the Scriptures—the church of Christ, or the bride of God, is truly called Christ's body, truly because the general church of Christ is his body and Christ is called the head and all the elect are called members. From these members the one body of the church is brought unto a perfect man and the measure of the fulness of Christ. But the body of Christ, that is, the bride of God, is called in law the church. This is according to the apostle's words: 'And they twain shall be one flesh.' This, he says, is a great sacrament in Christ and the church.[1] For, if Christ and the church are one flesh, then certainly there is one body, one head, one bridegroom, but different elect persons, members the one of the other." So far, Paschasius.
These quotations from the saints show that the holy catholic church is the number of all the predestinate[2] and Christ's mystical body—Christ being himself the head—and the bride of Christ, whom he of his great love redeemed with his blood that he might at last possess her as glorious, not having wrinkle of mortal sin or spot of venial sin, or anything else defiling her, but that she might be holy and without spot, perpetually embracing Christ, the bridegroom.
- ↑ Eph. 5:32. The false translation of Jerome, rendering the Greek word mystery by sacrament, a rendering used to justify the inclusion of marriage among the sacraments and repeated in the Rheims version.
- ↑ Wyclif, Congregatio omnium predestinatorum, solum numerus predestinatorum, de Eccles., 2, 5, etc. In his Com. on the Lombard, p. 36, Huss defines the church as "the congregation of all the faithful about to be saved. It is the mystical body of Christ, that is now hidden to us, of which body the damned do not really have part, but they are like dung which in the day of judgment are to be separated from the body of Christ."
"Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood." Paschasius was a monk and then, 844–851, abbot of the convent of Corbie, nearer Amiens. His tract was written 831 and sent to Charles the Bald 844. His doctrine was opposed by the monk Ratramnus, and others. The next controversy over the Lord's Supper was led by Berengar, d. 1088. Transubstantiation was made a dogma of the church at the fourth Lateran council, 1215. Wyclif denied it, declaring that transubstantiation would involve transaccidentation. Huss was also charged with denying the doctrine, but emphatically repudiated the charge. Ratramnus's work was put on the Index by the council of Trent.
