Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

Note 1. That the parts of the assumed humanity are manifold; for some are physically essential, as body and soul: others integrating, as head, arms, legs: and others excrementitious, as hair, nails, and all those things which, as superfluous, contribute nothing to nutrition and the integrity of the body. Moreover, of the integrating parts some pertain precisely to the integrity of the human body, as head, bones, flesh, and the rest; some only to its truth, but not to its integrity, as blood, vital spirits, and other humors, which are said of the truth of the body by reason alone, since the human body cannot subsist without them, at least without blood, which is the basis and foundation of life. The question is asked whether the Divine Word hypostatically joined to Himself all those parts. All agree indeed that He assumed and joined to Himself all the parts that belong to the integrity of the body; otherwise He would not have assumed a true and perfect human body, which is contrary to the preceding Conclusion. But a grave difficulty concerns the parts pertaining to the truth and life of the body.

Note 2. Certain theologians with Cajetan, question 51, article 2, distinguish a twofold blood in the human body: one merely nutritive, and another natural, or such as he says belongs to the truth of nature. Nutritive blood is only a certain sanguineous humor little concocted and purified, which has not yet the true nature of blood, although in color and other accidents it is like it. Such is that which is proximately generated from food, either in the liver or in the veins leading to the liver, which physicians call Mesaraic: and the Philosopher reports that this blood is sweated out by some, in the book on the history of animals. Natural blood, however, is that which is made from the former by greater decoction and elaboration of the formative virtue of blood residing, according to Galen, in the liver, or according to Aristotle in the heart, whereby it becomes far purer and obtains the true substantial form of blood. It is called natural, moreover, because although it serves in some way for nourishing the whole animal, this function is not adequate to it, but besides it concurs also to the natural integrity and life of the body. — Cajetan teaches, however, with very many Thomists, that the former blood does not live, nor is it animated by the vivifying form of the body; but that the latter is animated. Yet it must be observed from St. Bonaventure in 4 dist. 11 p. 1 quest. 1 ad 2: A thing is said to live in three ways: either because it receives the influx of life: or because it disposes to life: or because it has its origin and constitution from an act of life. In the first way the corporeal substance and flesh are vivified: in the second way spirits and humors grow: in the third way hairs and even nails: and because all these have connection with life, all will rise again. Therefore, since blood does not belong to the official members, but only to the similar parts, nor is it animated by the rational soul, nor does it vivify, but only serves vivification, as do also the spirits we call vital, the question arises by what reason it was united to the divine Word, and whether, separated from the body of Christ, it was always joined to the Divinity. Whether, moreover, the blood was assumed immediately, or only mediately through the humanity, so that it had its own proper subsistence without subtraction of the subsistence of the Word, is a grave controversy among theologians. For Durandus in 4 dist. 10 qu. 1 denies that any blood, whether natural or nutritive, was hypostatically assumed by the Word. Cajetan, however, and most Thomists, establishing a distinction between nutritive and natural blood, assert that the latter was assumed, but not the former. Other theologians teach that every blood which was in Christ while He lived in a mortal body subsisted by the subsistence of the Word; for they reject that distinction of blood into nutritive and natural.

