Cyprian, Gelasius, And Guido De Bres On Communion In Two Kinds

That we ought not to take from the laity the wine of the supper. Gelasius Pope of Rome, of consecration in that the second distinction, chapter Comperimus etc.

“We have understood that some men receiving only the body of the Lord, do abstain themselves from the cup, who for as much as they sin by superstition, ought to be contravened and compelled to receive the sacrament wholly or else to reject it altogether. For the the division of this mystery cannot be without great sacrilege. Jesus Christ commanded in his Supper and said: drink all of this, for this is my blood of the new testament.”

The Council of Basle has ordained that the laity should communicate the supper in two kinds.

St. Cyprian in his sermon on penitent sinners:

“How shall we exhort the people to shed their blood for the confession of Christ, if we deny to them the blood of him when they ought to fight or how can we make ourselves capable to drink the cup of martyrdom, except that we suffer ourselves first to drink the cup of the Lord?”

Guido De Bres, The Staff of Christian Faith (London, 1577), 28–29; translated from Baston de le Foi, (1555).


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One comment

  1. It is amazing what one finds in the words of the early bishops of Rome. Thomas Cranmer, in his Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ (1550), commented on Gelasius’ argument which refuted the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius. Quoting Gelasius, he shows that transubstantiation was not the understanding in the Church at that time:

    The other example is of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ; which, saith he (Gelasius), “is a godly thing, and yet the substance or nature of bread and wine do not cease to be there still.”

    So regarding the Eucharist, both the cup and the bread distributed to the laity and no transubstantiation in the late 4th century.

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