By the word of God, then, let us proceed to try the question, and we will examine the language of Scripture,
I. With reference to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper;
II. With reference to the life and work of our blessed Lord.
May the Holy Ghost lead us calmly, seriously, and dispassionately to learn the truths of his own most holy word!
I. The language of Scripture with reference to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
The doctrine is supposed to rest upon the words of our blessed Saviour, “This is my body,” or as they were revealed to St. Paul, “This is my body which is broken for you.”
This sentence is thought to contain a plain, literal, absolute, assertion that the bread was changed into his body; changed so completely that while the Saviour spoke the words, that bread which he held within his hand, was his real, natural, whole, and substantial person. The belief of the Church of England is that the words have no such literal meaning; but were employed to teach that the bread and wine were signs, figures, or emblems of his body broken, and his blood shed upon the cross. [58a] He says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” “I am the door:” but none suppose that he was a real vine, a real door, or his people real branches of a growing tree. St. Paul says “That rock was Christ:” but none believe that the flinty rock was in very fact a living man. [58b] In all these passages we never doubt for a single moment what was the meaning of the Holy Ghost. The vine and the rock represented Christ, and the door was a figure of him. Just so we believe it to be with the words of consecration; the bread was a figure of his body and the wine of his blood.
That this is the true meaning of the passage seems to lie upon its very surface. Let us turn to 1st Corinthians xi. We shall there find that
1st. It is inconsistent to take the words literally; for they are quite as explicit and literal when spoken of the wine as of the bread. “This is my body which is broken for you.” “This cup is the New Testament in my blood.” But in this one passage there are no less than three figures. The cup stands as the emblem or figure of the wine contained in it; the new covenant is said to be the New Testament in his blood, because it was sealed and ratified by his blood; and the cup itself is declared positively to be the testament. This must be figurative, it must mean that the cup is a sign, emblem, or figure of the testament. Thus the warmest advocate of the doctrine of transubstantiation is compelled to allow the use of figure with reference to the cup. Is it consistent? is it defensible or any principle of scriptural interpretation to deny it with reference to the bread? ought they not to be interpreted on the same principles? Here are two sentences, spoken at the same time, by the same person, under the same circumstances, to the same company, and for the same purpose. But there must be a figure in the one, who shall deny it in the other? The cup must be an emblem of the testament, can we be wrong in believing also that the bread is an emblem of the body?
2d. But this is not all. We have besides the direct testimony of the Holy Ghost that the bread remains bread, and the wine remains wine after consecration. Of the wine our Lord spoke in terms which it is quite impossible to mistake or misinterpret. In Matthew xxvi. 29, he expressly says, “I will drink no more of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” These words were spoken after the consecration, and they seem uttered with especial caution as if he had foreseen the error which was about to creep into his professing church. He does not rest content with the name of “wine,” but calls it “fruit of the vine,” as if to prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that it had gained no new substance, but remained as it was before, the natural produce of the vine, the simple unaltered juice of the grape. Nor is the evidence less positive with reference to the bread. Again and again do we read of the breaking of the bread, never once of the sacrifice of the body. Nor is this merely accidental, for in the 10th and 11th chapters of 1st Corinthians we have the bread called bread by the Holy Ghost, no less than four times after consecration. In 1 Cor. x. 17, the Christian communicant is said to partake of bread, not of flesh with bones and nerves; “We are all partakers of that one bread.” In 1 Cor. xi. 26, “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.” In 27, “Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord;” and 28, “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.” We do not, therefore, rest on human reason only when we deny the doctrine of transubstantiation. We boldly cast ourselves upon the teaching of the Bible, yea, upon the teaching of the Son of God himself, and believe the bread to be still bread, and the wine to remain as the fruit of the vine. We behold in them the signs and symbols of the passion of our Lord; and beholding the sign, we feed in faith on the reality. They are the figures of himself; the representations of his passion; the emblems and signs of his atoning death. As such we value, we receive, we honour them: but we live on Christ himself; we rest on the passion itself, on the atonement itself; and so by a strong, spiritual, realizing faith we are made partakers of his flesh and blood. “The words that I speak unto you they are spirit, and they are life.”