propriation. This is a distinction without a difference. It con- cerns simply the extent given to the meaning of the word faith. If faith be merely knowledge and assent, then there is a difference between believing and eating, or appropriating. But if by faith we not merely receive as with the hand, but appropriate and ap- ply what is thus received, the difference between believing and eating disappears. When we are commanded to eat the flesh and to drink the blood of Christ, we are commanded to act ; and the act required is an act of faith ; the act of receiving and appro- priating Christ and the benefits of his redemption. The language of Calvin above quoted is to be taken in connection with his ex- plicit declaration already cited, that the Christian receives and feeds on Christ whenever he truly believes ; and with the fact that he admits that the believer eats Christ as fully elsewhere as in the Lord's Supper ; and especially with the fact that the saints under the old dispensation ate of the same spiritual meat and drank of the same spiritual drink as fully and as really as believ- ers now do. The Reformed understood that " eating and drink- ing," as used in John vi. 51-58, must be understood " figuratively of the spiritual appropriation of Christ by faith," because our Lord makes such eating and drinking essential to salvation. On this point the Lutherans are of one mind with the Reformed, in so far as their leading theologians understand all that is said in John vi. of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, of the appro- priation of his sacrificial death by the act of believing.
What is received in the Lord's Supper.
The question, What is the act we perform in eating ? and, What it is we eat ? are distinct, though the answer to one may determine the answer to the other. If the manducation is not with the mouth but by faith, then the thing eaten must be spirit- ual and not material. Nevertheless our Lord says we must eat his flesh and drink his blood , and all the Reformed Confessions teach that we receive the body and blood of Christ, although not " after a corporal or carnal manner." In answer to the question, What is here meant by the body and blood of Christ ? the almost uni- form answer is, (1.) That it is not the matter of his body and blood. (2.) That it is not his body and blood as such. (3.) That it is not his glorified body now in heaven. His body and blood were received by the disciples before his death, and consequently before his ascension and glorification, and it is not disputed that believers since the apostolic age receive what the Apostles re-
646 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
ceived when this sacrament was instituted. (4.) That we receive Christ's body as broken, or as given unto death for us, and his blood as shed for the remission of sins. (5.) That therefore to receive the body and blood as offered in the sacrament, or in the Word, is to receive and appropriate the sacrificial virtue or effects of the death of Christ on the cross. And, (6.) That as Christ and his benefits are inseparable, they who receive the one receive also the other ; as by faith through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost we are united to Christ so as to be members of that body of which He is the head and the perpetual source of life. By faith, therefore, we become one with Him, so as to be flesh of his flesh, in a sense analogous to that in which husband and wife are no more two, but one flesh.
Although Calvin admitted all these propositions, he neverthe- less, at times, teaches that what the believers receive is specifically an influence from the glorified body of Christ in heaven. Thus he says : " We admit without circumlocution that the flesh of Christ is life-giving, not only because in it once our salvation was obtained, but because now, we being united to Him in sacred union, it breathes life into us. Or, to use fewer words, because, be- ing by the secret power of the Spirit engrafted into the body of Christ, we have a common life with Him ; for from the hidden fountain of divinity, life is, in a wonderful manner, infused into the flesh of Christ, and thence flows out to us." 1 Again, " Christ is absent from us as to the body ; by his Spirit, however, dwelling in us, He so lifts us to Himself in heaven, that he transfuses the life-giving vigour of his life into us, as we grow by the vital heat of the sun.,, 2 If by the word " flesh," in this connection, we understand the humanity of Christ, there is a sense in which the passages above quoted may be understood in accordance with the common doctrine not only of the Reformed, but of all Christian churches. When Paul said " I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," he no doubt meant by Christ the incarnate Son of God clothed in our nature at the right hand of God. It is a divine- human Saviour, He who is both God and man in two distinct na- tures and one person forever, in whom and by whom we five, and who dwells in us by his Spirit. Unless we are willing to accuse the illustrious Calvin of inconsistency, his meaning must be made to harmonize with what he says elsewhere. In the " Consensus Tigurinus," he says : " Christus quatenus homo est, non alibi quam in coelo, nee aliter quam mente et fidei intelligentia quae-
1 See his Consensionis Capitum Expositio, Niemeyer, pp. 213, 214. 3 Ibid. p. 215.