On the phrase, “this is my body” in the Institution narratives of the Lord’s Supper, Henry Newcome responded to “T.B.” (a Catholic priest he was engaged in a written debate with on the topic of Transubstantiation) wrote the following:
My first argument against Transubstantiation was that the words, This is my Body, is no better proof of it, than I am a Vine, the Rock is Christ. What does T.B. return for Answer? Why? Though those are, there are other expressions in the Scripture that are not figurative. And what follows thence? But that, This is my Body, may be figurative, or not Figurative for what T.B. pretends to prove. Sure it does not follow that all Scripture must be understood literally, because some must. For then the rock is Christ, must import a Transubstantiation. And if some Scripture must be taken figuratively, there is no absolute necessity of taking these words, This is my Body, literally. Christ says, I am the true Vine. What glorying had there he said, This is my true Body? And yet if he had said so, this as well as that expression might have been taken figuratively. I desire T.B. here to consider, how common this sacramental Metonymy is in the Scriptures. In eating the Paschal Lamb, the Jews say, This is the Lord’s Passover: In eating the bitter herbs, they say, Those are the bitter herbs which our Fathers did eat in the Wilderness. Did they thereby mean a Transubstantiation or a Commemoration only? Circumcision is called the Covenant, which was only the Seal of it. And in Pharaoh’s Dream, the seven Cows are called seven years. And if figurative expressions are so common about such matters, what necessity can there be of excluding a figure from Christ’s institution? Nay, the other part of this Institution is unavoidably figurative. The Cup is the new Testament only be a sacramental Metonymy, and not by any substantial change: and what reason can there be to deny such a sacramental Metonymy of the Bread? Let T.B. consider what St. Chrysostom says on those words, The Rock is Christ; and then tell me seriously, whether his words do not sound more for a real and substantial presence of Christ in the Rock, than all he hath cited out of him concerning the Eucharist. The Rock was Christ. It was not (says he) the Nature of the Rock that sent out the water, but another spiritual Rock that did all the work, i.e. Christ, who was present everywhere with them, and did all the wonderful works (Vol. 9. Hom. 22. In 1 Cor. p. 525). If without reflection on the Father’s ingenuity, T.B. can interpret this passage without a Transubstantiation of the Rock into Christ, I may do the like of this is my Body. And the first argument remains unshaken (I may say truly, untouched) that this is my Body is no proof of Transubstantiation. (Henry Newcome, “A Reply to T.B’s Answer” in Part II, pp. 21-22 in T.B. and Henry Newcome, Transubstantiation Discuss’d, in Two Parts [London, 1705], spelling has been modernised).
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