which he refers to the Lord's Supper, he understands not the earthly, human, but the heavenly, di- vine manifestation of Jesus, a spiritual nutriment coming down from above, which the Logos through the Holy Ghost com- municates to believers (but not to a Judas, nor to the unbeliev- ing).^ With this view accords his extending qf the participation of the eucharistic food to believers in heaven, and even to the angels, who, on account of their incorporeal nature, are incapa- ble of a corporeal participation of Christ.^ Gregory Nazianzen sees in the Eucharist a type of the in- carnation, and calls the consecrated elements symbols and an- titypes of the great mysteries, but ascribes to them a saving virtue.^ ' To this result H. Voigt comes, after the most thorough investigation, in his learned monograph on the doctrine of Athanasius, Bremen, 1861, pp. 1*70-181, and since that time also Steitz, in his second article, already quoted, pp. 109-127. Mohler finds in the passage Ad Scrap, iv. 19 (the principal eucharistic declaration of Athanasius then known), the Koman CathoHc doctrine of the Supper (Athanasius der Gr. p. 560 ff.), but by a manifestly strained interpretation, and in contradiction with passages in the more recently known Festival Letters of Athanasius, which confirm the exposition of Voigt. ^ So in the main passage, the fourth Epistle to Serapion (Ad Scrap, iv. 19), which properly treats of the sin against the Holy Ghost (c. 8-23), and has been variously interpreted in the interest of different confessions, but now receives new light from several passages in the recently discovered Syriac Festival Letters of Atha- nasius, translated by Larsow, Leip2dg, 1852, pp. 59, 78 sqq., 153 sqq., and especially p. 101. ^ Li the Festival Letters in Larsow, p. 101, Athanasius says: "And not only, my brethren, is this bread [of the Eucharist] a food of the righteous, and not only are the saints who dwell on earth nourished with such bread and blood, but also in heaven we eat such food ; for even to the higher spirits and the angels the Lord is nutriment, and He is the delight of all the powers of heaven ; to all He is all, and over every one He yearns in His love of man." * Orat. xvii. 12 ; viii. 17 ; iv. 52. Comp. Ullmann's Gregor. v. Naz. pp. 483-488 ; Neander, 1. c. i. p. 431 ; and Steitz in Dorner's Jahrbiicher for 1865, pp. 133-141. Steitz makes Gregory an advocate of the symbolical theory. § 95. THE SACKAMENT OF THE ECCIIAKIST. 497 St. Basil, likewise, in explaining the words of Christ, "I live hy the Father" (John vi. 57), against the Arians who in- ferred from it that Christ was a creature, incidentally gives a spiritual meaning to the fruition of the eucharistic elements. " We eat the flesh of Christ," he says, " and drink His blood, if ^^•e, through His incarnation and human life, become par- takers of the Logos and