II

The use of the Aristotelian philosophy as an aid to theology was carried still further by the Dominicans Albert the Great and his pupil St. Thomas Aquinas. Albert the Great was born at Lauingen in 1193, joined the Dominican Order about 1222, was famous as a teacher at Paris and Cologne, became Bishop of Ratisbon in 1260, but resigned that see two years later, and died at Cologne in 1280. His voluminous works include treatises On the Sacrifice of the Mass and On the Sacrament of the Eucharist; and parts of his commentaries on the Gospels refer to the Eucharist in connection with the accounts of the institution and with the discourse at Capernaum recorded by St. John; but the most complete and clearest statements of his Eucharistic doctrine are in his comments on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The book of these comments exhibits in a highly developed form the scholastic method of setting out at length an adversary’s case, and proceeding to refute it step by step; in the main the appeal is to authority, but the whole work is pervaded by the idea of the essentially rational character of the revealed religion, and a good instance of the general point of view in this respect is afforded by a statement in connection with the Eucharist that—

“In this Sacrament and in all other articles of the faith there are many things above reason but there is nothing in them contrary to reason, because God would be contrary to Himself if He had given us reason and yet acted in the Sacraments against the dictates of reason.”

The Eucharist is described as spiritual food. There are said to be three ways of receiving the real body of Christ, first, that which is sacramental but not spiritual, or a Communion made unworthily; secondly, that which is both sacramental and spiritual, or a Communion made worthily; and, thirdly, that which is spiritual and not sacramental, in which some receive Christ spiritually and not sacramentally by uniting themselves with Him by the memory of His passion and sacrifice. Hence there are three ways of spiritual Communion, first, that which may be used from the beginning of Christian life, when there is union with “the mystical body of Christ and with Christ the Head not by means of the Sacrament but by means of the faith and love of the Head and the members”; secondly, “the tasting of the sweetness of the grace of Communion with the body in meditation” on the part of those who have already become communicants; and, thirdly, that which is sacramental as well as spiritual. On questions about the relation of the body of Christ to the body and mind of those who communicate sacramentally, Albert states that it does not pass into the stomach and undergo the processes of digestion after the manner of ordinary food, but that in another sense it does pass into the stomach because “it passes to every place to which the species of bread and wine go, under which is contained the whole Christ in actual reality”; and that it does not pass into the mind by way of a substantial entrance, but that it does pass into the mind by producing sacramental grace in the mind. Evil communicants receive the real body of Christ, and thus the body of Christ, which itself is good, has evil effects in those who receive it unworthily. The change at consecration is of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the whole substance of the body and blood of Christ. This Transubstantiation is neither natural nor miraculous but is marvellous. It does not resemble any movement or change of a natural kind. The substance of the bread and wine is not destroyed when it is thus converted, but neither does it remain so as to co-exist together with the body of Christ. Christ is whole in each part of each species as the spiritual food of the soul, since His body cannot be without His blood, and His blood is contained in His body; but this is not by the force of the Sacrament but because of the union between body and blood. At the institution of the Sacrament Christ gave His body to His disciples in its impassible and immortal state by an anticipation of the prerogatives of the risen body. On the question whether, if the body of Christ had been reserved or consecrated during the three days between His death and His resurrection, it would have been His dead body, the answer is given that this could have happened as an abstract possibility but that it would have been unfitting. In the consecrated Sacrament the accidents remain without a subject. They all retain their real existence; and, when the consecrated species of bread is broken, there is a real fraction in them, though the body of Christ is not broken. Like Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great explains the language of Berengar’s declaration at the Council of Rome of 1059, as accepted by the Church, to have been an assertion of the presence of the body of Christ on the altar, not that the body itself is broken. There are different ways of the presence of Christ. In His divine nature He is present, like the Father and the Holy Ghost, in all things by way of essence and power; like the Father and the Holy Ghost, in the saints by grace; and differently from the Father and the Holy Ghost, in the human nature which He united to His divine Person. In His human nature He has a local and circumscribed presence, such as that in the Virgin’s womb or on the cross; and He has also that presence whereby “He Himself, full of grace, in His deity and in His humanity, is the reality of the Sacrament and the spiritual food of the Church after a supernatural manner, and after such a manner He is in the Sacrament,” in regard to which presence considerations of place have no force. Thus, as regards that way of presence which is circumscribed by place, Christ is now in one place only, that is, in heaven; but in an accidental way He is in a place in the Church and on the altar, because the sacramental species in which He is have a local presence there. Wicked priests can validly consecrate; and so can an excommunicated priest, and Peter Lombard in denying this would be right only if he meant to refer to an excommunicated priest who did not retain what is essential in the Church’s method of celebrating. As to the question whether an animal can receive the body of Christ, an animal is not capable of union with Christ; nevertheless “so long as the species are discernible, the body of Christ is there”. On the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice the teaching of Albert the Great is much less systematised and complete. The prayers and ceremonies of the rite are commemorative of the passion; there is a union of earthly and heavenly worship; the Sacrament is a memorial; the fraction signifies the passion; the connection of the blood is with the soul; the Sacrament has its “special effect” “through the oblation which Christ made on the cross,” “which every priest continually makes by way of commemoration when he celebrates Mass”.

