Chapter 10: Arguments from the Old Fathers and Sacraments
betokened by the signs of this sacrament, because bread is made of many grains, and wine runneth together of many grapes, which things in accidents have no truth.
And of these men we marvel very much, who if at any time they hear us bring similitudes, as for example: The rock was Christ, The Lamb or beast for sacrifice is the Passover, Circumcision is the covenant: they cry that these allegories serve not for this place. And now these men heap up everywhere tropes and figures. They say also, that bread is here taken for all that which may be eaten, as Lehem in the Hebrew tongue is taken for all kinds of meat. But against them make the Evangelists which restrain this kind of meat unto bread. Others feign that bread signifieth accidents, and the form of bread, who, as the logicians term it, do Petere principium, and take as it were already granted that which is in controversy: namely that accidents be there without a subject: which thing they ought first to prove.
Neither must miracles be heaped together without necessity.
Chapter 10:
Arguments from the Old Fathers and Sacraments Another argument is that the old Fathers had the same sacraments which we have, and yet there was no need of transubstantiation. The rock, or the water flowing out of the rock, or manna, did not need to be transubstantiated, which might not then be done; therefore, neither is this required for our sacraments. The former proposition we have read in Paul, to wit, that the old fathers and we had one and the same meat. Our adversaries deny it, and would have our sacraments altogether and in many ways be distinguished from the mysteries of the old fathers, which we also grant, as well in respect of diverse signs, as also for the difference of times and certain other properties. But as touching the matter of the sacraments, which was