death of Myconius), it is asserted, that "Christ is indeed present in His holy supper to all true believers, but sacramentally, and by the commemoration of faith, which lifts up the mind of man to the heavens, and does not draw down Christ, according to His human nature, from the right hand of God." By this addition a Zuinglian sense is given to all the ambiguous language of the Confession, and the presence of Christ is confined to the mere operation of the human mind. It is also very illustrative of the meaning of the term "sacramentally" in the "reformed" writers, and throws light upon the Scotch Confession. With regard to Myconius himself (as far as one may judge from his single work,) he appears to have suffered from his intercourse with Zuingli and Œcolampadius; and while he contended for a more literal acceptation of the words "This is my Body," still to have had no, or scarcely any, higher notions of the benefits of the Sacraments, than the rest of the reformed school:—a warning, first, against familiar intercourse with those who hold low notions on any point of Christian truth, as hkely imperceptibly to influence us, even while we think ourselves opposed to them; and, secondly, to take heed, not only that we hold the truth, but how we hold it, lest we deceive ourselves, and some subtle theory rob us of all but the name.
5, 6. The Gallic and Belgic confessions again state, "that through these outward signs God operates by the virtue of His Holy Spirit," and the Gallic says that "that bread and that wine, which is given to us in the supper, really becomes our spiritual food," (than which nothing could seem a plainer declaration; but this is done away with, immediately, by the addition) "inasmuch, namely, as they set, as it were before our eyes, that the flesh of Christ is our food and His blood our drink." In like manner, although we are said "to be engraffed in the body of Christ by Baptism," yet Baptism is said to be "given us to attest our adoption," (i.e. not to effect or convey it,) as is the Lord's Supper to "attest our union with Christ." The Belgic, similarly, declares that the Sacraments were added to the word of the Gospel, in order the more efficaciously to exhibit to our outward senses, as well what He declares to us outwardly in His word, as what He operates inwardly in our hearts, and thus renders so much the more assured the salvation which He communicates to us." Whereby the Sacraments become a mere picture.
7. Even the Hungarian confession, (which is altogether pure Zuinglianism, and in the highest degree offensive for its rationalist tone and the coarse language in which it inveighs against the Lutheran doctrine,) even this "rejects their phrensy, who teach that the Lord's Supper is an empty sign, or that the memory only of absent Christ is cherished by these signs. For as Christ is 'Amen, faithful
