Communion of Saints (continued)

 

Means of Grace

      The local churches, of which visible Christendom consists, have a bond of union in their relation to the one true Church, or body of Christ; but this latter is replenished and sustained by outward means, ordained by Christ Himself to be channels of His grace, and committed to each local Church to administer; viz., the pure teaching of the Word, the celebration of the Sacraments, and common prayer in the name of Christ.  These means of grace, as they are usually called, may be considered under a threefold aspect; as (especially the Sacraments) signs of admission into, or continuance in, the Church (tesserae); as pledges of the presence of Christ, by His Spirit in the Church (pignora); and as forming the material of visible Christian worship.  In idea they may be thus distinguished, in fact, each, in a greater or less degree, combines these aspects.  If the Church were purely invisible, a union of sentiment merely, or, as Schleiermacher terms it, [Christliche Glaube, §§ 126, 127.] of operations (wirkungen) of the Holy Ghost, these outward means might be dispensed with; but since it is not only the effect but the instrument of Christ’s saving work, and has a mission to fulfill as well as to promote its own edification; and, since man is to be approached as a complex being, consisting of body as well as soul; the means at the Church’s disposal must be of a complex character, appealing to the senses in their application, but accompanied by invisible effects.  As the Word Himself became man, in order to establish His Kingdom on earth, the Church too, without claiming to be the Incarnation of Christ, needs a system of external worship, and external means of edification and extension.

 

A. – The Word

 

§ 85.  Preaching

      It was the command of Christ that, after the descent of the Holy Ghost, the Apostles should preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15), for faith, the appointed condition of salvation, comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10:17); and this they considered so essential a part of their office, that before long they declined other spiritual employments which they thought might be a hindrance to their ministry of the Word and of prayer (Acts 6:4).  S. Paul declares that Christ sent him not primarily to administer sacraments, or regulate the affairs of Christian societies, but to preach the Gospel to the heathen (1 Cor. 1:17); and it is obvious that by no other instrument but the Word could the heathen be gathered into the Christian fold.  But this means of grace is not to be confined to missionary effort; the work of edification in constituted Christian Churches is emphatically ascribed to it.  The commission to teach all nations, with a view to Christian baptism, prescribes also the duty of instructing the converts thus made in the whole compass of Christian doctrine and practice (Matt. 28:20); and accordingly we find that the first Christians, among other religious exercises, continued steadfastly under the teaching of the Apostles (Acts 2:42).  S. Paul commends the Ephesian elders, in view of impending dangers, “to God and to the Word of His grace,” which Word was able to build them up in everything that concerned salvation (Acts 20:32).  And the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, more immediately connected with the Word, are by the same Apostle said to have been given specially for the edification of the Church: if Christ “gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers” – it was “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephes. 4:11, 12).  As it is by the Word that the seed of eternal life is sown in the heart (1 Pet. 1:23), so it is by the same Word that the newborn spiritual babe is nourished, and grows into the measure of the stature of Christ.  If any means of grace, therefore, is of direct institution by Christ, this may claim the character; if any is essential to the well-being of the Church, the chief place must be assigned to this; and hence in defining the notes of a true Church, our Article makes the “pure preaching of the Word” one of the two essential ones.  A sacramental character, too, belongs to the ordinance of preaching.  It cannot, indeed, be said to have an “outward and visible sign” in the same sense in which the two sacraments have: the winged words of the preacher do, in fact, make themselves wings and fly away: the vehicle is spiritual, and appeals to the understanding rather than to the senses; but unquestionably “an inward spiritual grace” accompanies it.  It is the principle instrument of the Holy Spirit in the work both of regeneration and sanctification.  Not the human agent, but Christ Himself by His Spirit speaks in His Word, and communicates to it its saving power.  Hence it ought to constitute, and in Christian assemblies conducted after the Apostolic model, in one shape or another, whether as oral teaching or as the reading of Scripture, – ever has formed, an indispensable part of Christian worship.

      But what is this Word of God, and where is it to be found?  Considered as immanent in God, it is the Divine plan of salvation through Christ; the λόγος ενδιάθετος of Philo and his Christian disciples.  Revealed, this Word becomes a λόγος προφορικος, and addresses itself to man through human agency, in history, type, prophecy, inspired oral teaching; and in so doing becomes affected with the limitations which attend every such outward vehicle.  As the Trinitarian Word in becoming incarnate exhibited His Divine glory under a veil, so the Word of revelation, in accomplishing its end, adapts itself to human comprehension, and is no longer quite identical with the Word as it existed from eternity in the Divine Mind.  Hence there is an element of truth in the statement that Scripture is not, but contains the Word of God; [It is found in the first sentence of the Homily on “the reading and knowledge of the Scripture”: “Unto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable than the knowledge of Holy Scripture; forasmuch as in it is contained God’s true Word, setting forth His glory, and also man’s duty.”] though it is sometimes employed to insinuate serious error.  In Scripture, or in the oral teaching of the Apostles, the Word clothes itself in an inadequate form of expression: no human language, only that which S. Paul heard in his rapture to the third heaven, and which he describes as “unspeakable,” and not lawful (or possible) for a man to utter (2 Cor. 12:4), is capable of conveying it in its fullness; not to mention that human speech can never quite dissociate itself from the peculiarities of the speaker or writer, his habits of thought, his mental culture, his personal history and surroundings, his particular spiritual experience.  And this applies especially to instruction by type, or typical persons, such as the Old Testament abounds with.  One safeguard against error is to remember that the canon of Scripture consists not of one book but of a sacred library; in each portion of which we have indeed the Word of God but not the whole of it.  It is only, therefore, by a collation of one part of Scripture with another, and a comprehensive view of the whole, that we attain to such a measure of knowledge as we can in this life expect.

      To us who live in these latter times, the inspired volume is the only authentic source of what the preacher has to deliver.  Types are fulfilled in Christ; inspired oral teaching in the Church has ceased; but the record of what that teaching was is to be gathered from Scripture, and from that alone.  The preacher, therefore, ought to be, above all things, an expositor of Scripture.

 

§ 86.  Prayer in the Name of Christ

      The essence of religion resides in the belief of a Supreme Being, distinct from the material universe, and of the possibility of establishing relations between this Being and the rational creature.  When this belief is called out into active exercise, it expresses itself in prayer.  Only to the atheist, who acknowledges no God, and to the pantheist, who identifies the universe, and himself as part of it, with God, can prayer seem superfluous or irrational.  This converse of the soul with God, as it appears both in the Old and in the New Testament, presupposes on the part of the worshipper that he is addressing a personal God, and not the blind Fate of heathen mythology; and further, that this personal God is accessible, and that the expressed feeling of dependence and the exercise of faith are pleasing to Him: “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”  Our Lord recognized the duty and the importance of prayer, both by precept and by example; and furnished to His disciples a model which the Christian Church in all ages has followed; but it was not until towards the close of His ministry that He unfolded the essential idea of Christian prayer: “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20); “Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if ye shall ask anything in My Name, I will do it” (John 14:13, 14); “Hitherto ye have asked nothing in My Name; ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full” (Ibid., 16:24).  The Apostles, though accustomed to prayer, had not asked anything in the Name of Christ, because the work of atonement was not accomplished until the words “It is finished” were uttered on the Cross; and because the accomplishment was not publicly attested until Jesus, after His resurrection, proved that all power in heaven and earth was given to Him by the mission of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to take His place.  Thenceforward, Christian prayer is to be offered through Him as the only Mediator between God and man; and by the assistance of His Divine Vicar, the Holy Ghost, who prompts petitions acceptable to God: and to pray in the Name of Christ is not only to pray in reliance on His atoning sacrifice, but to pray under the guidance and suggestion of the Holy Spirit, Who is Christ, with and in us.  The best comment on these promises of Christ is Rom. 8:26: “Likewise the Spirit, also, helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  Christ in us, not without our own cooperation, but employing our natural faculties and quickening our spiritual desires, and yet the real Prompter of prayer – prays for us; and since “He that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what is the Mind of the Spirit making intercession for the saints,” all such prayer must surely be heard; and therefore our Lord could say, “If ye shall ask anything,” without exception, “in My Name I will do it.”  This implies that prayers may be offered which are not “in the Name of Christ,” in the sense explained; and this need occasion no surprise when it is remembered that the Christian, though delivered from the dominion of sin, is by no means free from its approaches, and may prefer requests which are not according to the Will of God, or which, at least, for reasons hidden from us but known to Omniscience, would not, if granted, promote the spiritual benefit of the suppliant, or the advancement of Christ’s kingdom, or not in the way marked out by Divine wisdom.  Such prayers may be natural, but they are mistakes; and to grant them might not be a real token of the Divine favour.  Hence the example Christ Himself should ever be present to us: “If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39).  In every prayer, except those framed after the model of the Lord’s Prayer, there must be a reservation of this kind; there must be expressed or implied resignation to His Will, who alone knows the issue and determines the course of events.  It is on this condition that Christians, as individuals, are encouraged “in everything by prayer and thanksgiving to make known their requests unto God” (Phil. 4:6).

      But prayer, as a means of grace, is essentially common, or united, prayer; prayer expressive of the common feeling of the Church, as distinguished from the circumstances of individuals.  It is to it as such that the promises of Christ are attached.  And to it as such the Lord’s Prayer has a special reference.  In the first three petitions, “Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Christians, noting the incomplete fulfillment of prophecy, pray that whatever hindrances stand in the way, social or political, may be removed [“Withal praying for us that God would open unto us a doer of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am an ambassador in bonds” (Col. 4:3).  “I exhort therefore that supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings, and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim. 2:1, 2).]; in the three last, the growth of each believer in grace is the subject of supplication, so that when Providence opens the way the Church may be prepared to seize the opportunity, and under a second Pentecostal effusion achieve spiritual victories of a magnitude unknown since the apostolic age.  Prayer for these objects, expressing the common desire of Christians, never can be a mistake; they cannot fail to be according to the mind of Christ and in His Name; they aim at the same objects that Christ Himself is carrying forward; and so can confidently plead the promise in its most unlimited extent.  In fact, they are the necessary condition, on man’s part, of the fulfillment of prophecy; for since Christ works through the Church, the union of Christians in fervent prayer for an outpouring of the Spirit is itself a sign of the Church’s becoming alive to her duty, and girding up her loins for the spiritual conflict.

      Public prayer, as a means of grace, assumes the form either of silent assent (with, as in our Church, occasional responses) to the officiating minister, or of psalmody, which is, in fact, the congregation praying aloud.  Whether it finds expression in liturgical forms, or in the unwritten outpourings of the heart, is immaterial.  Its connection with the solemn assemblies of Christians on the first day of the week is obvious.  Those who on the plea that they can pray always and in all places neglect “the assembling of themselves together” (Heb. 10:25) on the stated occasions of public worship are likely not to pray at all; they certainly cannot expect the special blessing which Christ has connected with this duty, and which, even if He had not done so, may be naturally anticipated from the joint action of Christians in the work of prayer and praise.

 

B. – The Sacraments

 

§ 87.  Definitions

      The derivation of the word Sacrament, by which the other class of Christian ordinances is commonly described, is doubtful.  In classical usage sacramentum signifies either the sum of money which the plaintiff and defendant in a suit deposited with the authorities, the share of the defeated party being devoted to religious purposes, [Either from sacrare to devote to the gods, or because the sum was placed in loco sacro.  Varro, L.L., v. 36.] or the military oath of allegiance.  Tertullian seems first to have used the word to denote the Christian Sacraments; he describes the Christian as enlisted in the service of Christ, and his baptismal vow as corresponding to the oath by which the Roman soldier bound himself to obedience. [Credimusne humanum sacramentum divino superduci licere, et in alium dominum respondere post Christum?  De Cor., c. xi.]  From him it passed, in the Western Church, into the current language of theology, though at first in a very extended meaning.  It was applied not only to the sacraments of the Gospel, but to any rite or ceremony which bore a symbolical character, and even to passages of Scripture which might be interpreted allegorically.  Thus Augustine calls the additions to baptism, prevalent at that time, viz., exsufflation and exorcism, sacraments; and he applies the term to the chrism at confirmation, to circumcision, ordination, marriage, the sabbath, and the water and blood which issued from the side of Christ. [“The holy Catholic Fathers have made mention, not only of seven, as M. Harding here accounteth them, but, also, of seventeen sundry sacraments.”  Jewell, Def. Ap., c. xi., div. 2.]  Still, amidst this looseness of expression, baptism and the Lord’s Supper occupy in ancient writers a position peculiar to themselves.  It was not before the twelfth century that the defination and number of the sacraments became fixed; and particularly by P. Lombard and T. Aquinas. In the Eastern Church the Greek word μυστήριον is used for the Latin sacramentum, but it conveys a different meaning.  It is probably derived from the verb μυέω, to initiate into the mysteries (Eleusinian, etc.); and since the ceremony took place in secret, the word came to be applied to any ordinance or doctrine of a recondite meaning; and, particularly in the Eastern liturgies, to the two sacraments.

      By the schoolmen various definitions of a sacrament are given.  They will be found enumerated by Bellarmine, and are essentially founded on Augustine’s statements: “A sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing,” instituted “as a token of Christian fellowship,” “a visible word,” for it is the word, not which is spoken, but which is believed, that “transforms the element” (the material part) into a sacrament.  “A sacrament” (that is, the visible element) “is so called because of its similitude to the thing signified; for if this resemblance did not exist, the sacrament would not be entitled to the name; and on account of it the signs commonly bear the name of the things signified” (as, e.g., the bread and wine are called the body and blood of Christ).  The symbolical element of the sacraments, which Augustine thus so strongly enforces, did not commend itself to the founders of the scholastic theology, by whom the doctrine of an inherent virtue in the elements was generally held, and accordingly the necessary additions were made.  By Hugo de St. Victor the symbolism of the ordinances is not denied, but the remark is appended that the sacraments, by virtue of consecration, “contain a certain invisible and spiritual grace.”  Or, as he expresses it in another work, “The sacrament not only signifies, but also confers, that of which it is the sign.”  And so, though more concisely, his contemporary P. Lombard: “A sacrament is in this sense a sign of invisible grace that it is both a representation and a cause thereof.”  The theory was more fully worked out by T. Aquinas.  “Sacraments,” he says, “are applied for the sanctification of men, their medicinal properties being proportioned to the twofold nature of man, body and soul.”  “They are the cause of grace in the soul, not, however, the primary cause, for God alone is that, but the instrumental: the difference may be thus illustrated; fire by virtue of its own form produces heat, and the effect is similar to the energy; in this sense God is the Author of grace, and this grace is nothing but a communication of the Divine nature, according to 2 Pet. 1:4; whereas a mere instrumental cause does not operate by virtue of its own form, but only by the motion which it receives from the principal agent; as, e.g., the carpenter’s axe does not cut from itself, nor is there a resemblance between it and the work produced.  It is in this latter sense that the sacraments of the new law are the cause of grace.”  If the question be asked, what is the grace of which the sacraments are the cause? the answer is, not the increase of ordinary sanctifying grace, but a grace peculiar to each sacrament.  “There are three applications which the word grace admits of: abstractedly, secundum se, it perfects the essence of the soul so far forth as it communicates participation of the Divine nature; and from this proceed various gifts and virtues which cooperate with the powers of the soul: but over and above these there is a sacramental grace, communicated only by the sacraments, which produces certain special effects necessary in the Christian life as, e.g., the special grace of baptism is a kind of spiritual regeneration, and so as regards the other sacraments.”  “The sacraments of the new law contain grace, not merely as signs thereof, but as instrumental causes” (that is, grace is attached to them physically as distinguished from morally).  On the subject of the baptismal character, which is to be distinguished from the grace peculiar to each sacrament, T. Aquinas proceeds as follows: “The sacraments are appointed for two ends, as a remedy against sin, and to perfect the soul in matters relating to the worship of God.  But whoever is deputed to a certain secular function usually receives a visible sign thereof: as, e.g., soldiers in former times were stamped in the body.  For spiritual functions the stamp must, of course, be spiritual, or on the soul; and on its powers as distinguished from its essence since it is conferred for spiritual actions.  Upon those who receive the character the Divine bounty confers grace for the due performance of such actions.  The character, being a participation of the priesthood of Christ, is indelible and unchangeable, unlike grace which is subject to variations.  Only three of the seven sacraments impress the character, viz., baptism, confirmation, and orders, for they only are not repeated.  The sin of the minister does not interfere with the efficacy of the sacrament, though he may thereby be himself guilty of mortal sin; but the intention of the minister, strictly so called, may, if of a certain kind, be an effectual bar.  The mere outward act, as, e.g., in baptism the ablution of water, may be variously applied; to the cleansing of the body, or for sanitary purposes, or with a spiritual intention; therefore it is necessary that it be determined to the specific effect which it is intended to produce.  Hence there must be an intention on the part of the minister to baptize; but if this he present, lesser defects, such as inattention to what he is saying, administration for sinister purposes, even absence of faith, especially if it be concealed, will not invalidate the ordinance.  But a celebration in mere sport does so; for in this case there is no intention of doing what the Church intends.  A secret unbeliever may intend to do what the Church affirms; and heretics may likewise so intend, because, however erroneously, they consider themselves to be the true Church, or part of it.  They confer the sacramentum but not the rem sacramenti, viz., remission of sins and sanctifying grace.” [Sum. Theol., P. iii., QQ. lx–lxiv.]  These concessions were intended to obviate the difficulty, that if the efficacy of the sacrament were made to depend on the intention of the minister in every sense, no one, however devout, could be sure of receiving sacramental grace.

      Such was, on the doctrine of the Sacraments, the elaborate structure which had gradually grown up, attaining under the great schoolmen its full proportions and symmetry: Augustine laid the foundations, his successors carried it on, and the Aristotelian philosophy was applied by T. Aquinas with boundless ingenuity and great dialectical power to complete the edifice.  The sacramental theories of the middle ages, sacerdotal throughout, fell in naturally with the hierarchical tendencies then coming to a head.  Not, however, without opposition from various quarters.  To say nothing of Berengar of Tours and Ratramnus, some of the earlier schoolmen endeavoured to rescue the symbolism of the Sacraments, or, at least, to purge the popular system from its worst excrescences.  Even at the Council of Trent great differences prevailed between the leading schools of thought on this subject; and particularly on two points, the inherent causative power of the Sacraments (continent gratiam), and the intention of the minister, the Dominicans and Franciscans took opposite sides.  Ambrose Catharinus, a leading theologian present, forcibly pointed out the inconveniences that might arise from an undue pressing of the doctrine of intention, nor did he conceal his opinions even after the decree of the Council on the subject had assumed its present shape. [Sarpi, L. ii., § 66.]  The majority, however, favoured the Dominicans, and the Canons of the Council prove how exactly they were framed after the decisions of the schools.  “Since,” the Council says (Sess. vii.), “it is through the Sacrament that true justifying righteousness commences, or is increased, or, if lost, is restored; it is important, especially since various heresies on the subject are prevalent, to lay down the following Canons: ‘If anyone shall affirm that the Sacraments of the new law do not contain the grace which they signify; or do not confer this grace on those who interpose no bar, [The bar, or obex, is mortal sin; if this be absent, the bonus motus of the recipient is immaterial.] as if they were merely signs of grace or justification already received, let him be anathema.’ (vi.).  ‘If anyone shall affirm that grace is not conferred by the Sacraments ex opere operato, but that faith in the divine promise suffices to obtain grace, let him,’ etc. (viii.).  ‘If anyone shall affirm that in the three Sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation, and Orders, there is not a character impressed on the soul which is indelible, let him,’ etc. (ix.). ‘If anyone shall say that in celebrating the Sacrament an intention is not required of doing at least what the Church does, let him,’ etc.” [Conc. Trid., Sess. vii.] (xi.).  Thus the floating theories of individual writers, or schools of writers, were transformed into articles of faith, and the Sacraments of the Gospel, which were designed to be bonds of union among Christians, became the occasion of a rupture apparently irreconcilable.

      Next to the doctrine of justification by faith, or rather as a consequence of it, that of the sacraments could not fail to claim the attention of the Reformers.  Yet it was only by degrees that they freed themselves from the yoke of ecclesiastical tradition, and arrived at the conclusions which appear in the Protestant Confessions, particularly those of the reformed type.  The Augsburg Confession merely lays it down “that the sacraments were instituted not only to be notes of profession amongst men, but also to be signs and testimonies of the will of God towards us, for the purpose of stimulating and strengthening faith.  To the right use of the sacraments that faith which accepts the promises is necessary.  We condemn those who teach that the sacraments justify ex opere operato, and who do not teach that faith in the remission of sin is necessary.” [Conf. Augs., § 83.]  The Apology of the Confession (Melanchthon) adds that, “As regards the number of the sacraments we do not attach much importance to it, especially since the ancients differ on this point.  If we define sacraments to be rites appointed by God, and with a promise of grace attached, three such are found in Scripture, Baptism, the Supper of the Lord, and Absolution.  We condemn the whole tribe of the schoolmen who teach that the sacraments are vehicles of grace ex opere operato, sine bono motu utentis, to those who interpose no bar to their operation.” [C. vii.]  Here the doctrine of the opus operatum is condemned, but the number of the sacraments is not yet defined.  In the articles of Smalcald and the two catechisms (minor and major) composed by Luther, the sacraments in general are not treated of, and baptism and the Eucharist but briefly; and not without reason, for, in truth, Luther’s own opinions on the subject had varied from time to time.  It is seldom that a reaction against prevalent errors recognizes the particle of truth which they may contain, and the early history of the Reformation presents no exception to this remark, nor was the temperament of its leader likely in all cases to recommend moderation of statement.  The revival of the doctrine of justification by faith, Luther’s great work, was naturally accompanied by a protest against the scholastic doctrine of the infusion of justifying grace in and by the sacraments, with its kindred tenets, the opus operatum and the powers of the priesthood.  The symbolical nature of the sacraments, which had been well nigh lost sight of for many ages, came to the front, and in insisting on this vital point, Luther and Melanchthon, to say nothing of the Swiss Reformers, at first lay under the temptation to consider these ordinances rather as signs and pledges of the remission of sin than as channels of grace.  But Luther’s controversy with Carlstadt and Zwingli, which at one time threatened to produce a rupture between the Saxon and the Swiss Protestant Churches, resulted in his modifying his earlier views, so far at least as regards the connection of the elements (sacramentum) with the grace conveyed (res sacramenti): he retraced his steps in the direction of the system in which he had been nurtured on the subject of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist; and finally enunciated a doctrine on the identity of the sign and the thing signified, to distinguish which from that of transubstantiation as taught by the Church of Rome, requires some dexterity. [Confitemur quod in coena Domini corpus et sanguis Christi vere et substantialiter sint praesentia et quod una cum pane et vino distribuantur atque sumantur.  Form. Concord., c. vii., B. i.]

      The doctrine of the Swiss reformers on the sacraments passed through a similar process of development, though it stopped short of the Lutheran in sundry material points.  Zwingli’s conception of the sacraments is that of their being signs of Christian profession, certifying to the Church that the recipient is a believer; commemorative of a past redemption, but not channels of present grace. [“Sunt sacramenta signa vel ceremoniae quibus se homo probat aut candidatum aut militem esse Christi; redduntque ecclesiam totam potius certiorem de tua fide quam te.”  De ver. et fals. rel.  Occasionally, however, he speaks otherwise.  See Möhler, Symb., § 31.  Also see infra p. 523.]  But this exclusively symbolical view was not adopted by the Helvetic confessions.  In the first of them, 1553, with which the others substantially agree, sacraments are described as “mystical symbols, consisting of the Divine word (of promise), the signs, and the things signified; by which God preserves in His Church the remembrance of Gospel blessings, and from time to time renews them; by which also He seals His promises, and so strengthens and increases our faith.” [Comp. the following confessions: Vanitatem eorum qui affirmant sacramenta nil aliud esse quam mera et nuda signa esse omnino damnamus.  Conf. Scot., A. xxi.  Sunt sacramenta symbola et sigilla visibilia rei internae et invisibilis, per quae ceu media Deus virtute S. sancti in nobis operatur.  Conf. Belg., § xxxiii.  Sacramenta sunt sacra et in oculos incurrentia signa et sigilla, ob eam causam a Deo instituta, ut per ea nobis promissionem Evangelii magis declaret et obsignet; quod scilicet non universis tantum verum etiam singulis credentibus gratis donet remissionem peccatorum.  Cat. Heidelb., § lxv.]  Calvin himself, whose position was that of a mediator between the earlier Swiss teaching as represented by Zwingli and AEcolampadius and the Lutheran, adds little of any moment to these statements, except in one point.  A sacrament he defines to be “an external symbol, by which God seals the promises of His goodwill towards us, in order to strengthen the weakness of our faith; and we, in turn, testify before Him, the angels, and men, our devotion to His service.” [Inst., L. iv., c. 14.]  The point which he more prominently brings forward is the independence of the thing signified of the sign: “Augustine’s distinction between the sacramentum and the res sacramenti not only implies that figure and reality there meet together, but that they are not so connected as to be inseparable.  Hence that thou mayest receive not an empty sign but the thing signified with it, the Word which is therein included thou must receive by faith.  Thus in proportion to thy communion with Christ will be the benefit which thou wilt receive with the sacraments.” [Inst., L. iv., c. 14, s. 15.]  Whatever minor differences exist between the Reformed and the Lutheran churches, all Protestants agree in holding that the sacraments are not only symbols (signa), but seals (sigilla), or pledges (pignora), of what they symbolize.  And thus we may the better understand the definition of our Church (which is of the Reformed, not of the Lutheran, family): “Sacraments are not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God’s goodwill towards us; by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken but also confirm and strengthen our faith in Him ... the promises of forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God are visibly signed and sealed” (AA. 25–7).

 

§ 88.  Number of the Sacraments

      Melanchthon, in the passage already quoted, dismisses this question as of little importance, on the ground that the ancients differed on it.  The ancients used the term sacrament in a looser sense than afterwards prevailed, but they did not define the number.  This omission, like others, was supplied by the schoolmen.  T. Aquinas lays it down that the sacraments are seven in number, viz., Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Orders, and Matrimony. [Sum. Theol., P. iii., Q. lxv.]  He is followed by the Council of Trent, which, under an anathema, pronounces them to be neither more nor less than seven.  The same Canon ascribes them all, to the institution of Christ Himself. [Si quis dixerit sacramenta nova legis non fuisse omnia a Jesu Christo instituta; aut esse plura vel pauciora quam septem ... anathema sit.  Sess. vii., Can. 1.]  There is no doubt that both baptism and the Lord’s Supper answer to this description, but as regards the other five, the evidence fails.  Confirmation appeals to no higher sanction than the fact that the Apostles were accustomed to lay hands on persons recently baptized, that they might receive the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost [Acts 8:17.  That the spiritual gift here mentioned was an extraordinary one appears from verses 18, 19, and c. 10:44–46.  Simon can hardly be supposed desirous of purchasing the ordinary gifts of confirming and strengthening; the power of miraculous gifts (such as healing) he might have turned to profitable account.]; ordination, as practiced by the Apostles, can plead no institution by Christ; nor can penance, nor extreme unction, still less matrimony.  If it be urged that, at any rate, these latter are apostolic, and so far may be referred to Christ; even in this modified sense two only fulfill the definition, viz., confirmation and ordination.  For though an Apostle recommends anointing the sick with oil (Jas. 5:14), this was not as a sacramental ordinance cleansing the departing soul from venial sins here contracted, but with a view to the patient’s recovery; and on his recovery penance would be, according to the Church of Rome, the appropriate rite to obtain forgiveness of sin.  The penitential institute itself, consisting of contrition, confession, and satisfaction on the part of the penitent, and absolution by the priest, is not of apostolic appointment, much less of Christ’s.  The only passage which Bellarmine can allege in favour of his position, is that in which Christ is said to have breathed on the disciples, authorizing them to remit and retain sins (John 20:22, 23), but the parallel passage in S. Luke’s Gospel proves that the commission was not given to the Apostles alone, but to the disciples assembled.  “On the first day of the week at evening, the eleven being gathered together and them that were with them,” Jesus appeared and said unto them, “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:33, 36).  Whatever, then, the meaning of the commission may be, it is plain that it contains no power of absolution confined to a priestly caste: it is the whole Church that was addressed.  All that can be traced – distinctly traced – to Christ is the power of discipline, conferred on the whole congregation (Matt. 18:18); the ministry of the word which proclaims forgiveness of sin on repentance and faith, and retention of it on persistent impenitence; and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in His manifold gifts, for the exercise of these functions.  But no rite of ordination, of a sacramental character, can claim Christ as its author.  As regards matrimony – an institution which dates from creation can be a sacrament neither of the law nor of the Gospel.  It probably never would have been regarded as such but for the use of the word sacramentum by the old Latin Version and the Vulgate as a translation of the Greek word μυστήριον; which, however, never signifies an ordinance but a doctrine or interpretation before hidden but now revealed.  Thus S. Paul speaks of “the mystery of Christ which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, but is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit,” viz., the extension of Gospel blessings to the Gentiles (Ephes. 3:4–6); Christian ministers are described as “stewards of the mysteries of God “ (1 Cor. 4:1), and the context proves that the Apostle is speaking not of sacraments but of the preaching of the Word.  “Great,” he affirms in another place, “is the mystery of godliness”; but the mystery consisted in the facts of the Incarnation and Ascension, as expounded by him in their various relations (1 Tim. 3:16).  In the instance before us the “great mystery” of Ephes. 5:32 is to be understood, not as a sacrament, but as a hidden truth which was now first brought to light, viz., that the marriage tie was intended to be a symbol of the union betwixt Christ and His Church.

