For a perfect Sacrament requires both matter and spirit.[[4]] If either is absent, the Sacrament is incomplete.
Thus, the Council of Trent's definition of Transubstantiation[[5]] seems, as it stands, to spoil the very nature of a Sacrament. It is the "change of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, of the whole substance of the wine into the blood of Christ, only the appearance of bread and wine remaining".
Again, the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation destroys the nature of the Sacrament. The Lutheran Formula Concordiae, e.g., teaches that "outside the use the Body of Christ is not present". Thus it limits the Presence to the reception, whether by good or bad.
The Figurative view of the Blessed Sacrament destroys the nature of a Sacrament, making the matter symbolize something which is not there.
It is safer to take the words of consecration as they stand, corresponding as they do so literally with the words of Institution, and simply to say: "This (bread: it is still bread) is My Body" (it is far more than bread); "this (wine: it is still wine) is My Blood" (it is far more than wine). Can we get beyond this, in terms and definitions? Can we say more than that it is a "Sacrament"—The Blessed Sacrament? And after all, do we wish to do so?
(II) WHAT IT DOES.
Briefly, the Blessed Sacrament does two things; It pleads, and It feeds. It is the pleading of the one Sacrifice; It is the feeding on the one Sacrifice.
These two aspects of the one Sacrament are suggested in the two names, Altar and Table.[[6]] Both words are liturgical. In Western Liturgies, Altar is the rule, and Table the exception; in Eastern Liturgies, Table is the rule, and Altar the exception. Both are, perhaps, embodied in the old name, God's Board, of Thomas Aquinas. Both contain a truth.
The Altar.
This, for over 300 years, was the common name for what St. Irenaeus calls "the Abode of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ". Convocation, in 1640, decreed: "It is, and may be called, an Altar in that sense in which the Primitive Church called it an Altar, and in no other". This sense referred to the offering of what the Liturgy of St. James calls "the tremendous and unbloody Sacrifice," the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom "the reasonable and unbloody Sacrifice,"[[7]] and the Ancient English Liturgy "a pure offering, an holy offering, an undefiled offering, even the holy Bread of eternal Life, and the Cup of everlasting Salvation ".