SECTION IX. Arguments from other Scriptures, proving Christ's real Presence in the Sacrament to be only spiritual, not natural. 1. THE first is taken from those words of our blessed Saviour; "Whatsoever entereth into the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast forth into the draught";" meaning, that all food that is taken by the mouth, hath for his share the fortune of the belly; and indeed, manducation and ejection are equally diminutions of any perfect thing; and because it cannot, without blasphemy, be spoken, that the natural body of Christ ought or can suffer ejection, neither can it suffer manducation. To this Bellarmine weakly answers, that these words of Christ are only true of that which is taken to nourish the body;' which saying of his is not true; for if it be taken to purge the body, or to make the body sick, or to make it lean, or to minister to lust, or to chastise the body, as those who in penances have masticated aloes and other bitter gums, yet still it is cast into the draught. 2. But suppose his meaning true, yet this argument will not so be put off; because although the end of receiving the blessed sacrament is not to nourish the body; yet that it does nourish the body, is affirmed by Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and others; of which I have already given an account. To which I here add the plain words of Rabanus: "Illud [corpus Christi] in nos convertitur, dum id manducamus et bibimus:" "That body is changed into us, when we eat it and drink it;" and therefore, although it hath a higher purpose, yet this also cannot be avoided. 3. Either we may manducate the accidents only, or else the substance of bread, or the substance of Christ's body. If we manducate only the accidents, then how do we eat Christ's body? If we manducate bread, then it is capable of all the natural alterations, and it cannot be denied. But if we manducate Christ's body after a natural manner, what worse thing is it, that it descends into the guts, than that it goes into the stomach; to be cast forth, than to be torn in pieces with the teeth, as I have proved that it is by the Roman doctrine? Now I argue thus: If we eat Christ's natural body, we eat it either naturally or spiritually: if it h St. Matt. xv. 17. k Sect. 5. n. 9. m Sect. 3. n. 6. m i Lib. 1. Euch. c. 14. sect. Resp. cum Algero. 1'H dè reopù rồ σãμa rò äπrov. Aristot. lib. 3. de Anim. cap. 12. be eaten only spiritually, then it is spiritually digested, and is spiritual nourishment, and puts on accidents and affections spiritual. But if the natural body be eaten naturally, then what hinders it from affections and transmutations natural? 4. Although Algerus, and out of him Bellarmine, would have Christians stop their ears against this argument (and so would I against that doctrine, of which these fearful conclusions are unavoidable consequents), yet it is disputed in the 'Summa Angelica,' and an instance or case put which to my sense seems no inconsiderable argument to reprove the folly of this doctrine: for, saith he, what if the species pass indigested into the belly from the stomach? he answers; that they were not meat if they did not nourish; and therefore it is probable, as Boetius says, that the body of our Lord does not go into the draught, though the species do. And yet it is determined by the gloss on the canon law", that as long as the species remain uncorrupted, the holy body is there under those species; and therefore may be vomited; and consequently ejected all ways by which the species can pass unaltered. "Eousque progreditur corpus, quousque species," said Harpsfield, in his disputation at Oxford. If these things be put together, viz. the body is there so long, as the species are uncorrupted: and the species may remain uncorrupted till they be cast upwards or downwards, as in case of sickness it follows that in this case, which is a case easily contingent, by their doctrine, the holy body must pass in latrinam.' And what then? it is to be adored as a true sacrament, though it come from impure places, though it be vomited' so said Vasquez; and it is the prevailing opinion in their church. Add to this, that if this nourishment does not descend and cleave to the guts of the priest, it is certain that God does not hear his prayers: for he is enjoined by the Roman missal, published by authority of the council of Trent and the command of Pope Pius the Fourth, to pray, "Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, et sanguis, quem potavi, adhæreat visceribus meis;" "Let thy body, O Lord, which I have taken, and the blood which I have drunk, cleave to my bowels." It seems indeed they would have it go no further, to prevent the inconveniences of the present argument; but certain it is, that if they intended it for a figurative speech, n De Consecrat. dist. 2. c. Si per negligentiam. Glos. ibid. it was a bold one, and not so fitted for edification, as for an objection. But to return. This also was the argument of Origen P: "Quod si quicquid ingreditur in os, in ventrem abit, et in secessum ejicitur, et ille cibus, qui sanctificatur per verbum Dei perque obsecrationem, juxta id, quod habet materiale, in ventrem abit, et in secessum ejicitur:-et hæc quidem de typico symbolicoque corpore."-He plainly distinguishes the material part from the spiritual in the sacrament, and affirms, that "according to the material part, that meat that is sanctified by the word of God and prayer, enters into the mouths, descends into the belly, and goes forth in the natural ejection. And this is only true of the typical and symbolical body." Now, besides that it affirms the words of our blessed Saviour to have effect in the sacrament, he affirms, that the material part, the type and symbols, are the body of Christ, that is, his body is present in a typical and symbolical manner. This is the plain and natural sense of the words of Origen. But he must not mean what he means, if he says any thing, in another place, that may make for the Roman opinion. And this is their way of answering objections brought from the fathers; they use to oppose words to words, and conclude they must mean their meaning; or else they contradict themselves. And this trick Bellarmine uses frequently, and especially Cardinal Perron, and from them the lesser writers: and so it happens in this present argument; for other words of Origen are brought to prove he inclined to the Roman opinion. But I demand, 1. Are the words more contradictory, if they both be drawn to a spiritual sense, than if they be both drawn to a natural? 