Annotatio CXCIV
”Adore ye the footstool of his feet.” — Psalm 98:5
The words of Augustine expounding this passage, the Sacramentarians of our times usurp;1 and of old the heretics usurped [them] who excluded the body of Christ from the sacrament of the Eucharist. The text of the words is this: “When thou adorest the footstool of his feet, remain not in the flesh by [thy] thought, and be not left un-quickened by the Spirit; for the Spirit quickens, but the flesh profits nothing. But at that time, when the Lord commended this, he had spoken of his flesh, and had said, ‘Unless one shall have eaten my flesh, he shall not have life eternal in himself’;2 certain disciples were scandalized, and said, ‘This is a hard saying.’ They took it foolishly, they thought it carnally, and supposed that the Lord was about to cut off certain little pieces from his body and give them to them; and they said, ‘This is a hard saying.’ They themselves were hard, not the saying. But he instructed them, and said to them: ‘It is the Spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing. The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life.’ Understand spiritually that which I have spoken: it is not this body which ye see that ye are to eat, nor are ye to drink that blood which they will shed who will crucify me. I have commended to you some sacrament; understood spiritually, it will quicken you. And although it is necessary that it be visibly celebrated, yet it must be understood invisibly.” Peter [Lombard], bishop of Paris, vindicated this passage from the wrenching of the heretics, in book 4 of the Sentences, distinction 10. See below, Annotation 196 of book 6.