"In sacrament and mystery": Ussher on the Eucharist in the early Irish church
As yesterday was St Patrick's Day, here are words from Ussher's A discourse of the religion anciently professed by the Irish and British (1631). Ussher sees in the texts to which he is referring the Augustinian understanding of Eucharist ("mystical and sacramental" as opposed to "the bread and wine ... converted into these things really"), prevalent in the Latin West until the latter part of the first millennium. It also points to the vibrant Eucharistic understanding available within the Reformed ecclesia Hibernica.
But, you will say; these testimonies that have been alleged, make not so much for us, in proving the use of the communion under both kinds, as they make against us, in confirming the opinion of Transubstantiation: seeing they all specify the receiving, not of bread and wine, but of the body and blood of Christ. I answer, that forasmuch as Christ himself at the first institution of his holy Supper did say expressly; This is my body, and, This is my blood: he deserveth not the name of a Christian, that will question the truth of that saying, or refuse to speake in that language, which he hath heard his Lord and Master use before him. The question only is, in what sense, and after what manner, these things must be conceived to be his body and blood ... how can it be thought to be contained under the outward elements, otherwise than in sacrament and mystery? and such as in times past were said to have received the sacrifice from the hand of the Priest; what other body and blood could they expect to receive therein, but such as was suitable to the nature of that sacrifice, to wit, mystical and sacramental?
But, you will say; these testimonies that have been alleged, make not so much for us, in proving the use of the communion under both kinds, as they make against us, in confirming the opinion of Transubstantiation: seeing they all specify the receiving, not of bread and wine, but of the body and blood of Christ. I answer, that forasmuch as Christ himself at the first institution of his holy Supper did say expressly; This is my body, and, This is my blood: he deserveth not the name of a Christian, that will question the truth of that saying, or refuse to speake in that language, which he hath heard his Lord and Master use before him. The question only is, in what sense, and after what manner, these things must be conceived to be his body and blood ... how can it be thought to be contained under the outward elements, otherwise than in sacrament and mystery? and such as in times past were said to have received the sacrifice from the hand of the Priest; what other body and blood could they expect to receive therein, but such as was suitable to the nature of that sacrifice, to wit, mystical and sacramental?
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