains 
 no natural substance. The bread is changed into the 
 glorified body of our Lord, and the wine — into what? If 
 I understand the Roman theology, I suppose that it must 
 be said that the wine is changed into our Lord's body, 
 too. At any rate, the consecrated elements are so changed 
 into a greater and heavenly thing that nothing of the 
 substance of bread or wine remains, but only appearances 
 deprived of the reality which formerly underlay them. 
 A theory embraced by so many saints, and supported by 
 so magnificent a force of devout scholarship and conse- 
 crated intellectual power, must be criticized reverently, 
 if one dare criticize it at all, but I must criticize it. I 
 have no escape. 
 
 For, first, it seems to be inconsistent with such Scrip- 
 tural language as S. Paul's, — "The bread which we 
 break," and "We are all partakers of that one bread" 
 (1 Cor. X. 16, 17), and with the habit, testified to and 
 approved by Scriptural usage, of calling the Service of 
 the Holy Eucharist by the name of "the breaking of the 
 bread" (Acts ii. 42; xx. 7). Of course, it will be rephed 
 that the early Christians used the name of the appearance 
 freely to designate the great Reality, when as yet no one 
 had denied that Reality, and so taught worshipping 
 saints to be more careful. But when we pass to the 
 testimony of the primitive Church, I think that it must 
 be said that we shall find careful theologians, like S. 
 Justin Martyr and S. Irenaeus, speaking theologically, 
 
18 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and in their most careful theological utterances, making 
 clear their belief that the elements of bread and wine 
 continued still as bread and wine, after their consecration 
 to be the body and blood of our Lord. 
 
 Of course, the strength of the Roman theory lies in its 
 appearance of splendid literalness, — of taking our 
 Lord's words exactly as they stand, and refusing to 
 explain them away, — and in its appearance of exact 
 conformity to the language of the primitive Church, 
 which always spoke of the bread and wine of the Eucharist 
 as being changed into something greater, rather than as 
 being made to receive the presence of something greater. 
 We shall find that language of the latter type, language 
 which speaks of the body and blood of our Lord as being 
 contained in, or spiritually discerned "in," or "under," 
 the forms of bread and wine, is very rare in the speech of 
 primitive Christianity.^ The language of the Fathers 
 does not represent our Lord's body and blood as being 
 added to existing earthly elements of bread and wine. 
 No ! the nearly universal speech of the Christian Church, 
 in the days when the eucharistic tradition was still fresh, 
 speaks of the bread and wine as being changed into, 
 made to become, the body and blood of our Lord. So 
 far as the Roman theology conforms to that primitive 
 speech, it has a very strong position. 
 
 But how far, after all, can the Roman theology claim 
 this glory of exact conformity to the teaching of the 
 primitive Church? And how far can the Roman theology 
 claim "splendid literalness" in interpreting our Lord's 
 words? 
 
 (a) As to the former point, I have already indicated 
 S. Justin Martyr and S. Irenaeus as careful theologians 
 who make it clear that in their eucharistic belief the 
 1 See Note A, p. 233. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 19 
 
 consecrated elements were regarded as still remaining 
 bread and wine in their natural substances. I here add 
 that in the controversy over the Eutychian heresy in the 
 fifth century we shall find Catholic writers maintaining 
 earnestly the continuing of the bread and wine of the 
 Eucharist as bread and wine, and finding therein an 
 analogy to the Incarnation of our Lord, where His human 
 nature remains human nature, though taken into God. 
 We shall find this maintained particularly interestingly 
 by that eminent theologian, Theodoret, Bp. of Cyrrhus, 
 in the middle of the fifth century, and by Pope S. Gelasius 
 (noteworthy as the compiler of the Gelasian Sacramentary) 
 at the centiu-y's close. Roman theology fails to echo 
 primitive theology exactly in a very important point. 
 
 (b) As to the other point, of "splendid literalness," 
 I have to submit that the Roman theology departs widely 
 from literalness of interpretation in dealing with the 
 words, "This is My blood." If Roman theology is 
 literal in declaring that the consecrated bread is our 
 Lord's body, because it is changed into His very Self, 
 present in His body and blood. His soul, and His Divinity, 
 it is hardly literal, — certainly, not "splendidly literal," 
 — to say that the consecrated wine is our Lord's blood, 
 because it is His body. The Presence is exactly the same 
 in the two cases, according to the Roman theology, the 
 great heavenly Reality is exactly the same in both. In 
 the one case that great Reality is called our Lord's body. 
 Why? Because the hallowed bread is a symbol of our 
 Lord's broken body. In the other case the same great 
 Reality is called our Lord's blood. Why? Because 
 the consecrated wine is a symbol of our Lord's shed blood. 
 Neither "This is My body" nor "This is My blood" is 
 interpreted literally, when these two so different phrases 
 are taken to convey one identical meaning. 
 
so THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 (c) And here I am obliged to suggest a further criti- 
 cism. Is our Lord's glorified body a body of flesh and 
 blood? S. Paul tells us that "flesh and blood cannot 
 inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. xv. 50). I have 
 suggested that the body is life's vehicle, and life's agent 
 in laying hold upon the worid. I add now that blood 
 may be defined as life's instrument of renewal. Because 
 a man's blood is the agent of perpetual renewal of his 
 bodily life, blood stands in God's order as the symbol of 
 renewal, and of life itself. But then also blood may be 
 said to represent the possibility of decay. In a body 
 raised above the possibility of decay, and therefore beyond 
 the need of renewal, it would appear that blood would 
 have no longer any office to fulfil. In that view blood 
 would be one of the elements to be abolished in the body 
 perfected. There are such elements in the human body, 
 as we know it. "Meats for the belly," says S. Paul, 
 "and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both it 
 and them" (1 Cor. vi. 13). "Flesh and blood cannot 
 inherit the kingdom of God." Are we to suppose, then, 
 that our perfected bodies will be bodies of flesh and 
 blood? Are we to suppose that our perfected bodies 
 will not be bodies of flesh and blood, but that in our 
 Lord's case the law has been suspended, and "flesh and 
 blood" has inherited the kingdom? Are we to suppose 
 that in this great particular our Lord is not the Pattern 
 Man, nor our bodies, fashioned anew, to be truly con- 
 formed to the body of His glory? Nay, I venture to 
 assert that our Lord's resurrection-body is to be regarded 
 as a body of "flesh and bones," to use His own phrase 
 (S. Luke xxiv. 39), and not of "flesh and blood." Literal 
 blood our Lord cannot be supposed to have in the body 
 of His glory. 
 
 "The Scripture cannot be broken." The Roman 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 21 
 
 theology would seem to be not "splendidly literal," but 
 grossly literal in ascribing to our Lord's glorified body 
 literal blood, which it has not, and curiously wn-literal in 
 requiring two phrases, which literally suggest quite 
 different meanings, to sustain precisely the same meaning. 
 
 3. Returning now to the opposite approach to our 
 great subject, we find another, and much more creditable 
 attempt at non-literal interpretation of the words "This 
 is My body" in "the Calvinistic Theory." Its upholders 
 of the present time prefer to call it " the Virtualist Theory." 
 It maintains, with the Zwinglian, that the consecrated 
 elements are mere symbols, that there is no Heavenly 
 Reality in them, but it insists that they are, in the language 
 of our Articles of Religion (Art. XXVIII), "effectual 
 signs," in the Latin of the Articles, efficacia signa. Though 
 mere symbols in themselves, these elements are our 
 Lord's body and blood in force and eflScacy. A favorite 
 formula with those who hold the Virtualist Theory is 
 this: "The presence of Christ is to be looked for in the 
 Sacrament, but not in the elements." There is a super- 
 natural and special presence of our Lord, — yea, even 
 of His body and blood, some followers of this school 
 would say, — but this presence is not associated with the 
 consecrated bread and wine. It is a presence in the 
 faithful receiver only. 
 
 As against the Zwinglian view, this theory has the 
 strength of a fair recognition of the element of mystery 
 in our Lord's Sacrament. It recognizes that a great 
 Reality is given and received. As against the Roman 
 theory, it has the strength of a just recognition of the 
 earthly element remaining still, even after the consecra- 
 tion of the Sacrament. But it is open to the objection 
 that it diverges hopelessly from the mind of the whole 
 Catholic Church of the first five hundred years of Chris- 
 
«2 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 tianity, in denying that the elements themselves are 
 changed by the consecration in the Eucharist, and raised 
 to a higher and supernatural plane of being. The whole 
 primitive Church certainly held that the consecrated 
 elements were made by their consecration to be some- 
 thing great and heavenly. Further, the whole primitive 
 Church held that unfaithful men, coming to the Holy 
 Communion, received the body and blood of the Lord, 
 and that it was a very dreadful thing for them to do, so 
 to touch the Ark with profane hand, like Uzza. And 
 surely that is the only simple and natural way of taking 
 S. Paul's words about the man who "eateth and drinketh 
 judgment unto himself, if he discern^ not the body" 
 (1 Cor. xi. 29). Could S. Paul have thought of a man as 
 eating and drinking judgment, in an unfitting approach 
 to the Sacrament, unless he had thought of that bread 
 and wine as being somehow heavenly powers? With all 
 the honorable support which it has had in the last four 
 centuries, the Virtualist Theory is certainly a late inven- 
 tion. It is clearly another Gospel. It had no place in 
 the Church's mind and heart, as the Church came forth 
 from the teaching of the Apostolic Age. The whole 
 primitive Church did believe and maintain that the 
 consecrated bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist were 
 in some sense really the body and blood of our Lord, 
 having suffered in the consecration some transforming, 
 elevating change, which made them to be different things 
 from what they were before. 
 
 4. But if the Virtualist Theory of the eucharistic 
 Presence must be set down as a late invention, so also, it 
 
 * The margin of the Revised Versions, both English and American, 
 assures the student that S. Paul's Greek word rcjiUy means, "discrim- 
 inating." The translation should be, "if be fail to discriminate the 
 Lord's body." 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 23 
 
 seems plain to me, must be the theory which I shall call 
 for convenience "the Theory of the Oxford School." 
 It is that which is found in the writings of Dr. Pusey, of 
 Mr. Keble, and of most of the scholars who may be 
 classed as "High Anglicans" in the last century. A 
 particularly honored, and honorable, advocate of this 
 theory among living scholars is Dr. Darwell Stone. It 
 differs from the Roman Theory in only one point, — 
 a very crucial point, certainly. It holds to the con- 
 tinuance of the bread and wine of the Eucharist in their 
 natural and proper substances after the consecration. 
 In this particular it goes along with the thought, and 
 constant teaching, of the primitive Church. But, on 
 the other hand, it states the Heavenly Reality, what it 
 calls the Res Sacramenti, in the precise language of the 
 Roman theologians. It loves to say that our Lord is 
 present in the entirety of His Being, — the whole Christ, 
 His body and blood. His soul. His Divinity, — in every 
 particle of the bread and in every drop of the wine. It is 
 carefully explained, as by the Roman theologians, that 
 this Presence is after a manner not known to our philoso- 
 phy. The body of our Lord is present after the manner 
 of a spirit. The presence is "supra-local," "hyper- 
 physical." Such theology can use Cardinal Newman's 
 language: "When the consecrated Host is carried in 
 procession, the body of our Lord does not move from 
 place to place." About the philosophical questions thus 
 raised, I must speak presently. At present, I am con- 
 cerned with this one point. According to the Oxford 
 Theory, the bread remains, and a greater thing is added, 
 that is to say, our Lord's body. The wine remains, and 
 a greater thing is added, that is to say, our Lord's blood. 
 It must be observed that according to their view the con- 
 secrated bread is not really our Lord's body; it is a 
 
24 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 vehicle of His body. The consecrated wine is not our 
 Lord's blood; it is a vehicle of His blood. The followers 
 of the Oxford School may say that they mean just exactly 
 what the early Christian writers meant. It remains that 
 the natural language of the early Christian writers is 
 not the natural language of these pious and studious 
 Anglicans. 
 
 The Oxford School says, "Here are two realities, an 
 earthly and a heavenly. The earthly reality is bread, 
 and the heavenly reality is our Lord's body." But surely 
 the Oxford School would have to acknowledge that it 
 finds these two realities to be different realities. The 
 bread is one thing; our Lord's body is another thing. 
 But the primitive Church declares with one voice that 
 the consecrated bread of the Eucharist is our Lord's 
 body, and that the consecrated wine is His blood. The 
 primitive Church speaks of two realities, an earthly and 
 a heavenly, and does not try to tell us what that heavenly 
 reality is; but it says that by the addition of some 
 (undefined) heavenly power to the earthly reality that 
 earthly reality becomes, — not contains, but becomes, — 
 the body, or the blood, of the Lord. Certainly, the 
 natural language of the Oxford School is that our Lord's 
 body is present "m the bread," or "under the form of 
 bread." ^ Certainly, the natural language of the early 
 Church was that the bread of the Eucharist is our Lord's 
 body, or is changed into our Lord's body. The two 
 atmospheres are not the same. 
 
 ^ For passages alleged to show that the Fathers used such language 
 see Note A, p. 233. 
 
EUCHARISTIC PRE-SUPPOSITIONS 25 
 
 VI 
 
 The Simplest Theory is the Best 
 
 It is painful to me to follow with what must seem 
 unsympathetic criticism some of the tenderest and most 
 devout meditations of friends whom I love and scholars 
 whom I admire; but I must add here, in closing my 
 Lecture for to-day, some critical reflections which apply 
 equally to the Roman Theory and to that of the Oxford 
 School. The best theory of any matter is that which fits 
 all the facts and accounts for them most simply. 
 
 I observe, then, (a) that both the Roman view and 
 the Tractarian are liable to objection in that our Lord in 
 His Sacrament seems to offer us two different gifts. His 
 body and His blood, and these theologians explain to us 
 that the gift given is in both cases one and the same. 
 The theories do not seem here quite to fit the given facts. 
 It may be replied that the external symbolism of the 
 broken body and the. shed blood was so important in 
 our Lord's purpose as fully to justify His using these 
 two names for His one Presence imder two symbolical 
 veils. Such an explanation seems to me not impossible, 
 but certainly not simple. A theory which should be 
 able to fit all the facts, and fit them more simply, would 
 demand our respectful attention. 
 
 I observe, further, (6) that these two theories do not 
 seem to fit the facts of matter and spirit, as we are allowed 
 to know them. Both theories assume that our Lord's 
 body is present in our Sacrament after the manner of 
 spirit. That is, returning to the conditions of the original 
 Institution, we must hold that our Lord's natural body, 
 not yet glorified, was raised above the laws of matter, 
 and was present after the manner of spirit, in every 
 
26 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 particle of the bread and in every drop of the wine. 
 Certainly, our Lord's natural body could do supernatural 
 things, — could walk on the sea as on a floor, could pass 
 through closed doors. But can any material body, 
 even our Lord's body, exist anywhere after the manner 
 of spirit? Can any presence in a place be supra-local? 
 Can any presence of a material body in a place be hyper- 
 physical? Such suggestions seem to contradict all that 
 God has made known to us of His world. I acknowledge 
 that this notion of the possibility of a material body 
 existing after the manner of spirit may be true. There is 
 a modern Philosophy which leans toward the notion 
 that force is the only fact, and that such words as "spirit" 
 and "matter" represent only crude guesses which men 
 have made in their ignorance, to cover phenomena which 
 they did not in the least understand. Then, it might be 
 added. Almighty God had to use these clumsy words of 
 ours to make His revelations intelligible enough to be 
 useful. If God's revelations seem ever to land us in self- 
 contradiction, it is because of the weakness of our words 
 and of our minds. Certainly, if God has revealed to us 
 any such startling pronouncement as that matter can 
 exist after the manner of spirit, we must accept it as 
 settled fact. But I venture to assert that Almighty 
 God has not revealed any such thing. The primitive 
 Church does not seem to have taught any such thing. 
 It is a guess of theologians.^ 
 
 ' For a further difficulty suggested by our Lord's phrase, "My 
 blood which is being poured out," see Note B, p. 239. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 
 
 ROME; CARTHAGE; MILAN 
 
 IN my first Lecture I set forth two pre-suppositlons 
 concerning our Lord's Eucharistic Presence, which 
 I think to have occupied men's minds at different periods 
 of Christian history. Meeting the phrase, "This is My 
 body," the modern pre-supposition, the pre-supposition 
 of the last thousand years, is that the word "This" 
 refers to the Heavenly Reality, and not to the earthly 
 element,^ and again, that "My body" must mean our 
 Lord's natural body, and cannot mean anything else. 
 Meeting that same phrase, "This is My body," the pre- 
 supposition of the whole Church of the first four centuries, 
 was, if I have rightly understood its expression, that the 
 word "This" referred to the earthly element, and that 
 the Lord's body, which He thus announced must, of course, 
 be a body additional to His natural body, a body in- 
 formed with the life that was in His natural body, a body 
 
 * The Zwinglian School referred "This" to the sacramental element, 
 and escaped the resulting difficulty by refusing to the Eucharist any 
 Heavenly Reality at all. I am rejoiced to find among High Anglican 
 friends a readiness to resent this suggestion, and to say, as I should say, 
 that to make "This" refer to anything but the bread or wine would be 
 ungrammatical. It remains for such to explain in what sense they 
 hold bread to he our Lord's body. That has not been made clear to me. 
 But the unexpected agreement is most welcome. 
 
 27 
 
28 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 different from His natural body, and yet in a sense the 
 same as the natural body. I must now proceed to an 
 examination of the utterances of the Christian writers of 
 these four centuries to see whether they show with any 
 clearness the presence of one of these pre-suppositions, 
 or the other. For the period preceding the Second 
 General Council (Constantinople, a.d. 381) I have thought 
 it best to follow a geographical, rather than a merely 
 chronological, order, grouping my writers with reference 
 to three great local centres of tradition, Rome, Alexandria, 
 Antioch. It seems to me that to trace the tradition of a 
 great School tells more than to skip from name to name, 
 quoting an utterance from Italy, and another from 
 Egypt, a word from Jerusalem, and a word from Con- 
 stantinople, simply because they were spoken in that 
 order of time. Also, I begin with Rome, not only because 
 that was the great central city of the world, where (as 
 Irenaeus has taught us in a famous passage) the faith 
 was preserved because all men of all minds resorted 
 there from all directions, and so the thoughts of all manner 
 of thinkers were there brought into a focus, but because 
 two great theologians, who resided and taught in Rome, 
 and profoundly affected Rome's theological tradition, 
 had, both of them, their own initiation into the Christian 
 tradition at Ephesus, and so were brought into a special 
 nearness to S. John. S. John had lived at Ephesus to 
 the very end of the first century. S. John seems to have 
 been making a deep impression on the Church's mind, 
 and doing much to form the Church's tradition, long 
 after any other of the original Apostles of our Lord. 
 It follows that these two theologians, S. Justin Martyr, 
 who became a Christian at Ephesus within thirty years 
 after S. John's death, and was for some years a student 
 there, and S. Irenaeus, who was a friend and follower of 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 29 
 
 S. Polycarp, the aged Bishop of Smyrna, and used to hear 
 S. Polycarp talk of the days when he was a pupil of S. 
 John, — these two teachers, Justin and Irenaeus, are the 
 nearest to a clearly apostolical tradition of all the Chris- 
 tian writers who give us material for any theory of the Eu- 
 charist. I shall state as the subject of this Lecture, 
 
 The Ephesine-Roman Tradition, 
 
 and I shall note the names of three cities in which that 
 tradition flourished, Rome, Carthage, Milan. 
 
 A. The Ephesine-Roman Teachers 
 
 S. Justin Martyr, Philosopher {circa a.d. 150) 
 
 I begin with the testimony of S. Justin Martyr. In 
 his First Apology, Chapter 66, he gives an account of 
 the Christian Eucharist, 
 
 "of which," he says, "no one is allowed to partake but the 
 man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and 
 has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of 
 sins, and is so Uving as Christ hath enjoined. For not as com- 
 mon bread and common drink do we receive these things, but in 
 Hke manner as Jesus Christ, our Saviour, having been made 
 flesh by the Word of God ["Word of God" is here a title of the 
 Holy Ghost] had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so like- 
 wise have we been taught that the food which has been blessed 
 by the invocation of the Word that is from Him, and from which 
 our blood and flesh are by transmutation nourished, is the flesh 
 and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the Apostles, 
 in the Memoirs composed by them, which are called ' Gospels, ' 
 have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them, that 
 Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, 'This 
 
80 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 is My body, ' and that after the same manner, liaving taken the 
 cup, and given thanks, He said, 'This is My blood,' giving it to 
 them alone. " ^ 
 
 Two points come out very clearly. First, the consecrated 
 bread is still bread in S. Justin's view. It is not "common 
 bread." A startling change has come upon it. Of that 
 I must speak presently. But still these elements con- 
 tinue to be bread and wine, "from which our blood and 
 flesh are by transmutation nourished." A modern 
 Roman theologian may insist that "nourishment" is 
 one of the "accidents," which remain, according to 
 Roman theory, when "the substance" of bread and wine 
 has ceased to be. Granted, for the sake of argument, 
 that such a notion is philosophically conceivable. But 
 what could have been S. Justin's object in introducing 
 such a phrase as this in writing to the heathen Emperor? 
 The only idea that Justin's words could have conveyed 
 to Antoninus Pius, and the only idea that Justin's words 
 could have been intended to convey, was just simply this, 
 that the bread and wine, so wonderfully transformed, 
 were transformed by a glorifying addition, loithout losing 
 anything of their natural conditions in the change. 
 
 We turn, then, secondly, to S. Justin's view of the 
 great transformation, on the positive side, and we find 
 him presenting It as something analogous to our Lord's 
 Incarnation. As our Lord took material elements of the 
 substance of the Blessed Virgin by the operation of the 
 Holy Ghost, here called "the Word of God," so by 
 the operation of the same Word - our Lord takes to Hlm- 
 
 1 Patrologia Graeca, 6, col. 428, 429. 
 
 ^ S. Justin's phrase is 5i' tixvs \6yov rov irap' airrov. I should 
 render this, "by invocation of the Word that proceeds from Him," that 
 is, of the Holy Ghost. Dr. Pusey translates, " by the prayer of the word 
 which is from Him," on p. 319 of The Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 31 
 
 self material elements of bread and wine, and makes 
 them to be somehow His body and His blood. If S. Jus- 
 tin had wished to say that these elements received a myste- 
 rious presence of our Lord's body he could have said so, 
 and it might even have been a simple thing to say. What 
 he does say is, that as our Lord once incarnated Himself 
 by the power of the Holy Ghost, making human flesh to 
 be His body, so He now makes bread and wine to be 
 His body and His blood. 
 
 II 
 
 S. Irenaeus, Bishop (circa a.d. 175) 
 
 The next witness to be heard is S. Irenaeus. Though 
 Bishop of Lugdunum in Southern Gaul (our modern 
 "Lyons"), he had been a pupil of S. Polycarp, who was a 
 pupil of S. John, and he knew Rome intimately as well. 
 He uses the generally accepted doctrine of the Eucharist 
 to enforce the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, 
 on this wise : 
 
 as taught by the Fathers, but paraphrases, "by prayer in His words" 
 (plural), on p. 144. 
 
 Bishop Hedley (R. C.) in his book. The Holy Eucharist, p. 25, 
 renders it, "by the utterance in prayer of the word derived from Him." 
 Whether Justin's phrase, here used, is to be taken as meaning, "by 
 invocation of the Holy Ghost," or "by the recital of our Lord's two 
 phrases, ' This is My body,' ' This is My blood,' " it is certainly the doc- 
 trine of the Catholic Church that the consecration of the Holy Eucharist 
 is an operation of the Holy Ghost, and S. Justin's intention to draw a 
 parallel between the Mystery of the Incarnation and the Mystery of the 
 Eucharist is unmistakable. It may be remarked that the recital of our 
 Lord's words of distribution in the Canon of the Eucharist is not "prayer 
 in His words," and that "utterance in prayer of the word derived from 
 Him" is quite impossible as a translation of the Greek words given 
 above. Somehow or other, 5i' evxv^ means, "by prayer." For the 
 use of the title "Word" see Note C, p. 241. 
 
32 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "How say they that that flesh passeth to corruption, and 
 partaketh not of life, which is nourished from the body of the 
 Lord and His blood? Either let them change their mind, or 
 abstain from offering the things above spoken of. But our 
 meaning is in harmony with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist 
 confirms our meaning. And we offer to Him His own, carefully 
 teaching the communication and union, and confessing the 
 resurrection of the flesh and spirit. For as the bread from the 
 earth, receiving the invocation of God,^ is no longer common 
 bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly 
 and a heavenly, so also our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are 
 no longer perishable, having the hope of the resurrection to life 
 everlasting." * 
 
 Here we have the same teaching as in Justin Martyr, 
 that the consecrated elements are no longer "common," 
 and yet that the common bread remains, with its power 
 to nourish. In fact, the Eucharist consists of "two things, 
 an earthly and a heavenly." And here comes a very 
 critical question. Does Irenaeus mean to say that the 
 "earthly thing" is the "heavenly thing"? I confess that 
 that does not seem to me possible. But Irenaeus and 
 Justin and all the Fathers say that the bread of the 
 Eucharist is after consecration the body of our Lord. 
 We may express the idea by an equation: the "earthly 
 thing" (bread) + the "heavenly thing" = "the body of 
 our Lord." Or again, the "earthly thing" (wine) + 
 "the heavenly thing" = "the blood of our Lord." There 
 is nothing to show (what seems to be assumed in modem 
 writing) that S. Irenaeus held the "heavenly thing" 
 of the Eucharist to be itself our Lord's body. What 
 
 ^ It may be noted that Irenaeus seems to regard the consecration as 
 effected by prayer, rather than by formula. His language harmonizes 
 with the interpretation which I have given to S. Justin's "prayer of the 
 Word that is from Him." 
 
 « Adv. Haer. IV. xviii. 5; P. G. 7, 1028, 1029. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 33 
 
 Irenaeus did hold to be the "heavenly thing" of the 
 Eucharist will appear from another passage. It is in 
 the Adversus Haereses, V. ii, 2, 3. He is again arguing 
 for the resurrection of man's body against the objections 
 arising out of a falsely "spiritual" conception of the 
 universe. 
 
 "Since we are His members, and are nourished through the 
 creature, and He Himself giveth us the creature, making His 
 sun to rise, and raining, as He wiUeth, He owned the cup which 
 is from the creature to be His own blood, from which He be- 
 deweth our blood, and the bread from the creature He aflSrmed 
 to be His own body, from which He increaseth our bodies. 
 When, then, both the mingled cup and the created bread receive 
 the Word of God, and the Eucharist becometh the body and 
 blood of Christ,^ and from it the substance of our flesh is increased, 
 and consisteth, how do they say that the flesh is not capable of 
 receiving the gift of God, which is eternal Ufe, [that flesh] 
 which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is 
 His member, as the blessed Paul saith that we are all 'members 
 of His body, of His flesh and of His bones,' not speaking thus 
 of some spiritual and invisible man, for a spirit hath not bones 
 nor flesh, but of the dispensation by which our Lord became an 
 actual man, consisting of flesh and sinews and bones, — [that 
 flesh, I say,] which is nourished both from His cup which is His 
 blood, and from the bread which is His body. And just as a 
 cutting from the vine planted in the ground f ructifieth in its due 
 season, and the corn of wheat, falling into the earth and be- 
 coming decomposed, riseth with manifold increase by the Spirit of 
 God, who containeth all things, and then through the wisdom of 
 God serveth for the use of men, and haviag received the Word 
 of God, becometh the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of 
 Christ; so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and deposited 
 
 * The Greek original, here happily preserved, runs thus: Kal ylverat 4 
 tixapiarria aribfia Xpiffrov. "The Eucharist becomes a body of Christ," 
 or "becomes body of Christ," not "the body of Christ." For some 
 words on this distinction see Appendix I, pp. 220-222. 
 
34 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 in the earth, and suffering decomposition there, shall rise at 
 their appointed time, the Word of God granting them resurrec- 
 tion to the glory of God, even the Father. " * 
 
 I note with interest the repeated references to the 
 eucharistic body and blood of our Lord as nourishing 
 our bodies and bedewing our blood, but my chief concern 
 in quoting this passage is to give the answer of S. Irenaeus 
 to the question, "What is that 'heavenly part' which is 
 added to the earthly elements?" Irenaeus says that it 
 is "the Word of God." He does not say that it is "the 
 body of the Lord." He says that it is "the Word." 
 This seems to me to be S. Justin's thought again. The 
 Eucharist is a sort of second Incarnation. The Word of 
 God takes to Himself these material elements and lives 
 in them, and they become His body and His blood. And 
 certainly, the "Word of God" here mentioned is not 
 our Lord's phrase, "This is My body," regarded as a 
 formula of consecration. "The Word of God granting 
 them resurrection" is a phrase which sufficiently estab- 
 lishes that this is a use of S. John's great title for our 
 Lord Himself. I will not enter upon the question whether 
 our Lord by His omnipresence is everywhere present in 
 His body, "after the manner of spirit." I do not think 
 it, but I will not venture to deny it. Only I will suggest 
 that as at every Baptism our Lord through the operation 
 of the Holy Ghost visits some child of man, imparting 
 to the person thus baptized a share in our Lord's human 
 life, incarnating Himself anew in this new Christian, so 
 our Lord may visit the elements of every Christian 
 Eucharist, incarnating Himself in this bread and wine. 
 He, with His Gift of Life, is "the Heavenly Part." Such 
 seems to me to be the theology of Irenaeus. 
 
 » P. G. 7. 1124. 1125. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 35 
 
 Before leaving the testimony of Irenaeus I must make 
 one remark on what I have been reading from him, and 
 then add two further extracts from his writings. First, 
 I must remark that when Irenaeus speaks of our Lord 
 as acknowledging the bread and wine of the Eucharist to 
 be "His own body" and "His own blood," we must not 
 assume, as the modern mind is likely to assume, that 
 "His own body" means necessarily "His natural body." 
 Modern readers start with such a pre-supposition, that 
 there is, and can be, no other body which is our Lord's 
 own body. If, as I suppose, S. Irenaeus had the opposite 
 pre-supposition, that, of course, our Lord's eucharistic 
 body was (in a sense) another body from His natural 
 body, he could as perfectly naturally write of our Lord's 
 acknowledging the body of the Eucharist to be His very 
 own, as if he were referring to the body natural. 
 
 I proceed to offer two extracts which will curiously 
 balance each other. The former one is taken from the 
 fifth book of the Adversus Haereses (ii, 2), from an argu- 
 ment directed against those heretics who denied the 
 resurrection of the flesh. 
 
 "But if it will not be saved," says Irenaeus, "in truth, the 
 Lord hath not redeemed us by His blood, nor is the cup of the 
 Eucharist the communication of His blood, nor the bread which 
 we break the communication of His body. For blood is not, 
 save of veins and flesh and of the rest of human substance, in 
 which the Word of God was truly made. By His blood He 
 redeemed us, as also His Apostle saith: 'In whom we have 
 redemption through His blood, even the remission of our 
 sins." 1 
 
 What does Irenaeus mean? He is arguing against the 
 falsely spiritual notion that regards matter as essentially 
 
 1 P. G. 7, 1125. 
 
86 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 evil, and he appeals to the well-known fact that our 
 salvation is declared in God's own teaching to be de- 
 pendent on material things. We are saved by the blood 
 of Christ. We receive a material element which He 
 names with the name of His own blood in the Eucharist. 
 But certainly "blood" is a word of material association. 
 "Blood" (in the natural sense) animates flesh, and 
 pours through veins. If our Lord never had a real body, 
 there could be no such thing as salvation through His 
 blood, nor any giving of anything that could be called 
 His "blood." There must be blood in a natural sense, 
 or there could not be blood in the sacramental sense, is 
 the thought of our saint. 
 
 That I have a right to represent Irenaeus as distinguish- 
 ing in his own mind between a natural and a sacramental 
 sense of such a phrase as "the blood of our Lord," will 
 appear plainly from the next, which shall be our last, 
 extract. It is taken from a Commentary on 1 Peter iii. 
 by Ecumenius, a writer of the tenth century, who was 
 able to quote from a writing of Irenaeus, which is now 
 no longer extant. 
 
 "When the Greeks, having arrested the slaves of Christian 
 catechumens, then used force against them, in order to learn 
 from them some secret thing (practised) among Christians, 
 these having nothing to say that would meet the wishes of their 
 tormentors, except that they had heard from their masters that 
 the divine Communion was the body and blood of Christ, and 
 imagining that it was actually flesh and blood, gave their in- 
 quisitors answer to that effect." 
 
 The story, as taken from Irenaeus, goes on to tell how 
 the charge was brought against the martyr, Blandina, 
 and she 
 
 "replied very admirably in these words: 'How should those 
 persons endure such accusations who for the sake of the practise 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 37 
 
 of piety, did not avail themselves even of the flesh that was 
 permitted them ? ' " ^ 
 
 Now all the early Christians believed that what they 
 received in the Holy Eucharist was "actually flesh and 
 blood" — in a sense. How then could the martyr 
 Blandina indignantly deny the accusation, and the 
 bishop, Irenaeus, commend her for doing so? Because 
 the bread and wine of the Holy Communion were not 
 held to be bread and wine in a literal sense. The eucha- 
 ristic body of our Lord could be described as the flesh of 
 the Lord Himself, and even as the flesh which rose from 
 the grave and went into heaven, or it could equally be 
 said that it was not flesh at all. The language of the 
 Fathers, the belief of the Fathers, makes room for both 
 kinds of utterance. 
 
 B. The North African School 
 
 We shall find the same paradoxical contrast in the 
 language of Tertullian of Carthage, the priest who brought 
 to his theology the training of a lawyer. The Roman 
 Church itself produced few writers in the first four Chris- 
 tian centuries, and none that offer us any help for our 
 present study; but it taught some other Churches, and 
 Chiu-ches which produced very eminent writers, its own 
 particular tradition. Rome was the natural source of 
 intellectual fashions to Northern Italy in one direction, 
 and to the Province of Africa, — Carthage and its be- 
 longings, — in another. We shall be following faithfully 
 the line of the Ephesine-Roman tradition, if we pass 
 from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus to African Tertullian 
 and Cyprian, and then to Ambrose of Milan, and his 
 imitator, the author of the treatise, De Sacrameniis. 
 
 1 P. G. 7, 1236. 
 
88 THE EUCHABJSTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 III 
 
 Tertullian, Lawyer, Presbyter, Schismatic 
 (circa a.d. 200) 
 
 We take first the language of Tertullian. He is insis- 
 tent that we receive our Lord's body in the Eucharist. 
 In his book on Idolatry he is fierce against the maker of 
 idols who dares to approach the altar. "Mourning . . . 
 that he should approach those hands to the body of the 
 Lord, which bestowed bodies on demons. . . . Whose 
 hands ought more to be cut off than those by which the 
 body of the Lord is offended?" ^ 
 
 That Tertullian holds the bread and wine of the Eucha- 
 rist to be themselves the body and blood of the Lord, and 
 not merely vehicles of those mighty powers, appears in 
 his book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, where he uses 
 this very remarkable language, — "The flesh feeds on 
 the body of Christ, that the soul, too, may be fattened 
 from God" (De Res. Cam. 8). The body of om* Lord is 
 something that nourishes human flesh.^ On the other 
 hand, he speaks of the consecrated elements as "bread" 
 and "wine." "We feel pained if any of the wine, or 
 even of our bread, be spilled upon the ground." ' In 
 
 1 De Idol. 7; P. L. I. 669. 
 
 * The reference is P. L. 2, 852. It is, of course, open to the Roman 
 theologian to say that the power to nourish is one of the "accidents" of 
 the eucharistic bread, and so the glorified body of our Lord has power to 
 nourish the body of the receiver. But certainly, unless a man holds 
 that the bread has disappeared, leaving its "power to nourish" as an 
 attribute of another substance, such a phrase as "The flesh feeds on 
 the body of Christ" is clear and emphatic for the belief that it is the 
 bread itself which is the body of Christ. But Tertullian, as I shall 
 proceed at once to show, held no such belief as that the bread ceases to be. 
 
 « De Corona, 3; P. L. 2, 99. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 39 
 
 fact, he appeals to the outward senses with all confidence, 
 as witnessing truly, as far as they go. 
 
 "We may not, we may not, call in question those senses, lest 
 their truth should be questioned m Christ Himself, lest it should 
 be said, perchance, that He saw untruly Satan cast down from 
 heaven; or heard untruly the voice of the Father bearing 
 witness of Him; or was deceived when He touched Peter's 
 mother-in-law; or perceived as other than it was the breath of 
 the ointment which He accepted for His burial; or afterwards 
 the taste of the wine which He consecrated to be a memorial of 
 His blood. For so Marcion preferred to believe Him a phan- 
 tom, denying to Him the reality of a perfect body." ^ 
 
 A Roman theologian might think Tertullian's argu- 
 ment that if our senses could be deceived in a sacrament, 
 then our Lord's senses might be supposed to have been 
 deceived in any of the experiences of His earthly life, 
 to be an absurdly unfair argument. Tertullian's argu- 
 ments were often unfair, and some of them were even 
 absurd. But certainly, the man who advanced that 
 argument did not think that the senses were deceived in 
 the presence of the eucharistic elements. Furthermore, 
 it is to be noted that Tertullian was here arguing against 
 the Docetic heresy of Marcion, who refused to believe 
 that our Lord had any material body of flesh and blood 
 at all. If, then, the Marcionites could have pointed to 
 the accepted doctrine of the Catholic Church as teaching 
 that the consecrated bread and wine had no longer any 
 material existence, the retort, as Dr. Pusey well points 
 out {Doctrine of the Real Presence as taught by the Fathers, 
 79, 80), would have been absolutely crushing. But let 
 it be observed that when Tertullian is trying to prove by 
 the material reality of the eucharistic bread and wine 
 the material reality of our Lord's natural body of flesh 
 
 1 De Anima, 17; P. L. 2, 718. 
 
40 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and blood, he describes the eucharistic wine as a "memo- 
 rial" of our Lord's natural blood. The natural blood is 
 one thing; the "blood" of the Eucharist is another. 
 In like manner, in his book against INIarcion, Tertullian 
 twice calls the eucharistic bread a "figure" of our Lord's 
 body natural. His argument is precisely that a real thing, 
 which the eucharistic bread confessedly is, cannot be any 
 proper "figure" of a thing which is not real. The first 
 of these passages runs thus: 
 
 "For as God revealed in your Gospel,^ too, calling bread HOls 
 body, that hence, too, thou mayest at once understand that He 
 gave to bread to be a figure ^ of His body, for whose body the 
 prophet aforetime used bread as a figure, the Lord Himself 
 designing to give an interpretation of this mystery by and by." ' 
 
 Later in the same treatise Tertullian has a long passage, 
 as follows: 
 
 "Having declared, 'with desire have I desired to eat this 
 Passover,' [treating it] as His own (for it were unworthy that 
 God should desire anything not His own). He made the bread 
 which He took and distributed to His disciples to be that body of 
 His, saying, 'This is My body,' that is, the figure of My body. 
 But it would not be a figure imless His body were a veritable 
 body.* But an empty thing, as a phantom is, can admit of no 
 figure of itself. Or if He pretended that the bread was His 
 body, because He had in truth no body, He must have given 
 
 ^ It will be remembered that Marcion recognized no Gospel but 
 that of S. Luke. 
 
 ' Tertullian has just been quoting from Jeremiah xi, 19, "Come, 
 let us destroy the tree with the bread (English Versions, "fruit") there- 
 of." The Fathers found in this verse a reference to the Cross and the 
 eucharistic bread. Some remarks on current translations of this 
 passage may be found in Note D, p. 247. 
 
 » Adv. Marcion., III. 19; P. L. i. 376. 
 
 * Tertulliau's phrase is corpus veritatis, "a body of truth." 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 41 
 
 bread for us. It would fit with the emptiness of Marcion, that 
 bread should have been crucified. But why doth He call bread 
 His body, and not rather a pumpkin, which is what Marcion must 
 have had in place of a heart? Marcion did not understand that 
 that was an ancient figure of the body of Christ, who said Him- 
 self through Jeremiah, 'They have devised devices against me, 
 saying, Let us cast wood on His bread, ' that is the Cross on His 
 body. Therefore the Illuminator of the things of old hath 
 plainly shown what He meant bread to signify, calling bread 
 His own body. " ^ 
 
 To Tertullian, then, the hallowed bread appeared to 
 be a figure of our Lord's body natural, and he seems to 
 have found a close parallel between the figure by which 
 the eucharistic bread was called our Lord's "body," and 
 that by which our Lord's body was called "bread." 
 Our Lord's body was called bread, because it was intended 
 that in His good time it should perform the office of a 
 great, world-wide nourishment. The eucharistic bread 
 was called our Lord's body, because it was consecrated 
 to perform the office of a body for Him, becoming in very 
 truth a vehicle of His life, an instrument of His activity, 
 and even a means of His partial manifestation of Himself 
 to men. And yet Tertullian meant so very much more 
 by this phrase, "figure of [our Lord's] body," than the 
 empty symbol, the poor and powerless picture, which 
 modern theologians have commonly meant by "figure," 
 that he is able to say in the very same breath these two 
 seemingly contradictory things, that our Lord made this 
 bread to be His own body, and that when He said, "This 
 is My body," He meant, "This is the figure of My body." ^ 
 
 1 Adv. Marcion., IV. 40; P. L. 2, 491, 492. 
 
 * It will be claimed by some of those theologians to whom I feel 
 myself to be nearest, and of whose devout thoughts I am most tender, 
 that I am here making an unhappy mistake. "We hold," they will 
 say, "as truly as Tertullian did, that the hallowed bread is a figure of 
 
42 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 It is necessary to take note of some utterances of 
 Tertullian which might be urged by objectors as incon- 
 sistent with the Hne of thought which is here ascribed to 
 him. Thus he is quoted as referring to our Lord's body 
 as present in the bread, and His blood as present in the 
 wine of the Holy Eucharist. One such passage is found 
 in Chapter 6 of the Treatise De Oratione: 
 
 "In bread is understood His body." * 
 
 I would remark that Tertullian is here commenting 
 on the phrase, "Give us this day our daily bread," in the 
 Lord's Prayer. He reminds us that Christ is called 
 "the Bread of Life." Then he adds that "in bread too 
 is understood His body." It is just such a use of "in" 
 as when one says, "We may see in Napoleon an instru- 
 ment of God's wrath against the nations." It is a phrase 
 of identity. Only so will it be consistent with Ter- 
 tullian's more ordinary speech. 
 
 Another example of this use of "in" is found in Book 
 rV, Chapter 40, of the Adversus Marcionem, from which 
 a quotation has been made above, where Tertullian is 
 commenting on Gen. xlix. 11, — "He washed His garments 
 
 our Lord's body, but we utterly disown the interpretation that you put 
 upon Tertullian's phrase." I must press upon them, then, to make 
 my point clear, that they do not hold, in any such way as Tertullian did. 
 that the hallowed bread is our Lord's body. They hold that the Sacra- 
 ment consists of two parts, an earthly and a heavenly, — bread and our 
 Lord's body. They do not hold that the earthly part is the heavenly 
 part, and Tertullian did hold that the earthly part is made to be the body 
 of the Lord. Distinguishing, as I seem to find that Tertullian did dis- 
 tinguish, between the natural body of our Lord and His sacramental 
 body, he could say, with perfect naturalness, either "He made bread 
 to be His own body (sacramental)," or "This is My body (sacramentaO, 
 that is, the figure of My body (natural)." Tertullian's use of "figure" 
 will be considered further in Note E, p. 25£. 
 1 P. L. 1, IIGO. 
 
 i 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 43 
 
 in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes." Here 
 our author says, certainly, "He consecrated His blood in 
 wine"; but let it be observed how the sentence continues, 
 — "who then figured forth wine in blood." It is the 
 "in" of identity in both cases. ^ 
 
 It remains that earlier in this same chapter of the 
 Adv. Marcion. Tertullian, arguing for the reality of our 
 Lord's body against Docetic notions, uses these words: 
 
 "Mentioning the cup, and making the Testament to be sealed 
 in His blood, He affirms the reality of His body. For there can- 
 not be blood of any body, which is not a body of flesh. If any 
 sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, 
 not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus from the 
 evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and from the 
 evidence of the blood, a proof of the flesh. In order, however, 
 that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure 
 for blood, tmn to Isaiah, who asks, 'Who is this that cometh 
 from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah.'* ' " 
 
 "There cannot be blood of any body which is not a 
 body of flesh." Certainly not. But Tertullian was 
 here thinking of our Lord's natural body, and of bodies 
 in the natural order. If Tertullian held the view which 
 this Lecture ascribes to him, he would not have regarded 
 the blood of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist as "blood of 
 a body." But like S. Irenaeus, he would argue that if 
 wine could be truly a figure of our Lord's blood, then our 
 
 * Compare also the immediately preceding context. "In His 
 garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out His flesh, and His blood 
 in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine." The 
 "in" of identity appears in the former sentence in both its clauses, — 
 "in His garments," "in the wine." The same use of "in" is found in 
 the second clause of the other sentence, — " figured forth wine in blood." 
 It seems a particularly natural supposition that Tertullian was using 
 the word "in" with just the same shade of meaning in the clause which 
 comes between. 
 
44 THE EUCILVRISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Lord must have had real blood (in the ordinary, natural 
 use of words), and if He had real (natural) blood, He 
 must have had a real (natural) body. When Tertullian 
 wrote that "from the evidence of the flesh we get a proof 
 of the body," or (as Dr. Pusey prefers to render the 
 words) that "the proof of a body consisteth in the testi- 
 mony as to flesh," he would have been very much aston- 
 ished, if some one had charged him with saying that the 
 Church could not be called our Lord's body, not being a 
 body of flesh and blood, or with making out that our 
 Lord's body mystical, or (I may add) His body sacra- 
 mental, must necessarily be a body of flesh and blood. 
 
 IV 
 
 S. Ctprian, of Carthage, Archbishop and Martyr 
 (circa a.d. 250) 
 
 We pass on to S. Cyprian, half a century later. His 
 writings are rich in expressions of his intense conviction 
 that the sacramental elements were things of great and 
 mysterious power. No Virtualist theory can tolerate S. 
 Cyprian, nor S. Cyprian any Virtualist theory. I will 
 not multiply quotations for so simple a point as that. 
 It will be sufficient to refer to the stories which he tells of 
 persons who in one way or another profaned the Sacra- 
 ment. They are all found in Chapter 16 of his treatise 
 De Lapsis ("On those who fell away in the time of Persecu- 
 tion").^ There is the case of an infant who had been 
 taken by her nurse, and made to take part in an idol 
 sacrifice, and was later brought to the Church by her 
 parents, and communicated by a deacon from the chaHce. 
 "There followed a sobbing and a vomiting. The Eucha- 
 » P. L. i, 49&-501. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 45 
 
 rist was not able to remain in a body and mouth that had 
 been polluted. The draught which had been consecrated 
 in the blood of the Lord made its way from a mouth 
 which had been desecrated. So great is the power of the 
 Lord, so great His majesty." Again, a grown woman 
 who had sacrificed to idols, "introduced herseK secretly, 
 while we were sacrificing," Cyprian says. She essayed 
 to make her Communion, and "found not food, but a 
 sword," falling into convulsions and suffering agonies of 
 pain. A man who had thus fallen presented himself to 
 receive the Lord's body, and opening his hand found 
 there only a cinder. "Thus it was shown by the ex- 
 ample of one, that the Lord withdraws when He is 
 denied." A woman went to open the box in which she 
 was keeping a portion of the reserved Sacrament, and 
 fire rising from within the box frightened her away. 
 Certainly, Cyprian held that the consecrated elements 
 were great, mysterious, and full of awful power. 
 
 But there is very little indication in Cyprian's writings 
 of what he conceived to be the nature of that sacramental 
 power, or, in other words, what he thought those great 
 words, "the body and blood of our Lord," to mean. Like 
 his master Tertullian, he is emphatic in identifying the 
 consecrated bread and wine with the body and blood of 
 Christ. Thus he says (in Epistle 62, §4) : ^ 
 
 "Who is" more a priest of the Most High God than our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, who offered sacrifice to God the Father, and offered 
 that same which Melchizedek had offered, that is, bread and 
 wine, namely, His own body and blood.f*" 
 
 It will be observed that, so far from holding that no 
 bread and wine remain in the Christian Eucharist, S. 
 Cyprian says that our Lord offered bread and wine as 
 1 P. L. 4, 387. 
 
46 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 His sacrifice. If He only appeared to offer bread and 
 wine. He did not offer "that same which Melchizedek 
 had offered." It should be observed, too, that the 
 identification of the earthly part with our Lord's body is 
 very direct, — "bread and wine, namely. His own body 
 and blood." I venture to claim S. Cyprian as one of 
 those who thought of the Lord's body sacramental as at 
 once the same as, and yet different from, the body natural 
 in glory. It may be recalled, also, that when he was 
 speaking of the withdrawal of the Heavenly Part of the 
 Sacrament, as I quoted him above, he did not say, "The 
 body of the Lord is withdrawn," but "the Lord with- 
 draws, when He is denied." Not "the Lord's body," 
 or "the Lord's blood," but "the Lord Himself" is the 
 "Heavenly Part" of the Sacrament. The use of this 
 particular language at this point may have been acci- 
 dental. That is to say, a modern theologian might have 
 viTitten the same thing. But it fits in very exactly with 
 the course of thought which I have been ascribing to the 
 primitive Church. 
 
 Also, I note that S. Cyprian does not speak like modern 
 theologians of the body of our Lord being present "m" 
 the eucharistie bread. Dr. Pusey claims him among 
 patristic authorities for that sort of phrase, which Dr. 
 Pusey valued as opposing the opinion of Transubstantia- 
 tion. His careful scrutiny could find but ten writers 
 within the space of the first five centuries, to whom such 
 language could be ascribed. The examples from Ter- 
 tuUian do not seem to prove his point, and those from 
 Cyprian are confined to cases where the martyr speaks of 
 our Lord's ^^hlood" and speaks of it as being "in the 
 cwp." 
 
 Dr. Pusey claims broadly that "'the cup' in the Fathers 
 is altogether equivalent to the element of 'wine,' so that 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 47 
 
 *the cup' stands for the one element as much as 'the 
 bread' for the other." Certainly, "the cup" is often so 
 used, but Dr. Pusey's own quotations from S. Cyprian 
 show that this point must not be pressed. So far from 
 "the cup" being "altogether equivalent to the element 
 of wine," there are manifold examples where "the cup" 
 must mean "the chalice," quite literally. Thus, in a 
 later section of the Letter last quoted {Ep. 62, §6),^ S. 
 Cyprian writes: 
 
 "When the blood of grapes is mentioned, what else is shown 
 than the wine of the cup of the blood of the Lord.''" 
 
 Certainly, "the wine of the cup" is not to be taken as 
 equivalent to "the wine of the wine." When, then, S. 
 Cyprian goes on in the same section with these words, — 
 
 "Mention is therefore made of wine that the blood of the Lord 
 may be understood, and what was afterwards manifested in the 
 cup of the Lord might be foreshown in the predictions of the 
 prophets, " 
 
 we may understand "what was manifested in the cup 
 of the Lord" to mean "what was manifested in the 
 chalice." ^ 
 
 There remains one more passage of S. Cyprian which 
 I must quote. It is from section 9 of his Letter 62, and 
 in it he is arguing from the words of distribution: 
 
 "Wherein we find that the cup which the Lord oflfered was 
 mixed, and that that was wine which He called His blood. 
 
 1 P. L. 4, 389. 
 
 * The phrase, " Mention is made of wine that the blood of the Lord 
 may be understood" suggests Tertullian's "In bread is understood His 
 body," and both passages suggest that somehow the use of these words 
 "body" and "blood" in connection with the Holy Eucharist is an excep- 
 tional use, a use depending upon a particular understanding, a use not 
 according to men's common speech. 
 
48 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Whence it is apparent that the blood of Christ b not offered, if 
 there be no wine in the cup. " 
 
 This is another example of the use of "the cup" by S. 
 Cyprian as meaning distinctly "the chalice." I offer it 
 chiefly because of the phrase, — "the wine which He 
 called His blood." Roman theology demands such a 
 phrase as "wine which He turned to be His blood." The 
 Oxford School calls for "wine in which He made His 
 blood to dwell as within a veil." Either theology can 
 represent our Lord as calling what He offers us in the 
 chalice His blood. Neither theology really calls udne 
 "our Lord's blood," nor thinks of our Lord as doing so. 
 S. Cyprian gazed upon the consecrated wine, and called 
 that element "our Lord's blood," believing that he was 
 following the word of revelation of our Lord Himself. 
 
 C. North Italy, and the Testimony of S. Ambrose 
 and the Author of the Book De Sacramentis 
 
 I return to Italy again. The only Roman theologian 
 of note who appears between the time of S. Irenaeus and 
 the end of the fourth century is S. Hippolytus. I find 
 nothing of his that throws any light upon our present 
 questions, and we must pass directly to the testimony 
 of S. Ambrose,^ and the author of the treatise De Sacra- 
 mentis. 
 
