I

In regard to the presence and gift in the Eucharist, the writers who have been mentioned afford instances of three different kinds of phraseology.

1. That which is bestowed in the Eucharist is described in terms which denote a spiritual gift without defining its specific nature. In the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles the words of prayer quoted as used in connection with the administration of the Eucharist include references to “the holy vine of David” made known through Jesus, “the life and knowledge” made known through Jesus, “the knowledge and faith and immortality” made known through Jesus, and the “spiritual food and drink and eternal life” bestowed through Him; and that which is received is described as “the holy thing”.

“Concerning the Eucharist (τῆς εὐχαριστίας) thus give thanks (εὐχαριστήσατε). First, as to the cup: we give thanks (εὐχαριστοῦμεν) to Thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which Thou didst make known to us through Jesus Thy servant: to Thee be the glory for ever. Then, as to the broken bread (τοῦ κλάσματος): we give thanks (εὐχαριστοῦμεν) to Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou didst make known to us through Jesus Thy servant: to Thee be the glory for ever. As this broken bread (κλάσμα) was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered together became one, so may Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom: for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever. But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist (εὐχαριστίας) but they who have been baptised in the name of the Lord (εἰς ὄνομα Κυρίου); for concerning this also the Lord hath said, ‘Give not that which is holy to the dogs’. And after ye have received (τὸ ἐμπλησθῆναι) thus give thanks (εὐχαριστήσατε): we give thanks (εὐχαριστοῦμεν) to Thee, holy Father, for Thy holy name, which Thou didst make to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality, which Thou didst make known to us through Jesus Thy servant: to Thee be the glory for ever. Thou, Almighty Master, didst create all things for Thy name’s sake, and didst give food and drink to men for their enjoyment that they might give thanks (εὐχαριστήσωσιν) to Thee, but didst bestow on us spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy servant.”

Somewhat similar language to these expressions in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is found in the Epistles of St. Ignatius in addition to much more explicit phraseology which must be noticed later. St. Ignatius refers to the Eucharist as “the bread of God,” and as “one bread,” “which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die but live for ever in Jesus Christ”. With these definite references to the Eucharist may be compared the passages in which, with the Eucharist probably in his mind, St. Ignatius speaks of “faith, which is the flesh of the Lord,” and “love, which is the blood of Jesus Christ”; “the bread of God, which is the flesh of Christ,” and “His blood, which is love uncorrupted”; and “taking refuge in the Gospel as the flesh of Jesus”.

In discussing our Lord’s teaching at Capernaum about the spirit and the flesh in connection with the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, Tertullian writes:—

“Making His spoken word life-giving, because that word is spirit and life, He also described His flesh in the same way, because the word became flesh; therefore, to obtain life, we ought to long for Him, and to devour Him with our hearing, and to ruminate on Him with our understanding, and to digest Him by our faith.”

This kind of expression is more fully developed in the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement writes:—

“The Lord expressed this by means of symbols in the Gospel according to John when He said, ‘Eat My flesh and drink My blood,’ depicting (ἀλληγορῶν) plainly the drinkable character of faith and the promise by means of which the Church, as a human being consisting of many members, is refreshed and grows and is welded together and compacted of both, of faith as the body and of hope as the soul, as also the Lord of flesh and blood.”

[After a more explicit passage quoted on pp. 37, 38, infra.] “But you are unwilling to understand it thus, but perhaps more generally (κοινότερον). Hear it also as follows: The Holy Ghost uses flesh as a picture (ἀλληγορεῖ) for us, for by Him was the flesh created. Blood signifies (αἰνίττεται) for us the Word, for as rich blood the Word has been poured into our life.”

“The blood of the Lord is twofold. In one sense it is fleshly, that by which we have been redeemed from corruption; in another sense it is spiritual, that by which we have been anointed. To drink the blood of Jesus is to partake of the Lord’s immortality; and the Spirit is the strength of the Word, as blood of flesh. As then wine is mixed with water, so is the Spirit with man. And the one, the mixture, nourishes to faith; and the other, the Spirit, guides to immortality. And the mingling of both—of the drink and the Word—is called Eucharist, renowned and beauteous grace; and those who partake of it in faith are sanctified in both body and soul, since the will of the Father has mystically united the divine mixture, man, by the Spirit and the Word. For in truth the Spirit is joined to the soul that is moved by it, and the flesh, for the sake of which the Word became flesh, to the Word.”

