The Lord's Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz Bjarne - Logia

The Consecration |
Again: We must judge in this, not according to what the eyes
and outward senses grasp and indicate, but according to what faith,
grounded in the Word of God, teaches us. The eyes see bread and wine;
all outward senses witness nothing else. Faith, however, perceives the
Lord Christ truly present, who presents His own body and blood in this
most holy mystery. The same Lord Christ, present but unseen under the
sacrament, hidden and concealed, is worshiped here by believers, and
not the element of bread or the outward appearance. (HS 540–543). 70
280 After quoting at great length also from Prince George’s first sermon,
Chemnitz and his co-authors testify, “We have not here mutilated
these words of the precious choice preacher (as King Solomon calls
himself), Prince George of Anhalt, but we want to set them down
fully for the year 1553 as an eternal witness of the teaching about the
sacrament [held] in the churches of this land, which has also been
[held] after the death of Dr. Luther” (HS 545). They also then add the
testimony that “the pious Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt [stood] in the
same faith and confession about the Supper of the Lord” and that he
remained in this faith until his death on March 23rd of 1566. He was
a signer of the Augsburg Confession (1530) and the last one, with the
exception of Philip of Hesse, to remain of the original signers.
281 In the Examination Chemnitz closes his confession that the veneration
of the sacrament is permissible within its prescribed action
by bringing quotations from Luther’s works. It is somewhat surprising
that he does not appeal to Luther’s 1523 detailed discussion found
in “The Adoration of the Sacrament” (LW 36, 275–305), nor to his
“Brief Confession Concerning the Holy Sacrament” (1544). Here, at
the end of his life Luther recalls Carlstadt’s fulminations against it
twenty years previous. Some had drawn the conclusion that since the
elevation was not universally practiced among the Lutherans, this was
an acknowledgement that “Christ’s body and blood was not in the
sacrament, and that they are not orally received” (LW 38, 313). Luther
disabuses his critics of that notion, and observes that “if you come to
a place where they still observe the elevation you should not be offended
nor should you condemn them, but accept it because it is taking
place without sinning and without endangering the conscience”
(LW 38, 319).
282 Chemnitz first refers to one of the last articles that Luther wrote,
“Against Thirty-Two Articles of the Louvain Theologists” (1545).
Chemnitz says, “Luther also, writing against the theologians of Lou-