Irenæus has expressed himself so much more fully on the subject of the holy Eucharist than any other writer near his time, that it is not wonderful that his opinions should be appealed to by those who have entered into the various discussions on the subject. And his language has just so much of ambiguity about it as to allow of hanging upon it a more exact and positive meaning than he ever thought of. Every sentence, and almost every word therefore, requires to be well weighed, that we may come at his real meaning. And we must bear in mind that he wrote hundreds of years before any controversy had arisen on the subject, and consequently is not to be judged of as though he had written since. There are two or three important passages which bear directly on the subject, and I do not know how to do justice to it without giving them at length. The first I shall take is that in the fifth book(404), where he is combating the Gnostic notion that the flesh is incapable of salvation. His words are as follows:— “And altogether absurd are they who despise the whole of the divine arrangement, and deny the salvation of the flesh, and reject its regeneration, saying that it is not capable of immortality. But if it is not saved, then the Lord did not redeem us by his blood; nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of his blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of his body. For there is no blood, except from veins and flesh, and the rest of man’s substance, in which the Word of God was truly made. With his blood he redeemed us; as also his apostle saith: _in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the remission of sins_. And since we are his members, and are nourished by the creature, and he himself gives us the creature, making his sun to rise and sending rain as it pleaseth him, he has recognised the cup of the creature for his own blood, with which he tinges (δεύει) our blood, and the bread of the creature he has ordained to be his own body, by which he strengthens our body.