V. Christ used bread because with the divine blessing it is of all the elements the most efficacious for nourishing and strengthening the body; the most common, the most familiar and to be found everywhere, easily prepared and the most pleasant. However, the bread he used was unleavened; not from the necessity of the thing, but from an accidental circumstance of time, on account of the feast of the Passover, in which it was lawful neither to use nor to have any other (Ex. 12:19). Otherwise it was always fermented in Judea (whenever the Supper was celebrated outside of that time, Acts 2:42) as well as among the Gentiles (who used common and not unleavened bread). Hence it was called simply the “breaking of bread” (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 10:16; 11:26, 27). So that here so fierce a dispute on this subject falsely sprang up between the Greeks and Latins; the Greeks pressing the necessity of leavened, the latter of unleavened bread. The former were called “fermentarians” and the latter “azymites.” The thing is in itself indifferent (as many of the Romanists acknowledge); on account of which the peace of the church ought not to be disturbed, but it should be left to their freedom (as it is evident that both the ancient and also the modern uses vary). We do not deny that the use of fermented bread seems to us the more suitable, both because it is more in accordance with the design of Christ (which was to use common and ordinary bread, which is everywhere to be found); and because it is more appropriate to sustain the sacramental analogy (which consists in signifying our communion with Christ by the similitude of bodily nourishment); and because the necessity of unleavened bread belongs to the Jewish ceremonies (which are abrogated and cannot be retained without a certain affectation [kakozēlia] of Judaism); and because in the whole ancient church no traces appear of the common use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist before the ninth or tenth century. Yea, it is evident that the Eucharistic symbols were formerly taken from the offerings of bread and wine made by believers, which were undoubtedly of ordinary and fermented bread (as the Jesuit James Sirmondus, “Disquisitio de Azymo,” Opera Varia [1696], 4:513–30, candidly acknowledges and solidly confirms by many arguments). The example of Christ neither can nor ought to be made an objection here, because as we have said there was a peculiar reason which impelled him to the use of unleavened bread (which no longer exists). Therefore, his example binds us as to the essence of the thing itself, that we should do whatever he did (take, bless, and break the bread and other acts of this kind mentioned by the sacred writers); but not forthwith as to the particular circumstances, which do not belong to the thing. Suarez remarks: “An act of Christ alone is not sufficient to form a command; for although he consecrated in white wine, or at night, for example, he did not on that account command us so to consecrate” (3. Thom. de Sacra). Nor if unleavened cakes have a mystical signification, are they immediately of divine institution, since it is evident that the cause of the institution was the memory of the hasty departure from Egypt.

Francis Turretin | Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 19.22.5, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 3 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 430.

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