Excerpt from The Primitive Tradition of the Eucharistic Body and Blood I have read rather recently in a magazine article a hasty phrase dropped from a pen which I greatly admire and value. It spoke of a certain eucharistic theory which I do not myself hold in respect as a profane and im possible heresy. I have italicized the last word, to point my criticism, and I want to plead with this esteemed writer and those who think with him, and urge upon them that such a phrase is quite too hasty. For the last eight hundred years there has been no Catholic explanation of our Lord's words, This is My body, This is My blood. There is, I am sure, a Catholic doctrine touch ing the Holy Eucharist and it is this: The consecrated bread is our Lord's very body, and the consecrated wine is our Lord's very blood. As to what is meant by those words, body and blood, there has never been any ecumenical decision. I think that there was once an ecumenical agreement. I have tried in these Lectures to show what it was. I may mention that I suppose that agreement to have remained, with little disturbance, but with a fading force of conscious memory on the part of the Church, for more than seven hundred years. S. John of Damascus seems to me to present it clearly and strongly in the middle of the eighth century. But it has been impossible for me to examine closely and fully the testi mony Of the Fathers beyond the first four hundred years of the Church's life. My references to that number of centuries are not to be taken as meaning that I have any idea that the Church's doctrine was different in three or four centuries next following. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.