Tractatus de apostasia

XXXII
INTRODUCTION.
never mention this scandalous theory, which resembles the apotheosis
of Pagan idolaters, who made a god out of nothing. The Sacrament
has weight; that cannot be accounted for on the hypothesis
of an
aggregate of accidents. This theory makes out the Sacrament to be
(even after consecration) only a sign of Christ's Body; which is the
heresy of Berengarius.
Ch. XIII. Quality, as an absolute accident, is here discussed.
Of all the theories, it is the least improbable; a sacrament is a form
of grace, and in so far a quality; some Saints bssides have favoured
this opinion, which is however inadmissible. The arguments already
brought to bear against quantity are conclusive here too. Quality
within quality would be multiplied ad infinitum. We cannot say that
the Sacrament is whiteness, heaviness, &c. but that it has them; and
for, that reason Aquinas made quantity the basis that has (pp. i65— 168).
If however the substance of bread failed, when passing into the
substance of Christ's Body, nothing would pass. Baptism
does not
annihilate the convert to whom it gives a new being. How this
change is conceivable it is hard to say; whether natural, as in the
eduction of forms, or supernatural,
as in the present case. Whatever
Pope Innocent may have decided, we are not under the Old Law
now and it is not for
practicable
the whole world to await the Pope's
decisions. He ought not to be consulted, unless he is learned in Holy
Writ. It is no matter what modern doctors think; Augustine denied
the possibility
been in error:
of absolute
as v.
g.
in
accidents; and these doctors have often
the question of temporal power (pp. 168 to
177).
If any accident could be absolute, it would be either empty
space or time: vet neither could exist without a world existing
extendedly and subject to change.
Ch. XIV. Three Nominalistic theories respecting the essence of
the visible Sacrament. The first says that the Host, having (like the
Universals) no existence as such, except in the mind,
is not Christ's
Body as an actuality but in signification (in actu signato, non exercito).
But then the Sacrament would be only a figure of Christ; nothing
proves this theory; and any one could in that sense call himself God
(pp. 186-187). The second asserts that the substance of bread is —
i. e. has become — Christ's Body. But it were idolatry to worship
bread; and bread cannot be said to become anything, when it totally