which I give to you, is my body.' That is, is the symbol of my body ; precisely as we say of a statue, it is the person which it represents ; or as the Scriptures say that the sign is the thing of which it is the symbol, Ez. 5, 4. 5. Gal. 4, 24 ; or as our Saviour says, I am the vine, ye are the branches. I am the door ; or as in the preceding chapter it was said, " that rock was Christ ; " or as in John 1, 32, the dove is said to be the Holy Ghost ; or as baptism is said to be regeneration. This is a usage so familiar to all languages that no one dis- putes that the words in question will bear this interpretation. That they must have this meaning, would seem to be plain, 1. From the impossibility of the bread in Christ's hand being his literal body then seated at the table ; and the wine the blood then flowing in his veins. 2. From the still more obvi- ous impossibility of taking the words " this cup is the New Testament " in a literal sense. In Matt. 26, 28 it is said, " this (cup) is my blood." But Romanists do not hold to a transub- stantiation of the cup^ but only of the wine. But if the words are to be taken literally, they necessitated the belief of the one as^vell as of the other. 3. From the utter subversion of all the rules of evidence and laws of belief necessarily involved in the assumption that the bread in the Lord's supper is literally the crucified body of Christ. 4. From the infidelity on the one hand, and the superstitious idolatry on the other, which are the unavoidable consequences of calling upon men to believe so glaring a contradiction. It is only by denying all distinc- tion between matter and spirit, and confounding all our ideas of substance and qualities, that we can believe that wine is blood, or bread flesh.
The Romish interpretation of these words is, that the bread is the body of Christ, because its whole substance is changed into the substance of his body. The Lutherans say. It is his body, because his body is locally present in and with the bread. Calvin says. It is his body in the same sense that the dove (John 1, 32) was the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost appeared under the form of a dove, which was the pledge of his presence. So the bread is the symbol of Christ's body, because with the one we receive the other. What is received, however, and what Calvin calls Christ's body, and sometimes the substance of his body, is not the body itself, which, he ad- mits, is in heaven only, but a life-giving power (vim vivificam) which flows to us from the glorified body of our Lord. The only presence of Christ's body in the sacrament admitted by
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