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

interpretation, we are to go through the New Testament, and whatever it
asserts "is," we are to declare is not, but is only a symbol; and whatever it
asserts is not, we are to declare is not a symbol, and therefore the reality.
God is not a Spirit, but is the symbol of a Spirit; and they be no symbols of
gods which are made with hands, and are, of consequence, real gods. God
hath chosen things which are not symbols to bring to naught things that
are symbols--that is, He has chosen the things that are, to bring to nothing
the things that are nothing already. 0 glorious interpretation! throwing into
the shade the idea of the sceptic who wished to take all the "nots" out of
the Commandments, and put them into the Creed--the matchless canon
which covers all speech--the simple canon: whatever is, is not, and
whatever is not, is.
"Naught is everything, and everything is naught."
How the controversy is to be decided.
As around the words of our Lord, uttered by His own lips, or
breathed into His apostles by His Spirit, the controversy has gathered, so
in those words alone can the solution of their own mystery be found. The
words themselves are a perfect rule of faith, and if they have not brought
the whole Church to a unity, it is because not all have studied them
enough in the right spirit. God the Holy Ghost, in making a revelation to
man by language, of necessity subjected His own words to the laws of
language; and the whole nominal Church of Christ ever agrees in the
doctrine of the Eucharist, the agreement will be reached under the ordinary
aid of the Spirit, by the right application of the laws of language to the
inspired words. The most vital question in the controversy is, indeed, one
to which even now the Eastern Church, the unreformed Western Church,
and the purified Church of the West--the Lutheran Church--return the
same answer. The doctrine of the objective presence of the body and blood
of Christ in the Supper is the faith of a vast majority in Christendom now,
as it has been from the beginning; and mischievous as is the error of
transubstantiation, it still leaves the foundation of the Eucharistic mystery
undestroyed, while the rationalistic opposition destroys the foundation
itself.