“Christ is most really offered every day, when the sacrifice is presented to God the Father; for offering means an act of oblation so far as the thing which is the oblation is concerned, and sacrifice means the same act so far as the effect is concerned. Wherefore, since, so far as the thing which is the oblation is concerned, the oblation always abides offered and to be offered for us, we always offer and always sacrifice. But it is not so about the crucifixion; for this means not the act of the thing offered but rather the unjust act of the Jews or the passion, so far as it was brought about by them. So it could never be repeated.”

A passage in the Sermons on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, attributed to Albert the Great but probably not by him, which has also been ascribed to St. Thomas Aquinas, will be quoted later in connection with the teaching of St. Thomas.

St. Thomas Aquinas was born at Roccasecca in the kingdom of Naples in 1226. As a boy he was taught at the Abbey of Monte Cassino, and afterwards studied at the University of Naples. In 1243 he became a member of the Dominican Order. He was a pupil of Albert the Great. He was a teacher at Paris, Cologne, Rome, Bologna, and Naples. He died in 1274. Like his master Albert the Great he applied the Aristotelian philosophy as a whole to theology on a large scale; and one chief aim of his work was the reconciliation of theological and spiritual truth with philosophic thought, of the demands of reason as understood in his time with the inherited beliefs of the Church. His treatment of the Holy Eucharist is harmonious with the rest of his theology. Ends evidently in view are the preservation of the traditional doctrine that the consecrated species are the body and blood of Christ, the avoidance of carnal conceptions of that body and blood as thus present, the gaining of support against unbelief from the Aristotelian philosophy, and the statement of the doctrine accepted so as to be in accordance with what were believed to be the true lines of philosophic thought. The Sum of Theology, the last work of his life, may be taken as affording, in conjunction with his book on the Sentences, the best representation of his teaching. The treatment of the Eucharistic sacrifice is less voluminous than that of the Eucharistic presence and gift; but it contains suggestions which had a very important influence on the later history of the doctrine in the West.

In regard to sacrifice in general and to the sacrifice in the passion of Christ, the teaching of St. Thomas contains the following points. “It is a result of the natural reason for man to use certain objects discernible to sense, offering them to God as a sign of due submission and honour,” so that “the offering of sacrifice belongs to natural law”. The offering of sacrifice includes both “the sacrifice which is offered outwardly” and “the inner spiritual sacrifice whereby the soul offers itself to God”; and “as we ought to offer to the Most High God alone the spiritual sacrifice, so also to Him alone we ought to offer the outward sacrifices”. The “inner sacrifice” is the “first and chief sacrifice”; and the offering of it is an obligation to which “all are bound”. As regards external sacrifices, the Jews were bound to those of their religion, and others are bound to those acts which their obligation requires. “Priests offer the sacrifices which are specially ordained for divine worship not only for themselves but also for others”; and “there are certain other sacrifices which any one can offer to God for himself”. In replying to an objection to the statement that a sacrifice is an act of a specific kind, St. Thomas says:—

“Sacrifices are properly so called when something is done in regard to things offered to God, as that animals were slain and burned, or that bread is broken and eaten and blessed. And this the name itself signifies; for a sacrifice is so called because man makes something sacred. But an offering is directly so called when something is offered to God, even if nothing is done in regard to it; as money or bread is said to be offered on the altar, in regard to which nothing is done. Wherefore every sacrifice is an offering, but not every offering a sacrifice. Now first fruits are offerings, because they were offered to God, as we read in Deuteronomy 26.; but they are not sacrifices, because nothing sacred was done in regard to them.”

