having acknowledged that we have some communion with Christ, when they mean to describe it, represent us as merely partakers of his spirit, but make no mention of his flesh and blood, as though there were no meaning in those and other similar expressions: That his flesh is meat indeed; that his blood is drink indeed; that except we eat his flesh and drink his blood we have no life in us.'" he calls disclaiming the absurdities be omitted. And on the other hand, I know the impossibility of two persons in different places communicating at the same moment, if the real, substantial and true body be present in the communion, unless it be present in different places at the same time. Has Calvin attempted to solve this difficulty? He has in n. 8, told us that Christ was from the beginning the fountain of life: that the life was manifested by his assuming flesh; that man alienated by sin from God, lost the partici immortality, he should be received into communion with the incarnate word "resident in our flesh," openly exhibiting himself to our participation. I shall now give his own words. "He also makes the very flesh in which he resides the means of giving life to us, that by a participation of it, we may be nourished to immortality. I am the living bread, says he, which came down from Heaven. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. In these words he shows, not only that he is life, as he is the eternal word, who descended from Heaven to us, but that in descending he imparted that power to the flesh which he assumed, in order that it might communicate life to us. Hence follow these declarations. That his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed, meat and drink, by which the faithful are nourished to eternal life." From these passages, it is manifest, that Calvin did not believe with the Catholics nor with the Lutherans in the real presence, either by transubstantiation or by consub-pation of life; that to receive the hope of stantiation, nor did he believe with those Zuinglians, who considered that in eating bread and drinking wine, in the celebration of the Sacrament, they were eating Christ, by believing or having faith:-nor did he believe with others that it was an external profession of faith and confidence in him and in his redemption of us by his death; nor with others, that by partaking of the elements we partook of his spirit, and were enlivened by his faith and animated by his love: but he required that we should eat his flesh and drink his blood, though neither his flesh nor his blood was present in what was eaten and drunk. Thus Calvin introduced a new explanation. But it is much easier to understand what he did not believe, than what was precisely his doctrine. That he acknowledges some presence of Christ in the Sacrament, we should suppose from his expressions, n. 19. "It is necessary for us to establish such a presence of Christ in the sacred supper, as neither, on the one hand to fasten him to the element of bread, or to enclose him in it or to circumscribe him, which would derogate from his celestial glory." Catholics do not enclose him in it, nor circumscribe him, nor do they fasten him to the element of bread, because they say the bread ceases altoge ther to be there, at the moment of his arriving where it was. He proceeds, "nor on the other hand to deprive him of his corporeai dimensions, or to represent his body as in different places at once, or to assign it an immensity diffused through heaven and earth which would be clearly inconsistent with the reality of his nature. * * * These absurdities being disclaimed, I readily admit The next paragraph, n. 19, commenceswhatever may serve to express the true and "We conclude, that our souls are fed by the substantial communication of the body and flesh and blood of Christ, just as our corpoblood of the Lord, which is given the faith-real life is preserved and sustained by bread ful under the sacred symbols of the supper; and to express it in a manner implying not a mere reception of it in the imagination or apprehension of the mind, but a real enjoyment of it as the food of eternal life." I know of no words stronger to declare the real and true and substantial presence of Christ than those here used, if the first particle, or what In the next paragraph, n. 9, after showing that the flesh of Christ had not this power by nature, but is endued therewith by its union with the divine nature, he proceeds to say "therefore he showed that the fulness of life dwelt in his humanity, that whoever partook of his flesh and blood, might, at the same time, enjoy a participation of life." * "So the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain, which receives the life flowing from the Divinity, and conveys it to us. Now, who does not see that a participation of the body and blood of Christ is necessary to all who aspire to heavenly life?” The remainder of this paragraph continues a sort of a general description of the union of Church with Christ as a portion of his body. and wine. For, otherwise there would be no suitableness in the analogy of the sign, if our souls did not find their food in Christ; which cannot be the case unless Christ truly becomes one with us, and refreshes us by the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood. Though