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

Summary of Patristic Testimony by Dr. Pusey.
"I have now gone through every writer who in his extant works
speaks of the Holy Eucharist, from the time when St. John the Evangelist
was translated to his Lord, to the dates of the Fourth General Council, A.
I). 451,,a period of three centuries and a half. I have suppressed nothing; I
have not knowingly omitted anything; I have given every passage, as far as
in me lay, with so much of the context as was necessary for the clear
exhibition of its meaning. Of course, in writers of whom we have such
large remains as St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom, or in some with whom
I am less familiar, I may have overlooked particular passages. Yet the
extracts are already so large, so clear, and so certain, that any additional
evidence could only have coincided with what has been already produced.
Albertinus did his utmost on the Calvinistic side. His strength lies in his
arguments against a physical doctrine of Transubstantiation; his weakness,
in the paradox which he strangely maintains, that the Fathers did not
believe a real Objective Presence. In so doing, he treats the Fathers as
others of his school have treated Holy Scripture on the other Sacrament.
When his school would disparage the doctrine of Baptism, they select
passages from Holy Scripture, in which it is not speaking of that
Sacrament. In like way Albertinus gains the appearance of citing the
Fathers on the orthodox side (as he calls it), i. e., the disbelief of the Real
Presence, by quoting them when they are not speaking of the Holy
Eucharist, but, e. g., of the Presence of our Lord's Human Nature in
Heaven, or the absence of His Visible Presence upon earth; of the natural
properties of bodies; or of spiritual, as distinct from sacramental
Communion, or of the Eucharistic and outward Symbols, under which the
Sacramental Presence is conveyed. Supported, as he thinks, by these, he
proceeds to explain away, as he best may, the clear and distinct passages
which had hitherto been alleged from the Fathers, in proof of the Doctrine
of the Real Presence. Yet the very diligence of Albertinus on the one side,
or of Roman Catholic controversialists on the other, obviously gives the
more security that nothing can have been overlooked which could seem to
support either side.