642 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
faith as broken and shed for our salvation, and exert upon us their proper effect.1 " The body of Christ is in heaven at the right hand of God," says the Helvetic Confession. " Yet the Lord is not absent from his Church when celebrating his supper. The sun is absent from us in heaven, nevertheless it is efficaciously present with us ; how much more is Christ, the sun of righteousness, though absent as to the body, present with us, not corporally in deed, but spiritually, by his vivifying influence." Calvin says : " Every imagination of local presence is to be entirely removed. For while the signs are upon earth seen by the eyes and handled by the hands, Christ, so far as He is a man, is nowhere else than in heaven ; and is to be sought only by the mind and by faith. It is, therefore, an irrational and impious* superstition to include Him in the earthly elements." He likewise teaches that Christ is present . in the promise and not in the signs.2 Ursinus, one of the principal authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, in his Exposition of that formulary, says: "These two, I mean the sign and the thing signified, are united in this sacrament, not by any natural copulation, or corporal and local existence one in the other ; much less by transubstantiation, or changing one into the other; but by signifying, sealing, and exhibiting the one by the other ; that is, by a sacramental union, whose bond is the promise added to the bread, requiring the faith of the receivers. Whence it is clear, that these things, in their lawful use, are always jointly exhibited and received, but not without faith of the promise, viewing and apprehending the thing promised, now present in the sacrament ; yet not present or included in the sign as in a vessel containing it ; but present in the promise, which is the better part, life, and soul of the sacrament. For they want judgment who affirm that Christ's body cannot be present in the sacrament except it be in or under the bread ; as if, forsooth, the bread alone, without the promise, were either a sacrament, or the principal part of a sacrament."
1 " Corpus Christi in ccelis est ad dextram patris. Sursum ergo elevanda sunt corda, et non defigenda in panem, nee adorandus dominus in pane. Et tamen non est absens ec- clesise suae celebranti coenam dominus. Sol absens a nobis in ccelo, nibilominus efficaciter praesens est nobis : quanto magis sol justitiae Christus, corpore in coelis absens nobis, praesens est nobis, non corporaliter quidem, sed spiritualiter per vivificam operationem. (xxi. ; Niemeyer, Collectio Confessionum, Leipzig, 1840, p. 522.) Calvin says (Consensus Tigu- rinus, xxi. ; Ibid. p. 196): " Praesertim vero tollenda est quaelibet localis praesentias imagi- natio. Nam quum signa hie in mundo sint, oculis cernantur, palpentur manibus : Christus quatenus homo est, non alibi quam in ccelo, nee aliter quam mente et fidei intelligentia quaerendus est. Quare perversa et impia superstitio est, ipsum sub dementis hujus mundi includere."
2 Consensus Tigurinus, x. ; p. 194.
* Summe of Christian Religion, by Zacharias Ursinus, London, 1645; Catechmn of Christian Religion, quest. 77, p. 434.