The true catholic doctrine of the holy Eucharist : as contrasted with the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation in the Instructiones historico-theologicae of John Forbes of Corse

Front matter

me ate a \ : i beat See | t Sooew SRR RET ITE ES }

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Low, William Leslie.

Contents

PAGES I. Memoir or Dr Joun Forses oF Corse 4 9-42 II. INTRODUCTION . ; d : ‘ : - 43-48

Noting the frequency in history of special activities of the Powers of Good being immediately followed by antagonistic outbursts of the Powers of Evil. Examples: God’s Creation, “very good,” followed by the invasion of Satan; the temptation and fall of man—countered again by God, John iii. 16.

Again: the great act of divine love and pity in the Son of God taking into His personality the nature of man as it came from the hands of the Creator, followed by unceasing effort by the Powers of Evil to frustrate the divine plan of salvation, by the persecution and death of the incarnate Redeemer on the Cross. Again: that sacrifice of the Lamb of God having redeemed mankind the enemy of God and man still strives to make the sacrifice vain. When, in obedience to the Risen Saviour just before His ascension, when He directed them to go into all the world and proclaim the glad tidings of Redemption, they had got as far west as Hippo in North Africa, Satan was still struggling to thwart God’s loving purposes with a powerful weapon—the difference between the Oriental and the Western in the way they formulated their thoughts and expressed them—viz. the Oriental thinking and speaking in picture, simile, metaphor, the Western thinking and expressing himself in hard, literal, matter-of-fact words. In this difference the enemy saw the instrument for producing infinite misunderstanding and dispute. In endeavouring to defeat Satan’s plan the greatest of the Fathers, St Augustine, toiled in speech and writing, in the fifth century, and Dr John Forbes in the seventeenth, as will appear in the following pages.

Introduction

WHEN the mind travels back over the time known to man, one thing again and again arrests the attention. That striking thing is, that when at any time there has been a manifest quickening in the activity and energy of the powers of good there has followed, almost at once, a corresponding energy and activity of the powers of evil.

When “in the beginning ” the infinite goodness of God manifested itself in the Creation, He crowned His work with the creation of man in His own image, with endowments capable of evolving and marvellously developing manifestations of the goodness of the Creator from whom they sprang. pees 7g

The next thing recorded is an equally active onset of the powers of evil to thwart and paralyse the action of the powers of good in man: to stay the evolution of what was good in him, and to plant in him the seeds of evil, with the capacity of developing and multiplying in man all that was antagonistic to God.

Man yielded to the deceits of evil, and did the thing that the Creator had forbidden, adding : “‘ In the day thou ecatest

_ thereof thou shalt surely die.” Man had caten that thing, and man must die.

But it is contrary to the nature of God to acquiesce in the triumph of evil. Accordingly there ensued another active movement of the supreme power of God: ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life” (John iii. 16),

Sin was no part of man’s nature, but an alien evil intruded into it. So God the Son took into His divine personality the nature of man as it came from the creating mind of God.

44 INTRODUCTION

Thus in sinless human nature God the Son paid the penalty of death for sinful mankind, and redeemed mankind from Satan, sin, and death. Moreover, the incarnate Son of God, who had died to redeem mankind, proved on the third day by rising from the dead, that His sacrifice had been triumphantly effectual.

On the evening before He thus gave his life for the salvation of the fallen world He had kept with His disciples the Passover feast. That feast, ever since its institution on the eve of Israel’s deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, in all its features prefigured the deliverance of mankind from bondage to sin and from death, through the death of Jesus Christ, our Paschal Lamb. The blood of the lamb on the door post and lintel of the believer brought it to pass that the Angel of Death struck no one there: in like manner the life-blood of Jesus Christ, our Passover— pleaded by the penitent believer—saves from death eternal. And by the Redeemer’s command, and example, ‘“‘ The Lord’s Supper,’ the Commemorative Feast, is to be celebrated till He come again. 7

“This do in remembrance of Me.” The bread, the outward and visible sign of His body, and the wine, the outward and visible sign of His blood, SEPARATE THROUGHouT, as His body and blood were SEPARATED BY DEATH, and so pleading HIS DEATH on our behalf as the only and sure plea of the penitent believer for the forgiveness of sins and all other benefits of his Saviour’s death and passion. ‘“‘ Do this in remembrance of Me,” your Passover, sacrificed for you.

This has been the greatest manifestation of the energy and action of Divine Love for the salvation of mankind.

But then, again, as after the Creation, came the uprising into special activity of the powers of evil in an effort to neutralise all that the power of love and goodness had done at such cost to bind to God and the Redeemer the devoted adoration and love and service of the human soul.

