Forbes on Article XXXI: Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross

“THE breaking of the Bread and the Prayers,” which are the terms used for the worship of the primitive Church a, have from the beginning been invested with

Acts ii. 42.

[…]

b Heb. viii. 2. c 2 Cor. iii. 6. d Rom. xv. 16.

e 1 Cor. n. 40, 45. f Eph. n. v. ; Magn., n. vii. ; Phil. iv.

« Tryph., 41, 117. h S. Iren. iv. 17, n. 5.

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remark : ” Thus Jesus Christ has established the Sacri fice of the New Testament, which the Church offers to God throughout the whole world, according to the teaching handed down by the Apostles.” He states that it is the Word Who is offered in this Sacrifice *.

Origen k asserts that in the Christian Churches there is a Sacrifice, at once commemorative and propitiatory, that is to say, the Eucharist.

St. Cyprian \ who had occasion to enter upon the consideration of the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist with a view to satisfying the scruples of certain igno rant and simple persons who demurred at the use of wine in these holy mysteries, asks : — ” Who is more a Priest of the Most High God than our Lord Jesus Christ, Who offered a sacrifice to God the Father, and offered the same which Melchisedek had offered, i.e. bread and wine, namely, His own Body and Blood ?” In the same letter he says : — ” If Jesus Christ our Lord and God is Himself the great High-Priest of God the Father, and first offered Himself a Sacrifice to the Fa ther, and commanded this to be done in remembrance of Himself, surely that priest truly acts in Christ’s stead, who imitates that which Christ did ; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father, when he begins to offer it according as he sees Christ Himself offered it.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his ” Catechism,” which is very important as shewing the actual practical in-

1 S. Iren. iv. 18, n. 4. k In Lev. Horn. xiii. n. 3.

1 EpAxui.

struction of the Church of his time, says, without oratorical periphrasis, “We offer Jesus Christ immo lated for our sins m.”

But a still clearer evidence of the faith of the early Church is to he found in the early Liturgies. The parts of these which are found in all, and are thus traced up to a common ancestry of unwritten tradition, are so venerable in their antiquity, that many great scholars have maintained that they are more ancient than the later epistles. In any case, they are docu ments of the highest authority, and unimpeachable witnesses to primitive practice. Now, in all these without exception, we have the distinctest enunciation of the Sacrificial character of the Holy Eucharist. In spite of the insertion of the prayer of St. Chrysostom into our morning service, which was in 1544 appended to the Litany, it is probable that the English He- formers were not conversant with the Eastern Litur gies, otherwise we cannot conceive how they could have preferred the Second to the First Book of Ed ward, or have rested content with the emendations at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth.

Bearing in mind, then, the hieratic language of Holy Scripture, the unbroken tradition of Church doc tors from the earliest times, the witness of the ancient Liturgies, (a witness corroborated by the fact that many of these have been used by bodies which have been alienated from the Catholic Church since the Council of Chalcedon, and so become an independent testi-

m My st. Cat., xxiii. n. 10.

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raony,) we are safe in accepting the truth, that in view of the imperfection of the Levitical rites, and of His Eternal Priesthood after the order of Melchisedek, our Lord, — although He was about to offer Himself once for all upon the altar of the Cross to His Father, by means of His death to obtain eternal redemption for us, yet because His is an abiding Priesthood, in order that He might leave to the Church a visible rite whereby the bloody Sacrifice once for all to be accom plished on the Cross might be represented, remembered till the end of the world, and its virtue applied to the remission of sins as they are committed, — at the Last Supper, in the night that He was betrayed, offered to God the Father His own Body and Blood under the form of Bread and Wine, delivered Them to the Apo stles, and, by the words ” This do in remembrance of Me,” commanded them and their successors thus to shew forth His death till He come again.

