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

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drink it?" Here there is no literal cup, no literal contents; but anguish is<br />

figured under the word. Not so is it when our Lord says: "He that giveth a<br />

cup of cold water--" <strong>The</strong> containing cup is not of water, but of wood or<br />

metal: it is the cup contained, our Lord means; but He uses no figure, but<br />

plain every-day prose.<br />

While metaphor proper is never used in a testament to directly<br />

designate the thing conveyed, the grammatical metonymy is constantly so<br />

used. A man may direct in a will that a cup of wine shall be given to every<br />

tenant on the estate,--so many barrels of ale, so many sacks of wheat, be<br />

distributed at a particular time.<br />

<strong>The</strong> cup is called the New Testament, not because of the identity of<br />

sign <strong>and</strong> thing signified, but because of the identity of cause <strong>and</strong> effect--the<br />

cup contained is Christ's blood, <strong>and</strong> that blood is literally the New<br />

Testament causally considered.<br />

III. Objection,--<strong>The</strong> supposed impressions of the first disciples.<br />

It has been objected that, as our Saviour was visibly present, the<br />

disciples could not have understood that what they took from His h<strong>and</strong>s<br />

<strong>and</strong> ate was truly the Communion--the communicating medium of His<br />

body. This objection reveals the essentially low <strong>and</strong> inadequate views of<br />

the objector, both as to the person of Christ <strong>and</strong> the doctrine of the Church.<br />

First. It assumes as a fact what cannot be proven, as to the underst<strong>and</strong>ing<br />

of the disciples. Second. Whatever may have been the limitation of the faith<br />

of the disciples at that time, when they were not yet under the full<br />

illumination of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament measure, <strong>and</strong> there<br />

was necessarily much they did not underst<strong>and</strong> at all, <strong>and</strong> much that they<br />

understood very imperfectly, we have strong <strong>and</strong> direct evidence, as we<br />

have already shown, of their mature <strong>and</strong> final underst<strong>and</strong>ing of our Lord's<br />

words, to wit, that these words do involve a true, supernatural, objective<br />

presence of His body <strong>and</strong> blood. Third. All the earliest Fathers who were<br />

the disciples of the apostles, or of their immediate successors, show that it<br />

was their faith that in the Lord's Supper there is a supernatural, objective<br />

communication of the body <strong>and</strong> blood of Christ, <strong>and</strong> in connection with<br />

the other facts make it certain that this was the underst<strong>and</strong>ing

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