[PAR35]

though the Westminster Confession of Faith recognizes only a symbolic presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Not an accurate statement of either the WCoF or the reformed doctrine.

The Calvinst view is that Christ is present is a spiritual, but not physical sense. Thus it is distinguished from the Catholic and Lutheran view of a real physical presence, but also from the Baptist view that the elements are merely symbolic.

The relevant portions of Chapter 29 of the WCofF:

V. The outward elements in this sacrament, duly set apart to the uses ordained by Christ, have such relation to Him crucified, as that, truly, yet sacramentally only, they are sometimes called by the name of the things they represent, to wit, the body and blood of Christ; albeit, in substance and nature, they still remain truly and only bread and wine, as they were before.

VII. Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament,[13] do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.

[loftyheights]

PAR,
I ought to have been more clear when I used the words "true presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar". I needed to write, "the true, bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar according to His divine and human natures." Incidentally, until after the Reformation the almost unanimous belief among church fathers is that of the bodily presence both according to Christ's divine and human natures. The fact that most "influential" churches deny this doctrine is nothing short of apostasy, in my opinion.