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the presence of Christ's Body and Blood therein, Mystic and Sacramental. Now a Sacramental expression doth, without any inconvenience, give to the sign the name of the thing signified; and such is as well the usual way of speaking, as the nature of Sacraments, that not only the names, but even the properties and effects of what they represent and exhibit, are given to the outward Elements. Hence (as I said before) the Bread is as clearly or positively called by the Apostle, the Communion of the Body of Christ.
This also seems very plain, that our Blessed Saviour's design was not so much to teach, what the Elements of Bread and Wine are by nature and substance, as what is their use and office and signification in this mystery; for the Body and Blood of our Saviour are not only fitly represented by the Elements, but also, by virtue of His institution really offered to all, by them, and so eaten by the faithful mystically and sacramentally; whence it is, that "He truly is and abides in us, and we in Him."
This is the spiritual (and yet no less true and undoubted than if it were corporal) eating of Christ's Flesh, not indeed simply as it is flesh, without any other respect, (for so it is not given, neither would it profit us,) but as it is crucified and given for the redemption of the world; neither doth it hinder the truth and substance of the thing, that this eating of Christ's body is spiritual, and that by it the souls of the faithful, and not their stomachs, are fed by the operation of the Holy Ghost; for this none can deny, but they who being strangers to the Spirit and the divine virtue, can savour only carnal things, and to whom, what is spiritual and sacramental, is the same as if a mere nothing.
As to the manner of the presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, we that are Protestant and Reformed according to the ancient Catholic Church, do not search into the manner of it with perplexing inquiries; but, after the example of the Primitive and purest Church of Christ, we leave it to the power and wisdom of our Lord, yielding a full and unfeigned assent to His words. Had the Romish maintainers of Transubstantiation done the same, they would not have determined and decreed, and then imposed as an article of faith absolutely necessary to salvation, a manner of presence, newly by them invented, under pain of the most direful curse, and there would have been in the Church less wrangling, and more peace and unity than now is.
