Note 173 — Chapter XXII · THE VIATICUM.
Reading edition
“Christ’s secret gifts, by good Tarcisius borne, The mob profanely bade him to display; He rather gave his own limbs to be torn, Than Christ’s celestial to mad dogs betray.” Carmen, xviii.
See also Baronius’s notes to the Martyrology. The words “(Christi) cœlestia membra,” applied to the Blessed Eucharist, supply one of those casual, but most striking, arguments that result from identity of habitual thought in antiquity, more than from the use of studied or conventional phrases.