 In approaching this testimony I take leave to remind 
 you once more of the difference which I seem to find 
 between the eucharistic pre-suppositions of the Fathers 
 
 * A great Galilean theologian is here passed over, — S. Hilary, Bp. 
 of Poictiers. lie refers largely and eloquently to the subject of the Holy 
 Eucharist, but I find nothing in his language which might not be used 
 as the expression of any high view of the Sacrament. For his use of 
 "sub Sacramento" see Note A, p. 233. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 49 
 
 and those of modern theologians. The modern student 
 cannot see the phrase "the body of the Lord" without 
 thinking of our Lord's glorified body in heaven, unless 
 he knows that the mystical body, the Church, is in question. 
 The Fathers understood (so, at least, I am maintaining) 
 that the bread of the Eucharist was "the body of our 
 Lord" in some special sense, even as the Church was 
 "the body of our Lord," in some special sense, differen- 
 tiated from His natural body. Hence comes this deeply 
 marked difference, that the modern theologian who holds 
 high views of the Sacrament has to distinguish between 
 the bread of the Eucharist and the body of the Lord. 
 The bread is to him the earthly part, and the body of our 
 Lord is the heavenly part. But the early writers identified 
 the bread and the body. They held that the bread, the 
 earthly part of the Sacrament, receiving the add^ion of 
 the heavenly part, became thus our Lord's body. The 
 modern writer explains how the bread may be called "the 
 body of our Lord," but has to acknowledge that it cannot 
 be called so in strictness of speech. The early writers 
 used constantly the language which the moderns declare 
 that they cannot in strictness use, and they never use the 
 language which some moderns consider strictly accurate, 
 at all. I mean that no ancient writer, so far as I am 
 aware, ever speaks of our Lord's body as present in the 
 bread. I shall examine the instances of such use alleged 
 by Dr. Pusey in a supplemental note (see p. 233). The 
 early writers absolutely identify "the bread" and "the 
 body of the Lord," whereas modern theology is in 
 the habit of distinguishing them. 
 
60 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 S. Ambrose, of Milan, Abp. (circa a.d. 380) 
 
 A striking example of this identification is found in 
 these words of S. Ambrose : 
 
 "So often as we receive the sacraments which by the mystery 
 of the holy prayer are transfigured into flesh and blood, we show 
 forth the death of the Lord." ^ 
 
 This passage is alleged by Roman theologians to show 
 that S. Ambrose held the theory of Transubstantiation. 
 It is an unfortunate selection for that purpose. As Dr. 
 Pusey points out (pp. 230, 231), readers of S. Ambrose 
 found this word transfigurari in their Latin version of 
 the Holy Scriptures, where it was used of the "trans- 
 figuration" of our Lord (S. Matt. xvii. 2), of Satan's being 
 "transfigured into an angel of light," of the ministers of 
 Satan being "transfigured as ministers of righteousness," 
 of false Apostles "transfiguring themselves into Apostles 
 of Christ " (2 Cor. xi. 13-15). In every one of these 
 cases the thing transfigured remains suhstantially as it was 
 before. And Dr. Pusey quotes aptly TertuUian's argu- 
 ment (in the De Resurrectione Carnis, 55) ^ to show that 
 the changing of our bodies does not mean the loss of our 
 bodies. Tertullian quotes the passage "who shall trans- 
 figure (so he read in Pliil. iii. 21) the body of our humilia- 
 tion," and goes on thus: 
 
 "If you maintain that a transfiguration and a conversion 
 amounts to the annihilation of any substance, then it follows that 
 Saul, when 'changed into another man,' passed away from his 
 own bodily substance, and that Satan himself, when 'transfigured 
 into an angel of light, ' loses his own proper character. So like- 
 
 1 De Fide IV, 125; P. L. 16, 64. » P. L. 2, 925. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 51 
 
 wise changes, conversions, and reformations will necessarily 
 take place to bring about the resurrection, but the substance of 
 the flesh will be preserved safe. " ^ 
 
 No! Certainly, S. Ambrose does not imply any dis- 
 appearance of the elements, but the contrary. In view 
 of the passages of Scripture which have been referred to 
 as containing this word "transfigured," I suggest that 
 it may have had in the mind of S. Ambrose the idea of 
 "putting on some novel glory." It might be a real 
 acquisition, as with the Transfiguration of our Lord, and 
 as with the resurrection of God's people. It might be a 
 false assumption, as with Satan or the false Apostles. 
 In the case which S. Ambrose has in hand, it is, of course, 
 a real glorification. But does S. Ambrose mean that the 
 elements are glorified by receiving our Lord's body and 
 blood? That could be called a "transfiguring" of the 
 elements, I am sure. But S. Ambrose does not say that 
 thing. He says that the elements are "transfigured into 
 flesh and blood." They receive a new glory, and that 
 glory gives them this new character. They are, not 
 merely contain, the body and blood of Christ. 
 
 Dr. Pusey quotes from S. Ambrose (De Mysteriis, 
 Chapter 9) ^ a passage far too long to be given here. 
 Chapter 8 had closed with the words, — "Light is better 
 than shadow, truth than figure, the body of the Author 
 than manna from heaven." 
 
 * It should be acknowledged that Tertullian has another passage 
 {Adv. Praxeam, 27) in which he says just the opposite: "Whatsoever is 
 transfigured into some other thing ceases to be that which it had been, 
 and begins to be that which it previously was not." But he gives no 
 proof for this judgment, as he does for the opposite one. 
 
 2 P. L. 16, 409. 
 
52 TIIE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 Then Chafpter 9 begins thus: 
 
 "Perhaps you will say, 'I see something else; how is it that 
 you assert that I receive the bo<Jy of Christ? ' . . . Let us prove 
 that this is not wliat nature made, but what the blessing con- 
 secrated, and the power of blessing is greater than that of nature, 
 because by blessing nature itself is changed." 
 
 He proceeds to give exami)lcs of the power of God to 
 change natures: Moses' rod changed to a serpent, the 
 rivers of Egypt turned to blood, the Red Sea parting, 
 Jordan driven back, the iron made to swim at tlie prayer 
 of Elislia. It will be observed that in most of these cases 
 the old nature remains, and the miracle is a miracle of 
 added qualities or powers. But all these were miracles 
 wrought by prophets, by mere men. The miracle of the 
 altar is wrought by the word of One who is God. 
 
 "If the word of Ehjah had such power as to bring down fire 
 from heaven, shall not the word of Clirist have power to change 
 the nature (species) of the elements.'* You have read concerning 
 the making of the whole world, 'He spake, and tliey were made: 
 He commanded, and they were created. ' Shall not the word of 
 Christ, which was able to make out of nothing that which 
 (formerly) was not, be able to change things which already are 
 into that which they were not.'* For giving a new nature to 
 things is not an inferior accomphshment to changing them." 
 
 "To change the nature of the elements," "change 
 things which already are into that w^hich they were not." 
 The Roman tcacliing docs not fit with S. Ambrose, for 
 his "transfiguring" leaves the elements still in existence. 
 The teaching of the Oxford School does not fit with S. 
 Ambrose, for it acknowledges no change in the nature of 
 the elements themselves, whereby they become in some 
 sense our Lord's body and blood, but claims that the 
 elements are called our Lord's body and blood to show 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 53 
 
 that our Lord's body and blood are really there without 
 change in the elements. But let us go on with the words 
 of S. Ambrose: 
 
 "But why use arguments? Let us use the examples that He 
 gives, and prove the truth of the Mystery by the example of the 
 Incarnation. Did the course of nature proceed as usual, when 
 the Lord Jesus was born of Mary? If we look to the usual course, 
 a woman ordinarily conceives when she has had intercourse 
 with a man. And this body which we make is that which was 
 born of the Virgin. Why do you seek the order of nature in the 
 body of Christ, seeing that the Lord Jesus Himself was born of 
 a virgin, not according to nature? It was the true flesh of 
 Christ which was crucified and buried; in truth, then, stands the 
 sacrament of His flesh. The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims, 
 'This is My body.' Before the blessing of the heavenly words 
 another nature is spoken of; after the consecration the body is 
 signified. He Himself speaks of His blood. Before the conse- 
 cration it has another name; after it is called blood. And you 
 say, 'Amen,' that is, 'It is true.' What the mouth utters, let 
 the heart within confess. What the voice speaks, let the soul 
 feel." 
 
 I must comment briefly on three of these phrases. 
 First, there is that strange-sounding clause, "In truth, 
 then, stands the sacrament of His flesh." I take it that 
 those words are meant to signify that "the sacrament of 
 our Lord's flesh," the bread consecrated to be His body, 
 belongs to the domain of reality. Our Lord's natural 
 flesh is real, not phantasmal; the sacrament of His flesh, 
 the bread called His body, has a real rigfet to the name. 
 Next, I note that S. Ambrose distinctly says that "the 
 body which we make," in the act of consecration, "is 
 that which was born of the Virgin." I accept that 
 saying ex animo. I hold that our Lord so takes to Him- 
 self for a body the bread of our Eucharist that it becomes 
 
64 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 an extension of His body natural, a part of that body 
 natural, and so one with it, that we may truly say just 
 such a thing as this, — "The body of the Eucharist, the 
 consecrated bread, is the body which was born in Bethle- 
 hem." I claim that the words of S. Ambrose are patient 
 of such an interpretation. The subject of the identity 
 of the eucharistic body and the body in heaven will come 
 up again, to be dealt with more fully. Meanwhile, I ask 
 attention to still another phrase, — " the sacrament of 
 His flesh," I seem to find S. Ambrose using that form 
 of words to point to the bread as being our Lord's "flesh" 
 in a sacramental sense, as distinguished from the flesh 
 in the natural sense. And this notion I find confirmed a 
 moment later by that phrase used of the wine, — "It is 
 called blood." "The body is signified" is ambiguous. 
 It might mean, either "the bread is in a sense our Lord's 
 body," or "the body of the Lord is shown to be present 
 in the bread." But "it is called blood" refers plainly to 
 the wine. I feel sure that according to the theology of 
 S. Ambrose the earthly element deserved that name. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Author of the Book, De Sacrameniis ; North 
 Italy (before a.d. 400) 
 
 We turn to the Treatise, De Sacrameniis. The author 
 is unknown, but it has been made out clearly that he was 
 a bishop in North Italy, perhaps a pupil, certainly an 
 admirer and imitator, of S. Ambrose, and of but little 
 later date. He is really another witness as to the kind 
 of teaching that S. Ambrose used to give. I take some 
 passages from his Fourth Book, Cap. iv. Sections 14-23.* 
 
 » P. L. 16, 439-144. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 55 
 
 "14. You say, perhaps, 'My bread is common bread.' But 
 that bread is bread before the words of the sacraments; when 
 the consecration has taken place, from being bread it becomes 
 the flesh of Christ. Let us then declare this. How can that 
 which is bread be the body of Christ.? By consecration. " 
 
 "How can that which is bread be the body of Christ?" 
 Our author here has a chance to explain that it is not 
 really so, but is called so because the body of Christ is 
 there behind its veil. But he does not say that. He does 
 not think it. He holds that this very bread has by the 
 consecration become a greater thing. For hear how he 
 goes on in Section 15: 
 
 "If then there is such power in the word of the Lord Jesus 
 that those things which were not should begin to be, how much 
 more does it bring to pass that those things which were should 
 still be, and should also be changed into something else. . . . 
 Before consecration it was not the body of Christ; but after 
 consecration, I tell you that now it is the body of Christ. ' He 
 spake, and it was made : He commanded, and it was created. ' 
 
 You were yourself, but you were an old creature; after you 
 were consecrated, you began to be a new creature. Do you wish 
 to know how a new creature .f* 'Every one,' says the Scripture, 
 ' in Christ is a new creature. ' " 
 
 You see how distinctly it is the doctrine of this author, 
 as of his master, S. Ambrose, that the elements continue 
 in being, and that they are also changed so as to be some- 
 thing else. And he hints, at least, at the nature of the 
 change. He tells the Christian enquirer, who is asking 
 "How can these things be?" to consider his own case. 
 Once he was an old creature, and lost; now since his 
 Baptism, his "consecration," he is a new creature, and 
 saved. What has made the difference? Of course, the 
 pupil will bethink himself that it is the indwelhng life of 
 
56 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Christ the Saviour, given liini in his Baptism, that makes 
 him a new creature. That indwelHng of our Lord's hfe 
 is what changes a man into a Christian. Our author 
 seems to have had a similar thought as to the mystery 
 of the change of our bread and wine into the body and 
 blood of our Lord. Yet the same author who is sure 
 that the elements are in some sense our Lord's body and 
 blood will also freely speak of them as figures, or like- 
 nesses, of our Lord's (natural) body and blood. In 
 Section 20 he speaks thus: 
 
 "But haply thou say est, I do not see the form (speciem) 
 of blood ! No ! but it hath a likeness. For as thou hast received 
 a Hkeness of death,^ so also thou drinkest a likeness of the 
 precious blood, that there may be no horror at gore, and that 
 none the less the price of redemption may accomplish its work. 
 You have learnt, then, that what you receive is the body of 
 Christ." 
 
 In Chapter 21 occurs a quotation from the Liturgy in 
 use in Northern Italy in the author's time: 
 
 "Wouldest thou know that it is consecrated by heavenly 
 words? Hear what the words arc. The priest says, 'Make this 
 oblation for us avaiUng, vahd, reasonable, acceptable, because it 
 is the figure of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.' " 
 
 Our writer speaks of the Eucharist as consecrated "by 
 the words" given above. It is only fair to add that he 
 is quoted as holding the idea that consecration was 
 effected by the recital of our Lord's words, "This is My 
 body," "This is My blood." "When the words of 
 Christ have operated," he says, "there is made the blood 
 
 * The reference is to Romans vi. 5, — "If we were united with Him 
 in the likeness of Ilis death," — and it is interesting to see how our 
 author looks again to the Sacrament of Baptism for an analogy to the 
 Sacrament of the Eucharist. 
 
THE EPHESINE-ROMAN TRADITION 57 
 
 of Christ" (Chapter 23). But in view of the distinct 
 statement of the writer that the consecration is effected 
 by the words of the Liturgy, given above, it seems to be 
 worthy of enquiry whether his phrase, "When the words of 
 Christ have operated," may not be meant, as S. Chrysos- 
 tom's great phrase about our Lord's Voice re-ordering the 
 elements seems to have been meant, to refer to an abiding 
 efficacy of our Lord's words spoken in the upper room. 
 The phrase of S. Chrysostom is examined in Note G, 
 p. 258. 
 
 I must call attention briefly to the phrase of S. Ambrose, 
 "This body which we make" (p. 53), and to the phrase 
 of his follower, "There is made the blood of Christ." We 
 shall find similar language used by S. Jerome in the next 
 generation. I submit that according to this doctrine 
 the body of Christ in the Eucharist is a body that can 
 be made. His body in heaven is a body which cannot 
 be made by man. 
 
 Dr. Pusey, on page 285 of his monumental book, makes 
 the strange mistake of translating the words "ibi sanguis 
 Christi efficitur," "the blood of Christ is made to be 
 there." This would certainly require efficitur ut ibi sit. 
 The same passage is rightly rendered on Dr. Pusey's 
 page 106. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN HOLY 
 SCRIPTURE, AND THE TESTIMONY OF THE 
 ALEXANDRLVN SCHOOL 
 
 IF there is any one thing that is more shocking, more 
 utterly repellent, than another, to most students who 
 have been accustomed to take high views of the Eucharistic 
 Mystery, it is the suggestion that our Lord's words," This 
 is My body," "This is My blood," are to be taken figura- 
 tively. To say, "Oh! That is a figurative expression!" 
 is the common refuge of shallow theologians when they 
 meet with a mysterious saying which offers them more 
 than they are ready to receive. Alas! They show by 
 their language, and by their behaviour, that "a figura- 
 tive expression" is to them an expression that means very 
 little, or nothing at all. I have put forth a suggestion 
 that the writers of the primitive Church were in the 
 habit of taking our Lord's great words above recited 
 as figurative. I expose my study to such a bitterness of 
 prejudice by that acknowledgment that I am bound to 
 take time for some observations on the use of figurative 
 language in Divine Revelation. 
 
 There is a great deal of it. Figurative language occurs 
 not only in the meditations of saints, as in Psalm Ixxxiv., 
 "The Lord God is a sun and a shield," where it certainly 
 means much, and not little, but also in the communication 
 of new truths to the people of God. "In the beginning 
 was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
 
 6S 
 
THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 59 
 
 Word was God" (S. John i. 1). Certainly, that great 
 title of "the Word" for the Second Person of the Blessed 
 Trinity is a figurative expression. Certainly, also, it 
 means a great deal, and we are expected to study it 
 reverently, and, with the help of God, draw out the 
 meaning. "This is My beloved Son" (S. Matt. xvii. 5) 
 is a figurative expression. It confirms from heaven what 
 S. Peter had been saying, a few days before, "Thou art 
 the Christ, the Son of the living God" (S. Matt. xvi. 16). 
 In that confession of S. Peter there are two figurative 
 expressions, Christ, which stands for "Anointed," and 
 Son. None of us could be guilty of the folly of supposing 
 that these expressions, as being figurative, were of small 
 significance. Word and Christ and Son! These words 
 carry tremendous meaning, every one of them. One 
 may say that our Lord was really "the Son of God," 
 and was really "the Lord's Anointed," — "anointed with 
 the Holy Ghost and with power." Surely. But it 
 remains that that "Sonship" is figurative, not literal, 
 and that "anointing" is figurative, not literal. Our 
 deep sense that these figurative expressions used in regard 
 to our Lord stand for realities, and magnificent realities, 
 must not make us forget the fact that God tells us these 
 great things by the method of parable. Here, then, is 
 my first point about the figurative language of Holy 
 Scripture. God, seeking to convey to us such an idea 
 as we can receive of the greatest facts, the most funda- 
 mental realities, of the universe, does habitually use the 
 language of figure. 
 
 But I must go farther. God has made His material 
 world full of pictures — of parables, so to speak, — of 
 spiritual facts. The Divine mind loves to contemplate 
 such pictures, and dwell upon them, and to use them in 
 bringing material beings to a vision of spiritual truths. 
 
60 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 And more than that, God teaches His people to look 
 through the picture to the spiritual reality which the 
 picture somehow represents, and find the spiritual reaUty 
 greater, and more splendidly real, than the earthly counter- 
 part. Bread is a natural figure for anything which 
 supplies nourishment to the world. It is a picture 
 therefore, of our Lord supplying nourishment for the 
 whole world. But the fact of our Lord as the nourish- 
 ment of a needy world is so much greater than the fact 
 of our earthly bread as the nourishment of a needy world, 
 that our Lord speaks of Himself as "the true [the genuine^ 
 bread out of heaven" (S. John vi. 32), the only "bread" 
 that is really worthy of the name. And so our Lord 
 describes Himself as "the true [the gemiinc} vine," 
 (S. John XV. 1). "Vine" is a figurative title for Him, 
 but He fulfils the idea which the vine was put into the 
 world to represent, more fully and finely and nobly than 
 any natural vine that God ever made. Not only, then, 
 is the use of figurative language for the expression of the 
 greatest spiritual realities one of the habits of the INIind 
 of God, but when God does that thing. His spiritual fact 
 is more real, not less, than the literal meaning of the 
 words which He borrows out of our halting speech. 
 
 If, then, I ascribe to the Fathers of the Church a habit 
 of regarding as figurative our Lord's words about giving 
 Ilis body and His blood in the Eucharist, I do not for 
 a moment mean to charge the Fathers with represent- 
 ing those consecrated elements as mere pictures — dis- 
 tant, ineffective, unreal pictures — of heavenly powers. 
 Plainly, they thought those elements to have become 
 inexpressibly great. They did not think that the broken 
 bread was a mere picture of our Lord's broken body, 
 nor the j)ourcd wine a mere picture of our Lord's shed 
 blood. ISIy brethren who folhnv the teachings of the 
 
THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 61 
 
 Oxford School do make the consecrated bread and wine 
 to be the merest figures. They hold that Heavenly 
 Realities are present there, under the veils of bread and 
 wine, but they hold the bread, and wine themselves to be 
 but pictures, mere " figures of the true." ^ The Fathers 
 of old time, if I miderstand them, took our Lord's words 
 in another way. "Words in His language," they might 
 have said, "mean always more than the corresponding 
 words in our language. If He says that our eucharistic 
 bread is His body, then it is something greater than even 
 His natural body of flesh and bones. If He says that 
 the wine of our Eucharist is His blood, then He means 
 something greater than even the blood that was in His 
 veins on that night in the upper room. Through the 
 body of His flesh He touched the world in which He lived 
 with blessing, but when He takes the bread of the Eucha- 
 rist for a body. He touches a vaster world than that little 
 world of Galilee and Judea, and wheresoever He touches, 
 He blesses. He heals the diseased. He makes the blind 
 see and the deaf hear, He raises the dead to newness of 
 life. Greater than even the body of His flesh is the body 
 of our Lord's bread." To call our Lord's language 
 "figurative" in such a meaning is not to make its meaning 
 poor and small. 
 
 ^ Theologians of the Oxford School are scornful of the idea that our 
 Lord's words can be taken figuratively. They regard themselves as 
 absolute literalists, because they take the word "This" as referring 
 to the Heavenly Reality, and not to the earthly element at all. Grant 
 them such a reference of the word "This" in our Lord's words of dis- 
 ti'ibution, and they are literalists as regards the word "body" and the 
 word "blood." But when they have to explain the language of the 
 Fathers, who say unhesitatingly that the bread is our Lord's body, they 
 resort at once to an explanation of that language, which is figurative in 
 the lowest order of figurative speech. S. Augustine's much-quoted 
 phrase about Sacraments having "a likeness to those things of which 
 they are Sacraments" will be considered in Lecture V, p. 134. 
 
62 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 My particular reason for bringing in this subject of 
 figurative language just here is that the great theological 
 school of Alexandria maintained for several generations 
 a tradition of particular sympathy with our Lord's mind 
 on that side of its working. Those who love figures of 
 speech and find it natural to use them in their own teach- 
 ing can find, I am sure, more readily than the born liter- 
 alist, the real meaning which the great users of figurative 
 language intended by their language to convey. Are 
 there scholars who are still under the delusion that what 
 is really meant by a figurative expression is any less real 
 than what is meant by a literal expression, as if our 
 Lord, the True Vine, the Genuine Vine,^ was less real as a 
 vine than some common vine that bears grapes in a 
 vineyard? Then for the benefit of such it may be worth 
 while to observe that in the Arian Controversy the 
 figure-loving, mystical school of Alexandria was a pillar 
 of orthodoxy, as against the contentions of the more 
 literal-minded school of Antioch, which was always a 
 fruitful mother of heresies. Arius, who was entirely a 
 son of Antioch, though he came to Alexandria to take 
 charge of a wealthy and worldly congregation, and found 
 a field to preach his heresy there, pressed upon men what 
 he called the necessary consequences of the word "Son," 
 just as in the last thousand years a long line of well- 
 meaning theologians have been pressing what they thought 
 to be the necessary consequences of our Lord's words 
 
 * Our Lord's word &\r]di.v6s seems to be used to mean that that to 
 which a certain title is now applied is more truly worthy of the title 
 than anything else to which the title is applied. "I am the True Vine" 
 might well be rendered, "I am the Rail Vine." So far is the figurative 
 from having in it any element of the unreal in the language of Him who 
 is the Truth. For the use of iXriOiPos compare Trench's Synonyms 
 of the N. r., pp. 25-29. 
 
THE USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 63 
 
 about His body and blood. Arius insisted, for example, 
 that a "son" could not be as old as his father. He 
 declared that it was impossible — if he had been writing 
 as an English theologian for to-day, he would doubtless 
 have said that it was not merely supra naturam, but 
 contra naturam, and therefore utterly incredible — that 
 a "son" should receive the whole substance of His father. 
 Arius foamed at the mouth because the "orthodox," 
 like Athanasius, reduced (as he thought) words of Divine 
 Revelation to empty figures, and evacuated them of their 
 natural meaning. But we can see now that Athanasius 
 was right. Aj-ius, taking words of God in what seemed 
 to him a more real sense, was simply contending for a 
 reality that was not there. Athanasius, so unjustly 
 charged with weakening certain great words of God, and 
 depriving them of something of their natural suggestion, 
 was really holding to the sense of God in those same 
 words, and to what had always been the supernatural 
 intention of them. If God uses words figuratively, you 
 will make no gain of reality by taking them literally. 
 And God does love the figurative use of words. 
 
 S. Clement, of Alexandria, Doctor of Theology 
 (a.d. 190-203) 
 
 I pass to the examination of the language used by 
 Alexandrian writers concerning the Eucharistic Mystery, 
 and the first that comes before us is the presbyter Clement, 
 long the head of the great catechetical school of that city. 
 His language is highly figurative, and sometimes very 
 obscure, but I think that he makes some points quite 
 clear. One is that he held the phrase, "the blood of our 
 Lord," to have two meanings, one natural, one sacra- 
 
64 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 mental. My quotation begins near the beginning of 
 Book II, Chapter 2, of the Paedagogus (Potter's Edition, 
 p. 177).i 
 
 "Two fold," he says, "is the blood of the Lord. The one is 
 His natural blood, by which we have been saved from destruc- 
 tion, the other spiritual,^ i. e., wherewith we are anointed. To 
 drink the blood of Jesus is to partake of the Lord's immortahty." 
 
 I should say that plainly his thought was that the 
 wine of our Eucharist is called "the blood of our Lord" 
 figuratively, because it is made to be the vehicle of His 
 immortal life, which is communicated to us thereby. 
 
 "But the Spirit is the strength of the Word, as blood of flesh. 
 As the wine is mixed with water, so is the Spirit with the man. 
 And the one, the mixture, nourishes to faith, and the other, the 
 Spirit, guides to immortahty. And the mingling of both, of the 
 drink and the Word, is called Eucharist, a grace renowned and 
 glorious, and those who partake of it in faith are sanctified in both 
 body and soul, the will of the Father mingling together mystically 
 the divine mixture, man, with the Spirit and the Word.^ For 
 
 1 P. G. 8, 409. 
 
 2 It is necessary to urge upon modem re<aders that to S. Clement and 
 the men of his day the word "spiritual" had no such connotation of 
 "immaterial" as the word has tmfortunately had thrust upon it in 
 modern times. That most unhappy mistake by wliich S. Paul was 
 made to appear to English readers as setting a "spiritual" body over 
 against a "natural" body, where the latter should have been called a 
 "psychic" body, a phrase which nobody would have understood, and 
 nobo<ly could have been deluded into thinking that he understood, while 
 he was getting the idea all wrong, — that pitiful mistake in translation, 
 I say, has worked havoc in the modern mind, giving to the word "spirit- 
 ual" the senses of "non-material," and (alas!) " un-real." To S. 
 Clement an earthly element of a sacrament was a "spiritual" thing, and 
 a txemendous reality. 
 
 ' Several translations of this sentence read "by the Spirit and the 
 Word." The Greek case (the Dative) will not admit the idea of Per- 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 65 
 
 in truth the Spirit is joined to the soul that is moved by it, and 
 the flesh, for the sake of which the Word was made flesh, to the 
 Word." 
 
 I seem to find here, not the thought that the joining of 
 our Lord's natural flesh and blood to the eucharistic 
 elements makes the Sacrament, but rather the thought 
 that the joining of the Spirit and the Word to bread and 
 wine makes that bread and wine to be a body and blood 
 of our Lord. The same thought comes out near the end 
 of the same chapter (Potter's Clement, p. 186),^ where he 
 says, 
 
 "He blessed wine, saying, 'Take, drink; this is my blood,' 
 [when it was] blood of the grape. For in a figure He sets forth 
 (dXX777opel) the Word which ' is shed for many for the remission 
 of sins', as a holy stream of gladness. " 
 
 Dr. Pusey advances this passage to show that S. Clement 
 held that the wine was still wine after the Consecration. 
 It stands good for that purpose, but it stands good also 
 to show that Clement thought that it was wine which 
 our Lord meant when He said, "This is My blood," — 
 wine, and not the natural blood of His own veins. A 
 like saying is found in the sixth chapter of Book I of the 
 Paedagogus (the pages in Potter's edition are 123, 124) : ^ 
 
 "The Holy Ghost makes of flesh a parable (dWriyopet) for 
 us, for by Him hath the flesh been created. Blood figures 
 (otfiTrerat) for US the Word, for as rich blood the Word hath 
 been poured into our life." 
 
 Returning to the beginning of the chapter (II. 2) which 
 I have quoted earlier, we have this strange-sounding 
 phrase : 
 
 sonal Agency. It must be translated "by means of" (as of a mere 
 instrumentality) or "with." The sentence following shows that "with" 
 was S. Clement's thought. 
 
 » P. G. 8, 428. 2 P. G. 8, 301. 
 
CG THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "The mystic symbol of the holy blood the Scripture hath called 
 wine." 
 
 Again we have a given element called "the blood" of 
 our Lord and a "mystic symbol" of His blood. The 
 explanation offered by S. Clement is, "The blood of the 
 Lord is two fold." The wine of our Eucharist is made 
 to be a sacramental, or as S. Clement likes to say, a 
 "spiritual," blood; it is a symbol of our Lord's natural 
 blood. 
 
 II 
 
 Theodotus, Heretic (last part of second century) 
 
 I follow Dr. Pusey in adding here a quotation from a 
 heretical writer, Theodotus, who was a contemporary of 
 Clement of Alexandria. His doctrine of the Eucharist 
 would seem to have been just that of the Catholic Church. 
 This passage is noteworthy as bringing together, as if 
 they were quite analogous, three sacramental consecra- 
 tions, — that of the bread of the Eucharist, that of the 
 oil of Confirmation, and that of the water of Baptism. 
 
 "And the bread and the oil are sanctified by the power of 
 the Name, not being, as they appear, the same as they were 
 taken, but by power they are changed into a spiritual power. In 
 like manner, the water, too, both that which is exorcised, and 
 that which becometh Baptism, not only contains what is inferior, 
 but also acquires sanctifying."^ 
 
 * The passage is in the Patrologia Graeca 9, col. 696. The Greek 
 phrase is r6 Mujp Kal t6 i^opKi^ofitvov Kal t6 ^dimafjia yiv6titvov 
 cannot be translated rightly, "The water which is exorcized and 
 becometh Baptism." Theodotus, using koI , . . Kal, plainly dis- 
 tinguishes two waters, a lustral holy water, and the water of Baptism. 
 Cf. article Holy Water in Diciiorary of Christian Antiquities. The 
 water of exorcism may have been at that time a Gnostic peculiarity. 
 It is not mentioned so early by any Catholic writer. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 67 
 
 I venture to remark that all the early writers thought 
 thus of sacramental elements as changed into spiritual 
 powers. According to most modern theories the elements 
 of bread and wine are not themselves spiritual powers 
 at all. They only provide a spiritual power with a local 
 habitation which it does not locally inhabit. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Origen, Greatest Teacher of the Third Century 
 (a.d. 203-253) 
 We pass to the testimony of that very great man, 
 Origen. Just because he was a great man, he often had 
 thoughts hard for common men to understand, but he 
 was a devoted, and most devout, student, a deeply loyal 
 son of the Church in every purpose of his heart, and a 
 man who drew out an almost unbounded admiration and 
 personal devotion from men (some of them really great 
 men in their time) who were his personal pupils. He 
 was the object of severe criticism, and of some ecclesiastical 
 condemnations, but so far as I am aware, no one ever 
 faulted him as misrepresenting the Church's doctrine of 
 the Eucharist. How does he represent that doctrine? 
 To him, as to S. Clement, the eucharistic body of our 
 Lord is a "typical and symbolical body." The passage 
 from which I take these words is a long one occurring in 
 his Commentary on S. Matthew, Tom. xi. n. 14. Origen 
 is commenting on the words, "Not that which entereth 
 into the mouth deJBleth the man" (S. Matt. xv. 11), and 
 he has laid down a general principle that no holy thing 
 can, of itself, without a holy action of the man's own 
 soul, hallow a man, and, on the other hand, no foul 
 thing can, of itself, without some unholy action of the 
 man's own soul, defile a man. He presently illustrates 
 by the Holy Eucharist. 
 
68 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "That which is sanctified by the Word of God and by prayer 
 doth not of itself sanctify tlie receiver; for if so, it would sanctify 
 even liim who eateth unworthily the bread of the Lord, and no one 
 would through that food become weak and sickly, or sleep. . . . 
 And in this bread of the Lord there is profit to the receiver, when 
 with mind undefiled and conscience pure he receiveth that 
 bread. And so neither by not eating, simply from the not eating 
 of the bread which is sanctified by the Word of God and by 
 prayer, do we lose any good, nor by eating do we gain any good; 
 for the cause of our loss is our wickedness and deeds of sin, and 
 the cause of our gain is our righteousness and deeds of upright- 
 ness; for this is what is meant by Paul in the words, 'neither if 
 we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse. ' 
 And if 'whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, 
 and is cast out into the draught,' and the food which is con- 
 secrated by the Word of God and by prayer, so far as regards the 
 material part, goes into the belly, and is cast out into the draught, 
 but so far as regards the prayer which cometh upon it, according 
 to the proportion of the faith, becomes beneficial, and the cause 
 of the mind's perception, as it looks to that which is beneficial, 
 then not the matter of the bread, but the word spoken over it, is 
 that which bcnefiteth him w'ho eateth it, not unworthily of the 
 Lord. And this may be said of the tj-pical and symbolical 
 body."i 
 
 "The cause of our gain is our righteousness and up- 
 rightness." That is startling doctrine! But I think 
 that what Origen means is true. He was no Pelagian, 
 to make us men our own saviours; but he perceives that 
 nothing from outside ourselves can save us, unless we 
 truly give ourselves to be saved. But it is, of course, 
 with his eucharistic doctrine that we have our chief con- 
 cern, and this has in it something to give us furiously 
 to think, as our French neighbors have a way of saying. 
 
 » Origenw Opera. Edition of De La Rue, III. 500; P. G. 13, coll. 948, 
 949. 952. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 69 
 
 For he makes it clear that he thinks of the food of the 
 Eucharist as subject to all the laws of human food, laws 
 of digestion and excretion. He knows of no "material" 
 element in the Holy Eucharist, which is not subject to 
 those laws. Surely, our Lord's body in heaven, and His 
 blood, if He has blood in heaven, which I suppose that 
 He has not, are "material" substances, and even if they 
 are present in the Eucharist after a spiritual manner, 
 should be carefully excepted when one is speaking about 
 the material part, and saying something which is not 
 true of them at all. No! Plainly, Origen thought of no 
 material part in the Eucharist except the bread and 
 wine, and when he adds, "This is true of the typical and 
 symbolical body," he leaves no room for us to say that 
 he is distinguishing between this typical body, the bread, 
 and a more real body. If it be objected that Origen 
 may have held that our Lord's body in heaven was not 
 now a material body, I will simply say, "Then grant me 
 at least that Origen's idea of a 'typical and symbolical' 
 body was of a body of bread which could be eaten and 
 digested. He does not think of a symbolical body as 
 being the identical body which it symbolizes." 
 
 For further illustration of Origen's habit of thinking of 
 the bread of the Eucharist as being, rather than con- 
 taining, our Lord's body, let me quote two passages: 
 
 "We, giving thanks to the Creator of the universe, eat the 
 bread offered with thanksgiving Uvxapiarias) and prayer over 
 the things offered, which bread becometh a body passing holy,^ 
 
 ^ Dr. Pusey and Dr. Darwell Stone both translate auna ayiov ti, 
 "a certain holy body," or "a kind of holy body," which would be a 
 version very welcome to me, but I am bound to point out that rt follow- 
 ing an adjective qualifies the adjective, and not the noun, and (as in our 
 dialect phrases, "some strong," "some talkative," "some good-looking") 
 means that the quality denoted by the adjective belongs to the subject 
 
70 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 wliich halloweth those who use the same with a sound 
 purpose." ^ 
 
 "Ye, who are wont to be present at the Divine Mysteries, 
 know how, when ye receive the body of the Lord, ye keep it with 
 all care and veneration, lest any particle of it fall, lest any of 
 the consecrated gift escape you."* 
 
 It will, of course, be said by some that Origen was 
 thinking of a greater and heavenly Thing, present, invisi- 
 ble, in a visible sacrament. But strictly there can be no 
 such thing as a "particle" of the "heavenly body" of the 
 Oxford School. Origen was plainly calling bread "the 
 body of the Lord." I add further passages which seem 
 to me to make it clear that Origen found in the elements 
 a sacramental body and blood of our Lord, rather than 
 His natural body. In one of them Origen distinguishes 
 the blood of the flesh from the blood of the Word, and 
 in the other he calls the body of our Lord, which is offered 
 us in the Sacrament, His eucharistic body. 
 
 "But thou, who hast come to Christ, the true High Priest, 
 who by His own blood hath made God propitious to thee, and 
 reconciled thee to the Father, stop not at the blood of the flesh, 
 but learn rather the blcxxl of the Word, and hear Himself saying 
 to thee, 'This is My blood, which is shetl for you for the remis- 
 sion of sins.' He who is imbued with the Mysteries knoweth 
 the flesh and blood of the 'Word of God.'"' 
 
 "Therefore further on in the Psalm, hinting at the mystical 
 food, as it seems. He said, 'Taste, and see that the Lord is good.' 
 Perchance exhorting to taste Christ Himself, he hinted by these 
 
 in an indefinite, that is an unmeasured, an immeasurable, way. "A 
 certain holy body" would require auna ri &yiop. See further in Note F, 
 p. 256. 
 
 » Contra Cclvim, 8, 33; T. G. 11, 156.5. 
 
 2 In Kxodum. Horn. xiii. 3; P. G. \i, .SOI, 
 
 » In Lcvil.. Horn. ix. 10; P. G. li. 523. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 71 
 
 words at His body, whereof there was a symbol in the Law, the 
 eucharistic body of Christ succeeding the shew-bread." ^ 
 
 A greater symbol, the eucharistic body, succeeding a 
 lesser symbol, the shew-bread, seems to be the connection 
 of thought. 
 
 But it may be said that Origen has a passage in which 
 he says expressly that our Lord did not call bread His 
 body, and did not call wine His blood. That would not 
 be quite accurate. Origen says, "Not that visible bread 
 . . . did He call His body, but the Word, in the Mystery 
 of which that bread was to be broken; nor did He call 
 that visible drink His blood, but the Word, in whose 
 Mystery that drink was to be poured out." It is a fairly 
 familiar figure of rhetoric. We say that a man did not 
 do one thing, but another, where every one knows that 
 he did both, meaning that the second was vastly more 
 important than the first. To say that a man did not do 
 one thing, but another, in that particular sort of rhetorical 
 figure, is an express indication that the writer regards 
 the man as having really done that former thing. Keble's 
 lines will be remembered: 
 
 "Oh! come to our Communion-feast, 
 Where present in the heart, 
 Not in the hands, the eternal Priest 
 Doth His true Self impart." 
 
 Literal-minded people persuaded the poet in later life 
 to change "Not in the hands" to "As in the hands." 
 There was not the slightest change in the poet's thought. 
 So it was with Origen. The whole object of the Sacra- 
 ment, he would say, is to make men partakers of God 
 the eternal Word. In the ultimate meaning He is Him- 
 
 1 Sel. in Psalm. Ed. De La Rue, Tom. ii, p. 520; P. G. 12, 1068, 
 1069. 
 
72 THE EUCILVRISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 self the Food of His people. You must learn to look 
 through the Sacrament and beyond the Sacrament to 
 the Lord Himself. In such a spirit Origen writes what 
 Dr. Pusey calls "a passage of great diflBculty": 
 
 "That bread which God the Word confesses to be His own 
 body is the word that nourishes souls. It is the word pro- 
 ceeding from God the Word. It is bread from the heavenly 
 Bread, which is placed upon that table of wliich it is written, 
 'Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that trouble 
 me.' And that drink which God the Word confesses to be His 
 blood is the Word that gives drink and excellent gladness to 
 [literally, "bedeweth and inebriateth"] the hearts of those who 
 drink, which Word is in that cup of wliich it is written, 'And 
 Thy gladdening cup, how excellent it is.' And that drink is 
 that fruit of the True Vine, which says, 'I am the True Vine.' 
 And it is the blood [the secret of the hfe] of that Grape which, 
 cast into the wine-press of the Passion, brought forth this 
 drink. So also the bread [that wliich really sustauis hfe] is the 
 Word of Christ, made of that Seed-corn which, faUing into the 
 ground, yields much fruit. For not that visible bread which 
 He held in His hands did the Word call His body, but the Word 
 in the mystery of wliich that bread was to be broken. Nor did 
 He call that visible drink His blow!, but the Word in the mys- 
 tery of which that drink was to be poured out. For what else 
 can the body of God the Word, or His blood, be but the word 
 which nourishes, and the word wliich gladdens the heart?" 
 
 I interrupt my quotation here to say that I take Origen's 
 meaning in these last words to be something like this: 
 Any incarnation of God must be an allegory. The body of 
 God must be an allegory of His desire to touch the world. 
 The blood of God must be an allegory of His desire to 
 animate the world. The "body of the Lord" and the 
 "blood of the Lord" mean in the highest view His means 
 of doing these two things, His whole power to express 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 73 
 
 Himself and to communicate Himself. And Origen sums 
 up all our Lord's power to express Himself and His 
 means of expressing Himself in this one description, 
 *'the ward." He goes the whole length of saying in one 
 of his Homilies on Numbers, that we "drink the blood of 
 Christ, not only in the way of Sacraments, but when we 
 receive His words, in which He consists" {In Num. Horn. 
 vii. 5).^ And yet to make him say that what he would 
 call the lower meaning of the sacramental words was not 
 literally true, would be to make him contradict himself 
 quite hopelessly. Origen believed in a great sacramental 
 grace that belonged to the bread and the cup of the 
 Eucharist, and in his next following words, which seem 
 to me to be very important, he further plainly distinguishes 
 the one grace from the other. 
 
 "Why then did he not say, 'This is the bread of the new 
 covenant.' Because the bread is the word of righteousness, 
 by eating which souls are nourished, while the drink is the word 
 of the knowledge of Christ according to the mystery of His 
 birth and passion. Since, therefore, the covenant of God is set 
 for us in the blood and passion of Christ, so that, beheving the 
 Son of God to have been born, and to have suffered according 
 to the flesh, we may not in [mere] righteousness be saved, in 
 which alone, without faith in the passion of Christ, there could 
 be no salvation, for this reason it was said of the cup only, 'This 
 is the cup of the new covenant.'" ^ 
 
 All this is mystical in the highest degree. It seems 
 quite plain that Origen accepted with all his heart the 
 common teaching of the Church as to the greatness of the 
 sacramental elements, and that the bread of the Eucharist 
 
 1 P. G. 12, 701. 
 
 2 In Matt. Tractate 35, § 85. Ed. De La Rue T. iii. 897; P. G. 13, 
 754, 755. 
 
74 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 was verily Christ's body, and the wine His blood. Then 
 he embroidered upon these simpler truths soaring mysti- 
 cisms, in which also he preached great truths. My own 
 point is that when he puts aside the lower truth to make 
 room for the higher, the thing which he thus puts aside, 
 and in putting thus aside, shows to be the accepted 
 doctrine of the Church, taught to all beginners in Christian 
 doctrine, is just what I have been saying, — The bread 
 is, not contains, our Lord's body, and the wine is, not 
 contains. His blood. When Origen is urging Christians 
 to rise from the Sacrament to our Lord Himself, it is not 
 from His glorified body to His yet more glorious Person, 
 that Origen calls their thoughts, but from the bread and 
 wine to the Word, expressing Himself in all manner of 
 "words." When he calls men to lift up the eyes of their 
 faith above the bread and wine to what they stand for, 
 it is not to our Lord's glorified body in heaven that he 
 calls them, but straight to the Heavenly Word in His 
 own Person. He simply has nothing to say of the glorified 
 body of our Lord at all. I am sure that Origen would 
 have said, with other Fathers of the Church, that the 
 eucharistic body of our Lord was one with our Lord's 
 body in heaven. He might well have said that it was the 
 same with that body, if it had come in his way to say so. 
 But that body does not come before him in his mystical 
 flights. 
 
 IV 
 
 S. DiONTSIUS THE GrEAT, HeAD OF THE CATECHETICAL 
 
 School, a.d. 232, Archbishop of Alexandria, 
 A.D. 247 
 
 From Origen's great successor in the Catechetical 
 School, S. Dionysius, Dr. Pusey quotes several passages 
 in his Catena, but I find nothing in them that bears upon 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 75 
 
 the particular points which I am investigating, except 
 that in a letter to a bishop, Basilides, he speaks of coming 
 to the Holy Communion as touching the body and blood 
 of Christ. That certainly looks as if he thought of the 
 elements themselves as being really our Lord's body and 
 blood. I ought to add that in his "letter to Paul of 
 Samosata," * if it be genuine, Dionysius uses this language, 
 "in order that we, the faithful, may be able to contain 
 Him, and to become the abode of God, receiving Him 
 whole." But there is nothing to show, or to hint, that 
 "receiving God whole" had for S. Dionysius the connota- 
 tion of the modern theological idea of the presence of 
 "the whole Christ, body, blood, soul, and Divinity in 
 every particle of the bread, and in every drop of the 
 wine." 
 
 S. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, 
 A.D. 327-373 
 
 We pass to that very great man, Athanasius. One of 
 his most striking expressions is preserved to us (from a 
 sermon addressed to the newly baptized) in a sermon of 
 Eutychius, a Patriarch of Constantinople in the sixth 
 century: ^ 
 
 "So long as the supplications and prayers are not yet made, 
 bare is the bread and the cup. But when the great and mar- 
 vellous prayers are completed, the bread becomes the body, 
 and the wine the blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 ^ We are told expressly by the Council of Antioch referred to in 
 Eusebius, H. E. vii. 30, that Dionysius wrote a letter to the council, but 
 would not consent to write to such a one as Paul. But this Epistle 
 may after all be that of Dionysius, with a false heading, "to Paul of 
 Samosata," instead of "concerning Paul of Samosata." 
 
 ^ The passages may be found in Patrol. Graeca, 26, col. 1325. 
 
76 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 I ask you to note (as against the Roman theory) that 
 he does not say that before the consecration the elements 
 are bread and wine, but that afterward they are not 
 bread and wine. He says that at first they are "mere," 
 or "bare," bread and wine, and thus he imphes that 
 afterward they are bread and wine with an additional 
 character. He does not say that the added fact is our 
 Lord's body. He says rather that the elements them- 
 selves (with this additional fact, which he does not define) 
 are the body and blood of the Lord. Further on in the 
 sermon, he gives the same testimony still more tellingly : 
 
 " Let us come to the consecration of the mysteries. This bread 
 and this cup, so long as the prayers and supplications are not 
 yet said, are bare things (lAiXA). But when the great prayers 
 and the holy suppHcations are sent up to God, the Word descends 
 upon the bread and the cup, and His body is produced " {yiverai). 
 
 I venture to claim that S. Athanasius clearly regarded 
 the miracle of the Altar as a close parallel with the miracle 
 of the Incarnation. He represents the Word as descend- 
 ing upon the bread and wine of our Eucharist and making 
 for HimseK a body, even as he descended into the womb 
 of the blessed Virgin, and made for Himself a body. 
 "This is a doctrine of 'Impanation,' " I. imagine that 
 some of my friends will be saying. If it is the doctrine 
 of all the Fathers, I need not mind its being called by a 
 nick-name; but I may remark that "Impanation" is a 
 very late theological word, and stands for a doctrine 
 that our Lord's natural body is locally included in the 
 bread and wine of the Eucharist. I certainly do not 
 find any such teaching in the writings of the early Church, 
 nor commend any such. The analogy of the miracle of 
 the Incarnation and the miracle of the Eucharist will 
 come up for fuller consideration in my Seventh Lecture. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 77 
 
 i 
 I simply point out now that it was not a new thought of 
 the writers of the fifth century. 
 
 Meanwhile I must for honesty exhibit the kind of 
 language used by S. Athanasius, which would be most 
 likely to be appealed to as conveying the idea of some 
 modern theologians. Thus in the fourth of his Festal 
 Letters, that which announced the date of Easter for 
 A.D. 332, he uses these words: 
 
 "Our Saviour, also, since He was changing the typical for the 
 spiritual, promised them that they should no longer eat the 
 flesh of a lamb, but His own, saying, 'Take, eat and drink, this 
 is My body and My blood.' " ^ 
 
 "Not the flesh of a lamb, but His own." If you start 
 with the assumption that our Lord has not, and cannot 
 have, any other body than His natural body, as most 
 modern theologians do, you must acknowledge that this 
 points to our Lord's natural body. But surely, if our 
 Lord makes bread to be His body. His flesh, in some 
 new sense, that flesh is "His own." I add that if we 
 take our Lord's natural body to be meant, we must make 
 a considerable explanation as to its presence "after the 
 manner of spirit" in the sacramental elements, or under 
 their veils, which the Fathers never do make. They do 
 not seem to have taught anything which to their minds 
 required such explanation. 
 
 As an example of what Athanasius does have to say 
 when the matter of "spiritual" interpretation comes 
 directly in his way, I give a passage from the fourth of 
 his Dogmatic Letters to Serapion {Ey. ad Serapion. iv. 
 19), in which he has been considering the words, "It is 
 the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." 
 
 1 P. G. 26, 1379. 
 
78 THE EUCIL\RISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "Here also He has used Ixifli terms about Himself, namely 
 flesh and spirit. And He distinguished the spirit from what 
 relates to the flesh, in order that they might beUeve not only 
 in what was visible in Him, but also in what was invisible, and 
 might thereby learn that what He says is not fleshly, but spirit- 
 ual. How many would the body be sufficient for, for eating, 
 that it should become the food of the whole world? But for this 
 reason He made mention of the ascension of the Son of Man into 
 heaven, in order that He might draw them away from the bodily 
 notion, and that from henceforth they might learn that the 
 aforesaid flesh was heavenly eating from above, and spiritual 
 food given by Him. For He says, 'What I have spoken unto 
 you is spirit and life,' as much as to say, 'That which is mani- 
 fested and is given for the life of the world is the flesh which 
 I wear. But tliis and its blood shall be given to you by Me 
 spiritually as food, so that this may be imparted spiritually to 
 each one, and may become to all a preservative for resurrection 
 to eternal Hfe.' " ^ 
 
 I note with particular interest the suggestion that our 
 Lord wanted to call attention from what was visible in 
 Him to what was invisible, and his enquiry as to how 
 much our Lord's body could do towards feeding a whole 
 world, as showing that he really thought the heavenly 
 reality in the Eucharist to be our Lord's life, rather than 
 our Lord's body. Certainly, when Athanasius represents 
 our Lord as speaking of "the flesh that I wear," he is 
 thinking of our Lord's natural body. When, then, 
 Athanasius goes on to present our Lord as saying, "This, 
 and its blood, shall be given to you spiritually as food," 
 many will understand him as meaning precisely what I 
 have just now declared that the Fathers never say. I 
 grant that the language can be taken in the sense of the 
 Oxford School without the least forcing. But I claim 
 that it is entirely patient of the other interpretation, too, 
 1 P. 0. 26, 665-667. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 79 
 
 — "This, my natural body, shall be given to you spirit- 
 ually through its extension which is My sacramental body." 
 I venture to think also that the latter interpretation 
 accords better with the earlier part of this same passage, 
 and with the other passages which I have set before you. 
 
 VI 
 
 Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, Contemporary 
 OF S. Athanasius 
 
 Bishop Serapion has left a Book of Prayers, which has 
 of late years been restored to the Church's study. In it 
 we find a eucharistic Anaphora containing this Invoca- 
 tion: 
 
 "O God of truth, let Thy Holy Word come upon this bread, 
 that the bread may become the body of the Word, and upon this 
 cup, that the cup may become the blood of the Truth." 
 
 Does Serapion think of the body of the Eucharist as 
 our Lord's natural body, coming from heaven in a heavenly 
 manner, to us unknown? or as a special, sacramental 
 body, of a new order .'* The fact that he calls the bread 
 a "likeness" of our Lord's body natural seems to me to 
 point to the latter conclusion. These are the words used: 
 
 "To Thee we have oflfered this bread, the likeness of the body 
 of the Only -begotten. This bread is the likeness of the holy 
 body, because the Lord Jesus Christ in the night in which He was 
 betrayed took bread, and brake, and gave it to His disciples, 
 saying, 'Take, and eat, this is My body, which is being broken 
 for you for the remission of sins. ' Wherefore we also, making 
 the Ukeness of the death, have offered the bread. . . . We have 
 ofiPered also the cup, the likeness of the blood, because the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, taking a cup after supper, said to His own dis- 
 ciples, 'Take, drink, this is the new covenant, which is My blood 
 which is being poured out for you for the remission of trespasses.' 
 
80 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Wherefore we also have oflFered the cup, presenting a likeness of 
 the blood." 
 
 Dr. Darwell Stone remarks that this use of the word 
 "Hkeness" (to duolcofxa) occurs only before the Invoca- 
 tion. Quite true, but it occurs after the solemn recital 
 of our Lord's words, "This is My body," "This is My 
 blood." Theologians who hold that these are words of 
 Consecration are estopped from suggesting that this 
 word of "likeness" is said of unconsecrated elements. 
 Or is it meant by Dr. Stone that Serapion himself regarded 
 the consecration as effected by the Invocation, and so 
 used language which he would not have used, if he had 
 not thus erred? But even supposing that Serapion used 
 the word "likeness" of elements which he regarded as 
 still unconsecrated, which I fully believe to be the case, 
 it is noteworthy that he gives our Lord's words, "This is 
 My body," as his own reason for calling this bread a 
 likeness of our Lord's body. 
 
 It remains to quote a still earlier passage from the 
 same Anaphora: 
 
 "O Lord of Hosts, fill also this sacrifice with Thy power and 
 with Thy participation; for to Thee have we offered this living 
 sacrifice, this bloodless offering." 
 
