Eight Sermons on The Priesthood, Altar, and Sacrifice, by Mayow Wynell Mayow

Transcribed from the 1867 James Parker and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

Eight Sermons
ON
THE PRIESTHOOD, ALTAR, AND
SACRIFICE.

PERPETUAL CURATE OF ST. MARY’S, WEST BROMPTON, AND LATE
STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD.

p. iiiTO THE
RIGHT REV. FATHER IN GOD,
WALTER KERR,
LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY,
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF A CONNECTION WITH HIS
DIOCESE FOR NEARLY A QUARTER OF A CENTURY,
AS A TOKEN OF REVERENCE FOR HIS OFFICE, AND UNFEIGNED
RESPECT FOR HIS CHARACTER,
AS SOME LITTLE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MANY
KINDNESSES RECEIVED,
AND AS A HUMBLE TRIBUTE TO HIS CONSTANCY
IN DEFENDING THE FAITH IN
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,

IS (BY PERMISSION) INSCRIBED,
BY HIS LORDSHIP’S VERY FAITHFUL AND GRATEFUL SERVANT,

p. vADVERTISEMENT.

The following Sermons were preached at St. Mary’s, West Brompton, in November and December, 1866. They are now printed as a humble contribution towards the defence of the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, in days when there seem no limits to assault upon it, when there prevails every conceivable confusion between what is Catholic and what is Roman, and when there is the widest misapprehension of the principles of our Reformation. If this small volume should contribute in any way to a better understanding of those principles, and to the vindication of the loyalty to our own Church of such as, maintaining its Catholic character, desire equally to be loyal to the Church Universal, (and believe in truth that there is no antagonism between them,) it will not, I trust, be wholly useless. If, further, it should lead any, in the spirit of candour and of prayer, to give more consideration to this doctrine than perhaps hitherto they have done, and especially to consult larger and more learned works upon the subject, I shall have great additional reason to be thankful.

It is, I hope, hardly necessary to add that there is no intention or desire in anything here said to pass judgment upon individuals, either within or without our own communion. It will be found p. vistated in the following discourses how readily we believe that many receive the benefits of the Christian altar and sacrifice who are yet unconscious of them; whilst it is also willingly acknowledged, even as regards those who more directly deny Catholic doctrine, that the present divided state of Christendom, and the wide differences of teaching within our own communion, make it a very different thing to be unable to see, (or even to oppose,) the truth than would be the case if the Church were still united, as of old, in one harmonious voice and one external communion, or if there were a perfect unanimity among ourselves. When, alas, even priests are found to repudiate their priesthood, it must be admitted, without reserve, that there is too much excuse for the laity being uncertain and perplexed. Whilst this teaches us to award the largest measure of charitable construction to those who differ from us, it gives only the more urgent cause both to state and vindicate the ancient faith, and to shew that it was in God’s mercy preserved to us at the Reformation.

I must not omit to say that I am indebted to Mr. Carter’s excellent treatise for many facts, suggestions, and illustrations, even beyond those which the references given explicitly acknowledge.

p. viiCONTENTS.

p. 1SERMON I.
Treasure in Earthen Vessels.—Faith, not Sight, the Recogniser of the Priesthood.

The words rendered “in earthen vessels,” are easy enough as to their general sense. Ἐν ὀστρακίνοις σκεύεσιν, (the Apostle says,) where σκεύος may stand for any kind of utensil or household stuff. It is the word used in St. Matthew, “How can one enter a strong man’s house and spoil his goods;” [1] any of his household stuff or possessions; whilst ὀστράκίνοιν, (the same word which gave its name to the well-known Grecian ostracism, from the mode of voting,) signifying in its first sense that which is made of shell and therefore brittle, is often used in a derived sense for anything frail and liable to break, and when broken not to be re-joined. Therefore, again, it represents anything poor and mean, as compared with other stronger or more precious material. Thus, in his second Epistle to Timothy, St. Paul uses the very same word to denote those inferior vessels which are made for less honourable use: p. 2“But in a great house, there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; ὀστράκινα;—and some to honour, and some to dishonour.” [2a]

We cannot, then, err as to the general meaning of the text, if we take it to express the fact that great gifts of God—treasure—may be, and are, according to His will, and for good and wise reason, lodged in weak and frail tenements, giving little outward sign of that which is hid within: great riches enshrined in poor and mean caskets, even as the soul of man dwells in the earthy tabernacle, (that red earth or clay which gave its very name to Adam,) when “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” [2b]

But St. Paul’s application of the figure here is somewhat different from the illustration just used. It is not life, or an immortal soul shrouded in a mortal body, of which he speaks, but some special gift or gifts of God for the use of His Church and people, which he declares had been entrusted to vessels of little “form or comeliness.” And it will be of much interest and importance both to trace out what this treasure is, and what are the vessels in which it is placed, as well as to insist upon the fact that the treasure is not the less, because thus shrouded or obscured; and that it gives no cause to deny the existence of the treasure, that those who bear it seem either so p. 3like other men as they do, or so little worthy in themselves of what they bear.

Now, to see what the treasure is, we need turn back but a little way. In the preceding chapter, speaking of himself and others charged with the ministry of the Gospel, the Apostle says, deprecating all high thoughts in those so honoured: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament;” and then, after thus disclaiming all personal merit or glory, he goes on immediately to contrast the glory of the Gospel with the glories of the earlier dispensation. “For if the ministration of death,” he says, “written and engraven in stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.” [3a] Pursuing this thought a little further, and enlarging upon the glories of the ministration of the Spirit of the Lord which giveth life, he comes back; at the opening of the fourth chapter, more closely to the subject of his ministry, and says: “Therefore, as we have received this ministry, we faint not;” [3b] and after a word on the effect of the Gospel which he preached, that it p. 4led to the “renouncing the hidden things of dishonesty;” [4a] and another, as to its being sufficiently manifested to every willing heart, and so, if hidden, hidden only “to them that are lost, whom the God of this world hath blinded;” [4b] he returns once more to what it was which he preached, and declares how this great treasure,—“the unsearchable riches of Christ,” as he elsewhere describes it,—was entrusted to poor and weak instruments; “for we preach,” he says, “not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,” (that is, in the natural world when He said, “Let there be light:”) “hath shined in our hearts,” (that is, in the new creation of the spiritual world,) “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” [4c] And then, in the text, he seems to meet an objection, that if his call and ministry in the Gospel were of so glorious a nature, the instruments thereof would bear more or higher marks of glory themselves, he adds the words of our text: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” [4d]

And now, brethren, again I ask, what is the treasure, and to whom committed? Surely the ministry of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, entrusted to human stewardship!

p. 5And who shall disparage this, or overlook it, or deny the gifts and treasure of and in those who bear it, though they be but as earthen vessels; though they look simply like other men; though they are “men of like passions;” though they have few or no high marks or tokens, to be discerned by man’s eye, of the greatness of the treasure which nevertheless they bear?

This thought, this warning against denying God’s gifts when lodged in earthen vessels, and so speaking against them as actually to make a new Gospel totally unlike to that which has been from the beginning, is especially a danger of our day: a day when men live so much by sight, and, alas, so little by faith; when restless and free enquiry ranges over every subject, and men pride themselves upon their refusal to submit to any authority but their own reason, or their own mere opinion, or to receive anything beyond that of which they can understand the mode and assign the use.

Not, perhaps, the most unfrequent of these attacks of the present time is directed against almost the very subject of our text: the reality of the treasure or gifts bestowed upon the ministers and stewards of Christ’s mysteries, because they are contained in earthen vessels. Whereas St. Paul fully claims and asserts that there is this treasure, and gives as the sufficient reason for its being so lowlily enshrined, that thereby it would be seen indeed that “the excellency of the power p. 6is of God, and not of man;” [6] these objectors deny there can be any such treasure as it is asserted there is, because it is not to their eye exhibited in or by, glorious, or sufficiently distinctive, instruments.

Take a case in illustration, very near indeed to the argument of the Apostle in this place. If our Christianity in our beloved Church of England is, and is to be, the Christianity which has been from the beginning, it cannot be without a priesthood, and an altar, and a sacrifice. I do not propose at this moment to go into the proofs of this, but rather to notice an objection which is sometimes triumphantly put forward, by modern infidelity or ignorance, as fatal to all such claims. It is said, that if it were so that there is a priesthood, (which it is intended to deny;—O sad and fearful thought! That any should be found to deny and refuse the chiefest means of applying to us the pardon of the Cross): but if it were so, then, it is said this priesthood must be seen to be such by some peculiar exhibition of its powers, by some glorious or distinctive appearance in the treasure-bearing vessels. So it is said, Whatever there may be elsewhere, the Church of England at least has no priesthood, and no priests. No! Can any one believe (it is added) that they are priests who are young men, as others, one day; and are ordained, with so little outward difference, the next? p. 7Can it be that prayers and a laying on of hands, even by bishops, can effect such a change when all looks so nearly the same? No, truly! If such there were, if such there be, if we are to believe in a power given of this kind, if the priest can consecrate, and offer upon the altar of God, let us see the difference. Let the young, who are to fill such an office, be educated, not as other young men are, living with them in social life at our schools and Universities, but as set apart for this from their earliest days. Let them be known of all as a separate kind or caste; let them have a distinctive dress; let them give up social life; let them, above all, renounce the married state, and give themselves up to pursue their avocation in the single life; and then, perhaps, we may be more inclined to believe in their sacrificial function; in their power to officiate sacerdotally at the altar; in the committal to them of the power of the keys, and all which is included in the idea of a distinct order and a priestly authority. Now all this, brethren, is mere man’s wisdom, setting forth, in truth, not what it really desires to find as the mark of a priesthood, if it might have this in vessels of gold or silver, but simply, if it may not disparage and deny a priesthood of Christianity altogether, (which yet it desires to do), at least delighting to deny it to us; to raise a prejudice against it, and to drive from the Church of England (if it were possible) all those who cleave to the statements of our formularies p. 8as they are, and to the faith once for all delivered and handed down to us.

But observe, brethren, what all this really amounts to. I am not saying whether there should not be (unto the more edification), a more distinctive theological education for the future priesthood than very often there is among us. I am not saying whether there might not, with advantage, be some greater distinction in outward appearance or dress, than we have among us generally, for those who minister in holy things. (Let it, however, here be remarked, that the greatest objection and hindrance as to this proceeds, as we well know, from the clamours of those who would first deny us all priestly character, and then reproach any who, claiming it, are anxious to mark it also by some outward difference.) I am not, however, now dwelling upon these things, nor even on what are the advantages or disadvantages of a celibate clergy, but I say that to suppose the presence or absence of these outward signs or marks should affect the essence of the priesthood, and men being in reality and truth ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God, in the full sense in which these words are understood in all the primitive writings and liturgies of the Church of Christ, shews, not only an ignorance of the very first principles of Christian worship, but a strange overlooking of the truth taught in the text, and confirmed to us in so many other places of Holy p. 9Scripture. If St. Paul confessed that, even with him, his ministry was confided to an earthen vessel; if there were no need and no likelihood that any of the primitive stewards of God’s mysteries should be distinguished as by a star upon their breast, or any insignia of their rank in the Apostolic band, then it can amount to nothing as a disproof of the priesthood of the ministry of the Church of England, that those who serve at her altars have but the outward look and bearing of other men.

We may even carry this argument further, if it may be so done with due reverence and humility. We may take, not merely prophets and Apostles, but our blessed Lord Himself,—our King as well as our great High Priest,—and say of Him, that, although of course it is not objectively true that He had any of His gifts or powers in an earthen vessel, (save in the sense that He took upon Him man’s nature, and so being of Adam’s race—yet without sin—had His share of the earth of which Adam was created); but though, I say, except thus, He held not anything in an earthen vessel objectively, still, on the other hand, subjectively, to man’s sight and apprehension, He veiled His Godhead, He emptied Himself of His glory, He obscured His greatness, so that nearly throughout His life and ministry He was passed over as a common man, or His claims denied, and Himself treated as an impostor. In spite of the p. 10holiness of His life, the tenderness of His compassion, the purity of His precepts, the marvels of His teaching, the abundance and power of His miracles, yet He was not received or accepted generally as other than a common man. The Jews were offended at Him. He was to them “a stumbling block,” as He was to the Greeks “foolishness.” He came in no outward manifestation of glory; He was not in kings’ courts; He had no armies or numerous followers; He won no carnal victories; He did nothing “to restore the kingdom to Israel,” in any sense which the Jewish nation could observe or recognise; nay, in His very priestly acts, and in that greatest of them in which He did in truth offer up the great sacrifice of all, He appeared to man’s eye in no such aspect. Even as a victim, He was only considered as a malefactor put to death, whilst it may be well doubted whether even His own Apostles had the least insight at the time into the nature of the sacrifice He made; and none of them had a single thought or perception of the priesthood which He exercised. So, indeed, He seemed to have “no form nor comeliness;” [10a] “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” [10b] He seemed to have all He had in an earthen vessel, undistinguished and undistinguishable by the vulgar eye from others who were around Him, or who had preceded Him, p. 11with some pretensions to be teachers, or reformers of manners, but who had disappeared and left no trace behind them. Is it, then, so certain that those who now “seek after a sign” before they admit any claim to “the office of a priest in the Church of God,” and who look for various marks and distinctions in outward show or appearance before they will entertain the doctrine as belonging to the Church of England; is it, I say, so certain that they would not have rejected Christ Himself, as not coming up to their mark and requirement, if they had seen Him in the days of His ministration upon earth?

But let us pass on from the priesthood of our Lord and Saviour, and turn again for a moment to the Apostles and their fellow-labourers. Observe, I am not engaged in proving now their priestly character, nor the truth of the sacrifices, or altars of the Christian religion; (we may come to this another day;) but I am merely meeting the preliminary objection that there can be no such things, at least, none such in the Church of England, because our priesthood is not more manifestly set forth in outward show to the eye of the world, by a more distinctive priestly education, or a more distinctive priestly dress, or a more distinctive (as is supposed) priestly life as separated from social life; and this particularly by the exhibition of an unmarried clergy. As I have before said, I am not even giving an opinion on the advantages or disadvantages of p. 12some of these things; but I am asking the plain broad question, What right have we, from Scripture and Scriptural example, to say these differences are needful to the existence of a priesthood? Be the priesthood and ministerial powers of St. Peter and St. Paul, and others their companions, what they may, did they shew them forth as in vessels of gold and silver, or were they not what we may call obscured, undistinguished, not (in many particulars at least) dissevered from social life, but just like other men; in short, with their treasure borne in earthen vessels, however really great and precious in itself?

Carry your mind back, brethren, to Simon Peter with Andrew his brother, to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, fishing on the sea of Galilee. There is no reason, at I know of, to suppose that they wholly gave up this their occupation immediately upon their endowments at the day of Pentecost. They certainly pursued them as long as their Lord was with them, and after the Crucifixion. Nay, after the Resurrection; after Jesus had appeared unto the Eleven; after He had “breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and conveyed to them, (if any thing could do so,) the priestly power, saying, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained,” [12] still Simon Peter said to the rest, “I go a fishing; and they said unto him, We also p. 13go with thee.” [13a] Will any one dare to say, Had they been true priests of God, they must have pursued another mode of life, and borne the marks of their office more demonstratively and visibly before the eyes of men? Will any say, We cannot receive it that the hands, engaged one day in casting a hook into the sea, or spreading or mending nets, can be those which exercise, the next, (or the same if so it be,) the Christian ministerial office,—in breaking of bread, and celebrating the most holy Christian mysteries? Will any say that the lips which called to their partners for help, or in direction as to the safety or management of their boats and fishing, must therefore be incapable of preaching the glad tidings of the Gospel, or of exercising the commission given them of binding and loosing in the name of Christ? Or, think of St. Paul, with his fellow-helper and companion in labour, Aquila, working with their hands at their craft, “for by their occupation they were tent-makers;” [13b] aye, even “working night and day,” that they “might not be chargeable” to others: and will any say, Herein they shewed themselves too like to other men to put forward any pretence or claim to have or exercise any priestly or sacerdotal function. Will any again call to mind that St. Peter was certainly a married man; (“Peter’s wife’s mother,” we read at one time, “was sick of a fever;”) as also certainly was Aquila the companion p. 14in labour of St. Paul, (for he came “with his wife Priscilla;”) or, once more, St. Paul’s own claim to the right (though he did not exercise it, but still the right) to marry if he thought fit; as he says, “Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other Apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” [14] will any consider so much, and then say, you must needs have a celibate priesthood, if you are to have any priesthood at all in the Church of Christ; or, if there be one, it must be one so separated from all earthly pursuit as to be recognised at a glance as of a different order?

Nay, my brethren, such things are surely no arguments of even a feather’s weight in the mouth of any man against a true priesthood in the Church of England; and one can hardly see how they can be supposed, by any sober-minded thinker, to be either contained in, or deduced from, Holy Scripture. They are, in fact, objections merely playing with the prejudices of those who have already come to a foregone conclusion, and intended rather to point an unjust shaft at the Church of England, through a mock admiration of the Church of Rome, than to advance the cause of truth. And this with no justice, even towards Rome herself, either in praise or blame; for Rome herself may have something to say in defence of her practice as to the distinctions p. 15with which she marks her priesthood, if looked on merely as matters of expediency and not of faith or doctrine; and at the same time, we certainly have no little reason to maintain that in many of these things, (and however there may be incidental disadvantages which we need not deny, on the ground of expediency also,) yet we come the nearer of the two to the following of the Apostles, in the not making too broad an outward distinction between priests and people, and in the not having laid a yoke hard to be borne, perhaps, as a wide and extended rule, too hard to be borne, upon our priesthood’s neck; and, in short, that we are at any rate close upon the very type and pattern which St. Paul mentions in our text, in that we too have our treasure in earthen vessels, and may, in one sense at least, rejoice that it is so, inasmuch as thereby it may be seen by all “that the excellency of the power is of God, and not of us.”

Further, it needs surely no words to prove that such objections and such line of argument in denial of our priesthood, can have but one effect, if they have any, namely, to forward the interests of the Church of Rome. This, I presume, ought in consistency to be the last wish of those who use them. But so it is, and in this way. There is no more possibility of any one, who has the knowledge of what Christianity has been from the beginning, being moved by such assertions to disbelieve the great doctrines of the p. 16priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, as belonging, and necessarily belonging, to the Church Universal, than there is of the words of the objectors moving mountains or drying up seas. We can no more unlearn the very first elements of the appointed mode of our applying to Christ for His intercession on high for us miserable sinners,—no more believe the Catholic truths which we have drunk in to be mere human figments and superstitious inventions,—than we could return to the system of Ptolemy, and believe the earth to be the centre round which the sun and the stars revolve. Nothing, therefore, can be gained in this direction by those who propound such views. But if it should be that any, who know what the Church Universal holds and has ever held on these points, should, by weakness or inadvertence, be shaken in their belief that the Church of England maintains these doctrines and preserves this sacerdotal order,—if any should come to think that perhaps after all she has not a priesthood, and an altar, and a sacrifice, then such would no doubt begin to fail in their allegiance to her, and be afraid longer to trust their souls to her teaching or her keeping. No well-instructed, patient, humble-minded member of the Church of England can, I think, be deceived by so sophistical an argument as that which we have been considering; but, of course, all are not well instructed, nor, perchance, are all patient or humble minded, and hence it may be, there is a danger. p. 17But if there be this danger, or if any defections should follow upon such defamation of our Church, those who put forth the libel must have upon their conscience the weight of having aided the Church of Rome against their Mother Church of England.

But to return; take but two brief illustrations further of our subject. You will remember the contention between St. Paul and St. Barnabas concerning “Mark, sister’s son to Barnabas,” whom “Paul thought not good to take with them,” and how it “was so sharp between them that they parted asunder one from the other.” [17a] Again, you will recollect the occasion when at Antioch St. Paul (as he says), “withstood” St. Peter “to the face because he was to be blamed;” saying to him “before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Consider that “the other Jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation;” and to such a point did this reach, that St. Paul declares he “saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel;” [17b] put all this together and then say whether, upon the grounds of the objection urged, any one might not far more plausibly have denied to the Apostles themselves any just power or fitness to rule or teach authoritatively p. 18in the Church of God, than any man can deny the priesthood of the Church of England because its power is not more demonstratively shewn among us.

