Martin Chemnitz Quotes
Nevertheless the meaning is not that the blessed bread which is divided, which is offered, and which the apostles received from the hand of Christ was not the body of Christ but becomes the body of Christ when the eating of it is begun.
Chemnitz, Martin. The Lord's Supper. Translated by J. A. O. Preus, Concordia Publishing House, 1979.
when he ingests the wafer at holy communion He was referring to the Roman Catholic communion where the bread wafer is believed to be the body of Christ. This really offended many Protestants who saw it as blasphemous and to many justified their intolerance. And yet, as Locke herein observed, there was really no injury that a Roman Catholic taking communion inflicted on a Protestant who had nothing to do with the Catholic service. Of course, the same logic did not then apply to the Roman Catholic intolerance of Jewish and Muslim religious customs in which they were not involved.
Martin Chemnitz was an eminent second-generation German, Evangelical Lutheran, Christian theologian, and a Protestant reformer, churchman, and confessor. In the Evangelical Lutheran tradition he is known as Alter Martinus, the "Second Martin": Si Martinus non fuisset, Martinus vix stetisset ("If Martin [Chemnitz] had not come along, Luther would hardly have survived") goes a common saying concerning him. He is listed and remembered in the Calendar of Saints and Commemorations in the Liturgical Church Year as a pastor and confessor by both the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