it appears incredible for the flesh of Christ from such an immense local * * does not thereby mean that he is received merely in the understanding and imagination, and concludes that paragraph with the pas sage which you have quoted, 40. distance to reach us, so as to become our food, we should remember how much the secret power of the Holy Spirit transcends all our senses, and, what folly it is to apply any measure of ours to his immensity. Let I must acknowledge that I do not underour faith receive, therefore, what our under- stand what Calvin teaches or believes, save standing is not able to comprehend, that the that it is something between Zuinglius and Spirit really unites things which are separa- Luther. Indeed, he tells us himself, n. 7, ted, by local distance." * * "For "If, however, it be possible, in any words, to which reason the Apostle said the cup of unfold so great a mystery, which I find myblessing which we bless is it not the commu- self incapable of comprehending, even in my nion of the blood of Christ? The bread mind; and, this I am ready to acknowledge, which we break is it not the communion of that no person may measure the sublimity the body of Christ? Nor, is there any cause of the subject by my inadequate representato object that it is a figurative expression by tion of it. On the contrary, I exhort my which the name of the thing signified, is given readers not to confine their thoughts within to the sign. I grant indeed that the break- such narrow and insufficient limits, but to ing of the bread is symbolical, and not the endeavor to rise much higher than I am able substance itself: yet, this being admitted, to conduct them: for as to myself, whenever from the exhibition of the symbol we may I handle this subject, after having endeavorjustly infer the exhibition of the substance, ed to say every thing, I am conscious of havfor unless any one would call God a deceiv- ing said but very little, in comparison with er, he can never presume to affirm that he its excellence. And, though the conceptions sets before us an empty sign. Therefore, if of the mind can far exceed the expressions by the breaking of bread, the Lord truly re- of the tongue; yet, with the magnitude of presents the participation of his body, it the subject, the mind is oppressed and overought not to be doubted that he truly pre-whelmed. Nothing remains for me, theresents and communicates it. And it must al-fore, but to break forth in admiration of that ways be a rule with the faithful, wherever mystery which the mind is unable clearly to they see the signs instituted by the Lord, to understand, or the tongue to express." assure and to persuade themselves that they In considering this and similar passages are also accompanied with the truth of the in Calvin's works, I am led to think that this thing signified. For to what end would our writer had no precise notions upon the subLord deliver into our hands the symbol of ject, that he neither knew what to believe, his body, except it be to assure us of a real nor what to teach respecting the nature of participation of it? If it be true that the visi- the Eucharist. I do not mean respecting the ble sign is given to us to seal the donation object of its institution, nor respecting its of the invisible substance, we ought to enter-effects: for upon those two points there is tain a confident assurance that in receiving the symbol of this body, we at the same time truly receive the body itself." In his next paragraph, he concludes the description of his opinion of the nature of this Sacrament. In it, we find the following expressions: n. 11, "When I intend to give a familiar view of this truth, I am accustomed to state three particulars which it includes: the signification; the matter or substance which depends upon the signification; and the virtue or effect which follows from both. The signification consists in the promises, which are interwoven with the sign. What I call the matter or substance is Christ, with his death and resurrection.-By the effect, I mean redemption, righteousness, sanctification, eternal life, and all the other benefits which Christ conferred upon us." Thus, we at length would seem to have arrived at a declaration, that Christ is the substance of the Eucharist and this by the secret power of the Holy Spirit. He then proceeds to say, that although Christ is received by faith, he not so much difference, but concerning what was the nature of the sacrament, that is, whether it was mere bread and wine, or if not, what substance did the communicant actually receive. The Catholic plainly said, that it was only the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but producing upon the senses the same impression, as if it was bread and wine. The Lutherans of that day, said that it was not only the substance of the body and blood of Christ, but also the substance of bread and wine; but that the latter substances alone made any impression on the human senses. The Zuinglian said that the only substances which were present were those of bread and wine. He said that there was no miracle, but that this observance was instituted for a special purpose, and produced certain spiritual effects. The Catholic and the Lutheran both said that an exertion of the miraculous power of God was necessary, but the Lutheran required probably one miracle more than was required by the Catholic. Calvin rejects the Catholic doctrine, he rejects that of the Lutheran, and also that of the Zuinglian. What does he say is the substance received? I have deeply read; I have closely examined; I have reflected as well as I could, and I cannot tell.