Or, for a second point, note this:—Does, or did ever, the admission to the Christian covenant, and the wondrous gift of God, the new birth of water and of the Spirit, by which, as the Apostle plainly teaches, Christians are made the temples of the Holy Ghost; does it, or did it ever, make such outward show of difference as will enable man to decide, immediately and infallibly, who are Christ’s, and who are forfeiting or have forfeited the gift bestowed? Then, if there be not this palpable manifestation as to the Christian life in each, why should there be a more manifest and outward demonstration of the treasure of the priesthood? If the grace of Baptism be not thus self-evident, and ever recognised by sight, why must the grace of Orders be so either? Oh! when shall we learn to believe instead of to cavil; to use the blessings God gives us, not to dispute about them; to judge, not according to appearance, but to judge righteous judgment; to believe there is a treasure, even the treasure which the Church has ever believed and declared to be in her ministry and stewardship, though it be contained in earthen vessels?

One word more, brethren, of most serious weight and import, as to such objections and I objectors. Carry your mind back to the time p. 19of Christ, to the labours of Apostles and Evangelists, and the infancy of the Church, and see of what Spirit they are. I am not speaking, remember, of all who may, from one cause or other, not be able to receive the doctrine of the Christian priesthood and altar, and who, we may well hope and believe, many of them receive the blessing of these gifts of Christ, though they know it not; but I speak of the particular objection with which I have all along been dealing,—that there cannot be a Priesthood, unless marked by striking outward differences visible by all. And I ask, what would have been the part taken, if the framers of such a test, being consistent in their objection, had lived in the days of Christ on earth? Surely we should have heard them saying, aye, in spite of His mighty works and great High Priesthood, “Is not this the carpenter’s Son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” [19a] What is He different from another? Or what more likely than that expecting something different in show and demeanour in the great Apostle of the Gentiles, they would have joined in the reproach: “His bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible!” [19b] and have rejected Him?

If these things shew us the dangers of such a line of argument, let them keep us from any p. 20word said to countenance or support it. It is a solemn thought that we cannot, by even the most careless word of levity, express approval of such assaults upon the ancient faith, or sympathy with those who make them, without becoming sharers in their responsibility. For it is thus, by a few words here and a few there, that public opinion is formed or strengthened; and what can be more awful than to have helped to form it adversely to the truth of God, and in derogation of that “ministry of reconciliation,” and those means of grace, which He has appointed. Surely the sin of such must be, like that of the sons of Eli, “very great before the Lord,” when a prejudice is raised by which men, if they do not “abhor,” are at least taught to deny and despise, “the offering of the Lord.” At the same time, let us pray earnestly for them, for, we will hope and trust, “they know not what they do.” Let us not wish that they went out from us, but let us hope and pray that they may be turned to better things. Let us remember, too, as a ground of charity, that many fall into error here because too much, for many years, the teaching of the primitive Church and of Catholic antiquity has been overlooked as a guide to the due understanding of the Scriptures; and again, because the face of Christendom, alas, is not now so one and undivided as to present all truth in due form, and mode, and weight, to each man’s acceptance. The glory p. 21of our Reformation is, indeed, that it appeals to antiquity, and carries us back to the early Church; but these later days have too much overlooked this great principle of the Reformation. So it has happened, that what is, alas, the misfortune and the reproach of Christendom—I mean its divided state—may be, and we will hope is, some palliation before God for defect in those who wish to follow the truth, but are unable at the present moment to see or to accept it. So let us above all pray to the one great Lord of all, that in His good time the Church may again be one, not only in its essence, which it must be, (we believe in but “one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,”) but also in its life, and in a re-established communion of the Saints; that being indeed, if it may be so, once more one, our Lord’s own prayer for it may be fulfilled, and His promise accomplished, and “the world believe that God hath sent Him.” [21a] And let us ourselves, brethren, ever remember that all we have in treasure is indeed in earthen vessels, and let us for ourselves be content to be reviled and threatened (yes, as the holy Apostle was, and his Lord and Master before him), for “the disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord.” [21b] Neither, indeed, let us count it a strange thing, “as though some strange thing happened unto us,” [21c] if we have to “go forth bearing p. 22the reproach of Christ” [22a] and His Apostles; nay, rather, “being reviled, let us bless; being persecuted” (if so it be), “let us suffer it; being defamed, let us intreat;” yea, let us be willing to be “made as the filth of the world, and the off-scouring of all things,” [22b] so that we may but do our Master’s work, and preserve His truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and win souls to Christ, and, if it may be so indeed, “finish our course with joy, and the ministry, which we have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God.” [22c]

p. 23SERMON II.
The Witness of the World, before Christ, to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

That which such a man as Job “did continually,” we shall naturally conclude was well-pleasing in the sight of God. The Almighty’s own witness to his character is given in His Word addressed to Satan: “Hast thou considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” [23] And when we couple this with the circumstances to which the text relates, and the tone of the whole narrative, we shall find, I think, more than a prima facie probability that the act so mentioned was not only right in itself, but that it bore a significant import, not merely to those who lived near Job’s own time or in his own country, but to the world at large.

Job, we read, was a man of great substance as well as great integrity, living in a very early time p. 24in the land of Uz. Moreover, besides his great possessions, we are told that he had seven sons and three daughters. And we find that his sons were used, “to feast in their houses, every one his day;” and that on these occasions it was their custom to “send and call for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them;” a token, (as a well-known commentator has fairly enough conjectured,) both of their harmonious family affection and of the good order and conduct which prevailed in their feastings, or so holy a man as Job would not have permitted his daughters to join in their festivity. But, nevertheless, we read that Job in his anxious care was mindful to intercede for them, even in case they might have erred or sinned in the fulness of their rejoicing, or in the exuberance of their mirth. “And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.” [24]

Here, then, we have no doubtful witness, not merely to the usage of sacrifice, but to its acceptableness also in the sight of God, as a part of worship and intercession. And this is all the more, not merely curious, but important, when we reflect upon the very early date almost universally p. 25assigned to the events related in the Book of Job. Whether the record itself may have been composed at a somewhat later period, as some have thought, yet all authorities are, I believe, agreed that the time of Job’s life was contemporaneous with even the earliest part of the life of Moses, and, therefore, that he did not derive his knowledge of God from the institutions of the Jews, or live under the Mosaic dispensation. The consenting witness, both of the Jews themselves and of the early Christian writers accepting their testimony, is that Job is the same as Jobab, mentioned in the first book of Chronicles, who is there named as the third in descent from Esau; so that he, as well as Moses, was the fifth in descent from Abraham,—the one in the line of Esau, and the other in the line of Jacob. Moreover, it would appear that this Job or Jobab was, if not absolutely what may be termed a king, yet a ruler and a prince in the land called Uz, or Ausitis, a country on the confines, probably, of Idumæa and Arabia. If this be so, he would seem, from the summary given in the first book of Chronicles, to have succeeded Balaam in the sovereignty or chiefdom of that country. “For,” (says that narrative,) “these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the children of Israel; Bela the son of Beor,” (undoubtedly the same as Balaam); “and the name of his city was Dinhabah. And when Bela was dead, Jobab the son p. 26of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his stead.” [26a] Now we find in the book of Numbers, that Balaam the son of Beor was killed in battle, fighting on the side of Midian in the last year of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness, [26b] and supposing Job’s trial to have taken place (as some ancient writers assert) some few years after the Exodus, as he lived one hundred and forty years after those events, he may very well have succeeded to the chief place among the Idumæan or Uzzite people upon the death of Balaam. The importance of this to our present purpose lies in the fact, that he is thus a witness to the antiquity and the use of sacrifice and burnt-offering, quite independently of the institutions and commands of the Mosaic law. If Job were of man’s estate, and had sons and daughters of like estate also, (as the narrative unquestionably implies,) even before his sufferings, he must have been born not far in time from the birth of Moses, probably some little while before him; and what he “did continually” in his own country, and apart from Moses, is a witness to the practice and acceptableness of sacrifice, anterior to the enactments of the law from Sinai; and a witness, not merely, let us observe, to the use of sacrifice, but to sacrifice by burnt-offering, when the victim was killed and consumed upon the altar of God.

Now this leads us back to consider what is the probable origin of sacrifice, and sacrifice of this p. 27kind, altogether; for it is thus evident, that it was adopted into, and not originated by, the peculiar institutions of the Jewish nation and law.

Now, of course we see at once where we must turn for the first account of sacrifice. The primal exercise of this mode of approach to God, is that recorded in the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis, which shews at once the need which the Fall had brought upon man of drawing nigh to God, not without a propitiation; and at the same time exhibits, in sad prominence, the first-fruits of that corruption of nature entailed by it, which provoked the eldest-born of the world, in malignant envy of heart, to slay his next born brother.

Let us turn, then, to a brief consideration of those events, as illustrative of the origin and nature of sacrifice.

Look first to St. John’s and St. Paul’s account of the cause of Cain’s quarrel against his brother Abel. “And wherefore slew he him?” (says St. John), “Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” [27a] And St. Paul tells us wherein Abel’s righteousness and superiority consisted: “By faith he offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts.” [27b] The narrative in the Book of Genesis tells us the same thing as to the fact that Cain’s offering was rejected and Abel’s accepted; p. 28but without the Apostle’s comment we should not have precisely traced the cause of this rejection and acceptance: but we know now that it was faith in the one and a want of faith in the other, in which the distinction lay; and also that somehow this difference was exhibited in the gifts which they brought: “God” (of Abel) “testifying of his gifts.” By this, too, St. Paul tells us, “He being dead still speaketh;” a statement which brings the whole matter home to ourselves. The narrative then is this: “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect.” [28]

This takes us back to the origin of sacrifice; and the first remark which occurs is, that it would seem highly probable that its institution was a matter of revelation from God to Adam; for though mere reason and moral feeling might make the creature see the propriety of offering to the Creator something of that which His bounty had bestowed, and possibly might lead to the thought that it should be not mean, but good and precious, yet there are so many attendant circumstances in the institution, which it does not p. 29appear possible to account for upon the hypothesis of the mere dictates of reason and feeling, that we can hardly ascribe the practice to anything short of a communication of the divine will to man. However, be this as it may, it is plain that both Cain and Abel were conscious of the duty of offering sacrifice or oblation in some kind to God. And each brought of that which he had. So far, it might be thought, Cain was not behind his brother. “Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” Cain brought of the fruit of the ground, but Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock, and (it is added) “of the fat thereof.” Now it may be we are intended to note a difference here,—that Abel’s offering, the firstlings and the fat, denotes the earliest and the best: as if he hastened to acknowledge, in all thankfulness and humility, that he was not worthy to touch or use anything he had, until he had sanctified it by first offering of it to God; and this, the first he had, and the best: whilst the more scanty narrative as to Cain, that he merely brought of the fruit of the ground, may mark that he took no heed to bring of the first, nor of the best. He would offer something as an acknowledgment of God’s power,—perhaps, too, of His goodness,—but not in that due spirit of unmeasured humility and thankfulness, which alone was becoming in a son of Adam. But this, if it were so, does not seem to be all which is implied as to his lack of faith. To understand p. 30wherein this lay, we must remember the promise made to our first parents after the Fall, of “the seed of the woman” who should “bruise the serpent’s head.” [30a] Faith in this seed, the hope, the only hope of the world after Adam’s transgression, seems to be the thing intended; and if we suppose that God was pleased to reveal to our first parents some further particulars as to the mode of the atonement to be made by shedding of blood, by which this hope was to be fulfilled, and the victory to be obtained, we shall be furnished, not merely with a clue to the difference in the acceptableness of the offerings of the two, but also with a key to a large part of the Holy Scriptures, and an understanding what manner of faith should be in every one of us, as well as to much that is important as to the history and design of sacrifice. Let it be granted, then, as highly probable, that to Adam a revelation was given that in him, as the federal head of mankind, and by his transgression, as deteriorating the whole race to spring from him, were all men lost by nature, and further, that “without shedding of blood should be no remission;” [30b] but that by a worthy sacrifice and blood-shedding should the promised seed of the woman in due time effect a reconciliation for them and their descendants, and reverse the evil and the curse of their transgression. Surely, then, from that time p. 31forward, a faith in the efficacy of a sacrifice by blood would be required, and would be acceptable to God. Cain, then, would be evidently one who had not this faith, who denied, and disbelieved, and did not look forward to, this sacrifice, or cast himself upon this mercy. By bringing of the fruits of the ground, he may be considered to have made acknowledgment of the power and goodness of God, in causing the seed to grow and the corn to ripen; he may have done as much as we do, when we merely confess that we must look to God for rain, and sunshine, and “fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness;” (therefore, by the way, let us not think too highly of ourselves if we do confess so much; it is right, but it is a very small part of religion:) he may have meant to express thankfulness for blessing, but observe what he did not express. He made no acknowledgment of sin; he exhibited no sense of unworthiness; he confessed no shortcomings; he gave no sign of sorrow or repentance; he asked no mercy; above all, he turned to no one out of himself—no intercessor, no mediator between his God and him. He shewed no sign of looking to a Saviour to make atonement, atonement by blood: he looked to no “Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world” in general, and his own sins in particular. He ignored, then, the whole promise which was the sole hope of man. He may have said, “God, I thank Thee,” but he shewed p. 32himself to be wholly without the feeling “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

But, on the other hand, Abel brought of the sheep or goats which were of his flock. He offered up not an unbloody sacrifice. He laid the victim on the altar, and believing God, as well as feeling his need of a Saviour, he looked forward with the eye of faith to an expiation greater than that of kids, or lambs, or bulls, or goats, to take away sin. Nay more, he shewed his sense of the need of an atonement out of and beyond himself; for the blood of the victim offered described at once the sense of his own blood being required as a penalty, if justice only held its course and no expiatory sacrifice were found, and represented also, in true type and figure, that better sacrifice, that more precious blood, which should be shed in the fulness of the time to make such an expiation, even that of “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.”

Now I have gone through this history with what I think is its probable and satisfactory explanation, because not merely does it serve to shew what the Apostle means when he tells us it was by faith that Abel pleased God, and that God testified of his gifts, but also because the very same remarks seem to apply to the whole history and intention of sacrifice, as either commanded or accepted, or both, by Almighty God from the beginning. Take such to be the origin of propitiary sacrifice, and I think nothing can p. 33more fully agree with, or illustrate, or be illustrated by, the further progress both of the fact and doctrine as we find them, first in the Holy Scripture, and, secondly, in the world at large, even though by the world’s wickedness so fearfully perverted. In perfect accordance with such beginning of acceptable sacrifice we have the same used and practised, and with the like acceptance, by Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, Isaac, and Jacob, [33a] and, indeed, by all the patriarchs until the institution was embodied in the law of Moses. As we know, also, it was practised by all the heathen nations of antiquity of whom we have any record, though with them its true meaning and intention were fearfully lost and perverted. Nor does the difference in the instance of Abraham on one occasion, as to his being ready to offer a human sacrifice in the person of his son (which was of course a wholly exceptional case as regards the sacrifices of those knowing the true God), make any difference as to the witness of the acceptableness of sacrifice by blood, or the consuming the victim upon the altar. It has, indeed, been disputed whether Abraham were not the more easily reconciled to the idea of sacrificing his son, or even incited to it, by the customary “fierce ritual” of the Syrians around him; but independently of the utter contradiction which this view would give to the account in Holy p. 34Scripture, by the attribution of any other motive for Abraham’s conduct than the command of God, received in all faith, and leading to all obedience, it may well be doubted whether a perverse misinterpretation of the sacrifice which Abraham was thus ready to make, and an utter inattention to the real circumstances of that case, may not have been, instead of in any way the consequence, rather the cause of the nations around falling into the practice of human sacrifice. But, be this as it may, we have the plain witness to the usage of sacrifice, and its efficacy when performed according to the will of God. Also, that it prefigured the great sacrifice by the blood of a pure victim, as well as in itself taught the lesson that (as afterwards expressed by the Apostle to the Hebrews) “without shedding of blood is no remission.” [34]

And all this we see consolidated and confirmed, as well as more fully expanded and defined, under the Law. And especially there, a certain new element in its administration is introduced, in the appointment of a particular order for the performance of the service. In all the earlier usage, it would seem that the head of the family or tribe acted as the ministering priest. And there is no disproof of this, as far as I see, in the account of even the first sacrifice of all. For there is nothing in the narrative in the Book of Genesis to shew that Cain and Abel were themselves the p. 35acting priests (if we may so term it) in the sacrifice. They may each, for aught that appears to the contrary, have brought their offering to Adam, and it may have been by his hand that the different oblations were placed before God, and presented or devoted to Him. Such as the office and privilege of the head or chief, would seem to have been the recognised right and duty of such persons throughout the patriarchal age; but as the rule of patriarchs in secular matters merged in that of kings, as nations grew out of families, so the office of chiefs as priests, however thus exercised by Noah, Abraham, Melchizedek, or Job, seems to have been afterwards restricted to a tribe, or family, or other persons, set apart for the special service, and denominated priests, ἱερεῖς, or sacerdotes; names implying their dedication to holy things, and their exclusive rights in many particulars to deal with them. And this theory of worship, if we may so call it, was not merely reduced to a system by God’s law among the Jews, but also prevailed universally among the heathen world from the very earliest times of which any records are preserved. Hesiod, Homer, Herodotus, bear witness to it, and the universal practice of all nations substantiates it, whether in the barbarian forms of the ancient Druidical or other worship in the ruder peoples of the world, or in the more refined practice of Greece and Rome, or in the grotesque or cruel rites of the eastern countries, or absolutely barbarian tribes. p. 36They all have their altars, their priests, and their sacrifices, and in most, if not in all, the notion of propitiation by the blood of the victim has prevailed.

It need hardly be added that in the provisions of the Mosaic Law all these principles were embodied, so that, with every safeguard introduced against the perversions, the sensuality, the materialism, and the cruelty, which pervaded all forms and systems of idol worship, yet the true worship of Jehovah, as established by Himself, embraced, and contained, and stereotyped under the mark of His own approval, nay, of His absolute command, the same three points, of an altar, a priesthood, and a sacrifice; yes, a sacrifice in the sense of more than a mere oblation or offering,—a sacrifice by blood of a victim slain, and consumed in the very act of the commanded worship. For it ought never to be forgotten that amid all other offerings that were permitted,—nay, for certain purposes enjoined, as, for instance, for thank-offerings, or for mere legal purification,—yet, under the Jewish Law, the particular sacrifice which was appointed for expiation of any moral offence was the burnt-offering, where the victim, as I have said, was killed, and afterwards consumed by fire upon the altar; [36] and this appears to have no exception, unless it were in the case of the extremely poor, who might offer the tenth part of an ephah of meal; but even then, I believe, it is considered p. 37that this was placed upon a victim offered by others, or by the priest, for the sins of the people, and so may be deemed to have made a part of a sacrifice with blood. So that, in truth, as St. Paul says to the Hebrews, “almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission.”

We might say much on this head, and more particularly upon the appointment of the Passover, and the light thrown by this institution upon the typical character of sacrifice generally, and its relation to the great sacrifice of all,—the Lamb slain, once for all upon the cross, for the sins of the world; but the outline already given of the doctrine taught by the sacrifice of Abel will readily suggest a key to the true intention of the ever-recurring sacrifices of the Jews, and to the manner in which they (although “the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin,” yet) pointed to, and prepared the way for, our understanding the nature of the sacrifice of Christ, and, indeed, were the great means to elicit and foster faith in Him who should come, and to teach all the world daily and continually to look to Him who alone is its salvation, without whom, and whose mercy, no flesh should be saved at all.

