though the nature of the bread has remained," is to be understood only concerning the species and properties of the bread. Nor did he intend to deny the change of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ; for that truly happens, and he acknowledges it. A And if it has been obliterated by age in one place, let it receive light from another. I am compelled to admit that this is true of the manuscript of this epistle; although it is 500 years old, it is written with little accuracy and requires help from the Greek manuscript, or at least from another Latin one. In the one I saw, sometimes words are continuous, sometimes a simple vowel E is written instead of the diphthong Æ; T instead of D, and vice versa D instead of T; sometimes the words are so corrupted that they cannot be restored to health without the aid of other manuscripts. I opine that the negligence of the scribes deterred Peter Martyr from editing it. I pass over the translation, which seems less accurate, or indeed downright barbaric. I have not thought that benevolent readers would be offended by all these flaws of mine, since I suppose that we are giving the epistle exactly as we received it (as it is currently being rendered in Latin in the way it was written, a fragment of which was published by Peter Martyr and has long agitated the minds of learned men). B For who, when he has read it, could grasp the mind of John Chrysostom, or observe on what occasion, or with what intention, those words were written? But even further, one might wonder at the summary and unusual divine charity of a most loving man, who, although he was oppressed by countless troubles and by continual terrors concerning the incursions of the Isaurians—as he writes in his epistles to Olympias—was nearly exhausted; nevertheless, having heard that his friend the monk Caesarius had fallen into the heresy of the Apollinarians and the Synousiasts, he endeavored in this epistle to turn him away from heresy out of his incredible goodness and to call him back to the way of sincere piety. How much the Apollinarian heresy was then spreading, and how many it had invaded, can be gathered from the fact that Diodorus of Tarsus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theophilus of Antioch, to omit many others, wrote against the Apollinarians and Synousiasts. And so that John might recall Caesarius from that error, C and indeed to the Catholic faith, which confesses that in Christ there are two natures, not confused, in one person, he brings in the analogy of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which bread after consecration is not yet called bread, but body of Christ. Even though the nature of the bread, he says, has remained in it, it is preached as one body of the Son, and not two bodies. By which words the holy doctor assumes and acknowledges the true and real presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist; otherwise, no comparison would exist between the human and divine nature in Christ and the Eucharist. Chrysostom himself, in his 2nd Homily to the people of Antioch: "For D Elijah left his mantle to his disciple, and the Son of God, ascending, left his flesh to us; but Elijah, having put it off, left it; Christ also left it to us, and having it, he ascended: for Elijah indeed left his mantle to his disciple, but the Son of God ascending into heaven left his flesh to us: but Elijah departed; Christ both left his flesh to us, and having it, he ascended." And in Homily 83 on Matthew: "So also in the mysteries we do; not looking only at what lies before us, but contemplating his words. For his Word is unerring, but our sense is easily deceived. This never failed, but that is frequently mistaken. Since then the Word says, 'This is my body', let us both be persuaded, and believe, and look at it with our intellectual eyes." I would excerpt all these passages from Chrysostom, in which he speaks similarly concerning the most holy Eucharist, if I were to compose an entire book; but it will be more pleasant and salutary for you to read them at the source.
THE EPISTLE OF THE BLESSED JOHN, BISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE, TO CAESARIUS THE MONK, AT THE TIME OF HIS EXILE, BEGINS.
We have inspected the letters of your reverence; we have inspected them, however, not without tears; for how shall we not weep, and constrain our soul with grief, seeing a brother who from boyhood chose a solitary life, and who conducted himself consummately—that is, perfectly—in matters of piety, suddenly fallen by the darts of heretics?