When thou comest to this seal of thy peace, the sacrament, pray that God will give thee that light that may direct and establish thee in necessary and fundamental things; that is, the light of faith to see that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; but for the manner, how the Body and Blood of Christ is there, wait his leisure, if he have not yet manifested that to thee: grieve not at that, wonder not at that, press not for that; for he hath not manifested that, not the way, not the manner of his presence in the Sacrament to the Church.
O! I have ever felt, and for many years thought that this
rem credimus, modum nescimus,
is but a poor evasion. It seems to me an attempt so to admit an irrational proposition as to have the credit of denying it, or to separate an irrational proposition from its irrationality. I admit 2 + 2 = 5; how I do not pretend to know, but in some way not in contradiction to the multiplication table. To spiritual operations the very term 'mode' is perhaps inapplicable, for these are immediate. To the linking of this with that, of A. with Z. by
intermedia,
the term 'mode,' — the question 'how?' is properly applied. The assimilation of the spirit of a man to the Son of God, to God as the Divine Humanity, — this spiritual transubstantiation, like every other process of operative grace, is necessarily modeless. The whole question is concerning the transmutation of the sensible elements. Deny this, and to what does the
modum nescimus
refer? We cannot ask how that is done, which we declare not done at all. Admit this transmutation, and you necessarily admit by implication the Romish dogma, of the separation of a sensible thing from the sensible accidents which constitute all we ever meant by the thing. To rationalize this figment of his church, Bossuet has recourse to Spinosism, and dares make God the substance and sole
ens reale
of all body, and by this very