§ 95. THE SACKAMENT OF THE EUOHAEIST. 499
distinction between tlie outward sign and the inAvard grace, which are equally essential to the conception of the sacrament. He maintains the figurative character of the words of institution, and of the discourse of Jesus on the eating and drinking of his flesh and blood in the sixth chapter of John ; with Tertullian, he calls the bread and wine ^'•Jlgurm " or " signa corporis et sanguinis Christi " (but certainly not mere figures), and insists on a distinction between " that which is visibly received in the sacrament, and that which is spiritually eaten and drunk,' or between a carnal, visible manducation of the sacrament, and a spiritual eating of the flesh of Christ and drinking of his blood.* The latter he limits to the elect and the believing, though, in opposition to the subjectivism of the Donatists, he asserts that the sacrament (in its objective import) is the body of Christ even for unworthy receivers. He says of Judas, that he only ate the bread of the Lord, while the other apostles " ate the Lord who was the bread." In another place : The mcrarnentum " is given to some unto life, to others unto destruction ; " but the res sacramenti, i, e., " the thing itself of which it is the sacramentum, is given to every one who is partaker of it, unto life." " He who does not abide in Christ, undoubtedly neither eats His flesh nor drinks His blood, though he eats and drinks the sacramentum {i. <?., the outward sign) of so great a thing to his condemnation." Augustine at all events lays chief stress on the spiritual participation. " Why preparest thou the teeth and the belly? Believe, and thou hast eaten."' He claims for the sacrament religious reverence, but not a superstitious dread, as if it were a miracle of magical efiect.' He also expressly
trine, Kahnis (Vom Abendmahl, p. 221, and in the second part of his Luth. Dogmatik, p. 207) frankly concedes.
' In Psalm, iii. 1 : " Convivium, in quo corporis et sanguinis sui figuram discipulis commenda\'it." Contra Adamant, xii. 3 {"sic/n.u)n corporis S2<i"); Contra advers. legis et prophet, ii. c. 9 ; Epist. 23; De Doctr. Christ, iii. 10, 16, 19; De Civit. Dei, xxi. c. 20, 25 ; De pcccat. mer. ac rem. ii. 26 (" quamvis non sU corpm Christi, sanctum est tamen, quoniam sacramentum est ").
" Tract, in Joh. 25: "Quid paras denies et ventrem? Crede, et manducasti." Comp. Tract. 26 : " Qui non manet in Christo, nee manducat carnem ejus, nee Mbi. ejus sanguinem, licet premat dentibus sacramentum corporis et sanguinis Christi."
* De Trinit. iii. 10: "Honorem tamquam religiosa possunt habere, stuporena temquiun mira non possunt."
500 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
rejects the hypoihesis of tlie ubiquity of Christ's body, vvhict had already come into use in support Df the materializing view, and has since been further developed by Lutheran divines iu support of the theory of consubstantiation. " The body with which Clu'ist rose," says he, " He took to heaven, whieli must be iu a place. . . . We must guard against such a conception of His divinity as destroys the reality of His flesh. For when the flesh of the Lord was upon earth, it was certainly not in heaven ; and now that it is in heaven, it is not upon earth." " I believe that the body of the Lord is in heaven, aa it was upon earth when he ascended to heaven." ' Yet thia great church teacher at the same time holds fast the real presence of Christ in the Supper. He says of the martyrs : " They have drunk the blood of Christy and have shed their own blood for Christ." He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements.
Augustine's pupil, Facundus, taught that the sacramental bread " is not properly the body of Christ, but contains the mystery of the body." Fulgentius of Euspe held the same symbolical view ; and even at a much later period we can trace it through the mighty influence of Augustine's writings iu Isidore of Sevilla, Beda Venerabilis, among the divines of the Carolingian age, in Eatranmus, and Berengar of Tours, until it broke forth in a modifled form with greater force than ever in the sixteenth century, and took permanent foothold in the Keformed churches.
Pope Leo I. is sometimes likewise numbered with the symbolists, but without good reason. He calls the communion a " spiritual food," ^ as Athanasius had done before, but sup-
' Ep. 146 : " Ego Domini corpus ita in coelo esse credo, ut erat in terra, quando ascendit in ccelum." Comp. similar passages in Tract, in Joh. 13; Ep. 187; Serm. 264.
" "Spiritualis alimonia." Tliis expression, however, as the connection of the passage in Serm. lix. 2 clearly shows, by no means excludes an operation of the sacrament on the body ; for " spiritual " is ofteu equivalent to " sui)eruatur*L" Even Ignatius called the bread of the Supper " a medicine of immortality, and Ul antidote of death " ((^a/jMa/cof aflofoo-tas, ai/TiSoTos Tov fir] a.irodav(7f, aWa ^j' (P \pi(TTcy 5ta Trai/To's), Ad Epbes. r, 20 ; though this passage is wanting in the shortfij Syriac recension