-Nor do I believe he could tell himself, and if any of his admirers can inform me, it certainly will be an addition to the little stock of knowledge that I possess. You tell us that whilst the Reformers agreed in rejecting transubstantiation, they differed among themselves as to what they should substitute in its stead. But Calvin goes still farther, for he rejects consubstantiation and the mere figurative sense, and he appears to me to differ not only with others but with himself as to what he shall substitute in their stead. He too requires miracles to be wrought in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. (Same chapter, n. 24,) "But the infamy of this falsehood cannot be entirely effaced, without repelling another calumny for they accuse us of being so devoted to human reason, as to limit the power of God by the order of nature, and to allow him no more than our own understanding teaches us to ascribe to him. Against such iniquitous aspersions, I appeal to the doctrine which I have maintained; which will sufficiently evince that I am far from measuring this mystery by the capacity of human reason, or subjecting it to the laws of nature. * * * * We say that Christ descends to us, both by the external symbol and by his spirit, that he may truly vivify our souls with the substance of his flesh and blood. He who perceives not that many miracles are comprehended in these few words, is more than stupid; for there is nothing more preternatural, than for souls to derive spiritual and heavenly life from the flesh which had its origin from the earth, and was subject to death; nothing is more incredible than for things separated from each other by all the distance of heaven and earth, notwithstanding that immense local distance, to be not only connected but united, so that our souls receive nourishment from the flesh of Christ. Let those fanatics, then, no longer attempt to render us odious by such a calumny, as though we in any respect limited the infinite power of God; which is either a most stupid mistake or an impudent falsehood." In n. 31, he writes of Catholics and Lutherans, "They are exceedingly deceived, who cannot conceive any presence of the flesh of Christ in the supper, except it be attached to the bread. * * * * * * The only question between us, therefore, respects the manner of this presence; because they place Christ in the bread, and we think it unlawful for us to bring him down from Heaven. Let the reader judge on which side the truth lies. Only let us hear no more of that calumny, that Christ is excluded from the sacrament, unless he be concealed under the bread. For as this is a heavenly mystery, there is no necessity to bring Christ down to the earth, in order to be united to us." (No. 32.) "If any one inquire of me respecting the manner, I shall not be ashamed to acknowledge, that it is a mystery too sublime for me to be able to express, or even to comprehend; and to be still more explicit, I rather experience it than understand it. Here therefore, without any controversy, I embrace the truth of God, on which I can safely rely. He pronounces his flesh to be the food, and his blood the drink of my soul. I offer him my soul to be nourished with such aliment. In his sacred supper he commands me, under the symbols of bread and wine, to take and eat, and drink, his body and blood: I doubt not that he truly presents, and that I receive them." I could multiply quotations not only from his Institutions, but from his Catechisms and other works, placing in a more forcible way his declarations leading to believe a real, true and substantial presence of the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, by the mysterious and miraculous power of God, at the time of communion. I could adduce a great many of his arguments and vituperations against consubstantiation. But this letter has already swollen too much. I shall therefore only exhibit one or two of his declarations upon this latter subject. In the same chapter, xvii, n. 16, he says of some Lutherans, "by placing the body itself in the bread, they attribute ubiquity to it, which is incompatible with its na ture."