One cannot find any contradiction between this Arti cle and the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice thus stated. In the words of Mr. Palmer n : ” The Arti cle condemning the sacrifices of masses, in which it was commonly said that Christ was offered for the quick and dead for the remission of pain or […] rightly censures that erroneous view of the Sacrifice, but does not declare against the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice rightly understood.” And elsewhere : ” The Thirty-first Article is directed against the vulgar and heretical doctrine of the reiteration of Christ’s Sacrifice n Treatise on the Church, vol. i. p. 400, od. 1842.

in the Eucharist. It was those ’ missarum sacrificia, quibus vulgo dicebatur sacerdotem ofFerre Christum in remissionem poense, aut culpse, pro vivis et defunctis/ which are pronounced ‘blasphema figrnenta et perm- ciosse impostures ;’ but not ’ missarum sacrificia/ as understood by the Fathers, and in an orthodox sense. The Article was directed against the errors main tamed and countenanced by such men as Soto, Har- dinge, &c., who, by rejecting the doctrine of a Sa crifice by way of commemoration and consecration, and not literally identical with that on the Cross, and by their crude and objectionable mode of expression, countenanced the vulgar error that the Sacrifice of the Eucharist or mass was in every respect equal to that of Christ upon the Cross, and that it was, in fact, either a reiteration or a continuation of that Sacri fice,” i.e. actively a continuation. ” The Article was not directed against the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, as explained by Bossuet, Yeron, and others, with which we have no material fault to find °.”

Or if it be right to claim Episcopal sanction for this view, it is to be found in the words of the late Lord Bishop of Exeter: “Again I see the same high autho rity numbers among the errors of Rome which our own Church has renounced, that a propitiatory virtue is attributed to the Eucharist P.” “I am not aware of our Church having anywhere condemned such a doctrine. That it has condemned (as we all from our

OF THE ONE OBLATION, &C. 607

hearts condemn) ’ as blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits/ * the sacrifices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and dead to have remission from pain or guilt/ — we know and heartily rejoice. But this is very far, indeed, from saying or meaning that the Eucharist hath not ’ a propitiatory virtue/ and we must be very careful how we deny that virtue to it. The conse crated elements ought not to be separated in our minds from the propitiation for our sins, continually pre sented for us before the throne of God. Whether we regard them in correspondence with the meat-offerings and drink-offerings of the Old Testament, as memo rials of the one great Sacrifice, and so, in union with that Sacrifice, by virtue of Christ’s appointment, re presenting and pleading to the Father the atonement finished on the Cross — or as answering to those por tions of the typical sacrifices which were eaten by the Priests and offerers — in either case, they are inti mately united with the altar in heaven and with its propitiatory virtue. ‘In these holy mysteries/ in an especial manner, heaven and earth are brought toge ther. Sursum Corda. ’ Therefore with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy holy Name/ The partakers of the Sacrifice, are partakers of the altar and of all its in estimable benefits, the first of which is the propitiation for our sins. Tor, in the Eucharist, as a Sacrament, ‘we eat our ransom,’ as St. Augustine says, — we receive spiritually ‘the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which

was given for us/ ’ the Blood which was shed for us ;’ in the same Eucharist as a Sacrifice, we, in repre sentation, plead the one great Sacrifice which our Great High-Priest continually presenteth for us in heaven. In heaven, He presenteth ever before the Father, in person, Himself, — mediating with the Father as our intercessor ; on earth He invisibly sanctifies what is offered, and makes the earthly elements, which we offer, to be sacrament ally and ineffably — but not in a carnal way — His Body and Blood. For although once for all offered, that Sacrifice, be it remembered, is ever LIVING AND CONTINUOUS, made to be continuous by the resurrection of our Lord. Accordingly, St. John tells us, in Rev. v. 6, 12, that he beheld, and lo in the midst of the throne stood a Lamb as it had been slain, and to Him is continually addressed the triumphant song of the heavenly host, ’ Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.’ To Him His Church on earth, in the Eu- charistic Service, in like manner, continually cries, ’ O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world/ Not that tookest away, but still takest — ’ Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata rnundi.’ As, then, the Sacrifice is continuous, its pro pitiatory virtue is continuous, and the fulness of the propitiation is pleaded for the whole Church, where soever the commemoration of it is exhibited in the Holy Eucharist.”

