st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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84 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
to surmount the difficulty
by suggesting a new piece
of subtilty, that like as a man s body takes in daily
additional matter, and all becomes one and the same
body, so our Lord s personal body takes in all the newmade
bodies of the Eucharist ;
and thus, by a kind
of growth or augmentation,
all become one and the
same personal body of Christ. A marvellous thought !
But he was wedded to a new scheme." This new
scheme," of which Waterland makes John of Damascus
a votary, was the cause of image-worship. Upon
this, in fact, Waterland lays the blame of much of
the innovation in theory which about this time began
to prevail respecting the Holy Eucharist. "The
bread and wine,"
Damascenus goes on to say ( 271),
is not a type of the body and blood of Christ God
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forbid ! but the very deified body of the Lord."
Commenting upon language like this, Waterland
tells us that the next time this new doctrine
appeared upon the stage was in the service of imageworship,
then creeping into the Church. They who
opposed that innovation, kept up the ancient principle
with regard to the elements of the Eucharist as
symbols, figures, images ; pleading that our Lord had
left no visible image of Himself, His incarnation,
passion, sacrifice, &c., but that of the Eucharist. In
reply to that plea, the innovators remonstrated against
the symbolical nature of the Eucharist, contending
that the consecrated elements were no images, types,
or figures, but the very body and blood of Christ,
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literally Near as the language of Damascenus
so."
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1
Epist. ad Zachariam," p. 197.