Christ and his body.* Cyprian's views were probably similar to those of Tertullian. That he admitted a supernatural element in the Lord's Supper is evident also from his legendary narratives of the consequences of partaking unworthily of it.+ In Infant communion was introduced along with Infant baptism, and in this practice there was assumed to be a sanctifying operation independently of an intelligent reception. As the unconditional necessity of baptism was inferred from our Lord's conversation with Nicodemus, so from the words in the 6th chapter of John's Gospel respecting eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ it was concluded that no one could have eternal life without partaking of the Lord's Supper, and hence it was given to children immediately after baptism. Cyprian adopted this view, yet still held it necessary, immediately to guard against the moral indolence which might arise from so objective a conception of the Lord's Supper, and to require that Faith should show itself active in works. Cyprian we first observe the transition from the idea of a spiritual sacrifice to the later catholic view. The sacrificial act at the Lord's Supper he refers to the sacrifice of Christ; the Body and Blood of Christ are offered (sanguis Christi offertur). Hence he requires § a correspondence between the sacrificial act and the sacrifice offered by Christ in order to a right celebration of the Lord's Supper. And with this view, notions of magical efficacy were connected. The Christian priesthood formed on the model of the Old Testament, seemed to require a sacrifice and one of a higher kind: the celebration of the Lord's Supper was regarded as a presentation of this sacrifice, and thus was formed the germ of the Catholic idea of the Mass. In addition to this, in the thanksgiving prayer at the Lord's Supper, special mention was made of those who had brought gifts, and prayer also was offered for those who had died in the faith, for whom their relations brought gifts on the day of their death. The conjunction of * De Orat. 18.-He also explains the petition for our daily bread, in the Lord's Prayer, as referring to the Supper. De Lapsis, c. 25, 26. Testim. iii. 25. THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 243 these references with the idea of sacrifice led to the Catholic idea of masses for the dead. THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL went a step farther in the direction of Symbolical construction. The general distinction maintained by it of the wητὸν and the αἰσθητόν, of the idea and the Symbol, finds also its application in the Lord's Supper. CLEMENT says, "To eat the flesh and blood of Christ is to take a part in the divine life of Christ by spiritual communion with him; it is to renounce our former course of conduct and to make Christ's course our own." Thus he explains the passage in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John; but though the Alexandrians regarded the symbolic representation of the internal as the highest object of an outward religious act, yet they ascribed an effect to the Symbol in itself. Clement says that they who partook of the Lord's Supper in Faith, were sanctified in soul and body, and thereby seems to admit a spiritual communion with the Logos for the soul, and at the same time a certain connexion of the body with the body of Christ. ORIGEN developes his ideas more clearly † according to him, we must distinguish what Christ's body is in its bodily and sensuous significance,-the eating of the body and blood in the highest spiritual, and in the subordinate symbolical, sense -the true eating, and that which is understood to be eating, according to the common view of the Lord's Supper. The highest object of the Lord's Supper is to represent spiritual communion with the Logos, and the spiritual enjoyment of it; the Logos becomes the food of the soul. Both the worthy and the unworthy can partake of the visible Supper; but it is not so with the Logos, the true bread and the true wine which a bad man cannot eat. This is the divine promise of the Word of Truth, by which the soul is nourished.§ In like manner he *Пaiday. i. p. 102. Strom. v. p. 579. + Ibid. ii. p. 151.—ἡ δὲ ἀμφοῖν αὖθις κρᾶσις, ποτοῦ τε καὶ Λόγου, εὐχαριστία κέκληται, χάρις ἐπαινουμένη καὶ καλὴ, ἧς οἱ κατὰ πίστιν μεταλαμβάνοντες ἁγιάζονται καὶ σῶμα καὶ ψυχὴν τὸ θεῖον κρᾶμα τὸν ἄνθρωπον τοῦ πατρικοῦ βουλήματος πνεύματι καὶ Λόγῳ συγκρίναντος μυστικῶς· καὶ γὰρ ὡς ἀληθῶς μὲν τὸ πνεῦμα ὠκείωται τῇ ἀπ' αὐτοῦ φερομένη ψυχῇ· ἡ δὲ σὰρξ, τῷ Λογῳ δι' ἣν ὁ Λόγος γέγονε σάρξ. In Matth. § 14, towards the end. § In Joann. xxxii. § 16.—νοείσθω δὲ ὁ ἄρτος καὶ τὸ ποτήριον τοῖς μὲν ἁπλουστέροις, κατὰ τὴν κοινοτέραν περὶ τῆς εὐχαριστίας ἐκδοχὴν τοῖς δὲ βαθύτερον ἀκούειν μεμαθηκόσι, κατὰ τὴν θειοτέραν καὶ περὶ τοῦ τροφίμου τῆς ἀληθείας λόγου ἐπαγγελίαν. says, "When Christ called his body bread, we are to understand by it the Word which nourishes the soul, which comes from heavenly bread; he did not call that visible bread his body, but the Word, the participation of which is represented by the breaking of bread and the pouring out of wine." His representation then is, that as the bread is broken and given for nourishment, thus Christ communicates himself through the Word of Truth which proceeds from him. The communication of this element is a symbol of the communication of the Logos through the Word of Truth. This is the highest esoteric import of the Supper, and known only to the Gnostics (οἱ γνωστικοί). But still the outward Supper has its own peculiar reference. The bread used at the Supper, Origen says, becomes by prayer a holy and sanctifying body for those who partake of it with a right disposition. He therefore ascribes the sanctifying influence to the consecration, but assumes, as in baptism, a susceptible state of mind as a necessary condition, and therefore differs from those who ascribe a sanctifying influence to the Elements in themselves.