Luther's great principle was never to depart from the doctrine and customs of the Church, except when the language of Scripture rendered it absolutely necessary. "Where has Christ commanded us to elevate the host and exhibit it to the people?" Carlstadt had demanded.--"And where has Christ forbidden it?" was Luther's reply. In this answer lies the principle of the two Reformations. Ecclesiastical traditions were dear to the Saxon reformer. If he separated from them on several points, it was not until after terrible struggles, and because, above all, it was necessary to obey the Scriptures. But when the letter of the Word of God appeared in harmony with the tradition and usages of the Church, he adhered to it with immovable firmness. Now this was what happened in the question of the eucharist. He did not deny that the word _is_ might be taken in the sense indicated by Zwingle. He acknowledged, for instance, that in the words, _That rock was Christ_,[619] it must be so understood; but he denied that this word must have the same meaning in the institution of the Lord's Supper. [619] 1 Cor. x. 4. He found in one of the later schoolmen, Occam,[620] whom he preferred to all others, an opinion which he embraced. Like Occam, he gave up the continually repeated miracle, by virtue of which, according to the Roman Church, the body and blood of Christ took the place of the bread and wine after every consecration by the priest; and with this doctor, he substituted a universal miracle, worked once for all,--that of the ubiquity and omnipresence of the body of Jesus Christ. "Christ," said he, "is present in the bread and wine, because he is present everywhere, and above all, wherever he wills to be."[621] [620] Diu multumque legit scripta Occami cujus acumen anteferebat Thomæ et Scoto. Melancth. Vita Luth. [621] Occam und Luther, _Studien und Kritiken_, 1839, p. 69. [Sidenote: ZWINGLE'S TURN OF MIND.] The turn of Zwingle's mind was very different from Luther's. He was less inclined to preserve a certain union with the universal Church and to maintain his connexion with the traditions of past ages. As a theologian, he looked at Scripture alone, and thence only would he receive his faith freely and immediately, without troubling himself about what others had thought before him. As a republican, he looked to his _commune_ of Zurich. It was the idea of the present Church that engrossed his thoughts, and not that of the Church of former times. He clung particularly to these words of St. Paul: _For we being many are one bread, and one body_; and he saw in the Lord's Supper the sign of a spiritual communion between Christ and all Christians. "Whoever acts unworthily," said he, "is guilty towards the body of Christ of which he is a member." This thought had a great practical influence over men's minds; and the effects it produced in the lives of many confirmed Zwingle in it.