Luther approached the whole subject by a different path. What repelled him in the mediæval doctrine of the Holy Supper was the way in which he believed it to trample on the spiritual priesthood of all believers. He protested against Transubstantiation and private Masses, because they were the most flagrant instances of that contempt. When he first preached on the subject (1519) it was to demand the "cup" for the laity, and he makes use of an expression in his sermon which reveals how his thoughts were tending. He says that in the Sacrament of the Holy Supper "the communicant is so united to Christ _and His saints_, that Christ's life and sufferings _and the lives and sufferings of the saints_ become his." No one held more strongly than Luther that the Atonement was made by our Lord, and by Him alone. Therefore he cannot be thinking of the Atonement when he speaks of union with the lives and the sufferings of the saints. He believes that the main thing in the Sacrament is that it gives such a companionship with Jesus as His disciples and saints have had. There was, of course, a reference to the death of Christ and to the Atonement, for apart from that death no companionship is possible; but the reference is indirect, and through the thought of the fellowship. In the Sacrament we touch Christ as His disciples might have touched Him when He lived on earth, and as His glorified saints touch Him now. This reference, therefore, clearly shows that Luther saw in the Sacrament of the Supper the presence of the glorified Body of our Lord, and that the primary use of the Sacrament was to bring the communicant into contact with that glorified Body. This required a presence (and Luther thought a presence extended in space) of the glorified Body of Christ in the Sacrament in order that the communicant might be in actual contact with it. But communion with the Living Christ implies the appropriation of the death of Christ, and of the Atonement won by His death. Thus the reference to the Crucified Christ which Zwingli reaches directly, Luther attains indirectly; and the reference to the Living Risen Christ which Zwingli reaches indirectly, Luther attains directly. Luther avoided the need of a priestly miracle to bring the Body extended in space into immediate connection with the elements Bread and Wine, by introducing a scholastic theory of what is meant by presence in Space. A body may be present in Space, said the Schoolmen, in two ways: it may be present in such a way that it excludes from the space it occupies any other body, or it may be present occupying the same space with another body. The Glorified Body of Christ can be present in the latter manner. It was so when our Lord after His Resurrection appeared suddenly among His disciples in a room when the doors were shut; for then at some moment of time it must have occupied the same space as a portion of the walls or of the door. Christ's glorified Body can therefore be naturally in the _elements_ without any special miracle, for it is _ubiquitous_. It is in the table at which I write, said Luther; in the stone which I hurl through the air. It is in the _elements_ in the Holy Supper in a perfectly natural way, and needs no priestly miracle to bring it there. This natural presence of the Body of Christ in the elements in the Supper is changed into a Sacramental Presence by the promise of God, which is attached to the reverent and believing partaking of the Holy Supper.