Chapter 21: The Fellowship of Saints and Transubstantiation
He might still after His ascension rule the Church by His own self, and be present with His Apostles. But He saith that He would leave a vicar in His stead: namely the Holy Ghost, who had not been necessary, if whole Christ as touching divinity and humanity (as these men will) were present. For seeing the flesh and body of Him is by participation in each one of us
(according to their doctrine) and that His godhead is present, He might deal by His own self without the Holy Ghost to be the prompter.
Mary the mother of the Lord, the most blessed virgin, when she had heard of the Angel, that the word of God should take flesh upon Him, and that she was chosen to conceive and bring forth the Son of God, she judged these to be strange and wonderful things, and demanded how these things should be, and so forth. But this translation of the bread into the body of Christ, seeing it is no less matter than is that mystery of His incarnation and nativity of the Virgin, it is a wonder that in the holy scriptures there is found neither admiration nor question demanded of that matter: and that in none of the writings of the Evangelists or Apostles, this belief of transubstantiation is commended unto us, being a thing of so great importance. Neither do we hearken unto some that say, in the sixth chapter of John there went a question before: because the answer that was there given of spiritual eating, they will now transfer unto this sacramental eating, which nevertheless they assign to be another than that was. For us therefore doth that question and answer serve, but it nothing at all profiteth these men, who feign another eating differing from that spiritual eating, to wit, this eating which we now have in hand.
Chapter 21:
The Fellowship of Saints and Transubstantiation
Other inconveniences and absurdities do follow the feigning of these things.
For Christ said: "I will that where I am, there also my minister should be:" and He spake the same oftentimes to His Apostles. And in the Apocalypse we read of certain martyrs: "They follow Him wheresoever He shall go."
Whereupon would be concluded, that in the Eucharist, not only should be affirmed transubstantiation into the body of Christ, but into all the Saints.
Which if it displease them, let them leave Christ in heaven with His saints, otherwise they shall follow Him together for company.
But they say: We suffer Him also to be in heaven, visible and in His majesty and glory, but yet herein the sacrament we affirm Him to be invisible: and those things which be objected as touching the fellowship of the Saints and martyrs, they be true as touching Christ, according as He is visible in heaven in His glory and majesty. This answer leaneth upon a false ground: for it admitteth that one and the same body of Christ is in many places at once: which the fathers deny. It admitteth that Christ is with us as touching
His body and flesh; whereas He said, that as touching these things, He would send another in His place, namely, the Holy Ghost.
Neither can they avoid it that Christ had two bodies, seeing in the supper when He had taken bread into His hands, if it had been transubstantiated into His body, yet He Himself had borne His own body with His body, and it should be necessary to grant both the body bearing and the body borne to be both one, when as nevertheless one and the same agent and patient in respect of one and the selfsame thing in one very time cannot be. And thus we see into what absurdities they cast themselves.
They are wont to bring Augustine upon the Psalms, who said that Christ bare Himself in His own hands. But if the place which is written upon the 73rd Psalm be considered, that He, after a sort, bare Himself in His own hands: that also do we grant, because He bare in His own hands the sacrament of His own body, and not properly and really His own body. Add