blood of Christ, just as our corporal life is preserved by bread and wine. For the analogy of the signs would not hold, if our souls did not find their aliment in Christ, which, however, cannot be the case, unless Christ truly coalesce into one with us, and support us through the use of his flesh and blood. It may seem incredible indeed that the flesh of Christ should reach us from such an immense local distance, so as to become our food. But we must remember how far the power of the Holy Spirit trans- cends all our senses, and what folly it must be even to think of reducing his immensity to our measure. Let faith then embrace what the understanding cannot grasp, namely, that the spirit truly unites things which are totally separated. Now this sacred communication of his flesh and blood, by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if He penetrated our bones and marrow, He testifies and seals in the holy supper ; not by the exhibition of a vain and empty sign, but by putting forth such an energy of his Spirit as fulfils what He promises."
In 1561 Calvin wrote in answer to the Lutheran Hesshuss, and with an irenical purpose, his tract " De participatione carnis et sanguinis Christi in sacra coena." In an appendix to that Tract, he says, " The same body then which the Son of God once offered in sacrifice to the Father, he daily offers to us in the supper, that it may be our spiritual aliment. Only that must be held which was intimated as to the mode, that it is not necessary that the essence of the flesh should descend from heaven in order that we may feed upon it ; but that the power of the Spirit is sufficient to penetrate through all impediments and to surmount all local dis- tance. At the same time we do not deny that the mode here is incomprehensible to human thought; for flesh naturally could neither be the fife of the soul, nor exert its power upon us from heaven ; and not without reason is the communication, which makes us flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, denominated by Paul a great mystery. In the sacred supper we acknowledge it a miracle, transcending both nature and our understanding, that Christ's life is made common to us with Himself, and his flesh given to us as aliment." 1
Again, " These things being disposed of, a doubt still appears with respect ]to the word ' substance ' ; which is readily allayed if we put away the gross imagination of a manducation of the flesh,
Don secus acsi in ossa et medullas penetraret, in coena etiam testatur et obsignat; et quidem non objecto inani aut, vacuo signo, sed efficaciam Spiritus sui illic proferens, qua impleat, quod promittit." 1 Works, Amsterdam, 1667 ; vol. viii. p. 744, a, b.
628 PART m. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
Lord's Supper, that to which the whole service is directed, is the remembrance of Christ's body devoted, and of his blood shed for the remission of our sins. This remembrance, however, cannot take place without true faith. And although the things of which the service is a memorial, are not visible or present after a visible or corporal manner, nevertheless believing apprehension and the assurance of faith renders them present in one sense to the soul of the believer. He has truly eaten the bread of Christ .... who believes on Christ, very God and very man, crucified for us% on whom to believe is to eat, and to eat is to believe Be- lievers have in the Lord's Supper no other life-giving food than that which they receive elsewhere than in that ordinance. The believer, therefore, receives both in and out of the Lord's Supper, in one and the same way, and by the same means of faith, one and the same food, Christ, except that in the supper the reception is connected with the actions and signs appointed by Christ, and accompanied with a testifying, thanksgiving, and binding service. v . . . Christ's flesh has done its work on earth, having been offered for our salvation ; now it no longer benefits on earth and is no longer here."
Calvin's Doctrine.
While Calvin denied the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist, in the sense in which that presence was asserted by Romanists and Lutherans, yet he affirmed that they were dynamically present. The sun is in the heavens, but his light and heat are present on earth. So the body of Christ is in heaven, but from that glorified body there radiates an influ- ence, other than the influence of the Spirit (although through his agency), of which believers in the Lord's Supper are the recipients. In this way they receive the body and blood of Christ, or, their substance, or life-giving power. He held, therefore, that there was something not only supernatural, but truly miraculous, in this divine ordinance.
He says : 1 " We conclude that our souls are fed by the flesh and
i Institutio iv. xvii. 10; edit. Berlin, 1834, part ii. p. 407. "Summa sit, non aliter animas nostras came et sanguine Christi pasci, quam panis et vinum corporalem vitam tuentur et sustinent. Neque enim aliter quadraret analogia signi, nisi alimentum suura animsc in Christo reperirent: quod fieri non potest, nisi nobiscum Christus vere in unum coalescat nosque reficiat carnis sua? esu et sanguinis potu. Etsi autem incredibile videtur, in tanta locorum distantia penetrare ad nos Christi carnem, ut nobis sit in cibum, mem- inerimus, quantum supra sensus omnes nostros emineat arcana Spiritus sancti virtus et quam stultum sit, ejus immensitatem modo nostro velle metiri. Quod ergo mens nostra non comprehendit, concipiat fides, Spiritum vere unire, quae locis disjuncta sunt. Jam sacram illam carnis et sanguinis sui communicationem, qua vitam suam in nos transfundit Christus,