Take ye, eat ye," or lastly, in the time of pronouncing those words,
"This is my body" (for this is the word whereby, in the Bishop's judgment,
the element was made the sacrament, as we shall see afterward).

Now but, by his leave, we will reduce his five acts to three; for thus
speaketh the text, "And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed it
and break it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is
my body," Matt. xxvi. 26; Mark xiv. 22. Whence it is manifest, that the
giving of the bread to the disciples, which no man, I suppose, will deny
to have been the administration of it, went before the two last acts which
the Bishop reckoneth out. Nothing, therefore, is left to him but to say,
that their gesture of sitting might have been changed, either in the
taking or in the blessing, or in the breaking, or else between the taking
and the blessing, or between the blessing and the breaking; yet doth the
text knit all the three together by such a contiguity and connection as
showeth unto us that they did all make up but one continued action, which
could not admit any interruption.

_Sect._ 2. I saw a prelate sit down to his breakfast, and, as he did eat,
he took some cups, and, having called for more, he said, he thanked God
that he was never given to his belly; and with that he made a promise to
one in the company, which he brake within two days after. Would any man
question whether or not the prelate was sitting when he made this promise,
forasmuch as between his sitting down to meat and the making of the
promise there intervened his taking of some cups, his calling for more,
and his pronouncing of these words, I thank God that I was never given to
my belly? Yet might one far more easily imagine a change of the prelate's
gesture than any such change of the apostles' gesture in that holy action
whereof we speak. Because the text setteth down such a continued, entire,
unbroken, and uninterrupted action, therefore Calvin gathereth out of the
text that the apostles did both take and eat the sacramental bread whilst
they were sitting. _Non legimus_, saith he,(1225) _prostratos adorasse,
sed ut erant discumbentes accepisse et manducasse. Christus_, saith
Martyr,(1226) _eucharistiam apostolis una secum sedentibus aut
discumbentibus distribuit_. G. J. Vossius(1227) puts it out of doubt that
Christ was still sitting at the giving of the bread to the apostles. And
that the apostles were still sitting when they