Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 78: January 27, 1916
Romanists hold that the bread and wine, by the consecration, are changed into the ?esh and blood of our Redeemer, as the water at the feast in Cana was changed into wine. The accidents, such as form, taste, color, chemical affinities, and nutritive qualities remain, they say, but the substance, or essence, is different, and the bread and wine remain ?esh and blood after the communion. This miracle they call transubstantiation.
It follows that they regard the observance of the sacrament as a propitiatory sacrifice, for the expia-tion of sin. What is offered, they say, is Christ, His body, soul, and divinity, all of which are present under the form of a wafer and wine.
The doctrine of transubstantiation was first introduced in the ninth century, but was not accepted as an article of faith until the fourth Lateran council in 1215. It is founded, not on the Scriptures, but on the philosophy of Aristotle, according to which there is in everything a substance that sustains the properties we perceive with our senses, such as form, color, taste, odor, etc. A theory which may, or may not, be perfectly true, but which, nevertheless, has no bearing whatever on any question relating to the presence of our Lord in the sacrament.
As far as there can be said to be any Scripture justification for this doctrine, it is supposed to be found in the words of our Lord, This is my body; This is my blood. But the Jews said of the bread broken at the passover, This is the bread of affliction, referring to the sufferings of their fathers in Egypt, although they did not mean to affirm that it was the identical' cake which their fathers had eaten, or that the bread broken had been transformed into the original loaf baked in Egypt. They meant to say that it was a. Symbol, an emblem of the bread of af?iction eaten in Egyptian bondage. Jesus also said, I am the door I am the vine. One of the apostles says, That rock was Christ. Are we, therefore, to conclude that in each case transubstantiation is taught, so that Christ is changed into a door, a vine, a rock? That would be wresting the Scriptures.
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