Annotation CXCVI
”I am the bread of life.” — John 6:48
Whether the Eucharist contains the true body of Christ.
The exposition of Augustine set to this passage, Bertram the priest — or someone else under his name — in the book On the Body and Blood of the Lord, twists to the heresy of the Sacramentarians, who assert that the Eucharist is nothing else than the substance of bread and wine, which bears the figure, likeness, and name of the body of Christ — [a body] which is not corporally and truly in the sacrament, but only spiritually and mystically. And the words of Augustine, cited from tract 26 on John, are of this sort:
1. “PHINEHAS also ate, and many there ate, who pleased God, and did not die. Why? Because they understood the visible food spiritually, spiritually hungered, spiritually tasted, that they might be spiritually satisfied. For we too receive a visible food; but the sacrament is one thing, the power [virtue] of the sacrament another. Likewise in the later [words], ‘This is the bread which came down from heaven.’ This bread the manna signified; this bread the altar of God signified: those were sacraments; in the signs they are diverse, in the reality which is signified they are alike. Hear the Apostle Paul:1 ‘I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all in Moses were baptized in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.’ The same spiritual [food], assuredly, [though] the bodily [was] another — because [for] them [it was] manna, [for] us another [thing]; but a spiritual [food] the same as [ours]. And he adds, ‘And all drank the same spiritual drink.’ Another [thing for] them, another [for] us — but in visible appearance, which yet would signify this same [thing] by spiritual power. For how did they drink the same drink from the spiritual [rock] following [them]? ‘And the rock was Christ.’ The rock [was] Christ in a sign, the true Christ in the word, and in the flesh.”
2. Thus far Augustine’s words; to which Bertram, in the same volume, added also other sayings of the same author, violently distorted to the confirmation of his error. For, when he wished to show that it is a crime to believe that the true flesh of Christ is contained in the Eucharist, he usurped from the third book of Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine, chapter 16, these words: “IF a preceptive expression forbids either a shameful deed or a crime, or enjoins [some] utility or beneficence, it is not figurative; but if it seems to enjoin a shameful deed or a crime, or to forbid [some] utility or beneficence, it is figurative.2 ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you’ — [this] seems to enjoin a crime or a shameful deed; it is, therefore, a figure, prescribing that [we] must communicate in the Lord’s passion, and sweetly and profitably lay up in memory that for us his flesh was crucified and wounded,” etc.
3. Likewise, when he was about to demonstrate that the sacrament of the Eucharist is called the body of Christ not because it is [it], but because it signifies Christ’s body, he used a testimony from epistle 23 to Boniface the bishop — in which Augustine seems to intimate that the sacrament of the altar is called the body of Christ according to the common form of speaking, by which we are wont to call the day of the commemoration of the Lord’s passion “the passion of Christ,” because it has a likeness to that day on which of old Christ’s passion was once accomplished. The words of the epistle run thus: “OFTEN we so speak that, as Easter approaches, we say that tomorrow, or the day after, is the Lord’s passion — although he suffered [it] so many years before, nor was that passion done at all except once. Indeed, on the Lord’s day itself we say, ‘Today the Lord rose again,’ although so many years have passed since he rose. Why is no one so foolish as to charge us, speaking thus, with having lied — except because we name these days after the likeness of those [days] on which these [things] were done? So that the [present] day is called that very [day], which is not the same, but is like it by the revolution of time; and it is said to be done on that day, on account of the celebration of the sacrament — [that] which was done not on that day, but already of old. Was not Christ once immolated in himself, and yet is he immolated for the peoples in the sacrament, not only through all the solemnities of Easter, but every day? Nor does he lie who, being asked, answers that he is immolated. For if the sacraments did not have a certain likeness of those things of which they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all: and from this very
—[likeness] they [the sacraments] often now take even the name of the very things [they signify]. As, therefore, according to a certain manner, the sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ, [and] the sacrament of the blood of Christ is the blood of Christ; so the sacrament of faith is faith,” etc.