Carrying further the idea of a sacrifice as an offering to God in which “something is done,” St. Thomas says that the name sacrifice is properly applied to “something done that is properly due to God for His honour to appease Him”; and that, since our Lord’s voluntary bearing of the passion was “in the highest degree acceptable to God as the outcome of the greatest love,” “it is clear that the passion of Christ was a real sacrifice”. As mediator between God and man, and as offering the prayers of the people to God, and as making satisfaction for sins, Christ is a Priest; “insofar as He was Man, He was not only Priest but also a perfect sacrifice”; His priesthood has “complete power of making expiation for sins”; “the consummation of the sacrifice, which consists in those for whom the sacrifice is offered obtaining the end of the sacrifice,” “was pre-figured in the entrance of the Jewish high priest into the holy of holies once in the year with the blood of a goat and a bullock”; “and in like manner Christ entered into the holy of holies, that is, heaven itself, and prepared for us a way of entrance through the power of His blood, which He shed for us on earth”; the Jewish high priest, though thus a type of Christ, was an inadequate and incomplete type, since Christ as Priest actually cleanses away sins, and has an eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek.

The teaching of St. Thomas on the Eucharistic sacrifice must be considered in the light of the ideas of sacrifice in general and of the sacrifice and priesthood of Christ which have been mentioned. “In the new law” of the Christian religion “the real sacrifice of Christ is communicated to the faithful under the species of bread and wine,” fulfilling the type of the offering of bread and wine in the priestly work of Melchizedek. As a sacrifice the Eucharist “has the power of satisfaction”. “By way of sacrifice it benefits others than those who receive it, inasmuch as it is offered for their salvation.” “In the work of satisfaction the mind of the offerer is of more moment than the amount of the offering”; and “therefore, although this offering from its amount is sufficient to make satisfaction for all penalty, yet it effects satisfaction for those for whom it is offered and also for those who offer it according to the amount of their devotion and not for all penalty”. It is the “representation of the passion of the Lord,” the “memorial of the passion of the Lord,” the “commemoration of the passion of the Lord, which was a real sacrifice,” the “sacrifice of the new law instituted by Christ so as to contain Christ Himself who suffered not only in signification or figure but also in actual reality”. “It is called a sacrifice insofar as it represents the passion itself of Christ; and it is called a victim insofar as it contains Christ Himself who is the saving Victim.” The separate taking of “the bread as the Sacrament of the body and the wine as the Sacrament of the blood,” forms part of the “memorial” of “the passion of Christ, in which the blood was separated from the body”. The prayers and ceremonies of the rite combine to form a mystical presentation of the passion and the resurrection of Christ. The consecrating words are said by the priest, “in the person of Christ Himself,” and “the priest offers and takes the blood in the person of all,” and “in the prayers speaks in the person of the Church,” so that in offering the sacrifice he is the representative both of Christ and of the Church, and the sacrifice is completed when he has received the Sacrament in both kinds. Each of the three following passages is of some special importance.

“In a twofold way the celebration of this Sacrament is called the offering of Christ. First, it is so called because, as Augustine says to Simplicianus, ‘symbols are usually called by the names of those things of which they are symbols, as when looking on a picture or wall painting we say, This is Cicero, This is Sallust’. Now the celebration of this Sacrament, as has been said before, is a kind of representative symbol of the passion of Christ, which is the real offering of Him. And therefore the celebration of this Sacrament is called the offering of Christ. Because of this Ambrose says, ‘In Christ the offering was once made, powerful for eternal salvation. What, then, of us? Do not we offer sacrifice every day? Yes, but for the commemoration of His death.’ In another way the celebration of this Sacrament is called the offering of Christ so far as concerns the effect of the passion of Christ, because by means of this Sacrament we are made partakers of the fruit of the passion of the Lord. Wherefore in a certain Secret Prayer for Sunday it is said, ‘As often as the commemoration of this sacrifice is made, the work of our redemption is carried on’. So far as concerns the first method then, it could have been said that Christ was offered even in the figures of the Old Testament. Whence also it is said, ‘Whose names have not been written in the book of life of the Lamb, who has been slain from the foundation of the world’. But so far as concerns the second method, it is peculiar to this Sacrament that in the celebration of it Christ is offered.”