NOTE 3. That about the year of Christ 1351 a grave controversy arose at Barcelona; for while some in the aforesaid city asserted and publicly preached that the blood of Christ shed in the Passion was separated from the Divinity, and therefore was not to be adored during the three days of death with the worship of latria, and, as Wadding relates in our Annals under the same year, n. 3, Franciscus Baiuli, Guardian of the Minorites, taught this ex professo; Nicolaus Rosselli, then Inquisitor in the kingdom of Aragon, learned through his letters that Ioannes Morlandinus had been assumed to the Cardinalate together with the General Pastor of the Order of Minors by his uncle Clement VI in the year last past: this Morlandinus replied that he had received by the oracle of the living voice from the Pontiff, on the 20th of July, instructions in mandate that those who had so preached should be compelled to recant, and that it had been judged that this opinion must altogether be accounted heretical. The process having been completed, the Inquisitor Nicolaus, relying solely on the letters of that Cardinal, severely punished all who had been assertors of that proposition, and brought it about that before the Curia and in the presence of the Bishop of Barcelona they abjured that sentiment. Thus at that time, without tumult, the affair was quieted and concluded: yet after one hundred and thirteen years the same opinion revived among the Brescians in the year 1462¹ preached by blessed James Picenus, commonly surnamed of the March, a man indeed of outstanding sanctity and conspicuous in very many miracles. But when James of Brescia of the Order of Preachers, Inquisitor in Lombardy, contended keenly that that opinion had been condemned as heretical by Clement VI, bitter disputes came about, and public disputations before Pius II. Nevertheless nothing was decreed by the supreme Pontiff in this matter, as will appear below.

Three things, therefore, are chiefly to be resolved in this Question: First, whether the Word truly assumed human blood immediately: Second, whether it is of faith: Third, whether the Word also immediately assumed the excrementitious parts of the human body.

First Conclusion. It is probable that all the blood of Christ the Lord's humanity was immediately assumed by the divine Word and hypostatically united to Him. This is the more common opinion among theologians.

Proof. 1. By all those texts of sacred Scripture in which the price of our redemption is attributed to the blood of Christ the Lord shed forth. So Rom. 5 v. 9: Justified in his blood. Ephes. 1 v. 7: Having redemption through his blood, the remission of sins. Also Coloss. 1 v. 20: He made peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in heaven. Heb. 9 v. 12: Christ, by his own blood, entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption. If the blood of goats etc. v. 13: sanctify the unclean unto the cleansing of the flesh etc. v. 14: how much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? 1 Pet. 1 v. 2 the faithful are called elect unto the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. And ibid. v. 19 they are said to be redeemed with the precious blood, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled, Christ. 1 John 1 v. 7: The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Apoc. 1 v. 5: He hath washed us from our sins in his own blood. From all these texts it appears that the blood poured forth by Christ the Lord, especially upon the cross, was at once the price of our redemption and the saving laver wherein all sins are washed away. Further, that blood of Christ the Lord would not have had that power and efficacy unless it had been assumed by the Word and joined to the Divinity, by reason of which union it was of infinite worth and price.

It is confirmed further by this argument: Whatever pertains to the integrity of the human body was hypostatically assumed by the Word: but it is more probable that blood pertains to the integrity of the human body: therefore the divine Word hypostatically assumed it. The major stands from the preceding Question, in which we proved that the divine Word assumed the entire humanity, and consequently a body consisting of all its parts. The minor, however, is proved: First indeed by the authority of Aristotle, book 3 De Historia animalium, chapter 2, where he ranks blood among the similar parts of the animal body. To him Seneca gives suffrage, book 2 Quaestiones Naturales, where he writes thus: Blood is as it were a part of us, which nevertheless is even matter, for it prepares other things too, and none the less is numbered among those of which the whole body is made. St. Damascene also subscribes, book 2 De Fide, chapter 12, where he says: Every body is compounded of four elements, but the bodies of living creatures from four humors. The same St. Augustine taught, epistle 116, saying: The nature of flesh is tempered by four humors. Also that authority of St. Paul to the Hebrews 2: Therefore because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same. Wherefore St. Cyril, in the epistle which was read and approved in the Council of Chalcedon, Action 1, interprets that saying of John, the Word was made flesh, thus: He assumed flesh and blood. And Nazianzen, oration 50: The Word, he says, was made flesh, not putatively, but truly, because He assumed a body consisting of flesh and bones and blood. Yet it could be answered here that in these places blood is signified indeed to be a part of man, not integral, but only accessory, which, since it is the seat and vehicle of the animal spirits, by whose benefit man lives and moves, therefore by synecdoche the whole man is wont to be designated in the Scriptures by the name of blood. So Matthew 16: Flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee. And 1 Cor. 15: Flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God.

