In the same year that the Anabaptists made their appearance (1524), a long and pernicious controversy arose among those who had withdrawn from the Romish communion, respecting the manner in which the body and blood of Christ are present in the sacred supper. Luther and his adherents, while they renounced the papal error of transubstantiation—that the bread and wine after consecration remained no longer, but were transmuted into the body and blood of Christ—yet did maintain that persons coming to the sacred supper participated truly of the body and blood of Christ, together with the bread and wine. This doctrine gave rise to the term, consubstantiation. Ulric Zwingle, the Swiss Reformer, and his adherents were much more simple, being more fully delivered from the traditions of Rome. They maintained that the body and blood of the Lord are not present in the holy supper, but that the bread and the wine are merely symbols or emblems by which people should be moved to remember the death of Christ, and the blessing flowing therefrom.
As nearly all the Swiss divines, and not a few in Upper Germany, followed the teaching of Zwingle, and Luther and his friends contended strennously for his doctrine, great disunion was created among the true friends of the Reformation, which was artfully fomented by the papists. But more of this afterward, if the Lord will. We now turn to the