And how do the Satanic powers set about their evil work? By using their natural deceit to sow broadcast in

INTRODUCTION 45 the minds of men misunderstandings regarding the Redemption and its commemorative rite —such misunderstandings as would in time rend the Church of the Saviour into fragments in constant mutual conflict, at times unto fire and sword.

Spirits such as these could not fail to observe that already among men in different parts of the earth there were differences, many amounting to contrasts more than colour-deep, and more important than the shape of the features of the face. Two men of different races would in describing the same thing emphasise different features ; and hearers would get more or less different conceptions of the same thing. And in such ways differences would be created and magnified.

The Oriental, in conveying his ideas, made free use of picture, parable, metaphor, symbol and simile, all to make the true tale vivid and true to the Oriental mind. A brother-Oriental would not often misunderstand. But even with him it would not be impossible. Bad feeling towards the speaker might cause it, as with the unbelieving Jews in John vi. 40, etc. Nay, it would not be impossible even in a friend and fellow-Oriental, as happened to Nicodemus, who was not hostile to Jesus. Yet he failed to catch our Lord’s meaning when He said: “ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John iii. 3), Nicodemus was evidently thinking that Our Lord meant, and was thinking of, a material physical birth. It did not occur to him that Our Lord’s words were a way of saying that a man must be a new man ere he could see the kingdom of God. Our Lord gently reproached his friend: “‘ Art thou a teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things ? ”

If such a mistake could be made between Orientals, what _ would happen if these words, or similar words, were spoken to men of a totally different race? Our Lord left with His Apostles the command to go and make disciples of all nations. In due time some of them, in fulfilment of this charge, went Westward. As they went Westward they

46 INTRODUCTION proclaimed the great news of the redemption of mankind by the Incarnate Son of God, and naturally in such language as we find in the Gospels of the New Testament with its parables and figures.

In due time they came to a country which had for long been under the sway and influence of the practical, hardheaded, matter-of-fact Romans. What would happen? The Gospel story would be told by the missionaries from the East with the imagery, metaphors, figures, symbols and parables as we find them in the. Gospels. If misunderstanding took place with such a man as Nicodemus, what would happen with the Western man ?. Would he understand better than Nicodemus? Would he not be apt to interpret literally the parables and figures, and so misunderstand them, or reject them as incredible, or foolishness ? The result would be misbelief, and disbelief, and endless disputation and dissension not ended even at this day.

With results thus deplorable East and West had met in many places, and among the rest at Hippo, in the north of Africa, where St Augustine, “ the Greatest of the Fathers,” was Bishop for thirty-five years before his death in A.D. 430.

In his voluminous writings there are many evidences how hard he had to labour against the misbelief and disbelief generated as has been described. Again and again he teaches his flock and his friends how to distinguish a metaphorical or figurative passage from one to be taken literally, and how each kind of passage is to be dealt with. Again and again he teaches Oriental and Occidental to see the one:-truth. ©

Again and again he has to teach the Western man to recognise the living truth in the Oriental man’s metaphors, figures, symbols and parables, and labour to teach both Eastern and Western the spirituality of the gift ; according to Our Lord’s words (John vi. 63): “It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing.” |

It is because the IJnstructiones Historico-Theologice of John. Forbes so faithfully pass on the teaching of St Augustine and the other orthodox Fathers, of which he had

INTRODUCTION AT knowledge so wide and deep, that I have been moved to write these pages.

It is because his writings are in Latin that they are so little known, and that Anglican Churchmen sustain in consequence so great a loss. They are in Latin because that was the academical language of Forbes’s day—a language known to all scholars; and the Instructiones are the teaching which he gave to his students in the University of Aberdeen, where he was Professor of Divinity from 1620 to 1641. His father, Bishop Patrick Forbes, is called in the annals of that university its ‘‘ Second Founder,” because he restored it to its full efficiency, which had at times greatly declined since 1494, when it was founded by another great Bishop of Aberdeen—William Elphinstone.

Dr Grub, in his Ecclestastical History of Scotland, vol. iii., p. 109, says of John Forbes: “In learning he probably surpassed all other Scottish Divines ; his piety, his meekness, and his charity appear in the record of his spiritual life which he left behind him, and in every authentic memorial of his actions.”

I once heard the late Bishop Dowden, whose learning is well known, say with great emphasis: ‘‘ John Forbes was a GIANT OF LEARNING,” to which Dr Grub added with equal emphasis: “ John Forbes was a SAINT.”

His whole works form two large volumes folio, published at Amsterdam in 1702-1703.

