Maceration

“ But since He said, “And the bread which I will give is My flesh,” and since flesh is moistened with blood, and blood is figuratively termed wine, we are bidden to know that, as bread, crumbled into a mixture of wine and water, seizes on the wine and leaves the watery portion, so also the flesh of Christ, the bread of heaven absorbs the blood; that is, those among men who are heavenly, nourishing them up to immortality, and leaving only to destruction the lusts of the flesh.
Thus in many ways the Word is figuratively described, as meat, and flesh, and food, and bread, and blood, and milk. ”

“ But in the confessional the poison is administered under the name of a pure and refreshing water; the deadly wound is inflicted by a sword so well oiled that the blow is not felt; the vilest and most impure notions and thoughts, in the form of questions and answers, are presented and accepted as the bread of life! ”

“ I profess that in the Mass is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice, for the living and the dead, and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly really and in substance the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that there does take place a conversion of the entire substance of the bread into the body, and of the entire substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic Church doth call Transubstantiation. ”

“ If she hunger, and want milk, the infant, deprived of its proper sustenance, languishes and dies. But if, in her greatest extremity, she drink but the lees of wine, those lees, taken by the mouth, become changed into blood, and supply milk and nutriment to the child. If nature, then, exert so much power over the woman, how much more shall the virtue of the sacramental rite, operating by the mouth of the priest, (that is, by the words of Christ proceeding from his mouth) , convert bread into flesh, and wine into blood. ”

“ The blood of the Lamb has put away every obstacle to our fellowship with God; and in proof of this the Holy Ghost has come down to baptize believers into one body, and gather them round the risen and glorified Head. The wine is the memorial of a life shed out for sin: the bread is the memorial of a body broken for sin: but we are not gathered round a life poured out, nor round a body broken, but round a living Christ, who dieth no more, who cannot have His body broken any more, or His blood shed any more. ”

“ Now the law requires, both in private and public sacrifices, that the finest flour be also brought; for a lamb the measure of one tenth deal, - for a ram two, - and for a bull three. This they consecrate upon the altar, when it is mingled with oil; for oil is also brought by those that sacrifice; for a bull the half of an hin, and for a ram the third part of the same measure, and one quarter of it for a lamb. ”

“ I most firmly believe that thou, my God, art here present, and that thou art looking out upon me from behind the veil of the sacrament, and dost behold all the most secret recesses of my heart. I believe that under this species of bread are contained not only thy Flesh and thy Blood, but also thy Divinity and thy Humanity. ”

“ The totem-animal was regarded as a kinsman, and the domestic animal often as a god.210 But in both these cases the life of the kinsman and god was sacrificed in order that the community might be bound together by eating the body and assimilating the life. Consequently, when grain came to be the sacrificial food, it was often held that an animal or human being must be sacrificed in the character of the corn-god or spirit, whether his own flesh was eaten or the sacred grain was imagined to be his flesh. ”

“ Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?—The stronger ones have not helped the weak to feed and grow strong; but, as though it were a small matter, the clergy, have lived on the fat of the land, relatively to their poorer congregations. ”

“ And they ever thronged about the corpse as when in a farmstead flies buzz about the full milk-pails, in the season of spring, when the milk drenches the vessels; even so thronged they about the corpse. ”

“ Water of purification which is disallowed, must not be kneaded in mortar, lest it bring misfortune to others. R. Judah said, “it is worthless.” “A cow which drank water of purification?” “Her flesh is unclean for twenty-four hours.”750 R. Judah said, “it becomes worthless in her intestines.” ”

“ There are many things to commend cremation aside from the pretty Indian fancy that fire, the purifier, completes the deliverance of the soul from its long-time prison of flesh, and by the smoke and ascending heat forms a path on which the spirit ascends to its home in the skies, or, as one tribe has it, the soft, warm chariot conveys the released and purified soul toward the sun. ”

“ Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross. ”

“ Thank God for all these other things! but you cannot heal a man who has poison in his veins by administering cosmetics, and you cannot put out Vesuvius with a jugful of water. If the camp is to be healed, the Christ must be lifted up. ”

“ Does it call the bread flesh, either before or after the consecration? Let us see. "Jesus took bread." "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine." "The bread which we break." "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup." Such is the language of inspiration. Now we ask, if the Holy Spirit desired that plain and unprejudiced readers should find the doctrine of Transubstantiation in His words, why does He call the earthly elements bread and wine before, during and after the consecration Why does He not say, "as often as ye eat this flesh and drink this blood?" ”

“ The four ingredients, earth, saliva, coals, and water, are then mixed together in a dish, and the patient is made to take three sips, and what remains is taken to a private place and buried, the person who buries it making three paces backward, exclaiming, "May the evil eye be buried beneath the earth." ”

“ And thou shalt kill him in the sight of the Lord, beside the door of the tabernacle of the testimony.
29:12. And taking some of the blood of the calf, thou shalt put it upon the horns of the altar with thy finger, and the rest of the blood thou shalt pour at the bottom thereof.
29:13. Thou shalt take also all the fat that covereth the entrails, and the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon them, and shalt offer a burn offering upon the altar:
29:14. But the flesh of the calf, and the hide and the dung, thou shalt burn abroad, without the camp, because it is for sin. ”