4. AGAIN, to show that in the sacrament there is nothing else than the substance of bread and wine, and a representation of the mystical body, he takes a fragment from Augustine’s sermon On the Sacrament, to the Infants [newly baptized], at the altar, in these words: “THIS, which you see on the altar of God, you saw also [when] the night was past; but what it was, what it meant, how great a thing the sacrament contained, you have not yet heard. That, then, which you see is bread and a cup, which your very eyes also report to you; but [as to] that which your faith requires to be instructed [about] — the bread is the body of Christ, the cup is the blood of Christ. Briefly indeed has this been said, which may perhaps suffice for faith; but faith desires instruction. For the prophet says: ‘Unless you believe, you shall not understand.’ You can, then, say to me: ‘You have bidden [us] believe; expound, that we may understand.’ For such a thought can arise in anyone’s mind: We know whence our Lord Jesus Christ took flesh — namely, from the Virgin Mary; as an infant he was suckled, was nourished, grew, was advanced to youthful age, suffered, was slain, was buried, on the third day rose again, ascended into heaven, there raised up his body, and is there now, sitting at the right hand of the Father: how, then, is the bread his body? And the cup, or what the cup holds, how is it his blood? These [things], brethren, are on that account called sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, another understood. What is seen has a bodily appearance; what is understood has a spiritual fruit. If, then, you wish to understand the body of Christ, hear the Apostle saying to the faithful:3 ‘You are the body of Christ, and members.’ Your mystery is placed on the table; you receive the mystery of God. To that which you are, you answer ‘Amen,’ and by answering you subscribe [to it]. You hear, then, ‘the body of Christ,’ and you answer ‘Amen.’ Be a member of the body of Christ, that your ‘Amen’ may be true.”
5. BERENGAR, deacon of the church of Angers — who nearly two hundred years after Bertram renewed the same heresy in the year of the Lord 1160, when, [as] a heretic, he impiously composed an Apologia for his dogma against Humbert the Burgundian, a catholic man — brought forward, besides these, also other testimonies of Augustine, of which the more notable are these: AUGUSTINE, on the third Psalm: “Christ admitted Judas to the banquet, in which he commended and delivered to the disciples the figure of his body and blood.”
6. THE SAME AUGUSTINE, on Psalm 98:4 “THE SPIRIT is what quickens; the flesh profits nothing. When the Lord had commended this, and had spoken of his flesh, and had said, ‘Unless anyone eat my flesh, he shall not have eternal life in himself’ — certain of his disciples were scandalized, nearly seventy; and they said, ‘This is a hard saying’; and departed from him. For it seemed hard to them, what he said, ‘Unless anyone eat my flesh, he shall not have eternal life.’ They received it foolishly; they thought of it carnally; and supposed that the Lord was going to cut off for them particles from his body, and to give [them] to them. But when the twelve disciples had remained with him, [the others] departing, he instructed them, and said: ‘It is the Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing. The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life.’ Understand spiritually what I have spoken. It is not this body which you see that you are going to eat, nor are you to drink that blood which they who will crucify me are going to shed. I have commended to you a certain sacrament, [which,] spiritually understood, will quicken you. Even though it must needs be celebrated visibly, yet it must be understood invisibly.”
7. THE SAME [Augustine], in tract 25 [26] on John: “This is to eat the food, not that which perisheth, but that which endureth unto life eternal. Why dost thou make ready tooth and belly? Believe, and thou hast eaten.” By these sentences Berengar persuaded [himself] that in the sacrament there is only a sign of the body of Christ, but not the very body of Christ; which also he contended cannot be in heaven and on the altar at once — the words of Augustine being brought forward for this from epistle 57 to Dardanus, which run thus:
8. “DO NOT doubt that the man Christ Jesus is now there, whence he is to come [again]; and by memory recall, and faithfully hold, the Christian confession: that he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and from nowhere else than thence is to come to judge the living and the dead — in the same form and substance of flesh, to which indeed he gave immortality, [but] did not take away its nature. According to this form he is not to be thought diffused everywhere. For it must be guarded against, lest we so build up the divinity of the man that we take away the truth of the body. For [it is] one person [that] is God and man, and each is one Christ Jesus; everywhere by [reason of] that [by] which he is God, but in heaven by [reason of] that [by] which he is man.”
