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Works Tertullian (160-220) De resurrectione carnis Elucidation - On the resurrection of the flesh

II.

(His flesh, the Bread, cap. xxxvii. p. 572.)

Note our author's exposition. He censures those who understood our Lord's words after the letter, as if they were to eat the carnal body. He expounds the spiritual thing which gives life as to be understood by the text: "the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." His word is the life-giving principle and therefore he called his flesh by the same name: and we are to "devour Him with the ear and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith." The flesh profits nothing, the spirit imparts life. Now, was Tertullian ever censured for this exposition? On the contrary, this was the faith of the Catholic Church, from the beginning. Our Saxon forefathers taught the same, as appears from the Homily of Aelfric, 1 a.d. 980, and from the exposition of Ratramn, a.d. 840. The heresy of Transubstantiation was not dogmatic even among Latins, until the Thirteenth century, and it prevailed in England less than three hundred years, when the Catholic doctrine was restored, through the influence of Ratramn's treatise first upon the mind of Ridley and then by Ridley's arguments with Cranmer. Thus were their understandings opened to the Scriptures and to the acknowledging of the Truth, for which they suffered martyrdom. To the reformation we owe the rescue of Ante-Nicene doctrine from the perversions of the Schoolmen and the gradual corruptions of doctrine after the Ninth Century.


  1. ^82 See Soames' Anglo Saxon Church, cap. xii. p. 465, and cap. xi. pp. 423-430. See also the valuable annotations of Dr. Routh's Opuscula, Vol. II. pp. 167-186. ↩

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De resurrectione carnis
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De la résurrection de la chair
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Über die Auferstehung des Fleisches. (BKV)
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Elucidation - On the resurrection of the flesh

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Faculty of Theology, Patristics and History of the Early Church
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