Eucharist, that sound and genuine doctrine, which the Catholic Church, instructed by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and by His apostles, and taught by the Holy Ghost, who day by day brings to her remembrance all truth,[1] has always retained, and will preserve even to the end of the world, forbids all the faithful of Christ, lest they should henceforth presume to believe, teach, or preach concerning the holy Eucharist, otherwise than as is explained and defined in this present decree.
CHAPTER I.
On the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.
In the first place, the holy synod teaches, and openly and simply professes, that, in the sacred[2] sacrament of the holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For neither are these things mutually repugnant, that our Saviour Himself ever sitteth at the right hand of the Father in heaven,[3] according, to the natural mode of existing, and that, nevertheless. He be, in many other places, sacramentally present unto us in his own substance, by that manner of existing, which, though we can scarcely express it in words, we yet can, by the understanding illuminated by faith, suppose, and ought most faithfully to believe, to be possible unto God.[4] For thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have discoursed of this most holy sacrament, have most openly professed, that our Redeemer instituted this so admirable a sacrament at the last supper, when, after the blessing of the bread and wine, He bore witness, in distinct and clear words,[5] that He gave them His own very Body, and His own Blood;
- ↑ See Luke xii. 12 ; John xiv. 26 ; xvi. 13.
- ↑ "Almo," a word commonly used as an epithet of various heathen deities, with a reference to the power of providing nourishment, and hence "beneficial," "kindly." We have no equivalent word in our language. The Rev. J. Waterworth has rendered it "august" in his translation.
- ↑ See the Symbol in Sess. iii.
- ↑ Cf. Matt. xix. 26 ; Luke xviii. 27.
- ↑ Matt. xxvi. 26-28 ; Mark xix. 22-24 ; Luke xxii. 19, seq.
