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

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words, or a principle by which the sense can ever be fixed. <strong>The</strong>re is no<br />

position midway between the implicit acceptance of the literal sense, <strong>and</strong><br />

the chaos of eternal doubt.<br />

<strong>The</strong> first view which was arrayed against that of our Church was the<br />

view of Carlstadt. He admitted the literal force of every term in the<br />

Institution, <strong>and</strong> interpreted thus: <strong>The</strong> Saviour said, "Take, eat," <strong>and</strong> came to<br />

a full pause. <strong>The</strong>n pointing, as it were, with His finger to His body, He<br />

uttered as a distinct proposition, "This body is My body." It is hardly<br />

necessary to add that so preposterous an interpretation found few friends.<br />

Zwingli himself rejected it, <strong>and</strong> Carlstadt withdrew it. 370<br />

<strong>The</strong> word TAKE these interpreters have usually construed literally,<br />

though why an imaginary body, or the symbol of a body, might not be<br />

taken mentally, they cannot say. Men do not open doors because a door is<br />

a symbol of Christ: why should they take <strong>and</strong> eat bread because it is a<br />

symbol of His body? A symbol is addressed to the mind; it derives its<br />

being <strong>and</strong> takes its shape from the mind of the user, <strong>and</strong> is intellectually<br />

received by the person to whom it is addressed. <strong>The</strong> mere symbol cannot<br />

be so identified with its object, as that an inference from the object is<br />

logically applicable to the symbol, or from the symbol, logically applicable<br />

to the object. We cannot say of one door more than another, "That door is<br />

Christ," but still less could we draw an inference from the symbol to the<br />

object, or from the object to the symbol.<br />

<strong>The</strong> symbolic theory, even were we to grant its assumption, can give<br />

no intelligible reason for the statement, "This bread is My body; This cup<br />

is My blood," for as a symbol, this bread is no more Christ's body than<br />

any other bread; as one lamb, one vine, or one shepherd, is no more a<br />

symbol of Christ than another. <strong>The</strong> symbol is founded on the common<br />

quality of the thing symbolizing; the innocence of all lambs, the nutritious<br />

character of all bread, the means of access furnished by every door. It is<br />

evident that as it is only after Christ's blessing the bread, that it is true that<br />

"This," which He now comm<strong>and</strong>s us to "Take, eat," is His body--<strong>and</strong> that<br />

this<br />

370 Walch: Bibl. <strong>The</strong>ol. II. 419.

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