From these it is gathered that the conclusion has no most efficacious foundation, neither from authority nor from reason, whereby its most constant truth may appear: for what is wont to be adduced from Councils and the decrees of supreme Pontiffs we shall declare does not patronize this assertion in the following Conclusion. Nevertheless we have called that opinion the more probable: partly because it is more conformable to the manner of speaking of Scripture and the Holy Fathers, who seem to attribute our redemption to the price and worth of the blood of Christ the Lord: partly because a more numerous company of theologians accords with that opinion: finally, because the supreme Pontiffs, before whom this controversy was agitated, seem to incline the more toward it. For Spondanus relates under the year 1462 that

the contention growing and a schism being made by the people on account of the controversy stirred up between blessed James of the March and the Friars Preachers, and the Bishop of the place not prevailing to calm the tumult, the matter was referred to the Apostolic See: concerning which Pope Pius II at that time commanded the Superiors of the Orders to send their most learned theologians to the Curia, whom he heard disputing for three days at the Nativity of the Lord in the Apostolic Palace, in the presence of Cardinals, Bishops, and Doctors of divine and human law who were at the Curia. Finally after three days, when they had produced whatever parts they wished, the assembly having been dismissed, he treated of the matter with the Cardinals on most days; approved the greater part of the sentence of the Preachers, few sided with the Minors, and Pius also inclined to the major part: but it was not thought well at that time to make a decree of declaration, lest the multitude of Minors, whose preaching against the Turks was necessary, be offended: and therefore it pleased that decision be deferred to another time, which nevertheless it never pleased to decide. How empty and futile this reason of Spondanus is, namely that the supreme Pontiff was unwilling to settle this controversy by his decree lest he offend the Minorites, will appear in the following Conclusion.

You will object. 1. If the divine Word had assumed human blood, it would follow that He assumed several natures: but this is absurd, seeing He assumed only one human nature: therefore, etc. The major is plain, because since blood is not of the integrity of the nature, it must be another nature than the human.

I distinguish the major: To have assumed several natures ordered to constituting one and the same whole, I concede; otherwise, I deny. And in this there is nothing absurd, since it stands that Christ assumed body and soul: and the body consists of heterogeneous parts.

You will say. 2. If the Word had assumed blood, it would follow, by the communication of idioms, that one could say, the blood is God, and God is blood: but this is absurd: therefore also that from which it follows.

I deny the consequence of the major, because by the communication of idioms two entire natures can indeed be predicated of one another, but not a part of a whole, nor a whole of a part: hence although the Word immediately assumed soul and body, still it is not rightly said, God is body, and body is God.

Second conclusion. It has not been proved with certain certainty that the blood of Christ was properly and immediately united to the Word of God, especially during the three days of death: in such wise that the contrary opinion could be defended without heresy and without error. This is against Suarez, Vazquez, and many other Moderns.

And the conclusion is proved: If that which was the foundation of the contrary opinion, whereby it was held as most certain that Christ the Lord must be believed to have assumed human blood, especially because, as the adversaries will, it was so defined by Clement VI and Pius II: but this reason is nonexistent: therefore, etc. The major is evident from Suarez and Vazquez themselves, who judged all the testimonies which they adduce from sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers in support of their assertion to be so weak that they had recourse to the decree of Clement VI and Pius II as to a most solid foundation. The minor our Wadding proves in the place praised just above: First indeed from the fact that Pius, the supreme Pontiff, by his diploma absolved blessed James of the Marches, well deserving of the Church and of the Catholic faith, from every note of heresy and error on account of the asserted contrary opinion: for while this blessed man complained before the same supreme Pontiff that his adversaries were boasting at Barcelona that the process drawn up against him had been confirmed by Papal authority, and that he was therefore regarded by many as a heretic, he answered him with his diploma, which Wadding transcribed from the autograph, as follows:

