THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
" The true body and blood of Christ are truly present under the form of bread and wine, and are there communicated to and received by those that eat in the Lord's Supper " (iii. 13).
Afterward Melanchthon changed this article in the edition of 1540, substituting for distribuantur (" communicated ") exhibeantur (" shown "). This departure occasioned much controversy. The Lutheran doctrine is thus given in the Formula of Concord (1576), Art. VII., Affirmative:
" We believe, teach, and confess that in the Lord's Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and that they are truly distributed and taken together with the bread and wine " (iii. 137).
The authoritative teaching of the Reformed Churches is thus given: First Helvetic Confession (1536), XXIII. :
" The bread and wine [of the Supper] are holy, true symbols, through which the Lord offers and presents the true communion of the body and blood of Christ for the feeding and nourishing of the spiritual and eternal life " (iii. 225).
So also in the Second Helvetic Confession, Cap. XXI. (iii. 291-295).
The French Confession of Faith (1559), XXXVL, XXXVIII. :
" The Lord's Supper is a witness of the union which we have with Christ, inasmuch as he not only died and rose again for us once, but also feeds and nourishes us truly with his flesh and blood, so that we may be one in him, and that our life may be in common."
" The bread and wine in the sacrament serve to our spiritual nourishment, inasmuch as they show, as to our sight, that the body of Christ is our meat, and his blood our drink " (iii. 380, 381).
The Scotch Confession of Faith (1560), Art. XXL:
" The faithful in the richt use of the Lord's Table do so eat the bodie and drinke the blude of the Lord Jesus that he remains in them and they in him " (iii. 467-474).
The Belgic Confession (1561), Art. XXXV.:
" Christ that he might represent unto us this spiritual and heavenly bread hath instituted an earthly and visible bread as a Sacrament of his body, and wine as a Sacrament of his blood, to testify by them unto us, that, as certainly as we receive and hold this Sacrament in our hands, and eat and drink the same with our mouths, by which our life is afterward nourished, we also do as certainly receive by faith (which is the hand and mouth of our soul) the true body and blood of Christ our only Savior in our souls, for the support of our spiritual life " (iii. 428-431).
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Ques. 76:
" What is it to eat of the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ? It is not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ, and thereby to obtain the forgiveness of sins and life eternal, but moreover, also, to be so united more and more to his sacred body by the Holy Ghost, who dwells both in Christ and in us, that although he is in heaven, and we are upon the earth, we are nevertheless flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, and live and are governed forever by one Spirit, as members of the same body are by the one soul " (iii. 332, 333).
The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1562), Art. XXVIII. :
" The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a [heavenly and spiritual] partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ " (iii. 505).
So the Irish Articles of Religion (1615; iii. 542, 543). The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chap. XXIX.:
" The Lord's Supper [is] to be observed for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of himself in his death, the sealing of all benefits thereof with true believers, their spiritual nourishment and growth in him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe. unto him; and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him, and with each other, as members of his mystical body."
" Worthy believers do inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his death " (iii. 663-667).
The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Ques. 96:
" What is the Lord's Supper? A sacrament wherein by the giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth, and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all its benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace " (iii. 697).
The Confession of the Society of Friends (1675), Thirteenth Proposition:
" The communion of the body and blood of Christ is inward and spiritual, which is the participation of his flesh and blood, by which the inward man is daily nourished in the hearts of those in whom Christ dwells; of which things the breaking of bread by Christ with his disciples was a figure, which they even used in the Church for a time, who had received the substance, for the cause of the weak; even as ' abstaining from things strangled, and from blood '; the washing one another's feet, and the anointing of the sick with oil; all which are commanded with no less authority and solemnity than the former; yet seeing they are but the shadow of better things, they cease in such as have obtained the substance " (iii. 797).
Reformed Episcopal Articles of Religion (1875), Art. XXVII. :
" The Supper of the Lord is a memorial of our Redemption by Christ's death, for thereby we do show forth the Lord's death till he come. It is also a symbol of the soul's feeding upon Christ. And it is a sign of the communion that we should have with one another " (iii. 823).
IV. The Liturgy in the Churches of the Reformation.— 1. Luther and the Lutheran Church: Although Luther hoped for a complete renewal of the whole life of the people by the preaching of a pure gospel, he did not try to attain this end by making
his own external arrangement of the 1. Luther's ordinances of public worship. Look- First Form, ing upon himself as a member of the
one Church, and bearing in mind how the people were accustomed to liturgical forms, he concluded to retain as much of the Roman mass as did not conflict with the word of God. His order for the celebration of the Lord's Supper is, therefore, only to be fully understood by a comparison with the Roman Mass (q.v.). He kept the first part of it almost unchanged as far as the creed; but the introduction of a sermon at this point made a sharp division between the missa catechumenorum and the offertory and canon which followed. In regard to the offertory of the mass, Luther declares in his Formula missce (1523) that from that point nearly everything savors of a sacrifice, and that accordingly, repudiating all that has this meaning, he has retained what is pure and holy. On this basis, he struck out the offertory and the five following prayers, and went on, after the creed and sermon, to (a) the preface of the Roman mass, somewhat abridged, and then immediately to (b) the words of institution in Latin, beginning, as in the mass, " Qui pridie quam pateretur," but leaving out all