The Church of Asia Minor, as also some great Origenists in the West, professed views of the holy eucharist which the Church of Rome and the Lutheran have (to a certain extent,) pleaded as the sentiments of antiquity supporting their own. Such were those of Ignatius, Justin Martyr, lrenzcus, Hilary of Poitiers, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyasa, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Theodoret. The common point of agreement among these writers is the communion of the body and blood of Christ in a high spiritual sense generally. But a considerable difference of statement regarding details is observable among them. For example, some expressions of Cyril of Jerusalem are directly and strongly opposed to the tenet of transubstantiation, which Gregory of Nyasa is not unfairly quoted as supporting.
The views of the Church of North Africa, as expressed by Tertulliau, Cypriot], and Augustine, differed as a whole from those just named. The African doctors may be considered as regarding the eucharist as an active and efficacious symbol.
A third party, that of the school of Alexandria, applied in some measure its usual allegorising views to this sacrament. But even in the absence of all approach on the part of these Fathers to corporeal views, a leaning to the sentiments of the first-mentioned party is observable in some portions of their writings.
Each of the many designations by which this sacrament was known until the close of the 4th century, bore some reference to the original object of its institution. This may be traced throughout the various expressions—breaking of bread, communion, Lord's supper, eucharist, oblation, commemoration, and passover. Ecclesiastical antiquity can not be adduced with fairness in support of the literal iuterpretation applied by a large body of Christians to the words used by our Lord in His institution of the sacrament. John of Damascus, the principal writer of the Eastern Church, maintained (it is true), on the authority of some of the Fathers, a literal change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The figurative interpretation put upon the words of Christ by a council at Constantinople in A.D. 754 was denied at. the second council of Nice in 787, when it was ruled that the sacred symbols are not figures or images at all, but the real body and blood. Theophylact and Euthymius Zigabenus coincide with John of Damas cus. But it was reserved for the Western Church to carry out into its remote consequences the doctrine of a material change, which, in common with her Eastern sister, she ultimately came to maintain. This doctrine was maintained during the 9th century by Paschasius Radbert more precisely and authoritatively than before. Ife was opposed, however, by Itabanus Maurus, and Itatmrun or Bertram (whose sounder and more scriptural views many centuries later found an echo in our own Ridley), and also by the suspected ingenuity of Scotus Erigcna.
Various instances of opposition to the doctrine of transubstantiation subsequently occurred ; but, supported by authority like that of Sylvester If. (the famous Gerbert), it continued to gain ground. During the 11th century it had become an article, to dissent from which was heretical ; although a doctrine substantially the same with -that held by the Anglican Church at the present (lay was preached by doctors such as Alfric, and although an archbishop of Sens, Leutheric, advocated opinions regarding the eucharist similar to those which involved Berengar of Tours in controversy with Lanfranc, and drew upon him the hostility and condemnation of popes and councils.
Among the numerous controversies connected with the different theories on the subject, the more modern opinions are marked by a tendency to regard the eucharist as a purely symbolical rite. For transubstantiation Luther substituted a corporal local presence, com monly called consubstantiation. There appears an inconsistency in the obstinacy with which Luther coutended for his theory. lie had aban doned the sacrifice of the mass and the theurgio pretinsions connected with the real presence which made this dogma of such importance to the Church of Rome. Luther's great object was to preserve this sacrament from being degraded by the same unspiritual subjective views (as he conceived) with which it was menaced by Carlstadt and his tarty. This evil would be best remedied by a bold assertion of the objective dignity of this sacrament, divested of the superstitious additions with which it was encumbered in the Church of Rome. Hence the Lutheran doctrine of the eucharist. What has been said will suffice to show how ungrounded is the charge sometimes brought against Luther—that he threw away the substance while he retained the shell. But his tena cious adherence to scholasticism in this respect contrasts strangely with his uncompromising hostility to that philosophy respecting the funda mental dogma of justification by faith. Zwingli, on the other hand, together with a corporal and local presence, rejected all notion of a spiritual presence and graces. But the opinions of Calvin shortly afterwards superseded the colder ones of Zwingli, many of whose followers, to quote from Waterland, abandoned the "notion of naked signs and figures to the Anabaptists of those times, where they rested, till again revived by the Sedulous, who afterwards handed them down to the Remonstrants." The point of divergence between the adherents of Luther and Calvin respecting the eucharist may he stated thus :—The former party held, according to the earlier Augsburg Confession and the Form of Concord, that the body of Christ was contained in, with, and under, the sacra mental bread. The others held the doctrine only of a real spiritual feeding on the body of Christ, which took place in the faithful contem poraneously with the reception of the outward elements. In the opinion of Waterland, " Calvin refined upon Zwingli'a scheme, steering a kind of middle course between the extremes. He appears to have set out light, taking his ground with good judgment ; and had he but built as carefully upon it afterwards, no fault could have been justly found." Bishop Lloyd considered that the Anglican doctrine was borrowed from that of Calvin. The third and fourth clauses of the twenty eighth article, respecting the manner and means after and by which the body of Christ is taken in that sacrament, would seem to support this view. But the words of Waterland may be fairly quoted as expressing briefly the opinion held by the majority of Anglican teachers on this subject : " Onr divines who came after Calvin had some advantage in point of time, and a greater still in the rule or method which they pitched upon as most proper to proceed by. The sum of all is, that sacramental or symbolical feeding in the eucharist is feeding upon the body broken and the blood shed under the signs and symbols of bread and wine; the result of such feeding is the streugtheniug or perfecting our mystical union with the body glorified, and so, properly speaking, we feed upon the body as dead, and we receive it into closer union as living, and both in the eucharist when duly celebrated."