Chapter 3: The Present Tense and Substance
signify all one thing, and be, as it is said in the schools, a proposition of one and the selfsame signification, unless there be found anything before or after in the joining together of the speech which may drive us to a trope or allegory, which in this place is not found.
Nay rather, if thou rightly look upon the words which follow, they revoke us to the plainness of the proposition: For it is said: Which is given for you.
But it is manifest that the very body itself of Christ was given for us.
Moreover, those things which differ in nature and form, and by the logicians are commonly called Disparata, as a man, a horse, and a stone, be in that case as they can never be mutually verified one of another. For it will never be true, that a man is a stone, or else contrariwise. But that in this sense the body of Christ and bread are to be understood, no man doubteth.
Wherefore it will never be true to say of bread, that it is the body of Christ.
So that when the Lord pronounced, "This is my body," it must of necessity be that the substance of bread went away.
Chapter 3:
The Present Tense and Substance It is added that Christ did not without consideration use the verb substantive of the present tense, so as He said: "This is my body." Doubtless He might have said: "This signifieth my body," "This representeth my body," "This is the figure of my body," or "the sign of my body:" or else thus: "This bread is my body." All these things, seeing He refused, the saying is absolutely to be understood, as He pronounced it.
Besides, if the substance of bread should remain, there should be two substances together at once, yea and those corporal substances: and they should one pierce another, which by the doctrine of transubstantiation is