There is, therefore, a presence of Christ's body in the Lord's Supper; not local, but spiritual ; not to the senses, but to the mind and to faith; and not of nearness, but of efficacy. If the presence is in the promise, then the body of Christ is present, offered to and received by the believer whenever and wherever he embraces and appropriates the promise. So far the doctrine of the Reformed Church is clear.
Manducation.
Our Lord in John vi. 53-58, expressly and solemnly declares that except a man eat of his flesh, and drink his blood, he has no life in him ; and that whoso eateth his flesh and drinketh his blood, hath eternal life. It is here taught that the eating spoken of is necessary to salvation. He who does not eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, has no life in him. He who does thus eat, shall live forever. Now as no Christian Church, not even the Roman, maintains that a participation of the Lord's Supper is essential to salvation, it is plain that no such Church can consistently believe that the eating spoken of is that which is peculiar to that ordi- nance. Again, the Scriptures so clearly and variously teach that those who believe in Christ; who receive the record God has given of his Son ; who receive Him ; who flee to Him for refuge ; who lay hold of Him as their God and Saviour, shall never perish but have eternal life ; it is plain that what is expressed in John vi. by eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his blood, must be the same thing that is elsewhere expressed in the various ways just referred to. When we eat our food we receive and appro- priate it to the nourishment of our bodies ; so to eat the flesh of Christ, is to receive and appropriate Him and his sacrificial work for the life of our souls. Without this appropriation of Christ to ourselves we have no life ; with it, we have life eternal, for He is our life. As this appropriation is an act of faith, it is by believing that we eat his flesh and drink his blood. We accordingly find that this is recognized in all the leading Confessions of the Reformed Church. Thus in the Zurich Confession it is said, " Eating is believing, and believing is eating." The Helvetic Confession, as quoted above,1 says, that this eating takes place as often as and wherever a man believes in Christ. The Belgic Confession says,2 " God sent Christ as the true bread from heaven which nourishes
i Page 636.
2 " Deus panem vivificum misit, qui de ccelo descendit, nempe Jesum Christum : is nu- trit et sustentat vitam fidelium spiritualem, si comedatur, id est, applicetur et recipiatur Spiritu per fidem." xxxv.; Niemeyer. Collectio Confessionum, p. 385.
644 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
and sustains the spiritual life of believers, if it be eaten, that is, if it be applied and received by the Spirit through faith." Faith, as shown above, is, in all these Confessions, declared to be the hand and the mouth by which this reception and appropriation are ef- fected. A distinction may be, and often is, made between spirit- ual and sacramental manducation. But the difference between them is merely circumstantial. In the former the believer feeds on Christ to his spiritual nourishment, without the intervention and use of the elements of bread and wine ; in the latter, he does the same thing in the use of those elements as the divinely ap- pointed sign and seal of the truth and promise of God.
Although the Confessions are thus uniform and clear in their assertion, " that eating is believing," the theologians, in some in- stances, make a distinction between them. Thus Calvin says : 1 " There are some who define in a word, that to eat the flesh of Christ, and to drink his blood, is no other than to believe on Christ Himself. But I conceive that in that remarkable discourse, in which He recommends us to feed upon his body, He intended to teach us something more striking and sublime ; namely, that we are quickened by a real participation of Him, which he desig- nates by the terms eating and drinking, that no person might suppose the life which we receive from Him to consist in simple
knowledge At the same time, we confess there is no
eating but by faith, and it is impossible to imagine any other ; but the difference between me and those whose opinion I now oppose is this, .... they consider eating to be faith itself, but I apprehend it to be rather a consequence of faith." Among the moderns Dean Alford makes much the same distinction. " What is this eating and drinking ? Clearly, not merely faith : for faith answers to the hand reached forth for the food, — but not the act of eating. Faith is a necessary condition of the act : «o that we can hardly say, with Augustine, * Crede, et manducasti ; * but 4 crede et manucabis.' " 2 Eating, he says, implies the act of ap-
1 " Sunt enim qui manducare Christi camera, et sanguinem ejus bibere, uno verbo defin- iunt, nihil esse aliud, quam in Christum ipsum credere. Sed mihi expressius quiddam ac sublimius videtur voluisse docere Christus in praeclara ilia concione, ubi carnis suae mandu- cationem nobis commendat: nempe vera sui participatione nos vivificari, quam manducandi etiam ac bibendi verbis ideo designavit, ne, quam ab ipso vitam percipimus, simplici cog- nitione percipi quispiam putaret. Quemadmodum enim non aspectus, sed esus panis cor- pori alimentum sufficit, ita vere ac penitus participem Christi animam fieri convenit, ut ipsius virtute in vitam spiritualem vegetetur. Interim vera hanc non aliam esse, quam fidei manducationem fatemur, ut nulla alia fingi potest. Verum hoc inter mea et istorum verba interest, quod illis manducare est duntaxat credere : ego credendo manducari Christi carnem, quia fide noster efficitur, eamque manducationem f ructum effectumque esse fidei dico." Institutio, iv. xvii. 5; edit. Berlin, 1834, pp. 403, 404.
a Greek Testament, John vi. 53; edit. London, 1859, vol. i. p. 723.