The Eucharist

1 98 The Wo rks of H uld reich Zwing li [1 8]

THE EUCHARIST

-seven articles * one, the eighteenth , on the Eucharist, in which I wrote many things with a View rather to the times than to the thing itself .

For Two years ag o I wrote among Sixty n ot even Christ could praise enough the faithful steward of His word who in due season sets meat before the household of his Lord ; of whom He speaks with admiration in Matt . 24 : 45

" that is, h ow great, is the faithful and wise steward "Who,

to whom hi s lord hath entrusted his household to give them "

I determined , therefore, unceasingly so food in due season ? to dispense the word as to reap the largest harvest for my Lord .

For who would not cast off a servant who shoul d proceed to plough the ground in the dead of wi nter and to sow seed in it?

These things are to be done in the spring time .

So I made many concessions at that time to the tender minds of those for whom I wrote, but all for their ediﬁcati on .

After the example of Christ I distributed and kept in store as well ; for after He had instituted the Eucharist, He said [Jn . 1 6 : 1 2 -1 3] that He had yet many things which must be told to the disciples , but they could n ot bear them then ; therefore He determined to keep them until the coming of the Holy Spirit .

When , there fore , kind reader, you come upon some things here which you have not seen in my earlier writings, or some things said more plainly here than elsewhere , and some things said differently, do not be astonished .

I did n ot . wish to give food when the time was un seasonable, or to cast pearls before swine [M t . 7: 6]

Indeed , even if I could have done it without any danger, I did n ot wish to put things forth at a time when no on e would receive them .

I repeat here, therefore , what I said there , with the understanding that what I Oﬂ 'er here , in the forty-secondi year of my age , Shall outweigh what I offered in the fortieth , when , as I said , I wrote rather with a view to the times than to the thing itself, according to the Lord 's command that we Shall do our edifying in such fashion as n ot to be torn to pieces by the dogs and swine at the start [cf. Mt . 7

For I fear that if there is anywhere pernicious error in the adoration and wor ' Aucleg en a nd Gr and s der St ussreden.

'Zwi ngl i wa s born Janua ry 1 , 1484 .

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i on ship of the on e true God , it is in the abuse of the Eucharist . If this had retained its proper use, according to the institution of Christ, there would not have crept in such atrocious sins against God 's people , the Church .

Now we are all bent upon handling holy things, or upon having them about us— yea , I will say it plai nly, upon making holy by our own merit, forsooth , things that perhaps are not holy ( for everybody knows how much h as been expended on the bones of the pious to provide for their worship) — rather than upon making ourselves holy . The result is that we worship with embraces and kisses wood , stones , earth , dust, shoes , vestments , rings, hats , swords , belts , bones , teeth , hair, milk , bread , quadras , tablets , wine, knives , jars , and anything that pious men have ever handled .

And ( most fool ish thing of all) we think ourselves distinctly blessed if we have got just a look at any such thing ; we promise ourselves the remission of our sins, prosperous fortun e , and the whole world .

But true piety , which i s nothing else than blamelessness pre served through love and fear of God , we have abandoned SO completely that not even among i nﬁdels do we see ordinary , that is , human , righteousness so utterly prostrate as among Christians .

We have fancied that we do something worth while if we have high sentiments about holy things , though holiness has been ascribed to them by ourselves, or if we talk about them in most polished terms, and yet ourselves teem the while with all uncleann ess, just like whited sepul chres [ cf. Mt .

23 :

To be on e who trusts in God and is holy— this it was to be a Christian .

Let n o one , then , when he hears me talking of the Eucharist, form such a judgment about me as to think that because Zwingli h as sai d a thing it must be accepted— ii , perchance , there are any who have sworn such allegiance to the man , though I fancy there are few or none . On the other hand, let no man cast aside what he sees brought from the fountain sources of the hidden things of God because he who brings them is a humble writer .

I see sins committed in both these direc tions . In every instance judgment is to be suspended until the cause h as been heard to the end and we see clearly what verdict should be pronounced .

The Greeks gave th e name Ei 's Supper, havi ng always, if I may be permitted to say so, b een more zxa pwr i a to the Lord '

The Wo rks of H uldreich Zwing li pious and more learned men than the Latins, as their written works bear witness clearer than day .

And they undoubtedly gave it this name for the reason that they understood, both from faith and from the meaning of the words of Christ and the Apostle , that Christ wished to have a joyful commemoration of Himself made by this supper and thanks given publicly for the blessing which He has bountiful ly bestowed upon us . For V the Eucharist is a thanksgiving .

He, therefore , that would take part in this publi c thanksgiving should prove to the whole

Church that he is of the number of those who trust in the Christ who died for us : to remove , to withdraw , or to estrange one '

's self from that number, whether by desertion or by uncleanness of life , would be the height of faithlessnes s . Hence , also, the Eucharist is called Communion or Communication by Paul , I Cor .

From this comes excommunication , too, or denying someone access to this communication of the faith ful on account of impurity of life .

We therefore n ow under stand from the very name what the Euchari st, that is, the

's Supper, is : namely, the thanksgiving and common rejoicing of those wh o declare the death of Christ, that is, trumpet, praise , confess , and exalt His name above all others .

But since that most signiﬁcant discourse of Christ Lord 's which is embraced in the sixth chapter of John is not correctly under stood by the great majority, though they boldly distort it into other meanings , I have determined above all things to declare the primary sense of this passage , that they who force all

Scripture willy -nilly to serve their own view may not be able to get here weapons to defend their error .

When Christ saw that those who were coming to Him were given over to their bellies and came to Him on that account [Jn . 6 : 26] according to His custom He took occasion to teach a lesson from the Situation .

Therefore , soon after they were ﬁlled He thus addressed them :

"Ye come to me for the sake of being ﬁlled with food ; but I came into this world not to act as a steward of bodily food , but to feed the mind .

Ye work and sweat, following me for the food of the belly .

Ye slothful ones , work for the food that surely will n ot perish ; for that which thus far ye seek perisheth with the belly ; but the food that I will give you is spiritual , and hence cannot perish but abideth

The Wo rks Of H uldreich Zwing li therefore, not comprehending the words of Christ, which were nothing else than the explanation of the gospel ( for by "eat ing bread" He means believing the word of the gospel) , say " Jesus , therefore, said unto them [John to Him [Jn . 6 : 34] "Lord , evermore give Us this bread .

"I am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall in n o wise hunger ; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst .

Hearing Christ say that the bread which came down out of heaven gives life to the world, the Jews desired that this bread be evermore given to them .

Jesus , understanding that they did n ot comprehend the meaning of the gospel , explains what this bread is, so life giving that it can make the whole world live , and says [Jn .

"I am the bread of life .

He, therefore, that cometh to me , that is, who is grafted upon me , who receiveth me, shall

" is here used for "receiveth , " And that "cometh to in no wise feel hunger .

" the following words indicate :

"He that b eli ev eth on me shall n ot thirst .

It is faith , therefore , that allays all hunger and thirst .

But what hunger, and what thirst ?

Those of the soul , of course .

Faith in Christ is, therefore , the only thing that can give such food and drink to the heart that it shall want nothing further .

Christ continues :

"But I said unto you , that ye have seen me, and yet believe n ot .

What else is this than , "Ye wonder that I said that 'he that cometh ' when yet ye are here present with me and subject to hunger and thirst .

This comes from the fact that ye have looked upon me and even still look upon me with the eyes of the ﬂesh .

But I am n ot speaking of this kind of sight or nearness , but of the light of faith .

If any man has that, he shall want nothing .

He will not seek by night for some on e whom he may love and to whom he may lament to me shall neither hunger nor thirst,

his burnings [ cf. Jn . n or will he wander distractedly about .

For he is sure that He whom he holdeth i s the true spouse and only treasure of the soul , and he will thirst for no other .

Ye have n ot this light of faith , for ye do n ot trust in me .

Hence ye do n ot understand how I am the food , that is, the hope , of the soul .

And the reason for your blindness is, to say nothing harder, that the Father hath not drawn you into knowledge of me .

Otherwise ye would receive me [ cf.

Jn .

For [Jn . 6 : 37-38] all that which the Father giveth

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n me shall come unto me .

And I for my part cast out none that cometh to me .

For I am come down from heaven not to do my will , the will that you attribute to me just as to other men

( I am , indeed , true man , and according to that nature also have a will of my own , but on e much more obedient than yours ; for your will Often resists the will of God , but mine always Obeys) —I am come down from heaven , then , to do the will of him that sent me .

And that you may know what is the will of him that sent me , I say ; This is the will Of my Father , who sent me , that of all that which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but shoul d raise it up at the last day .

But that ye may know this also , what ye ought to understand by the words , ' and 'The Father giveth me 'The Father hath given me , '

I will speak more plainly : This is the will of him that sent me , that every on e that seeth , that is, knoweth , the S on , and b eli ev eth on him , should have eternal life : and I will raise him up at the last day " [Jn .

Behold the food of which he is speaking !

God h as sent His Son into this world that we may . have life through Him .

Wh o, then , are to have life through Him ?

Those who rely upon His grace .

But how will they rely upon Him unless they recognize Him ?

He said , there fore :

"Every on e that seeth the Son , that is , who under stands why the Son was sent into the world,

"and believeth on him , shall have eternal life .

Here it seemed to the ﬂesh that Christ was taking to Himself too much when He said [Jn .

For He had shortly before said [Jn . 6 : 33] "I am the bread of life .

"For the bread of God i s that which cometh down from heaven , and giveth life unto the world

; from which it followed that He is Himself that bread which came down from heaven .

Therefore the ﬂesh , that is, the Jews , murmurs , and says [Jn . 6 : 42-43] "Is not this Jesus , the son of Joseph , whose father and mother we know ?

How is it, then , that he saith , I came down from heaven ?

Jesus therefore answered and said unto them :

"Murmur n ot among your selves .

Have ye not heard me say already, All that which the Father giveth me shall come to me ?

Your unbelief, from which follows slowness of un derstanding , compels me to say the same thing over and over again .

This is the fact : No man can come to me , that is, n o man approaches me as the one

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pledge of salvation , except the Father th at s ent me draw him and him whom He draweth to me , that is, u niteth with me in faith , I

'will raise up at the last day [ cf. Jn . 6 : 44] It is strange that ye constantly think my words are such peculiar utter ancee, when I say nothing or very little that is n ot written in your own law or prophets .

And this also is written in the prophets , Isa . and Jer .

'And they shall be all taught of God .

Why, then , do ye wonder at my saying that on account of your unbelief knowledge of me is denied you by the Father, when even your prophets teach that this knowledge must be given by the Father ?

But what can be said more simply and plainly than what I am n ow going to say ?

And I am going to say it, that ye may n ot have left any cause for just complaint .

What I expressed before by the words , 'What the Father giveth me cometh to me , 'N0 man can come to me, except my Father draw him ,

' or by the words ' hear now in other , clearer terms , thus [Jn . 6 : 45] 'Whoever hath heard the Father and learned from him , cometh to me

' as to the on e and only anchor of salvation .

Not that any man hath seen the Father [cf. J11 . lest perchance ye Should refer thes e words

'learn to the senses rather than to the mind , that is , to inward illumination .

NO man hath ever seen the Father— although he works within us so that we may hear and 'hear '

. and learn what he wills— save he is that is from God : he hath seen the Father . Verily, verily, I say unto you [J11

He that believeth on me hath eternal life .

