more than a century earlier (a.d. 1059) for denying it. The mediæval schoolmen were the first to attempt metaphysical explanations of the doctrine. But the essential idea appears full blown as early as the fourth century, and to nobody is the formulation of it more distinctly attributable than to Gregory of Nyssa. This daring and original Church Father writes, "The body of Christ was transmuted[1] to the flesh of God by the indwelling of God the Word. I do well then in believing that now also the bread of God the Word, when consecrated, is being transmuted[2] into the body of God the Word."[3] Together with this notion of transubstantiation Gregory also has the idea of miraculous effects produced by the Divine food on the persons of the recipients of the communion. Thus he says, "For as a little leaven, as the apostle says, changes and assimilates the whole lump to itself; so the body of Christ which was by God put to death, having come to be in our body, transmutes and transfers it all into its own character. For as when the destructive agent[4] was mingled with the sound (body), all that it was mingled with was made worthless with it, so the immortal body also, having come to be in him that has received it, transmuted the whole also into its own nature. But indeed it is not possible for anything to come to be in the body except it be well mixed with the bowels by being eaten and drunk. Surely then it is requisite to receive, in the way possible to our nature, the power of the Spirit that is to quicken us."[5] We can scarcely conceive of a more grossly materialistic notion of the use of the Sacrament. But we must observe all along that it is a materialistic end the theologian has in view. The body of Christ is so to transmute the body of the communicant that it shall survive the shock of death and be capable of resurrection. Thus the eating and drinking of the Eucharistic elements by the Christian is supposed to secure for his body what the Egyptian aimed at by the art of embalming, what the