His Eucharistic teaching, which he gave to his students, \ is to be found in Vol. I., books ix.-xi.,

The great value of his teaching is due to—

I, His extraordinary knowledge of the teaching of Scripture, and the Fathers and theological writers down to his time.

2. To his scrupulous care to present truthfully the real belief and meaning of the Father whom he was quoting.

3. To his evident recognition of the great difference in mental characteristics between the Oriental man and the Occidental. He also notes the effect on

INTRODUCTION the belief and worship of some produced by the desire (widespread in fallen man) to have something visible and tangible to worship before. The strong language of the Second Commandment should give warning of the danger of the worshipper’s thought and desire

_ being diverted to the seen away from the unseen.

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE: OF THE EUCHARIST

AS CONTRASTED WITH

Tuk Roman DoGMA OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION, IN THE INSTRUCTIONES HISTORICO-THEOLOGICA

OF JOHN FORBES OF CORSE

THE Eucharistic teaching of John Forbes is contained in his Instructiones Historico-Theologice, partly in Book IX., on Sacraments in general, but mainly in Book XI., on the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, as it is called in the Book of Common Prayer.

_ These Jnstructiones embody the teaching which he gave to his students in the University of King’s College, in Aberdeen, where he was Professor of Divinity from 1620, when his father was Bishop of Aberdeen, till 1641, when he was ejected from the office by the Covenanters, who at that time had got the upper hand in civil and ecclesiastical affairs in the long and tangled struggle of the Reformation in Scotland.

The interest and value of the Imstructiones are derived from the remarkable Christian character of their author and his noless remarkable Scriptural and Patristic learning. The reader will not take long to discover that when John Forbes claims the support of any Father he has taken pains to be sure of that Father’s real mind, and whether his words are to be understood according to the flesh or according to the Spirit.

His whole teaching shows that he knew the writings of the Fathers, of the schoolmen, and of theologians and historians down to his own day as few men have known them, and that his constant aim was to get at, and give to his students, the true mind of Christ and of His great servants,

Naturally he begins with a definition of the word Sacrament. The definition given by the Anglican Communion in the “ Catechism, that is to say, instruction to be learned of every person before he be brought to be confirmed by the Bishop,” is that “‘the word Sacrament ” means “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, given unto us, ordained by Christ Himself as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.” And the answer to the question that immediately follows declares that in the Sacrament thus defined there are just “two parts’”’—“the outward and visible sign’ being one of them, and the other, “the inward and spiritual grace.”

St Augustine (A.D. 354-430), who has been called “the greatest of the Fathers,” and who is quoted by name in the Twenty-ninth Article of Religion in the Prayer Book, evidently carried great weight with John Forbes, as well as with the authorities of the Church of England. He is quoted by Forbes in connection with this definition. “A _ sign,” according to St Augustine, is ‘“‘ a thing which, besides the appearance which it presents to the senses, of itself causes something else to come into the mind, as when we see a footprint we think that the animal has passed whose footprint it is’? (Augustine: De Doctrina Christiana, chap. i.): where also he gives the admonition that in signs the thing to be attended to is, not what they ave, but what they are signs of, that is, what they signify.”

Many people, at all periods, have used the word Sacrament as a short expression to indicate the whole rite, but in strict propriety of language it means, as the Church Catechism . says, the outward and visible sign. Forbes deals with all the definitions that have been proposed to arrive at the true and clear conception. In the course of these discussions _ he quotes the following definition by Scotus:—‘In the | manner in which there can be a definition of a Sacrament this is its definition,—namely, ‘a sign perceivable by the © senses, signifying by divine institution the grace, or free operation (gvatuitum effectum) of God, ordained for the salvation of man on his pilgrimage (viaforis),’’’ Also the following from Gabriel Biel: ‘In order that anything should be a sacrament, three things are required: 1. That it should be a thing perceived by the senses, having a natural similitude to the grace, or free operation of God which it represents. 2. That it be instituted by God Himself. 3. That it be a sign effectual and certain, so as to have infallibly the effect which it signifies unless there be impediment in the recipient by his placing in the way an obstacle repugnant to the grace.”’