Now ye have the essence of this teaching of mine , aye , of the whole mission entrusted to me, namely, that he that believeth on me hath eternal life .

I am that bread of life, the nature of which I explained in the beginning of this discourse .

No one denies that your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and they died [Jn . but he that eateth of this bread , me to wit, that is , that believ eth on me, hath eternal life .

This is that bread which cometh down from heaven , that a man may eat thereof, and not die

[Jn .

[II .] We must note in passing that Christ is our salvation by virtue of that part of His nature by which He came down from heaven , n ot of that by which He was born of an immacu late virgin , though He had to suffer and die by this part ; but

The Works of H uld reich Zwing li They murmured , therefore, the more recklessly and wildly the more ignorant they were, indignantly saying [J11

"How can this man give us his ﬂesh to eat ?

For they still thought only of the ﬂesh which stood before their eyes .

Hence they very "properly shuddered , though our theologians shudder not .

Christ, therefore , seeing that all His efforts to draw them into knowledge of Himself were vain , treated them as Isaiah was once ordered to treat the people, Ch .

-1 0, where the Lord says :

"Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed , but understand n ot ; and see ye indeed , but perceive not .

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy , and shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes , and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again , and I heal them .

Christ, I say, seeing that He was accomplishing nothing, made their ignorance yet the more crass , as He shows by His own words, Matt .

-1 7.

Therefore , when they Spoke of Him so hatefully, He said [Jn . 6 : 53

"Verily , verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the ﬂesh of the Son of man and drink his blood , ye have n o life in yourselves .

He that eateth my ﬂesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day .

For my ﬂesh is meat indeed , and my blood is drink indeed "— Christ 's ﬂesh , I say, in so far as it was delivered to death for our deliverance ; and His blood, in that it was shed for our cleansing ; as is made very plain in what has been said .

For when they would not take in His mystical language , which He had yet so perfectly explained that they ought n ot to have wanted anything more ,

He smote them harder and made them blinder, for that was what they deserved, and such is the judgment of God .

Hence after all this He adds [Jn . 6 : 56] He that eateth my ﬂesh , and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him . "

This is said for the hardening of unbelievers , but for the enlightening of the pious .

And it is the fourth mark by which we perceive that Christ is speaking here not of sacra

mental eating ( for there are numberless persons, alas ! wh o eat and drink the body and blood of Christ sacramentally, and yet are n ot in God nor God in them , except in the same way

He is in the elephant and the ﬂea) , but of the eating of faith ; for he that believeth himself set free by the delivering up of

O n True a nd Fal s e R elig i o n Christ and washed clean by the shedding of His blood surely abideth in God .

For he casts all his conﬁdence securely upon the Son of God , and directs his hopes nowhere else ; for he can n ot thirst for any other good who already enjoys the highest good ( I mean as far as is meet for wayfarers to enjoy, and not use or enjoyment to the extent the theologians talk about ; for the pious enjoy God while they are here , although this is unknown to all whose hearts burn not with love of God)

. And , on the other hand , God abideth in them , for ( as is plain from 's very words [ Jn .

6 : no on e approaches Christ unless the Father draw him .

He , therefore , who learns by inward teaching from the Father surely h as God in him ; and ,

Christ at the same time , whoso abideth in Christ , in him abideth Christ also .

For to abide in Christ is to cling ﬁrmly to God through the love with which He gave Himself for us ; but "God Himself is Love , " I John 4 : 8.

"Whoso, therefore , abideth in the love of God , God is in him and he in God " [I John 4 :

But love follows faith in the order Of the understand ing .

It is , therefore, through the faith with which we rely upon th e grace of Christ that we abide in God, and He in us .

That this is the meaning is proved by Christ 's following words [Jn .

6 : 57] "AS the living Father hath sent me , and I live because Of the Father ; so he that eateth me , he also shall live because of me .

" He says , "

"The Father sent me, "hence also I obey his will in all things ; for I am the Son of the Father .

S O, surely , they also that eat me , that is , believe on me, will fashion them selves to my pattern .

Ye will eat in vain , that is , ye will in vain pretend that ye believe , unless ye also change your life .

I came not only to redeem but also to change the world .

They, therefore, that beli eve on me will transform themselves in to my pattern .

This is the bread which came down from heaven , as is shown by its resul ts ; for he that eateth of this bread shall live forever ; not so he that eateth bodily bread .

This ye can

see from the fact that your fathers di d eat the manna that came down from above , and di ed .

NO bodily food , therefore , can make any on e last forever .

This language offended not only those who hated Christ, but also some of His own disciples ; and they, not to do anything too rudely, said [Jn .

"This is a hard saying ; who can hear it ?

They still clung to

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the visible ﬂesh just as tenaciously as His enemies did .

Jesus , therefore, knowing that even some of His disciples were mur muring at this , said unto them [Jn . 6 : 61

"Doth this cause you to stumble ?

What, then (supply "will ye say , or

"if ye should behold the Son of Man ascending where he was before ?

Ye do not take in my words because ye do not believe that I am the Son of God .

But what will ye say when ye shall see me ascendi ng to heaven by my own might ?

Will not the fact itself then force "

"will ye think, or some such phrase) you to confess that I am the Son of God ?

Ye do not trust in me because ye do not believe that I am the Son of God, and your n ot believing i s the reason why ye do n ot understand what

I try to lift you to the things above by comparisons and pleasant allegories, but ye are always sinking to the depths by I say V th e weight of your unbelief .

The thing of which I am speak ing i s a spiritual thing, and has nothing to do with bodily things .

The Spirit teaches spirit .

The Spirit of God , I say , deigns to draw the wretched Spirit of man to itself, to unite and to bind it to itself, and wholly to transform it into itself .

This thing feeds and rejoices the heart and assures it of salva tion .

What else is this than the food of the soul ?

By what comparison can it be more ﬁtly expressed than by that of food ?

For as the starving stomach rejoices when food comes into it, wherewith the used-up breath and heat and strength are repl en i sh ed, so the starving soul , when God discloses Himself to it, leaps for joy, and daily grows and increases in strength more and more , being transformed into the likeness of God until it develops into the perfect man .

It i s, therefore , spiritual food of which I am speaking, for only the Spirit gives it, since the Spirit alone draws the heart to itself and refreshes it .

Ye are very thoughtless when ye imagine that I am speaking of the ﬂesh that is built up with veins and Sinews .

That proﬁteth nothing .

How long will ye be without understanding [cf. Mt .

I tell you plainly , so far am I from speaking of bodily ﬂesh or essential body, that I bear open witness that my

ﬂesh proﬁteth absolutely nothing .

And this is the ﬁfth and most distinct mark by which we discover that Christ is in no wise speaking here of the Sacrament of the Eucharist ; and not only this, but in

21 0 The Works of Huldreich Zwi ng li perceived by sense .

For instance, there is our friend Beren gerius , * whom we compelled ( as appears in Section 2 of the De Consecrati on e, beginning 'I Bereng ari us ') to confess that after consecration the true, that is , the corporeal and essential , body and blood of Christ are present, and that the sacrament is not only as a matter of sense but in reality handled by the hands of the priest, broken and torn by the teeth of the faith ful , etc .

So also will we drive to this all who venture to utter a syllable to the contrary .

If you insist altogether upon the statement, ' we will turn from you ; for it is better for us to withdraw from you than to have our revenues and gains vanish .

'The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing, "

Do not be scandalized , kind reader, by this sharp irony of mine .

Y ou will see presently why on e has to deal in this way with so stupid a class of men , who have even compelled the senses to confess something other than what they have experienced .

When , therefore , Christ had taught clearly that it was spiritual and not oral manducation of which He was speaking— for, He said , the ﬂesh proﬁteth absolutely nothing— He added [Jn .

"The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and are life .

That " is used by the Hebrews for the whole matter, the whole event and case , is everywhere evident in Holy Writ .

Luke 1 : 65 :

"word

"And all these words were noised abroad throughout all the hill country "

Hence in this passage Christ is to be understood as having said : of Judaea .

"This case that I have been setting forth to you i s one of the heavenly Spirit , and begets life in those who intrust themselves to it .

And the reason few of you understand it or receive it is that the great part of you do not believe .

[VI .] This is the crown as it were of the whole discourse :

I announce the gospel to you , but ye do n ot believe it .

Now the gospel is nothing else than myself, though in the beginning

I expressed myself modestly and darkly, in order not to give an *Bet eng ar of Tours, 998 -1088.

He wa s twice ( in 1 059 and agai n i n 1 079 ) forced to recant h i s deni al of the Real Presence.

The former recan ~ tati on wa s i n these words :

Eg o B ereng ari u s et ore et corde proﬁteor , de sa cramenti s domini cae mensae, pa nem et vi num, qu ae i n alta ri ponuntur , post consecrati onem non sol um sacramentum, s ed eti am verum corpu s et sang ui nem domi ni nostri Iesu Chri sti esse, et s ensual iter non sol um sacramentum, sed i n veritate manibus s acerdotum tracta ri , frangi et ﬁdel i um dentibus atteri .

O n T ru e a nd Fal se R elig i on impression of arrogance or temerity ; but what the Father wills has to be said .

Therefore I said that I am He whom the Father promised to your fathers , the true food of the soul , sure salvation , and the infallible pledge of hope .

He , therefore , who trusts in me is already saved ; for he felt within himself, as soon as he set all his trust on me , h ow glad his conscience became , h ow his soul was raised from despair to the sure possession of salvation .

I have ampliﬁed at somewhat greater length than before the substance of this sixth chapter [of John] , as far as it per tains to the Eucharist, but I hope n ot fruitlessly .

For I think we can clearly see from this that the theologians and experts in Pontiﬁcal Law , in distorting to the abuse of the Eucharist everything they have drawn from this passage, have acted recklessly or ignorantly, and , therefore , their authority ought to have no value where it is not based on the truth .

But if you absolutely insist upon forever thrusting it in my face as an invincible shield , I will simply say that faith itself dictates this meaning for this passage , unless I am very greatly wrong in my faith when I unwaveringly believe that there is one and only one way to heaven , ﬁrmly believe that the Son of God is the infallible pledge of our salvation , and trust in Him so com pletely that for the gaining of salvation I attribute no power to any elements of this world , that is, to things of sense .

And if now anyone asks pertly for what purpose I have explained this section of John wi th such pains , I answer : That the truth may come into the light .

And if in any part I have fallen short , this ought to be made manifest by Scripture testimony ,

's accusations .

It was easy to accuse Christ before His judge with false and made and n ot by somebody -up slanders . Yet when the latter asked [M t. 27: 23] "What evil hath he done ?

" n o witnesses were brought forward, but all was threats and outcry .

Unless , therefore , we wish to become like the impious enemies of Christ, we ought not in deference to papal authority to rage against the innocent truth , which is Christ Himself .

If, then , this is the genuine meaning of this passage, no man 's authority ought to outweigh it , the ﬂesh ought n ot to be guilty of preferring any man 's authority to the truth .

Human wis dom ought n ot to prevail over di vine truth .

Whatever, there

Th e Wo rks of Huldreich Zwing li fore , has been plucked from this chapter and distorted into any other meaning than this native one which the Lord h as explained through me, whether it be read in decrees of Popes or works of theologians , or heralded in churches or pulpits , ought to have so little effect that we should all declare it would have been more pious for those who have done this thing never to have touched the undeﬁled truth than in their presumption so to have deﬁled it .

