Bellarmine · De Controversiis · On the Sacrament of the Eucharist · Book II: On the Real Presence, from the Testimonies of the Fathers
Chapter 33: Testimonies of the Fathers of the Eighth Age: John Damascene and Epiphanius
Our translation, from the Latin of the Opera Omnia (Paris: Vivès, 1870–74), vol. IV, De Sacramento Eucharistiae, Book II: On the Truth of the Body of the Lord in the Eucharist, from the Testimonies of the Fathers. The Latin source text is public domain; this English rendering is released with the site. Scripture quotations follow Bellarmine's Vulgate citations, rendered in Douay-Rheims wording where he quotes exactly. Click “Show the Latin” for the original (raw OCR of the scan; scanning errors remain — the scan itself is the authority).
John Damascene flourished in the time of Leo the Iconoclast, about the year of the Lord 740. He wrote of the Eucharist in Book 4 On the Faith, chapter 14, according to his manner, most fully and most plainly. For when he had proved by several arguments that nothing is impossible to God, he thus subjoins: “Just as all things whatsoever God made, He made with the Holy Spirit cooperating, so also now the operation of the Holy Spirit works these things which are above nature, which nothing can grasp but faith alone.” And below: “The bread and the wine and the water are, by the invocation of the Holy Spirit, supernaturally transmuted into the body and blood of Christ; and they are not two, but one and the same. The bread and wine are not a figure of the body and blood of Christ—far be this—but are the very deified body of the Lord.”
Epiphanius, the equal of Damascene, and most learned, in his disputation with Gregory, which is had in the Seventh Synod, act 6, volume 3, proves in many words that the Eucharist is not a figure of the body and blood, but the very true body and blood of the Lord. “Thou wilt never find,” he says, “that either the Lord, or the Apostles, or the Fathers called that unbloody sacrifice, which is offered by the priest, an image; but the very body, and the very blood.”
Show the Latin (Vives edition, OCR)
CAPUT XXXI LI. Testimonia Patrum VIII. letatis Joannis Damasceni, et Ephiphanii, ejus aequalis. Joannes Damascenus tempore Leonis Icono- machi floruit circa annum Domini 740. Scri¬ psit vero dcEucharistialib.lv. de fide, cap. 14. pro instituto suo plenissime, et apertissi¬ me. Nam cum aliquot argumentis probasset, nihil esse Deo impossibile, ita subjungit : « Quemadmodum omnia, qmecumquc fecit Deus, Spiritu sancto cooperante fecit, sic et nunc Spiritus sancti operatione lucc super naturam operatur, qua3 non potest capere nisi sola fides. » Et infra : « Panis, vinumque, et aqua per invocationem Spiritus sancti supernaturaliter transmutatur in corpus et sanguinem Christi : et non sunt duo, sed unum et idem. Non est figura panis et vinum «orporis, et sanguinis Christi ; absit enim hoc, sed est ipsum corpus Domini deifi- catum. )> Epiphanius Damasceni aequalis, et doctis¬ simus, in disputatione cum Gregorio, quae habetur in YII Synodo act.G. t. m. multis ver¬ bis probat, Eucharistiam non esse figuram cor¬ poris et sanguinis, sed ipsum verum corpus, et sanguinem Domini. «Nunquam invenies, inquit, neque Dominum, neque Apostolos, neque Patres incruentum illud sacrificium, quod a Sacerdote offertur, imaginem dixisse; verum ipsum corpus, et ipsum sanguinem. »