II

Berengar of Tours was a pupil of Fulbert, and it is possible that he, though probably affected more by the treatise of Ratramn On the body and blood of the Lord than by any other influence, may have derived from Fulbert ideas which he developed in some parts of his future teaching. Born at Tours about 1000 and educated at Chartres, he became Director of the Cathedral School at Tours in 1031, and was appointed Archdeacon of Angers, though without ceasing to reside at Tours, about 1040. He was a diligent student of Holy Scripture, of the tradition of the Church, and of philosophy; and appears to have been known for independence of judgment, and for originality of thought. During the ten years which followed his appointment as Archdeacon of Angers about 1040 he developed views in regard to the Eucharist which led to a controversy far more acute than those of the ninth century. About 1048 Adelman of Liège, afterwards Bishop of Brixen, who had been a fellow-pupil of Fulbert with Berengar at Chartres, wrote to Berengar telling him of, and asking him to deny, a widespread report that he held opinions other than those of the Catholic faith “about the body and blood of the Lord, which is daily offered in every land on the holy altar,” and regarded it “not as the real body and real blood of Christ but a kind of figure and likeness”. In this letter Adelman complains that he has received no reply to a similar inquiry addressed to Berengar two years before; and gives some of his reasons for his belief that He who made the light out of nothing and turned water into wine can make bread His body and wine His blood. Not later than the summer of 1049 Hugh, Bishop of Langres, who also had been a fellow-pupil with Berengar, wrote to him on the same subject, remonstrating with him for his contention that that body of Christ is in the Sacrament “in such a way that the nature and essence of the bread and wine are not changed,” and maintaining that, if the body present in the Eucharist is only a creation of the mind and the actual body of Christ is in the Sacrament merely in power and effect, this Sacrament would lose its distinctness from other Sacraments and particularly from Baptism. The same letter contained a statement that the altar is “both priest and sacrifice,” since Christ is Himself “the altar on high of the Father.” In 1050 Berengar himself addressed a short letter to Lanfranc, then Prior of Bec, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he declared his acceptance of “the opinions of John the Scot about the Sacrament of the altar,” and his rejection of those of Paschasius; and added that, if Lanfranc regarded John the Scot as a heretic, he must similarly condemn, among others, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. By “the opinions of John the Scot” Berengar probably meant the views expressed either in the treatise of Ratramn On the body and blood of the Lord, which may by this time have come to be ascribed to Scotus Erigena, or in a work maintaining a similar position actually written by Scotus and now lost. This letter was read at a council held at Rome under Pope Leo IX. in 1050; and a sentence of excommunication was passed on Berengar in his absence. Lanfranc states that there was a report that he, like Berengar, held opinions regarded as unorthodox: and at the command of the Pope he explained his belief before the council with the result that what he said was approved. Probably in the same year, 1050, a council was held at Brionne near Bec, convoked by William of Normandy, afterwards William I. of England, at which Berengar is said to have been reduced to silence by argument and to have assented to declarations of the doctrine ordinarily believed. In September, 1050, a council was held at Vercelli, to which Berengar was summoned; but he was prevented from attending by the action of King Henry I. of France, who imprisoned him for a short time. At this council a condemnation was passed on “the book of John the Scot on the Eucharist” and on the opinions of Berengar. In October, 1050, King Henry I. Summoned a council, which met at Paris, to consider the same matter; and at this council the opinions of Berengar were again condemned. Four years later, in 1054, a council was held at Tours under the presidency of Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory VII., as papal legate. Berengar was present, and denied the charge brought against him of having said that “the holy bread of the altar is only bread and does not differ from unconsecrated bread,” and asserted that “the bread and wine of the altar after the consecration are really the body and blood of Christ.” In 1059, during the Papacy of Nicolas II., a council was held at Rome. Berengar was present, and, apparently after considerable pressure, burnt his own writings and assented to the following document, which was drawn up by Cardinal Humbert:—