 I venture to assert that that, so common, patristic 
 plirase, "the bloodless sacrifice," which we are now 
 beginning to meet, carries in it at least a suggestion that 
 those who used it thought that the word "blood" was 
 used in a figurative sense in our Lord's revelation of the 
 Holy Eucharist. It does not seem to me a natural phrase 
 to have grown up in the minds of men who believed that 
 blood was offered in their sacrifice, no matter how much 
 they may have thought of it as blood raised into a new 
 and higher order of being. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 81 
 
 VII 
 
 S. DiDTMus, Head of the Catechetical School, 
 Second Half of the Foubth Century 
 
 Our next witness shall be another head of the Catecheti- 
 cal School, Didymus, blind from childhood, so that he 
 never learned to read, who yet became a noted teacher, 
 numbering among his pupils Jerome, and Jerome's some- 
 time friend, and later adversary, Rufinus. Jerome used 
 to speak of him as "my seer," because he, blind, saw so 
 much more than common men. In a commentary on 
 Psalm xl. 7 (in the LXX version, which gives "A body 
 hast Thou prepared for me," while our English Versions 
 number the verse differently, and give "Mine ears hast 
 Thou opened") he writes: 
 
 "Having abolished all Jewish sacrifices, . . . He brings in, 
 in place therof , the bloodless and reasonable sacrifice of the body 
 and blood of the Lord, in the new song of the new covenant, of 
 which (body and blood) He said, 'Whoso eateth My flesh and 
 drinketh My blood hath eternal life.' Wherefore He said, 
 'Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not; but a body Thou hast 
 prepared for Me.' But Christ Himself prepared for the Church 
 a body, which is the Lord's. And that He did not vaguely, 
 but at the time of the mystical supper, when He said, 'Take, 
 and eat.' This body, then, He prepared for our participation." 
 (Quoted in Pusey, p. 442).^ 
 
 ' The original is to be found in the Expositio Patrum Graecorum 
 in Psalmos of Corderius, 748. 
 
 I feel that I must add here the Greek of one sentence, with a translation 
 of my own. For S. Didymus wrote this: 
 
 KarriprlaaTO au/xa rij iKKXijaiq., Sr]\ad^, t6 KvpiaKof Kirhs 6 XpiffToi, 
 oix air^w, dXXd oiiry Kotpy kt\. . . . Tore rolvw KaT-qpruraTo rb 
 ff CO/JO irpos nerLXrfipLV. 
 
 " A body did Christ Himself prepare for the Church, that is to say, 
 that body which represents the Lord, not without plan, but on the 
 
82 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 I understand S. Didymus to say that our sacrifice is 
 "without (Hteral) blood." That would be my inter- 
 pretation of his "bloodless sacrifice." He also says that 
 our Lord prepared for His Church a body, which was 
 His own body, and yet a body newly prepared, at the 
 time of the Institution of the Holy Eucharist. He seems 
 to distinguish the body thus and then prepared from the 
 natural body of our Lord, prepared thirty-four years 
 earlier. 
 
 VIII 
 
 S. Theophelus, Archbishop of Alexandria 
 (circa a.d. 400) 
 
 Two more Alexandrians shall be quoted, bringing us 
 to the end of the fourth century. S. Theophilus is last 
 in order, having been Archbishop from a.d. 385 to a.d. 
 412. But I quote him first, because he has but a single 
 word to say, and a slight one. 
 
 The Festal Letter of Theophilus for a.d. 402 is preserved 
 for us in a Latin translation by S. Jerome, in his Letter 
 XCVIII.,^ and in it the Pope of Alexandria speaks of 
 
 "the bread of the Lord, by which the body of the Saviour is 
 shown." 
 
 As usual with the Fathers, it is the outward element 
 which is spoken of as "the bread of the Lord," and it is 
 not said, "in which the body of the Saviour is present," 
 or "in which the body of the Saviour is hidden," but 
 "by which the body of the Saviour is shown,'" I take the 
 
 very occasion etc. ... At that time, then, did He prepare the body 
 for participation. ' ' I may not have hit upon the right phrase to show 
 what S. Didymus meant by r6 KvpioKdv; but certainly it is not the 
 same as t6 Kvplov. 
 » P. L. i. 801. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 83 
 
 phrase as meaning, "in which you see that which our 
 Lord has taken to be His body sacramental." I do not 
 think that it can be said without somewhat severely 
 straining language, that by the element of bread in the 
 Eucharist our Lord's natural body is "shown." That is 
 just what, according to certain modern theologies, it is 
 not. It is there, but it is hidden. S. Theophilus seems to 
 have been thinking on different lines. 
 
 IX 
 
 S. Macarius, Monk, (a.d. 801-391) 
 
 I turn to S. Macarius, who lived for sixty years in the 
 wilderness, and came to be an object of almost boundless 
 admiration among the orthodox. 
 
 In his Homily 27 he has this language, — "that in 
 the Church bread and wine are offered, an antitype of 
 His flesh and blood, and that they who partake of the 
 visible bread, spiritually eat the flesh of the Lord." * 
 
 Calling bread and wine "an antitype" of the body and 
 blood seems to me to imply that the bread and wine are 
 really existent things. But I must acknowledge that 
 that particular phrase will bear readily enough either 
 (1) the Virtuahst interpretation, "the elements are the 
 outward sign of a thing not present save in force and 
 eJEcacy," or (2) the interpretation of the Oxford School, 
 "the elements are the outward sign of a thing which they 
 conceal within their veils," or (3) the idea which I am here 
 presenting as that of the Fathers, "the elements are made 
 actuaUy to be our Lord's body and blood in a sense which 
 is new and unique." A great deal of patristic language 
 wiD bear either of these three interpretations. But in 
 1 P. G. 34, 705. 
 
84 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 his Homily 4 Macarius uses language which seems to 
 me to be consistent only with the last of these three 
 views of the Eucharistic Mystery. These are his words: 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord cometh to the refreshment of worthy 
 souls, to their exaltation and delight and life everlasting. For 
 tlie Lord emhodicth Iliniscif even into food and drink, (as it is 
 written in the Gospel, *He that eateth of this bread shall live for 
 ever,' that He may ineffably rest the soul, and fill it with spiritual 
 joy; for He saith, 'I am the bread of life.' In hke manner [He 
 embodieth Himself] into drink of a heavenly fountain, as He 
 saith, 'He who drinketh of this water which I shall give him, it 
 shall be in him a fountain of hving water springing up unto 
 eternal life.' And we were all, it says, made to drink of the 
 same drink." ^ 
 
 Dr. Pusey warns us (p. 446, n. 1) that "there is no 
 special stress, in this passage, on the word aufiaTowoiei, 
 'embodies,' as though it expressed the mode of the Presence 
 of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. It does express an 
 indwelling, so to speak, a Presence within the consecrated 
 elements, but no relation to them (such as ' Consubstantia- 
 tion' has been used to express), nor any analogy to the 
 Incarnation. For S. Macarius uses this same word, in 
 this very context, to express the indwelling of the Godhead 
 in faithful souls." I confess that I cannot follow this 
 argument. For in the first place, I know not by what 
 authority Dr. Pusey can speak for S. Macarius, and assure 
 us that the elder saint laid no stress on his so remarkable 
 word <T03fjLaTOTroLel. Then, further, I should say that in 
 the case of our Lord's indwelling in faithful souls He had 
 not only a presence in them, but "a relation to them." 
 And still further, I should say confidently that in the 
 indwelling of our Lord in faithful souls our Lord Himself 
 means us to find an "analogy to the Incarnation." I 
 
 » P. G. 34, 481. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL 85 
 
 cannot see how it Is proved that S. Macarius did not 
 think of our Lord as taking to Himself the bread of the 
 Eucharist to be a body, distinct from His natural body, 
 when it is shown that S. Macarius uses the same word of 
 our Lord's embodying Himself in faithful souls, by which 
 act we all agree that He does make for Himself a body 
 distinct from His natural body, being, in fact. His mystical 
 body, the Church. Let me write down a few of the 
 sentences from this context of S. Macarius, and let them 
 speak for themselves. 
 
 "The Infinite and Unapproachable and Uncreated God . . . 
 embodied Himself, and, so to speak, contracted Himself from 
 His unapproachable glory, that He might be able to be united 
 with His visible creatures (as with souls of saints and with 
 angels) that they might be able to partake of the Ufe of the God- 
 head. . . . The Infinite and Inconceivable God . . . con- 
 tracted Himself, and put on the limbs of this body, and gathered 
 Himself from His unapproachable glory, and for His tenderness 
 and love for men, being transformed, embodies Himself, and 
 immingles Himself, and takes holy and well-pleasing souls, and 
 becomes 'one Spirit' with them (according to the divine saying 
 of Paul), soul, so to speak, to soul, and substance to substance, 
 that the soul may be able to live in newness, and feel the im- 
 mortal Ufe, and become partaker of the incorruptible glory. 
 . . . When He; wiUeth, He becometh fire, . . . When He 
 willeth. He is joy and peace, . . . But if He will to liken 
 HimseK to one of His creatures, . . . He can do all things as 
 He wills. . . . All things are easy for Him, changing Himself, 
 as He willeth, for souls faithful and worthy of Him. . . . For 
 the Lord embodieth Himself even into food and drink." 
 
 S. Macarius says that our Lord embodies Himself in 
 His Church, and in some like sort "embodies Himself" 
 in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. I am willing, 
 and glad, to leave that with you, as my last word for 
 to-day. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 BODIES IDENTIFIED, NOT NECESSARILY BODIES 
 IDENTICAL, AND EXAMINATION OF THE TES- 
 TIMONIES OF THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 
 
 SOME years ago, I found in a Manual of Instruction 
 for Confirmation and First Communion, — a most 
 excellent Manual, by the way, — prepared by a priest of 
 the American Church, who has since been made a bishop, 
 this extraordinary phrase: "Note carefully the distinction 
 between the bread and wine and the Body and Blood of 
 our Lord." ^^ Extraordinary I" you may say. "What is 
 extraordinary about that?" Well, it is certainly a very 
 • natural expression in these days. It is a fair expression 
 of the general theological attitude of the Church, of the 
 West, at any rate, for a thousand years past. But it 
 does seem extraordinary to one who comes to it with 
 a mind steeped in the language of the Fathers of the 
 first five centuries. Distinction between the consecrated 
 bread and wine of the Eucharist, on the one hand, and 
 the body and blood of our Lord! A\Tiy, the idea would 
 have been to all the early writers of the Church repulsive 
 and unintelligible.^ I am afraid that in their haste and 
 
 * A Roman writer (Fr. Vassall-Phillips in his translation of S. Optatus, 
 p. 100, n. 1) rebukes one of our modern Anglicans for telling a story out 
 of S. Optatus, and using this language: "The consecrated elements were 
 thrown to the dogs." Fr. Vassall-Phillips complains, most justly: 
 "S. Optatus WTites nothing concerning 'the consecrated elements.' 
 The very word 'elements' would have been incomprehensible to him in 
 
 86 
 
BODIES IDENTIFIED, BUT NOT IDENTICAL 87 
 
 heat they would have called it "heresy." I hasten to 
 say that I do not call it "heresy." But I ask you to hold 
 your minds open to the evidence that such Christian 
 writers as are to speak to us to-day could not have said 
 such a thing, and could not have understood such a thing. 
 They could distinguish between our Lord's body in the 
 Eucharist and our Lord's body in heaven. They could 
 never have distinguished between the consecrated bread 
 and our Lord's body in the Eucharist. Those were two 
 names for the same thing. 
 
 But here I must enter a cautela, or if it shall seem to 
 any hearers a better phrase, make an acknowledgment. 
 Though the early Christian writers distinguish the eucha- 
 ristic body of our Lord from His natural body in which 
 He lived this earthly life, they yet identify these two 
 bodies, and sometimes ascribe to one what belongs to the 
 other. We shall find striking examples of these modes 
 of speech in the writings of S. Augustine, coming to be 
 considered in our next Lecture. If, instead of having 
 numerous passages of his writing touching the mystery 
 of the Eucharist, we had but two or three, and those 
 limited to the type in which he speaks of Jews converted 
 shortly after our Lord's Ascension as drinking of the 
 blood which they had shed, S. Augustine would be 
 quoted triumphantly as holding that the body which is 
 upon the altar is identical with the body which hung upon 
 
 this connection. He does call the Eucharist 'the holy body* and 'the 
 body of Christ.' It is impossible to avoid observing the contrast be- 
 tween Catholic terminology of the fourth, and Anglican terminology of 
 the twentieth century." Quite true! It should be added that there 
 are contrasts between modern Roman theology and that of the fourth 
 century, too. Also, the early writers all held that the consecrated 
 bread and wine remained as bread and wine, — they could have under- 
 stood that, — and they spoke always of that bread and wine as being 
 (not containing) the body and blood of the Lord. 
 
88 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 the cross. He is so quoted even now. But we shall 
 find that he has other passages not easily reconcilable with 
 that view. 
 
 Yet here I can imagine some of the friends with whom 
 I am usually in close agreement theologically, — friends 
 who hold the "Oxford view," — saying to me, "It is 
 necessary that we interpret S. Augustine and other 
 Fathers so as to bring them into consistency with this 
 view which you are rejecting. If they identify the 
 natural body of our Lord with the body on the altar, 
 as you yourself acknowledge, and eagerly profess, then 
 it simply cannot be that they distinguish one from the 
 other. You cannot, — no rational being can, — distin- 
 guish two bodies, and yet identify them. You cannot 
 assign to one body the things which belong to another 
 body, on the groimd that each is the body of the Lord." 
 
 I know how irresistible that argument must seem to 
 one who advances it. But let us consider. S. Paul 
 teaches the resurrection of the flesh. He teaches the 
 identity of the body that is raised with the body that is 
 laid down. "AU flesh is not the same flesh" is part of 
 his argument, and suggests that he is prepared for much 
 of difference. But certainly he teaches identity. "It is 
 sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption, ... It 
 is sown a psychic body; it is raised a spiritual body." 
 It is the same subject of which he predicates the "corrup- 
 tion" and the "incorruption," the condition of being 
 "psychical" — the translation "natural" has done a 
 world of harm — and the condition of being "spiritual." 
 S. Paul stands ready to say that the body which is sown 
 is raised. I suppose that every man is ready to say that 
 the body which he wears now is the body in which he 
 was bom, and grew up to manhood. And yet the body 
 which I am wearing now has, quite possibly, not a single 
 
BODIES IDENTIFIED, BUT NOT IDENTICAL 89 
 
 particle of the matter which I was wearing sixty-five 
 years ago. Identity of matter is not in the least necessary 
 to secure the identity of my body in one estate of being 
 with my body in another estate of being. Still more is 
 this true, one may think, in the case of the resurrection. 
 S. Paul teaches that the new body is a very different body 
 indeed from the old one in its character and qualities. 
 In his figure of the seed sown he may seem to suggest 
 that some part of the material of the old body is taken to 
 help in constituting the new body. I am sure that no 
 theologian of to-day would insist that all the material 
 of a body buried must be restored for the former owner's 
 use in the body raised. I doubt if many theological 
 scholars would insist that any of the particular material 
 of the body that was buried must be used for the clothing 
 of the spirit in the day of the bodily resurrection. It is 
 enough to constitute identity of my body in one estate of 
 being and my body in another estate of being that each 
 body is mine. What is my embodiment at one time or 
 place, and what is my embodiment at another time or 
 place is all part of one embodying. It is all one body, 
 for it is mine. And yet the body of my old age is one 
 body, and the body of my early childhood is another body, 
 and the body of my resurrection will be, in a very true 
 sense, another. No matter how many bodies we may 
 find a man to have, we instinctively identify them. It is 
 one body all the way through. Our language is not 
 unnatural, our thought is not irrational. 
 
 And let me add that the ascription of things which 
 belong to one body of our Lord to another, because both 
 are His, is no more strange than the language which 
 speaks of "the Church of God, which He hath purchased 
 with His own blood," or of the blessed Virgin as "the 
 Mother of God," or of "the Son of Man, which is in 
 
90 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 heaven," spoken when our Lord was not yet ascended 
 in His body. And we shall do well to remember how S. 
 Augustine identifies the eucharistic body of our Lord 
 with His mystical body, the Church. "We are" says S. 
 Augustine, "that which we receive.*' Yet every one of 
 us will recognize that the body, the Church, is numeri- 
 cally "a different body," and is distinguishable as the 
 body of our Lord, from that body which is enthroned in 
 heaven. The conclusion which I draw from what I 
 have been saying is that when we find any early Christian 
 writer clearly identifying the body of our Lord in the 
 Eucharist with the body of His natural flesh, or with the 
 body of His glory, we are not thereby estopped from 
 finding that that same Christian writer made that very 
 distinction which we have found so many Christian 
 writers making, between the one body and the other 
 body, between the body which is bread divinely assumed, 
 and the body which is flesh divinely assumed. With 
 this caidela we may proceed to examine the testimony of 
 writers of the different Asiatic Schools. 
 
 The School of Antioch, and Other Asiatic Schools 
 
 S. Ignatius of Antioch, the Buening Enthusiast, 
 (circa a.d. 110) 
 
 S. Ignatius, made a martyr very early in the second 
 century, after having been Bishop of Antioch, we know 
 not how long, is an interesting witness because of his 
 nearness to the Apostles. He makes it clear, in the 
 few words of his that have come down to us, touching our 
 subject, that the thought that the Sacrament of the 
 Altar is a great power was one of the original thoughts of 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 91 
 
 the Church of Christ. He speaks of Christians as break- 
 ing "one bread, which is the medicine of immortahty, 
 the antidote that we should not die, but live in Christ 
 for ever."^ I ask you to observe, as we pass, that, after 
 the manner of the Fathers generally, Ignatius looks upon 
 the holy bread, an earthly element that can be broken 
 by men's hands, as having this marvellous character of 
 an "antidote that we should not die." Our saint says 
 also, "Haste ye, then, to partake of one Eucharist, for 
 there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup 
 for uniting men with His blood, one altar." ^ It should 
 be observed that "one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ" 
 is not necessarily a numerical expression. Certainly, 
 "one Eucharist," "one cup," "one altar," are not numeri- 
 cal expressions. I mean that speaking of "one flesh" in 
 this way does not necessarily exclude the possibility that 
 several things might be equally worthy of the name, and 
 be included under that designation. In that same view, 
 most certainly, "one Eucharist," "one cup," "one altar," 
 are not numerical expressions. S. Ignatius did not mean 
 to imply that there were not many Eucharists celebrated, 
 many cups used, many altars set up in Christian churches. 
 And yet there can be no doubt, I think, that Ignatius 
 would have been quite ready to say that there was but 
 "one flesh" of our Lord even numerically, so earnestly 
 does he fix his gaze on the identification of the body of 
 the altar with the body natural. For writing against 
 the Docetae, those heretics who maintained that our 
 Lord could not have assumed anything so evil as a material 
 body, he writes these words: 
 
 "They abstain from Eucharist and prayer, because they con- 
 fess not that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus 
 
 » Ad Ephes. xx; P. G. 5, 661. ^ ^^^ Philad. iv.; P. G. 5. 700. 
 
92 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Christ, wliich suffered for our sins, which the Father in His 
 mercy raised again. They, then, who speak against the gifts 
 die disputing. Good had it been for them to love, that they 
 might rise again." ^ 
 
 This, it will be observed, is a very distinct identifying 
 of the body of the altar with the body of the cross and of 
 the resurrection. I must not minimize its meaning. 
 Yet I must here note two points by way of safeguard 
 against unwarranted deduction from this strong language. 
 The first is that such expressions are rare in the patristic 
 writings. "What difference does it make," I can imagine 
 one of my critics asking, "What difference does it make 
 whether a thing is said often, or only said rarely, so long 
 as it expresses the mind of the Cathohc Church, and is 
 entirely true?" I answer, that what is said very rarely 
 by Christian writers in connection with a great mystery 
 is likely to be something which may be said, because it 
 is true in a sense, something which may be said with a 
 stretching of our human words. I myself hold the 
 language of Ignatius to be justifiable, but it is not what 
 one finds, as one reads down through the early centuries, 
 to be the common language of the Church. 
 
 The other point in connection with this phrase of S. 
 Ignatius is that even here, where he is distinctly identify- 
 ing the body of the Eucharist with the body of our Lord's 
 earthly life, there is no indication of that turning of the 
 mind's eye to the glorified body on the heavenly throne, 
 which is so characteristic of modern devotion. 
 
 We have found such language as this of Ignatius 
 exceptional in the West, and among the Alexandrians. 
 We shall find it exceptional among the Asiatics, whom 
 we are about to examine. This Ignatius was an ardent 
 soul. The blunder of Latin writers in much later times, 
 » Ad Smym. 7; P. G. 5, 713. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 93 
 
 who tried to connect his name with their Latin word, 
 ignis, "a fire," was a wise sort of folly. He was "a fire," 
 blazing up to heaven. They were right about that. 
 Like another great saint of Antioch, three centuries later, 
 S. John of the Golden Mouth, whose title we have kept 
 nearly in its Greek form, as "Chrysostom," he came to 
 the subject of the Holy Eucharist, not as a theological 
 instructor, framing definitions with balanced care, but 
 as a preacher, a poet, an orator, looking for the greatest 
 things that he could say, to stir their hearts and arouse 
 their emotions. It may be added in regard to our present 
 author that these three scraps of writing which I have 
 quoted are all that we have of this impassioned preacher 
 on his way to martyrdom, by which to measure what 
 may have been his utterances as a careful teacher ex- 
 pounding the subject of the Eucharist to pupils with 
 minds as yet unformed. 
 
 I must add one more reflection. S. Ignatius here 
 brings his eucharistic reference to bear against the Docetae, 
 who would not acknowledge that our Lord's body of 
 flesh could have been anything but a phantom deluding 
 men's natural senses. If, now, he had regarded the 
 Church as teaching that the bread of the Eucharist was 
 not really our Lord's body, but only a veil deluding the 
 senses, while behind that veil our Lord was offering men 
 a body that was present only after the manner of spirit, 
 without any material quality, I think that he would 
 have avoided the subject of the Eucharist in this particular 
 controversy, or else would have entered into careful 
 explanations to show that the nature of the Presence in 
 the Eucharist did not after all support the contention of 
 the Docetae, as in that case they would certainly have 
 claimed that it did. Doubtless, I shall be told that the 
 Church had not yet got its mind clear as to the nature 
 
94 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 of the Presence, had not, at the beginning of the second 
 century, developed a theory of the Presence at all. That 
 would, of course, minimize the value of Ignatius of An- 
 tioch as a theologian, and make his utterances of no 
 particular value, except so far as they may seem to 
 represent a settled habit of utterance on the part of the 
 Church. We will pass on, then, and enlarge our collection 
 of testimonies, for it is only the united testimony of 
 many voices which will give us anything that we can 
 rightly call the voice of the Church. 
 
 n 
 
 FRAGMENTS FROM ASIATICS OF THE SECOND AND THIRD 
 CENTURIES 
 
 Melito, Bishop of Sardis; Tatian, the Assyrian: 
 S. FiRMiLiAN, Bishop of Caesarea 
 
 There is a most remarkable paucity of great writers in 
 the Asiatic provinces of the Church in the next two 
 centuries after the martyrdom of S. Ignatius. Some of 
 those who had great reputation in their day have left 
 nothing that has come down to us. Some have left us 
 nothing that touches our present subject. I group 
 together a few fragments out of the second century and 
 the third. 
 
 1. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who in the year 170 pre- 
 sented a Defense of Christians to the Emperor Antoninus, 
 wrote also a Key to the Interpretation of Scripture, referred 
 to by its title in Latin versions as his Clavis, in which he 
 set out to give the spiritual meaning of words used mysti- 
 cally in Scripture. One of the explanations in the Clavis 
 is this: 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 95 
 
 "Wine: the blood of Christ in the Gospel. *He that eateth 
 My flesh, and drinketh My blood.'" 
 
 Now the only passage in the Gospel where "wine" 
 could be said to be used with a mystical meaning for 
 "the blood of Christ" is in the words of distribution. 
 The explanation in the Clavis makes it clear that to S. 
 Melito "This is my blood" meant "This wine is my 
 blood," not "This great heavenly gift which I am offering 
 invisibly is my blood." It is only here that wine can be 
 said to be used figuratively for "blood" in any Gospel. 
 
 2. A passage from Tatian, the Assyrian, maker of the 
 first Harmony of the Gospels ever attempted, who was at 
 Rome about a.d. 172, comes to much the same thing: 
 
 "And then having taken bread, and afterwards the cup of 
 wine, He bore witness that it was His body and blood, and 
 bade them eat and drink, for that it was a memorial of His 
 coming suffering and death." [Pusey, 327,] 
 
 It simply shows that in the current Christian speech 
 bread and wine were spoken of as being really the body 
 and blood of the Lord. Tatian had fallen into one of 
 the Gnostic heresies, but in this particular he speaks just 
 as all Christians were speaking. 
 
 3. In the middle of the third century, we come to a 
 great personage, S. Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea in 
 Cappadocia, a friend of Origen, a correspondent of S. 
 Cyprian. He was a power in his day, but not a volu- 
 minous writer, and we have from him as concerning the 
 Eucharist only a passing word. He is writing of persons 
 who had denied Christ in times of persecution, and were 
 by most of the faithful regarded as excommunicate 
 beyond restoration in this life. His letter is preserved as 
 Ixxv.^ among the Epistles of S. Cyprian: 
 
 1 P. L. 3, 1172. 
 
96 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 " How great is the sin, whether of those who admit, or of 
 those admitted, that .... they, in communion rashly granted, 
 should touch the body and blood of the Lord, whereas it is 
 written, 'Whosoever shall eat the bread, or drink the cup of 
 the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood 
 of the Lord.' " 
 
 To S. Firmilian the body and blood of the Lord can be 
 "touched." That is a natural expression to him, as to 
 S. Didymus of Alexandria. 
 
 in 
 
 Early Fourth Century Writers: ADAMANTros 
 
 AND EUSEBIUS OF CaESAREA 
 
 An anonymous writer whose book of Dialogues is 
 printed along with the works of Origen, and who is quoted 
 under the name of Adamantius, because he gives that 
 name to the Catholic speaker in his debates, has this to 
 say against the followers of Marcion : 
 
 "If, as these say, he was fleshless and bloodless, of what 
 flesh and of what body, and of what blood, did He giving the 
 images (tlKovas) , both bread and cup, enjoin upon the disciples 
 to make through these the memorial of Him?"^ 
 
 Here that bread and wine which our Lord called His 
 body and blood, and which the Church had constantly 
 proclaimed to be made to be His body and blood, are 
 called "images" of the Lord's body and blood. But it 
 is not at all to be supposed that the writer of those words 
 would have found any difficulty in using the more common 
 language of the Church as well. 
 
 The same is true of Eusebius, the great Church his- 
 torian, and Bishop of the Palestinian Caesarea. I find 
 
 > P.G.U, 1840- 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 97 
 
 no passage in which he identifies the bread of the Eucha- 
 rist with our Lord's body, though he is clear that we 
 receive what is, in some sense, the body of our Lord in 
 our communions. Probably he simply does not happen 
 to use the more common speech. But he really does 
 emphasize the idea that the bread and wine are symbols 
 of our Lord's natural flesh and blood. And he makes it 
 clear that he opposed "symbol" to "literal fact" exactly 
 as we do. Speaking of this very subject of the Eucharist, 
 in his Demonstratio Evangelica (to use the Latin title), 
 he uses this language: 
 
 I "Being admitted to the sacrifice and priestly ministration 
 which are better than those of ancient times, we deem it no 
 longer holy to fall back to the first and weak elements, which 
 were symbols and images, but did not embrace the truth itself." ^ 
 
 Eusebius uses such words as "symbol" and "image" 
 just as we do, and just as rational beings do generally. 
 A "symbol" of a thing is not the thing itself. If certain 
 bread is a "symbol" of our Lord's body, and also is our 
 Lord's body, it must be a symbol of the body in one 
 meaning of the word "body," and be actually the body 
 in another meaning of the word "body." But let us 
 hear what Eusebius has to say, himseK. I make scattered 
 extracts from the same book: ^ 
 
 "Having, then, received the memory of this sacrifice to 
 celebrate upon the table by means of the symbols of His body 
 and His saving blood, . . . We have been taught to offer, 
 all Hfe long, bloodless and reasonable and acceptable sacrifices 
 to the supreme God through His High Priest, who is over all. 
 . , . These sacrifices, immaterial and in idea {aaufiaTovs Kal 
 poepai Ovaias), again the words of the prophet proclaim [quot- 
 
 1 Dem. Ev. I. x. 18; P. G. 22, 88. 
 
 ' The context is given somewhat largely in Stone, pp. 110, 111. 
 
98 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 ing Psalm 1. 14, 15]." (Dcm. Evangel. I. x, 28-38) . . . "After 
 the manner of Melchizctlck. . . . For as that priest of the 
 Gentiles never seems to have used bodily sacrifices, but only 
 wine and bread, when he blessed Abraham, so our Saviour and 
 Lord Himself, and then all the priests who in succession from 
 Him are throughout all the nations, . . . represent in a mystery 
 (a'lvlTTovT ai) with wine and bread the mysteries of His body 
 and saving blood." ^ 
 
 In a later passage of the same book (VIIL i. 78-80) 
 Eusebius comments thus on Jacob's blessing of Judah, 
 Gen. xlix. 12: 
 
 "And I think that the passages, 'His eyes gladdening from 
 wine,' ^ and 'His teeth whiter than milk,' again mystically refer 
 to the mysteries of the new covenant of our Saviour. For it is 
 my opinion that the words 'His eyes gladdening from wine' 
 signify the gladness from the mystic wine which He gave to 
 His own disciples, saying, 'Take, drink, this is My blood which is 
 poured out for you for the remission of sins; do this for My 
 memorial,' and that the words 'His teeth whiter than milk' 
 signify the brightness and purity of the mystic food. For 
 again He gave to the disciples the symbols of the divine dis- 
 pensation, bidding them make the image (eucSvas) of His ovm 
 body." 3 
 
 There are a few more passages which I might quote, 
 but these will be enough to show how the mind of Eusebius 
 dwelt habitually on the thought of the elements in the 
 Eucharist as "symbols," and as having a "mystic" 
 meaning. He seems to me to be the first writer whom we 
 have encountered who shows a mind cold toward mystery 
 in revelation, rather than warm towards it. Of two 
 
 » Dem. Evangel. V. iii. 18, 19; P. G. 22, 365. 
 
 * Eusebius read the verse in the Greek of the LXX version: x<ipo^oto2 
 ol 6<l>0a\ixol avTov virip oIj'oj'. 
 s P. G. 22, 593, 696. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 99 
 
 things which might be said, he seems invariably to say 
 the lesser. Yet I do not think that he, though he had 
 Arian leanings, really departed from the eucharistic 
 theology of the Church. In a work on The Theology of 
 the Church (iii, 12) he particularly distinguishes between 
 the eucharistic body of our Lord and His natural body: 
 
 "Do you, receiving the Scriptures of the Gospels, perceive 
 the whole teaching of our Saviour, that He did not speak con- 
 cerning the flesh which He had taken, but concerning His 
 mystic body and blood. . . . He instructed them to understand 
 spiritually (wvevfiaTLKus) the words which He had spoken 
 concerning His flesh and His blood; for, He says, you must not 
 consider Me to speak of the flesh which I wear {■ffv irept/cei/ioi), 
 as if you were to eat that, nor suppose that I command you to 
 drink perceptible and corporal (a-wfiaTiKop) blood. . . . These 
 things profit nothing, if they are understood according to sense 
 (aiaOriTus) ; but the Spirit is the Life, given to those who are 
 able to imderstand spiritually." ^ 
 
 IV 
 
 S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Instructor of 
 Catechumens 
 
 Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem from a.d. 351 to a.d. 386, is 
 chiefly noted for his Catechetical Lectures, delivered to 
 persons preparing for Baptism, Confirmation, and their 
 first Communion, while he was still a presbyter, in 348. 
 The first point to be noted about this careful and sys- 
 tematic theological teaching is that S. Cyril impresses 
 upon his candidates a mental habit of grouping the 
 outward elements of these three sacraments together, and 
 regarding them in much the same way. All are bare 
 elements, to begin with. All are consecrated, and so 
 1 P. G. 24, 1071, 1074. 
 
100 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 have some great thing done to them, after which they 
 are not "bare" elements any more, but filled with spiritual 
 power. Here is his language about Baptism: 
 
 "Look not to the laver, as being simple water, but to the 
 spiritual grace that is given with the water. For as the things 
 that are brought to the heathen altars, though simple in their 
 nature, become defiled by the invocation of the idols, so con- 
 trariwise the simple {\it6v) water, on receiving the invocation 
 of the Holy Ghost and of Christ and of the Father, acquires the 
 power of hoUness."* 
 
 In like manner S. Cyril speaks of the oil of Confirma- 
 tion, now so unhappily disused in the Anglican Com- 
 munion, by one of the worst, and most inconsistent, 
 mistakes of our Reformers honestly endeavoring to re- 
 store the Church to a real primitive Catholicity of doctrine 
 and usage: 
 
 "But beware of supposing this to be bare (^iXdv) ointment. 
 For as the bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the 
 Holy Ghost, is no longer simple {\it6s) bread, but the body of 
 Christ, so also is this holy ointment no longer bare ointment, 
 nor, so to say, common (Koivdv), after the mvocation, but 
 becomes Christ's gift of grace (xapiffMa). and by the coming 
 of the Holy Ghost fit to impart His Godhead, which ointment 
 is symbolically applied to thy forehead, and to thy organs of 
 sense beside, and wliile thy body is anointed with visible oint- 
 ment, thy soul is sanctified by the Holy and Life-giving Spirit." ^ 
 
 We are warned by Dr. Darwell Stone in his History of 
 the Doctrine of the Hobj FAicharist (I. 69) that it will not 
 do to assume that writers who make this sort of com- 
 parison — we shall find the same thing in Gregory of 
 Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria — regarded the power 
 that entered into the other sacraments as in any way 
 
 » Lect. iii. 3; P.O. 33, 429. =" Lcct. xxi. 3; P. G. 33, 1089, 1092. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 101 
 
 comparable with the power that entered into the elements 
 of the Holy Eucharist. The comparison, Dr. Stone 
 would have us think, is in the fact that there is a change 
 in each case, and that there comes a presence of power. 
 This comparison must not be pressed to exclude great 
 diflFerences further on. That is quite just. But I would 
 point out that S. Cyril was here instructing beginners, 
 and if his comparison had carried along with it, in his 
 own view, a tremendous contrast also, I humbly think 
 that he would here, or somewhere in his addresses, have 
 given some word of warning to that effect. As a matter 
 of fact, he ascribes to the oil of Confirmation a special 
 presence of our Lord in His Godhead (of course not with- 
 out His Manhood, which is from His Godhead now 
 inseparable). He must have ascribed as great a Presence 
 of our Lord to the water of Baptism, surely, which he 
 regarded as no longer mere water, but a sacrament by 
 which men are made to be members of the very body of 
 the Lord. In all three sacraments, according to the 
 teaching of S. Cyril, our Lord embodies Himself. It is 
 our task to find, if we can, how that embodying of Himself 
 in the elements of the Eucharist by our Lord appeared to 
 S. Cyril's mind. We shall find him asserting most 
 emphatically that the bread and wine are the body and 
 blood of our Lord, having been changed into them, and 
 also using the words "type" and "antitype" as freely as 
 Eusebius of Caesarea. 
 
 "Regard, then, the bread and the wine not as bare (^iXots) 
 elements, for they are (rvyxapei) ^ the body and blood of 
 Christ, according to the declaration of the Lord." ^ 
 
 ^ I suggest that the Greek word ru-yxai'w can be used for elul only 
 when there is an element of the accidental, the unexpected, or the 
 non-literal. I think that I find here a suggestion of the last, the 
 "non-literal." The words "body" and "blood" are without the article. 
 
 2 Lect. xxii. 6; P. G. 33, 1101. 
 
102 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "He once at Cana of Galilee changed the water into wine 
 akin to blood; and is it incredible that He should change wine 
 into blood? ... In the figure (t^ttv) of bread is given to thee 
 the body, and in the figure of wine is given to thee the blood, in 
 order that by partaking of a body and blood of Christ thou 
 mayest become of one body and of one blood (avacrwuos Kal 
 cvfaLfios) with Him. For so also do we become Christ-bearers 
 (xp^aTO(t>6poi) , since His body and blood are distributed 
 throughout our members. Thus, according to the saying of 
 the blessed Peter, we become partakers of the divine nature." ^ 
 
 " The seeming {<i>aLv6titvos) bread is not bread, even though 
 it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and the 
 seeming wine is not wine, even though the taste will have it 
 so, but the blood of Christ." "^ 
 
 "Trust not the judgment to thy bodily palate; no, but to 
 unfaltering faith; for they who taste are bidden to taste not 
 bread and wine, but the antitype {avrnvivov) of the body and 
 blood of Christ. "3 
 
 These passages taken, each by itself, would be capable 
 of sustaining different interpretations. I think that to 
 make S. Cyril consistent with himself, we must apply 
 such explanations as these: (1) "The seeming bread is 
 not bread" will mean plainly that that which seems to be 
 mere bread is not mere bread, but our Lord's (eucharistic) 
 body; (2) "In the figure of bread is given to thee the 
 body" will have to be taken appositionally, as when we 
 say that "we see in our Lord the pattern man"; (3) we 
 must particularly note that according to S. Cyril the 
 body and blood of our Lord are "distributed throughout 
 our members," i. e., he gives these great names to the 
 material elements by which our bodies are nourished. 
 
 But we must here add that just as S. Cyril has one 
 sense of the words "body" and "blood" in which he can 
 
 » Lcct. xxii. 2. 3; P. G. 33, 1097, 1100. 
 
 2 Lcct. xxii. 9; P. G. 33. 1104. » Lcct. x-xiii. 20; P. G. 33, 1120. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 103 
 
 speak of our Lord's body and blood as being distributed 
 throughout our members, so also he has a mystical use of 
 the word "bread," — for he is a mystical soul, — in 
 which he will say that our "bread" cannot be subject 
 to bodily processes. Hear him commenting on the 
 Lord's Prayer, in which he read kxLoixnov aprov (which 
 we render "daily bread"), and took it as meaning "sub- 
 stantial bread": 
 
 "Give us this day our substantial bread. This common 
 bread is not substantial {iiriovaioi) , but this holy bread is 
 substantial, that is, appointed for the substance (ovaLa) of the 
 soul. For this bread does not go into the belly, and is not cast 
 out into the draught, but it is imparted to your whole system 
 for the benefit of body and soul." ^ 
 
 Here he is taking "this holy bread" as a title of our 
 Lord Himself, acting the part of "bread." It is as 
 natural to him to do that as to use the words "body" 
 and "blood" (under our Lord's direction) for bread and 
 wine which our Lord uses as a body and a blood. 
 
 I add one more passage, which is of interest because 
 it seems to be a plain allusion to the Liturgy of the 
 Church of Jerusalem, as S. Cyril used to hear it used. 
 
 *'We beseech the merciful God to send the Holy Ghost upon 
 the oblations, that He may make the bread the body of Christ, 
 and the wine the blood of Christ, for whatever the Holy Ghost 
 has touched, is surely consecrated and changed." ^ 
 
 1 Lect. xxiii. 15; P. G. 33, 1113, 1116. 
 
 2 Lect. xxiii. 7; P. G. 33, 1113, 1116. 
 
104 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 S. Epiphanius, Encyclopedic Scholar, 
 Bishop a.d. 367-403 
 
 Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis in the Island of Cyprus, 
 called from his exceptional knowledge of languages "the 
 man of five tongues," for to Greek and Latin he added 
 Egyptian, Hebrew and Syriac, was not a man of broad 
 mind, of generous sympathies, of any particular heights 
 or depths. All the more we may take him as reflecting 
 just the common theology of his day. Like S. Cyril of 
 Jerusalem, he calls the eucharistic elements "antitypes," 
 and also brings Baptism and the Eucharist into closer 
 comparison than is common in modern theology. 
 
 "When Abraham was eighty or ninety years old, more or 
 less, then Melchizedek met him, and brought forth bread and 
 wine, prefiguring the mysteries of the sacraments, which are 
 antitypical of our Lord, who said, 'I am the living bread,' an- 
 titypical, too, of the blood from His pierced side, which flowed 
 forth for the purification of those that are defiled,^ and for the 
 cleansing and salvation of our souls." ^ 
 
 1 think it worth while to point out that the writer does 
 not set forth the sacramental wine as an antitype of an 
 invisible spiritual reality by it conveyed. He points to 
 the wine as an antitype of a past historical fact, of some- 
 thing, in fact, which has ceased to exist. The wine, 
 according to fourth century opinion, was an antitype of 
 the blood shed from the pierced side long ago. It was 
 the blood that Christians were receiving now. 
 
 ' Dr. Pusey strangely translates tuv KtKotvointvuv, "of those who 
 communicate." It certainly means, "of those who have been made 
 common" {koivoI), that is, unholy. 
 
 2 Adv. Ilaer. 55 n. G; Pusey, p. 101; P. G. 41, 981. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 105 
 
 In his exposition of the Faith, with which he concluded 
 his book Against Heresies, he refers to the fulfiUing of the 
 prophet's word "concerning the transfer of power, con- 
 cerning the offer of salvation by the power," — he is 
 referring to Isaiah iii. 1, where we read of God's taking 
 from Jerusalem "the staff of bread and the staff of water," 
 and he regards these as taken from the elder church to be 
 given to the later, — 
 
 "concerning the oflFer of salvation by the power of bread 
 taken from Jerusalem, and by the strength of water. And here 
 the power of bread and the strength of water being made strong 
 in Christ, that not bread may be made power for us, but power 
 attach to bread, bread is indeed a food, but the power must be 
 in it to gender hfe. And this is not (a plan) that water should 
 save us by itself, but that in the power that belongs to the water 
 by help of faith and active work and hope and the ministering 
 of sacraments and the entitling of sainthood, it should come to 
 be to us an accomplishment of salvation." ^ 
 
 It seems noteworthy that here, as with S. Cyril of 
 Jerusalem, there is no suggestion that the power of our 
 Lord present in the element of water is less than, or 
 different from, the power of our Lord present in the 
 elements of bread and wine. It may be observed also 
 that in this passage, which is one of those offered by Dr. 
 Pusey in support of such a phrase as that our Lord's 
 body is "in the eucharistic bread," Epiphanius does not 
 say that our Lord's body is in the bread, but our Lord's 
 *'power." The power of our Lord was in the bread. 
 Therefore the bread was His body. 
 
 1 Exposition of the Faith, 16; P. G. 42, 812, 813. 
 
106 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 VI 
 
 S. Ephraim, the Syrian, Poet and Mystic 
 (a.d. 300P-373) 
 
 Our next witness brings us to a distinctly new source of 
 testimony as to the Church's tradition. He Hved a long 
 life in Mesopotamia, just on the borderland where the 
 Roman Empire was engaged for centuries in a struggle 
 against the Kingdom of Parthia. An oriental, an ascetic, 
 a mystic, and a poet, he will use a language different in 
 some of its expressions from any that we have heard 
 before, as when he speaks of our Lord as clothing Himself 
 w^th bread, but we shall find, I am sure, the same funda- 
 mental beliefs as in the Fathers of the less distant East. 
 His writings, all in Syriac, — we are distinctly told in 
 the Church History of Theodoret that he had "not tasted 
 Greek instruction," — used to be read in Church after 
 the Scripture Lessons, according to S. Jerome, in the 
 Syriac-speaking East. S. Ephraim — he is commonly 
 cited as Ephrem Syrus — had to resist the heresy of the 
 Marcionites, who held that matter was essentially evil, 
 and therefore that our Lord had no real body of flesh 
 and blood. Against their teaching he argues from the 
 Holy Eucharist, which they did receive and celebrate: 
 
 "They have but a likeness of blood, who own not the body 
 of Christ. Where is the true hotly, there is also the true blood. 
 If because the body is defiled and liateful and loathsome, the 
 Lord abhorreth it, in that cafce the cup of redemption is in the 
 house of devils." 
 
 The argument is that if the human body is a foul thing, 
 which our Lord would not wear, then He could not take 
 to Himself the wine of their own Eucharist, and the only 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 107 
 
 fit place for a material sacrament must be in the service 
 of evil powers. But this, argues S. Ephraim, is contrary 
 to the acknowledged facts of the Eucharist. Hear how 
 the argument goes on: 
 
 "And how did He loathe the body, and yet clothe Himself 
 with bread in the Eucharist? Whereas lo! bread is the brother 
 of weak flesh. And if dumb bread pleases Him, how much more 
 the speaking body." ^ 
 
 Our Lord clothes Himself with bread. Bread is "the 
 brother of weak flesh." These phrases seem to show 
 that S. Ephraim felt very deeply the analogy between our 
 Lord's Incarnation and His "Impanation," if I may call 
 it so. I protest, by the way, that "Impanation" is as 
 good a word, in spite of having been used most basely 
 in some past times, as onoovcnos was when taken up by 
 the Council of Nicaea, in spite of base use, and formal 
 condemnation in such use, beforetime. 
 
 Dr. Pusey quotes a passage from the Eleventh Rhythm 
 on the Nativity, and says that in it the poet speaks of 
 the Holy Eucharist as "the Image of Christ" and as 
 "shadowing forth Christ." The poet does speak of the 
 Eucharist as "shadowing forth Christ," but I must 
 point out that the venerable father who comments on 
 him quite failed to see what S. Ephraim meant by "the 
 image" of our Lord. By that phrase he referred to our 
 Lord's natural body of flesh and blood, and he distin- 
 guishes it most particularly from the eucharistic body, 
 that bread which becomes "living bread." Here is the 
 passage, which is cast in the form of an address by the 
 Blessed Virgin to our Lord, wherein she views the Infant 
 in the manger, and yet sees in vision all His accomplish- 
 ment in the life of the Church that is to be: 
 
 * Adv. Haeres. Rhythm 4; Pusey, p. 78. 
 
108 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "In Thy visible form I see Adam, and in Thy hidden form 
 I see Thy Father who is joined with Thee. Am I, then, the 
 only one to whom Thou hast shown Thy beauty in two forms? 
 Thee let bread shadow forth, and also the mind; dwell also in 
 bread, and in the eaters thereof. In secret, and op>enly too, 
 may thy Church see Thee, as well as Thy Mother. 
 
 "He that hateth Thy bread is like unto him that hateth Thy 
 body. He that is far off that desireth Thy bread, and he that 
 is near that loveth Thine image, are alike. In the bread, and 
 in the body, the first and also the last have seen Thee." 
 
 Surely the meaning is clear. The worshippers before 
 the altar, who are "afar oflF," and see "in secret," are 
 contrasted with the disciples who surround our Lord in 
 His earthly life, who are "near" and see "openly." 
 Both see our Lord quite truly, but the first see Him 
 clothed in His bread, and the last see Him in His "image." 
 Now to carry the quotation somewhat farther: 
 
 "Yet Thy visible bread is far more precious than Thy body; 
 for Thy body even unbelievers have seen, but they have not 
 seen Thy living bread. They that were far off rejoiced; their 
 portion utterly scorns that of those that are near. 
 
 "Lo! Thy image is shadowed forth in the blood of grapes 
 on the bread ,^ and it is shadowed forth on the heart with the 
 finger of love, with the colors of faith. Blessed be He that by 
 the image of His truth caused the graven images to pass away. " 
 
 The "image" referred to here is in every case our 
 Lord's natural body. His "visible bread," His eucharistic 
 body, is here declared to be far more precious than even 
 that dear and holy flesh! "Dwell also in bread" is S. 
 Ephraim's idea of a right prayer for our Lord's eucharistic 
 Presence. The bread is called our Lord's body, not 
 
 * In the Syrian Liturgy the priest used to dip a portion of the con- 
 secrated bread in the cup, and sprinkle the rest of the bread with it. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 109 
 
 because our Lord's body is there from heaven, but be- 
 cause He Himself has taken this "visible bread" to be a 
 new body. What does S. Ephraim really find in the 
 hallowed bread? Let another passage tell us. I will 
 only say beforehand that it will not be a body and blood, 
 but "a Spirit that cannot be eaten,'* and "a Fire that 
 cannot be drunk." These are the poet's words: 
 
 "In Thy visible vesture there dwelleth a hidden power. 
 A little spittle from Thy mouth became also a great miracle of 
 light in the midst of its clay." 
 
 "In Thy bread is hidden the Spirit that cannot be eaten; 
 in Thy wine there dwelleth the Fire that cannot be drunk. Thy 
 Spirit in Thy bread and the Fire in Thy cup are distinct miracles, 
 which our lips receive." 
 
 "When our Lord came down to the earth, to mortal men, He 
 created them a new creation, as in the angels He mingled Fire 
 and the Spirit, that they might be of Fire and Spirit in a hidden 
 manner." . . . 
 
 "To the angels, which are spiritual, Abraham brought bodily 
 food, and they ate. A new miracle it is, that our mighty Lord 
 giveth to bodily creatures Fire and the Spirit, as food and 
 drink." 
 
 I interrupt my quotation here to ask if S. Ephraim does 
 not make it entirely clear that to his mind the Heavenly 
 Reality in the Holy Eucharist was a purely spiritual force, 
 not material, not bodily. "Bodily food" is expressly 
 contrasted with it. And, as so constantly happens, he 
 makes no mention of any presence of any body of the 
 Lord in the sacrament, except as he refers to the hallowed 
 bread as being itself our Lord's body, because in it He 
 dwells. I must add a few more verses from this poem: 
 
 "Fire came down upon sinners in wrath, and consumed them. 
 The fire of the Merciful cometh down in bread and abideth. 
 Instead of that fire which devoured men, ye eat a fire in bread. 
 
110 THE EUCHAMSTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and are made alive. As fire came down on the sacrifice of Elijah, 
 and consumed it, the Fire of Mercy hath become to us a living 
 sacrifice. Fire ate up the oblations, and we, Lord, have eaten 
 Thy Fire in Thy oblation." . . . 
 
 "O Might liidden in the veil of the sanctuary! Might which 
 the mind never grasped! It hath His love brought down, and 
 It descended, and lighted upon the veil of the altar of pro- 
 pitiation. Lo! Fire and Spirit in the bosom of her that bore 
 Thee! Lo! Fire and Spirit in that river wherein Thou wast 
 baptized! Fire and Spirit in owr Baptism! In the bread and the 
 cup is Fire and the Holy Ghost!" {De Scrutin. x. 3, 5, 7. 
 Pusey, 122.) 
 
 Again I note the habit of S. Ephraim's mind, which 
 finds a parallel between the Incarnation, and the descent 
 of our Lord into the Jordan to sanctify water for a sacra- 
 ment from thenceforward, and between His Presence in 
 Baptism, and His Presence in the Eucharist. Another 
 example of this last habit is found in De Scrutin., Rhythm 
 vi. 2. (Pusey, 415.) 
 
 "In bread the Strong One that cannot be eaten is eaten; 
 in strong wine also is drunk the Power that cannot be drunk; 
 we also anoint ourselves with oil with the Power which cannot 
 be used as ointment." 
 
 So also in one of the Funeral Hymns we read thus: 
 
 "Spare the body and the soul! Thou who didst mingle Thy 
 body with our body, and didst join Thy Spirit with our spirit. 
 Lo! in our body is Thy Baptism, and in our persons Thy living 
 body. In us, Lord, there is a portion from Thee; let us not be 
 a portion for the fire!" {Cant. 12. Pusey, 416.) 
 
 So, too, in Paracn. 29 (Tom. iii. 480, Pusey, 420): 
 
 "The departed, who were clothed with Thee, O Lord, in 
 Baptism, and ate of Thy body, and drank Thy living blood, may 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 111 
 
 they rise, Lord, on the right hand, and with the angels, be filled 
 with joy in Eden ! " 
 
 I close our study of S. Ephralm with three quotations 
 emphasizing three several points. The first shows us S. 
 Ephraim calling the wine "our Lord's blood" (sacra- 
 mental) and "the token of His blood" (natural) in the 
 same breath: 
 
 "I have with me the token of Thy blood, a weapon whereat 
 the vast mouth of hell, which hungers and thirsts for the wicked, 
 shrinks back affrighted. Through the blood of the Lamb death 
 shrank back from the Hebrews. Through Thy precious blood, 
 O Lord, how shall hell shrink back!" {Paraen. 3. Tom. iii. 386. 
 Pusey, 418.) 
 
 My second quotation indicates that to S. Ephraim's 
 mind the bread of the Eucharist was the very material 
 out of which the body of our Lord was made. It comes 
 from his commentary on Ezek. x. 2 : 
 
 "Those coals again, and the man who bringeth them, and 
 scattereth them upon the people, are a type of the priest of God, 
 through whom the living coals of the life-giving body of our Lord 
 are given. But this, that another, a cherub, stretched out, and 
 placed them in his hand, this is a type that it is not the priest 
 who can of bread make the body, but another, who is the Holy 
 Spirit." (Tom. ii. 175. Pusey, 123.) 
 
 The last quotation is one which renews most strikingly 
 the parallel of the miracle of the Incarnation with the 
 miracle of the Eucharist: 
 
 "The garment, seeing that it was the covering of Thy Human 
 Nature, and Thy body, seeing that it was the covering of Thy 
 Divine Nature, coverings twain they were to Thee, the garment 
 and the body, that bread, the bread of life. Who would not 
 
112 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 marvel at Tliy changes of garment? Lo! the body covers Thy 
 glorious fearful brightness; the garment covered Thy feebler 
 nature; the bread covereth the Fire which dwells therein." 
 {Paraen. 23. Tom. iii. 458. Pusey, 124.) 
 
 VII 
 
 The Great Cappadocians: Basil and tub 
 Gregories 
 
 About A.D. 375 the three most eminent Christian 
 teachers in Asia INIinor were Basil, Archbishop of Cae- 
 sarea, and Exarch (having general supervision of all its 
 provinces) of the Roman "Diocese" of Pontus; Basil's 
 friend, Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus; and Basil's brother, 
 Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa. Curiously enough, the chief 
 of the three, he who has come to be known as S. Basil 
 the Great, has left us nothing in his writings which throws 
 any light on his opinions as to the Holy Eucharist. Greg- 
 ory of Nazianzus has left us very little. But Gregory of 
 Nyssa has much to say, and in what he says he is the 
 spokesman for this commanding group. 
 
 What remains of S. Gregory of Nazianzus may be dealt 
 with in few words. In his funeral oration on his sister, 
 Gorgonia (Oration viii. 18),^ he is found speaking of the 
 consecrated elements, reserved, as "whatever of the 
 antitypes of the precious body or blood her hand treas- 
 ured." He speaks of the clergy as those "who are to be 
 over the people, and to handle the mighty body of Christ," 
 and again as those "who approach to the approaching 
 God" (Oration xxi. 7).^ It seems worthy of note that 
 in asking the prayers of a friend he says (Ep. ad Amphilo- 
 chium, clxxi),^ 
 
 » P. G. 35, 809. 2 P. G. 35, 1088. ^ p q 37^ 280. 281. 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 113 
 
 "Be not slack in prayer and pleading for us, when by the 
 word you draw down the Word, when with the bloodless 
 cutting you divide the body and blood of the Lord, having 
 your voice as a knife." 
 
 "Bloodless cutting" implies that in one sense there 
 is no blood there. Our Lord's natural blood is not 
 present at all. "When . . . you divide the body and 
 blood" seems to imply, even as "body or blood" in our 
 first extract implied, that S. Gregory thought of the 
 consecrated bread as being our Lord's body, and of the 
 consecrated wine as being His blood, in such sense that 
 the body and blood so brought to pass were divided, one 
 from the other. He does not seem to have held the 
 view, which so many moderns regard as a first foundation 
 of orthodoxy, that our Lord's body and blood are equally 
 present in the bread, and equally present in the wine, and 
 cannot be supposed to be divided. 
 
 We pass to the detailed examination of the testimony 
 of 
 
 S. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, a.d. 372-395 
 
 The key to S. Gregory's eucharistic doctrine is to be 
 found in two works of his, — a sermon on the Baptism of 
 Christ, and a writing called the Great Catechism, or 
 Sermo Catecheticus Magnus. Let me present first the 
 passage from the sermon on our Lord's Baptism and the 
 Christian sacrament of Baptism. The preacher asks 
 why water is needed as well as Spirit in this saving act. 
 His answer is that man is "not simple, but compound." 
 The twofold being needs a twofold remedy, "for his 
 visible body, water, the sensible element; for his soul, 
 which we cannot see, the Spirit, invisible, invoked by 
 faith, present unspeakably." S. Gregory's idea of a 
 sacrament seems to be that of our Catechism, — a ma- 
 
114 THE EUCHABISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 terial form, which, continuing itself unchanged, becomes 
 instinct with a divine grace. He goes on to show by a 
 series of illustrations how commonly God uses this method, 
 and the Eucharist is brought in as one of these illustra- 
 tions, in no wise distinguished from the rest as to this 
 central point. 
 
 "For this holy altar, too, by which we stand, is stone, ordinary 
 in its nature, nowise different from the other slabs of stone that 
 build our houses, and adorn our pavements; but seeing that it 
 was consecrated to the service of God, and received the bene- 
 diction, it is a holy table, an altar undefiled, no longer touched 
 by the hands of all, but of the priests alone, and that with 
 reverence. The bread, again, is, up to a certain time, common 
 bread, but when the mystery consecrates it, it is called, and it 
 becomes, the body of Christ. So with the sacramental oil; 
 so with the wine." 
 
 S. Gregory goes on to show how the priest is made to 
 be another man by his ordination, — 
 
 "without being at all changed in body or in form; but, while 
 continuing to be in all appearance the man he was before, being, 
 by some unseen power and grace, transformed (/Li£Ta/xop</)wfie£s) 
 in the unseen to the higher state." ^ 
 
 A little later, it is true, our saint gives the further 
 illustration of Moses' rod : 
 
 "When God willed to accomplish through it mighty miracles 
 beyond all words. He changed the wood into a serpent." 
 
 But he thinks of the Eucharist, and speaks of it, along 
 with cases in which the material thing was not changed 
 into some other material thing, but remained, bearing 
 new power. He even refers to the oil of Confirmation 
 between the bread of the altar and the wine of the altar, 
 so much does it appear to him as a parallel illustration of 
 » P. G. 46, 581. 
 
THE ASL\TIC SCHOOLS 115 
 
 sacramental power. And with him, as with other Fathers, 
 the natural way of expressing the relation of the hallowed 
 bread to our Lord Himself is not to say that it enshrines 
 His body, but that "it is called, and becomes, the body of 
 Christ." 
 
 In the Great Catechism (XXXVII) S. Gregory goes 
 further. He there offers an attempt, which Dr. Pusey 
 describes (on his p. 180) as "standing alone in antiquity," 
 to give a philosophy of the eucharistic miracle. Bodies 
 may be made out of a variety of materials, seems to be 
 S. Gregory's thought. He enumerates various foods of 
 animals and men, and declares that when you look at a 
 man's food, you are, in effect (8vvaiJL€L), looking at the 
 bulk of his body. He describes our Lord's natural body 
 as being "in effect, bread," because it was made out of 
 that common material of the food of men. In like 
 manner, he declares that "if a person sees bread, he also, 
 in a kind of way, looks on a human body." He also 
 speaks of the bodies of believers as being composed of 
 what they eat and drink, which is partly wine and bread. 
 All this is offered to show how our Lord may have a 
 body consisting of bread, and blood consisting of wine, 
 at the altar. 
 
 The passage that I am about to quote is cited trium- 
 phantly by Roman theologians for the sake of a phrase 
 in which the bread of the Eucharist is said to be "trans- 
 made" (fxeTairoieLcdaL) "into the body of God the 
 Word." That word "transmade" is urged as implying 
 a belief in a change of substance. I will not burden these 
 pages with a labored examination of that point. Dr. 
 Pusey shows abundantly (Pusey, pp. 179-189) that this 
 word "transmake" is used not only by others among the 
 Fathers, but by S. Gregory himself, of a number of 
 
116 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 changes which cannot possibly be thought of as implying 
 changed substance, as of "the transmaking of Moses to 
 a more glorious appearance"; of the goodness of God, 
 "transmaking him who receiveth it to itself"; of men, 
 "transmade in nature to that which is more Divine"; 
 and even (in speaking of our Lord Himself), of "the 
 change and transmaking of the human nature into the 
 Divine." In this very oration S. Gregory uses the word 
 of three changes besides that of the sacramental ele- 
 ments, — of our own bodies into our Lord's body; of 
 our Lord's natural body into the divine dignity; and of 
 our Lord's food into the substance of His natural body. 
 Only one of these changes (the last named) is a change 
 of substance, and even that change is in no way analogous 
 to the change suggested in the word "Transubstantia- 
 tion." But let us turn to the oration itself. 
 
 "If the subsistence of every body depends on nourishment, 
 and this is eating and drinking, and in the case of our eating 
 there is bread, and in the case of our drinking there is water 
 sweetened with wine, and if, as was explained at tlie beginning, 
 the Word of God, who is both God and the Word, coalesced 
 with man's nature, and when He came in a bodj' such as ours, 
 did not innovate on man's physical constitution, so as to make 
 it other than it was, but secured continuance for His own body 
 by the customary and proper means, and controlled its subsistence 
 by food and drink, the former of which was bread, — just, then, 
 as in the case of ourselves, as has been repeatedly said aheady, if 
 a person sees bread, he also in a kind of way, looks on a human 
 body, for by the bread being within the body the bread becomes 
 the body, so also, in that other case, the body into wliich God 
 entered by partaking of the nourishment of bread, was in a cer- 
 tain measure the same with bread, that nourishment, as we have 
 said, changing itself into the nature of tlie body. For that which 
 is peculiar to all flesh is acknowledged also in the case of that 
 flesh, namely, that that body, too, was maintained by bread, 
 
THE ASIATIC SCHOOLS 117 
 
 which body also by the indwelling of God the Word was trans- 
 made to the dignity of Godhead. Rightly, then, do we believe 
 that now also the bread which is consecrated by the word of 
 God is transmade into the body of God the Word. For that 
 body was once in effect bread, but has been consecrated by the 
 inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the flesh. There- 
 fore, from the same cause as that by which the bread that was 
 transformed in that body was changed to a divine potency, a 
 similar result takes place now. For as in that case, too, the 
 grace of the Word used to make holy the body, the substance of 
 which came of the bread, and in a manner was itself bread, so 
 also in this case the bread 'is sanctified,' as the Apostle says, 
 'by the word of God and prayer'; not that it advances by the 
 process of eating to the point of becoming the body of the Word, 
 but it is at once transmade into the body by means of the Word, 
 as the Word said, 'This is My body.' . . . He bestows these 
 gifts as He trauselements the nature of the visible thing to that 
 immortal thing by means of the consecration."^ 
 
 I can understand S. Gregory's speculation in only one 
 way. He seems plainly to have held that our Lord takes 
 the elements of the Eucharist to Himself, and makes of 
 them a body and blood in extension of His natural body, 
 as He used to take food and add it to His natural body 
 when He was on earth. The Word which formerly 
 glorified bread transmuted into flesh now glorifies bread 
 without first transmuting it into (literal) flesh. But 
 He does make it to be truly a body for His sacred service. 
 Only we are to observe that that enlargement of our 
 Lord's body which was accomplished, when He was on 
 earth, by processes natural and slow is now accomplished 
 suddenly and by miracle, the bread of our Eucharist 
 being, as S. Gregory says, "at once transmade into the 
 body by means of the Word." 
 
 ^ For the use of iitTaaTOLXit-oo) ("transelement") by the Fathers, see 
 Pusey, pp. 195-210. The text is in P. G. 45, 96, 97. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE GREAT WRITERS BETWEEN THE SECOND AND 
 THIRD GENERAL COUNCILS: CONSTANTINOPLE, 
 A.D. 381, EPHESUS, A.D. 431 
 
 A. The Latin Fathers 
 
 THE last quarter of the fourth century and the first 
 quarter of the fifth were marked by the presence of a 
 group of writers of very large output and of extraordinary 
 power. The philosopher, Augustine, the scholar, Jerome, 
 and the orator, John Chrysostom (John of the mouth of 
 gold), were enough to glorify that brief space, if there were 
 no more. I shall devote this Lecture to an examination 
 of the testimony of the two Latin Fathers, Augustine and 
 Jerome. ' 
 
 I 
 
 S. Augustine, the Philosopher, Bishop of Hippo, 
 A.D. 354-430 
 
 The testimony of S. Augustine is of special interest, 
 partly because he was a voluminous writer, and a very 
 large proportion of what he wrote has been preserved to 
 our day, but much more because he was a man of many- 
 sided mind. Many men might write folios, but what 
 they said on page after page, and in volume after volume, 
 would be the same thing over and over. Augustine has 
 his favorite ideas, which he repeats frequently, but he 
 was very notably a man who looked at things in many 
 
 118 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 119 
 
 ways. He was not in the habit of throwing in repeatedly 
 in his discourses such phrases as "in some sense" and 
 "so to speak," but he very well might have. Like most 
 great men, he tries to make words his instruments for 
 expressing ideas outside the ordinary range of common 
 men with their common speech. So, most naturally, he 
 is sometimes hard to understand, and sometimes he will 
 seem to contradict himself. You will need to be on the 
 lookout, as you read him, to take his words in his way. 
 Common and simple ways will not do. Augustine of 
 Hippo was not a common and simple man. 
 
 We are dealing, it is to be remembered, with the ques- 
 tion whether our Lord's words, "This is My body," 
 suggested to the early Christian teachers a mysterious 
 presence on the altar of our Lord's glorified body, which 
 is in heaven, or rather the making of the hallowed bread 
 to be our Lord's body in some new way and in some new 
 meaning. Now the first thing that I shall note about S. 
 Augustine is a negative thing. I cannot show it by 
 quotations short of spreading before you all that we 
 have of his teaching concerning the Holy Eucharist. For 
 that I have not space. I must ask you to take my word 
 for it, — or much better than that, search the Augustinian 
 quotations on the Eucharist for yourselves, as they are 
 given in Dr. Pusey's volume, and see whether I say truly, 
 — that S. Augustine never, when he is speaking of the 
 Eucharist, refers to the body of our Lord as being in 
 heaven, or as coming down to the altar, or as being 
 present in the element of bread. Some of you, who do 
 not know Augustine's phrases familiarly will be saying, 
 "Oh! That must be impossible!" Others, who do know 
 Augustine's phrases well, will say, "That is not true! 
 S. Augustine speaks over and over of our eating in the 
 Eucharist the bread which comes down from heaven. 
 
120 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Does not the Lecturer know that?" Oh! yes. I know 
 that patent fact quite well, but I must point out that 
 S. Augustine explains "the Bread from heaven" as 
 meaning our Lord in His Person, in His Divine-human 
 life. I repeat my statement that S. Augustine never, 
 in all his many utterances, speaks of our Lord's body 
 as being in heaven, or coming from heaven, or as 
 being present in the consecrated bread, when he is 
 writing of the Presence of our Lord in the Holy 
 Eucharist. It is from the modern point of view a notable 
 omission. 
 
 A second point to be insisted on in the examination of 
 S. Augustine's writings is this: Augustine is clear that 
 something which is "the body of our Lord" in one sense 
 is to be identified with something else, which is "the 
 body of our Lord" in a different sense. My point is 
 that he identifies the body of our Lord received in the 
 Eucharist with the mystical body, the Church. He 
 identifies thoroughly, as one and the same body, two 
 bodies which he certainly did not regard as identical. 
 Here is an extract from a sermon for Easter Day : 
 
 "I promised to you wlio have been baptized a sermon, in 
 which I was to explain the sacrament of the Lord's table, which 
 you have even now seen, and of which you became partakers, last 
 night.^ Ye ought to know what ye have received, what ye 
 are about to receive, what ye ought daily to receive. That 
 bread which ye see on the altar, consecrated by the word of 
 God, is the body of Christ. That cup, or rather what that 
 cup holds, consecrated by the word of God, is the blood of 
 Christ. In this way the Lord willed to impart His body, and 
 
 * The baptism of the catechumens had taken place in the late eve- 
 ning of Easter Even, Confirmation being a part of the baptismal rites 
 in those days, and had been followed by a midnight mass. This ser- 
 mon was preached in the service of Easter morning. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 121 
 
 His blood, which He shed for the remission of sins. If you have 
 received well, you are that which you have received." ^ 
 
 "You are that which you have received." This is a 
 plain identification of the sacramental body and the 
 mystical body. The same teaching appears in another 
 sermon: 
 
 "That virtue which is there understood is unity, that being 
 joined to His body, and made His limbs, we may be that which 
 we receive." ^ 
 
 In like vein Augustine speaks in his Tractates on the 
 Gospel of S. John, commenting on vi. 51: 
 
 "The faithful know the body of Christ, if they neglect not 
 to be the body of Christ. Let them become the body of Christ, 
 if they wish to live by the Spirit of Christ. None lives by the 
 Spirit of Christ but the body of Christ. . . . Wouldest thou then 
 also live by the Spirit of Christ.'' Be in the body of Christ. For 
 does my body live by thy spirit.'' My body lives by my spirit, 
 and thy body by thy spirit. The body of Christ cannot live but 
 by the Spirit of Christ. It is for this that the Apostle Paul, 
 expounding this bread, says: 'One bread,' saith he; 'we, being 
 many are one body.' " ' 
 
 It seems to me a point worth observing that Augustine's 
 thought dwelt on the idea that it was indwelling spirit 
 that made matter to be a body. My spirit makes my 
 body to be my body. At least, he could have understood 
 the claim, if he had heard one saying, "What makes the 
 bread of our altars to be our Lord's body is the indwelling 
 of His Spirit, even as in His natural flesh." 
 
 Returning to the words of S. Augustine himself, I take 
 
 1 Sermon 227. Pusey, 528, 529; Stone, 95; P. L. 38, 1099. 
 
 « Sermon 57. Stone, 95; P. L. 38, 589. 
 
 ' Tractate xxvi. 13. Pusey, 511; P. L. 35, 1612, 1613. 
 
122 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 a passage from his book On the City of God. He is arguing 
 against persons who minimize in various ways what he 
 holds to be the teaching of Scripture as to Eternal Punish- 
 ment: 
 
 "There are others who promise deliverance from eternal 
 punishment, not indeed to all men, but only to those who have 
 been washed with Christ's baptism, who have become partakers 
 of His body, howsoever they may have lived, in whatsoever 
 heresy or impiety, on account of what Jesus saith: 'This is the 
 bread wliich came down from heaven, that a man may eat 
 thereof, and not die. ... If any man eat of this bread, he shall 
 live forever.' . . . There are also those who do not promise 
 this even to all who have the sacrament of Clu"ist and of His 
 body,^ but to Catholics onlj', because they have eaten the body 
 of Christ, not sacramentally only, but in reality (non solo Sa- 
 cramento, sed re ipsa), being incorporated in that very body of 
 Has, of which the Apostle says, ' We, being many, are one bread and 
 one body,' so that although they have afterwards lapsed into 
 some heresy, or even into heathen idolatry, yet simply because 
 in the body of Christ, that is, in the Catholic Church, they have 
 received the Baptism of Christ, and eaten the body of Christ, 
 they shall not die forever." . . . "He who is in the unity of 
 that body, that is, in the fast hold Lcompagel of the members 
 of Christ, of wliich body the faithful are wont to receive the 
 sacrament from the altar in their communions, he is truly to 
 be said to eat the body of Christ and to drink the blood of 
 Christ." 2 
 
 CaUing the Church "the body of our Lord" is figurative 
 language, as all agree. S. Augustine found a tremendous 
 reality conveyed in that figurative language, and he uses 
 
 ' This seems to mean the sacrament of Baptism, regarded as making 
 men members of our Lord's body, and so in the former sentence, those 
 "who have been washed, who have become partakers of His body," 
 are one group of people, not two. It would seem that to Augustine 
 to be baptized was "to cat the flesh of Christ and to drink His blood." 
 
 » De Civitate xxi. 19, 20, 25. Pusey, 532, 533. P. L. 41, 733, 734. 741. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 12S 
 
 such figurative language about a "body" of our Lord 
 quite interchangeably with our Lord's eucharistic word, 
 "body." Nay, I observe that he speaks of Catholics as 
 eating the body of our Lord, "not sacramentally only, 
 but in reality," when they are incorporated in the body 
 mystical. Now S. Augustine is absolutely clear that 
 those who receive the Holy Communion "unworthily," 
 do receive our Lord's body, — to their condemnation and 
 hurt. Apply this key, that S. Augustine regarded our 
 Lord's eucharistic language as figurative, as truly as S. 
 Paul's language about the body, the Church, and all 
 comes clear. Our Lord calls the hallowed bread His 
 body, because He has taken it as the vehicle and instru- 
 ment of His Divine-human life. The wicked man really 
 receives this body, with its indwelling life. He receives 
 a figure, which is not a mere figure, but a great power. 
 And yet he receives sacramentally only, but not in reality y 
 that gift (of union with our Lord in His glorified body in 
 heaven) which this sacramental body, a great reality in 
 itself, was intended to convey. 
 
 Certainly Augustine holds our Lord's eucharistic 
 language to be figurative language. Not only does our 
 saint contrast what is done "sacramentally" with what 
 is done "in reality." He speaks of our Lord as commend- 
 ing and delivering to His disciples "the figure of His own 
 body and blood." (Enarrations on the Psalms, iii. 1.)^ He 
 speaks of our Lord as hesitating "not to say, 'This is My 
 body,' when He gave a sign of His body." (Contra 
 Adimantum, 12. § 3.)^ Again, he says, "These things are 
 therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing 
 is seen, another is understood. What is seen has a 
 bodily form; what is understood has a spiritual fruit." 
 (Sermon 272.) ^ 
 
 1 P. L. 36, 73. 2 P. L. 42, 144. 2 P. L. 38, 1247. 
 
124 THE EUCHARISITC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Of course, it will be said here by some devout modern 
 students that the thing seen is bread, and the thing 
 understood is our Lord's glorified body. But let me ask 
 them to observe how different the language of Augustine 
 is from theirs. They always distinguish the bread from 
 our Lord's body. They do not really, when they are 
 thinking their own thoughts, and using their natural 
 language, call the eucharistic bread "our Lord's body." 
 They say that the bread is a figure of our Lord's body 
 natural, and that the body is 'present in the bread. S. 
 Augustine, like all the rest of the Fathers, did call the 
 consecrated bread our Lord's body, and did believe that 
 our Lord had made it so, it being truly the body of our 
 Lord in a new and figurative sense, which yet included 
 a tremendous reality. That is the thought which enables 
 Augustine to dwell so much on the fact (as he held it to 
 be) that Judas received our Lord's body, and yet to 
 write such a passage as this from the Treatise On the City 
 of God: 
 
 "These persons (Christians who live in habitual sin) are not 
 to be said to eat the body of Christ, for they cannot even be 
 reckoned among His meml)ers. For not to mention other 
 matters, they cannot be at once the members of Christ and the 
 members of a harlot. In fine. He Himself, when He says, 'He 
 that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, 
 and I in Him,' shows what it is, not by way of sacrament, but 
 in reality (non sacramento tcnus, sed re vera), to eat His body, 
 and drink His blood; for tliis is to abide in Christ, that He may 
 also abide in us. For He hath so said this, as if He said, 'He 
 that abidetli in Me, and in whom I abide not, let him not say 
 or think that he eateth My flesh, or drinketh My blood.'" ^ 
 
 The bread and wine are called the body and blood of 
 Christ in a figure, because He enters into them, and 
 » De Civiiatc. xxi. 25 end; Puscy, 533, 531; P. L. \\, 742. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 125 
 
 makes them a power for certain ends. This figure is in 
 itself a great reahty, filled with an awful power. That 
 reality all communicants receive, for good or for evil. 
 But really eating the flesh, and drinking the blood of 
 the Lord, or in other words, truly carrying out his figure, 
 according to its intended action, is to be said only of 
 those who turn that great power to an appointed use, of 
 blessing and newness of life. 
 
 I know no other explanation than that which I have 
 given, which can clear Augustine of the charge of self- 
 contradiction. He who thus tells us that the wicked 
 "are not to be said to eat the body of the Lord," did use 
 that very form of speech over and over. He said of 
 Judas, that he "received Christ's body" ^ {Tractate on S. 
 John Ixii. 3. Pusey, 516), and again, "They ate the bread 
 which was the Lord: he, the bread of the Lord, against 
 the Lord. They ate life; he punishment." (Tractate 
 on S. John, lix. 1.) Again, he speaks of certain offenders, 
 who "fear not, with the mark of the devil, to receive the 
 body of Christ." ^ Nothing could make it more clear 
 that Augustine regarded the eucharistic elements them- 
 selves, received by good and bad alike as worthy to be 
 called by great names, because they had received the 
 indwelling of a great power. It is equally clear that 
 Augustine regards these elements as fulfilling the promise 
 implied in such great names to those only who fulfilled 
 certain conditions. In other words, there was a great 
 
 ^ That is, he says of Judas receiving the sop, that he "did not at that 
 time receive Christ's body," and goes on to show that that receiving 
 happened earUer. The next quotation is ambiguous. It refers cer- 
 tainly to the receiving of the sop. Probably it refers to the communion 
 of Judas also. The passages are in P. L. 35, 1802, and 35, 1796, re- 
 spectively. 
 
 - Ep. 245, 2, Ad Possidium. Pusey, 508; P. L. 33, 1061. 
 
126 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 reality there, but the names which it secured to the 
 consecrated elements were figurative names, which might 
 or might not, make their promise good. 
 
 What did S. Augustine hold to be the Inner Reality 
 of the sacrament? Certainly, our Lord Himself. And 
 it may be added, not our Lord in His glorified body, but 
 our Lord in His glorious Person. I have said that Augus- 
 tine nowhere speaks of our Lord's body as coming from 
 heaven. He does speak often of our feeding on bread 
 from heaven. But He invariably refers that phrase to 
 our Lord personally, and not to our Lord's body. He 
 speaks several times of our feeding on "the bread of 
 angels," but he explains that phrase as referring to our 
 Lord in His Divine Nature. He was the bread of angels, 
 Augustine says, before His Incarnation. He could be- 
 come the bread of men only by the way of Incarnation. 
 Here is a passage from a sermon on Psalm 34 (in the 
 Vulgate, 33) : ^ 
 
 "In His own body and blood He willed our health to be. 
 But whereby commended He His own body and blood.' By 
 His own humility. For unless He were Immble, neither could 
 this be eaten, nor that drunk. Consider His high estate: 'In 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and 
 the Word was God.' Behold! tlic food is from everlasting, 
 but of it eat the angels, of it eat the heavenly spirits, and eating, 
 they are filled. And yet remainetli that whole which satisfieth 
 them, and maketh them glad. [So far the subject is our Lord's 
 Person in His Divine Nature, exclusively.] But what man 
 could be capable of that food.'* How could his heart be made 
 fit enough for that food.'' Tlierefore it behooved that table to 
 become milk, and so to come even to babes. But how doth food 
 become milk? How is food changed into milk, except it is 
 passed through flesh? For the mother docs this thing: What 
 
 2 Scrm. i. 6. Puscy, 517-519; P. L. 36, 303. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 127 
 
 the mother eats, that the infant eats, but because the infant 
 is less fit to feed on bread, the same bread the mother incarnates, 
 and through humihty of her own breast, and the juice of milk, 
 of that very food feeds the infant. How, then, did the Wisdom 
 of God feed us with that same bread? 'The Word was made 
 flesh, and dwelt among us. ' See, then, humility, in the fact that 
 man ate the bread of angels, as it is written, 'He gave them of 
 the bread of heaven; man did eat angels' food'; that is, that 
 Word, by which the angels live from everlasting, which is equal 
 to the Father, did man eat; because 'being in the form of God 
 He thought it not robbery to be equal with God,' by that (form) 
 are the angels filled. But He 'made Himself of no reputation,' 
 that man might eat angels' food, 'and took upon Him the form 
 of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being 
 found in fasliion as a man. He humbled Himself, and became 
 obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,' that so from 
 His cross might be commended to us the body and the blood 
 of the Lord for a new sacrifice." 
 
 Again, in the Traetates on S. John (xxvi. 20), we have 
 the same teaching: 
 
 "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that by 
 eating Him we may live, seeing we cannot have eternal life of 
 ourselves. . . . Even they who eat Christ shall certainly die 
 temporally, but they shall live for ever, because Christ is eternal 
 life." 1 
 
 j The teaching is continued in the next Tractate (xxvii. 1) : ^ 
 
 **He explained the mode of this bestowal and gift of His, in 
 what manner He gave His flesh to eat, saying, ' He that eateth My 
 flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him.' 
 The proof that a man has eaten and drunk is this, if he abides 
 and is abode in, if he dwells and is dwelt in, if he cleaves so as 
 not to be abandoned. This, then. He has taught us, and ad- 
 monishes us in mystical words, to be in His body, among His 
 
 1 Pusey, 513; P. L. 35, 1615. 2 Pusey, 513; P. L. 35, 1616. 
 
128 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 members, under Himself as Head, eating His flesh, not abandon- 
 ing our unity with Him." 
 
 Pursuing this line of teaching, our saint adds (in Tractate 
 xlv. 9, quoted in Pusey, 514-515) an assertion which 
 may startle modern hearers. He says that the worthies 
 of the Old Covenant received the same blessing that we 
 do, that is, union with our Lord. I venture to doubt 
 the correctness of S. Augustine's teaching in this particular 
 point; but I value his words here as showing very strik- 
 ingly what he held the Heavenly Part in the sacrament 
 to be. 
 
 "Was not the same faith theirs by whom these signs were 
 employed, and by whom were foretold in prophecy the things 
 which we believe? Certainly it was. But they believed that 
 they were yet to come; and we, that they have come. In like 
 manner does he also say, 'They all drank the same spiritual 
 drink.' 'The same spiritual,' for it was not the same material 
 (drink). For what was it they drank .'^ 'For they drank of the 
 spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.* 
 See, then, how that while the faith remained the same, the signs 
 were varied. The rock was Christ; to us that is Christ which 
 is placed on the altar of God. And they, as a great sacramental 
 sign of the same Christ, drank the water flowing from the rock; 
 what we drink is known, is known to the fg.ithful. If one's 
 thoughts turn to the visible form, the thing is different; if to the 
 meaning tliat addresses the understanding, they * drank the same 
 spiritual drink.'" ^ 
 
 I set it down confidently that S. Augustine never any- 
 where contrasts an earthly sacrament with a heavenly 
 body, but always with a heavenly Person, or a heavenly 
 Life. I^t me give one more extract to this eflFect, and 
 this time, from Sermon 131. ^ 
 
 » P. L. 35, 1723. 
 
 « Pusey, 527; Stone, 91, 92. P. L. 38, 729. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 129 
 
 "What, then, does He answer? ' Does this make you stumble? 
 What then if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where He 
 was before?' What does He mean by 'Does this make you 
 stumble?' *Do you think that of this body of Mine, which you 
 see, I shall make pieces, and cut up My limbs, and give them to 
 you? ' What does He mean by 'If then you shall see the Son of 
 Man ascending where He was before?' Certainly, He who 
 could ascend whole, could not be consumed. Therefore He both 
 gave to us healthful nourishment from His body and blood, and 
 in a few words solved so great a question about His wholeness. 
 Therefore let those who eat, eat, and let those who drink, drink; 
 let them 'hunger and thirst'; let them eat life, let them drink 
 life. To eat this is to be nourished; but so are you nourished 
 that the source of your nourishment does not fail. To drink 
 this, what is it but to live? Eat life, drink life; you will have 
 life, and yet the life is whole. Then this will happ>en, that is, 
 the body and blood of Christ will be life to each one, if what is 
 visibly received in the sacrament is spiritually eaten, and spirit- 
 ually drunk, in very truth." 
 
 In the quotation given above from the Tractates on S. 
 John (xxvii. 1), we heard S. Augustine saying, "He 
 explained first the mode of this bestowal and gift of His, 
 . . . when He said, 'He that eateth My flesh and drinketh 
 My blood, dwelleth in Me and I in Him.'" Perhaps you 
 could not see that those words of our Lord really con- 
 stituted an explanation of those other great words, "This 
 is My body," "This is My blood." S. Augustine makes 
 it clear that he, for his part, did find there an "explana- 
 tion," and one which satisfied his deeply philosophical 
 mind. To him those words of our Lord seem to have 
 meant, "This bread is now a means by which I can 
 extend the reach of My human life, and bring it to bear 
 upon My people, feeding them from Myself, and uniting 
 them with Myself." "This wine is now a means whereby 
 I may commimicate Myself to My people as a quickening 
 
130 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Force, animating My body mystical, My Church, even 
 as My natural blood, now flowing in My veins, animates 
 My natural body." With such an understanding of 
 our Lord's words, S. Augustine finds naturally in a phrase 
 that defines eating our Lord's flesh and drinking His 
 blood as amounting to a mutual indwelling of our Lord 
 and His people, an "explanation" of our Lord's mysterious 
 saying. 
 
 Let me present, in this connection, an example of this 
 great bishop, and clear-headed teacher, setting himself 
 to explain the mystery of the Blessed Eucharist to be- 
 ginners in the Clu-istian Religion, so far, that is, as it 
 can be explained at all. The most noteworthy thing 
 about this offered explanation is, that it does not follow 
 the line that a modern Roman theologian would follow, 
 nor the line that a modern High Anglican w^ould fol- 
 low, in the very least, and the next most noteworthy thing 
 about it is that neither of these modern theologians can eas- 
 ily find any "explanation" here at all. The passage which 
 I am to quote is from a sermon to children (Sermon 
 cclxxii. Quoted by Stone, p. 95, and, in part, by Pusey, 
 p. 530.) I ask you to notice that their bishop has nothing 
 to say to them about our Lord's body being able to be in 
 heaven and on the altar at the same time, being present 
 among us after the manner of a spirit. If he had thought 
 that, I know no reason why he should not have said it, 
 but every reason why he should, when his particular 
 object was to explain our Lord's eucharistic Presence just 
 as far as it could possibly be explained. But if you 
 listen to his explanation, which he did give, with that 
 other thought in your mind, — that our Lord must have 
 meant by "This is My body," "This also is My body in 
 some sense, another body, which I have besides My 
 body natural," then I think that you can see that the 
 
A.D. 381-431; LATIN FATHERS 131 
 
 bishop's words do constitute something of an explanation. 
 Here, at any rate is what he says: 
 
 "This which you see on the altar of God, you saw last night, 
 also; but what it was, what it meant, of how great a thing it 
 contained the sacrament, you have not yet heard. What you 
 see, then, is bread and a cup, which even your eyes declare to 
 you; but as to that in which your faith demands instruction, the 
 bread is the body of Christ, the cup, the blood of Christ. . , . 
 Such a thought as this may occur in some one's mind : our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, — we know whence He received flesh, of the 
 Virgin Mary. As a babe He was nourished, suckled, grew. 
 . . . He was slain. . . . He rose again. . . . He ascended 
 into heaven. . . . There He is now sitting at the right hand of 
 the Father. How is the bread His body? How is the cup, or 
 that which the cup contains. His blood? Brethren, these 
 things are called sacraments for this reason, that in them one 
 thing is seen, another thing is understood. That which is seen 
 has bodily appearance (speciem); that which is understood has 
 spiritual fruit. If you wish to understand the body of Christ, 
 hear the Apostle, speaking to the faithful, 'Now ye are the body 
 and members of Clu-ist.' If you, then, are the body and mem- 
 bers of Christ, your mystery is laid on the Table of the Lord, 
 your mystery you receive. To that which you are you answer 
 Amen, and in answering you assent. You hear the words, 
 'The body of Christ,' and you answer 'Amen.' Be a member of 
 the body of Christ, that the 'Amen' may be true." ^ 
 
 Now if S. Augustine had believed that the bread of 
 the Eucharist was (1) not our Lord's body at all, but 
 (2) called so, because it was a picture of our Lord's body, 
 being also (3) an appointed sign and pledge of the presence 
 of our Lord's heavenly body, he would have said so 
 plainly. If, again, these catechumens were asking, 
 "How can our Lord's heavenly body be here on the 
 altar?" to tell them that in a sacrament one thing is 
 1 P. L. 36, 1246-1248. 
 
132 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 seen, and another understood, would have been simply 
 to re-state the difficulty with which their minds were 
 occupied, and not in the least to explain it. But once 
 more let me substitute my pre-supposition, which I 
 suppose to have been S. Augustine's, and that of every- 
 body else in his time. These people, who looked to him 
 for instruction, were not asking "How can our Lord's 
 body, which is in heaven, be here on the altar, too?" 
 They were asking, "IIow, since we know that our Lord's 
 body is in heaven, and not here, can this bread of His 
 sacrament be His body, too?" Then Augustine's answer 
 will make sense. And its sense will be something like 
 this. "The words used in defining the grace of a sacra- 
 ment are used in a special, not an ordinary, way. When 
 bread is called 'the body of the Lord,' and wine *the 
 blood of the Lord,' you know that these hallowed elements 
 have suffered a change, and have in them some mysterious 
 potency, some spiritual fruit, beyond their outward 
 seeming. Would you ask how bread can have the po- 
 tency of a 'body' for our Lord, bethink yourselves of 
 how He teaches us to call the Church His 'body' because 
 He lives in it and w^orks through it." To tell them that 
 in these sacramental phrases words are not used literally, 
 and to point them to another well-known and well-loved 
 use of one of these words in a figurative way, is to give 
 them at least the beginning of an explanation that ex- 
 plains. I venture to say that an explanation of Augus- 
 tine's ouTi meaning as the preacher of this sermon must 
 be looked for along the line which I have just indicated. 
 I keep insisting that to S. Augustine and his hearers 
 the natural suggestion of "This is My body," was "This 
 is a body which is Mine, and is in addition to that in 
 which I stand before you." I want to give some further 
 passages which seem to me to establish that that was the 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 133 
 
 attitude of Augustine's mind. I begin with two which 
 can be easily explained otherwise, but which will gather 
 force from those which follow after. 
 
 In that sermon on Psalm 34 (Sermon i. 10), which I 
 have already quoted, I find this: 
 
 "Christ was carried in His own hands, when delivering His 
 own body, He said, 'This is My body.' For that body He carried 
 in His own hands." ^ 
 
 It will be said by some that my emphasizing "that 
 body" does not truly represent the preacher's mind. 
 Then I will quote from his second sermon (Sermon ii, 2) 
 on this same psalm, a passage which comes nearer to 
 saying clearly what I understand him to mean: 
 
 "When He delivered His own body and His own blood, He 
 took in His hands what the faithful know, and in a certain 
 fashion \iquodam modo'\ He carried Himself, when He said, 'This 
 is My body.' " 2 
 
 If it be held that still I have not proved that S. Augus- 
 tine thought of that eucharistic body as "another body," 
 I will call him as a witness to his own belief that Christians 
 do not eat our Lord's body natural. Thus in the first 
 sermon on Psalm 34 (Sermon i. 8; Pusey, 519) we find 
 this: 
 
 "Recollect the Gospel! When our Lord Jesus Christ spake 
 concerning His body. He said 'Except a man eat My flesh, and 
 drink My blood, he shall have no life in him. For My flesh is 
 meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.' And His disciples 
 who followed Him feared, and were shocked at His discourse; 
 and understanding it not, they thought that our Lord Jesus 
 Christ said some hard thing, as if they were to eat His flesh, 
 and drink His blood, which they saw; and could not endure 
 it, saying, 'How is it.?'"^ 
 
 » Stone, 82; P. L. 36, 306. 2 P. L. 36. 308. ^ p i 35, 305. 
 
134 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Of course, it will be urged by some that when S. Augus- 
 tine implied that, of course, our Lord's followers were 
 not to eat His flesh, and drink His blood, which they saw, 
 he only intended to say that they were not to eat of that 
 body as they saw it, that is, in its natural state. But it 
 seems to me that this is to charge a great saint and great 
 teacher with using words somewhat carelessly and 
 clumsily. If he had meant that other thing it would 
 have been quite as easy to say so. Two more brief 
 extracts will make it absolutely sure, I think, that S. 
 Augustine did not regard the eucharistic body of our 
 Lord as identical with His body natural in any wise. 
 We have heard Augustine representing our Lord as 
 "carrying HimseK in His own hands, in a cert aiji fashion." 
 We shall find that cautious phrase coming out in one of 
 the most famous of Augustinian sayings. It comes from 
 Epistle xcviii. 9.^ 
 
 "If the sacraments had not any likeness to those things of 
 which they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at 
 all. And from this likeness for the most part also they receive 
 the names of the things themselves. As then, after a certain 
 fashion [^secundum quemdam modum~\ the sacrament of the body 
 of Christ is the body of Christ, and the sacrament of the blood 
 of Christ is the blood of Christ, so the sacrament of faith is 
 faith." 
 
 I think that if S. Augustine had been writing in our 
 modern English speech he would have preferred the word 
 "analogy" to the word "likeness." The resemblance 
 that he has in his mind is a "resemblance of ratios." 
 That is exactly what I am claiming. He seems to have 
 regarded the eucharistic bread as being to our Lord in 
 one sphere what His body of flesh and bones had been 
 
 » Pusey. 507; Stone, 05; P. /... 33, 3G4. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 135 
 
 to Him in another sphere. Because of that analogy, 
 it is proper to give it that name of "body," too. 
 
 My second brief passage is from the Treatise on Christian 
 Doctrine (iii. 16; Stone, 65). Here is Augustine's rule 
 for declaring what is to be taken as figurative, and what 
 as literal, in Holy Scripture : 
 
 "If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a 
 crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, 
 it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or 
 vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figur- 
 ative. 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man,' says Christ, 
 'and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.' This seems to 
 enjoin a crime or a vice; therefore it is a figure, enjoining that we 
 should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and a sweet 
 and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded 
 and crucified for us. " ^ 
 
 Now, certainly, S. Augustine believed a great deal 
 more concerning the sacrament than these words of his 
 would suggest to a modern reader. But when we read 
 those passages in which he expresses that "more," we 
 must never forget that in this one point he has put him- 
 self on record unalterably. The words, "This is My 
 body," "This is My blood," are figurative expressions, 
 not literal, and his distinction between "figurative" 
 and "literal" is exactly the same which we make to-day. 
 
 I wish to close my examination of the teaching of S. 
 Augustine with a long quotation, in which our Lord will 
 be represented as saying, "You are not to eat that body 
 which you see, nor to drink that blood which they who 
 shall crucify Me will pour forth." But before I proceed 
 to that closing testimony as to Augustine's non-literalness, 
 I must make the most distinct acknowledgment that 
 this same great teacher regards the sacramental body of 
 1 P. L. 34, 745. 
 
136 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 our Lord as something to be identified with His body 
 natural, and does, therefore, with an appearance of 
 flattest self-contradiction, assert over and over that men 
 do eat and drink the body and blood of our Lord, which 
 He wore here on earth. I must remind you of the distinc- 
 tion which I drew in my first Lecture and again in my 
 fourth Lecture between "identified" and "identical." 
 Augustine distinctly declines to acknowledge the sacra- 
 mental body of our Lord as identical with His natural 
 body, and yet he identifies the two bodies in some sense. 
 I note further that this identification is always an identi- 
 fication with the body of our Lord's earthly life, and 
 never with the body as glorified. The latter identifica- 
 tion could have been made just as well, on the same 
 theological foundation. Only our saint's thoughts never 
 seem to turn that way. He thinks rather of the body 
 on the altar as in some sense one with the body which 
 suffered and was rejected here on earth. Here are the 
 passages : 
 
 "Those men, indeed, [the Jews] saw Christ dying by their 
 own villany, and yet they believed Christ pardoning their vil- 
 lanies. Until they drank the blood they shed, they despaired 
 of their own salvation. " ^ 
 
 "What murderer should despair if one was restored to hope, 
 by whom even Christ was murdered? There believed of them 
 many. They were presented with Christ's blood as a gift, that 
 they might drink it for their deliverance, rather than be held 
 guilty of shedding it. Who can despair.?" (Ibid, xxxviii, 7.) 
 
 "That blood which in their rage they shed, in their faith they 
 drank. " (Ibid. xl. 2.) 
 
 But from these examples of one of Augustine's habits 
 of mind, identifying, in a fashion, the "blood" of the 
 
 » Tractate on S. John, xxxi. 9; Pusey. 514; P. L. 35, 1640. The next 
 two passages arc on col. 1678 and col. 1684. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 137 
 
 Eucharist with the blood of our Lord's natural body, 
 I turn back to my promised quotation, drawn from the 
 Enarrations on the Psalms (xcix. [in the Vulgate, xcviii.] 
 8).^ Augustine is here commenting on the words in the 
 fifth verse of the Psalm, which we read in our Prayer 
 Books as "fall down before His footstool, for He is holy." 
 The King James Version gives, "worship at His foot- 
 stool." Augustine read in his Latin Bible, odor ate 
 scahellum pedum ejus; quoniam sanctus est, — "worship 
 His footstool; for He is holy." The difficulty arose at 
 once to Latin readers, how could men be bidden to worship 
 a created thing? Augustine explains by referring to the 
 saying, "Earth is My footstool" (Is. Ixvi. 1; Acts vii. 49), 
 and then to the fact that man is said to have been made 
 out "of the dust of the ground" (Gen. ii. 7). Earth is 
 made man. Our Lord takes man's nature upon Him. 
 Then earth, which is God's footstool, is found to be part 
 of the vesture of the Eternal Word. God's footstool is 
 made worshipful, when of it is made the flesh of Christ. 
 Here follows the quotation: 
 
 "Because He walked here in flesh itself, and gave flesh itself ' 
 to us to eat for our salvation, and no one eats that flesh, unless 
 he has first worshipped, a way has been found in which such a 
 footstool of the Lord may be worshipped, and in which we not 
 only do not sin if we worship, but should sin if we did not wor- 
 ship. But doth the flesh give life? Our Lord Himself, when He 
 was speaking in praise of this same earth, said, 'It is the Spirit 
 
 » Pusey, 521-523; Stone 108-109; P. L. 37, 1264. 
 
 * The translator for the Oxford Library of the Fathers here renders 
 "that very flesh" as if S. Augustine had written "illam carnem ipsam." 
 Dr. Darwell Stone's rendering, "He walked here in the flesh itself, and 
 gave the flesh itself" is, of course, perfectly possible, but the rendering 
 above seems nearer to Augustine's sequence of thought. Augustine 
 did at times identify the eucharistic body and the historic body, as we 
 have seen. He is not making that point here. 
 
138 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 that quickeneth; the flesh profitelh nothing. ' Therefore when 
 thou bowest thyself down prostrate before the earth, look not 
 unto the earth; look not as if unto the earth, but unto that Holy 
 One whose footstool it is that thou dost worship. Wherefore 
 He hath added here also, 'Worship His footstool, for He is holy.* 
 Who is holy? He in whose honor thou dost worship His foot- 
 stool. And when thou worshippest Him, see that thou do not 
 in thought remain in the flesh, unquickened by the Spirit; for 
 He saith, 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth 
 nothing.' But when our Lord counselled this, He had been 
 speaking of His own flesh, and had said, 'Except a man eat My 
 flesh, he shall have no life in him.' Some disciples of His, about 
 seventy,^ were offended, and said, 'This is a hard saying. Who 
 can hear it.''' And they went back, and walked no more with 
 Him. It seemed to them hard that He said, 'Except ye eat 
 the flesh of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you.' They 
 received it foolishly, they thought of it carnally, they even 
 imagined that the Lord would cut off parts from His body, and 
 give to them; and they said, 'This is a hard saying.' They were 
 hard, not the saying; for unless they had been hard, and not 
 meek, they would have said to themselves, 'He does not say this 
 without reason, but there must be some latent mystery therein;* 
 they would have remained with Him, softened, not hard, and 
 would have learne<l that from Him wliich they did learn who 
 remained after the others had departed. For when, on their 
 departure, twelve disciples had remained, these remaining fol- 
 lowers suggested to Him, as if in grief for the death of the former, 
 that these were offended by His words, and turned back. But 
 He instructed them, and saith unto them, 'It is the Spirit that 
 quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I 
 have spoken unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life. Under- 
 stand spiritually what I have said: you are not to eat this body 
 which you see, nor drink that blood which they ivho shall crucify Me 
 
 * This is a curious example of exegesis by the way of inference. Our 
 Lord's disciples left Him so largely that he asked the Twelve if they were 
 going too. Those who had gone already must, then, have been the 
 next most intimate group, " the seventy " ! 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 139 
 
 vdll pour forth. I have delivered unto you a certain mystery. 
 Spiritually understood, it will quicken. Although it is needful 
 that this be visibly celebrated, yet it must be spiritually under- 
 stood.' 'Oh! magnify the Lord our God; and worship His 
 footstool; for He is holy.'" 
 
 I might multiply quotations, but I forbear. I close 
 with two claims. I claim that S. Augustine continually 
 uses such phrases as my understanding of his eucharistic 
 belief calls for. You may explain every one of them so 
 as to satisfy yourself entirely that it will bear another 
 interpretation, and can be made to fit with another habit 
 of speech. It remains that it is his habit to use such 
 words and phrases as with my general view of the patristic 
 teaching I should expect. I claim, secondly, that the 
 language which some modern theorists find most natural 
 is language which S. Augustine never uses at all. 
 
 II 
 
 The Testimony of S. Jerome, the Traveller 
 (a.d. 346P-420) 
 
 The learned scholar, Jerome, is exceptional among the 
 Fathers of the Church for the wide range of his associa- 
 tions with men as well as for the largeness of his studies. 
 Born in the Roman province of Pannonia (east of the 
 northern part of the Adriatic Sea) he studied at Rome, 
 in Gaul, in Asia Minor, at Antioch, at Alexandria. In 
 later life he had a few years at Rome in the commanding 
 position of secretary to the Bishop, Damasus, and then 
 a much longer career as head of a group of religious 
 houses at Bethlehem. No man of his day knew better 
 what Christian thought was, no man was quicker to 
 detect differences of thought among students, than this 
 
140 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Jerome, whose almost ecumenical experience and ob- 
 servation I have tried to sum up in a phrase by calling 
 him "Jerome, the Traveller." Because of this extraordi- 
 nary largeness of experience he represents much more 
 than himself. If it be suggested that that is true of 
 almost any Christian scholar, I will say that, much more 
 than most other Christian writers, S. Jerome represents 
 more than himself. That fact of his life would certainly 
 tend to save him from putting forth peculiar, individual, 
 and novel opinions and teachings. If S. Jerome intro- 
 duces us to an exceptional word, it will be particularly 
 likely that his exceptional way of speaking will yet repre- 
 sent most justly, if the subject be one of the subjects 
 near to the Church's heart, and always prominent in the 
 Church's thought, what the Church had been thinking 
 in regard to that same subject for three hundred years. 
 And in connection with this great subject of the Eucharist, 
 S. Jerome does introduce us to a new phrase. He speaks 
 over and over of "making" the body of our Lord in the 
 sacrament. 
 
 This phrase ought to be startling to theologians of 
 the modern pre-possession. Our Lord's glorified body in 
 heaven needs not to be made, nor can be. Our Lord's 
 body in which He stood before the Apostles, when He 
 consecrated His first Eucharist, needed not to be made, 
 nor could be. But according to the view that I have 
 been pressing, the making of the eucharistic bread to be 
 our Lord's body does include and imply the making of a 
 new body. That idea, and that only, can account 
 reasonably, and without straining of human speech, for 
 such an expression as that the Priest makes {conficit) 
 the body of Christ. I shall begin my quotations from S. 
 Jerome with one in which he may give his answer — I 
 think that he does give a clear answer — to the question 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 141 
 
 whether, in his thoughts about the sacrament of the 
 altar, our Lord is understood to have another body 
 besides His natural body. Jerome is here commenting 
 on Eph. i. 7, "In whom we have redemption through 
 His blood," and he is led to compare some legendary 
 heathen deliverers of their people with our Lord, the 
 Saviour of a whole world by His blood-shedding. Then 
 he goes on thus: 
 
 "But the blood and flesh of Christ are understood in two ways, 
 either that spiritual and divine (flesh), of which He said Himself, 
 'My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed,' and 
 'Except ye eat My flesh, and drink My blood, ye shall not have 
 eternal hfe,' or the flesh and blood of which the one was crucified, 
 and the other was shed by the soldier's spear. According to this 
 distinction there is a difference of blood and flesh to be under- 
 stood in the case of His saints as well, so that there is one flesh 
 which is to see the salvation of God, and another flesh and blood 
 which cannot possess the Kingdom of God." ^ 
 
 Now when Jerome approaches this great subject with 
 the idea that the flesh and blood of our Lord are to be 
 understood in two ways, that two distinct realities may 
 be called by these great names, one "flesh and blood" 
 being spiritual and another literal, it should be no surprise 
 to find him going on to such phrases as 
 
 "Wine is consecrated into the blood of Christ," ^ 
 
 and again, 
 
 "Far be it from me to say anything offensive of these persons 
 [the clergy], seeing that they, succeeding to the Apostolic office, 
 do with consecrated lips make the body of Christ, and by their 
 act [in administering Baptism] we are Christians," ^ 
 
 1 Stone, 97, 98; Pusey, 482; P. L. 26, 481. 
 
 2 Com. on Gal. v. 19; Pusey, 582; P. L. 26, 445. 
 
 ' Eyistola xiv., ad Heliodorum ; Pusey, 582; P. L. 22, 352. 
 
142 TIIE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and again, when commenting on the robes of the Jewish 
 High Priest, and their Christian meaning, 
 
 "A Pontiflf and Bishop, ready to oflFer sacrifices for the people, 
 a mediator between men and God, and making with consecrated 
 Hps the flesh of the Lamb [^carries Agni sacro ore conficiens'], 
 because the holy oil of Christ his God is ufK)n liim," ^ 
 
 and again, when rebuking the pride of the seven deacons 
 of the city of Rome, 
 
 "What ails the minister of tables and widows, that he swells 
 and lifts himself up above those [the presbyters] at whose 
 prayers the body and blood of Christ are brought into being." ' 
 
 We have seen that S. Jerome distinguishes two kinds 
 of "flesh and blood" of our Lord, one which is (literally) 
 flesh and blood, and one w^hich is bread and wine. How 
 utterly he identifies the eucharistic bread w ith the eucha- 
 ristic body may be seen in sundry passages of his writings. 
 I take first his comment on the phrase of the prophet 
 Malachi, "Ye offer polluted bread upon Mine altar." 
 
 "We pollute bread, that is, the body of Christ, when, being 
 unworthy, we approach the altar, and, being impure, drink pure 
 blood." 3 
 
 In like manner we have in his Enarrationes Hehraicae on 
 Genesis xiv. 18 (Pusey, 478) the phrase, "offering bread 
 and wine, that is, the body and blood of the Lord Jesus." * 
 And in his Commentary on Ezekiel xliii. (Pusey, 479) 
 he quotes from S. Paul's words to the Corinthians, "Let 
 a man prove himself; and so let him eat of the bread, and 
 
 » Ep. Ixiv. 5, Ad Fabiolam • Pusey, 47G; P. L. ii, 611. 
 
 * Ep. cxlvi.. Ad Evangelum : Pusey, 476; P. L. ii, 1193. 
 » Com. on Malachi i. 7; Pusey, 481; P. L. 25, 1624. 
 
