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is called the body of Christ, and the wine is called his blood, not really or essentially, but in their own way—namely, sacramentally.
But we were not the first to imagine this. All who have even glanced at the first pages of their writings know that the Orthodox Fathers once thought and taught the same thing before us and our teachers. Indeed, Tertullian, the most ancient writer, says in book 4 against Marcion: "Christ made the bread he took and distributed to his disciples his own body, saying, 'this is my body,' that is, a figure of my body." The most holy martyr Cyprian, who used to call him his teacher, insisting on the footsteps of his mentor in his Sermon on the Chrism, writes that bread and wine are called the Body and Blood of Christ because signs and the things signified are considered to be under the same names. St. Augustine likewise, in his enarration on the third Psalm, says that Christ, although he was not ignorant of the thoughts of the Jews, nevertheless brought him to the feast, in which he commended and handed down to his disciples the figure of his Body and Blood. The same man has these things in his work against Adimantus, Chapter 12: "The Lord did not hesitate to say, 'This is my body,' when he was giving the sign of his body." The same author says against Maximinus: "In the Sacraments, it is not what they are, but what they show, that is attended to; because they are signs of things, existing as one thing and signifying another." St. Ambrose agrees with this.