What, therefore , will their authority avail , however great and excellent they are ?

The truth i s more excellent .

To the others , who break out with , "Y ou seem to me to hold that the bodily ﬂesh and also the blood of Christ are n ot present in the " I answer :

Do you say this of yourself or have others said it to you ?

If you are a believer, you are aware h ow salvation comes ; and then the word of God h as such power with you that you raise n o question about bodily ﬂesh .

But if others have told you that this is my view, I say to them that in this matter I hold as the Church of Christ holds .

She will Eucharist, n ot even brook the question whether the body of Christ is in the Sacrament of the Eucharist in actual , physical , or essential form . For when you bring up these elements of the world , sh ewill thrust this buckler in your face :

' [Jn .

'The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing 6 : 63] why , then , do you dispute about the ﬂesh ? Even if you now cry out, " nay, even "0 heaven ! O earth I "Stars and seas l "

; why, then , is it better for you to be curious rather than anxious about it?

Be this, then , a wall of bronze , "

"The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing I shall simply say, "

"The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing .

Go n ow, and bring up all your engines of war, catapults, batter ing -rams, sheds, and every kind of weapon ; far from shat tering this wall , you will be able n ot even to shake it . We must, then , hold a different view of the ﬂesh and blood of this sac rament from that which the theologians have thus far laid down , whose opinion is opposed by all sense and reason and understanding and by faith itsel f.

For I do n ot think we have "I have always ﬁrmly believed that in this sacrament I eat the essential body, to listen to those who are so bold as to say, " As if in saying this they could persuade any one to believe that his senses perceive what they do n ot perceive !

When , therefore, thy say that the or the bodily and sensible ﬂesh , of Christ .

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sense have no need of faith , for by sense they are perceived to be perfectly sure .

On the other hand, if your eating is a. matter of belief, " the thing you believe cannot be sensible or bodily .

Therefore what you say i s simply a monstrosity .

Observe, too, that the theologians asserted here another thing, which even the senses knew not, namely, that bread is ﬂesh ; for if this had been so, it would have been established by the verdict of sense , not by faith .

For faith springs n ot from " t hings accessible to sense nor are they objects of faith .

Nor do I think we have to listen to those who , seeing that the view mentioned is not only crude but even frivolous and impious , make this pronouncement :

"We eat, to be sure , the true and bodi ly ﬂesh of Christ, but spiritually ; for they do not yet see that the two statements cannot stand , "

" and "It is body "It is eaten spiritually .

For body and spirit are such essentially different things that whichever one you take it cannot be the other .

If spirit is the on e that has come into question , it fol lows by the law of contraries that body is not ; if body is the

on e, the b earer is sure that spirit is not .

Hence, to eat bodily ﬂesh spiritually i s simply to assert that to be body which is spirit .

I have adduced these things from the philosophers against those men who, in spite of Paul 's warning to be on our guard against philosophy, Col . 2 : 8, have made it the mistress and instructress of the word of God , that they may see clearly h ow nicely they sometimes weigh their decisions and pro n oun cements .

In short , faith does not compel sense to con fess that it perceives what it does n ot perceive , but it draws us to the invisible and ﬁxes all our hopes on that [cf. Heb . 1 1 :

For it dwelleth n ot amidst the sensible and bodily , and b ath nothing in common therewith .

. Come now, understand what happiness i s born in you if you believe that you eat the bodily and sensible ﬂesh of Christ, or, as others say, eat His bodily ﬂesh spiritually !

Y ou will undoubtedly admit that nothing arises therefrom but perplexity , dulness , and , to speak freely, suspicion in regard to other things of faith which are most certain and most sacred .

Yet these ﬁne fellows were all the while saying that this monstrous eating of sensible and bodily ﬂesh is a prop to faith , and sometimes they brought it forward as a miracle, which yet no man perceived .

Wh o, pray , ever

O n T ru e a nd Fal s e R elig i on made up such nonsense , and that before the eyes of those who clung in their hearts to the true and most high God , and who , as soon as they examined their faith , saw that there was n o need of paradoxes of this sort ? For what did God ever promise to those wh o believed that bodily ﬂesh is eaten here ?

Did not those who were truly faithful know for certain th at ' salvati on is found in relying upon the mercy of God , of which we have the sure sign or pledge in Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God ?

What, then , do you imagine this invention— subtle forsooth , since it consists of words only ( for no mind can take it in , and neither does faith teach it, as we have seen) — effected with th e pious ?

Nothing , by heaven .

Hence it undoubtedly came about that those who were truly pious either believed nothing of the kind , or when pressed to believe took to ﬂight in their hearts , even though with their lips they confessed that they believed it was as the impious declared .

For who , when confronted with anything so monstrous , di d not ﬂee, saying :

And when ever the goadi ng voice of the Truth said :

"Do not examine this thing ; believe the Fathers .

"It is a strange thing .

How can it be that you should be compelled to believe that which you cannot see to be possible ?

When the Jews did n ot comprehend it , Christ showed that it was to b e understood spiritually , but now these persons say it is done in a bodily and material sense, which yet you do not perceive nor experience ,

did not everyone say to himself :

"It is n ot for you to take anxious thought about these things " ?

But these fellows had taught men thus to run away that the truth might not shi ne forth and be understood .

And as to the impious , they di d not trust even in Christ, so far were they from giving Him thanks for the redemption given to us .

What, then , did they do but tyrannically thrust upon us what it is impossible that they themselves believed, even though they said so a thousand times ?

For faith is the gift of God ; and since God never taught this thi ng, He surely h as not drawn men to believe it .

That He di d n ot teach it is clear , because the ﬂesh proﬁteth absolutely noth in g .

And much the strongest and clearest proof is , that we all , as h as been said, when we consider thi s spiritual-bodi ly manducation ( for I am forced to speak thus agai nst my will) , always turn away in heart , chieﬂy for the reason that truth is

21 6 The Wo rks of Huld reich Zwing li

always victorious ; but the indifferent or fearful heart would not resist, because it saw something different enjoined by the Pope .

What, then , is the reason of this, when nothing so delights the soul as partaking of the word of God —as David bears witness, Ps . 1 1 9 : 1 03 :

"How sweet are thy words unto my taste !

Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth !

And again [Ps .

"The commandment of the Lord is pure , enlightening the eyes" and [Ps . 1 1 9 : 1 05] "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path .

Since , I say, the veil that softened the brightness of the light for Moses

' gaze has been taken away, what is the reason why we all ﬁght shy of considering this manducation ?

If it rested upon the authority of the word of God , it no doubt would have , in common with the rest of God

's words , the quality of becoming clearer and more acceptable the more it was considered .

We discover, therefore, since faith is the sweetest and pleasantest thing known to the soul , while this bodily and sensible manducation oppresses or saddens the heart , that it has proceeded from the notion of reckless men rather than from the word of God ; though , not to be unfair to anyone , some men can plead ignorance as an excuse for their fault because of the words of Christ which we call the words of con secration . * For, as we show the bread we say plainly :

"This is my body . "

Of these words I am now going to speak .

I have now refuted , I hope, this senseless notion about bodily ﬂesh .

In doing that my only object was to prove that to teach that the bodily and sensible ﬂesh of Christ is eaten when we give thanks to God is n ot only impious but also fool ish and monstrous, unless perhaps one i s living among the Anthropophagi .

Meanwhile I leave everyone free to hold what view he will of spiritual manducation , provided he rests on Christ 's dicta and not his own , until he h as weighed what I am going to bring forward about the words of Christ .

Then he may choose what the Lord will give him to choose , for I impose no law upon any man .

I bear witness , therefore, by the one only God Almighty , Father, Son , and Holy Spirit, who knoweth the hearts of all , that what I am presently going to put forth , I shall put forth for no other cause than that of ﬁnding out the truth .

I know "In thi s connecti on see Zwi ngl i , De cwncme mi ssa e epiohi/ resis .

21 8 Th e Works of H uldreich Zwing li execrate my effort, they wi ll do it, if they are wise, by the force of the Scriptures .

Then I shall be not a little obliged to them , for they will bring me back from error to the right way .

For I am thoroughly determined to listen most gladly to any one wh o duly admonishes me according to the heavenly teachings . But if anybody goes to work with clamori ng s, he will shout as . vai nly as Hercules did for Hylas .

I am deaf to such words as, "It is heretical , erroneous , an offence to pious ears .

They have so often smitten upon these ears that they have made them callous . Therefore let no man say,

Who will put up with this ?

The whole world thinks differently .

Let him rather reﬂect that often an entire nation , except a few persons, has been in error, as happened in Noah

's time [Gen .

6 : 1 7 Elijah [I Kings thought himself entirely alone , and Micaiah [I Kings 22 : 9-28] stood a true prophet against the entire crowd of reckless prophets .

The truest is always kn own by the fewest .

So perhaps those who think otherwise than the majority about the bread of the Eucharist do so not without reason .

Following the example of Moses, I will see what this ﬁre means [cf. Exod .

Now, I frankly confess, before myGod and the Lord Jesus Christ and the whole creation , that I am more inclined to this sense for Christ 's words which I am going to put forth than to that other sense which we have thus far given them , though I make n o rash declaration ; but if anyone will put forth something clearer and more consonant with faith , I promise to receive it with open arms in great thankfulness .

I have said, then , that this hard view of the bodily and sensible ﬂesh of Christ was occasioned by ignorance of Christ 's words, " If their meaning had been decided from the Holy Scriptures rather than according to the dicta of avaricious men , we never should have stumbled unawares upon so many absurd questions . Now, these words ,

"This is my body, etc .

"This is my body, " should n ot have been so handled with unwashen hands , but we should ﬁrst have examined every corner of Scripture to see what meaning they coul d bear and what not, as, for example , we see done in other cases .

Some men today attribute to works what belongs solely to the grace of God, but they do it not without Scripture authority, for there is found just as much Scripture tes

O n Tru e and Fal s e R elig i on timony attributing to works what belong to the grace of God as there is testimony attributing it to the grace of God alone .

What opinion , then , in these circumstances ought properly to prevail ?

That which faith dictates .

And faith di ctates this :

We are the work of God , of Him we breathe , in Him we move and have our being [Acts 1 7: to Him we tend ; therefore all things are His , and we are unproﬁtable servants who are not sufﬁcient for anything [Lk . 1 7: but all our sufﬁciency is from God [II Cor . 3

Those wh o hold this view easily free themselves from difﬁcul ty when they come upon mention of works in the Scriptures .

For they see it belongs to God 's grace and friendlin ess to ascribe to our works that which yet He

Himself works ; nay, that it is His work and n ot ours ; and so they sail safely all through Scripture .

And this is what ought to have been done in this passage .

After Chr ist had said to the Jews, " ( for so emphatic is the Greek expression 0 13K no lips should have ventured to talk further about bodily ﬂesh , especially when it is clearly seen that the Jews took offence at this same bodily ﬂesh , and that Christ met their offence with these words, so that no on e can fairly even dream that there can be any disagreement on this point .

For nothing else oﬁ "The ﬂesh proﬁteth absolutely nothing 'th e Jews than the thought that bodi ly and visible ﬂesh must be eaten ; but Christ met their error by saying that the ﬂes h proﬁteth absolutely nothing ; that it is the Spirit that ' ended quickeneth the soul ; that He spoke words of salvation namely, that he who trusted in Him who was to give His body and blood for us should have everlasting life ; that these words were brief, but life and the heavenly Spirit breathed from them .