      It thus appears that three of the so-called sacraments of the Church of Rome, Penance, Extreme Unction, and Matrimony, cannot lay claim even to apostolic precedent; but supposing they could do so, we may still ask whether Apostolic appointments can be placed on a level with those of Christ Himself.  That the general promise that the Apostles should be led by the Holy Ghost into the whole truth (John 16:13) includes their regulations as well as their teaching may with some limitations be admitted; and, indeed, in one instance this is claimed by them (Acts 15:28); but we do not find this claim advanced beyond matters of polity, or questions affecting the discipline of the Church, or decisions on important practical points, such as the obligation of the Mosaic law on Gentile converts.  Apostolic decisions or appointments of this kind are not lightly to be set aside; we are sure that they were the best for the time being, and the burden of proving that they are no longer necessary rests on those who would abrogate or alter them; and in fact the greater part of them do remain to this day acknowledged by Christians.  That is, they are relatively binding; but when it is affirmed that they are absolutely binding, we appeal to the practice of the Church itself in disproof.  Several undoubted apostolic appointments have been allowed to fall into abeyance; as, for example, the prohibition of eating “things strangled” or “blood” which at the time was expedient, the anointing of the sick with oil, the kiss of charity, the love feasts of the Apostolic Church, and the washing of the saints’ feet after the example of Christ (1 Tim. 5:10).  If every apostolical ordinance is to be held of Divine institution, it would seem that Christian Churches, our own included, have erred gravely in abandoning those just mentioned.  But the Church has judged rightly in declining to place them in the same category with the positive institutions of Christ Himself, such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper; partly because the latter do proceed directly from Christ, and partly because, in fact, they symbolize and seal the fundamental verities of the Gospel, the atonement of the Cross, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit.  And the subsequent additions of ritual, such as in baptism exorcism, exsufflation, milk and honey; in confirmation, anointing with oil, and the sign of the cross; bear the same relation to the apostolical precedents as the latter do to the appointments of Christ.  They may, or may not, have been devised in an apostolical spirit; but, in any case, they are merely ecclesiastical additions, and have no claim to rank even with the apostolical appointments.  Christian polity and ritual are elastic as compared with those of the Mosaic economy; and the Church is not debarred from expanding or modifying her outward forms according to circumstances, provided always that such changes are apostolical in spirit.  But they must not be invested with an authority which they do not possess.  And the peculiar danger to which Catholicism, in its various forms, is liable lies in this point.  Instead of justifying itself on grounds of order, adaptation to circumstances, legitimate, if human, developments of the primitive arrangements, it has always been tempted to allege some secret tradition handed down by the Apostles; or to assume that Christ’s discourses during the great forty days must have been occupied with such matters; or to appeal, in support of its claims, to spurious literature, such as the Apostolic constitutions.  A frail foundation, and as needless as it is frail ; for all such developments, if legitimate, can appeal to the Scriptural principle that “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.”

      A second alleged note of a sacrament is, that it is an instrument whereby justifying grace is infused into the recipient.  With four of the seven, Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, and Extreme Unction, such grace may conceivably be connected, but, surely, not with orders and matrimony.  The sacrament of orders, besides the impressed character, is said to confer grace; but grace of what kind?  Not either justifying or sanctifying grace (which according to the doctrine of Rome are one), but a mystical grace of priesthood for the valid performance of holy functions.  This grace contains nothing moral in it; for the most immoral priest may possess it equally with the most holy; it is a grace not gratum faciens but gratis data.  This note, therefore, does not belong to orders.  No more does it to matrimony.  This natural union is indeed elevated to a special dignity by its being chosen as a figure of union with Christ, and, like all natural relations, needs grace for the due discharge of its duties; but how can a special sacramental grace, and especially of a justifying nature, be ascribed to it?  The only Scriptural proof which the Council alleges is Ephes. 5:23, on which sufficient has been already said.  Indeed, since the sacramental character of matrimony resides in its indissolubility, it is plain that actual holiness is not necessary to confer this character on it.

      From another point of view the same conclusions follow.  By the schoolmen each sacrament is held to consist of two parts, matter and form.  For example, the matter in baptism is water, and the form is added by the recitation of the words : “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”; in the Eucharist the matter is bread and wine, and the determining form the words of institution, “Take eat,” etc., pronounced by the priest in the act of consecration.  The whole doctrine of transubstantiation, philosophically considered, rests on this distinction, which has no actual existence, and is merely a logical abstraction.  But in the other five sacraments we can discover either no matter or no form, or neither matter nor form.  What, for example, is the matter in confirmation?  Not the laying on of hands, for that ceremony was used both by Christ and the Apostles on a variety of occasions; by Christ in blessing little children (Mark 10:16), and performing miracles (Ibid., 8:23), by the Apostles in healing the sick (Acts 28:8), in communicating the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, and in ordaining ministers.  A rite common to many spiritual acts loses its appropriation to any one of them.  The chrism, and sign of the cross, have no Scriptural warrant.  So that, to say nothing of the lack of an efficacious word impressing the “form,” no specific “matter” can be found for this alleged sacrament.  The same remarks apply to orders.  The oil in extreme unction may indeed supply the place of “matter,” but here the “form” is wanting, for nothing is mentioned by S. James in connection with the unction but prayer, and prayer differs essentially from a word endued with power.  With respect to the sacraments of penance and matrimony the difficulty is still greater.  What can be the matter and form of penance?  It has confessedly no symbol like the water in baptism, and the schoolmen were sore put to it to discover a matter of another kind.  A distinction was drawn between those sacraments which convey some positive grace, and those which merely remove post-baptismal sin and its effects; in the former an external matter is necessary, in the latter the acts of the penitent himself (contrition, confession, satisfaction) constitute the matter.  If it be objected that baptism itself comes under the latter class, the reply is that baptism confers not only a plenary remission of sin, but the gift of regeneration.  By some writers the sins of the penitent, as the lignum or material for the consuming fire of the sacrament, were held to be the matter; but the other opinion was the more common one.  As regards the “form,” it consists in the words of absolution, absolvo te.  It is needless to observe that no institution by Christ, or precedent by the Apostles, could be pretended in this case.  That of matrimony was still more perplexing.  Neither matter nor form, in any proper sense of the words, could be found here.  T. Aquinas makes the consent of the parties the matter, and the words expressing this consent the form; while others consider the persons of the contracting parties the matter, and the words the form.  Both the Council of Trent and the Catechism observe a prudent silence on this point.  Bellarmine’s opinion, founded on a distinction between the sacrament as it becomes a sacrament, and the same sacrament afterwards, is that, under the former aspect, the words of consent are both matter and form, under the latter the persons are the matter, since their continued union is a symbol of that betwixt Christ and the Church.  Recourse was finally had to the mystical import of the number seven, and to analogies from nature.  There are seven sins, or forms of sin, for each of which a particular remedy is needed; seven cardinal virtues; seven gifts of the Spirit.  The blood of the red heifer was to be sprinkled seven times (Numb. 19:4); Naaman was told to wash in Jordan seven times.  The correspondence between the natural and the spiritual life, as expounded by T. Aquinas, seems a favourite argument with Romish writers, from Bellarmine to Möhler. [De Sac., L. ii., c. 26.  Symbolik, § 30.]  In the natural life, Thomas observes, a person may be considered either as an individual or as a member of a community; and further, his progress towards perfection may be either positive or negative, either by natural growth, or by the removing of impediments thereto.  We thus arrive at seven principal functions or epochs in the natural life.  By birth we come into active existence, and to this the new birth by baptism corresponds.  Strength to labour and repel enemies comes with growth; the counterpart of this is confirmation.  For growth we need nourishment; the Eucharist furnishes the nourishment of the soul.  We are liable to bodily infirmities, sickness, etc., which demand the aid of the physician; the sacrament of penance is for the healing of the soul that has sinned.  We need proper diet for a complete restoration to health; in spiritual things extreme unction discharges this office.  We are members of a community, which involves the exercise of authority and the discharge of public duties, with corresponding ability; the sacrament of orders qualifies for similar spiritual functions.  By such membership the race is propagated; the sacrament of matrimony confers grace for the conjugal relation, and the due training of children, if any.  So runs the parallel; but it is far from being satisfactory.  Confirmation, it is said, confers spiritual strength, the Eucharist spiritual nourishment; but nourishment and strength are so intimately connected with, and dependent on, each other, that they can hardly need two distinct sacraments to produce the effect.  The Eucharist presupposes repentance for sin and seals to the penitent the promises of forgiveness; a special sacrament of penance seems superfluous.  Confirmation, or some ordinance resembling it, has a necessary place in every church which practices infant baptism; the immaturity of the subject rendering it expedient that, before being admitted to the Holy Communion, he should give a public assurance to the Church of his intention to ratify the vows made for him in his baptism.  But this does not constitute it a distinct sacrament.  Men, as members of a State, need to be governed; but since the sacrament of orders applies only to the clergy, the civil magistrate receives no benefit from it.  The duties of the matrimonial state need only the aid of common grace; and further, only those who enter that state receive the sacrament.  But the sacraments of Christ are intended for all Christians.  The dying Christian needs, indeed, special consolation; but the Eucharist supplies all that is here needful.  In short, as Nitzsch observes, [Prot. Beant., Möhler’s, p. 182.] in the natural life birth admits only of one parallel, viz., growth; the child is born into the world, the babe grows into a man, these are the two essential conditions of the discharge of the various duties of life.  If there has been no birth, the functions of a human being have never been performed at all; if the life, thus begun, is not maintained by the proper means, they cease to be performed.  No subordinate differences of relation or function can be placed on a level with these essential conditions of existence, which are the same for all men, savage or civilized, governors or governed, married or single.  The analogy, therefore, from nature confirms the Protestant position, that two, and only two, Christian rites are, in the proper sense, sacraments of Christ.  Christ is the Author of sundry gifts and graces, but spiritual life and the maintenance of spiritual life lie at the foundation of their exercise and are common to all Christians, private and official.  Regeneration, and growth in grace, comprise every spiritual blessing.  It was in an unhappy moment, therefore, that the Tridentine Council transformed what had been a speculation of the schools into an article of faith, and thereby added one more to the many differences which stand in the way of a reconciliation between the Romish and the Protestant churches.  The Council and the Romish theologians claim tradition in their favour.  In point of fact, no fixed, certainly no authoritative, doctrine touching the number of the sacraments appears before the Council of Florence, A.D. 1439.  The leaders of the Reformation demanded, and rightly so, that when the question was concerning the covenanted means of grace, the seal of Christ Himself – His institution, His promise – should be produced ; and they proved that to only two out of the seven did this description apply. Indeed, if a sacred meaning is all that is necessary to constitute a sacrament, there are other observances better entitled to the name than several of those selected by the Council.  Such, for example, as prayer, the sign of the cross, almsgiving, the Holy Scripture, the kiss of charity, the washing of the saints’ feet recommended by the example of Christ Himself (John 13:5). [The washing of the disciples’ feet by Christ causes embarrassment to the Romish theologians.  It seems to possess greater claims to be a sacrament than Matrimony or Orders.  As Bellarmine observes, it has a visible sign, a promise of grace (“If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me”), a mysterious meaning (“What I do thou knowest not now,” etc.), a command (“I have given you an example,” etc.), and Patristic authority.  His attempt to reply is not very successful.  De Sac., L. ii. c. 24.]  The selection seems an arbitrary one, resting on no consistent principle.

 

§ 89.  Opus Operatum

      The Council of Trent lays great emphasis on the efficacy of the sacraments ex opere operato; it is proper, therefore, that what this doctrine means should be understood, especially since the Council, perhaps from prudential motives, furnishes no explanation of it. [In fact, there was so much discussion on the subject when discussed at Trent, that it was thought safer, while retaining the term, to leave its meaning more or less an open question.]  To suppose that it expresses nothing but what our Article does, when it declares that the “unworthiness of the minister does not hinder the effect of the sacraments” (Art. xxvi.) would leave unexplained why an anathema should be launched against those who deny it; for no Protestant Church does deny it in this sense.  Möhler expends labour in vain in attempting to prove that ex opere operato, as understood in his Church, is equivalent to saying that the efficacy of the sacraments is owing to their institution by Christ, and not to any worthiness of the minister or meritorious cooperation on the part of the receiver. [Symb., § 28.]  Every Protestant Confession teaches that it is Christ’s institution, Christ’s word of promise, Christ’s Spirit, that are the efficient causes of whatever grace the sacraments confer.  The real meaning of the term is to be sought in the distinction which the later schoolmen, and after them the Romish theologians, make between the sacraments of the old law (Circumcision and the Passover being assumed to be sacraments) and those of the new.  The latter are said to be superior to the former, in that they confer grace ex opere operato, while the others conferred it ex opere operante, or rather, operantis; that is to say, to the efficacy of the Jewish sacraments a right disposition on the part of the receiver was necessary, and in proportion to his piety was the blessing received; but the Christian sacraments produce their effect irrespectively of the spiritual state of the receiver, by virtue of the opus operatum, [Another sense of opus operatum is found in the schoolmen, viz., the official power of the priest in the mass, as distinguished from the benefits which the pious priest may obtain for communicants by his prayers, etc.; which latter may be called opus operantis.  But this is a secondary sense and does not need further notice.] the mere act of receiving, provided only that no impediment (obex) of mortal sin is present.  No positive preparation of repentance and faith (in the Protestant sense of faith) is required; only the negative one of the absence of the bar.  It must be remembered that by mortal sin is meant gross delinquency, either existing or intended, as, e.g., either living in adultery or an intention to do so. [Peccatum quod secundum se repugnat dilectioni mortale est ex genere; sive sit contra dilectionem Dei, sicut blasphemia, perjurium, et hujus modi; sive contra dilectionem proximi, sicut homicidium, adulterium, et similia.  T. Aqu., P. Sec., Q. lxxxviii., A. 2.]  That this is the true meaning is plain from the explanation of Gabriel Biel, the last of the great schoolmen.  “Sacraments,” he says, “are said to confer grace ex opere operante (operantis) when it is in the way of merit, that is, when the outward reception does not of itself benefit, but over and above this there is required in the receiver an inward good disposition, in proportion to which, after the manner of merit of condignity or congruity is the grace given; to such grace nothing is added by the outward rite.  But ex opere operato means that by the very act of receiving, grace is conferred, unless mortal sin stands in the way; that beyond the outward participation no inward preparation of the heart (bonus motus) is necessary.” [L. iv., Sent. dist., i, 93.  Quoted by J. Gerhard, Loc. xix., c. 7, § 86.]  It is true that, to conceal the obvious inconsistency of this doctrine with Scripture, it was added that, by the sacrament itself, an inward qualification is infused, viz., fides formata (faith actuated by love); [In sacramentis novae legis non per se requiritur quod homo se disponat, ergo per ipsum sacramentum disponitur.  Peter de Palude.  Ibid.  It will be observed that here two questions are confounded: (1) Does man dispose himself ? – to assert which would be Pelagian; (2) Does the sacrament confer the disposition, the latter being supposed not to exist antecedently to reception?] but the point at issue is, What is the antecedent condition of sacramental efficacy? or, Is there any condition beyond the absence of mortal sin? and the answer is in the negative.  Nor is its unscriptural character disproved by Bellarmine’s rejoinder to the Protestant objection, that faith as a condition of beneficial reception is, on the Romish theory, dispensed with; viz., that the Council does make faith a qualification; for the faith meant by it is not the apprehensive faith of Protestantism, laying hold directly, under conviction of sin, on the promise of forgiveness through Christ, but a passive reception of the dogmas of the Church.  The Romish doctrine of the opus operatum rests on the notion that the sacraments contain in themselves a physical virtue to heal the maladies of our nature as the medicines of the physician possess a power to heal those of the body; an apprehensive faith being as little needed in the one case as in the other.  The sacraments thus become, not signs of spiritual life already existing or means of spiritual growth, but, by an inherent virtue, the instruments of implanting that life.

 

§ 90.  Intention of the Minister

      If the sacraments produce their effect ex opere operato, as above explained in general, no bonus motus on the part of the recipient, in private masses no recipient at all, in infant baptism no conscious one, being required – it is difficult to understand what can remain but a mere rite, destitute of any value in a spiritual point of view, or with no higher significance than the christening of a bell or other inanimate object.  To obviate as far as might be this objection, the doctrine of the intention of the minister was devised.  The fathers of the Council found themselves, in fact, in a difficulty.  That the moral unworthiness of the priest or minister does not hinder the efficacy of the sacraments was admitted on all sides, Protestant as well as Romish: now, if in addition the sacraments work ex opere operato, they seem in the celebration to be destitute of any vivifying principle raising them above mechanical acts of ritual.  And this in a religion the main characteristic of which is that it is a religion “of spirit and of truth” (John 4:23).  The Protestant escapes the difficulty by transferring the validity of the sacraments from the minister, whether worthy or unworthy, to the recipient; whose faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, is the condition of beneficial reception, and that which communicates life and meaning to the outward act.  Questions touching the worthiness of the minister are thus dispensed with.  But from this mode of explanation the Romanist is shut out by his doctrine of the opus operatum.  Nothing remained for the Council, in order to secure to some extent the spiritual nature of the sacraments, but to attach to the priest an inward qualification, however inferior in nature to a believing reception; he must, at least intend to do what the Church intends.  Thus he became not only, by virtue of the impressed character, the indispensable consecrator of the Eucharist, but the depositary also of whatever preparation of the heart was still supposed necessary.  The intention of the priest stands for the repentance and faith of the communicants.  It is to the credit of Bellarmine, and some of his successors, that they endeavoured to soften down the scholastic doctrine of the opus operatum, and to present it in a more Scriptural form; but whether in so doing they have delineated it in its real spirit may be a question.

 

§ 91.  Effect of the Sacraments

      It has been a point of controversy whether the sacraments convey a special grace, different in kind from ordinary, and which, as a rule, cannot be obtained except through the sacraments.  The question must be narrowed by setting aside what is admitted by all Christians.  All agree that the sacraments are visible signs of church membership; not until a catechumen is baptized is he a member of the Church, and not until he receives the Holy Communion is he a full member thereof.  That they symbolize the two leading truths of the Gospel, regeneration by the Holy Spirit and the life of faith in the atonement, is beyond doubt.  And, further, that they make over to individuals the Spiritual blessings which the Word proposes generally is not disputed.  But the question remains whether a special inward grace is attached to each sacrament, a grace sui generis.  By the schoolmen two effects of this kind are alleged; sacramental grace, and the impressed character; the former belonging to all the seven sacraments, the latter to three only.  Some remarks have been already made on the impressed character (§ 89); to which the following may be added.  It is evident that it is not the same with sacramental grace, since only three sacraments convey it.  The character is defined as “an emanation from the priesthood of Christ, by virtue of which the faithful are qualified for certain acts of Divine service (cultus, etc.), and are distinguished from others upon whom it is not impressed.”  It is of the nature of an internal sacrament.  For example, in baptism the water is the outward sign (sacramentum), and the stamp on the soul (in part) the inward effect (res sacramenti); but although this effect is not justifying grace, but of a neutral character, existing equally in the faithful receiver and in the insincere (fictus), yet it is itself a kind of sacrament, that is, an inward sign of qualification for the discharge of certain ecclesiastical acts.  Justification (infused) is the grace, or res, of the whole sacrament, of water and the impressed character together.  The character is indelible, and this is the ground on which it is maintained that baptism cannot be repeated; whereas the true order of things is that since baptism, as corresponding to natural birth, cannot be repeated, therefore the character is indelible.  The sacramental grace is a different thing: it is an effect of all the sacraments, which are said to “contain” it, that is, to convey it ex opere operato.  But, equally with the impressed character, it is morally neutral in nature, that is, it is not, nor is it a pledge, of, sanctifying grace.  The reasoning of T. Aquinas plainly proceeds on this supposition.  He supposes a person to possess ordinary sanctifying grace, and, moreover, various gifts of grace; and (such is his argument) since these may be present antecedently to the sacrament, if the latter conferred no special grace, it might be dispensed with altogether.  Sacramental grace then, is something different in kind from ordinary; a grace which, in the regular course of things comes only through the sacrament; a grace which, since it is expressly distinguished from gratia gratum faciens, is morally indifferent.  What, then, is it?  Obviously no easy question to answer; which may be the reason why neither the Council nor its Catechism alludes to the subject.  T. Aquinas lays it down that grace considered in itself affects the essence of the soul; considered as gifts and virtues, it directs the powers of the soul to their proper objects; and considered as sacramental grace, it crowns the whole with something peculiar to itself, so that it stands to gifts and virtues in the same relation as these do to grace secundum se.  But what the “something” is; what the special effect is of which sacramental grace is the cause; he does not explain.

      The Protestant churches reject not only five of the seven Romish sacraments, but the whole doctrine of the impressed character.  Möhler, the most adroit champion of his church in modern times, passes over the subject sicco pede.  No trace of it can be found in Scripture.  Bellarmine endeavours to account for this by remarking, that since the knowledge of grace is more important than the knowledge of the impressed character, it is no wonder that Scripture is comparatively silent on the latter topic.  In fact, he can find only three passages which seem to bear upon it.  S. Paul tells the Corinthians that God had “sealed them, and given the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts” (2 Cor. 1:22); and he uses the same figure in Ephes. 1:13, and 4:30.  It is needless to observe that by the sealing or the earnest of the Spirit is meant, not a sacramental effect, but, what the same Apostle elsewhere describes as the witness of the Spirit, that we are the children of God, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15, 16), [If, indeed, the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, communicated by the  laying on of the Apostles’ hands, be not rather meant.  “In whom, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy spirit of promise” (Ephes. 1:13.  Comp. Acts 10:45).] and which is never possessed apart from sanctifying grace.  “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption”; this surely implies something different from a stamp on the soul, of which the subject is unconscious, and which has no necessary connection with moral renovation.

      As regards sacramental grace, it is not easy to form a clear notion of it.  An esteemed writer of our Church, in a work on baptism, devotes several chapters to prove that in Scripture, in the Fathers, and in the schoolmen; to say nothing of the divines of the Reformation; regeneration implies actual and not merely potential goodness; a state as well as a relation; one of real, however imperfect, holiness. [Mozley, Bapt. Cont., chaps. v. xi.]  Nothing can be more cogent than his reasoning, more decisive than the authorities on which he relies.  Regeneration, in its Scriptural sense, is the union of conversion and justification; and is inconsistent with the dominion of sin in the heart or life.  But the same writer speaks of regeneration as “the grace of baptism” (chap. iii.), as “the res sacramenti of baptism” (chap. iv.), as “unquestionably the grace of baptism” (note 8).  Does he, then, mean that the actual goodness which he had just proved regeneration to involve is by baptism infused into the baptized person, who was previously destitute of it?  But surely the repentance and faith which are the necessary conditions of an adult baptism, the normal one of Scripture, are also the essential elements of moral regeneration, regeneration as a state of actual goodness; and since they exist antecedently to baptism, they cannot be the special grace of it. [Here and in other parts of this section Litton is hardly fair to Mozley or consistent with himself; for in reality he agrees with Mozley.  To say that Regeneration is the grace of Baptism is not inconsistent with its existing antecedently to Baptism, as is evident from Acts 10:44–48 and from the Office of Adult Baptism.  The full meaning of Baptism is Regeneration, but this does not imply that Regeneration invariably results from Baptism. – Ed.]  Thus, the writer, to be consistent with himself, can only understand by “the grace of baptism” a mystical grace, indefinable except as a something superadded to ordinary grace, which, as we have seen, is the description that T. Aquinas gives of it.  No such notion appears in our Article on baptism.  By this sacrament they who receive it rightly “are grafted into the Church the promises of forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God are visibly signed and sealed; faith is confirmed, and grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God”; but no mention is made of a special grace conveyed by it.  That existing faith is confirmed, and existing grace increased, is a different mode of expression from saying that a new and peculiar grace is the effect of the sacrament.  Nor does Scripture give countenance to the notion.  In fact, the Holy Ghost, the Author and Giver of all spiritual grace, is seldom mentioned in direct connection with either baptism or the Lord’s Supper.  That the worthy reception of these sacraments, depends upon a preliminary work of the Holy Spirit, and is accompanied with further measures of His grace, is unquestionable; but wherever a distinct gift is mentioned, it is in connection with the laying on of the Apostles’ hands.  “Repent,” says Peter, “and be baptized, and” (afterwards) “ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38).  Of the disciples of Samaria it is said that “the Holy Ghost was not yet fallen upon them; only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Ibid., 8:16).  Although in John 3:5 it is said that a man must he born both of water and the Spirit, it is not said that the latter is the invariable accompaniment or consequence of the former. [No inference to the contrary is to be drawn from the absence of the article (εξ ύδατος και Πνεύματος).  See Westcott in loc.  ύδατος could not admit an article (comp. John 1:26, 33), and therefore Πνεύματος is without one.  In ver. 6 Πνεύματος has the article because it stands alone.]  As regards the Eucharist, neither do the words of institution, nor any subsequent allusion to this sacrament, mention a special spiritual gift or grace of the Holy Ghost, as connected with it.  “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?” Cor. 10:16); however these words may be interpreted, they are not applicable to a gift of grace, to which physical conceptions are foreign.  Let it be repeated that the question before us is not whether a spiritual blessing may not be expected from a devout reception of the sacraments; who denies this?  We may rest assured that any ordinances of which Christ directly is the Author must be channels of grace.  We must fear that they who from prejudice, or worse motives, neglect these appointed means of grace, deprive themselves, to what extent we know not, of what Christ intended for them.  The present question is a very limited one; whether some undefined grace, different in kind from ordinary, is or is not attached to the sacraments?

 

§ 92.  Circumcision and the Passover

      The Council of Trent pronounces an anathema on those who hold that the sacraments of “the new law,” or the Gospel, differ from those of the old, only in respect of the external rite; or, to put it otherwise, who deny that a difference exists in the mode of their operation.  This difference, according to the Council, is, that the former produce their effect ex opere operato, the only condition being the absence of mortal sin, while the latter work ex opere operantis, in proportion to the faith and devotion of the receiver. [Sess. vii., Can 2.]  The anathema is directed against the Protestant theologians, who, for the most part, place circumcision and the Passover on a level with baptism and the Eucharist, both as regards the inward qualifications required, and the spiritual blessings attached; differing only in the visible signs, and in the object to which they refer, in the case of the former a promised Saviour, in that of the latter a Saviour actually come.  That each covenant had its sacraments, in the strict sense of the word, is on either side assumed.  And by Protestants circumcision and the Passover are held to be sacraments because they belonged to a dispensation, and were not merely occasional tokens such as the fleece of Gideon, or the sundial of Ahaz; and, further, to a remedial dispensation, having a reference, though under the form of type and prophecy, to the future salvation of Christ.  The correspondence, indeed, of these legal appointments to the Christian sacraments is obvious; of circumcision to baptism as being an initiatory rite introducing to the privileges of the Mosaic covenant, as baptism is the door into the Church visible; of the Passover to the Lord’s Supper, as being a perpetual commemoration of redemption from Egyptian bondage, as the Lord’s Supper is a perpetual commemoration of redemption from spiritual bondage.  The law, therefore, had its sacraments and yet they may differ from those of the Gospel, as the legal dispensation itself differs from the Christian.

      The distinction, indeed, which the Council of Trent draws between the inward qualification in either case required (ex opere operantis and ex opere operato) is not tenable.  Circumcision as the sign of the covenant with Abraham, previously to the giving of the law, was a token of the Divine approbation of the patriarch’s faith and obedience, exercised under difficult circumstances; the acceptance, or the counting righteous, of which it was the seal, implied no mere absence of mortal sin, but positive pious dispositions, such as operative reliance on the promise; and this is precisely the condition on which the Christian sacraments are effectual, so far as they are effectual, to salvation.  The rite was afterwards incorporated into the Mosaic law as a token of the national covenant with Jehovah, but there is no reason to suppose that its original office was thereby affected.  It still remained the sacrament of faith in the promises of God, the seal of justification by faith, and the symbol of what the Jew ought to be and what he was, so far as he was of the spiritual seed of Abraham; for “he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit” (Rom. 2:29).  And so as regards the Passover.  Appointed in Egypt, it was continued under the law, in perpetual memory of a deliverance effected by God Himself, under the shelter of blood sprinkled, and signalized by the destruction of the people’s foes.  Grateful remembrance of these mercies, a sentiment of fraternal union and love, and possibly the dim hope of a future redemption founded on better promises, formed, we may suppose, the conditions of an acceptable celebration of the feast; as they do of a worthy reception of the Eucharist.  It is one thing, however, to reject the distinctions of the schools, and another to assert the identity of the legal and the Christian sacraments.  Not to speak of the difference of outward sign, which excluded a moiety of mankind from one of the sacraments of the law, the object was not the same in either case, or only the same as type and antitype are the same; and it is going beyond what is written to describe either circumcision or the Passover as channels of grace. [Here again Litton is hypercritical.  Though the Old Testament saints had much less light and looked dimly forward to the coming Christ, yet they did look forward and did by faith receive grace from God.  Though “fragmentary and incomplete,” the revelation was real and in principle identical with the full Christian grace. – Ed.]  Yet such is the common language of divines.  According to J. Gerhard, circumcision equally with baptism had a promise of grace, of which the proof alleged is Gen. 17:7, “I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.”  The meaning, he says, of this promise is, I will forgive you your sins, receive you unto the adoption of sons, give you the Holy Spirit, raise you from the dead to eternal life.  “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head” (Gen. 3:15); “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Ibid., 22:18) – here, he continues, we have the same justifying God, the same justification, the same promise of grace, the same faith, the same righteousness, the same salvation, in Christ and through Christ, in the Old as in the New Testament; only promised in the former, exhibited in the latter.  “God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed” (Deut. 30:6) – he here finds the doctrine of regeneration, and even the fides infantum of the Lutheran Church: “as baptism is the means of regeneration and salvation, so also is circumcision.  But, ‘thy seed’ means thy infants; whence we see that not only adults but infants received by circumcision remission of original sin, and the implantation of faith.”  As regards the Passover, he quotes no passages, and for the best of reasons, because he could find none.  Assertion takes the place of proof: “The passover was not only a type of Christ, but also a confirmation of the Divine promise of a Redeemer, a guide to the spiritual feeding on Christ, and consequently a salutary sacrament, whereby the faith of the Israelites was strengthened, and the benefits of Christ applied to believers.  Therefore the sacraments of the Old Testament were efficacious means of spiritual benefits bestowed on believers.” [Loc. xix., §§ 64–69.]  Thus does this eminent theologian persuade himself, and attempt to persuade his readers, that the Gospel was revealed and understood even in the earlier times of the Jewish dispensation, and not merely that the ancient Fathers did not look only for transitory promises, which may be quite true, but that little remained for the final revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit to disclose.