 * P. L. 23, 1011. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 143 
 
 drink of the cup" (1 Cor. xi. 28), and makes a striking 
 substitution, as of equivalent meaning, — 
 
 "Whence the Apostle says: 'Let a man prove his own self, 
 and so let him approach the body and blood of the Lord.'" ^ 
 
 I will add one more such passage, this time from his 
 Commentary on Isaiah (Is. Ixii. 9; Pusey, 472): 
 
 "This is the wheat, and this the wine, of which none shall eat, 
 save those who praise the Lord, and none shall drink, except in 
 His holy courts, of which the Lord said in His passion, 'Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, I will no more drink of this fruit of the 
 vine, until I drink it new in the Kingdom of My Father,' which 
 words are partly fulfilled in the Church. . . . Wheat, also, 
 whereof heavenly bread is made, that is, whereof the Lord 
 speaketh: 'My flesh is meat indeed,' and again of wine, 'My 
 blood is drink indeed.'" ^ 
 
 Certainly to Jerome the bread and wine of the altar 
 are themselves, very really and unquestionably, our 
 Lord's body and blood. I may add that he has the 
 same thought on which Augustine was to dwell so habit- 
 ually, that we Christians are ourselves "the body of the 
 Lord," equally really, equally unquestionably. In his 
 commentary, if it be really his, on 1 Cor. xi. (a passage 
 not quoted by Dr. Pusey) he quotes S. John vi. 56, and 
 draws out a moving consequence: 
 
 '"He abides in Me, and I in liim.' Whence every one that 
 either eats Christ's body or drinks Christ's blood should bethink 
 himself of what he is, that he do no wrong to Him whose body 
 he has been made to be." ^ 
 
 Does S. Jerome ever speak of our Lord's heavenly 
 body as present in the sacrament? I venture to assert 
 that he does not. But I will quote two passages, which 
 
 1 P. L. 25, 436. « P. L. 24, 63. » P. L. 30, 783. 
 
144 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 may seem to carry that meaning in the eyes of some 
 theologians of the modern pre-supposition, as a matter 
 of presenting evidence fairly. 
 The first is from his Letter to Hedihia {Ep. cxx.) : ^ 
 
 "If, then, the 'bread which came down from heaven,* is 
 the Lord's body, and the wine which He gave to His disciples 
 is the blood of the new covenant," etc. 
 
 We have seen that to S. Augustine "the bread which 
 comes down from heaven" is always our Lord in His 
 Divine-human Person. It is never His heavenly body. 
 The bread which He gives us from the altar may be 
 described as "bread from heaven," because He who is 
 the true " bread from heaven" dwells in it, without neces- 
 sarily supposing the presence of His heavenly body. 
 
 The other passage is from the commentary on S. Matt. 
 XX vi,, and runs thus: 
 
 "After that the typical Passover was finished, and He had 
 eaten the flesh of the lamb with His apostles, He takes bread, 
 which strengthens the heart of man, and passes to the true 
 paschal sacrament; that as Melchizedek, priest of the Most 
 High God, had done in profiguration of Him, He might do in 
 present act in the verity of His own body and blood." ^ 
 
 Of course, if one starts with the assumption that our 
 Lord can have but one body, this is decisive. That body 
 is in the sacrament, and is there in its verity. But I 
 protest that that assumption is not a sound one. I 
 protest further that the view of the eucharistic Presence 
 which I am here offering as that of the ancient Church 
 regards the eucharistic body of our Lord as quite as 
 much a "verity," and quite as much "His own," as the 
 blessed body in the heavenly places. S. Jerome himself 
 
 » Pusey, 472; P. L. 22, 986. ^ Pusey, 482; P. L. 26, 202, 203. 
 
A.D. 381-431: LATIN FATHERS 145 
 
 has distinguished for us two meanings of such words as 
 "the flesh and blood of the Lord," one spiritual, and one 
 literal. He would not have allowed any man to tell him 
 that when he said "spiritual" he must be meaning 
 "unreal." 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE GREAT WRITERS BETWEEN THE SECOND 
 AND THIRD GENERAL COUNCILS 
 
 'B. The Greek Fathers 
 
 S. John Chrysostom, Pre-eminent Orator 
 (a.d. 347-407) 
 
 WHEN we approach the testimony of S. Chrysos- 
 tom, we find ourselves in a different atmosphere 
 from any that we have known before. To some 
 minds the change of atmosphere will represent a change 
 of theology. I think that that is a mistake. Great 
 orators and great poets take up the common material of 
 thought as they find it around them in their day, and 
 make new atmospheres for men. Sometimes they make 
 the world seem a different place to men. In a sense, 
 then, they may be said to think new thoughts. But 
 most often, and most largely, they press upon men what 
 men were already possessed of, only they present it with 
 a new vividness and a new ardor. Old views seen with 
 a new vision are their gift to the duller world around 
 them. With the orator, especially, whose business is to 
 persuade men to new action, it is absolutely necessary 
 that he have a common ground with his hearers, a founda- 
 tion of a common thought. An innovator cannot be an 
 orator. You may think that you know of many ex- 
 amples to disprove that statement. But think again! 
 
 146 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 147 
 
 No man who seems to you an innovator will carry you far 
 with him as an orator. The orator who really moves 
 men must talk to them of things which they already 
 believe. 
 
 But the orator has his element of newness. He strains 
 language to the uttermost to work on the emotions of his 
 hearers. The poet is less bound than the orator to saying 
 only what men already think, or are all ready to think. 
 Indeed, the poet may be a prophet, bringing men visions 
 altogether new to them. He will not get a hearing 
 readily, if he does bring them such new visions. But so 
 far as the poet presents old thoughts, he will strain 
 language, if he be a great poet, to make it hold a greater 
 depth and height of thought. I think that S. Augustine 
 shows more of that quality, of making language serve as 
 an instrument of deepening and heightening thought, 
 than our great S. John of Constantinople. It is intensity 
 of feeling, rather than newness of thinking, that marks 
 the orator of the mouth of gold. But certainly he strains 
 language. Every reader of S. Chrysostom must see 
 that. I will begin my quotations with two examples of 
 the Impassioned orator. Afterward we will consider 
 the elements of his reasoned theology. I take the first 
 of these extracts from the treatise on the Priesthood.* 
 
 "When thou seest the Lord sacrificed, and laid upon the altar, 
 and the priest standing and praying over the victim, and all 
 [the people] reddened with that precious blood, canst thou 
 then think that thou art still among men, and standing upon the 
 earth? Art thou not, on the contrary, straightway translated 
 to heaven, and dost thou not cast out every carnal thought from 
 thy soul, and with disembodied spirit and pure reason con- 
 template the things of heaven? Oh! what a marvel! Oh! 
 what love of God to man! He who sitteth on high with the 
 
 * De Sacerdoiio, iii. 4; Pusey, 545; P. G. 48, 641. 
 
148 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Father is at that hour held in the hands of all, and gives Himself 
 to those who are willing to embrace and grasp Him. . . . 
 There stands the priest, not calling down fire from heaven, but 
 the Holy Spirit; and he makes prolonged supphcation, not that 
 some flame sent down from on liigh may consume the offering, 
 but that grace descending on the sacrifice may hereby enlighten 
 the souls of all, and render them more refulgent tlian silver 
 purified by fire." 
 
 Some of this is very unliteral, certainly. Yet even in 
 this rhapsody, I ask you to observe, our saint does not 
 represent our Lord's body as coming from heaven. He 
 describes the "inward part" of the sacrament as "grace" 
 simply. If he had seen with the eyes of his vivid faith 
 the body on the heavenly throne coming to be present 
 on the altar, would he have failed to rhapsodize on a 
 point so obviously suggestive to the orator's instinct for 
 thrilling effects .f* 
 
 I take another example of rhapsody, in which the same 
 opportunity is missed again, amid much of straining for 
 effect, from the Homilies on S. Matthew. 
 
 "How many now say, *I would wish to see His form, the 
 mark, His clothes. His shoes.' Lo! thou seest Him, thou 
 touchest Him, thou eatest Him. And thou indeed desirest to 
 see His clothes, but He giveth Himself to thee, not to see only, 
 but also to touch, and eat, and receive within thee. . . . 
 Consider, how indignant thou art against the traitor, against 
 them that crucified Him. Look, therefore, lest thou also thy- 
 self become guilty of the body and blood of Christ. They 
 slaughtered the all-holy body, but thou after such great benefits 
 receivest it in a filthy soul. For neither was it enough for Him 
 to be made man, to be smitten and slaughtered, but He also 
 commingleth Himself with us, and not by faith only, but also 
 in very deed maketh us His body. What, tlicn, ought not he 
 to exceed in purity, tliat hath the benefit of this sacrifice, than 
 what sunbeam should not that hand be more white which is to 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 149 
 
 sever this flesh, the mouth that is filled with spiritual fire, the 
 tongue that is reddened by that most awful blood? Consider 
 with what sort of honor thou wast honored, of what sort of table 
 thou art partaking. That which when angels behold, they 
 tremble, and dare not so much as to look up at it without awe 
 on account of the brightness that cometh thence, with this we 
 are fed, with this we are commingled, and we are made one body 
 and one flesh with Christ." ^ 
 
 I have given an example of Chrysostom the orator; I 
 turn to Chrysostoni the theologian. He has a theology 
 underlying all his rhetoric, and I think that it is not 
 obscure. He is no Virtualist. As we have seen in the 
 last extract, he regards the sacraments as working their 
 great effects, "not by faith only, but in very deed." No 
 one can surpass S. John Chrysostom in warning men that 
 sacraments received amiss do no good, but rather harm. 
 But he holds that they do in every case something. They 
 are powers from God. Further, like the Fathers before 
 him, S. John Chrysostom holds that the bread and wine 
 of the Eucharist are the body and blood of our Lord. 
 He does not say that they form a shrine for our Lord's 
 body and blood, and therefore bear the names of those 
 greater things. No ! He represents the material elements 
 of the sacrament as being the material also of our Lord's 
 sacramental body and blood. I give two extracts from 
 the Homilies on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, to 
 show that Chrysostom regarded the bread as our Lord's 
 body, and our Lord's (sacramental) body as actually 
 broken in the Eucharist: 
 
 " 'The bread which we break is it not a communion of the body 
 of Christ?' Wherefore said He not 'the participation'? Be- 
 cause he intended to express something more, and to point out 
 how close was the union, in that we communicate not only by 
 » Horn. Ixxxii. 4, 5; Pusey, 570-572; P. G. 58, 743, 744. 
 
150 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 participating and partaking, but also by being united. For as 
 that body is united to Christ, so also are we united to Him by 
 this bread. 
 
 But why adds he also, *whieh we break?' For although in 
 the Eucharist one may see this done, yet on the cross not so. 
 For, 'A bone of Him,' saith one, 'shall not be broken.' But that 
 which He suffered not on the cross, this He suffers in the oblation 
 for thy sake, and submits to be broken, that He may fill all 
 men. . . . 
 
 For what is the bread.' The body of Christ. And what 
 do they become who partake of it? The body of Christ: not 
 many bodies, but one body. For as the bread consisting of many 
 grains is made one, so that the grains nowhere appear, — they 
 exist, indeed, but their diflFerence is not seen by reason of their 
 conjunction, — so are we conjoined both with each other and 
 with Christ, there not being one body for thee, and another body 
 for thy neighbor to be nourished by, but one body for all." ^ 
 
 "Do not cut thyself off from thy neighbor, since Christ for 
 His part gave equally to all, saying, 'Take, eat.' He gave BUs 
 body equally, but dost not thou give so much as the common 
 bread equally? Yea, it was indeed broken for all alike, and 
 became the body for all." 
 
 We have seen in the former of the above extracts a 
 reference to the undoubted fact that while our Lord em- 
 bodies Himself in many men and women, His members, 
 yet His body is not many, but one. Correspondingly, 
 our Lord's body in many Eucharists is one. Wherever 
 He embodies Himself, and however He may embody 
 Himself, whether in His natural flesh, or in the bread and 
 wine of the Eucharist, or in thousands of disciples who 
 have received His Baptism, and so have "put on Christ," 
 all His embodiments make up but one body together. 
 Because we are in Him, according to S. Paul's doctrine, 
 
 1 Eom. in 1 Cor. xxiv; Pusey, 580; P. 0. 61, 199. Next passage, 
 P. G. 61. ii9. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 151 
 
 we are in the body that is enthroned in heaven, — our 
 "life is hid with Christ in God." Chrysostom felt that 
 oneness of our Lord's body deeply. I give one extract 
 (from his Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews), to 
 illustrate that conviction of his, and then I shall go on 
 to some consequences that come from it in his thought 
 and speech. 
 
 "We always oflfer the same One (t6v AMv), not one sheep 
 now, and tomorrow another, but always the same thing 
 (rd ain-6), SO that the sacrifice is one. And yet, by this reasoning, 
 since the offering is made in many places, are there many Christs? 
 But Christ is one everywhere, being complete here and complete 
 there also, one body. As, then, while offered in many places. 
 He is one body, and not many bodies, so also He is one sacrifice." ^ 
 
 Starting with the idea that all our Lord's embodiments 
 are so many forms of one body, Chrysostom naturally 
 identifies the sacramental body of our Lord with the 
 body of His earthly life, and even with His glorified body 
 in heaven. In speaking of the theology of S. Augustine 
 (p. 136) I pointed out that that great man identified the 
 eucharistic body with the body of our Lord's earthly 
 life, but never with the body in heaven. I said then that 
 the latter identification might perfectly well have been 
 made also, on Augustine's principles. I will now add 
 that the fact that we meet with no such identification till 
 we find it in the passionate oratory of Chrysostom, 
 nearly four hundred years after the Church's beginning 
 of thought and feeling, is a very striking fact indeed. 
 My own way of accounting for that really remarkable 
 slowness of development would be this: the Church had 
 started out with a clear and strong impression that the 
 body of our Lord in the Eucharist was a different body 
 
 » Horn, in Heb. xvii. 3; Pusey, 596-597; P. G. 63, 131. 
 
152 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 from His natural body glorified in the heavenly places. 
 While the Church felt deeply that the body of the altar 
 was one with the body in glory, the Church felt just as 
 deeply that the body of the altar was not the same as 
 the body in glory. Because our Lord's body in all its 
 forms is one, what was true of the body of the altar could 
 be said, non-literally, but deeply truly, of His body of 
 His earthly life and death, and also of His body of the 
 heavenly life. But for some centuries the Church felt 
 the difference between the body of the altar and the 
 body in glory, as a matter of literal fact, too deeply to use 
 language that could at all seem to contradict that literal 
 fact. In all those years this identification might have 
 been made. It involved no new theology, when it was 
 made. It waited for the orator of the golden mouth to 
 be made. And yet the number of these identifications is 
 surprisingly small. I proceed to give three examples 
 of the more common identification, of the body of the 
 altar with the body which was crucified. The first is 
 from the book on the Betrayal of Judas} 
 
 "And Judas was present when Christ said this. This is the 
 body which thou didst sell, O Judas, for thirty pieces of silver; 
 this is the blood for which, a little while before, thou madest that 
 shameless compact with the reckless Pharisees. Oh! the love 
 of Christ for man! Oh! the frenzy, the madness of Judas! 
 For Judas sold Him for thirty pieces of silver, but Christ, even 
 after this, refused not to give the very blood which was sold, 
 for the remission of sins, to him who sold it, if he willed." 
 
 The second and third passages are both from a homily 
 before quoted : 
 
 "This, which is in the cup, is that which flowed from His side, 
 and of that do we partake." . . . 
 
 » De Proditione Judae, i. 6; Pusey, 655; P. G. 49, 380. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 153 
 
 "For if one would not inconsiderately receive a king, — why 
 say I, a king? Nay, were it but a royal robe, one would not 
 inconsiderately touch it with unclean hands, — though he should 
 be in solitude, though alone, though no man were at hand; . . . 
 if even a man's garment be what one would not venture incon- 
 siderately to touch, what shall we say of the body of Him 
 who is God over all, spotless, pure, associate with the Divine 
 Nature, the body whereby we are and live, whereby the gates of 
 hell were broken down, and the archways of heaven opened? 
 How shall we receive this with so great insolence? Let us not, I 
 pray you, slay ourselves by our irreverence, but with all awful- 
 ness and purity, draw nigh to it; and when thou seest it set 
 before thee, say thou to thyself, 'Because of this body I am no 
 longer earth and ashes, no longer a prisoner, but free, because of 
 this I hope for heaven, and to receive the good things therein, — 
 immortal life, the portion of angels, converse with Christ. This 
 body, nailed and scourged, was more than hell could stand 
 against; this body the very sun saw sacrificed, and turned away 
 its beams; for this both the veil was rent, in that moment, and 
 the rocks were burst asunder, and all the earth was shaken. 
 This is even that body, the blood-stained, the pierced, and that 
 out of which gushed the saving fountains, the one of blood, and 
 the other of water, for all the world.' " ^ 
 
 The identification of the sacramental body with the 
 heavenly body is (as I have said above) even with Chry- 
 sostom very rare, but here are two examples of it. The 
 first is from the homily last quoted: 
 
 "Open only for once the gates of heaven, and look in, nay, 
 rather, not of heaven, but of the heaven of heavens, and then 
 thou wilt behold what I have been speaking of. For what is 
 of all things most precious there, this will I show thee lying upon 
 the earth. For as in royal palaces what is most glorious of all 
 is not walls, nor golden roofs, but the person of the king sitting 
 on the throne, so likewise in heaven, the body of the King. But 
 
 1 Horn, in 1 Cor. xxiv. 3-7; Pusey, 579, 582; P. G. 61, 199, 202. 
 
154 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 this thou art now permitted to see upon earth. For it is not 
 angels, nor archangels, nor heavens, and heaven of heavens, that 
 I show thee, but the very Lord and Owner of these. Per- 
 ceivest thou how that which is more precious than all things 
 is seen by thee on earth, and not seen only, but also touched, 
 and not only touched, but likewise eaten, and after receiving it 
 thou goest home." ^ 
 
 The next extract will combine the two identifications, 
 with the body crucified, and with the body glorified. It 
 comes from the Homilies on the Epistle to the Ephesians: 
 
 "Since we are concerned with the Lord's body, come, and let 
 us turn our thoughts to it, even that which was crucified, which 
 was nailed, which is sacrificed. . . . Since we have to do with a 
 body, consider that so many of us as partake of the body, so many 
 of us as taste of this blood, do partake of that which is in no wise 
 different from that body, nor separate [as regards participa- 
 tion], that we taste of that body, the same which sitteth above, 
 the same wliich is worshipped by angels, the same which is next 
 to the Power that is indefectible. Alas! How many ways 
 to salvation are open to us! He hath made us His own body. He 
 hath imparted to us His own body, and yet naught of these 
 things turns us away from what is evil ! " ^ 
 
 I have said that in these identifications of the sacra- 
 mental body of our Lord with His body natural, on earth 
 or in heaven, S. Chrysostom did not expect to be taken 
 literally. Some critics will enquire, with a certain scorn, 
 by what right I set aside such utterances as "non-literal." 
 My plea in rebuttal has three divisions. First, Chrysos- 
 tom certainly has the non-literal habit. We have heard 
 S. Jerome saying that the priest with hallowed lips makes 
 the body of Christ. Chrysostom would have approved 
 that saying entirely, we may be sure, but to enforce a 
 
 1 Horn. «i 1 Cor. xxiv. 8; Puscy, 590; P. G. 61. 205. 
 » Uom. in Eph. iii; Pusey, 590; P. 0. 62, 27. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 155 
 
 different point he says (in his Homilies on 2 Timothy 
 (Hom. ii. 3), that the priest's part "is but to open his 
 mouth, while God worketh all. The priest only performs 
 a symbol." So again he says {De Proditione Judae, i. 6), 
 "It is not man that makes what lieth there to become 
 the body and blood of Christ", and again (in the Homily 
 for Pentecost, i. 4), "he that is present doeth nothing, 
 nor are the gifts that lie before us any accomplishments of 
 human nature." ^ These passages are not to be taken 
 as contradicting S. Jerome in the least. Of course, S. 
 Chrysostom regarded the priest at the altar as doing 
 something, and a very great thing. But he loved 
 exaggerated and non-literal expressions of great truths. 
 
 My second point is that S. Chrysostom must be taken 
 non-literally in the expressions which I have indicated, 
 when he identifies the sacramental body of our Lord with 
 His natural body, or else he will contradict the theology 
 of all the Fathers who have testified before him, and 
 that is an inadmissible suggestion for these two rea- 
 sons: (1) he is plainly unconscious of advancing any 
 new theology of the Eucharist, and (2) his contempo- 
 raries did not charge him with having done any such 
 thing. 
 
 My third point is that to take Chrysostom literally in 
 such identifications is to make him inconsistent with 
 himself. I go back to my second example of Chrysostom 
 the fervid orator, to quote a piece of sober theological 
 statement which just preceded that flame of sacred 
 passion. The reference is to the Homilies on S. Matthew, 
 and we shall find the theological teacher making a careful 
 statement concerning the inward part, the Heavenly 
 Reality, of the sacrament, and declaring it to be a thing 
 
 * The references for these three passages are P. G. 62, 612; 49, 380; 
 and 50, 459. 
 
156 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 incorporeal, which coming from heaven makes bread to 
 be our Lord's body. Here are the words: 
 
 "His word cannot deceive, but our senses are easily beguiled. 
 That hath never failed, but this in most things goeth wrong. 
 Since, then, the word saith, 'This is My body,' let us both be 
 persuaded, and believe, and look at it with the eyes of the mind.' 
 
 For Christ has given nothing sensible, but though in things 
 sensible, yet all to be perceived by the mind. So also in Bap- 
 tism, the gift is bestowed by a sensible thing, that is, the water; 
 but that which is done is perceived in the mind, the birth, I mean, 
 and the regeneration. For if thou hadst been incorporeal. He 
 would have delivered thee the incorporeal gifts bare; but 
 because the soul is locked up in a body. He delivers thee the 
 things which the mind perceives, in things sensible." * 
 
 The grace of the two greater sacraments, I understand 
 Chrysostom to mean, is a grace of union with the Person 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ and participation in His Life. 
 The gift is in each sacrament "incorporeal," but it must 
 be given by means of a material element, and it may be 
 added that because we are partly material creatures, our 
 Saviour had to take a material embodiment, which He 
 will retain forever, and through His embodiment in 
 sacramental forms here, whether of water or of bread and 
 wine, He does unite us to His glorified body in heaven, 
 as well as to His mystical body, of so deep a humiliation, 
 His Church on earth. But to Chrysostom the gift given 
 in the Eucharist is a thing understandable by the mind, 
 and not a thing perceivable by the senses. And further- 
 more, it is a thing "incorporeal." Now our Lord's 
 glorified body is a thing capable of being perceived by 
 the senses, or it has ceased to be a human body. It is 
 
 ' I allow myself to think that this phrase, "look at it with the eyes 
 of the mind," is quite equivalent to "take it non-litcrally." 
 2 Bom. Ixxxii. 4; Pusey, 570; P. G. 58, 743. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 157 
 
 not perceived, according to the Oxford theology, and the 
 Roman, because our Lord chooses that it shall not be; 
 but it remains that it is in its nature " capable of being 
 perceived" (aiadrjTov) . And certainly, being a body, 
 it is not "incorporeal." We must take our saint non- 
 literally, on one side of his mind, or the other, — either 
 as rhapsodizing orator or as philosophic theologian. If 
 we must somewhere use with S. Chrysostom this method 
 of non-literal interpretation, with its attendant risks of 
 so explaining one's author as to explain him away, it 
 seems to me far more reasonable to apply it to the soaring 
 emotional orator than to the teacher carefully explaining, 
 and aiming to guard against mistake. 
 
 II 
 
 Macaeius Magnes (a.d. 400) 
 
 Contemporary, as his writings prove, with S. Chrysos- 
 tom was another bishop who has been brought to our 
 notice in recent years, through a re-discovery of portions 
 of his writings, under the name of Macarius Magnes.^ 
 He is probably to be identified with Macarius, Bishop of 
 Magnesia, who took part (a.d. 403) in the Council of the 
 Oak, which pronounced a sentence of condemnation and 
 deposition upon S. Chrysostom. Indeed his having been 
 known as an opponent of S. Chrysostom is very probably 
 a cause of the dropping out of sight of his writings. But 
 
 ^ My references are made to his book called Apocritica, iii. 23. The 
 book is cast in the form of a dialogue in wliich are arrayed all the strong- 
 est objections against Christianity made by heathen philosophers near 
 the end of the fourth century. Paraphrases and a partial quotation 
 may be foimd in Stone, p. 65 and pp. 73-74, and a paraphrase without 
 direct quotation in the Article Macarius Magnes, in the Dictionary of 
 Christian Biography. No edition of the Greek text of Macarius is easily 
 obtainable, and I can give no references, but see Note I, p. 269. 
 
158 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 it must be remembered that there were as yet no serious 
 differences among the Church's theologians as to the 
 doctrine of the Eucharist. To be sure, this was a time 
 of controversy, and theologians were more ready than 
 they had been in earlier days to condemn one another's 
 phrases instead of looking for a good meaning in them. 
 Thus Macarius disowns somewhat sharply the use of the 
 word "type," which we have found to be nearly universal. 
 He says that "it is not a figure (tvwos) of the body and 
 a figure of the blood, as some, whose minds are blinded, 
 have declaimed,^ but really the body and blood of Christ." 
 But it should be observed that it was not at all the 
 doctrine of Macarius that the body and blood of our 
 Lord were present in the Eucharist as added to the bread 
 and wine. Far from it! The elements themselves were 
 made to be the body and blood of our Lord. Macarius 
 speaks of "the body which is the bread" and " the blood 
 which is the wine." That is very different indeed from 
 calling bread "our Lord's body," and then explaining 
 that this is said because our Lord's body is there under a 
 veil, and is (of all that is there) the utterly predominant 
 fact. Granting that on such terms bread might be 
 called "our Lord's body," such a doctrine gives no excuse 
 for speaking of "the body which is the bread." Further- 
 more, when Macarius wishes to make mention of the 
 earthly part and the heavenly part together, he does not 
 
 ^ The word used is ippaif/c^drjffav, which Dr. Stone translates "have 
 foolishly said." In its original meaning pa\p(^d(lv was "to recite verses 
 strung together at length." As a term of contempt it carried the idea 
 of a dull repetition of other men's sajnngs. It may be conjectured that 
 Macarius was a bitter Anti-Origenist, who had seen such language 
 quoted from Origcn, and was so ill-informed as to think that it marked a 
 man as a follower of Origen. What the earlier writers had really meant 
 by tOttos and figura seems to have been exactly the doctrine of Macarius 
 himself. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 159 
 
 speak of the bread as containing our Lord's body, but of 
 "the bread . . . , being united to the power of the Holy 
 Ghost." 
 
 The connection of these phrases will repay examina- 
 tion. For, in fact, here is another attempt at a philosophy 
 of the Eucharist, such as we had from Gregory of Nyssa, 
 and following much the same order of thought. The 
 heathen opponent in the Apocritica complains that the 
 suggestion of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of 
 our Master is barbarous and revolting, and even if it be 
 explained as allegorical (the heathen objector seems to 
 have rather expected such a defense), it is still disgusting, 
 he thinks, and repulsive to a decent mind. The Christian 
 disputant makes answer that it is not shocking at all when 
 rightly viewed. An infant will die unless it eats the 
 flesh and drinks the blood of its mother, for its food is 
 obtained from the physical substance of its mother, 
 transmuted by the processes of nature into milk. It is 
 not unreasonable that Christ should command those to 
 whom He has given the privilege of becoming children of 
 God (S. John i. 12) to eat the mystic flesh and drink the 
 mystic blood of her who bare them. For the Wisdom of 
 God brought forth children, and fed them from the two 
 breasts of the two Covenants, and gave them her own 
 flesh and blood, and bestowed upon them immortality; 
 and this Wisdom of God, who thus did for men a mother's 
 part, is no other than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 
 Then our author goes on to show that men are made 
 from the earth, and in eating corn and wine and oil, 
 which are fruits of the earth, they may be said to eat the 
 flesh and blood of the earth. From the earth they are 
 nourished, and the earth suffers no loss in giving them 
 nourishment. Again, he points out that the Son of God 
 created the earth with all its powers of nourishment, and 
 
160 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 in the Incarnation took from the earth a body for Himself. 
 Then comes the passage from which I have abeady quoted. 
 You can see that Macarius is willing to put a highly 
 allegorical meaning on the words "body" and "blood" 
 in connection with the eucharistic mystery. But it should 
 be observed on the one hand, that this allegorizer uses 
 only allegories in which some great thing is done, and done 
 in a mysterious way, and on the other hand, that what- 
 ever meaning he does attach to those words "body" and 
 "blood" is predicated of the bread and wine of the Eu- 
 charist quite directly. This bread and wine are not 
 figures of that body and blood of Christ with which He 
 has promised to feed His people. Other men have called 
 the bread and wine "figures," as being types of our Lord's 
 natural flesh and blood. Macarius cares nothing for any 
 such suggestion. He regards it as idle declamation. 
 The bread and wine are the great thing ol the Lord's 
 promise. 
 
 in 
 
 S. Isidore of Pelusium, Theologian and Ascetic 
 
 I will cite here a solitary phrase of one who was a 
 great power in his day in Egypt, S. Isidore, a monk 
 from before a.d. 395 to a.d. 449 or 450, and for years 
 Abbot of his monastery, near the city of Pelusium. He 
 was eminent for learning, for theological acumen, for 
 careful discrimination and sober judgment, and so faithful 
 in duty that he could more than once rebuke his Patri- 
 arch, being such a one as Cyril of Alexandria, and yet re- 
 tain his correspondent's affectionate respect. This great 
 man, in a letter to one Marathonius, against the heresy 
 which denied the Personality of the Holy Spirit, speaks of 
 our Lord as giving, to be a completion of the work of 
 the Holy Trinity, 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 161 
 
 "the All-Holy Spirit, who is also in the Invocation of Holy 
 Baptism numbered, as freeing from sins, with the Father and 
 the Son, and who on the mystical table exhibits the common 
 bread as a special body of His [our Saviour's] Incarnation." * 
 
 Dr. Pusey translates (xdixa ISlkov, "the very body" 
 (of His Incarnation). Rev. C. H. Hebert, in whose 
 Catena I first saw the Greek of the passage, calls it "the 
 peculiar body." It remains that there is no article, and 
 I venture to assert that "a special body" or "a peculiar 
 body" is the only possible meaning of that Greek phrase 
 in that connection. It seems to point to the eucharistic 
 body, as being somehow a different body from the natural 
 body, of our Lord. 
 
 IV 
 
 An Unknown Writer, Caesarius 
 
 I place next to S. Isidore an obscure witness, of whom 
 we know only his name, Caesarius, and that his date 
 must fall in this time with which we are dealing. He 
 wrote certain Dialogues, and Photius, a Patriarch of 
 Constantinople in the eighth century, mentions a tradi- 
 tion that he was a brother of S. Gregory of Nazianzus. 
 S. Gregory had certainly a brother of that name, who was 
 a coiu't physician, but writing a funeral panegyric on his 
 brother, S. Gregory mentions no such book, nor does 
 S. Jerome. The Dialogues of Caesarius cannot, there- 
 fore, fairly be quoted as a pendant to the study of the 
 theology of the two Gregories, but the book has a certain 
 value as illustrating the lines of Christian thought about 
 the beginning of the fifth century. From his Third 
 Dialogue we may read two passages, from Questions 140 
 
 » Exnst. cix; Pusey, 665; P. G. 78, 756. 
 
1C2 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and 161, respectively. They are quoted by Dr. Pusey 
 (p. 439), and may be found with the works of S. Gregory 
 of Nazianzus in the Patrologia Graeca} 
 
 "But upon the Servant of God, the Word of God, he even 
 tramples who without fear receives His mystic mixtures with 
 hands that are covetous and that are lifted up against his neigh- 
 bor, setting on an equality with common bread and wine things 
 which among the faithful by understanding eyes are beheld as 
 God. For in neither (body nor blood) was He vanquished, when 
 the one was nailed fast, and the other flowed down, nor is He 
 again consumed when He is partaken of like the air by all, and 
 still remains the same undiminished God." 
 
 The second of these sentences, beginning "For in neither 
 was He vanquished," is omitted by Dr. Pusey as of no 
 particular account. I venture to suggest that it is one 
 of the most interesting and striking passages that we 
 have seen. Not only are certain visible objects declared 
 to be beheld as God, but they are so entirely assumed to 
 be the body and blood of our Lord, that the writer goes 
 on to speak of the one as being nailed to the Cross, and 
 of the other as flowing down, when our Lord died. The 
 same objects are at once visible, material objects, and 
 yet the very body and blood of our Lord. I pass on to 
 the other passage, where an objector is trying to charge 
 Catholic theology with an inconsistency in disowning 
 anthropomorphic conceptions of Deity, and yet pro- 
 claiming an Incarnate God. 
 
 "Objector. How is it that after disowning in your former 
 arguments those who ascribe bodily members to Deity and speak 
 of God as a being in the form of man, you come back now and 
 answer tliat in our time He is by nature just tliat. Answer. I 
 did not say that He was so by nature, but that He became so, 
 
 » P. G. 38, 10C5, 1132. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 163 
 
 having been united both in soul and body with our people, since 
 also the Holy Word Himself, when He had come to be as one 
 of us, and was sharing our manner of life, being what He was, 
 and being seen as what He was not, said to the guild ^ of the 
 Apostles, while distributing bread, 'Take, eat of it, all of you; 
 this is My body,' when as yet He had not been made a sacrifice 
 in the flesh, and 'Take, drinlv,' when He had not had His side 
 pierced with a spear on the Cross. And we see that holy bread 
 to-day laid on the stainless table in the bloodless sanctuary, at 
 the season of the divine and mystic rite, and not looking like 
 the image of the saving body of Him who is our God and Word, 
 and the cup of wine that is placed with it not looking like the 
 blood that was mingled with the same. They do not look like 
 the articulation of His limbs, nor the quality of flesh and blood, 
 nor yet like the invisible and secretly united Deity which has no 
 outward form. For the one [our Lord's body] has blood, has 
 life, has muscles, is red, is jointed, is supplied with various 
 arteries and veins, with which also the Word that created all 
 things has been interwoven, even to having hair and nails. For 
 I say that the very hair of Christ is the hair of God, and His 
 feet and nails and blood and moisture. For the Word is joined 
 for my sake with all that is mine. So, then, the one stands erect, 
 articulate, can walk, can act, but the other [the holy bread] is 
 round, is inarticulate, is lifeless, bloodless, moveless, looking like 
 neither, not like that which is seen of Him who is in His Deity 
 invisible. But nevertheless we believe the divine revelation, 
 and that that which is consecrated on the divine table, and 
 everywhere distributed to the guild without division, and par- 
 taken of without failure of supply, is, not as a matter of being 
 equal or like, but properly and fitly [as regards the use of terms] 
 the very body of God." ^ 
 
 1 The word used is Oiaau from Olaaos, a word used generally of a 
 company of persons bound together under some religious sanction. 
 
 2 I subjoin the Greek of the last sentence: inarTtvonev bk ofius rfj 
 Berjyoplq., aal ovx ws o/xoiov f) 'iaoi>, dXXa Kvplcos Kal apapoTUi avrd 
 irrapxeiv to Oelov xxcoixa to ewl ttjs deias Tpairk^tjs iepovpyovnevov, Kal 
 T<{j diaacp wavTij dxyuijrcos Siaipovixepov, Kal aXr/KTUs utTtxonevov. Dr. 
 
164 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 According to Caesarius, then, if I understand him 
 rightly, the material element of bread is made in con- 
 secration to be "the very body of God," though it is not, 
 even then, like nor equal to the body which our Lord had 
 before. I take "not equal" to mean here "not identical." 
 In what other sense could it have been said that the 
 body on the altar was not equal to the body which our 
 Lord wore on earth, or even to the body which He wears 
 in Heaven.'^ If any such sense can be alleged, — I 
 suppose that it can be done, certainly, — I must ask what 
 reason was there for introducing that phrase here? I can 
 think of no other meaning that seems pertinent to the 
 argument which Caesarius is making. 
 
 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Eminent Commentator 
 ON Holy Scripture (a.d. 350-428) 
 
 We must pass with but a slender reference one of the 
 greatest writers of his day, Theodore, Bishop of Mop- 
 suestia, not far from Tarsus, for thirty-six years from 
 a.d. 392. He was a really remarkable commentator on 
 the Bible, a prince among zealous students of the literal 
 meaning and historical background of the different 
 books. In later years he fell under suspicion, along 
 with his beloved teacher Diodore, Archbishop of Tarsus, 
 as having sowed (so some declared) the seeds of the 
 
 Pusey's translation omits avrb, and seems to me to miss the force 
 of inrkpxtiv, and hence to reverse the author's intended relation of 
 subject and predicate. He would render, " the divine body is that which 
 is consecrated," meaning, apparently, "the heavenly body is the fact 
 which is found on the altar." Caesarius means just the opposite, — 
 "the fact which is found upon the altar, i. c, bread, is the very {abrb) 
 body of God," though not like, nor equal to, the natural body. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 165 
 
 Nestorlan heresy. There is no reason for imagining 
 that his doctrine about the Eucharist ever wandered 
 from the Hne of the Church's generally received thought. 
 He has left so little of reference to this subject that his 
 name does not appear in Dr. Pusey's great Catena nor in 
 Dr. Stone's History. Yet I find two phrases of his which 
 seem to me worthy of mention. Commenting on 1 Cor. 
 X. 3-5, he says: 
 
 "He calls both the food and the drink spiritual, on the ground 
 that the Spirit did Himself supply them both through Moses, 
 according to His secret power. . . . And the expression 'That 
 rock was Christ' was meant to say that the rock was among 
 them what Christ is to us, whose blood we, the faithful, do 
 spiritually drink, as it is transmade in the mysteries." ^ 
 
 Again, in commenting on S. Matt. xxvi. 26, Theodore 
 has this to say: 
 
 "He said not, 'This is the symbol of My body, and this of My 
 blood,' but 'This is My body, and My blood,' teaching us not to 
 look to the nature of the elements,^ but that through the Thanks- 
 giving {ei)xapi(TTlas) that has been made they are changed into 
 flesh and blood. As the woman was made a member of Adam by 
 being taken from His bones and flesh, so we also are members of 
 the Master's body, as having been made *of His flesh and of His 
 bones.'" 3 
 
 It seems noteworthy that Theodore should show him- 
 self impatient of the word "symbol" (avu^oXov), as Ma- 
 carius Magnes has been seen to have been impatient 
 of the word "type," in his insistence that our Lord's 
 
 1 Pcd. Graeca, 66, 885. 
 
 2 "Of the elements" — tuv wpoKeifxivuv, "the things laid before God," 
 a technical term used exactly as we use "the elements" in our modern 
 speech. 
 
 3 P. G. 66, 713. 
 
166 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 body and blood are really given in the Eucharist. I 
 venture to think that these writers would have acknowl- 
 edged, if pressed, that, of course, the consecrated elements 
 were "symbols" in a sense. It remains that Theodore 
 is not on record as so saying, and he is on record as dis- 
 owning that mode of speech. On the other hand, he is 
 found, in his Commentary on S. John,^ speaking of our 
 Lord's teachings about this sacrament as "things of 
 thought" (vorjra), as distinguished — at least that is 
 the distinction which his old friend and fellow-student, 
 John Chrysostom, makes — from "things of sense" 
 (ai(7dr}Ta) . He regards the food of God as "spiritual," 
 also, a word which in other writers we have found asso- 
 ciated with the idea of "non-literal," though not in the 
 very least wuth the idea of unreal. But chiefly I press 
 the point that Theodore describes the elements as 
 "changed," and as "changed into flesh and blood." 
 My friends of the Oxford School will point out justly 
 that they believe that a great change comes to the eucha- 
 ristic elements, and that it is a change made by a great 
 indwelling. If I may claim that the elements are magnifi- 
 cently "changed" by receiving a certain Presence, a 
 certain great new ownership and use, without being in 
 the least changed in their own nature, in their ovaLa, as 
 a Greek writer might call it, in their ''substantia" in 
 Latin terminology, their "substance" in English speech, 
 why may not the followers of the Oxford School claim 
 that Theodore's word "changed" fits just as well with 
 their view, that the elements are changed by receiving 
 our Lord's Presence in His glorified body, "present after 
 the manner of spirit"? I answer that so far as the mere 
 word "changed" is concerned, they have as much right 
 to use it as I. But Theodore says that the elements 
 I vi. 29; p. G. G6, 745. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 167 
 
 are changed "into flesh and blood." He does not say 
 that they are changed so as to be vehicles of our Lord's 
 flesh and blood. That explanation, I contend, would 
 have been perfectly easy to put into words. If that was 
 the explanation held by the Fathers, I know of no one 
 of them that ever did put it into words. Some of them 
 — this great Theodore is one — say distinctly that the 
 bread and wine are changed into flesh and blood. What- 
 ever they may have understood by "body," or "flesh," 
 and "blood," the result of the sacramental change, as it 
 appeared to their eyes, was simply that the elements had 
 come to be — not "contain" or "hide," but "be" — what 
 those greater names portended. 
 
 VI 
 
 Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 
 
 A.D. 428 TO A.D. 431 
 
 We come now to the time when all the Eastern Church 
 was shaken by the bitter controversy that arose between 
 a Patriarch of Alexandria and a Patriarch of Constanti- 
 nople, between Cyril and Nestorius. Both were hard 
 men in personal temper. Those who are moved to pity 
 for Nestorius, condemned as a heretic at the General 
 Council of Ephesus, a.d. 431, and sent into exile by the 
 Emperor of the East, do not commonly remember — 
 perhaps many of them never knew — that this same 
 Nestorius was himself a bitter persecutor of persons 
 whom he regarded as aliens in religion, and that on the 
 occasion of his first sermon as Patriarch he addressed the 
 Emperor with such words as these: "Give me, my prince, 
 the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven 
 as a reward. Help me in destroying heretics, and I will 
 help you in destroying your Persian foes." Nestorius 
 
168 THE ETTCHARISTTC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Wcis not a lovable person, nor large-minded. Modern 
 scholars have raised a question whether he really held 
 and taught the heresy which bears his name, making out 
 the eternal Son of God to have adopted a man as His 
 agent, so that God did not suffer on the cross, and Jesus 
 was not God. Certainly he laid himself widely open to 
 suspicion of that kind. But I think that in his case, 
 also, there is no reason to suppose that in anything he 
 departed from the Church's ordinary teaching as to the 
 eucharistic body. The writings of Nestorius were ordered 
 to be destroyed after his condemnation. We have but 
 little of his remaining, save in quotations made by his 
 opponents. But an ancient Syriac book, preserved among 
 Syriac-speaking Nestorians, and called The Bazaar of 
 Heraclides, is now known to be the work of the deposed 
 Patriarch of Constantinople. In this book Nestorius 
 raises the following questions : 
 
 "Is the bread the body of Christ by a change of oiaia? Or 
 are we His body by a change? Or is the body of the Son of God 
 one in nature with God the Word?" 
 
 To these questions Nestorius expects the answer, 
 "No." His thought seems to run along these Unes: 
 We are all agreed on certain points, as that we who by 
 our baptism and our communions are members of Christ, 
 are not made to be any other than human beings, not 
 being deified by the coming of the Divine Word to dwell 
 in us, and that the bread which we all hold to be our 
 Lord's body is really bread as it was before, in spite of 
 having received the indwelling of the Divine Word. Then 
 it follows, he would say, that the indwelling of the Divine 
 Word in the flesh that was born of the Virgin leaves that 
 flesh merely the flesh of a man after all. 
 
 Of course, the weak point in the argument of Nestorius 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 169 
 
 was that he inserted "of a man" in place of "human." 
 Our Lord took a human nature to Himself, but not the 
 nature of a man. He took a human body, but not the 
 body of a man. Ordinarily a human nature implies a 
 human person. Our Lord did not take to Himself a man, 
 a human nature with a personaUty of its own already 
 inherent in it. "The Word was made flesh," taking to 
 Himself flesh as an embodiment of His own sole. Divine 
 Person. But the things to which Nestorius appealed in 
 his first two questions above quoted are things which the 
 Church of his day did, I think, agree in holding. At any 
 rate, I have seen no passage quoted from Cyril in which 
 he objects to either of these suggestions of Nestorius. 
 Nestorius goes on thus: 
 
 "How is it that when He said over the bread, 'This is My 
 body,' He did not say that the bread was not bread, and the 
 body not body? But He said 'bread' and 'body', as showing 
 what it is in ovaia. But we are aware that the bread is bread 
 in nature and in ovaia. Yet Cyril wishes to persuade us to 
 believe that the bread is His body by faith, and not by nature, — 
 that what it is not as to oicria, that it becomes by faith." 
 
 It seems quite clear what Nestorius believed. What 
 he was ascribing to Cyril is not so easy to make out. 
 It is to be remembered that we are reading the language 
 of a bitter controversialist, who is not to be supposed to 
 be careful to be just, or even to have patience and good 
 temper enough to make him capable of being just. What 
 Nestorius habitually charged against Cyril was that 
 Cyril deified the flesh of the Christ. It should be noted 
 that in the above extract Nestorius asks tauntingly why 
 our Lord did not say that the bread was not bread, and 
 the body not body. The two cases stand on the same 
 footing in the mind of Nestorius. He charges Cyril 
 with the same offense in connection with the body natural 
 
170 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and the body sacramental, — the offense of deifying it. 
 Nestorius insisted that the Divine Word was in His 
 Divine Nature hfe-giving but that His flesh was not so. 
 A human body, Nestorius would argue, cannot give Di- 
 vine Life. It is a pitiful sort of argument. It begs 
 the question, assuming that our Lord's human nature is 
 the human nature of a mere man. But the poverty of the 
 argument, and even the fact that a grave heresy lurks 
 behind it, should not blind us to two important points in 
 connection with our present study: 
 
 (1) Nestorius was casting about for an argument 
 which should be popular, he was trying to offer a sugges- 
 tion which everybody would accept, when he asked his 
 triumphant question, "Is the bread the body of Christ 
 by a change of ovaia?" He seems to have expected 
 confidently that the whole Church would say, "No." 
 
 (2) The opponents of Nestorius do not seem to have 
 made any difficulty about that particular point. They 
 assailed him for denying that the flesh of our Lord was 
 life-giving. They showed that that flesh was life-giving 
 in our Lord's earthly life. They anathematized Nestorius 
 for denying that our Lord's flesh was life-giving in the 
 Eucharist. They did not seize upon that suggestion (so 
 striking to a modern student) that the bread which was 
 consecrated to be our Lord's body was still, in its nature 
 and substance, bread, remaining so still after it had 
 become our Lord's body. They do not seem to have 
 found any heresy in that, even when they were hunting 
 down heresies, like hounds in full cry. All this is the 
 more noteworthy, because Nestorius comes from the 
 same theological atmosphere which formed the minds of 
 John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia. The 
 three together may be taken as reflecting fairly the 
 eucharistic theology of the School of Autioch. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 171 
 
 VII 
 
 S. Cyril, Patriakch of Alexandria (a.d. 376-444) 
 
 We turn to the chief opponent of Nestorius, the great 
 Alexandrian patriarch, Cyril. He was like Nestorius in 
 a certain hardness of mind and temper. He was not a 
 man to make allowances, not a man to balance carefully 
 the elements of truth that might be found in a statement 
 which seemed to him to carry a suggestion of fundamental 
 error. In his own theological studies he labored for 
 balance most carefully, and maintained it most admirably. 
 In opposing Nestorius he did not fall into the snare of 
 Eutyches. But in his controversial writing he sometimes 
 seems almost to be trying to make the medicines of 
 truth difficult for his opponent to swallow. I make my 
 personal acknowledgment that for years I had allowed 
 my own detailed studies of patristic teaching about the 
 Eucharist to end with Chrysostom. When, then, I came 
 to examine with care the utterances of S. Cyril of Alexan- 
 dria on this subject, my first feeling was that here I was 
 coming into a new theological atmosphere, and perhaps 
 even into a new theology. True, there was a passage — 
 I shall quote it presently — in which Cyril seemed to 
 attempt something in the way of a philosophy of the 
 eucharistic Presence, and it seemed to me to be quite 
 after my own heart. But other passages — and there were 
 many of them — were filled with such a passionate asser- 
 tion of the eucharistic gift as the very flesh of God, and 
 what meant much more to me, such a habit of moving 
 directly and altogether naturally from the flesh of our 
 Lord's natural body to the flesh received in the Holy 
 Eucharist, that it seemed as if my distinction between 
 "things identified" and "things identical," even if it 
 
172 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 were reasonably applied as a key to unlock former diffi- 
 culties, could here no longer bear the strain which must 
 be put upon it. 
 
 Having made this acknowledgment in all simplicity of 
 honesty, I ask the indulgence of a thoughtful hearing for 
 my statement of the conclusions as to S. Cyril's meaning 
 to which my further study of the Nestorian controversy 
 led me. For, in the first place, S. Cyril himself claims 
 eagerly that he has no new theology at all. "We every- 
 where follow the opinions of the holy fathers," he writes 
 to John of Antioch, "and especially those of our all-well- 
 famed father, Athanasius, and refuse to deviate at all in 
 anything from them." Then if it be suggested that 
 Cyril had moved away from his predecessors uncon- 
 sciously, I will add, as my second point, that (as I have 
 said above) Cyril does not charge Nestorius with being 
 at fault in claiming that what both parties agreed in calling 
 "our Lord's body" was really bread. So much by way 
 of negative argument. But there is a third point which 
 will carry us much farther. Cyril does charge Nestorius 
 with teaching "cannibalism." A better rendering of 
 Cyril's word is "anthropophagy." He charges Nestorius 
 with teaching that in the Eucharist Christians ate human 
 flesh. To explain such a charge I must go back, and 
 state the position of Nestorius once more. Certainly 
 his presentation of the theology of the Incarnation was 
 a most unhappy one. But we ought to bear in mind that 
 he was impelled to it by motives to which we owe a 
 genuine sympathy, — by his experience, in fact, of some 
 unhealthy exaggerations and wild distortions of the 
 truth, which he was beginning to hear around him, and 
 which forced themselves upon the Church's attention 
 within twenty years more, calling downi the Church's 
 solemn condemnation upon what we call "the Eutychian 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 173 
 
 heresy." Nestorius met with men who were proclaiming 
 that our Lord's humanity was deified, that it was lost 
 and swallowed up in Deity. Against such teaching the 
 Church was called to fight a great battle. Nestorius was 
 honestly trying to fight that fight, demanded so im- 
 peratively by a true loyalty to our Lord. He lost the 
 balance of revealed truth, and so lost his place of leader- 
 ship, and the Church had even to fight against his 
 exaggerations, too. But we cannot understand his exag- 
 gerations without taking account of those of the other 
 side. In his eagerness to maintain the entire humanness 
 of our Lord's humanity, Nestorius interpreted the phrase, 
 "The flesh profiteth nothing," of our Lord's own flesh. 
 I allow myself to suppose that our Lord Himself intended 
 to be understood as saying that even His flesh could not 
 profit any one as by a sort of magic power, apart from a 
 spiritual action in the receiver and a spiritual union with 
 Himself. But Nestorius seems to have gone farther, 
 and to have made out that our Lord's human nature was 
 not life-giving at all, even as ministered by the Spirit of 
 God, and received by the responsive spirit of man. At 
 any rate, so Cyril understood him, and Cyril raged 
 against him accordingly. Nestorius plainly held that 
 Christians did not receive our Lord's natural flesh in the 
 Eucharist. The bread was changed so as to become a 
 body for our Lord, but it was not changed from the ovala 
 of bread to the ovaia of flesh. Cyril does not blame 
 him for that teaching. But Nestorius insists that our 
 Lord's embodiment, whether in the natural, or in the 
 sacramental, order, is so entirely human that it has no 
 power to give life. Cyril condemns that idea as utterly 
 shocking, but be it observed, even Cyril, with all his 
 tendency to look for any stick to beat a dog with, could 
 not possibly have charged Nestorius with teaching 
 
174 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "anthropophagy," unless he had accepted one teaching of 
 Nestorius, that teaching which declares that the bread 
 which our Lord calls His body is "bread," and not (in its 
 substance) "flesh," as being really the teaching of the 
 Church. That the bread which is our Lord's body is of 
 the nature of bread, and not of the nature of flesh, and 
 yet may perfectly justly be called, and ought to be called, 
 "the body of Jesus Christ," is the teaching of Nestorius 
 and Cyril alike. It is common ground. When Cyril 
 denounces Nestorius for his doctrine concerning the 
 Eucharist, it is not for saying that the sacramental flesh 
 of Christ is bread, — that would give no ground for the 
 "anthropophagy" charge, — but for saying that the 
 flesh of Christ (to whatever object that name may be 
 applied by our Lord's authority) is not life-giving, and is 
 only the flesh of a man. 
 
 As giving something in the way of a philosophy of the 
 Eucharist, Cyril's comments on S. Matt. xxvi. 26 and 
 S. Luke xxii. 19 may well be studied. The passage from 
 the Commentary on S. Matthew is brief, the gist of it 
 being found in the following paragraph: 
 
 "With conclusive utterance He said, 'This is My body,' and 
 'This is My blood,' that you may not understand the things 
 which do appear to be a type, but that by some secret action of 
 the Omnipotent God the things referred to ^ are truly changed 
 into Christ's body and blood, and we partaking of them receive 
 the Ufe-giving and sanctifying power of the Christ. For it must 
 needs be that by the agency of the Holy Spirit He should be 
 mingled in us after a divine order, as by our bodies, by means 
 of BUs holy flesh and precious blood, which we have had for a life- 
 
 * S. Cyril's phrase is ra irapevjjveyniva, which seems to mean "the 
 things put forward," "the things adduced." "The things which have 
 been offered " would forlainly be Trpoatvrivtyn'a>a. He uses rd wpoupjiixtfa 
 in a similar way, a little above. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 175 
 
 giving blessing, as in bread and wine, that we should not shudder 
 at seeing flesh and blood laid out on holy tables in churches. 
 For God, condescending to our infirmities, sends a power of life 
 into the elements and translates them into an efficacy which 
 proceeds from His own life.^ And doubt not that this is true, 
 when He says clearly, 'This is My body' and 'This is My 
 blood,' but rather receive with faith the word of the Saviour, 
 for being Truth, He does not lie." ^ 
 
 The corresponding passage from the Commentary on 
 S. Luke is very long, and I cannot give space to it here. 
 It may be said that neither the passage just given, nor 
 the companion passage from the Commentary on S. Luke, 
 gives anything which bears upon my present enquiry in 
 a positive way.^ I quite acknowledge the point. But 
 I do claim that these passages are of real value negatively. 
 The great Alexandrian is undertaking to explain our 
 Lord's words of definition of His sacrament, so far as 
 they can be explained, and he does not say one word 
 about the heavenly body being present on the earthly 
 
 ' The Greek here is avyKaOicTTaneuos yap 6 Qedi rals rifxerepaii 
 aadevtlais, €vlri<n rots irpoKei^ikvois Swa/iiv fw^s, Kal peOicrTrjati' auri 
 TTpoj tvkpyeiav t^s kavrov fw^s: It is to be observed that bvvapiv and 
 kvepyeiav are both without the article. So are aupa and alpa in the 
 phrase which I have translated "Christ's body and blood" above. The 
 thought is that the elements are changed into something which has the 
 character of body, and something which has the character of blood, 
 belonging to Christ, in fact, into a body and blood of Christ. 
 
