II. The Doctrine. — In the Confession of the Synod of the fourth Lateran Council, transubstantiation is thus defined: "There is only one universal Cliiirch, beyond which no man can in any way be saved. In which Je- sus Christ is himself the priest and sacrifice, whose body and blood are really contained in the sacrament of the altar, under the form of bread and wine, being transub- stantiated, the bread into the body and the wine into the blood, by divine power." By the institution of Corpus Christi Day by pope Urban IV in 1264 and pope Clem- ent V in 1311 at the Synod of Vieiine. the doctrine in question was expressed in a liturgical form and its pop- ularity secured. Henceforth the sacrifice of the mass formed inore than ever the centre of the Catholic ritual, and reflected new glory npon the priesthood.
The change effected by transubstantiation is declared to be so perfect and coni[)lete that, by connection and concomitance, the soul and divinity of Christ coexist with his tlesh and blood under the species of bread and wine; and thus the elements, and every particle there- of, contain Christ whole and entire — divinity, humanity, soul, body, and blood, with all their component parts. Nothing remains of the bread and wine except the acci- dents. The whole (iod and man Christ Jesus is con- tained in the bread and wine, and in every particle of the bread, and every drop of the wine. The natural result of such a doctrine is the elevation of the Host for adoration, a practice unknown till the rise of transub- stantiation.
It is claimed by the advocates of transubstantiation that it had the belief and approval of the early fathers of the Church. Bingham {Christ. A ntiq. bk. xv, ch. v, § 4) asserts that "the ancient fathers have declared as plainly as words can make it that the change made in the elements of bread and wine by consecration is not such a change as destroys their nature and substance, but only alters their qualities, and elevates them to a spirit- ual use, as is done in man}' other consecrations, where the qualities of things are much altered without any real change of substance." We give some extracts from the authorities quoted by Bingham. Thus Gregory of Nyssa {De Bapt. Christi, iii, 360), "This altar before which we stand is but common stone in its nature . . • but after it is consecrated to the service of God, and has received a benediction, it is a holy table, an im- maculate altar, not to be touched bj- any but the priests, and that with the greatest reverence. The bread also at first is but common bread, but when once it is sancti- fied by the holy mystery, it is made and called the body of Christ." Cyril of Jerusalem {Catech. Myst. iii, note 3), " Beware that you take not this ointment to be bare ointment; for as the bread in the eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Spirit, is not mere bread, but the body of Christ, so this holy ointment, after invocation,
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is not bare or common ointment, but it is the gift or grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit, who by his presence and divine nature makes it etHeacious." Clirysostom, in his famous Epistle to CV*«'i«*', explaining the two nat- ures of Christ — that he had both a human and a divine substance in reality— says, "As the bread, before it is sanctified, is called bread, but after the divine grace has sanctilied it by the mediation of the priest it is no longer called bread, but dignified with the name of the body of the Lord, though the nature of bread remain in it, and they are not said to be two, but one body of the Son; so here, the divine nature residing or dwelling in the human body, they both together make one Son and one Person." When this passage was lirst produced by Peter iMartyr, it was looked upon as so unanswerable that the llomish Church declared it to be a forgery, and it was stolen from the Lambeth Library during the reign of nueen Mary. Theodoret plainly says that tlie bread and wine remain still in their own nature after consecration. Augustine, instructing the newly bap- tized respecting the sacrament, tells them that what they saw upon the altar was bread and the cuji. as their own eyes could testify to them; but what their faith re- quired to be instructed about was that the bread is the body of Christ, etc. Answering an objection, supposed to be urged, that Christ had taken his body to heaven, Augustine replies, " Tliese things, my brethren, are therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing- is seen and another is understood. That which is seen has a boilily appearance; that which is understood has a spiritual fruit." He also says that "this very bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ; consequently it could not be his natural body in the substance, but only sacramentally. The natural body of Christ is only in heaven, but the sacrament has the name of his body, because, though in outward, visible, and corporeal ap- pearance it is only bread, yet it is attended with a spirit- ual fruit." Isidore, bishop of Seville (A.D. 630), speak- ing of the rites of the Church, saj's, " The bread, because it nourishes and strengthens our bodies, is therefore called the body of Christ; and the wine, because it creates blood in our tiesh, is called the blood of Christ, Now, tliese two tilings are visible, but, being sanctified by the iloly (xhost, they become the sacrament of the Lord's body" {De Eccles. Offic. i, 18). From the time of Paschasius this doctrine had been the subject of angry contention, and one of its bitterest o]iponents was the able scholastic writer Duns Scotus, whose opinions were maintained in the 11th century by Berengarius and his numerous followers.