      Such errors might have been avoided had he and his followers in modern times borne in mind their own correct maxim, that the Mosaic economy had for its subject a Saviour promised, while the Gospel testifies of a Saviour come.  For what does this amount to?  That during the preparatory dispensation the great Atonement was not an accomplished fact; that the Holy Ghost was not yet given as the fruit of Christ’s ascension (John 7:39); that the resurrection of the body had as yet no positive pledge.  Could it be expected that the revelation of these Gospel facts, certain, indeed, in the counsels of God, but not yet accomplished, should be otherwise than fragmentary and incomplete?  So it was, in fact.  It proceeded by gradual stages; “in many ways”; e.g., by type and prophecy (πολυτρόπως); in many partitions (πολυμέρως) as Divine wisdom thought proper to impart it (Heb. 1:1).  It grew in fullness and clearness pari passu with the approach of the actual event.  It is quite true that since the fall of man there has been no remission of sin except through Christ: He is the Lamb of God, “slain from the foundation of the world” in the Divine purpose (Rev. 13:8): this atonement was ever present to the mind of God, and availed, before it was actually made, for the justification of the ancient believers.  The glory of the cross shed its rays backwards as well as forwards.  It is also true that the Holy Spirit must have been operative wherever there were saints of God, whether patriarchs or apostles, for without His influence no true sanctification has ever existed.  But anticipation is not fulfillment, and typical or prophetical adumbrations are not explicit revelation.  The distinct offices of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity could not be clearly enunciated until the doctrine of the Trinity had been laid as a foundation: which was not the case, at least explicitly, until the advent of the Saviour.  The mistake, a natural one, of many Christian writers is that of unconsciously transferring their knowledge of the scheme of redemption to the Jews under the Mosaic law, and even to the first ages of the world.  It is forgotten that although hints of a Redeemer were vouchsafed, and directly after the fall; and the leading ideas of redemption, atonement by sacrifice, and a future gift of regeneration, were prefigured in the ceremonial law, and still more explicitly announced in prophecy; the knowledge thus imparted fell vastly short of what every catechumen in the Christian Church is expected to possess.  A greater among the ancient saints, both as regards knowledge and sanctity, had not arisen than John the Baptist; yet, on the testimony of Christ Himself, the least in the kingdom of heaven (the new dispensation) is greater than he (Matt. 11:11).  In the caskets of the law and prophecy there were hidden treasures of spiritual knowledge, but the key was wanting to open them, and the Holy Ghost alone could, and in due time did, furnish a key.  That the passages adduced by J. Gerhard are insufficient for his purpose is obvious.  “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head” – in this prophecy, the first link of the chain, some one in human nature is promised Who, at the cost of personal suffering, should destroy the power of the serpent; but who He should be, and how He should reverse the effects of the fall, is not revealed; to say nothing of the mysteries of His Person, His atonement, and His resurrection from the dead.  “I will establish My covenant with thee, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed” – to Abraham an assurance is here given that God would stand in some special relation to him and his posterity; further than this the words do not carry us.  “I will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed” – Israel, afflicted for its sins and repentant, is consoled with the promise of a more effectual Agent of renovation than the law of Moses could supply, a renovation of which circumcision was the figure; the other details are due to the pious fancy of the commentator.  “Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56); that some special revelation concerning the promised Saviour was vouchsafed to the Patriarch may be inferred from our Lord’s words, whether it were a disclosure of the typical import of the commanded sacrifice of Isaac, or given on some other occasion; but the point is that no record of it is contained in the Book of Genesis: whatever it was, it was not incorporated into the public documents of the Church; it formed no addition to the existing stock of revealed knowledge; and, in fact, the memory of it had perished until the authoritative declaration of Christ made it known.  In like manner, the inference which Christ drew from Exod. 3:6, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” that there is a resurrection from the dead, however cogent it may be, when pointed out as it was by Christ, is no proof that it was so understood by Moses, to whom the words were originally addressed; it is plain, indeed, that not even by the Jews of our Lord’s time was the truth latent in them perceived.  Thus was the scheme of salvation gradually unfolded, in separate portions, as the ages advanced towards the fulfillment of the first promise in Gen. 3:15; in which, indeed, all was implicitly contained, but not wrought out into particulars.  Nor is this any disparagement to the faith and piety of the ancient believers.  Their faith in the immediate temporal promises was the same in kind as the faith of the Christian believer which appropriates the Gospel promises; for it is not clearness of knowledge but the state of the heart that is of value in the sight of God.  As a profound writer remarks, “When it was said to Abraham, ‘I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,’ that general promise of Divine favour was the sufficient bond and motive of obligation.  The duty was perfect, though the Patriarch knew not the nature, or the manner, of the retribution secured to him.”  But more than this; the Jew was not left without intimations that might well lead a reflective mind beyond Canaan, and the law under which he was placed.  “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” – if Philo and his school had pondered more deeply the import of this promise, they would never have supposed that it could be fulfilled by the submission of all nations to the law of Moses.  To what purpose, the pious Jew might ask, was this complicated system of sacrifice and purification established?  It must surely point to something beyond itself.  In a word, the surmises and hopes of the ancient believer were, far from being discouraged, stimulated by the law and prophecy combined.  Still, they remained, for the most part, surmises and hopes.

      To apply these remarks to the subject before us – circumcision was the sacrament of Abraham’s faith, but we cannot say that the object of his faith was explicitly Christ; nor does S. Paul say so when using the passage in Genesis to illustrate his argument on justification.  Herein it differs from Christian baptism.  The same remark applies to the Passover.  That the pious Jew in celebrating it had Christ and His atonement before his mind as distinctly as the Christian has in the Eucharist, is not told us in Scripture.  Neither is it declared that either circumcision or the Passover were channels of grace; further than that all acts of obedience to the Divine command must be supposed to bring a blessing with them.  The grace of the Holy Spirit was not a purchased and covenanted gift of the Jewish dispensation.  On still less evidence does the opinion, sometimes advanced, rest, that the sacraments of the law were types of the Christian.  Scripture does not warrant the assertion. [Here again Litton pushes his point to a wrong extreme.  It may possibly be right to say that the Old Testament rites are not positively types of Christian sacraments.  But he wrongly depreciates their correspondence which he cannot help admitting. – Ed.]  Circumcision and baptism correspond as initiatory rites; but that the former is related to the latter as type to antitype, or that baptism has taken the place of circumcision, we are not told. Col. 2:11, 12, the passage usually quoted to prove that baptism is Christian circumcision, hardly bears out the conclusion.  “You are circumcised,” the Apostle says, “with the circumcision made without hands”; that is, with an inward, spiritual circumcision, of which the Jewish rite was a figure; “in putting off,” he continues, “the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ,” by the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit.  In proof of this, and not as drawing a parallel between the two ordinances, he reminds his readers, as he does in Rom. 6, of the import of their baptism, a dying unto sin and a rising again to a new life.  Baptism is a manual act, though not of the same kind as circumcision, and could hardly be described as “a circumcision made without hands.”

 

§ 93.  Baptism

      After His resurrection, and immediately before His ascension, our Lord instituted the initiatory sacrament of the Church, in the command given to the eleven Apostles to make disciples from all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and when thus incorporated into visible Christian societies, teaching them to observe whatever He had commanded (Matt. 28:19, 20).  The order then was this; by the preaching of the Word men were to be brought to repentance and the acknowledgment of Jesus as the promised Saviour, just as Christ had gathered to Himself out of the Jewish people a company of disciples (παθηταί), before either the Christian Church or sacraments existed; the converts thus made were to receive Christian baptism, and then to be placed under the ministry of the same Word, but not only as it proclaims the Gospel, but as it explains the mysteries, privileges, and duties of the new covenant.  From the words of Christ it is obvious that baptism is more than a sign of Christian profession, and stands on a different footing from a mere ecclesiastical, or even apostolic, ordinance.  Much, as regards worship and polity, was left to the Apostles to supply as need required, and their appointments are, if not absolutely, yet relatively, binding on the Church of all ages; but two ordinances owe their institution to Christ Himself, and this alone places them in a category of their own.  Nor does the language He uses in the institution of baptism convey the idea of its being a sign, or tessara, of Christian fellowship (though this doubtless is one of its uses), but rather of its being a means of introducing the recipient into new relations towards God, with corresponding duties.  To be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost expresses an advance from Jewish monotheism to the Trinitarian revelation of God as the God of redemption; and further, it implies fellowship with the triune God, and vows of service and obedience to Him.  The simpler form which we find in the Book of Acts, baptized into the name, or on the foundation of the name (επι τω ονόματι) of the Lord Jesus, [That is, on the admission of Christ’s claim to be the Messiah.] is equivalent in sense to the fuller, and may have been employed by the Apostles; but the Church has preferred to use Christ’s own words in the celebration of the sacrament.  Brought thus into new relations towards the Holy Trinity, the baptized person at the same time becomes a recognized member of the Christian Church; not merely of the local society from which he has received the sacrament, but of the Church universal; for it is the whole body of Christ that properly is the temple of the Holy Ghost; as there is but “one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all,” so there is but “one baptism of the Spirit,” of which the one visible sacrament is the sign (Ephes. 4:4).  His position now is a different one from that which he occupied as a catechumen.  He is admitted to the means of grace of which the Church is the dispenser, and to the support and encouragement which the Christian society, with its variety of spiritual gifts, is calculated and is intended to furnish.  Baptism is the first and principal means by which the invisible Church becomes visible.  Regeneration, as implying a change of heart, is presupposed in every complete baptism, but not until the sacrament is received is the believer, in the sight of man, a citizen of the new Jerusalem, as the Jew was not, before circumcision, formally initiated into the old covenant.  Thus viewed, baptism is the last and crowning work of the Church in its missionary capacity.  By the ministry of the Word the catechumen is conducted through the preliminary stages of conversion, etc. but the Divine signature, or seal, that the work has advanced to an individual appropriation of Christ, that the offers of mercy have been accepted, is still wanting, and the want is supplied by this ordinance of Christ.  And hence it is, that the reception of it is regarded by Jews and heathens, and naturally so, as the overt act of becoming a Christian.  The mere hearer, or inquirer, or even catechumen, is considered as not yet having passed the Rubicon; but when he proceeds to baptism, the final decision is supposed to have taken place, and the opposition and persecution, which they who confess Christ before men are taught to expect (Matt. 10:34–6), commence.

      These remarks may explain why in Scripture baptism, not less than the Word, is connected with regeneration.  Some of the passages, indeed, usually quoted in this connection, cannot be considered decisive.  That John 3:5 directly refers to Christian baptism is no more clear than that John 6:53 directly refers to the Lord’s Supper; it is hardly consistent with the manner or object of our Lord’s teaching that He should expound the nature of sacraments before they were instituted. [“I hold it for a most infallible rule in exposition of Holy Scripture that where a literal construction will stand, the farthest from the letter is commonly the worst.”  Hooker, E. P., v. 59.  This rule requires limitation.  The literal construction may “stand” – that is, be admissible – and yet it may not be the best.  They no doubt err who deny that Christ in John 3:5 could have alluded to baptism, but it does not follow that other interpretations may not be preferable.  See Lücke, on this passage.]  Nor can it be established that in every passage in which the words baptism, or baptized, occur they necessarily mean external baptism; for there is no doubt that they are used figuratively to signify participation in the element which is the subject of the statement.  Thus when Christ announced to James and John that with the baptism that He was baptized with they should be baptized (Mark 10:39), He can hardly be supposed to refer either to John’s baptism or to the Christian sacrament, but to His own impending sufferings, of which these disciples should have a share.  “John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence” (Acts 1:5); the fulfillment of the promise proves that “baptized” is to be taken figuratively, for no baptism with water is mentioned in connection with the effusion of the Holy Ghost which took place on the Day of Pentecost. [That the descent of the Holy Ghost was accompanied by visible signs, the rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire, has no bearing upon the present question; viz., whether the word “baptism” does not often in the New Testament bear a figurative sense.  It may be observed that the threefold baptism of theologians – aquae, sanguinis, flaminis – presents an instance of this figurative usage; for the baptismus flaminis is nothing but the grace of the Holy Spirit, and it is expressly distinguished from baptismus aquae.  See T. Aq., P. iii., Q. lxvi., A. 12.]  There is no reason, however, to question an allusion to baptism, as the sacrament of regeneration, in some passages, such as Ephes. 5:26, Tit. 3:5, and perhaps John 3:5.  For it is the sacrament of regeneration, as the Eucharist is the sacrament of the atonement; it is the instrument of our formally “putting on Christ” (Gal. 3:27), of our being figuratively “buried with Christ” to a death unto sin, and figuratively rising with Him to newness of life (Rom. 6:4); of our being invested with the privileges of Christian citizenship; of our being visibly sealed in anticipation of the future inheritance.  Enough surely to account for the language of Scripture on the subject.  Only let it be remembered that the sacrament depends on the Word for its explanation, not the Word on the sacrament; and that to the Word more explicitly than to the sacrament is ascribed regeneration.  It is not merely that the Word precedes, and prepares for, the reception of baptism in and by which the special grace of regeneration is supposed to be conferred; but that this grace itself is ascribed to the Word.  “Of His own will,” says S. James, “begat He us with the word of truth” (chap. 1:18); and S. Peter reminds Christians that they were “born again, not with corruptible seed but incorruptible, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23).  And how could it be otherwise, when, in its full sense, regeneration implies a moral change, and such changes can only be wrought by means which appeal to the conscience through the understanding?  As to the notion that by baptism we are brought into mystical union with Christ in His glorified body, and that this is the special grace of regeneration, it can plead no warranty of Scripture.  Indeed, it is almost unintelligible.  It can be defended only on the supposition that the baptismal water is by the Holy Ghost united mystically with Christ’s glorified body, as the bread and wine are alleged to be in the other sacrament; and to this length theological speculation has not as yet advanced.  That there is a presence of Christ in this sacrament, as in all means of grace, is unquestionable; but where is the res sacramenti, corresponding to the body and blood of the Eucharist, to be here found?  Such expressions as the figurative one, “buried with Christ” (by baptismal immersion), furnish no ground for the theory.

      In common with the Eucharist, baptism serves the purpose of appropriating to the individual what the Word propounds only generally.  The promises of Scripture are universal, and necessarily so; and though faith reduces them into saving possession, yet both the Church and the individual need something further: the Church a visible proof that the candidate for membership has personally apprehended Christ, the individual that forgiveness of sin is made over to himself as distinguished from others.  It is one thing to say, Christ has died for sinners, and another to say, Christ has died for me.  Since to the Church the dispensing of the sacraments is committed, and the Church cannot read the heart, and must take men at their profession, the outward reception of either sacrament is no positive proof that the grace thereof, whatever it be, is received; if Christ were to administer the sacraments directly, no mistakes would be made; baptism would always be a sure proof of regeneration, the Eucharist of abiding in Christ by faith; administered by fallible men, who can only presume on the existence of the necessary qualifications, the proof is only presumptive, and the language of charity, with the necessary reservations, is the only language that is appropriate.

      The visible element to be used at baptism is not mentioned in the words of institution; whence we infer that our Lord adopted a well known symbol, and transferred it to a Christian use.  That the Apostles understood that water was to be used is plain from the instances in the Book of Acts, such as that of the eunuch (10:47); but on what previously existing usages its employment was founded has been a question.  The baptism of proselytes to the Jewish religion, which used formerly to be insisted on, [See Wall, i., p. 4.] has had so much uncertainty thrown upon its date by the researches of later times that it is hardly safe to allege it: we have no clear evidence that it existed in the time of Christ, nor indeed before the fourth century of the Christian era.  But John’s baptism, and its relation to the Gospel, are facts of Scripture; and it may be fairly argued that Christian baptism is, with the necessary modifications, an adaptation of this earlier ordinance; especially since the disciples of Christ, doubtless by the command, or under the sanction, of their Master, baptized (John 4:1, 2), and this baptism must be regarded as substantially of the same character as that of John.  But when an identity between John’s and Christian baptism is asserted, the evidence does not support the assertion.  The Baptist’s own confession of the inferiority of his mission (Matt. 3:11), which Christ endorses (Ibid., 11:11); and particularly the circumstance mentioned in Acts 19, that certain disciples who had only received John’s baptism were, by Paul’s command, baptized in the name of Christ; sufficiently prove the contrary.  According to S. Paul, John’s baptism implied no mention of the Holy Ghost; from which it may be inferred that the form prescribed in Matt. 28:19 was in use at that time, though the fact is not mentioned; and, further, that baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity was different from a baptism unto repentance.  As to spiritual gifts, absent in the one and conveyed by the other, the narrative is silent.

 

§ 94.  Infant Baptism

      At the time of the Reformation the connection of the Anabaptists with political movements of doubtful tendency raised a strong prejudice against this sect, and prevented an impartial discussion of the principal tenet from which it took its name.  Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and the other leaders were anxious to dissociate themselves from men whose opinions on social and political questions seemed to reflect discredit on the movement; and this they thought could not be better accomplished than by denouncing in no measured terms those who entertained doubts respecting the validity, or apostolicity, of infant baptism.  Moreover, that infants could not be saved without baptism, was an accepted conclusion, dating from Augustine’s day.  The subject, therefore, did not at that time receive an unbiased investigation; and it would be too much to say that the Protestant theologians of the following century supply the want.  It is only in later times that the difficulties connected with the subject have been candidly recognized.

      The general result of modern research is that no satisfactory proof of the prevalence of infant baptism in the Apostolic age can be gathered from Scripture.  The traditionary arguments are either insufficient, or they seem to assume what has to be proved. [The arguments from the baptism of whole households and from the analogy of circumcision are stronger than Litton admits. – Ed.]  Assuming that infant baptism then prevailed, it is not difficult to discover grounds for or allusions to it; such as the command of Christ to baptize all nations, for infants (it is urged) are a part of nations; the fact being that our Lord was speaking not of the proper subjects of baptism, but of the duty of gathering all men, Gentiles as well as Jews, into the Church, and that the command to teach such converts is consistent with their being infants.  Or S. Peter’s words (Acts 2:39), “the promise is to you and your children,” in which a trace of infant baptism has been discovered; whereas the context proves that the promise referred to (Joel 2:28) is that of remission of sin and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and, moreover, “you and your children,” according to Old Testament usage, can only mean, you and your posterity.  The baptism of “households” is appealed to (Acts 16:15, 1 Cor. 1:16); but, unfortunately for the argument, the term household is similarly used in passages which can by no possibility be applied to infants; as when the “house of Stephanas” (the very “household” which S. Paul baptized) is said to have addicted themselves to the “ministry of the Saints” (1 Cor. 16:15), and the jailer of Philippi to have believed “with all his house” (Acts 16:34).  Wall lays great stress on 1 Cor. 7:14, arguing that the word άγια, there applied to children, must imply baptism, as, indeed, it usually does in S. Paul’s salutations to the churches.  In this passage, however, it can hardly do so, since the very same word, in its verbal form, is used of the unbelieving husband or wife; “the unbelieving husband is sanctified (ηγίασται) by the wife”; and no one will contend that an unbelieving adult could have received Christian baptism.  In truth, the passage is rather against what it is quoted for; for if these children had been baptized, why should not the Apostle have used the proper word, and thereby strengthened his argument?  The unbelieving husband was not to be abandoned by the believing wife, for as long as they lived together he was under religious influence, which might, it was to be hoped, in time issue in his own conversion; and a fortiori the children of the marriage enjoyed this advantage, and were, by providential circumstances, so far άγια.  More than this cannot be inferred from the passage.  Nor does history come to our aid.  A very learned and candid inquirer can find no express mention of children in connection with baptism before Irenaeus (about A.D. 170), whose words are: “Christ came to save all who by Him are regenerated to God, infants, little ones,” etc.  There is no reason to doubt that by the term “regenerated” he may have meant baptism, or that infant baptism by that time had gained a footing; but the point at issue is whether it can be discovered in the New Testament, or in the earliest patristic remains.  Later on, Tertullian’s judgment is well known; dissuading from the practice, on the ground that it is better to wait until young persons could have some knowledge of what they were doing.  Now the question is, not whether Tertullian was right in his view, but whether he would have ventured so to advise if it had been in his time a ruled point that infant baptism could be traced to the Apostles.  That his discussion of the question shows that infant baptism was then common is a fair inference, and is in itself extremely probable.  But it also proves that it was considered an open question.  And that this was the case may also be argued from the many instances on record of persons, who, though born of Christian parents (as, e.g., Augustine), were not baptized until of a ripe age.  It is unnecessary to refer to later evidence: there is no doubt that in the fifth century paedobaptism had become the normal usage of the Church.

      On general grounds of probability it seems doubtful whether the Apostles would at once introduce infant baptism either in the Jewish or the Gentile Churches.  As regards the former, it has already been observed (§ 18) that these converts neither considered themselves, nor were they considered by their Jewish brethren, as separatists from the theocracy; but rather as one of the many Jewish sects existing at the time, that one whose peculiar tenet it was that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah.  We may hence infer that the Apostles would not, unless expressly so commanded, interfere with the Divinely appointed ordinance of circumcision; and, in fact, that the Jewish converts continued to circumcise their children as the law commanded.  And then the question arises, would these converts be likely to adopt, or the Apostles to enjoin, in the absence of any command by Christ, another mode of initiating their children into the Abrahamic covenant than that prescribed to the Patriarch himself?  It must be remembered that the Gospel claimed to be the spiritual fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant – the covenant of faith (Gal. 3:6, 7, 17); and that circumcision was the seal of that covenant, appointed to be so, long before the promulgation of the law.  The disciples of John were baptized, and the disciples of Christ baptized under their Master’s sanction (John 4:1, 2); but neither of these baptisms was the initiatory rite of a new dispensation.  That a new dispensation had succeeded to the patriarchal and legal, though announced in the Epistle to the Hebrews, was not placed beyond doubt by any visible interposition of Providence until the destruction of the temple; that event decided the question for ever.  The Apostolic baptism, like that of John, and like that of Christ (probably of a similar character to that of John), was, as far as we read, confined to adults; the reason, it may be presumed, being that while circumcision, the door of entrance into the covenant of Abraham and also into the legal dispensation, continued in force under an express Divine appointment, the Apostles hesitated to supersede it by a modification of adult baptism, which could plead no command of their Master, and which, however natural it may seem to us, may not have seemed so to them, who lived (most of them) under the legal dispensation, who were far from thinking themselves separatists from it, and to whom no signal from heaven was given of its dissolution.  The argument, then, that because the Apostles were familiar with circumcision they must have baptized infants should be exchanged for another, viz., the production of proof that, notwithstanding their familiarity with circumcision, they introduced the baptism of infants.  For this reason it is to the Gentile Churches that we must probably look for the first adoption of paedobaptism.  But here another difficulty meets us.  Paedobaptism presumes that the child will be brought up “agreeably to this beginning”; and this presumes a certain maturity of Christian knowledge and practice in the parents and sponsors, and in the Church at large in which the child has been born.  Hence, it may be a question whether in our missions it would be wise to introduce the practice before the native Churches have given evidence of their fitness for the trust; and this must be a matter of time and experience.  The Churches to which S. Paul addressed his Epistles appear (in several instances) to have been, as regards both doctrine and practice, in an imperfect and unsettled condition, as indeed might be expected in converts just gathered in from such cities as Corinth and other ancient communities.  They had need to be instructed and set right in many fundamental points before they could be teachers.  Heathenish associations clung to them, and produced a strange mixture of what was old and what was new.  They were “babes in Christ,” spiritually quickened indeed, but far removed from spiritual manhood; hardly as yet “understanding what the will of the Lord” was.  To infant Churches in such a condition S. Paul may well have hesitated to entrust baptized infants, to be brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, especially where no command of Christ indicated the duty.  He may have left the question undetermined, as many other matters of polity and discipline were left, to be settled at a future time, at the discretion of the Church.  And so may the other Apostles have acted.

      Another circumstance, too, renders this conclusion probable.  National Christianity, as distinguished from saving, does not occupy a place in the Apostolical Epistles; for the obvious reason that the state of the world at that time did not admit of such a conception.  The existing civil power was a heathen one; the state, in its public religion and in the spirit of its institutions, was heathen; and so the Church appears in the New Testament, not indeed as antagonistic to the powers that were, but as having little to do with them, and as absorbed in her heavenly mission.  This, however, was not to continue.  The eventual triumph of Christianity over Paganism brought with it a national recognition of the Christian religion; and when the Roman empire broke up, national Churches came into existence.  And so, no doubt, it was intended to be.  National Christianity is not, indeed, saving, but it is of the highest importance and value.  It gives promise that the Church is about to infuse a Christian spirit into the social customs, the institutions, the laws, the government of the nation which, as a nation, has received Christianity; and we have only to compare the standard on these points of Christian nations as compared with heathen to understand how powerful the influence is.  In truth, Christianity has a mission for this world as well as for the next.  National Christianity is not necessarily saving, but it is the vestibule, the outer court of the temple, to the inner circle which constitutes the true Church, or mystical body of Christ.  How shortsighted, then, the policy of those who would destroy this invaluable outwork of the Gospel, under the plea of its being a corruption and inconsistent with the Apostolical model as we find it in the New Testament!  The Apostles themselves, had they survived to see it, would have been the first to welcome the addition of national to saving Christianity. [The importance of national Christianity is exaggerated by Litton.  It has little or no support in the New Testament as necessary or to be expected; though, of course, where real it is to be welcomed.  Litton inconsistently seeks analogies from the Old Testament, such as he had severely rejected in the case of sacraments. – Ed.]  That a national religion is in itself not unacceptable to the Most High, we may infer from the instance of the Jewish theocracy, though we must beware of introducing its types and shadows under the Gospel.  Now, of all the visible symbols of national Christian faith, infant baptism seems the most suitable and expressive.  In this point of view, circumcision, serving the same purpose, would naturally suggest it.  Infant baptism, in short, may be regarded as the accompaniment of national Christianity.  But it had to bide its time (so we may conclude) until empires and states became Christian empires and states, or the Providential direction of affairs manifestly tended in that direction.  We need not, then, wonder that it does not appear in the Apostolic Church, nor attempt to introduce it prematurely into that Church by strained expositions of Scripture.  Still less need we wonder that, in due time, it made its appearance, and has, on the whole, held its place.  Scripture is very far, indeed, from discountenancing it; and the Church (as a whole), exercising the discretion which on this as on other points was left to her by her Divine Master, has acted wisely in “retaining” it.

      On the whole, it is consistent with the historical evidence, and with the nature of things, that paedobaptism is of ecclesiastical and not of apostolical origin; growing up gradually in the Church, and justifiable on its own grounds.  And this conclusion seems confirmed by the parallel history of infant communion.  It should not be forgotten that this, for a long time, prevailed in the Church as extensively as infant baptism, and the arguments in its favour were very similar; and indeed essentially they seem to stand on the same footing.  It was in use in the Western Church from about A.D. 400 to A.D. 1000, 600 years; and it is practiced in the Eastern Church to this day.  And yet in the West it has been abandoned, as being merely an ecclesiastical custom, which the Church could abrogate without infringing any apostolical precedent or direction.  It is not unreasonable to suppose that the baptism of infants grew up in a similar manner.  That it has been retained while the other has fallen into disuse is due not to any difference of Scriptural authority between them, but from intrinsic considerations which are of force in the one case and not in the other.  The natural life of an infant, though real, differs materially from that of an adult; and the new birth of the Spirit, though the earnest of spiritual growth, may be conceived of as a germ compared with the future development.  But baptism is the sacrament of the new birth, as the Eucharist is of Christian manhood; and here we have at once a distinction between the two sacraments.  If regeneration (in a modified sense) may be predicated of infants, it may fairly be argued that baptism is a more appropriate sacrament for them than the Eucharist; and this without approaching the question whether either should be administered to infants.  We find, let it be supposed, in the Church the practice prevailing as regards both sacraments, and a debate arises whether this is justifiable; obviously there is more to be said for the retention of infant baptism than for that of infant communion.  This, it is true, goes but a little way towards deciding the question; still it clears the way for understanding why when the one practice was given up the other was retained; and also for considerations of a more positive character, such as the following: By an act of Providence a child born in a Christian Church is at once placed in a different position from that of a child born in heathenism; he is placed from his birth under Christian influences, and grows up in an atmosphere of Christianity; if not an election to eternal life, it may well be called, in a lower sense, an election.  The Church acknowledges in such a child the germ of a corrupt nature leading, of itself, to a sinful career; but also perceives him in possession of spiritual privileges which are intended to, and may issue in, a saving regeneration.  Why should she not recognize the fact of Divine favour thus gratuitously bestowed, and interpret it as a warrant for receiving the infant into her fellowship, in faith and hope that in the use of the appointed means he will become a living member of Christ?  Here it is that the Scripture analogies and the statements of Christ, which are of no force to prove that the Apostles practiced infant baptism, acquire argumentative value.  Circumcision was at first Instituted in an adult, but afterwards was extended to infants; this does not prove that baptism came in place of circumcision, still less that the command in the one case implies a command in the other; but it does present an analogy which has force. Christ’s blessing little children, and declaring that of such is the kingdom of heaven (Mark 10:15, 16), does not prove that He had their baptism in view; but it does prove that He has a special love towards little children, and is pleased that they should be brought to Him in every way in which they can be brought; and baptism surely is one way, and in the case of infants the only way, in which they can be visibly brought.  Moreover, we may ask the opponents of infant baptism, whether even they can fix empirically the moment of regeneration, or prevent mistakes in adult baptism; and especially to note the fact that in the Apostolic administration of this sacrament to adults, it was not deferred until unquestionable proofs of the new birth (which only a consistent life of holiness can furnish) were exhibited, but was administered at once on an expression of desire for it (see the various instances in the Book of Acts).  To the objection that the children of Christian parents already by birth possess the privilege of adoption, and therefore do not need the sacrament, it may be replied that if they do possess the privilege, the sacrament, the sign and seal of adoption, should not be denied them.  The practice of the Baptist churches, in theory at least, keeps the Church perpetually in the state of being just gathered in from heathenism, and puts aside the fact that, besides representing the invisible church, each visible church is a school of training for its younger members, the duties connected with which can only be consistently discharged on the assumption that they are members, however imperfect, of the society.  Private instruction may, no doubt, be, and probably is, given in families; but the Church as such, as represented by its ministers, has no concern with its children, until they apply for baptism.  It leads, too, to a depreciation of the sacraments, and to the custom, too prevalent in the early Church, of putting off the reception of baptism indefinitely: the worshipper is tempted to forget that as long as he is not baptized, though he may attend the ministry of the Word, he is merely in the position of a catechumen, and is not really a member of the Christian Church.  On such grounds as these it is better to rely than to put forward assumptions which cannot be sustained, and which, like all weak advocacy, do more injury than benefit to the cause to be defended.  And this is the footing on which our Church places the matter.  “The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable to the institution of Christ” (Art. xxvii); whatever may be the meaning of “agreeable to the institution of Christ,” the language seems purposely to avoid positive statements.  And, further, it is not said that infant baptism is to be introduced where it is not the usage, but to be retained where it is, a moderation of statement which presents a contrast to what has been sometimes written on the subject, particularly by the Lutheran divines.  Regeneration implies justification (see § 70), and the dogma that every infant is by baptism regenerate necessarily involves the assumption that he is also in and by the sacrament justified.  But how was this to be reconciled with the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, justification by faith?  Luther felt the difficulty, and the mode in which he attempted to extricate himself from it furnishes an instructive warning against attempting to be wise above what is written.  He did not hesitate to maintain that though infants could not understand the Word preached, yet the Holy Spirit in the act of regenerating them in baptism produces faith in their hearts; and not merely a habit of faith but faith in actual exercise.  And this doctrine of the fides infantum continued for a long time to be taught by Lutheran writers.  As if the salvation of infants were in peril unless they could be brought under a certain ecclesiastical formula!  As if infant regeneration or justification must not mean something different from what these terms signify in the case of an adult.

