§ 95. THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST. 497
St. Basil, likewise, in explaining the words of Christ, " I live by the Father" (John vi. 57), against the Arians wlio inferred from it that Christ was a creature, incidentally gives a spiritual meaning to the fruition of the eucharistic elements. " We eat the flesh of Christ," he says, " and drink His blood, if we, through His incarnation and human life, become partakers of the Logos and of wisdom." '
Macarius the Elder, a gifted representative of the earlier Greek mysticism (f 390), belongs to the same symbolical school ; he calls bread and wine the antitype of the body and blood of Christ, and seems to know only a spiritual eating of the flesh of the Lord.*
Theodoret, who was acknowledged orthodox by the council of Chalcedon, teaches indeed a transformation {fiera^dWeiv) of the eucharistic elements by virtue of the priestly consecration, and an adoration of them, which certainly sounds quite Romish, but in the same connection expressly rejects the idea of an absorption of the elements in the body of the Lord, as an error akin to the Monophysite. " The mystical emblems of the body and blood of Christ," says he, " continue in their original essence and form, they are visible and tangible as they were before [the consecration] ; ' but the contemplation of the spirit and of faith sees in them that which they have become, and they are adored also as that which they are to believers." *
' Epist. viii. c. 4 (or Ep. 141 in the older editions) : Tpwyonef yap alrov r^v ffdpKa Kol irij'O/uei' avTou rh alij.a, k o iv aiv ol y ivo fxe i/o i 5ia T'ijs ivapBponrriaeu^ koI rfjs aitrOrjTTjs ^cdtjs tov \6jov k al ttjs <ro(pias. Sap/ca yap Kal ai/na iraaav aiirov t V iJ.v(TTtKT}v e tt 1 5 tj m ' a " {i. e., a spiritual incarnation, or His internal com- \n(^ to the soul, as distinct from His historical incarnation] wuofiacre koI tV ^k '"'paK- TtKTJi Kal (pvtnKris koJ 6to\oytKrjs avviariicrav S iS aa k a\ iai>, SI ris rpfcperat x^/ux^ Kal irphs t5iv ivToiv Qeoipiav irapaaKiva^srai. Kat tovto ((Tti ih e/c rov priTov icrca^ S-nAov/xefor. This passage, overlooked by Klose, Ebrard, and Kahnis, but noticed by Riickert and more fully by Steitz (1. c. p. 127 fif".), in favor of the sjTnbolical view, is the principal one in Basil on the Eucharist, and must regulate the interpretation of the less important allusions in his other writings.
'^ Hom. xxvii. 17, and other passages. Steitz (1. c. p. 142 S.) enters more fully Into the views of this monk of the Egyptian desert.
' Dial. ii. Opera ed. Hal. tom. iv. p. 126, where the orthodox man says agiinst the Eranist; Ta nvaTiKO. avfi.^o\a . . . /ifVet iivX tijs irporepas ova las Kal tov a XT) jULaTos Kal tov elfSous, Ka\ opaTa iari /col aTrra, ola koX TrpoTipov ijv.
* npovKwiiTai is iKslpo. uvra ainp iriffTeveTai. These words certainly prove that
498 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Similar language occurs in an epistle to the monk Csesariiu asci'ibed to Chrysostom, but perhaps not genuine ; ' in Ephraiin of Antioch, cited by Photius; and even in tlie Koman bishop Gelasius at the end of the fifth century (492-496).
The latter says expressly, in his work against Eutyclies and Nestorius : " The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, is a divine thing, because by it we are made partakers of the divine nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease. And assuredly the image and the similitude of the body and blood of Christ are cele brated in the performance of the mysteries." *
It is remarkable that Augustine, in other respects so decidedly catholic ill the doctrine of the church and of baptism, and in the cardinal points of the Latin orthodoxy, follows the older Afi-ican theologians, Tertullian and Cyprian, in a symbolical theory of the Supper, which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith, and in this respect stands nearest to the Calvinistic or orthodox Reformed doctrine, while in minor points he differs from it as much as from transubstantiation and consubstantiation,* He was the first to make a clear
the consecrated elements are regarded as being not only subjectively, but in some sense objectively and really what the believer takes them for, namely, the body and blood of Clirist. But with this they also retained, according to Theodoret, thcit natural reality and their symbolical character.
' Ep. ad Cffisarium monach. (in Chrys. Opera, torn. iii. Pars altera, p. 89"? of the new Paris ed. of Montfaucon after the Benedictine) : " Sicut enim antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nominamus : divina autem ilium sanctificantc gratia, mediante sacerdote, liberatus est quidem ab appellatione panis ; dignus autem habitus dominici corporis appellatione, etiamM nahira paids in ipso permansit, et nou duo corpoia, sed unum corpus FiUi prajdicamus." This epistle is extant in full only in an old Latin version.
■■' De duabus naturis in Christo adv. Eutychen et Nestorium (in the Bibl. Max, Patrum, torn. viii. p. "703) . . . " et tamcn esse non desinit subdantia vel naiura panis et vini. Et certe imago et similitudo corporis et sanguinis Christi in actionc mysteriorum celebrantur." Many lloman divines, througli dogmatic prejudice, doubt the genuineness of this epistle. Comp. the Bibl. Max. torn. viii. pp. 699-700.
' From his immense dogmatic authority, Augustine has been an apple of contention among the different confessions in all controversies on the doctrine of the Supper. Albertinus (De euchar. pp. 602-742) and Ruckert (1. c. p. 35S ff.) have successfully proved that he is no witness for the lloman doctrine ; but they go too fai when they make him a mere symboUst. Tliat he as httle favors the Lutheran docv