who still have need of milk [ef. I Cor. 3: 2], who are slow in reaching the stage when they renounce themselves and are wholly drawn to God, when it is no longer they that live but Christ liveth in them [Gal. 2: 20], when they realize that they do not even live save for the reason that God is the life, motion, and activity of all things. But this also I have treated more fully in my Conclusions and my Confutation of the Canon.
Tur Mass
The New Testament is eternal, as is proved by Isa. 9:2 and Jer. 31:31. “Therefore the blood also with which the New Testament is sprinkled must be eternal; for it is the blood of the eternal Son of God, I Pet. 1: 19; Heb. 9: 14.
I. The blood of Christ alone takes away our sins; for He is the only one who takes away the sns of the world and who has reconciled all things through His blood, Col. 1: 20. For if sins could have been expiated in any other way, Christ would have died in vain, and those who eat Him would still hunger, those who drink Him would none the less thirst. Far be this from the minds of believers. He Himself, lifted up from the earth, has drawn all things to Himself [ef. Jn. 12:32]. But
[Emser’s Missae Christianorum contra. Lutheranam missandi formulam]
[assertio, published in 1524.]
sin also is not removed without blood, Heb. 9: 22.
II. But the blood of Christ was offered once only; for it is the eternal blood of God’s eternal Son, Heb. 9: 12: “Through his own blood he entered in once for all into the holy place.”
III. Therefore the blood of Christ, offered once for all, endures forever to remove the sins of all men.
In the second place: I. Christ is offered only when He suffers, sheds His blood, dies. In fact, these are equivalent. Proof: Paul says, Heb. 9:25-26: “Nor yet that he should offer himself often, ete., else must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world.” “Therefore, “to offer Christ” is for Christ to suffer; for Paul proves that the offering of Christ must be the only offering of the kind, from the fact that He was slain only once. Therefore there is offering only when there is death; for offering follows death. For the offering is accomplished only when that which is offered has been slain.
II. Christ can no more die, suffer, shed His blood, Rom. 6: 9-10: “Christ, who rose from the dead, dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin, and that once; but the life that he liveth he liveth unto God.”
III. Therefore Christ can no more be offered up; for He cannot die.
I now admonish you not to skip over any one of these propositions, but to examine each carefully. If you do the latter, you will never make the sacrament of the Eucharist into an oblation, though on land and sea you gather all the testimonies of the Fathers. For, no matter how many you bring, they cannot weaken the word of God, except perchance with those who hold the word of man in higher esteem than the word of God, upon whom we have no more effect than upon unbelievers. Grant, then, that the Eucharist is spiritual food, by which those who believe that Christ’s death is for them a means of life cement, join, unite, themselves together into the one body of Christ. So Paul, in I Cor. 10: 17 ealls all the multitude which proclaims, in the way explained, the Lord’s death, one body and one bread; for by that means of grace we all partake of the one bread and the one eup. “That will be far the most
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