# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1856_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Consubstantiation and Impanation.

That we may never forget this,
He gave us His body to eat,
Hidden in bread so small,
And to drink His blood in the wine.

This is, as is well known, the second verse of the incomparable Communion hymn: "Jesus Christ, our Savior, who turned God's wrath from us," etc., which hymn is a German reworking, by Luther, of a Hussite hymn — perhaps originally, as Wackernagel *) supposes, a Bohemian one, afterward translated into Latin. The relevant words in the Latin translation are:

Nobis in sui memoriam
Dedit hanc panis hostiam

However suspicious those words, "Hidden in bread so small," may sound to those who do not know the doctrine of our church, the solution to the riddle of this manner of speaking, which seems to express impanation, is quite simple. "Hidden" here is by no means an adjective belonging to "body," nor is the word "small" to be referred to "body"; the former word is here rather an adverb, to be joined with the verb "gave," while the word "small" is to be joined with "bread." The sense is therefore: the Lord gave us His body — the highest, greatest good — to eat in and with so "small" a little piece of bread, in a manner "hidden," that is, incomprehensible, to our understanding. — So have our theologians always understood these words. To cite only one of them, Joh. Andr. Quenstedt writes in his Theologia didactico-polemica: "When in the church hymn of Hus, translated by Luther, we sing: Hidden in bread so small (in Latin: parvo latens in crustulo), we do not sing, as the Calvinists accuse us, of an enclosing of the body of Christ lying hidden within the bread (for we expressly say that no divine presence is to be described by a lying-hidden), but rather we thereby sing of the depth of the mystery, praise the ineffable presence, and lift the mind to the incomprehensible greatness of the benefit dealt out to us in this most holy meal. That '"hidden"' refers to the manner of the giving — namely, that Jesus Christ has offered us His body for sacramental partaking in a manner hidden and surpassing all reason. We do not concern ourselves with the Latin translator, if he refers '"hidden"' to "body," as an adjective to its noun. But if he set it adverbially, then he translated as he ought. Therefore '"hidden"' is to be referred not to an enclosing, but to the recognition of the fact that the Lord Jesus, for His most holy remembrance, has set forth the greatest mystery in a small little piece of bread, and has hidden His body — hidden, namely, not in the crumb of the bread, but hidden in the manner of the presence, which we know solely from revelation

*) See: M. Luther's Spiritual Songs with Their Melodies, edited by Phil.
Wackernagel. Stuttgart, published by Liesching (deluxe edition). 1848. P. 130.