Of God and His Creatures
What happens when the Sacramental Species pass away
FOR the removal of this doubt there has been invented a famous theory
(famosa positio), which is held by many. They say that when this
Sacrament comes to be changed in the ordinary process of digestion
or to be burnt, or otherwise destroyed, the accidents are not converted into
substance, but there returns by miracle the substance of bread that had been
before, and out of that are generated the products into which this Sacrament
is found to turn. But this theory cannot stand at all. It seems better to say
that in the consecration there is miraculously conferred upon the accidents
the power of subsistence, which is proper to substance: hence they can do
all things, and have all things done to them, that the substance itself could
do, or have done to it, if it were there: hence without any new miracle they
can nourish, or be reduced to ashes, in the same mode and order as if the
substance of bread and wine were there.*
4.65 : The Difficulty of the Accidents remaining
4.67 : Answer to the Difficulty raised in respect of the Breaking of the Host