_ That the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, or Eucharist, was ordained by God the Son incarnate no one questions. Nor does anyone question that it was at the Passover feast that He didso. St Luke, who says that he had “ traced the course of all things from the

- first,” describes it thus: “And He took bread, and when

He had given thanks, he brake it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘ This is My body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of Me.’ Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, ‘ This cup is the New Testament in My blood which is shed for you.’”’ St Paul’s account, which, he says, he received of the Lord, is this: ‘‘ The Lord Jesus, in the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks he brake it, and said, ‘ Take, eat : this is My body which is given for you: do this in remembrance of Me.’ After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, ‘ This cup is the New Testament in

} My blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ ”

Forbes points out that St Augustine refers to the condition in Gabriel Biel’s definition that ‘‘ the sign perceivable by the senses ” should have a natural similitude to the grace which it represents.” He says, in his Twenty-third Epistle :

“For if sacraments had not a certain similitude to those things whose sacraments they are they would not be sacraments [or signs] at all.” But St Augustine distinguishes very clearly between the sign, and the thing which it signifies. In his Twenty-sixth Treatise on the Gospel of St John he says: ‘‘ Many ate the Manna who pleased the Lord, and did not die. Why? Because they understood the visible food spiritually, that they might be spiritually filled. For we also to-day receive the spiritual bread ; but the Sacrament is one thing, and the virtue of the Sacrament another. ... The Manna signified this bread. Those sacrament were diverse in signs, but alike in the things which they signified. . . . They did all eat of the same spiritual food. The spiritual [food] assuredly the same, but the corporal different ; because they ate the manna, we, another thing ;

but the spiritual, that which we eat. ... But the Rock was Christ. Of it the food; of it the drink. The rock was Christ in sign: true Christ in word and flesh... . That if any man eateth of [Christ] Himself, he may not die,—-he who eateth that which belongeth to the virtue of the Sacrament, not what belongeth to the visible [sign or] Sacrament ; who eateth inwardly, not outwardly ; who eateth with the heart, not presseth with the teeth. . . . ‘Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in Him.’ To abide in Christ, therefore, and have Christ abiding in him, this is to eat that food, and drink that cup. And he who abideth not in Christ, and in whom Christ abideth not, without doubt neither eateth His flesh nor drinketh His blood, although carnally and visibly he presseth with his teeth the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, but rather eateth and drinketh to his own judgment the Sacrament [or sign] of so great a thing : because he has presumed to come unclean to the Sacraments of Christ, which no one receives worthily but he who is clean.”

Forbes naturally has much to say about the results which have followed from the confusing of this distinction by . giving to the Sacrament, oroutward and visible sign, the name of the thing signified, to which the similitude between the sign and the thing signified has largely contributed. On this point he has the following quotations from Augustine's _ Twenty-third Epistle: —“ But from this similitude _ sacraments generally receive the name also of the things , themselves that are signified. As, therefore, according to a certain manner, the Sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ, and the Sacrament of the blood of Christ, the blood of Christ, so the Sacrament of the Faith [Baptism] is the Faith; so the Sacrament of so great a thing was called by the name of the same thing.’”’ And in his book against Adamanthus, the disciple of Manichzus, chap. xii. : “For the Lord did not hesitate to say, ‘This is My body,’ when he was giving the figure of His body” (Bk. IL, Giap, x., 9'r).

Forbes says, ‘‘ According to a certain manner, namely, sacramentally, these symbols [the bread and the wine] are called, and are, the body and blood of the Lord. For so Scripture is wont to speak, naming the things signifying as [it names] the things that are signified.”

As Augustine points out in Treatise 63, On the Gospel of St John, and in Epistle 103, and in Questions on Leviticus, chap. 57, in which passages on Leviticus he subjoins certain examples of this: ‘‘ The thing,” he says, “ that signifies [the sign] is wont to be called by the name of the thing which it signifies : as it is written, ‘seven ears of corn are seven years,’ for he did not say ‘ signify seven years,’ and ‘ seven kine are seven years,’ for he did not say ‘ signify seven years, and many of this kind. Hence that which was said (1 Cor. x. 4), ‘That Rock was Christ.’ For he did not say ‘the Rock signified Christ,’ but as it meant that,

_ assuredly it was not that by substance.”

In XI. iv. 3 of the Instructiones Forbes quotes Ambrose as saying, in Book IV., chap. iv., of his De Sacramentis: “ Of the bread is made the flesh of Christ. How can that which is bread be the body of Christ ? By consecration. ... If, therefore, there is such power in the word of the Lord Jesus, that the bread and the wine began to be what hitherto they were not, how much rather should it be capable of effecting that they should be what they were, and at the same time

be made to be something else.” But lest anyone should ' mistake the true mind of Ambrose on the matter, Forbes quotes the same Ambrose again (/mstructiones, XI. vi. 12), as saying on chapter xxiv. of St Luke, “ For not by corporal / touch, but by faith, do we touch Christ’; and in Sermon

