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

AUGUSTINE had said: "The humanity itself after the resurrection
obtained divine glory." "'The Son of man which is in heaven.' He was on
earth, and yet said that He is in heaven--and what is more, that 'the Son of
man is in heaven,' that He might demonstrate that there is one person in
two natures...There are not two Christs, two Sons of God, but one person,
one Christ." "Why shouldst thou separate man from God, and make one
person of God, another of man, so that there would be, not a Trinity, but a
Quaternity--for thou, a man, art soul and body, and as soul and body is one
man, so God and man is one Christ?" 308 The Church grounds herself, then,
in this great doctrine, on the direct testimony of God's Word, accepted in
the sense in which it had long been understood by the best interpreters of
the Ancient Church.
Lutheran doctrine; 1. Admissions of some writers of the
Church of Rome.
So irresistible, indeed, is the logic of the case, and so strong is the
historical testimony by which the argument is sustained, that we find the
truth conceded in whole or in part by some of the ablest representatives of
the Churches which have most violently opposed the Lutheran doctrine of
the person of Christ. Bellarmine, and other Polemics of the Church of
Rome, in the blindness of their purpose to stamp our doctrine with the
reproach of heresy, have violently assailed the Lutheran doctrine of the
personal omnipresence of Christ according to both natures. But, in
addition to the Fathers, men whose names have been held in honor in that
Church at a later period have acknowledged, in whole or part, what
modern Romanists deny. HUGO DE S. VICTORE 309 says: "From the
nature of its union with divinity, the body of Christ has this dignity, that it
is at one time in many places." BIEL 310 says: "Not only can the body of
Christ be in diverse places definitively and sacramentally, but...can by
divine power be in many places circumscriptively." Nor have there been
entirely wanting, even among modern Romanists, some who have
conceded the truth of the Lutheran
308 Augustine: De verb. Apostol. Serm. xiv.; Do. De Tempore. Serm. cxlvii.
309 Lib. II. de Sacram. Pars viii. ch. xii.
310 IV. Sent. Dist. xi.