We have brought, then, our statement, and I may say our argument, to this point; first, generally that the whole world, with one consent, bears witness to the usage of sacrifice. The p. 38whole world from Adam to Christ,—Patriarchal, Jewish, Gentile, Barbarian, Civilized, North, South, East, and West, together (for the new world when discovered was found herein not to be divergent from the old),—testifies, I say, with one mind and one mouth, as to the Being of a God, so likewise to this usage of sacrifice. And again, secondly, and more particularly, the witness agrees, that the sacrifice is made, (to speak generally,) not without blood, and made for the purpose of reconciliation, after sin committed, with the supernatural being or beings invoked, or for propitiation and intercession in cases of favour sought. Even, still further is there accordant and consenting witness; that there will be, as necessary accompaniments to the sacrifice, an altar on which it is to be made, and a specially set apart order of men: priests (ίερεῖς, sacerdotes, or however particularly designated), by whom these sacrifices should be offered up, and intercessions made on behalf of the people. So much the whole world testifies generally, in spite of certain differences of usage, and the fearful abominations which prevailed amongst those who did not retain the true God in their knowledge:—the cruelty, licentiousness, and abhorrent vice into which this worship, when it degenerated into idol worship, everywhere sunk; which, however, it is plain, is no more an argument against sacrifice, holily and obediently offered in accordance with God’s appointment, than the superstitions of heathen p. 39invocation are an argument against godly prayer and intercession. And thus, too, we see that this very idea of sacrifice, (without the vicious accompaniments,) prevailed among God’s children from the first,—as with Abel, Noah, Melchisedek, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job; whilst by God’s own sanction and special command, and, with what in human affairs we should call the most laborious care and pains, the whole system was, under Moses, recognised, enlarged, defined, and embodied in a whole code of laws, to be in their very minutest details carried out until the Mediator of a new covenant should come, when that which was old should be ready to vanish away.

But it is well worthy of all our care in examination, to see whether it is the essence of this idea, and even mode, of worship which is done away, or only its ceremonial and local detail, as established in the Jewish Church and polity; whether—as all sacrifices before Christ were intended to look forward to Him, and His precious, inestimable, expiation, to be once made by blood and suffering upon the altar of the cross—whether, I say, so it has not been His will to continue an altar and a priesthood, and therewith and thereby a sacrifice commemorative—but, though commemorative, nevertheless perfectly real and true—by which the Christian Church may both look back to Him, then dying once for all, and ever plead afresh the merits of p. 40His death before the throne of God on high. As Abraham looked forward, and “rejoiced to see His day, and saw it, and was glad;” [40a] what if, so likewise, the Christian Church is to look back on Him, and to rejoice; not merely to see Him and be glad, but to be allowed also, according to His own will and ordinance,—(aye, brethren, observe, of and by His own very appointment, whereby His very body and blood are truly offered up to God,)—allowed thus to plead, week by week and day by day, the very all-prevailing merits of that same sacrifice upon the cross; yea, and be the means of Himself graciously pleading it for His people ever afresh before the mercy-seat of His Father. O, my brethren, if this be so, who can undervalue this great thing, or disparage it, or attempt to throw it off, or deny it, or trample it under foot, without a sacrilege fearful to think of? But, again, if this be so, how is the Lamb of God, and His precious blood-shedding, made, more than in any other way which we can conceive, the centre towards which the whole world looks, from its earliest to its latest day; from the moment of the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head, [40b] until that awful hour when that same seed of the woman, the Son of Man, shall come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory? I do not say, it is not conceivable that p. 41the whole system and machinery (so to call it), of priest, and altar, and sacrifice, might have fulfilled its purpose at the hour of the crucifixion, and nothing remain of it, or like it, in the Christian Church; nothing in the Christian ministry to answer to the previous priesthood; nothing in it, but a set of teachers or expounders of the Christian faith; a faith, however, be it remarked, in that case, a very different thing from that which the Church has ever supposed it to be, or (as I think) the Holy Scripture sets before us. But even if all this be conceivable, I do say, and I think no unprejudiced person should dispute it, that the whole testimony and usage of all previous time in this matter, the whole of what holy men “did continually” in relation to it, not merely with God’s manifest approval, but even with His especial sanction, and by His positive command, raises a very strong prima facie presumption, that all this was not intended to be, and was not, thus abrogated and done away; and that, at the very least, we ought to have shewn us the most express and distinct proofs of its being thus abrogated, before we can accept its abrogation. We have been accustomed to see, rather, that instead of being abrogated, the usage is changed and glorified; changed from the shadow to the image, from wood and stone to silver and gold, from a comparatively dead state to a glorious living one, from the ministration of death to the ministration of life; but, if this be not so, then, indeed, p. 42we may surely ask to see this reversal of all which the economy of God’s dealings would seem to lead us to, expressly promulgated and proved by the word of Christ or His Apostles; so plainly set down as to need no explanation further; or else, so explained by those who immediately followed them, and had the best means of understanding their sense and design, as to leave us no ground for reasonable doubt, or we must be excused if we cannot accept the mere assertion of so improbable a thing as true, or believe the unchangeable God to be so like a Man that He should thus repent.

A fair examination into this question is most important, but we cannot enter upon it at the present moment. We must necessarily defer it to another day. I trust, with God’s help and guidance, to resume our subject on Sunday next, and endeavour further to see how the doctrine really stands, taking, briefly but carefully, into consideration these three points:—

1. What is the testimony of the Holy Scripture as to the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, altar, and sacrifice?

3. How it has been received by our own branch of the Church Catholic, the Church of England?

And I will only add now, whilst I pray that we may all strive simply to know the will of God p. 43that we may do it, that there can be no more practical matter than this to engage our thoughts and hearts. For, if it be so, that Christ has left Him no priests now on earth to minister at His altars, and no sacrifice with which His people are concerned, a great part of what so many believe, I might say, of what the Church of God for eighteen hundred years and more has believed, to be of the essence of our faith, is a mere fable and superstition; whilst if, on the other hand, “it be truth, and the thing certain,” [43] that a Christian priesthood, ordained by Christ Himself, and these sacrificial powers, and altar and sacrifice, remain and must remain ever in His Church, what words shall describe the misery and sin of those who are endeavouring to rob a whole nation of their belief in such truth of God, and to pour more than slight and contempt upon the ordinances of Christ; so that, in fact, they would, if they could have their will and way, unchurch the Church of God in this land, deny the virtue of His mysteries, and starve the children of God who seek to receive at His altar the benefits of His sacrifice, humbly waiting on Him there, and partaking of the sacrifice and feast ordained by Him.

Oh! let us pray indeed that we may come to the consideration of so weighty a matter, casting away all passion and prejudice and preconceived opinion, and whatsoever may hinder us from p. 44seeing the truth of God, to which may He of His mercy guide us. And may He grant us also that we may not merely know the truth, but when we know it follow it, in our daily life and conversation, without turning aside to the right hand or to the left.

p. 45SERMON III.
Witness of the New Testament to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

I resume the subject upon which I have spoken on two previous Sundays—the reality of the Christian priesthood, altar, and sacrifice.

I endeavoured to shew in the first of these discourses that it was no argument against the truth of the priesthood that they who hold it have “this treasure in earthen vessels,” that a priest is like and “of like passions” with others, nay, is “weak as another man.” In the second, I pointed out that sacrifice was an institution as old as the days of our first parents, and in all probability appointed directly by the Almighty upon man’s fall, with some revelation of its predictive significance; that certainly it met with His approval when duly and religiously performed; and that it was by faith that those who took part in it “obtained the witness that they were righteous:” [45] whence we were led to consider p. 46more particularly its relation to the sacrifice upon the Cross of “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world,” and how from the beginning it looked forward, in its inner meaning, with a preparing and expectant eye and heart, to that wonderful consummation. We saw, too, that thus among God’s own chosen people, by special and minute provision, this doctrine and usage of sacrifice were preserved even as long as the elder dispensation lasted; whilst, though in terrible and wicked perversion, both as to the object and the mode of worship, they yet prevailed universally throughout the heathen world. Admitting it to be conceivable that in the Almighty’s will it might be intended that sacrifice should altogether cease when once the great sacrifice was completed; that, although He had appointed foreshadowing and predictive rites of that wonderful event, He did not intend that there should be any reflective or commemorative sacrifice to carry us back to it, or to apply its virtue, or to plead its merits ever afresh before the throne of God; we yet saw great reason to think this to be highly unlikely, and reserved the point more particularly for further examination. What is the testimony which has been furnished to us upon it? You will remember that I proposed to consider this testimony under the three heads: first, what Holy Scripture tells us; secondly, what has been the understanding by the Church from the beginning of the declarations of Holy Writ; and thirdly, p. 47what is the mind of our own Church in this matter?

Before, however, coming to these particulars, let me premise that it can be but a brief summary of such evidences which it is possible to give here. The subject is so large, and the full testimony so extensive, that it would require volumes to go through it. Those who would study it in a more complete manner will find it elaborately discussed in the discourses on “The Government of Churches and on Religious Assemblies,” of Dr. Herbert Thorndike, Canon of Westminster, about the middle of the seventeenth century, (a very learned theologian); and in the three octavo volumes of “Treatises on the Christian Priesthood,” by Dr. Hickes, Dean of Worcester, some fifty years later; whilst there is a very thoughtful and condensed statement of the whole matter in a small book by the Rev. T. T. Carter, called “The Doctrine of the Priesthood.”

Let us now turn to our own enquiry, as some help (if it please God) to those who may not be so likely, possibly may not have leisure or opportunity, to consult larger works, but may yet have a godly anxiety amid the bold assertions, and I fear we must say, in no small measure, the irreverent scoffing of a free and licentious time, to learn the will of God herein, that they may neither think nor do anything but what is pleasing and acceptable in His sight.

Our question is, Has God willed, and has He p. 48revealed to us His will, that in His Church, since the death of His Blessed Son upon the cross, there shall be no priesthood, no altar, and no sacrifice? And first, “What saith the Scripture?” [48a] I must take but a few out of many passages.

1. We have, in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, the following direction: “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” [48b] Now if this direction be intended to be a guide of conduct for Christian people in the Christian Church, can it be denied that our Lord speaks of an altar to be used, and an offering to be made thereon; and that, speaking to those who were constantly accustomed to altars and sacrifices, His words must have conveyed to them the meaning that an altar and a sacrifice would remain for them whilst they should be practising the precepts of His religion? If He did not intend so much by this precept, the question surely arises, How shall we, with any certainty, know what other portions of that or any of our Lord’s discourses were designed for the instruction merely of the Jews who were around Him, or should receive His teaching during the time that their covenant lasted, but became immediately inapplicable and void in and under the Christian dispensation? Will any say that the p. 49precepts concerning purity, meekness, government of the tongue, charity, are thus limited? as, “Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart;” or, “Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment;” or, again, “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay;” or, once more, “Resist not evil; love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.” [49] That these and other divine precepts of that same discourse were injunctions to bind the Jews, to whom primarily they were spoken, but require other proof or repetition before they can be conclusively accepted as designed for Christians would seem strange indeed. If no one will say so, surely we must confess to a strong presumption in favour of the doctrine of an altar and a sacrifice remaining in the Christian Church.

But perhaps it may be said, Not so: we accept those other precepts as belonging to the Christian Church, because they are simply moral precepts applying to the heart, but the former passage relates to a ceremonial usage of the Jewish polity, and may well be taken to be a mere adaptation of what was then in well-known use; to inculcate, not an act or mode of worship, but figuratively a frame of mind that would be required in Christians. So that, as the Jew would literally p. 50understand, he should go his way from the temple and the altar, and be reconciled to any one to whom he had done wrong, before he could there make his offering; so the Christian in all time, though having no altar to which to come, and no real offering or sacrifice in which to join, should yet learn to be in peace and charity with all men, before he should esteem himself fit to lift up his voice or heart in prayer to God; and that therefore our Lord’s words, spoken “while as the first tabernacle was yet standing,” [50] do not sufficiently prove any altar designed to exist in the Christian Church. Well, let us allow the utmost weight to such an argument, and grant that the words in and by themselves might possibly be so explained, and yet bear just a tolerable though not, I think, at all a likely interpretation in such sense; but then, let us yet turn and see whether the other and more natural meaning be not corroborated elsewhere, where this gloss will not avail. Remember the objection to the proof of a Christian altar from those words is, that they were spoken whilst the Jewish polity subsisted, and before the Christian Church was set up, and therefore that it is only (as is asserted) by a figure, suitable enough to Jewish ears, but not as really enunciating a truth or principle to endure in the Christian Church, that they were uttered. But shall we not find a witness in Holy Scripture to the existence of this altar in the new dispensation, which p. 51is free from this exception or construction? I turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews, and I find the Apostle writing, “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.” [51a] Was not this written to Christians? Does it not speak to them expressly of their altar at which they are to eat? Was it not set down for their guidance and instruction? Was it not written after the great sacrifice upon the altar of the cross had been made, and made once for all?

Was it not after the setting up of the Christian Church, and the establishment of Christian worship? Nay, is it not in an Epistle, the very whole drift and scope of which is to contrast the usages and provisions and teaching of the elder covenant with those of the new, and to shew the superiority in each respect of that which had been ordained, not by angels, but in the hand of the Son of God Himself. [51b] And can it therefore be that the inferior part or type in the one can lack the corresponding superior part, or antitype, in the other with which it is contrasted, and on which correspondency and contrast the whole argument depends? Will any one say, Yes, but still the Jewish temple had not then been destroyed; the Jews’ visible altar and worship still existed, and it is only by (again) an adaptation, as a mode of speech particularly intelligible to the Hebrews, and by a very natural economy, that such terms were employed. But granting that the date of p. 52the Epistle is, with all probability, rightly put some little time before the destruction of Jerusalem, yet does not the very turn both of the argument and of the expression of the Apostle shew that he is not making an application of a figure, but a declaration of a fact? Addressing Hebrews, but most evidently converted Hebrews, Christians, to keep them firm in the faith, and to enlighten them to the more full understanding in it, he presses on them this point, that they have an altar; and not only so, but one distinguished from the altar of the Jew; one at which “they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.” Take the whole passage together and see its force: “We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.” Where evidently the type, the great day of atonement under the law, is contrasted with its antitype, the great sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. So far it might be perhaps thought that our altar is only the cross; but then he continues: “Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach; for here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His p. 53name.” [53] Here it is evident another sacrifice is to be made, even the sacrifice of praise (which we must remember is the very phrase universally used in the ancient Church for the Holy Eucharist). Let us therefore (surely we are to understand) follow after Christ, being content to bear His reproach even as we offer to Him, ourselves, our souls and bodies, in and by the sacrifice of His own appointing, the Eucharistic Sacrifice in the supper of the Lord, at the enduring Christian altar as well as table.

But perhaps some may still say, We are not convinced. The allusion to an altar here may yet be figurative, or only adapting language to the mind of the Jew, “while as the first tabernacle was yet standing;” and the sacrifice of praise need not necessarily mean the Holy Eucharist, or, if it do, may point to no altar or sacrifice by means of a priest, but merely denote the lifting the heart in sincerity to God.

Now, although putting the whole argument together and reading the passage by the light which the continuous belief of the Church throws upon it (as we shall see presently), nothing, I think, can be more unlikely or untenable than such an interpretation, still, for the moment, let us allow it to throw a doubt upon the sense of the passage. Let us, then, turn to yet another place, and see if the witness of the Apostle is not unmistakeable as to the doctrine of which we speak.

p. 54Take that passage in the first Epistle to the Corinthians in which our text occurs, and see if it be possible to understand it in any sense but in that which speaks of a present altar and a continually recurring sacrifice, in which Christians have an interest and bear a part: “Are not they which eat of the sacrifice,” says he, “partakers of the altar?” [54] and this especially in contrast as to the conduct of those engaged in idol worship, and those in Christian worship. As truly, then, as the idolater partook of his altar (though his idol be nothing), so, only much more, does the Christian of the Christian altar. And this cannot be the one offering on the cross alone, however deriving all its virtue and power from it, because in that case the Christian could not be said to eat of the sacrifice in any continuous or recurring act. The sacrifice would be wholly past, and not present as the idol sacrifices were, and so there would be no true parallel between the two things brought into comparison. Mark the progress of the argument: “What say I then? that the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice to the idol is anything? But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God;” that is, under the symbol of the senseless wood or stone there lurked an acknowledgment of demoniac power, so that, in fact, in the heart of those worshippers there was a homage paid to Satan and his angels, and this was something p. 55wickedly real, even though the idol was nothing. For he immediately adds what shews that this worship was not without its effect, an effect impressing a character on those who shared in it; for he says, “And I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils,” and why? because thus they would lose all fellowship with God. “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils. Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.” [55] Let it make no difficulty that it is called a table here, as an altar above. It is both, just as the other, the heathen altar, was both, because in each case there was not merely a sacrifice, but a feast upon a sacrifice. As truly, then, as the Apostle says that there is a heathen idolatrous sacrifice which Christians can never have to do with, because if they do they would have fellowship with devils, so does he, by the very parallel he draws, and the whole scope of his argument, imply that Christians have a sacrifice, at which they can be, and are to be, continually present; in and by which they have fellowship with the Lord, which also is offered continually in their assemblies, and of which they eat. For as in the one there were the heathen feasts upon the victims or offerings offered to devils; so in the other there is the feast upon the Christian sacrifice, the offering made in that continually recurring commemorative oblation to God of the body and blood of Christ. If this p. 56be not to be offered up continually, since the one sacrifice completed as the propitiation by blood made once for all upon the cross, then there is no coherency or force in the Apostle’s argument; for there would be nothing in the Christian dispensation like, or answering to, those sacrifices to devils which the heathen used, and in which they were forbidden to join. The teaching surely is, and must be, as they who join in the heathen altar-worship are partakers of it, and have fellowship thereby with those to whom it is really offered, so they who join in the Christian sacrifice (not so made and passed in point of time as to be incapable of continued and continual recurrence by commemorative but real act) are thereby partakers in and of their feast upon their sacrifice, and have therein fellowship with the Lord. So this is the continual memorial of the one “sacrifice upon the cross, and of the benefits which we receive thereby,” also the appointed means of our receiving those benefits. And it would be absurd to think of the Apostle describing the worship of idols as a real act of adoration and sacrifice to devils, and as impressing a real character by a power upon them for evil in those who join in such worship, and not to see that he must allow an equal act of sacrifice, adoration, and homage in the sacrifice and the altar which he speaks of as the Christian’s constant privilege to frequent; and which is as much greater to impress a character for good upon the Christian and to nourish p. 57him to life eternal, as the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ is greater than the idol, which is nothing, or the things offered to idols, which are nothing.