2. Though we have no need to make use of it, yet it is no impossible thing that the fathers should contradict one another and themselves too; as you may see pretended violently by Cardinal Perron in his answer to King James. 3. But why must all sheaves bow to their sheaf, and all words be wrested to their fancy, when there are no words any where pretended from them, but with less wresting than these must suffer, they will be brought to speak against them, or at least nothing for them ? But let us see what other words Origen hath, by which we must expound these. 4. Origen says, that "the Christian people drink the blood of Christ, and the flesh of the Word of God is true food." What then? so say we too; but it is P In cap. xv. St. Matt. q St. Matt. xv. 17. spiritual food, and we drink the blood spiritually. He says nothing against that, but very much for it; as I have in several places remarked already. 5. But how can this expound the other words;- Christian people eat Christ's flesh and drink his blood?' therefore, when Origen says, 'The material part, the symbolical body of Christ, is eaten naturally and cast into the draught,' he means, not the body of Christ in his material part, but the accidents of bread, the colour, the taste, the quantity, these are cast out by the belly. Verily a goodly argument; if a man could guess in what mood and figure it could conclude. 6. When a man speaks distinctly and particularly, it is certain he is easier to be understood in his particular and minute meaning, than when he speaks generally. But here he distinguishes a part from a part, one sense from another, the body in one sense from the body in another; therefore these words are to expound the more general, and not they to expound these, unless the general be more particular than that, that is distinguished into kinds,— that is, unless the general be a particular, and the particular be a general. 7. Amalarius was so amused with these words and discourse of Origen, that his understanding grew giddy, and he did not know whether the body of Christ were invisibly taken up into heaven, or kept till our death in the body, or expired at letting of blood, or exhaled in air, or spit out, or breathed forth, our Lord saying, "That which enters into the mouth, descends into the belly, and so goes forth into the draught:" the man was willing to be of the new opinion of the real presence, because it began to be the mode of the age'. But his folly was soberly reproved by a synod at Carisiacum, about the time of Pope Gregory the Fourth, where the difficulty of Origen's argument was better answered, and the article determined, that "the bread and wine are spiritually made the body of Christ; which, being a meat of the mind and not of the belly, is not corrupted but remaineth unto everlasting life." 8. To expound these words of the accidents of bread only, and say that they enter into the belly and go forth in the draught, is a device of them that care not what they say; for, 1. It makes that the 'ejectamentum' or 'excrement' of the body should consist of colour and quantity, without any substance. 2. It makes a man to be nourished by accidents, and so not only one substance to be changed into anEp. ad Guitard. 6 other, but that accidents are changed into substances, which must be, if they nourish the body and pass in latrinam,' and then beyond the device of transubstantiation we have another production from Africa, a transaccidentisubstantiation,' a μεoupioraμevoμerovoía. 3. It makes accidents to have all the affections of substances, as motion, substantial corruption, alteration, that is, not to be accidents but substances. For matter and form are substances, and those that integrate all physical and compound substances: but till yesterday it was never heard that accidents could. Yea, but magnitude is a material quality, and ground or subject of the accidents. So it is said; but it is nonsense. For besides that magnitude is not a quality, but a quantity, neither can it be properly or truly said to be material but imperfectly; because it is an affection of matter; and however it is a contradiction to say, that it is the ground of qualities; for an accident cannot be the fundamentum,' the ground or subject of an accident; that is, the formality and definition of a substance, as every young scholar hath read in Aristotle's Categories: so that to say, that it is the ground of accidents, is to say, that accidents are subjected in magnitude, that is, that magnitude is neither a quantity nor quality, but a substance. Αεὶ δ ̓ ἐστὶν ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ὑφιστάμενον: 'An accident always subsists in a subject,' says Porphyry. 9. This answer cannot be fitted to the words of Origen; for that which he calls the 'quid materiale,' or the material part in the sacrament, he calls it the symbolical body, which cannot be affirmed of accidents, because there is no likeness between the accidents, the colour, the shape, the figure, the roundness, the weight, the magnitude, of the host or wafer, and Christ's body: and therefore, to call the accider's a symbolical body, is to call it an unsymbolical symbol, an unlike similitude, a representment without analogy: but if he means the consecrated bread, the whole action of consecration, distribution, sumption, manducation, this is the symbolical body, according to the words of St. Paul; "He that drinks this cup, and eats this bread, represents the Lord's death;" it is the figure of Christ's crucified body, of his passion and our redemption. 10. It is a strange expression to call accidents a body ; Λευκὸν γὰρ σῶμα λέγεται : ὁ δὲ λόγος ὁ τοῦ λευκοῦ οὐδέποτε κατὰ τοῦ σώματος καταγορηθήσεται, |