Supper, is only an illusion of the imagination, but with the further illusion that it is not an illusion. Zwinglius only expressed simply, nakedly, prosaically, rationalistically, and therefore offensively, what the others declared mystically, indirectly,—inasmuch as they confessed[1] that the effect of the Lord’s Supper depends only on a worthy disposition or on faith; i.e., that the bread and wine are the flesh and blood of the Lord, are the Lord himself, only for him for whom they have the supernatural significance of the divine body, for on this alone depends the worthy disposition, the religious emotion.[2]
But if the Lord’s Supper effects nothing, consequently is nothing,—for only that which produces effects, is,—without a certain state of mind, without faith, then in faith alone lies its reality; the entire event goes forward in the feelings alone. If the idea that I here receive the real body of the Saviour acts on the religious feelings, this idea itself arises from the feelings; it produces devout sentiments, because it is itself a devout idea. Thus here also the religious subject is acted on by himself as if by another being, through the conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the process of the Lord’s Supper can quite well, even without the intermediation of bread and wine, without any church ceremony, be accomplished in the imagination. There are innumerable devout poems, the sole theme of which is the blood of Christ. In these we have a genuinely poetical celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In the lively representation of the suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul identifies itself with him; here the saint in poetic exaltation drinks the pure blood, unmixed with any contradictory, material elements; here there is no disturbing object between the idea of the blood and the blood itself.
But though the Lord’s Supper, or a sacrament in general, is nothing without a certain state of mind, without faith, nevertheless religion presents the sacrament at the same time as something in itself real, external, distinct from the human
- ↑ Even the Catholics also. “Hujus sacramenti effectus, quem in anima operatur digne sumentis, est adunatio hominis ad Christum.”—Concil. Florent. de S. Euchar.
- ↑ “If the body of Christ is in the bread and is eaten with faith, it strengthens the soul, in that the soul believes that it is the body of Christ which the mouth eats.”—Luther (T. xix. p. 433; see also p. 205). “For what we believe that we receive, that we receive in truth.”—Ib. (T. xvii. p. 557).