Pius Bishop, etc., to his beloved son Fr. James of the March. Beloved son, health and Apostolic blessing. You wrote that you are greatly anxious on account of that matter of the blood shed by our Lord and Savior, which in certain places is commonly said to have been decided and determined by Us, against your opinion and preaching. We wonder at this, nor do we know whence such a report arose. For We have not thus far determined that matter itself, nor, on account of various occupations, have We been able to determine it, but God willing, We intend to do so when first a more opportune occasion shall present itself, and We shall not be distracted by so many occupations. But lest you should think that We neglect your honor and reputation, since you write that from Milan even to Verona you have been publicly preached to be a heretic, We will that you write to our brother the Bishop of Verona, to whom We likewise hereby give command, that he reduce to writing the things preached in this matter, and transmit them to Us in authentic form: for if the Preachers have behaved less honorably in their preaching, and have said anything of you that ought not to be said, We shall show them that this displeased Us, nor shall their transgression go unpunished. But as touching the authentication of that opinion, or of the process celebrated at Barcelona, made by that Prelate to whom this affair was committed by Us, know that it was not done so that by it faith or authority might be added to this kind of opinion or process; but that it might be a certain testimony of a thing done, that is, lest the knowledge of that deed, whatever it may have been, perish; for it was not Our intention, by reason of the commission, to confirm or approve the opinion or the process. For whereas supplication had been made to Us on the part of the Friars Preachers that We should wish to have them authenticated, We could not do otherwise than commit the cause: but the Commissary judged, as you have already seen. Wherefore let not your heart be troubled, > neither let it fear; be of quiet mind, and let not your soul be scandalized at this, for We know your sincere charity, nor is your zeal unknown to us, but persevere in the best faith, which God, the searcher of hearts, knows well, and let not the rumors of the crowd or the voices of calumniators delay you. Sufficiently known to God is your conscience, and it can rest content that We have conceived a paternal opinion of you, and retain what we have conceived. Concerning attendance at the Chapter of your Order soon to be celebrated, We are content, and exhort you to attend, and to do those things that are pleasing to God and to the honor of the Order and conducive to the salvation of your soul. But concerning access to the Duke of Venice We are content, and we exhort you to approach him. For We know him to be a good prince and one who fears God. We think that you wish to address and see him for no other than a good and honest cause, and We judge your access to him will be useful. Given at Macerata in the diocese of Siena, under the Fisherman's ring, on the 28th day of April 1461, in the sixth year of our pontificate.

Therefore the Pontiff did not mark the opposing opinion with any note of error.

This same judgment of the Pontiff is confirmed — namely, that he defined nothing by any Apostolic authority concerning this controversy — from the fact that the same supreme Pontiff eight days before his death, namely in the year 1464, issued another diploma, which Laurence Cherubinus reports, wherein he enacted,

that it shall not be lawful hereafter to any of the Orders of Minors or Preachers to dispute concerning the aforesaid doubt, or to preach, or to speak publicly or privately, or to persuade others that it is heretical or sinful to hold or believe that the same most sacred blood, as premised, during the three days of the passion of the same our Lord Jesus Christ was in any way divided or separated, or not divided or separated, from the divinity itself, until concerning the decision of this kind of doubt, what is to be held, shall have been defined by the Apostolic See. He commanded therefore all and singular the Brothers of the same and of whatsoever other Orders constituted throughout the whole world, of whatsoever state, grade, or condition they may be, present and future, under pain of the sentence of excommunication latae sententiae, which they would incur ipso facto, and from which, unless constituted in the article of death, they could be absolved only by the Roman Pontiff, not to presume in any way to come against, or to do, or to attempt anything against the aforesaid statute and ordinance.