9. THUS FAR [the passages] which Bertram and Berengar collected from Augustine. Now it pleases [me] to add two other passages, the former of which Bertram dragged to his cause from the book of St. Ambrose to those who are initiated in the mysteries [On the Mysteries]; in whose eighth and tenth chapters these words are read, here and there and pieced together: “THIS food which thou receivest, this living bread which came down from heaven, supplies the substance of eternal life; and whosoever shall eat this bread, shall not die forever: and it is the body of Christ.” And below: “THE word of Christ, who was able to make out of nothing that which was not — cannot [that word] change the things which are into that which they were not? For it is not greater to give new things [being] than to change natures.” And a little after: “WHY dost thou here seek the order of nature in Christ’s body, since the Lord Jesus himself is [born] beyond nature, brought forth of a virgin? Truly indeed it is the flesh of Christ, which was crucified, which was buried. Truly, therefore, this is the sacrament of his flesh. The Lord Jesus himself cries out, ‘This is my body.’ Before the benediction of the heavenly words, another species is named; after the consecration, the body of Christ is signified.” And below: “WHAT we eat, what we drink, the Holy Spirit has expressed to thee elsewhere through the prophet, saying:5 ‘Taste, and see, that the Lord is sweet: blessed [is] the man that hopeth in him.’ In that sacrament is Christ, because it is the body of Christ; therefore [it is] not bodily food, but spiritual. Whence the Apostle says of its type: ‘Because our fathers ate spiritual food, and [drank the same spiritual]
—“[they drank the same spiritual] drink. For the body of God is a spiritual body; the body of Christ is the body of the divine Spirit — which Spirit is Christ, as we read,6 ‘The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord.’” By these words Bertram said it is manifest that, although the substance of bread and wine after the consecration remains the same as it was before, yet it is inwardly changed, by the power of the word of God, into the sacrament, the likeness, and figure of the true body of Christ — which feeds the souls of the faithful, and supplies the nourishment of eternal life.
10. THIS interpretation of Bertram, Berengar confirmed, adducing another testimony under the name of Ambrose from the book On the Sacraments, in these words: “AFTER the consecration of the altar, the bread and wine become the sacrament of religion — not so that they cease to be what they were, but [so] that they be what they were, and be changed into another [thing].” These, then, are the sayings of Augustine and Ambrose, which of old Bertram and Berengar — but most recently John Calvin, in the seventh chapter of his Institutes, and other Sacramentarian heretics — have wrongly abused against the truth of this most holy sacrament.
THE most pestilent error of these [men], Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, most stoutly refuted, in the book On the Sacrament, against Berengar; and after him Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris, in book 4 of the Sentences. These, then, admonish [us] that, for the exact elucidation of these passages, three [things] must be observed, and held as rules.
Three rules.
THE FIRST rule will be, that in the Eucharist three [things] must be regarded: one, which is a sacrament, or sign, and not a reality [res]; another, which is a sacrament, or sign, and [also] a reality; a third, which is a reality, and not a sign or sacrament. Now the sacrament-and-not-reality is the species of bread and wine, and the visible form — which two signify, namely, the body and blood of Christ, the true food and drink of the soul, lying hidden in the Eucharist; and the unity of the ecclesiastical body, which is gathered out of many faithful no otherwise than [as] one bread out of many grains, and the same wine out of many berries. The sacrament-and-reality is the proper flesh and blood of Christ. It is indeed a reality, because it is that same body which — born, dead, and revived — sits at the right hand of God. But it is a sacrament and sign, because, just as this very [body] consists of many most pure and immaculate members, so the mystical body of the glorious Church consists of many faithful [who are] free from the filth of crimes. The reality-and-not-sacrament-nor-sign is the unity of the Church in the predestined, the called, the justified, and the glorified.7
THE SECOND rule teaches that there are two modes of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ — namely, the sacramental and the spiritual. The sacramental is that by which we receive the true body of Christ, not according to the customary manner of eating — by which we press with the mouth the visible flesh of slain animals cut into morsels, grind [it] with the teeth, and send [it] down into the stomach for the body’s nourishment — but by a sacramental rite, by which we receive the Lord’s body, not in a visible form, nor cut into parts to satisfy the body’s hunger, but for the soul’s nourishment, invisibly, under the species of bread and wine, whole
and impassible, living, and divine, [thus] we eat [it]. But the spiritual [mode], which befits only the good and pious, is that by which we receive not only the body of Christ, but also the power flowing from it — that is, the life of the soul. Speaking of the former mode, the Savior said, “The flesh profits nothing”; but of the latter, “It is the Spirit that quickens.” I here pass over, for brevity’s sake, the twofold variety of this spiritual eating — of which the one befits not only us, but also the angels, and the ancient fathers of the Old Testament, whom Paul and Augustine admonish [us] to have eaten the same spiritual food as we; but the other befits us alone, by which we receive the true body of Christ, and the efficacy of its power.
THE THIRD rule indicates that a twofold presence can be considered in Christ’s body: namely, a conspicuous and visible [presence], by which of old he was seen on earth, and conversed with men; and an invisible and hidden presence, according to which he is invisibly present in the sacrament of the altar, covered by the form of bread and wine. These [things] being established in this manner, there is an easy approach to the plain understanding of the objected passages.
THE FIRST passage, then — from tract 26 on John — so speaks of the spiritual eating of the body of Christ, according to the second rule, that it does not reject the sacramental eating of the same; [and] it so mentions the sign, or sacrament, that it does not exclude the reality and power of the sacrament — nay, connecting both together at once, it says: “FOR we today have received a visible food; but the sacrament is one thing, the power of the sacrament another. The rock [is] Christ in a sign; the true Christ [is] in the word and in truth.”
