When commenting against Lutheran teaching concerning the Eucharist and the relationship between the humanity and divinity of Jesus, Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) wrote the following:
69. They strive to prove this
corporeal presence by the likeness of a teacher. Since he is able to extend his
words to many hearers, be communicates his mental concepts to them so that all
alike understand him fully. Even so, they say, the Lord acts in the words
pronounced at the sacrament. He wraps his body in them, so that by them he
might be revealed in all these symbols, and communicated to all who receive.
Therefore why not allow Christ what is granted an earthly master?
But the comparison is far-fetched,
and as we said before, words do not carry the substance or concept of mind,
except by way of signification.
Their purpose is not served either
by what they attempt to add from Ephesians 1, where it is said that the body of
Christ is everywhere. Christ is given as head of the body of the church, which
is as the Greek has it “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Martyr
quotes the Greek of Eph. 1:22-23). For that does not mean that the body of Christ
fills everything and is everywhere as they infer. The meaning of that verb or
participle plêroumenou is ambiguous, for it can be taken both actively and
passively, since it is a middle verb. If you understand it passively, according
to the Greek scholia, the meaning is that Christ the head of the church is
filled in all his members in regard to all things, not that he is completed in
his own person. For he is perfect and sufficiently blessed, and is to be
regarded in terms of the body and members. As the headship is conferred on him,
so the church is understood as the fullness of Christ, so that it fills and
perfects his mystical body. But if the sense is active, then Christ is said to
be head in that he himself perfects all gifts and virtues in all his members.
The meaning is not that he is everywhere as man. . . .
70. They also like to cite a place
in Ephesians 4, “He that descended is the same that also ascended even above
all heavens that he might fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). Yet this passage proves
nothing, and is interpreted in two ways. First, to fill all things is referred
to what is prophesied and written of Christ. Thus a little before he quoted the
Scripture, “He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, he gives gifts to
men.” If you refer it to places, you must understand this as kinds of places,
not one single kind, as in the sentences, “The Lord wills all men to be saved”
(1 Tim. 2:4). So we may say that Christ occupies sometimes a middle place,
sometimes a higher, or another time even lower, as in the sepulchre. The transubstantiators
say this does not apply to them, because they do not say that the body of
Christ is everywhere, but only where there is a sacrament. Still, it counts
against them; for it is not inconsistent for Christ’s body to be at one time in
twenty or fifty places, as they hold, then likewise in a hundred or a thousand,
and ultimately in all; hence they will make the body of Christ infinite. (Peter
Martyr Vermigli, “Treatise on the Sacrament of the Eucharist,” in The
Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist [trans. Joseph C.
McLelland; The Peter Martyr Library 7; Moscow, Idaho: The Davenant Press,
2018], 110, 111)
Note how Virmigli’s interpretation of Eph 4 speaking of Jesus “filling”
all things is similar in many respects to the Latter-day Saint interpretation, as
offered by D. Charles Pyle, who I quote in the following article:
