Ternio sacrorum theorematum, de uno Deo, de uno mediatore, et de Iesu, qui est Christus

4. That we were circumcised in Christ, with a circumcision made without hands, by the putting off of the body of the flesh subject to sin. Col. 2:11.

5. That Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. 1 Cor. 5:7.

Although I see that it cannot be solidly denied by these illustrious Oracles, which demonstrate that both the blessing of salvation and the grace of the Sacraments are common to us with the Fathers, yet this doubt greatly troubles me: I do not see how those Fathers could have become partakers of the Flesh of Christ, given for the life of the world, when in their times that flesh did not yet exist corporally. I confess, however, that it is not for me to deny the things I do not yet understand, as such a disposition should be foreign to a modest person and one studious of the truth.

Learn, therefore, ou chreōstō I do not owe [an answer], that the Flesh of Christ existed spiritually at the time of the Fathers, which also (as long as the Catholic Church proceeds by faith and not by sight) serves for their vivification, is present to it, and is perceived by it, only spiritually. 2 Cor. 5:7, Eph. 3:17, 1 Cor. 10:3, 4.

And lest you wander far from the way of truth with the ignorant, to whom the Lord has not yet given the ability to understand this mystery of faith, and imagine that the flesh of Christ should be referred to simply among NON-ENTITIES in the age of the Fathers, religiously weigh all these things with me:

1. That it is the Flesh of the Lamb slaughtered from the foundations of the world. Rev. 13:8. Therefore, in whatever way that Lamb was slaughtered, in that same way did the Fathers perceive his Flesh; and in the way they received it, in that same way it existed. It existed then Spiritually, not corporally.

2. That it is the Flesh which we hear was given for the life of the world (taking the word in the better part). John 6:51.