      Infant baptism is a modification of the original ordinance; within the discretion of the Church and on general grounds justifiable; and as such it is an imperfect baptism, and needs a supplement.  Confirmation in the reformed churches supplies this need.  If this rite be regarded as a quasi-sacrament, conveying an independent grace of its own, infant baptism is left without its proper supplement.  It will also be necessary to establish a difference between the two sacraments, as regards the conditions of beneficial reception, which Scripture does not warrant, and which our Church rejects.  Sensible of this imperfection, our Church aims at placing the infant, as far as possible, in the position of an adult.  She attributes no inherent efficacy to the sacrament, irrespectively of conditions; but by a legal fiction attempts to supply the conditions.  The infant is supposed to profess that he renounces sin and believes in Christ; but he does this through his sureties, whose faith, or the faith of the Church, is treated as if it was his own.  Whence does this arrangement spring but from a feeling that infant baptism, however to be “retained,” fails to come up, per se, to the idea of a complete baptism?  It is therefore difficult to understand how Martensen can write: “Baptism is according to its idea infant baptism.  The Church in introducing infant baptism is so far from deviating from the original institution, that she presents baptism precisely in the form which most perfectly corresponds to its idea” (Dog., § 255).  In which he is followed by an English commentator on Mark 10:14: “Not only may infants be brought to Christ, but in order for us who are mature to come to Him, we must cast away all that wherein our maturity has caused us to differ from them, and become like them.”  Most true; and now for the application to baptism, concerning which there is no proof that our Lord had it especially in view.  “Not only is infant baptism justified but it is (abstractedly considered, not as to the preparation for it, which from the nature of the case must be exceptional), the normal pattern of all baptism; none can enter into the kingdom of God but as an infant.  In adult baptism (the exceptional case) we strive to secure that state of simplicity and childlikeness, which in the infant we have ready and undoubted to our hands.”  This is not to interpret, but to impose an interpretation on, Scripture.

      Since Augustine’s time baptism has been generally held to be the remedy for the guilt of original sin; and that Father appealed to the custom of infant baptism in his time, with great effect, against his Pelagian opponents.  These denied, or explained away, the fact of original sin, but did not dispute the propriety of baptizing infants.  Why, then, asks Augustine, do you baptize infants?  Baptism is for the remission of sin; but since infants have no actual sin, what can they need the sacrament for but original?  It was an argumentum ad hominem of weight; but it left the question of infant baptism itself untouched.  We can hardly argue that because we practice paedobaptism infants have original sin, and then that because they have original sin they need baptism.  The latter fact must be established on other grounds.  The particular connection of baptism with original sin is not very clear from Scripture.  That a sinful nature is propagated from our first parents is matter of experience; that this implicates infants in something which, for want of a better term, we call guilt is the doctrine of our Church (Art. ix), and appears to be taught in Scripture, however mysterious it may be, and to our reason unaccountable; but the special relation of baptism to original sin is not so clearly revealed.  In the instances of Scripture it is actual sin that is thus remitted.  It may, indeed, be urged that since actual sin springs from original as from a root, both kinds of sin are implied where one is mentioned; and this may be so; still, there is no passage in which original sin and baptism are brought together as disease and remedy.  That baptism remits in infants original sin is a hypothesis, not a doctrine.

      Such being the state of the evidence on paedobaptism, some practical inferences may be drawn.  There is no reason why we should not retain it; no reason why the administration should not be accompanied by the language of faith and hope, seeing that we have no reason to doubt that Christ “favourably allows the charitable work” of thus presenting infants to Him, or to doubt that the prayers of the sponsors and of the congregation on their behalf will be heard; there is nothing, as in the case of an adult fictus, to rebut these presumptions.  If we baptize infants at all, why should we not cherish expectations of a spiritual benefit?  But when the question is respecting dogmatic statements on the effects of infant baptism, our footing becomes less firm.  We have no instances in Scripture to reason from ; no exposition of the theory of the case; no assertion that what baptism conveys to a believing adult it also conveys to an infant; no explanation how or why conditions required in an adult may in the other case be dispensed with, or how difficulties may be removed.  In short, we have no certain data in Scripture on which to build conclusions.  Under such circumstances, it seems prudent to abstain from positive statements, as if they were revealed truth, and to content ourselves, as regards the effects of infant baptism, with the language of faith, hope, and charity.  The controversies which have arisen on this subject are never-ending, for the combatants, for want of premises to argue from, beat the air.  Had this been acknowledged on all sides, and by all parties, the Church might have been spared much profitless theological strife.  We know but little about the state of infants, except that they come into the world with a sinful nature.  We know not what their regeneration, or justification, is; or rather, what these theological terms mean when applied to them, whether they are to be understood strictly or with modifications.  Of one thing, however, we may feel sure, that if infants are removed before the dawn of reason, the atonement of Christ has been in some way applied to them, to ensure their safety.  Beyond this, we see through a glass darkly.  When the Apostolic origin of infant baptism is itself doubtful, how can we pronounce positively on its effects?  On this, as on many other points, Scripture leads us a certain way; and then leaves us to make use of the fragmentary information as best we may.

 

§ 95.  Eucharist – Institution

      As a token of continuance in the Church, and of abiding in Christ by faith; as a commemoration of the atonement as the Christian’s sole ground of hope; as a visible seal of the promises; and as a pledge and means of Christian union; Christ, shortly before His Passion, appointed the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; to be continually celebrated, as S. Paul tells us, “until He come again” (1 Cor. 11:26).  It is the sacrament of spiritual growth, as baptism is the sacrament of spiritual birth.

      We possess four accounts of the institution of the Lord’s Supper: Matt. 26:26–8, Mark 14:22–4, Luke 22:19, 20, and 1 Cor. 11:23–26.  Of these that of S. Paul is the earliest in date, and appeals to a direct revelation from Christ: “I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you.”  The substance of this communication was that “The Lord Jesus in the same night that He was betrayed took bread: and when He had given thanks He brake it, and said, Take eat, this is My body which is broken for you; this do in remembrance of Me.  After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in My blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.  For as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death till He come.”  The points in which S. Luke’s account differs from those of the other Evangelists lead to the conclusion that he derived it from S. Paul.  S. Matthew and S. Mark omit the words “which is broken for you”; and the commemorative aspect of the ordinance is more strongly expressed in S. Paul’s account, and also in that of S. Luke.  But in other respects they all agree.

      The occasion on which this sacrament was instituted has been from early times matter of debate, owing to the difficulty of reconciling the narratives of the synoptists with that of S. John.  So much is plain: since Jesus rose on the first day of the week, and remained in the grave during the Jewish Sabbath, He must have been crucified on the preceding Friday; and the supper mentioned by S. Matthew (26:20) must have been the last which He partook of with His disciples, for it was held on the same night that He was betrayed, and His betrayal led immediately to His crucifixion.  This supper, then, appears to have taken place on the 13th of Nisan, the day before the celebration of the legal passover.  The paschal lamb was to be slain on the 14th of Nisan, and “between the evenings,” that is, as it was usually understood, between about three o’clock in the afternoon and the setting of the sun; but at that time Jesus had expired on the cross.  And S. John’s account seems to confirm this; according to which it was early in the morning of the 14th of Nisan (Friday) that Jesus was brought before Pilate, and the circumstance is added, that the Jews did not enter into the judgment hall “lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the passover” (18:28), which implies that the passover had not yet been celebrated.  On the other hand, the synoptical narratives convey the impression that it was during the Paschal feast that the Lord’s Supper was instituted.  It is sufficient to refer to S. Luke, with whom the others are in substantial agreement: “Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed.  And He sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover that we may eat.  And when the hour was come, He sat down, and the twelve Apostles with Him.  And He said unto them, With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.  And He took bread, and gave thanks and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.  Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the New Testament in My blood which is shed for you” (22:20).  The attempts that have been made to reconcile this discrepancy, as that Jesus anticipated by a day the legal passover because He knew that He Himself would the next day be slain as the Antitype, or true Paschal Lamb; or that He celebrated a mere commemorative passover like the modern Jews; or that as by His Divine authority He was “Lord of the Sabbath,” so by the same He could institute a passover of His own; cannot be deemed successful.  Both S. Matthew and S. John were eyewitnesses of what they describe, so that on this point no preference can be given to either.  On the whole, S. John’s account seems the more accurate; and if it be preferred, the meal at which the Eucharist was instituted was not the Jewish passover, as indeed it is not so called by this Evangelist. [The reader who wishes to pursue the subject will find it fully discussed by Lücke on John 18:28; De Wette, Kgf. Handbuch, etc., John 13:1–20; and Winer, Real Wörter-Buch, “Pascha”.  It is to be noted that during the supper Judas departed on his errand, and Jesus and His disciples after it was finished proceeded to the Mount of Olives; whereas it was the Jewish custom not to leave the house or the city on the night of the Paschal feast.  See Exod. 12:22.  [But see Edersheim, “Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,” for a masterly vindication of the consistency of the two accounts. – Ed.]]

      As regards the meaning of the words used by Christ, there does not seem room for much difference of opinion.  “Take eat, this is My body which is broken for you”: whether we interpret τουτο of the bread delivered, which is quite compatible with the rules of grammar, the neuter being frequently used as the subject when the predicate is of an inanimate object; or take it to refer to the whole transaction, This ordinance which I now appoint; is a matter of little moment.  Since the word is repeated in the delivering of the cup, the latter seems the more natural construction.  Nor does it signify whether we attach the words “in My blood” to “the cup” or to the “New Covenant”; this cup by reason of what is (symbolically) contained in it, viz., My blood shed for you, is the New Covenant, or, this cup is the New Covenant, which covenant is founded in, sanctioned by, My blood, as the Mosaic covenant was hallowed with the blood of burnt sacrifices (Exod. 24:8): the meaning either way will be nearly the same.  Of more importance it is to determine the sense of the copula “is,” which occurs, as regards the bread, in all the accounts, S. Luke alone omitting it in the delivery of the cup.  Grammatically, as is acknowledged even by rigid Lutherans, [See e.g. Kahnis, Lehre vom Abendmahle, 41, quoted by Schenkel, Dog., B. ii., p. 1125.] it may be taken either in a literal or figurative sense; the context determining which is to be adopted.  Even if there were no Biblical examples of the figurative usage, the general laws of language would support it. [Thus it is common to say, “This picture is the person” whom it is intended td represent.]  But, in fact, Scripture abounds with instances.  Such are, I am the Vine, I am the Door, the Seed is the Word, This Rock was Christ, I am the Bread of Life, and others of similar character.  The literal interpretation, then, not being forced on us, we examine the context.  Can we suppose that our Lord, sitting at the table, meant to deliver to the Apostles a duplicate of Himself, so that two bodies of Christ, in His proper humanity, were present there at the same time?  This will hardly be maintained; only, perhaps, that an invisible spiritual body was so connected with the bread and wine by the words of Christ that though but one Christ could be seen, heard and handled, another Christ, who could not be perceived by the senses, was under the material elements delivered to the Apostles to be fed upon.  But this is to introduce the theories of a later age, and to force upon the words of institution a sense which they do not necessarily convey.  To which we may add that a doketic conception of this kind would be foreign to the habits of mind of the Apostles, men untrained in the schools of philosophy.  Moreover, the body and the blood distributed are said to be the one broken, the other shed; neither of which was at the time fact, but the contrary; so that it could never have occurred to the assembled guests to put a literal construction on their Master’s words.  Had they done so, we should have expected some such expression of surprise on their part as that of the men of Capernaum, John 6:52, “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?”  But they seem unconscious of any such miracle; and if this impression was a false one, it was not rectified by Christ Himself.  In short, they must have understood the word “is” as they were accustomed at each anniversary of the passover to understand, Exod. 12:24–27: “Ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever.  And it shall come to pass that when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel when He smote the Egyptians.”  It is not the very sacrifice of that memorable night, but a memorial of it; and every Jew would understand that the word “is” was not to be taken literally.  It is to be observed, further, that no section of the Christian Church construes the words literally throughout.  The Romish Church, which advances to the extreme limit in this direction, teaches indeed that the substance of the bread is changed into the body of Christ, but it leaves the accidents as they were; and a substance, deprived of its accidents, is so far not what we mean literally by the object in question.  Nor does, or can, any Church construe the words “This cup is the New Testament, or covenant, in My blood” literally: the cup was not the wine contained in it, nor was the wine a covenant.  We arrive, then, at the conclusion that a literal interpretation of the words of institution is untenable; and this, whether the transaction is to be considered as commemorative, or symbolical; and whether, with Zwingli, we take the word “is” to be equivalent to “signifies,” or, with AEcolampadius, attach the trope to the words “body” and “blood,” as meaning “figure of My body,” “figure of My blood.”

      The bread broken and the wine poured out were symbolical, as Christ Himself declares, of His body broken and His blood shed; but there was another act to be performed, viz., the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine, an actual participation of the elements, which we must suppose was also intended to convey a meaning.  What this is no one can mistake: the atonement of Christ, in order to become beneficial, must be appropriated, just as bread and wine have no power to nourish until received into the system.  The blessing intended, whatever it may be, must be spiritually assimilated by some spiritual organ, and so made over to the individual.  We hence learn that the ordinance does not merely imply commemoration; though the repeated injunction to “do it in remembrance” of Christ proves that this aspect of it is, to say the least, a principal one; but that it implies also an active appropriation of some spiritual benefit on the part of the receiver.  What we therein “show forth,” that is, commemorate, openly boast of, and trust in, is “the death of Christ, till He come”; but the eating and drinking signify, further, that the atonement must become ours by a personal and apprehensive faith.

      It is difficult to understand how the idea of priestly consecration could have come to be connected with the simple words of Christ.  The meal at which they were used was either the legal passover, or a substitute for it; and it is well known that the ministration of a priest was not necessary at the celebration of the passover; each family kept the feast in its own house, under the presidency of the head of the family.  To him, and not to a priest, was assigned the duty of giving thanks over the unleavened cakes, which he afterwards broke and distributed; and over the cups, said by some to be four in number, by others five, which in like manner were handed round.  “The cup of blessing which we bless, the bread which we brake” (1 Cor. 10:16); if the acts of blessing and breaking the bread were afterwards, as a matter of order, confined to the presbyters present, neither does this passage prescribe it, nor was the custom derived from the Jewish Paschal feast, at which Christ presided.  Nor did the words, “This is My body,” “This is My blood” carry with them any consecrating virtue, or even separation from common to sacred purposes.  Whether the meal was the legal passover, or merely a prophetic one, the bread and wine had already been set apart as constituents of the feast itself; they had been already hallowed; and Christ did nothing more than apply these substances, with the customary act of thanksgiving, to the purposes of the new covenant.  To explain this transfer and adaptation, not to introduce an element of liturgy, was the object of the Saviour; and nothing else is contained in His words.  Had He intended to establish a new priestly institute, to take the place of the old, and intended to attach if to the sacrament, He would have appointed a sacerdotal ritual and specific directions how the sacrifice was to be offered: He would have given a warning against the celebration of the mysteries by others than consecrated hands.  These things, indeed, we find in abundance in later ages of the Church, but no trace of them appears in the original record of institution.  The Lord’s Supper there appears reduced to its barest elements – eat the bread, drink the cup; and appears instituted in the persons of the Apostles, not as priests or even ministers, but as representatives of the true Church to the end of time, and without a hint of devolution of sacerdotal powers to successors.  Whether the prayer employed on this occasion was a silent or an uttered one; whether the thanksgiving in use at the Jewish festival (“Praised be the Lord, who causes the fruit of the earth to grow, who creates the produce of the vine”), or some other, was employed; how often the sacrament is to be celebrated; at what particular time of the day, except so far as Christ Himself instituted it in the evening – on these, and such like points, the original narrative is silent: a proof that Christians have emerged from the region of type and shadow, to which a ritual worked out by law into a minute detail is appropriate, into that of the freedom of the Gospel, which, provided the substance is retained, leaves scope for differences of administration, according to varying circumstances of climate or social usage.  Nor, as has been observed (§ 82), does the later revelation vouchsafed to the Apostles supply the deficiency, as it did in many important points of doctrine and practice left by Christ Himself to be thus more fully explained or supplied.  After the institution, the Eucharist is seldom referred to in the New Testament, and for the most part incidentally, to correct abuses which had sprung up in connection with it.  If Acts 2:42 alludes to it, nothing more is said than that the disciples continued in the breaking of bread.  We read in Acts 20 that, on the first day of the week, the disciples came together to eat bread, and nothing further.  1 Cor. 10:16 has been already considered.  So far as we gather from Scripture, the true consecrating element, that which gives “validity” to the sacrament and ensures the grace thereof, is not the person of the administrator but the faith of the recipient.  In a secondary sense, indeed, the bread and wine may be said to be consecrated to holy uses.  So was the tabernacle, and the vessels it contained.  Things thus set apart contract a special relation to God, and a relative sanctity; and to profane them by careless or indiscriminate use is a sin.  Such was the sin of the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. 11).  The bread and win of celebration are, in this sense, no longer common bread and wine.  But Christ, in instituting the supper, acted as Master of the feast, not as a priest; and no physical transformation, the effect of a priestly word, however spiritually it may be interpreted, can be connected with the words He used.  And the blessing which He intended to convey, and which in fact the Church does receive in this holy ordinance, belongs not to the elements as such, but to the worthy reception of them.  Christ, or the Spirit of Christ, is to be sought, not in them, but in the proper use of them, that is, as used by those who are already in spiritual union with Him. [“The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not, therefore, to be sought in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament.”  Hooker, E. P., B. v., 6.]

      “Do this in remembrance of Me”: this is the only object of the Eucharist, which Christ Himself enunciates; a circumstance which may be commended to the attention of those who seem inclined to forget it.  The words imply the impending departure of the Speaker in the flesh; and since we are apt to forget those who are absent, it is plain that the ordinance is specially intended to counteract this tendency.  But there is to be a remembrance not merely of His person, but of His atoning work on the Cross; of His body broken and His blood shed for the remission of sin; and the subsequent history of the Church proves how important the sacrament is in this point of view.  That history reads us a lesson how easily the all-sufficiency of this atonement may be forgotten, and its place supplied by reliance on human merit or the mediation of a human priesthood, to the detriment of that “peace with God through Jesus Christ”; on which alone, as a foundation, the edifice of true sanctification and fruitful service can be raised.  Do this, and as you do it, remember that by the death which it symbolizes, “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice and satisfaction was made for the sins of the whole world.”  Simple and affecting memorial, which ought to have been the chief bond of union among Christians: and which yet, by a strange inconsistency, has been the innocent occasion of dissension and separation.

 

§ 96.  The Real Presence

      That Christ is, in some sense, present in the Eucharist, follows from the promises which, before His departure, were given to the Church: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst”; “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”; “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.”  These are general statements, but they must surely apply with peculiar force to the occasions on which Christians assemble for public worship and the celebration of the sacrament.  A Church from which Christ were, in every sense, absent, would be no Church, or only as a dead body is a man, an organization from which the animating spirit had fled.  So much must on all sides be admitted; but differences of opinion exist as to the manner in which Christ is present with the Church, and especially in the celebration of the Eucharist.

      The term “real presence,” which, by the way, does not occur in our formularies, is ambiguous and misleading.  If Christ is present at all, or in any sense, His presence must be a real one, and not a mere phantom of the imagination.  But reality may be predicated of spirit as well as of body, and which form of existence is to be here understood the mere epithet “real” does not determine; in fact, however, the meaning in theological debate is not doubtful.  It is, that Christ in His human nature, the Son incarnate, whether before or after His resurrection is immaterial – for in the latter case He could say of Himself, “Behold My hands and My feet that it is I Myself; handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see Me have” (Luke 24:39) – is present in the Eucharist.  That He is so is argued from the words of institution: “Take eat, this is My body”; “drink, this is My blood”.  Since these words give to the sacrament, in the language of the schools, its form, they never can be omitted; and what can be plainer than their import?  Christ was present in His human nature when they were uttered; He must, therefore, be present, and in His human nature, at every subsequent celebration, otherwise there would be no continuity of the ordinance, and the Apostles would have received a gift which has not been transmitted to succeeding generations of Christians.  He gave Himself to the first communicants; He must give Himself to their successors to the end of time and in the same sense as at first.  Thus there is a real presence of the Incarnate Son wherever the Eucharist is duly celebrated.

      This reasoning, however, cannot be accepted without examination.  It is to be observed that the form of institution does not terminate, as it is often made to do, with the words “body” or “blood,” but contains an addition of great importance.  The full form is, “This is My body, which is given for you”; [In 1 Cor. 11:24, whether with most editors we reject the word κλώμενον or retain it, the sense remains the same.] “this is My blood, which is shed for you”; and in the original the mode of expression is more significant than can be gathered from our versions, authorized or revised.  For the words “which is given,” etc., “which is shed,” etc., are not introduced by a relative and a verb (ό εστι), as if they were independent and additional clauses, but by the article and the participle (το σωμα το διδόμενον, το αίμα το εκχυνόμενον), in which construction the participles acquire a defining and limiting power.  The meaning is, This is (represents or signifies) that body of Mine which is (or is about to be) given for you, this cup, that blood of Mine which is about to be shed for you; and it may be supposed, without incurring the charge of extorting a sense, that the words contain an allusion to, not another body, but another stage of humanity not at the time existing.  And, in fact, Christ, as regards His human nature, did pass through two conditions of it, which, though personal identity was preserved, differed essentially; the state of His humiliation (status exinanitionis), and the state of His exaltation (status gloriae).  And the transition from the one to the other did not take place according to the course of nature; as, for example, when the humanity of an infant passes into that of manhood or old age.  It was such as required the miracle of the resurrection to effect it; such a miracle as that by which the bodies of the saints will be raised, and they who shall be alive at the second coming of Christ will be changed.  Personal identity will be preserved, but the body is “sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, raised in glory; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:42–44).  So it was with Christ Himself, the firstfruits from the dead.  Now it was only in the first stage of His humanity that He was capable of suffering and death, capable of having His body broken and His blood shed, of having the body and the blood separated from each other, the well-known cause and proof of death in the Jewish sacrifices.  For the ideas of suffering and death cannot be connected with Christ in His glorified humanity.  The stage of humiliation has passed away, never to recur.   “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more” (in this condition of His humanity) (2 Cor. 5:16);  “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more” (Rom. 6:9); He reigns in glory until all enemies are put under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25).  We have thus two states of Christ’s humanity, one of which has passed away by giving place to the other, and the latter of which, the glorified state, never can be exchanged for its predecessor or come to an end.  And we have now to ask, in connection with which state does Scripture allude to the Eucharist?  Invariably with the state of humiliation.  That the words of institution, when fully cited, do so is obvious.  The only other passage of importance in this connection is 1 Cor. 10:16, and properly understood, it is a reminiscence, almost a repetition, of the words of institution.  “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” here, in the twofold action of eating the bread and drinking the cup, as at the institution, that is, in the separation of the elements, the death of Christ, the separation of the body and the blood, is symbolized, and communion or participation of that death is the thing signified by the eating and drinking.  The future meeting of Christ and His Church, to which He alludes in the words “I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom” (Matt. 26:29), whatever we are to understand by them – most probably the marriage supper of the Lamb (Apoc. 19:7), to celebrate the completion of redemption – will, we may be sure, be one with which no associations of suffering and death can be connected.  Such, then, is the state of the Scripture evidence on this subject.  Christ in His suffering humanity is not now present anywhere, for that state no longer exists; Christ in His glorified humanity is never spoken of in connection with the Eucharist, either at the institution or afterwards; nor could He be so, for the leading ideas of the sacrament are sacrifice, suffering, and atonement.  We infer, then, that Christ, as the incarnate Son, is in no sense present in the Eucharist.  He cannot be so in His state of humiliation, because He no longer exists in that state; nor in His glorified state, for the body broken and the blood shed do not belong to that state, which is incompatible with the idea of His being made an offering for sin.  As far as Christ in His human nature is concerned, what is present in the Eucharist is not Himself but the fact, future at the institution, but on the eve of its accomplishment, of the atonement effected by His death on the cross, and the continued virtue of that atonement to be appropriated by faith.  It is a memorial of the fact, a special means of appropriating it, a channel of grace; but Christ, in the humanity which now belongs to Him, is not to be sought in it.  Where He is to be sought, in that humanity, is in heaven; discharging sacerdotal functions on behalf of His Church.  His true real presence is before the throne of God, ever making intercession for us, as our High Priest, pleading the merits of the sacrifice once offered and never to be repeated, and reigning as head of His Church until all enemies are put under His feet.  But He cannot be present in the body crucified and the blood separated from it, except by such a miracle as even the Romish Church has not openly ventured to defend, viz., the actual reincarnation of the Son in the body of His humiliation, such as He had before His resurrection and ascension.  It may be mentioned, in passing, that by many divines it has been doubted whether the glorified humanity of Christ has any blood in it at all, referring as they do to our Lord’s words, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me have,” without any mention of blood.  The point may be thought a speculative one; but if there is any truth in it, it is an additional proof that the words of institution cannot be applied to Christ in His glorified body.

      “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation” (or, judgment) “to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body” (1 Cor. 11:29).  This verse has been cited in proof of the doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament of Christ in His humanity.  The argument seems of the same character as that founded on the words, “This is My body”; what follows about the sacrifice of the body being omitted.  Isolated texts may be made to mean anything.  Abuses in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper had crept into the Corinthian Church demanding the Apostle’s animadversion.  He reminds the Church of what “he had received,” that the sacrament is a memorial of Christ’s death, “of His body broken, His blood shed”; symbolized by the bread broken and the wine poured out; and proceeds to point out the danger of profaning an ordinance of such sacred import.  “Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (ver. 27); shall be held liable to punishment (not eternal) for thinking lightly of the death of Christ.  This is the meaning in ver. 29, of “not discerning the Lord’s body”: the mention of the blood is omitted as unnecessary; and the eating and drinking unworthily is explained as making no distinction between the memorial of Christ’s death and an ordinary banquet.  It is still the sacrifice, not the presence, of Christ to which the Apostle alludes.  As to John 6:51–63, it has never yet been satisfactorily made out that it refers directly to the Eucharist at all.  Most modern commentators of note agree with the result of Waterland’s exhaustive discussion, that, though it may be applied to the Eucharist, it cannot be interpreted thereof.  It is not in itself likely that our Lord should have alluded, at so early a period of His ministry, to the sacraments of the Church; a remark which, notwithstanding Hooker’s dictum (E. P., B. v.), may occasion doubt whether John 3:5 is to be literally interpreted of Christian baptism.  And yet there is more to be said for this latter passage than for that in John 6, for both John’s and Christ’s baptism had, from the identity of the visible symbol in either, to some extent anticipated the Christian rite, whereas no such anticipation of the Eucharist is to be discovered.  In either case, the supposition of a direct reference to sacraments would involve the doctrine that no one can be saved without being baptized and partaking of the Lord’s Supper; and in the case of the latter sacrament, that every one who does partake of it will be saved: “Whosoever eateth my flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life” (ver. 54).