Nor is there any escape, that I can see, from the force of this argument of St. Paul, unless any one will try to evade it by saying: “Look back a moment, and see if the whole argument does not belong to the Jew, and not to the Christian.” Will any one take this line and appeal to the words immediately before the text? True, it is written, “Behold Israel after the flesh. Are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” But if this be urged, I say, go back a little further still, and observe the flood of light thrown upon the whole passage, in connection not merely generally with Christianity, but especially and particularly with the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, in this true commemorative Sacrament, which is exactly where and how, we say, the Christian sacrifice is offered by the Christian priests upon the Christian altar. After exhortation against yielding to temptation, and declaration of the ever-ready help of God for those who will use it, “who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it,” the Apostle adds: “Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” (Oh, let us also be wise to hear and p. 58learn! “Judge ye what I say.”) “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.” [58] And then all but immediately he adds, “are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” Can anything be clearer than that, to the blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, he attaches the teaching which follows so directly as to the nature of the sacrifice and the altar? Ah! but, it is said, he interpolates words that you have omitted which alter the application:—“Behold Israel after the flesh;” he says, and then adds, “are not they which eat of the sacrifice partakers of the altar?” Well, and what do the parenthetical words mean? Surely they must mean merely this,—that, as his readers would allow such was the case under the law, and with Israel after the flesh; and that Israel, as well as the heathen, had an altar and a sacrifice, so it is also with Christians: as if he had said, We Christians, by this blessed sacramental bond, are one body, even as we are all partakers of that one Bread; and as you will all allow, the partaking of a common sacrifice (for instance, that of the Paschal Lamb,) signified this under the law and with “Israel after the flesh,” so you must be prepared to admit as p. 59much under the Gospel, and with the true Israel born anew of the Spirit. Thus the interpolation does not for one moment break the sequence or invalidate the force of the argument as to the Christian sacrifice, but merely illustrates it by a parenthetical allusion to what his hearers or readers would allow at once to have been the case with Jewish rites, sacrifices, and altars: and the conclusion from the whole is distinct and inevitable, that St. Paul,—speaking to the Christians at Corinth as to men who would understand the whole force of his argument, as being acquainted with Jewish customs, and living also in the very midst of heathen idolatrous worship,—teaches as plainly that Christians use a Christian altar, and offer up a Christian sacrifice, and feast together upon it, and that this is undoubtedly the cup of blessing which we bless, and the bread which we break, and that thereon follows the blessedness of fellowship with the Lord; I say, teaches this as plainly as he says there is, or has been, in Jewish worship a Jewish altar and sacrifice, and as there is in heathen worship an altar and a sacrifice to devils, and a partaking of the cup of devils, and of the table of devils, and thereby the having fellowship with them. And, (what is particularly to the purpose of my citing this passage), herein is the proof that the sacrifice referred to cannot be the one meritorious, painful, bloody sacrifice upon the cross, once made and never to be repeated; both because this was not (no one can p. 60say it was) the literal breaking of bread, and the blessing the cup in the Holy Eucharist, and because also, if that one sacrifice had been intended, there would have been no parallel at all between the heathen sacrifices to which the people were often called, and that sacrifice to which Christians on this supposition could never be called. Whereas if we do but allow, according to the plain meaning of the words and of the argument, that there is a true sacrifice to God, commemorative, but real, as ordained and appointed by Christ Himself,—no repetition of blood or agony, but the presenting afresh, and pleading afresh, yea, causing Christ Himself to plead afresh for us in heaven, the merits of that one precious death,—then we have the most manifest recognition and declaration of the very doctrine for which we contend, and both many other passages of Holy Writ are made perfectly clear,—(who will now doubt the sense of the other two Scriptures which we examined?)—and the whole sense and usage of the Church from the beginning is both explained and justified.

Our time has been so much taken up in examining what was, of course, the most important question of all, the teaching of Holy Scripture upon this point, that we have left ourselves no time to-day to consider the further portion of our proposed subject, viz., what is the teaching of the Church Catholic from the beginning, and its understanding of the written word on this p. 61doctrine of sacrifice; and, yet again, what is the witness of our own Church to her having most carefully preserved, held, and maintained the same. To this we will recur, if God will, another day; in the meanwhile commending ourselves ever to His mercy, and all we think or do to His grace and guidance.

p. 63SERMON IV.
The Testimony of the Early Church to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

The next division of our enquiry is, the understanding of Holy Scripture in the primitive Church as to the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, and its consequent doctrine thereupon. Before, however, proceeding to this examination, let me briefly remind you of the point in the argument from Holy Scripture at which we have arrived, for our time on Sunday last hardly permitted me to sum up the remarks then made. The last passage which we considered asks in the tone of unquestionable affirmation, “Are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” The parallel, as I then pointed out, lies between those on the one hand, who, eating of the heathen sacrifices, are partakers of the heathen altar, and thus have fellowship p. 64with devils; and those, on the other hand, who, eating of the Christian sacrifice, are partakers of the Christian altar, and thus have fellowship with God. For, I must repeat, if St. Paul’s argument have not this meaning and significance, there is no coherency in the things brought into juxtaposition, and nothing on the one side to answer to the requirement of the other. Observe further, before we pass on, how the Apostle’s whole reasoning, as it stands, excludes, and must exclude, the sense of the Christian sacrifice being a mere figurative expression, and that which is eaten in it a mere subjective thing, dependent upon the mind of the recipient for its being there at all; for, if it were so in the Christian sacrifice, it must be so in the idol sacrifice also. But is it so in the latter? Is it that what is there eaten is a mere nothing in itself, dependent upon the mind of the eater? Is the partaking of the idol altar not an effect of an actual eating? Is the consequent fellowship with devils not the result of such actual feasting upon an actual objective sacrifice? And, therefore, if the parallel has any force at all, must it not be that there is a real objective presence of a sacrificial thing at the Christian altar,—the res sacramenti, as in strict theological phraseology it is termed,—by which he that eateth is partaker of the altar, and the result of which is, his having fellowship with Christ and God? From which our inference p. 65was plain and direct that in St. Paul’s understanding there is a Christian altar and a Christian sacrifice. Such was the conclusion from Holy Scripture at which we arrived.

I proceed now to shew further, that this, the natural and, as I think, the necessary sense of that passage (supported by numerous other passages of Holy Writ, some of which we have noticed, though many others we have not had time particularly to examine), is the sense in which the Church Catholic has ever understood the doctrine of the Scripture upon this subject, and which our own Church carefully guarded and preserved at her Reformation; thus maintaining, on so essential a point, her connection with the Church from the beginning and in all times.

But yet, before we go into the proof of this, let it be remarked (for it is very important in order to our seeing the full weight and bearing of the facts and records to which we are about to refer) that these three things—the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice—are what we may call correlatives, and reciprocally imply one another. As the word parent implies a child, or brother, brother or sister; so, if there be an altar, there will be a sacrifice, for the altar would be unmeaning without it, would miss its aim and be purposeless if there were nothing to be offered on it; and in like manner, if there be a sacrifice there will be an altar, for it is contrary to the whole sense and usage of the word to make such sacrificial p. 66offering to God, and not withal to sanctify some special place and mode of oblation. Again, if there be an altar and a sacrifice, there will be a priesthood; unless the voice of the whole world (over and above the constraining teaching of the Scripture) be in error, and any man that pleases may “take this honour unto himself,” [66a] and offer up “gifts and sacrifices” acceptably to God.

Premising, then, thus much, I proceed to call attention to the fact, that the whole literature of Christianity from the beginning either states or implies the doctrine of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, which we have deduced also from Holy Scripture. It is true that in the very scanty writings which remain to us from the first century, we may not find the word ‘priest’ applied to the Christian ministry. But, as Mr. Carter has well observed, “the real question is not whether the name, but whether the idea, of priesthood is found to exist in the extant writings of the Apostolic Fathers;” [66b] whilst for the absence of the name it is not hard to assign satisfactory reasons. In the first place, the extant writings of that century are too few to let a negative conclusion be built upon them. They amount, I believe, in all, (if we exclude the “Shepherd of Hermas,” a confessedly mere allegorical work,) to not more than what would make about thirty pages of an octavo volume. [66c] Over and above this paucity of material on which to found an argument, other reasons p. 67may readily be given for the term ‘priest’ not occurring. It may be sufficient here just to touch upon two. First, there might be great cause why the earliest Christian writers should not designate those who ministered at their altars by a term which might have been understood to imply that they claimed for them a descent from the house of Aaron according to the flesh; which claim the Jews around them would know in many instances to be unfounded, and which, therefore, to be supposed to make, would lay them open to a charge of imposture; whilst again, secondly, they might equally desire to keep clear of all mistake as to their being confounded with the priesthood of the Gentiles, or heathen world, so likely to involve them in the charge of offering up bloody sacrifices like them; a charge which in fact we know, as it was, they did not wholly escape; a wonderful and most unsuspicious witness by the way (for it comes from those who had no thought to forward any interests of Christianity), that Christians claimed to make a true sacrifice in the Eucharist, for it is evidently this, perverted and mistaken by the persecuting heathen, (as if, when they offered the Body and Blood of Christ, they confessed to offering a human victim,) which led to the accusation; a great evidence surely to the doctrine of the real presence of Christ therein, for who could mistake the Eucharistic doctrine of a large portion of modern Christianity for anything open to such a charge, under which we know, p. 68upon the testimony of heathen writers, the early Christians suffered reproach?

These two reasons, then, may suffice as to the term ‘priest’ not being so early applied to the Christian ministry, and indeed we need no defence upon the subject, because the whole idea of the priesthood prevails in those early writings whether the word ‘priest’ be used or not, inasmuch as there is constant mention of the sacrifice and the altar as in use in the Christian Church.

As we proceed with the stream of Christian writing there is ample proof of the universal holding and teaching of this doctrine.

I cannot, of course, pretend here to go through this evidence in detail. We must rather look for a summary which may give the result of a fair examination into the records left us, than make a series of extracts from them. We shall perhaps hardly find a more unexceptionable witness than the learned writer Vitringa, cited by Mr. Carter in his work already mentioned. Speaking of the age shortly succeeding the Apostles, Mr. Carter says: “As to the usage of this period there can be no surer authority than that of Vitringa. His extensive learning, directed assiduously to this very point, and his zeal as a partizan, make his testimony to be peculiarly conclusive.” [68] His zeal as a partizan, be it observed, was not in favour of the Catholic sense of the writings, nor of any priesthood or altar, for Vitringa was a Dutch p. 69Presbyterian, who lived about the middle of the last century, and wrote expressly to explain away the evidence which nevertheless he adduces. He acknowledges that his own views are opposed to the unvarying testimony and belief of the Catholic Church for sixteen hundred years. His theory excludes all idea of priesthood and equally of bishops, (not the name only, but also the office,) chancels, altars, and oblations, and, indeed, any stated ministry. In fact, he regards the whole subject as a staunch Presbyterian, and it is, therefore, certainly not with any bias in favour of the doctrine which we are considering that he thus sums up the results of his enquiries into the writings of those early centuries:—

“That Tertullian, in the beginning of the third century, calls the bishop ‘chief priest,’ (summus sacerdos); that before his time, in the second century, Irenæus calls the gifts made at the Holy Eucharist, ‘oblations,’ (oblata,) and when consecrated by the prayer of the bishop, ‘a sacrifice,’ (sacrificium); and that in Justin Martyr, a still more ancient writer, the gifts are called ‘offerings,’ (προσφοραὶ); are facts so certainly known to the learned, that it is needless to speak of them at greater length. In the subsequent writings of the Fathers, the terms ‘priesthood,’ ‘Priest,’ ‘Levites,’ ‘altars,’ ‘offertories,’ ‘sacrifices,’ ‘oblations,’ used in reference to the Church of the New Testament, are so obvious and frequent that it can escape no one who has even p. 70cursorily examined their writings. In Eusebius, moreover, and the rest of the ecclesiastical historians, and the canons of Councils, such frequent mention occurs of these phrases, that it is evident they must have struck deep root into the minds of men in those ages.” [70] So much is the testimony of a very learned man, and a most unsuspicious witness.

But there is a separate line of evidence to be drawn from another and perhaps even still more convincing source: I mean the ancient liturgies of the Church which have come down to us, and tell us in what way the early Christians worshipped God; the place which they assigned to the Holy Eucharist, and the light in which they regarded it in connection with sacrifice, altar, and priesthood. There are four liturgies, (and we are to remember, the word in all ancient writings means merely and simply the Eucharistic service,) which have been shewn to have been reduced to writing in the course of the fourth century, and one of them in the earliest part of it. They bear their witness to the Church’s faith and hope and teaching in those days, and even earlier, because it is generally conceded that they were in use long before they were put into writing, the days of persecution rendering it unsafe for the Christians to have documents which might be seized, and turned against them; or perhaps still more, p. 71the desire to preserve the mysteries of their faith, and especially of the Holy Eucharist, from the inquisition of heathen scoffing, indisposing them to keep any records which could be thus profanely used. Of course, after the Empire became Christian, under Constantine, this reason ceased, and it was only what was natural that the services which had been orally in use for years should now be reduced to writing. Now, these four liturgies were used at the four great central sees of Christendom, and their subordinate branches, and so pervaded the whole Catholic world. “The first,” to use the words of a learned writer, Mr. Palmer, the author of the Origines Liturgicæ, “is the great Oriental liturgy, as it seems to have prevailed in all the Christian Churches, from the Euphrates to the Hellespont, and from the Hellespont to the southern extremity of Greece; the second was the Alexandrian, which from time immemorial has been the liturgy of Egypt, Abyssinia, and the country extending along the Mediterranean Sea to the West; the third was the Roman, which prevailed throughout the whole of Italy, Sicily, and great part of Africa; the fourth was the Gallican, which was used throughout Gaul and Spain, and probably in the exarchate of Ephesus, until the fourth century.” [71]

Now, the especially important bearing of these liturgies upon our subject is this, that in spite of enough of difference to shew that they are independent p. 72witnesses, they yet correspond most closely with one another in all main features, and particularly in their witness to the sacrificial doctrine, and the priestly office, in relation to the Holy Eucharist. And (as Mr. Palmer has pointed out), with regard to the one first named, the Oriental, existing documents enable us to trace this liturgy to a very remote period indeed, almost or quite to the Apostolic age; for he reminds us that in the time of Justin Martyr, whose writings are the “existing documents” of which he speaks, the Christian Church was “only removed by one link from the Apostles themselves.” [72a] Nor even is this all; for there is yet a fifth liturgy, of a date still earlier than these four already named, called the Clementine, and what is particularly remarkable in it is, that it agrees with those four great liturgies in all points where they agree with each other, as well as in their general structure.

“Now, in all these liturgies alike,” says Mr. Carter, “the ancient sacerdotal terms in question are ordinarily used. In reading them, we open upon a scene which represents a priesthood of different degrees, with a complete ritual, ministering before God on behalf of the people, offering sacrifices, and communicating heavenly gifts and benedictions.” [72b]

I must forbear both any quotations to shew this, as well as defer any further remarks upon p. 73the progress of events, or (which also is part of our subject) on the careful attention, by our own Reformers and Revisers, to preserve the teaching of the primitive Church in this matter. If it please God, yet once more we may return to the subject, and see how this stands, as well as make some little practical application of the doctrine to ourselves at this day, to some of our dangers and temptations in an age so free-thinking and free-handling as the present. Without anticipating these things in any detail, let me yet just remind you that the mere fashion, or usage, or clamour, or forgetfulness, or unbelief of any age or time can make no difference in the truth of God, or in the doctrine which has been from the beginning, or in the mysteries of His kingdom. That men should try to bring all things, however divine and holy, however deep and mysterious, to the level of their own understanding, and discard all which they may be unable to explain, need be to us no matter of surprise. The very same temper which in one induces a disbelief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, because the doctrine is beyond the human understanding to fathom,—or leads another to reject the mystery of the Incarnation, because it is ineffable and above his comprehension,—or another to deny the regenerating gift and efficacy of holy baptism, saying, “How can these things be?”—may readily bring others to that hard state of scepticism which robs the Holy Eucharist at once of its deep mysteriousness and of its hidden p. 74virtue; which therefore rejects, and too often ridicules, the very idea of a priesthood and an availing sacrifice, saying, “How should man have power with God?” or, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?” [74a] even though the priestly power be derived from Christ’s own commission, and the mysterious virtue assured by His own Word of Truth. That there should be some who, leaning too much to their own understanding, forsake the old ways, and dislike and accuse those who desire to cleave to them; that they should frame worldly arguments for worldly men, and even deceive some who in heart and wish are not worldly, but rather unwary, or led away by the mere voice of the multitude, or swayed by prejudice, or betrayed through an ignorance of what has been from the beginning; that some should scoff when they cannot reason, and ridicule that which they have not the heart to understand,—all this, I repeat, need not fill us with either surprise or dismay, though perchance it may make us (not wholly unwarrantably) deem that the latter days are come, or close coming, upon us. I say all this need not surprise us, for have not our Lord and His Apostles warned us that such things must be? “When the Son of Man cometh,” He said Himself, “shall He find faith on the earth?” [74b] as though it would exist but in a remnant. And again, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call p. 75them of his household?” [75a] Why, then, should we expect to escape such things? But I said, also, we need not be dismayed at them. Is there not the exhortation, “Ye have need of patience?” [75b] and again the encouragement, “In your patience possess ye your souls?” [75c] and again the gracious promise, “He that endureth to the end shall be saved?” [75d] What though in the latter times some shall depart from the faith? [75e] What though “the time will come when men will not endure sound doctrine.” [75f] Shall this make any difference in our faith, or cast any gloom upon our hope? No! Brethren, let us ever remember that what we have to rely upon is, not “man’s wisdom,” nor “an arm of flesh:” what we have to cleave to with all constancy is “that which was from the beginning;” [75g] for it is this which gives us “fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” [75h]

And surely here we may see and bless the goodness of God towards us in this our Church of England that He put it into the hearts of our Reformers not for one moment to think of making a new religion or a new Church, but only (throwing off errors and corruptions) to go back to the teaching of the early ages, and embrace the doctrine of the Church universal. If the Church of England had begun at the Reformation, (as sometimes p. 76men speak,) no man, who knew anything of the essentials of Christianity could belong to her for a moment. But, blessed be God, He put it into the heart and minds of those who, in His providence, guided the course of the English Reformation, to make it a maxim, Stare super antiquas vias, to give heed to the injunction of the prophet: “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths where is the good way; and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” [76] It is this which has been, under God, our safeguard. From time to time assaults have been made to destroy our true Catholic character and our bond of union with primitive Christianity; but God has, of His mercy, hitherto, ever kept it in the heart of the rulers in our Church to “ask for the old ways, and to walk in them.” That our Church has kept to the old ways is manifest from this, that the very persons who disbelieve and desire to drive us from the ancient faith, are the same who, as the means of doing so, are striving to new model our formularies and alter our Prayer-book. They feel no less than we that, whilst we retain these, we cleave to the doctrine which has been of old; and they, desiring to deprive us of the doctrine, are as anxious to alter our formularies as we are to keep them unchanged. And many of them would perhaps, even more openly than they do, advocate extensive measures of liturgical revision, p. 77in a doctrinal sense, but for the consciousness that to shew too great anxiety on the point is too like a confession of how much the Prayer-book is against them. Surely these things are of great weight when we would know what doctrine is most according to the mind of the Church of England. “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” It is this same principle, too, of preserving the one faith once delivered, which makes it so important to examine, as we are attempting to do, the sense of Holy Scripture as attested by the consent of the Church from the beginning, and as accepted by our own Church, upon so grave and practical a subject as the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice. May God give us His illumination to see His truth as He has seen fit to reveal it to us, and grace that where we see it, we may boldly confess it; so shall we pass in safety the waves of this troublesome world, so may we, perchance, be delivered from the strife of tongues; or, if not, yet shall we learn not to fear man, nor be troubled even if we cannot please men, remembering the witness of St. Paul, that “if he pleased men, he should not be the servant of Christ.” [77]

And, brethren, let us all pray for an humble, meek, gentle, teachable, believing heart, that we may not despise or refuse, or disbelieve God’s mighty works, though His treasure be placed in earthen vessels; nor turn our back upon His mysteries, p. 78though they transcend our utmost powers of conception, nor neglect His call, be it what it may; to go forth, if it be so, like Abraham, we know not whither; or, like him, to sacrifice our dearest hope, if God demand it; or, like Daniel, to be cast even into the den of lions; or, like the Apostles, to be made the very refuse of the earth and the offscouring of all things,—so that we may but hold fast the faith, and yet hand on again to those who shall come after the good deposit committed to our charge. If this, indeed, we are enabled to do, we may well “thank God and take courage.”

p. 79SERMON V.
The Testimony of our Formularies to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

In the brief outline which I have submitted in these discourses of the evidences for the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, altar, and sacrifice, I first met the objection sometimes made to there being any such treasure (in our Church at any rate) because lodged in earthen vessels; secondly, I traced, at least in part, the witness of the whole world before Christ’s coming to the belief in, and usage of, sacrifice and altar, with the necessarily attendant priesthood; and thirdly, I adduced some very small portion of the proofs both from Holy Scripture and from the universal consent of the early Church in its interpretation of Scripture, that priesthood, altar, and sacrifice did not expire with the law, but were intended to be continued, and were continued in and under the Christian dispensation, in and under Him who p. 80was and is a High Priest of surpassing power and dignity, not after the pattern or lineage of the priests of the sons of Aaron, but “called an High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek;” of Him who, fulfilling that royal type, was “King of Righteousness,” and after that also “King of Salem, which is King of Peace,” and yet, again, in like manner, “priest of the Most High God,” and who “abideth a priest continually.” [80]

We brought our examination of this evidence to the fourth century of the Christian era by, as I think it must be allowed, the summary of an unexceptionable witness to the substance of the early Christian writings upon that point, and by a reference to the five most ancient liturgies of the Christian Church. It is unnecessary to say a word as to the same doctrine being the universally received doctrine of the Church from the fourth century to the sixteenth, because its very opponents adduce the teaching of that thousand or twelve hundred years, in this among other things, as proving the great darkness and corruption which had then fallen upon the Church, and obscured, in their view, the simplicity of the Gospel. So that, whatever may be thought of its orthodoxy, the fact is not disputed, that for such period the whole of Christendom, with the most insignificant exceptions, believed in the doctrine which we are considering. Whether, as is affirmed by such objectors, this universal belief p. 81were a mark of the corruption and ignorance of “the dark ages,” as the self-complacent pride of later times has designated them, (when perchance in God’s judgment they may be as light itself compared with much of the “philosophy and vain deceit” [81a] of this free-handling nineteenth century, which so often “darkens counsel by words without knowledge” [81b]); or whether such consent, following the track of the earliest ages, be not rather the mark of a true understanding of the mind of the Spirit pervading that body with which Christ has promised to be, “even to the end of the world,” is another question. It is one which I need not now pursue, as what we have to say of the course taken and the doctrine maintained by the Church of England at her Reformation will throw a light upon the whole matter, which ought, I think, to be sufficient for any understanding and faithful member of our Church.

