emblem of the bread (still existing as such), or under the outward form, sub specie panis. More naturally the former. 494 THIRD PERIOD, A.D. 311-590. of the wine is giveu to thee the blood, that thou mayest be a par- taker of the body and blood of Christ, and be of one body and blood with him." ' " After the invocation of the Holy Ghost the bread of the Eucharist is no longer bread, but the body of Christ." " Consider, therefore, the bread and the wine not as empty elements, for they are, according to the declaration of the Lord, the body and blood of Christ." In support of this change Cyril refers at one time to the wedding feast at Caua, which in- dicates the Roman theory of change of substance ; but at another to the consecration of the chrism, wherein the substance is un- changed. He was not clear and consistent with himself His opinion probably was, that the eucharistie elements lost by con- secration not so much their earthly substance, as their earthly purpose. Gregory of Nyssa, though in general a very faithful disciple of the spiritualistic Origen, is on this point entirely realistic. He calls the Eucharist a food of immortality, and speaks of a miraculous transformation of the nature of the elements into the glorified body of Christ by virtue of the priestly blessing.' Chrysostom likewise, though only incidentally in his homi- lies, and not in the strain of sober logic and theology, but of glowing rhetoric, speaks several times of a union of our whole natm-e with the body of Christ in the Eucharist, and even of a manducatio oralis.^ Of the Latin fathers, Hilary,* Ambrose,^ and Gaudentius (f 410) come nearest to the later dogma of transnbstantiation. The latter says : " The Creator and Lord of natm-e, who pro- duces bread from the earth, prepares out of bread his own body, makes of wine his own blood." ° ' 2i>(7(Ta!,uos KoX (Tucai/xos avTov. ^ Orat. catech. magna, c. 37. Comp. Neander, 1. c. i. p. 428, and Kahnis, ii. 213. ^ Of an ffxTTrti^ai TOUT oSoVraf t^ aapKi /cat (TvixirKaKrivai. Comp. the passages from Chrysostom in Ebrard and Riickert, 1. c, and Kalinis, ii. p. 215 fF. * De Triuit. viii. 13 sq. Comp. Riickert, 1. c. p. 460 ff. * De Mysteiiis, c.,8 and 9, where a mutatio of the species elemcntoncm by tlio Tvord of Christ is spoken of, and the changing of Moses' rod into a serpent, and of the Nile into blood, is cited in illustration. The genuineness of this small work, however, is doubtful. Riickert considers Ambrose the pillar of the media?val doc- trine of the Supper, which he finds in his work De mysteriis, and De initiandis. * Serm. p. 42 : " Ipse naturarum creator et dominns, qui producit de terra Ci-tyrii^l/^Tii § 95. THE 81CEAMENT OF TUE EUCHAKIST. 495 But closely as these and similar expressions verge upon the Koman doctrine