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character of His Body and Blood, that by them our spirit might the better embrace spiritual and invisible things, and be more fully fed by faith." Again, "We must receive our spiritual Sacrament with the mouth of the soul, and the taste of faith." Item, "Whilst therein we savour nothing carnal, but we being spiritual, and understanding the whole spiritually, we remain in Christ." And a little after, "The Flesh and Blood of Christ are received spiritually." And again, "To savour according to the Flesh, is death; and yet to receive spiritually the true Flesh of Christ, is life eternal." Lastly, "The Flesh and Blood of Christ are not received carnally, but spiritually."
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As for the opinion of Bertram, otherwise called Ratramnus, or Ratramus, perhaps not rightly, it is known enough by that book which the Emperor Charles the Bald, (who loved and honoured him, as all good men did, for his great learning and piety,) commanded him to write concerning the Body and Blood of our Lord. For when men began to be disturbed at the book of Paschasius, some saying one thing, and some another, the Emperor being moved by their disputes propounded himself two questions to Bertram. 1. Whether, what the faithful eat in the Church, be made the Body and Blood of Christ in figure and in mystery. 2. Or whether that natural Body which was born of the Virgin Mary, which suffered, died, and was buried, and now sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, be itself daily received by the mouth of the faithful in the mystery of the Sacrament. The first of these Bertram resolved affirmatively, the second negatively; and said, that there was as great a difference betwixt those two bodies, as betwixt the earnest and that whereof it is the earnest. "It is evident," saith he, "that that Bread and Wine are figuratively the Body and Blood of Christ. According to the substance of the Elements, they are after the Consecration what they were before. For the Bread is not Christ substantially. If this mystery be not done in a figure, it cannot well be called a mystery. The Wine also which is made the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ by the Consecration of the Priest, shews one thing by its outward appearance, and contains another inwardly. For what is there visible in its outside but only the substance of the Wine? These things are changed, but not according to the material part, and by this change they are not what they truly appear to be
