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

stands separate in the world in this, that in it alone, in any sense,
symbolical or sacramental, imaginary or real, the guests are invited to
participate in the body of Him of whom it is the memorial? Does not this
fact alone demonstrate that Christ's body is solitary in its powers and
relations to men; that language in regard to it belongs to a wholly different
sphere from that which pertains to the bodies of other men; that we can
affirm of it what would be worse than blasphemy, what would be
incoherent raving, if made in regard to any but Christ? Would any man at
a supper devoted to the memory of Washington offer bread, and say:
"Take, eat, this is Washington's body"? Would he use such language at
all, or, if he did, could he mean thereby that the spirit of Washington, or his
principles, or the efficacy of the work he had wrought through his body,
are the support of our civil life, as bread supports the natural life? These
suppositions look so monstrous that we can hardly think of them gravely
as they really are, that is as actual parallels to the mode of interpretation
substituted for that of our Church, by men who pronounce our doctrine
unscriptural. It is not overstating the fact to declare that as a question of the
laws of language, apart from philosophical speculation or doctrinal system,
the meaning of the words: “Take, eat, this is My body," are as clear as any
passage from Genesis to Revelation. Dr. Hodge says that the words have
been the subject of an immense amount of controversy, but so have been
the clear words which teach the Trinity, the Divinity of our Lord, the
eternity of future punishments; not that they are not clear, but that men will
not admit them in their obvious sense. A doctrine is not proved to be
disputable simply because it is disputed.
Finally, to put this point in a. just light, suppose that our Lord at the
Supper had said: "Take, eat, this is bread," and that men had arisen, who,
in the face of this clear testimony, had said it was not bread of which He
spoke, but His body, and His body only, how would the patrons of the
Zwinglian theory, which in that case would have been related to the words
supposed, as the Lutheran view now is to the words used, how would they
have received such an interpretation? They would