 2 P. G. 72, 452, 453. 
 
 ' When, for example, Cyril speaks of a power of life being sent into 
 the elements, there is nothing to show whether that power of life is a 
 gift of our Lord's human life, reaching out, as it were, from His heavenly 
 body, and taking to itself a new embodiment, or a gift of the heavenly 
 body itself. The most that can be said is that the careful omission of 
 the articles in sundry Greek phrases, where English translators as care- 
 fully put them in, may seem to lend some measure of support to my 
 suggested interpretation. 
 
17G THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 altar. He does not deal with the diflBculty — perfectly 
 easy to deal with, some of my brethren will tell me, but 
 certainly requiring to be dealt with — as to how our 
 Lord's body can be in heaven and on a thousand altars 
 at the same moment of time. But this teacher does 
 point to the bread and wine of the Eucharist as being 
 worthy to be called the body and blood of our Lord, 
 and he recognizes that there is a difficulty involved in 
 such a naming. For that difficulty he has an answer 
 ready. It is not that the elements are called our Lord's 
 body and blood, though they are not really so, because 
 the body and blood of our Lord are really there. S. 
 Cyril's answer seems to be rather, "These elements are 
 really that which we are taught to call them, because 
 God sends into them a power of life." 
 
 With so much of comment I turn to Cyril the con- 
 troversialist, presenting first the passage (from the 
 fourth of his five books Against Nestorius) in which he 
 charges Nestorius with teaching anthropophagy. He 
 first quotes Nestorius as commenting on our Lord's 
 words (S. John vi. 53), "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son 
 of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you," 
 and as saying that those who heard Him "endured not 
 the loftiness of the revelation. They thought in their 
 ignorance that He was introducing anthropophagy." 
 Cyril catches at that word, and pounces upon his opponent 
 on this wise : 
 
 " Then how is the proposition not plain anthropophagy? And 
 in what fashion can the mystery be made out to be lofty any 
 longer, except we declare the Word that proceedeth from God the 
 Father to have been sent,^ and acknowledge the particular manner 
 
 ^ Nestorius interpreted "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send 
 I you" (S. John xx. 21) as referring to the Man Jesus, and not to the 
 Divine Word. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 177 
 
 of the sending to be that of the Incarnation? For then, and 
 only then [Greek, rore yap Tore] shall we see the flesh that was 
 united to Him availing to quicken us to life, and [that flesh] 
 not as the flesh of some other person, but only because it has been 
 made His own, who avails to quicken all things. For if fire, the 
 very fire we know by our senses, communicates the power of the 
 natural force which belongs to it to the materials with which it 
 would seem to be associated, and changes even water also, which 
 is cold by nature, into that which is contrary to its nature, and 
 makes it warm, what wonder is it, and should it be held a thing 
 incredible, if the Word that is from God the Father, being Life 
 by nature, showed forth the flesh united to Him as a quickening 
 power? For it is His own flesh, and not the flesh of some other 
 person, who is regarded as apart from Him, and is just one of 
 us. But if you abandon the mystical and true union of God the 
 Word with the body that is quickening, and utterly disjoin the 
 body from the Word, how can you prove it to be quickening? 
 For who was He who said, 'He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh 
 My blood, dwelleth in Me, and I in him'? If it be some one of 
 man's sort, and if it be not rather that the Word of God has been 
 made like us, the thing that is done is man-eating, and our par- 
 ticipation is absolutely without profit. For I hear Christ Him- 
 self saying, 'The flesh profiteth nothing; it is the Spirit that 
 quickeneth.' For as regards its own nature, the flesh is mortal, 
 and in no wise will it give life to others, having the disease of 
 mortality in itself. But if you say that it is the own body of the 
 Word Himself, why these portentous and vain fables? Why 
 contend that not the Word of the Father was sent Himself, but 
 some other instead of Him, that is, a visible being, or His flesh? 
 Whereas the divinely inspired Scripture everywhere proclaims 
 one Christ, strongly asserting that the Word became Man with 
 us, and defining herein the tradition of the true faith." ^ 
 
 Nestorius and Cyril agreed in these two points, — 
 first, that human flesh, even the flesh of our Lord, could 
 
 ^ Adv. Nestorium IV. 5, Patrol. Graeca Ixxvi. 189, 192; Pusey, 655. 
 
178 THE EUCHAIUSTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 not be life-giving in ilself,^ and second, that those who 
 came to be associated with our Lord's flesh did receive 
 life from that association. Their difference lay in this, 
 that Nestorius said that our Lord's Divinity gave life 
 through a partnership with a human body, which body 
 was not really His own after all, but only the body of 
 His human partner, and Cyril, on the other hand, insisted 
 that the Eternal Son of God took a human nature, and 
 made it absolutely His own, so that His human body 
 was as truly and entirely His body. His own body, and 
 no other person's body, as your body is your body, and 
 mine is mine. So Cyril is constantly pressing upon men 
 that the body of our Lord is an "o^vti body" (aco/za tdtov) 
 of the Divine Word. But even while Cyril is looking 
 eagerly for something with wliich he may reproach Nes- 
 torius, and for something, anything, whereby he may 
 make Nestorius to be abhorred, he never finds any fault 
 with Nestorius for saying that what we receive in the 
 Eucharist is bread and wine. He never thinks of charging 
 Nestorius with believing in a "real absence." The only 
 point of difference between them as to the Eucharist is 
 that Nestorius thought participation in the Eucharist 
 made Christians to be partners with a man, who in his 
 turn was a partner with God, and Cyril stormed at this 
 strange idea, and said that it was truly a bringing in of 
 man-eating. It follows that when Cyril lays such stress, 
 as he often does, on our receiving in the Eucharist "the 
 own body of the Word," he is not contrasting our Lord's 
 
 * So Cyril speaks in his book, De Recta Fide ad Theodosium, 38:* 
 "Shall I not confess that the flesh from the earth had in its own nature 
 no power to give life? How, then, tell me, is the flesh life-giving? Or 
 how can that of earth be understood to be of heaven, too? I say, By 
 union, the union with the Living Word from heaven." 
 
 * P. 0. 7G, 1192. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 179 
 
 body with bread, as all modern readers are inclined at 
 once to assume, but rather contrasting our Lord's own 
 body with the body of some other person, a man, Jesus, 
 supposed to be taken into partnership with the Word. 
 I shall proceed to give some brief illustrations of this 
 habit of Cyril's mind from other controversial writings 
 of his. Much more may be found in the fifty pages 
 which Dr. Pusey devotes to S. Cyril of Alexandria in his 
 Catena (Pusey, pp. 614-664). 
 
 From Cyril's Twelve Anathemas against Nestorius I 
 take the Eleventh Anathema, and Cyril's later explana- 
 tion of the Anathema. 
 
 Anathema XI 
 
 "If any one confesses not that the flesh of the Lord is life- 
 giving, and that it is the own flesh of the Word which is from 
 God the Father, but says that it is of some other than He, joined 
 to Him in dignity, that is, having, as it were, an indwelling only, 
 and [confess]] not rather that it is Hfe-giving, as we have said, 
 because it is become an own flesh of the Word which can quicken 
 all things, let him be anathema." 
 
 Explanation of the above Anathema 
 
 "We celebrate the holy and life-giving and bloodless sacrifice 
 in our Churches, not believing the offering to be the body of one 
 of us, and of a common man, likewise also the precious blood, 
 receiviag them rather as being the own body and also blood of 
 Him who quickeneth all tilings. For common flesh cannot 
 quicken, and the Saviour Himself witnessed tliis, saying, 'The 
 flesh profiteth notliing, it is the Spirit that quickeneth.' For 
 since it became the own flesh of the Word, it is so understood, 
 and is quickening, according as the Saviour Himself saith, 'As 
 the Living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, he 
 that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me.' Since Nestorius and 
 
180 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 they who agree with him do ignorantly destroy the power of the 
 mystery, therefore, and reasonably, this is anathema." * 
 
 So also in the Defense against Orestes, Prefect of 
 Alexandria, we find this sentence, — "We say that it 
 [^our Lord's flesh] became the own body of the Word, 
 and not of some man, conceived of as Christ and Son, 
 separate and distinct from Him." Cyril's emphasis on 
 this phrase "own body," is constantly directed against 
 the Nestorian idea of a body of some man. Of course, if 
 the modern student approaches such passages with the 
 modern pre-supposition, that "the own body of our 
 Lord," or even "an own body of our Lord," cannot possi- 
 bly mean anything but our Lord's natural body, in 
 which He reigns in heaven, then such passages — and 
 there are many of them — will furnish overwhelming 
 evidence that Cyril held one of the modern views. Just 
 so, if any student approaches the language of the Fathers 
 with a pre-supposition that when a writer says that our 
 bread and wine are made to become the body and blood 
 of our Lord, that writer must intend to support the 
 modern doctrine of Transubstantiation, such a student 
 can find, nay, must find, Transubstantiation written 
 manifoldly across the pages of early Christian Literature. 
 But both these pre-suppositions, common as they are in 
 difi'erent quarters, are thoroughly unreasonable. All 
 Christian thought in the first five Christian centuries 
 identified the element of bread in the Eucharist with 
 our Lord's body, and the element of wine with His blood. 
 At least, that is what I have been maintaining in these 
 Lectures, and what I deeply believe. The consecrated 
 bread was to one of those early believers just as much 
 
 * The Anathema and the Explanation of the Anathema may be 
 found in the Palrologia Gracca 76, 309, 311. The above quotations are 
 given in Pusey, {jp. CGI, 6C£. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 181 
 
 our Lord's body as the very body of His natural flesh. 
 If it be granted that my explanation of the language of 
 such men as Augustine and Jerome and Chrysostom is a 
 possible one, treating the eucharistic body of our Lord as 
 a body distinct from His natural body, united with it, 
 identified with it, but not identical with it, then certainly 
 the language of Cyril will bear the same construction. 
 
 The question that we have to try to settle may be put 
 thus : Does Cyril truly identify the hallowed bread with 
 our Lord's body, really meaning, as I have interpreted 
 him, that our Lord takes bread for a body and wine for 
 blood? or does Cyril simply call bread our Lord's body, 
 and wine our Lord's blood, because in each case our 
 Lord's body and His blood are there present, and the 
 majesty of that presence fills the mind of the believer, 
 as if the great inner reality, there symbolized, alone were 
 there? As tending to confirm my view of Cyril's meaning, 
 I offer his comment of S. John xx. 16, — the story of our 
 Lord's appearance on the eighth day: ^ 
 
 "Most reasonably, then, do we in the churches make holy 
 assemblies on the octave. And if I may speak in a more mystical 
 manner, the thought constraining us uncontrollably, we shut 
 to the doors, and Christ appears to us all, both visibly and 
 invisibly, invisibly as God, and visibly again in the body, and 
 He permits and grants us to touch His holy flesh. For accord- 
 ing to the grace of God we approach to the participation of the 
 mystical Eucharist, receiving Christ in our hands, that we too 
 may firmly believe that He hath truly raised His own Holy 
 Temple." 
 
 The eucharistic body of our Lord, according to S. 
 Cyril, is something that we can see and touch. 
 
 I shall give one more example of Cyril, again offering 
 something in the way of a philosophy of the Eucharist, 
 1 P. G. 74, 725. 
 
182 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 and again the interest will be chiefly in noting what he 
 does not say. It is drawn from the Commentary on S. 
 John, where he is considering S. John xv. 1 : ^ 
 
 "Let some one tell us the cause, and come and teach us the 
 power, of the mystical Eucharist. For it comes to be in us — 
 for what reason? (yherai. yap kv rifilv Sia ri ;) Is it not as 
 making Christ to dwell in us even corporeally (kuI aunariKus) 
 
 r by the participation and communion of His holy flesh.'' Indeed 
 I think that I speak rightly. For Paul writes that the Gentiles 
 were made fellow-members of one body, and fellow-heirs, and 
 fellow-partakers with Christ. How were they, then, shown to 
 be fellow-members of a bo<ly? Because, being admitted to 
 
 /(^ partake of the mystical blessing, they are become one body 
 joined to Him, just exactly the same as each one of the holy 
 Apostles. For why did he call liis own members, yea, the mem- 
 bers of all [Christians], as well as his own, the members of Christ? 
 For he writes, ' Know ye not that your members are the members 
 of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make 
 them members of an harlot? God forbid!' But the Saviour 
 Himself says, ' He that eateth My flesh, and driiiketh My blood 
 dwelleth in Me, and I in him.' For here it is sj>ecially to be 
 observed that Christ says, that He shall be in us, not by a certain 
 
 ? relation only, such as is entertained through the affections, but 
 also by a participation of His nature [^Kara nkTt^iv (^uo-i/cV]. For 
 as, if one mixeth wax with other wax, and mclteth them by 
 means of the fire, there resulteth a single sometliing, so by the 
 participation of the body of Christ and of His precious blood, we 
 are co-unite<l, He in us, and we in Him. For in no other way 
 could that which is by nature mortal be made living, unless it 
 were mixed in bodily wise with the body of Him who is by nature 
 Life, the Only-begotten. And if you are not persuaded by my 
 words, give credence to Christ Himself, crying, 'Verily, verily, 
 
 5- I say unto you. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and 
 drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My 
 flesh, and drinkelh My bloo<l, hath eternal life; and I will raise 
 
 » P. G. 7i, 341, 344. 
 
A.D. 381-431: GREEK FATHERS 183 
 
 him up at the last day. ' You hear now Himself plainly declaring 
 that unless we have eaten His flesh and drunk His blood, we have 
 not in ourselves, that is, in our own flesh Zei> Tjj idiq. (rapKl"], 
 eternal life. But eternal life may be conceived, and very justly 
 conceived, as the flesh of Him who is Life, that is, of the Only- 
 begotten." 
 
 The closing thought seems to be that the life which is 
 eternal may be regarded as an embodiment of the Eternal 
 Word. No human life could have eternal quality unless 
 it were taken up and worn by Him. Thus the passage 
 closes on a note of non-literalness which shows this great 
 Cyril to be in the true Alexandrian succession with his 
 master Athanasius, and with Origen and Clement of the 
 centuries before. And again we are admonished that 
 with the great Christian teachers of early time the non- 
 literal is not by any means the non-real. 
 
LECTURE VII 
 
 LATER THEOLOGIANS WHO PRESS THE PARALLEL 
 OF THE INCARNATION AND THE EUCHARIST 
 
 HAVING now presented, in my last five Lectures, 
 as fair and faitliful a representation as I was able 
 to make of the whole testimony of the Church's WTiters 
 in regard to the subject we are considering for the first 
 four hundred years of the Church's life, I ask leave now 
 to present the testimony of four writers ^ lying outside of 
 this limit of time, because of a special interest that 
 attaches to them. Three of them are eminent teachers, 
 one of them being, indeed, a Bishop of Rome. The other 
 is anonymous, which makes it probable that he was 
 obscure. They all insist particularly on the parallel, 
 which the mind of the Church seems to me always to 
 have perceived, between the mystery of the Eucharist 
 and the mystery of the Incarnation, and they present 
 that parallel in a deeply significant way. Before intro- 
 ducing these last witnesses, however, I want to put 
 before you a very representative passage (very repre- 
 sentative, I mean, of the modern attitude of mind) from 
 Dr. Darwell Stone's History, I. 98. 
 
 "In the period now under review," he says, speaking of the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, "there is but little attempt to explain 
 the method of the relation of the presence of the body and blood of 
 Christ to the elements of bread and wine. The writers who say 
 anything bearing on this subject may be divided into two 
 
 • One of them. S. John of Damascus, must be reserved to Appendix L 
 
 184 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 185 
 
 groups, — those who push the connection between the Incarna- 
 tion and the Eucharist in the direction of emphasizing the abiding 
 reahty of the elements of bread and wine, and those who tend 
 toward aflfirming a change in the elements themselves." 
 
 Two things in this Utile paragraph are profoundly 
 characteristic of the difference between most modern 
 theology and all ancient theology. First there is the 
 suggestion of some relation of some presence of our 
 Lord's body and blood to the eucharistic elements. It is 
 quite assumed by Dr. Stone, as by moderns generally, 
 of course, that "our Lord's body and blood" must mean 
 our Lord's natural body and blood, and therefore that if 
 there is any presence of these powers in the Eucharist, 
 the Lord's body and blood will constitute one fact, and 
 the elements will constitute another, and lesser fact. 
 But, as I have pointed out over and over, ancient theology 
 never defines, nor even suggests, any presence of our 
 Lord's heavenly body under sacramental veils. It 
 always identifies the consecrated elements themselves 
 with our Lord's body and blood. "Body" is its name, 
 and its only name, for the hallowed bread. "Blood" 
 is its name, and its only name, for the hallowed wine. 
 In the case of either element there is one fact, not two. 
 There is really just one fact, which may be regarded under 
 either of two aspects. The element of bread, for instance, 
 is a single fact. It may be regarded as bread, or it may 
 be regarded as our Lord's body. You may call it either. 
 You may not be allowed to distinguish between this 
 bread and the Lord's body which it has come to be, as 
 if the bread were one thing, and the body another. With 
 the utmost respect for a student who seems to me to 
 have in general a rare gift for representing justly the 
 workings of other men's minds, even of minds differing 
 much from his own, I must here take leave to criticize. 
 
186 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 I must declare my deep conviction that no ancient Chris- 
 tian could have understood what a theologian was trying 
 to say who used that so utterly modern phrase, — "the 
 relation of the presence of the body and blood of Christ 
 to the elements of bread and wine." 
 
 My second criticism is, that it is wholly characteristic 
 of modern, as distinguished from ancient, theology, to 
 find any opposition, or even any difference between 
 "emphasizing the abiding reality of the elements" and 
 "aflBrming a change in the elements." Why, those two 
 things go together constantly in ancient theology. The 
 modern mind is in the habit of assuming that if the 
 elements in the Eucharist are to suffer any great and 
 glorifying change, they must be changed into our Lord's 
 natural body and blood, or into vehicles of our Lord's 
 natural body and blood. The Roman theologian follows 
 the former of these lines of thought. Of course, he has 
 no patience with the idea that the bread and wine remain 
 as bread and wine, and writers who indicate such a 
 belief must by him be condemned or explained away. 
 The Anglican theologian of the School of Dr. Stone takes 
 the other line. He holds that the elements are changed 
 into vehicles of our Lord's body and blood, and then 
 the great realities which they contain and convey so fill 
 the mind of the believer that in looking at the bread he 
 sees nothing but the body of the Lord. He says con- 
 fidently that our Lord Himself calls the visible things 
 of this sacrament by the names of the invisible things. 
 And yet the pious modern Anglican of the Oxford School 
 does not really in his devout heart call bread and wine 
 our Lord's body and blood. He is acutely aware, at 
 every moment, of the difference between the sacramental 
 elements and that which he regards them as conveying. 
 He does not think that the elements of bread and wine 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 187 
 
 are really changed at all in their essential nature. And 
 so when he is a man of Dr. Stone's acuteness of perception, 
 and unflinching honesty in recognition, of facts of thought, 
 he has to acknowledge a difference of tone between him- 
 self and the Fathers who dwell on the material elements 
 of the Eucharist as really being changed, so as to be — 
 really to be — the body and blood of our Lord. Here 
 again, therefore, I must express my deep conviction that 
 ancient theology could have seen no theological difference 
 between two common ways of looking at the same thing, 
 — the way of affirming the abiding reality of the bread 
 and wine and the way of affirming the glorious trans- 
 formation of them to be the body and blood of the Lord. 
 I must insist that Dr. Stone's "two groups" of theologians 
 are not really distinct enough to constitute two species 
 of the genus "theologian." All those who press the 
 analogy of the Incarnation assure us that the elements 
 are made to be the body and blood of the Lord. All 
 those who say that the elements are "changed" into 
 something give evidence, nevertheless, that the change 
 which they have in mind is not a change of substance, 
 but a change of quality. He who from a poor man, 
 without rank or following, becomes a king, is greatly 
 changed, and in fact, trans-made; but he remains a man, 
 even as he was before. Between those who dwell most 
 on the identity and those who dwell most on the change 
 there is no room for real difference of opinion. 
 
 With so much of introduction I shall present my re- 
 maining witnesses to the eucharistic tradition of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
188 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus (a.d. 393-458) 
 
 The first that I shall name is one of the most interesting 
 and attractive figures of the fifth century, Theodoret, 
 Bishop of Cyrrhus in the Euphrates valley for some 
 thirty-five years, from the year 423 to 458. By nature a 
 man of peace, he lived to see the Church shaken awfully 
 by the strife of two contending parties, — a sort of 
 Broad Church party whose extreme mistakes were repre- 
 sented by the heresy of Nestorius, and a sort of High 
 Church party, whose extreme mistakes were represented 
 by the heresy of Eutyches. Himself a son of Antioch, 
 and of the Antiochene theological school, he was in 
 sympathy with Nestorius at the beginning of that dreadful 
 strife, and was inclined to look with suspicion on every- 
 thing that came from Alexandria, and particularly from 
 the great and overbearing Archbishop Cyril. It would 
 seem, too, that at times Theodoret really took the wrong 
 side in the controversies of the day, and for a time em- 
 braced opinions that could not be entirely cleared from 
 the charge of heresy. But when the storm cleared, the 
 saintly Bishop of Cyrrhus was found having "peace at 
 the last," planted with firm feet and clear vision on the 
 orthodox side. If he made mistakes, and sometimes 
 fought against real champions of the faith, it is to be 
 noted that the dangers which disturbed and alarmed him 
 were real dangers. It was because he saw the evil which 
 flowered presently in the Eutychian delusion threatening 
 the Church that he was so far thrown off his balance for 
 a while as to be entangled in the Nestorian misunder- 
 standings. But he recovered a true balance at last, and 
 was received in the Council of Chalcedon (a.d. 451) as 
 an orthodox bishop. Canon Bright describes him as 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 189 
 
 "facile princeps among his brethren for varied learning," 
 and adds that his warmth of heart "enables us to feel 
 towards him as (S. Augustine excepted) we can hardly 
 feel towards any of his contemporaries in East or West." 
 
 In the last decade of his life this great man wrote three 
 dialogues, in which he represented an orthodox believer 
 as arguing with a follower of Eutyches. Orthodoxus and 
 Eranistes are the names which he gives to his speakers. 
 An epavo^ was a sort of club-feast or picnic, to which a 
 number of persons contributed. Eranistes, then, does not 
 mean "a beggar," as some have said, but rather "a 
 picnic theologian," a person whose feast of reason has 
 not a well-ordered bill of fare, but consists of scraps 
 brought together from various sources, and not sys- 
 tematized. The title given to his Dialogues by Theo- 
 doret himself is Eranistes, or Polymorphus, and the word 
 Polymorphus, "of many forms," seems to be meant to 
 convey the idea of a man who keeps changing his shape 
 likiQ Proteus in the fable, a man incapable of consistency. 
 Picnic Theology, or the Chameleon Student would repre- 
 sent Theodoret's idea to an English-speaking enquirer 
 of our day. In both the first and the second of these 
 dialogues reference is made to the Church's accepted 
 doctrine of the Eucharist as throwing light on the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation. 
 
 Two points are to be noted before we approach the 
 study of these passages. 
 
 1. The two parties regard the doctrine of the Eucharist 
 as something about which there is general agreement. 
 It can be appealed to to settle disputed questions. 
 
 2. The two parties agree in finding a suflScient analogy 
 between the eucharistic Presence of our Lord and His 
 Incarnation, so that the one may be expected to throw 
 light on the other. 
 
190 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 When I say that both parties agreed, I mean, of course 
 that Tlieodorct thought that they agreed. He was launch- 
 ing an argument which he thought to be strong in itself 
 and appealing to the people who were ensnared by the 
 arguments of Eutyches and his followers. Perhaps 
 Theodoret exaggerated the amount of agreement among 
 theologians, but certainly he knew the mind of the theo- 
 logians of his day particularly well. He represents both 
 parties as appealing to the analogy of the Incarnation, 
 — it is to be supposed that he is combating arguments 
 which he had really known Eutychians to make, — and 
 he represents both parties as holding that there is a 
 tremendous change in the elements as the result of the 
 consecration. There appears no ground for suggesting 
 that one party was pressing the Incarnation analogy and 
 the other party the sacramental change. I shall 
 present the passage from the Second Dialogue first. 
 
 "Orthodoxus. Tell mc now: the mystic symbols which are 
 offered to God by those who perform priestly rites, — of what 
 are they symbols? 
 
 Eranistes. Of the body and blood of the Lord. 
 
 Orth. Of that which is really a body? or not? ^ 
 
 Eran. Of that wliich is really a body. 
 
 * I must here call attention to a slip in translation in Dr. Stone's 
 " History," I. 99. He makes Orthodoxus say, 
 
 "Is it really the body? or is it not?" 
 
 But besides the fact that Theodoret's phrase, rov ovrwi auixaroi, ^ oi', 
 requires the translation given above, it may be observed that the 
 argument itself requires this sense. Eranistes is forced to acknowledge 
 that our Lord's body now in heaven is still a real body, and Orthodoxus 
 then hammers in the point. "Yes, a tj^pe must have a real thing for its 
 archetype." 
 
 I ought to add that Dr. Stone's translations can very rarely be faulted. 
 So far as I am able to judge of such matters, their general fidelity is quite 
 exceptional. 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 191 
 
 Orih. Very good: for the image must have its archetype. 
 For indeed painters imitate nature, and depict the images of 
 things that are seen. 
 
 Eran. True. 
 
 Orth, If then the divine mysteries are anti-types of that which 
 is really a body, then the body of the Lord is even now a body, 
 and it has not been changed into the Divine Nature, but filled 
 with a divine glory. 
 
 Eran. Opportunely have you introduced the subject of the 
 divine mysteries, for from this I shall show you the change of 
 the Lord's body into another nature. Answer now to my 
 questions. 
 
 Orth. I will answer. 
 
 Eran. Before the priestly invocation, what do you call the 
 gift that is being offered? 
 
 Orih. One should not say it openly, for it is likely that some 
 who are uninitiated are present. 
 
 Eran. Let your answer be phrased enigmatically. 
 
 Orth. The food that is made of a kind of grain. 
 
 Eran. And by what name do you call the other symbol ? 
 
 Orth. This name is common too, signifying a kind of drink. 
 
 Eran. But after the consecration how do you entitle these 
 things? 
 
 Orth, Christ's body and Christ's blood,^ 
 
 Eran. And do you really believe that you partake of Christ's 
 body and Christ's blood? 
 
 Orth. I do. 
 
 Eran. As then the symbols of the body and blood of the Lord 
 are one thing before the priestly invocation, and after the invo- 
 cation are changed, and become another thing, so the body of 
 the Lord after His taking up was changed into the Divine 
 Substance. 
 
 Orth. You are caught in the net of your own weaving. For 
 even after the consecration the mystice symbols do not depart 
 
 ^ It should be noted that o-wAia and al/na are both without the article. 
 "Something that has the quality of body, and belongs to Christ, some- 
 thing which has the quality of blood, and belongs to Christ." 
 
192 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 from their own nature, for they remain in their former substance 
 (oiffif) and figure and form; and they are visible and tangible, 
 as they were before. But they are regarded as being just what 
 they have become, and they are believed so to be, and they are 
 worshipped as being just what they are believed to be. Com- 
 pare then the image with the archetj-pe, and you will see the 
 likeness. (For the type must be like the reality.) For that 
 body [our Lord's heavenly body is meant, of course]] preserves 
 its former form, figure, and limitation, and, in a word, the sub- 
 stance of the body; but after the resurrection it became im- 
 mortal and superior to corruption, it was counted worthy of the 
 seat on the right hand, it is adored by every creature, as being 
 called the natural body of the Lord. 
 
 Eran. Yes; but the mystic symbol changes its former title, 
 and is no longer named with the name by which it was called 
 before, but is entitled 'body.' So must the Reality be called 
 God, and not body. 
 
 Orth. You seem to me to be ignorant; for it is called not only 
 body, but also bread of life. So the Lord Himself entitled it; 
 and that very body we call a divine body, and life-giving, and 
 the body of our Master and Lord, teaching that it is not common 
 to every man, but is peculiar to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is 
 both God and Man." 1 
 
 It should be observed that the orthodox speaker does 
 not question in the least the statement that after the 
 invocation the elements are changed, and become another 
 thing. Nay, he repeats it in his owti phrase, — "They 
 are regarded as being just what they have become." 
 They have been turned from being merely one thing 
 to being also another thing. Yet they have lost nothing. 
 They continue to be that "one thing," exactly as they 
 were before. In stating the difference of the two speak- 
 ers, Dr. Stone has this sentence: 
 
 * The passage may be found in Pat. Gracca, 83, 165-1G8, and in 
 translation in Nicenc and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, III. 200, 
 and (parts of it) in Puscy, 85 and 112, and Stone, I. 99. 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 193 
 
 "The Eutychian maintains that after the ascension the body of 
 Christ is changed into the Divine Nature, so as to be no longer 
 a human body, and after the consecration the elements are 
 changed into the body and blood of Christ, so as to be no longer 
 bread and wine." (Stone, I. 101.) 
 
 I venture to suggest that the last part of Dr. Stone's 
 sentence needs modifying. That the elements were so 
 changed as to be "no longer bread and wine" is just 
 what the Eutychian did not say, but would have had to 
 say, to make a valid argument. Theodoret's precise 
 point is that the Eutychian has not sl valid argument. 
 Indeed Theodoret represents his Eutychian as having a 
 confused mind. This poor Eranistes has been so carried 
 away by the thought of the wonderful change and ex- 
 altation of the eucharistic elements that he has completely 
 lost sight of the crucial fact, that after all they are still 
 bread and wine. But note what follows! When Ortho- 
 doxus reminds him of that part of the accepted doctrine 
 of the Church of Christ, Eranistes does not tell Orthodoxus 
 that he is wrong. He cannot say that. He is, as Ortho- 
 doxus said, fairly caught in the net of his own weaving. 
 He can only give up that particular point, and renew his 
 attempt to make something out of the other side of the 
 truth, taking it up and pressing it once more. At least, 
 says Eranistes, the elements are now called by a greater 
 name than they ever were before. Therefore our Lord's 
 body of flesh must be called by a greater name than it 
 could have been before. 
 
 And here I must call most particular attention to the 
 nature of the Eutychian argument, as Eranistes is made 
 to state it, and as Orthodoxus feels obliged to meet it. 
 It is founded on an analogy between the two miracles, of 
 the Incarnation and the Eucharist, which is assumed all 
 through by both parties, without being mentioned at all. 
 
194 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 It is part of the subconscious mind (to use a modern 
 phrase) of both parties. What is true of the Eucharist, 
 they think, must be true of the Incarnation, and vice 
 versa. At least, there is a certain Hkeness in the two 
 cases, and in the hues of that hkeness the same law must 
 operate for both. I offer my suggestion — the only one 
 that I can find — that the likeness which was in the 
 mind of all fifth-century Christians was this: In the 
 miracle of the Incarnation the Eternal Word took to 
 Himself flesh for a body, and in the miracle of the Eucha- 
 rist the Eternal Word took to Himself bread for a body, 
 and wine to be for a certain use His blood. Then (the 
 argument runs naturally on) the effect of the touch of 
 His Deity must be the same in the one miracle as in the 
 other. That is the line of argument, it seems to me, 
 that is common to Ortliodoxus and Eranistes in the dialogue. 
 There is absolutely no difference between the orthodox 
 believer and the heretic as to their holding in this matter. 
 They hold with equal eagerness the idea of analogy 
 between Incarnation and Eucharist. They hold with 
 equal eagerness that the elements which receive union 
 with our Lord are greatly exalted and changed thereby, 
 while yet remaining the same in substance and form. 
 But without such an analogy as I have just suggested, 
 there is no reason for arguing from the Eucharist to the 
 Incarnation. The argument is senseless. It is no argu- 
 ment at all. 
 
 I proceed to the promised quotation from the First 
 Dialogue: 
 
 " Orthodox-US. You know that our Lord has entitled bread His 
 own body. 
 
 Eranistes. I know it. 
 
 Orth. And contrariwise. He has called His flesh wheat.* 
 * The reference is to S. John xii. 23, 24. 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 195 
 
 Eran. I know this too, for I have heard Him saying, 'The 
 hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified,' and 'Ex- 
 cept a grain of wheat fall uito the ground and die, it abideth by 
 itself alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' 
 
 Orth. But in the delivery of the mysteries, certainly. He called 
 the bread body, and the mixture blood. 
 
 Eran. He did so name them. 
 
 Orth. But then with reference to nature, it is the body that 
 should be called body, and the blood, blood. 
 
 Eran. Confessedly. 
 
 Orth. But our Saviour, for His part, interchanged the names, 
 and has put upon the body the name of the symbol, and upon 
 the symbol the name of the body. In like manner, having 
 named Himself Vine, He entitled the symbol blood. 
 
 Eran. You have said truly. But I should like to know the 
 cause of this interchange of names. 
 
 Orth. The object is plain to those who have been initiated 
 into the things of God. For He willed that those who partake 
 of the divine mysteries should not give their attention to the 
 things seen, but through the exchange of the names believe in 
 the transformation that has come from the grace. For He who 
 entitled the body which is His by nature, corn and bread, and 
 again named Himself Vine, has also honored the visible symbols 
 with the titles of body and blood, not changing their nature, 
 but adding the grace to their nature." ^ 
 
 I have a comment to add to this quotation also. I 
 ask attention to the fact that Theodoret makes his 
 orthodox speaker present in close parallel the language 
 of our Lord calling Himself a vine, and the language of 
 our Lord calling wine His blood. It seems plain to me 
 that Theodoret was a non-literalist, and that he expected 
 
 ^ The passage may be found in Pat. Graeca, 83, 56, and in the transla- 
 tion in Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, III. 168. 
 Also in Pusey, 87; Stone I. 101. Dr. Stone renders "dignified the visible 
 symbols with the titles of the body and the blood" [italics mine]]. 
 
19G THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 any other theologian, even an opponent in a great con- 
 troversy, to go along with hira in that hne of thought, 
 as a matter of course. I ask attention also to the com- 
 bination of a distinct statement that the elements are 
 "transformed" (nera^aWeLv is the Greek verb) with 
 another distinct statement that our Lord does not change 
 their nature, but adds to their nature "the grace." 
 
 What does Theodoret mean by "the grace"? The 
 Oxford School will answer, "The Presence of our Lord in 
 his totality, body, blood, soul and Divinity." But that 
 Presence, I submit, would call for a different sort of 
 language. That Presence would not make the bread 
 and wine to be our Lord's body and blood, but to be 
 vehicles of His body and blood. According to that view 
 our Lord does not take bread to be His body, nor wine 
 to be His blood. He has no need of any body beside 
 His body natural. Not only does Theodoret, like the 
 Fathers before him, insist that the bread and wine are 
 somehow our Lord's body and blood, and never speak of 
 them as containing or veiling the body which is in heaven, 
 but a little farther on in the dialogue just quoted he has 
 this passage: 
 
 "Orthodoxies. Of what do you understand the holy food to be 
 a symbol and type.^ Of the Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ? 
 or of His body and blood? 
 
 Eranistes. Plainly of those things of which they have received 
 the names. 
 
 Orth. You mean, of the body and of the blood. 
 
 Eran. I do. 
 
 Orth. You have spoken like a lover of truth; for when the 
 Lord took the symbol. He did not say, 'This is My Divinity,' 
 but 'This is My body,' and again, 'This is My blood'; and in 
 another place, 'The bread which I will give is My flesh, which 
 I will give for the life of the world.'" 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 197 
 
 Certainly Theodoret held that oui Lord gave Himself 
 in His Divinity to be received by His people in the Eucha- 
 rist. As certainly Theodoret insists that the bread of 
 the Eucharist is made to be His body, and not His Divinity. 
 Let us note how the bread of the Eucharist is correlated 
 to our Lord's body and to His Divinity, respectively, in 
 Theodoret's view. I think that the matter may be put 
 into two corresponding statements on this wise. 
 
 1. The consecrated bread symbolizes our Lord's 
 body, according to this teaching, and is our Lord's body; 
 but there is no suggestion that it contains our Lord's 
 body. 
 
 2. The consecrated bread does contain (in a sense) 
 our Lord's Divinity, which yet cannot be contained; but 
 it does not symbolize our Lord's Divinity, and is never 
 said to be our Lord's Divinity. 
 
 No theology, then, I allow myself to claim, which 
 puts the Lord's body and the Lord's Divinity into the 
 same relation with the eucharistic elements is really the 
 theology of Theodoret. 
 
 n 
 
 Gelasius I., Bishop of Rome 
 
 The second of my supplemental witnesses is a Bishop 
 of Rome, Gelasius I., who occupied the great see of the 
 West from a.d. 492 to 496. It is not good history to call 
 any Bishop of Rome a "Pope," however much he and 
 many other bishops may have been called by that name 
 in their own day, before the coming of the Forged De- 
 cretals. What "pope" means to our ears did not really 
 exist till the ninth century. But certainly Gelasius was 
 a Roman bishop who magnified his ofiice with really 
 papal pretensions. His chief claim on the Church's 
 
198 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 memory is in his book of offices, the Gelasian Sacra- 
 mentary, but he has also laid the Church under obligation 
 by his treatise, if it be his,^ on The Two Natures in Christ, 
 from which I must draw a really striking passage: 
 
 "Certainly, the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ 
 received by us arc a matter belonging to the realm of the divine, 
 because we are indeed made partakers by them of the Divine 
 Nature; and yet the substance or nature of bread and wine 
 
 ' I may mention that Roman theologians are inclined to question the 
 authorship of this treatise, and to assign it to an obscure Gelasius, who 
 was Bishop of Cyzicus in Asia Minor. In view of the fact that the 
 treatise is not only mentioned, but actually quoted from, as a work of 
 Gelasius, Bishop of Rome, by S. Fulgentius of Ruspe, a contemporary 
 WTitcr, it seems hardly worth while to go into the arguments for rejecting 
 the Roman authorship. But I will mention one of them. Several Greek 
 writers are quoted in this Roman book, and only two Latin wTiters. 
 Surely, it is suggested, the author must have been an Eastern himself. 
 It is commonly replied that the book was meant for circulation in the 
 East, to give the great authority of the representative see of the West, and 
 by implication, of the Western Church generally, to the contentions of 
 the orthodox party in the sorely divided East. Supporting arguments 
 drawn from great authorities in former times would with Eastern readers 
 be more useful, if drawn from Eastern soiu"ces. But I wish to add here 
 a conjecture of my own, — I have not seen it anywhere put forth, — 
 that the treatise was written for Gelasius in Greek by a Greek scholar 
 in his employ, and sent out under the name, and with the approval, of 
 Gelasius, a somewhat clumsy translation into Latin being retained to 
 represent the treatise in the West. The first sentence of the passage 
 which I am to quote is clumsy and actually ungrammatical in Latin, 
 and to my thinking shows plainest signs of having been written originally 
 in Greek. "Sacramenta quae sumimus corporis et sanguinis Christi 
 divini res est" — notice the plural subject and singular verb — is a very 
 awkward translation of some such Greek phrase as ra v4> ij^Cov \yj4)dtvTa 
 HVffrripia tov cruiiards re Kal tov aifiaros XptoroD XPVf^^ <<'■'"' fov Otlov. 
 The loss of the Greek original is easily accounted for by the increasing 
 bitterness of the Eastern Churches in later centuries against Bishops 
 of Rome. But certainly the Latin quoted above is a translation from 
 Greek by a literarj' "hack." 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 199 
 
 does not cease to be. And certainly an image and likeness of the 
 body and blood of Christ are set forth in the celebration of the 
 mysteries. Therefore it is shown to us plainly enough that we 
 must think in the case of the Lord Christ that which we profess 
 and celebrate and receive in the case of His image. Thus as the 
 natures pass into this, that is, the divine substance, by the 
 operation of the Holy Ghost, while yet remaining in their own 
 proper being, they show that that principal mystery itself [the 
 mystery of the Incarnation is meant, of course], the efficacy and 
 virtue of which they truly present ^ to us, remains one Christ, 
 because whole and real, these natures of which He is made up 
 remaining each in its proper being." 
 
 The Latin is crabbed, and the text needs emending, 
 to make sense; but what the writer was trying to convey 
 is beyond question. I used to be taught in my student 
 days, as nearly as I can now recall, that the idea of this 
 passage was that there were two distinct realities in the 
 Eucharist, — the material element, bread or wine, on the 
 one side, the heavenly fact of the body and blood of 
 Christ, on the other side, and that correspondingly there 
 were in the Incarnation two distinct realities, the human 
 nature and the Divine Nature of our Lord. That was 
 supposed to be the fundamental fact of the comparison. 
 I do not see that Gelasius does say that thing exactly. 
 If he had said only that, it would have been open to a 
 Eutychian opponent to say: "Oh! yes. You are quite 
 right in asserting that there is a likeness between the 
 conditions of the Incarnation and the conditions of the 
 Eucharist, according to your view, which likeness is not 
 found in my view. I consider that that is precisely the 
 
 ^ The Latin word is representant, which is used for making things to 
 be present either (1) literally, or (2) to the mind of some person or persons 
 interested. I use the word "present" in English as having the same 
 ambiguity, while "represent" is Avith us limited to meaning (2). I 
 imagine the Greek to have had diro^aifet, probably in sense (1). 
 
200 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 fact of the case. The conditions of the Incarnation and 
 the conditions of the Eucharist are not alike in that 
 particular point. Why should they be alike?" 
 
 No, what Gelasius says is, first and foremost, that the 
 elements of the Eucharist are brought into such a relation 
 to our Lord Jesus Christ, that what is true of that sacra- 
 ment must be true of the Incarnation, also. Gelasius is 
 laying down, be it observed, what he regards as a uni- 
 versally accepted proposition, in which all Catholic 
 Christians will of course agree. It amounts to this, if I 
 may paraphrase him: the elements in the Eucharist are 
 taken to Himself by our Lord, as He took a body to 
 Himself in His Incarnation. It is clearly shown to us, 
 therefore, that we must think of the Incarnation as we 
 think of the Eucharist. What happens to the bread and 
 wine in passing "into the Divine Substance " must be 
 what happens to the body of our Lord in passing "into 
 the Divine Substance." It is the same experience in 
 both cases. The i)articular point which Gelasius is 
 essaying to prove is that as the bread and wine remain 
 bread and wine, so the human body of flesh remains a 
 human body of flesh. But the foundation of the argu- 
 ment, the thing which Gelasius is here offering as a 
 commonplace of Catholic theology, is that our Lord is 
 known to take the elements of the Eucharist into pre- 
 cisely such a union with Himself as that union into which 
 He took His human body in His Incarnation. 
 
 So much seems to me quite clear and certain in the 
 teaching of Gelasius. I will add a suggestion which is, 
 I acknowledge, quite conjectural and uncertain. Our 
 Latin text speaks of the elements as passing "into the 
 Divine Substance." What can Gelasius be supposed to 
 mean? Surely, it is not at all a natural way of saying 
 that the elements i)ass into the substance of our Lord's 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 201 
 
 body. It suggests rather some such phrase as writers 
 on the Incarnation have been wont to use, hke that of the 
 Athanasian Creed, "taking of the manhood into God." 
 I offer my suggestion for what it may be worth, that the 
 Greek author who prepared the message of Gelasius to 
 the troubled East, wrote here the words els ttjv ddav 
 xnrbcTaaiv. We know that Latin writers had a habit 
 of translating vTroaraaLs by substantia, and that they 
 found a great deal of difficulty in understanding the 
 use of virdarTaais as a theological word by Greek writers. 
 But certainly that phrase about passing "into the divine 
 substance" is an awkward phrase, whatever interpreta- 
 tion may be put upon it, and its interpretation must be 
 set down as conjectural rather than clear. I return 
 to my main point. The treatise presses the idea that 
 our Lord takes the elements of the Eucharist to Himself 
 so exactly as He takes the body of His Incarnation that 
 the Church must argue from the one mystery to the 
 other. Such seems to me to be the teaching of Gelasius, 
 Bishop of Rome. 
 
 Ill 
 
 An Unknown Writer of the Second Half of 
 THE Fifth Century, Author of an Epistle to 
 Caesarius 
 
 I must add here a brief passage for the knowledge of 
 which I am indebted to Dr. Stone's History. It comes 
 from a letter which is printed with the works of S. John 
 Chrysostom, because it is ascribed to him in manuscripts. 
 No one now supposes it to be his, but there is no trace 
 of the real author, and, in fact, the Greek original is lost. 
 It exists only in a Latin version. From internal evidence 
 it is assigned to the period in which Gelasius flourished. 
 
202 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 — the second half of the fifth century. It gives another 
 example of the application of a (confidently assumed) 
 parallel between the Incarnation and the Eucharist. 
 
 "As before the bread is consecrated we call it bread, but 
 after the grace of God has consecrated it through the agency of 
 the priest it is set free from the name of bread, but counted 
 worthy of the name of the body of the Lord, although the nature 
 of bread remains in it, and we speak not of two bodies, but of one 
 body of the Son, so in this case, wlien the Divine Nature estab- 
 lished itself in a body, the two natures made one Son, one 
 Person." ^ 
 
 Here is, I think, the same view of the Eucharist as in 
 Theodoret and Gelasius. The nature of bread remains 
 after the consecration. That is one point. But then 
 this bread, now exalted to a higher usefulness, is "set 
 free from the name of bread, but counted worthy of the 
 name of the body of the Lord." That is a second point, 
 and I think an important one. I have said over and 
 over that I cannot see why that which is a vehicle, or a 
 veil, for our Lord's body should be called our Lord's 
 body, nor why a rev^elation that it was to be such a 
 vehicle, or veil, could not have been made in much plainer 
 words. Of course, I know that many devout students, 
 who are also strong and clear thinkers, will find my 
 argument in both these particulars to be of no value. 
 I must not take time to argue the same point over again 
 now. I will only say that this author's phrase seems to 
 
 ^ The Latin here is somewhat remarkable, preserving as it does a 
 word of the original Greek which seems to have struck the translator 
 particularly: " Sic et hie, Divina tvidpvaaaiji, id est, insidente corpori 
 Natura, unum Filiimi, unam Personam, utraque hacc fecerunt." It 
 will be observed that " Divina insidente Natura" is an ablative absolute 
 translating a Greek genitive absolute. Ilcncc the curious combination, 
 " iyiSpixr&arjs, id est, insidente." 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 203 
 
 me to fit more easily with what I have been offering as 
 an interpretation of patristic thought than with the 
 theology which says that the hallowed bread is one 
 entity, and the body of our Lord another entity. 
 
 I must pass to the third point, which will show our 
 author, with the same theology of the Eucharist, making 
 a different application of the Incarnation parallel from 
 the two writers last studied. He is turning it against 
 the opposite heresy from that which they were attacking, 
 and he does not seem to me to be so strong or so clear. 
 He uses a phrase which is certainly novel (we have had 
 to travel over a space of four hundred and fifty years, to 
 find anything of the sort), and certainly noteworthy, — 
 "We speak not of two bodies, but of one body of the 
 Son." What shall I say of this utterance? Shall I 
 describe it as a new view.'' Or shall I call it only a new 
 expression of the same teaching with which we have 
 been made familiar? And then it will be pressed upon 
 me, of course, that / do "speak of two bodies of the 
 Son," and represent the Fathers as so speaking, and here 
 comes one of my own witnesses, and testifies against me. 
 I must dispose of this charge, that my witness contradicts 
 me flatly, before I attempt to show the bearing of his 
 phrase upon the argument against the followers of Nes- 
 torius. In my own defense my answer is this: I have 
 certainly been maintaining in every one of my Lectures, 
 as my own thought, and as the thought of the whole primi- 
 tive Church, that the eucharistic body of our Lord is 
 numerically distinct from His natural body, and that 
 in that sense our Lord has two bodies, nay three, for there 
 is also His body the Church; but I have also equally 
 maintained, as my own thought, and as the thought of 
 the whole primitive Church, that whatever our Lord 
 takes for a body is so united with His natural body as 
 
204 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 to become a part of it, and to be identified with it. In 
 that sense, I also have been maintaining that our Lord 
 has not two bodies, but one. My witness does not 
 contradict me, unless I quite misconceive the movement 
 of his thought.^ 
 
 But what is our author trying to express? Why does 
 he take the trouble to mention that "we speak not of 
 two bodies." There were no teachers who were using 
 any such phrase, and whom he was anxious to oppose, 
 surely. He is appealing to the doctrine of the Eucharist 
 as a doctrine which all members of the Church hold in 
 common, and from which, therefore, he may argue with 
 the assurance that his premises will be granted. Then 
 it must be that his only reason for suggesting that we do 
 not speak of "two bodies" is precisely that we are dealing 
 with two things which we might call two bodies, but 
 which because they are unified in the holding of our 
 Lord, we call "one body," after all. Is this not so? Let 
 us consider! Our author is arguing against the heresy 
 which so divides our Lord's humanity from His Divinity 
 as to make not only two natures, but two beings. Now 
 to say that our Lord's glorified body, present (in one 
 manner of being) in heaven, and present (in another 
 manner of being) on the altars of our Churches, is one and 
 the same body, would not help in the least to show that 
 our Lord's Godhead and our Lord's humanity made up 
 one Person. No! The argument here presented requires 
 that we should see two things which are genuinely distinct, 
 one from the other, brought together in such wise that 
 the result of their holding is one, because it is a holding 
 by one Divine Person. That makes a real argument 
 from analogy. To put my point in another way, I will 
 
 * Compare the teaching of S. Chrysostom in his Homilies on Co- 
 rinlliiaiis, as given in Lecture VI, p. 150. 
 
THE INCARNATION ANALOGY LATER 205 
 
 express it thus. That the same thing twice over is really 
 one thing is no proof whatever that two different things 
 can be brought under a glorious unity. That the eucha- 
 ristic body of our Lord, though distinct from His natural 
 body, is yet so made one with His natural body in the 
 holding of His one Divine Person, that we speak not of 
 two bodies, but of one body, is precisely what leads up 
 to the thought that humanity and Divinity may be held 
 together in a similar fashion in the holding of one Divine 
 Person, one single Son of God. 
 
 I think that I can see how a Nestorian could have met 
 that particular argument, while I do not see how a Euty- 
 chian could have evaded the argument from the Eucharist 
 brought against his heresy by Theodoret. With no more 
 sympathy, I trust, for the one heresy than for the other 
 in my own mind, I find Theodoret's argument from the 
 Eucharist weighty, as against Eutychian error, and this 
 argument of the unknown writer weak, as against Nes- 
 torian error. But if this writer had held that the eucha- 
 ristic body of our Lord and His natural body were in no 
 wise distinct entities, and could not in any sense be spoken 
 of as two, then (I should say) he could not even have 
 dreamed of finding any argument here at aU.^ 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 I should have been glad to add here the testimony (a 
 very striking and important testimony, as it seems to 
 me) of S. John of Damascus, that great teacher and 
 guide of the Holy Orthodox Eastern Church, but space 
 
 ^ Completing here a survey of the patristic teaching of five cen- 
 turies, I invite attention to the view of the same writer taken by an 
 eminent Roman Catholic scholar, Mgr. Batiffol. See Note H, p. 261. 
 
20G THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 fails me, and I must print what I have to offer from his 
 writings in an Appendix. It remains to spend a few 
 minutes in friendly talk about the relation of this ancient 
 Christian thought, which I have been presenting, to the 
 Christian thought of to-day. 
 
 And, first, I know that the enquiry will shape itself 
 in the minds of some who hear me, "How can this doctrine, 
 that the bread of the Eucharist and our Lord's body in 
 the Eucharist are one and the same thing, be squared 
 with the language of our own Anglican formularies, the 
 language which speaks of the Sacrament as having two 
 parts, — an outward and visible sign, which is bread, 
 and an inward part, or thing signified, which is our 
 Lord's body?" My answer is, first, that our Anglican 
 Reformation formularies were certainly intended by 
 those who framed them to be very generously inclusive. 
 I sometimes think that they were meant to comprehend 
 everybody who could at all be comprehended by them, — 
 I had almost said, that they were meant to take in every- 
 body who could be taken in. Certain extremists, whom 
 there was no hope of conciliating anyway, are roundly 
 denounced in our famous "Articles of Rehgion," to catch 
 the favor of men on the opposite side and make them feel 
 that this reformed Church of England was really mox-ing 
 in the right direction. Nothing was said to make it im- 
 possible to keep any particular fishes in the net that 
 could possibly have been ex])ected to be kept. Where 
 these framers came near treading on any toes, they 
 meant to be understood as treading lightly. 
 
