The Catholic Doctors approved by the Roman Church, who have written about the sacrament of the Eucharist, intend to assert this, that the body of Christ which was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered and was buried, which also rose from the dead and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the Father, and in which the Son of God is about to come to judge the living and the dead, is really and truly contained under the species of bread. But, although it may really lie hidden under the species of bread, it certainly is not seen by us with the bodily eye, but with the mind the faithful believe that it is concealed under the species of bread.
And it is also held that the substance of the bread is transubstantiated, converted, or changed, so that the substance of the bread does not remain but that only the accidents existing per se remain without a subject.
And not only the body of Christ, which is one of the two parts of the human nature affected by the transubstantiation of the bread, is really contained under the species of bread; but also the whole Christ, undivided, perfect God and true man, is at the same time truly and really contained under the entire host and under each part; although by a proper assumption of ‘conversion’ and ‘transubstantiation,’ the substance of the bread may not be converted into divinity or rational soul or into some accident.
This is also my faith, since this is the Catholic faith. For whatever the Roman Church explicitly believes, this alone and nothing else either explicitly or implicitly I believe. But how much efficiency and nobility there may be in implicit faith Innocent sets forth in a gloss on the De Summa Trinitate et Fide Catholica, ‘Firmiter.’ “Implicit faith,” he says, “prevails to such a degree, as some say, that if any one has this; namely, that he believes as the church believes; if he is impelled by natural reason falsely to think that the Father may be greater or prior to the Son or that the three persons may be three things mutually separate, he is not a heretic nor does he sin; provided he does not defend this error and believes this very statement because he believes that the church so believes, and substitutes his opinion for the faith of the church; for although he may thus wrongly think, yet that faith is not his faith; on the contrary his own faith is the faith of the church.”
Therefore, if there be such great efficacy in implicit faith that it may excuse one ignorantly erring concerning those doctrines which are set forth in the canonical Scriptures, much more will it excuse the one ignorantly forming an opinion of something which is found set forth neither in the canonical Scriptures nor in the writings of the Doctors approved by the church.
← The Introduction to the Tract Concerning the Body of Christ Begins. Prologue · Contents · Chapter II That the Body of Christ Is Really Contained Under the Species of →