A. What is to be Maintained and by What Authority

15. On the first point I say that the proposition ‘the body of Christ is of a truth really there’ belongs simply to the articles of faith, in the way that the truth of any sacrament belongs to the articles of faith. For this truth was handed on expressly from the beginning, from when the Eucharist was instituted.

16. The foundation of this authority is Matthew 26.26-28 and Luke 22.19-20, where in the Cena Christ says, “This is my body; this is my blood.”

17. And if heretics [e,g, Berengar of Tours, who afterwards recanted] want to gloss this by saying that it is said figuratively, like what is said in John 15.1, “I am the true vine,” and in I Corinthians 10.4, “Now that rock was Christ” - this is altogether against the intention of the Savior.

18. The fact is plain from a saying of Augustine 83 Questions q.69 n.2, “The circumstances of Scripture show how to understand Scripture.” For universally the meaning of the words of Christ (whether he is speaking figuratively or not) can be gathered from what precedes and what follows in the same place, or from other places of Scripture. Hence when Christ say, “I am the true vine,” he adds, “and you are the branches;” for it is plain that the disciples were not natural branches but only branches figuratively.

19. But when he says in Luke 22, “This is my body,” he adds, “which will be given up for you;” also when he had said, “This is the chalice of my blood,” he adds in the same place, “which will be shed for you.” The same is also plain from another place of Scripture, namely John 6, where there is an extended sermon about this sacrament.

20. And if you say that, when Christ saw that some departed from him because of his preaching about the Eucharist, he then gave an exposition of himself saying, “The spirit gives life but the flesh is worth nothing at all; the words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life,” which Augustine treats of (On the Psalms psalm 98 n.9; in Gratian Decretum p.3 d.2 ch.44), and says, “Not this body which you see will you eat of, nor the blood that they will shed     etc .” “It is a sacrament I have commended to you; spiritually understood will it give you life.” Therefore      it seems from the words of Christ and Augustine that he does not understand them of the body save figuratively -

21. I say that the Master replies in the text, and replies well, that neither Christ nor Augustine in their exposition mean to deny the truth of Christ’s body in the sacrament, but that Christ’s body is not in the sacrament carnally, as those took it who departed from him, namely as visible in its proper form. Rather, in opposition to this way of understanding, it is there spiritually, that is intelligibly. And this is what Augustine says (and the Master adduces it, from Gratian ibid. ch.45), “It indeed is eaten, and not the body that was seen - it invisibly, not visibly.”The words are not from Augustine in fact but Lanfranc On the Body and Blood of the Lord ch.18, and from Ambrose’s Letter to Irenaeus 64 n.1. The misattributions are found first in Gratian, from whom the Master took them, and Scotus from the Master. Vatican editors. ⁴

22. In this way too does the Apostle treat at length of the Eucharist I Corinthians 11.23-29, and all later Catholics who expound these places of Scripture and say that the words of Scripture are to be understood of the real and not figurative presence of the body of Christ.

23. Hence it is a straightforward heresy today to think that the true body is not really there.

This on the first point [n.14].