Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/510

336 present; but they will probably occur to the memory of most readers.

There is a curious defence of transubstantiation in this moral; and we may admire its ingenuity while we reprobate the absurd doctrine it is designed to advocate.

"You ask," says the writer of the, "by what means bread may be converted into the real body of Christ. Observe how the mother nourishes her child. If she hunger, and want milk, the infant, deprived of its proper sustenance, languishes and dies. But if, in her greatest extremity, she drink but the lees of wine, those lees, taken by the mouth, become changed into blood, and supply milk and nutriment to the child. If nature, then, exert so much power over the woman, how much more shall the virtue of the sacramental rite, operating by the mouth of the priest, (that is, by the words of Christ proceeding from his mouth), convert bread into flesh, and wine into blood."