      To escape from this conclusion, various exceptions are allowed, as of infants or idiots, of those who lived before the sacrament was instituted, of those who desired to receive it but were prevented by unavoidable circumstances.  The necessity of such revelations shows that the words cannot be taken in their literal sense.  Briefly, the leading truth unfolded in this discourse of Christ is not His presence in the Eucharist, or in any other rite of the Church, but His incarnation and death.  In reply to the request of the Capernaites for material bread, He announces Himself as, the Bread of Life, the bread which cometh down from heaven, of which, if “any man eats, he shall live for ever.”  This plainly contained a mystery; and instead of expressing Himself more plainly, our Lord exchanges the term “bread” for “flesh”; and, as if to increase the perplexity of His hearers, adds the word “blood”: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of God and drink His blood, ye have no life in you”; an idea most repugnant to the Jewish mind.  Now His flesh and blood combined, considered in themselves simply, seem to signify what they do in the words of institution, viz., the body of His humiliation, and if it be asked why He should insist on the fact of the incarnation, we have only to remember that one of the most pernicious heresies of the early Church consisted in the denial of the fact.  “Flesh and blood” signify what the eternal Son became when He entered the womb of the Virgin; and to eat and drink of His flesh and His blood is to accept in faith that incomprehensible mystery.  But the incarnation was with a view to the atonement, and our Lord completes His present disclosure of the mystery with a reference thereto: “The bread that I will give is My flesh” (with the blood), “which I will give for the life of the world.”  There is here clearly a gradation of thought: the Son becomes incarnate (σάρξ και αίμα) ; and then, in that human nature, gives Himself, in some unexplained sense, for the life of men.  The full meaning is not disclosed, and yet the additional clause connects the passage with the Eucharist.  For what is here obscurely hinted at is brought to light in the words of institution: the life of the world is to be purchased not merely by Christ’s giving, in some sense, His flesh for it, but specifically by giving His body to be broken and His blood to be shed, by His passion and death, for the remission of sins; and the sacrament is a perpetual memorial of that death.  The ideas of incarnation and atonement are common, both to the discourse in John 6 and to the Eucharist; more dimly intimated in the one, more explicitly in the other; and so far, but no further, the former is anticipatory of the latter.  The presence of the glorified humanity of Christ, alleged to be intended in the discourse and fulfilled in the appointment of the sacrament, and a quasi-physical incorporation of the recipient into that glorified humanity, are ideas foreign both to the passage in S. John and to the words of institution.  “There is one construction” (of John 6), says the writer already referred to, as distinguished for his learning as for his candour, “which will completely answer in point of universality, and it is this: all that shall finally share in the death, passion, and atonement of Christ are safe, and all that have not a part in it are lost.  All that are saved owe their salvation to the salutary passion of Christ; and their partaking thereof” (which is feeding on His flesh and His blood) is their life.  Our Lord’s general doctrine in this chapter seems to abstract from all particularities and to resolve into this: that whether with faith, or without (explicit, he must mean), “whether in the sacraments or out of the sacraments, whether before Christ or since, whether in covenant or out of covenant, whether here or hereafter – no man ever was, is, or will be accepted, but in and through the grand propitiation made by the blood of Christ.” [Waterland, Eucharist, c. vi.] That this is the true meaning of the passage few will doubt: the only point in which the learned writer may be thought to have erred, is in introducing into the discourse what it needed the fuller revelation of Christ in the words of institution, and of the Apostles after the descent of the Holy Ghost, to explain.

      It has been urged that the use of such unusual language (in the discourse at Capernaum) points to some great mystery expressed by it; something far deeper and more sublime than the incarnation and the atonement, which are comparatively simple doctrines, and could be expounded in simple and intelligible language. [Bp. Browne on Art. xxviii.]  We apprehend that these two doctrines, which form the very foundation of the Gospel, are quite as mysterious as a supposed presence of Christ in His glorified body, which presence is neither that of pure body nor of pure spirit, but something between the two, which, for want of a better term, we are to call “sacramental”; which is incomprehensible because it cannot be comprehended, mysterious no doubt but only because it abounds with contradictions; and which cannot be proved from Scripture as necessary to the spiritual life, or (as the Fathers consistently held), to the resurrection of the body.  The language, indeed, in which the incarnation and the atonement are stated is simple enough; but the facts themselves, in their various relations, no finite mind has comprehended, or can comprehend.  When S. Paul speaks of “the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16), the first particular of it which he mentions is the manifestation of God in the flesh; on union with Christ’s glorified body he is silent.

      So plainly incompatible are the words of institution with the glorified state of Christ, that a doubt might arise whether men of learning and ability can really mean that He is present in the Eucharist in His glorified humanity: and not rather tacitly conceive of Him as at each celebration reverting to the state of humiliation.  And, in truth, this point was not cleared up in the ancient Church until about the twelfth century.  About that time it came to be received that transubstantiation did not mean reproducing the Christ who walked on the shores of the sea of Galilee and expired on the Cross, with whom alone the notion of sacrifice could be connected, but the Christ who reigns in glory, to the manifest detriment of the sacrificial theory of the Mass.  The Council of Trent avoids direct statements on the subject; and the Romish Catechism briefly declares that the “true body of Christ, the same which was born of the Virgin, and sits in heaven at the right hand of the Father, is contained in this sacrament.”  Bellarmine’s language, too, is not so clear as usual: “What is offered to God are not the species of the bread (and the wine) but that which had been offered on the Cross.”  However, it is clear that it is Christ in His glorified humanity Whom the schoolmen and the Romish Church suppose to be present in the sacrament; only the sacrifice is an unbloody one as distinguished from that on the Cross; in which distinction it is forgotten that not the nature of the sacrifice, but the idea of sacrifice at all is what is incompatible with our Lord’s glorified state.  There is no doubt as to the meaning of the writers of our Church who hold the Real Presence.  “The immediate result” (of the denial of a human priesthood and the necessity of consecration) “was that, instead of any recognition of the present action of our glorified Redeemer, the holy Eucharist was supposed to be a mere memorial of His season of humiliation”; and so another writer of the same school, “Christ’s body is now glorified, but still it is the same body, though in a glorified condition.  It is not denied that we receive that body really, substantially, corporally; for although the word ‘corporally’ seems opposed to ‘spiritually,’ it is not so of necessity.  When we come to explain ourselves, we may say that, though it be Christ’s very body we receive in the Eucharist, and though we cannot deny even the word ‘corporal’ concerning it, yet as Christ’s body is now a spiritual body, so we expect a spiritual presence of that body.  Certainly it is true that the faithful Christian lives by union to the glorified Divine humanity of His Lord.”  It is to be feared that the explanation leaves the matter more dark than ever.  The Rubric in the Communion for the Sick gives better instruction: “If a man, by reason of extremity of sickness, or for want of warning in due time to the curate, or for lack of company to receive with him, or by any other just impediment, do not receive the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, the curate shall instruct him that if he do truly repent him of his sins and steadfastly believe that Jesus Christ hath suffered death on the Cross for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving him hearty thanks therefor, he doth eat and drink the body and blood of our Saviour profitably to his soul’s health, although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth.”

      And yet Christ must, as we have observed, in some sense be present in this as in every ordinance of the Gospel; and the discussion would be incomplete if an attempt were not made to ascertain how He is so.  The 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of S. John’s Gospel furnish the explanation.  “I go,” said Christ to the disciples, “to prepare a place for you; but I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.  Now I go My way to Him that sent Me; a little while and ye shall not see Me, I leave the world and go to the Father; I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice; if a man love Me he will keep My words, and My Father will love Him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again to you.”  There is no positive contradiction in these statements, for Christ might depart to the Father, and by coming again, mean merely that at the last day He should be seen by the disciples.  But, as we have seen, such promises as “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world,” and “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst,” can hardly be reconciled with His departure to the Father, not to return till He comes to judgment.  The doctrine of the Holy Trinity harmonizes what otherwise might seem inconsistent.  Immediately after the announcement which filled the disciples with sorrow, Christ tells them that He would pray the Father to send them another Comforter, who should abide with them for ever, and who should as fully, and even more fully, discharge the offices which He had Himself discharged while He was with them – teaching, enlightening, comforting; that it was expedient for them He should depart, for otherwise this other Comforter would not come to them (John 16:7).  This Comforter was to exercise a much more important agency in the new dispensation than that of merely bringing down the incarnate Son from heaven to be present in the Eucharist or in Baptism: He was to be the active Administrator of the new dispensation, as it was founded on the work of redemption by Christ.  We know who the promised Comforter is, “even the Spirit of truth” (14:17) – the third Person of the Trinity, who, as regards His Godhead, that wherein the Divine personality resides, is one with Christ; a Vicar indeed, to take the Saviour’s place, but because He is a Divine Vicar, one with the Principal.  And thus where Christ is there is the Holy Ghost, and where the Holy Ghost is there is Christ.  In the language of the ancient Canon, “opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt”; i.e., in works outside itself, all the Persons of the Holy Trinity combine in producing the work.  Such a work was creation, which is indiscriminately ascribed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and such another is the Divine indwelling in the Church.  It is in works ad infra, in the internal relations of the three Persons towards each other, that the distinction of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit properly resides.  Not that, even in the economy of redemption, we may “confound the Persons,” and say that the offices of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are strictly one and the same; whence the aforesaid Canon adds, “Salvo tamen earum (Personarum) ordine et discrimine.”  To the Father, election belongs; to the Son, redemption; to the Holy Ghost, sanctification.  This is the great mystery of Christian Trinitarianism; that in the work ad extra of restoring fallen man, it is the whole Trinity that is operative, while yet there is a distinction between the Persons: the second and the third Persons are, as regards the Godhead, one, and, notwithstanding, One of them is the Redeemer, the other the Sanctifier.  And thus our Lord could, with perfect consistency, say that, in one sense, He would depart from His Church (to discharge sacerdotal functions in heaven), and in another that He would ever be with His Church; or, in other words, Christ is really absent and really present – absent as the incarnate Son, present in and by His Divine Vicar, the Holy Ghost.  Through the indwelling of this Divine Vicar, Christ is in Christians and they in Him (John 17:23); holds inward fellowship with them (Rev. 3:20); dwells in their hearts by faith (Ephes. 3:17); is in them, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27): not that Christ in His glorified humanity takes up His abode in us, which, if that humanity is not a phantom but a reality, is inconceivable; but that the Comforter, Who takes His place, and Who is, in fact, Christ as regards the Godhead, performs these gracious offices.  “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63).  Thus in this as in other instances the doctrine of the Trinity supplies the key to the meaning of passages which otherwise seem not easy to reconcile; a proof of this doctrine analogous to that on which the law of gravitation rests; viz., that the Newtonian hypothesis, and it alone, has been found adequate to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies, even such as on their first discovery may have appeared exceptions to it.  To our faith Christ must ever be present, whether in the Eucharist or out of it; His atonement on the Cross, never to be repeated, is the foundation of our hopes, and His intercession in heaven our warrant for drawing nigh to the mercy seat; and especially must He be present to our faith in view of the operation of the Holy Ghost, His Vicar on earth; for the great gift of the Comforter was the particular fruit of His cross and passion: we feed upon His Person and work by faith; He is in us by the indwelling of His Spirit; beyond this it is not safe, because it is not Scriptural, to advance.

      Where true views are entertained of the Holy Spirit’s work under the Gospel dispensation; that His are the offices of teaching, quickening, sanctifying, conferring gifts, and in general of actively administering the application of Christ’s work; such expressions as that “the life” of Christ in His glorified humanity is communicated to us in the Eucharist or elsewhere, might be spared.  They are difficult to understand, and they are not needed.  They savour of physical conceptions of our union with Christ.  What more do we need than the great promise, “He” (the Comforter) “dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:17)?  In truth, the doctrine of the real presence would be an otiose conception, of little practical moment, but for its connection with another doctrine far more influential in its results.  The Church of the fourth and fifth centuries, and even earlier, began to regard the Christian ministry as a continuation of the Levitical priesthood, but priests without sacrifices to offer would be an incongruity, and where could there be a proper sacrifice without a victim?  To fill up the gap, Christ in His humanity was supposed to be present in the Eucharist by virtue of consecration; and when the theory was fully worked out, to be sacrificed afresh at each celebration of the Mass.  To the Romanist the doctrine of a real presence of Christ in His human nature is a necessity; [As is candidly admitted by Bellarmine: Eucharistia potuisset vere et proprie sacramentum esse, etiamsi Christi corpus reipsa non contineret.  Quae igitur causa est cur debuerit necessario Eucharistia Christi corpus reipsa continere, nisi ut posset vere et proprie Deo patri a nobis offerri, at proinde sacrificium esse vere at proprie dictum.  De Miss., L. i., c, 22.] to the Protestant, even to the Lutheran, it is not so.  The Lutheran holds it as a truth of Scripture, but builds nothing of importance upon it.  In any system of really Protestant theology it is a superfluity, which may be dispensed with.

 

§ 97.  Ubiquity

      What the powers and properties of a glorified body may be is an interesting subject of speculation, but one on which Scripture throws little or no light.  It has entered, however, into controversies about the Eucharist, and especially that touching the power of Christ to be present at various celebrations in His glorified humanity; and although the inquiry may seem superfluous until it is proved that Christ, as the Incarnate Son, is present at all in that ordinance, it may, on historical grounds, claim some notice here.

      That Christ, as God, is omnipresent all must admit; but the general remark may be made that the abstract attributes of Deity belong rather to the topic of natural theism than to that of the economical Trinity, the Trinity of redemption.  In other words, we cannot speak of the presence of Christ in the Church without bearing in mind that He is God manifest in the flesh (that is, under a veil), that He humbled Himself so as to become obedient to death, that He ascended to heaven in a proper, though glorified, humanity; facts which render the problem of His omnipresence, as the Son incarnate, by no means so simple as it might at first sight appear.  Such arguments as those of Luther in the Sacramentarian Controversy, that since God is omnipresent and the human nature can never be conceived of apart from the Divine, therefore the latter must also be omnipresent; or that since Christ is at the right hand of God, and the right hand of God is everywhere, Christ is everywhere; are far from conclusive.  Can a real human nature, which could be touched and handled (Luke 24:39), be ubiquitous?  Can even a glorified body be independent of space?  Can that be a body which can neither be seen nor touched?  Is it inconsistent, as the communion rubric declares, with the truth of Christ’s “natural” (i.e., His glorified) body to be at the same time in more places than one?  These, and similar questions, not easy of solution, arise in connection with the complex person of the Redeemer.

      In a previous section (§ 51) some account was given of the attempts made by theologians to explain, and even to modify, the definitions of the Council of Chalcedon, which laid down that in Christ there is one Divine Person (έν πρόσωπον, μια υπόστασις), consisting of two natures, the Divine and the human, which, though combining to form the one Person, did so, not in the way of fusion (ασυγχύτως), nor by alteration of the essential properties of either (ατρέπτως), but of union under one hypostasis; to which the statements of the Athanasian Creed correspond: “Although He be God and man, yet He is not two but one Christ.  One not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.  One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person.”  It was shown that these attempts, as they assumed a final shape in the writings of J. Damasc., failed to bring the natures into any real union.  Neither did his Perichoresis (circumcessio), or interpenetration of the natures, nor his Theosis, or deification of the human nature, solve the difficulty: though the latter may be thought an approximation thereto.  All through mediaeval theology a monothelite tendency is visible: Christ and man are kept apart, as the infinite from the finite: the Saviour dwells in incommunicable glory; and we have no longer a High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because He was in all points tempted as we are: He is removed from human sympathy and pity, and becomes not the Propitiator but the Being to be propitiated.  This appears most strongly in the Romish Church where Christ practically disappears as the Mediator between God and man, His place being taken by other mediators.  The cult of the Holy Virgin in that Church is only the natural result of this tendency, and proves that the instincts of sinful and suffering man, if not satisfied by the Scriptural exhibition of the Redeemer, are sure to seek their gratification in forbidden ways.  The schoolmen advanced little beyond the point at which J. Damasc. had left off.

      Soon after the commencement of the Reformation disputes arose between the Lutheran and the Swiss Reformers on the subject of the Eucharist, and particularly on the mode of the presence of Christ in that sacrament.  Luther’s early views, before his attention had been drawn to the subject, seem to have fluctuated between the extremes of Romanism and Zwinglianism; at least, his language is ambiguous, and admits of various interpretation.  It was not until A. Carlstadt, at one time a friend and coadjutor of the great Reformer, appeared publicly at Wittemberg about the year 1526, as an opponent of the doctrine of the real presence, that the controversy assumed an embittered aspect.  Luther classed Carlstadt with the enthusiasts of the inner light (Schwarmgeister) whose extravagancies had raised a prejudice against the Reformation; but, in fact, his opinions seem to have differed little from those of Zwingli, AEcolampadius, and Bullinger, to say nothing of Calvin.  The Lutheran doctrine may be summed up in the words of the Formula Concordiae, which, though composed after Luther’s death, represents his sentiments: “We believe and confess that in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ” (tantamount, it is assumed, to the whole Christ) “are truly and substantially present, and are received along with” (in, cum, sub) “the bread and wine” (P. i., c. 7).  From which it follows not only that Christ’s manhood is practically ubiquitous, but that the unworthy are equally with the worthy partakers of Christ.

      Of Scripture proof Luther adduces but little, except the words of institution.  He avows, in a letter to the Reformers of Strasburg (1524), that five years previously he would have been only too glad to be able to accept the tropological sense of the words, “This is My body,” for that it would have placed in his hands a weapon of great force against the Papacy, but that he could not get over “the powerful letter of Scripture.”  On this point sufficient has been said in the preceding section.  His doctrine is that of the communicatio idiomatum (see § 51) applied particularly to the question of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, and the later schoolmen, chiefly Occam and Biel, are the authorities which he follows.  According to these writers a thing or person may be present in three ways, “circumscriptive,” “definitive,” and “repletive”.  “Circumscriptive,” when a body which we see and can touch, occupies a certain portion of space; it is circumscribed by space.  In this sense Christ on earth was present; He could be seen and touched, and filled a portion of space.  “Definitive,” when a body is not locally present, or an object of sense, yet can, when it pleases, be here or there, as, for example, the angels and spirits.  The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is of this nature, and may be illustrated by the power which He exercised after the resurrection of passing through the closed doors of the place where the disciples were assembled (John 20:19).  It resembles, too, the presence of the soul in the body of man; the soul dwells in the whole body, but also, and as completely, in each part thereof.  It may be called an illocal presence, a presence independent of space.  “Repletive” signifies the Divine omnipresence in the strict sense of the word, all things being present to God and He to them.  Such were the speculations of the schools, which it is unnecessary to pursue further.  Luther and his followers, adopting the scholastic terms, attributed to Christ in His glorified humanity a presence in the Eucharist both “definitive” and “repletive”.  Since the human nature, they argued, exists in inseparable union with the Divine, and the Divine is omnipresent, the human nature, too, must be omnipresent; from which it would logically follow that Christ is present in every particle of matter throughout the universe as God is, in every stone, every tree, every animal.  Well might the Swiss theologians ask, was it really intended that Christ is present in the Eucharistic elements only as He is present in the materials of every common meal, as He undoubtedly is, when considered merely as God?  The difficulty was pressing, and Luther could only meet it by maintaining that Christ may be present, not only “repletive” in the full sense of omnipresence, but also, in certain cases, “definitive,” by virtue of a special appointment and promise.  The Eucharist, he holds, is an example.  “Although Christ is in all creatures, and I might find Him in a stone, fire, water, etc., as assuredly He is there, yet it is not His will that, without His word, I should seek Him there.  He is omnipresent, but thou art not to feel after Him everywhere, but only where the promise is, there thou properly apprehendest Him.”  “If His glorified body passed through doors, and if even upon earth He could say that He was in heaven (John 3:13), He must be omnipresent now, for in every stage of His humanity personal identity remained.  He was omnipresent as the babe in the manger, He was so on the cross, and is so now in His glorified state.  Why, then, is He present in the Eucharist particularly and after a special manner?  Because it is one thing that God is there, and another that He is there to thee.  And to thee He is there when He pledges His word for it, and says, Here thou shalt find Me.”  Such is the Lutheran doctrine, especially as it was fully worked out by J. Brenz, of Wurtemberg, 1555.  It differs from that of the early Church in predicating of the body of Christ, the human nature, what the Fathers ascribe to the whole person, in the union of the two natures.  It did not receive the sanction of Melanchthon, who, in his later years, inclined to Calvin’s view, nor of Chemnitz, one of the authors of the “Formula Concordiae,” and in other respects a decided Lutheran.  This eminent theologian’s labours were very properly directed to confining the controversy within the limits of Scripture as much as possible, and avoiding philosophical speculations, which, in his opinion, seldom lead to profitable results.  It is the presence of Christ, he observes, not in the abstract, but in the Church, that Christians have to do with.  Accordingly, instead of the physical conceptions of Luther and Brenz (and it may be added of the Fathers), who united the natures as metal and heat are united in a mass of glowing iron, Chemnitz insisted rather on the ethical aspect.  The human nature is present in the Eucharist, not of natural necessity, but as the Logos wills that it should be; for the term ubiquity, he says, let us substitute multivolipresence, a presence which, however multiplied, results from particular acts of the Divine will.  “Let us be content with this, that Christ in His humanity can be present everywhere, whensoever, and in whatever manner He pleases, but as to what His will is, let us judge from His revealed word.”

      On the whole it may be said that these subtle definitions and distinctions amount to little more than a confession of ignorance, and lose themselves at last in mystery.  What conception can we form of an illocal presence?  Or of a presence not strictly ubiquitous, yet capable of being, at will, in various places at once?  What do we know of the relation of a glorified body to space, or of its powers, or of the connection, antecedently to the incarnation, of the Logos with the Man Christ Jesus?  How can an angel, or a (created) spirit, the examples which the schoolmen employ of a presence definitive, be present not merely in various places successively, but in various places at once, which is the thing predicated of Christ in the Eucharist?  The “natural” body of Christ, it is admitted even by Romanists, is in heaven; if it is present in the Eucharist, it is so as regards the “substance”.  But substance is a mere category, an abstraction, never existing by itself, but always in the concrete.  The logical substance of a man is in no proper sense of the words a man.  Of these difficulties the defenders of a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist seem conscious, for it is chiefly by negatives that they define it.  It is not local, it is not natural, it is not an object of sense, it is not ubiquitous as God is, but only as Christ wills.  What, then, is its mode?  It is “sacramental”; which seems little more than saying that Christ’s presence in the sacrament is a sacramental one; which, however true, does not add much to our knowledge.  It is to be observed that the Romish Church can dispense with speculation on this subject, since by the miracle of transubstantiation, wrought by consecration, the elements are, at each celebration, changed into Christ in His glorified humanity.  Hence Bellarmine can, and does, contend against the essential ubiquity of Christ’s human nature, by the communicatio idiomatum, as strongly as Zwingli and AEcolampadius themselves.  The Lutheran doctrine renders consecration unnecessary.

      But from another quarter, too, a difficulty arises.  According to Luther, the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature dates from the unio personalis in the womb of the Virgin, but during the state of humiliation it was only in possession, not in use, or not always in use; it was restrained in its exercise.  But on the ascension, the human nature entered into the full exercise of the Divine attributes, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience; finitum became not merely capax infiniti but actually infinitum.  Now there is no doubt that the session at the right hand of God is described in terms which seem to approach to a deification of the whole Christ: “We see Jesus who suffered on the cross crowned with glory and honour” (Heb. 2:9); “God has exalted Him, and given Him a name above every name” (Phil. 2:9); “all power is given” unto Him “in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18); prayer is made to Him (Acts 7:59).  Yet, on the other hand, in 1 Cor. 15:24–28, Christ is said to reign only until He has put all enemies under His feet; that a time is coming when His mediatorial offices shall cease, and the kingdom shall be delivered up to God, even the Father; when the Son Himself (in our nature) shall be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.  The passage is one the full meaning of which commentators have as yet failed to discover; but the impression conveyed is that Christ, even after the close of this dispensation, will, as touching His manhood, still be in a state of subordination to the Father.  Since the Church holds that the human and the Divine natures never can be separated, a question arises whether this relative subordination shall ever cease.  If not, the Divine attribute of ubiquity cannot be predicated of Christ either now or hereafter; and the Lutheran doctrine, that eventually the human nature will be really deified, demands revision.  We may put the question in another form: does the κένοσις spoken of in Phil. 2:7 cease with the ταπείνωσις of the following verse?  In this passage two distinct stages in the incarnation seem to be indicated, one ending with ver. 7, the other with ver. 8.  “He did not think it a thing to be grasped at to remain equal with God, but emptied Himself (εκένωσε) so as to be in the likeness of men”; the incarnation itself was a kenosis or relative emptying of the Divine nature, in that a real human nature cannot be conceived of as possessing the abstract Divine attributes.  But further: being thus incarnate, He grasped not at earthly riches or splendour, but humbled Himself (εταπείνωσεν εαυτον) to a life of suffering, and to the death of the cross.  This latter tapeinosis ceased with the ascension; Christ is highly exalted, with a name above every name; but as long as He is really man, does the former kenosis entirely cease?  The answer may affect the question whether ubiquity is to be predicated, either now or at any time, of the incarnate Son?

 

§ 98.  Transubstantiation

      This dogma, on which the sacrifice of the Mass depends, passed, like most of those established at the Council of Trent, through many stages before it assumed its final shape.  The earliest Patristic mention of the Eucharist occurs in the epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans.  There are some, Ignatius observes, who abstain from eucharistia and prayer, “because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ which suffered for us.”  This is little more than a repetition of the words of institution, “This is My body, broken for you”; and whether Ignatius interprets the words literally or tropologically is not clear.  Nor can more be inferred from the passage of Justin, Apol. I., 66: “We receive the elements not as common bread and wine; for as our Saviour Christ assumed for our sake flesh and blood, so we have been taught that the eucharistic food is the body and blood of the incarnate Jesus.”  No change in the elements is here asserted, and, indeed, the comparison of the incarnation excludes such a supposition; for when the Word became man, He did not convert either the Godhead into flesh, or the manhood into Deity.  “As the bread,” says Irenaeus, “when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly, so our bodies through the Eucharist are no longer corruptible, but partakers of the hope of the resurrection.”  The distinction here indicated between an earthly and a heavenly element in the sacrament seems an anticipation of that of the schoolmen between the sacramentum (the bread and wine) and the res sacramenti, the body and blood of Christ; and particularly the supposed effect of the sacrament on the body, a doctrine which occupies a conspicuous place in later writers, but which has no warrant in Scripture, is to be noted; but nothing is said of a change of the substance of the bread and wine.  By the Alexandrian School, as represented by Clement, Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, and even Athanasius, the symbolism of the elements is insisted on; which, if not absolutely inconsistent with a change of substance, does not favour it; and no less is it so by the leaders of the African Church, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine.  “Christ,” says Tertullian, “in taking and distributing the bread to His disciples, made it His body, when He said, ‘This is My body’; that is, a figure of My body.”  Cyprian: “Let the Divine tradition touching the offering of the cup be followed; and let us not deviate from the example of Christ, but mix wine in the cup which is offered in remembrance of Him”; the commemorative aspect of the ordinance here retains its place, and this again does not favour the notion of a presence of Christ in and under the elements.  The figurative interpretation finds a strong defender in Augustine.  A question had arisen in the diocese of Boniface, Augustine’s friend, whether it was proper to use language which seemed to imply that Christ was offered afresh at each celebration, particularly on Good Friday; and it was referred to the Bishop of Hippo for consideration.  The answer of Augustine is that as we commonly say on Easter Sunday, “Christ rose today,” so, by a similar figure, we say at the Eucharist, whether it be the daily celebration or those of the great festivals, “Christ is sacrificed for us,” whereas we know that He died once for all for sin.  “For if sacraments,” he continues, “had not some similitude to those things of which they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all.  But from this similitude they commonly receive the names of the things themselves.  As therefore, after a certain manner (secundum quendam modum), the sacrament of the body of Christ is the body of Christ, the sacrament of the blood of Christ is the blood of Christ; so the sacrament of faith is faith.” [Epist. xcviii.]  Still more distinctly: “The Lord did not hesitate to say, ‘This is My body,’ when it was the sign of His body which He gave” [Adv. Adimant., xii. 3.]; “Behold, we believe in Christ when we receive that supper in faith.  Prepare not your mouth but your heart.  In receiving it, we know what we are thinking of.  We receive a morsel, and in heart are feasted.  Not therefore what is seen, but what is believed, nourishes.” [Sermo cxii., 5.]  It is not to be denied that all these writers, particularly Cyprian and Augustine, connect the idea of sacrifice with the Lord’s Supper; not in the primitive sense in which the offerings of the faithful presented at the Holy Table were so called, but that in the sacrament there is a representation to God, by sacerdotal hands, of Christ’s sacrifice.  By the Holy Ghost, as in baptism, some undefined change was supposed to be wrought in the elements, the bread being no longer κοινος άρτος; and Augustine in particular, by an ambiguous use of the term “body of Christ,” which may mean either Christ’s own body or His mystical body the Church, assigns to the sacrament a power of incorporating the worthy recipient into this mystical body.  Superstitious practices, as the driving out of demons by the Eucharist, and celebrating it in prayers for the dead, to say nothing of infant communion, had already become prevalent.  But no formal statement as yet appears of the mode in which either the Holy Ghost, or Christ in His humanity, is present in the sacrament.

      The influence of Augustine made itself felt for a long time in the Western Church, with the result that the symbolical view of the sacraments held its place along with tendencies of an opposite kind.  Even Gregory the Great (A.D. 600), although he maintains that in the Eucharist an offering of Christ is repeated, adds that “it is a sacrifice which imitates the passion of the only begotten Son on our behalf.” [Hom. 37, in Evang. Dial., iv. 58.  See Steitz, article “Mass” in Herzog.]  Passages may be cited from the works of Ambrose which seem to teach transubstantiation; and indeed Paschasius Radbert, held to be the real author of this doctrine, refers to Ambrose as his principal authority; but it is not the fully developed Romish tenet.  Ambrose argues from the Divine omnipotence: if by a miracle the Son became incarnate, why may not the body of Christ be present in the Eucharist by a corresponding miracle?  “Before consecration, the element (species) is bread, but when the words of Christ are added, it is the body of the Lord.  And before the words of Christ the cup is full of wine and water; when the words of Christ have operated, it is made the blood of Christ.  What the tongue confesses, let the heart embrace.” [De Sac., L. iv., c. 5.]  Here, no doubt, a change is taught, effected by Divine power, but it is undefined: the substance of the bread and wine is not said to disappear by virtue of priestly consecration.