“The food is the mystic contemplation; for the flesh and blood of the Word are the comprehension of the divine power and essence. ‘Taste and see that the Lord is Christ,’ it is said; for so He imparts of Himself to those who partake of such food in a more spiritual manner, when now the soul nourishes itself, as says the truth-loving Plato. For the eating and drinking of the divine Word is the knowledge of the divine essence.”

Thus, of one aspect of Clement’s teaching it is true to say:—

“The flesh and blood of the Logos are the apprehension of the divine power and essence; the eating and drinking of the Logos is knowledge of the divine essence; the flesh is the Spirit, the blood is the Logos, the union of the two is the Lord who is the food of His people.”

The mode of speech thus found in Clement of Alexandria is carried on in the writings of Origen; and the latter lays some stress on the more perfect understanding of the phraseology about the Eucharistic elements which is possessed by those who have deeper knowledge of the Christian religion. Thus he writes:—

“Our Lord and Saviour says, Unless ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye will not have life in yourselves; My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. Because therefore Jesus is wholly clean, His whole flesh is food, and His whole blood is drink, because every work of His is holy and every word of His is true. Therefore also His flesh is true food and His blood is true drink. For by the flesh and blood of His word as clean food and drink He gives drink and refreshment to the whole race of men. In the second place after His flesh Peter and Paul and all the Apostles are clean food. In the third place are their disciples. And so each one, in proportion to the extent of his merits and the purity of his senses, is made clean food for his neighbour.”

“Those of the Jews who followed the Lord were offended and said, Who can eat flesh and drink blood? But the Christian people, the faithful people, hear the saying, and embrace it, and follow Him who says, ‘Except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye will not have life in yourselves; for My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink’. And moreover He who thus spoke was wounded on behalf of men, for He Himself ‘was wounded for our sins,’ as Isaiah says. Now we are said to drink the blood of Christ not only in the way of Sacraments, but also when we receive His words, in which life consists, as also He Himself said, ‘The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life’. Therefore He Himself was wounded, whose blood we drink, that is, receive the words of His teaching.”

“That bread which God the Word confesses to be His own body is the word that nourishes souls, the word proceeding from God the Word, and is bread from the heavenly Bread, which is placed upon the table of which it is written, ‘Thou hast prepared before me a table against those that trouble me’. And that drink which God the Word confesses to be His blood is the word that gives drink and excellent gladness to the hearts of those who drink, which is in the cup of which it was written, ‘And Thy gladdening cup, how excellent it is’. And that drink is the fruit of the True Vine, which says, ‘I am the True Vine’. And it is the blood of that grape which, cast into the wine-press of the passion, brought forth this drink. So also the bread is the word of Christ, made of that corn of wheat which falling into the ground yields much fruit. For not that visible bread which He held in His hands did God the Word call His body, but the word in the mystery of which that bread was to be broken. Nor did He call that visible drink His blood, but the word in the mystery of which that drink was to be poured out. For what else can the body of God the Word, or His blood, be but the word which nourishes and the word which gladdens the heart? Why then did He not say, This is the bread of the new covenant, as He said, ‘This is the blood of the new covenant’? Because the bread is the word of righteousness, by eating which souls are nourished, while the drink is the word of the knowledge of Christ according to the mystery of His birth and passion. Since therefore the covenant of God is set for us in the blood of the passion of Christ, so that believing the Son of God to have been born and to have suffered according to the flesh we may be saved not in righteousness, in which alone without faith in the passion of Christ there could not be salvation, for this reason it was said of the cup only, ‘This the cup of the new covenant’.”

“Let the bread and the cup be understood by the more simple according to the more common acceptation of the Eucharist, but by those who have learnt to hear more deeply according to the more divine promise, even that of the nourishing word of the truth.”