It is not true, therefore, what Suarez and Vazquez affirm, that Clement VI and Pius II condemned that doctrine which asserted that the blood was separated from the divinity during the three days of death, since they can bring forward nothing for the establishing of this assertion of theirs besides those alone-written letters of John the Cardinal Dominican, against which our Francis de Ruvere, Cardinal of the Franciscans — who afterwards was Pope under the name Sixtus IV — opposed many things, together with the little book, or process drawn up by the Inquisitor likewise a Dominican, which Gabriel Vazquez wrongly says was formed by mandate of Clement through Apostolic letters: whereas copies of it exist, and no briefs, or Bulls, or Pontifical diplomas are seen there, except that one letter of the Cardinal: and this alone did the aforesaid Inquisitor of Brixia allege as foundation of the definition, while he was vehemently pressing the cause against B. James of Picenum. Add that Dominic de Dominicis, a learned man of almost that age, in the book which he wrote on the blood of Christ, asserts that the decree of Clement is not authentic, nor does it rest on approved testimonies. And certainly the little book, or process formed by Rossellus, rests on no other credit than its own, being strengthened neither by the hand of a Notary, nor by the testimony of any public minister. Whence I can scarcely wonder enough for what cause Sylvester, in the Golden Rose, tract. 8, qu. 31, asserts that Clement the supreme Pontiff damned the aforesaid proposition, and what is more wonderful, that the condemnation and retraction made at Barcelona by the aforesaid Inquisition was approved by Pius II: for Pius himself denies this in express words in the aforesaid diploma given to B. James of the Marches. To these things add that, for anything to be declared as a dogma of faith, it must rest upon the authority of Scripture, or some tradition: but it is difficult to show either of these on which the supreme Pontiffs rested and were moved to bring forth that definition; for all the authorities, whether of Scripture or of the Holy Fathers, by which to the blood of Christ shed is attributed the remission of our sins and the other subsequent benefits, press but little: because, as we said in the prior Conclusion, all these things are appropriated to the blood, not that we were saved or delivered by the mere shedding of blood, since there were other meritorious works of our salvation in Christ, and he could have saved us by sweat and tears, had he so willed, but because all his merits were terminated and consummated in death and passion. Hence these benefits are referred principally to the death of Christ: to the shedding of the blood indeed, as to the means through which death followed, just as to the cross these same benefits are attributed as to an instrument.

He urges — Vazquez urges, bringing forward what he thinks a firm foundation of this definition, which he boasts himself to have collected from the VI Synod, act 16, where a certain heretic named Constantine is condemned because he said the blood was dismissed from the Word during the three days of death, and from the same Synod act 8, where the confession of Macarius Antiochene Bishop, albeit a Monothelite, is proved, in that he said Christ assumed flesh and blood, and from the Epistle of the Alexandrian Council, which is the 10th, recited and approved by Cyril in the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, anathematism 5, where the divine Word is said to have been made partaker of flesh and blood. Truly these urge nothing, for as regards the condemnation of Constantine, it was deservedly pronounced; Vazquez himself admits it, because Christ plainly confessed in the Council that he had laid aside not only the blood, but also the flesh and the human will: for the Synod questioned him: Where then did that flesh and blood remain? Constantine answered: He laid it aside. And the Synod again asked: And did he lay aside the human will together with the flesh? Constantine answered: Yes, Lord. Whence he was partly condemned as a Manichean, and partly as an abettor of the Monothelites, because he confessed only one will in Christ. The same must be said of Macarius, who as a heretic was deposed in that Synod, and whose confession was condemned, in that he confessed only one will and operation in Christ; whence it is vain to seek testimony from his confession. As to the authority of Cyril and of the Councils approving that epistle, we have spoken sufficiently above.

Third conclusion. Hairs, nails, tears, sweats, and other excrementitious parts were not assumed hypostatically by the divine Word immediately, but only because they were in the human nature which was assumed. This is the more common view, against Suarez disp. 15, sect. 1, who holds as more probable that nails, teeth, and hairs were assumed according to hypostasis by the divine Word.

