§ 115. THE EUCHARIST. 715
is the oblation of our salvation.1 It was also called the mass.
The elements to be used are wheaten bread, either leavened or unleavened. Water is to be mixed with the wine as Christ probably mixed them, following the custom in Palestine. Water symbolizes the people, and the wine symbolizes Christ, and their combination the union of the people with Christ. The mixture likewise represents the scene of the passion. Thomas Aquinas also finds in the water flowing in the des ert, 1 Cor. 10: 4, a type of this custom. He relied much, as did Albertus Magnus2 before him, upon the words of Prov. 9 : 5, Come eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled for you. But the admixture of the two elements is not essential. The synods of Cologne, 1279, Lambeth, 1281, etc., prescribed two or three drops of water as sufficient.
At the moment of priestly consecration, the elements of bread and wine are converted into the very body and blood of Christ. The substance of the bread and wine disappears. The " accidents " — species sensibiles — remain, such as taste, color, dimensions, and weight. What becomes of the sub stance of the two elements ? asks Peter the Lombard. There are three possible answers. First, the substance passes into the four original elements or into the body and blood of Christ. Second, it is annihilated. Third, it remains in part or in whole. Duns Scotus adopted the second explanation, the substance is annihilated.3 The Lombard, Bonaventura, and Thomas Aquinas adopted the view that the substance is converted into the body and blood of Christ. Against the theory of annihilation Thomas used the illustration that it does not follow because air, from which fire is generated, is
1 Hostia salutaris. Eph. 5:2, is quoted where the word hostia is used in the Vulgate for Christ's sacrifice.
2De euchar. vol. XIII. 668. Th. Aquinas, III. 74. 1, Migne, IV. 705, speaks of the Cataphrygse and Pepuziani as mixing with the dough of the sacramental bread the blood of children gotten by pricking their bodies, and also of the Aquarii who, from considerations of temperance, used only water.
8 He defined transubstantiation as transitus totaUs substantice in substantiam. Seeberg, p. 378.
716 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1204.
not here nor there, that it has been annihilated. The change on the altar is altogether supernatural. The body of Christ is in the sacrament not quantitatively, per modum quantitatis, but in substance; not in its dimensions, but by a sacramental virtue, ex vi sacramenti, in a way peculiar to this sacrament. It is on the altar and is apprehended by faith only.1
Upon the basis of the separate existence of substance and " accidents " the Schoolmen proceeded to perfect their theory. What the substance of bread is, if it is not its nutritive power, and how it is possible to think of bread without those qualities which make it bread to us, the practical mind can not understand. Scholastic dialectics professed to under stand it, but the statements are nothing more than a fabric of mystifying terms and gratuitous assumptions. Wyclif thoroughly exposed the fallacious reasoning.
Thomas Aquinas went so far as to declare that, though the substance of bread and wine disappears, these elements con tinue to preserve the virtue of their substance.2 Luther said the Schoolmen might as well have set up a theory of transaccident ation as of transubstantiation. Thomas Aquinas an ticipated his objection and argued that by a providential ar rangement this was not so for three reasons: 1. It is not the custom for men to eat human flesh and drink human blood, and we would revolt from eating Christ's blood and flesh un der the form of bread and wine. 2. The sacrament would become a laughing stock to infidels if Christ were eaten in his own form. 3. Faith is called forth by the enveilment of the Lord within the forms of bread and wine. The body of Christ is not broken or divided by the teeth except in a sacramental way.3 Creation, said this great Schoolman, is
1Th. Aq., III. 75. 1, Migne, IV. 716, neque sensu, neque intellectu deprehendi potest sed sola fide. Bonaventura says, Brevil.VI. 9, in specierum utraque continetnr totaliter, non circumscriptibiliter, nee localiter sed sacramentaliter totus Chris tus.
2 Quamvis non sint substantia, habent mrtutem substantice. Th. Aq., III. 77. 6, Migne, IV. 755.
8Th. Aq., III. 77. 7, Migne, IV. 756; Bonaventura, Brpvil., 322.