“The Eucharist is not only a Sacrament but also a sacrifice. Insofar as it is a Sacrament, it has effect in every one who is alive [that is, spiritually], in whom it needs that life [that is, spiritual life] already exists. But insofar as it is a sacrifice, it has effect also in others for whom it is offered, in whom it does not need that spiritual life should already exist in fact but only in possibility; and therefore, if it finds them disposed, it obtains grace for them by the power of that real sacrifice, from which all grace has flowed into us, and in consequence it blots out mortal sins in them, not as an immediate cause, but insofar as it obtains for them the grace of contrition. And as for the argument to the contrary that it is not offered except for the members of Christ, we must understand that it is offered for the members of Christ when it is offered for any that they may be members.… Insofar as it is a sacrifice, it possesses a method of satisfaction; and according to this it takes away penalty in part or in whole, as also do other satisfactions, according to the measure of penalty due for sin and of the devotion with which the Sacrament is offered. Yet the whole penalty is not always taken away by the power of this Sacrament.”

In explanation of the words in the canon of the Mass, “Command these to be borne by the hands of Thy holy angle to Thy altar on high,” he writes:—

“The priest does not seek either that the sacramental species be taken to heaven or that the real body of Christ, which does not cease to be there, should be taken thither; but he seeks this for the mystical body, which is signified in this Sacrament, that is, that the angel who stands by in the divine mysteries may present to God the prayers of priest and people, according to the words, ‘The smoke of the incense from the offerings of the saints went up out of the angel’s hand’. Now by the altar of God on high is meant either the Church triumphant itself, to which we seek to be transferred, or God Himself, to partake of whom we seek.… Or by the angel is meant Christ Himself, who is the Angel of great counsel, who joins His mystical body to God the Father and to the Church triumphant.”

In considering this teaching of St. Thomas on the Eucharistic sacrifice, it may be noticed that the connection with the heavenly worship and the heavenly offering of Christ, though referred to, is little emphasised; that the commemoration of the passion is prominent; that the two separate species are mentioned in connection with the separation of our Lord’s body and blood in the passion; that the idea of a sacrifice as an offering in which “something is done” “to appease” God is strongly expressed; that the priest offers the sacrifice “in the person of all” as well as consecrates “in the person of Christ”; that as a satisfaction it takes away penalty which is due for sin; and that the sacrifice may be offered with good results to those who at the time are not in grace. All these points are important in their bearing on the later history of the doctrine of the sacrifice.

A passage from the treatise Of the Venerable Sacrament of the Altar, which has been printed with the works of St. Thomas, which is a later form of the Sermons on the Eucharist attributed to Albert the Great, though probably neither by Albert nor by Thomas, may be quoted here for the sake of convenience, since it will be necessary to refer to it subsequently. It is as follows:—

“The second reason for the institution of this Sacrament is the sacrifice of the altar, against a certain daily ravage of our sins; that, as the body of the Lord was once for all offered on the cross for original sin, so it should be offered continually on the altar for our daily sins, and that in this the Church should have the precious and acceptable office of appeasing God beyond all sacrifices of the law.”

