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

The Consecration |
of the Council that, in view of such varied disputes and opinions,
they should prescribe a fixed form of consecration” (Ex. 2, 224). But
Chemnitz also knows that they did “not explain what and what kind
it is” because the Catholics could not agree among themselves what
its essence was. Some thought it consisted in the soft murmuring
of the four words, “This is my body, “over the bread” so that neither
the things which precede in the institution nor those which follow
either belong to or are necessary for the consecration.” Some thought
that the consecration came about through both the Words of Institution
and the words of the Canon. Some of the Papalists were
writing “publicly that those churches which used the Words of Institution
of Christ in the Supper without adding the papistical Canon
do not have the true body and blood of Christ, as Undanus says,
only a bread-sacrament” (Ex. 2, 224 f.). Chemnitz, however, is certain
what the word of blessing is which coming to the bread and the wine
makes it the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, “Surely this
is beyond controversy, that each sacrament has some certain word of
God that belongs properly and specifically to it, so also the Eucharist
has a certain specific word which belongs to it, namely, the divine
institution” (Ex. 2, 225 f.). The church had always recognized this
from the beginning, as Chemnitz points out, “The ancient church,
though it used also other exhortations and prayers in the administration
of the Eucharist, nevertheless simply and correctly judged that
the blessing or consecration of the Eucharist is performed with the
speech of Christ, that is, with the Words of Institution” (Ex. 2, 226).
In analyzing the Tridentine arguments for the Sacrifice of the Mass,
Chemnitz strikes a telling blow against this perversion of the sacrament
by demonstrating that even the papalist writers themselves
must acknowledge that the very substance of the papalist Mass “did
not exist at the time of the Apostles, for they say that the Apostles
consecrated simply with the words of the Lord, to which they added only
the Lord’s Prayer” (Ex. 2, 480; emphasis added).
191 The basis for the recitation of the Words of Institution is for Chemnitz
the command of Christ himself, “In short, Christ has commanded
us to do in the action of the Sacrament what He himself did. He
did not, however, perform a mute action but spoke. And what he
said is reported to us in Scripture, as much as the Holy Spirit judged
to be necessary for us” (Ex. 2, 226). He finds the word of command