Tractatus de apostasia

e something
INTRODUCTION. XV
real. Some of these realities are in their nature such
that thev cannot even be conceived without a subject; for
instance,
movement without something in motion is unthinkable. But we can
imagine an accident of greater perfection than these, so that, though
naturally requiring the support of a subject, its entity might miraculously
exist, even were its substance to fail. From this results the Scholastic
conception of quantity, which, according to Aquinas,
remains in the
buicharist as the subject of form, colour, movement, taste, and all
the other phenomena observed in the visible and tangible Host. The
reader will of course ask: Can quantity exist without anything that
has quantity? but the very question indicates that he has not
sufficiently understood this hypothesis. Quantity is not a mere
abstraction, nor a mere mode of being; it is quite different from
extension, for it is that which makes extension, and may be defined
as a force that extends material substance: vis extensiva materie. This
force is really distinct from its substance, not as a mode differs from
what it modifies, but as a thing differs from another thing, to which
it belongs. Thus, after the w rords of consecration, the substance of
bread is no longer there, but quantity takes its place, and upholds
the other accidents naturally, being itself upheld by God's supernatural
power; and therefore, whatever the bread could do, — even to
feeding the body — is now performed by the quantity that remains
(Cf. Th. Aq., S. Th.,
hand, though
3 a
Pars, qu. 77, art. 1, 2, 3, 6). On the other
St. Thomas admits that the bread is nowhere after
consecration, he denies that it is annihilated, since it is changed into
Christ's Body (ib. qu. j5, art. 3); which is hard to understand, and is
not, I believe, an article of faith. Neither is it de fide to maintain,
as he does, that Christ, though really present, is not locally present
in the Host, either as a body (secundum modum commensurationis)
or as a spirit (definitive) but rather as the substance of bread was
present before — identical in every part of the volume it occupied
(ib. qu. 76, art. 4, 5).
So long as the old School held its sway, this theory, however
mysterious, however unsatisfactory it may appear, remained the most
popular, and most of the explanations that sprung up to supersede
it approached the confines of heresv, if they did not go beyond them.
Descartes, however, was a sincere Catholic, and vet would not admit