      In the eighth century, John of Damascus, the representative of Greek orthodoxy, made important advances in this direction.  Taking his stand on the Scriptural doctrine of the first and second Adam, he observes that the new birth and the new nutrition which we need, must both be spiritual.  Also, since we are compounded of soul and body, the birth and the nutrition (or rather the instruments thereof, baptism and the Eucharist) must be of a compound nature; water and the Spirit in the former, bread and wine and Christ Himself in the latter.  Take, eat, this is My body; drink this, it is My blood: by these words of power, the elements become transformed (μεταποιουνται) into the body and blood of God; the body becomes united to Deity, not however by the descent of the glorified Body from heaven (adductione corporis), but by the changing of the elements into the body that was born of the Virgin (conversione elementorum).  “Askest thou, how this can be?  Learn that it is by the invocation and descent of the Holy Ghost, the same Holy Ghost who created the human nature out of the spotless womb of the Virgin.  As natural bread and wine are assimilated by the bodily organs of the receiver – and not two bodies, but one, is the result – so, through the power of the Holy Ghost, the elements are changed supernaturally into the body and blood of Christ, and one spiritual body remains.  So then, the bread and wine are not types of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid), but the very body itself Deified.  If some (e.g., the divine Basil) have called them symbols (αντίτυπα) it was before consecration, not after.  The celebration is called participation (μετάληψις), because in it we participate of the Deity of Christ, and are made one with Him and His Church.” [De Fid. Orth., L. iv, c. 13.]  It is obvious that this approaches closely to the Romish doctrine, although the mode of transformation is not defined; for if only one body remains after the change, viz., the body of Christ, it seems that the bread no longer retains its substance but only its accidents.  Not so much stress is laid on consecration as would be by a writer of the Western Church of the same date, and more upon the invocation of the Holy Ghost; a trait this of Eastern theology, as appears from the fact that in the Roman liturgy no such invocation appears.

      The Patristic testimony may be thus summed up: a real presence of Christ in His human nature is taught by all the Fathers; and this presence is connected with the species of bread and wine, irrespectively of the faith of the receiver, so closely as to amount practically to a doctrine of transubstantiation.  Ambrose, Theodoret, and J. Damasc. can hardly be understood otherwise.  The statements that, in the Eucharist, Christ in His whole Person is participated of, though a gross physical union is disclaimed, and that the body receives therein the seed of immortality, are sufficient to show in what direction thought was tending.  Yet, side by side with these theories, the figurative interpretation, at least in the Western Church, never wholly disappears; and the result is that authorities may be quoted on either side, and that it is very difficult to frame a consistent system out of the materials at hand.  In the East it was different: the second Nicene Council (A.D. 787) taking J. Damasc. as its guide, declares that the consecrated elements are not symbols of the body and blood of Christ, but the very things themselves.  The later Greek Church teaches, under the name of μετουσίωσις, a doctrine substantially identical with that of Rome.

      So matters remained until the beginning of the ninth century, when the disputes occasioned by the writings of Paschasius Radbert, monk and afterwards Abbot of Corbie, issued in more precise statements.  Radbert, a disciple of Augustine, endeavoured, in his treatise “De Corpore et Sanguine Christi,” to reconcile the symbolism of his master with the teaching which had become current in the Church, but only with partial success.  With Augustine he insists on the spiritual nature of the sacramental grace, and the necessity of faith to its beneficial reception; only they who belong to the mystical body of Christ, who walk by faith not by sight, receive the blessing.  “Sancta sanctorum sunt; non nisi electorum cibus est.”  The unworthy partake indeed of the sacramentum, but not of the virtus sacramenti; they eat and drink to their own condemnation.  But do they receive the res sacramenti, the body and blood of Christ?  No; they receive nothing but bread and wine.  “What do the guests partake of but the mere elements, unless through faith they mount into the higher regions of spiritual perception?” [C. viii. 2.  Quoted by Steitz, Radbert, Herzog, vol. xii.]  Yet he asserts in the strongest manner the presence in the sacrament of the very body of Christ that was born of the Virgin; and to the question, how this can be? he answers that the same Word which called the world into being, changes, when spoken over the elements by the priest, the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, yet so that their figure, colour, and taste (the accidents of the schoolmen) remain; which is, substantially, the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation.  The consecrating power of the priest assumes in this writer a new importance.  His treatise formed an epoch in the controversy, and materially influenced the decisions of the fourth Lateran council.

      It is proof, however, of the unsettled state of the controversy that Radbert’s work met with opposition from influential quarters.  The best known to us of his opponents are Ratramn, [Sometimes called Bertram, but probably it is a mistake of the scribes.] also a monk of Corbie and a contemporary of Radbert, and Berengar of Tours.  Ratramn received a commission from Charles the Bald to review Radbert’s treatise, which had just come into the emperor’s hands; and particularly to discuss the question whether what the faithful receive in the sacrament is the very body and blood of Christ, or only in a figure or mystery.  This obviously is the point at issue.  Ratramn’s work is interesting in itself, but particularly so as having been the means of convincing our Reformers of the errors of the faith in which they had been nurtured. [“This Bertram was the first that pulled me by the ear, and that first brought me from the common error of the Romish Church, and caused me to search more diligently and exactly both the Scriptures and the old ecclesiastical Fathers in this matter.”  Ridley, Disputation at Oxford.]  The view maintained in it is a near approach to that of Calvin.  “What lies on the altar,” Ratramn says, “is not the real body of Christ, which is in heaven, but the symbol of it, just as it is the symbol of His mystical body, the blessed company of all faithful people: it is secundum quendam modum the body of Christ, and that mode is in a figure or image, as when in the Lord’s Prayer we ask for a supply of our daily bread, spiritual as well as natural.  The elements remind us of that death which was once undergone for us, and we shall no longer need them when we behold the Saviour in His glory.”  Here we might suppose ourselves listening to Zwingli.  He proceeds, however, to explain that he is far from denying an objective spiritual presence, which the communicant feeds on by faith: and this is the point in which Calvin differs from the Reformer of Zurich.  Ratramn, like his successor, Calvin, is not clear on the point whether it is faith that makes Christ present; we may say that when we meditate on a thing it is present to us; or whether faith is exercised on an object already by other means present.  His comparison of the Eucharist with Baptism leads to the latter conclusion.  In baptism, he observes, the visible element of water is one thing, the spiritual grace another; the water itself can only cleanse the body, but by consecration it receives from the Holy Ghost a supernatural power to cleanse the soul, and then is rightly called the laver of regeneration.  A similar operation of the Holy Ghost must be supposed in the other sacrament, whereby the bread and wine become endued with life-giving power.  It may be inferred, then, that Ratramn was not, as regards this point, superior to the current notion of his time, and held a physical change in the elements not the less real because not perceptible to the senses.

      The influence of Berengar of Tours (died 1088) was not so great or so lasting as that of Ratramn; partly because his attention was not concentrated on this particular question, and partly because the recantations to which he submitted throw a shade on his character.  Otherwise, his protest against Radbert’s teaching leaves nothing to be desired.  The senses, he argues, which God has given us must be relied on in a matter of this kind; and moreover, it is contrary to reason that substance and accidents should be divorced from each other.  Scripture does not stand in our way; for John 6 does not refer to the Eucharist at all, but to the appropriating by faith of the death of Christ and the atonement thereby effected; and the words of institution must be understood figuratively.  With Augustine we must distinguish between the sacrament and what is represented thereby; and if we suppose the actual body and blood of Christ to be on the altar, the nature of a sacrament is destroyed.  Christ Himself is in heaven; and it is an unworthy notion that at every consecration He should be brought down thence and sacrificed afresh.  His principal opponents were, Guitmund, Archbishop of Aversa, Lanfranc and Anselm, of whom the first was chiefly instrumental in the formation of the Romish dogma.  To him it owes the distinction between substance and accidents, which the schoolmen are wrongly supposed to have first propounded; and particularly the additions, that the unworthy equally with the worthy partake of Christ (without which no real doctrine of transubstantiation can hold its ground); and that the whole Christ, body, soul, and deity, is contained under other species, on which the withholding of the cup from the laity rests.  Not the mere substance of Christ’s body, but the glorified Saviour Himself descends from heaven, and is present in the Eucharist; the whole Christ is in each portion of the host as perfectly as in the whole (“totus in toto, et totus in qualibet parte”); in every Mass throughout the world Christ is present, and undivided in each.  Such were Guitmund’s positions: and it only needed the imprimatur of the Lateran Council under Innocent III (1215) to render them the understood doctrine of the Church.

      The Eucharist was a subject well suited to the theology of the schools, and accordingly it was taken up with peculiar zest by the leading schoolmen.  Yet their labours consisted rather in supplementing and rounding off the theories which had established themselves in the Church than in substantial additions thereto.  Some points had not been sufficiently determined.  The matter was now confined to wheaten bread, preferably unleavened, the form to the words, “This is My body,” pronounced by the priest, on which transubstantiation immediately follows; a certain amount of water is to be mixed with the wine. [Thos. Aqu., P. iii. Q. 74.]  But how was the change itself of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ to be described?  Thomas Aquinas treats of this subject at length in P. iii. of his “Summa Theologiae,” Q. 75.  There are various modes in which a substance previously absent may become present.  By creation, in which something is made out of nothing; or by change of place, as when Christ in His glorified body is supposed to descend from heaven and become present in the sacrament; or by conversion, one present substance being converted into another.  It is in this last mode that transubstantiation takes place.  The substance of the bread and wine, by the word of consecration, or, as some hold, by the power of God accompanying the word, [Thomas is in favour of the former, Bonaventure and G. Biel of the latter, hypothesis.] is converted into the substance of Christ’s body and blood; the accidents only remaining.  The substance of the bread and wine is not annihilated after consecration, for, in that case, no proper conversion of one substance into the other could take place, the terminus a quo of annihilation being nothing.  To the difficulty of conceiving how one substance can be changed into another, since the changes with which we are conversant are merely formal; e.g., when air is changed into fire, the same matter of air receives the new form of fire; the only answer which Thomas supplies is that the sacramental conversion must not be compared with the natural, the one being effected by Divine power, which can convert the whole substance into another substance, whereas conversion by created power can affect only the form.  A more difficult class of questions is concerned with the mode in which Christ is present in the sacrament.  It has been remarked that, by Guitmund, the presence of the whole Christ in the elements, and in each portion of them, was asserted; it was the task of the schoolmen to explain how this could be.  The decision of Thomas Aquinas is that transubstantiation “terminates” indeed in the conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood; this is all that is directly effected vi sacramenti, by virtue of consecration; but that vi concomitantiae, owing to the inseparable union of the Deity with the human nature, and of a soul with a body to make up a perfect man, the whole Christ becomes present, and the Christ in the sacrament is the same as the Christ at the right hand of God. [The identity of the two is a ruled point with the schoolmen and their immediate predecessors.  The only difference allowed is that the glorified Christ is impassible and immortal – properties which did not belong to the state of humiliation.  Strange that they did not perceive that these properties of Christ glorified are the very ones which render the words of institution inapplicable to Him as glorified.]  But what of Christ during the three days’ sojourn in Hades, when the soul was separated from the body?  If the sacrament had been celebrated in that interval, Thomas argues, the soul could not have been present either vi sacramenti or vi concomitantio, and in fact the sacrament would have wanted validity (Q. lxxvi., A. 1).  After the resurrection this difficulty disappeared.  The principle of concomitance is also applied to explain how the whole Christ is present in either species: “although vi sacramenti, only the substance of the bread is changed into that of the body, and the substance of the wine into that of the blood, yet vi concomitantiae” (i.e., that where the body is there must be the blood, and vice versa; and with the body and blood there must be the soul and Deity); “the whole Christ is present under either the bread or the wine” (Ibid., A. 2).  But now arose a difficulty.  Christ in His glorified body is in space circumscriptive: “His body is a real one, and occupies a definite portion of space, and each member of it its own portion: but if the sacramental and the glorified body are identical, must not Christ be also in the former circumscriptive,” in His proper dimensions and figure; which, yet, our senses tell us is not the fact?  The schools were equal to the occasion.  The direct object of transubstantiation, it was replied, being only the substance of Christ’s body, its local dimensions (which from its identity with the glorified body it must have) assume a subordinate place; they exist only per accidens and vi concomitantiae; just as the dimensions of the bread remain the same after consecration, although the substance has passed away.  Now the substance, or, rather, the nature of the substance (T. Aquinas confounds the two), of any body is as completely in the smallest specimen of it as in the largest; the whole nature of air is contained in the least portion thereof, the whole nature of man in a dwarf not less than in a giant; now, Christ is present, not after the manner of quantity, but after the manner of substance, which renders Him independent of quantitative dimension: the latter, it is true, remains, but not after its proper manner, but after that peculiar to substance. [Corpus Christi est in hoc sacramento per modum substantiae et non per modum quantitatis.  Q. lxxvi., A. 1.]  However minute, therefore, the division of the bread, each fragment possessing the whole substance of the body possesses also its measurable dimensions, but after a mode of its own, invisible to the senses.  Thus the realism of the older schoolmen, which assigned to quantity an independent existence, midway between substance and quality, enabled them, at pleasure, to attach it as an accident to substance, or to detach it therefrom; but at the expense of any proper idea of a body.  A material thing which has no quantitative existence cannot be conceived of as possessing figure or organization; it is a mathematical point: hence it cannot be the same body as the glorified one, which was the original hypothesis.  The nominalist school, represented by Occam and Biel, came by another path to the same conclusion.  Quantity, they properly agreed, cannot be separated, except in thought, from a material substance; but the substance may shrink into a state of non-extension.  The natural process of condensation, whereby a thing which filled a larger space comes to fill a smaller, presents an analogy; who can tell but that this may be the case with the body of Christ?  But the residuum, as before, is a mathematical point, without form or organization; and the relation of the body to space is that of a mathematical point.  This is the true meaning of the Lutheran “illocal” presence in the sacrament, a presence filling no definite portion of space; whence there is no absurdity in supposing that it may be in heaven circumscriptive and on each altar definitive; or that it may be on many altars at once.  On this point, of an illocal presence the Lutherans and the schoolmen, whether realists or nominalists, occupy common ground.*

            [*Corpus Christi non est in hoc sacramento secundum proprium motum quantitatis dimensivae, sed magis secundum modum substantiae.  Omne autem corpus locatum est in loco secundum modum quantitatis dimensivae, in quantum scil. commensuratur loco secundum suam quantitatem dimensivam.  Unde relinquitur quod corpus Christi non est in hoc sacramento sicut in loco, sed per modum substantiae; eo scil. modo quo substantia continetur a dimensionibus: succedit enim substantia corp. Christi in hoc sacramento substantiae panis; unde sicut substantia panis non erat sub suis dimensionibus localiter, sed per modum substantiae, item nec substantia corp. Christi.  T. Aqu., P. iii. Q. lxxvi., A. 5.  Hence the disfavour with which in later times the Cartesian philosophy, which made three dimensions essential to a body, was received by the Church.]

      The Romish doctrine, as laid down by the Council of Trent, the catechism of the Council, and the great writers of their Church, is entirely derived from the scholastic theology. The rule of inquiry, indeed, prescribed to the Council was that it should confine its proofs to the Fathers and the councils, which the Italian theologians objected to, as not allowing sufficient weight to the schoolmen, with whom they were better acquainted. Their objection was overruled, and the discussion professed to proceed on the lines stated ; it soon, however, appeared that the schools, though nominally put aside, were in the ascendant. [Sarpi, L. iv., 10.]  The Dominicans and Franciscans, as usual, took opposite sides, but the theories on either side were scholastic.  Both held a real doctrine of transubstantiation.  The Dominicans (Thomists) denied that the presence of Christ in the sacrament is produced by a change of place, by the migration of Christ from heaven to the altar; the substance of the species being instantaneously converted into the substance of the body and blood.  The Franciscans (Scotists) contended for a transitive movement, whereby the one substance comes into being where it did not previously exist, yet without interfering with the identity of Christ in heaven and Christ in the sacrament; Christ, by an exercise of Divine power, is present in heaven, and also on the altar.  According to the Dominicans, Christ exists in a twofold mode of being, one which may be called natural, because though in a glorified body this body like any other has its dimensions and occupies space, the other sacramental, as being peculiar to this sacrament, and a pure object of faith.  The Franciscans held that there is no difference between the body in heaven and that upon the altar, except that the former retains its proper quantity and relation to space, while the latter possesses dimensions only after the manner of (the nature of) a substance.  These are the speculations which we have already become acquainted with in Thomas, Duns Scotus, Occam and Biel.  The Council endeavoured, by using general expressions, and as few definitions as possible, to avoid giving umbrage to either party.  It sided with the Dominicans in the distinction between the natural glorified body of Christ and the sacramental body: “Christ is really, truly, and substantially contained under the sensible species of bread and wine; for there is no inconsistency in our Saviour’s being at the right hand of God according to His natural mode of subsistence, and also substantially present on many altars sacramentally, according to a mode of subsistence which we cannot explain, but which is possible to God.”  “The peculiar excellence of this sacrament is that in the other six Christ is only present virtually in the actual use of them, but in this He is present Himself, in His whole Person, and independently of the use.  By the consecration of the bread and wine a conversion is effected of the whole substance of these species into the whole substance of Christ’s body and blood; and this is what is properly meant by transubstantiation.”  These statements reappear with greater precision in the anathematizing canons: “If any one shall deny that the whole body and blood, together with the soul and deity, of Christ, the whole Christ is not really and substantially contained in the sacrament but only as a sign and figure, or virtually; or that the substance of the bread and wine remains therein together with the body and the blood, denying the conversion of the whole substance of the one into the whole substance of the other; or that in either species, or any portion thereof, the whole Christ is not contained; or that after consecration the body is not in the sacrament but only while it is used; or that the chief or only fruit of the sacrament is remission of sin; or that Christ therein is eaten only spiritually, and not sacramentally and really; or that faith alone is a sufficient preparation for a due reception – let him be anathema.”  The Catechism adds some further explanations.  The accidents of the bread and wine, it says, remain, in a marvelous manner, perceptible to the senses, yet without any subject to inhere in; for their proper substance ceases to exist.  If the true body of Christ is, after consecration, under the species of bread and wine, since it was not there previously, it must be so either by change of place, or by creation, or by conversion of something not the body into the body.  Not by change of place, for then Christ would be absent from heaven, since nothing moves without leaving the place whence it moves.  Not by creation, which is inconceivable.  Conversion only remains, which is, in fact, the mode.  No substance of the bread is left (after consecration).  Since with the body and the blood the soul and the Deity are inseparably united, all these things are in the sacrament; not by virtue of consecration, but by concomitance; so that the whole Christ is in the sacrament.  And He is so, not merely under either species, but, after fraction, in each particle of the bread, however small; for consecration affects the whole mass, and it is not necessary to repeat it over each fragment.  It will be seen that while by the Council many practical abuses were reformed, the doctrine of Rome in the Eucharist is substantially that of the schoolmen; almost in the letter, and certainly in the spirit.  And the same may be said of some recent treatises in our own Church on the subject.  They are simply an exposition of the scholastic, that is, the Romish doctrine, as will be evident to every one who compares the two.  The foregoing somewhat dry and thorny discussion may be useful, if it serves to exhibit the sources, character, and object of these treatises.

      The practical results of the doctrine of transubstantiation, as taught by the Church of Rome, are such as might be expected.  Since Christ is present in the Eucharist, independently of the use, it follows that all who eat the bread, whether worthy or unworthy, are equally partakers of Christ, though not of the spiritual benefit; they receive the res though not the virtue of the sacrament.  Though destitute of the Spirit of Christ, and with sin reigning in the heart, they are brought into union with Christ; than which a more unscriptural notion can hardly be conceived.  The union becomes a physical one, of neutral effect, supernatural but not sanctifying.  It reminds us of the corresponding tenet, that regeneration may exist, even in an adult, without a moral change.  The Anglican Church teaches otherwise: “They that are void of a lively faith,” however they may “press with their teeth” the consecrated bread, “are in no wise partakers of Christ” (Art. xxix.).  On the supposition that John 6 refers to the Eucharist, Christ’s words are inconsistent with such a notion: “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life”: but of the wicked and unbelieving it cannot be said that they have eternal life.

      The adoration of the host is another consequence of transubstantiation.  If Christ is present under the elements, worship is due to Him in that state; and not merely the hyperdulia of the Virgin, or the dulia of the angels and saints, but Latreia, the highest form of worship, due to God alone.  T. Aquinas argues that the substance of bread and wine cannot remain after consecration, because “this would be inconsistent with the adoration of Latreia,” which the Church prescribes (III. Q. lxxv., A. 2).  The Council of Trent endorses and expands this statement: “No doubt remains that the faithful, according to the custom always prevalent in the Church, are bound to show their veneration towards this sacrament by the worship of Latreia.  Especially should they do so at the annual festival (corpus Christi) which is celebrated in its honour, and in processions in which it is borne through the public streets.  The concluding act of the Romish ritual is to elevate the host in what is called a monstranz, a small receptacle surrounded by a glass or crystal image of the sun with rays: at the moment of elevation the worshippers bow the head, and if military men are in the church they present arms.

      The reservation of the host stands in a similar connection.  Justin Martyr, describing Christian worship in his day, informs us that the deacons carried portions of the bread to those who from sickness or other causes could not attend.  They were considered as virtually a part of the congregation.  In this there was nothing superstitious.  But it appears from Cyprian’s account of a miraculous cure connected therewith that it was common to carry home a portion of the consecrated bread, not for the use of the sick, but for solitary communion, or as an amulet against spiritual and bodily danger.  Penitents, in danger of death, received the viaticum, brought to them, no doubt, from some neighbouring church where the host was preserved for this purpose.  The Council of Trent sanctions this kind of reservation.  It anathematizes those who hold it unlawful to reserve the host in sacrario (a vessel on the high altar), and who maintain that it should be distributed immediately after consecration to those present; or who forbid its being carried with due honour to the sick.  It is obvious that the practice rests on the supposition that Christ is in the element, independently of the use.  The excessive scrupulosity shown lest any portion of the bread or wine should fall to the ground is founded on the same supposition.

      The withdrawal of the cup from the laity, of all Romish usages the most plainly repugnant to Scripture, and unwarranted by antiquity, is traceable directly to the doctrine of concomitance, which is itself a part of transubstantiation.  Since the communicant under one species loses nothing by the withdrawal of the other, the question became one of order and expediency.  There was more danger of spilling the wine than of dropping the bread; and accordingly, in some churches the bread was steeped in the wine, in others the wine was conveyed into the mouth through a pipe.  So late, however, as the eleventh century communion under both kinds was the practice.  Alexander of Hales seems to have been the first who openly maintained that it should be left free to the laity to receive or decline the cup.  He was followed by the schoolmen.  T. Aquinas decides in favour of what he calls “the usage of many churches,” on the ground that thereby profanation of the sacrament is more likely to be avoided.  To the objection that the sacrament is thus mutilated he replies that its perfection consists not in the use but in the consecration; and, moreover, that the priest who is bound to communicate under both kinds does so in the name, and as the representative, of the whole body of communicants.  The Council of Constance (1415) decreed formally that the cup should be denied to the laity.  Yet, conscious, apparently, of the lack of either Scripture or Patristic authority, the Tridentine Fathers declined any positive decision on the subject, recommending that it be referred to the Pope for settlement.  Modern Romish theologians, such as Möhler, do not hesitate to express a wish that the laity should be permitted an option in the matter.  All the Reformed Churches agree with our own that the “cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people ; for both parts of the Lord’s sacrament, by ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike” (Art. xxx.).

      It is almost unnecessary to observe that none but a priest can consecrate, and by consecration change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  Hence he is said conficere sacramentum.  His lips alone can pronounce the mystic form, “This is My body,” one which the change follows; he alone can offer up Christ for the sins of the living and the dead.  This power, coupled with that of the keys, or absolution, are the two pillars on which the sacerdotal system of Rome rests.  What a mass of error they can and do sustain the history of that Church furnishes abundant proof.

 

§ 99.  The Mass

      According to the Council of Trent, the Eucharist is not merely a sacrament, to be partaken of by the faithful, but a propitiatory sacrifice which the priest offers up on behalf of the living and the dead.  Our Lord, it is alleged, agreeably to the prediction that He should be a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec (Ps. 110:4), since a priest must have a sacrifice to offer, instituted, at His last passover with His disciples, a perpetual sacrifice, to be a representation of that offered on the cross, and a repetition of it too, so far as an unbloody sacrifice can be of a bloody one.  At the supper He offered Himself under the species of bread and wine; a sacrifice which did not supersede that about to be offered on Calvary, and yet was to continue in the Church to the end of time, and to be of propitiatory virtue.  On the same occasion, He who was Himself on that occasion both Priest and Sacrifice, delegated the office of priesthood to the Apostles and their successors, by the words “Do this” (Hoc facite).  This is that new Passover which takes the place of the old, of which the sacrifices of the law were the types, and which the prophet Malachi predicts should be celebrated in every place among the heathen (Mal. 1:11).  More explicitly: the same Christ is therein contained, and sacrificed incruente, who sacrificed Himself on the cross cruente; and they who approach with due preparation of heart thereby obtain mercy from God; Who, appeased by this propitiation, forgives venial sins, and confers that grace and gift of penitence which leads to the sacrament of penance, whereby mortal sin, as distinguished from venial, is forgiven.  It is one and the same Victim that was offered on the cross and is offered in the Mass, one and the same Priest who officiates, but in the latter through a human priesthood; only in the mode of sacrifice a difference exists.  The sacrifice is available for the sins not only of the living but of the dead in Purgatory, as Apostolic tradition teaches.  As regards the departed saints, Masses may be said in memory and honour of them, but no sacrifice is offered to them; the priest does not say, I offer this sacrifice to thee, Peter or Paul, but while he gives thanks for their final victory, he implores their patronage, and their intercession on our behalf.

      It has already been pointed out that the first Jewish converts whether Apostles or others, were not likely, as long as the temple stood, to set up a propitiatory sacrifice as part of Christian worship; and, in fact, that the synagogical form of worship, providentially appointed to receive into itself the Christian, excluded all such offerings, as it did a human priesthood.  The Levitical ritual, in actual possession of the ground, and not yet abrogated by any act of Providence, must have indisposed such converts to establish anything resembling it in their Christian synagogues.  Yet, as time went on, and the teaching especially of S. Paul began to exercise a predominance in the Church, the question might occur to the Jewish Christians whether, if the legal sacrifices should come to an end, it would be proper or allowable to supply the deficiency by something corresponding, in the Christian Church.  The Epistle to the Hebrews is a summary of Divine instruction on this point, evidently intended to prepare the way for the impending dissolution of the Mosaic economy.  The Hebrew Christians were warned that the ceremonial law, having served its purpose, though still in existence, was “decaying and waxing old,” and might be expected, before long, “to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13).  It was no longer needed, because its appointments, in themselves only typical, had been fulfilled in the Antitype.  The Priesthood of Christ, after the order of Melchisedec, was not merely to have no connection with the Aaronic priesthood (Heb. 7:13), but it was not to be exercised on earth either personally or by delegates (8:4); but in heaven, in the presence of God, for us (9:24).  And as regards sacrifice: the expiatory death of Christ, suffered once for us all, is never to be repeated.  “Every” (human) “priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can never take away sins: but this Man, after he had offered one Sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (10:11, 12).  If the Levitical sacrifices had been thus perfect, “would they not have ceased to be offered?” (Ibid., 2).  The other and the proper function of the priesthood, viz., to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, is actually discharged by our great High Priest, and will never cease: He ever liveth to make intercession for us (9:24, 7:25).  Whatever be the meaning of the passage Heb. 9:11–14, the office described is not that of slaying the victim, but of presenting the blood.  The word “offer” may apply to either function; an ambiguity which has sometimes been taken advantage of, to establish the doctrine of a perpetual sacrifice in the Church.  Christ perpetually pleads, and in this sense offers, the virtue of His atonement; but the sacrifice on Calvary, whether in a bloody or an unbloody form, is not to be repeated.  Inasmuch, however, as sacrifice is an act, on the part of the offerer, either of surrender or of thanksgiving, the Apostles do employ terms borrowed from the typical dispensation, but in a purely figurative sense.  Christians are “a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices” (1 Pet. 2:5); such as the presenting of their bodies “as a living sacrifice, a reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1), or the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, and of Christian benevolence (Heb. 13:15, 16).  S. Paul calls his self-surrender to the service of Christ a drink offering poured out (Phil. 2:17); the gift of the Philippians “an acceptable sacrifice” (Phil. 6:18); the conversion of the Gentiles an “offering up” of them pleasing to God (Rom. 15:16).  In no instance, even in this figurative sense, are these terms applied to the Eucharist.  Heb. 13:10 is not an exception.  To discuss the meaning of this difficult passage at length would be out of place here; it may be observed, briefly, that to establish an allusion in it to the Eucharist it would be necessary to prove that the word “altar,” or an equivalent term, is applied in this Epistle, or in the New Testament, to the sacrament; that the doctrine of later times, not fully recognized in the Church till the twelfth century, viz., that Christ is offered up afresh at each celebration, can be traced to the Apostolic age; and that there is no other satisfactory explanation to be given, which is by no means the case.  As the sin offerings on the great day of atonement were not to be eaten by the priests, but to be burnt without the camp, so, conversely, since Jesus, our sin offering, “suffered without the gate,” the beneficial participation of the atonement effected by that sacrifice belongs not to those who, rejecting the Gospel, seek to be justified by the law of Moses.  Such appears to be the design of the passage.

