The Lutheran and High Church view,—that the communicant, in partaking of the consecrated elements, eats the veritable body and drinks the veritable blood of Christ in and with the bread and wine, although the elements themselves do not cease to be material. To this doctrine of “consubstantiation” we object:
(a) That the view is not required by Scripture.—All the passages cited in its support may be better interpreted as referring to a partaking of the elements as symbols. If Christ's body be ubiquitous, as this theory holds, we partake of it at every meal, as really as at the Lord's Supper.
(b) That the view is inseparable from the general sacramental system of which it forms a part.—In imposing physical and material conditions of receiving Christ, it contradicts the doctrine of justification only by faith; changes the ordinance from a sign, into a means, of salvation; involves the necessity of a sacerdotal order for the sake of properly consecrating the elements; and logically tends to the Romanist conclusions of ritualism and idolatry.
(c) That it holds each communicant to be a partaker of Christ's veritable body and blood, whether he be a believer or not,—the result, in the absence of faith, being condemnation instead of salvation. Thus the whole character of the ordinance is changed from a festival occasion to one of mystery and fear, and the whole gospel method of salvation is obscured.
Encyc. Britannica, art.: Luther, 15:81—“Before the peasants' war, Luther regarded the sacrament as a secondary matter, compared with the right view of faith. In alarm at this war and at Carlstadt's mysticism, he determined to abide by the tradition of the church, and to alter as little as possible. He could not accept transubstantiation, and he sought a via media. Occam gave it to him. According to Occam, matter can be present in two ways, first, when it occupies a distinct place by itself, excluding every other body, as two stones mutually exclude each other; and, secondly, when it occupies the same space as another body at the same time. Everything which is omnipresent must occupy the same space as other things, else it could not be ubiquitous. Hence [pg 969]consubstantiation involved no miracle. Christ's body was in the bread and wine naturally, and was not brought into the elements by the priest. It brought a blessing, not because of Christ's presence, but because of God's promise that this particular presence of the body of Christ should bring blessings to the faithful partaker.”Broadus, Am. Com. on Mat., 529—“Luther does not say how Christ is in the bread and wine, but his followers have compared his presence to that of heat or magnetism in iron. But how then could this presence be in the bread and wine separately?”
For the view here combated, see Gerhard, x: 352—“The bread, apart from the sacrament instituted by Christ, is not the body of Christ, and therefore it is ἀρτολατρία (bread-worship) to adore the bread in these solemn processions” (of the Roman Catholic church). 397—“Faith does not belong to the substance of the Eucharist; hence it is not the faith of him who partakes that makes the bread a communication of the body of Christ; nor on account of unbelief in him who partakes does the bread cease to be a communication of the body of Christ.” See also Sadler, Church Doctrine, 124-199; Pusey, Tract No. 90, of the Tractarian Series; Wilberforce, New Birth; Nevins, Mystical Presence.
Per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:525-584; G. P. Fisher, in Independent, May 1, 1884—“Calvin differed from Luther, in holding that Christ is received only by the believer. He differed from Zwingle, in holding that Christ is truly, though spiritually, received.”See also E. G. Robinson, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:85-109; Rogers, Priests and Sacraments. Consubstantiation accounts for the doctrine of apostolic succession and for the universal ritualism of the Lutheran Church. Bowing at the name of Jesus, however, is not, as has been sometimes maintained, a relic of the papal worship of the Real Presence, but is rather a reminiscence of the fourth century, when controversies about the person of Christ rendered orthodox Christians peculiarly anxious to recognize Christ's deity.
“There is no ‘corner’ in divine grace” (C. H. Parkhurst). “All notions of a needed ‘priesthood,’ to bring us into connection with Christ, must yield to the truth that Christ is ever with us” (E. G. Robinson). “The priest was the conservative, the prophet the progressive. Hence the conflict between them. Episcopalians like the idea of a priesthood, but do not know what to do with that of prophet.” Dr. A. J. Gordon: “Ritualism, like eczema in the human body, is generally a symptom of a low state of the blood. As a rule, when the church becomes secularized, it becomes ritualized, while great revivals, pouring through the church, have almost always burst the liturgical bands and have restored it to the freedom of the Spirit.”
Puseyism, as defined by Pusey himself, means: “1. high thoughts of the two sacraments; 2. high estimate of Episcopacy as God's ordinance; 3. high estimate of the visible church as the body wherein we are made and continue to be members of Christ; 4. regard for ordinances as directing our devotions and disciplining us, such as daily public prayers, fasts and feasts; 5. regard for the visible part of devotion, such as the decoration of the house of God, which acts insensibly on the mind; 6. reverence for and deference to the ancient church, instead of the reformers, as the ultimate expounder of the meaning of our church.” Pusey declared that he and Maurice worshiped different Gods.