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John Calvin On The Real Presence Of Christ In The Holy Sacrament
John Cosin (1594-1672)
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| John Cosin (1594-1672) was Bishop of Durham, and a leading contributor to the 1662 Prayer Book |
NOW because great is the fame of Calvin, (who subscribed the Augustan Confession, and that of the Switzers,) let us hear what he writ and believed concerning this sacred mystery. His words in his Institutions and elsewhere are such, so conformable to the style and mind of the Ancient Fathers, that no Catholic Protestant would wish to use any other.
"I understand," saith he, "what is to be understood by the words of Christ; that He doth not only offer us the benefits of His Death and Resurrection, but His very body, wherein He died and rose again. I assert that the Body of Christ is really, (as the usual expression is,) that is truly given to us in the Sacrament, to be the saving food of our souls." Also in another place;
Item "That word cannot lie, neither can it mock us; and except one presumes to call God a deceiver, he will never dare to say, that the symbols are empty, and that Christ is not in them. Therefore if by the breaking of the bread our Saviour doth represent the participation of His Body, it is not to be doubted but that He truly gives and confers it. If it be true that the visible sign is given us, to seal the gift of an invisible thing, we most firmly believe that receiving the signs of the Body, we also certainly receive the Body itself. Setting aside all absurdities, I do willingly admit all those terms that can most strongly express the true and substantial Communication of the Body and Blood of Christ, granted to the faithful with the symbols of the Lord's Supper ; and that, not as if they received only by the force of their imagination, or an act of their minds, but really, so as to be fed thereby unto Eternal Life."
Again, "We must therefore confess that the inward substance of the Sacrament is joined with the visible sign, so that, as the bread is put into our hand, the Body of Christ is also given to us. This certainly, if there were nothing else, should abundantly satisfy us, that we understand, that Christ, in His Holy Supper, gives us the true and proper substance of His Body and Blood, that it being wholly ours, we may be made partakers of all His benefits and graces." Again, "The Son of God offers daily to us in the Holy Sacrament, the same Body which He once offered in sacrifice to His Father, that it may be our spiritual food." In these he asserts, as clearly as any one ran, the true, real, and substantial Presence and Communication of the Body of Christ, but how, he undertakes not to determine.
"If any one," saith he, "ask me concerning the manner, I will not be ashamed to confess that it is a secret too high for my reason to comprehend, or my tongue to express; or to speak more properly, I rather feel than understand it: therefore without disputing I embrace the truth of God, and confidently repose on it. He declares that His Flesh is the food, and His Blood the drink of my soul; and my soul I offer to Him to be fed by such nourishment. He bids me take, eat, and drink His Body and Blood, which in His holy Supper He offers me under the symbols of Bread and Wine: I make no scruple, but He doth reach them to me, and I receive them." All these are Calvin's own words.
From "The History Of Popish Transubstantiation", as reprinted in "Tracts For The Times", No. XXVII, Feb. 1834.
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