      And for some time this figurative sense of the word “sacrifice” was that intended by the early writers when they employed it.  Barnabas (if the epistle bearing this name is that of the companion of S. Paul) speaks of the “new law of Jesus Christ” as enjoining “a human oblation”; which, as Waterland observes, can only be understood of the offering of themselves by Christians, in S. Paul’s sense (Rom. 12:1) as distinguished from the legal offerings.  Clement of Rome (A.D. 96) recommends due order, both as regards seasons and persons, in dedicating the offerings (προσφορας) and gifts (δωρα) which the faithful laity presented at the Eucharist; and censures the deposition of bishops who had duly discharged this office.  To understand this language, we must remember that in the Apostolic Church the Eucharist was celebrated in connection with love feasts, the materials for which were provided by the joint contributions of the congregation.  When the Agape fell into disuse, the custom was continued of presenting oblations, as they were called, that is, bread and wine and the firstfruits of creation, out of which the portion needed for the celebration of the sacrament was taken, while the remainder was applied to charitable purposes.  They were received by the bishop, or other ministrant, and set apart with prayer and thanksgiving, in the name of the assembled worshippers.  These were the “offerings”’ and “gifts” to which Clement alludes; and (which is to be noted) they were presented previously to the act of dedication, called in later times consecration, by which the bread and wine of the sacrament were set apart.  It is, to say the least, doubtful whether Ignatius, when he uses the word “altar,” means the Lord’s Table; but if so, it was not Christ whom he supposed to be offered on it, but the gifts of the faithful, which in S. Paul’s sense were a sacrifice, or, rather, the piety which offered them was so.  In process of time, not merely these offerings, but the whole service, including as well the prayer of consecration as that of thanksgiving (ευχαριστία), the breaking of the bread, the pouring out of the wine, and the distribution came to be called a sacrifice; and as long as the prominent idea expressed therein was the thankfulness of the communicants for the mercies of redemption, and the surrender of themselves to the service of God, there was nothing unscriptural in it.  A gradual change, however, was the consequence of these incautious expressions.  To the service, itself an inherent value began to be attached; it was held to be the pure offering of which Malachi had prophesied; it received the name of the unbloody sacrifice, not merely as distinguished from that of the cross, but from the bloody sacrifices of the law; the bread and wine of Melchisedec were declared to be types of the sacramental elements.  The sacrificial character of the rite, as distinguished from the sacramental, assumed a prominence which is very visible in the writings of Irenaeus and Tertullian, and still more so in those of their successors.  Yet, in Tertullian especially, the figurative sense on the whole maintained its ground.  By Cyprian the foundation of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist, viz., the proper priesthood of Christian ministers, as distinguished from the priesthood of all Christians, was laid, and the indeterminate statements of his predecessors reduced to a consistent theory.  According to this Father, the ministers of Christ discharge the same offices, and are invested with the same privileges, as the Jewish priesthood under the older economy.  Let the following passages suffice.  Alluding to the schism in his see, which resulted in the appointment of a rival bishop, Cyprian observes that “there can be but one altar, and one bishop”; and asks, “How can they escape the judgment of an avenging God who heap reproaches not only on their brethren but upon the priests (sacerdotes), upon whom God” (under the law) “was pleased to bestow such honour, that whosoever refused obedience to the priest for the time being should be put to death?”  “Heresies,” he continues, “spring from not recollecting that in a Church there can be but one priest (sacerdos), and one judge, who for the time being is the Vicar of Christ.  Can that man think that he has communion with Christ who separates himself from the communion of Christ’s clergy and people?  He wages war against the Church, against the ordinance of God ... not knowing that he who thus opposes himself to the Divine ordinance shall experience the Divine chastisement of his temerity.  Thus it was that Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, intruding themselves into the priest’s offices, received the just reward of their deed.  Thus, too, King Uzziah, attempting, contrary to the Divine law, to burn incense upon the altar, was struck with leprosy.”  Since priesthood and sacrifice are correlative terms, if the Aaronic priesthood is continued in the Christian Church so must some real sacrifice be found in it: and since the legal sacrifices, not even excepting the peace offerings, were propitiatory, of this character must the Christian sacrifice be.  In the Eucharist this sacrifice was discovered by all the great writers of the Church after Cyprian’s time until the Reformation.  But where was the victim? “behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Gen. 22:7).  There was a gap in the theory; and it was filled up by the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in His body, and, by virtue of concomitance, His soul and Deity – that is, the whole Christ –in the sacrament.  In proportion as transubstantiation was worked out to its final results in the eleventh century, under the treatment of Anselm and his contemporaries, so did the doctrines of a human priesthood and a propitiatory sacrifice in the Mass advance pari passu, until they appeared in their full proportions and connection in the decisions of the Council of Trent.

      An esteemed writer of our Church (Waterland) has done his best to explain the strong statements which abound in the Fathers on this subject.  He has proved that they occasionally employ the term sacrifice, as the New Testament does, in a figurative sense, but not that in connection with the Eucharist they do not use the word literally; still less does he explain why they should speak of this sacrament as they do, in language so unwarranted by Scripture, and so liable to misconstruction.  Can Cyprian be supposed to mean nothing more than the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, or the oblations of the faithful, or the surrender of the heart to God, when he prescribed that no presbyter should take the office of guardian to the children of a deceased brother, under the penalty, in case of disobedience, that “no offering should be made for him” (the deceased transgressor), “nor any sacrifices offered for his repose”?  Or Ambrose, when he remarks that though Christ Himself does not now seem to offer, yet on earth He is offered when His body is offered; and again, “When we sacrifice” (celebrate the Eucharist) “Christ is present, Christ is slain”?  Or Augustine himself, when after arguing truly that the one sacrifice of Christ has taken the place of all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, he goes on to say that “this sacrifice is His body which is offered” (in the Eucharist) “and ministered to the communicants”?  Nothing is gained to the cause of truth by attempting to impose a sense on the Fathers, which only partially represents their real meaning, a meaning which is confirmed, if confirmation be needed, by the language of the ancient liturgies, even the earliest that have come down to us, such as the Clementine and that of S. James.  Whatever they may have suffered from interpolation of a later date, these remains sufficiently indicate the popular view of the Eucharistic service in the third and fourth centuries.  It can hardly have been a recent innovation when the Clementine Liturgy habitually calls the Eucharist “the holy mysteries,” a “sacrifice,” and the celebrant bishop a “high priest”.  Nor can the still stronger expressions that occur in that of S. James be regarded otherwise than as a superstructure on an ancient foundation; e.g., when the priest proclaims silence and holy dread, “while Christ our God is brought in to be slain, and given for food to the faithful,” or implores the Divine favour while “with fear and trembling he approaches the holy altar to offer up this awful unbloody sacrifice for his own and the people’s sins.”

      As soon as the sacrificial, as distinguished from the sacramental, character of the Eucharist was established, the practice of private masses gained ground in the Church.  Traces of a doctrine of purgatory are found in Augustine, and he does not hesitate to console the friends of those who had died in communion with Christ and the Church, with the hope that prayer, and especially the celebration of the Eucharist, on their behalf might be beneficial to them; and this, not merely as augmenting their bliss, but as inducing God to deal with their sins more leniently than they deserved.  Since the dead cannot communicate, except in spirit, it was plainly the sacrificial virtue of the ordinance which Augustine had in view, as, indeed. appears from his connecting with it the remission, in part or wholly, of the sins committed in this life.  Similar celebrations, and with the same object, were customary at the anniversaries of the death of the martyrs, which were observed with great solemnity.  At first it was the martyrs themselves who were supposed to receive benefit therefrom; but since this seemed to compromise their dignity, in process of time they were invested with the office of intercessors with God, that the offerings of the worshippers, especially that of the Eucharist, might be accepted.  The multiplicity of occasions on which the Eucharist was celebrated, the erection in the churches of private shrines or altars dedicated to some apostle or saint, the magical character which the ordinance assumed (it was a μύησις or initiation into the Christian mysteries, a solemnity to be shuddered at, φοβερα θυσία), all combined to deter the laity from communicating, except as spectators.  It was too formidable a service for ordinary Christians to take a part in, and was the privilege of those only who had reached an extraordinary degree of sanctity.  Consequently the number of spectators, especially at the daily celebrations, began to fall off.  Chrysostom, in a well-known passage, complains of the scanty attendance in his time: “In vain is the sacrifice daily offered, in vain we stand at the altar.  Nobody takes part in it.”  But for a sacrifice, as distinguished from communion, it was sufficient if the priest alone officiated, and this eventually became the custom.  This is the origin of private masses.  An effort was made to save the idea of communion by representing that the priest was acting as a public person, and offering on behalf of the whole Church, but on the popular mind so refined a conception would have little effect.  It is not improbable that in the Church of Rome there would be few, if any, lay communicants were it not for the ecclesiastical injunction that once a year at least the laity should actually communicate.  Practically, it may be said, the Apostolic conception of the Eucharist as a coming together of Christians to break bread, in commemoration of the death of Christ, has in that Church disappeared.

      It was the work of the schoolmen to frame a scientific basis for the popular system of the Church as it existed in their day.  Materially they had little to add to this system.  According to T. Aquinas, the priest is constituted a mediator between God and man, and alone has power to consecrate the elements, and by consecration to transubstantiate them into the body and blood of Christ (perficere sacramentum).  This power he receives at ordination, which, as a sacrament, impresses an indelible character on his soul; which character, however, is a mystical, not a moral, grace; it is one which the immorality of the priest does not affect, because his office is not personal but ministerial; he acts merely as the representative of Christ.  The Eucharist is both a sacrifice and a sacrament; a sacrifice inasmuch as Christ is therein offered, a sacrament inasmuch as Christ is therein received; as a sacrifice it is propitiatory (habet vim satisfactivam).  As a sacrifice, too, it can profit those who do not partake of it (the absent and the departed), since it can be and is offered for their spiritual benefit.  If it be objected that such a celebration is only an imperfect one, it must be remembered that the perfection of the Eucharist depends on consecration, not, as in baptism, on the use of the sacrament, a privilege which belongs to the Eucharist alone.  T. Aquinas, however, retains the distinction between representation and fact; the Eucharist, he observes, is a representative image of the passion of Christ, and Christ therein is sacrificed in the same sense in which the altar is an image of the cross, and the celebrating priest an image of Christ; that is, we do not speak literally when we say Christ is therein slain, but in a figure, as when, looking at the pictures of Cicero or Sallust, we say: This is Cicero, that is Sallust.  The inconsistency of making the same transaction both an image and a reality is obvious; the picture of Cicero never can be really Cicero; but it does not seem to have been noticed by Thomas, for in immediate juxtaposition to the representative view occurs the statement: “As often as the commemoration of the passion of Christ is celebrated, the work of our redemption is carried on”; that is, a real propitiatory sacrifice for sin is offered.

      The question of private Masses, that is, those in which the priest alone celebrated, Thomas passes over in silence; nor, indeed, was there any necessity for him to discuss it.  If it be once granted that the Eucharist is a propitiatory sacrifice, offered to God, the lawfulness of private Masses follows; for, as Bellarmine remarks, “to a sacrifice, as such, it is of no moment whether few or many, or none, are present and communicate, since it is a matter between the priest and God; the priest can offer for the people in the absence of every one but himself.”  Incidentally, however, T. Aquinas, by his admissions, must rather have promoted than dissuaded from the practice.  He accepts Augustine’s distinction between a mere sacramental partaking, such as that of Judas Iscariot, and a profitable reception, which only the pious enjoy; and not less so, that Father’s maxim: Crede et manducasti.  Two things, he observes, in the reception are to be distinguished, the sacrament itself and its beneficial effect.  It is most perfectly received when both are combined.  It may happen, however, that there may exist an impediment (e.g., mortal sin) to this effect, and thus an oral manducation may not be a spiritual one; just as in baptism some receive only the sacrament (water), others that and also the inward benefit.  Since the Eucharist is not, like baptism, of absolute necessity, and impresses no character, the outward reception may, in extreme cases, be supplied by the intention and desire, as is the case even in baptism (baptismus flaminis).  The distinction is in itself just and valuable as a counterpoise to the doctrine of the opus operatum prevalent at the time in the Church; but coupled with the exaggerated language of the liturgies on the awful character of the Eucharist, it may have given encouragement to the abstention of the laity from communicating, and so to the introduction of private Masses.  Nor would this tendency be effectually counteracted by the admission that such an intended Eucharist, or baptism, is inferior in effect to an actual reception.

      The decrees of the Council of Trent, which merely reproduce the doctrine of the schools on this subject, present many difficulties.  We are assured, over and over again, that the sacrifice of the cross and that of the Mass are one and the same; it is the same victim (hostia) that is offered, the same priest that officiates; only in the Mass it is an unbloody sacrifice, and Christ who offered Himself on the cross now does so through the agency of human priests.  But if in either case the sacrifice is really propitiatory, to which form of it are we to ascribe the atonement for the sins of the world of which Scripture makes mention?  The question is not an easy one to answer, and Bellarmine is sensible of this, for after laying down that the sacrifice is the same, he proceeds to specify some points of inferiority in that of the Mass as compared with that of the cross.  The former is propitiatory only in the sense of impetration; for Christ in it cannot, and does not, now suffer as He did on the cross, or make a full satisfaction for sin; he impetrates from God spiritual gifts on behalf of His Church. [Sacrificium Missae dicitur propitiatorium quia impetrat remissionem culpae, satisfactorium quia impetrat remissionem poenae; meritorium quia impetrat gratiam benefaciendi et merita acquirendi.  De Mis., L. ii., c. 4.]  He therein applies to believers the benefits of the sacrifice of Calvary. [Ibid.  Comp. Wilberforce, Euch., c. 11: “That acceptance which Christ purchased through the sacrifice of the cross He applies through the sacrifice of the altar.”]  Secondly, from its impetratory character, in which it resembles prayer, it requires worthiness, though not of the priest yet of the offerer who presents it through the priest; with the sacrifice of the cross it was otherwise (Bellarmine does not explain how this observation applies to private Masses).  Thirdly, and principally, the sacrifice of the Mass is of finite value, as appears from its being often repeated: whereas that of the cross is of infinite value, and being so is not literally repeated (Heb. 10:2).  Why this difference of value should exist Bellarmine confesses is not easy to discover.  He attempts to account for it by observing that on the cross Christ was offered in His natural humanity (esse naturale), in the Mass only in His “sacramental body,” and that in the former He Himself was the offerer, while in the latter He acts through the priest. [De Miss., L. ii., c. 4.]  Such are the straits to which this acute defender of his Church is reduced in his attempt to reconcile the alleged identity of the two sacrifices with a distinction between them.  As regards that favourite mode of explanation, that the sacrifice of the Mass is a means of applying that of the cross to individuals, we may surely ask, how can one sacrifice apply another, especially that with which it is substantially identical?  A sacrament may, in some sense, apply a sacrifice, but a sacrifice cannot apply itself.  The truth is, as has been already observed, a fallacy lurks in the word “offering” as used by Bellarmine, and other writers of similar views: it is made to signify both sacrifice and intercession. [Such is the principle upon which the Holy Eucharist is called a sacrifice.  It rests upon the necessity of our Lord’s intercession: upon the truth that the Church’s services cannot be effectual unless they are presented by its Head: that His intervention is essential, not only because He communicates grace to His members, but because His members cannot be accepted save through the sacrifice of Himself.”  Wilberforce, Euch., c. 11.  The confusion here is evident between “sacrifice” and “intercession,” or intervention: the words are used interchangeably.  Yet they differ as the slaying of the victim by the high priest on the day of atonement differed from the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat.]  What does “impetration” or “application” mean as applied to the sacrifice of the Mass, but that it is not really a sacrifice; it is not the sacrifice, but the priest that impetrates or applies, he pleads the merit of the sacrifice as a ground for expecting favours from heaven, but the sacrifice, an act of a different character, does not plead its own efficacy.  The Epistle to the Hebrews establishes the essential distinction between the two things, the sacrifice and the application of it.  The High Priest slew the victim on the day of atonement, but the impetration, or application, began when he brought the blood into the holy of holies and sprinkled it on the mercy seat.  It was in discharging this office that he acted as the real mediator between the sinful people and God; for though on this occasion the slaying of the victims was deputed to him, this was an exception, and as a rule the act of sacrifice was performed not by the priest but by the offerer.  So in the antitype, the sacrifice was offered on the cross, but the impetration belongs to Christ not suffering, but risen and ascended, our advocate with the Father, ever living, not to offer a juge sacrificium in heaven, however spiritually interpreted, but to make intercession for us.  If all that is meant by propitiation is impetration, as Bellarmine asserts, the Protestant insists on the latter as strongly as the Roman Catholic does; only, with the Epistle to the Hebrews and the whole of the New Testament, he refers the impetration not to an ordinance of the Church, as if any ordinance had an inherent virtue to remit sin; nor to a human priest, the representative of Christ; but to Christ Himself, whose one sacrifice the Church pleads not only in the Eucharist but in every prayer offered up through Christ to God; to Christ Himself, who impetrates, as our ever living High Priest, that the ordinances may be channels of grace to us, and that those prayers may be heard.  And it is Christ Himself, and not any human mediator, who conveys to the suppliant the assurance that His confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness are heard; Christ Himself by His Divine vicar, the Holy Ghost, who by the spirit of adoption certifies to the believer that his iniquity is taken away, and his sin covered.  The doctrine of the Mass, that the sacrifice of the cross is applied only through the Church and not by the apprehensive faith of the communicant or the suppliant, is but an instance of the principle that lies at the root of Roman Catholicism and its kindred systems, viz., that Christ has retired from the active personal administration of this dispensation, delegating His offices, priestly, prophetical, and regal, to the visible Church, i.e., the priesthood, through which, and through which alone, He operates. Christ Himself is ever impetrating for us; Christ (as His Divine vicar the Holy Ghost) is ever assuring us of the fruits of His impetration.  But, according to Romish teaching, Christ not merely regenerates, impetrates, absolves, teaches, through the Church, but sacrifices Himself de novo for the remission of sin, and in private Masses for the sins of individuals, living or departed, through the Church, that is, through its priesthood.  Thus, at every step, the Church intervenes between the soul and the Saviour.  It is to be regretted that some of our own divines have used incautious language on this subject.  Thus Bishop Cosin writes: “Neither is the sacrifice of the cross, as it was once offered up there, modo cruento, so much remembered in the Eucharist (though it be commemorated) as regard is had to the perpetual and daily offering of it by Christ in heaven in His everlasting priesthood; and thereupon was, and should be still, the juge sacrificium observed here on earth, as it is in heaven, the reason which the ancient Fathers had for their daily sacrifice.” [Quoted by Wilberforce (c. xi.) as from Cosin; but it is ascribed by others to Bp. Overall.]  The language is ambiguous; does the Bishop mean by the term “offering” sacrifice, or intercession?  It is to be presumed that he does not mean that Christ is perpetually offering Himself as a sacrifice in heaven; but only that He devotes Himself continually to God to be offered on earth by the hands of the priest; that the juge sacrificium is not an actual but a consenting one.  Even so, the assertion is without Scripture warrant.  Where does Scripture give the slightest hint of any such perpetual sacrifice, even in intent, going on in heaven?  Rather we may ask, where does it not emphatically repudiate the notion?  Christ appears in the presence of God for us; that is the sum and substance of the revelation.  No other sacerdotal function is He ever spoken of as discharging, no other is needed.

      By some, indeed it may be said by many, writers a middle course is adopted on this subject.  The sacrifice of the Mass is rejected, as well it may be, as unscriptural, but the Eucharist is held to differ from other ordinances of the Gospel as being a special “representation” to God of the sacrifice of the cross, and so to contract a sacrificial character.  If by this is meant merely that every private prayer, every act of public worship, is offered through the merits and mediation of Christ, it is nothing but the truth; but it is so obviously nothing but the truth that a doubt arises why it should be insisted on.  No Christian ventures to approach the throne of grace except through Christ.  But the fact is that representation insensibly passes into presentation, and what is intended is that in this sacrament a special presentation of the sacrifice on Calvary is made.  The question at once occurs, By whom is it made?  By the whole congregation or the celebrating minister?  If by the latter alone, then the minister becomes invested with a sacerdotal character, and we have one half of the Romish doctrine without the other half.  We have no sacrifice, but we have a mediating, impetrating priest.  He “presents” on behalf of the congregation what the congregation only presents through him.  That is, the perfection of the sacrifice once offered for sin is not, as it is in the Mass, invaded, but the intercessory function of Christ is so; it is transferred to the human celebrant, who, not as the mouthpiece of the congregation, but as an official mediator, stands between the worshippers and God.  The priest is there, but there is no sacrifice ; and the theory is not merely an unscriptural but a mutilated one.

      It is worthy of remark that in the Greek Church, however it may agree with the Romish in holding the Eucharist to be a sacrifice, private Masses are unknown.  Each principal church has but one altar, with a kind of credence table on which to make the necessary preparations; and if the Mass is to be celebrated in neighbouring chapels, a consecrated cloth is used for an altar.  On Sundays and festivals no more than one celebration of the Mass is permitted.

 

§ 100.  Benefits

      We must here set aside the particular instances in which the Eucharist is alleged, rightly or wrongly, to have been the means of procuring special mercies or averting special calamities.  The Fathers quote many cases of magical or miraculous efficacy of this kind.  Augustine tells us of a landed proprietor in his diocese whose house was infested with evil spirits, to the great injury of his servants and cattle.  He summoned one of the presbyters to pray that they might be expelled.  The presbyter “offered there the sacrifice of the body of Christ, praying as earnestly as he could that the plague might cease ; forthwith, through the mercy of God, it did cease.” [De Civit. Dei, L. xxii., c. 8.]  The Eucharist was held to be a charm against apprehended dangers, temporal and spiritual. [Quos excitamus et hortamur ad praelium, non ut inermes et nudos relinquamus, sed protectione sanguinis et corporis Christi muniamus; et cum ad hoc fiat Eucharistia ut possit accipientibus esse tutela, quos tutos esse contra adversarium volumus, munimento dominiae saturitatis armemus.  Cyprian, Epist., L. iv.]  It was resorted to in times of public calamity – war, famine, pestilence, etc.  It may be asked how it came to be regarded in this light, so entirely without precedent or warrant from Scripture?  What has been observed in the last section supplies the answer.  The Mass, Bellarmine says, is a propitiatory sacrifice rather in the sense of moving God to grant what the offerer prays for than as atoning for sin; it is a sacrifice of impetration, whereby benefits of all kinds are to be obtained. [Jam vero, non solum propitiatorium sacrificium esse, ac pro peccatorum remissione offerri posse corpus Dominicum, sed etiam esse impetratorium omnis generis beneficiorum, ac pro iis etiam recte offerri, facile probari potest testimoniis Scripturae et Patrum.  De Mis., L. ii., c. 3.]  In fact, he makes impetration the specific property of this sacrament. [Impetratio propria est hujus sacrifici vis, et efficientia.  Ibid., c. 4.]  Hence it is that the Council of Trent does not ascribe to it the remission of all sin, but only of venial; atonement for mortal sin and absolution from it belong to the sacrament of penance; which might be thought superfluous if the Eucharist had the same power.  Hence, too, it is that, under this aspect of the Mass, the opus operantis, the piety and devotion, of the minister comes into account; whereas as regards the opus operatum of transubstantiation, with its attendant sacrifice, no such qualification is needed.  Since the sacrifice is here a prayer (oratio realis non verbalis – Bellarmine), its efficacy presupposes the worthiness of the offerer; which is not the case if it is regarded as purely propitiatory.  Thus the Eucharist, in itself and apart from the prayers of intercession which usually accompanied the celebration, became an act of intercession with God, and the celebrant a priest.  These prayers were natural and appropriate.  The ancient liturgies contain intercessions for all sorts and conditions of men; prayers that the celebrant may be accepted, that the worshippers may find favour, that the whole service may be blessed; some before, some after consecration; but these are the petitions of the congregation, and the minister is only the organ of its addresses to God.  In process of time the unbloody sacrifice, not the attendant prayers, became the prevailing plea with God, and the intercession of the priest superseded that of Christ. [It is in solitary masses that the true spirit of the Romish system is best seen.]

      In the remains of antiquity statements are frequently found that once Christ in this sacrament is present in His glorified humanity, our bodies in particular receive from that humanity a vivifying influence, the seed of immortality. [Wilberforce, Euch., c. xii.  It is to be regretted that in one passage of our communion service countenance seems to be given to this notion: “that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body, and our souls washed through His most precious blood.”  How can the body of Christ, a real though a spiritual one, affect our bodies, except by a quasi-physical union?  How can the blood, a material substance, affect the soul?  If body and soul are taken for the whole man, and the body and blood of Christ for the virtue of the atonement, it is most true that every believer is cleansed and washed by the death of Christ; but the language is peculiar, and may give rise to erroneous theories.]  This, if it means anything, must mean that in some mysterious manner we are actually made “members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones” (Ephes. 5:30); and this, although the spiritual nature of the union in the Apostle’s mind is placed beyond doubt by the illustration which he draws from the union of husband and wife; this relation is the closest of earthly ones, but it is in no sense physical: and although the resurrection of the body is ascribed by S. Paul, not to union with Christ’s glorified body, but to the presence of the Holy Spirit in us (Rom. 8:11).  Or again, the Church is said to be the body of Christ because Christ in His humanity is really present in the Eucharist, and the Church therein partakes of His humanity; so that His body mystical (the Church) is “the extension of His body natural,” [Wilberforce, c. xii.] or in the incautious language of Hooker, “God frameth the Church out of the very flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of Man.  So that in Him, according to our heavenly being, we are as branches in that Root out of which they grow.” [E. P., v., c. 56, 7.]  Surely it is but a play upon words to argue that because by a figure the Church is called in Scripture the body of Christ in reference to Christ the Head, therefore it is an emanation from His humanity; the Church is His body because from Him, as the Head, vital energy, the quickening and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, proceeds, and brings each member into union with Him; not because sacraments are “an extension of the incarnation,” and the partaking of them engrafts us into the incarnation.  “Christ is our life” (Col. 3:4); on such passages as this is founded the inference that, especially in the Eucharist, the present life of Christ as the incarnate Son passes into the believer, and becomes the life of the latter; whereas all that is meant is that He is the Purchaser and Giver of spiritual life.  The “life” of Christ in His state of humiliation did not communicate itself to His disciples; nor does it, as far as we are told, communicate itself now, simply as His life, to those who are His; yet He is our life, because unless He had risen and ascended the gift of the Spirit could not have been ours.  Such are specimens of what the noble figures of Scripture have to suffer at the hands of mystical interpreters.*  But the theory proceeds even further.  Since in the Eucharist we are brought into union with Christ’s humanity, and, by concomitance, His humanity is inseparably united to Deity, we, in fact, through union with Him, “are engrafted into the Divine nature,” [Wilberforce, Euch. c. xii.  Comp. J. Damasc.: μετάληψις δε λέγεται· δι’ αυτης γαρ της Ιησου θεότητος μεταλαμβάνομεν.  Κοινωνία δε λέγεται τε και έστιν αληθως δια το μετέχειν αυτου της σαρκός τε και της θεότητος.  De Fid. Orth., iv., c. 13.  In the University of Oxford many years ago a sermon was preached on, “I have said, Ye are gods” (Ps. 82:6); the argument being that through the Eucharist our mortal nature is deified.] we become gods.  Such is the ultimate result of these speculations.  They begin with a real presence of the incarnate Son in the Eucharist, the effect of consecration; partaking of the bread and wine, we are incorporated into the humanity of Christ; through the humanity we are engrafted into the Divine nature.  The commemoration of the atonement, the real subject of this sacrament, is well-nigh lost sight of.  Salvation comes through the incarnation, not through the atonement.  And the faith which is necessary to a beneficial reception is not that which apprehends the promise of forgiveness through the atonement, but either a passive acquiescence in the articles of the creed, or the belief of a real presence which because it eludes the senses, but in no other sense, must necessarily be an object of faith. [“The benefit of this sacrament cannot be obtained without faith; seeing that it is only through faith that the inward part, the res sacramenti, can be apprehended by the mind.”  Wilberforce, c. xii.  This is faith in the sacrament, not the justifying faith which apprehends Christ.]

            [*It is to be regretted that the notion of the Jewish high priest’s carrying to the mercy seat, on the day of atonement, “a life” in the blood instead of a symbol of death, has been in modern times revived.  Thus, in an otherwise useful essay on the atonement in “Lux Mundi,” it is said that “the passages which speak of our salvation by virtue of Christ’s blood refer, according to the Jewish conception of the ‘blood which is the life,’ not only, or even chiefly, to the blood-shedding in death, but to the heavenly ‘sprinkling’ of the principle of life”; that is, the communication of spiritual life (quickening and sanctifying) by virtue of Christ’s presentation of His blood in heaven.  The leading passage in Leviticus 17:10, 11, does not contain the expression “the blood which is the life,” but “the life of the flesh is in the blood.”  The blood circulating in the veins (sanguis) is, popularly speaking, “the life”; the life of the animal may be said to be in the blood thus circulating; but when the blood is shed, becoming thereby not sanguis but cruor, no idea but that of death can be, or ever was, associated with it.  What the high priest carried into the Holy of Holies – viz., a vessel of shed blood (cruor, not sanguis) – neither contained life nor was a symbol thereof, but was the evidence and symbol of a violent death which had been suffered; and the sprinkling of the blood was the application of that (typical) death to cover the sin of the people.  The atonement consists of two parts: the death of Christ, and the presentation of that death by Christ in heaven to silence the accusation of the law; as the typical sprinkling silenced (typically) the condemning sentence of the two tables beneath the mercy seat (Heb. 9:4).  “Life” in this sense was, no doubt, the effect of the atonement, but not “life” in the sense of quickening and sanctifying.  The theory confuses the offices of the incarnate Son and of the Third Person (the Holy Ghost) in the economy of redemption.]

      The question remains whether any, and if so what spiritual benefits of a general kind are connected with the Eucharist.  It is impossible to suppose that ordinances emanating from Christ Himself, and therefore of permanent obligation in the Church, can be mere symbols of spiritual truths: they stand on a different footing from Apostolical, or post-Apostolical, appointments, or adjuncts to the main service of human origin.  Yet, as has been observed (§ 91), Scripture is reticent as to any special grace attached to either sacrament.  The two main privileges of the Gospel are remission of sin and sanctifying grace; and it is doubtful whether, except as regards baptism, Scripture connects either of these great gifts of our Lord’s Passion with sacraments.  There are passages which associate baptism, though not exclusive of the Word and its operation, with “washing away sin,” but none which make it a channel of sanctifying grace, however existing grace may be sealed, or strengthened, or perfected, by it.  Sanctification is a gradual process, and therefore baptism, which can only be administered once, is not a fitting instrument for this operation of the Spirit; which, accordingly, in Scripture is usually connected with the ministration of the Word, which is a constantly recurring means of grace.  So is the Eucharist capable of repetition; but no language is applied to it resembling that of S. Paul to the Ephesian elders, “I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up” [Comp. “Christ gave some Apostles,” etc. (all gifts or offices connected with the ministry of the Word) “for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephes. 4:1, 12).  “Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet. ii. 2).] (Acts xx. 32); while, as regards remission of sin, this gift is never attributed to it.  The reason, surely, is not far to seek.  Baptism is the sacrament of the process of regeneration, of the application of the work of Christ to individuals, under its twofold aspect of conversion and justification; the Eucharist is the sacrament of that work itself, of the atonement on which as a foundation the saving application rests, and without which it would be impossible.  This sacrament, therefore, presupposes remission of sin as already (potentially) effected by the death of Christ, and already in actual possession on the part of the faithful receiver.

