"-Page 572.
"In addition to the above clear passages, incontestably teaching the
real presence, it deserves to be ever remembered, that only fourteen
years after the Form of Concord was published, when Duke Frederick
William, during the minority of Christian II., published the VISITATION
ARTICLES OF SAXONY, in 1594, in order to suppress the Melancthonian
tendencies to reject this and other peculiarities of the symbols, the
Article on this subject which was framed by men confessedly adhering to
the old symbols, and designing to re-enunciate their true import, and
which was enforced upon the whole church in Saxony as symbolic, gives
the most objectionable view of this doctrine, viz.: I. 'The pure
doctrine of our church is, that the words, '_Take and eat, this is my
body: drink, this is my blood_, are to be understood _simply and
according to the letter_.' II. That the body (which is received and
eaten,) is the _proper_ and _natural body_ (der rechte natuerliche Leib)
of Christ, _which hung upon the cross;_ and the blood (which is drunk)
is the _proper_ and _natural blood_ (das rechte natuerliche Blut) _which
flowed from the side of Christ_.' Mueller's Symb. Books, p. 847. Now we
cannot persuade ourselves, that this is the view of a single minister of
the General Synod, or of many out of it; and yet these are the views
that those are obligated to receive, who avow implicit allegiance to the
former symbolical books of our church in Europe.
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