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

individual witnesses is most probable, all other things being equal, which
best accords with the claim. The faith once delivered to the saints has
abode through all time. By separating the testimony, and by assuming that
the Christian Church for centuries had no fixed doctrine, no faith in regard
to the Eucharist, but that there was a mere chaos of conflicting private
opinions, the Fathers have been forced into contradiction of each other and
of themselves. But if it first be allowed that the whole testimony of the
Fathers, as adduced by Romanists, Lutherans, and Reformed, may be
internally harmonious, and if that possible harmony be tested by the effort
to arrange the whole in a self-consistent system, the Romish and Reformed
views alike fail to meet the demands of the case; and the whole testimony,
as a whole, corresponds from beginning to end with the Lutheran faith.
We claim that the Latin and Greek Fathers had the same faith touching
the Eucharist, and that the faith they held is identical with that confessed in
the Tenth Article of the Augsburg Confession. This we shall endeavor to
establish by a Systematic Statement of their views in their own words.
Systematic Statement of the views of the Fathers.
1. The Fathers clearly assert the substantial reality of the bread and
wine before, during, and after the Supper. Their utterances, decisive against
Transubstantiation, have been perverted to a denial of the objective true
presence, which they firmly held. They call these visible elements "bread
and wine" throughout; they speak of them as "of the creature," "made of
the fruits of the earth," as "the food of life," "the substance of bread and
wine," (THEOPHYLACT in Marc. 14,) the bread is "made up of many
united grains," is "wheat," "the nature of bread remains in it,"
(CHRYSOSTOM,) "not altering nature," (THEODORET). 422 The wine is
"the blood of the vine," "fruit of the vine," "wine pressed out of many
grapes," as conjoined with water it is "mixed," "the mystical symbols
depart not from their own nature, for they remain still in their former
substance," (ousia) (THEODORET). 423 So express is the language of
THEODORET against Transubstantiation, that in the edition of his
Dialogues, published in Rome, 1547, by
422 Dialog. I., IV.
423 Dialog. II.