Scholars have differed here as to
what the two elements are, the “two things, both an earthly and a heavenly.”
Here I can only state the results at which I arrived after a detailed study:
that the earthly thing is most indubitably the bread and wine which are of the
same creation as our everyday bodies; and that the heavenly thing is the body
and blood of Christ. And if this be the correct interpretation, then St. Irenaeus
has told us here that after the Epiclesis the bread is common
bread plus the body of Christ. He knows nothing of ay “virtualism,” nor
a doctrine which makes the Holy Spirit the content of the Eucharist. (Felix
L. Cirlot, The Early Eucharist [London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1939], 85, italics in original; note how Cirlot understands Irenaeus to be teaching that the 'transformation' [however understood] takes place, not when the essential form is said, but at the epiclesis)
