Dilucida explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis & sanguinis Christi in sacra coena, ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas

and yet, the good student of Irenæus repeatedly reproaches me with quibbles, sophistries, and even tricks, as if there were anything evasive, ambiguous, or in any way obscure in my manner of speaking. When I say that Christ's flesh and blood are substantially offered and exhibited to us in the Supper, I simultaneously designate the mode, that is, how Christ's flesh is life-giving to us: because Christ, by the incomprehensible power of His Spirit, infuses into us the life that is proper to the substance of His own flesh, so that He may live in us, and His life may be common to us. Who will Heshusius persuade that there is any sophistry in such a clear discourse, where I speak popularly and yet satisfy learned ears? If only those futile calumnies with which he obscures the cause would cease, the matter would soon be settled. After Heshusius has puffed out all his grandiloquent words, the whole question turns on this hinge: Does he who denies that the body itself is eaten by the mouth remove the substance of Christ’s body from the sacred Supper? Am I attacking the man in open combat because he denies that we become participants in the substance of Christ's flesh unless I eat it with my mouth? For this is how he speaks: that the very substance of flesh and blood must be ingested by the mouth. But I define the mode of communication without ambiguity: that Christ, by His immense and admirable power, causes us to coalesce with Him into the same life, and does not merely apply the fruit of His passion to us, but truly becomes our own, so that He may share His goods with us, and therefore joins us to Himself, just as members and the head are made one body. And I do not restrict this unity to the divine essence, but I affirm that it pertains to the flesh and blood: because it is not simply said, "My Spirit

is truly food." But if it is said, "It must be distinguished," this communication of flesh and blood must be interpreted according to the time He was made man, so that He might make us one with Himself. For He did not place His flesh into heaven, but as the material of spiritual communication, He freely offers Himself to us. Eve was not formed from Adam's image and offspring, but was marked from his bones, not so that there would be only one figure, but so that there would be one flesh, and as a pledge of unity. It is not in the quality of Christ, nor in His history, but in the reality; not only an offering, but in reality; not that He Himself provides it, not in one, but I establish that it exists through faith and communion, not in one, but in Christ with His members. In His admirable power and in His grace, I acknowledge and I confess, and I am not ashamed.

Here you, Heshusius, not without impudence and not without open insult to God, say, "It is not my body, but it is the Son of God," and "It is not in the law itself, but in grace and law," with boldness.