640 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1680.
colloquy to be conducted in Latin, which would have placed him on an equality with Luther; but it was decided to use the German language in deference to the audience.
John Feige, the chancellor of the Landgrave, exhorted the theologians in an introductory address to seek only the glory of Christ and the restoration of peace and union to the church.
The debate was chiefly exegetical, but brought out no new argument. It was simply a recapitulation of the preceding controversy, with less heat and more gentlemanly courtesy. Luther took his stand on the words of institution in their literal sense: ‘This is my body;” the Swiss, on the word of Christ: “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.”
Luther first rose, and declared emphatically that he would not change his opinion on the real presence in the least, but stand fast on it to the end of life. He called upon the Swiss to prove the absence of Christ, but protested at the outset against arguments derived from reason and geometry. To give pictorial emphasis to his declaration, he wrote with a piece of chalk on the table in large characters the words of institution, with which he was determined to stand or fall: ‘ Hoe est corpus Meum.”
(Ecolampadius in reply said he would abstain from philosophical arguments, and appeal to the Scriptures. He quoted several passages which have an obviously figurative meaning, but especially John 6:68, which in his judgment furnishes the key for the interpretation of the words of institution, and excludes a literal understanding. He employed this syllogism: Christ cannot contradict himself; he said, “The flesh profiteth nothing,” and thereby rejected the oral manducation of his body; therefore he cannot mean such a manducation in the Lord’s Supper.
Luther denied the second proposition, and asserted that
§ 108. THE MARBURG CONFERENCE CONTINUED. 641
Christ did not reject oral, but only material manducation, like that of the flesh of oxen or of swine. I mean a sublime spiritual fruition, yet with the mouth. To the objection that bodily eating was useless if we have the spiritual eating, he replied, If God should order me to eat crab-apples or dung, I would do it, being assured that it would be salutary. We must here close the eyes.
Here Zwingli interposed: God does not ask us to eat crabapples, or to do any thing unreasonable. We cannot admit two kinds of corporal manducation; Christ uses the same word “to eat,” which is either spiritual or corporal. You admit that the spiritual eating alone gives comfort to the soul. If this is the chief thing, let us not quarrel about the other. He then read from the Greek Testament which he had copied with his own hand, and used for twelve years, the passage John 6:52, “ How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” and Christ’s word, ver. 63.
Luther asked him to read the text in German or Latin, not in Greek. When Christ says, “The flesh profiteth nothing,” he speaks not of his flesh, but of ours.
Zwingli: The soul is fed with the spirit, not with flesh.
Luther: We eat the body with the mouth, not with the soul. If God should place rotten apples before me, I would eat them.
Zwingli: Christ’s body then would be a corporal, and not a spiritual, nourishment.
Luther: You are captious.
Zwingli: Not so; but you contradict yourself.
Zwingli quoted a number of figurative passages; but Luther always pointed his finger to the words of institution, as he had written them on the table. He denied that the discourse, John 6, had any thing to do with the Lord’s Supper.
At this point a laughable, yet characteristic incident occurred. “Beg your pardon,” said Zwingli, “that passage [John 6: 63] breaks your neck.” Luther, understanding