-After remarking on this he says, n. 17: "Some plead with a little more subtility, that the body of Christ which is given in the sacrament, is glorious and immortal, and that therefore it involves no absurdity, if it be contained under the sacrament in various places, or in no place, or without any form." Calvin assails their position only by an effort to distinguish the glorious and the mortal body into different substances. The only difference between this division of Lutherans and Catholics on this head is, that the former say that the substance of bread and wine remain, whilst the latter state, that the substance alone of Christ remains, producing the same sensible impressions, as if bread and wine continued. In n. 20: Calvin again assails the Lutherans on their effort to hold to the words of the Institution. "Those who acknowledge the continuance of the bread in the supper, and affirm that it is accompanied with the real body of Christ differ considerably among 6 themselves. Those of them who express themselves more modestly, though they strenuously insist on the literal meaning of the words, This is my body. yet afterwards depart from their literal precision, and explain them to import that the body of Christ is with the bread, in the bread and under the bread. * * * * But if they object to every trope, and insist on taking the words in a sense strictly literal, why do they forsake the language of Christ and adopt a phraseology of their own so very dissimilar? For there is a wide difference between these two assertions, that the bread is the body,' and that the body is with the bread.' But because they perceived the impossibility of supporting this simple proposition, that the bread is the body,' they have endeavored to escape from their embarrassment by those evasions. Others more daring, hesitate not to assert, that in strict propriety of speech, the bread is the body; and thereby prove themselves to be advocates for a truly literal interpretation." You will observe that Catholics and others who teach the doctrine of transubstantiation, hold that there being no bread, the proposition which Calvin here combats is absurd, but the argument which follows, of course, has no application to their doctrine. Calvin continues-"If it be objected then that the bread is Christ, and Christ is God, they will deny this, because it is not expressed in the words of Christ. But they will gain nothing by their denial of it, for it is universally admitted that the whole person of Christ is offered to us in the sacrament. Now it would be intolerable blasphemy to affirm of a frail and corruptible element, without any figure, that it is Christ. I ask them whether these two propositions are equivalent to each other: Christ is the Son of God, and Bread is the body of Christ." It was after a similar train of argument that he concludes, n. 23, by the following observation" at the same time, as if their victory consisted in obstinacy and calumny, they charge us with accusing Christ of falsehood, if we inquire into the true meaning of his words." "Now it will be easy for the reader to judge how unjustly we are treated by those syllablehunters, when they persuade the simple to believe that we derogate from the authority due to the words of Christ, which we have proved to be outrageously perverted and confounded by them, but to be faithfully and accurately explained by us." Luther in order to sustain, better as he thought, the doctrine of the real presence by consubstantiation, maintained in 1527, the doctrine of Ubiquity, or that the body of Christ is every where, though invisible, except in heaven: hence, that it was present in the sacramental bread,--though upon this principle, it was equally present in any bread or any meat. This was strenuously upheld in 1559, by Illyricus, Westphalus, James Andrew, Smeidelin, Chytræus and other eminent Lutherans. It was his dislike of ubiquity that caused Melancthon to seek an union with Calvin. It was then the doctrine of a large portion of Lutherans when Calvin wrote as follows in the same chapter of his Institutes, n. 30: "It is evident that some persons would rather incur the greatest disgrace by betraying their ignorance, than even relinquish the least particle of their error. I speak not of the Romanists whose doctrine is more tolerable, or at least more modest: but some are so carried away with the heat of contention as to affirm on account of the union of two natures in Christ, that wherever his divinity is, his flesh, which cannot be separated from it, is there also." Thus, supposing the truth of the real presence, Calvin saw that the doctrine of the Catholics was more Conformable to the letter of the Institution, and to the true nature of Jesus Christ than was that of the Lutherans. We are not, however, to expect constant and consistent adherence to such or similar declarations. I repeat then, that although I can understand the teaching of the Catholic Church, that of the Lutherans, and that of the Zuinglians, yet I am perfectly unable to form any distinct and clear notion of Calvin's opinion, nor whether he had any precise, positive notions on the subject of the Eucharist himself. Thus in n. 10 he writes-"We conclude, that our souls are fed by the flesh and blood of Christ, just as our corporal life is preserved and sustained by bread and wine." It is certainly by receiving food into our bodies, and its being as it were transfused through them, that our life is sustained; hence he says: “Now that holy participation of his flesh and blood, by which Christ communicates his life to us just as if he actually penetrated every part of our frame, in the sacred supper he also testifies and seals, and that not by the exhibition of a vain and ineffectual sign, but by the exertion of the energy of his spirit, by which he accomplishes that which he promises." Whereas in n. 31 he writes, "I candidly confess that I reject that mixture of the flesh of Christ with our souls, or that transfusion of it into us which they teach: because it is sufficient for us that Christ inspires life into our