 What, then, would they have said of such a view as I 
 have been endeavoring to present? Why, they would 
 have observed, of course, that it was much nearer than 
 the view of some of my critics to the language of the 
 Black Rubric, — "The natural body and blood of our 
 
CONCLUSION 207 
 
 Saviour Christ are in heaven, and not here; it being 
 against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one 
 time in more places than one." Then, also, these Anglican 
 Reformers were far too well-read in theology and philos- 
 ophy to have had any notion of treating "outward" and 
 "inward" as terms of locality. They did not think of 
 the inward power as being contained (in any local sense) 
 in the outward sign. Doubtless, most of them did, in 
 all their speculations, think of the bread and our Lord's 
 body as being two different things, but they never said 
 that they were two different things. They only said 
 that in the Sacrament the eye of faith must see two 
 facts, — a spiritual fact, to be discerned by an inner 
 vision, and a material fact, to be discerned by an outward, 
 natural vision. The two facts might concur in one 
 substance, for anything that the Catechism says to the 
 contrary. I allow myself to add a criticism, on one point, 
 of the writer of the section on the sacraments in our 
 Catechism. I admire him profoundly, but it seems to 
 me that he fell into a manifest confusion in his use of 
 that phrase, "inward part." In applying his definition 
 of a sacrament to the cases of Baptism and the Eucharist, 
 respectively, he falls into a confusion between what 
 theologians have called the Virtus Sacramenti and what 
 they have called the Res Sacramenti. For Baptism his 
 "inward part" is a benefit to the soul, — "a death unto 
 sin, and a new birth unto righteousness." Then, to 
 make his corresponding answer for the Eucharist truly 
 to correspond, he should have said that the inward and 
 spiritual grace of the Eucharist was a fresh incorporation 
 with our Lord, a renewal of our hold upon His blessed 
 body. But he was thinking deeply of the fact that all 
 early Christian teaching told men that they did receive 
 in bread and wine our Lord's body and blood, and he 
 
208 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 wanted to say that same thing. It was a thing well 
 worth saying, and, in fact, he did say it. I repeat my 
 former assertion, that he docs not say, and does not in 
 any way necessarily imply, that the hallowed bread is 
 not that very "body of our Lord, which is spiritually 
 taken and received." He does not insist, though prob- 
 ably enough he did think, that the bread was one thing, 
 and our Lord's body another. All that he meant to 
 bind on the consciences of the Church's children, was 
 that they should believe that in receiving the Sacrament 
 they were receiving "verily and indeed" the body and 
 blood of our Lord. If he could have imagined such an 
 interpretation of the Fathers as I have been presenting, 
 he might not have agreed with it in the least, but I am 
 sure that he would not have claimed that it was now 
 impossible for a loyal Anglican theologian to hold it. 
 
 Let me say further that while our Reformation formu- 
 laries are certainly binding upon us, so far as that we 
 must, as honest men, hold ourselves within their very 
 broad limits, or give up ministering in the name of the 
 Church which still imposes them, I must remind you of 
 two points as to which I am sure that you will all agree 
 with me. The first is tliat no theologian of eminence 
 now maintains that the Anglican Reformation formularies 
 are in themselves infallible and irreformable. The 
 second, like unto it, is that the Reformation formularies 
 do not really represent in all points the mind of our own 
 Church of to-day. A large part of the thirly-nine 
 Articles, for example, is occupied with subjects that even 
 theologians do not spend much time in thinking about 
 now. I do not care profoundly whether the thought and 
 language of the Fathers agrees precisely with the thought 
 and language of the divines who supported the throne of 
 
CONCLUSION 209 
 
 Queen Elizabeth.^ I am asking myself interestedly what 
 this ancient thought, which I have been bringing out 
 from the Church's early days, has to offer to modern 
 men, thinking the thoughts that I meet with now, as I 
 read their books and hear their talk. 
 
 And here let me say that while in these Lectures I have 
 spent much time in criticizing the views of other men, 
 and while I have taken up the attitude of impartially 
 faulting all modern theories and their upholders, my 
 purpose all through has been distinctly eirenical. I hold 
 that because all modern theories of the eucharistic pres- 
 ence begin with a mistaken pre-supposition, therefore 
 their followers have thrown away the key of truth, and 
 the chaotic confusion which does actually exist in the 
 modern world is the necessary result. But I find some 
 hopeful indications of drawing nearer together among 
 modern theologians, and I feel that the ancient theology 
 has a ground to offer, on which they might come together 
 more readily than on the lines which have been the 
 fashion of the last thousand years. 
 
 Let me speak of approximations which modern thinkers 
 have already been making, even along the lines of their 
 modern pre-suppositions. Roman theologians and Angli- 
 can theologians of the Oxford School have, as it appears 
 to me, been engaged, of late years, in minimizing that 
 which was most offensive in their eucharistic doctrine to 
 men who approached the subject with the same modern 
 pre-suppositions, but with an opposite mental habit. 
 They have dwelt upon the presence of our Lord's body 
 in the Eucharist as "a spiritual presence," as "a presence 
 after a spiritual manner," as the presence of "a body 
 
 ^ I am aware that the addition to the Catechism was made after the 
 accession of King James. It remains that the theology involved was that 
 of the preceding half century. 
 
210 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 which is wholly a spiritual body," until there is left no 
 presence, so far as I can discern, of any material thing at 
 all. I think, myself, that they are on dangerous ground. 
 I hold that they are coming perilously near to a doctrine 
 that destroys our Lord's full and complete humanity. 
 Certainly it was not a High Churchman who was reported, 
 some years ago, as having preached a sermon in which 
 he spoke of our Lord's Ascension as "a kind of ex-carnation 
 of the Incarnation," but I fear that some modern teaching 
 of Catholic theologians leans quite too far that way. 
 Yet one thing is clear, and has promise in it. If such 
 theologians can show the theologians of the Virtualist 
 type that their doctrine includes no bringing down from 
 heaven to the altar of any material thing at all, they will 
 have gone a long way in the direction of healing the 
 breaches of our modern religious thought. 
 
 Then there are what I may call "eirenic symptoms" 
 on the other side. To be sure, the Protestant Churches 
 pretty generally seem to me to be afflicted with a sore 
 disease, which must run its course before there can be 
 any eirenic discussions of value between us and them. 
 They have suffered a fever of rationalism, and it will 
 have to be followed, nay, is followed already, by the 
 chill of a mere humanitarianism, without any revelation 
 of truth, without any sacraments of grace, without any 
 supernatural government of the world, to rest a sad or 
 weary heart upon. Between those who hold to a super- 
 natural religion and those who acknowledge nothing 
 supernatural in human life except their own enlightened 
 wills I cannot see that there can be any eirenic con- 
 ference as yet, except as to that one point of difference, 
 — "Have we a supernatural religion? or have we not?" 
 But within our own Anglican Communion, and with such 
 staunch believers in the things of God as Scottish Presby- 
 
CONCLUSION 211 
 
 Cl, 
 
 terians, for example, there has been a movement upwards 
 from low views of the sacrament that may fairly be 
 described as eirenic, too. There has been a rising tide of 
 devotion to our Lord in connection with the sacrament 
 of the altar, an enlarging use of the sacrament, a deepening 
 sense of the value of the sacrament, a growing readiness 
 to give expression to noble interior thoughts in noble 
 outward forms. I venture to call this returning instinct 
 for "forms" a return to the divine method. For surely 
 the method of God Himself has always been a sacramental 
 method, seeking to enshrine life in some fitting embodi- 
 ment. As I look back to my own boyhood, and think of 
 the bareness and chilliness of the sacramental teaching, 
 and of the sacramental manifestation, the outward and 
 visible vesture of sacramental observance, as they were 
 sixty years ago, I feel that the Virtualist type has known 
 great changes. It, too, has made large advances toward 
 a common ground in its fuller appreciation of the sacra- 
 mental idea. 
 
 But beyond these approximations of students whose 
 diverse views are on both sides essentially modern views, 
 I claim that the ancient theology offers a new and larger 
 "eirenicon." If the follower of the Oxford School can 
 receive my suggestion that the bread of the Eucharist 
 was called our Lord's body in ancient times, with the 
 understanding that that phrase meant that the bread 
 was an embodiment of our Lord's life, it still remains 
 open to this Anglican scholar to hold, exactly as he does 
 now, that the Presence thus embodied is actually a 
 Presence of our Lord in His natural body. The early 
 Fathers do not seem to me to have had any such thought, 
 but I grant that the thought might, nevertheless, be a 
 perfectly true thought. So far as I can see, the two 
 thoughts might perfectly well be held together. 
 
212 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 I have been asked what bearing the thought which I 
 have been presenting as that of the Fathers would have 
 on such practical questions of to-day as those which 
 gather around the words "Reservation" and "Benedic- 
 tion." I will be entirely frank, and say (at the risk of 
 alienating sympathy that might be beginning to turn 
 toward me from another direction) that so far as I can 
 see, no Anglican theologian has anything to lose by 
 accepting this view of the eucharistic Presence, which I 
 seem to find in the ancient writers. Here is our Lord 
 vouchsafing a most special Presence of Himself among 
 us, giving Himself to be our food and sustenance in the 
 power of His life, giving Himself to receive our adoration 
 in a visible embodiment, waiting, it may be, to receive 
 our visits to His Tabernacle, or to give us His blessing 
 from the Monstrance. So far as I can see, the whole 
 treasure of such pious hearts would remain to them 
 unimpaired. For myself, I lean to the idea of the Bishop 
 of Oxford that it would do the Church more good to learn 
 to ascend to our Lord in heaven, than to make a Tabernacle 
 for Him in which He may be visited on earth, and that 
 we should gain by dwelling more on His presence in 
 ourselves, in proportion to His presence in our sacra- 
 mental elements. But what I have called the old theology 
 finds our Lord in the sacrament as much as any modern 
 theology. Nay, more, I think, for I myself can say, 
 with S. Cyril of Alexandria, that, according to this belief, 
 which I have learned from the Fathers, "Christ appears 
 visibly in His body, and He permits and grants us to 
 touch His holy flesh." I have learned to say that I can 
 see and touch the very body of the Lord. What w^e ought 
 to do with that wonderful gift is another matter. I will 
 only say that I am convinced that devout men should 
 have freedom to decide the question, each in his own 
 
CONCLUSION 213 
 
 way. If one man holds that visits to the Tabernacle, 
 and Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament are unde- 
 sirable, let him not practice them. If another man craves 
 with his whole soul such approaches to our Lord, let no 
 Bishop, no General Convention, no force of unreasoning 
 prejudice, no! no wise and careful theologian even, take 
 the responsibility of hindering that soul from coming to 
 God in its own natural way, even as the flower turns 
 toward the light. Our Lord is there. He is drawing 
 men. Let them come to Him, as each one sees the way. 
 Such language as this will grieve and repel my friends 
 of the Virtualist type of mind, to whom the phrase, 
 "The natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ are 
 in heaven and not here," has always seemed the cardinal 
 point of eucharistic theory, and to whom, therefore, the 
 idea of our Lord's body appearing visibly on the altar 
 seems at first view utterly repellent. But this view 
 reiterates for them that formula, "The natural body and 
 blood are not here." It provides abundantly for the 
 satisfaction of that requirement of their minds. It 
 presents our Lord's Person and our Lord's Life as the 
 heavenly part of the sacrament, and says simply that 
 the bread which receives these as a shrine is thereby 
 made to be the body of our Lord, and the wine which 
 receives these is made to be something which our Lord 
 can rightly call His blood. This view does ask the 
 Virtualist to go a step farther than he has ever gone 
 before, and to acknowledge that our Lord really taber- 
 nacles in a special way in the material elements of the 
 sacrament, even as He condescended, nineteen centuries 
 ago, to dwell, all unrecognized as to his Deity, in the 
 body of His flesh. But the theory here presented offers 
 the Virtualist theologian an opportunity to take this 
 forward step without contradicting his own reason, as 
 
«14 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 he has felt in time past that he would have to contradict 
 his own reason, to accept the idea of "body present as 
 spirit," and the other phrases which have troubled him 
 in the older Tractarian teaching. 
 
 But then there are, I believe, a multitude of devout 
 men among us, of the clergy as well as of the laity, who, 
 though they are clear reasoners and devout students and 
 faithful waiters upon God in His sacramental gifts, have 
 never found any theory of the mystery of our Lord's 
 eucharistic Presence, to which they could give their 
 adhesion. I wonder yearningly if what I think that I 
 have found to be the primitive Christian belief and teach- 
 ing may not prove to be a perfectly possible beUef and 
 teaching for them, giving them the satisfaction of feeling 
 that they can share the thoughts of generations of saints. 
 
 K I asked a group of Anglican theologians to name 
 the greatest master of theology that the Anghcan Com- 
 munion has had in four hundred years before our time, 
 I think that most of them would say, "Richard Hooker." 
 Well, that good man seems to me to have been just one 
 of those unsettled souls who have not been able to satisfy 
 themselves with any modern theory of the eucharistic 
 Presence. In his despair of such an intellectual satis- 
 faction he fell back upon that famous phrase of his, — 
 "Why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful 
 communicant but this: *0h! My God, thou art true. 
 Oh! My soul, thou art happy.'" There are many, many 
 minds that need no philosophy of any matter: Hooker's 
 phrase is quite enough for them. There are other minds 
 that must think things out. I think, and hope, that 
 there may be some who, if they could once be brought to 
 taste the wine of Christian doctrine pressed out from the 
 devout meditations of the early Fathers, would cry out 
 with joy, "The old is better!" 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 WRITERS WHO PRESS THE PARALLEL OF THE 
 INCARNATION AND THE EUCHARIST 
 
 (continued) 
 
 IV 
 
 S. John of Damascus, Monk, and Teacher of all 
 THE Orthodox East 
 
 It lies outside the lines of consecutive study of the 
 Church's eucharistic teaching to present here a writer of 
 the eighth century, but I need make no apology for 
 abandoning those lines to introduce here that great 
 teacher, S. John of Damascus. He is often spoken of as 
 having lent powerful help to the movement of the Church's 
 thought in the direction of the modern theory of Tran- 
 substantiation. For my part, I seem to find in him most 
 remarkable testimonies in favor of what I have been 
 describing as the ancient belief of the Church. But my 
 chief reason for going far outside my appointed limits to 
 include him in my study of the Fathers is that he seems 
 to be to all the Orthodox East what S. Augustine of 
 Hippo was for centuries in the West, the supreme repre- 
 sentative of the Church's theology and philosophy, the 
 teacher of teachers, and the interpreter by whose help 
 all other Fathers were to be understood and measured. 
 
 Born in Damascus, of Christian parents, in the latter 
 part of the seventh century, John Mansour had large 
 advantages of education and culture, and came to be a 
 
 215 
 
216 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 .1 
 trusted officer in the great Mahometan court of the 
 Cahphs of his day. After he had reached middle life, 
 and had known the fascinations of luxury and power, he 
 felt the call of a great renunciation, and gave himself to 
 the more exclusive service of God as a monk in the mon- 
 astery of Saint Sabas, a little out of Jerusalem. His 
 death may be placed about a.d. 760. 
 
 My quotations from S. John of Damascus may well 
 begin with his comments on 1 Cor. x. 16, 17. They press 
 very strongly the identification of the eucharistic body 
 of our Lord with His natural body, but they press just as 
 strongly the thought that the eucharistic bread is itself 
 made to be a body of our Lord. Further, we shall find 
 S. John insisting that we ourselves, as the result of our 
 communions, are not many bodies, but one. This last 
 statement is to me extraordinarily interesting, because I 
 find in it a confirmation by S. John of Damascus of my 
 interpretation of that phrase of our anonymous author, 
 "We speak not of two bodies, but of one body of the 
 Lord." S. John of Damascus had read that treatise in 
 which the phrase I have just quoted stands out so uniquely. 
 He had read the treatise, and he quoted from it as a writing 
 of S. John Chrysostom. It would seem as if that very 
 passage was in his mind, when he wrote that tve "are 
 made not many bodies, but one." We are many bodies. 
 Nothing can change that fact. But according to S. 
 John, we become so identified with our Lord's body in 
 heaven, that our existence as in so many separate bodies 
 may be set aside, and dropped out of view. So, it would 
 seem, he would understand the writer whom he mis- 
 takenly supposed to be Chrysostom, saying "we speak 
 not of two bodies, but of one body." Two bodies there 
 arc in literal fact, but their unification makes it right to 
 speak as if they made but one. In this case I have 
 
APPENDIX I 217 
 
 preferred to present my comments on the author, before 
 presenting his own words. I will now read the extracts 
 from the Commentary without interruption or further 
 explanation. 
 
 "The cup of blessing which we bless. 
 
 When he says 'blessing,' he speaks of the Thanksgiving 
 (evxapiariav) , and speaking of the Thanksgiving he unfolds in 
 its entirety the treasury of the beneficence of God, and calls 
 to mind His great bounties, in that when we had no hope, and 
 were without God in the world. He made us His brethren and 
 joint-heirs with Him. 
 
 Is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? 
 
 That same blood which is in the cup. He says, is that which 
 flowed from the side,^ and of that we partake. 
 
 The bread which we break, is it not a communion 
 of the body of the Christ? 
 
 And why did he not say a participation {neToxiiv) ? Because 
 he wanted to make it clear that there was something more, 
 and to show the greatness of the union {<Twa(l>tiav) . For not by 
 participation and reception only, but also by being made one 
 with Him do we communicate with Him. Even as the body has 
 been made one with the Word, so are we being united with Him 
 by means of this bread. 
 
 ^ The Greek is t6 iv tw ■Kor-qpic^ iKtlvb kariv t6 iwd rijs irXeupas pevaav. 
 I think that eKdvo must qualify t6 kv tw iroTr]plw. If it belongs to t6 
 i,Trd TTJs irXeupSs pedcrav, the translation is, "That which is in the cup is 
 that same which flowed from the side." To one clause or the other 
 eKelvo lends a strong demonstrative force. The Greek cannot mean 
 simply, "That which is in the cup is that which flowed from the 
 side," as in the translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 
 as if e/celw was not there at all. The saying is very emphatic, as one 
 writes a phr^we in italics in a modern style. 
 
218 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Because tee, the many, are one bread, one body, 
 Jof we all of us parta/ce of the one bread. 
 
 'Why do I speak of a communion?' he says. 'We are that 
 body itself (avro katiev 'tKtlvo t6 aufia). For the bread is 
 a body of Christ, and the receivers are made (yiyvovrai) not 
 many bodies, but one. Even as the bread, while composed of 
 many grains, has been made one, so that the grains are no more 
 seen, but yet they exist in themselves, with their distinction 
 lost to view in their union, so also are we united with one another, 
 and with the Christ. For we are not nourished, one of one body, 
 and another of another body, but all of the same [Greek, airrov 
 'of itself,' but English idiom requires us to say, 'the same']. 
 Wherefore he says, ' For we all of us partake of the one bread.* 
 But if of the same [here we have really tov avTovl, and we are 
 all made to be the same thing Lei t6 abrh yiyvofjoda iravres^, why 
 
 do we not also show the same love, and thus become one? " ^ 
 
 It may be noted in passing, that in his first and second 
 Discourses on the Holy Images John of Damascus uses 
 such an argument as this against the opponents of the 
 veneration of images: 
 
 "Is not the life-giving table, which ministers to us the bread 
 of life, material? Are not the gold and silver, from which crosses 
 and patens and chalices are made, material? Above all these, 
 are not the body and blood of our Lord material?" * 
 
 Of course, his point is, first, that material things are 
 not to be despised with a Manichean feeling that what is 
 material is evil, and, second, that God does plainly use 
 material means for spiritual ends and as vehicles of 
 spiritual power. But could he fairly have appealed to 
 our Lord's body and blood as material, if he had regarded 
 them as raised from the material to the spiritual order? 
 or even as present on the altar "only after the manner of 
 
 1 P. G. 94, 648. * On the Images, I. 16; P. G. 94, 1245. 
 
APPENDIX I 219 
 
 spirit"? It seems to me that he could not. But I do 
 not mean to make much of this point. Certainly, some 
 of the Fathers did sometimes use arguments that were 
 not fair. I will only say that it seems to me simpler to 
 understand the arguments as referring to the consecrated 
 bread and wine, named, as the Fathers did so constantly 
 name them, "the body and blood of our Lord," and 
 regarded as unchanged in their material substance. 
 
 S. John of Damascus wrote an elaborate treatise on 
 The Orthodox Faith. It may be found in the Patrologia 
 Graeca, 94, and if the student will turn to Chapter 10 of 
 Book IV, filling columns 1148 to 1153, he will find that it 
 deals with the subject of the Eucharist. Some extracts 
 follow: 
 
 "If then the word of God is living and powerful, and the Lord 
 did all that He willed ; ... if the heaven and the earth, water 
 and fire and air, and all their ordered belonging, and in sooth this 
 much vaunted creature, man, were brought to full accomplish- 
 ment by the word of the Lord ; if the Divine Word by an act of 
 His own will became man, and without seed of man made the 
 blood of the holy and ever Virgin Mother to supply flesh for 
 Him, can He not then make the bread a body of His own,^ and 
 the wine and water blood? He said in the beginning, 'Let the 
 earth bring forth grass,' and even to this day, when the rain 
 comes, it does bring forth its proper fruits, urged on and em- 
 powered by the divine command. God said, 'This is My body,' 
 and 'This is My blood,' and 'This do in remembrance of Me,* 
 and it is done, at His omnipotent command, until He come. 
 For such was the saying, 'Until He come,' ^ and to this new 
 husbandry there comes, through the Invocation, a rain, even 
 the shadowing power of the Holy Spirit. For just as God made 
 all things which He made by the operation of the Holy Spirit, 
 
 * The Greek is, oi Sdvarai t6p &.pTov eauroD au/jia Troirjaai. 
 ^ Of course, the reference is to 1 Cor. xi. 2G, but the quotation is not 
 accurate, «w$ dv eXOn, probably by a slip of memory, for tixpts ov eX^p. 
 
no THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 so also the operation of the Holy Spirit performs those things 
 which are beyond nature, wliich faith alone can receive. 'How 
 shall this be to me?' said the Holy Virgin, 'seeing I know not 
 a man?' And Gabriel the archangel answers, 'The Holy Spirit 
 shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall over- 
 shadow thee.' And do you now ask how the bread becomes a 
 body of Christ, and the wine and water blood of Christ? I also 
 say to you: 'The Holy Spirit comes on them, and makes them 
 to be those things which are beyond reason and thought.' 
 
 " Further, bread and wine are employed, for God knows the in- 
 firmity of man, for in general man turns discontentedly away from 
 everything that does not run in the well-worn ways of custom; 
 and so, with His usual indulgence. He makes His supernatural 
 creations by means of the things which men are accustomed to 
 in nature; and just as in Baptism, seeing it is man's custom to 
 wash himself with water and anoint liimself with oil, God linked 
 the grace of the Spirit with the oil and the water, and made it 
 to be the water of regeneration, in like manner, seeing it is man's 
 custom to eat bread and to drink water and wine, with them 
 God linked His Deity and made them His body and blood, that 
 through those things which are ordinary and natural we may 
 come to have part in those things which are supernatural.' 
 
 Body is truly united with Deity, even the body which was 
 born of the Virgin, not that the body which ascended comes down 
 from heaven, but that the bread itself and the wine are transmade 
 [/itraTTotflTot] into a body and blood of God." 
 
 I interrupt my quotation here to remark on questions 
 of translation that come up in the last two sentences. 
 It is the custom of the Greek Fathers in speaking of the 
 natural body of our Lord to use the article. It is a very 
 common thing with them in speaking of the eucharistic 
 body to omit the article. I should not dream of insisting 
 that a noun without the article in Greek must always be 
 
 * The Greek is, iv roh virkp <f>l>(yiv ytvufieda, literally, "may become 
 in those things which are supernalural." 
 
APPENDIX I 221 
 
 translated by a noun without the article in English. I 
 know better. The idioms of the two languages do not 
 exactly correspond. But this I say confidently: When 
 a Greek writer uses awp-a (anarthrous)/ he never means the 
 same thing that he would mean if in the same phrase he 
 wrote TO aCiixa. In the last sentence but one, I have 
 written these words, — "with them God linked His 
 Deity, and made them His body and blood," just as I 
 should if the Greek had been to ccofxa Kal to alfxa avTov. 
 But the words auixa and al/xa had, in fact, no article, and 
 the meaning was strictly, "made them to be a body and 
 blood of Him," that is to say, "made them to be a body 
 and blood for His use." 
 
 In like manner in the very last words quoted above, 
 "transmade into a body and blood of God," it would 
 
 ^ For the help of students who do not read Greek, it may be well to 
 oflFer an explanation of what is meant by "anarthrous." It refers to 
 the use of a noun without the definite article in Greek. The Greek 
 language has not an indefinite article, such as our "a" or "an." Greek 
 cannot distinguish between "having fish for dinner" and "having a 
 fish for dinner." It can distinguish "the fish" from "fish" or "a fish," 
 but not these last from one another. It is true also that in Greek some 
 great titles like "Lord" come to be used without the article (anarth- 
 rously in fact), when the phrase is used definitely, and means "the 
 Lord." I have not discovered any indication that the words "body" 
 and "blood" are thus used anarthrously when their meaning is a definite 
 meaning. It is quite possible that when a Greek writer speaks of bread 
 as being "made body of our Lord," to translate by "a body" might 
 in a measure misrepresent the course of his thought. I hold it to be 
 certain that to translate such a phrase by "the body" would be a clear 
 misrepresentation of his thought. When the Greek writers say that 
 bread and wine are made "body" and "blood," omitting the article, 
 they mean that these elements are made to take on the quality of "body" 
 or "blood," as the case may be. That is different from saying that 
 these elements are made to be " the body and blood of the Lord," though, 
 as I have constantly affirmed, that also might be said, and is often said, in 
 a sense. 
 
222 TIIE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 misrepresent S. John Damascene, and mistranslate Greek 
 words, to put it "transmade into the body and blood of 
 God." What is meant is that bread and wine are made 
 over into things having the character of body and the 
 character of blood respectively, and belonging to One 
 who is God. I must call attention also to the phrase, 
 "not that the body which ascended comes down from 
 heaven." Of course, both Roman theologians and those 
 of our own Oxford School would earnestly disown the idea 
 that our Lord's glorified body "comes down from heaven" 
 to be present in the Eucharist. Its presence is not local, 
 they say. It does not move from place to place. I have 
 before quoted Cardinal Newman as saying that "the 
 body of our Lord does not move from place to place, 
 when the Host is carried in procession." But look at 
 the way in which the Damascene introduces his phrase. 
 He does not say that our Lord's heavenly body is on the 
 altar, "only you must understand that it does not leave 
 heaven in order to be there." No! He says that the bread 
 and wine become a body and blood of God, are joined to 
 the glorified body and become one with it, but that that 
 heavenly body is not there on the altar, though the body 
 that is there is so joined with the body which is above as 
 to be identified with it. That seems to me to be the only 
 natural and unforced reading of this "not that the body 
 which ascended comes down from heaven," introduced 
 as the phrase is here. 
 
 I resume my quotation from the spot where I broke 
 off. The Damascene is going to give us a little more in 
 the way of interpretation of the mystery, even in the 
 act of saying that he can say nothing more. 
 
 "But if you enquire how this happens, it is enough for you 
 to learn that it is through the Holy Spirit, just as through the 
 Spirit our Lord made flesh to be for Himself, subsisting in Him- 
 
APPENDIX I 223 
 
 self, from the holy Theotokos. And we know nothing more, 
 save that the Word of God is true and active and Almighty, 
 while the method is misearchable. But it is not a very bad 
 way to put it, that as in nature the bread tlirough being eaten 
 and the wine and water through being drunk are changed into 
 body and blood of him who eats and drinks, and do not become 
 another body, difiFerent from the former one, so the bread of the 
 preparation ^ and the wine and water are supernaturally changed 
 by the invocation and presence of the Holy Spirit into the body 
 of the Christ and into His blood, and are not two things, but 
 one and the same." 
 
 The bread and wine which a man takes to himself for 
 nourishment are changed into body, and do not become 
 another body, different from the former one. So in the 
 Eucharist, says our S. John, our Lord takes to Himself 
 bread and wine to extend His power, and these elements 
 are made to be body and blood for His use, but as an 
 enlargement of His body which He had before, not as a 
 separate and (so to speak) rival body. "But," it will be 
 said to me, of course, "can you not see that S. John of 
 Damascus flatly contradicts your own teaching.? You 
 tell us that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are 
 made to be 'another body' and 'another blood' of our 
 Lord." My answer is, as in the case of that nameless 
 writer whose work S. John of Damascus admired and 
 quoted, and who said that "we speak not of two bodies," 
 that here are two forms of speech which may be used 
 with equal truth and propriety. We may call the eucha- 
 ristic body of our Lord and His natural body two distinct 
 bodies, or one and the same body. We may say of the 
 
 * Greek, TpoOeaeus, referring, apparently, to the "table of pro- 
 thesis" in the sacristy, or side-chapel, in an oriental church, and to the 
 elaborate preparation of the elements before the "Little Entrance" in 
 the Greek rites. 
 
224 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Church that it consists of many persons, or that it is one 
 Person. S. Paul is our authority for that: "Ye are all one 
 man in Christ Jesus." ^ Which of two things does John 
 of Damascus mean to say, — that the elements become 
 our Lord's glorified body and no other.? Or that the 
 elements become a distinct body and blood of our Lord, 
 which yet are an extension of, and so are to be identified 
 with. His natural body? I claim that it is only the latter 
 interpretation of our saint, with which his illustration of 
 the natural growth of human bodies by sustenance can 
 be made to fit. Our food is added to the body we had 
 before and becomes part of it, and loses its distinct value 
 in becoming identified with our former body. But it is 
 not changed into the identical body which we had before 
 we ate this food. It becomes that body which we had 
 before this eating, in a sense. It becomes identified 
 with that body, and is a part of that body, and takes on 
 the character of that body. But hold these two con- 
 ceptions distinctly before your mind, — the body of a 
 man about to take food and the food which he is about 
 to take, and certainly the latter is not transmade into 
 the former. Food becomes a man's body by being added 
 to the body which the man had before. That is the 
 crucial point. The eucharistic elements are super- 
 naturally changed into our Lord's body and blood by 
 being added to the body which He wears in heaven. 
 That, or else this illustration given by the Damascene is 
 no illustration, but only an example of utter intellectual 
 confusion. 
 
 I must comment briefly on one more phrase of the 
 extract. S. John says of the bread and of the wine and 
 water that when they have been supernaturally changed 
 
 ' Gal. iii. 28, iravTes y&p u/ueli «Is kari. That does not mean, "Ye 
 are all one Ihin^," but "Ye are all one Person." 
 
APPENDIX I 225 
 
 they " are not two things, but one and the same." Plamly, 
 he means that this is true of each element. I think that 
 there will be no difference of opinion among students of 
 the passage about that point. The bread, for example, 
 is not two things, but one. With such a statement the 
 Roman theologian has, of course, no difficulty. The 
 bread and our Lord's body are not two things! No, 
 indeed! The bread has been transformed into our 
 Lord's glorified body, and has ceased to be. It may be 
 remarked that this is a very strange use of the word 
 "transformed." The Roman theology talks of changing 
 one thing into another. It really teaches that one thing 
 is annihilated to make a place for another. But let that 
 pass. This particular statement, that the bread is not 
 two things but one, will give a Roman theologian no diffi- 
 culty. But I venture to suggest that to the students of 
 the Oxford School it presents a difficulty to which I see 
 no answer. To their thought, as to the thought of the 
 whole primitive Church, the bread remains. The bread 
 is one thing, and our Lord's glorified body is another 
 thing. How then are these two things "not two things, 
 but one"? My own thought is that S. John means 
 here to say that in case of each of the eucharistic elements 
 a common thing has a marked change of character, and 
 becomes a very much greater thing, and so is called by 
 a very much greater name, but it is one thing which is 
 there all through, bearing both names. When George V 
 was made king, he was not made to be some king that had 
 formerly existed. He was made to have the character of 
 king. But in being thus made to be what he was not 
 before he was not two things, but one. Such, as I read 
 S. John of Damascus, is his account of the supernatural 
 change that makes bread and wine to be our Lord's body 
 and blood. 
 
226 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Interesting parallels with earlier writers are frequent 
 in our Damascene. As Dr. Stone points out in his 
 History (I. 147), he suggests S. Ambrose in his use of 
 illustrations from God's acts in the creation and in the 
 Incarnation to throw light on the eucharistic miracle, 
 and again he suggests S. Gregory of Nyssa in his use of 
 the word "transmade," and in presenting the illustration 
 from the turning of bread and wine into the body of a 
 man who eats them. So now we shall find him following 
 the example of Macarius Magnes in disowning the name of 
 "type" for the consecrated elements. Of course, in this 
 he separates himself from the speech of the Church 
 generally through all the first four Christian centuries. 
 But apparently his change of language does not involve 
 any real change of doctrinal ojiinion. Only the obvious 
 fact that the broken bread and the poured wine do make 
 natural pictures, "symbols," as we say, or "types," of 
 our Lord's broken body and shed blood seems to him 
 utterly unimportant, as compared with the meaning of 
 the consecrated elements as spiritual powers, and as being 
 really a body and blood of the Lord, and he has learned 
 to fear that some one might get from such a word as 
 "type" an impression of unreahty. Here are his words: 
 
 "The bread and wine are not a figure [tuttoj] of the body and 
 blood of Christ, but tlie Lord's very body, deified [auxA t6 awfta 
 Kvplov TfOeuixipov^, since the Lord said, 'This is My bo<ly,' not 
 'This is a figure of My body,' and not 'figure of the blood,' but 
 'blood.'" 1 
 
 In his next paragraph, it will be found, he makes an 
 interesting use of Isaiah's vision of the coal brought by a 
 seraph from the altar of burnt-offering to touch the 
 
 ' The reference is still to Chapter 13 of Book IV of the Treatise 
 On the Orthodox Faith. 
 
APPENDIX I 227 
 
 prophet's lips. It was a favorite type of the Eucharist 
 in the patristic teaching. Interesting examples will be 
 found in Dr. Pusey's Catena, pp. 119-131. It should be 
 observed, however, that Dr. Pusey assumes that the 
 "fire" in the coal is our Lord's body, or perhaps I should 
 rather say, "the totus Christus." In such patristic 
 passages as I know, where it is made clear what the 
 writer's thought was, it is our Lord's Deity. Of course, 
 that is so when the coal is taken as a type of the Incarna- 
 tion. Then the humanity of our Lord is the "coal," 
 and His Divinity is the "fire." It will be seen that S. 
 John of Damascus keeps close to the customary parallel 
 of the Incarnation and the Eucharist, and explains the 
 "fire" as being our Lord's Deity, while the "coal" is the 
 material element in which He embodies Himself. 
 
 "Let us draw near with an ardent desire, and, with our hands 
 held in the form of the cross, let us receive the body of the 
 Crucified, and applying our eyes and lips and foreheads,^ let us 
 partake of the divine coal. . . . Isaiah saw a coal. But a 
 coal is not plain wood, but wood united with fire. In like man- 
 ner the bread of the communion also is not plain bread, but 
 bread united with Deity. But a body wliich is united with 
 Deity is not one nature, but two, but the body has one nature, 
 and the Deity which is united to it has another, and the sum of 
 both is not one nature, but two." 
 
 It does seem manifest that S. John is really speaking 
 here of a union of bread and Deity all through, and not 
 of a union of our Lord's natural flesh and His Deity. 
 The two natures that meet in the Eucharist are not 
 
 * Dr. Pusey gives on his p. 130, an interesting, but impossible transla- 
 tion, "having signed eyes and lips and brow." That sense would require 
 that the nouns should be in the dative, even if "cross" or "sign" could 
 be dispensed with as a direct object of "applying." But the nouns 
 are all in the accusative, as being themselves direct objects of the verb. 
 
228 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 human flesh and Godhead, but bread and Godhead. 
 But bread thus "united to Deity," thus adopted by the 
 Incarnate Word, becomes truly a flesh for Him, a body, 
 and wholly one with His natural flesh. 
 
 It may be added that a little later in this chapter the 
 Damascene says that if some of the Fathers, like Basil, 
 did call the bread and wine "antitypes," they were 
 speaking of the elements before consecration. That is, 
 of course, an entire misunderstanding on his part, and it 
 seems possible that he was not altogether satisfied with 
 his own explanation of the matter. At any rate, in 
 the last paragraph of the chapter he uses the word, 
 himself: 
 
 "And they are called antitypes of the things to come, not 
 as being really Clirist's body and blood,^ but because now by 
 means of these we partake of the Deity of Christ while here- 
 after we shall partake of it spiritually [wjjtcos, regularly opposed 
 by Greek writers to aiadrjTws, "by way of sense"], by means of 
 the vision only." 
 
 * I am bound to say that I am sure that S. John Damascene had no 
 idea of saying that the consecrated elements were not really Christ's 
 body and blood. If I understand what seems in English a rather awk- 
 ward phrase, his thought is this: The consecrated elements are not 
 called "antitj-pes" when viewed in their character of Christ's body and 
 blood, a character which they do really possess. But comparing our 
 earthly experience of feeding on Christ by sacrament with the still higher 
 and closer and more gloriously effective union with Him which His 
 people will have in the life of heaven, this earthly communion may be 
 said to be an antitype of that which shall be hereafter. 
 
 Of course, this is an utterly different use of such a word as "antitjTJe" 
 from that of the cjirlicr writers. That idea of the material elements, as 
 symbols of a botly broken and a blood shed, which so deeply interested 
 the early Christian writers, had lost interest in the Church's mind and 
 heart, and was not even rememberetl, so that when men met with it 
 they did not know how to explain it. That was a very great, and I will 
 say, a very regrettable, thcologiad change. 
 
APPENDIX I 829 
 
 This, it will be seen, is a difiPerent use of the word 
 "antitype" from that of the earher writers, but it applies 
 the word, as they did, to the elements after consecration. 
 That is a very unimportant point. I offer it partly as a 
 matter of justice to the memory of a great Christian 
 writer, showing him feeling his way out of a mistake. 
 Far more important is the illustration which comes out 
 here of the habitual teaching of S. John of Damascus. 
 He instructs us that by means of a body which is bread, 
 and blood which is wine, we partake of our Lord's Deity. 
 That is, in sum, his account of the Holy Eucharist. 
 
APPENDIX II 
 
 THE DECLARATION OF THE ICONOCLASTIC 
 COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (a.d. 75i) 
 
 "Let them be glad and rejoice and be full of boldness 
 who with most sincere soul make and desire and reverence 
 the true image of Christ, and offer it for salvation of soul 
 and body, which the Divine High Priest, having taken 
 upon Him a substance [_4>{)paiia'] which is ours and wholly 
 derived from us, hath at the time of His voluntary passion 
 delivered to His faithful ones as a figure and most clear 
 memorial. For when He was about to give Himself up 
 voluntarily to His gloriously-hymned and life-giving death. 
 He took the bread and blessed it, and gave thanks and 
 brake it, and distributing to them He said, 'Take, eat, 
 for the remission of sins; this is My body.' In like manner 
 also imparting the cup He said, 'This is My blood; do this 
 for My memorial,' as though no other form under heaven 
 was chosen by Him, and no other figure could image His 
 Incarnation. Here, then, is the image of His life-giving 
 body, as it is made honorably and worthily. For what 
 did the all-wise God herein contrive.'* Nothing else but 
 to show us men and make plainly clear to us the mystery 
 which was accomplished in His dispensation, — that as 
 that which He took from us is only material of human 
 substance, which substance is perfect in all respects, but 
 not bearing the likeness of any individual person, lest an 
 addition of person should occur in the Godhead, so likewise 
 He ordered His image to be offered as selected matter, in 
 fact, the substance of bread, not bearing the likeness of 
 human form, lest idolatry should be introduced. As, 
 
 230 
 
APPENDIX n 231 
 
 therefore, that which is naturally Christ's body is holy, as 
 having been made divine Ldecceef'} so, plainly, that also which 
 is His body by adoption [piaei^, or His image, is holy, as 
 being made divine by grace through a certain consecration. 
 For this, as we have said, our Master Christ did bring 
 about, it being His good pleasure that, as He made the 
 flesh which He took on Him divine by its own natural 
 consecration arising out of union with Himself, so also the 
 bread of the Eucharist, as no untrue image of His natural 
 flesh, should be made a divine body by the descent of the 
 Holy Spirit, through the mediation of the priest who makes 
 the oblation, transforming what is common to what is 
 holy. In fine, the flesh of the Lord with its natural gifts 
 of life and thought was anointed with Divinity by the 
 Holy Ghost; in like manner also the God-given image of 
 His flesh, the divine bread, was filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 together with the cup of the life-giving blood from His 
 side. This, then has been shown to be no untrue image 
 of the Incarnation of Christ our God, as was said before, 
 which He Himself, the true Maker and Quickener of nature, 
 hath delivered with His own voice." ^ 
 
 The above declaration seems a plain setting forth of the 
 idea that by an operation of the Holy Ghost, and "by 
 grace through a certain consecration," dimly discerned, 
 not definitely understood, the very elements of bread 
 and wine are made to be (not contain, or carry, or effec- 
 tively represent) a divine body, a divine blood, which may 
 indeed be identified with the body and blood seen on the 
 cross, but are not identical with these. 
 
 I know that the Iconoclastic Council has an unhappy 
 reputation with Catholic theologians. Even so Prot- 
 estant a writer as Archbishop Trench quotes approvingly 
 the earlier language of Dean Milman, who said, "Hatred 
 of images, in the process of the strife, might become, as 
 ^ Hardouin, Concilia iv. 368, 369; Stone I. 148-150. 
 
232 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 it did, a fanaticism, it could never become a religion. 
 Iconoclasm might proscribe idolatry, but it had no power 
 of kindling a purer faith." Certainly the Iconoclastic 
 movement was base. It remains that the theology of 
 the 338 bishops in regard to the Eucharist seems to be 
 entirely in accord with that of S. John of Damascus, 
 whom in the matter of image-worship they most severely 
 condemned. On the other hand, the Second Council of 
 Constantinople (a.d. 787), restoring all things, anathema- 
 tized the members of the Council of 754, and approved, 
 though they did not adopt as a conciliar decree, a state- 
 ment in which it was roundly asserted that when the 
 Fathers of old time called the bread and wine types and 
 figures of our Lord's body and blood they were speaking 
 of the elements before consecration. The statement 
 fm*ther denounces the idea that the divine oblation is 
 made " by adoption " as " sheer madness," and says 
 that the use of the word " image " for the consecrated 
 elements is " insane." If this was intended to indicate 
 a real cleavage in eucharistic doctrine, it must be said 
 that it was the Iconoclastic Council that showed in this 
 particular the truer understanding of the Church's past. 
 But I think that rather the tradition of eucharistic belief 
 and teaching was still unbroken. The habit of disowning 
 the old language, which had been so free in calling the 
 eucharistic body and blood "figures" and "symbols" 
 and "types," was an unhealthy habit. It was a sign of 
 a coming change. But S. John of Damascus seems to 
 teach the old ideas, though he was beginning to dislike 
 and shrink away from the old words. At any rate the 
 338 bishops stand for a theological tradition that is by 
 no means negligible. I think that it was a genuinely 
 primitive tradition. 
 
NOTE A 
 
 OF DE. PUSEY'S NOTE ON "IN. UNDER, WITH THE 
 
 BREAD AND WINE," AS USED BY 
 
 THE FATHERS 
 
 In Dr. Pusey's Catena (pp. 131-134), he has a Note on 
 the use of the prepositions "in, under, with," as expressing 
 the relation of our Lord's body and blood to the elements 
 of bread and wine, in the language of the Fathers. His 
 object is to show the continued existence of the bread 
 and wine after the consecration, and most of his passages 
 stand good for that purpose. His own interpretation of 
 the passages which he brings forward would have a 
 further consequence, of proving what was with him, of 
 course, a constant assumption, that the bread and our 
 Lord's body were two diflFerent things, and correspondingly 
 that the wine and our Lord's blood were two different 
 things. I have ventured the assertion that I have not 
 found in the writings of the Fathers of the first five 
 centuries any language which fairly carries this implica- 
 tion, that in the Eucharist the consecrated bread is a 
 vehicle or veil of our Lord's body, and the consecrated 
 wine a vehicle or veil of our Lord's blood. I feel bound, 
 therefore, to examine the passages offered by Dr. Pusey 
 in detail. 
 
 He presents the names of ten writers flourishing before 
 A.D. 550. It may be interesting to tabulate them. 
 
 1. Tertulhan. 
 
 2. S. Cyprian. 
 
 3. S. Hilary of Poictiers. 
 
 4. S. Cyril of Jerusalem. 
 
 233 
 
234 THE EUCIIARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 5. S. Ephraim. 
 
 6. S. Epiphanius. 
 
 7. S. Augustine. 
 
 8. S. Chrysostom. 
 
 9. S. Cyril of Alexandria. 
 
 10. S. James of Sarug. 
 
 1, and 2. The i)assages from Tertullian and S. Cyprian 
 have been examined in Lecture II. Tertullian's phrase, 
 "In the bread is understood His body," seems to be 
 plainly an example of what I have called the "in" of 
 identity. Dr. Stone says, "He interprets the words of 
 institution as placing our Lord's body under the head 
 of, or in the category of, bread." S. Cyprian speaks of 
 our Lord's blood as appearing in the cup, — exactly 
 what it does not, according to the Roman doctrine and 
 that of the Oxford School, — but he does not speak of 
 our Lord's blood as being, or seeming to be, in the wine. 
 I must repeat here, what I have said in Lecture II, 
 that Dr. Pusey's statement, "The 'cup' in the Fathers is 
 altogether equivalent to the 'element of wine,' " is a state- 
 ment altogether unwarranted. In that very quotation 
 from S. Cyprian we have mention of a condition "when 
 the cup is without that wine whereby the blood is set 
 forth." Wlien S. Cyprian speaks of our Lord's blood 
 as being "in the cup," he means "in the chalice," and 
 I hold that when he writes "blood," he means the 
 consecrated wine. 
 
 These two witnesses are all that are presented for the 
 first three hundred years of the Church's life. They do 
 not contradict my statement that the Fathers never 
 speak of the consecrated elements as vehicles or veils of 
 our Lord's body and blood. 
 
 The next five witnesses named by Dr. Pusey are all of 
 the fourth century. 
 
NOTES 235 
 
 3. S. Hilary of Poictiers. The quotations from this 
 great, but difficult, writer are found in a short passage of 
 his book De Trinitate (viii. 13-17). He is arguing that 
 our Lord is one with the Father in Nature, and not 
 merely in will, and he refers to the Eucharist as making 
 us one in nature with the Father. If we are made of 
 one nature with the Divine Father through the Word, 
 the Word Himself cannot be any less than one in nature 
 with the Father. Dr. Pusey's first quotation runs thus: 
 "We truly receive the Word made flesh through the 
 food of the Lord." The Latin is " Vere Verhum carnem 
 factum cibo Dominico sumimus." It is to be observed 
 that nothing is said here of receiving our Lord's flesh at 
 all. "We receive the Word- made-flesh." It is the 
 Incarnate Word, not His flesh, that we are here said to 
 receive. The Word-made-flesh is everywhere present, 
 but His flesh is not everywhere present. Nothing is 
 here asserted, then, concerning any presence of our 
 Lord's natural flesh. The passage has nothing to do 
 with the subject of this Note. Such being the case, it 
 might seem not worth while to point out an uncareful 
 piece of translation; but I prefer to take a passage where 
 nothing of importance depends on it, to illustrate a 
 certain weakness of Dr. Pusey's Catena. Dr. Pusey, 
 whom Newman loved to call 6 Me7as (the Great One), 
 was a man of wide reading, and an enormous accumulation 
 of learning; but his translations from Latin and Greek 
 writers are not always closely accurate. I do not com- 
 plain that they are not closely literal. To be closely 
 literal in translation is sometimes to fail of carrying over 
 the intended meaning safely from one language to the 
 other. But there are failures in accuracy. Here is an 
 example. Cibo Dominico should be rendered, " by means 
 of the food of the Lord." The word "through," care- 
 
236 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 fully italicized in Dr. Pusey's Note, suggests much more 
 in the direction in which his mind was turning than lies 
 really in the Latin phrase. 
 
 The next quotation seems at first more telling. "We 
 receive under the mystery the flesh of His own body." 
 But sub mysterio will bear the rendering, "under a mys- 
 tery," which will be a very different thing. Perhaps also 
 the word "own" should be omitted. For both these 
 corrections I have the authority of Dr. Pusey himself. 
 On page 394 of the same book, he gives the (really accu- 
 rate) rendering, "We truly receive under a mystery the 
 flesh of His body." I take it that "under a mystery" 
 means no more nor less than in "a sacramental way." 
 It does not define. And mysterium is not equivalent to 
 sacramentum with S. Hilary, for he speaks of "the mystery 
 of the sacraments" (viii. 15). 
 
 Dr. Pusey says further that S. Hilary speaks of "the 
 flesh to be communicated to us under the sacrament." 
 This is a curious mistake. S. Hilary speaks of our Lord 
 as mingling the nature of His flesh with the nature of 
 eternity "under a sacrament of flesh to be communicated 
 to us." There is nothing to indicate that the word 
 "sacrament" refers to the elements, nothing about flesh 
 being present under a certain material element, or being 
 communicated under a certain material element. Dr. 
 Pusey himself recognizes (on his own p. 394) that "under 
 the sacrament" is in relation with "hath mingled." 
 "Under the sacrament of the flesh to be communicated 
 to us" is his own translation.^ Sub sacramento would 
 seem to mean "by way of sacrament." At any rate S. 
 Hilary has nothing to say of our Lord's body being 
 hidden under a veil of bread. 
 
 ^ The Latin is "et naturam carnis Suae ad naturam cternitatis sub 
 Sacramento nobis communicaudic curnis admiscuit." 
 
NOTES 237 
 
 4. S. Cyril of Jerusalem is quoted as saying, "In the 
 type of bread there is given to you His body, and in the 
 type of wine. His blood." My own understanding of 
 this passage would be that it is an example of the "in" 
 of identity again, as in TertuUian's use. In receiving 
 the consecrated bread we receive our Lord's body in a 
 sense. All the Fathers call the bread our Lord's body, 
 and most of them call it a type of his body. It is the 
 same thing of which they speak under both names. 
 
 5. S. Ephraim's sayings have been examined in Lecture 
 IV. He has not a single passage in which he speaks of 
 our Lord's body as being in the bread of the Eucharist, 
 or His blood in the wine. Always he speaks of some 
 heavenly power as being in the elements, and that power 
 (called "Spirit" and "Fire") would seem to be our 
 Lord's Person, not His body (natural) or His blood. 
 
 6. S. Ephiphanius, like S. Ephraim, says that "the 
 bread indeed is food, but the Might in it is for giving of 
 life." There is nothing about our Lord's natural flesh 
 being in the bread. 
 
 7. S. Augustine is represented by three sayings. In 
 the Sermon itself Dr. Pusey had quoted the passage, 
 "Our Lord Jesus Christ commended His body and blood 
 in those things which are, out of many, reduced into some 
 one." It would seem to be another example of the "in" 
 of identity. And so may be understood the two other 
 phrases: "Receive ye that in the bread which hung on 
 the cross; receive ye that in the cup which flowed from 
 the side." And again, "We drink His blood under the 
 form and flavor of wine." All three sayings will cer- 
 tainly bear Dr. Pusey 's understanding of them. They 
 will bear another understanding equally well. 
 
 8. From S. Chrysostom only two phrases are suggested: 
 "This which is in the cup is that which flowed from the 
 
238 TIIE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 side, and of that do we partake"; and "The blood in the 
 cup is drawn for thy cleansing from the undefiled side." 
 These have no bearing at all. They are presented with 
 an assumption that always in the Fathers to say, "the 
 cup," is the same as to say, "the consecrated wine." 
 The assumption is not well founded. 
 
 9. S. Cyril of Alexandria is presented as a witness 
 with a single phrase, which seems to be a simj)le phrase 
 of identification rather than of inclusion: "In the life- 
 giving Eucharist we receive in bread and wine His holy 
 flesh and precious blood." 
 
 10. S. James of Sarug, a Syrian who was made a 
 bishop A.D. 519, is quoted (in the Sermon) as saying, 
 "He from whom the spirits of fire have their glow. Him 
 in bread and wine thou seest on the table." Of course, 
 this stands good for the purpose of showing that the 
 consecrated elements were regarded as being still bread 
 and wine. But that which is seen in the bread and wine 
 by the eye of faith is not said to be our Lord's body, but 
 our Lord's Person. 
 
 No one of these ten writers seem to give any indication 
 of distinguishing between bread and our Lord's body, 
 or of looking upon the consecrated bread as a shrine of 
 our Lord's body. On the other hand, I hail with joy the 
 quotation given near the end of Dr. Pusey's Note which 
 I have been analyzing, from S. Hesychius, a Presbyter of 
 Jerusalem (about a.d. 425) : 
 
 " That mystery is at once bread and flesh." 
 
 I could not ask for a better statement of what I have 
 been trying to convey. 
 
 Just outside the hmit of writers flourishing before a.d. 
 550 comes an author not mentioned in the Note, but 
 quoted in p. 38 of the Sermon, Facundus, Bishop of 
 
NOTES 239 
 
 Hermiana, in North Africa, who was deeply engaged in 
 the controversy known as that of "the Three Chapters," 
 on the side of the defense of the authors accused of 
 Nestorian doctrine. 
 
 "The Sacrament of His body and blood which is in the con- 
 secrated bread and cup, we call His body and blood, not that 
 the bread is properly His body, or the cup His blood, but because 
 they contain in them the mystery of His body and blood." 
 
 Such is the careful language of Facundus. He makes 
 it clear that to his mind the bread and wine are called 
 our Lord's body and blood non-literally. He does not 
 say that our Lord's body and blood are in the bread and 
 wine. He has two opportunities to say that, and both 
 times he says something else. "The Sacrament of His 
 body and blood" is "in the consecrated bread and cup"; 
 "they contain in them the mystery of His body and 
 blood." The thing that Facundus is called in to say is 
 just what he will not say. 
 
