For my flesh, says He, is meat indeed, and my
blood is drink indeed. For while by meat and drink men seek to attain to this,
neither to hunger nor thirst, there is nothing that truly affords this, except
this meat and drink, which does render them by whom it is taken immortal and
incorruptible; that is, the very fellowship of the saints, where will be peace
and unity, full and perfect. Therefore, indeed, it is, even as men of God
understood this before us, that our Lord Jesus Christ has pointed our minds to
His body and blood in those things, which from being many are reduced to some
one thing. For a unity is formed by many grains forming together; and another
unity is effected by the clustering together of many berries.
In a word, He now explains how that which He
speaks of comes to pass, and what it is to eat His body and to drink His blood.
He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him. This it
is, therefore, for a man to eat that meat and to drink that drink, to dwell in
Christ, and to have Christ dwelling in him. Consequently, he that dwells not in
Christ, and in whom Christ dwells not, doubtless neither eats His flesh
[spiritually] nor drinks His blood [although he may press the sacrament of the
body and blood of Christ carnally and visibly with his teeth], but rather does
he eat and drink the sacrament of so great a thing to his own judgment, because
he, being unclean, has presumed to come to the sacraments of Christ, which no
man takes worthily except he that is pure: of such it is said, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8
As the living Father has sent me, says He, and I
live by the Father; so he that eats me, even he shall live by me. He says not:
As I eat the Father, and live by the Father; so he that eats me, the same shall
live by me. For the Son, who was begotten equal, does not become better by
participation of the Father; just as we are made better by participation of the
Son, through the unity of His body and blood, which thing that eating and
drinking signifies. We live then by Him, by eating Him; that is, by receiving
Himself as the eternal life, which we did not have from ourselves. Himself,
however, lives by the Father, being sent by Him, because He emptied Himself,
being made obedient even unto the death of the cross. Philippians 2:8 For if we
take this declaration, I live by the Father, according to that which He says in
another place, The Father is greater than I; just as we, too, live by Him who
is greater than we; this results from His being sent. The sending is in fact
the emptying of Himself, and His taking upon Him the form of a servant: and
this is rightly understood, while also the Son's equality of nature with the
Father is preserved. For the Father is greater than the Son as man, but He has
the Son as God equal — while the same is both God and man, Son of God and Son
of man, one Christ Jesus. To this effect, if these words are rightly
understood, He spoke thus: As the living Father has sent me, and I live by the
Father; so he that eats me, even he shall live by me: just as if He were to
say, My emptying of myself (in that He sent me) effected that I should live by
the Father; that is, should refer my life to Him as the greater; but that any
should live by me is effected by that participation in which he eats me.
Therefore, I being humbled, do live by the Father, man being raised up, lives
by me. But if it was said, I live by the Father, so as to mean, that He is of
the Father, not the Father of Him, it was said without detriment to His
equality. And yet further, by saying, And he that eats me, even he shall live
by me, He did not signify that His own equality was the same as our equality,
but He thereby showed the grace of the Mediator.
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