souls from the substance of his flesh, and even infuses his own life into us, though his flesh never actually entered into us." I believe, Rev. Sir, that I have now made it sufficiently plain, that at the period that those gentlemen whom you call Reformers, rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, they could not say, if our Saviour did not teach that doctrine, what it was that he did really teach concerning the nature of the Eucharist. I have, Rev. Sir, the honor to be, Yours, &c., LETTER VI. To the Rev. John Bachman, D. D., &c. REV. SIR,-Protestants frequently boast that their religion existed before Luther, not only, as some of them have said, in the Bible; but, as others say, in the Confessions of Faith of various Churches, whose existence may be traced for centuries before Luther was born. Indeed, we are furnished with a few specimens, which, if we were less acquainted with the laws of criticism, and had most of our historical documents destroyed, would seem to show that the Confession of Augsburg was not the first good Protestant enumeration of doctrinal propositions: and, our sympathies are enlisted on behalf of a variety of sufferers, whom the tyranny and bigotry of the Roman Catholic Church, it is said, had persecuted for professing the true doctrine of Christ, during centuries before either Luther or Zuinglius saw the light. I am not, Rev. Sir, one of those who would strip persons claiming such ancestry of all their pretensions. I am perfectly ready to admit the force of their demand, to a considerable extent. Do they say that before the days of Luther there were separatists who charged the Church of Rome with error and apostacy? I acknowledge that there were. And, if I attempted to deny it, I should be easily refuted and exposed. Do they assert that these separatists held the same doctrines which Protestants teach at present? I am free to avow that there are very few tenets in which Protestants differ from the Catholic Church, for which difference one or the other of these sects could not be claimed as a predecessor. But, if you ask, did any one of them hold exactly the same tenets that are now held by any division of Protestants? I answer: Certainly no! And, I go farther, and say, that neither Luther, nor Zuinglius, nor Calvin, either undertook or intended to find any Church in existence, to which he would unite himself. Thus, though Protestants did not, in leaving the Catholic Church, unite themselves to any that was in existence, but formed new societies, still all their teachings were not new. They agreed in many of their opinions with the Church that they had left; they revived many which seem ed to have been abandoned, and they agreed in others with some remnants of existing sects that still survived in opposition. I propose, then, at present, as we have glanced at the history of the doctrine regarding the Eucharist from the dispute at Jena, between Luther and Carlostadius, in August, 1524, to the close of that century; to go back and trace an outline of the teachings against transubstantiation, from the beginning of the Christian era to the period of Luther's secession from the Church. Be not alarmed, Sir, the review will not be tedious! I assume, as I trust I shall at a future day demonstrate, that the teaching of the Saviour was the doctrine of Transubstantiation. I shall not, just now, dwell upon the fact, that its truth was contradicted even before the institution of the Sacrament, by those persons of whom it is related by the Evangelist, (St. John vi, 53,) "The Jews, therefore, disputed amongst themselves, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?" 61, "Many of his disciples hearing it, said, this saying is hard, and who can hear it ?"-and, 67, "Many of his disciples therefore from this time left him, and went away, and walked no more with him." I shall look for incredulous disciples, after the period of his ascension and of the descent of the Holy Ghost. You are aware that from a very early period in the schools of Asia, of Egypt, and of Greece, men were led away by a vain philosophy into a variety of systems, which be wildered the human mind, and carrying man into the regions of fancy, subjugated the understanding to the power of the imagination. Amongst the first professors of Christianity, in the very days of the Apostles, were men of this description, the first efforts of whose speculative and restless minds were to explain the doctrines of the Saviour by the principles of their systems, and to substitute their own opinions for the simple testimony of their religious teachers. Proud of their supposed knowledge, they gloried in the name of Gnostics, and undertook to demonstrate by philosophy what the body of believers received as mysterious truths, delivered by God for their information, not for their discussion. A considerable portion of those persons looked upon bodies to have been created by the principle of evil, they forbad marriage, and they considered Jesus Christ to be so perfectly pure and holy, that they taught that nothing which appertained to him was the production of the evil one— therefore that he had no body, but that in a phantasmatic appearance he showed himself to men, as if he had flesh. They denied the truth of the Incarnation. Of them, St. John |