# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S372
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

372 The Lutheran Formula of Distribution, etc.

formula), were nowhere and never used in the ancient Church at the
distribution. The word of the Lord, one recognized clearly, belonged
in the Consecration; the confession of the Church, in the Distribution.
One was as far as possible removed from the thought — which one would
have regarded as satanic — of wanting, out of distrust in the unconditional
truth of the clear testamentary word of the Lord, and in order to leave its
validity or non-validity open to a supposedly peace-loving human freedom,
to transform the confession made in honor of the Lord at the Distribution
into a report deliberately evading this confession ("Jesus said, etc."), and
thus into a non-confession to his dishonor, a denial." (P. 332.)

From the time of Bishop Gregory the Great onward (6th century) the
following formula of distribution was used: "The body — the blood of
our Lord Jesus Christ preserve your soul." (Joh. diac., Vita Greg.
II, 41.) At the time of Charles the Great there arose the formula, still
found in the Roman Canon missae: "The body — the blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ preserve you (or also: your soul) unto eternal life."
(See: G. A. Franke, Von der Formel der Darreichung, in the
Theologisch-historische Abhandlungen, p. 229.)

In Luther's first Agenda of 1523, or: "The Manner of Holding
Christian Mass," it says: "The priest may also speak this prayer: The
body of our Lord, etc., preserve your soul unto eternal life, and the
blood of our Lord preserve, etc." (Opp. X, 2760.) In the Agenda drawn
up in 1536 for the lands of Duke Henry of Saxony, and afterward
introduced in many others as well, among them even the Electoral Saxon
lands, the prescribed formula is: "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ,
given for you unto death, strengthen and preserve you in faith unto
eternal life. Amen. The blood of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, shed for
your sin, strengthen and preserve you in the true faith unto eternal life.
Amen." In the Nürnberg "Agendbüchlein" (by Veit Dietrich) of the year
1533, on the other hand, the words of distribution read: "Take and eat,
this is the body of Christ, which is given for you. Take and drink, this
is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for your sin."
(Dodecas scriptor., p. 1165.) In the Swedish and Finnish Church, according
to an ordinance of 1693, the words of distribution are: "Jesus Christ,
whose body — whose blood — you receive, preserve you unto eternal
life. Amen." (See Schwedens Kirchenverfassung, by F. W. v. Schubert,
Greifswald, 1821, C. 2, p. 79.) The formula that had already come into
use in very many Lutheran churches in the 16th century, and in many
places has also remained in use, *)

*) When we ourselves were still a preacher in the Kingdom of Saxony, we used this
formula, herein following a long line of our predecessors in office, down to the last of them.