The key to the meaning of the Article is in the

OF THE ONE OBLATION, &C. 609

words “wherefore” and “satisfaction.” Any con struction which condemns a doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice consistent with the first sentence of the Article, makes it self -contradictory, inasmuch as the Article expressly confines itself to excluding any notion which would militate against the perfection of the offering of Christ once made upon the Cross, as being the only ” satisfaction for sin.” For ” there is but one real, true, and proper Sacrifice, viz. the offering which the Incarnate Son of God made of Himself upon the Cross to the Eternal Father.”

The Sacrifice in the Eucharist is substantially the same as the Sacrifice of the Cross, because the Priest is the same in both, and the Yictim is the same in both ; just as the Sacrifice which Christ the eternal Priest is now presenting to His Father in heaven, is the same which He offered upon the Cross, because He Himself is the same Yictim and Priest both in one. But there is a difference. There is a difference in the manner of offering. In heaven Christ is not offering Himself in the same manner as He did upon the Cross. We cannot rightfully censure or approve first part of this proposition, without consideration >f the second. If we deny the first as contradictory ) the Article, we must deny the second, for it also affirms a Sacrifice of Christ distinct in the manner >f offering from that on the Cross, — distinct both as not meriting any more, and as not accompanied by suffering — and so far both statements stand in the same relation to the statement in the Article ; if the

R r

second is not contradictory, neither is the first. Are we prepared to say that the second statement in the proposition, “The Sacrifice which Christ the eternal Priest is now presenting to His Father in Heaven, is the same which He offered upon the Cross,” is con tradictory to the Article, and is equivalent to setting up another meritorious Sacrifice ? If not, there is no confusion of thought. While the Sacrifice is con tinuous, the Satisfaction, properly so called, is not so. The “atonement/’ as meritorious, was finished upon the Cross.

If the doctrine be said to be antagonistic to the statement, ” Christ in His Holy Gospel hath com manded us to continue a perpetual memorial of that His precious death until His coming again,” it must be recollected that we are dwelling on the act of our blessed Lord in meritoriously dying upon the Cross, an act in time which being past can be commemorated. If we withdraw our thoughts for one moment from the Blessed Eucharist to the action of our Lord in heaven, we find that there, by the presentation of His Humanitj^, He does make a memorial of His act upon the Cross. In that celestial service we find the two elements of a real presence and a commemorative offering, and if we believe a real presence in the Holy Sacrament, with the change from a natural to a supernatural condition, we can apply this reasoning to establish an analogous offering in the Church below.

That a memorial of a Sacrifice may be the Sacrifice itself, is plain from the case of the Paschal Lamb;

OF THE ONE OBLATION, &C. 611

which, offered as it was year by year continually, was in kind the same sacrifice with that originally offered in Egypt, yet truly a memorial of it. When, therefore, the Homily says, ” we must be careful that we do not of a memory make it a Sacrifice,” we may not under stand it as though the two ideas were inconsistent, but rather as follows : ’ It is not to be accounted a distinct and independent Sacrifice ; we must never use it or think of it apart from its relation to the One Great and True Sacrifice which had gone before/ And this is no doubt St. Chrysostom’s meaning, when having said, “we celebrate no other Sacrifice, but the same always/’ he as it were qualifies his words, adding, “or rather we make a remembrance of a Sacrifice;” i.e. it was never to be forgotten that this rite, though most truly a Sacrifice, was so by being the memorial of the One Sacrifice on the Cross. Memory, then, is not inconsistent with Sacrifice. If it were, there could be no Sacrifice of the Altar at all.

The next point which requires to be considered is the assertion of the futility of the sacrifices of masses in reference to the quick and the dead. It is not inconsistent with this to assert that ‘We pray that the whole Church may receive, through this Sacrifice, the benefit of the Lord’s Passion, each, of course, according to his need and capacity of receiving. Whence the Eucharist is called by some of the Fathers a Sacrifice for the Living and the Dead/ Where a word is absolutely necessary to convey a meaning, the use of that word must be risked, but always with

careful explanations. We are not content with say ing the Church simply, nor yet the whole Church, but we say ” all the whole Church V’ that there may be neither limitation nor reserve in our application of the Sacrifice. And as the Church, in the amplitude of its extent, embraces both worlds, the visible and the invisible, we must be understood to pray and to offer for all the living members of Christ’s Body, whether sojourning with us here on earth, or departed hence in the Lord — for we cannot offer for all the whole Church unless we do, when we comprehend all who are in it, all who are united to Christ, all who are one with us in that mystical Body which is the fulness of Him Who filleth all in all. It is no new use of the term to apply the very peculiar expression of ” all Thy whole Church,” to those in the intermediate state ; many English divines have done so without blame.

