it is not upon earth." " I believe that the body of the Lord is in heaven, as it was upon earth when he ascended to heaven." ' Yet this great church teacher at the same time holds fast the real pres- ence of Christ in the Supper. • He says of the martyrs : " They have drunk the blood of Christ, and. have shed their ow}i blood for Christ." He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements. Augustine's pupil, Facundus, taught that the sacramental bread " is not properly the body of Christ, but contains the mystery of tlie body." Fulgentius of Ruspe held the same symbolical view ; and even at a much later period we can trace it through the mighty influence of Augustine's writings in Isidore of Sevilla, Beda Yenerabilis, among the divines of the Carolingian age, in Ratramnus, and Berengar of Tours, until it broke forth in a modified form with greater force than ever in the sixteenth century, and took permanent foot- hold in the Reformed churches. Pope Leo I. is sometimes likewise numbered with the sym- bolists, but without good reason. He calls the communion a *' spiritual food," * as Athanasius had done before, but sup- ' Ep. 146 : "Ego Domini corpus ita in coelo esse credo, ut erat in terra, quando ascendit in coelum." Comp. similar passages in Tract, in Joh. 13 ; Ep. IS? ; Serm. •J64. - " Spiritualis alimonia." This expression, however, as the connection of the passage in Serm. lis. 2 clearly shows, by no means excludes an operation of the sacrament on the body ; for " spiritual " is often equivalent to " supernatural." Even Ignatius called the bread of the Supper " a medicine of immortality, and an antidote of death " (<^apyuaKOV oflafotrtas, avTiSoToi tou ht) airoBaveiy, oAAa ^v «V Xpiffrui Sio TravrSs), Ad Ephes. c. 20 ; though this passage is wanting in the shorter Svriac recension. § 95. THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST. 501 poses a sort of assimilation of the flesh and blood of Christ • by the believing participation. "What we believe, that we receive with the mouth. . . . The participation of the body and blood of Christ causes that we pass into that which we receive, and bear Christ in us in spirit and body." Vol- untary abstinence from the wine in the Supper was as yet considered by this pope a sin.' III. The old liturgies, whose testimony on this point is as important as that of the church fathers, presuppose the actual presence of Christ in the Supper, but speak throughout in the stately language of sentiment, and nowhere attempt an ex]3lanation of the nature and mode of this presence, and of its relation to the still visible forais of bread and wine. They use concerning the consecrated elements such terms as: The holy body. The dear blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ,