es, led to great abuses, being employed, through the founding of
masses for souls, to entice immense sums of money from pious
superstition. We may suppose, that the Reformers turned their attention
chiefly to these abuses, and first of all were obliged to attain for
themselves a right view of the design of the Lord's Supper. According
to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, the bread and wine were
changed, by the consecration of the priest, into the real body and
blood of Christ, so that thus, by the transaction of the mass, the
personal Christ was once more sacrificed, as it were, and in this way
the redemption of mankind by the sufferings and death of Christ
dwelling in mass, was, in a certain measure, daily renewed, for the
salvation of all the living, or even the departed, for whom mass was
founded.

This mode of representation was unanimously rejected by the Reformers;
but in order to prove it invalid, they had to resort to explaining the
words of the Gospel, and here they began to diverge more and more from
each other. We all know, that Christ simply expressed himself thus:
"Take, eat; this is my body, broken for you; do this in remembrance of
me;" that after supper he also took the cup, saying: "This cup is the
New Testament in my blood; as oft as ye drink of it, do it in
remembrance of me." Zwingli, with his searching glance, his methods of
examination, strengthened by the study of the lively, vigorous authors
of antiquity, his penetration into the spirit of language and his
dislike to everything contrary to the course of nature, ordained by God
himself, soon arrived at a mere allegorical exposition of these words,
and understood by the expression, _This is_, simply, _This signifies_.
But he did not entertain this view alone. Before he ventured to utter
it publicly, a Dutch jurist, Cornelius Horn, had actually done it.
Zwingli caused his work to be printed in Switzerland, and promoted its
circulation. In the Conference at Zurich touching the mass, he for the
first time came out openly as an advocate of this view; but he did not
satisfy the bulk of his hearers. The not unlearned under-clerk, Joachim
am Gruet, opposed him, even attacked him, in a second Conference before
the Councils and scholars, with tolerable success, and availed himself
of the objection, against the reference of the Reformer to a multitude
of Scripture passages, where Christ in parables likewise made use of
the word "_is_," plainly instead of