“I, Berengar, an unworthy deacon of the Church of St. Maurice of Angers, acknowledging the true Catholic and Apostolic faith, anathematise every heresy, especially that concerning which I have hitherto been in ill repute, which attempts to affirm that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are after consecration only a Sacrament and not the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that these cannot be held or broken by the hands of the priests or crushed by the teeth of the faithful with the senses but only by way of Sacrament (sensualiter nisi in solo sacramento). And I assent to the Holy Roman and Apostolic See, and with mouth and heart I profess that concerning the Sacrament of the Lord’s Table I hold the faith which the Lord and venerable Pope Nicolas and this holy synod have by evangelical and apostolical authority delivered to be held and have confirmed to me, namely that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are after consecration not only a Sacrament but also the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that with the senses (sensualiter) not only by way of Sacrament but in reality (non solum sacramento sed in veritate) these are held and broken by the hands of the priests and are crushed by the teeth of the faithful.”

At a council held at Rouen in 1063 a formula, which had been drawn up on some previous occasion, was recited as an act of repudiation of opinions ascribed to Berengar:—

“We believe with the heart and profess with the mouth that the bread placed on the Lord’s Table is only bread before consecration, but at the consecration itself is converted by the ineffable power of God into the nature and substance of flesh, and not of any other flesh but of that flesh which was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, which also for us and for our salvation was scourged, hung on the cross, lay in the tomb, on the third day rose from the dead, and sits on the right hand of God the Father. In like manner the wine which mixed with water is placed in the cup to be sanctified is really and essentially converted into that blood which from the wound pierced in the Lord’s side by the soldier’s spear happily flowed for the redemption of the world.”

Some time after the council held at Rouen in 1063 Lanfranc published his book On the body and blood of the Lord. In it he defended at length the doctrine expressed in the declaration drawn up by Cardinal Humbert and accepted by Berengar at the Council of Rome of 1059, and charged Berengar with the continued teaching of false doctrine, which he had then promised to avoid. According to the representations here made by Lanfranc, the teaching of Berengar contained denials of any conversion at the consecration and that the consecrated elements were in any but a wholly symbolical and figurative sense the body and blood of Christ. Against these views of Berengar, Lanfranc develops the expression of his own belief. The bread and the wine, he maintains, are converted at consecration into the real body and blood of Christ. Though they may still be called bread and wine, as being the Bread from heaven and the Wine which maketh glad the hearts of the servants of God, they are incomprehensibly and ineffably converted into the substance of Christ’s flesh and blood; and that which is converted must in that part cease to be what it was before. The flesh and blood are invisible and spiritual; but they are the flesh and blood of that body which was visibly manifested. The rite is full of mystery; and in it the nature of the elements is essentially changed. The miracles by which the flesh of Christ has actually been seen in the Sacrament show the reality of His presence in it. As material bread nourishes the flesh of those who eat it rightly, so the spiritual and invisible body of Christ nourishes the soul of those who receive it worthily. Though Christ is really eaten by communicants on earth, yet in heaven He is whole and unbroken. On the cross Christ offered Himself as a sacrifice for the redemption of men; in the Sacrament there is the memorial of the daily offering of the same flesh as that offered on the cross. To quote two passages in which Lanfranc sums up the doctrine which pervades the whole treatise:—

“We believe then that the earthly substances, which are on the Lord’s Table, are divinely consecrated in the priestly mystery, and are ineffably, incomprehensibly, wonderfully converted by the operation of heavenly power into the essence of the Lord’s body, the species of the things themselves being preserved, and certain other qualities, so that men may not shrink through perceiving what is raw and bloody and that through belief they may receive the fuller rewards of faith, the Lord’s body itself none the less existing in heaven at the right hand of the Father, immortal, unviolated, whole, unbroken, unhurt, so that it can be truly said that we receive that very body which was taken from the Virgin, and yet that it is not the same:—the same indeed so far as concerns the essence and peculiarity and power of the real nature, but not the same as regards the species of bread and the species of wine and the other things mentioned above.”

“The real flesh of Christ and His real blood are offered on the Lord’s Table, are eaten and drunk, bodily, spiritually, incomprehensibly.”

With the doctrine thus expressed by Lanfranc may be compared the provision made in his statutes for Canterbury Cathedral, which may previously have been is use at Bec, for the carrying of the Sacrament in procession on Palm Sunday, and for acts of adoration in connection with the procession.

