Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you.
Ver. 33. Little children, yet a little while] Here our Saviour useth the self-same words to his apostles, which before he had used to the Jews, with whom he was angry; so to cut off all hope from them of his corporeal presence. The fiction of the ubiquity began about the time of Berengarius; was fostered and furthered by Gerson, Chancellor of Paris, who first taught the real communication of properties, by means whereof the human nature of Christ received this prerogative, said he, that at his supper (and then only) it might be in many places at once, wheresoever the supper was celebrated. But in the year of Christ 1524 Jacobus Faber Staupulensis taught at Paris, that by the same reason Christ might be as well corporally present in all places at once, as he was at the supper. For which doctrine of the ubiquity he was opposed the year following by one Natalis Beda, and by the Sorbonists banished out of France. This is the nativity of that famous ubiquity, which being cast out of France, Luther brought back into the Churches of Germany; Brentius furbished it over, and Smidelinus obtruded it upon many places and persons, whether they would or not; whence he is surnamed, Ubiquitatis Apostolus, Omnipresent Apostle. How much better that good woman in the Book of Martyrs, that being asked by the bishops, "Dost thou believe that the body of Christ is in the sacrament really and substantially?" "I believe," said she, "that that is a real lie, and a substantial lie." Domitius Calderinus, the Italian, who flourished in the year 1442, when he was called by his friends to go to mass, was wont to say (as Vives tells us), Eamus ad communem errorem, Let us go to the common error.