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