Thus we are brought to the immediate subject of our further enquiry. It being admitted, as I think I have shewn it must be, that this doctrine of the priesthood, altar, and sacrifice, is a doctrine founded upon, and supported by, Holy Scripture; so understood by the Church at large from the earliest times, so maintained with no faltering lips to at least the sixteenth century; what, we ask next, is the evidence of the mind of our own Church at the Reformation and since, as to her preserving or rejecting it?

p. 82You will hardly expect me to go through all the evidence. But—remembering what we said on Sunday last, that these three things are correlatives, reciprocally implying each other, or each one the other two, (the priest; the altar and the sacrifice;—the altar; the sacrifice and the priest;—the sacrifice; the priest and the altar;)—let us turn to some portion of the proof that our Church has fully intended and intends, has accounted and accounts, those who in her carry on the services of the sanctuary to be priests of God.

Now, observe, the three great offices embraced in the idea of a priest are these:—first, that he is one who has commission to rule and teach; secondly, one who has power to absolve; thirdly, one who has authority to offer up sacrifice. The first of these functions, though belonging to the priesthood, is hardly to be called distinctive of it (as we may see more clearly presently); the other two are of its essence, that is, pertaining to none else; so that, on the one hand, he who has them both, or even he who has, if it were so, either of them, is necessarily in a true sense a priest; and, on the other, he who is a priest will have one or other, or both of these powers, not indeed of himself, but committed to him. To see how this stands with us, who are ministers and stewards of God’s mysteries in this our Church of England, we must turn to our service-books, and especially to the Service for Ordaining p. 83Priests, to see what is the commission given to each, and what we learn from this to be the mind of the Church concerning them who are admitted to that holy function.

Turn first, then, for a moment to the Preface, to “The Form and Manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, according to the order of the United Church of England and Ireland.” We find it there said: “It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Which offices were evermore had in such reverend estimation, that no man might presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, tried, examined, and known to have such qualities as are requisite for the same; and also by public prayer, with imposition of hands, were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful authority. And therefore, to the intent that these Orders may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed, in the United Church of England and Ireland; no man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, in the United Church of England and Ireland, or suffered to execute any of the said functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the form hereafter following, or hath had formerly episcopal consecration, or ordination.”

p. 84Now this shews, I think, beyond dispute, that the Church of England holds that no one, according to her mind and rule, is to be accounted or taken to be a lawful bishop, priest, or deacon, without episcopal ordination or consecration; for those who are ordained or consecrated according to the forms which follow, unquestionably have it; and those who are or have been admitted by any others, are not to be accounted lawfully admitted to those Orders unless they have at some time been episcopally ordained.

We therefore find the authority and commission, in each case, given by the laying on of a bishop or bishops’ hands, though, according to the Scriptural warrant, accompanied also, in the ordination of priests, by the laying on of the hands of the priests present. Still it is evident that these, without the bishop, are not esteemed competent to convey the gift of Holy Orders.

But, next, what is the commission given? Observe the difference between that to deacons and to priests, and you will see the more clearly what is of the essence of the priesthood.

To the deacon it is said, with the laying on of hands: “Take thou authority to execute the office of a deacon in the Church of God committed unto thee; in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;” and then, further: “Take thou authority to read the Gospel in the Church of God, and to preach p. 85the same if thou be thereto licensed by the bishop himself.” [85a]

But to the priest the corresponding, but far higher commission, is: “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of my hands.” [85b]

Yes, it may be said, but what work? We grant there is the use of the word ‘priest,’ but the whole question turns upon the sense in which it is used. Oh, brethren, listen with simple hearts of reverence, loving and seeking only the truth, to the solemn and awful words which follow: “Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained; and be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of His holy Sacraments: in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” [85c]

And then, further, delivering the Bible into the hand of each: “Take thou authority to preach the Word of God, and to minister the Holy Sacraments in the congregation where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereunto.” [85d]

Now, not only is there evidently in all this a general superior commission given, but there is the particular and specific difference which I affirm can only be accounted for by the intentional full recognition of the priestly idea and p. 86priestly office as we have all along explained and taken those terms.

And the words settle, as it seems to me, beyond dispute, another question,—which yet is not another, though it may bear a separate word of comment in our argument,—namely, whether the Church of England considers our Lord’s ministerial commission to His Apostles to have been confined to them, or whether it was His will, by virtue of His words, “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you,” [86] that they should again transmit the powers of the priesthood on to others after them? For observe particularly what words they are which are used by the bishop to give this commission to the priest. “Receive,” he says, “the Holy Ghost for the office of a priest, in the Church of God;” and then, “Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.” Now from whence do these words come? Who used them before, and to whom did they then give a commission? Let us turn to the twentieth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, and we shall find the Divine record: “Then said Jesus to them again,” (viz. to the Apostles,) “Peace be unto you; as My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever p. 87sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” [87]

Now is there any one who denies that our Blessed Lord thus gave such power to those to whom He then spoke, and on whom He then breathed? I suppose not. It would be wholly to explain away and contradict His word to say so. It would be to prevent any one relying upon the plainest meaning of anything to say so. It would be to make every injunction He ever gave, and every truth He ever uttered, without sense or force, so to read such a passage, as that it gave no commission even to the Apostles. If His Apostles did not receive from that commission a power to bind and loose, to remit and retain sins, it must, I think, be hopeless for any one to imagine any duties can be proved or any doctrines declared in Scripture, or, we might add, by any words anywhere set down. But then it is said, We do not deny the commission as a personal thing to the Apostles, but we say that it extended no further. We say that if any imagine such a power and authority to have been intended to be transmitted further, or to be capable of being thus transmitted, he is in a grievous error and mistake. Now I am not arguing this question, whether mine be the right understanding of the Scripture, but I say, is it not as plain as the sun at noon-day that, right or wrong, it is the understanding of the Church of England? Surely her meaning here p. 88can no more be questioned as to those to whom she applies them, than our Blessed Lord’s intention can be questioned as to those to whom He addressed them. What possible explanation is there of her appointing those words to be solemnly used in her Ordinal at the time of, and in the ordaining a man to be a priest, but that she believed the powers of the priesthood, as to absolution, to be then and thereby given to that man according to the will of God and Christ? “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say.” Would it not shew either an ignorance of the force of words which is inconceivable, not merely in eminent theologians, which assuredly many of our Reformers were, but in any one of sane mind, if the words appointed to be so solemnly used, yet mean absolutely nothing? Or, if not this, must it not argue an impiety amounting to blasphemy for the Church of any country to draw up for use a service such as this, and, playing unmeaningly or deceitfully with such holy words, not to suppose any gift of the Holy Ghost, or any power of absolution, to be conveyed to those to whom they are addressed? What could we esteem such a barren equivocation with the holiest of things, if there were such design, but impious mockery towards God and deceit towards man?

But further, we are not even left to such proof that our Church intends no such mockery. Turn to the work of the priest on this very point of absolution, and what is the light thrown by this p. 89upon the words of ordination? I will pass over the Absolution both in our Morning and Evening Prayers and in the Office of Holy Communion, as, though in each case specifically limited to being given by the priest, they may be thought to be capable of a sense chiefly or only declaratory, or precatory. But I ask you to turn to two other places—1. to the end of the second Exhortation, as to the coming to Holy Communion; and, 2. to the Office for the Visitation of the Sick.

In the former place, after explanation of the preparation, “the way and means” to come worthily to that Holy Sacrament, we find the following: “And because it is requisite, that no man should come to the Holy Communion but with a full trust in God’s mercy, and with a quiet conscience; therefore if there be any of you, who by this means” (namely, his own private examination of his life) “cannot quiet his own conscience herein, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned minister of God’s Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God’s holy Word, he may receive the benefit of absolution,” (What is the benefit if there be no power to absolve?) “together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the quieting of his conscience, and avoiding all scruple and doubtfulness.” [89]

Here then, surely, he who has been ordained a priest, and received the Holy Ghost that he may p. 90remit or retain sins, is to exercise his ministry in the absolution of the penitent soul.

But if it be said, There is no minute description or account of the mode of absolution, it may still be but declaratory or precatory; I say, then, turn once again to another place, and see if the form and method of the absolution be not there actually all which we can suppose even an Apostle himself could use. In the Office for the Visitation of the Sick, when the sick man is in the full contemplation of death, and perhaps death very near at hand, the priest being solemnly engaged in his office of preparing him for it, the distinct direction is given that the sick person shall be “moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession, the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort.” And the words are: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee thine offences;” (so far we have the declaration of the power left to the Church, and either, it may be said, declaratory or precatory words, “forgive thee.” But this is not all; immediately it is added), “And by His authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” [90]

p. 91Now, brethren, I do not desire to say much in comment on such words as these. But I do say, and I know not how to avoid saying, first, if such authority was committed to the priest, when was it committed to him, or how, but at his ordination, and in and by “the form and manner of ordering priests,” which we have before noted? And, secondly, can any reasonable being believe that the Church could have drawn up such a service, and put such words into the priest’s mouth when dealing solemnly and truly with a sick or dying man, and yet believe that such power of absolution, as a part of the priest’s distinctive character and endowment by God, had not been conferred upon him? or maintain that she thought our Blessed Lord’s commission extended no further than to its first recipients, and died out with the Apostles themselves, when still she uses the words continually in her “ordering of priests?” If it be said,—Well: still we cannot believe this, and can only say that we heartily desire to remove from our Prayer-book and Ordinal, as a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit, all traces of such authority being given,—I can only reply that this argument is wholly beside our present question. I am not now arguing whether such an interpretation and use of Holy Scripture be the right interpretation and use, (though I have given reasons before for feeling sure it is,) but I am shewing what is the mind and understanding herein of the Church of England. I am p. 92silencing, if I may, (and in the judgment of right reason I cannot conceive that I should fail in doing so,) the calumny that they who maintain the doctrine of the priesthood are disloyal to the Church of England, or deviating from the principles of the Reformation. For, not merely according to what right reason must, I think, enforce to be the intention of those who drew up our formularies, but according to the simple sense of those formularies, this doctrine and none other is the only doctrine which can be made consistent with the documents themselves, or which they can justly be taken to enunciate. We have at times heard not a little of the dishonesty of those who, it is said, have taken our formularies in a non-natural sense, on the Catholic side, though in a sense which they deemed they would fairly bear. If this argument be good for anything, against whom can it so conclusively be brought as against such as will affirm that, when in the most solemn exercise of a bishop’s office, the bishop says, “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God,” the Church intends that there is no gift of the Holy Ghost bestowed, and no priest made at all? Or, again, when he says, adopting Christ’s own words of commission,—“Whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven unto them, and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained;”—that in this there is no intention to teach that the commission of Christ extended beyond the Apostles themselves, and that no p. 93power of binding or loosing is conferred by this solemn act? Or, yet again, who tell us that when the priest is instructed to exercise this holy function of absolving penitents, either that they may come “with a full trust in God’s mercy and with a quiet conscience” to the Holy Eucharist, or, in the solemn moments of serious sickness, perhaps the near prospect of death, (things and times surely beyond all others to drive away the very notion of unreal or unmeaning words, which must also, if they be such, be to the poor penitent most deceitful and misleading words also); that then the Church gives her instruction to use the word of absolution, and say, “By His authority committed unto me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” and yet means hereby only a mockery and a delusion; that there is no such power, no such authority, no such absolving at all; surely all this is not a mere non-natural sense which the words will bear, though it may not be the most obvious at first sight, but is a non-natural sense so monstrous that they will not bear it at all.

So much I say in proof of the mind of the Church of England upon the subject of the priesthood, as involved in the priestly function of absolution. It is but a small part of what might be said, but it is as much perhaps as our time will now permit, and I cannot understand it to be less than sufficient (unless our Reformers in the sixteenth p. 94century, and the Revisers of our Book of Common Prayer and offices since, are to be esteemed either as the most incompetent or the most impious of men,) to prove the point for which I have adduced the wording of our Ordinal, and the comment upon this given by other parts of the Prayer-book, namely, that our Church unmistakably maintains the doctrine of the Christian priesthood, not merely the name but the thing, in the same reality and power in which the Church universal has ever claimed and ever maintained it.

And this remark may give us, if it please God, a wholesome thought with which to conclude this morning. Let us ever strive and pray, that we may never for a moment be severed in heart or hope, or even in thought, from the universal Church. Let us love it, and cleave to it, as we contemplate it one and undivided of old, however, alas, now distracted by unhappy divisions. Let us beware of encouraging a self-sufficient or self-reliant temper, as if we shewed our wisdom or independence, by isolating ourselves from that which has been the faith of the Church, not here or there, but everywhere from the beginning. If we can discover (as in most points of importance we may if we will,) what are the truths which have been held always, everywhere, and by all, (semper, ubique, ad omnibus, according to the well-known rule of St. Vincentius,) we may be certain that we shall run into no serious error, nor perverted interpretations of Holy Scripture dangerous to our souls. p. 95Individuals, however gifted, may go astray. Individual Churches may err, and have erred, even in matters of faith; but the whole Church at large, the Church Catholic, we may be sure, has not done so, nor ever shall, or how should it be, what St. Paul tells us “the Church of God” is, “the pillar and ground of the truth,” [95a] or how should be fulfilled our Blessed Lord’s word and promise,—“The gates of hell shall not prevail against It;” [95b] and again, “Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” [95c] So, indeed, let us look upon Her with tender reverence as the spouse of Christ. “Oh! pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love Thee.” [95d]

p. 97SERMON VI.
The Christian Altar.

I resume our subject: the priesthood, altar and sacrifice in the Christian Church, and the mind of the Church of England upon it. On Sunday last we treated of this in part, shewing in relation to it what were the “old paths,” and pointing to the proof that our Church walks in them, recognising and maintaining a true priesthood in those who minister at her altars, by the solemn committal to them of the power of absolution, a thing which she would not do upon any other hypothesis than that of their possessing a true sacerdotal character. We had not time to say much upon the altar or the sacrifice. Our text, however, now leads us by no uncertain course to this portion of our subject, especially when placed in connection with St. Paul’s emphatic question in another place: “Are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar?” You will remember that we examined both those passages on a former occasion, [97] when we were regarding the scriptural p. 98testimony to the doctrine, and I need not repeat what I then said. But they will lead us on now naturally,—after the remarks I made last week upon the Christian priesthood, as borne witness to by the primitive Church, and maintained in the Church of England,—to some consideration of the sacrifice also, as borne witness to and maintained in like manner.

“We have an altar,” says the Apostle. Of course it is in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist that this altar is used, and the sacrifice made; the great commemorative sacrifice of the Christian Church, wherein we do not repeat, or attempt to repeat, (God forbid,) the one sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction once for all made upon the Cross, but yet are allowed to present before God the Father, the memorial of that ever-blessed offering, by the Body and Blood of Christ really present, (though not after the manner of any “corporal presence of Christ’s natural flesh and blood,” but) after a true though mystical and heavenly manner; to present this, I say, according to His will and ordinance, by which it is granted us to apply to ourselves the merits of His death and passion, and to obtain His own prevailing intercession for us before the throne of God; whereby, too, our souls and bodies, as we “eat of the sacrifice are partakers of the altar,” and gain heavenly nourishment and sustenance unto everlasting life.

We have seen already that such is the judgment p. 99and doctrine of the primitive Church in its understanding of Holy Scripture, as shewn by the early Christian writers, and by the ancient liturgies. Also, that the doctrine was maintained continuously for fifteen hundred years. Our question now is, What has our own Church said and done in this matter at or since the Reformation? Does she maintain, or does she reject, the previous teaching of the Church Universal, and put something else in the place of its doctrine, and its understanding of Holy Scripture upon the subject?

We cannot here go into a minute history of all which was done at the Reformation in this regard. But I think we may, within reasonable compass, arrive at a satisfactory general conclusion. If we compare our Church’s Eucharistic Office with the ancient liturgies which have been preserved to us, we may see, I might almost say, at a glance, whether in prayer, in praise, in oblation, in general design and structure, we follow in their steps, or make “some new thing.” It cannot be disputed that in design and structure those liturgies all proclaim the doctrine of priest, sacrifice, and altar. This is interwoven with their whole system. It was the one understanding of Christians in those days as to what their liturgies contained. If, then, we find that the Church of England follows carefully in their steps, and maintains in her Eucharistic Office the whole substance of those liturgies,—at p. 100any rate, all the main points in which they agree together, even though it be with some differences of arrangement, such as might naturally be expected,—surely we prove our point, and cannot doubt that our Reformers had no design to break away from the ancient faith, though they would cast off Roman error and Roman usurpation, and therefore that our Church not only does not condemn, but adopts and continues, (as in truth she never dreamed of any other thing,) the doctrine of the Church Universal in this matter.