“When the cantor begins the antiphon ‘The multitudes meet,’ two priests vested in albs are to come forward, who are to carry the shrine, which a little before daybreak ought to have been placed there by the same priests, in which the body of Christ ought to have been laid. Those who carry the banners and the crosses and the other things which have been mentioned above are to move forward at once to the shrine; and, while those who carry the shrine stand still, they are to stand on the right and on the left of the shrine in the order in which they have come.… At the end of the antiphon ‘The multitudes meet’ the boys and those who are with them are to begin the antiphon ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ genuflecting both at the beginning and at the end of the antiphon, because ‘Hosanna’ is said in both places. The choir is to repeat this antiphon, and in like manner to genuflect. Then the boys are to sing the antiphon ‘With the angels,’ genuflecting only at the end of the antiphon. This antiphon is to be repeated by the monks, and in like manner a prostration is to be made. When this has been done, the abbot or the cantor is to begin the antiphon ‘Hail our King,’ and the bearers of the shrine are to pass through the midst of the station, while those who carry the banners and the other things mentioned before go in front, all keeping in returning the order which they had in coming. As the bearers of the shrine pass by, all are to genuflect, not all at once but one by one on this side and on that as the shrine passes before them.… Before the entering of the gates the shrine is to be placed on a table covered with a pall in such a way that the aforesaid bearers, standing on each side, may have their faces turned towards the shrine in their midst.”

Like veneration on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday is mentioned in these statutes. The priest was ordered after Mass on Maundy Thursday to place “the body of the Lord” in an “appointed place most beautifully adorned,” “censed before and after,” before which a light was to be continually burning. It was directed that after the adoration of the cross on Good Friday the priest and the deacon, preceded by lights and incense, should go to the place where the Sacrament was, that it should be censed and brought to the high altar, and that, on the approach to the altar, “all the brethren should genuflect and adore the body of the Lord.”

The same statutes of Lanfranc contain careful provisions for dealing with any accident which may have befallen the Sacrament.

Another treatise of importance against Berengar is that of Durand, the Abbot of Troarn, On the body and blood of the Lord. Durand died an old man in 1089; his book was probably written nearly twenty years earlier, about the same time as that of Lanfranc. Durand, like Lanfranc, represents Berengar and his adherents as holding that the consecrated elements are only figuratively the body blood of Christ. His own belief also appears to have been much the same as that of Lanfranc in his assertions of the reality of the presence of the body and blood and of the spiritual character of the change effected at the consecration. The visible elements, he maintains, are invisibly and substantially made the real body and blood of Christ by the incomprehensible working of God the Holy Ghost when the words of institution are recited by the priest. The flesh thus present is the same as that which was taken of the Virgin and is now in heaven; and the elements are changed into it by the operation of the same power as accomplished the Incarnation. Being the flesh of Christ, it is the object of the adoration of Christians. It is spiritually received by communicants; and by receiving it they are united to Christ, so that He is in them, and they are in Him, and they are transformed from what is human to what is divine and from what is carnal to what is spiritual. Being so spiritual and divine a thing, it is not subject to the ordinary processes of digestion but fits the souls of those who receive it for dwelling with God. It is offered as a sacrifice appointed by God, whereby He is propitiated and men are reconciled for their sins of daily infirmity. To quote two passages, which include in a short space some of the main features of the teachings contained in this book:—

“The Sacrament of the Lord is really the body and blood of Christ, not only in the effective and spiritual force of power but also in the most complete peculiarity of natural reality; nor is it any other than that same flesh which the Virgin conceived of the Holy Ghost, and brought forth with the integrity of her spotless virginity unbroken, contrary indeed to the ordinary course of human nature but not contrary to the reality of human body; which was condemned to the cross, and sentenced to death, but afterwards glorified in the triumph of the blessed resurrection, and ascended above the heights of heaven, and now sits on the eternal right hand of the Father, where for us, according to the true words of the Apostle Paul, He has been made a High Priest for ever, and in His human flesh continually intercedes, while in the reality of His divine nature He receives the prayers of His faithful people, and in His divine power and majesty grants their prayers.”

