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

ody, and of the rationalistic exaggeration, which leaves only natural
matter, run into the nihilism of the mystic. You cannot annihilate either
element in the Lord's Supper without annihilating both.
In the doctrine of Transubstantiation, nevertheless, as in almost all of
her corruptions, the Church of Rome has not so much absolutely removed
the foundation, as hidden it by the wood, hay, and stubble of human
device. Truth can sometimes be reached by running the corruptions of it
back to the trunk on which they were grafted. Such an error as that of
Transubstantiation could never have been grafted on an original faith like
that of Zwingli in regard to the Lord's Supper. The tendency of the
Zwinglian view, if it be corrupted, is to laxer, not to higher, views of the
sacramental mystery. Such an error as the doctrine of the immaculate
conception of the Virgin Mary never could have been grafted on a faith
originally Socinian. It is a corruption which presupposes as a truth, to be
corrupted in its inference, the divinity and sinlessness of our Lord Jesus
Christ; and just as the comparatively modern corruption of the worship of
the Virgin is a proof that faith in the Godhead of Jesus Christ was part of
the primitive faith, so does the comparatively modern corruption of
Transubstantiation prove that faith in the objective supernatural presence of
the body and blood of our Lord was part of the primitive faith. A rotten
apple always presupposes a sound apple. However corrupt a fig may be,
we know that it grew on a fig-tree, and not on a thistle.
IV. The Sacramental Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ--
Zwinglian and Calvinistic Views--Concessions of un-Lutheran
writers.
Our fourth proposition in the analytic exhibition of the doctrine of
the Augsburg Confession is:
That the true body and blood of Christ, truly present in the Lord's
Supper, under the species of bread and wine, are communicated. 378
We have virtually proved this proposition in proving the three which
preceded it. Nevertheless, in the affluence of Scripture evidence sustaining
the doctrine of our Church, we can well afford
378 German, ausgetheilt: Lat., distribuantur. In the Apology; Lat., exhibeantur; German, dargereicht.