Christ taught. For we do not receive these things as common bread
or common drink. For as Jesus Christ our Saviour was made flesh
by Word of God and possessed flesh and blood for our sake; so we
have been taught that the food blessed (lit. thanked for) by prayer
of Word spoken by him, food by which our blood and flesh are by
change of it (into them) nourished, is both flesh and blood of Jesus
so made flesh. For the apostles in the memorials made by them,
which are called gospels, have so related it to have been enjoined
on them: to wit, that Jesus took bread, gave thanks and said:
This do ye in memory of me; this is my body, and the cup likewise
he took and gave thanks and said, This is my blood; and he distributed
to them alone. And this rite too the evil demons by way
of imitation handed down in the mysteries of Mithras. For that
bread and a cup of water is presented in the rites of their initiation
with certain conclusions (or epilogues), you either know or can
learn.”
The second account, in ch. 67, adds that the faithful both of town and country met for the rite on Sunday, that the prophets were read as well as the gospels, that the president after the reading delivered an exhortation to imitate in their lives the goodly narratives; and that each brought offerings to the president out of which he aided orphans and widows, the sick, the prisoners and strangers sojourning with them. These contributions of the faithful seem to be included by Justin along with the bread and cup as sacrifices acceptable to God. But he also particularly specifies (Dialog. 345) that perfect and pleasing sacrifices alone consist in prayers and thanksgivings (thusia). The elements are gifts or offerings. Justin was a Roman, but may not represent the official Roman church. The rite as he pictures it agrees well with the developed liturgies of a later age.
Irenaeus (Gaul and Asia Minor, before 190) in his work against heresies, iv. 31, 4, points to the sacrament in proof that the human body may become incorruptible:
“As bread from the earth on receiving unto itself the invocation of God is no longer common bread, but is an Eucharist, composed of two elements, an earthly and a heavenly, so our bodies by partaking of the Eucharist cease to be corruptible, and possess the hope of eternal resurrection.”
There is a similar passage in the 36th fragment (ed. Harvey ii. p. 500), sketching the rite and calling the elements antitypes:
“The oblation of the Eucharist is not fleshly, but spiritual and so pure. For we offer to God the bread and the cup of blessing (εὐλογία), thanking him for that he bade the earth produce these fruits for our sustenance. And therewith having finished the offering (προσφορά) we invoke the Holy Spirit to constitute this offering, both the bread body of Christ and the cup the blood of Christ, that those who partake of these antitypes (ἀντίτυπα, i.e. surrogates) may win remission of sins and life eternal.”
Here we note the stress laid on the Invocation of the Spirit to operate the transformation of the elements, though in what sense they are transformed is not defined. This Epiklesis survives in the Greek liturgies, but in the Roman a prayer takes its place that the angel of the Lord may take the oblation laid on the visible altar, and carry it up to the altar sublime into the presence of the divine majesty. We must not forget that the church of Irenaeus was Greek.
To the second century, lastly, belongs in part the evidence of the catacombs, on the walls of which are depicted persons reclining at tables supporting a fish, accompanied by one or more baskets of loaves, and more rarely by flasks of wine or water. The fish represents Christ; and in the Inscription of Abercius, bishop of Hierapolis about A.D. 160, we have this symbolism enshrined in a literary form: “In company with Paul I followed, while everywhere Faith led the way, and set before me the fish from the fountain, mighty and stainless, whom a pure virgin grasped, and gave this to friends to eat always, having good wine and giving the mixt cup with bread.” This representation of baskets of loaves and several fishes, or of one fish and several loaves, seems to contradict the usage of one loaf. It may represent the agapé or Lord’s Supper as a whole, of which the one loaf and cup formed an episode. Or the entire stock of bread may have been regarded as flesh of Jesus in virtue of the initial consecration of one single loaf.
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
