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

present. This presence is spiritual, when that word is opposed to carnal, but
it is not spiritual when that word is opposed to true, as if His presence were
something wrought by our spirits. His body is a spiritual body, as opposed
to the present conditions and limitations of flesh and blood, but it is not
spiritual as opposed to real and natural. All the pretended contradictions of
our theology vanish when the terms of that theology are taken in the sense
in which it uses them.
2. The true presence.
We affirm it, secondly, to be a Scriptural doctrine that these
sacramental objects, to wit: the true body and true blood of Jesus Christ,
are truly present in the Lord's Supper: Vere adsint--wahrhaftiglich
gegenwartig sei.
We oppose a true presence, first, to the Zwinglian theory, that the
presence of these objects is simply ideal, a presence to our memory or
contemplation: secondly, to the theory set forth by Bucer in the
Tetrapolitan Confession, further elaborated by Calvin, and now generally
known as the Calvinistic, to wit: that the body and blood are present in
efficacy through the working of the Holy Spirit, in the believing elect. In
opposition to the first, we affirm it to be Scriptural, that the presence is one
wrought not by our ideas, memories, or contemplation, but is a presence
equally true, whether we do or do not think, remember, contemplate, or
believe. In opposition to the second, we affirm, that the efficacy of
Christ's body and blood is not separable from them, but is wrought by
them truly present; that this efficacy is direct and personal, not mediated
by the Holy Ghost, but by Christ Himself, substantially present; that this
presence does not depend for its reality (but alone for its salutary results)
upon the faith of the receiver, and that its sole causes are the divine
personality and beneficent will of the Institutor of the Supper.
We prove this, first, by the demands of all those types of the Old
Testament which contemplate Christ as the Paschal Lamb, who is to be
present in that nature in which He was slain, not after the shadowy mode
of the old dispensation, but after the true mode of the new, in the New
Testament Paschal. It. is through His human nature that Christ is our
Paschal Lamb sacrificed; and, therefore, it must be through His human