However people may wish to disparage the tes timony of the early Liturgies, it is a fact which cannot be gainsaid, that in ever}/ one of them, with out exception, there is a commemoration of the faith ful departed. The entire universality of the prac tice must remove any ground for doubt on the sub ject. Much has been said about the difficulties of arriving at what the ancients believed, but here over the whole Christian world we have evidence for this truth from the most solemn documents which may be traced up to the highest antiquity, docu ments which with the strongest evidences of a com- i Communion Office, Book of Common Prayer.

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mon origin, yet vary sufficiently to become concur rent testimonies in favour of any doctrine which they agree in expressing.

And secondly, it may be further said that the appli cation of the blessed Eucharist to the departed, must in our Church stand and fall with the practice of prayers for the dead. In its aspect of the great ob lation, the Holy Communion may be considered as prayer in its most intense and highest form. If it is unlawful to pray for the faithful departed, it must be unlawful to remember them in the sacred mysteries ; but if the first practice be permitted, the second must be so likewise. The Church of England has judi cially ruled in her Supreme Tribunal, that prayer for the Dead is not unlawful r.

It cannot be doubted that in the very earliest and purest ages of the Church, it was universally believed that the celebration of the Holy Eucharist had spe cial reference to the faithful departed. TertulKan s : — ” Wherefore does she pray for his (her husband’s) soul, and begs for him in the meantime refreshment, and a share in the first resurrection, and offers for him on the anniversary of his death/’ St. Cyprian*, pro viding against the clergy becoming executors, says that the Bishops who preceded him resolved that there should be no oblation for such, nor should the sacrifice be celebrated for his repose (” nee sacrificium pro dor- mitione ejus celebraretur”). The passage in St. Cyril’s

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8 De Monog., n. x. * ISp. . ad Cier. et Plel. Furnis.

Catechism is well-known : — ” Also on behalf of the holy Fathers and Bishops who have fallen asleep before us, and of all in spirit who have already fallen asleep among us, believing that it will be of very great as sistance to the souls, for which prayer is raised while the holy and most awful Sacrifice lies before us.” St. Macariusu, of Alexandria, discusses the subject of the advantage that accrues to the soul when ” an oblation is offered up to God in the Church for the dead.” St. Epiphanius, in controversy with Aeriusv, asserts and defends the practice of making a commemoration of the just, and on behalf of sinners : ” on behalf of sinners supplicating for mercy from God, and for the just … in order that on account of the honour that we pay to Christ, we may separate Him from the race of men. ” St. Ambrose x : — ” Give the heavenly Sacra ment, let us follow the soul of the grandson with our oblations.” St. Chrysostom.y describes the actual ritual of his time as obtaining irapa^vOia for the dead. The reader will also remember the last injunction of St. Monica to St, Augustine.

One common argument against the Eucharistic Sa crifice is that, according to this belief, one must hold and teach the blasphemy, that the Sacrifice in the Eucharist must be substantially, virtually, and essen tially, although not as He appeared on Calvary, Christ still laying down His life for the sheep, still shedding

n Serm. de Excess., n. 3 — 5, p. 238, t. vii. Galland. v Adv.

Hair., 75. x De obit. Valent., t. ii. p. 1189, s. 56.

y In Act. Apost. Horn. ix. ; also xli. in 1 Cor. iii. ad Philip.

