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

Testament which speak of the Lord's Supper. That it is the work not of the
Spirit, but of Christ, to impart to us Christ's body and blood sacramentally,
is demonstrated by the fact, that when the Lord's Supper was instituted, the
Holy Ghost was not given in any of the distinctive functions allotted to
Him under the New Dispensation. These, it is distinctly taught, were not
to be exercised till Christ was glorified and had gone to the Father. But
whatever the words of the institution mean now, they meant when the
Supper was instituted. As they could not mean then that the Holy Ghost
mediated Christ's presence, which, if it were done at all, would be in the
highest degree a work of the New Dispensation, they cannot mean it now.
There is not a solitary passage in which the sacramental impartation of
Christ's body is associated with the work of the Holy Spirit. For a true
presence of Christ on earth the Reformed view substitutes an imaginary
presence of the believer in heaven. The view seems to derogate from the
personal sufficiency of Christ. It seems to separate properties from the
substance in which they inhere, to sunder the efficacy from the Omnipotent
Being who has that efficacy, to segregate the merits of Christ from His
undivided person, in which they were wrought out. According to it,
Christ's body can be truly eaten without being truly present; it is rather we
who are communicated to Christ than He to us; the Holy Spirit lifts us to
heaven; the bread which we break is the communion of our spirit to
Christward, not the communion of the body of Christ to usward. We are
the centre of the mystery. Christ's body is at one point on its
circumference, and the Holy Spirit its radius; the Holy Ghost can lift us to
the body of Christ, but the divine nature of Christ cannot bring that body to
us--our faith, with the aid of the Holy Ghost, can do what incarnate
omnipotence cannot do. How tangled is that which promised to be so
simple--how vague that which meant to be so sharp and clear. The
terminology of the Reformed view is, in the last degree, perplexing, and
wears the air of a want of candor. If it be accepted loosely, it runs out into
the old Zwinglian theory, which is also the view of a low Arminianism,
and of Rationalism. If it be accepted rigidly, it is less