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natural substance. Before the Bread be sanctified we call it Bread; but when it is consecrated by the divine grace, it deserves to be called the Lord's Body, though the substance of the Bread still remains." When Bellarmine could not answer this testimony of that great Doctor, he thought it enough to deny, that this Epistle is St. Chrysostom's; but both he and Possevin do vainly contend that it is not extant among the works of Chrysostom. For besides that at Florence and elsewhere it was to be found among them, it is cited in the Collections against the Severians which are in the version of Turrianus the Jesuit, in the 4th tome of Antiq. Lectionum of Henry Canisius, and in the end of the book of Joh. Damascenus against the Acephali.
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Which also hath been said by St. Austin ( A.D. 400.) above a thousand times; but out of so many almost numberless places, I shall choose only three, which are as the sum of all the rest. "You are not to eat this Body which you see, nor drink this Blood which My crucifiers shall shed; I have left you a Sacrament which, spiritually understood, will vivify you." Thus St. Austin, rehearsing the words of Christ again; "If Sacraments had not some resemblance with those things whereof they are Sacraments, they could not be Sacraments at all. From this resemblance they often take the names of what they represent. Therefore as the Sacrament of Christ's Body is in some sort His Body; so the Sacrament of Faith, is faith also." To the same sense is what he writes against Maximinus the Arian. "We mind in the Sacraments, not what they are, but what they show; for they are signs, which are one thing, and signifies another." And in another place, speaking of the Bread and Wine; "Let no man look to what they are, but to what they signify, for our Lord was pleased to say, 'this is My Body,' when He gave the sign of His Body.'"
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And the same kind of expressions………were also used by venerable Bede, our countryman, who lived in the eighth century, in his Sermon upon the Epiphany; of whom we also take these two testimonies following: "In the room of the Flesh and Blood of the Lamb, Christ substituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, in the figure of Bread and Wine." Also, "At Supper He gave to His Disciples the figure of His holy Body and Blood." These utterly destroy Transubstuntiation.
