converts, or sincere penitents, to God, by their pastors, who have laboured successfully in the blessed work, is another very acceptable Gospel sacrifice. 8. The sacrifice of faith and hope, and self-humiliation, in commemorating the grand sacrifice, and resting finally upon it, is another Gospel sacrificei, and eminently proper to the Eucharist. These, I think, are all so many true sacrifices, and may all meet together in the one great complicated sacrifice of the Eucharist. Into some one or more of these may be resolved (as I conceive) all that the ancients have ever taught of Christian sacrifices, or of the Eucharist under the name or notion of a true or proper sacrifice. Let it be supposed however for the present, in order to give the reader the clearer idea beforehand, of what I intend presently to prove. In the mean while, supposing this account to be just, from hence may easily be understood how far the Eucharist is a commemorative sacrifice, or otherwise. If that phrase means a spiritual service of ours, commemorating the sacrifice of the cross, then it is justly styled a sacrifice commemorative of a sacrifice, and in that sense a commemorative sacrifice: but if that phrase points only to the outward elements representing the sacrifice made by Christ, then it means a sacrifice commemorated, or a representation and commemoration of a sacrifice. From hence likewise may we understand in what sense the officiating authorized ministers perform the office of proper, evangelical priests in this service. They do it three h Rom. xv. 16. Phil. ii. 17. Compare Isa. lvi. 20. cum Notis Vitring. p. 950. This is not said in any single text, but may be clearly collected from many compared. * Nonne semel immolatus est Christus in seipso? Et tamen in sucramento non solum per omnes paschæ solennitates, sed omni die populis immolatur; nec utique mentitur qui interrogatus, eum responderit immolari. Si enim sacramenta quandam similitudinem earum rerum, quarum sacramenta sunt, non haberent, omnino sacramenta non essent: ex hac autem similitudine plerumque etiam ipsarum rerum nomina accipiunt. Sicut ergo, secundum quendam modum, sacramentum corporis Christi corpus Christi est, sacramentum sanguinis Christi sanguis Christi est; ita sacramentum fidei fides est. Augustin. Epist. ad Bonifacium xcviii. alias xxiii. p. 267. ed. Bened. ways: 1. As commemorating, in solemn form, the same sacrifice here below, which Christ our High Priest commemorates above. 2. As handing up (if 1 may so speak) those prayers and those services of Christians to Christ our Lord, who as High Priest recommends the same in heaven to God the Father'. 3. As offering up to God all the faithful who are under their care and ministry, and who are sanctified by the Spirit m. In these three ways the Christian officers are priests, or liturgs, to very excellent purposes, far above the legal ones, in a sense worth the contending for, and worth the pursuing with the utmost zeal and assiduity. Having thus far intimated beforehand what I apprehend to be in the main, or in the general, a just account of the eucharistical sacrifice, upon the principles laid down in Scripture, as interpreted by the ancients; I shall next proceed to examine the ancients one by one, in order to see whether this account tallies with what they have said upon this article. I shall begin with St. Barnabas, supposed, with some probability, to have been the author of the Epistle bearing his name, penned about A. D. 71. This very early writer, taking notice of the difference between the Law and the Gospel, observes that Christ had abolished the legal sacrifices, to make way for an human oblation: which he explains soon after, by an humble and contrite heart, referring to Psalm li. 17. So by human oblation, he means the free-will offering of the heart, as opposed to the yoke of legal observances; the offering up the whole inner man, instead of the outward superficial performances of the Law. Therefore the Christian sacrifice, as here described by our author, resolves into the 5th article of the account which 1 Revel. viii. 5. Vid. Vitring. in loc. m Rom. xv. 16. • Hæc ergo [sacrificia] vacua fecit, ut nova lex Domini nostri Jesu Christi, quæ sine jugo necessitatis est, humanam habeat oblationem-nobis enim dicit, Sacrificium Deo, cor tribulatum, et humiliatum Deus non despicit. Psal. li. 17. Barnab. Epist. cap. ii. p. 57. 351 I have given above. Mr. Dodwell renders the words of Barnabas thus: "These things therefore he has evacuated, "that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is "without any yoke of bondage, might bring in the mys"tical oblation P." He conceived the original Greek words (which are lost) might have been λoyıxǹ λargela, reasonable service which however is merely conjecture. But he understood the place, of Christians offering themselves, their souls and bodies, instead of sacrificing beasts. Another learned man, who had an hypothesis to serve, understands by human oblation, an offering made with freedom; and he interprets it of the voluntary oblations made by communicants at the altar, viz. the lay oblations 9. The interpretation appears somewhat forced, and agrees not well with Barnabas's own explication superadded, concerning an humble and contrite heart; unless we take in both: however, even upon that supposition, the Christian sacrifice here pointed to, will be a spiritual sacrifice, or service, the sacrifice of charitable benevolence, and will fall