† As not that which goes in at the mouth defiles a man so neither can a man be sanctified by what goes in at the mouth, although simpleminded persons regard the so-called bread of the Lord as something sanctifying. The cause of receiving benefit is the good disposition of the individual, but it is the uttered prayer which is of use to him, who worthily partakes of the Supper. To sum up the whole we recognise in this period a threefold gradation, with various transitions from the more sensuous realistic conception to the more spiritual. On the first stage there was a peculiar penetration of the substance of the bread and wine by the body and blood of Christ effected in a supernatural manner, the participation of which was the means of preparing the bodies of believers for the Resurrection; this view supposes that not the glorified Christ himself is present, but a repeated Incarnation of the Logos takes place, which Opp. iii. p. 898, Ru. † In Matth. xi. 14.—καὶ ἐπὶ τοῦ ἄρτου τοίνυν τοῦ κυρίου ἡ ὠφέλεια τῷ χρωμένω ἐστὶν, ἐπὰν ἀμιάντω τῷ νῷ καὶ καθαρᾷ τῇ συνειδήσει μεταλαμβάνη τοῦ ἄρτου. Οὕτω δὲ οὔτε ἐκ τοῦ μὴ φαγεῖν, παρ' αὐτὸ τὸ μὴ φαγεῖν ἀπὸ τοῦ ἁγιασθέντος λόγῳ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐντεύξει ἄρτου, ὑστερούμεθα ἀγαθοῦ τινος, οὔτε ἐκ τοῦ φαγεῖν περισσεύομεν ἀγαθῷ τινι· τὸ γὰρ αἴτιον τῆς ὑστερήσεως ἡ κακία ἐστὶ καὶ τὰ ἁμαρτήματα· καὶ τὸ αἴτιον τῆς περισσεύσεως ἡ δικαιοσύνη ἐστὶ καὶ τὰ κατορθώματα. THE GENERAL IDEA OF SACRAMENT. 245 produces mediately body and blood, as at first immediately the corporeal substance of Christ. This would consist with the view of Christ's Incarnation, according to which a connexion of the Logos merely with a human body without a human soul, was supposed. On the second stage no such penetration of the elements by the body and blood of Christ was admitted, but a certain supernatural sanctifying contact with the body of Christ, and inherent to the outward symbols, by the spiritual communion with Christ. The third stage, which Origen occupies, held the symbol and the significance apart, and rejected the representation of a supernatural element inherent in the bread and wine. The general idea of Sacrament was given neither in the New Testament nor in the oral tradition of the Apostles. Had it been formed with scientific precision, the two only symbols of this kind which were instituted by Christ, might have been compared, and what was common to them both might have been sought for; but the idea was formed with too little reflection and very unconsciously from ecclesiastical practice, and thus was applied, not with clear consciousness, but with an arbitrary extension. Sacramentum is a translation of μvorýgiov, and is very ambiguous; it may seem to signify omnis res sacra. Hence the term is applied to things of so many different kinds sacred doctrine and sacred symbolsthe whole of Christianity as a sacred Institution-the vow which is taken at baptism as sacramentum militiæ Christiana. No attention was paid to the number of sacred symbols which were regarded in the Church as Sacraments. We have seen how Confirmation was added to the two New Testament symbols, owing to special inducements that arose in the practice of the Church. Through such peculiar conditions two other catholic Sacraments were subsequently introduced, of which we find the germ at this Period; the Ordination of Bishops, to which, according to the doctrine of a Priesthood, peculiar importance must be attached, since Consecration imparted to the Priesthood the power of conferring the Holy Spirit; the first traces of the Sacrament of Penance also make their appearance. As Regeneration and Baptism were not kept apart, and the remis sion of Sins was attached to the baptismal rite, without its being perceived that the objective of the forgiveness of sins cannot be appropriated by a rite, but by the subjective of faith through a whole life-the notion arose that the forgiveness of sins which is obtained through Christ, referred only to sins committed before baptism. The question was now started, What would happen if the baptismal covenant were violated by gross sins? It was believed that for sins after baptism the divine justice required another satisfaction, namely, good works and voluntary penances; the continued performance of good works obtained the forgiveness of the peccata venalia. Thus Cyprian* speaks of the continued performance of good works as a kind of repeated baptism by which the divine grace was obtained. This expression of a baptism continued through the whole life might harmonize with evangelical representations, but he explains it to mean, that good works must make good, what baptism had promised, and constantly render satisfaction. An erroneous view of good works is here implied, since they are not understood to be in connexion with faith. But good works alone could furnish no satisfaction for peccata mortalia; further punishments voluntarily undergone were required; a juridical view of penance and the spiritual judgments it imposed, of which traces are to be found in Tertullian.t Absolution was awarded to those who had rightly performed penance; here the representation of Absolution as a priestly act finds a point of connexion, inasmuch as the power of the keys conferred on the Apostles, belonged to the bishops and gave them the right to absolve the penitent. Controversies at this period were connected with these errors in reference to penance and absolution; there was a strict party which became established through Montanism and Novatianism, and in opposition to one more lax, maintained that since the forgiveness of sins granted by Christ referred only to sins before baptism, the Church was not empowered to announce it afresh to those who had forfeited forgiveness by peccata mortalia. They might indeed be exhorted to repentance, but they could not be absolved by the bishops; hence the maxim maintained in the Novatian controversy, that, if * De Op. et Eleem. 2.-Et quia semel in baptismo remissa peccatorum datur, assidua et jugis operatio baptismi instar imitata Dei rursus indulgentiam largitur. + For example, De Pœnit. c. 5, per delictorum pœnitentiam Domino satisfacere. |