§ 117. THE lord's supper. 589
In the eucliaristic controversy, which raged with such fury in the age of the Reformation, and was the chief cause of separation in its ranks, Calvin consistently occupied from the beginning to the end the position of a mediator and peacemaker between the Lutherans and Zwinglians, between Wittenberg and Ziirich.
The way for a middle theory was prepared by the Tetrapolitan or Swabian Confession, drawn up by Martin Bucer, a born compromiser, during the Diet of Augsburg, 1630,i and by the Wittenberg Concordia, 1536, which for a while satisfied the Lutherans, but was justly rejected by the Swiss.
Calvin published his theory in its essential features in the first edition of the Institutes (1536), more fully in the second edition (1539), then in a special tract written at Strassburg. He defended it in various publications, and adhered to it with his usual firmness. It was accepted by the Reformed Churches, and never rejected by Luther; on the contrary, he is reported to have spoken- highly of Calvin's tract, De Coena Domini., when he got hold of a Latin copy in 1545» a year before his death.^
Calvin approached the subject with a strong sense of the myster}^ of the vital union of Christ with the believer, which is celebrated in the eucharist. "I exhort my readers," he says, in the last edition of his Institutes^ " to rise much higher than I am able to conduct them ; for as to myself, whenever I handle this subject, after having endeavored to say everything, I am conscious of having said but very little in comparison with its excellence. And though the conceptions of the mind can far exceed the expressions of the tongue ; yet, with the magnitude of the subject, the mind itself is
1 Ch. XVIII. See vol. VI. 720.
2 See vol. VI. 660. But Luther never gave up his dislike of Zwingli ; and in one of his last letters, in which he describes himself as " iii/elicissimus omnium hominum," he wrote : " Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the Sacramenlnrians, nor standeth in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sitteth in the seat of the Zurichers." De Wette, V. 778.
590 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
oppressed and overwhelmed. Nothing remains for me, therefore, but to break forth in admiration of that mystery, which the mind is unable clearly to understand, or the tongue to express." ^
He aimed to combine the spiritualism of Zwingli with the realism of Luther, and to avoid the errors of both. And he succeeded as well as the case will admit. He agreed with Zwingli in the figurative interpretation of the words of institution, which is now approved by the best Protestant exegetes, and rejected the idea of a corporal presence and oral participation in the way of transubstantiation or consubstantiation, which implies either a miracle or an omnipresence of the body of Christ. But he was not satisfied with a purely commemorative or symbolical theor}^ and laid the chief stress on the positive side of an actual communion with the ever-living Christ. He expressed in private letters the opinion that Zwingli had been so much absorbed with overturning the superstition of a carnal presence that he denied or obscured the true efficacy of the sacrament.^ He acknowledged the mystery of the real presence and real participation,
1 Inst. IV. ch. XVII. 7.
2 He wrote from Strassburg, May 19, 1539, to Andre Zebe'dee, a minister at Orbe : " Nihil fuisse asperitatis in Zwinglii doctrina, tibi minime concedo. Siquidem videre promptum est, ut nimiu7n occupatus in evertenda carnalis prasentice superstitione, veram communicationis vim ut simul disjecerit, ant certe obscurarit." Herininjard, V. 318. In the same letter he characterizes Zwingli's view Sis falsa et perniciosa. In a letter to Farel, Feb. 27, 1540, he disapproves Ze'be'de'e's extravagant eulogy of Zwingli, and expresses his preference for Luther : " Nam si inter se comparantur, scis ipse, quanta intervallo Lutherus excellat." But he disowns any intention to dishonor his memory. Herminjard, V. 191. In a letter to Richard du Bois, from Strassburg, 1540 {ibid. VI. 425), he says, with evident allusion to Zwingli and CEcolampadius, that he never liked the view of those who in "evertenda localis prasenlice superstitione nimis occupati, vera prasentice virtutem vel elevabant extenuando, vel subticendo ex hominum memoria quodammodo delebant. Sed est aliquid medium," etc. In a letter to Viret (Sept. 3, 1542, in Opera, XI. 438) he remarks that he never read all of Zwingli's works, and hoped that towards the end of his life he retracted and corrected what first had escaped him carelessly, but " I remember, in his earlier writings how profane his doctrine of the sacraments is (ijuam profana sit ejus de sacramentis doctrina) ."