56, De Tempore: ‘“‘ The blessed Paul taught us how we are to seek the Saviour among the heavenly beings, saying, ‘ Seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.’ . . . Therefore not om the earth, nor om the earth, nor according to the flesh ought we to seek the Saviour if we desire to find and touch Him, etc.” And Forbes adds: ‘“‘ Observe from Ambrose that Christ, absent from us as far corporally as heaven from earth, is nevertheless touched by faith by those [on earth] who seek Him with devotion of mind, and so is spiritually present to them.” So that his quotation above from Ambrose means: If therefore there is such power in the word of the

' Lord Jesus that the bread and wine began to be the outward and visible signs of the body and blood of Christ, which they were not before, how much rather should that word be capable of effecting that they should be the bread and wine which they had been, and at the same time be made to be the outward and visible signs of the body and blood of Christ, and that Christ in heaven should be touched by worthy communicants on the earth by the hand of faith, and so be spiritually present to them.

Evidently also it is to be clearly noted what that is of which the bread and wine were thus made the outward and visible signs. They were made the outward and visible signs of the body and blood of Christ im separation from each other, which they were not when He spoke the words of institution, and never were except in His death, wherein

(Heb, ix. 26).—‘‘ He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself,’’ and having proved the efficacy of that sacrifice by rising from the dead according to His promise (Matt. xxvii. 63,64) entered “‘into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us’ (Heb. ix. 24). And so His words of direction mean: “‘ Do this in remembrance of Me ’—of Mz SLAIN—the one and only sacrifice of all time effectual for the forgiveness and perfecting of mankind. So we are bidden

“ Lift up our hearts ” in faith from the significant memorial . on earth to where on high He pleads on our behalf that one and only sufficient sacrifice for sin, and with living faith in Him rejoice and praise Him through whom we are forgiven, and believe that according to our faith we receive from the unseen hand of our great High Priest the inward strengthening and refreshing, of which the bread and wine are the outward and visible signs, and significant pledges that we | receive these gifts.

The care with which both St Augustine and John Forbes distinguish the outward and visible sign from the thing signified makes very clear their conviction that in order to get at the true meaning of any document it is essential that the reader should know and remember the manner of | the writer—the forms into which he casts his thoughts and | the mode in which he seeks to convey them to the mind | of the reader.

There is the strongest possible contrast between the ancient Oriental mind and the modern Western mind in « these and kindred respects. The ancient Shemitic peoples in their thought and its expression loved the symbolical and figurative: the modern Western mind seeks literal precision and exactness. If any Western who did not know and remember this were to interpret an Oriental document as if it were an English lawyer’s inventory, it is practically certain that if he made any sense of it at all it would not be what the Oriental writer intended.

Our Blessed Lord was, according to the flesh, an Oriental —a Hebrew of the tribe of Judah, and being—as He said— “sent unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel,” He expressed Himself after the Oriental manner of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, his knowledge and understanding of which at twelve years of age so astounded the doctors in the Temple. And later on He taught in parables, which are but expanded metaphors. And these were not the only metaphors he used. What Western teacher would put an important truth before a disciple in such words as these : “ Except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the

- Kingdom of God ”’; or, ‘“‘I am the door of the sheep ” ; or, “Tf thy right eye cause thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee’’? Would any. sane Western teacher interpret any of them literally ? Forbes (XI. viii. 6) quotes St Augustine’s earnest warning to remember the habitually figurative character of Oriental speech. ‘“‘ Augustine CRIES ALOUD (clamat): ‘ Above all, care must be taken not to understand a figurative expression literally. For to this also is pertinent what the Apostle says, —‘‘ The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” For when a thing said figuratively is understood as if it had been spoken literally, it is carnally understood. Nor is any death of the soul more appropriately named than when that in us which transcends the beasts, that is, the mind, is subjected to the flesh by following the letter: for he who follows the letter holds the translated words to be literal and does not refer that which is signified by the literal word to another meaning. . . . It is indeed a miserable servitude of the soul to take the signs for the things, and to be unable to raise the eye of the mind above the corporeal creature to take in eternal light ’ (De Doctrina Christiana, Book Ile chance).

As Christianity spread westward, and was embraced by multitudes who were not Orientals, nor descendants of Orientals, the danger of misunderstanding became correspondingly greater, and became clear to Augustine when it reached his abode. No one in the guest-chamber at the Paschal Supper would have misunderstood the words said of the Passover bread—‘ This is the bread of misery which your fathers ate in the land of Egypt ’—or supposed it to be literally the bread of so many centuries ago. They would all have understood that it represented it in the celebration of the Feast which was, as recorded in the Book of Exodus, instituted as a memorial of, and thanksgiving for, the deliverance of their race from bondage and death. They did not need to have the word signify or represent expressed.