“It is a grave offence to suppose this, namely, that the flesh of the Lord should be thought to be received as common flesh or as that of some animal, since rather it must be believed to be spiritually received by a Sacrament, and yet to be none other than that which bore the passion, though the species of the bread that is offered be seen; and it ought to be faithfully believed that this is accomplished by the appointment of God, so that human weakness, which is not wont to feed on its own flesh, may find nothing in the appearance to shrink from, and for the rest may realise the truth that the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ is in the Sacrament, of which the Apostle says, ‘Though we have known Jesus Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.’ Here the Apostle does not deny the reality of the nature taken from us, but he shows the incorruptibility of our glorified substance as it is in God through the resurrection, which, as it is incorruptible in God, so we receive incorruptible in the Sacrament under the visible and accustomed species. But the minds of those who receive it are to be conformed and fitted to this so great Sacrament, so that what is received in the mystery may be of profit to them by inward result to the end that whoever partakes of so great holiness may be dead to the world and to sin, and may strive henceforth to live in newness of life.”

A third treatise of importance by an opponent of Berengar, published, like the two which have been hitherto mentioned, during the period between the earlier condemnations of his teaching already recorded and the Roman Councils of 1078 and 1079 yet to be described, is that entitled On the Reality of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, by Witmund of Aversa. Witmund was a Norman, a pupil of Lanfranc, and regarded as one of the most eminent theologians of his day. He was offered an English bishopric by William the Conqueror but refused to accept it because of his conviction that William’s policy of filling English sees with Norman bishops was destructive of the best interests of the English Church and nation. He was afterwards nominated Archbishop of Rouen by William, but declined to continue to seek that office in consequence of opposition to his appointment. Later he went to Italy. Pope Gregory VII. made him a cardinal, and Pope Urban II. appointed him Archbishop of Aversa. His book on the Eucharist is longer and more systematic than either of those by Lanfranc and Durand of Troarn; and it shows traces of a more careful study both of the opinions of Berengar and of other current views. Yet, in spite of his great reputation, he appears to have possessed much less insight than either Lanfranc or Durand; and his theological statements differ in important respects from both earlier and later Western theology. He mentions four different opinions about the Eucharist which he aims at refuting. He ascribes two of these four opinions to two different schools of Berengarians, the first being that the Sacrament is only a figure of the body and blood of Christ, the second, which he describes as said to be that of Berengar himself, being that in the Sacrament “the body and blood of the Lord are really but secretly contained, so that in some kind of way they can be received, and are, so to speak, impanated,” the holders of these two opinions agreeing that “the bread and the wine are not essentially changed”. The third opinion is that part of the elements is changed into the body and blood of Christ, while part of them remains unchanged. The fourth opinion is that the bread and the wine are wholly changed into the body and blood of Christ; but that, if they are received unworthily, they are changed back again into bread and wine. The common reason for these third and fourth opinions is the desire to avoid admitting that those who communicate unworthily receive the body and blood of Christ. In contravening these opinions Witmund shows his own belief. According to it the elements are essentially changed in a way to which the change of ordinary food into the substance of the body of those who eat it may be regarded as parallel. The body of Christ is pressed by the teeth of communicants, as it was touched by St. Thomas and the holy women after the resurrection. Christ is able in the Sacrament to divide His body. On the other hand, no death or injury results; each fragment of the Sacrament is the whole body of Christ; He does not divide Himself but bestows Himself on each individual to whom He comes; His body does not suffer corruption, or reception by irrational creatures, or the ordinary processes of digestion. Witmund carries his doctrine of a substantial change so far that he ascribes incorruptibility to the sacramental species, and appears to regard this as a consequence of his belief that the presence of Christ is not by way of impanation or invination or after the manner of a figure but substantially. On the subject of the reception by the wicked, he says one who communicates unworthily “eats and does not eat: he eats bodily but he does not eat spiritually” At the end of his book Witmund sums up his position by saying:—

“Our sacrifice is not a shadow only or a figure of the flesh and blood of Christ, nor can it cover Christ impanated in it as Berengar thinks, nor can reality allow that the substance of the bread and wine is in part changed but in part abides unchanged, nor may one think that after being changed it returns to what it was before or is changed again into something else. It remains that by the help of God this is the unimpaired and firm faith, that the whole of the bread and the whole of the wine of the altar of the Lord are so substantially changed by the consecration of God into the flesh and blood of Christ that afterwards henceforth for ever they are nothing else at all than the flesh and blood of our Saviour and Lord God Jesus Christ.”