On the subject of the Eucharistic presence and gift St. Thomas writes with elaborate fulness and characteristic clearness. The Eucharist is “spiritual nourishment”; in it are “spiritual food and spiritual drink”. the reception of it is “the end of all the Sacraments”; “through it we have communion with Christ, and partake of His flesh and Godhead, and through it we have communion with and are united to one another”; it “really contains Christ”. “In this Sacrament are the real body and blood of Christ”; but they “cannot be discerned by the senses or the understanding but only by faith, which rests on the authority of God”. Though Christ “promises to us His bodily presence as a reward,” “yet neither has He deprived us of His bodily presence in our pilgrimage on earth, but by means of the reality of His body and blood joins us to Himself in this Sacrament”. To say that “the body and blood of Christ are in this Sacrament only by way of sign,” is to maintain what is “heretical, as being contrary to the words of Christ”. The consecration is effected by the recital of the words “This is My body,” “This is My blood” by the priest “speaking in the person of Christ”; the substances of the bread and wine are then converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ: the consecrated Sacrament, as being the body of Christ, is to be adored; the opinion that “after the consecration the substance of bread and wine remains in the Sacrament” “cannot be maintained,” and “is to be rejected as heretical”; the substances of bread and wine are not “annihilated” and are not resolved into some more elementary material condition, but are converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, so that “by the power of God the whole substance of the bread is converted into the whole substance of the body of Christ, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of the blood of Christ” by a conversion which is “not formal but substantial,” which “by a distinctive name can be called Transubstantiation”. In this change “all the accidents of bread and wine remain,” and “are there in actual reality,” and “are discerned by the senses,” while the substance is the object of the mind; but “the substantial form of the bread does not remain”. “The Catholic faith requires the acknowledgment that the whole Christ is in this Sacrament”; He is “whole under each species of the Sacrament,” so that “under the species of bread is the body of Christ from the power of the Sacrament, and His blood,” as also “His soul and Godhead,” “from real concomitance.” and “under the species of wine is the blood of Christ from the power of the Sacrament, and the body,” as also His “soul and Godhead,” “from real concomitance”; this concomitance is the result of the present inseparable nature of the body and blood of Christ, and if the Sacrament could have been celebrated at the time of the death of Christ, “under the species of bread would have been the body of Christ without His blood, and under the species of wine would have been His blood without His body”. By this concomitance “Christ is whole under each part of the species,” and the bulk and all the accidents of His body are in the Sacrament. When in the Sacrament there is a miraculous appearance of flesh or blood or of Christ Himself, this is not due to the reality of Christ being seen, but either to an effect in the eyes of those who see the appearance or to a miraculous change in such accidents as shape and colour. The accidents which remain in the Sacrament after consecration are “without a subject”; the accident of “dimensive quantity” is as a subject to the other accidents; the sacramental species “can perform, when the substance of bread and wine is turned into the body and blood of Christ, every action which they could perform while the substance of bread and wine existed”; they can become corrupted, and possess the power of imparting physical nourishment, because “at the consecration” “the property of matter” “is miraculously attached to the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine”. The sacramental species can be broken; and, when the fraction of the consecrated Sacrament is made, it is of them, not of the body of Christ, for “the real body of Christ cannot be broken, first because it is incorruptible and impassible, and secondly because it is whole under every part” of the Sacrament. On the problems, which had often proved puzzling, how the sacramental species, which are the body of Christ, can be corrupted and can nourish and can be broken, although the body of Christ is incorruptible and spiritual and impassible, St. Thomas thus reached a solution which he deemed satisfactory; on connected problems he taught that, if a beast should eat the consecrated Sacrament, “it would eat the body of Christ by way of accident and not sacramentally, as one might eat it who should take a consecrated host not knowing that it was consecrated”; and that wicked and heretical and schismatical and excommunicated and degraded priests can validly consecrate. On the question whether it was the glorified or the mortal body of Christ which He gave to His disciples at the institution of the Sacrament, St. Thomas decided that at that time “there was under the species of the Sacrament in an impassible way that which in itself was passible, as there was in an invisible way that which in itself was visible”. On the subject of beneficial reception, he, like earlier writers, says that all communicants alike receive sacramentally the body of Christ, but distinguishes between the reception which profits and that which is to judgment, and between reception which is merely sacramental and that which is both sacramental and spiritual, and refers to the possibility of spiritual Communion when the Sacrament is not actually received by one who desires to receive it. Following the main lines of earlier writers, St. Thomas writes in many places fully and explicitly on the nature of the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. The body of Christ is in the Sacrament “spiritually” and “invisibly” “by the power of the Holy Ghost”; it is not in the Sacrament “as a body in a place” but “in a certain special way, which is peculiar to this Sacrament”. The presence is not effected by a “local movement”. The change in consecration is not like any “natural change” but is “wholly supernatural”. “The body of Christ is in this Sacrament by way of substance and not by way of quantity,” or by way of “dimensions,” or so as to be “limited” or “circumscribed”. “So far as concerns place, Christ in Himself according to His own being is not moved” in the Sacrament, “but only by way of accident, because He is not in this Sacrament as in a place.” and “that which is not in a place is not moved in itself in place but only in relation to the movement of that wherein it is”. “The body of Christ is not locally in the Sacrament of the altar.”

