II. To the Initial Arguments

43. From the above the answers to the arguments are plain.

As to the first [n.15], because the Eucharist is not a sign of accidental grace but of subsistent grace.

44. As to the second [n.16], it seems the difficulty is good against someone who posits that the sacrament has an action with respect to the thing signified [IV d.1 nn.279-283], but it is not valid against me. For I say that the proposition “a sacrament effects what it signifies” is understood in this way, namely that if it signifies the coming to be of something then that something comes to be through the sacrament through an efficacious sign; but if it signifies the being of something, then that something exists through the sacrament through a true sign [ibid. nn.192-193, 308, 315, 323]. How the ‘through’ is to be understood was stated in d.1 n.280.

45. And when it is said there [n.16] that no finite power can act to make the body of Christ present, I concede when speaking properly of action. Yet some finite virtue or some part of finite virtue can be an immediate disposition for the being of Christ’s body there, not by itself but by God co-assisting there. And in this way did God institute the species, so that, after the consecration, he assists them for the containing of the real presence of Christ’s body.

46. As to the third [n.17] it is plain that the sacrament does not have words for form, because then it would not be a sacrament that remains, since words cannot exist except in succession. But the consecration of the sacrament consists in coming to be, and it requires some form of words in it; but they are not the form of the sacrament but the form of the consecration of the sacrament. And to this extent they can be called sacramental words, because they belong to the sacrament as the form of its consecration, and this consecration is the sacramental beginning. But these words are not said thus to be sacramental as the words of baptism are; for the latter sacramental words are the form of the sacrament.

47. But if you are altogether asking what the form of this sacrament is, I say that the perceptible species are the form, that is, the proximate and formal foundation of the signification, and the signification is what is formal there, as it is in other sacraments.

48. And if you ask what in this foundation is as the matter and what else as the form, I reply that there is not one thing as matter and another as form in it as in the other sacraments. The reason is that this sacrament is permanent and so no words can pertain to its essence. But in any sacrament matter and form are distinguished - the visible sign is said to be the matter, and the words the form.

49. To the fourth [n.18] the reply is that they are both a single sign of one thing (as the body of Christ).

50. On the contrary: synonymous names are different names despite signifying the same thing - and this for the reason that there are several spoken words imposed there for doing the signifying; therefore, by similarity, just as here there are different species doing the signifying, there will be a different sacrament.

51. Therefore I say in another way that, as was said at the end of the question [n.36], the sacrament is one by oneness of integrity, not indivisibility. Therefore, the argument [n.50] does not work.