of the divine nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease. And assuredly the image and the similitude of the body and blood of Christ are cele brated in the performance of the mysteries." ^ It is remarkable that Augustine, in other respects so decided- ly catholic in the doctrine of the church and of baptism, and in the cardinal points of the Latin orthodoxy, follows the older African theologians, Tertullian and Cyprian, in a symbolical theory of the Supper, which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith, and in this respect stands nearest to the Calvinistic or orthodox Reformed doctrine, while in minor points he differs from it as much as from transubstan- tiation and consubstantiation.^ He was the first to make a clear the consecrated elements are regarded as being not only subjectively, but in some sense objectively and really what the believer takes them for, namely, the body and blood of Christ. But with this they also retained, according to Theodoret, their natural reality and their symbolical character. / ' Ep. ad Caesarium monach. (in Chrys. Opera, torn. iii. Pars altera, p. 897 of the new Paris ed. of Montfaucon after the Benedictine) : •" Sicut enim antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nominamus: divina autem ilium sanctificante gratia, mediante sacerdote, liberatus est quidem ab appellatione panis ; dignus autem habi- tus dominici corporis appellatione, etiamsi natura panis hi ipso permansit, et nou duo corpora, sed unum corpus FiUi prsedicamus." This epistle is extant in full only in an old Latin version. '■' De duabus naturis in Christo adv. Eutychen et Nestorium (in the Bibl. Max. Patrum, torn. viii. p. V03) . . . " et tamen esse non desinit substantia vel natura panis et vini. Et certe imago et similitudo corporis et sanguinis Christi in actione mysteriorum celebrantur." Many Roman divines, through dogmatic prejudice, doubt the genuineness of this epistle. Comp. the Bibl. Max. tom. viii. pp. 699-700. ^ From his immense dogmatic authority, Augustine has been an apple of conten- tion among the different confessions in all controversies on the doctrine of the Sup- per. Albertinus (De euchar. pp. 602-742) and Riickert (1. c. p. 353 ff.) have suc- cessfully proved that he is no witness for the Roman doctrine ; but they go too far when they make him a mere symbolist. That he as little favors the Lutheran doc- ,^/)U/r7i!^^ i^y^c^^i't-^^^i-^, i/y^^-^^^^^^y S--^'^'^- (^>/Ly3-^;^/iTTt^ 1 i § 95. THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHAKI6T. distinction between the outward sign and the inward grace, which are equally essential to the conception of the sacrament. He maintains the figurative character of the words of institu- tion, and of the discourse of Jesus on the eating and drinking of his flesh and blood in the sixth chapter of John ; with Ter- tullian, he calls the bread and wine ''''figurce, " or " sicjna corporis et sanguinis Christi " (but certainly not mere figures), and insists on a distinction