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"J.N.D. Kelly points out that the literalist and symbolical views were both prevalent in the early centuries and he gives the following summation of the symbolical or figurative view held in the Church up to the time of Augustine. "

Thanks, as it is of some value, however the uninspired writings of men are not determinitive of what the NT church believed, not even for Catholics, as instead of such, or of Scripture, it is what their church asserts that both Scripture and tradition consist of and mean that are to matter most to the orthodox faithful.

* Thus are explained both her respect for the writings of the Fathers of the Church and her supreme independence towards those writings–she judges them more than she is judged by them.” — Catholic Encyclopedia: “Tradition and Living Magisterium” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm

“It was the charge of the Reformers that the Catholic doctrines were not primitive, and their pretension was to revert to antiquity. But the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of the Church at this hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine” "The only Divine evidence to us of what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church at this hour." — Dr. Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Lord Archbishop of Westminster, “The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost: Or Reason and Revelation, pp. 227-228.

Catholics do appeal to both Scripture and tradition - forcing the former to support that latter according to the understanding of their church - in attempting to bring hearers to submit to their church, thus Scripture is not the supreme sure standard, and since it is disallowed that men can discern the contents to Scripture apart from faith in her, and to avoid circular reasoning (proving the church by the Scriptures and the Scriptures by the church) then in Catholic theology Scripture is appealed to merely as reliable historical sources, and abstract altogether from their inspiration. By which it is supposed that the candidate for conversion discerns the RCC as the one true church, even though it is disallowed that one can otherwise discover what the contents of Scripture are. Of course, when distinctive Catholic teachings are not found to be manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels) then they are told they need to faithfully submit to "The Church" to understand Scripture regarding this. Imagine if the 1st century souls wholly followed this model.

As suspected, it's merely lip service to their claim of "unanimous consent" of the fathers as well as to St. Vincent of Lerin's threefold (but never realized) criterion of Catholic doctrine: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (‘what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all’) formulated by St Vincent of Lérins (d. before 450) in his Commonitorium, a guide to heresy and to determining the true faith.

William Webster also wrote an excellent essay about the Catholic church's "living" tradition. It's basically Rome’s New and Novel Concept of Tradition Living Tradition: (Viva Voce – Whatever We Say)

John 6:63.

“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak to you, they are spirit, they are life.”

How can this possibly be misconstrued so as to make a wafer the literal, flesh, of Christ, and the wine, the literal blood of Christ?

Christ plainly states that the flesh profiteth nothing. How can anyone believe that their we have life in that? He says there is not.

So what are they changing these physical things into? Certainly not the literal flesh and blood of Christ. He plainly states that rhe Flesh and Blood are spirit, not flesh. That the flesh profiteth nothing.