Serapion of Thmuis in Egypt, a younger contemporary of Athanasius, in his Eucharistic prayers combines the language of the _Didache_ with a high sacramentalism alien to that document which now only survived in the form of a grace used at table in the nunneries of Alexandria (see AGAPÉ). He entreats "the Lord of Powers to fill this sacrifice with his Power and Participation," and calls the elements a "living sacrifice, a bloodless offering." The bread and wine before consecration are "likenesses of his body and blood," this in virtue of the words pronounced over them by Jesus on the night of his betrayal. The prayer then continues thus: "O God of truth, let thy holy Word settle upon this bread, that the bread may become body of the word, and on this cup, that the cup may become blood of the truth. And cause all who communicate to receive a drug of life for healing of every disease and empowering of all moral advance and virtue." Here the bread and wine become by consecration tenements in which the Word is reincarnated, as he aforetime dwelled in flesh. They cease to be mere _likenesses_ of the body and blood, and are changed into receptacles of divine power and intimacy, by swallowing which we are benefited in soul and body. Cyril of Jerusalem in his _catechises_ 5^1 enunciates the same idea of [Greek: metabolê] or transformation.
Gregory of Nyssa also about the same date (in Migne, _Patrolog. Graeca_, vol. 46, col. 581, oration on the Baptism) asserts a "transformation" or "transelementation" ([Greek: metastoicheiôsis]) of the elements into centres of mystic force; and assimilates their consecration to that of the water of baptism, of the altar, of oil or chrism, of the priest. He compares it also to the change of Moses' rod into a snake, of the Nile into blood, to the virtue inherent in Elijah's mantle or in the wood of the cross or in the clay mixt of dust and the Lord's spittle, or in Elisha's relics which raised a corpse to life, or in the burning bush. All these, he says, "were parcels of matter destitute of life and feeling, but through miracles they became vehicles of the power of God absorbed or taken into themselves." He thus views the consecration of the elements as akin to other consecrations; and, like priestly ordination, as involving "a metamorphosis for the better," a phrase which later on became classical. John of Damascus (c. 750) believed the bread to be mysteriously changed into the Christ's body, just as when eaten it is changed into any human body; and he argued that it is wrong to say, as Irenaeus had said, that the elements are mere antitypes after as before consecration. In the West, Augustine, like Eusebius and Theodoret, calls the elements signs or symbols of the body and blood signified in them; yet he argues that Christ "took and lifted up his own body in his hands when he took the bread." At the same time he admits that "no one eats Christ's flesh, unless he has first adored" (_nisi prius adoraverit_). But he qualifies this "Receptionist" position by declaring that Judas received the sacrament, as if the unworthiness of the recipient made no difference.