About the period at which we have now arrived, one of the most grievous sources of discouragement to the Reformers, both in Germany and Switzerland, was the dispute which arose about the sacrament of the supper, commonly called the sacramentarian controversy. Luther, it will be remembered,* whom God used to raze to the ground almost every part of the Romish system, retained to the end of his days a superstitious reverence for a certain materialism in the supper which he called consubstantiation; that is, "he believed in the presence of the flesh and blood of Christ with, in, or under, the bread and wine." He did not believe like the Romanist, that the Lord's supper was a sacrifice, or that the body of Christ in the elements should be worshipped; but he maintained that the body was there, and received, not merely by faith, but corporeally by the communicant. Zwingle, on the other hand, was extremely simple in his views of the sacred supper. He maintained that its grand design was a memorial or commemoration. "This do in remembrance of Me." At the same time he affirmed that it can only be properly commemorated in faith. We show the Lord's death-His death for us, the blood shed by which our sins are washed away. We thus rest in faith upon His death as the sure ground of our eternal life, and joyfully feed on the rich spoils of accomplished redemption.
"His precious blood was shed,
His body bruised for sin;
Remembering this, we break the bread,
And, thankful, drink the wine."
But as we have already described the conference of Marburg, we return and take up the thread of our history.
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