Other instances of this kind of phraseology may be seen in the Ethiopic document sometimes described as the Statutes of the Apostles, which probably represents a third century form of the “Lost Church Order,” in the Syriac Didascalia of the Apostles, also probably of the third century, and in the Verona Latin fragments of the Canons of the Apostles, which probably represent an ante-Nicene text. In the Statutes of the Apostles, besides many more explicit statements, the value of the consecration of the elements is in one place described as being that the gift may be to the communicants “for holiness, and for filling them with the Holy Spirit, and for strengthening of faith in truth, that Thee they may glorify and praise”. In the Syriac Didascalia the Eucharist is called “the divine food which endureth for ever”. In the Verona Latin fragments the words of administration are, “the bread of heaven in Christ Jesus”.

In any attempt to place the phraseology of which instances have here been given in its right position in the history of Christian thought, it must be remembered that the less definite descriptions of the Sacrament in the Letters of St. Ignatius and in the Statutes of the Apostles occur side by side with the more explicit terminology in the same writings which will be quoted later, that the writings of Clement of Alexandria and Origen contain many instances of “the more common acceptation of the Eucharist” which in the last quotation Origen described as suitable only for “the more simple,” and that a marked characteristic of the Alexandrian theology was the excessive extent to which it carried allegorical and mystical interpretation.

2. Another kind of phraseology is found most markedly in Tertullian, though it occurs also in Clement of Alexandria and in the Statutes of the Apostles and in the Canons of the Apostles. Clement incidentally says that “the Scripture named wine as the mystic symbol (σύμβολον) of holy blood”. In one place the Saidic text of the Statutes of the Apostles refers to the Eucharistic bread as “the form of the flesh of the Christ”. The Verona Latin fragments of the Canons of the Apostles speak of the bread and wine as the “copy” (exemplum) or “antitype” (antitypum) of the body and blood of Christ. Tertullian more than once uses like language with explicit reference to the Eucharist. He asserts our Lord’s intention to have been to show that bread was “the figure (figura) of His body”; he explains the words “This is My body” as meaning “This is the figure (figura) of My body”; he interprets the words of institution as placing our Lord’s body under the head of, or in the category of, bread (corpus eius in pane censetur). He says also that our Lord by the use of bread “makes present (repraesentat) His very body”. The consideration of this type of phraseology must include some discussion of (a) the meaning of the words “symbol” (σύμβολον) and “figure” (figura); (b) the meaning of the word translated “makes present” (repraesentat); (c) the relation of the passages here quoted to other statements of the same writers.

(a) Students of the history of language and thought will be quick to recognise the difficulty involved in such words as “symbol” and “figure”. Even at the present time most minds marked by the characteristics of the thought of the West of Northern Europe would approach the whole question of what is meant and conveyed in a symbol quite differently from those which have been mainly influenced by the traditions and associations and tendencies of the South. The tendencies of the East, again, are different from those of either North or South in the West. In the past very different ideas have been connected with symbolism at different epochs and in different countries. As regards the early Church it may be confidently stated that the notions suggested by words meaning “symbol” would differ in important respects from those which like words would suggest to an ordinary Englishman or German of to-day. Dr. Harnack has stated a crucial difference with great clearness. “What we nowadays,” he writes, “understand by ‘symbol’ is a thing which is not that which it represents; at that time ‘symbol’ denoted a thing which in some kind of way really is what it signifies”; “What we now call ‘symbol’ is something wholly different from what was so called by the ancient Church”. That these general statements would hold good in the case of Clement of Alexandria is rendered likely by the characteristics of Alexandrian thought. “Symbol” is one of the words which the Alexandrian theologians obviously borrowed from the terminology of the Greek mysteries. Clement of Alexandria uses it for the various acts and objects which in these mystic rites were regarded as at once the signs and the vehicles of divine gifts,—the eating out of the drum, the drinking from the cymbal, the carrying the vessel, the entrance into the bridal chamber, the reception of the touch of the serpent gliding over the breast, the dice, the ball, the lamp, the sword, and other material things. With like thoughts evidently in mind Origen refers incidentally to Baptism as “the symbol of purification”. An essential element in the understanding of the word in Greek theology is the recollection of this connection with the pagan mysteries. Still more explicit indications of the meaning of such terms in the phraseology of Tertullian may be shown by an examination of his language elsewhere and by a comparison of other known uses of the word “figura”. In describing the Incarnation Tertullian uses the phrase “caro figuratus” to denote that our Lord received in the womb of His Virgin Mother not only the appearance but also the reality of flesh. He says that our Lord made known to the Apostles “the form (figura) of His voice”. He uses the word “figura” in the sense of a main point in, or head of, a discussion. Elsewhere he denotes by it the prophetic anticipation of an event afterwards to be fulfilled. Such a method of using the word follows the lines of what is found in other writings. In one of Seneca’s letters it is the equivalent of the Greek word ἰδέα as used in the Platonic philosophy. The translation of “being in the form of God” (ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων) in Phil. 2:6 by “in figura Dei constitutus” in the old Latin version ought not to be left out of account in considering Tertullian’s use of the word “figura”; and it is worth notice that after his time a Roman Council spoke of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as being “of one Godhead, one power, one figura, one essence,” and a Gallican version of the Nicene Creed translated “was made flesh and became man” (σαρκωθέντα, ἐνανθρωπήσαντα) by “corpus atque figuram hominis suscepit”. A scholar of great authority as to the meaning of early Latin documents has inferred from these facts that in the Tertullian “figura” is equivalent not to σχῆμα but to χαρακτήρ, that is, it would approach more nearly to “actual and distinctive nature” than to “symbol” or “figure” in the modern sense of those terms. The question of the meaning of such words in connection with the Eucharist will recur again in a later period. It may be sufficient here to express the warning that to suppose that “symbol” in Clement of Alexandria or “figure” in Tertullian must mean the same as in modern speech would be to assent to a line of thought which is gravely misleading.