 The Venerable Bede (d. a.d. 735) is too late to be an 
 important witness to primitive theological movements, 
 and Theophylact (d. a.d. 1110) is of the last degree of 
 unimportance. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 OF OUR LORD'S PHRASE, "MY BLOOD WHICH IS 
 BEING SHED" 
 
 I SUPPOSE that when men contend for the literal inter- 
 pretation of Holy Scripture, they regard the opposite of 
 "literal" as being "evasive." If, however, our Lord 
 ever uses figurative language, to interpret that language 
 literally would not be right, and would be precisely 
 
240 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "evasive." I do not care, then, to be literal in all ray 
 interpretations, but I do care a great deal about being 
 straightforward. I must call attention to one more point 
 in which certain eucharistic theories are not straightfor- 
 ward in interpretation. 
 
 In S. Matthew xxvi. 28, and S. Mark xiv. 24, and in 
 the received text of S. Luke xxii. 20, we find our Lord 
 speaking of His blood (or in S. Luke, of the cup which 
 He had blessed) as " that which is being poured out for you " 
 (to kKxvvvoiJLevov) . Now that phrase cannot apply literally, 
 it cannot be applied straightforwardly, to our Lord's 
 natural blood. It is most true that our Lord was at 
 that moment engaged in a great act of dedication of 
 Himself to suffering and death. He was bringing Him- 
 self as a willing Victim to be slain, that He might become 
 the supreme Sacrifice of the world. But it is simply not 
 true that the blood in His veins was at that time being 
 poured out. It was true of His sacramental blood, the 
 consecrated wine. It was not true of His natural blood. 
 The Vulgate Version gives effundetur, "shall be poured 
 out," in S. Matthew and S. Mark, and fundetur, "shall 
 be poured," in S. Luke, the change of tense from present 
 to future carrying a serious change of meaning. Of our 
 modern Revisions, the English Revision gives "which is 
 shed" in S. Matthew and S. Mark, but recognizes in S. 
 Luke that the phrase belongs to "cup," and not to 
 "blood," and so gives "even that which is poured out 
 for you." The American Revision honors itself by 
 giving "poured out" in all three cases. But really to 
 make a modern reader understand what was really 
 meant, it should have been, "which is being poured 
 out." 
 
NOTES 241 
 
 NOTE C 
 
 THE USE OF THE TITLE Aoros BY S. JUSTIN 
 MARTYR AS A TITLE OF THE HOLY GHOST 
 
 Both in Bp. Kaye's valuable study of Justin Martyr 
 and in the article Justinus Martyr in the Dictionary of 
 Christian Biography, S. Justin is charged with confusing 
 the operations of the Second and Third Persons of the 
 Blessed Trinity. On the other hand, it is agreed that 
 when he speaks of "the Spirit," or "the prophetic Spirit," 
 he ascribes to Him exactly such operations as later 
 theologians do. The ground of charge of "confusion" 
 is that S. Justin repeatedly ascribes such operations to 
 "the Word." I ask consideration for some facts which 
 seem to point to the conclusion that S. Justin used the 
 title "Word" (Aoyos) quite indiscriminately for the Son 
 of God and the Spirit of God. If there be any "con- 
 fusion," it is not in S. Justin's theology, but in his use of 
 a word which in his time had not become technical, and 
 now has become technical. 
 
 The first piece of evidence is found in the very passage 
 quoted on p. 29. S. Justin speaks of our Saviour, as 
 "having been made flesh by the Word of God." To 
 represent the phUosopher-theologian as having taught 
 that our Lord was made flesh by Himself would be to 
 represent him as individualist to the last degree. All 
 Christian thought was filled with the idea that the Lord 
 Jesus was in His human nature "conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost." When, then, we read in an earUer chapter 
 (xxxiii.) of the First Apology, "It is wrong to understand 
 the Spirit and Power of God as anything else than the 
 Word, who is also the First-begotten of God, as the 
 foresaid prophet Moses declared, and it was This that 
 
242 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 when it came upon the Virgin and overshadowed her, 
 caused her to conceive," we must take our choice between 
 two lines of explanation. We must either treat S. Justin 
 as contradicting the Creed of his day, or we must recognize 
 that he regarded the Force which proceeded from God 
 as Word and Wisdom and Power as a dual Force, con- 
 sisting of the Son and of the Spirit, and that he used 
 such titles as freely of the One Person as of the Other. 
 To add force to this dilemma we have in the closing 
 words of that same chapter a further exclusive claim for 
 the Power here described as "the Divine Word." "And 
 that the prophets are inspired by no other than the 
 Divine Word, even you [the Roman Emperors], as I 
 fancy, will grant." "By no other than the Divine 
 Word." Later theology may ascribe inspiration to the 
 Divine Word in one view, and to the Divine Spurit in 
 another. It would certainly say that inspiration was, 
 at least mainly, an operation of the Holy Ghost. Here 
 again, either S. Justin excluded Him from being the 
 Great Inspirer (an office which he does actually ascribe 
 to "the prophetic Spirit" over and over), or else he 
 includes the Son and the Spirit under a common name. 
 
 But how, it may be enquired, could a second century 
 theologian use the title "Word" indiscriminately for the 
 Son and for the Holy Ghost? The answer is really very 
 simple. "Word" (Aoyos) is a figurative expression, and 
 as a figurative expression it was perfectly applicable to 
 either the Divine Son or the Divine Spirit. Either Son 
 or Spirit might perfectly well be described as the ex- 
 pression of God's thought to men. It is a common- 
 place of theological students that for some centuries the 
 Wisdom Books of the Old Testament, and those of the 
 Apocrypha, had been preparing the way for the revelation 
 of the doctrine of the Trinity by their bold personification 
 
NOTES 243 
 
 of the Wisdom of God as His Eternal Companion, and as 
 His Agent in the creation and government of the world. 
 What has been too little noticed is the fact that S. John's 
 great title A670S, which we translate as "Word," is only 
 the most natural and obvious development of the Old 
 Testament idea of the Divine Wisdom. "Wisdom" may 
 be taken as a most natural word to be used to repre- 
 sent God's meaning, uttered or unuttered. But when 
 men came to feel with a new vividness that God had 
 uttered His meaning on a great scale, and was sending a 
 Messenger, who yet was inseparable from Himself and 
 part of Himself, to speak for Him to His world, it was 
 to be expected that they would use such a word as Aoyos 
 rather than So(/)ta, "the Expression of God," rather than 
 "the Wisdom of God," to convey this great new thought. 
 I am aware that A670S was used by philosophers for 
 Meaning Un-uttered, for Thought, or Reason, or Mind, 
 in God, and not simply for Expression. But it remains 
 that the first Christian writers who give us the word 
 Aoyos for the Expression of God's Thought do not seem 
 to have been philosophers. It would seem to be the 
 case that they were attracted to the title Aoyos ("Word") 
 as a substitute for the title So^ta ("Wisdom"), precisely 
 because to them Aoyos meant Thought Expressed, Thought 
 uttered by God and heard by men. But this growing 
 revelation of the Wisdom of God as a Power that was an 
 inseparable part of God, and yet had a Personality of 
 Its own, did, as a matter of fact, include the revelation of 
 two Personalities, when the revelation came to be com- 
 plete in Christ. This Wisdom of God was not one 
 Person, but two. This Word of God spoke not with one 
 Voice only, but with two Voices. As a further illustration 
 of the workings of S. Justin's mind, let me point to 
 Chapter xiv. of the First Apology, where we read of our 
 
244 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Lord that "He was no sophist, but His Word was the 
 Power of God." I am sure that I am justified in capi- 
 talizing "Word" here, and treating the reference as a 
 reference to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, which is 
 the "Breath" of God, and the Expression, the Uttered 
 Mind, the ''Word" of God the Divine Father, is also 
 the Spirit, the "Breath," the Expression, the "Word" 
 of our Lord in His earthly ministry, and whether He 
 speaks the Mind of Son or Father, He is always, and 
 equally, the "Power" of God.^ 
 
 I had been for years convinced that S. Justin really 
 had this use of the word A670S, to us most curious, to 
 him supremely natural; but I knew of no confirmatory 
 evidence from any other early Christian writer. I am 
 indebted to the Rev. Dr. C. C. Edmunds, Professor of 
 the Literature and Interpretation of the New Testament, 
 in the General Theological Seminary, where these Lectures 
 
 * If any one should do me the honor to follow up this subject, and 
 examine the references in Bp. Kaye's Justin Martyr (note on p. 87) care 
 should be exercised. Bp. Kaye seems to have reversed the meaning of 
 the passage just quoted, and taken it to mean, "His Word [Our Lord 
 Himself] was the Power of God." Also there is a misleading reference 
 to the Dialogue with Trypho, chapter cii., which contains a passage to 
 which a tradition of mis-translation seems to attach. It is found in the 
 P. G. 6, col. 713, and the Greek runs as follows: Merd 70^ t6 KrjpO^cu 
 t6v rap' Avtov S.6yov ifSpcoOivra, 6 Hariip OapaTuataOat Avtop eKeKplxfi, 
 Sv kyeyeuvrjKti. I take it that this means "For after Ilis having pro- 
 claimed the Word that proceedeth from Him as having been made Man, 
 the Father had adjudged that He whom He had begotten should be put 
 to death." Contrast with this version that of the Antc-Nicene Christian 
 Library (I. 250), — "For the Father had decreed that He whom He 
 had begotten should be put to death, but not before He had grown to 
 manhood and proclaimed the Word which proceeded from Him." (The 
 Latin Version in the Patrologia Graeca is much worse.) In this passage, 
 Bp. Kaye takes T-iv irap Kinov \6yov as meaning "the message given by 
 God to the prophets," as in the translation of the A.-N. L. 
 
NOTES 245 
 
 were delivered, for calling my attention to a striking 
 little book of 65 pages, Dr. Rendel Harris's Origin of 
 the Prologue of S. John's Gospel. It is there shown 
 abundantly, I think, that the term Aoyos was a sequel to 
 (I think, myself, as I have tried to show above, that it 
 was a perfectly natural development out of) the 2o0ta of 
 Proverbs viii. and Wisdom vii., and also that such titles 
 as "the Wisdom of God," "the Power of God," "the 
 Hand of God," and even "the Spirit of God," are used 
 of both Son and Spirit. The finest example of this 
 confusion of titles is found in the book Ad Autolycum of 
 S. Theophilus of Antioch (ii. 10; P. G. 6, col. 1064, 1065): 
 
 "This Word is called Beginning {'Apxh) ... It was He 
 who, being the Spirit of God, and the Beginning and the Wisdom 
 and the Power of the Most High, descended on the prophets and 
 through them discoursed of the creation of the world and all 
 other matters. Not that the prophets themselves were present 
 at the creation of the world; but what was present was the 
 Wisdom of God that was in it, and His Holy Word that was 
 always with Him." 
 
 One sees here the beginning of recognition that in the 
 Creation-story place must be made for two Companions 
 of God, and not One only. In Chapter xv. of the same 
 book Theophilus comes out quite clearly. In this passage 
 the word "Trinity" (rptas) appears for the first time. 
 The three days of creation before the making of the 
 great luminaries are said to be "types of the Trinity, 
 i. e., of God, and His Word, and His Wisdom." Here is 
 both recognition of the Three Divine Persons, — that 
 recognition was not new, — and also recognition of the 
 need of using particular terms as distinctive of the Second 
 and Third Persons. But Dr. Harris is quite justified in 
 speaking of an earlier time — Theophilus is about a 
 generation later than Justin — which was marked by "a 
 
246 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Christian Duality, the Holy Spirit being not yet come, 
 in a theological sense, because the Divine Wisdom has not 
 been divided into Logos and Pneuma." Harris, p. 49. 
 
 This is going far afield from my eucharistic subject. 
 My excuse is that I was quite sure that without some 
 elaboration of defense, I should be assured that my 
 claim that "the Word that proceeds from Him" meant 
 the Holj'^ Spirit, was utterly foundationless and absurd, 
 while I think it to be, on the other hand, a secure in- 
 ference, and the key to the interpretation of the passage 
 where those words appear. 
 
 I may add that it is Theophilus (Ad Autolycum ii. 18) 
 who first shows that he recognizes that the Creative 
 Hand of God must be described as two Hands. He has 
 been saying tliat after creating everything else "by 
 Word," God felt that for the one great act of the creation 
 of man He must use His Hands. So "as if needing help, 
 God is found saying, 'Let Us make man in Our image, 
 after Our likeness.' He hath not said, 'Let Us make,' 
 to any one save to His own Word, and to His own Wis- 
 dom." Later, in Irenaeus, one will find mention of 
 "the Hand of God" as His instrument in creation, and 
 again of "the Hands," and when Hands are named, it 
 will be these two, — God's Word and God's Wisdom. 
 But the clear distinction of two Hands of God took time. 
 It may be worth while to invite any student who may 
 pass from the reading of this note to an examination of 
 Dr. Harris's book to the parallel (and contrast) of the 
 uses of A670S and So0ta. A670S ("Word") is used in 
 early Christian thought, first of our Lord, then of our 
 Lord and of the Holy Si)irit alike, and then, finally, as a 
 distinctive title of our Lord, the Divine Son. So^ia 
 ("Wisdom") is used first of our Lord, then of our Lord 
 and of the Holy Spirit alike, and then as a distinctive 
 
NOTES 247 
 
 title of the Holy Spirit, as by Theophilus and Irenaeus. 
 The use of 2o0ta as a distinctive title of the Spirit, not 
 having a great Scripture passage like S. John i. 1 to back 
 it up, and having, on the other hand, 1 Cor. i. 30 ("Christ, 
 who was made unto us Wisdom") to warn students 
 against pressing it unduly, has never so prevailed as to 
 blind men's eyes to the possibihty of applying it to the 
 Divine Son. Without such safeguarding, the title Aoyos 
 has come to seem to be a really exclusive possession of 
 the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. 
 
 NOTE D 
 
 ON SOME PASSAGES OF TERTULLIAN WHICH 
 SEEM TO HAVE BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD BY 
 TRANSLATORS 
 
 Tertullian read in his Version of the Book of Jeremiah 
 (xi. 19), Mittamus lignum in 'panem ejus, "Let us cast 
 wood upon his bread," where we read, "Let us destroy 
 the tree with the fruit thereof." The present Hebrew 
 text means hterally, "Let us destroy the tree in its bread," 
 the translators holding that "bread" is used poetically 
 for "the power to nourish." The LXX translators had 
 evidently another Hebrew verb before them. 
 
 In this phrase Tertullian and other early writers saw 
 plainest prediction of the cross of Christ and of His 
 body. As they would put it, the prophet here called 
 our Lord's body by the name of bread. Tertullian 
 himself refers to this phrase of the prophet Jeremiah in 
 three passages of his writings, Adversus Judaeos, x., and 
 Contra Marcionem III. 19, and IV. 40.^ In all three 
 
 » P. L. 2, 668, 669; 2, 376; 2, 491, 492. 
 
248 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 passages Tertullian refers to acts of figurative meaning, 
 — our Lord's calling bread His body, and the prophet's 
 calling our Lord's body bread. The general sense of 
 the passages is beyond question, but a certain curious 
 ambiguity of the Latin language has betrayed translators 
 into error in rendering a few phrases. All Latin scholars 
 know well that such English sentences as "I call the 
 king a wise man," and "I call the wise man a king," 
 may be represented by the same Latin words. Regem 
 sapientem appello will stand for one of these meanings 
 as well as for the other. If there were no emphasis on 
 either of the object-words, it may be thought that the 
 direct object would be more likely to be put first by a 
 Latin writer. But the first place in the sentence may be 
 taken as a place of emphasis, and if the writer desired to 
 emphasize his secondary object, he would by all means 
 put it first, — "A king do I call the wise man." Order 
 of words does not entirely clear the ambiguity of a 
 Latin sentence as to which of two object-words is prim- 
 ary object, and which is secondary object. 
 
 Here, then, is the Latin of the passage from the Ad- 
 versus Judaeos: 
 
 " XJtiquc in corpus Ejus lignum missum est. Sic enim Christua 
 revelavit, ■panem corpus Suum appellans, cujus retro corpus in 
 panem figuravit propheta . ' ' 
 
 The following is the translation of the Ante-Nicene 
 Fathers (III. 166, American Edition) : 
 
 "Of course on His body that wood was put; for so Clirist 
 has revealed, calling His body 'bread,' whose body the prophet 
 in by-gone days announced under the term bread." 
 
 I submit that in this place panem corpus Suum appellans 
 certainly means, "calling bread His body," and not. 
 
NOTES 249 
 
 "calling His body bread." As a simple matter of fact, 
 our Lord did not call His body bread, and Tertullian did 
 not think of Him as having done so. There is no refer- 
 ence here to S. John vi. 51, or 58. Our next quotation 
 will show Tertullian (in a precisely similar sequence of 
 thought) arguing solely from the account of the Institu- 
 tion of the Eucharist given in the Gospel according to 
 S. Luke. And there is nothing in that Gospel to justify 
 such a phrase as "calling His body bread." That is my 
 first point. The same criticism will come up in connec- 
 tion with each of the two other Tertullian passages with 
 which I am to deal. 
 
 But further, and this is a more important point by far, 
 the translator seems to have missed the idea of Ter- 
 tullian's word retro. He renders it, "in by-gone days." 
 But retro has no such meaning of itself. It means "back- 
 ward," or "in reverse direction," or "back of us." That 
 last meaning entitles us to render quod est retro, "what is 
 past," or even to render omnes retro principes, "all the 
 chiefs of old times." But look at this passage. If the 
 writer had wanted to say that this act, figuravit, took 
 place "way back in the old days," he would, of course, 
 have put retro closely with figuravit. What he does is to 
 say, cujus retro corpus in panem figuravit. The hody is 
 represented as going the reverse way somehow. Plainly, the 
 meaning is, — "calling bread His body, whose body in 
 reverse fashion the prophet translated (in the language 
 of figure) into bread." \ 
 
 The thought seems crystal clear. Our Lord called 
 bread His body, in a mystical fashion. The prophet 
 Jeremiah had, in a mystical fashion which was exactly 
 the reverse of this, called the Lord's body "bread." 
 
 The second of these TertuUian-passages {Adv. Mar- 
 cionem III. 19) runs as follows: 
 
250 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 "Sic cnim DeJis in Evangelio quoque vestro revelavit, panem 
 corpus Suum appellans, ut et hinc jam Bum intelligas corporis Sui 
 figuram pani dedisse, cujiis retro corpus in panem propheta 
 figuravit." 
 
 Again I give the version of the Ante-Nicene Fathers 
 (III. 337): 
 
 "For so did God, in your own Gospel even,* reveal the sense, 
 when He called His body bread, so that for the time to come you 
 may understand that He has given to His body the figure of 
 bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into 
 bread." 
 
 Here besides the old mistake of "when He called His 
 body bread" for "calling bread His body," we have the 
 astonishing translation, "He has given to His body the 
 figure of bread," when the plain meaning is 
 
 "so that even from hence [from our Lord's words recorded by 
 S. Luke] you may understand that He has given to bread to be a 
 figure of His body." 
 
 The misunderstanding of retro is repeated, hni figuravii 
 in panem is rendered justly. Again, as in the Adversus 
 Judaeos, we have the opposition of our Lord's calling 
 bread His body in a mystical sense, and the prophet, 
 "in reverse fashion," calling the Lord's body "bread" 
 in a mystical sense, "the Lord Himself designing [so 
 TertuUian continues herej] to give by and by an inter- 
 pretation of the mystery." I note, as I pass, that Dr. 
 Pusey (on his p. 97) gives a just, though not literal, 
 translation of both these passages, rendering panem 
 corpus Suum appellans, as I have done, "calling bread 
 His body," but Dr. Pusey misquotes the Latin of the 
 
 • It will be remembered that Marcion accepted no Gospel but that 
 of S. Luke. 
 
NOTES 251 
 
 second passage, giving cujus retro in corpus panem for 
 cujus retro corpus in panem. He gives fairly the right 
 meaning, but a wrong Latin. 
 
 Passing to the third of my passages (Adv. Marcion. IV. 
 40), I will give the Latin of the more important sentences: 
 
 "Acceptum panem, et distributum discipulis, corpus illud 
 Suum fecit, 'Hoc est corpus Meum,' dicendo, 'id est,figura corporis 
 Mei.' Figura non fuisset, nisi veritatis esset corpus. . . . Cur 
 autem panem corpus Suum appellat, et non magis peponem, quern 
 Marcion cordis loco kabuitF" 
 
 I will refer to my translation of these words in Lecture 
 II. (p. 40), for my own understanding of them. The 
 translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers quite overlooks 
 illud in the former portion, and renders, "made it His 
 own body hy saying, 'This is My body,' that is, the 
 figure of My body." Dr. Pusey translates illud, but 
 renders the phrase, "that body of His own," for which 
 I see no sufficient ground. The idea of introducing illud 
 seems to be, "that thing which the Church knows, which 
 is in some sense His body," or possibly "that body in 
 which He clothes Himself for a particular purpose." 
 
 In the second portion, the translation of the Ante- 
 Nicene Fathers (III. 418) gives us, "Why call His body 
 bread," and Dr. Pusey, "Why doth He call His body 
 bread?", etc. But certainly, the thought is "Why does 
 our Lord take bread, rather than some other thing, to be 
 a figure of His body?" Later, TertuUian goes on to 
 mention the prophecy of Jeremiah, as in the other quota- 
 tions, and adds this phrase: ^ 
 
 "And thus the Illuminator of the things of old declared plainly 
 what He meant by the bread, calling bread His body." 
 
 The idea is that our Lord as Illuminator antiquitatum 
 (a fine phrase) showed what the bread meant in Jeremiah's 
 
252 THE EUCILVRISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 prophecy, when in the upper room He called bread His 
 body. Both the A-N. F. and Dr. Pusey's volume reverse 
 the meaning in this place, as the A-N. F. had done before, 
 and translate "calling His body bread." 
 
 As I have pointed out before, TertuUian had two 
 pieces of figurative language before his mind, one of our 
 Lord, calling bread His body, as set forth in the Gospel 
 narrative, and one of an ancient prophet, giving to our 
 Lord's body, in a prophetic picture, the name of bread. 
 To ascribe to our Lord any act of calling His body bread 
 in interpreting this language of TertuUian is hopelessly 
 to confuse what TertuUian was trying to say. Whether 
 it is fair to charge TertuUian with thinking of our Lord's 
 words as "figurative" in the modern sense, that is, as 
 non-literal, will be considered in the next Note (Note E). 
 
 NOTEE 
 
 ON THE MEANING OF FIGURA IN THE PHRASE, 
 FIGURA CORPORIS MEI 
 
 I HAVE not referred in my Lectures in the warning of 
 Dr. Darwell Stone (History, I, 29-31), that the use of 
 such words as "figure," "symbol," and "type" by the 
 Fathers is different from the use of such words in 
 modern writing. Dr. Stone quotes Prof. Harnack as 
 stating "a crucial difference with great clearness." These 
 are the words referred to, from the History of Dogma: 
 
 "What wc nowadays understand by 'symbol' is a thing which 
 is not that which it represents; at that time 'symbol' denoted a 
 thing which in some kind of way really is what it signifies." 
 
 I remark that even in our modern use there are two 
 quite different levels of "symbol" and "figure." A 
 
NOTES 253 
 
 picture of a great monarch is one sort of symbol; an 
 ambassador, armed with proper credentials from "His 
 Majesty," is quite another. Each "represents" the 
 sovereign; but it may be said of the ambassador that 
 he, at any rate, "in some kind of way really is what [he] 
 signifies." Certainly the Fathers looked upon the 
 sacraments as "symbols" of this superior sort. 
 
 But Dr. Harnack falls below his usual "great clearness" 
 here. What does he mean by "in some kind of way"? 
 I venture to suggest that he does not know, himself, and 
 therefore does not tell us. That phrase, "in some kind 
 of way," posits an unsolved difficulty, and does it without 
 the clearness of open confession, — " We moderns cannot 
 make head nor tail of it." I am not satisfied that any 
 proof has been offered that the ancients used "symbol" 
 and "figure" in a different sense from the moderns, 
 except that in Christian theology the ancients used such 
 words in a way which modern theologies cannot interpret 
 satisfactorily. I repeat my own suggestion, that the 
 key to the difficulty lies not in differing uses of the words 
 "symbol" and "figure" and "type," as between them and 
 us, but in differing uses of the words "body" and "blood," 
 as between the mind of the ancient, and the mind of the 
 modern. Church. When the Church saw a natural 
 body of our Lord and a eucharistic body, and distinguished 
 (while it also identified) the two, it was supremely natural 
 for the Church to call consecrated bread our Lord's 
 body^ and also a "figure" of our Lord's body. The use 
 of the word "figure" was quite like our own. 
 
 But in regard to TertuUian in particular. Dr. Stone 
 refers to an interesting examination of his use of figura 
 (in the Journal of Theological Studies, VII. 595) by Mr. 
 C. H. Turner, of Magdalen College, Oxford. Mr. Turner 
 acknowledges freely, and I have no doubt that Dr. Stone 
 
254 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 would acknowledge, that Tertullian does sometimes use 
 figura quite in our modern fashion, as opposed to reality, 
 to what a Latin writer would call Veritas. On the other 
 hand, he shows, most convincingly, that Tertullian used 
 the word figura where some such phrase as "precise 
 presentment" ^ might stand in English, Well, let it be 
 remembered that we use the word "figure" for realities 
 over and over, ourselves. We speak of "a fine figure of 
 a man," of seeing "terrible figures of armed riders dashing 
 through the streets," of a "river of no inconsiderable 
 figure." Oh! yes! Even in English a figure may be a 
 very real thing. I may add that even where Tertullian 
 brings figura and veritatis corpus into one sentence, it 
 is by no means necessary to suppose that he opposes 
 them one to the other. I have no quarrel with Mr. 
 Turner on that point. If by figura corporis Mei he 
 meant, "the precise presentment of My body," it would 
 certainly be a good and sound argument to bring against 
 such a one as Marcion, to write, — "There would be no 
 precise presentment, if there had not been a real body to 
 present." 
 
 It may be agreed, then, that Tertullian certainly has 
 two uses oi figura, one carrying the meaning of "symbol," 
 and another carrying the meaning of "reality," and that 
 either meaning will make sense in the immediate connec- 
 tion in which this particular use of figura stands. Is it, 
 then, a drawn battle.'' Or can cause be shown why the 
 decision should be given to one party rather than to the 
 other? I think that we who take figura figuratively in 
 this place can really claim the verdict. Tertullian tells 
 us that in a certain correspondence with our Lord's 
 utterance, Hoc est corpus Meum, to which he lends 
 
 * The English phrase is my own suggestion, for which Mr. Turner 
 is in no way responsible, if I have not caught his meaning. 
 
NOTES 255 
 
 the word figura as an explanation, stands an utterance 
 of the prophet Jeremiah, figuratively calling our Lord's 
 body by the name of bread. Corpus in panem figuravit. 
 The prophet did not make our Lord's body to have the 
 figura (in the sense of substantial fact) of bread. The 
 prophet called our Lord's body "bread" by a figure of 
 speech. At least, that is Tertullian's understanding of 
 the prophet. Then, also, we hear (still according to 
 Tertullian's understanding) our Lord, saying, "This is 
 My body, that is, a figure of My body." These two 
 forms of speech TertuUian brings into parallel. These 
 two forms of speech he sees as parallel. What figura 
 means in figuravit in panem, that, and nothing else, 
 figura means in figura corporis Mei. In both cases figura 
 has a figurative meaning. 
 
 It seems to be worth while to point out further that 
 Tertullian's figura seems really to be expounded in 
 Augustine's signum} And then there is Augustine's 
 rule for deciding whether a Scripture passage is literal or 
 figurative, and his application of it to our Lord's words. 
 Augustine, to be sure, is two hundred years later than 
 TertuUian, but if he may be regarded, and I think that 
 he is generally regarded, as a true representative of the 
 North African tradition, it is clear that Tertullian's 
 figura corporis Mei is to be understood as a testimony 
 on the figurative side. 
 
 A word let fall by Mr. Turner suggests an interesting 
 train of thought. He says that Tertullian's figura some- 
 times seems to be an equivalent for the Greek xapaKTi7p. 
 The mention of that word, with its great association 
 with Eeh. i. 3 ("the very impress of His Person," R. V. 
 margin), suggests at once the mystery of the Blessed 
 
 ' See Lecture V, p. 123, "hesitating not to say, 'This is My body,* 
 when He gave a sign of His body." 
 
250 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 Trinity, Shall we say that God is One? or that God is 
 Three? No careful theologian would use the latter 
 phrase, but yet it is a phrase that could be used truthfully 
 enough. If you are thinking in terms of Being, God is 
 One. If you are thinking in terms of Personality, God 
 is Three. Our diflficulty about our Lord's body is, I 
 submit, that we have not learned to distinguish justly 
 between the material which our Lord uses for His em- 
 bodiment in various modes of existence, and His own 
 holding of these diverse embodiments in an unbreakable 
 unity. As to material, the body natural, the body 
 sacramental, and the body mystical are three. As to 
 the Corporator, if I may coin a new word, or rather 
 thrust upon an old word a meaning of my own coining, 
 these three are one. We are too apt to insist that our 
 Lord shall not be supposed to use one word of our poor 
 human language in several different ways. Yet we are 
 warned by S. Paul that it is within the right of the Great 
 Revealer so to deal with us. We do it ourselves. "All 
 flesh is not the same flesh," we may say. We use the 
 word "body" to mean many things. S. Paul uses that 
 suggestion in 1 Cor. xv. 37-42, to check men from a 
 false literalism touching the doctrine of the xesurrection. 
 I think that he would like to see us apply the same check 
 to the discussion of the doctrine of the Eucharist. 
 
 NOTEF 
 ON ORIGEN'S PHRASE AFION TI 
 
 The Greek of the passage referred to in Lecture III. 
 p. 69, is as follows: aiona yevotikvovs 5td rijv evxv^ olJi^v 
 Ti Kal ayt.6.^ov. 
 
NOTES 257 
 
 It must be perfectly clear to every Greek scholar that 
 ajLov and ayi.a^ov are two parallel attributes of acona 
 and that in the phrase ayiSv tl the word tl qualifies ayiop 
 and ay LOP alone. It cannot be imagined to belong with 
 cufia, with those five other words coming in between. 
 Even if aco/xa ayiov rt in a single group could be the same 
 in meaning as trco/xd ti ayiov, which I should not suppose 
 to be the case, this phrase, as it stands, is a clear instance 
 of the idiom in which tis lends indefiniteness of meaning 
 to an adjective. 
 
 My attention was directed to this piece of idiom nearly 
 thirty years ago by the Rev. Dr. I. T. Beckwith, then 
 Professor of Greek in Trinity College, Hartford, Connecti- 
 cut. I am again indebted to his kindness for the following 
 references furnished me only a few months since : Kuehner, 
 Ausfuehrliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, dritte 
 Auflage, 470. 3^ (Vol. III. p. 663) ; Winer's Grammar of 
 New Testament Greek, 25, 2; Liddell and Scott's Greek 
 Lexicon, ns A. 8; J. H. Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of 
 the New Testament, tls I, a. To these I add a reference to 
 A. T. Robertson's Grammar of the Greek New Testament 
 in the Light of Historical Research, p. 743. Kuehner gives 
 some interesting examples of the idiom: (1) from Homer's 
 Odyssey, xvii. 449, where Antinous insolently addresses 
 Ulysses with the words, — "Qs rts dapffoXeo^ Kal avalSrjs 
 iaau Trpo'iKTrjs. ("What an exceedingly bold and shame- 
 less beggar art thou ! ") ; (2) from Herodotus, 2, 43, — 
 dXXA Tis cipxatos ecrrt deos ("But he is a god of immense 
 antiquity"); and (3) from Xenophon's Memorabilia, 1, 3, 
 12, 8uvr]v riva \kyHs diiva/jLLV tov (f)L\r]fxaros dvai. 
 
 Dr. Beckwith also calls attention to the interesting 
 New Testament example of this idiom, — ^o^tpa 5e rts 
 
 * The same paragraph number stands good for the zweite Auflage, 
 in which the passage is on pp. 570, 571. 
 
258 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 ejcSoxi) Kplaecos (Heb. x. 27), and sends me extracts from the 
 commentaries of Bernhard Weiss and Von Soden in loco. 
 
 Weiss says, "The rts brings into especially emphatic 
 prominence, how indefinitely, because immeasurably, 
 fearful this expectation is"; and Von Soden, — " tls is 
 brought in as exalting the (jx>^epa to immensity." 
 
 Thayer's Lexicon says of tls that "joined to adjectives 
 of quality or quantity, it requires us to conceive of their 
 degree as the greatest possible," and instances, besides 
 Heb. X. 27, Acts viii. 9, — not "some great one," but "a 
 man beyond measure great." 
 
 It should be noted that Kuehner holds, and proves by 
 example, that the indefiniteness given by tis to an 
 adjective may be either an indefinite enlargement, or an 
 indefinite belittling of the idea. Owners of Thayer may 
 do well to correct the phrase, "conceive of their degree 
 as the greatest possible," by adding after "greatest" 
 the words, "or the least." On Heb. x. 27 Alford has a 
 very interesting note, accepting the connection of tis 
 with the adjective. Westcott, on the other hand, con- 
 nects the TLS with the noun, and so do the Revised Ver- 
 sions, which were very much under his influence. .] 
 
 NOTEG 
 
 CONCERNING A PASSAGE OF S. CHRYSOSTOM 
 WHICH IL\S NOTHING TO DO WITH THE 
 SUBJECT OF THIS BOOK 
 
 It will have been observed by some that I have said 
 nothing of a famous passage of S. Chrysostom from the 
 Homily On the Betrayal of Judas. It may be found in 
 Pusey, 211, 212, and in the P. G. 49, 380. 
 
NOTES 259 
 
 "Christ is present now too. The Same who adorned that 
 table adorneth this too now. For it is not man who maketh 
 what Ueth there to become the body and blood of Christ, but 
 Christ Himself, who was crucified for us. The priest standeth^ 
 filling up a figure, speaking these words [the words of the Lit- 
 urgy]. The power and grace are of God. 'This is My body,' 
 He [God] saith. This word re-ordereth what lieth there, and 
 as that voice, 'Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth,' 
 was spoken once, but throughout all time in effect giveth power 
 to our race for the procreation of children, so also that voice, 
 once spoken, doth on every table in the churches, from that 
 time even till now, and unto His Coming, complete the sacrifice." 
 
 ,1 
 
 This utterance has been much quoted for two purposes, 
 for neither of which does it stand good. It has been 
 cited in behalf of the theory of Transubstantiation, and 
 it has been used to show that S. Chrysostom held the 
 recital of our Lord's words of distribution to be the 
 instrument of the consecration in the Liturgy. Readers 
 may be referred to Dr. Pusey's treatment of this passage 
 for abundant evidence that S. John Chrysostom attached 
 no idea of a change of substance to the word /icra^pu^/xtfco. 
 He uses it, for example, of God's "re-ordering" the lions, 
 so that they did not hurt Daniel, cast into their den as 
 an offered prey. ^ No more does this passage avail as show- 
 ing that our saint attached the consecration in the 
 Eucharist to the priest's recital of the words, "This is 
 My body." On the contrary, he presses two points. 
 (1) The consecration is the act of God, and not of man. 
 Of course, this point must not be taken with a hard 
 literalness, but that is the direction in which the great 
 preacher is looking. (2) He makes the point that as 
 God's word, "Increase and multiply," enables for the 
 propagation of the human race through all the ages 
 since, exactly so the word of Christ, proclaiming that 
 
260 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 certain hallowed bread is His body, gives the bread and 
 wine of the Church's altars a new place and relation in 
 the universe, from that time forth, until His coming 
 again. It is right to find a higher meaning of nerappvOnl^o) 
 here than in any other passage where S. Chrysostom ever 
 used it, because this was the greatest change of pvdfioi 
 that the saint had ever had brought before his mind. 
 But certainly the present tense here is not a present of 
 repeated action, new at every altar and in every con- 
 secration, but a present of eternal, never-failing fact. 
 The words of our Lord, sounding in the spaces of the 
 upper room in Jerusalem, did not die on the air. They 
 live in heaven. They took up those elements of bread 
 and wine, as matter offered to God in sacrifice, — not 
 those particular portions which the Apostles saw, but all 
 bread and wine thus offered in all coming time, — and 
 gave them a new rhythm in the harmony of the spheres. 
 It seems to me entirely clear that the orator means 
 distinctly that it is the voice of our Lord Himself, sounding 
 once in the upper room, and not the words of our Lord, 
 repeated over and over by a priest, here or there, on this 
 occasion or on that, that must be understood as giving to 
 the elements a new character and a new place in the order 
 of God's world. 
 
 The passage is deeply interesting and touching, but it 
 has nothing to say about either of the subjects in connec- 
 tion with which it is commonly adduced. 
 
NOTES 261 
 
 NOTEH 
 
 ON THE fflSTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 EUCHARIST, AS SEEN BY A MODERN ROMAN 
 CATHOLIC SCHOLAR 
 
 A sMAMi man may point out mistakes in the work of a 
 great man. If there be a mistake there, it is the business 
 of any one who happens to see it, to call attention to it. 
 The lesser man may not praise the greater man without 
 some danger of seeming to be presumptuous. But that 
 danger must not be allowed to prevent the writer of these 
 Lectures from calling attention to the power and charm 
 of certain Studies of that eminent French scholar, 
 Mgr. Batiffol. He has put forth two series of Studies, 
 under the title Etudes d'Histoire et de Theologie Positive. 
 The second series is a little volume on Conversion and Tran- 
 substantiation in the Holy Eucharist. The author com- 
 bines that logical movement of thought and that clearness 
 of expression which one expects in a French writer, with 
 the fearless honesty of the chivalrous gentleman of every 
 race. John Bunyan in his Pilgrim's Progress introduces 
 a character whom he calls Mr. Facing-both-ways. He 
 has no Mr. Facing-the-facts, in his allegory. Perhaps in 
 the angry controversies of the sixteenth century he had 
 not encountered any such enquirer. But here we 
 have a fine example of the honest gentleman who faces 
 facts, even the most disagreeable, and salutes them, as 
 the soldier salutes his superior officer. On p. 379 of his 
 Etudes: deuxieme serie he uses the phrase, La critique 
 objective. Of that SM6jective criticism of which so much 
 has been "made in Germany," which settles with itself 
 how the history of the Church ought to have gone, and 
 then proceeds to prove, with enormous diligence and 
 
262 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 considerable acumen, that it did go so, Mgr. Batiffol 
 will have nothing. He has, to be sure, his own pre- 
 possessions. He holds, for instance, that the history of 
 Christian thought is an evolution in which the spirit of 
 God has led the Church step by step to a fulness of vision 
 and of wisdom embodied at last in the decrees of the 
 Council of Trent. But while he thus holds that the 
 highest truth that has as yet been given to the Church 
 to know concerning the Holy Eucharist is expressed in 
 the Tridentine Decree defining the dogma of Tran- 
 substantiation, he studies the Fathers with absolute and 
 fearless freedom, and pronounces that the vision of that 
 dogma was not given to their eyes to see. Some came 
 very near it, in the judgment of Mgr. Batiffol. S. Gregory 
 of Nyssa and S. John Chrysostom are his particular 
 heroes in the East, and S. Ambrose in the West. But 
 none of them quite saw the vision. He is rather severe 
 on S. Augustine, whose mistakes he points out most 
 faithfully, and whose great authority he tells us (on his 
 p. 246), kept back the Latin-speaking Church from the 
 healthy and proper development of its own eucharistic 
 doctrine until the ninth century. Secure in his theory 
 of development, he can show how unliappily Gelasius I 
 misconceived the Church's tradition. Pope and canonized 
 Saint though he be. Indeed, Mgr. Batiffol regards as 
 especially mischievous that Incarnation-analogy which 
 we have found cropping up in every century. "Cette 
 analogie trompeuse," he calls it, "entre V Incarnation et 
 VEucharistie" and he says of it (on his pp. 324, 325) that 
 it will appear no more after the definitive victory of the 
 theology of S. Cyril of Alexandria, under Justin and 
 Justinian, in the middle of the sixth century. But that 
 is one of the small mistakes of a great teacher, for Mgr. 
 Batiffol himself writes (on his p. 333) of S. John of Da- 
 
NOTES 263 
 
 mascus, two centuries later than Justin and Justinian, 
 as holding to the analogy of the Incarnation, which he 
 certainly did. 
 
 It may be worth while to mention a few of the inter- 
 pretations given by this clear-eyed Catholic scholar to 
 writings of the Church's early days. Thus, while he 
 greatly misHkes such an analogy himself, he says of Justin 
 Martyr (140 ^), that the thought of Justin "judges the 
 Eucharist by an analogy with the Incarnation." On the 
 other side of the account, our scholar translates 8C evxns 
 "Koyov, par une parole de priere, and later refers to this 
 parole as la formule de priere qui nous avons regue de 
 Jesus, We have been over this ground in Lecture II. 
 
 Passing to Irenaeus, we find (153, 154) the two elements, 
 "earthly" and "heavenly," of which the Eucharist 
 consists, made out by our French critic to be "the flesh 
 of Christ" (the earthly) and "the Spirit of Christ" (the 
 heavenly). His idea of the heavenly part seems to be 
 that which is ascribed to Irenaeus in Lecture II. But 
 what can Mgr. Batiflfol mean by calling "the flesh of 
 Christ" an "earthly" element? To S. Irenaeus the con- 
 secrated bread was certainly "earthly," and as certainly 
 "the flesh of Christ." But can our Lord's glorified body 
 be called an "earthly" element? I suppose that our 
 critic would say, "Yes! When it dwells on earth, it is 
 earthly." Whether I represent his mind in this point, 
 I am not quite sure, but he, in his turn, feels a diflSculty 
 in representing Irenaeus. "One is surprised," he says 
 (158), "that Irenaeus speaks of the first-fruits of the 
 creation, the bread and the wine, as if in the Eucharist 
 the bread and wine remained (subsistaient) , and could be 
 theoretically distinguished from the body and blood." 
 
 * Numbers in parenthesis in this note are to be understood as refer- 
 ring to pages of Mgr. Batiffol's volume. 
 
264 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 This distinguishing the bread and wine from the body and 
 blood is exactly what Irenaeus never does, and none of 
 the Fathers do, if I have understood them. But, of 
 course, Mgr. Batiffol is assuming that "body" must 
 mean "glorified body," and, of course, Irenaeus did 
 distinguish in theory between the body eucharistic and 
 the body natural. Then our author asks a question. 
 He has no doubt about the "Realism" of Irenaeus, but 
 did Irenaeus find his own explanation of it in a trans- 
 mutatio which did not annihilate the bread and wine, a 
 transmutatio analogous to that which is produced in a 
 wild-oUve tree by grafting? That is the modern French- 
 man's question, and he cannot answer it securely in his 
 own mind. "The question remains an enigma," he says. 
 He seems to me to come very near to my understanding of 
 Irenaeus. 
 
 Mgr. Batiffol recognizes in Clement of Alexandria the 
 disposition to treat the Incarnation and the Eucharist 
 as analogous mysteries, but he is dissatisfied with 
 Clement's mysticisms, which he does not approach in a 
 friendly spirit. "Who would accept (180) as a workable 
 theory of the Eucharist, or of the Incarnation either, 
 this idea of Kpacrts?" In deahng with Origen he has 
 (191, 192), a striking suggestion: "We may remind our- 
 selves in this connection that Cardinal Bellarmine gives us 
 authority for seeing in the eucharistic, or sacramental, 
 body a symbol of the historic body, or of the body 
 glorified." ^ 
 
 I had expected to be sharply criticized for allowing 
 myself to use any such phrase as "eucharistic body," 
 or "sacramental body." It is interesting to have the 
 authority of a Roman Cardinal for it. I may add that 
 
 * Cardinal Bellarmine autorise h voir dans le corps cucharistique ou 
 sacramentel un synil)i)Ii' du corjxs lii.stori(iue, du corps glorieux. 
 
'NOTES ms 
 
 in speaking (216) of Tertullian's phrase, corpus Meum, 
 id est, figura corporis Mei, Mgr. Batiffol makes the out- 
 ward appearance to be the figura, and quotes Vasquez 
 for it, but he scorns the idea that Tertullian was a 
 ReaUst in a sense satisfactory to modern Cathohcs. 
 "TertulUan opposes figure and reality. . . . No subtlety 
 of exegesis will make it possible to say that Tertullian 
 acknowledged in the Eucharist the reality of the body, — 
 I mean, that he saw there the natural body of Christ." 
 
 On S. Augustine our author is vastly interesting. "The 
 teaching of S. Augustine on the Eucharist," he says 
 (326), "has to this day been for us theologians one of the 
 most diflScult to bring into consistency with itself, or to 
 harmonize with that of a Gregory of Nyssa, an Ambrose, 
 or a Chrysostom." But put him in his proper place, the 
 critic says, as just representing the (rather poor and low) 
 African tradition of Tertullian and S. Cyprian, a little 
 more thought out, and you will have no trouble in under- 
 standing him. But this hardly allows weight enough, 
 it seems to me, to the fact that the young man Augustine 
 was a follower, an admirer, and a personal pupil of S. 
 Ambrose. Augustine is, as a matter of fact, in the 
 Ambrosian succession, as well as in the African, and the 
 writings of S. Augustine should be considered in weighing 
 what S. Ambrose really meant, himself. 
 
 Mgr. Batiffol represents S. Augustine (235) as holding 
 that there is "nothing sensible" in the Eucharist, and 
 that Christ could not give His natural body to be eaten 
 and His natural blood to be drunk, for this reason, before 
 all others, that the natural body is now glorified in heaven. 
 "Neither Augustine nor Gregory [of Nyssa]," he says, 
 "dreams of identifying strictly {_ne songent a identifier 
 proprement2 the eucharistic body and the glorified body 
 of Christ." 
 
266 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 On (246), still speaking of S. Augustine, our author 
 tells us that "Greek theology will come clear [La Dog- 
 matique grecque s'en degagera] with S. Gregory of Nyssa, 
 Latin theology with S. Ambrose." ^ Thus he credits S. 
 Gregory of Nyssa with having made a distinct advance 
 toward the idea of a "Conversion" in the Eucharist. At 
 the same time he sees clearly (256-258) that S. Gregory 
 did not hold to the modern theory of Transubstantiation, 
 any more than he can be satisfied to accept the suggestion 
 of an eminent German scholar, Dr. Loofs, that S. Gregory 
 attached himself to a theory of "Impanation." Mgr. 
 Batiffol complains that there is a defect in S. Gregory's 
 view. That view declares that food is turned to nutri- 
 ment "by a certain transforming power" [5id rjjs 
 aWoLOJTiKTJs 8vvan€0}s2- There must be, then, according to S. 
 Gregory's argument from analogy, a "transforming 
 power" in the Eucharist. The French critic sees as 
 clearly as I do that that "transforming power" is the 
 Divine Word. Nothing is said of the body of the Word. 
 "Le Verbe lui-meme sera cette aWoLOJTLKri bbva^is. Id 
 apparait le deficit de la theorie de Gregoire de Nysse." Mgr. 
 Batiffol does not deign to shelter himself behind the 
 suggestion that the Word cannot be present in the Eucha- 
 rist without His body. He is quite clear that S. Gregory 
 did not think of the natural body as being there. 
 
 For this is the way in which our French devotee of a 
 truly "objective" historical study goes on, speaking 
 still of S. Gregory : 
 
 "He did not at all realize [// n'a pas soupqonnf] that the eu- 
 charistic body which he was assigning to the Word was a new 
 body, a body different from the historic body. The Word 
 
 ' * As if S. Ambrose was later than S. Augustine, instead of being his 
 honored master! 
 
NOTES 267 
 
 assigns to Himself a body for the purpose of the Eucharist, as 
 He assigned to Himself a body for the purpose of the Incarnation. 
 And He can say of this eucharistic body, 'This is My body,' 
 since this body is His. But this body is not that which was 
 born, and which suffered." 
 
 The last words, "This body is not that which was born, 
 and which suffered," are, of course, the critic's con- 
 clusion from S. Gregory's thought. I hold it to be, to a 
 certain extent, a just conclusion. Yet I am sure that 
 S. Gregory himself would have said of such a statement, 
 "In one sense. Yes, and in another sense. No." He 
 would have held, with the Fathers generally, that any- 
 thing which our Lord takes to be His body becomes 
 thereby identified with His body now in glory, and with 
 His body of all His earthly life. In a sense, it is other; 
 in a sense, it is the same. It is a noteworthy point that 
 Mgr. Batiffol finds fault with S. Gregory for using such 
 qualifying phrases as "in some way" [^rporov tlvcl] and 
 "in some sense" [\6ycp tlvQ. These phrases seem to the 
 modern writer to imply the negation of that "substantial 
 conversion" of which Gregory of Nyssa is supposed to 
 have had some clear idea at first. In fact, the French 
 theologian's statement that with Gregory of Nyssa 
 Greek theology "came clear," is found to mean only 
 that Gregory had a clear understanding that the eucha- 
 ristic elements suffered a conversion. What that con- 
 version really was, he did not at all see, in the opinion of 
 Mgr. Batiffol. 
 
 Passing on to the fifth century, our author deals with 
 Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret. Even Cyril "did 
 not sound (274) the depths of the mystery of the mode 
 of the Real Presence, and as soon as he sets himself to 
 determine what the bread is, under the forms of which 
 the body of the Saviour is given, the thought of Cyril is 
 
268 THE EUCHARISTIC BODY AND BLOOD 
 
 at once obscured." I cannot but suggest that if so 
 clear-headed a thinker as Mgr. BatifFol cannot understand 
 the thought of so clear-headed a thinker as S. Cyril of 
 Alexandria, it really seems as if the modern student 
 was trying a lock for which he had not found the right 
 key. But of one thing Mgr. Batiffol is quite sure: it 
 was the Christologic question alone that was occupying 
 the minds of both Cyril and Nestorius. The doctrine of 
 the Eucharist ivas not in controversy between them. 
 
 Our author deals with Theodoret (278-284). We 
 must not be scandalized, if Theodoret's attempt at a 
 theory of the Eucharist is found to be no more happy 
 than that of Gregory of Nyssa, much less so, in fact. 
 The passages from the Eranistes are examined, and it is 
 clearly recognized that Theodoret holds to a "dyo- 
 physism" in the Eucharist, as in the Incarnation. But 
 I think that the French critic does not quite do justice to 
 Theodoret in two points. For, first, he makes out 
 Theodoret to give to the glorified body of our Lord the 
 same relation to the bread of the Eucharist that our 
 Lord's Divinity has to His flesh, — "Le corps du Verbe, 
 qui est au pain eucharistique ce qui la Divinite est a Vhu- 
 manite dans Vlncarnation," is the phrase of Mgr. Batiffol 
 (284) — whereas Theodoret really makes the Heavenly 
 Word to be related to the bread of the Eucharist, as to 
 the flesh of the Incarnation, which is a very different 
 view. Then, secondly, Mgr. Batiffol (281) approves 
 thoroughly of the language put into the mouth of the 
 Monophysite opponent, who says that after the Invoca- 
 tion the bread and wine "are changed and become other," 
 but our critic implies that Theodoret himself thought 
 this to be bad theology. I must repeat here what I have 
 said in Lecture VII, that Theodoret seems rather to 
 have been appealing to the doctrine of the Eucharist as 
 
NOTES 269 
 
 to something which all Christians held in common, and 
 that every statement concerning the Eucharist made in 
 the Dialogues should be understood as accepted by both 
 speakers — they never contradict one another in this 
 matter, — and as the belief of Theodoret himself. 
 
 Certainly this 12mo. volume of some 350 pages is most 
 interesting. One could wish to see it pubUshed in an 
 authorized English translation. 
 
 NOTE I 
 FURTHER LIGHT ON MACARIUS MAGNES 
 
 Just as this volume is going to press I receive by the 
 kindness of an English scholar, the Rev. T, W. Crafer, 
 who has been preparing a translation of Macarius Mag- 
 nes for publication by the S. P. C. K, a copy (made by 
 hand) of the Greek of the passage about the Holy Eucha- 
 rist from the Apocritica (see my pages 157-160). He 
 has sent me also some papers of his own reprinted from 
 the Journal of Theological Studies (April and July, 1907, 
 and April and July, 1914), in which he maintains very 
 interestingly that these dialogues are a record of a real 
 debate, that the heathen critic was Hierocles, a Roman 
 magistrate who flourished about a.d. 300 in some of the 
 Asiatic provinces, that the Christian apologist was 
 a devoted follower of Origen, not at all an anti-Origenist, 
 as Macarius, the bishop of a century later was, and that 
 if Macarius of Magnesia really had anything to do with 
 these dialogues, it must have been as an editor of a 
 writing of long before. 
 
 I am not able to discuss the question. I will only 
 mention as a point which does not seem to have been 
 touched by the disputants, that the objection to the use 
 
270 NOTES 
 
 of the word "type" for the consecrated elements seems 
 to suggest the theology of the beginning of the fifth 
 century rather than that of a hundred years earlier. 
 If, however, Macarius of Magnesia edited a book of a 
 forgotten author, wc are left in utter obscurity as to the 
 dating of particular ojiinions which may appear in the 
 book in its present form, except, of course, that Origenistic 
 utterances must plainly be ascribed to the earlier writer. 
 
 For purposes of my owm book I am very glad to be 
 able to give the Greek of the passage in which Macarius 
 speaks of "the body which is the bread, and the blood 
 which bears the character of the wine." It runs thus: 
 TO al/ia OTTcp ecTTtv 6 apro?, koX to a-Zfw. o-rrep Tvy)(av€L 6 olvos. 
 With this use of rvyxo-vu it is interesting to compare a 
 passage of S. Cyril of Jerusalem quoted above, p. 101. 
 
 There is also an interesting passage in which Macarius 
 says that our Lord has taught us "that body and blood 
 are ahke from the earth, and have both the same sub- 
 stance": «f 77? etvai TO (Tw/ia koI tov aprov, koI /jluiv CKarepa 
 KiKTYjadai rrjv ovaiav. The same matter could be either 
 bread or body, according to this view. It would depend 
 upon the use made of it in the economy of God. 
 

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