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His Blood for our redemption, still discharging the yet unpaid penalty for human guilt ; that the sacrifi cial work, in all its essentials of suffering, dying, and atoning, instead of being finished, must be still only in progress of accomplishment ; that, in fact, there is a propitiation of the same merit, nature, power, and efficacy, that Christ’s offering on the cross was not the alone satisfaction for sin ; that one must deny that the oblation of Christ was finished upon the Cross; that one must believe that that Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist re-enacts the Sacrifice of the Cross in all its essential entirety ; that one must hold our Lord’s eternal Priesthood to consist in His being an eternal victim, that is, suffering and dying to atone; that this belief, to be consistent, implies not only that Christ undergoes in another mode the Sacrifice of the Cross, but that His Sacrifice of Himself was insufficient, inasmuch as a repetition is tantamount to insufficiency of the first act of sacrifice.

Now all this is more than met by the thought that that one Sacrifice and its all-sufficient merits live on, as in our Lord’s perpetual presentation of Himself in heaven, so in our Eucharistical Oblation of His Body and Blood sacramentally present on our altars. We have nothing apart from that One Sacrifice ; our Eucharistic Oblation is not something in and for it self; something independent of that One Sacrifice, even while it pleaded it. Such is its union with that Sacri fice, that it is a perpetual application of its virtue ; yet not as something distinct, but as united with it

through the oneness of that which is offered, that same Body of Christ offered on the Cross to make atonement for the sins of the whole world and for each one of us, offered and presented to the Father, in heaven and in the Church below, on the ” altar above,” and on the Holy Table, in pleading and for application of the Atonement once for all wrought upon the holy Cross. On the Cross that offering was made once for all with shedding of Blood ; on earth the offering is made in an unbloody manner, as the ancient Church attests. On the Cross, that offering merited the salvation of the world ; on the Altar, Christ being risen from the dead, dieth no more, but the fruit of that death is made over to the faithful. On the Cross, the full satis faction was paid ; on the Altar, the memorial of that satisfaction is made to the Father, in correspondence with the memorial made upon the celestial Altar.

To shew the harmony between the doctrine of the Eucharist Sacrifice as taught by the Fathers, and the teaching of the Article, while on the one hand we are bound to receive as true what has been taught ubique, semper -, et ab omnibus, the Church’s concurrent exposition of the Word of God ” in the best and purest ages -” on the other hand it must be consistent with that other truth of God, which the Thirty-first Article declares, out of St. Paul. And the solution is found in the oneness of that which was sacrificed, — the Body of Christ, offered in satisfaction for our sins, with blood- shedding on the Cross, offered mystically, sacrament- ally, aOvrws and avai^dKrws, as the Fathers speak,

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without shedding of blood, or without sacrificial slay ing, on the Altar. And this is further illustrated 1. by a comparison of our acts on earth with our Lord’s everlasting Priesthood in heaven. Since His perpetual presentation of His pleading Body there, (by which continual intercession He obtains for us all grace,) does not interfere with the completeness of the Sacrifice on the Cross, so neither does the corre spending presentation on earth in the Eucharistic Sa crifice. 2. Other objections are to be met by stating the belief of the Fathers, — 1. that there is a real sacri fice in the Holy Eucharist ; 2. that what is offered is the Body and Blood of Christ, invisibly and sacra- mentally present with us, but still the same Body which our Saviour offered for us in His own merito rious Sacrifice on the Cross; (for although His Body is present with us in a different way, it is still the same Body, for our Blessed Lord hath not two Bodies, but one only;) 3. that by offering and pleading this, we, if there be no let or hindrance on man’s part, obtain the more readily the grace of God which we entreat for.

The matter may be made clearer by the distinction between “the active and passive sacrifice,” i.e. sacri fice as ” the action of offering,” and sacrifice as ” the thing offered.” It is simply an ambiguity in our language, in which we use the same word (as is noticed in Johnson’s Dictionary,) for 1. “the act of offer ing ;” 2. ” the thing offered.” Theologians use the word ” sacrifice” in the one English sense, of “the

thing offered ;” those who object to their teaching take it in the other, of ” the act of offering.” Article XXXI. uses the word sacrifice in the sense of ” the act of offering.” In this sense every one must affirm what the Article affirms, (it is a simple and funda mental matter of faith). As an act of immolation, atonement, satisfaction, the offering of Christ was ” finished once for all.”

