In the beginning of this passage we have an explicit acknowledgment that it is in some way or another in the real body and blood of Christ that we communicate in the Eucharist; and I am willing to grant that the whole passage, on a cursory reading, might be taken to imply that the bread and wine was _changed_ into the literal body and blood of Christ; for he appears to speak of our corporeal frames being literally sustained by the body and blood of our Lord. But when we find him speaking of the necessity of our bodily frames being sustained by himself, arising out of the fact that we, even our bodies, are his members, we see immediately that, as we cannot be literally and corporeally his members, so the change of the bread into his body, and that of the wine into his blood, in order to nourish our bodies with himself, cannot be a literal and corporeal change. And so he does not say that Jesus effected any such change, but simply that he _recognized_ the cup for his blood, and _ordained_ the bread to be his body(405).
Before I attempt to draw out any other of the opinions implied in this passage, I will go to another contained in the fourth book(406). It is this:--
"Since, therefore, the Church offers with singleness of heart, its sacrifice is rightly accounted pure with God. As also Paul saith to the Philippians: _For I am filled with those things which I have received from Epaphroditus, which were sent by you, a sweet savour, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God._ For it is our duty to make an offering to God, and in all things to be found grateful to God our Maker, offering to him the first fruits of his creatures with a pure mind and unfeigned faith, in hope unshaken, in fervent charity. And this oblation the Church alone offers pure to the Creator, offering to him of his own work with giving of thanks. But the Jews do not offer it; for their hands are full of blood; for they did not receive the Word, who is offered to God [or through whom the offering is made to God], neither indeed do all the assemblies of the heretics.... How, indeed, can they feel assured that the bread over which thanksgiving is made, is the body of their Lord, and the cup that of his blood, if they do not call himself the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, his Word, by whom the wood bears fruit, and the springs gush forth, and the earth affords first the blade, after that the ear, then the full corn in the ear?