st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
"
De
"
What
"
"
THE FONS SCIENTLflE."
83
he writes, and water by drinking, are turned in
course of nature into the flesh and blood of the eater
and drinker, and become not any other body than
this latter; so the bread of oblation, and the wine
and water, are supernaturally changed, through the
invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit, into the
body and blood of Christ, and are not two, but one
and the same"
( 270). The comparison,
it
may
appear to some, falls short of its purpose. It is not
made clearer how the deified Body of Christ, or
Christ in His divine nature, so absorbs into Himself
the consecrated elements, that they become one with
Him. At the same time, something less than justice
has been done, by a distinguished writer of our
Church, to the way in which Damascenus here treats
the subject.
was worse still," says Waterland, 1
"after all these lengths of fancy, there was yet a
difficulty remaining which was altogether insuperable.
The elements were to be made the very deified body
of Christ, like as the personal body in the womb had
been made. How could this be, without the like
personal union of the elements with the divinity?
Here Damascen was plunged, and attempted not to
get out, at that time, or in that work. But in another
work, 2 in the way of a private letter, he did endeavour
1
"Works"
(Oxford, 1843), vol. iii., p. 199.
Epist. ad Zachariam (in Migne s ed., vol. ii., pp. 401-
2 "
412). The genuineness of this is doubted by Lequien, though
Waterland thinks the evidence in favour of it. But the point
to notice is, that this argument, which Waterland says was not
thought of till the writing of the letter to Zacharias, really does
appear in the
as Fide," quoted above.
G 2