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

New Testament" (not of the Old). Surely, if in the forming of the Old
Covenant, which is a covenant of shadows, types and symbols, there was
true blood, not the sign or symbol of blood, much more in the forming of
the New Covenant, which is one of body, substance, and reality, we have
not the symbol of blood, but the true blood of the great sacrifice.
4. Let us now look for a moment at the words of the Institution
singly: "Take, eat; this is My body given for you." The Lutheran Church
confesses that each word in this sentence is to be understood literally. The
taking is a true taking, the eating a true eating. "This" means this--this
which I tell you to take, this which I tell you to eat, this is, truly is, "My
body," My true body truly given for My disciples. How have those who
favored a symbolical interpretation evaded the natural force of these
words? Against a sense so natural, so direct, so universally received by the
Holy Church of all ages, in its great assertion of an objective presence of
Christ's body and blood, its opponents were bound to produce, not merely
as probable a sense, but one more probable. They were bound in
undertaking to shake the faith of Christendom, to produce an interpretation
capable of a clear statement, and of invincible proofs. They were morally
bound to have some agreement as to what was to be substituted for the
received interpretation, and by what principles its necessity was to be
demonstrated from God's Word. This they have attempted for nearly three
centuries and a half, and up to this hour the failure has been total in every
respect. Luther records seven of their conflicting interpretations. At the
beginning of the seventeenth century there were twenty-eight contradictory
views urged by Calvinists. Vorstius confessed that "he hardly knew
whether the figure is in the copula or the predicate"--a confession really
that he did not know that it is in either. But Zwingli happily suggests that
among all their diversities, the opponents of the doctrine are agreed in the
effort to throw down the citadel. So that is done, it matters little what arms
are used. The efforts of our century have brought the -opponents of the
literal interpretation no nearer together. They are as far as ever from a fixed
sense of the