To the second century also belong two gnostic uses. Firstly, that of Marcus, a Valentinian, of South Gaul about 150, whose influence extended to Asia Minor. Irenaeus relates (Bk. I., ch. vii. 2), that this “magician” used in the Eucharist cups apparently mixt with wine, but really containing water, and during long invocations made them appear “purple and red, as if the universal Grace χάρις dropped some of her blood into the cup through his invocation, and by way of inspiring worshippers with a passion to taste the cup and drink deep of the influence termed Charis.” Such a rite presupposes a belief in a real change of the elements; and water must have been used. In the sequel Irenaeus recites the Invocation read by Marcus before the communicants:—
“Grace that is before all things, that passeth understanding and words, replenish thy inner man, and make to abound in thee the knowledge of her, sowing in the good soil the grain of mustard seed.”
The Acts of Thomas, secondly, ch. 46, attest an Eucharistic usage, somewhat apart from the orthodox. The apostle spreads a linen cloth on a bench, lays on it bread of blessing (εὐλογία), and says:
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, who hast made us worthy to commune in the Eucharist of thy holy body and precious blood, Lo, we venture on the thanksgiving (Eucharistia) and invocation of thy blessed name, come now and communicate with us. And he began to speak and said: Come Pity supreme, come communion of the male, come Lady who knowest the mysteries of the Elect one, ... come secret mother ... come and communicate with us in this Eucharist which we perform in thy name and in the love (agapé) in which we are met at thy calling. And having said this he made a cross upon the bread, and brake it and began to distribute it. And first he gave to the woman, saying: This shall be to thee for remission of sins and release of eternal transgressions. And after her he gave also to all the rest that had received the seal.”
In the 2nd century the writer who nearest approaches to the later idea of Transubstantiation is the gnostic Theodotus (c. 160):
“The bread no less than the oil is hallowed by the power of the name. They remain the same in outward appearance as they were received, but by that power they are transformed into a spiritual power. So the water when it is exorcised and becomes baptismal, not only drives out the evil principle, but also contracts a power of hallowing.”
In the Fathers of the first three or four centuries can be traced the same tendency to spiritualize the Eucharist as we encountered in the fourth gospel, and in the Didache. Ignatius, though in Smyrn. 7 he asserts the Eucharist to be Christ’s “flesh which suffered for our sins,” elsewhere speaks of the blood as being “joy eternal and lasting,” as “hope,” as “love incorruptible,” and of the flesh as “faith” or as “the gospel.” Clement of Alexandria (c. 180) regards the rite as an initiation in divine knowledge and immortality. The only food he recognizes is spiritual; e.g. knowledge of the divine Essence is “eating and drinking of the divine Word.” So Origen declares the bread which God the Word asserted was his body to be that which nourishes souls, the word from God the Word proceeding, the Bread from the heavenly Bread. Not the visible bread held in his hand, nor the visible cup, were Christ’s body and blood, but the word in the mystery of which the bread was to be broken and the wine to be poured out. “We drink Christ’s blood,” he says elsewhere, “when we receive His words in which standeth Life.” So the author of the Contra Marcellum writes in view of John vi. 63 as follows (De eccl. Theol. p. 180):
“In these words he instructed them to interpret in a spiritual sense his utterances about his flesh and blood. Do not, he said, think that I mean the flesh which invests and covers me, and bid you eat that; nor suppose either that I command you to drink my sensible and somatic blood. Nay, you know well that my words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life. It follows that the very words and discourses are his flesh and blood, of which he that constantly partakes, nourished as it were upon heavenly bread, will partake of the heavenly life. Let not then, he says, this scandalize you which I have said about eating of my flesh and about drinking of my blood. Nor let the obvious and first hand meaning of what I said about my flesh and blood disturb you when you hear it. For these words avail nothing if heard and understood literally (or sensibly). But it is the spirit which quickens them that can understand spiritually what they hear.”
But these views were not those of the uninstructed pagans who filled the churches and needed a rite which brought them, as their old sacrifices had done, into physical contact and union with their god. Their point of view was better expressed in the scruples of priests, who, as Tertullian (c. 200) records (De Corona, iii.), were careful lest a crumb of the bread or a drop of the wine should fall on the ground, and by such incidents the body of Christ be harassed and attacked!
The Eucharist as a Sacrifice.—Before the 3rd century we cannot trace the view that in the Eucharistic rite the death of Christ, regarded from the Pauline standpoint as an atoning or redemptive sacrifice for the sins of mankind, is renewed and repeated, though the germ out of which it would surely grow is already present in the words “My blood ... which is shed for many” of Matt. and Mark; yet more surely in Paul’s “my body which is in your behoof” and “this do in commemoration of me,” where the Greek word for do, Gr. ποιεῖτε, Lat. facite, could to pagan ears mean “this do ye sacrifice.” In the first two centuries the rite is spoken of as an offering and as a bloodless sacrifice; but it is God’s own creations, the bread and wine, alms and first-fruits, which, offered with a pure conscience, he receives as from friends, and bestows in turn on the poor; it is the praise and prayers which are the sacrifice. In these centuries baptism was the rite for the remission of sin, not the Eucharist; it is the prophet in the Didache who presides at the Lord’s Supper, not the Levitically conceived priest; nor as yet has the Table become an Altar. Among Christians, prayers, supplications and thanksgivings have taken the place of the sacrifices of the old covenant.