II. To the Initial Arguments

288. To the first initial argument [n.89] I say that just as bread is said to be gathered from grains, so the species that remain are said to be gathered, because they are something of what is gathered. And such is the exposition of Augustine.

289. To the second [n.90], Damascene does not mean that we feed on the bread remaining there as we are accustomed to make use of bread, but that, as concerns use, it has the same act as bread has; and the species nourish in the same way as that of which they are the species. His simile then must be understood to the extent we so use the bread and wine as we use things disposed in the same way for our use, or that we are fed in the Eucharist as we use water in baptism. But not to the extent that, as the water remains there, so the substance of the bread remains here, for he expressly holds the opposite immediately afterwards in the same chapter: “The bread itself and the wine pass over,” he says, “into the body and blood of God. But if you ask about how, it suffices for you to hear, since it is done by the Holy Spirit.” And a little later: “Bread and wine and water are by the invocation and special arrival of the Holy Spirit supernaturally transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ.”

290. To the third [n.91] I say that the species of bread and wine represents the true and mystical body of Christ the way bread does, and so the species displays in itself many grains to the extent that grains have the idea of being perceptible, namely by reason of the accidents.

291. To the next [n.92] the answer is plain from the second part of the solution to the question [n.175], for the transubstantiation here is not that whereby the term [of the conversion] receives ‘being simply’ but whereby it receives ‘being here’.

292. To the last one [n.93] I say that the first term of this conversion is neither matter alone, nor matter under quantity (because then there would not be transubstantiation but trans-accidentation), nor matter under some mode, nor the composite of matter and intellective soul. Rather it is the composite of matter and a certain form prior to the intellective soul, which form remained really the same in the living Christ and in his dead body, and which has always remained as the formal part of the thing contained under the Eucharist from the time when the Eucharist was instituted. Therefore the argument is to no avail.