[Campion]

And most certainly the Apostles themselves did not believe they were actually eating the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ because He was sitting alive alongside them as He instructed them to partake of the Lord's Supper

"Most certainly"? He's God ... he can most certainly cause the Apostles to actually partake of his flesh and blood as he sits there beside them at the Last Supper. And, in fact, that's precisely what he said he did.

And witness to this is borne both by the plain words of Scripture and by the words of, e.g., Ignatius of Antioch, who did learn his faith personally from the Apostles.

[Dr. Eckleburg]

The "plain words" of Jesus Christ were...

"Do this in remembrance of me."

No wizardly incantation, no magical elevation in height, transmogrifies the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Christ is, however, present spiritually during the Lord's Supper, as He told us He would be.

[adiaireton8]

"[The Docetics] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His graciousness, raised from the dead. And so denying the gift of God, these men perish in their disputatiousness."

- St. Ignatius of Antioch (107 AD)

[adiaireton8]

And most certainly the Apostles themselves did not believe they were actually eating the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ because He was sitting alive alongside them as He instructed them to partake of the Lord's Supper

"How was Christ carried in His Own Hands? Because when He commended His Own Body and Blood, He took into His Hands that which the faithful know; and in a manner carried Himself, when He said, 'This is My Body.'"

- St. Augustine