Coena Domini: Precarious hypotheses for oral manducation

For that first claim, precarious supporting premises have been advanced. First: that this oral mode of eating — even by Unbelievers — was set down in the Augsburg Confession, and even in the so-called Invariata, which Philip first wrote and the Princes and Theologians recognized at Wittenberg in 1531. In fact Article X speaks only indefinitely: That Christ's Body and Blood are truly present, and with Bread and Wine are distributed to those eating in the Lord's Supper. It does not express the mode of eating, nor name Unbelievers as the eaters. Underneath, rather, it is fairly plain that Christ's Body and Blood are exhibited to those who eat in the due mode and in faith.

Second: that Christ's Body is present in the Eucharist in a local way, without spatial distance. Neither the Confession, nor Luther, nor Melanchthon said that — and Melanchthon here stands farthest from any dogma of the Omnipresence or Ubiquity of Christ's Body. Third: that, for Christ's essential Body, no mode of eating can be conceived except oral eating with the bodily mouth — which cuts against what the State of the Controversy has already shown. Christ in the Institution did not say, Eat this Body with the mouth — the Body that was present and speaking. He spoke of eating the bread that way. He did not say, Drink this my Blood with the mouth — Blood not yet poured out, still to be poured out, and so not then drawn by the mouth; the Cup, rather. Spiritual eating is no less true for being figurative. Christ proves that one eating in John 6:55 and 63, and draws an argument from His ascension in verse 62. Related to the object of faith, eating can mean nothing but the act of believing — also spoken of as seeing, putting on, coming, and the like. Christ could not be food that goes into the belly (Matthew 15:17), any more than He could eat Himself at that first Supper. Spiritual eating is no harder to conceive than the other birth (John 3:3, 5), Abraham's seeing (John 8:56), the rending of the heart (Joel 2:13), putting on Christ (Romans 13:14), and union with Christ (John 6:56), and so on.

Fourth: the Lutherans likewise assume a union of Body and Bread by coexistence, as wine sits in a cup or water in a vessel. That is unwritten, and against what is written — Christ's Body then being separate from the Bread. Fifth: they assume the earthly thing and the heavenly thing are eaten by one and the same instrument — Bread and Body, sign and thing signed — as though there were no mouth of faith beside the mouth of the body.