THE SECOND passage — from the third book On Christian Doctrine — is not to be so taken as if Augustine determined that that saying of Christ cannot be interpreted of the sacramental eating of the body of Christ. For he did not mean this; but he signified that Christ’s saying is not to be understood according to the hard and savage understanding of the Capernaites, who supposed that the flesh of Christ must be eaten cut into morsels, and torn with the teeth, after the manner of the Laestrygonians and the Anthropophagi [man-eaters], who feed on human flesh. Removing this inhuman interpretation, Augustine says that that expression, [taken] from the precept of the second Rule, must be understood figuratively — that is, not of the eating of a lifeless and mangled corpse, but of the sacramental and spiritual eating of the living and life-giving flesh of Christ.
THE THIRD passage — from the epistle to Boniface — does not have [that] which Bertram lyingly gathered from it, namely, that the sacrament of the altar is called the body of Christ not from this, that it has the very body of Christ in itself, but only from this, that it bears a likeness of it. Far be it that Augustine should assert this! But what he [does] show is this: [that] the body of Christ, truly and essentially existing in the sacrament, is itself also, according to a certain manner, a sacrament and sign of the body of Christ — namely, of the mystical [body] — in that manner in which it was set out in the first Rule. And this mystical body is called “the body of Christ” according to a certain likeness, by which very often the things signified are wont to be named by the term of the things signifying. By which reasoning likewise the Lord’s own
—the species of the Lord’s sacrament are, in a certain manner, called “the body of Christ,” since they are signs of the body of Christ, [and] because it is contained hidden in them.
THE FOURTH passage — from the sermon to the newly-baptized — is to be understood, according to the reasoning of the first Rule [canon], of the mystical body, which is signified not only by the true body of Christ, but also by the very species of bread and wine, which Augustine there calls “bread” and “wine” according to the common manner of speaking, by which we are wont to leave to things the names of those things which they themselves formerly were.
THE FIFTH passage — from the third Psalm — the first Rule opens up. For although in that Psalm the sacrament of the Eucharist is named “a figure of the Lord’s body,” yet the very body of the Lord is not thereby banished from the Eucharist.
THE SIXTH passage — from Psalm 98 — is to be referred to the third Rule, so that according to it we understand the words that were said, “It is not this body which you see that you are to eat, nor to drink that blood which they who will crucify me are to shed,” [as meaning] this: you will not have to eat a body of this kind in a visible form, in a passible and mortal manner, in that manner by which the flesh of cattle is chewed with the teeth; but you will eat, invisibly, under the form of bread and wine, a glorious and impassible body.
THE SEVENTH passage — from tract 25 on John — the second Rule elucidates.
IN THE EIGHTH passage — from the epistle to Dardanus — we will apply the third Rule, understanding [him to mean] that Christ’s body is in one place only according to the visible presence — namely, in heaven, where it appears visibly in human form; but invisibly, and according to its invisible presence, it is on every altar, wheresoever the mysteries of the Eucharist are celebrated.
THE NINTH — the Ambrose passage — is to be interpreted partly by the first, partly by the second Rule. For [that] which is subjoined at once after those words, “Whosoever shall eat this bread, dies not forever” — namely, “And it is the body of Christ” — understand, by the first Rule, of the mystical body. But [that] which he adds, “Therefore it is not bodily food, but spiritual,” is thus expounded by the second Rule: that the flesh of Christ is not bodily food — that is, [not] of the number of the bodily foods which we daily consume for the body’s nourishment — but spiritual food, in which, without its consumption and diminution, the true body of Christ is received sacramentally and spiritually.
THE TENTH passage, Lanfranc asserts to exist nowhere in Ambrose, but to have been impudently and impiously fabricated by Berengar, so that by its authority credence might be built up for his impious dogma.
Let it suffice to have said these [things] briefly on the proposed sentences of Ambrose and Augustine. But, lest any of the heretics complain that they have been expounded by us far from the true and genuine sense of their authors, it is needful to subjoin here some passages of the same fathers, by which it may become clear that they held [it] as we have expounded, and that they taught, concerning the truth of the most holy sacrament, those [things] which the catholic and apostolic Church teaches and preaches.
Ambrose, book 4, On the Sacraments, chapter 4:
“THOU perhaps sayest, ‘My bread is ordinary.’ But this bread is bread before the words of the sacraments; when the consecration has been added, of bread it becomes the flesh of Christ. This, then, let us establish: how can [that] which is bread be the body of Christ? By the consecration. But the consecration — by what words is it, and by whose discourses? [By those] of the Lord Jesus. For [as to] all the rest which are said, praise is offered to God, [and] by prayer petition is made for the people, for kings, for the rest. But when [the priest] comes to consecrate the venerable sacrament, then the priest [uses] no longer his own discourses, but uses the discourses of Christ. Therefore the discourse of Christ confects this sacrament.”
Again, in the same place: “Therefore thou hast learned that out of bread is made the body of Christ. And [as to] the wine and water [that] is put into the chalice — it becomes blood by the consecration of the heavenly word. But perhaps thou sayest, ‘I do not see the appearance of blood.’ But it has a likeness. For as thou hast taken up the likeness of [his] death, so also thou drinkest the likeness of [his] precious blood — that there be no horror of gore, and yet the price of redemption may work [its effect]. Thou hast learned, therefore, that what thou receivest is the body of Christ.”
The same, in the same book, chapter 5: “WHO, the day before he suffered,” he says, “took bread in his holy hands. Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when the words of Christ have been added, it is the body of Christ. Finally, hear him saying: ‘Take, and eat ye of it; for this is my body.’ And before the words, the chalice is full of wine and water; when the words of Christ have worked, there the blood is made [effected], which redeemed the people. See, then, by how many kinds [of things] the word of Christ is powerful to change all [things]. Then the Lord Jesus himself testifies to us that we receive his body and blood. Ought we to doubt of his assurance and testimony?”
The same, book 5, On the Sacraments, chapter 4: “MINDFUL of my discourse, when I was treating of the sacraments, I told you that before the words of Christ, that which is offered is called bread; [but] when the words of Christ have been brought forth, it is no longer called bread, but is named the body,” etc. “This is not that bread which goes into the body, but that bread of eternal life, which supports the substance of our soul.”
The same, book 6, On the Sacraments, chapter 1: “AS our Lord Jesus Christ is the true Son of God — not in the manner of men, by grace, but as a Son from the substance of the Father — so [it is] true flesh, as he himself said, which we receive, and [it] is a true drink,” etc.
Augustine, on Psalm 98: “The only-begotten Son of God took earth from earth, because flesh is of earth; and of the flesh of Mary he received flesh. And because in this same flesh he walked here, and gave this same flesh to us to be eaten unto salvation — but no one eats that flesh unless he has first adored [it]: it has been found out in what manner such a footstool of the Lord’s feet may be adored; and [that] not only do we not sin by adoring, but we [would] sin by not adoring.”
The same, book 3 On the Trinity, chapter 4: “WE call the body and blood of Christ that which, taken from the fruits of the earth, and consecrated by the mystical prayer, we duly receive unto spiritual salvation, in memory of the Lord’s passion for us. Which, when by the hands of men it is brought to that visible species, is not sanctified so as to become so great a
—[so great a sacra]ment, except by the Spirit of God working invisibly — since God works all these [things] which are done in that work through bodily motions.
The same, tract 84 on John: “It is read in the Proverbs of Solomon,8 ‘If thou sit to sup at the table of a ruler, considering, understand what is set before thee; and so put forth thy hand, knowing that thou oughtest to prepare such [things].’ For what is the table of the ruler, but that from which is taken the body and blood of him who laid down his soul for us? And what is it to sit at it, but to approach humbly? And what is it to consider and understand what is set before thee, but worthily to ponder so great a grace?”
The same, on Psalm 33: “A man can be carried by the hands of others; by his own hands no one is carried; but Christ was carried in his own hands, when, commending his own body, he said, ‘This is my body.’ For he was carrying that body in his own hands.” He says the same in the second sermon on the same psalm.
The same, to Julian, epistle 111: “Let everyone, before he receive the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, prove himself, and, according to the Apostle’s precept, ‘So let him eat of that bread, and drink of the cup.’ For he who unworthily eats the body and blood of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. For when we ought to receive him, we ought beforehand to have recourse to confession and penance, and to discuss all our acts more carefully; and if we have felt [any] harmful sins in us, let us quickly hasten to wash [them] away through confession and true penance — lest, concealing the devil within us together with the traitor Judas, we perish.”
Thou wilt do well, best reader, to recall to the rules set down in this annotation all the passages of Origen, Chrysostom, and other authors pertaining to the Eucharist, which we have left undiscussed in this work. These are had at Annotations 120, 121, 152, 164, [and] 194 of book 5, and at Annotations 21, 66, 112, 193, and 206 of this book.