Take, then, the following short account of the structure, form, and usage of the ancient liturgies. I extract it from Mr. Carter’s book, as I know of no better way to place it before you:—“The following brief digest,” he says, “may give some idea of this system of devotion into which the mind of Christendom was habitually casting itself in its communion with God. It will be readily seen how the outline corresponds with our own Eucharistic Office. One or more collects; lessons from Holy Scripture; a sermon, sometimes preceded by a hymn or anthem; prayers for the catechumens, penitents, and others, who, with a benediction, were then dismissed; the creed, the offertory, with the oblations of bread and wine” (observe, first offered by being placed upon the altar); then, “thanksgivings and intercessions, with a commemoration of the dead in Christ. Then, the more mystical portion of the p. 101Liturgy commenced, and in all cases with the very same words, Sursum corda, (‘Lift up your hearts’); a thanksgiving, closing with the Ter sanctus, (‘holy, holy, holy’); intercessory prayers; consecration of the elements, with the repetition of our Lord’s words of institution; a second oblation of the now consecrated elements, (this was not always expressed in words,—sometimes silently, and in act only); an invocation of the Holy Ghost. This is not found in the Roman nor in the Gallican Liturgies;”—(so, observe, we do not forsake the doctrine of the sacrifice if we have it not, for no one will suspect the Roman Church, which was equally without it, of denying or disparaging that doctrine;)—then, “intercessory prayers for the whole Church, the dead as well as the living;”—(this, however, would be praying only for the dead in Christ, for none other would be considered as part of the Church after the time of probation is over: though in this world, and in the Church on earth, the good and evil, the wheat and tares grow together, it is not so in the Church beyond the grave:)—“the Lord’s Prayer; a benediction; administration or communion; thanksgiving; Gloria in excelsis; final benediction.” [101]

Now will any one take this account of the liturgies and usage of the ancient Church, which on all hands confessedly is admitted to have held the doctrine for which we contend, and then, comparing p. 102these with the Eucharistic Service of our own Church, doubt for a moment that the Church of England at the Reformation intended to preserve, and did preserve, the ancient form and practice, and therefore the ancient faith, in this matter? [102]

p. 103The Articles and Catechism of our Church are perfectly in accordance with this conclusion. Although the former, as we well know, were drawn up rather to guard against current errors of that day than to state doctrine upon points not brought into controversy, [103] they indirectly confirm p. 104what has been said. For instance, the Twenty-fifth Article, guarding against the notion of a gross carnal presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, expressed by the term ‘transubstantiation,’ might not be called upon, within its proper scope, to say anything in the way of dogma asserting the doctrine of sacrifice; but yet we find in it the statement that sacraments “be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace,”—that is, signs effecting what they signify, and therefore, in the case of the Holy Communion, effecting or procuring for sinners pardon through Christ’s body broken and blood shed, even as there, “as often as we eat that bread and drink that cup we do shew the Lord’s death till He come,” [104] all which is in perfect accordance and harmony with the doctrine of a true propitiatory commemorative sacrifice therein offered up to God.

One point further in relation to the Articles I will notice, lest I seem to overlook an objection. It is sometimes said, If the doctrine of a true and propitiatory sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist be admitted, there is a contradiction to the Thirty-first Article, which tells us that “the sacrifices of masses, in which it was commonly said that the p. 105priest did offer Christ for the quick and dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” It is assumed that any doctrine of a real and true sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist must come under this condemnation, and so it is sometimes thought that the whole question is thus decided. But, not to notice other points not without importance, but which we can hardly spare time to go into now, one thing surely is evident,—that the whole Article must be read together if we would rightly understand it. It is: “The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” Now it is plain that the contrast here is between the one satisfaction for sin made by agony and blood upon the cross, and any supposed repetition of that painful and bloody sacrifice. “There is none other but that alone;” wherefore, for which reason, such attempts at sacrifice as would repeat it, or such teaching as would imply that Christ repeats it and suffers again, “are blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” If, then, in anything we say there were a doctrine of its repetition, if we did not absolutely and entirely p. 106disclaim (as we all along have done) any such attempt and any such view of the sacrifice of the Christian altar, there would be a condemnation by the Article of our teaching. But certainly neither its terms nor its scope deal with any view of a merely unbloody commemorative sacrifice, appointed to be continually made in the Church of God so long as the world lasteth, by which the sacrifice upon the cross is never supposed to be repeated, but its sole merits applied to the believing and obedient heart, and the prevailing pleading and intercession of the Son of God presenting our prayers and praises, our penitence and offerings, before the throne of the heavenly grace are secured, and He Himself, our Advocate with the Father, is our propitiation. This no more interferes with the one “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, once offered” upon the cross, than His own continued intercession at the right hand of God (and certainly “He ever liveth to make intercession for us,”) [106] interferes with, or is inconsistent with, the same.

So much I have thought it well to say on the Thirty-first Article, because it is sometimes misunderstood and misapplied.

Next, I would say just a word as to the teaching of the Church Catechism, which it would not be right to pass over. I think it throws a further light upon the doctrine of the sacrifice and the p. 107altar, for it not only tells us that “the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper,” (that is, the baptized, Christian people, for so the word is always used in strict theological language,) and therefore certainly that there is a real presence of His Body and Blood; but it also says that that Holy Sacrament was ordained “for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby,”—where, as in the Communion Office itself, the term ‘remembrance’ is also to be understood in its complete theological sense as the memorial, the continual memorial before God, which by the offering up of the sacrifice is made in the Holy Eucharist; all which is strictly accordant with the doctrine of the primitive Church and the ancient liturgies; for, to sum up with the words of the learned Mede, “They (the ancient Fathers) believed that our blessed Lord ordained the Sacrament of His Body and Blood as a rite to bless and invocate His Father by, instead of the manifold and bloody sacrifices of the Law, . . . the mystery of which rite they took to be this, that as Christ, by presenting His death and satisfaction to His Father, continually intercedes for us in heaven, so the Church semblably (i.e. in a like manner) approaches the throne of grace by representing Christ unto His Father in those holy mysteries of His death and passion.” [107]

p. 108If further proof still be required of our Church’s mind from the Reformation downward, let it be noted how often this doctrine has been assailed, and yet how, on every occasion, the Church has refused to depart from the ancient rule and faith. As one instance, take the fact, that at the last revision in 1662, when the real meaning of the Puritan objections was well and fully understood, and when the demand was absolutely made by their leaders, both that the absolution by the priest should plainly be made only declaratory, and that the word ‘priest’ should be wholly omitted and ‘minister’ substituted, the Church refused both these demands: the bishops replying to the first, that the words as standing in the Visitation Service were far nearer to those of Christ Himself in the commission given, as these were, not, whose soever sins ye declare to be remitted, but, “whose soever sins ye remit,” and to the second, “It is not reasonable that the word ‘minister’ should be only used in the liturgy; for since some parts of the liturgy may be performed by a deacon, others by none under the order of a priest, viz. absolution and consecration, it is fit that some such word as ‘priest’ should be used for these offices, and not ‘minister,’ which signifies at large every one that ministers in that holy office, of what order soever he be;” [108] whilst yet again, it has been well noted, that the care of the Church was increased in this last revision to preserve the distinction and the doctrine dependent p. 109upon the word ‘priest,’ now that the objections to it were the better understood. For it has been pointed out that the word ‘priest’ occurs ninety times in the first book of King Edward the Sixth; fifty-five times in the second book, when the Puritan influence of the foreign reformers obtained its height; whilst in our present Prayer-book it occurs eighty-eight times: and an examination in detail would shew that this restoration was made on principle, and that wherever the term ‘priest’ is employed, more or less of the sacerdotal, or strictly priestly character and authority is implied; whilst where the term ‘minister’ is used, it is either as to simply a ministerial, as distinguished from a sacerdotal act, or the meaning of the term is determined by the previous use of the word ‘priest.’ [109] So that as to this whole ministration, we may well adopt the weighty and persuasive language of Dr. Hickes, where, summing up a detailed argument against Cudworth, who had invented the theory that the Holy Eucharist was only a feast upon a sacrifice, and not a sacrifice itself, he says: “I have said all this in defence of the old, against the Doctor’s new notion of the Holy Eucharist, much more out of love to that old truth than to prove Christian ministers to be proper priests. For, it will follow even from this,” (that is, from Cudworth’s own view,) “that they must be proper priests, because, as none but a priest can offer a sacrifice, p. 110so none but a priest can preside and minister in such a sacrificial feast as he allows the Holy Sacrament to be. Who but a priest can receive the elements from the people, set them upon the holy table, and offer up to God such solemn prayers, praises, and thanksgivings for the congregation, and make such solemn intercessions for them as are now, and ever were, offered and made in this Holy Sacrament? Who but a priest can consecrate the elements and make them the mystical Body and Blood of Christ? Who but a priest can stand in God’s stead at His table, and in His Name receive His guests? Who but a priest hath power to break the Bread, and bless the Cup, and make a solemn memorial before God of His Son’s sufferings, and then deliver His sacramental Body and Blood to the faithful communicants, as tokens of His meritorious sufferings, and pledges of their salvation? A man authorized thus to act ‘for men in things pertaining to God,’ and for God in things pertaining to men, must needs be a priest; and such holy ministrations must needs be sacerdotal, whether the holy table be an altar, or the Sacrament a sacrifice or not.” [110]

To what conclusion, then, can we come but to that of the learned Archbishop Bramhall? “He who saith, Take thou authority to exercise the office of a priest in the Church of God (as the Protestant consecrators do), doth intend all things p. 111requisite to the priestly function, and, among the rest, to offer a representative sacrifice, to commemorate and apply the sacrifice which Christ made upon the Cross:”[111a]—or to the brief but weighty saying of St. Jerome? “Ecclesia non est, quæ non habet Sacerdotes.” [111b]

Once more, brethren, we must pause, and as we do so, let us pray to Him from whom “cometh down every good and every perfect gift,” [111c] that He may give us His grace more and more to realize, and more and more to thank Him for the great privileges which He has vouchsafed to us in His “holy Catholic Church.” “We have an altar” to which we may come, the same blessed feast, of which we may partake, the same blessed sacrifice, in which we may join, which has ever been in His Church from the beginning. As the Israelites were taught to remember, as to their land flowing with milk and honey, that they “gat it not in possession through their own sword, neither was it their own arm that helped them;” [111d] Oh, so let us ever say with heart and voice, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise, for Thy loving mercy, and for Thy truth’s sake.” [111e]

p. 113SERMON VII.
The Christian Altar.

It may be well, before we proceed with our general subject, to call your attention to one particular as to the course of our argument. You may have observed that I have not, except here and there incidentally, entered into any examination of the nature of the Christian sacrifice itself, any more than I have into any details or particulars of the doctrine of absolution, such as its power and effect, or the necessary limitations to be understood in its application. And this has been done advisedly, because I was not so much concerned, for instance, with the doctrine of absolution in itself, as with it in relation to, and as a proof of, the necessary existence of a sacerdotal power in those to whom it is entrusted; and therefore if I shewed that such authority is, in and by the Church of England, considered to be vested in those who minister at her altars, I inferred thence, I think justly, the existence of a priesthood in the mind of our Church. This has been the object with which I have referred p. 114to that doctrine in illustration, and not to discuss the nature or define the powers of absolution itself. As, however, I have here touched upon it again, I may add, lest any mistake or misconception arise, that no one pretends the efficient power to absolve, (any more than to offer sacrifice,) lies in the priest himself. He is but the instrument administering the grace of God. The history of the cure of the lame man at the beautiful gate of the Temple (which we lately read) may well illustrate this. Surely no one will deny that the power to heal him was vested in St. Peter and St. John, whilst it is clear also, beyond all dispute, that not by their “own power or holiness had they made that man to walk.” [114] What, then, is there incredible in the affirmation that the power of the keys is vested in a priest as the instrument, though all the authority and absolving power is from God only; so that it is God and not man who pardons, and makes any man whole from sin. “Who, indeed, can forgive sins but God only?” But he who is invested with such authority, even instrumentally, is exactly what we term a ‘priest;’ and our argument has been (to recur to it thus for a moment) that the Church, which regards men as so endowed, regards them as priests of God.

I return more generally to the declaration of the text, “We have an altar;” and I will adduce one further illustration of the mind of the Church p. 115of England hereon, by a reference to the foreign Reformation. Take the two systems of Luther and Calvin, and what do we find? Luther was already a priest before he began the Reformation, and he had no design to cast off the priestly element and character in his Reformation. He and other priests who joined him did not cease to administer Sacraments, or to teach their efficacy. The Confession of Augsburgh, which embodies the principles of the German Reformation, asserts regeneration in baptism, private confession to a priest, the grace of absolution, and the real presence in the Holy Eucharist. It also fully recognises (as with this teaching we should expect it would) the priesthood in its true meaning. Luther did not design or promulgate a change of system in any of these doctrines. What he did declare, under the exigencies of his position, because no bishop joined him, was, that for the purposes of continuing the priesthood and its powers, no episcopacy was necessary, but that priests could make priests; as Mr. Carter observes, a perfectly new doctrine in the Church of God. But the whole proceeding shewed that a sacramental system was maintained after the pattern of the Church, nay, with true priests to administer it for a time, but without the only ordained means of transmitting the same powers to the succeeding generation. Now how great a testimony is this to the true doctrine, and how much light does it throw upon the acts of our p. 116own reformers at home, who, with a true episcopate and the power of succession unimpaired, were not likely to design a less perfect system than the German Reformer admitted and maintained in his theory, though he failed in the appointed means validly to carry it out.

And Luther’s testimony is all the more weighty when we remember that he was one who had so little reverence for antiquity or authority, that at one time he rejected and denied the inspiration of the Epistle of St. James, because he could not make its teaching as to good works square with his own theory of justification; and, at another time, absolutely exhorted the elect to sin boldly and shamelessly that they might be fit objects for the mercy of God, and because no sin which they could commit could frustrate the grace of God toward them! and yet even such a man wholly received and enforced the ancient doctrine of the priesthood, and its accompaniments, the altar and the sacrifice.

Glance for a moment at the teaching of Calvin, and you will find another theological aspect. Calvin was not a priest; he had, therefore, no authority to administer Sacraments; so he took the bold line of rejecting the doctrine of a priesthood altogether. He taught that Christ was the only Priest of the New Testament, and that Christian ministers were only, what such names as elders and pastors might denote, rulers and teachers that is, in the Church of Christ. This p. 117is the first of those three functions which we spoke of in a former discourse, as connected with the priesthood, but is just that one which we then said lacked the distinctive character of the priesthood,—the power of absolution and of offering sacrifice. So much Calvin allowed to his ministry, but all else he denied!

Now, it is obvious, that besides his own defect in point of orders, (that he was not, like Luther, a priest,) his system was one to dispose him to reject this doctrine; for what need of a priesthood, or any external means of approaching God acceptably, when his theory and teaching was that of individual election and reprobation, determined from all eternity, according to the mere purpose of God? How naturally would such a system dispense with the priesthood? Aye, and there seems hardly room to doubt that it would equally well have dispensed with Sacraments. But here both the testimony of Holy Scripture, and the whole usage of the Christian world, as to fact, were too strong for him. He saw he could not actually reject Sacraments, although his system might well do without them. It is true, there was evidence of the same kind, both in Scripture and in antiquity, for the priesthood also. But it was much easier to discard the doctrine as a mere matter of opinion, (so he might call it,) than to set aside things so plainly presented to the sight, as the facts of the use of baptism, and the celebration of the Lord’s p. 118Supper, everywhere established. The bodily eye could see those usages, but could not see the inner impress of the priesthood. He could elude or deny the one, but he dared not, even if he wished it, displace the other. To what, then, did he have recourse? He kept the outward form and show of Sacraments, as we may say, but denuded them of all their truth, mystery, and power. “He taught that they were bare signs; symbolizing, but not conveying grace; or rather, he separated the sign from the thing signified, making the one independent of the other.” [118] Yet, as he wished to keep them, so he saw that he must teach that there was some good in them. How did he contrive to give them this use in his system? Why, he invented and taught that the faith of the receiver, and not the act of consecration, is the cause of grace in Sacraments; not in the sense that Sacraments do not profit the unworthy (which is true), but that this subjective faith in the recipient is the sole cause of their having power or virtue, (which is not true). Thus he, in effect, constituted every man his own priest, and led directly to the conclusion further, that unless in each individual case, the receiver were predestinated to life eternal, there was nothing in the Sacrament at all. And so, again, we see the Christian ministry became, in Calvin’s system, nothing but an organ of government and instruction, which the term ‘elder’ or ‘presbyter’ might p. 119sufficiently describe. And all this, with full deliberation and design on his part, because Calvin was far too learned and able a man not to know that, if there were an altar and a sacrifice, there must needs be a priesthood, which he had not, and was determined to do without.

I should hardly have gone into this statement as to Calvin for its own sake, but I think it worthy of notice, for the sake of a practical lesson as to those who decry or deny the doctrine of the priesthood, call Christ our only Priest, and make every man, in fact, his own Priest. Surely we may see that the root of all this is, not the teaching of the Church of England, but absolute Calvinism and the teaching of the Helvetic Confession, the embodiment of the views of the Swiss Reformers. Those who accept this teaching may, or may not, adopt with it, the predestinarian part of Calvin’s scheme; but certainly they are adopting to the letter his denial of a Christian priesthood, which denial, equally certainly, the English Reformation did not accept. “We,” then, “have an altar,” however it may be that others may have rejected and cast it off, and perhaps, alas, some among ourselves may be unconscious of it, or may disbelieve it.

And this leads us to a few words further as to our position, when—I fear there is no denying or concealing it—when some of the priests themselves among us repudiate their priesthood, and thus follow the Swiss instead of the English p. 120Reformation! What must we say as to the effect of such unbelief; first as to their ministrations and the effect upon their flocks, and, secondly, as to themselves?

And, first, as to the first point. Brethren, blessed be God, we do not, and we need not, think that, even on this account, they do not offer up the true sacrifice. Turn, for your comfort, to the Twenty-sixth Article of our Church, and you will see why I say so. It is headed, “Of the unworthiness of the ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacraments;” and it tells us of them, as to “their authority in ministration of the Word and Sacraments,” that “forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by His commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away . . . nor the grace of God diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise. . . .”

Thus, even such have received the priesthood, and its indelible impress, the χαρακτὴρ, (as it is theologically termed,) which cannot be destroyed in them by any act or will of theirs. Thus, their ministration at the altar (so long as it be according to the rule and order of the Church of England) is the offering a valid sacrifice, p. 121and their distribution of the consecrated elements is the giving to be “verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful, the Body and Blood of Christ.” However, therefore, we may mourn for them, however we may feel in addition to sorrow a godly shame on their account, yet we need not fear that the flock is deprived of the needful food, nor defrauded of the blessed intercession of the Lamb, pleading for His people at the right hand of God, as often as the oblation is made, and the dread and blessed sacrifice is (even thus) offered up.

As to such themselves (our second anxious question) what shall we say? I will say nothing of my own mind or thought, but rather adduce a weighty passage which I have found upon the matter in the work of the learned Dr. Hickes, whom I have mentioned more than once, as having so largely treated on our present subject. Even in his day, more than a hundred-and-fifty years ago, these deniers of the grace given them, were not unknown; and he thus speaks of them, going, you will observe, not so much as I have done here, into the question of the effect of their misbelief upon their ministrations to their flocks, but more particularly into its effect upon themselves. “I desire,” he says, “your late writer,” (the author whom, in his dissertation, he was answering,) “and such others as he, who have been led into their errors by these and other writers since the Reformation,” (Cudworth he p. 122means more particularly, and the novel theory propounded by him,) “to consider that, if the Holy Eucharist be a sacrifice, as the Catholic Church believed in all ages before that time, how far the defect of administering it only as a sacrament may affect the holy office and the administration of it; and whether the Communion administered by a priest, who neither believes himself to be such, nor the Sacrament to be an oblation or sacrifice, can be a Communion in or with the Catholic Church? I say, I leave it to themselves to consider these things, and I think they deserve their consideration, and hope they will seriously and impartially ruminate upon them, lest they should not ‘rightly and duly administer that Holy Sacrament.’ The best of the Jewish writers tells us” (i.e. Maimonides), “that it was a profanation of a sacrifice, if the priest thought, when he offered up one sacrifice, that it was another; as if, when he offered a burnt-offering, he thought it was a peace-offering; or if, when he offered a peace-offering, he thought it was a burnt-offering. Whether that obliquity of thought, when it happened, had such an effect or no, I shall not now enquire; but this I dare say, if a Jewish priest, who did not believe himself to be a proper priest, nor the Jewish altar a proper altar, nor the sacrifices of the Law true and proper sacrifices, had presumed to offer while he was in this unhappy error, that he had profaned the sacrifice, so far as he was concerned in it, and not p. 123offered it up ὁσίως καὶ ἀμέμπτως, (holily and unblameably,) according to the will of God, though according to all the appointed rites, nor in unity and conjunction with the Jewish Church. For the Jewish Church would not have suffered such priests, if known, to minister among the sons of Aaron and Zadoc; nor would the ancient Catholic Church have endured bishops and presbyters without censure, who durst have taught that the Christian ministry was not a proper priesthood, the Holy Eucharist, not a proper sacrifice, or that Christian ministers were not proper priests.” [123a]

Oh, my brethren, for those who may have fallen into such error (not knowing what they do), let us pray, in all tenderness and charity, that they may be forgiven and enlightened; and for us all, priests and people alike, let us make our petition that we may never fall into it; whilst, as to whatever truth or privilege or blessing God has shewn or given to us, let us “not be high-minded, but fear,” [123b] not being puffed up because of our advantages, but all the more careful, because we confess we have them, diligently to use them.

