“The Supper of the Lord ... is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death; insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ, and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.
“Transubstantiation ... cannot be proved by holy writ....
“The Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten, in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.
“The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.”
At the end of the communion rite the prayer-book, in view of the ordinance to receive the Sacrament kneeling, adds the following:—
“It is hereby declared, that thereby no adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine, there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored (for that were idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians); and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ’s natural Body to be at one time in more places than one.”
These monitions and prescriptions are rapidly becoming a dead-letter, but they possess a certain historical interest.
The Helvetic Confession[10] of A.D. 1566 (caput xxi. De sacra coena Domini) runs as follows:—
“That it may be more rightly and clearly understood how the flesh and blood of Christ can be food and drink of the faithful, and be received by them unto eternal life, let us add these few remarks. Chewing is not of one kind alone. For there is a corporeal chewing, by which food is taken into the mouth by man, bruised with the teeth and swallowed down into the belly.... As the flesh of Christ cannot be corporeally chewed without wickedness and truculence, so it is not food of the belly.... There is also a spiritual chewing of the body of Christ, not such that by it we understand the very food to be changed into spirit, but such that, the body and blood of the Lord abiding in their essence and peculiarity, they are spiritually communicated to us, not in any corporeal way, but in a spiritual, through the Holy Spirit which applies and bestows on us those things which were prepared through the flesh and blood of the Lord betrayed for our sake to death, to wit, remission of sins, liberation and life eternal, so that Christ lives in us and we in him....
“In addition to the aforesaid spiritual chewing, there is also a sacramental chewing of the Lord’s body, by which the faithful not only partakes spiritually and inwardly of the true body and blood of the Lord, but outwardly by approaching the Lord’s table, receives the visible sacrament of his body and blood.... But he who without faith approaches the sacred table, albeit he communicate in the sacrament, yet he perceives not the matter of the sacrament, whence is life and salvation....”