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

FOURTHLY: In limiting the presence of the body and blood first to
the communicants (vescentibus), and secondly, to them in the Lord's
Supper (adsint in Caena), the Confession implies that nothing has a
sacramental character apart from its sacramental use: That the presence of
the body and blood of Christ is such that only the communicants can
actualize it--it is not a presence for mice and worms, but for man: and that
this presence is limited to the Supper: The body and blood of Christ
cannot be reserved, laid up in monstrances, or carried in procession, any
more than the Holy Ghost can be laid up in a Bible, or carried about in
one. FIFTHLY: In this denial of a change of the elements, and in the
maintenance that the presence is one to be actualized solely by the
sacramental eating and drinking, is involved the rejection of the doctrine
that the species in the Supper are to be worshipped, or that Christ Himself
is to be worshipped as in the species. We can and should worship Christ
at His table, but precisely as we worship Him away from it. He did not say,
Take, worship, but, Take, eat. He did not say, This is My Divinity, but this
is My body, and the bread which we break is not the shrine of His Deity,
but the "Communion of His body." The presence of Christ, which is
distinctive of the Sacrament, is sacramental only, that is to say, we reach
Christ there as we reach Him nowhere else, only as His will makes a
specific difference. We commune in His broken body and His shed blood
there, as it is impossible to commune with them elsewhere, but we can
worship Christ there in no other mode than we worship Him everywhere.
Transubstantiation rejected.
On the FIRST of these points, as conditioning all the rest, we