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

Nicolinus, printer to the Pope, it is admitted that his view is unsound (from
the Romish point of view), and the apology is made for him that the
Church had not yet fixed the doctrine by her decree. No less express is the
language of Pope GELASIUS (A. D. 492): 424 "Certainly the Sacraments
of the body and blood of Christ are a divine thing, through which we are
made partakers of the divine nature; and yet the substance or nature of
bread and wine does not cease to be (tamen esse non desinit substantia, vel
natura panis et vini)." So helpless are the acutest Romish controversialists,
Baronius, Bellarmin, Suarez, and others, before this passage, that they try
to prove that another Gelasius wrote the book. But not only have these
arguments been overthrown by Protestant writers, but the Jesuit LABBE,
renowned for his learning and his bitter antagonism to Protestantism, has
completely vindicated the claim of Pope Gelasius to the authorship of the
book. 425
2. They sometimes speak of the elements, simply considered as bread
and wine, in their natural relations and characteristics--as taken from the
earth, nourishing the body, passing into the circulation of the blood.
"Food by which our blood and flesh are nourished by transmutation,"
(Justin;) "by which the substance of our flesh is nourished and consists,"
(Irenaeus).
3. They sometimes speak of the elements, considered in themselves,
as natural symbols; bread and wine as the most obvious symbols of
spiritual nutrition and reviving, and this natural symbolism remains
through the Supper. CYPRIAN: "As common bread, which we eat daily,
is the food of the body, so that supersubstantial bread is the life of the soul,
the healing of the mind." "Because, among all things that are the food of
life, bread and wine seem most to strengthen and refresh our infirmity, it is
with great reason that He was pleased through these two things to confirm
the mystery of His Sacrament. For wine both gladdens us and increases
our blood; and, therefore, not unfitly the blood of Christ is figured by it." 426
In this aspect the elements are sometimes styled symbols, signs, figures,
types of the body and blood.
424 De duabus natur. in Chr. adv. Eutych. et Nestor. in Bibl. Patr. Mag. IV., I. 422.
425 Cave: Hist. Lit. Ann. 492, p. 298. Deyling: Obs. Misc. 361.
426 Druthmar (Christianus) on Matt. 26.