With all which men, educated in imperfect systems of theology, say on the perfectness and all-sufficiency of our Lord’s act of oblation — His active Sacrifice — one must most entirely concur. It is a matter of re joicing (amid the misbelief in many quarters at the present day) to observe the jealousy for the mainten ance of these most vital truths ; amid our many sor rows, it is gratifying to find, on the part of men even of extreme views in one direction, such harmony with the ancient faith on the blessed Atonement of our Lord. No Christian can say otherwise, than that the Sacrifice of the Cross was “the one oblation of Christ,” oblatio unica, “the offering of Christ once made,” semel fact a, ” for all the sins of the whole world, and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone,” prater illam unicam neque est ulla alia. It stands alone in all respects. It is one and singular in the victim, the act, and the result. There is only one Christ, one offering for sin, one purchase of man’s re demption. The Sacrifice of the Cross was Christ’s offering of Himself, performing an act which was unique in itself, and securing a purchase which was

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entire in itself. Although extending in its effects throughout eternity, the Sacrifice of Christ — i.e. His act of sacrificing Himself, His shedding of His pre cious Blood for man’s salvation, His dying for us, atoning for us, meriting for us, making intercession for us, — is, in time, place, and circumstances, a thing of the past. It was laying down His life, dying, volun tarily submitting to death ; and death, when really fulfilled, is an accomplished fact, a thing past and complete in itself. Again, the Sacrifice of Christ was offered upon the Cross ; it was the act of a certain specific time and place, as distinct from all other occasions and places. The Sacrifice of the Cross was, moreover, a perfect act of atonement and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, which Christ alone was able to make, and did make by the single act of dying, and which, when made, was ended as complete and sufficient for its purpose.

Every Christian must believe this. And so, on the other hand, every Christian must repudiate the fearful errors which are ignorantly supposed to follow from the true doctrine, ” there never can be any other sacri fice (i.e. any other act of sacrifice) identical with the Sacrifice of the Cross.” Assuredly not. No one ever said so. All that is said is with St. Chrysostom, What we offer is the Same which our blessed Lord then offered for us. Obviously, to say or imply that Christ was still laying down His life for the sheep, still shedding His Blood for our redemption, still discharging the yet unpaid penalty for human guilt, is more than

a contravention of the Thirty-first Article ; it is blas phemy.

But it has sometimes been said, the distinction be tween ” the action of offering/’ which was completed, perfected, finished, once for all upon the altar of the Cross, “and the Thing offered,” must be set aside on the ground that where the offerer is the same and the thing or person offered the same, the act of offering must be the same also. Will the reasoning hold ? Appty it to the ritual of the Day of Atonement. It was the same pontiff who immolated the victim outside the tabernacle, and who presented its blood within the holy of holies ; the latter function being described by the Apostle as the offering of the blood z ; a phrase, most momentous in relation to the an ti-typical part of the subject. It was also the same victim in both cases. But who will say that the act of offering, when the sacrifice was slain, and the act of present ing its blood within the holy of holies, was one and the same act ? Again, apply this inference to the sacerdotal work of our Lord. He was the Offerer on the Cross, and is the Offerer before the Throne. On the Cross and before the Throne there is but one Thing or Person offered ; one Sacrifice, in that passive sense in which theologians have used the terms. But, on the above assumption, it would follow that the “action of offering,” on the Cross and in Heaven, was one and the same; in other words, that the satisfaction or Atonement which belongs to z Heb. ix. 5.

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our Lord’s meritorious death on Calvary would not be “perfect,” or “once made,” but continuous.

The Fathers mean by their saying, that our Blessed Lord, now too, “is the Offerer and the Oblation,” that ” the Sacrifice here below is part of His Melchi- zedekean priesthood. He invisibly consecrates ; He invisibly offers.” Our Lord invisibly offers, in that He invisibly consecrates. St. Ambrose says : — ” though Christ is not now seen to offer, yet Himself is offered on earth, when the body of Christ is offered ; yea, Him self is plainly seen to offer in us, Whose Word sancti- fieth the Sacrifice which is offered a.” Christ now, also, doth invisibly and efficaciously all which is done in His Name. Christ baptizeth, although not in the same mode as He baptized on earth. Christ absolveth, al though not in the same mode as when He said to the penitent before Him, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” Christ consecrateth, Whose word of power consecrates, although not in the same mode as on the night be fore His Passion. Christ is the only Teacher, although not in the same mode as when He spake the Sermon on the Mount. He comforteth, though not in the same way as when He said on earth, “Be of good sheer,” or “Peace be unto you.” So neither does it follow, nor is it true, that because our Lord, by “is word, still consecrates our offering, He is the Offerer in the same way as when, on the night before He suffered, He anticipated the assault of the Jews, “according to the mode of His priestly act, ineffable