Why , then , di d we fall so incautiously into such a hard view , when we had a charm potent enough easily to lay bare all th e tricks of human viciousness ?

Is not this saying of Christ 's a bar rier whi ch the pious heart neither can nor would leap over ? Is it not a rul er with which he who h as wholehearted faith in God smooths an d straightens everything that otherwise would be hard and rough ?

Wh o that understands the central point, namely, that those who trust in Christ have thereby the power of becoming sons of God , nay, recognize that through on e and the same Spirit they are already sons and heirs of God [cf.

- Zwing li

The Wo rks of Huldreich Rom .

—who of these , I say, will be stupeﬁed, as the Jews were, at these words , " when he hears Christ so plainly say, "This is my body, " ?

Into such darkness, most merciful and righteous God, when we fail to trust in Thee, Thou dost suffer us to fall that even at midday we grope blindly like those wh o have lost their sight .

For if there had been sound faith , it would have driven off this dark ness , just as the sun at its appearing dissipates the night .

inscrutable are Thy judgments [cf. Rom . 1 1 :

For as it was proper for Thy justice to smite our faithless selves with blindness , so it was proper for Thy mercy to open our eyes again and to raise us to the bright light, as they say eagles do their young, that we, ﬁnding we can bear the light, may also recognize this blessing, because of our own power we never could have opened our eyes to the light hadst not Thou , wh o callest even the things that are not yet [cf. Rom . 4 : led us into Thine admirable light .

"The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing "The ﬂesh proﬁteth noth ing, Therefore the words of Christ, " force every thought into the obedience of God [II Cor .

so that by no reasoning either can you or should you " of bodily ﬂesh "This is my body, now understand the words , or sensible body, as h as been made plain .

We shall have to see, therefore , what sense the words must have ; for ( not to pass this point by) there is no weight in the foolish objection ,

"Why ' into conformity with the words , do we not force the words, 'The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing , ' and say the former must be squared with the latter, rather than make the latter ﬁt the meaning of the former ?

'This is my body, "

First, the things Christ is there discussing are so perfectly clear that n o one can base any purely allegorical or symbolical meaning upon what either precedes or follows .

Second , faith sees that the true meaning is the one which the words bear upon their face .

For who will believe that Christ thrust His own into a darkness in which He did not allow the Jews to remain ?

Christ is light, the Gospel is light .

Wh o can believe that we should be driven into a thing from which the Jews , lest they should feel abhor rence, were led away ?

Finally, the senses do not here make such protest and rebellion as when faith has the daring to say

that it believes that bodily ﬂesh is eaten .

For the senses can

Th e Works of Huldreich Zwing li s declaration in John 6 : 51 :

"The bread that I will give is my ﬂesh, which I will give for the life of th e world .

' support from Christ "

For this is equivalent to saying :

"Behold this very body, which I very recently declared must be sacriﬁced for the li fe of the world ! It will presently be hurried to the altar . But have n o fear or anxiety .

I am here , and show myself .

And, that you may n ot fall into any error, for instance, the error of believing that because I am the Son of God I am not going to give this body to be slain , but am going suddenly to produce another, as angels have often been seen to do— that you may not, I say, with the recklessness characteristic of human imag i ni ng s, fancy that I am going to give another instead of this body, I say to you plainly and clearly that I am going to deliver up for the redemption of the world this body which you see before you .

With their kind permission , then , I will say what I think, and what, we shall very clearly see, is the real fact of the matter .

"this so as to make it refer to Christ, the whole incident loses its point ; and yet it has been set down with such painstaking care by all the writers

If in this fashion we twist the word

that it is impious to suppose that it has been so carefully por "Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and gave thanks , and brake it, and gave it to the disciples , say ing , Take , eat ; this i s my body which is given for you .

What was the need of all this circumstance , which the Evangelists have set forth so vividly that even to this very day whenever we hear these words we seem to see Christ Himself acting and trayed for no good reason :

speaking ?

What need, I say, had Christ of all this circum stance, if all He wished to say was simply that this body of His was already between the hammer and the anvi l , as the saying is ?

Or is He , like a generous host , inviting the disciples to eat, although they have already dined, so that the meaning is ,

" ?

To what purpose , then , the words, "Be of good cheer, and eat in joy " ?

Would they n ot have eaten "

"gave thanks , "

"brake, "

"gave to "blessed, , unless Christ had divided the bread and given it to them ?

We are forced here either to let go all the actions and sayings— perish the impious thought — or to confess plainly that this body of His which Christ gave with such careful distinctness and majestic solemnity was a sym

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n boli cal one.

Nor is it an obstacle that the word for bread in both Greek and Latin is masculine , while that for body is neuter, for you will hear in almost any language countless like forms of expression by which one passes from the ﬁnished product to the material , as , ° it is the purest gold among all the royal v essels .

See how crater [b ow] , a masculine] signiﬁes the ﬁnished product, while "Take this bowl

"aurum [gold , a neuter] signiﬁes the material ; for the bowl is made with arti stic skill , and gold is the material of which it is made .

We pass, therefore , from the ﬁnished product to the material , that the value of each may be recognized .

Hence by this argument weapons woul d rather be supplied to the old view than wrested from it , if we rushed into a sickening battle of words .

For our "See , here there is a transition , from the product, namely , the bread , to the material , namely , the body,

-eaters will say : ﬂesh 'This bread , as far as its material is con cerned , is the very body of Christ . so that the sense is :

This would be a qui bble , however , whi ch I speak of only for fear someone may perhaps try th e thing in the way I have mentioned .

For in ordinary parlance we go from the product to the material which the hand of the maker had taken up to work with .

Hence here we ought to go from the bread to the ﬂour , and say , "This bread is ﬂour .

But these thi ngs are petty subtleti es and accord i ngly not very solid , and I have mentioned them not to attribute any force to them , but merely to show that expressions of this ki nd are foun d in qui te all languages .

Thus it becomes apparent that the argument drawn from the change of gender "Thi s do in remembrance of me is unsound .

In the third place , when Christ subjoins, " [Lk .

I Cor . what, pray , are they bidden to do i n remembrance of Him ?

If you say, ° "What , then , shall we make of the words , "To eat , I shall object

'Thi s is my b ody , , which come between ? "

Does it n ot seem exceedi ngly violent , when all the actions and all the sayings that precede and all that follow these words clearly lead to the conclusion that what is offered the di sciples to eat is the body of Christ, albeit a symboli cal on e, and when the com mand to do thi s in remembrance of Him sets forth the whole reason for this eating— d oes it not , I say, seem violent to twist these intervening words into a reference to somethi ng else ?

Th e Wo rks of Huldreich Zwing li does , indeed .

We must not do violence to words in this way even when faith does not contend that the sense is different .

"this , but in a word n o larger as far as number of letters i s con cerned , namely, in the verb The entire difﬁculty, then , lies n ot in the pronoun

For this i s used in more than "is . on e passage in the Holy Scriptures for "signiﬁes

I hear ( to mention this point ﬁrst) that Wycliffe* earlier held and the Waldensi ans 'r today hold this view, that "is " was put here for " but I have not seen their Scripture basis for it .

It is possible for persons to hold right views and n ot rightly support the right views they hold .

Perhaps that was the reason why their view was condemned as impious .

For I , having through the grace of God often joined battle with many adver "signiﬁes, sari es in regard to the meaning of Scripture passages, have often found that persons, even when they held right views , were sometimes forced to abandon their cause and to surrender it to others because they could n ot strongly support their right views .

Hence I shall without fear of these words, "He is a Wycliﬂ "

"He is a heretic, bring forward the passages of Scripture in which it cannot be denied that this word "

"He is a Waldensian , 'ian ,

" certainly is used for "i s "signiﬁes .

After wards I shall prove clearly that in this passage also "is " must be taken in the sense of "signiﬁes .

This will be plain from the testimony following .

In Gen .

Joseph , interpreting Pharaoh

's dream , says :

The seven beautiful kine , and the seven full ears, are seven years of plenty : and both contain the

What is this, pray ?

Are the seven fat kine seven years ?

Certainly not, but the kine he had same meaning of the dream .

-1384 ) opposed the doctri ne of transubstanti a "John Wycliffe ( 1324 ti on . Although h e deni ed that after consecrati on the bread and wi ne are ch ang ed i nto the body and bl ood of Chri st, h e held that by concomi tance the bread i s i n a ﬁg urative a nd sacramental sense the body of Chri st, which th e beli ever receives spi ritually .

He was condemned by the Council of Constance,

1415 A . D .

j For a l ong time th e Waldensi a n doctri ne of the Euchari st scarcely differed from th e Roman .

Under th e i nﬂu ence of Wycl iffe and Hu ss , the Waldenses ﬁrst turned ag ai nst the doctri ne of the real presence.

As Luther often desig nated the Bohemi an B rethren as Waldenses , i t i s possible that Zwingl i i s doi ng the same here. Th ey had been vi ol ently persecuted i n the early year s of the sixteenth century .

Th e Wo rks of Huld reich Zwing li it is worth while to give them an answer rather more polite than their objection .

Who does n ot know, then , that there is abso l utely n o word that is not sometimes taken out of its native soil and planted in a foreign on e, where it has a far higher value than if you had left it in the home ground, that is, in its literal meaning ?

This was specially customary with the Hebrews beyond other peoples, as is most plainly apparent all through Christ 's discourse, even when translated into a foreign tongue . *

Take the despised term " When Christ, in Luke makes the husbandman intercede for the barren tree , under taking to put dung about it, h ow could He more delightfully

"dung . have signiﬁed a kindly minister of the word , whose duty it certainly is to encourage the backward in every way, and to commend them to the Lord in constant prayers, lest He judge them according to their deserts ?

Take another term , "stone .

Does not this term occupy a more honorable position when it signiﬁes Christ [M t. 21 : 42] the stone , than when it means an inert rock projecting in the ﬁeld , or even on e used in the con struction of a building ?

So also with verbs .

Does n ot Paul use with great effect the verb "run " when he says to the Gala tians "Ye were running well , for "ye were walking uprightly in all diligence

" ?

And when our Saviour says , "I am the door " [Jn . was he a door ?

Yet, according to the intolerance of those who refuse to admit any extension of the meaning of verbs and nouns, He must be a door .

Of wood, then , or of stone, or of ivory or horn , as in Pliny and Homer ?

" [Jn .

"I am the vine "I am the light "I am the way " [J11 . etc . , force us in spite of ourselves to allow them a signiﬁcation other than the literal one .

Is He a vine ?

N0, but He is like a vine .

There is, therefore, no need of this senseless wail :

"Look out, fellow citizens , your interests are in jeopardy, you are going to lose your language

; for we cannot conveniently use even every-day speech without metaphors and metalepses .

With faith as teacher , then , we shall see in what sense we ought to take each expression ; for otherwise we should be doing a thing absolutely unworthy both of Christ and of our

~ selves in regarding him as actually a lamb or a ram in John and as a fatted calf in Luke "Namely, Greek .

O n T ru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n , therefore , He says [Jn .

"I am the vine , He is sayi ng nothing else than , When "

"I am like a vine to my disciples .

Who will make an uproar here ?

Who complain that an out rage is done ?

S o, also , in our passage we must consult faith , and if she says that in the expression ,

"This is my body , this verb "is

" must not be taken in its literal meaning , we must by all means obey faith and have n o fear whatever of those whom we see daring everything in their impiety , for they cannot , however much they rave , wrest the truth out of the hands of th e pious .

