Do eucharistic miracles really happen?

It is the holy, gracious, and deep meaning of the Lord's supper, and in no way the elements or the ministrant, which invests it with such value and blessing. He is in the midst of His own to give them the enjoyment of His love in present power, but as recalling their hearts to the sacrifice of Himself for their sins to place them without charge or question before God. The bread remains bread, and so does the wine; the thanksgiving, or blessing, we find as at all times of ordinary life in receiving the creatures of God; of miracle at this time the word of God whispers not a word. The Lord breaks the bread and says, This is My body which is on your behalf: this do in remembrance of Me; in like manner the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood: this do as often as ye drink it in remembrance of Me.

Accordingly, after the Passover Supper, He instituted the new memorial feast of the Lord's Supper which would remind them, and believers down through the centuries, of what He had done for them at Calvary's cross. The bread was emblematical of the body in which He suffered and completed the work of atonement and the cup would remind us of His blood which was shed on the cross for our sins. It was not, as some erroneously think and teach, that in the Supper the bread becomes literally His body and the contents of the cup become literally His blood, so that we actually eat His body and drink His blood as something which makes us more fit for heaven and gives us' the forgiveness of sins. The Lord was still bodily present with them when He instituted the Supper and surely He did not mean that, though He was bodily present, the bread and the cup He then gave them was also literally His body and His blood. No, He was thinking of the time when He would no longer be bodily present with them; thus He gave them, and believers throughout the Church age, the emblems of the bread and the cup which would recall Himself and His death on the cross vividly to their minds.

Hence it is, beloved friends, that in the Supper we come so close to the blessed person of the Lord Jesus Christ. "This is My body," are the Lord's words. There is no need, however, for fanciful notions with regard to the bread. Let us be clear that the material is bread, and that it remains bread. He said, "This is My body," using, of course, a figure of speech, such as was often upon His lips. He spake in the pictorial manner of that nation to which He came. When He said "This is My body," He thereby attached a special significance to the loaf as His memorial. This, and nothing else, was to be the emblem which should set forth to them His body, and should for this reason recall to their minds the things done in His body.

The word "blessing … we bless," as is perfectly evident from Scripture, is simply giving thanks. (See 1 Cor. 11:26; chap. 10:16; Luke 22:17; compare Mark 14:22-23; Matt. 26:26-27; exactly the same word as John 6:23.) When the Lord therefore says, "this is my body," He speaks, it is admitted, figuratively. It is still bread. It could not be His body then, nor, in spite of Augustine, did He hold His body in His own hand, nor was there thus any such body, that is, dead and the blood poured out, as it is said (ekchunomenon). Nor is there now. It is the figure of Christ as a victim and only so. I do not insist on "broken," for I suppose it is not the true reading. If "given" be genuine, it is the same thing; but I rest on the whole evident meaning, and it is expressly for us, not to us. It is the shed blood, shed for many. That we feed on Christ as then dead for us, and His blood shed, when eating the bread and drinking the wine specially, though at all times, is all well. But it is we who eat, and we who "do" in remembrance of that which must be, and can only be, remembered as past, though the One I remember is now ascended to the right hand of God, the same loving Saviour. The real act is our eating, and our drinking, our doing in remembrance; and even if "breaking" be spoken of, on which Mr. Sadler insists, it is we who break too. The wine is equally a figure, and a figure of blood shed, a shedding which took place on the cross, of which we perpetuate the memory.

But we may turn, I think, to the apostle Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 2:23-29. One thing is clear, that he calls it bread after the giving of thanks as before, has no idea of its being anything else (vv. 26, 27). For him it was bread and the cup after the Lord had said, "This is my body," as before. The words He uses as to the cup are that the cup is the new covenant, as in Luke. There is not a trace that He counted it anything but what it was, evidently. It is done in remembrance of Christ, which could not be if He was then giving Himself. Was Christ the offerer, doing it in remembrance of Himself? We shew forth the Lord's death, but He cannot die as now glorified: the notion of a sacramental putting to death a glorified Jesus is as horrible as it is contrary to all truth. It is a remembrance of what was His death, and His death is over for ever. All He says supposes it to be constantly bread and wine all through. That is what a man eats or drinks unworthily, when he is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. So that in saying this He has no idea it is not still bread.

It is not here a question of God's omnipotence or power to perform a miracle, which no one denies—the question is what God has done, not what he can do; and He never acts inconsistently with what He has revealed. Has He revealed that in the Eucharist the priest can turn bread into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ—can "make God," as some say? It is really a monstrous supposition, without any truth revealed in it, or any testimony to it. All the direct testimony which can be produced for it is: "This is my body," and "This is my blood" of the New Testament, "which is," or as they put it, "which shall be shed for you and for many."

