Coena Domini: Whence the schism began — institution words literal or sacramental?
THE LORD’S SUPPER — Where the schism took its start.
1. Should the words of Eucharistic institution — "This is my Body," and so on; "This is my Blood" — because they are serious, entirely true, and the words of Christ’s Testament, be taken properly and literally, plainly according to the letter? Or should they rather be taken in a metonymic and sacramental sense — the sense Holy Scripture already uses in sacramental speech and even outside the Sacraments (Genesis 17:10; 41:26; Exodus 12:11; 31:13, 16) — so that the names of the things signified (Body and Blood) are given to the signs and seals themselves (bread and wine)?
Or does the sense run this way instead: what I give you is truly and substantially my Body, that natural Body delivered for you; or else, in, with, and under this bread my Body is present without spatial distance, essentially or bodily there — so that bread is called Christ’s Body neither by Transsubstantiation nor by signification or sealing alone, but by a kind of Consubstantiation, a real and hidden inclusion?
Lutherans say yes; the Reformed say no.
Latin
COENA DOMINI, Unde initium Schismatis. 1. An verba institutionis Eucharisticae, Hoc est Corpus meum, &c. Hoc est Sanguis meus, uti seria sunt, & verissima, & verba Testamenti Christi, ita sint proprie & literaliter intelligenda, plane κατὰ τὸ ῥητόν? Non vero in sensu metonymico & sacramentali, eodemque in Scriptura S. & in locutionibus Sacramentalibus, imo & extra Sacramenta, familiari, Gen. XVII. 10, XLI. 26. Ex. XII. 11. XXXI. 13. 16. quo scilicet rerum signatarum nomina, puta Corpus & Sanguis, signis ipsis ac sigillis tribuuntur, Pani & Vino? An adeo sensus verborum sit iste: Hoc quod vobis do, est vere ac substantialiter Corpus meum, naturale illud quod pro vobis traditur; Vel, in, cum, sub hoc Pane est Corpus meum, ἀδιαστάτως secundum indistantiam loci, atque essentialiter seu corporaliter ibi praesens; Ut adeo Panis dicatur esse Corpus Christi, non quidem Transsubstantiatione, non etiam sola Significatione vel Obsignatione; sed Consubstantiatione, quadam, seu reali & occulta inclusione? Affirm. Luth. Negant Reform.