(b) The phrase “by which He makes present (repraesentat) His very body” occurs in a passage in which Tertullian is describing the use of material things in the ministries of grace as an argument against the view of Marcion that matter is essentially evil. The Lord whom Marcion acknowledges, he says:—

“Even up to the present time has not disdained the water which is the Creator’s work, by which He washes His own people, or the oil whereby He anoints them, or the mixture of milk and honey with which He feeds them as infants, or the bread by which He makes present (repraesentat) His very body, requiring even in His own Sacraments the ‘beggarly elements’ (mendicitatibus) of the Creator.”

The meaning of the Latin verb repraesentare is to make present that which has been unseen or has passed out of sight. According to the context in which it is used it may denote that the presence is actual or that it is only to the mind. It and the connected noun are favourites with Tertullian and he uses them in both senses. In considerably more than half the instances in his writings they denote actual presence, while in the other instances an anticipatory or a mental or a stage representation is meant. Thus the noun repraesentatio is used for the actual manifestation of the kingdom of God in the future, for the actual infliction of punishment in this life, for the second coming of Christ at the end of the world, for the manifestations of God by means of material elements in the Old Testament, for the revelation of the name of Christ in the prophets, for the actual infliction of the retaliation allowed by the Jewish law, for the manifestation to the disciples of the Christ whom prophets and kings had desired to see, for the presence of the bodies of men at the judgment-seat, for that future realisation of God which is contrasted with the present apprehension by means of faith, and for the revelation of God in Christ through the Incarnation. Similarly the verb repraesentare is used for the actual descent of fire from heaven which took place at the word of Elijah and for which the disciples wished, for the accomplishing of the promises of God, for the effecting of healing in the miracles of Christ, for the work of the Father in manifesting His Son at the Transfiguration, and for the presence of the body at the Day of Judgment. On the other hand, in a smaller number of instances the noun is used for the mental anticipation of future punishment, and the representation of the Christian Church in a council; and the verb denotes the representation of a character by an actor on the stage, the representation of a deity in an image, the imaginations of the mind, and the depicting of Christ in the Psalms. Consequently an examination of the usage of Tertullian in other places does not decisively determine whether the phrase “the bread by which He makes present His very body” means that the “very body” is actually present in the element of bread or that by means of the bread it is depicted or represented to the mind and soul.

(c) It is therefore important to inquire what is the teaching of Tertullian about the Sacraments, and about the Eucharist in particular, in other passages than those in which he uses the words “figura” and “repraesentat” which have so far been examined. This other phraseology of his falls under the head of, and must be taken with, the third of the three groups into which the Eucharistic language of the writers of the first three centuries has been divided.

