"How! you reject the authority of the Angelic Doctor, he to whom the celebrated Crucifix spoke, saying, '_Thou hast written well of me, Thomas_.' You dare to contradict him! and make your appeal to the Bible! None studied it more than he did, none understood it so fully. Do you pretend to say that you know it better?" "But," said I to him, "you are now going upon another question. I think it would be as well to settle the original one first." "I cannot argue," replied he, "with one who doubts such authority. You know what Pope John XX. said of Thomas Aquinas: that whoever departed from his doctrine, _semper fuit de veritate suspectus_." So saying, up rose Father Chiappa, and abruptly left the room. Father Galleani was a more quiet disputant. From the subject of Confession, we passed to that of Transubstantiation, and to the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass. When I found myself engaged in this argument, I confess, that losing sight of moderation, I assailed the Popish system with great warmth, and inveighed against the impiety of its doctrines, so injurious to the sacred mystery of the passion and love of Christ. "I cannot conceive, my dear master," I observed, "of an idea more degrading to Christianity--a bread god! I say bread, since what the Church of Rome calls the Body of Christ is actually neither more nor less than bread. It was bread in the hands of Christ Himself, when He said, 'This is my body,' and it is as bread that it forms the mystery of the Eucharist. Christ brake no other substance than the bread, nor ate any other Himself, nor gave any other to the Apostles. Unquestionably it is a figurative sign, a representation of the Body of Christ, which having suffered upon the cross has become spiritual food, a vital nutriment, for all true believers. Bread itself can only be eaten in a natural way; Christ living in the body, could not be eaten without occasioning His death. But you will tell me that it is a miracle. I answer that God can unquestionably work miracles, but he cannot act against Himself--Christ living and conversing as a human being, could not be eaten without ceasing to converse and to live. Tell me, moreover, how could Christ substantially eat Himself? This monstrous belief was never that of our fathers, who always considered, when they met together to eat this bread, that it was a symbol of the natural body of Christ, and of His mystical body, the Church. And this is the true signification of the Sacrament. Neither in one view nor in the other can the words be taken in their literal sense." "But you are aware that the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas, asserts that the whole of Christ is in the Sacrament in actual substance, under the form of bread and wine; and that it is not _circumscribed_, as water in a basin nor _definitive_, as the soul within the body; but _sacramentally_, spiritually, and substantially present at the same time."