If, however , faith cannot endure this meaning , then the signiﬁcation of this word in this passage— as was made plai n above by many arguments and is made singularly and soli dly plain by the expression , "

"The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing will be an altogether different one, whatever outcry is made by the ignorant and impious .

This verb " then , is in my judg ment used here for signiﬁes .

Yet this is n ot my judgment , but that of eternal God ; for we cannot boast of anything which Christ wrought not i n us , Rom . 1 5 : 1 8 ; and it h as been abun

"is ,

dantly shown above that since faith is from the unseen God , it points to the unseen God and is a thing absolutely independent of all sense .

For whatever is body , whatever is an object of sense , can in no way be a matter of faith .

Hence , when I say that i n my judgment this word is used in this way in this passage , I speak thus for the sake of certain weak persons , and not because this view can truthfully be shattered by means of an y passage of Scripture .

For either we must reject "The ﬂesh " whi ch yet it were impious to do ( for "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than one ti ttle of the word of God proﬁt-eth nothi ng , " [Lk . or this alone must be the on e simple meaning .

We must, then , now ﬁrst of all see how everythi ng squares if we us e " for " in this fashi on . And as everything will square beautiful ly , it wil l be proved at the same time that "is "signiﬁes

( P 7, IS in thi s passage as well as in others must be taken for "sig ni ﬁes , " whi ch was the second thing I undertook to prove .

Thus , then , Luk e [22 : 1 9] h as it , and we shall content ourselvae wi th him from among the Evangelists :

"An d he took bread, and when he had given thanks , he brake it , and gave to them , say in g , Thi s signiﬁes my body which i s given for you : thi s do in

Th e Works of H uld reich Zwi ng li remembrance of me .

See, faithful soul but captive of absurd n otions , h ow everything squares here h ow nothing i s vi olently taken away or added, but everything squares so perfectly that you wonder you have n ot always seen this meaning, and won der all the more that the beautiful harmony of the di scourse i n

question h as been so recklessly mangled by certain persons .

"He took bread, gave thanks , brake it, and gave to them , say i ng " Behold how there is no missing link here !

"This ( that I offer you to eat, namely) is the symbol of my body which is given for you, and this which I n ow do, ye shall do hereafter in remembrance of me .

Does not the saying, "Do this in remembrance of me , " plainly indi cate that this bread should be eaten in remembrance of Him ?

The Lord 's Supper , then , as Paul calls it [I Cor .

1 1 : 25 is a commemoration of Christ 's death , not a remitting of sins, for that is the province

"This which I n ow bid you eat and drink shall be a symbol unto you whi ch ye shall all

's death alone .

For He says : of Christ use in eating and drinking when ye shall make commemora "

And that nothing needful for the true under standing of this commemoration may be lacking, Paul , in I Cor . tion of me .

1 1 26 , after having said with regard to the bread as well as with regard to the wine, " explains "This do in remembrance of me , " (symbolical bread , namely, for n o one of them all calls it ﬂesh) ,

"For as often as ye eat this bread as follows :

"and drink this cup , proclaim * the Lord " But what is it to 's death till he come .

" ?

To preach , surely, to give thanks and prai se , as Peter says , I Pet . 2 : 9 :

"proclaim the Lord 's death "That ye shoul d shew forth the excellencies of hi m who called you out of dark

" Paul , therefore , reminds us that even unto the end of the world , when Christ will return and contend in judgment with the human race , this commemora tion of Christ ness into his marvellous light .

's death should be so made that we proclaim the death of the Lord , that is , preach , praise , and give thanks . For this reason the Greeks called it "Eucharist .

Now we wi ll come to the words of the cup , in which our view is found more clearly expressed .

But ﬁrst I will remind 'Annunci ate :

Gk .

H a Luther , al so, and the ma rgi n of th e Ki ng James Vers i on r epresent th e Greek verb as imperative.

The L atin Vulg ate h a s mmmwia bi tis .

The Wo rks of H uld reich Zwi ng li of Christ, for then he enjoys the heritage .

And that this cup is used thus as the symbol of the true testament the words them selves indicate , when He says, "

"This cup , the new testament, "is in my blood . that is, the sign and instrument of the testament, "This cup , which is the new testa ment, is my blood, "

He does not say, " but, "This cup is the new testament in my blood .

And these things , of which on e is in the other, are di stinct from each other, as thing and thing, in their real nature, as the philosophers say .

Furthermore, things which in their real nature are distinct cannot possibly so coincide as to be the same thing .

For what is in something else is not that very thing in which it i s .

What reason , then , was there, when the other Evangelists , Matthew and Mark had said, " for Luke and Paul [I Cor . to say, "This i s my blood of the new testament,

"This cup is the new testament in my blood "?

There seems to be a strange dis crepan cy here, for the former call it the "blood of the testa ment, " the latter "the testament of the blood , " that is , "the instrument and sign of the testament which h as its force i n the blood of Christ .

This was all done designedly .

For Luke and Paul , writing after the others , introduced new clearnes s into their words .

They saw that the words , "This cup is my blood, were too bold for the comprehension of some persons, although (as we see in Tertullian , of whom later) clear enough

to the men of an earlier time , and therefore they thought that n ot every on e would be sure to understand the expression as meaning, "This cup is the symbol of my blood, which is the blood of the new testament " ( for that is the force of the article

Consequently, they shaped the expression dif " that is, ferently :

"This cup is the new testament, "This is the cup of the new testament, which new testament h as its force in my blood "

; for both Matthew and Mark said in the genitive case, "Novi testamenti , what Luke and Paul said in the nom i native,

"Novum testamentum .

Hence also they used "is the new testament, " in an unusual sense , for "i s the symbol of the new testament, just as we call the document in which bequests

"In M t . 26 : 28 th e Greek text u s ed by Zwi ng li had " a"

7 6 , " n ,

7 6 y o u 7 6 1 9 s x c w ﬁ:

" c om a "

The second 7 6 i s referred to i n hi s comment .

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i on are contained a testament, and name the statue of Caesar "Caesar .

It is, then , the symbol of the new testament .

This idea wi ll be made more clear if we consider carefully the articles in all four writers .

For these, namely, 7; and

1 6 are by no means relative , but point out somethi ng as distinct and solid .

When , therefore , the words of the cup run :

" where "in my blood "This cup is the new testament in my blood , " can have no other meaning than that the testament

"h as force in my blood , it is plain that the words of the bread must in like fashion be taken in the sense :

"This ( that I bid you eat, namely) is a symbol of, or signiﬁes , my body which is given for you .

Now I want no one to suffer himself to be offended by this painstaking examination of words ; for it is not upon them that I rely, but upon the one expression ,

"The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothin g

" [Jn . 6 :

This expression i s strong enough to prove that " in this passage is used for "signiﬁes "is " even if the discourse itself contained abso

"is a symbol of, or l utely nothing by which the meaning here could be detected .

Paul must be consulted in another passage also , that we may see more clearly h ow Christ 's disciples used this sacrament in the time of the Apostles .

In I Cor . 1 0: 1 6 we have :

"The cup of blessing, i . e. , of the bounty and m uniﬁcence of God , "which we bless ,

" i . e. , with which we give thanks , "is it not the communion of the blood of Christ ?

That is , when we drink together from this cup which Christ h as given us as a symbol of His bounty, do not we alone drink who share in the blood of the testament ?

He , therefore , who drinks here, shows himself to all the brethren as on e of the number of those who trust in the blood of Christ .

For that this is the only natural meaning of these words is clearly proved by certain marks whi ch pres ently follow .

Th e bread which we break, " with one another, namely ,

"is it not the partaking of the body of Christ ?

[I Cor .

That is , when we break the bread with each other , do we not all , as many as are the body of Christ , mutually disclose and show to on e another that we are of the number of those who trust in Christ ?

Now follows a mark by which it is seen that thi s is the sense here, and that '"body is here used otherwise than

"symbol of the body, namely, for "the 'Wi th an y," a nd 4 1" resp ectively .

Th e Wo rks of H uldreich Zwing li

Church .

For He says [I Cor . 1 0:

"Seeing that we, wh o are a multitude , are one bread, on e body : for we all partake of '

We see here and in Chapter 1 1 : 1 7-34 most clearly that the use of this sacrament in Paul the on e bread .

's time was as fol lows : The disciples of Christ came together and ate their whole supper together from the beginning, and some made rather pretentious and sumptuous provision for themselves .

Hence arose shame .and scorn unto those who had little .

Some hur ried , while others were slow ; and so it came about that some had ﬁnished and were waiting for the symbolical bread , while others were still without supper when the bread and cup began to be carried round .

S o Paul bids them eat at home, and n ot contemn the church, that i s, the congregation of God .

How ever, he bids them eat at home not the symbolical bread and blood, but their ordinary supper .

When , therefore , they were gathered together in this way to give thanks and praise unto the Lord , they were warned n ot to eat without judgment ; whence he says [I Cor . 1 1 : 28-34] "But let a man prove him self, etc .

For whosoever eats of this symbol shows himself to be a member of the Church of Christ .

Therefore he may n ot thereafter eat of the things offered to idols [cf. I Cor . 8 : 1 -1 3] nor sit at such meals [ cf. I Cor . who has sat at the symbolical board of Christ ( for that is Paul 's trend in this passage) .

For those that eat and drink at that board become on e body and on e bread ; that is, all who assemble there for the 's death and eating the symbol ical bread certainly show that they are the body of Christ, that is, members of His Church , which , as it h as one faith and purpose of proclaiming the Lord eats the same symbolical bread , so is on e body and on e bread .

Thus it becomes clear that Christ wished to give us bread and wine as food and drink , because as these two are combined each into one body from numberless grains or atoms of ﬂour or drops of the juiceof the vine respectively, so we come together into one faith and on e body .

Hence also the Greeks called the Supper by the other name , o tua £ cs, * [gathering] , because by this symbol all who had thus assembled were gathered together

"cf . Steph anu s, Thesaurus li ng uae Gra ecae, v u , 12 19 :

" w e" peculi a

rite r di ctus est a quibusdam th eol og i s conventus , qui ﬁebat ad celebrandam cosh am domi ni , i tem celebrati o ipsi u s coeus s .

Th e Wo rks of Huld reich Zwing li as I have showed elsewhere by many proofs , but most brieﬂy

* where I reduced the whole matter to two very short syllogisms, which I shall not be sorry to insert here .

But ﬁrst I must make here the i ntroduc tory remarks that I made there . of all against Jerome Emser the Ibex , FROM THE

"REPLY TO EM SER 1

The NewTestament is eternal, as is clear from Isaiah 9 : 2 and Jeremiah 31 : 31

Therefore the blood also on which the New Testament rests and with which it is sprinkled must be eternal ; for it is the blood of the eternal Son of God, I Peter 1 : 1 9 ; Heb .

. The blood of Christ alone takes away our sins ; for He is the only on e who takes away the sins of the world and wh o has reconciled all things through His blood, Col . 1 : 20

. For if sins could have been expiated in any other way, Christ would have died for nought, and those wh o eat Him would still h un ger, those who drink Him would none the less thirst .

Far be this from the minds of believers .

He Himself, lifted up from the earth , has drawn all things to Himself [cf. Jn .

But si n also is not removed without blood, Heb . 9 : 22 .

II . But the blood of Christ was offered once only ; for it is the eternal blood of God 's eternal Son .

