Luther.—"Every thing that God commands becomes spirit and life. If it is by the Lord's order that we lift up a straw, in that very action we perform a spiritual work. We must pay attention to him who speaks, and not to what he says. God speaks: Men, worms, listen!—God commands: let the world obey! and let us all together fall down and humbly kiss the Word."[229]
Œcolampadius.—"But since we have the spiritual eating, what need of the bodily one?"
Luther.—"I do not ask what need we have of it; but I see it written, Eat, this is my body. We must therefore believe and do. We must do—we must do![230]—If God should order me to eat dung, I would do it, with the assurance that it would be salutary."[231]
At this point Zwingle interfered in the discussion. "We must explain Scripture by Scripture," said he. "We cannot admit two kinds of corporeal manducation, as if Jesus had spoken of eating, and the Capernaites of tearing in pieces, for the same word is employed in both cases. Jesus says that to eat his flesh corporeally profiteth nothing (John vi. 63); whence it would result that he had given us in the Supper a thing that would be useless to us.—Besides there are certain words that seem to me rather childish,—the dung, for instance. The oracles of the demons were obscure, not so are those of Jesus Christ."
Luther.—"When Christ says the flesh profiteth nothing, he speaks not of his own flesh, but of ours."
Zwingle.—"The soul is fed with the Spirit and not with the flesh."
Luther.—"It is with the mouth that we eat the body; the soul does not eat it."[232]
Zwingle.—"Christ's body is therefore a corporeal nourishment, and not a spiritual."
Luther.—"You are captious."