§ 95. THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHAKI8T. 493
I The realistic and mystic view is represented by several fatliers and the early liturgies, whose testimony we shall further cite below. They speak in enthusiastic and extravagant terms of the sacrament and sacrifice of the altar. They teach a real presence of the body and blood of Christ, which is included in the veiy idea of a real sacrifice, and they see iu the mystical union of it with the sensible elements a sort of repetition of the incarnation of the Logos. With the act of consecration a change accordingly takes place in the elements, whereby they become vehicles and organs of the life of Christ, although by no means necessarily changed into another substance. To denote this change very strong expressions are used, like fiera^oX^, fjierajSaXKeiv, fiera^dXkeaOai, fx,eTaaTOL')(^eiov(T6ai, fieTaTToielaOaL, mutatio, translation transfiguratio^ transformor tio j * illustrated by the miraculous transformation of water into "wine, the assimilation of food, and the pervasive power of leaven.
Cyril of Jerusalem goes farther in this direction than any of the fathers. He plainly teaches some sort of supernatural connection between the body of Christ and the elements, though not necessarily a transubstantiation of the latter. Let us hear the principal passages." "Then follows," he says in describing the celebration of the Eucharist, " the invocation of God, for the sending of his Spirit to make the bread the body of Christ, the wine the blood of Christ. For what the Holy Ghost touches is sanctified and transformed." " Under the type of the bread ' is given to thee the body, under the type
Augustine. But to this designation there are many objections. " Of the Synecdochian (Lutheran) interpretation of the words of institution the ancient church knew nothing." So says Kahnis, Luth. Dogmatik, ii. p. 221.
' But not yet the technical term transsubstanliatio, which was introduced by Paschasius Radbertus toward the middle of the ninth century, and the correspondrna Greeli term ixerovalamfi^, which is still later.
^ Comp. especially his five mystagogical discourses, addressed to the newly baptized. Cyril's doctrine is discussed at large in RUckert, Das Abendmahl, sein Wesen u. seme Geschichte, p. 415 if. Comp. also Neander, Dogmengesch. i. p. 426, and, in part against Riickert, Kahnis, Die Luth. Dogmatik, ii. p. 211 f.
• 'Ec Tiiiry aprovy which may mean either under the emblem of the bread (stiiJ existing as such), or under the outward form, sub specie panis. More na- Irally th former
494 THIRD PERIOD. A.l). 311-590.
of the wine is given to tliee the blood, that thou mayest he a i)artaker of tlie body and blood of Cln-ist, and be of one body and blood with him." ' " A fter the invoeation of the Holy Ghost the bread of the Eucharist is no longer bread, bnt the body of Christ." " Consider, therefore, the bread and the wine not aa empty elements, for they are, according to the declaration of the Lord, the body and blood of Christ." In support of this change Cyril refers at one time to the wedding feast at Cana, which indicates tlie Roman theory of change of substance ; but at another to the consecration of the chrism, wherein the substance is unchanged. He was not clear and consistent with himself. His opinion probably was, that the eucharistic elements lost by consecration not so much their earthly substance, as their earthly purpose.
Gregory of Nyssa, though in general a very faithful disciple of the spiritualistic Origen, is on this point entirely realistic. He calls the Eucharist a food of immortality, and speaks of a miraculous transformation of the nature of the elements into the gh)rified body of Christ by virtue of the priestly blessing.*
Chrysostom likewise, though only incidentally in his homilies, and not in the strain of sober logic and theology, but of glownng rhetoric, speaks several times of a union of our whole nature with the body of Christ in the Eucharist, and even of a rn.andncatio oralis.^
Of the Latin fathers, Hilary,* Ambrose,' and Gaudentius (f410) come nearest to the later dogma of transubstantiation. The latter says : " The Creator and Lord of nature, who produces bread from the earth, prepares out of bread his own body, makes of wine his own blood."'
" 'S.virnoifj.os KOL ffvfatfios avrov.
* Orat. catech. magna, c. 37. Comp. Neauder, 1. c. i. p. 428, and Kahnis, ii. 213.
* Of an e/j-TTri^ai tou? oSoVto? rp aapnl Kol cni/xwKaKTivat. Comp. the passages from Chrysostom in Ebrard and Riickert, 1. c., and Kahnis, ii. p. 215 fF.
* Dc Trinit. viii. 13 sq. Comp. Riickert, 1. c. p. 460 ff.
' De Myateiiis, c. 8 and 9, where a mutatio of the species clemeutorum by tl)e word of Christ is spoken of, and the clianging of Moses' rod into a serpent, and of the Nile into blood, is cited in illustration. The genuineness of this small work, however, is doubtful. Kiickert considers Ambrose the pillar of the medieval doc trine of the Supper, which he finds in his work De mysteriis, and De initiandia.
* Scnn. p. 42: "Ipse naturarum creator et dominns, qui producit de terre