Heb . 9 : 1 2 :

"Through his own blood he entered in once for all into the holy place.

III . Therefore the blood of Christ, offered once for all , endures forever to remove the sins of all men .

In the second place, observe the following I . Christ i s offered only when He suffers , sheds His blood, dies .

In fact, these are equivalent .

Proof : Paul says , Heb .

9 : 25

-26 :

"Nor yet that he should offer himself often else must he often have suffered since the foundation of th e world .

" is for Christ to suffer ; for Paul proves that the oﬂ "to offer Christ Therefore 'eri ng of Christ must be the only offering of the kind , from the fact that He was slain only once .

Therefore there is offering only when there is death ; for offering follows 'An epithet sugg ested by the ﬁg ure of thi s animal on Emeer 's coat of arm s .

S ee p . 345 .

'cf. pp . 392 -393 .

O n T ru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n death .

For the offering is accomplished only when that which is offered h as been slain .

II . Christ can no more die , suffer, shed His blood , Rom .

6 : 9-1 0:

"Christ, who rose from the dead , dieth no more ; death no more hath dominion over him .

For the death that he died , he died unto sin , and that once ; but the life that he liveth , he liveth unto God .

III . Therefore Christ can no more be oﬁ ered up ; for He cannot die . * From this it is clearly manifest how recklessly the Pope of Rome and all his minions have imposed upon the simple mindedness of Christians .

For what have they not acquired by celebrating the Mass ?

Whole kingdoms have been given them that they might eat the Lord 's Supper for us , and yet they did not eat it at all , but pretended that they were offering

Christ for our transgressions .

If this custom had come down from the Apostles or from those ﬁrst brethren of Christ , it would have h ad something to show for itself ; but, as it is , since this ritual of the Mass has absolutely no basis in any institution of Christ or of the Apostles , why , in the Temple , that is , in the Church of God , do we endure this shameless traﬂi c, which breaks out so openly to the dishonoring of Christ ?

Why do we not bid all thes e mass -mongers to cease this atrocious insult to Christ ?

For if Christ h as to be offered up daily, it must be because His being oﬂ ' ered once on the cross is not sufﬁcient for all time .

What greater insult can be named than this ?

All masses should be immedi ately abolish ed,t and the Lord ' s Sup per used according to its institution by Ch rist .

Yet no wrong should be inﬂicted upon the mass -reciters who have been chosen for this ofﬁce , but they should be supported in peace as long as they live ; but afterwards none should be put in the places of the dead, and their goods should be devoted to beneﬁting the poor .

The objections that are raised to this from the Fathers so-called , from the Councils and Pontiﬁcal laws , are so trivial that it is n ot worth while to refute them .

For as , before 'Here ends th e quotati on from th e R eply to E ms er .

Ton April 12 , 1 5 25 , th e Counci l at Zur ich decided th at th e M as s sh ould be done away wi th , and on th e foll owi ng day for th e ﬁrst time the Lord

' s Supper was cel ebr ated in Zurich accordi ng to Zwi ngl i s di recti ons .

Th e Works of H uld reich Zwing li Christ was born , n o on e coul d effect that any offering should save us, so , n ow that He has reconciled us to God by havi ng once suffered death on the cross , no cong eg ati on , no Coun cil , n o Fathers , can effect that He be offered up again .

For as He h as atoned for the sins of all from the founding of the world , so is He even unto the end of the world the bearer of salvation to all who trust in Him ; for He i s everlasting God ; through Him we were created and redeemed .

If, therefore , you ﬁnd anything from Holy Writ distorted into the contrary , do n ot be troubled, but hasten to the passage thus twisted , and you will immediately discover theft or violence .

For example , many men have argued a great deal about the priesthood of Christ, with the object of making themselves out His priest hood ; and to support this error they have brought forward the statement in Hebrews 5 : 1 :

"Every high priest, being taken from among men , is ordained for men , and many other pas sages from the same epistle .

Yet, when you examine the case more closely, you will see that there is n ot a better club with which to destroy all their arguments than this epistle ; and I advise you to study it carefully .

When , therefore , you come to the aforesaid passage , Heb . 5 : 1 , you will ﬁnd plainly that Paul i s explaining the priesthood of Christ by comparison with

the high priest of old .

It is not a series of sacriﬁcing priests ordained in succession , with new men substituted for the dead .

" according to the utterance of the prophet [cf. Ps . 1 1 0: if any on e were to succeed to His place ?

Is He dead or deprived of His office , that any one has to be substituted for Him ?

Nay, since He sits forever at the right hand of the Father [M k . and forever destroys our sins by the on e offering made upon the cross , He does not need that any one should supply His place .

And no on e can supply His place , save a righteous being who dies for the unrighteous [cf. I Pet . 3 : 1 8] and since none can be or do that save the Son of God , it is impious to talk of an offering priesthood at all .

I am n ot speaking of the ministers of the word and the Church .

They are the dispensers of the mysteries , that i s, the hidden things of God [cf. I Cor . and are not the priesthood of Christ ; for that can be nothing else than Christ Himself making satisfaction with the Father

"a priest for ever For how could Christ be

Th e Wo rks of H uld reich Zwi ng li It follows , therefore, forthwi th that those wh o come together for this practice or festival , to commemorate , that is, to proclaim the Lord 's death , bear witness by this very fact that they are members of on e body, are one bread ; for all who trust in Chri s t are on e body, as Paul bears witness in more than one place , and es pecially in the above mentioned I Cor .

He, therefore, who joins with Christians when they proclaim th eLord 's death , who eats with them the symbolical bread or ﬂesh , certainly ought afterwards to live according

's directions ; for he h as given evidence to others that he trusts in Christ .

They, therefore, that trust in Him to Christ "ought to walk even as he walked, I John 2 : 6 .

Hence it came about that those who shared in the communion of this bread expelled from their fellowship by the institution of excommunication any on e wh o too shamelessly went a-whoring

or a-drinking, or practiced usury, or worshipped idols , or was a reviler or an extortioner [cf. I Cor . 5 : 1 1 ]

And if this usage had never died out of the church of Christ, the life and con versation of Christians coul d not help being very good .

See, pious heart, how we become feeble and frail when we follow after our own devices .

We all wanted to attain salvation by masses , when yet the Lord 's Supper, even if celebrated accord ing to Christ 's institution of it, would n ot expiate si n ; for that belongs to Christ alone .

But it was a sacrament which wit messed before the church that we had sworn allegiance to Christ ; and if we did not faithfully live up to this witnes s we should have been removed from the fellowship of the brethren , that Christian integrity might the better be mai ntained .

What, then , h as happened since we have turned this rul e of life and discipline of Christian morals to another use? That whi ch we all see with our own eyes : we have become more shameless in our lives than even the Turks and Jews .

For you do n ot ﬁnd among them such frequent adultery, so many unscrupulous forms of extortion , such beastly drunkenn ess , such bold rob bery, to say nothing of the arrogance of high and low, of the continual wars , vile blasphemy , obscene talk, lying, cheating, and overreaching .

Have we not all had our hands full with tryi ng by hearing or hiring or reading masses to drain this universal swamp of evil ?

This , I believe , n o on e will deny,

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i on that we have all ﬂed for refuge to the mass , as to a sacred anchor [ cf. Heb .

Nay , we have gone even to such a pitch of madness as to fancy that we saw a bread that brings salvation .

Nor have we been content with this ; but what we saw we also worshipped , forgetting our own articles so -called , according to which it is agreed among all who have written on the subject, whether of the new school or of the old, that not even the pure humanity of Christ is to be worshipped .

" [cf. Mt . and "No man hath seen God at any time "Only God is to be worshipped " [Jn .

Why , then , do we worship a thing we see , when only God is to be worshipped and we have never seen Him ?

Whither will they now turn who teach that the Eucharist , so -called , is to be worshipped ?

Who ever worshipped a thanksgiving ?

For what is a thanks giving, or where is it, or how is it ?

Does it not exist only when thanks are given ?

So , what is a Synaxis ?

Nothing, by thunder, but a gathering together, an assembling , a con course .

But who will ever be able to worship that ?

It is an action , a usage , and exists only at the time when it takes place .

's Supper .

It is a supper and a thanksgiving , when it is eaten in conjunction with The same vi ew is to be taken of the Lord the proclaiming of the death of Christ .

Do we read that any on e of the Apostles worshipped the supper when Christ was instituting this commemoration of Himself ?

Alas for our souls, which are so given to error that, I fear , even though we see the truth itself set before our eyes we yet do not receive it !

Whither, then , does our faith tend , or upon what is it based ?

Does it not tend to God ?

Why, then , do we still delay to tear our hearts away from ceremonies ?

Why do we set our hopes upon things upon which the Lord h as n ot commanded us to ?

Is n ot our salvation based upon Him who is the Savior of all nations ?

Why, then , do we seek it in the bread of commem oration ?

I may add , however, that it is my conviction that this bread and chalice of commemoration are to be treated with all

" reverence in the church 1 11 which all things should be "done decently and in order, I . Cor .

But more in my concluding paragraphs .

Now I will cite those of the ancients who, as we shall see clearly from their own words , did not understand that there

The Works of Huld reich Zwi ng li was i n this sacrament or thi s symbolical bread any bodi ly ﬂesh or indeed any ﬂesh whatever ( for what is the use of calling ﬂesh spiritual , when that woul d be the same thing as calling ﬁre watery or iron Next I wi ll cite those wh o are silent about the ﬂes h , evi dently because they hold the same view as myself, but are by no means silent as to the object for whi ch the Supper was instituted .

Thus it will be established that the us e of the Eucharist among them was far different from the tradition the Roman Pontiffs have given us .

Ter tullian in his ﬁrst book against Marcion * says ,

"Nor did He, God namely, di sdain the bread by whi ch He represents His "

See how plainly he says that the body of Christ own body . is represented by the bread, n ot that Christ

's body is represented _by any visible bread whatsoever, but by the symbolical bread which was used in proclaiming the Lord 's death .

Hence also I have called it symbolical , because it is at once both sign and seal .

Augustine , though speaking differently in diﬂerent pass ages on this subject, yet seems in two places to express clearly what he understands by "

The ﬁrst 'r makes for the "body . vi ew of Tertul lian .

It is in the introduction to the third Psalm , where he speaks of Christ and Judas thus :

"And in the New Testament narrative itself our Lord 's patient endurance is so great and so marvellous that He bore so long with him , namely Judas , as if he were good , though He knew his thoughts when He admitted him to the feast at which He committed and delivered to His disciples the ﬁgure of His body and blood .

How clear this is which Augustine says here !

He tells us that Christ bequeathed to His disciples a ﬁgure of His

' ﬂwm at way did He bequeath to them a ﬁgure ?

By bequeathing, of course , the use of this symbol ical bread , by whi ch the Lord body and blood .

But l ﬁi 's death was represented and ﬁgured in a commemorative act by a sensible sign and observ ance .

Or , as manna in the Old Testament foretold and pre ﬁg ured Christ as the bread to come of the soul , so this bread

'Ag ai nst M arci on, I :

1 4 .

S ee Robertson and Donaldson , eds . , Th e An te-Nic ene Fa thers , III : 281 .

TEzvposi ti ons on th e book of Psa lms ; Psal m 3 :

1 .

S ee S chaﬂ, cd . , Th e Nicene and Pos t -Nic ene Fa th ers , Fi rst series ; VIII :

4 -5 .