“ It is the blood of Christ, who offered Himself to God, without spot, through the eternal Spirit, that He might purge your conscience. As the typical sacrifices under p. 374the law purified men from ceremonial defilement, so the real sacrifice of the Gospel saves the believer from moral pollution. Blood was the life of all the services of the tabernacle made with hands, and gave significance, and utility to all the rites of the former dispensation. By blood the covenant between God, and His people was sealed. By blood the officers, and vessels of the sanctuary were consecrated. ”

“ I am apt to think, that when a body is buried under ground, according to the depth of the grave, and difference of the weather and soil, the fermentation may be greater or lesser, and that according to the several kinds of meats or liquids in the stomach, the putrifaction will likewise vary so that it seems to me to be very uncertain. ”

“ Then the porridge plate of each member of the family is rubbed with the lerotse leaves. When this purification has been completed, but not before, the people are free to eat of the new crops. On the night after the purification every man was bound, as a matter of ritual, to sleep with his chief wife. If she had been unfaithful to him during the past year, it was incumbent on her to confess her sin before she fulfilled her part of the ceremony. Having confessed she was purified by a medicine-man, who fumigated her with the smoke produced by burning a bean plant. ”

“ Each strikes inwards and works outwards. The whole of a life may be set forth in the pregnant figure, 'A sower went forth to sow,' and 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' The seed may lie long dormant, but the green shoots will appear in due time, and pass through all the stages of 'first the blade, and then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear.' The sower has to become the reaper, and the reaper has to eat of the bread made from the product of the long past sowing. Shall we have to reap a harvest of poisonous tares, or of wholesome wheat? ”

“ The consumption of the body in the grave, though common to all, yet to them is in the nature of a punishment for their sin. The grave shall consume those that have sinned; that land of darkness will be the lot of those that love darkness rather than light. The bodies they pampered shall be a feast for worms, which shall feed as sweetly on them as ever they fed on the pleasures and gains of their sins. ”

“ That potion will rescue our bodies from torture, our minds from insult, our eyes and ears from seeing and hearing all those cruelties and indignities which await the vanquished. There will be persons in readiness who will throw our lifeless bodies upon a large pile kindled in the court-yard of the house. ”

“ Cremation and burial were, therefore, held in abhorrence, and a deceased person had to be borne to some isolated spot, far from fire and water, there to be exposed on an elevated bier with the intention that the flesh should be devoured by wild dogs, birds, etc. ”

“ One old man who had entirely lost his scruples in our absorption in the details of dairy ritual absolutely refused to speak a word when I turned to the subject of animal sacrifice, and for this and some other topics I had to be content with less scrupulous but at the same time less trustworthy witnesses. ”

“ The pernicious abuse has prevailed in your country of adding water in greater quantity than the wine, in the sacrifice, where according to the reasonable custom of the entire Church more wine than water ought to be employed. ”

“ The earliest form of sacrifice, as shown by Professor Robertson Smith,3 was that in which the community of kinsmen ate together the flesh of their divine or totem animal god and drank its blood. When the god became separated from the animal and was represented by a stone at the place of worship and the people had ceased to eat raw flesh and drink blood, the blood was poured out over the stone as an offering to the god. ”

“ At every agricultural festival, then, animal sacrifice may be assumed as an element. The analogy of the relation between the fertilization spirit and his worshippers to the human blood bond makes it probable that originally the rite was always a bloody one [426] . ”

“ To the dark womb of holy earth, Do we our handywork confide; The sower too confides his seed, And hopes that it shall yet shoot forth To bless – if heaven has so decreed. Far costlier seed do we commit In sorrow to the earth's dark womb, And hope that, from the coffin, it May blossom to a fairer doom. ”

“ And such as is the union of the Word with baptism, is the agreement of milk with water; for it receives it alone of all liquids, and admits of mixture with water, for the purpose of cleansing, as baptism for the remission of sins. And it is mixed naturally with honey also, and this for cleansing along with sweet nutriment. For the Word blended with love at once cures our passions and cleanses our sins ”

“ The food and drink we partake of are contaminated with the seeds of death, yet we partake of them to extend our lives until our allotted work is finished, when our tabernacle is in a state of ripeness, are sown in the earth to produce immortal fruit. ”

“ Those, too, that kick the bellies of certain animals before parturition, in order to feast on flesh mixed with milk, make the womb created for the birth of the fœtus its grave, though the law expressly commands, “But neither shalt thou seethe a lamb in its mother’s milk.” [201] For the nourishment of the living animal, it is meant, may not become sauce for that which has been deprived of life; and that, which is the cause of life, may not co-operate in the consumption of the body. ”

“ South-running water, salt, rowan-tree, enchanted flints (probably elf-arrow heads) , and doggrel verses (generally a translation of the Creed or Lord’s Prayer) were the means employed for effecting a cure. Diseases again were laid on by forming pictures of clay or wax, which were placed before the fire or buried with the heads downward; by placing a dead hand, or some mutilated member, in the house of the intended victim ”

“ An old man, belonging to those who furnished every thing necessary for funerals, sat near the deceased, with some domestics clothed in black. On the eighth day the funeral [Pg 7] rites were performed; but to prevent the body from corrupting before that time, salt, wax, the resinous gum of the cedar, myrrh, honey, balm, gypsum, lime, asphaltes, or bitumen of Judea, and several other substances, were employed. The body was carried to the pile with the face uncovered, unless wounds, or the nature of the disease had rendered it loathsome and disgusting. ”