In reply to Lanfranc and probably with other attacks on his teaching in view, Berengar wrote his treatise On the Hold Supper. In this book Berengar complains of the unfair and violent treatment of himself by the rulers of the Church; affirms his right to appeal to argument and logic, since reason is the gift of God and a characteristic of the image of God; depreciates the importance of the opinions of majorities; and appeals to the accredited authorities of Scripture and tradition. The book is extremely controversial and is occupied almost entirely with attacks on, and arguments against, his opponents; though it represents his mature view, which he says he has gradually attained, there are great difficulties in ascertaining from it what he really held as positive opinion. It is clear that he denied any destruction of the elements or material change in them. “After consecration,” he says, “there is on the altar the material bread”; “the bread and wine cannot materially lose their own nature”; the bread and the wine are not so called after consecration in any “figurative sense but literally”; they “are not destroyed but abide”. It is clear also that he denied any carnal presence of Christ. He explicitly rejects the idea that “the body of Christ is brought down from heaven and carnally present on the altar”. It is doubtful whether by his assertions that the consecrated elements are the body and blood of Christ he means that they are so in actual fact and spiritual reality, or whether he means only that they are so figuratively or virtually. On the one hand, there are passages which most easily lend themselves to the latter interpretation, as when he says:—

“The blood of Christ the Lord is set before you, but not carnally, that you may be washed in it; it is set before you, but not carnally, that you may also drink it. If the Lord God had instituted that you must do these things carnally according to the outer man, in the first place and principally you would rightly have shrunk back in the worth of the mind; but nothing has been set before you which can rightly be horrible to you. Christ the Lord requires from you that you believe that His mercy towards the human race led Him to shed His blood and that so believing you may be washed by His blood from all sin; He requires that you, having that same blood of Christ always in remembrance, may in it, as in food for making the journey of this life, base your inner life, as you base your outward life in outward food and drink.… He requires that, believing inwardly that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son as a propitiation for sins, you may be outwardly plunged in this element of water and thus by means of the element of water represent to yourself the death of Christ; … He requires that by means of bodily eating and drinking, which takes place through outward things, through bread and wine, you may remind yourself of the spiritual eating and drinking which are in the mind concerning the flesh and blood of Christ, while you refresh yourself inwardly with the Incarnation and passion of the Word, so that in humility, by which the Word became flesh, and in patience, through which He shed His blood, you may establish your inner life, as you ought, in humility, and, as you ought, excel in patience, so that in these you may rest and delight yourself, as in your outer life you rest in food and drink.”

On the other hand he says that the Eucharistic bread is “the body of Christ”; that “after consecration the bread and wine are really the body and blood of Christ”; that “the bread and wine are converted by means of the consecration into the real body and blood of Christ on the altar”; that they are “the Sacrament of the Lord’s passion, of the mercy of God, of peace and unity, lastly of the flesh and blood taken from the Virgin, each in their proper and distinct ways”; and writes as follows of the change at the consecration:—

“The word converted has more senses than one. For some things are converted by the destruction of the subject into something which they were not before; but it is quite a different thing for something to be converted by the consecration of its subject than for it to be converted by the destruction of its subject. Now the bread and the wine by the attestation of all Scripture are converted into the flesh and blood of Christ by consecration; and it is clear that everything which is consecrated, and everything which is blessed by God, is not removed or taken away or destroyed but abides and is necessarily advanced to something better than it was before.”

In regard to the sacrifice Berengar quotes with approval from the Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews which he thought to be the work of St. Ambrose:—

“Christ was once offered, but the sacrifice of the Church is the representation (exemplum) of the sacrifice of Christ.… As that which is everywhere offered is one body and not many bodies, so also there is one sacrifice, and the High Priest is He who made the offering which cleanses us. We offer that even now. We ever offer, not a different sacrifice, but the same, or rather we make the remembrance of the sacrifice.”

