Ubiquitarians

Ubiquitarians (from the technical term "ubiquity" q.v.]), in ecclesiastical history, a sect of Christians which arose and spread itself in Germany, and whose distinguishing doctrine was that the body of Jesus Christ is everywhere, or in every place. Brentius, a follower of Luther, and one of the earliest Reformists, is said to have first broached this error in 1560. Luther himself, in his controversy with Zwingli, had thrown out some unguarded expressions that seemed to imply a belief of the omnipresence of the body of Christ; for instance, that the man Christ could be everywhere present, not that he was always and everywhere present. He, saw, however, that this opinion was attended with great difficulties, and particularly that it ought not to be made use of as a proof of Christ's corporeal presence in the Eucharist. However, after the death of Luther, this absurd hypothesis was renewed, and dressed up in a specious and plausible form by Brentius, Chemnitius, and Andreeas, who maintained the communication of the properties of Christ's divinity to his human nature. It is, indeed, obvious that every person who believes the doctrine of consubstantiation, whatever he may pretend, must be a Ubiquitarian. The doctrine again became a subject of controversy early in the 17th century, between the divines of Tübingen and Giessen, the former supporting the Ubiquitarian theory, and the latter earnestly opposing it. The Ubiquitarians are strong opponents of the Calvinistic and Zwiniltian theories of the holy encharist, and their dogma is, in fact, a revulsion from them. See Bergier, Dict. de Theologie, s.v.; Cramer, En2chirid. Controvers. Ubiquit. (1613); Dorner. Person, of Christ, II, 2, 280 sq., 422; Mosheinm Eccles. Hist. 5, 3, 153 sq.