Chapter 11: The New and Old Sacraments
received by the holy Patriarchs, we say that the meat was altogether the same, and the drink the same with the substance of our sacraments.
Augustine, unto Marcellinus, writeth of the difference of these sacraments, that unto a prudent man it may suffice that by some sacraments it was foreshowed when Christ should come, and that by others it ought to be showed when He was come: where Augustine seemeth to have only a regard to the difference of the time. And in his little book De Utilitate Verae
Poenitentiae Agendae, he very plainly writeth, that the old fathers when they had manna did eat the very same thing that we do eat. For (saith he) they did eat the very same spiritual meat. What else is the very same, but because they did eat even that which we do? And because unto some man it might have seemed an unworthy thing that we have no more than the Jews had, he urgeth the testimony of Paul, unto whom (saith he) it was not enough to say that the old fathers had spiritual meat, but he would add that they had the very same: whereby we may understand that they in their manna did eat the very same thing that we do eat, therefore he added, the very same. Neither is it a let which some do say: that he spake of spiritual eating, to wit, that the Patriarchs believed in Christ to come. First, because these men are not able to confirm their fleshly eating of Christ: secondly, because the old fathers not only believed with their mind, but received a token of the thing believed, that is manna or water, therefore the thing did not stand only in faith: and the saying of Augustine standeth fast: that the meat of the fathers was not only spiritual but the same.
Chapter 11:
The New and Old Sacraments It little also availeth if thou object, out of the same Augustine upon Psalm
73 in the prologue, the differences between the new and the old sacraments: