Boultbee on Article XXIX: Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper

passage. The portions in italics (the very part most relied upon in our Article) are placed by the Benedictine editors in brackets, and there has been considerable controversy on the point. * It was controverted in the days of Archbishop Parker himself.^ But the Archbishop maintained his point, and alleged other passages in proof. It is the very opposite to probability that such words should be added as a gloss in the Middle Ages ; while it is probable that a zealous transcriber might omit them. Moreover they are certainly as old as the days of Bede and Alcuin. This question, however, does not affect the authority of the Article. Whether the words be the genuine expression of Augustine or not, our Church has adopted them and propounded them as containing the true doctrine.

Observations on Article XXIX.

This Article is a simple corollary to the last. If faith is the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten, those who have not faith cannot receive and eat it. But, further, this Article categorically denies the possibility of the reception in any wise. Those without lively faith are * in no wise * (nullo modo) partakers of Christ. This seems intended to exclude every possible subterfuge which might bring them in as partakers in a subordinate sense.

This Article is therefore a great difficulty with those who maintain a real objective presence in or with the consecrated elements. If the body of Christ is in anywise brought into union with the matter of the elements themselves by the act of consecration, then in some sense all who partake of them must be partakers of Christ. So not only the Catechism of the Council of Trent, ^ but most of those who maintain a corporal presence, assert. The difficulties inherent in such an assertion, especially in connection with St. John vi. 54 (* Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day ’) are felt to be BO great, that many able Romanist divines ’ do not interpret

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the expressions in that chapter to mean feeding on Christ in the Euchsudst But the direct application of the chapter to the Lord’s Supper is the usual Homan interpretation.^

On this subject the sixth chapter of Waterland on the Eucharist will be found very clear and satisfiictory. It con- tains a brief review of the ancient and modem interpretations of the sixth chapter of St. John. It may be well to add some of the conclusions.

• There have been two extremes in the accounts given of the Fathers, and both of them owing, as I conceive, to a want of proper distinctions. They who judge that the Fathers, in general, or almost universally, do interpret John vi. of the Eucharist, appear not to distinguish between interpreting and applying. It was right to apply the general doctrine of John vi. to the particular case of the Eucharist considered as worthily received, because the spiritual feeding there mentioned is the thing signified in the Eucharist, yea and performed likewise. After we have sufficiently proved from other Scriptures that in and by the Eucharist, ordinarily, such spiritual food is conveyed, it is then right to apply all that our Lord, by St. John, says in tlie general, to that particular case ; and this indeed the Fathers commonly did. But such application does not amount to interpreting that chapter of the Eucharist.’

Waterland then proceeds to discuss the language of Ignatius, Irenaeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, ^c. &c… and sums up his comments thus : ’ From this summary view of the ancients it may be observed that they varied some- times in their constructions of John vi. or of some parts of it ; but what prevailed most, and was the general sentiment wherein they united, was, that Christ himself is properly and primarily our bread of life, considered as the Word made flesh, as God incarnate, and dying for us ; and that whatever else might, in a secondary sense, be called heavenly bread (whether sacraments or doctrines, or any holy service), it was considered but as an antepast to the other, or as the same thing in the main, under a diiTorent form of expression.’

» Eg. Catechism of Trent, II. iv. 62.

The distinction thus drawn between * interpreting […] a passage is most valuable. It will be the key by which the reader may open the perplexity of some strange apparent contradictions in quotations from the Fathers on other subjects beside this.

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