It is a very difficult matter to give an account of the Reformed doctrine concerning the Lord’s Supper satisfactory to all parties. This difficulty arises partly from the fact that words have changed their meaning since the days of the Reformation. The Reformed as well as Lutherans asserted that there is “a real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper; and that the believer receives the true body and blood, or the substance of the body and blood of Christ. Such expressions would be understood in our day very differently from what they were then. Another source of difficulty on this subject is that the statements of the Reformed had for one great object the prevention of a schism in the ranks of the Protestants. They did all they could to conciliate Luther. They adopted forms of expression which could be understood in a Lutheran sense. So far was this irenical spirit carried that even Romanists asked nothing more than what the Reformed conceded. Still another difficulty is that the Reformed were not agreed among themselves. There were three distinct types of doctrine among them, the Zwinglian, the Calvinistic, and an intermediate form, which ultimately became symbolical, being adopted in the authoritative standards of the Church.
Zwinglian Statements.
It was the tendency of the Zwinglian element of the Reformed Church, to make less of the supernatural aspect of the sacraments than their associates did. There was, however, no essential difference, as afterwards appeared between the Churches of Zurich and those of Geneva. Zwingle taught that “The Lord’s Supper is nothing else than the food of the soul, and Christ instituted the ordinance as a memorial of Himself. When a man commits himself to the sufferings and redemption of Christ he is saved. Of this He has left us a certain visible sign of his flesh and blood, both of which He has commanded us to eat and drink in remembrance of Him.” This is said in a document presented to the council of Zurich in 1523.
In his “Expositio Christianæ Fidei,” written just before his death, and published by Bullinger in 1536, he says: “The natural substantial body of Christ in which He suffered, and in which He is now seated in heaven at the right hand of God, is not in the Lord’s Supper eaten corporeally, or as to its essence, but spiritually only… . . Spiritually to eat Christ’s body is nothing else than with the spirit and mind to rely on the goodness and mercy of God through Christ… . . Sacramentally to eat his body, is, the sacrament being added, with the mind and spirit to feed upon Him.”1
The Confessions most nearly conformed to the views of Zwingle are the “Confessio Tetrapolitana,” the “First Basil,” and the “First Helvetic.” These are all apologetic. The last mentioned protests against the representation that the Reformed regard the sacraments as mere badges of profession, and asserts that they are signs and means. The Lord’s Supper is called “cœna mystica” “in which Christ truly offers his body and blood, and hence Himself, to his people; not as though the body and blood of Christ were naturally united with the bread and wine, locally included in them, or sensibly there present, but in so far as the bread and wine are symbols, through which we have communion in his body and blood, not to the nourishment of the body, but of the spiritual or eternal life.”2
In “The Sincere Confession of the Ministers of the Church of Zurich,” dated 1545, we find the following precise statement of their doctrine: “We teach that the great design and end of the Lord’s Supper, that to which the whole service is directed, is the remembrance of Christ’s body devoted, and of his blood shed for the remission of our sins. This remembrance, however, cannot take place without true faith. And although the things of which the service is a memorial, are not visible or present after a visible or corporal manner, nevertheless believing apprehension and the assurance of faith renders them present in one sense to the soul of the believer. He has truly eaten the bread of Christ … . who believes on Christ, very God and very man, crucified for us, on whom to believe is to eat, and to eat is to believe… . . Believers have in the Lord’s Supper no other life-giving food than that which they receive elsewhere than in that ordinance. The believer, therefore, receives both in and out of the Lord’s Supper, in one and the same way, and by the same means of faith, one and the same food, Christ, except that in the supper the reception is connected with the actions and signs appointed by Christ, and accompanied with a testifying, thanksgiving, and binding service… . . Christ’s flesh has done its work on earth, having been offered for our salvation; now it no longer benefits on earth and is no longer here.”