N*. It is not a question of God's omnipotency, which, in the true sense of it, no Christian denies. But God has revealed His ways of dealing and acts in grace and truth according to those ways. Thus, working by the Lord Himself or by His followers to confirm the blessed word of His grace, He gave miracles, sensible signs, works of power which all men could see and multitudes did see, so as to accredit those who announced the truth. The miracle was a plain proof of the senses to confirm the testimony. But here the alleged miracle, which is not the revelation of any new truth, is the thing we are called upon to believe; not only with no testimony to it, but with the fullest testimony against it in every possible way, to sight, taste, touch and smell, and even, as is admitted, nourishing powers, it is and remains bread and wine, can be eaten by an animal, decay, become corrupt, nay, we learn from Corinthians could make people drunk, in a word in every way contradicts the alleged miracle, the very idea of which is founded on a heathen philosophical system of substance and accidents adopted by the schoolmen in the middle ages, never dreamt of in the early church, and a chimera without any real foundation, a mere philosophical thing without proof. Some hidden essence clothed in various appearances, which essence was the substance of bread, while all we can see, taste, or feel, are accidents; the substance becomes, they say, Christ, and these accidents remain. Nor is Christ brought down from above, for then, they say, there would be a change of place (Cat. Council of Trent, Euch. Part 2, 37 and 44), and space would be in question which, though they speak of a true body, bones and nerves, is not they admit, tenable. It is a creation of Christ there taking the place of what was bread in this philosophical idea of abstract substance. And if Christ does not change His place and come there it must be a creation of His soul too or changing, if they prefer it, the bread into His soul. And is it then the same soul? If it be His soul as in glory, He does not change His place; if not, is it another? Is it His soul, if He has not changed His place? I am called upon, not to believe a divine truth helped by the confirmation of visible works of power addressed to my senses, but a contradiction and a philosophical fancy in admitted contradiction to the evidence of my senses. This is not what Scripture calls a miracle. What is the truth I learn there? Christ's sacrifice is a truth already revealed, only with a declaration that it cannot be repeated. There is no revelation of any truth in transubstantiation, and no proof of it; but every proof which God does use in miracles contradicting it. And the thing itself, a repetition of Christ's sacrifice forbidden to the believer by the word of God. It is the contrary to a miracle, and a mere fable. Your appeal to the omnipotence of God, which no one denies — though what is contrary to truth, to what He has revealed, to Himself, He cannot do — is only throwing dust in peoples' eyes, the wiles of the enemy. The question is what has He done, not what He can do, of which indeed we are no judges, morally speaking. For I repeat He can do nothing inconsistent with Himself or His wisdom. God, it is said, who cannot lie: and of His wisdom we are no competent judges, knowing it only as it is revealed in Christ. Further we know divine truth only as it is revealed. The question is: Has He revealed that in the Lord's supper He has, and that the priests can turn bread into the body, blood, and soul, and divinity of Christ, as our poor Irish friends say, "make God"? It is really a monstrous supposition, without any truth revealed in it, or any testimony to it. But we will examine what Scripture says. All the direct testimony for it is: "This is my body," and "This is my blood" of the New Testament, "which is," or as you say "which shall be shed for you and for many." Now in ordinary language, nobody would dream of such a use of the words as would make it a change of the bread into the body. Supposing there were two pictures, and I were to say, "That is my mother, and that her sister," who would dream that the pictures were transubstantiated into my mother and aunt?

For the fact that the bread and wine remained bread and wine AFTER He had blessed them, we have the authority of His OWN words.

To obviate the difficulty of the bread growing mouldy, nature’s exposure of the deceitfulness of this supposed miracle, biscuit or wafer was substituted for bread.

N*. Most irreverent is the fact that they have done so, in itself, and it shews the wretched state into which the professing church had fallen. But I affirm it distinctly, and, what is more important, the Roman church affirms it. In the catechism of the Council of Trent, De Eucharistiae Sacramento, I read Section 26: "There are these three things most deserving of admiration and veneration, which the Catholic faith unhesitatingly believes, and confesses to be accomplished in this sacrament by the words of consecration; the first, that the real body of Christ, the same that was born of the Virgin, and sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, is contained in this sacrament; the second, that, however remote from and alien to the senses it may seem, no substance of the elements remains in the sacrament; the third, an easy consequence of the two preceding, although the words of consecration express it principally, that the accidents, which present themselves to the eyes or other senses exist in a wonderful and ineffable manner without a subject (sine ulla re subjecta esse). All the accidents of bread and wine we indeed may see: they inhere however in no substance, but exist by themselves; whereas the substance of the bread and wine is so changed into the body and blood of our Lord, that the substance of bread altogether ceases to exist." Now the Catechism is not content here with stating the real presence according to the Aristotelian and scholastic system, but formally, in the third wonder, bases the whole doctrine and alleged essence of the sacrament on that system. Part of the miracle is that the accidents, that is, all that man's mind can know, are all there without any substance or substratum to inhere in. They could not hold the colour, form, and other apparent qualities to be those of Christ, yet there they are. So they make a miracle of these sensible qualities being there without any existing substratum. They are sensible qualities of nothing, for Christ and no bread is there! They have a thousand other subtleties to make it out. It is Christ's body, now at the Father's right hand, the body born of the Virgin Mary, but not as extended in space, nor divided when the bread is broken, but all a whole Christ as they say in each part. Now I agree that all this is most painfully irreverent; but it is the irreverence of Roman doctrine. And the whole of it founded, and avowedly founded, on the mediaeval adoption of Aristotelian doctrine of substance and accidents, on logical predicables, not on divine truth at all.