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'The spiritual sense': Jeremy Taylor, the Eucharist, and breathing with both lungs

In Section III of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), Taylor continues to 'breathe with both lungs', invoking fathers and theologians of the East alongside the West.  Discussing John 6, refuting that there "our blessed Saviour taught the mystery of transubstantiation", alongside the Latin Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine, Taylor quotes Athanasius, Origen, and Theophylact (who died in the early 12th century):

St. Athanasius ... saith, "The things which he speaks, are not carnal but spiritual: for to how many might his body suffice for meat, that it should become the nourishment of the whole world? But for this it was, that he put them in mind of the ascension of the Son of man into heaven, that he might draw them off from carnal and corporal senses, and that they might learn that his flesh, which he called meat, was from above, heavenly and spiritual nourishment. For, saith he, the things that I have spoken, they are spirit and they are life."

But Origen is yet more decretory in this affair ... "If ye understand these words of Christ, 'Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood,' literally, this letter kills. For there is in the New Testament a letter that kills him, who does not spiritually understand those things which are spoken" ...

Theophylact makes the spiritual sense to be the only answer in behalf of our not being cannibals, or devourers of man's flesh, as the men of Capernaum began to dream ... "The men of Capernaum thought Christ would compel them to devour man's flesh. But because we understand this spiritually, therefore we are not devourers of man's flesh, but are sanctified by this meat".

'Breathing with both lungs', Taylor declares that John 6 is a proclamation of our spiritual participation in Christ:

 It may suffice that it is the direct sense of Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Austin, and Theophylact, that these words of Christ, in John, vi., are not to be understood in the natural or proper, but in the spiritual sense.

It is on the basis of the shared reading of the fathers of East and West that Taylor therefore sets forth how John 6 is to be read:

it can primarily relate to nothing but his death upon the cross; at which time he gave his flesh for the life of the world; and so giving it, it became meat; the receiving this gift was a receiving of life, for it was given for the life of the world. The manner of receiving it is by faith, and hearing the word of God, submitting our understanding; the digesting this meat is imitating the life of Christ, conforming to his doctrine and example; and as the sacraments are instruments or acts of this manducation, so they come under this discourse, and no otherwise.

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