“Since, therefore, both the mingled cup and the created bread receive the word of God, and the Eucharist becomes the blood and body of Christ, and by these the substance of our flesh gains strength and subsists, how can they say that the flesh is not capable of the gift of God, which is eternal life, when it is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord, and is his member? As St. Paul saith: _For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones_: not saying these things of some spiritual and invisible man (for the spirit has neither flesh nor bones); but concerning the divine work in the real man, consisting of flesh and veins and bones; which is also nourished from his cup, which is his blood, and is strengthened by the bread, which is his body. And as the wood of the vine, bent down into the earth, in its proper season bears fruit, and the grain of wheat, falling into the earth and becoming dissolved, rises manifold through the Spirit of God, which takes in all things; and then, through the wisdom of God, having come to the use of men, and having received the word of God, becomes the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ; so also our bodies, being nourished by it, and being deposited in the earth and dissolved in it, will rise again in due season, the word of God granting to them resurrection to the glory of God, even the Father.” In the beginning of this passage we have an explicit acknowledgment that it is in some way or another in the real body and blood of Christ that we communicate in the Eucharist; and I am willing to grant that the whole passage, on a cursory reading, might be taken to imply that the bread and wine was _changed_ into the literal body and blood of Christ; for he appears to speak of our corporeal frames being literally sustained by the body and blood of our Lord. But when we find him speaking of the necessity of our bodily frames being sustained by himself, arising out of the fact that we, even our bodies, are his members, we see immediately that, as we cannot be literally and corporeally his members, so the change of the bread into his body, and that of the wine into his blood, in order to nourish our bodies with himself, cannot be a literal and corporeal change. And so he does not say that Jesus effected any such change, but simply that he _recognized_ the cup for his blood, and _ordained_ the bread to be his body(405). Before I attempt to draw out any other of the opinions implied in this passage, I will go to another contained in the fourth book(406). It is this:—