and invisible to man, and offered Himself as an Offer ing and Sacrifice for us, Priest at once, and ‘the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world V ” He offered Himself by anticipation at the last Supper ; He offered Himself in deed by His meri torious death on the Cross; He offereth Himself by presenting Himself, our High-Priest for ever, in the presence of the Father in heaven; He mystically of fereth Himself in the Holy Eucharist, not only in that He consecrateth by His word the gifts which He has taught us to offer for a memorial of Himself, but that, being Sacramentally present, He is “pre cious in the eyes of the Father.” Yet because He Himself is the agent in all, it follows not that He acts in the same way in all. On the Cross, He made the offering; in heaven, He presents it, and as God- man, pleads it ; on earth He giveth it to us to plead, in that He consecrates that Offering, whose very Pre sence pleads, in that it is, in a mystery, the Body which was broken, the Blood which was shed for us.

But it may be argued that the assertion ” An eter nal Priesthood implies, by the necessity of the case, a perpetual victim, and that perpetual victim is the offering of the Body of Jesus,” is completely opposed to Scripture, because a victim is one enduring death for others, and a perpetual victim is a contradiction in terms.

Neither the Latin w’ctima (as used either in classic writers, or in a theological sense by the Fathers,)

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nor the English “victim” means ” one enduring death.” The Latin means, if we accept the authority of Fac- ciolati, ” a thing destined to be sacrificed,” or ” which has been sacrificed.” For the English, Johnson gives the original and metaphoric meaning : 1. “A sacrifice, something slain for a sacrifice. 2. Something de stroyed.” The act of being offered was ordinarily so brief as not to be taken into account. The only idea which the word ” victim” had not, was ” enduring death.” It continued a victim, after death, until it was consumed. Animal sacrifices perish ; our Great Sacrifice abideth. The title belonged to Him before He was slain. For He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. It applied to Him in the same sense, and in the same sense only, while He was dying. For His Death consummated the Sacrifice. It applies to Him equally now, as the Lamb which hath been slain, and is most especially applicable to Him who “appears,” or “exhibits Himself,” con tinually before God for us, with all His saving wounds, the tokens of His Passion. An eternal Priesthood implies, by the necessity of the case, something to be perpetually offered, and that which is perpetually offered for us by our Melchizedek is the Body of Jesus.

Many of these objections flow from an inadequate belief in the doctrine of the perpetual Priesthood of our Lord and His unceasing intercession for the whole Church. It is to be feared that some hold, rather, that having made His one Oblation upon the Cross, He has now ceased from any exclusively priestly function. Is

their idea of His intercession more than that of an oral all-prevailing prayer ? But God hath said, ” Thou art a High-Priest for ever.” And He is not in such wise a High-Priest, that He can be imagined separate from the Sacrifice which He once offered. For that Sacrifice was Himself. That Sacrifice is His Manhood, never to be divided from His Godhead. He has car ried within the veil that Holy Body, once wounded for our transgressions, and those very wounds, which He shewed to St. Thomas, now resplendent in glory, still move the Father to look upon the face of His Anointed, and for His sake freely to give us all things. And as this is no derogation from the oneness and completeness of our Lord’s atoning act on Calvary, so neither is it a derogation therefrom that we, in the Holy Eucharist, with all our prayers, present unto the Father the same Holy Body, present in an ineffable way by the words of consecration.

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Notes

• Treatise on the Church, vol. ii. p. 347. P Pastoral Letter of 1851, p. 53.
• In Ps. xxxviii. § 25, p. 852.