It is proved: First, because those excrementitious parts do not pertain to the integrity of the human body, whence they will not remain in glorified bodies: then, because those parts in no way, neither directly nor indirectly, conduce to the end of the Incarnation, namely the salvation of men: therefore they do not seem to have been assumed.

You will say: St. Ambrose lib. On the Incarnation cap. 6, and Athanasius in the Epistle to Epictetus, treating against heretics who said the divinity and the flesh of Christ were of the same substance, seem to infer that consequently they would say the Word was converted into flesh, hairs, blood, and bones: therefore those Fathers judged that these parts of the body pertain to its integrity.

I deny that the Fathers infer that, but only report the error of those heretics: for St. Ambrose writes thus: Thereupon all these men, namely the heretics, say that the Word was converted into flesh, hairs, blood, and bones, and changed from his own nature. Occasion is given them to twist the infirmity of the flesh into an infirmity of the Divinity by a certain fictitious mutation of the divine nature. And St. Athanasius against the same heretics writes thus: Nay rather you pass over into another impiety, asserting that the Word, his former nature having been left behind, passed away into flesh, into bone, into hair, sinews, and indeed wholly into body. Therefore the aforesaid Fathers do not argue as absurd that the Word was changed into hairs if it had been changed into a living body, as though even the hairs lived: but they suppose this from the opinion of those heretics.

You ask: whether some particle of the blood of Christ has truly remained on earth substantially, and is still preserved.

I answer. That there is a great controversy among Theologians concerning this difficulty; for very many, with John of Turrecremata, judge that no particle of the blood of Christ remained on earth after his resurrection: but that the blood which is carried about under the name of Christ is not that which flowed from his body, but from a certain image of Christ struck by the Jews of Berith, whose history Athanasius relates in the book On the Passion of the Image of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which author, although he is not held by some to be the great Athanasius, yet that book ought not to be of slight authority, since the aforesaid history was recited under the name of Athanasius and approved in the Second Council of Nicaea, Act 1. This author moreover, cap. 7 of that book, speaking of the blood which flowed from that struck image, says: This is that blood of the Lord, which is said to have been found among very many, nor is it to be lightly esteemed by true Catholics beyond what is written by us, as though something from the flesh and blood of Christ could be found in the world, except that which daily is spiritually wrought upon the altar through the hands of Priests. Other Theologians however think that particles of the blood of Christ are still preserved on earth, nor was all the blood shed in the passion resumed by Christ. Sylvester proves it in the Golden Rose tract. 3, question 31. First indeed by the authority of Pius II, who in a Bull to the Abbot of the Monastery of Xanten thus defines: The petition exhibited contained this, that although for so long a time, of which no memory exists in the Church of the said house, there is piously believed to be a certain particle of the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ shed healthfully for the redemption of the human race upon the wood of the cross, etc. We therefore, who have certain knowledge of the premises, attending to the fact that it nowise repugns the certitude of faith to affirm that our Redeemer left upon earth, out of most pious memory of him, some part of the aforesaid blood, etc.