3. According to a third kind of phraseology the bread and wine of the Eucharist are described as the body and blood of Christ. Besides the less definite language of St. Ignatius which has already been quoted, it is one of his charges against the Docetics that “they abstain from Eucharist and prayer,” that is, the public prayer of the Church, “because they do not acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered on behalf of our sins, which the Father in His goodness raised”; and it is part of his exhortation to the faithful, “Be zealous to use one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for union with His blood”.

In a different context St. Justin Martyr says much the same as St. Ignatius. In the course of his defence of Christian belief and worship and life against heathen attacks he refers at some length to the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist. Of the latter he says:—

“This food is called among us the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake unless he believes that our teaching is true and has been washed in the laver for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is living as Christ commanded. For we do not receive it as common bread or common drink; but just as Jesus Christ our Saviour, made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food over which thanksgiving has been made by the prayer of the word that is from Him—that food from which our blood and flesh are by assimilation nourished—is both the flesh and the blood of the Jesus who was made flesh.”

The circumstances in which St. Irenæus referred to the Eucharist resembled those which led to the teaching of St. Ignatius. He had to deal with that fundamental Gnostic error which interposed an insuperable barrier between spiritual beings and material things, between the true God and the universe of matter. In the mind of St. Irenæus the Eucharistic doctrine and practice of the Church afforded the standing refutation of any such mistake. And, as it showed the falsity of the central delusion of the Gnostic thinkers, so also it supplied an answer to their denials of the reality of Christ’s flesh and of the resurrection of the body.

“How can they allow,” he says, “that the bread over which the thanksgiving has been said is the body of their Lord and that the cup is of His blood if they say that He is not the Son of the Creator of the world, that is His Word, through whom the wood is fruitful and the springs flow and the earth yields first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear? How, again, do they say that the flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord descends to corruption and does not attain unto life? Either then let them change their mind or let them cease to offer that which has been mentioned. For our belief is in harmony with the Eucharist; and the Eucharist, again, establishes our belief. For we offer unto Him the things that are His own, proclaiming harmoniously the communion and unity of flesh and spirit. For as the bread of the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but Eucharist, made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, so also our bodies, partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.”

“How could the Lord, if He was the Son of another Father, have rightly taken the bread which is of the same creation as ourselves and acknowledged it to be His body, and affirmed the mixed wine in the cup to be His blood?”

“If” “the flesh” “is not the object of salvation, then neither did the Lord redeem us by His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communication of His blood, nor is the bread which we break the communication of His body.… The cup of created wine, from which He bedews our blood, He acknowledged as His own blood; and the created bread, from which He increases our bodies, He affirmed to be His own body. When therefore the cup of mingled wine and the made bread receive the word of God, and the Eucharist becomes the body of Christ, and the substance of our flesh is increased and sustained by these, how do they say that the flesh cannot receive the gift of God, which is life eternal, since the flesh is nourished from the body and blood of the Lord and is a member of Him?… As a cutting of the vine planted in the ground bears fruit in its season, and as a grain of wheat falling into the ground and being decomposed rises manifold by the operation of the Spirit of God, who contains all things, and then through the wisdom of God comes to the use of men and receiving the word of God becomes Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies being nourished by it and laid in the earth and decomposed there shall rise at the due season, the Word of God granting them resurrection to the glory of our God and Father.”

The words of the first part of an inscription found at Autun probably belong to the end of the second century or the quite early years of the third. They speak of our Lord, described under the well-known symbol of a fish from the initial letters of the Greek words for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour,” as being in the hands of the communicant:—

“Divine race of the heavenly Fish, a holy heart

Put forth, receiving among mortals the immortal fount

Of sacred waters; nourish, beloved, thy soul

With the ever-flowing waters of enriching wisdom.

Receive the honey-sweet food of the Saviour of the holy;

Eat, drink, having the Fish in thy hands.”