“It does not pertain to the body of Christ, insofar as it is a body, nor insofar as it is united to deity, to be in many places; but it has this by reason of consecration and of Transubstantiation, insofar as different pieces of bread, which are transubstantiated into it, are in different places. And because the substance of the bread passes into the body of Christ, the accidents remaining, therefore the quantity of each piece of bread remains, and in consequence the place of each piece of bread.”

“No body is in relation to a place except through the mediation of the dimensions of quantity; and therefore any body is in a place where its dimensions are commensurate to the dimensions of place; and in this way the body of Christ is in one place only, that is, in heaven.”

“The body of Christ according to its own dimensions is in one place only, but, by the mediation of the dimensions of the bread which is changed into it, it is in as many places as those in which this conversion is effected, not indeed by way of division into parts but whole in each case, for every piece of bread that is consecrated is converted into the unbroken body of Christ.”

“All pairs of places are distinguished in relation to one another according to some contrariety of place, those which are above and below, those which are before and behind, those which are to the right and to the left. But God cannot make two contraries to be at the same time, for this involves contradiction. Therefore God cannot make the same body to be locally in two places at the same time.… For any body to be in any place is nothing else than for the body to be circumscribed and included in the place according to the commensuration of its own dimensions. But that which is included in any place is in that place in such a way that none of it is outside that place: wherefore to maintain that it is locally in one place and yet that it is in another place is to maintain that contradictories are at the same time. Therefore it follows from what has been said that this cannot be done by God.”

“Two bodies cannot be at the same time in the same place.… It is not possible according to nature for two bodies to be at the same time in the same place, whatever kind of bodies they are.”

A further instance of like teaching may be cited from the treatise On the Sacrament of the Eucharist ascribed to St. Thomas, since, though probably by some other and much inferior writer, it represents to a large extent his lines of thought on this subject as shown in the foregoing quotations and elsewhere.

“The body of Christ is really in heaven and is really on earth on every altar and at every place where there is wheaten bread consecrated by a priest with the required form. In this then is the chief miracle, that a body identically one and the same is in different places.… We see that one and the same thing can be in different places in different respects and different ways, as our Lord speaks in the Gospel when He says, ‘Where your treasure is, there is your heart,’ … as the Apostle spoke, saying, ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’. … In such a sense it is easy to understand a statement that the body of Christ is in heaven according to its natural existence, and is on earth according to its sacramental existence. But that a body identically the same should be in different places in one and the same existence, this seems altogether impossible by the common law of nature. And yet we believe that the body of Christ according to its sacramental existence is in more places than one and in different places, that is, wherever bread is duly consecrated. And this seems to be altogether contrary to the reason of a real body. But still it can be said that the reason why one body cannot be in different places is that a body which is naturally in any place is limited and circumscribed by that place, and is commensurate to it, so that the whole body is superficially in the whole place, and the parts of the body are commensurate to the parts of the place, so that separate parts of that which is in the place are allotted to the separate parts of the place. And thus the body of Christ is in the pyx or in the host, yet it is not there locally in the way which has just been described, that is, according to the condition and measure of that which is in a place and the place. For the body of Christ, though it is in a place, yet is not there under its own dimensions or under its own quantity, but under the quantity and the dimensions under which the bread was.… Christ is whole not only in each host but also in each cognisable part of any host, which certainly could not be if He were localised there; and none the less the whole body of Christ, which was offered on the cross, is there most really and substantially, as the whole soul is most really in the whole body and in any part of it.… The body of Christ always remains in heaven, and yet is really on the altar and in the mouth of every one who receives.… Though the body of Christ itself, so far as it is of itself, is in one place only according to its corporal nature, nevertheless, because the bread which is converted is in more places than one, therefore it necessarily follows that the body itself is in more places than one, and this not through any change in itself but through the conversion of what is different into it.… The real glorious body of Christ, identically the same, which was born of the Virgin, and suffered on the cross, and rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, is really and essentially in this Sacrament.”

Different minds will estimate differently the soundness of the arguments and conclusions of St. Thomas in accordance with differences of natural temperament and experience and philosophic opinions; it might well be agreed by all scholars that with the methods of his age and with the light that was possible to him he strove earnestly to preserve belief in the spiritual character of the Eucharistic presence of the body of Christ. The significance of this fact will be seen when it is remembered that his was the most powerful theological influence in the West in the Middle Ages.