Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/445

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GERMAN REFORMED CONFESSIONS.
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bread is the true Body of Christ, and the wine His Holy Blood, sacramentally, in the way wherein God has consecrated and ordained the Holy Sacraments of the Old and New Testaments, to be visible and true signs of invisible grace; and the Lord Christ Himself shows, that the Holy Supper is a sign [?] of the new covenant, ["My blood of the New Covenant," so the Evangelists] yet not an empty and void sign, instituted for the remembrance of Christ, or, as the Apostle Paul explains," (1 Cor. xi. 26) "for a constant remembrance and announcement of His death, that it may be a memorial, uniting consolation, thanks, and love."

13. In the Leipzig Colloquy, both Lutherans and Reformed agreed on "the necessity of Baptism, as a means ordained for our salvation; and though the grace of God work not salvation through Baptism, ex opere operato, nor yet merely through the outward washing or sprinkling, yet, that it takes place by virtue of the word of consecration and promise, by the medium of Baptism." With regard to the Lord's Supper, they agreed also, that, "besides the outward elements of bread and wine, there was present not only the virtue and the efficacy or the bare signs of the Body and Blood, but that the true essential Body which was given for us, and the true essential Blood of Jesus Christ Himself, which was shed for us, are truly and presentially given distributed and received, by virtue of the sacramental union, which consists not in the bare signifying, nor yet in the bare sealing, but in the entire, unseparated distribution of the earthly element, and the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ: yet, that this Sacramental union does not take place distinct from the action commanded by Christ, [the actual reception] but only in the same. Further, that, also, in the spiritual feeding, not only the virtue, benefit, and efficacy, but the essence and substance of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ Himself, in the use of the Holy Supper, which takes place here upon earth, is fed upon, that is, is spiritually through true faith eaten and drunk, and that this spiritual feeding is in the highest degree necessary for the blessed use of the venerable supper. Further, that in the Sacramental partaking, the earthly elements and the Body and Blood of Christ, are partaken of at the same time, together and unitedly (mit-einander)." The Reformed confessed also, "that, through the medium of the consecrated bread and wine, the true Body and Blood of Christ, was presentially received, yet not with the mouth, but only through faith, whereby the Body and Blood of the Lord is spiritually united with those who worthily receive the Lord's Supper; but to the unworthy, the Body and the Blood is only offered, but on account of their unbelief, not partaken or received by them, but rejected and repelled by them."

14. In the Declaration of Thorun, the Zuingli-Calvinist view so far appears, that Baptism is confined to "infants born within the Church,"