A very imperfect idea of the Eucharistic doctrine of Tertullian would be given if attention were confined to those passages in his writings in which he describes the Eucharist as the “figura” of the body of Christ and the means by which our Lord “makes His body present”. To understand it rightly, it must be viewed in the general setting of sacramental principle which Tertullian emphasises. In his eyes the Incarnation has introduced new aspects of the relation of man to God. The human flesh which the Lord then took is an abiding reality. “That same Person who suffered,” he declares, “will come from heaven; that same Person who was raised from the dead will appear to all. And they who pierced Him will see and recognise the very flesh against which they raged.” With this Christ, thus retaining His human body and blood, Christians are closely united. The baptised are clothed with Christ; in them Christ lives. By the daily reception of the bread of life there is continuance in Christ and abiding union in His body. Before the Incarnation the flesh was far off from God, “not yet worthy of the gift of salvation, not yet fitted for the duty of holiness”; but Christ’s work, accomplished in the flesh, has changed all that. Since the Incarnation Sacraments have become necessary and effectual; and that which in the ordinances of the Church touches the flesh benefits the soul. It is in harmony with these general sacramental principles that Tertullian not only calls the Eucharist “the holy thing,” but also often and naturally refers to it as the body of Christ. It is a matter for anxious care that no drop of the wine or fragment of the bread should fall to the ground. It was the Lord’s body which the disciples received at the Last Supper. It is the Lord’s body which the communicant receives in the Church or reserves for his Communion at home. It is the Lord’s body with the richness of which the Christian is fed in the Eucharist. It is Christ’s body and blood with which “the flesh is clothed, so that the soul also may be made fat by God”. Even in unworthy Communions it is the body of the Lord which wicked hands approach, the body of the Lord which wicked men outrage and offend. And yet side by side with all this must be set that interpretation of the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel already mentioned, which seems to regard the flesh and blood of Christ there spoken of as His life-giving words received in faith. The writings of Tertullian certainly bear witness to his belief that the Eucharistic food is a special means of union with the Manhood of Christ, and that in some sense it is His body and His blood. When we view the complexity and varying elements of his language, perhaps we are wise if we are not too positive as to what further definitions he might have made if he had explained more precisely what his exact meaning was.

As in Tertullian, so also in Clement of Alexandria and Origen there are other elements than those to which reference has already been made. Clement explains that the Lord feeds Christians with His own flesh and blood even as a mother feeds her infant child from her own body.

“The young brood which the Lord Himself brought forth with throes of the flesh, which the Lord Himself swaddled with precious blood. O holy birth, O holy swaddling clothes, the Word is all to the babe, father and mother and tutor and nurse. ‘Eat ye My flesh,’ He says, ‘and drink ye My blood.’ This suitable food the Lord supplies to us, and offers flesh and pours out blood; and the little children lack nothing that their growth needs.”

Origen speaks of Christ giving to Christians “His own body and His own blood”; and of Christians receiving “the bread which becomes a kind of holy body because of the prayer”. If in some places he seems to identify the flesh and blood of Christ with His words, in one remarkable passage he reminds his hearers of the reverent care which they know is taken to prevent any part of the body of the Lord which is received in the mysteries from falling to the ground or being lost, and exhorts them to be no less careful to receive the words of Christ than to protect His body which Origen thus distinguishes from them:—

“If for the protection of His body ye take so great care, and are right to take it, can ye suppose that to be careless of the word of God is a less offence than to be careless of His body?”

This identification of the Eucharistic food with the body and blood of Christ is found also in the epitaph of Abercius, in Hippolytus, in the document known as the Canons of Hippolytus, in the Statutes of the Apostles, in the Canons of the Apostles, and in Dionysius of Alexandria. The epitaph which Abercius, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, wrote for his own tomb describes how in his journeys in West and East, to Rome and Nisibis,

“Everywhere faith led the way, and set before me for food the fish from the fountain, mighty and stainless (whom a pure virgin grasped), and gave this to friends to eat always, having good wine and giving the mixed cup with bread.”

