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difference betwixt the Flesh and the Spirit, that we might understand that what He said, was not carnal, but spiritual. For how many men could His Body have fed, that the whole world should be nourished by it? But therefore He mentioned His ascension into heaven, that they might not take what He said in a corporal sense, but might understand that His Flesh whereof He spake is a spiritual and heavenly food given by Himself from on high; for the words that I spake unto you they are spirit, and they are life, as if He should say, My Body which is shown and given for the world, shall be given in food, that it may be distributed Spiritually to every one, and preserve them all to the resurrection to eternal life." Cardinal Perron having nothing to answer to these words of this holy Father, in a kind of despair, rejects the whole Tractate, and denies it to be Athanasius's, which nobody ever did before him, there being no reason for it.
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Likewise St. Ambrose, (A.D. 380.) explaining what manner of alteration is in the Bread, when in the Eucharist it becomes the Body of Christ, saith, "Thou hadst indeed a being, but wert an old creature, but being now baptized or consecrated, thou art become a new creature." The same change that happens to man in baptism, happens to the Bread in the Sacrament: if the nature of man is not substantially altered by the new birth, no more is the Bread by consecration. Man becomes by baptism, not what nature made him, but what grace new-makes him; and the Bread becomes by consecration, not what it was by nature, but what the blessing consecrates it to be. For nature made only a mere man, and made only common bread; but Regeneration, of a mere man, makes a holy man, in whom Christ dwells spiritually; and likewise the Consecration of common Bread makes Mystic and Sacramental Bread. Yet this change doth not destroy nature, but to nature adds grace; as is yet more plainly exprest by that holy Father in the fore-cited place. "Perhaps thou wilt say," saith he, "this my bread is common bread; it is bread indeed before the blessing of the Sacrament, but when it is consecrated it becomes the Body of Christ. This we are therefore to declare, how can that which is Bread be also the Body of Christ? By Consecration. And Consecration is made by the words of our Lord, that the venerable Sacrament may be perfected. You see how efficacious is the Word of Christ. If there be then so great a power in the