And this brings us to the great practical question to which this whole enquiry leads. “We have an altar.” Do we, as we ought, use and profit by our great privilege? Do we indeed, individually and one by one, value the altar, use the altar, bring our gift to the altar, join in the services p. 124of the altar, become partakers of the altar, and thereby have fellowship with the Lord?

Such questions, seriously considered, may furnish us with a most important test as to our true state, particularly whether we believe the doctrine, and whether we so live day by day as to be meet to take our place and part in the altar worship. Let me say a few words on these points before I conclude.

First, do we really believe the doctrine? If we do, surely we must frequent the sacrifice. We must see in the altar service the highest act of our devotion. We must perceive that here is the crown and completion of all other worship, the sum and substance of our praises and thanksgivings, the prevailing mode of petition for ourselves and of intercession for others, the greatest and highest means of applying to our individual wants and individual sins the mercies of God through the ever-availing sacrifice of Christ. Such persuasion of their dignity and power has ever pervaded those who have believed in a priesthood, an altar, and a sacrifice. Heathen testimony witnesses to this, even amidst all the corruption and debasement of idol worship. The solemn, gorgeous, awful sacrifice has ever been the central act of all devotion, that to which all the people congregated, and to which, if they had any religion, they delighted to be called. We cannot here, and we need not, go into the proofs of this from the poets or historians of antiquity. p. 125We hardly need adduce any proofs further than we have done already from Holy Scripture to it. We may, however, just recall the manner of the sacrifice offered by Samuel previous to the anointing of Saul to be king over Israel, when all the people would not eat until the Prophet came, “because he doth bless the sacrifice.” [125a] And the majesty of the great feast and sacrifice at the dedication of Solomon’s temple; [125b] and again, the solemn renewal of the covenant and worship of God by Josiah, King of Judah, when he held the feast of the Passover unto the Lord, such as had not been “from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.” [125c] Let us remember, too, that the great Paschal sacrifice and feast, itself the type of the true Lamb of God, was ordained to be annually kept under the earlier dispensation, and was assuredly so great and central a scene and act of Jewish devotion that to it the whole nation was called, and called so stringently that he who observed it not was to be cut off from the people. [125d] What an intimation that he who keeps not its far greater antitype, the Christian Passover in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and feast, is p. 126cutting himself off from the people of God under the new and better covenant! Do we, then, all of us thus frequent and delight in the Christian altar? and if not, why not? Do we suppose that holiness of life, less than that which may allow us to come worthily to the Holy Eucharist, will be sufficient to let us come to heaven? Do we think that, though we are without the marriage garment which we feel is needful for us to go to the Supper of the Lord on earth, we can enter without it, to sit down at the great marriage of the Lamb in the courts of heaven? Can we believe that a heart less devoted to God, and a love and obedience less perfect toward Christ than will permit us to join in the highest act of thanksgiving in this world, will allow us to join in the everlasting Hosannas of the world to come? Or do we imagine that such a service as that of the Christian altar is not intended for us all, but is to be restricted to a certain few out of the whole body of the baptized? Surely, however widely such may seem to be the practical belief (rather, I should say, unbelief) of our day, there is no support for any such notion in either the Holy Scripture, or the faith and usage of the Church Catholic, or in the principles of the Reformation. Not only is the whole teaching of the Bible, of the primitive Church, and of our Articles, Canons, and Catechism against any such view, but our very Eucharistic Office itself speaks plainly against it also. Not to mention more p. 127direct proofs in other ways, it is a great mistake to suppose that office to design any division in its midst where ordinary Christians have licence to depart, and a few select or chosen are bidden to remain. The not unfrequent custom of using a collect and benediction after the sermon may perhaps, however well intended, have fostered an error here. This may seem to make an authorized close to the service at that point, as if one service were now ended and another were to begin. It has, therefore, enabled people the more easily to forget that we are then in the middle of the Office for Holy Communion, whilst the usage itself (as well as the custom of saying a collect and the Lord’s Prayer before the sermon) is certainly without authority, and rather against than according to the mind of our Church; and although we may perhaps not unreasonably, to avoid confusion, make a pause whilst children and those who may be unable, at any particular time, to remain for the celebration may leave, we are not to think that a certain barrenness or awkwardness felt by such as then depart is without its value in instruction. If they who thus habitually absent themselves from the sacrifice and feast of the altar, may be led to reflect from this very feeling that the Church herself, by the gentle remonstrance of the structure of her service, reminds them that they are leaving before the service in which they are engaged is ended, this may surely give a wholesome lesson. Oh, p. 128if any one even may be thus led to think, Why do I depart? why need I go away? why do I refuse to join in the Christian sacrifice, the highest act of thanksgiving and praise? why do I turn my back upon my Saviour, present to pardon, to feed, and to save me?—if any feel this, until meditating upon the love and the command of Christ, he resolves, instead of departing, to come with his gift to the altar, and taste and see how gracious the Lord is, shall he not find reason to bless and praise God that He thus brings him to himself, and thankfully acknowledge the wisdom of our Church, which has not appointed even the semblance of a finished service in the middle of her holy Eucharistic Office?

The opposite conduct to that of those who depart without communicating, I mean that of such as remain without communicating, has, as we know, been the subject of no small controversy in the present day. I do not desire here to enter into that dispute, but just so much I would observe: first, that if any desire to remain, having perhaps already communicated at an earlier service, or in a serious anxious wish to learn the will of God better as to the Christian sacrifice, with a view to the becoming a partaker of it; or, if any desire to join so far in it as to unite his heart and voice with those who offer it, being a communicant, though he may not design on that occasion to communicate, I do not conceive that the priest would have the wish, or if he had, would have p. 129any authority, to bid him depart. Whilst, nevertheless, I deem it needful to observe, secondly, that I see no warrant to think they are in anything but a dangerous error who imagine (if, indeed, any do so) that the presence of any one as a gazer upon, or witness of, the holy mysteries, is in any way equivalent to communicating. I do not see how such presence of one looking on, even joining in words of praise, but habitually and constantly doing no more; of one who is not a communicant, nor seeking to become a communicant; of one who does not eat of the sacrifice though present, perhaps often, at the offering of it, can be an act of worship or adoration well-pleasing to Almighty God; can, in any way, make up for his lack of understanding, or preparation, or obedience in that he does not “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood,” without which, our Lord Himself has told us, we have “no life in us.” [129] To be present in order to learn, and to learn in order to obey, we may indeed hope will be an acceptable service, so far as it goes; but to gaze constantly without obeying ever, and then to think nevertheless that we “are partakers of the altar,” seems to me nothing less than a dangerous self-deceit, and therefore certainly a practice not to be encouraged.

I sum up our remarks then, brethren, in this conclusion, that we should all of us, with a depth of feeling beyond our words to express it, thank p. 130our merciful God for His tender care and providence over us in this our Church of England. He has given us the treasure of the priesthood, though in earthen vessels, handed down from His very Apostles themselves by the laying on of hands, even according to the powers of their own commission from Christ Himself. He has shewed us the witness to the doctrine of sacrifice, as exhibited in the world from Adam to Christ. He has confirmed the doctrine and the usage of the sacrifice and altar in the Christian Church by His holy Word in the New Testament, and by the records preserved to us of the early Church, telling us unmistakeably how the Church, from the Apostles’ time downward, understood the Scriptures in this respect. He has let us know the mind of the Church at large to have been one upon the doctrine for nearly sixteen hundred years; and, blessed be His name, He “so guided and governed the minds” of those in authority among us at the momentous period of our Reformation, and in all revisions since, that our Church has ever maintained, and does maintain, the doctrine of the Church Universal on the deep and mysterious, but, at the same time, most important practical subject of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice. Thus, in His mercy, our Church has made no “new thing,” nor departed from “the old paths.” She is one with the Church of God in all times in this matter, and we need have no fears but that if we come, one by one “with p. 131true penitent hearts and lively faith,” to the altar of God and the table of the Lord among us, we may and do eat of the sacrifice, are partakers of the altar, and have fellowship with the Lord; that we have indeed preserved to us, in spite of the unbelief among us, and the strife of tongues around us, all that true and holy thing which the Church has ever had as Christ’s own appointed means for the pardon of our sins and the sustainment of our spiritual life, by the which we, with His “whole Church militant here on earth,” are allowed to offer up the never-ceasing, unbloody, commemorative, propitiatory sacrifice which the Church has ever offered, and by which she pleads before the throne of God the power of the one great sacrifice upon the cross for the pardon of sin, yea, even procures the pleading thereof for our individual sins and transgressions by the Son of God Himself, our “High Priest set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens,” [131a] who “ever liveth to make intercession for us;” so that we thus, in common with the whole Church of God, fulfil the Prophet’s word, “From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto My name, and a pure offering: for My name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of Hosts.” [131b]

And if God has been thus gracious to us in all straits and perils in time past, it would surely be p. 132a grievous want of faith not to put our trust in Him for the time to come. Though we know that for sin persisted in the candlestick of a church may be removed, yet we will hope confidingly that where He has preserved His truth so long He will still watch over it and keep it; where, too, in the ordering of His providence, so great a door seems set open before us; where, by our power and extended empire, our vast colonial possessions and daily increasing colonial Church, (all His own gift,) we seem fitted to be the means of His “way being known upon earth, His saving health among all nations,” He will still cause the light of His countenance to shine upon us; where, again, thousands, as we verily believe, come before Him daily in humility, penitence, and prayer, (like Daniel, interceding for his country and his people,) “crying mightily unto Him” for support in all dangers, and aid in all adversities; I say, we will hope indeed that He “will hear their cry and will help them.” Even in the day of thick darkness He can cause that “at evening time it shall be light.” [132] Whatever be our trial we need not, on that account, deem ourselves forsaken. Nay, unless we see it plainly written that for our sins He has turned His face wholly from us, we will not doubt, in all faith though in all humility, that He will allow us to hand on to our children’s children, and to the “generations which are yet for to come,” the same good deposit which we p. 133have ourselves received. If ever we seem to be disheartened or ready to faint by the way, we will remember on whose word we rely and on whose arm we lean; we will call to mind His wonders of old time; we will ever with all faith and hopeful trust, knowing how with Him “all things are possible,” make the prayer of the Psalmist continually our own, saying, “Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts: shew the light of Thy countenance, and we shall be whole.” [133]

p. 135SERMON VIII. [135]
(Preached on Christmas Day.)
God Incarnate our Great High Priest.

The preceding verses will tell us “of whom speaketh” the Apostle this. Having declared what great conflict he had for his converts at Colosse and “for them at Laodicea, and for as many as had not seen his face in the flesh,” he tells them that this his conflict and desire for them was, that their “hearts might be comforted; being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of p. 136the Father, and of Christ; in Whom,” he adds, “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

As there is nothing on which men may not make a controversy, so there has been a question raised whether the meaning be, “in Whom,” viz. in Christ, or, “in which,” viz. in the mystery of God, and the Father, and Christ, “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge?” But we may well be excused if we do not desire on such a day as this to run into criticism of this kind; and I shall therefore take it at once for granted that the plain and natural sense of the words is the true one, and that we have here the Apostle’s declaration of and concerning Him of Whom he says just afterwards unmistakeably, that “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” [136] that He is the same “in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” And if they be so in Christ, as He is, at the right hand of God, (for He was there undoubtedly when the Apostle wrote this of Him,) so, being ever one and the same Eternal God, “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,” they were equally in Him in the days of His humiliation, “when for us men and for our salvation” He took upon Him man’s nature. As the Second of our Articles of Religion, in the strictest theological language, expresses it: “The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, p. 137the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man;” whereof, too, be it well observed, the just and immediate consequence is, that He—“Who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men,”—was this same one Person, very God, and very Man. So that we speak simple truth (though a mystery beyond even angelic powers fully to understand or appreciate) when we say that God Himself was born of the Virgin Mary; God Himself lay in that manger at Bethlehem; God Himself grew up from infancy to manhood before men’s eyes; God Himself shed His Blood, and died upon the Cross, to save the lost and guilty race of Adam, whom by His Incarnation He made His brethren: even as the Apostle declares to the disciples at Miletus, that God had “purchased His Church with His own Blood;” [137a] and again, tells the Ephesians, that through Christ “we have redemption through His Blood;” [137b] and again, the Hebrews, that “by His own Blood entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” [137c]

p. 138This perfect union for ever of the two Natures in the one Person of Jesus Christ our Lord it is of the highest importance for us to receive, or we shall have unworthy notions of God, and what He has done for us. We shall, if we “divide the Substance,” making two Persons to be in Christ, be in danger of believing that a mere man died for us; or else, that the death of Christ was not, in a true sense, death at all; so that there would be either a propitiatory sacrifice made for the sins of the world by one less than God, or else no propitiatory sacrifice made at all. In either case, a denial of “the Lord that bought us.” [138] In the one, that He is the Lord; in the other, that He bought us. For, as we see at once, God, as God only, cannot die; and man, as man only, cannot make propitiation for sin. It is, of course, true that the Godhead, considered in itself, is incapable of suffering, and therefore, the Son of God, for this reason, (among many others, as we may well believe,) took upon Him man’s nature, which was capable of suffering and death. And not less true or less plain is it, that the Manhood, even in its best and most perfect state, could not make atonement to God for sin, or enable any man to “save his brother.” But when God became Flesh, when the Son of God became also the Son of Man, when the two natures in their Perfection were thus joined in the Person of Jesus Christ: then God being man could die, and man p. 139being God could not only live but give life. So Christ not only liveth ever, but He “giveth eternal life” [139a] to as many as are His. “Thus,”—to use the words of the well-known commentator on our Articles, the present Bishop of Ely,—“thus we understand the Scripture when it says that men ‘crucified the Lord of Glory,’ [139b] when it says that ‘God purchased the Church with His own Blood,’ [139c] because though God in His Divine Nature cannot be crucified, and has no blood to shed; yet the Son of God, the Lord of Glory, took into His Person the nature of man, in which nature He could suffer, could shed His blood, could be crucified, could die.” [139d] All this being done and suffered by that one Person—Christ Jesus, God and Man—it is no figure or fallacy but a simple truth, however wonderful, to say that God was born in Bethlehem and died upon the cross at Calvary. Thus, too, He the one ever-blessed Son of the Highest, “in Whom were hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” could become unto us “wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption;” our Prophet, Priest and King, our Sacrifice, our Mediator, our Intercessor, our ever-merciful and ever-enduring Saviour, Who sitteth at the right hand of God, until He shall come again with power and great glory to be also our Judge.

p. 140So very far have modern times gone in forgetfulness of the ancient faith, that, I believe, it is sometimes considered a strange thing to give to the Blessed Virgin the title of “the Mother of God,” as if it were a novelty so to designate her. Whereas, to deny her this title, and so in fact to make two Persons to be in Christ,—one, God, not born of her; and one, man, born of her,—is precisely the very and exact heresy of Nestorius condemned by the Third General Council held at Ephesus in the year 431, which decision was, and has ever since been, received by the whole Church. So that it is not merely truth so to designate her, but it is absolutely heretical to maintain the contrary. “Ever since the Council of Ephesus, the Church has consecrated the peculiar title of ‘Theotokos’ (God’s parent, or Mother of God,) to denote the incommunicable privilege of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in that she became the mother of Immanuel, ‘God with us.’ . . . For, though it is as man that Christ is of the substance of His Mother born in the world, yet, inasmuch as the Word took man’s nature in the womb of the Blessed Virgin of her substance, she may truly be styled ‘Mother of God,’ because ‘two whole and perfect natures—that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood—were joined in One Person never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man.’” [140]

p. 141But let us turn back again for a moment to the thought of the text, that in Christ “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” There is surely an emphatic force in the words “are hid,”—“εἰσὶν ἀπόκρυφοι,” not merely ‘contained,’ but ‘laid up,’ ‘concealed,’—and if in a certain sense, even now they are hid, because Christ our Lord does not manifest Himself to the eye of sense in any visible form of glory, though He has all wisdom and all knowledge ever inherent in Him, it may be said that they were even more obscured, when, emptying Himself of His glory, “He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and was found in fashion as a man.” [141] Look upon Him as He was on this day eighteen hundred and three-score and more years ago! Think of Him as a little infant, in the arms of His blessed Mother, or laid under her watchful eye upon some rude pillow in the manger, and then consider that there was the God of all flesh, the great God of heaven and earth, God the Son, ever one with the Father and the Holy Ghost, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-creating, all-upholding, all-preserving, and say if these treasures were not indeed hid and obscured!