under article the first, above mentioned. There have not been wanting some who would wrest the passage so far, as to make it favour the sacrifice of the mass: but the learned Pfaffius has abundantly confuted every pretence that way, and has also well defended the common construction; which Menardus had before admitted, and which Dodwell also came into, and which I have here recommended. There is nothing more in Barnabas that relates at all to our purpose, and so we may pass on to other Christian writers in order. Clemens of Rome has been cited in a chapter aboves, as speaking of the lay oblations brought to the altar, and of the sacerdotal oblation afterwards made of the same gifts, previously to the consecration. No doubt but such lay offerings amounted to spiritual sacrifice, being acceptable P Dodwell of Incensing, p. 33, &c. ↑ Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice, part i. p. 333. alias 338. service under the Gospel; and they fall under article the first, in the enumeration before given. I cannot repeat too often, that in such cases the service, the good work, the duty performed is properly the sacrifice, according to the definition of sacrifice in St. Austint above cited, and according to plain good sense. When Cornelius's prayers and alms ascended up for a memorial, (a name alluding to the legal incense,) it was not his money, nor any material gifts that ascended, or made the memorial; but it was the piety, the mercy, the beneficence, the virtues of the man. Under the Gospel, God receives no material thing at all, to be consumed and spent in his own immediate service, and for his honour only: he receives no blood, no libation, no incense, no burnt offerings, no perfumes, as before. If he receives alms and oblations, (as in the eucharistical service,) he receives them not as gifts to himself, to be consumed in his immediate service, but as gifts to be consecrated for the use of man, to whom they go. All that is material is laid out upon man only; not upon God, as in the Jewish economy. But God receives, now under the Gospel, our religious services, our good works, our virtuous exercises, in the name of Christ, and these are our truly Christian and spiritual sacrifices. In this view, the lay oblations, which Clemens refers to, were Christian sacrifices. So also were the sacerdotal services, referred to by the same Clemens; though in a view somewhat different, and falling under a distinct branch of Gospel sacrifice, reducible to article the seventh in the foregoing recital. Those who endeavour to construe Clemens's προσφοραὶ and λειτουργίαι (oblations and sacerdotal ministrations) as favouring the sacrifice of the mass, run altogether wide of the truth; as is plain from one single reason among many ", that all * Omne opus, &c. every good work. And it is observable that, conformably to such definition, that Father makes Baptism a sacrifice: Holocausto Dominicæ passionis, quod eo tempore offert quisque pro peccatis suis, quo ejusdem passionis fide dedicatur, et Christianorum fidelium nomine Baptizatus imbuitur. Augustin, ad Roman. Expos. cap. xix. col. 937. tom. iii. "The reader may see that whole question discussed at large in Buddæus, Miscellan. Sacr. tom. i. p. 45-49. Pfaffius de Oblat vet. Euch. p. 254--269. which Clemens speaks of, was previous to the consecration. Those also who plead from thence for material oblations, as acceptable under the Gospel, mistake the case: for the material part (as before hinted) goes not to God, is not considered purely as a gift to him, (like the burnt offerings or incense under the Law, consumed in his immediate service,) but as a gift for the use of man; and so nothing remains for God to accept of, as given to him, but the spiritual service; and even that he accepts not of, unless it really answers its name. So that it is plain that the New Testament admits of none but spiritual sacrifices; because none else are now properly given to God, or accepted by him as so given. Justin Martyr, of the second century, is so clear and so express upon the subject of Gospel sacrifice, that one need not desire any fuller light than he will furnish us with. The sum of his doctrine is, that prayers and praises, and universal obedience, are the only Christian sacrifices: from whence it most evidently follows, that whenever he gives the name of oblation, or sacrifice, to the Eucharist, his whole meaning is, that it is a religious service comprehending prayers, praises, &c. and therefore has a just title to the name of Christian oblation and sacrifice. But let us examine the passages. He writes thus: "We have been taught, that God has "no need of any material oblation from men; well know❝ing, that he is the giver of all things: but we are in"formed, and persuaded, and do believe, that he accepts "those only who copy after his moral perfections, purity, " righteousness, philanthropy," &c. Here we may observe, that God accepts not, according to our author, any material oblation at all, considered as a gift to him, nor any thing but what is spiritual, as all religious services, and * Αλλ' οὐ δέεσθαι τῆς παρὰ ἀνθρώπων ὑλικῆς προσφορᾶς προσειλήφαμεν τὸν Θεὸν, αὐτὸν παρέχοντα πάντα ὁρῶντες· ἐκείνους δὲ προσδέχεσθαι αὐτὸν μόνον δεδιδάγμεθα, καὶ πεπείσμεθα, καὶ πιστεύομεν, τοὺς τὰ προσόντα αὐτῷ ἀγαθὰ μιμουμένους, σωφρ.σύνην, καὶ δικαιοσύνην, καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν, καὶ ὅσα οἰκεῖα Θεῷ ἐστι, Just. Μart. Apol. i. p. 14. edit. Lond. |