Th e Wo rks of H uld reich Zwi ng li ﬂes h here, which proﬁteth nothing ?

Now I will come to those who have explained the use of this food in such fashion that we see plain ly that not only as regards the thing, but as regards its us e this sacrament was an altogether different thing to the men of old .

Hence I am easily induced to believe that Augustine, an exceptionally keen and clear -sig hted man , did not venture to proclaim the truth explicitly in his day, because it had already largely fallen into disrepute .

An altogether pious man saw what the sacrament was , and for what purpose it had been instituted , but the notion of bodi ly ﬂesh had grown very strong .

Fi rst, therefore, I quote Origen in two passages for the reason that he seems both in regard to the thi ng and in regard to the purpose to agree with me .

The ﬁrst passage is in the Homily on Matt . 23 : 23 , upon the words :

"Ye pay tithe of mi nt and anise and cummin , etc .

He says : * "But if we are to adopt a moral interpretati on for such words in the gospel , we must know that as mi nt and anise and cummin are seasonings for foods, not themselves chi ef articles of food, so in our behavior some things are of prime and necessary importance to the justifyi ng of our soul s , such as these weighty points of the Law , judgment, mercy, and faith ; while there are other things that season our acts , as it were, commend them , and make them sweeter, as, for instance , abstinence, laughter , fasting , genu ﬂexi on , remaining for the collects , assiduity in the communion , and the like , which are not themselves righteousness but are looked upon as adding savor to righteousness .

See h ow he relegates the communion , which in old times was partaken of more frequently than in our day, to a place among unimpor tant things and ceremonial acts , which he surely never would have done if he had felt and boasted about bodily ﬂesh , as we do .

The other passage is in Homily 351 upon the same Evan g eli st, on these words :

"This is mybody, etc .

Here he imme "This bread , which God the Word acknowledges to be His body, is the word that nourishes the soul , the word proceeding from God the Word and the bread from the bread di ately adds :

'S er i es v eteri s i n terpr eta ti onis commen ta ri oru m i n M a ttha ea m .

Homil i a 2 0.

TIbi d . 585 , on M att . 26 : 26 .

( Sometimes cited as Tracta te

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n of heaven which was placed upon the table , of which it is writ ten 'Thou h as prepared a table before me in the presence of those who afﬂict me .

, '

[Ps . 23 :

And this drink , which God the Word acknowledges to be His blood , is the word that gives to drink and in goodly fashion exhilarates the hearts of the 'And thy cup which exhilarateth me , how goodly it is ! drinkers ; and it is in the cup of which it is written ,

' And this drink i s the product of the true vine which saith [Jn . 1 5 : 1 ] 'I am the true vine .

And it i s the blood of th ose grapes that , cast into the winepress of the Passion , brought forth this drink .

So also the bread is the word of Christ made of that wheat which falling into good ground brought forth much frui t

'This is the bread of the new testament , [cf. Mt . 1 3 :

But why did He not say ,

' as He said , 'This is the blood of the new tes tament ' ? Because the bread is the Word of Righteousness , by eating which the soul is nourished ; while the drink is the Word of the Knowledge of Christ according to the mystery of His birth and passion .

Since , therefore , the testament of God

was made for us in the blood of the passion of Christ, that we , believing that the Son of God had been born and had suffered according to the ﬂesh , might be saved , and not in righteous ness , in which by itself there could be no salvation without . this account it was of the cup only that He said : faith in the passion of Christ , on "

' It would take too much space to transcribe the whole passage here .

"This is th e cup of the testament , etc .

We see by these words that Origen held the view that the essential thing in this sacrament is the faith by which we believe that Christ made sacriﬁce for us ; for He is the food of the soul .

And afterwards in the same passage he explains the procedure , saying :

"And Jesus always , taking the bread from the Father for those wh o are keeping this festival with Him , gives thanks, and breaks , and gives to the disciples according as each is capable of receiving ; and gives , sayi ng [M t. 26 : 26]

'Take and eat .

Lo , he calls it a festival , that is , a celebrating assemblage or gathering of the church !

Further , he says that Christ gives accordi ng to the capacity of each , which cannot possibly be understood of bodi ly ﬂesh , for, accordi ng to our friends , this is the same in the case of all to whom it is given ; but since He gives faith and thanksgiving not in the same

Th e Works of H uld reich Zwing li measure to all , it is apparent that these are what is spoken of.

What follows here in Origenwill at ﬁrst sight seem to his i nex peri en ced reader to have somewhat the appearance of being said of bodily ﬂesh , though nothing i s less true , as readily becomes plain if on e looks more closely .

But what he adds at the end shows with perfect clearness what the Eucharist is to him and what its purpose, when he says :

"Then he taught the disciples, w h o had celebrated the festival with their master

"festival "and had received the bread of blessing , and had eaten the body of the word ( observe

" ( see whether he thought "and had drunk the cup of thanksgiving, etc . there was sensible body here) "

Behold the Eucharist, a commemoration , celebration , or proclamation of the death of the Lord !

Hilary in Canon 9 , treating of the fasting of John 's disciples and Christ "But in answering that while the bridegroom is present the disciples have n o need of fasting , He is teaching the joy of his own presence and the sacrament of the holy food

's, says

of which none shall be in want while He is present, that is , while he keeps Christ before his heart ; but when He is taken away, He says they will fast, because none who believeth not that Christ has risen shall have the food of life .

For the sacra ment of the bread of heaven is received in faith in the resur rection , and whosoever i s without Christ shall be left fasting as far as the food of life is concerned .

Hilary means here that the mystery of Christ is the food of the soul , and that as long as He is at hand none need fast, but that when He has been taken away, then shall men fast .

They, therefore , for whom Christ has risen , that is, they that attribute to Christ resur rection from the dead, alone properly eat the sacramental bread which is the symbol of the heavenly, while they that are with out Christ are left fasting as far as the food of life is con cerned .

He thinks , therefore, that the Lord 's Supper is the symbol of those that trust in Christ, in whose hearts He h as risen again , that is , who ﬁrmly believe He has risen .

For those who believe He h as risen must believe that He is true

God ; and those wh o believe He is true God cannot help trust ing in Him .

Therefore , this great authority says :

"The sacra ment of the bread of heaven is received in faith i n the resur "Commen ta/ ry on S t. M a tth ew, ch . 9 , § 8.

The Wo rks of H uldreich Zwing li

by men , assembled together, wh o have been renewed through faith and life in Christ .

Augustine in Tractate 84 upon John , on the words , Greater love hath n o man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends ,

" [Jn . 1 5 : 1 3] says a little further on : "This doubtless is the thought in the Proverbs of Solomon 23 : 1 2 :

'When thou sittest to eat at the table of a rul er, consider di li gently what is set before thee, and put forth thy hand , know th at thou must provide the For what is 'the table i ng '

' but the table whence are taken the body and blood of a rul er sitting at it of Him who laid down His life for us ?

And what is '

' but approaching it in humility ?

And what is 'considering diligently what is set before thee ' but pondering worthily th e great favor shown you ?

And what is it 'to put forth thy hand , knowing that thou must provide the like ' but what I have already said , that as Christ laid down His life for us , so we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren ?

For this the Apostle Peter also says [I Pet . 2 : 21 ] 'Christ suffered for us , leaving us an example , that we should follow his

' steps , etc .

See for what purpose Augustine says that we eat the body and blood of Christ : for the purpose , namely, of pouring out our life for the brethren just as Christ did for us .

However, lest anyone think that Augustine means by body and blood these bodily things , I will quote also what he

"Finally, He sets forth how that is done of which He is speaking , and what it is to eat His body and to drink His blood : had said just before in Tractate 26 , after this fashion ,

'He that \eateth my ﬂesh , and drinketh my blood , abideth in me , and I ' [Jn . 6 :

This, then , is to partake of this food and drink this drink : to abide in Christ and to have Him abide in in him us ; and consequently he that abideth not in Christ, and in wh om Christ abideth not, beyond a doubt neither partakes

(spiritually) of His ﬂesh nor drinks His blood (though he physically and vi sibly crush with his teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ) , but rather eateth and drinketh the sacrament of this great thing to his own judgment, etc .

What, pray, could be said more clearly and openly than this ?

"The text of the S eptuag i nt i s fol l owed i n these verses .

O n T ru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n What at the same time could be said more carefully ?

For having said "though b e physically and visibly crush with his , "the sacrament of the body and blood teeth , he at once adds ,

" that you may not think this is to be understood of the bodily ﬂesh of Christ .

This , he means, is to eat carnally , when on e eats sacramentally ; but to eat sacramentally cannot be anything else than to eat the sign or symbol .

Again , let no one think it a trivial thing that he spoke of eating sacra menta lly of Christ ,

's words in I Cor . 1 1 : 27:

" as i f such partaking detracted from Paul , "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily , eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, etc .

For someone might 'be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord ?

"If I eat only sacramentally , how can I say :

Augustine , therefore , blunts the point of this thoughtless objection by saying,

"but rather eateth and drinketh the sacrament of this great thing to his own judgment .

See ﬁrst how he says n ot " but "this great thing ,

Of what thing ?

Of this , that through faith we are in Christ and He in us .

Therefore , continuing to speak carefully, he declares that those who merely eat the sacrament of faith in Christ eat and drink judg ment to themselves ; meaning , besides , that this sacrament ought n ot to be eaten by anybody but on e who trusts in Christ .

"the sacrament of this great thing .

"The Agreement among the Evangel Also in Book 3 of " Chapter 1 , giving the reason why John said nothing about the body and blood when he was describing the supper and the washing of the feet , he says : ists , "John says nothing in this passage about the body and blood of the Lord , but he plainly bears witness elsewhere much more fully as to the Lord

's having spoken upon this point .

Augustine , therefore , thinks the same kind of eating n ecesary here , as far as the thing itself is concerned, that is treated in the sixth chapter of John

. And this is to have faith i n the Gospel word .

We do not, therefore , according to his opinion , in any other way eat Christ than through faith , trusting in Him as the sure pledge of salvation .

I have quoted these things from the weightiest of the Fathers , not because I wish to support by human authority a thing plain in itself and conﬁrmed by the Word of God , but -it might become manifest to the feebler brethren that I am not the ﬁrst to put forth this view, and that it does n ot lack that

Th e Wo rks of H uld reich Zwi ng li very strong support .

For I call God to witness that for the glory of Him al one I secretly considered this matter with various learned men for several years , for the reason that I was unwilling to spread among the crowd thoughtlessly and reck lessly anything that might give rise to some great commotion .

But the more persons I conferred with , the more I found wh o assented to this view .

Therefore I prayed frequently that the Lord would show a way by which all shoul d learn to know h ow much less difficult than we all thought is this thing which in the judgment of the simple is by far the most difﬁcult ; and a way, too, by which , as far as usefulness is concerned, it would be of more service and us e in the church than anything else .

For what has opened the door more widely to all sorts of vice than that when sinning shamelessly we have not kept away from this commun ion ?

Or what coul d have more persuasively invited to mutual love and favor than the frequent pouring into the ear and the heart that Christ of His own free wi ll died for poor mortals and His enemies ?

Or h ow could any one have better defended himself against the risk of shame from adultery , usury , vanity , pride , arrogance , greed , and the other vices, than by sitting again and again at the table from which many had been turned away in dire disgrace, where daily examples were made ?

