human
Nor is that honor of the Deipara to be offered, viz., that the elements of the body of Christ, which the Blessed Virgin supplied to it, remain perpetually unaltered in Christ, and thereby are found also in the eucharist. . . . This solicitude for the Virgin's glory must, I consider, be discarded; since, if rightly considered, it involves an injury toward Christ, and such honors the Virgin loveth not. And first, dismissing philosophical bagatelles about the animation of blood, milk, etc., who can endure the proposition that a good portion of the substance of Christ in the eucharist should be worshipped with a _cultus_ less than _latria_? viz., by the inferior _cultus_ of _hyperdulia?_ The preferable class of theologians contend that not even the humanity of Christ is to be materially abstracted from the Word of God, and worshipped by itself; how then shall we introduce a _cultus_ of the Deipara in Christ, which is inferior to the _cultus_ proper to him? How is this other than casting down of the substance of Christ from his royal throne, and a degradation of it to some inferior sitting-place? Is is nothing to the purpose to refer to such fathers as say that the flesh of Christ is the flesh of Mary, for they speak of its origin. What will hinder, if this doctrine be admitted, our also admitting that there is something in Christ which is detestable? for, as the first elements of a body which were communicated by the Virgin to Christ have (as these authors say) remained perpetually in Christ, so the same _materia_, at least in part, which belonged originally to the ancestors of Christ, came down to the Virgin from her father, unchanged, and taken from her grandfather, and so on. And thus, since it is not unlikely that some of these ancestors were reprobate, there would now be something actually in Christ which had belonged to a reprobate and worthy of detestation.