But though obscured, the treasures were there nevertheless. It were impious to doubt or deny it. When, then, we hear it asked, as sometimes in these latter days of almost unlimited free enquiry it is, Are we to imagine that in that little p. 142infant was centred the knowledge of all history, all learning, all the secrets of nature as we term them, all the devices of art, all the developments of science? I think we cannot doubt that the answer is, There was. For what is there in any kind or department of knowledge or science, or of things past, present, or to come, which we can suppose the Almighty not to know? This would be to deny His attribute of Omniscience; and, therefore, to deny it of Christ, God and Man, would be to deny His Godhead. People think to escape this consequence by saying that it is merely His human nature which was ignorant,—that whilst as God He knew, yet as Man He did not know,—not seeing that thus immediately they must fall into that other error before mentioned. For if they do not deny the Godhead, they must divide the Substance of the Son. Perhaps in their defence they will urge such passages of Holy Scripture as that in which it is written, “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature;” [142a] or where He Himself said, concerning the Judgment, “Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father,” [142b] of which it may be sufficient to remark to-day, that the first passage seems to imply no more than that His wisdom, as He grew in years, and of course appeared to acquire human knowledge, increased, in the sense of its being more manifested in p. 143the eyes of men, just as His bodily stature increased in visible presence before them: whilst of the other, (without going into all which may be said on a passage confessedly difficult,) it may be enough to point out that He does not say even of the Day of Judgment, that He, the God-Man, Christ Jesus, ever undivided in His divinity and humanity, did not know it: but that the Son (Who must be taken of course here to be the Son of Man), knoweth it not. And if it be thought that this admission grants all that the objector asked, and is in fact but the enunciation of his own view, I should maintain that it is not so, and for this reason, that it is a very different thing to say of the One Person, Jesus Christ, that He, thus one and undivided, was ignorant of anything, and to contemplate apart His Godhead and His Manhood, and so, in some sort, their attributes apart. And I conceive that here our Blessed Lord using the term “the Son” (not ‘I know not,’ but the Son knoweth not,) contemplates Himself as the Son of Man, and speaks of Himself as viewed in that relation. What modern unbelief seems to delight to assert, is, that our Blessed Lord, as He stood and talked and reasoned with the people, was ignorant or mistaken. What we affirm to be the really just and consistent sense of the passages adduced, is, that if His human nature be contemplated apart from His Divine, it might be taken to be thus ignorant; so, I would repeat, He is not thus proclaiming p. 144that He, the God-Man, the One Christ, is ignorant, nor yet dividing His Substance and becoming two, but merely contemplating apart the Divine and human natures, which may well be done; and we may even go so far as to say that if we contemplate them as separated, then there would be things unknown to the one, though known to the other, and if they could be divided there would be a separate province of knowledge in each; but that, as we must believe the two natures have ever been united in one Person from the time of His taking our nature of the substance of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so no one can ever predicate of Him, the thus born Son of God and Son of Man; of Him “in Whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily;” of Him “in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;” of Him “Who is over all, God blessed for ever,” [144a] that it is possible there was, or is, or shall be anything, whether “of things in heaven, or things in earth, or things under the earth,” of which He was, or is, or shall be ignorant. [144b]

Turn then again, brethren, to the stable at Bethlehem. Cast away, at least on such a blessed p. 145day as this, the thoughts of controversy. Come to the sight which is to be seen in that lowly habitation “where the stalled oxen feed.” See the blessed Mother! See the glorious Infant, glorious and divine in Himself, howbeit He may look like any other child of man, and with the eye of faith “behold thy God!” Think of the wonders of love in the condescension that He should be found in such an humble guise and lowly place, only excelled by the marvel that He should abase Himself to become man at all! And then think that all this is no barren spectacle, to be gazed upon indeed with wonder, but in which we have no practical interest. No, it all belongs to us, and has to do with us, in matters of the very highest moment. It is so important to us, that we might say all other things are mere bubbles and trifles compared with it. What should we be, and what would be our hope, if we had not the Christmas season, and all which it has brought, to gild our year, and gladden our hearts? Think of what we are, and what are our prospects by nature! The children of Adam in his fallen state, and therefore “born in sin and children of wrath.” A degenerate race, from our very birth, with the sure seed of the first and second death implanted in us, with a corrupt nature, a depraved will, a heart estranged from God, exiles from Eden, unable to return to it. Even if we had the heart to seek it, only doomed to find it barred against us, and “cherubims and p. 146a flaming sword turning every way to keep the way of the tree of life,” on account of both the original guilt and actual sins of men. Thus, in ourselves with no access again to God. Placed, it is true, in a world of wonders, a world adapted by Almighty wisdom to supply our wants and minister to our comfort and gratification, apparently capable of almost unlimited development in these things under the fertile mind and ever-busy hand of man, yielding thus much enjoyment for the time, if we give ourselves to enjoy it. Even in more than such external things adapted to our constitution, as furnishing the food for absorbing pursuit and high aim in the acquisition of wealth or power, or in intellectual cultivation; nay, more and more widely still, meeting the cravings of our nature by supplying the field for sweet sympathies and home affections in the varied scenes of domestic life and mutual love; but yet, after all, not satisfying the yearnings of man’s heart or the aspirations of his being. A world, too, however framed with all these means of comfort or enjoyment, yet with much of pain, sorrow, sickness, bereavement, trial, fear, and weakness in the lot of every child of Adam. All this without; and within, a conscience enough alive to make us uneasy, when we have yielded to temptation, and broken the law written in our hearts, though of no sufficient power to prevent our yielding to the one and breaking the other, joined with a certain consciousness, indeed, p. 147of God’s greatness and goodness, but not the heart to love Him. So, with no light in ourselves to see our way clearly, nor in ourselves any strength to throw off our chains and turn to God; with dim forebodings of and even earnest yearnings after something higher, better, and more enduring than this world, and this earthly life and being, but with no apprehension to grasp it, and no power to attain to it. And then, as life wanes, and death draws on, and conscience, it may be, pricks, and the evil one himself, perchance, mocks and triumphs, and no remedy, in either external things or in our own selves, is to be found,—how darkly and sadly does the night close in upon man in his mere natural condition! Survey him in such aspect from his life’s beginning to its end, and what is there for him but either blank despair or reckless levity (often the direct fruit of despair), or a dark and corrupting superstition calling “evil good and good evil, saying Peace, peace, when there is no peace,” and resulting in the utmost dishonour to God, and the greatest licence of an unbridled sensuality, even under the plea of religion? or else, if not this, an utter unbelief, merely falling blindfold into judgment and eternity? Yes: for when once man was lost by the Fall, no one could save himself and no one could save his fellow. As it is written, “No man may deliver his brother, or make agreement unto God for him; for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that He must let that alone for ever.” [147]

p. 148But now, men and brethren, think of Christmas-tide, and all it tells and brings to us, and what a change is there! On this appalling picture, on this “day of darkness and gloominess, of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains,” [148a] “the Sun of righteousness hath arisen with healing in His wings;” [148b] “the day-spring from on high hath visited us; to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” [148c] As we raise our eyes to the Christmas morning the light dawns not merely on our eyes but on our hearts. Here we find the “seed of the woman” who reverses our curse, and the curse upon the earth, by “bruising the serpent’s head.” He comes, He comes, the Saviour of the world, bringing “life and immortality to light through the Gospel,” [148d] because He is God and Man. “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: the government is upon His shoulder: His Name is called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” [148e] What can more declare His Godhead? But nevertheless He is “not ashamed to call us brethren;” [148f] nay, we are told, it even “behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren,” and this, that “He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” [148g] Yes, and although He is such p. 149“a great High Priest, the Son of God passed into the heavens,” yet is He not one “which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” [149a] What can more declare His Manhood? Like unto us in all points, sin only excepted. Like unto us, with perfect manhood, human body and soul taken into the Godhead, so to be unto us “both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life.” As the new federal Head of the human race; as the one, and only one, of the descendants of Adam in whom sin found no place, and whose obedience was perfect, “He is able to save to the uttermost all them that come to God by Him.” Thus is God Incarnate our great High Priest and only Saviour. “To this end was He born, and for this cause came He into the world,” [149b] and such is the mercy which we this day commemorate. By this, the Incarnation of the Eternal Son, is the cloud of thick darkness rolled aside; by this, as the first manifested step (so to say) in our redemption, is the veil lifted; by this, is hope revived; by this, joy spread; by this, is Satan defied; by this, and by the consequences to which it led and leads, is he conquered; by this, is the sting taken from death, and victory wrested from the grave; this, is peace made for man with God, and peace brought to man within himself; by this, is he enabled to please God, for by the death of the Son made Man was the purchase and gift of the p. 150Spirit, whereby alone he can be sanctified. By Him, then, (“the great God and our Saviour,” as St. Paul terms Him,) are “we reconciled, and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;” by Him, “being now justified by His Blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him:” and so truly “we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now received the Atonement.” [150] He is the great High Priest, with power in Himself as none other has, or can have, to offer up the sacrifice and “make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” He is the immaculate Victim, the one only meritorious Sacrifice, “once offered to bear the sins of many,” Whose “Blood speaketh better things than that of Abel.” He is the true Paschal Lamb, “without blemish and without spot;” “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world;” the Lamb “slain,” (in God’s design, and His own ever-merciful intention,) “from the foundation of the world,” but manifested for this purpose “in the fulness of the time.” He is the great Physician, causing joy wherever He goeth, because He can heal all diseases; He is the great Lawgiver, proclaiming His will; He is the great Prophet, ordaining and promulgating His method of salvation; He is the great King, setting up His kingdom, marking out its boundaries, and ruling His subjects; He is the great Captain, ordering His armies, displaying His banners, giving out His weapons, going forth “conquering and to p. 151conquer;” He is the one Mediator, He is the availing Intercessor; He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; He is the Sun and Centre of the whole mediatorial kingdom; He is the Lord of this world and of the world to come!—And all this, because He is (as He is and ever hath been) “God the Son: God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; of one substance with the Father;” and because, in mercy to us, He became also the Son of Man, “conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary.”

Surely, then, this is a day “to be much observed unto the Lord,” a day in which we do well indeed “to make merry and be glad;” so only that our mirth be with sobriety, and our gladness with godliness. If, indeed, He had not come, if we had no Christmastide, and Christmas memories, and Christmas teaching, and Christmas faith, where should we place our hope? Truly, we should be “of all men most miserable.” Whether God could have forgiven man in any other way, without Himself becoming Flesh, and doing all which Christ has done, we know not. But it seems to be unlikely, according to His attributes and will, inasmuch as St. Paul plainly says, “without shedding of blood is no remission,” and (as we know,) “the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin;” whilst again it is declared, that God set forth His Son “to be a propitiation through faith in His Blood, that He might be just, and the justifier of him which p. 152believeth in Jesus:” [152] from which it would seem that God’s attribute of justice could not be satisfied unless by the payment, by some one able to pay it, of the penalty due to man’s transgression. But whether it could have been otherwise or not, otherwise it is not. This is God’s way, and undeniably it tells us more of God’s love, Who gave His only-begotten Son; and of Christ’s tender compassion, Who shrunk not back from all which He undertook, than if we had been saved by a forgiveness, without an atoning sacrifice at all. Therefore this mode, God’s mode of pardon, as it supplies us with greater proofs of His love, so it gives us higher motives for our own love and gratitude than any other mode which we can conceive. Therefore this day calls upon us all the more for praise, adoration, thanksgiving, joy, and obedience. Whatever else we do, or learn, or think, we can never think aright, unless—in praising and thanking God for all His mercies, and for the birth of Christ in human nature, as the source, if we may so term it, of the Gospel scheme of Redemption,—unless, I say, we attribute all we are in sanctification, and all we have in hope, and all we feel in peace, to God and Christ. Whatever be His way to bring us pardon, whatever laws He has set up in His Kingdom, whatever means He has appointed,—whether His Holy Word, or His Church, or His ministry of instruction or reconciliation,—all p. 153these are but His instruments, and He Himself is the only efficient cause of our salvation. “Not unto us, not unto us, but unto His Name give the praise.” No; even the fruits of the Spirit, wrought in us by Him, “albeit, indeed, they are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification, though they are acceptable and pleasing to God in Christ, yet can they not put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment.” [153a] Nay, not faith itself can do this; for though, as the means and instrument to lay hold on eternal life, faith may be said to save us, yet, as the efficient cause of our salvation it would be heresy to say so. For it is plain, we are not saved by anything of ours, even when wrought in us by God’s Spirit. As one of our Articles says, they are in grievous error “who say that every man shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the light of nature,” for that “Jesus Christ is the only Name whereby men must be saved;” [153b] so, truly, no one may affirm that we are saved, except instrumentally or conditionally, either by good works, (even if they were good, in the sense of being blameless, which none of ours are,) or by knowledge, or by the priesthood, or by sacraments, or by the Church, or by the Bible, or by prayer, or even by faith itself, for it is manifest that we are saved by Christ only, and by none else, either thing or person. He may have set forth, as He has done, p. 154certain conditions of salvation; He may have appointed, as He has done, certain means of applying to Him for mercy, and of obtaining mercy from Him; He may have ordained, as He has done, certain channels of help by which His grace flows to us, and enables us to receive His favour, and the reconciliation with God, which He has purchased for us; but it is He, and He only, Who is the sole meritorious cause of all we have, and all we are, and all we hope for. So, truly, again we may repeat in the words of the Apostle, that it is “Christ Jesus, Who, of God, is made unto us Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption;” not as if He could be this to us (God forbid the thought!) if we persist in sin, or in neglect of His way of life; but, as if (which is the truth), even if we had done all, we should be but unprofitable servants; as if (which is the truth) we are very far from having done all; as if (which is the truth) anything we have done to please God has been only of Him and through the purchased gift of His Spirit, and the communication to us of Himself. So that, indeed, we owe all to Him, and without Him are and must be lost indeed.

Brethren, as we think of these things, and of all we owe to Him in and for His abasement and humiliation in His Incarnation, should not “our hearts burn within us?” Oh, let them do so, with a reverent, loving, grateful, joyful sense of His goodness; Who, “though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor;” Who has gladdened p. 155and cheered this otherwise dark and gloomy World by His presence in it in human form and nature; Who, since He came to it thus, has (though absent so far as the eye of sense discerns) yet never left it to be as it was before, but, by the very means of His Incarnation, dwelleth in it still,—dwelleth, aye, in us, and we in Him, if we be His by the Spirit. And all this, though He be so wonderful, high, and mighty—nay, because He is so,—the very and eternal God, born as on this day in the stable at Bethlehem! In Whom, lying there, in all appearance, a mere helpless, unknowing, human babe, in Whom were still “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;” and “in Whom,” then as always, “dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

Oh, my brethren, believe that He sees and knows every one of us; and how we think of Him this day, and how we love and honour Him. He loves and longs for every one of us. He wills us to rejoice (and “again I say rejoice”) at the “good tidings of great joy which should be to all people” from that day at Bethlehem. Let our joy be, then, such as He sanctions, such as leads us nearer and nearer to Him, both in the exercise of dear and holy home affections, and in love to Him Himself; and then we may hope we shall indeed bless Him, not only now but for ever, that He has again brought us to this great and happy day.

When we gather, then, our families around us p. 156and see the aged, whom we love, still permitted to be with us, (though, it may be, now infirm and feeble,) let us rejoice in that hope, and the object of their faith, which gilds and cheers their old age. When we meet our fellows and companions of our own time of life, knit with us in the tenderest bonds of human affection, and enjoy with them some of that good which God’s bounty allows us, let us rejoice in the thought that they and we have a mutual share in things better than all which this world has to give, and are heirs together of the same common salvation. When we gather round us our little ones, and thank God for the blessing He has given us in them, and look forward not without anxious expectation to the future of their life, yet let us not forget to bless and praise His name that, by the Incarnation of His Son, He has permitted us to make our children His children, and has made sure to them all the privileges of their adoption and the promises of His covenant. So may we, whichever way we look and whatever meets our eyes, ever overflow with thankful joy that unto us “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” [156]

FOOTNOTES.

[70] Vitringa de Synagogâ vetere. Prolegomena, cap. 2, quoted Carter, pp. 54, 55

[102] Some attempts have been lately made to throw doubt upon the authenticity of the copies of the ancient liturgies which have come down to us, as not certainly uninterpolated in places in later times. But whether there may be any ground at all for such suspicion or not, it is evident that the inferences drawn from the liturgies, both in this passage and in a former sermon, will not be affected. For the argument, as used in these sermons, is not dependent upon a phrase or a sentence here or there, which, it may be alleged, is open to question, but is based upon doctrine interwoven with their whole system, and pervading their whole structure, and is what moreover is borne witness to, as thus pervading them, by the whole mass of contemporary Christian writing. The liturgies, therefore, must not merely have been interpolated in places, but almost entirely re-written in another sense, and the great bulk of the writings of the Fathers forged to agree with this change, if the argument above is to be shaken by the question raised concerning them.

I find a passage in Hickes’s Treatise, “The Christian Priesthood Asserted,” which, though written more than a hundred and sixty years before Mr. Carter’s book, seems almost as if it were a comment upon the passage just cited, and the application which I have made of it. He says, “I believe no man in the world that was of any religion where sacrifice was used, and that by chance should see the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist administered among Christians, as it was administered in the primitive times, or as it is administered according to the order and usage of the Church of England, but would take the bread and wine for an offering or sacrifice, and the whole action for a sacrificial ministration; and the eating and drinking of the holy elements for a sacrificial entertainment of the congregation at the table of their God. To see bread and wine . . . so solemnly brought to the table, and then . . . brought by the deacon, in manner of an offering to the liturg or minister, which he also taking in his hands as an offering, sets them with all reverence on the table; and then, after solemn prayers of oblation and consecration, to see him take up the bread, and say, in a most solemn manner, ‘This is My Body,’ &c., and then the cup, saying as solemnly, ‘This is My Blood,’ &c., and then to hear him with all the powers of his soul offer up praises, and glory, and thanksgiving, and prayers to God the Father of all things, through the Name of His Son, and Holy Spirit, which they beseech Him to send down upon that bread and cup, and the people with the greatest harmony and acclamation saying aloud, ‘Amen:’ after which also, to see the liturg, first eat of the bread and drink of the cup, and then the deacon to carry about the blessed bread and wine to be eaten and drunk by the people, as in a sacrificial feast; and, lastly, to see and hear all concluded with psalms and hymns of praise, and prayers of intercession to God with the highest pomp-like celebrity of words; I say, to see and hear all this would make an uninitiated heathen conclude that the bread and wine were an offering, the whole Eucharistic action a sacrificial mystery, the eating and drinking the sanctified elements a sacrificial banquet, and the liturg who administered a priest.”—Hickes’s “Priesthood Asserted,” Library of Anglo.-Cath. Theol., Oxford, vol. ii. p. 105–7.

[103] The scantiness of statements in the Articles, as to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, may illustrate this. Had it been possible to foresee the boldness of unbelief which these days have brought to light on this subject, or had our Reformers been now drawing up the Articles, we may feel very certain they would not have been content to leave that matter as it there stands. But they were engaged with practical errors of their own day, and not in stating all dogmatic truth upon other points. Many things were so fully assumed to be true as to need no assertion of their truth.

[107] Mede’s “Christian Sacrifice,” lib. ii. cap. 4, quoted in Carter, p. 65.

[125d] “But the man that is clean, and is not in a journey, and forbeareth to keep the passover, even the same soul shall be cut off from among his people: because he brought not the offering of the Lord in his appointed season, that man shall bear his sin.” (Numb. ix. 13.)

[135] The following sermon, although perhaps in strictness hardly one of this course, was preached almost immediately after the others, and, in some measure, as a sequel to them. It is evidently not unconnected with their subject, inasmuch as the whole Doctrine of the Priesthood,—Christ our High Priest, through His Manhood “able to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” and the sacerdotal powers derived from Him to “the ministers and stewards of His mysteries,”—is intimately related to, and dependent upon, the doctrine of the Incarnation.

[139d] “Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles,” by E. Harold, Lord Bishop of Ely, Art. II. p. 69.

[140] Owen’s “Introduction to the Study of Dogmatic Theology,” pp. 265, 266. See also, “Pearson on the Creed,” Art. iii. § 3.

[144b] It may be observed that the above explanation does not in any way impair the argument in our Lord’s reply to His disciples. It furnishes quite a sufficient reason why such mysteries as “when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?” should be unrevealed to flesh and blood, that they are unknown to be angels of heaven, and even to the Son of Man, if His humanity be contemplated apart from His Divinity.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eight Sermons on the Priesthood, Altar, and Sacrifice

Eight Sermons
ON
THE PRIESTHOOD, ALTAR, AND
SACRIFICE.

p. vADVERTISEMENT.

p. viiCONTENTS.

p. 1SERMON I.
Treasure in Earthen Vessels.—Faith, not Sight, the Recogniser of the Priesthood.

p. 23SERMON II.
The Witness of the World, before Christ, to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

p. 45SERMON III.
Witness of the New Testament to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

p. 63SERMON IV.
The Testimony of the Early Church to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

p. 79SERMON V.
The Testimony of our Formularies to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

p. 97SERMON VI.
The Christian Altar.

p. 113SERMON VII.
The Christian Altar.

p. 135SERMON VIII. [135]
(Preached on Christmas Day.)
God Incarnate our Great High Priest.

FOOTNOTES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eight Sermons on the Priesthood, Altar, and Sacrifice

Eight Sermons ON THE PRIESTHOOD, ALTAR, AND SACRIFICE.

p. vADVERTISEMENT.

p. viiCONTENTS.

p. 1SERMON I. Treasure in Earthen Vessels.—Faith, not Sight, the Recogniser of the Priesthood.

p. 23SERMON II. The Witness of the World, before Christ, to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

p. 45SERMON III. Witness of the New Testament to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

p. 63SERMON IV. The Testimony of the Early Church to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

p. 79SERMON V. The Testimony of our Formularies to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

p. 97SERMON VI. The Christian Altar.

p. 113SERMON VII. The Christian Altar.

p. 135SERMON VIII. [135] (Preached on Christmas Day.) God Incarnate our Great High Priest.

FOOTNOTES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

Eight Sermons
ON
THE PRIESTHOOD, ALTAR, AND
SACRIFICE.

p. 1SERMON I.
Treasure in Earthen Vessels.—Faith, not Sight, the Recogniser of the Priesthood.

p. 23SERMON II.
The Witness of the World, before Christ, to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

p. 45SERMON III.
Witness of the New Testament to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

p. 63SERMON IV.
The Testimony of the Early Church to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

p. 79SERMON V.
The Testimony of our Formularies to the Doctrine of the Priesthood.

p. 97SERMON VI.
The Christian Altar.

p. 113SERMON VII.
The Christian Altar.

p. 135SERMON VIII. [135]
(Preached on Christmas Day.)
God Incarnate our Great High Priest.