The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

the Supper of the Lord is observed in the public assembly of the Church, is
the whole Christ, in both His natures, present with the Church militant on
earth, as if when that celebration was over tie withdrew His presence, and
the members of His Church, apart from that public assembly, were, while
in their vocations, their trials, and temptations, deprived of that most sweet
presence of Christ, their High Priest and King, their Head and their
Brother. On the contrary, there is in the observance of the Lord's Supper a
public, solemn, and peculiar attestation and sealing of the truth, that Christ,
our Mediator and Saviour, wishes mercifully to be present with His
Church, which is warring in the world, to be present, not with the half, or
with one part of Himself only, to wit, His divinity alone, BUT WHOLE
AND ENTIRE, that is, in THAT NATURE ALSO WHICH HE HAS
ASSUMED, IN which He is of like nature with us, our Kinsman and our
Brother- that nature in which He was tempted, so that He might have
compassion on us in our griefs--that nature in which, by His sufferings and
death, He finished the work of our redemption, so that thus we may be
rendered members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones (Eph. v. 30).
And because our reason cannot grasp or comprehend this, St. Paul adds:
'This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.'"
IV. Modes of Presence. 1. The body of Christ in its own nature local.
"The humanity which Christ, assumed was not, by that union with
Deity, converted or transmuted into an infinite or immense essence, but has
and retains in that very union, and after it, the verity of a human nature, and
its physical or essential properties, by which a true human body consists in
a certain, finite, and circumscribed symmetry (dimension) of members, and
which, consisting in a local or finite situation and position of members, has
one part distinct from another in a certain order. The body of Christ,
therefore, with the property of its own nature, is essentially or naturally
finite, that is, according to its natural properties, which it has and retains
even in that union, IT LOCALLY AND CIRCUMSCRIPTIVELY
OCCUPIES A CERTAIN PLACE. 282
282 De duab. Nat. 174.