Therefore the supreme Pontiff judges it most probable that some particle of the blood of Christ the Lord remains substantially on earth. Add what Platina relates in the life of Leo III, that the Pontiff went to Mantua to see the blood of Christ, which then was in great veneration on account of constant miracles: and thence, the blood having been approved, it was brought to Charles. It is confirmed from book 6 of the Revelations of St. Bridget, where the Virgin addresses her in these words: When the time of my call from this world drew near, I myself commended that sacred membrane (namely of the foreskin) to St. John my keeper, together with that blessed blood which remained in his wounds when we took him down from the cross. There come besides innumerable narrations, all of which cannot be condemned as false by any man of sound sense, and yet from these it is beyond doubt that some portion of the blood shed by Christ survives (under another form, however, than that of blood). Such is that redness which is still seen in many instruments of the Lord's passion: the redness is not a bare color left from the sprinkling of blood (for second qualities are not propagated in that way), but the true substance of blood, which first adhered to those instruments and persists fixed to them. Likewise concerning the thorn of the royal chapel of Paris, and the iron of the lance formerly kept at Nuremberg, now at Rome, and concerning the sacred shroud of Turin, and the Holy Face of Rome, or the veil of Veronica, many writers relate. And specially as regards the Turin shroud Julius II declared that the redness which is then seen in it is relics of shed blood, and those who treat of Veronica's sudarium say the same of it. Finally all these things are confirmed from the fact that the flesh of the foreskin is reverently kept and worthily honored under the eyes of the supreme Pontiffs and in the sight of the Roman Curia; for every year in the presence of the Cardinals, in the Easter days, it is shown in the Lateran Basilica, and with a Latin and Italian proclamation from the high pulpit there is set before the people to be adored the blood and water which flowed from the side of Christ dying. Therefore it is not improbable that some substantial particles of the blood of Christ the Lord still remain on earth.

The Adversaries object all those texts of Scripture cited in the superior Conclusion, by which the blood of Christ the Lord is said to have been shed for the price of our redemption and salvation. Truly I answer that those texts are not to be understood of the blood of Christ separated from his body either dead or risen, but of his actual shedding thereof, whereby Christ himself, while still living, offered his own most precious blood to the Father for the redemption of the human race: whence the Apostle attributes the price of our redemption not to the blood alone, but also to prayer, to strong crying and tears and supplications, Heb. 5 v. 7, where of Christ he says: Who in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence: and indeed whereas he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by those things which he suffered: and being consummated, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation. In which words the Apostle taught two things especially: first, that not the blood alone, but also the prayers, supplications, and tears of Christ meriting were offered for our redemption: the other, that the whole merit of Christ and his satisfaction were terminated for us in his death. Being consummated, he says, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation. Whence Heb. 2 v. 10: For it became him, he says, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, who had brought many children into glory, to perfect the author of their salvation by his passion. Whence Tostatus admirably, on Gen. cap. 13, question 351, says the Church was founded rather on Christ living than dead: because, he says, our redemption is from the merits of the passion of Christ, in which passion all foundations instituted by Christ have their efficacy: but the passion of Christ is in the living, and not in the dead, because the dead can suffer nothing sensibly. It is to be noted by the wise: the same blood of Christ from the body of Christ living, and its penalities then profited unto our redemption: but that which was in Christ after death contributes nothing effectively to our redemption, because there is no meritorious action there, but only for signification: just as the burial of the body of the Lord does not contribute effectively or meritoriously to our redemption. And so the blood which flowed from the dead redeemed us not, but the blood which flowed from the living: but that which flowed from the dead signifies redemption and cleansing; it does not effect them.

They object 2. That common axiom from St. Damascene lib. 3, On the Faith cap. 23, where of the divine Word he says: What he once assumed he never dismissed: since therefore he once assumed blood, he never dismissed it.

The Theologians answer commonly that that axiom is to be understood of the principal parts of the humanity, namely soul, body, and its integral parts: whence Richard of Mediavilla, 3 dist. 2 art. 2 qu. 1, says that if a foot had been cut off from the body of Christ, it would always have remained joined to the divinity: but not of parts less principal, and accustomed to flow off from the body, which, since they were no longer parts of the body, had no conjunction with the divinity. Such likewise was the foreskin cut off from the body of Christ in circumcision, which even to this day is kept and shown in the Lateran Church: yet it is not adored as joined to the divinity. So therefore the blood shed in the passion and not resumed by Christ in the resurrection, which is kept at Rome, Mantua, in the monastery of St. Mary of Xanten, and at St. Maximin, although it flowed forth from the body of Christ the Lord at the time of the passion: nevertheless, since it is no longer joined to him, it seems neither on that account joined to the divinity nor to be adored with the worship of latria.