Seeing, therefore , that the original use of this sacrament would do so much good , I prayed earnestly to the Lord, as I have said , that He woul d show me the way to approach so delicate a matter wisely , and He answered my earnest prayers .

Thus at length I came to the conclusion that it would be of advantage if the mass should be overturned ; and I hoped that when that had been over turned the Eucharist could be restored in i ts purity .

I saw no more effective armor for this conﬂict than the sixth chapter of John .

There that indestructible adamant,

"The ﬂesh " is so ﬁrmly imbedded in its form and sub stance that it stands uninjured , however you beat upon it, and all opposing weapons are shattered without even making a dent proﬁteth nothing, in it .

Next to this passage the best adapted to the purpose seemed to be John "No man hath seen God at any time .

This forbids the worshipping of anything that is the object of sight or touch .

Finally , it was necessary that the orig

Th e Wo rks of H uldreich Zwing li the bread, but the body of Christ?

Do they n ot worship the creature ?

Where , then , are their decrees, by which , as I have said, they forbid the worship of the human ? But, again , they "

"We worship and even eat the spiritual body of Christ . say :

What, by Almighty God, i s the spiritual body of Christ ?

Do we ﬁnd anywhere in the Scriptures any other spiritual body of Christ than either the Church , as in Eph . 4 : 4 and Col . 1 : 1 8, or our faith , which believes He paid the penalty for us upon the cross and is sure of salvation through Him ?

Why, pray, do we burden pious hearts with words of this kind , which n o intellect can comprehend ?

" man comprehends as little as if you were to say "Spiritual body " or "bodily mind "

"ﬂeshy reason .

's body spirituallywhen webelieve that He was slain for us and trust in Him ?

Are n ot spirit and life forthwith in us ?

Why do we continue to link together i n con Do we not eat Christ g ruous words simply to weave this long rope of contention ? Let us speak plainly !

We eat spiritually when through the grace of God we come to Christ .

To eat the body of Christ spiritu ally, then , what is it but to trust in Christ ?

Why do we think up strange inventions which cannot possibly hold together ?

" says Christ [Jn . 8 :

Since , then , He is the light, wh o will believe that He h as thrust us into such darkness as this , in which faith is weakened rather than strengthened ? What I say is true and found to be so .

For when the human heart is safe through Christ by faith in God , does it not possess the crowning blessing of salvation ?

It cer "I am the light of the world,

tai nly does .

What, then , do you suppose happens to it when it is driven into things so disparate and so abhorrent to all under standing ?

It simply begins to waver, by Heaven .

Y ou wi ll "Faith can do all things ; and unless you have it , you can not be saved . say :

I answer , that i n this way everybody is imposed upon .

Those wh o hold this hard doctrine demand faith tre m endously in this instance, though at other times they do not attribute very much to it .

That is about what those do who out of their ﬂeshly minds, as Paul says , Eph . 4 : 1 4 and C01. assert anything they please .

When you press them so hard that they are forced either to give in or to turn and ﬂee , they take refuge in faith ; when if they really had faith they never could have made any such assertion .

For those who trust

O n Tru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n in Christ neither hunger nor thirst for anything else [cf. Jn . for they have already the food by which the soul is revived .

Therefore they ascribe to faith what she does n ot recognize nor suffer to be attributed to her , as has been abun dantly proved above . * Hence they do her no small wrong when they give her credit for establishing the presence of the bodily ﬂesh of Christ .

And this for two reasons : [I .] First , because they say that this bodily ﬂes h exists through our faith ; for faith protes ts .

And it will have to be admitted that this great thing, as th ey represent it , exists of itself rather than through our faith .

For faith is directed to things that exist before you put faith in them .

Our faith , therefore , cannot produce this ﬂesh .

This I shoul d not have said if there were not certain persons who seek such poor shelter under faith as to venture to say that this ﬂesh exists through faith .

What more foolish th an this can be said ?

Can our faith cause bread to be ﬂesh ?

This must be proved conclusively by the word of God , where faith h as its abode , not thrust upon faith by force .

[IL] Second , they do wrong to fai th because they say it saves

us .

This is , to be sure , true in itself, but in this instance it is as far from the truth as darkness is from light .

For they ar e putting up a pretext , as if this faith saves which believes that bodil y ﬂesh is in the bread or is the brea d itself .

But thi s is said without th e authority of the word ; for nowhere do we read :

"Veril y, verily , I say unto you , that he that believeth that in this bread he eateth my bodi ly ﬂes h shall be blessed .

Nay, an other very great error woul d follow, namely, that there

are two faiths eﬁecti ve for salvation : one that by which we trust in Christ , the other that by whi ch we believe that this bread is ﬂes h .

For they say :

"Unless you believe that the thi ng is so , you cannot be saved .

See how human reason , wi llingly and kn owin gly, ﬁnds darkn es s in the midst of li ght, in order

to grOpe in it and by groping and searchi ng to gain a reputa ti on for cleverness among the simple .

For where i n Scotus and Th oma is there such zeal an d diligence in investigating th e chan ging of the bread an d win e in to body and blood as there is display of clevernes s ?

Th ey imi tated physicians ' See p .

1 99 .

yDuns Scotus ( 1 265 and Thomas Aqui n a s ( 1 22 5

The Works of H uld reich Zwing li

unskilled in their profession , wh o, in order to seem learned , by means of drugs cause you at a period foretold by them to experience a more severe attack of some triﬂing ailment, that by their affording relief they may be regarded as gods .

Do we n ot see that this is like the case we have under discussion ?

These men taught, in the ﬁrst place , that the bodily ﬂesh of Christ, as it wailed in the manger and as it hun g upon the bloody cross ( they might at least have said , as it entered into the disciples through closed doors after the resurrection) , is eaten here .

And, in order not to seem bad teachers, they got up a wonderful maze of argument to show that the thing was so, and they led about in a labyrinth , as it were, the stolid minds that never really believed the thing or at least refused to take a clear look at what is the truth , showing them one form after another until they took away all concern for the way out .

After this was in great measure taken away, they pro ceeded to tyrannize over those who wanted to look into things a little more carefully .

They called those heretics who strove to teach that which is true . Why g o into detail ? When they were going to sell this bread of communion like any other com modity, they needed to make it something that all shoul d look upon with wondering admiration , so that they could increase the price .

They began , therefore, to make the bread ﬂesh , disregarding the saying ,

"The ﬂesh proﬁteth nothing .

I beg all , therefore, wh o read these words of mine, by that faith by which we all are saved , not to condemn or reject forthwith what they hear, even if it seems to them perfectly absurd, but to pray the Lord to give them the true light of understanding , by which they shall be able to see what is true and right and holy . The face of Truth is glad and by no means arrogant, but she is also inaccessible to ﬂattery . Hence they whose consciences are bad dare not at ﬁrst sight gaze upon her steadily and fearlessly ; but when they have again and again g ot a taste , as it were, of looking at her, sh e will begin not to disturb them .

Almighty God grant that we may all learn that that only is true religion by which our hearts cling to Him solely and alone , imitate Him alone, desire to please Him alone , hang upon His will alone .

And may He grant, on the other hand , that we may see that these elements of the world make us not a

Th e Works of H uld reich Zwi ng li

when he sets him before his own eyes so that he may learn to know himself, or sometimes drags him in spite of his resistance to a knowledge of hi s hypocrisy .

It i s a bitter and sharp thing that you are thoroughly bad within to the very core ; it is a still more bitter thing that you cannot deny your wickedness ; it i s the most bitter thing when you realize that you are dead and that your hopes have failed .

Then the wound begins to burn .

Presently, therefore, the minister of the word shoul d pour in

oil , that is, Christ, who i s anointed beyond all with the oil of gladness, that is , he shoul d show what grace has bestowed upon us through Him .

When the man h as learned this , he can n o longer be kept from hastening to Him .

Auricular confession , then , is nothing but a consultation in whi ch we receive, from him whom God has appointed to the end that we may seek the law from his lips , advice as to h ow we can secure peace of mind .

Behold the Keys , therefore , behold the Gospel , of which enough has been said .

The minister of the word, therefore , evangelizes you ; and when you have been evangelized, that is, when you have received Christ, you are absolved and delivered from the burden of si n , and this relief you feel in your heart, even if no pontiff pronounces the words of any formula over you .

Non sense and sheer trumpery , therefore , are the promises of the Papalists concerning the Keys .

In the same category belong the doctrines of certain reckless persons who have asserted that

a man is made sure by the Keys .

Unless he is sure wi thin through faith , you will say in vain , Thou art free .

For you can no more make him sure by your words than you can make an elephant of a ﬂy by saying,

"Y ou are an elephant .

Y ou may teach and expound the meaning of the Gospel , but you do it in vain , unless the Lord give inward teaching .

For how many are there who hear and do n ot receive it [cf. Mk . 4 : 1 5] What is the reason they do n ot receive it ?

God hath not drawn them [cf. Jn .

As soon as He draws them , they leap over to Him without your help .

Unless a man h as this cer tainty of faith , he will be absolved a thousand times by the priest in vain ; for he will always go from him in despair and unbelief .

And the things concerning confession that have been invented and handed down are as the ocean and Cimmerian darkness , so that it is n ot at all worth while to refute them .

O n T ru e a nd Fal s e R elig i o n you examine properly the few things that I add here , you will sail safely through the whole of Scripture , as far as Confession is concerned , easily perceiving that of the auricular confession we have hitherto practiced absolutely no mention is made therein .

[I .] To confess is , ﬁrst , to praise and to give thanks to the Lord ; as, " as the children of Israel sang when Pharaoh was drowned . *

[IL] Next, to confess is to trust in the Lord , to confess that He is "Confess unto the Lord , for he is good ,

-1 6 : our rock and refuge , as Ps .

1 05 : 1

-25 and I John 4 : 1 5 "

"Every on e that confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God , etc .

[III ] Further , to confess is to acknowledge that of which you are reproached or accused ; as those whose consciences were pricked by the preaching of John acknowledged that the case was as he taught . So today those confess their sins who when they hear the word of God are conscience stricken so that they recognize their trouble , and straightway betake themselves to the physician .

[IV .] Finally , we confess our sins when we inform our neighbor or some learned scholar of our secret guilt , in order that he may join us in asking forgiveness of the Heavenly Father, or may ﬁnd counsel , as has been said , that will enable us to resist evil thereafter .

Of this confession , James , says :

"'Confess your sins one to another , and pray on e for another, that ye may be healed ; for the continual prayer of a righteous man availeth much .

Relying upon this passage , the Papalists have defended auricular confession hitherto , though St . James is not speaking of that, but of the confession which every man makes to hi s neighbor when he discloses to him some internal and hi therto hi dden wound .

Hence , nothing more can be wrun g from this passage than that every man shoul d go to his neighbor and ask hi m to pray with hi m for his shortcomin gs .

And i n order that he may do this more earnestly, he exp oses the foul ness of hi s woun d .

In a word , he makes suﬁci ent confession who trusts i n God , as was sai d in the second article above ; who praises Hi m and gives thanks for blessings bestowed, as i n the ﬁrst article ; who acknowledges his sins and deplores them before the Lord, as * Th e quotati on i s n ot from Exod .

1 5 , a s one mi ght s urmi se from th e words that foll ow, but fr om P s .

1 36 : l . Probably verses 1 3 -1 5 l ed hi m to think th e wh ol e Psalm was sun g on th e occa si on of Ph araoh s destructi on .

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