Chapter 32: Confuting the Arguments for Transubstantiation
some dignity: as it happens in the consecration of Bishops, where the King, the Crosier's staff, or the labels of the Miter, are signs of things given and granted, and yet no vain signs. For the things which they signify are most certainly given. The very same thing I have shown to be done in Sacraments.
Chapter 32:
Confuting the Arguments for Transubstantiation Now let us confute the arguments of these men whereby they endeavour to prove their Transubstantiation. As touching the first, we answer that Christ promised his flesh or his body or blood to be meat and drink, and that in the 6th of John: which he performs as often as we believe that he truly died for us. He also performed it when in the supper he instituted this Sacrament:
For unto that spiritual eating, he added signs.
But specially they object, "This is my body": about the truth of which saying stands the controversy: albeit only as touching the manner: for both they and we affirm the proposition to be true, and we contend only about the sense. They affirm the proposition to be plain, and we on the other side say, that Augustine in "De doctrina Christiana" teaches that we must not interpret one place in a way that contradicts many others, but so as it may agree with the rest. Neither must they always claim a plainness of the sense.
Otherwise, when it is said, "Let us make man to our own image and likeness," the heretics called Anthropomorphitae arise and infer that God has a body and a soul and other members as we see them to be framed in man.
You say that this similitude must be referred to the soul because through it man rules over other creatures as God does: but they say that these things
are written of man, and that you vainly attribute to a part, namely to the soul, that which is pronounced of the whole. You again object that God is a spirit, and that a spirit has not flesh and bones, and so by other places of the Scriptures, you gather the sense of this one place. The Arians said that they had a plain sense of the place: "The Father is greater than I." You restrain this to the nature of man because in other places, the divinity of Christ is declared unto you: as in the first of John and in the Epistle to the Romans the 9th Chapter: and in the 5th Chapter of John's Epistle Christ says: "He that hath not a sword let him buy one." Whereby he seems to stir up to revenge: but if you have respect to other places, you will perceive it is spoken figuratively.
Paul says: "Pray without ceasing." The heretics called Euchites thought that we should apply ourselves to perpetual and close whispering prayers, when it is said elsewhere: "He that provideth not for his own, and especially for his household, renounces his faith, and is worse than an infidel." And again:
"Let all things be done in order." And again: "He that laboureth not let him not eat." The heretics called Chiliastae, or Millenarij, thought that they had a most plain word in the Apocalypse, the 20th Chapter, regarding a thousand years wherein Christ shall reign with his saints. The Sabellian heretics said: "There is no difference between the Father and the Son," by reason of the place: "I and the Father are one," Also Philip: "He that seeth me, seeth the Father," and "As I am in the Father, so likewise the Father abides in me." These things the heretics said were plain and made for them.
The Ebionites affirmed Christ to be a mere creature, and they said that these words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," could not otherwise be understood, seeing that God never forsakes Himself.
Because it is written in the 6th of John: "He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood shall not die at any time," some have said that it follows that they who have lawfully communicated once cannot perish everlastingly. This error Augustine in "De Civitate Dei" manifestly refutes. The words of the