God within himself, where he can no more be torn from him, and thus secures him as well from the power of accident as from that of ridicule; yet, notwithstanding this, he just as much as the Catholic consumes real flesh and blood in the bread and wine. Slight indeed was the difference at first between Protestants and Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper! Thus at Anspach there arose a controversy on the question—“whether the body of Christ enters the stomach, and is digested like other food?”[1]
But although the imaginative activity of faith makes the objective existence the mere appearance, and the emotional, imaginary existence the truth and reality; still, in itself or in truth, that which is really objective is only the natural elements. Even the Host in the pyx of the Catholic priest is in itself only to faith a divine body,—this external thing, into which he transubstantiates the divine being is only a thing of faith; for even here the body is not visible, tangible, tasteable as a body. That is: the bread is only in its significance flesh. It is true that to faith this significance has the sense of actual existence;—as, in general, in the ecstasy of fervid feeling that which signifies becomes the thing signified;—it is held not to signify, but to be flesh. But this state of being flesh is not that of real flesh; it is a state of being which is only believed in, imagined, i.e., it has only the value, the quality, of a significance, a truth conveyed in a symbol.[2] A thing which has a special significance for me, is another thing in my imagination than in reality. The thing signifying is not itself that which is signified. What it is, is evident to the senses; what it signifies, is only in my feelings, conception, imagination, is only for me, not for others, is not objectively present. So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that the Lord’s Supper has only a subjective significance, he said the same thing as his opponents; only he disturbed the illusion of the religious imagination; for that which “is” in the Lord’s
- ↑ Apologie Melancthon. Strobel. Nürnb. 1783, p. 127.
- ↑ “The fanatics however believe that it is mere bread and wine, and it is assuredly so as they believe; they have it so, and eat mere bread and wine.”—Luther (T. xix. p. 432). That is to say, if thou believest, representest to thyself, conceivest, that the bread is not bread, but the body of Christ, it is not bread; but if thou dost not believe so, it is not so. What it is in thy belief that it actually is.