In a fragment of uncertain origin and history ascribed to Hippolytus of Rome the “house” which the Wisdom of the Book of Proverbs built is interpreted of the flesh which the Lord took of the Virgin in the Incarnation; and the “table” which Wisdom “furnished” is explained to denote “the promised knowledge of the Holy Trinity, and the Saviour’s precious and stainless body and blood, which are daily consecrated on the mystic and sacred table”. “He hath given us,” it is added, “His sacred flesh and His precious blood, to eat and drink for remission of sins.” In another fragment ascribed to Hippolytus is the sentence:—

“We receive His body and His blood, for He is the pledge of eternal life for each one who draws near to Him in humility.”

In the Roman or Alexandrian document known as the Canons of Hippolytus is the provision:—

“The bishop is to give to them the body of Christ, saying, This is the body of Christ, and they are to say, Amen. And, when he gives them the cup, saying, This is the blood of Christ, they are to say, Amen.”

In the Statutes of the Apostles the effect of consecration is said to be that the elements become the body and blood of Christ, the bread and the wine are described as the body and blood of Christ at the moment of Communion, any profanation of the sacrament said to be a profaning of the body and blood of Christ. In the Verona Latin fragments of the Canons of the Apostles it is said that “the body of Christ is to be eaten be believers and not to be despised,” and that one who exposes the contents of the cup to profanation is “guilty of the blood” of Christ. In a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to Xystus, Bishop of Rome, there is a description of one who in this respect had lived a normal faithful Christian life as having

“heard the thanksgiving (or the Eucharist) and joined in repeating the Amen and stood by the table and stretched out his hands for the reception of the holy food and received it and partaken for a long time of the body and blood of our Lord.”

In another letter Dionysius speaks of the act of Communion as touching the body and the blood of Christ.

The writings of St. Cyprian contain very many incidental references to the Eucharist. It is always mentioned with profound reverence. The Eucharistic food is described as “sanctified”—a phrase applied also, it must be noticed, to a person who has been made holy by being baptised, and to the water and the oil made holy for use in the administration of Baptism. With obvious or expressed reference to our Lord’s words, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine,” it is spoken of as “the holy thing,” or “the holy thing of the Lord,” or “the pearls of the Lord”. “The blood of Christ” is said to be “shown” or “set forth” by the wine in the cup; the bread and wine which the Lord offered to the Father are called “His body and blood”; the “wine of the cup of the Lord” is spoken of as “blood”. Communicants are said to receive and to be sustained and protected by the body and blood of Christ. When any communicate unworthily the body and blood of the Lord are taken and drunk with defiled hands and polluted mouth, and are outraged and profaned. To complete what may be gathered as to St. Cyprian’s thought of the Eucharistic presence, there are two passages which need to be correlated to those already in view. In the first of these passages St. Cyprian says of one who took part in the Eucharistic rite after an act of apostacy:—

“He could not eat and handle the holy thing of the Lord, but found that he was carrying a cinder in his open hands. By this single instance it was shown that the Lord departs when He is denied, and that what is received does not benefit unto salvation one who is unworthy, since the saving grace is changed into a cinder on the departure of the hole thing.”

In the other passage St. Cyprian is speaking of an opposite instance, where the faith of Christ is victoriously maintained in time of persecution:—

“Let us arm,” he says, “the right hand also with the sword of the Spirit, so that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices of the heathen, and that the hand which mindful of the Eucharist receives the body of the Lord may embrace the Lord Himself, hereafter to obtain the reward of the heavenly crowns of the Lord.”

In the first of these passages, in distinction from those in which the body and blood of the Lord is said to be taken and drunk and outraged and profaned in unworthy Communions, the possibility is contemplated of a withdrawal of the sacred presence in such cases; in the second of them the embrace of the Lord Himself seems to be regarded as a special gift over and above what is in every good Communion.

The question of the crucial moment in the consecration of the Eucharist belong rather to later controversies than to the ante-Nicene period of Church history; but it may here be briefly noticed that Tertullian appears to connect the presence with the use of the words of Institution, that St. Justin Martyr and Origen ascribe it to the prayer offered in the Church, and that St. Irenæus speaks of it as effected by this prayer described as “the invocation of God,” or “the Word of God”. If the Statutes of the Apostles and the Verona Latin fragments of the Canons of the Apostles accurately represent ante-Nicene texts, there already existed at this time a rite in which the words of Institution were recited, and after them a prayer for the sending of the Holy Ghost upon the offering of the Church was used.