What is transubstantiation?

We cannot do better than to take the definition of Transubstantiation given by the Council of Trent; that "This holy Synod now anew declares, that by the consecration of the bread and wine, conversion of the whole substance into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord takes place, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. Which conversion is conveniently and properly called by the holy Catholic Church, "Transubstantiation." An anathema is pronounced against anyone who denies "that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently a whole Christ." The catechism of the same Council declares that, "Not only the true body of Christ, and whatever belongs to the true body, as bones and nerves, but also a whole Christ," is contained in the sacrament. It is said that the whole substance of the bread is converted into the body, and the whole substance of the wine into the blood; only the forms of bread and wine remaining, and it is to be adored with divine worship.

The Roman Catholics hold that after the priest has pronounced certain words over the bread and wine, they become changed into the actual body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is called transubstantiation. They also hold that both the body and blood of Christ are present in the bread which alone is given to the recipient, who thus partakes of the body and blood of Christ altogether independently of whether he has faith or not.

Alongside this evil came the doctrine of transubstantiation; that is, the notion that when the priest blesses the elements of the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine, but become the very flesh and blood of our Lord, though they continue to look, smell, and taste like bread and wine. This supposed miracle goes by the name of the Mass in Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic circles.

Clearly the terms used on this subject by the Lord, and recorded in the New Testament, are used, not literally, but figuratively. He says, "My Father gives you the true bread from heaven." Do the teachers of Transubstantiation mean to say that Christ was really bread? Surely not. Yet He says, "I am the bread of life"; "He that eats of this bread shall live for ever." He was not physically or literally bread come down from heaven: that is, the "is" was figuratively and spiritually used: the bread means Himself, who came forth from the Father, and came into the world, the Word made flesh, the Son of God. But incarnation was not enough to save us; for this He must die in atonement for sin, and so He gives His flesh (in death) for the life of the world. To get eternal life we must eat His flesh and drink His blood: in other words, we must each one personally, by faith, receive Him as the dying and crucified Saviour.

The doctrine of Transubstantiation is simply the fruit of the speculations of the schoolmen and their use of Aristotle in the middle ages. It depends, on the face of it, on what they call the difference between "substance" and "accidents." The substance of the bread, they alleged, is changed into the substance of the Lord's body, the accidents (such as colour, taste, smell, etc.), remain. But this was a mere metaphysical theory, without any real foundation. We have got, nowadays, to molecules and atoms infinitely minute, which may be called perhaps substance or essential matter; but all this Aristotelian theory of an imaginary substance, and accidents in material objects, is a mere groundless fancy. It is true; that we see certain qualities which awaken sensation in us—colour, form, hardness, etc.; but the schoolmen made a distinct but imaginary substratum in which the various qualities were inherent—there was the substance of bread, etc. But this was a mere philosophical notion, a mere theory of the heathen Aristotelian school, adopted by the schoolmen, without any other foundation whatever.

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.

N*. Well, we cannot take better authority than the Council of Trent to begin with. "But since Christ our Redeemer said that that which He offered under the form of bread, was truly His body, it has therefore been ever the persuasion of the church, and this holy Synod now anew declares, that, by the consecration of [the] bread and wine, conversion of the whole substance into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord takes place, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. Which conversion is conveniently and properly called, by the holy Catholic church, transubstantiation." (Sess. 12, c. 4.)

N*. Milner takes care not to quote the Canon of the Mass: "This is the chalice of my blood of the new and eternal covenant!" He quotes Matthew and Mark, saying, "This is my blood of the New Testament," which is not in the Canon, and adds, "Luke is nearly the same." Otherwise he has no proofs at all, only he avoids the Canon of the Mass which shews the absurdity of taking it literally. Bellarmine really gives little else than a few words on John 6 to which we will refer.

But allow me to state what is the real truth as to this doctrine, before I examine the scriptural statements in order to shew negatively that it is not taught there. The doctrine of transubstantiation is simply the fruit of the scholastic use of Aristotle in the middle ages. It depends, on the face of it, on the difference of substance and accidents. The substance of bread is changed into the substance of the Lord's body, the accidents of bread remain. Without this theory, the idea could not exist. But this theory of a particular substance and accidents was a mere metaphysical theory, without any real foundation. We have got nowadays to molecules and atoms infinitely minute, which may be called perhaps substance or essential matter; but all this Aristotelian theory of an imaginary substance and accidents in material objects, is a mere groundless fancy. We see different qualities which awaken sensations in us; colour, form, hardness, etc., and the mind recognises there is something there. Of this conviction, which in relation to us creatures I do not dispute, Aristotle and the schoolmen, who were as a rule wholly under his influence, made a distinct but imaginary substratum in which the various qualities were inherent. There was the substance of bread, etc. But this was a mere philosophical notion, a mere theory of the heathen Aristotelian school, adopted by the schoolmen, and has no other foundation whatever. But the whole doctrine of transubstantiation, and even the word, depends on it, cannot exist without it, is the mere expression of it, only bringing in a miracle on the ground of it, as to the Lord's supper.

But men are ever ready to abuse what grace provides, and Christendom, by making this memorial into what they call a "sacrament" (from the Latin "sacramentum," the Roman military oath), and defining it as an "outward and visible symbol of an inward and spiritual grace," have largely lost the true meaning which the Supper is intended to convey. Not only so, but the first error has led to others, Transubstantiationists believe that, at the word of the priests the bread and wine changes its substance and becomes the very body and blood of Christ. Such is Romanist ignorance, darkness, and blasphemy.

It describes the underground propaganda of Newman, Faber, Keble, Pusey, Manning, Ward, Mozley, Froude and others. It was not long before the doctrine of Transubstantiation was introduced; that is, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, it is blasphemously affirmed, that when the officiating priest pronounces certain words the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine, though in sight, taste and touch they appear to be such, and become the very flesh and blood of the Lord. This is called in Romish and Anglo-Catholic circles the Celebration of the Mass.

How fearfully the words of our blessed Lord have been misused, what blasphemous doctrines have been built upon the simple language of the Lord and how this blessed memorial has become the occasion for strife, violence and even bloodshed, we do not care to follow in our exposition. It would take hundreds of pages to record all that. The Roman dogma of the transubstantiation is a downright blasphemy. Hundreds of saints have been tortured and killed for stating thus the lie of transubstantiation, and, if Rome could, she would do the same in the present day. This transubstantiation claims that the bread and wine are changed into the real body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then there is the consubstantiation, the doctrine that the body and blood of Christ coexists in and with the bread and wine, although they retain their nature as bread and wine. This is more or less the teaching of the Lutheran church.