Page:Balthasar Hübmaier.djvu/280

 ".—Upon what is the Christian Church built?

".—On the oral confession of faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. This external confession, and not faith alone, makes a church, for a church has power to bind or to loose, is external, is a body, while faith is eternal. Although faith alone justifies, it does not by itself save. Public confession must be present as we read plainly in Matt, xvi., 18: 'On this rock (to wit, the preceding confession) I will build my church.' See also Matt, x., 32; Luke xii., 8; Rom. x., 10."

Christ has girded his bride, the Church, with two bands: the second of these is the Supper, which is the pledge of brotherly love and the memorial of Christ's sufferings. The bread and wine are real bread and wine: but they are also the body and blood of Christ, yet only in the sense of memorials. Hübmaier asserted an important difference between his teaching and Zwingli's, and reproached the latter for falsifying the Scriptures in saying "This is my body" is equivalent to "This signifies my body." Not even Luther is more emphatic in rejecting this exegesis of the Swiss reformer, and insisting that "is" must be taken in the plain sense of "is" and nothing else. But then he immediately argues away