The obscurity in Berengar’s own statement of what he describes as his developed and mature opinion, the real changes in his thought which appear to be indicated by this description, and his vacillations under persecution combine to explain the fact that Lanfranc and Durand of Troarn represent him as holding that the consecrated elements are only figures of the body and blood of Christ, while Witmund distinguishes him from those Berengarians who so held and says that he himself was said to adopt such a view of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements as Witmund describes as “impanation” or “invination”.

After councils condemnatory of his opinions at Poitiers in 1075 and at Saint Maixent in 1076, Berengar was summoned to Rome by Pope Gregory VII. for a council which took place in 1078. At this council he accepted the following statement:—

“I profess that the bread of the altar is after consecration the real body of Christ, which was born of the Virgin, which suffered on the cross, which sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and that the wine of the altar, after it has been consecrated, is the real blood which flowed from the side of Christ.”

At a later council held at Rome in 1079 Berengar subscribed, after some resistance and attempted evasions, a fuller and more explicit statement:—

“I, Berengar, believe with my heart and confess with my mouth that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are by the mystery of the holy prayer and the words of our Redeemer substantially converted into the real and true and life-giving flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and are after the consecration the real body of Christ, which was born of the Virgin and which was offered and hung on the cross for the salvation of the world and which sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and the real blood of Christ, which was shed from His side, not only by way of sign and sacramental power but in peculiarity of nature and reality of substance.”

A year later, in 1080, Berengar gave an account of his belief at a council held at Bordeaux, which was apparently allowed by the council. He died in 1088 on St. Cosme, an island in the Loire near Tours.

It is probable that Berengar in the earlier stages of his teaching was desirous of emphasising the spiritual character of the consecration of the elements and the presence of Christ. From this he himself at times may have gone on to deny the traditional doctrine that the consecrated elements are the body and blood of Christ. Such a denial formed part of the belief of some of his adherents. As there were two schools among his followers, some regarding the consecrated elements as merely figures and others asserting the presence of Christ in them in some form other than their change into His body and blood, so differences existed to a certain extent among their opponents. There was a marked tendency not only to affirm the traditional doctrine that the consecrated elements are Christ’s body and blood but also to use language of a carnal character in regard to this presence. Instances of this tendency may be seen in the statement imposed on Berengar at the Council of Rome in 1059, and in the writings of Lanfranc and Witmund. But in other parts of Lanfranc’s work and in the treatise of Durand of Troarn and opposite tendency, namely to protect the spiritual character of the consecration and presence, may be discerned. And it is noteworthy that the most carnal phraseology of the statement made at the Council of Rome of 1059 is absent not only in the shorter definitions of the Councils of Rouen of 1063 and Rome of 1078 but also in the longer statement of the Council of Rome of 1079. Moreover, while there is no doubt that carnal tendencies existed both in language and in thought, the probability must not be forgotten that such phrases as “the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are held and broken by the hands of the priests and are crushed by the teeth of the faithful” were used by many as clumsy ways of expressing the conviction that the Sacrament which is so held and broken and crushed is the body and blood of Christ.

A letter which was addressed to Berengar by Eusebius Bruno, who became Bishop of Angers in 1047 and died in 1081, is of considerable interest. Berengar had expressed his wish to hold a discussion on the Eucharist with Gottfrid, a priest of Tours, who had defended the doctrine taught by Lanfranc, in the presence of Eusebius to act as judge. Eusebius wrote to refuse the request, to express his sense of the danger in which the whole controversy was involved, and, while not deprecating study and the consideration of the writings of the fathers on the part of those who were fitted for such tasks, to emphasise his wish that men would “live in the quiet of Christian peace, content with the simple teaching and sufficient support of the holy faith found in the most holy words of Christ” at the institution of the Sacrament. After quoting the account of the institution, he said:—

“We believe and confess that by the power and act of this Word, by whom all things were made, after the consecration by the priest consecrating by these words the bread is the real body of Christ, and in the same way the wine is His real blood. If any one should ask how this can be, we answer him not according to the order of nature but according to the almighty power of God. Both this and all things whatsoever He has willed God has done in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in all deeps. For no eloquence of language could explain according to the order of nature how God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, was conceived of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, and how after the resurrection the real body of the Lord Jesus could find admission to the disciples when the doors were shut, and could be touched by them; and yet it must be believed most firmly and most faithfully that these things were done in reality according to the almighty power of God.”