From this time the
bread was considered to have great virtues; and on this latter account,
not only children, but sucking infants, were admitted to this sacrament.
It was also given to persons on the approach of death. And many
afterwards, who had great voyages to make at sea, carried it with them
to preserve them both from temporal and spiritual dangers.
In the twelfth century, another notion, a little modified from the
former, prevailed on this subject; which was, that consecration by a
Priest had the power of abolishing the substance of the bread, and of
substituting the very body of Jesus Christ.
This was called the doctrine of Transubstantiation.
This doctrine appeared to Luther, at the dawn of the reformation, to be
absurd; and he was of opinion that the sacrament consisted of the
substance of Christ's body and blood, together with the substance of the
bread and wine; or, in other words, that the substance of the bread
remained, but the body of Christ was inherent in it, so that both the
substance of the bread and of the body and blood of Christ was there
also. This was called the doctrine of Consubstantiation, in
contradiction to the former.
Calvin again considered the latter opinion erroneous: he gave it out
that the bread was not actually the body of Jesus Christ, nor the wine
his blood; but that both his body and blood were sacramentally received
by the faithful, in the use of the bread and wine.
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