      The very name Eucharist explains its object.  It is neither a prayer for, nor a means of, forgiveness, but a thanksgiving for the blessing in actual enjoyment, and received by faith.  It is a “thankful remembrance of Christ’s death and of the benefits we receive thereby.”  And on this hypothesis our communion service is constructed.  The worshippers are supposed to be real Christians, in covenant with God, pardoned and accepted; but to be sensible of those daily shortcomings which every Christian must confess and deplore.  They are exhorted to confess these sins of infirmity, and, as in the Lord’s prayer, to pray to God as children to a father for forgiveness.  They are assured, after confession and presumed repentance, by the citation of certain “comfortable words” of Scripture, of complete forgiveness.  With the minister they are exhorted to give thanks unto God for the promises of the Gospel, which they profess it is meet and right to do.  They draw near, then, as forgiven and reconciled children of God.  Sancta sanctis, as the deacon in the ancient Church exclaimed when the celebration commenced.  Either their faith in the promise does not convey full remission of sin (which no Protestant admits), and the Eucharist is necessary to supply the defect, or the Eucharist (that is, the reception) finds no unforgiven sin to remit.  It seems impossible to escape from this alternative.  If the communicant approaches with the consciousness of sin (whether venial or mortal is immaterial), unrepented of and therefore unforgiven, he is not a worthy communicant, and receives no benefit; if through repentance and faith in the promises attached to faith, his sins, of whatever kind, are covered by the atoning blood, he does receive a benefit, but it cannot be remission of sin, which has already, and in the fullest measure, been vouchsafed.  Although the object of Bellarmine, in treating of this point, is to prove the necessity of the sacrament of penance as a preparation for the Eucharist, his arguments are in themselves unanswerable.  Baptism and penance, he observes, are directly connected with remission of sin, as the symbols themselves teach.  The water in baptism signifies the removal of spiritual disqualification, the form in penance, absolvo te, though not in its nature material like water, yet operates as a kind of plaster, inferior to baptism in that it does not completely cleanse from all past sin, but, as it were, hiding and healing the scars and sores of post-baptismal sins; whereas the symbol of the Eucharist is nutrition and growth, and these presuppose a healthy state of the organs whether bodily or spiritual. [De Euch., L. iv., cc. 18, 19.]  The same acute controversialist, in answer to Chemnitz, urging the expression “for the remission of sins” in the words of institution, remarks very properly that this expression belongs not to the receiving of the elements, but to the body broken and the blood shed on the cross; it was by these that remission was procured, not by the personal appropriation of this blessing in the sacrament.  If, he continues, remission of sin is in any sense conveyed by the Eucharist, it can only be in the sense in which food expels bodily disease, viz., by strengthening the vital organs.  The Eucharist, by infusing grace (gratiam gratum facientem) debilitates the noxious effect of venial sin, and obliterates unknown mortal sin, and so renders the recipient more acceptable to God.  But nothing of a forensic nature (which Protestants always connect with remission of sin) is conveyed by the Eucharist. [Ibid., c. 19.]  The suffrage of any adversary, when he is on the side of truth, is valuable.  The Eucharist, therefore, does not convey, but presupposes, forgiveness of sin, and yet there is no ordinance of the Gospel which more directly refers to this gift.  It is the very sacrament of the atoning blood of Christ.  Again we endorse the Roman Catholic theologian’s statement.  “If the Eucharist is said to be the New Testament, because it is a sign of the will of the testator, there remains no difficulty.  For because it is a sign and representation of the death of Christ, it is also a sign of the will of the testator and of all the benefits promised to us; and so also of the remission of sins, so far as through it is represented the shedding of the blood of the Lord, on account of which all sins are remitted.” [Ibid., c. 19.]  So the case is, exactly.  It is not a channel through which remission of sin is conveyed, but a representation of the fact which renders remission possible.  It is the verbum visibile which proclaims the same atonement which the word does, but in a peculiar and impressive manner.  The worshipper having received through faith in the word of promise forgiveness, and the witness thereof in his heart by the Holy Spirit, draws near and receives this holy sacrament to his comfort.  What additional benefit comes to him thereby?  He draws near because it is the command of Christ that he should do so; because therein he “shows forth the Lord’s death,” testifies to the Church that his hope of salvation rests on the atonement, and to the world that he is not ashamed of the cross of Christ; because this verbum visibile is also a making over to him individually what the word preached declares in general terms; because the ordinance is specially adapted to stimulate his love to the Saviour and increase his faith; because therein he realizes, as he does in no other Christian rite, his unity with all who love Christ.  These are the benefits which he expects to receive, and does receive, from a worthy reception, but not incorporation into Christ’s humanity, nor remission, in and by the act of reception, of forgiveness of sin.  It is true that through the minister the communicants also pray that they “may eat the flesh of God’s dear Son Jesus Christ and drink His blood,” that they “may be partakers of His most precious body and blood,” [Com. Serv.] figurative expressions, which some may interpret in one way and some in another.  But there is nothing said of remission of sin by the act of reception.  In a subsequent part of the service this expression does occur (“we humbly beseech Thee to grant that by the merits and death of Thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in His blood, we and all Thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins”), but with no particular reference to the sacrament.  The prayer is no other than that in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses,” no other than what the Christian, apart from the sacrament, puts up daily.  If it be asked, why should the worshipper, before communicating, express himself as forgiven through faith in Christ, and shortly afterwards offer up a prayer for remission of sin, we reply that nothing is more common than such repetitions in prayer, and moreover, that the worshipper may be conscious of fresh sins of infirmity, in the very act of communicating or after it, which need renewed confession and forgiveness.

      Waterland, to establish his argument that remission of sin is conveyed through the Eucharist, [Euch., c. 9.] has recourse to inferential modes of reasoning.  It is natural, he observes, to ask, why should Scripture make a distinction in this point between the two sacraments? [This argument may be commended to the attention of those who do not hold that the Eucharist conveys remission of sin.  If it does not, why should baptism be supposed to possess the privilege?  May not the passages which, no doubt, do speak of forgiveness in connection with baptism be so explained as to place the two sacraments on a level as regards this point?]  If it teaches that baptism conveys this gift, why should not the other sacrament do so, which, more explicitly than baptism, is the sacrament of the atonement, and why is Scripture comparatively silent as to this effect of the Eucharist?  He assigns various reasons for the fact, but they are drawn rather from the writings of the “ancients” than from Scripture.  He has a long chapter on 1 Cor. 10:16, etc. (“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?”), the object of which is to prove that the Apostle’s expressions imply more than partaking of the visible elements, viz., a participation of what is meant by them, the passion and death of Christ and “the reconcilement therein made.”  Whoever doubted that?  But the meaning of the sacrament or its symbolism does not determine the point, whether in and by the act of reception remission of sin is conveyed.  We feed by faith on the body broken and the blood shed; we cannot, especially in this sacrament, help doing so; but whether the sacrament is a channel of remission, and not rather, as Protestants hold, the faith which lays hold of the promise, is another question. [Here Litton overstates his point.  Really the fact does act partly through the visible and appropriated symbols; yet still through faith. – Ed.]  “If any one,” Waterland continues, “should ask for a catalogue of those spiritual privileges, which S. Paul in this place (1 Cor. 10:16) has omitted, our Lord Himself may supply that omission by what He has said in John 6.  For since we have proved that there is a spiritual manducation in the Eucharist with all worthy receivers, it now follows, of course, that what our Lord says in John 6 of spiritual manducation in general is strictly applicable to this particular manner of spiritual feeding, and is the best explication we can anywhere have of what it includes or contains.  It contains: 1. A title to a happy resurrection for such as spiritually feed on Christ, Christ will raise up at the last day.  2. A title to eternal life; for our Lord expressly says: ‘Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.’  3. A mystical union with Christ in His whole person; or, more particularly, a presential union with Him in His Divine nature ‘he that eateth My flesh,’ etc., ‘dwelleth in Me, and I in him.’”  But these are the fruits of Christ’s atonement; the atonement gives us a “title” to them, and nothing is said about the instrument of appropriation.  In fact, the statement is nothing but an expansion of the language of our Church in the “exhortation”; “the benefit is great if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that holy sacrament, for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood; then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ and Christ with us.”  Then, but not thereby.  At last Waterland comes to remission of sin, and here he is compelled to have recourse to inference.  “4. In these are implied (though not directly expressed by our Lord in that discourse) remission of sins, and sanctification of the Holy Spirit.”  Remission of sin may be (must be) in the Eucharist; sealed by it, symbolized by it, even conveyed by it in the same sense in which the preached word conveys it; but it does not follow that by the act of reception absolution is conveyed.

      The truth is, that this valuable writer is uncertain on two points of doctrine, and the uncertainty is reflected in his discussion.  He does not hesitate, contrary to every Protestant confession, to make justification capable of increase, and progressive; at least his language tends in that direction.  At the close of chap. 9 we read: “The true answer” (to the objection that the worthy communicant comes to the table already pardoned) “is, that the grace of remission or justification, is progressive, and may be always improving.”  If, indeed, the writer merely means that our assurance of justification is capable of increase or confirmation, and not that a special gift of increase is infused in the Eucharist, he is in the right; but the expressions are, to say the least, incautious.  The other source of uncertainty is more latent.  The Romish Church, in this point in agreement with Scripture, does not connect remission of sin directly with the Eucharist, and there is no necessity for her doing so, for in the sacrament of Penance she possesses the means of presenting her communicants fully cleansed from sin and prepared to receive the Holy Communion worthily.  The absolution which the Protestant hopes for from the appropriation by faith of the “comfortable words” of Scripture spoken by the minister (the so-called “absolution” of the latter precedes in our service the act of communion), the Romanist assigns to a special ordinance, appointed, it is alleged, for this very purpose.  So difficult was it for the leaders of the Reformation at once to free themselves from the bondage of ecclesiastical tradition that Luther, and even Melanchthon, in their earlier writings, treated the number of the sacraments as a matter of subordinate importance, and in the apology for the Augsburg Confession Melanchthon enumerates three: baptism, the supper of the Lord, and absolution [“Vere sunt igitur sacramenta, baptismus, caeia Domini, absolutio quae est sacramentum poenitentiae.”  Apol. Conf., c. vii.] as a preparation for the Eucharist.  As clearer light dawned upon them, absolution with the other four sacraments of Romanism was rejected, and in the Cat. Maj. of Luther only baptism and the supper of the Lord are held to be sacraments in the strict sense of the word. [“Superest ut de duobus quoque sacramentis ab ipso Christo institutis disseramus.”  P. iv.]  In the Reformed confessions, our own included, no others appear.  In our article on “sin after baptism,” no ordinance of the Church is mentioned as a necessary channel of remission.  Waterland, with all his merits, seems not to have fully grasped the import of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith and its inconsistency with sacramental justification, and, like some writers of our own day,* to have been unable to understand how post-baptismal sin, especially of a grave nature, could be fully remitted without the intervention of the Church, sacerdotal and sacramental.  As a minister of our Church, he could recognize no sacramental rite for this purpose after baptism but the Eucharist; which, accordingly, he invests with a power of remission. [“Notwithstanding what I here said with respect to Eucharistical absolution,” etc.  Euch., c. ix.]

            [*“The Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith is incompatible with any real belief in the validity of sacraments.”  Wilberforce, Euch., c. v.  We are not surprised to meet with, in a following chapter (xii.), such statements as these: “There would be no such cure for this evil” (post-baptismal deadly sin) “as the analogy of the Christian covenant requires, unless God had left power to his Church to absolve all sinners.  For by the Church’s office, by the ministry of absolution and the power of the keys, the relation of man to Christ is renewed, even as it was originally bestowed in holy baptism.  It was understood, of course, that repentance and faith, as well as confession, were needed on the part of the offender, but the idea that after the commission of deadly sin men might restore themselves to their position in the body of Christ by an act of their own minds” (lively faith) “is wholly at variance with the belief of the ancient Church.  This right cannot be regained by those who fall into deadly sin after baptism except through that authority which it has pleased God to entrust to His Church, and which is exercised through priestly absolution.”  As the writer could find in the church to which he then belonged no sacrament of penance, and no rule that persons guilty of deadly sin should confess to the priest and be officially absolved by him (though in certain cases it recommends the penitent to seek from his minister “ghostly counsel and advice,” and absolution “through the ministry of God’s word”), it is not to be wondered at that he transferred his allegiance to another church in which he found both.]

      As regards the other great Gospel gift, that of sanctifying grace, we cannot doubt but that the Holy Spirit makes use of the sacraments as of the Word to carry on His gracious work.  Even if the sacraments were to us arbitrary appointments, if they were not a verbum visibile and full of meaning; yet since they are enjoined by Christ, obedience to the command must be in itself acceptable and warrant a blessing.  But the question is whether Scripture connects special sanctifying grace with these ordinances, instructive and consolatory as they are, and especially with the Eucharist.  None of the passages cited by Waterland (John 3:5, 1 Cor. 6:11, Ephes. 5:26, Tit. 3:5) bear out his statement that “they speak directly of the sanctification of the Spirit conferred in baptism.”  They may contain allusions to baptism, and establish some connection of the Holy Spirit with that sacrament; but not (as indeed is evident) a continuous and progressive work of the Spirit, which cannot belong to an ordinance which occurs but once in the Christian’s life.  As regards the Eucharist in particular, John 6 and 1 Cor. 12:13 (“we have all been made to drink into one spirit”) are too doubtful in their reference and their meaning to establish the conclusion.  Even if they refer to the Eucharist, they do not prove that special grace is conveyed by it.  So much, indeed, is at length acknowledged by the learned writer who cites them: “We do not confine God’s grace to the sacraments, neither do we assert any peculiar grace, as appropriate to them only; but what we assert is, some peculiar degree of the same graces, or some peculiar certainty, or constancy, as to the effect, in the due use of those means”; [Euch., c. x.] all which may be admitted, if by the word “peculiar” is meant an increase of grace, such as in prayer also we ask and expect.  But if this is all that is intended, viz., that an increase of sanctifying grace may be expected in the due use of the sacrament, we may ask why the writer should have devoted a long chapter to enforce a point which all Christians acknowledge?  Seeing that the Eucharist is not a mere rite of the Church but the appointment of Christ Himself, who can doubt but that it is a seal and token of spiritual union with Him, and an eminent means of ordinary sanctifying grace?  The interests of the Church require that from time to time the Christian should testify his continuance in the mystical body of Christ, and especially, whatever measure of sanctity he may have attained, his continued dependence on the atonement as the ground of justification before God.  The symbolism, even more than in baptism, appeals to the imagination, and reminds us of what we owe to the Saviour and to our Christian brethren.  We transfer ourselves in thought to the passover chamber; the communicating church represents the assembled Apostles; Christ, by His vicar the Holy Ghost, is present, according to promise, with His guests; we hear the same words which He used in announcing His approaching death; we break the bread and drink the wine in memory of that death; we rekindle the consciousness of brotherly union with all the members of His mystical body; the “exceeding great love of our Master and only Saviour” is brought home to our minds with greater power than by any exposition of the Word; we publicly glory in the cross, and renew our vows of obedience.  Since the Holy Spirit bears witness to our adoption “with our spirit” (Rom. 6:16), that is, employs the various faculties of the soul – reason, conscience, the affections – to carry on His work, we need no elaborate Scriptural proof that we have in this sacrament an extraordinary means of sanctification, the sacrament speaks for itself.  Unquestionably grace is therein increased and faith confirmed.  More is not told us; more we do not need.  “Why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this: O my God, Thou art true!  O my soul, thou art happy!” [Hooker, E. P., v., c. lxvii., 12.]

 

§ 101.  The Reformers

      The controversy of Luther with Carlstadt on the real presence (see § 97) spread from Saxony to Switzerland, and Zwingli the Luther, and OEcolampadius the Melanchthon, of the Helvetic churches, took an active part in it.  A war of pamphlets between Zwingli and Luther ensued; the former denying, the latter asserting, a corporal presence, and came to an end in 1528, with the ordinary result that neither was convinced by the arguments of the other.  One consequence, however, was that Zurich thenceforward assumed an independent and important place in the history of the Reformation, and the distinction between the Reformed and the Lutheran doctrine became fixed with greater precision.

      With respect to Zwingli, justice has not always been done to this Reformer. [Even Litton himself above {near end of § 87} gives alone the lower view which was not Zwingli’s mature opinion, which he stated thus: “Christum credimus vere esse in Coena, immo non esse Domini Coenam, nisi Christus adsit ... Verum Christi corpus credimus in Coena sacramentaliter et spiritualiter edi a religiosa fideli et sancta anima.” – Ed.]  A man of action rather than of speculation, in whom intellect predominated over sentiment and imagination, he is not to be compared with Luther in power to sway the minds of men.  His merits, however, are very great.  If not the first to suggest, he was the first to bring out into clear light the figurative sense of the copula in the words of institution; and Martensen, Lutheran as he is, only renders due homage to the Swiss Reformer when he says: “The whole Protestant Church unites in accepting Zwingli’s ‘this Signifies,’ not ‘this is’”; adding very truly, “that his merits in establishing the symbolical view of the elements have not as yet received due recognition.” [Dogmatik, § 262.]  As compared with Luther, too, and even Calvin, his exegetical tact led him to perceive that the words of institution can only refer to Christ in the state of humiliation while on earth, not to Christ in His glorified body.  It must be acknowledged that his view of the sacraments seldom rises above their being signs of spiritual blessings and tokens of Christian fellowship; their use, he argues, is rather for the Church than for the receiver.  “The sacraments are signs or ceremonies, I take leave to say, whereby a man proves to the Church that he is either a candidate for Christ’s service, or an enlisted soldier, and their end is rather to satisfy the Church concerning thy faith than thyself.  For if thy faith needs a ceremonial sign to confirm it, it is not faith.” [De Vera et Falsa Rel.]  Elsewhere, however, he speaks of them as signs of inward grace.  “As baptism signifies that Christ has washed us in His blood, and that we ought, as Paul teaches, to put Him on; that is, live according to His example; so the Eucharist also signifies both that we embrace all the blessings which through Christ have been bestowed upon us, and that we ought to cultivate towards our brethren the same love which Christ has shown towards us.” [De Fide Eccles. Expos.  Quoted by Möhler, Symb., § 31.]  It is possible that his premature death on the field of battle, 1531, prevented a revision of views, defective rather than erroneous.  As he left them, they are defective in recognizing the offices of the sacraments in making over the common objective salvation to individuals, and in conveying, not special, but ordinary sanctifying grace.  Union with Christ, an expression in itself scriptural though sometimes associated with erroneous theories, is not mentioned by this Reformer in connection with either baptism or the Eucharist.

      At the other extreme of Protestantism stands Luther.  Towards the close of his career he defended a doctrine as regards the real presence which it requires some dexterity to distinguish from that of Rome; but (and this is an essential point of difference) he did not make the change in the elements depend on sacerdotal consecration, but on the words of Christ Himself, This is My body, etc., repeated at each celebration.  Nor, though he holds a corporal presence, does he define it exactly as the Council of Trent does.  He does not teach a change of the substance of the bread and wine into that of the body of Christ (transubstantiation); nor consubstantiation, if by that term is to be understood either a mixture of the substance of the elements with the substance of Christ’s humanity, or a local and natural juxtaposition of the two substances; nor impanation, or a local inclusion of the body in the bread and of the blood in the wine, as in receptacles.*  What union, then, remains?  A sacramental one; which (as we have seen, § 96) amounts to a confession of ignorance as to the particular mode of union.  Christ’s humanity is in union with the bread and wine really, but sacramentally; and so as that all who partake of the elements, whether worthy or not, partake by oral manducation of the body and blood.  With the bread and wine the body and blood are offered to, and are received by, those who eat and drink unworthily, though to their own condemnation.  Such are the statements of the Formula Concordiae, the authentic exposition of Lutheran doctrine, so far as it possesses any such.  It differs from that of the Reformed confessions in that it makes the elements and the body and blood of Christ (that is, Christ Himself) identical.  Manducatio oralis and manducatio impiorum are the distinctive tenets of Lutheranism.  It may be observed that this whole debate about reception by the unworthy is one that has no meaning, and ought never to have been introduced.  The Eucharist was instituted only for the worthy, only for those who trust in and love the Saviour; none others have any right to it, none others were contemplated by Christ in the appointment.  By S. Paul the idea of any one’s partaking of Christ in this sacrament without lively faith would have been treated as a monstrosity.  The Corinthians (1 Cor. 11) are supposed to be real Christians; but Christians who failed in rendering due respect to so sacred an ordinance.

            [*The Lutheran theologians repudiate the terms “consubstantiation” and “impanation”.  “Monemus autem denuo propter calumnias adversae partis nos nec impanationem nec consubstantiationem nec ullam aliam physicam vel localem praesentiam statuere.”  J. Gerh., Loc. xxii., c. 11, § 98.  Comp. Cotta’s note: “Nec consubstantiationem, quam vocant, admittendam esse censent.  Diversimode quidem vocabulum hoc accipi solet.  Interdum enim συσσωμάτικον, seu localem duorum corporum conjunctionem, interdum autem utriusget corporis commixtionem, denotat, qua panis cum corpore et vinum cum sanguine in unam substantiam seu massam coalescere fingitur.  Sed in neutra significatione ecclesiae nostrae tribui potest monstrosum consubstantiationis dogma, cum nec localem istam duorum corporum conjunctionem, nec commixtionem quandam panis et corporis Christi vinique et sanguinis Christi statuant Lutherani.”  On impanation, see also Cotta.]

      In the year 1509, at Noyau in Picardy, was born Jean Cauvin, or Caulvin, in Latin Calvinus, a theologian who in after-years exercised a paramount influence over the churches of the Reformed family, our own included. [Attempts have been made, notably by Archbishop Laurence in his Bampton Lectures (1804), to extenuate this influence, and to ascribe a Lutheran origin to our formularies; but the fact is, that if we except the topic of the Lord’s Supper and Calvin’s tenet of reprobation, little difference existed between the German and the Swiss Reformers in matters of doctrine.  On election, free will, preventing grace, justification, etc., Lutherans and Reformed were agreed.  It is significant that the Archbishop of Cashel does not touch upon the doctrine of the Eucharist, the real point of difference.  To have done so would have refuted his theory; for our Articles on that subject are decidedly Calvinistic.  That our formulary belongs, not to the Lutheran, but to the Reformed type, appears from two characteristics generally found in the latter: the exclusion of the apocrypha from the rule of faith, and an enumeration of the books of canonical Scripture.]  While pastor and professor at Strasburg, about the year 1540, Calvin published a tract on the Lord’s Supper which contains substantially the view from which he never departed; but it was not until the disputes between the adherents of Luther on the one side, and Zwingli on the other, grew to a height, that he took an active part in the controversy.  The position which he assumed was that of a mediator between the contending parties; an office for which he was eminently fitted both from the structure of his mind and from his public reputation.  He did not succeed in uniting the two great branches of the Protestant communion on the question in debate; but he proposed a view which was accepted generally by the Swiss churches, and which from them passed, in the main, into the confessions of the Reformed churches throughout Europe.  Since it is by no means easy to understand, it will be proper to let him describe it in his own words.  The Institutes, Calvin’s replies to Westphal and Hesshus, and the Genevan Catechism, will furnish the materials.  “A twofold error is to be avoided, the divorcing of the symbols from the mystery attached to them, and the making them all in all so as to destroy or obscure the mystery.  That Christ is the Bread of life all admit, but all are not agreed as to the mode of participating of Him.  There are some who consider eating His flesh and drinking His blood as merely believing upon Him; my own opinion is that something more mysterious is intended thereby, viz., that we are spiritually quickened by a real partaking of Himself, and not merely by an act of the mind.  For just as not the looking at, but the eating of, bread supports the body, so must the soul, in order to be spiritually nourished, be fully and truly partaker of Christ.  No doubt this is practically the eating of faith, for we can imagine no other; but there is a difference between their and my mode of expression.  To them to eat is merely to believe, whereas I say that by faith the flesh of Christ is eaten, because by faith He becomes ours, and this eating is the effect of faith; or if you would have it more plainly expressed, they think that the eating is faith, I that it results from faith.  The verbal difference is indeed slight, but as regards the matter it is considerable.  For example, when Christ is said to ‘dwell in our hearts by faith,’ no one imagines that nothing but faith is meant, but rather an excellent effect of faith.”  [Inst. iv., cxvii., §§ 3–5.]  Again: “Christ, as the Word of God, existed indeed from all eternity, and as such is the source of life to all creatures; but in condescension to sinners He became flesh, and thus brought Himself into close proximity to us.  Nay, the flesh which he took He renders life-giving, that by it we may enjoy the gift of immortality.  ‘The bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world’; in these words we are taught not merely that He is life in that He is the eternal Word, but that by assuming our nature, He communicates to His flesh a virtue which from it flows over into us.  Thus the Apostle declares the Church to be the body of Christ, He being the Head from which all the members derive life (Ephes. 1:23); and, in still more striking language, that we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” [Ibid., § 9.]  Further on: “To sum up, our souls are fed by the flesh and blood of Christ, as bread and wine sustain our bodily life; and although it may seem incredible that at such a distance (of heaven from earth) the flesh of Christ should come down to us so as to become spiritual food, let us remember how vastly the secret virtue of His Holy Spirit surpasses our comprehension.  What our minds, then, cannot compass, let faith accept, viz., that the Holy Spirit unites things which are locally separate.  Now, the sacred communication of His flesh and His blood, whereby Christ transfuses His life into us not otherwise than as if it penetrated to the bones and marrow, He witnesses to and seals in the sacrament, and not by an empty sign, but by the energy of the Holy Ghost, fulfilling what He promises.  As regards transubstantiation, we reject it because we believe that the natural body of Christ is in heaven, to remain there until He comes again; nor do we need it, because by the agency of the Holy Spirit, the bond of our union with Christ, we become partakers of the body and blood of Christ, that is, Christ Himself, as S. Paul teaches in Rom. 8.” [           ]  Once more: “We reject consubstantiation which involves the ubiquity of Christ’s natural body, bringing it down from heaven, to be enclosed in the bread and wine wherever the sacrament is duly celebrated.  We, on the contrary, hold such a presence of Christ as neither derogates from His glory by circumscribing Him in earthly elements, nor is inconsistent with the attributes of a real natural body, of which it is plain that ubiquity cannot be predicated.  They are in error who can conceive no presence of Christ except in the bread; for so they leave no place for the secret operation of the Holy Ghost, which unites us to Christ, not by bringing Him down from heaven, but by raising us up to Him where He is.” [Ibid., §§ 16–33.]  To Westphal he writes: “I have always maintained that the body of Christ is exhibited to us in the sacrament efficaciously but not naturally, as regards its virtue, but not as regards its natural substance.  I affirm that by that body which hung upon the cross our souls are spiritually fed, no less than our bodies are by the bread and wine.  The difficulty touching local absence I thus solve: Christ indeed does not change His local habitation, but He descends to us virtually (vi, virtute, efficacia).  I leave Christ in possession of His heavenly throne, and am content with the secret operation of His Spirit whereby He feeds us with His flesh.  As regards the unworthy, Christ’s body was never intended canibus et porcis.”  And to Hesshus: “They” (the Lutherans) “accuse us of rationalism.  What can be greater miracle than that our immortal souls should derive life from flesh in itself mortal? that the flesh of Christ should transmit its virtue from heaven to us?  If it be asked whether we enjoy this benefit apart from the sacrament, we reply, undoubtedly.  By faith, too, we feed on the body and blood of Christ, but in the sacrament we have a visible pledge of the blessing, and it may be a fuller enjoyment of it.  Are we not in like manner cleansed by the blood of Christ apart from baptism?  But the sign was added to confirm our faith.”  Once more, in the Genevan Catechism we read: “M. Are we, then, in the sacrament fed with the body and blood of Christ?  P. That is my opinion.  For since in Him is our salvation, it is necessary that He Himself should become our own.  M. Did He not give Himself to us when He died for our sins?  P. Certainly, but that is not enough; what we want is to receive Him now.  M. What special advantage have we in the sacrament, over and above what we receive by faith?  P. This, that the participation by faith is here confirmed and increased.  M. What do the bread and wine represent?  P. The body of Christ once offered, and His blood once shed, and now spiritually received.  M. The Supper, then, was not instituted to repeat the sacrifice of Christ?  P. No, only that we may feed on the body and blood once offered.  M. To sum up, then, you say there are two things in this sacrament: the visible signs, and Christ who invisibly feeds our souls?  P. Exactly so; and not only that, but that our bodies too receive a pledge of their resurrection, since they partake of the symbols of life.”  What Calvin rejects may be hence gathered without difficulty.  In common with all Protestants, he says nothing about the necessity of consecration, that term being understood to imply sacerdotal intervention: the words of Christ at the institution ought to be used, and by them the bread and wine are set apart to holy uses, but they do not effect any inward change in these elements.  That is, he rejects transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass.  Nor does he, with the Lutherans, hold that Christ’s natural body is, through the communicatio idiomatum, ubiquitous; it is, and remains, in heaven.  Nor is it so conjoined with the bread and wine as to be partaken of equally by the worthy and the unworthy.  Nor is there any physical admixture or transfusion of the body and blood into either our souls and bodies.  But when he comes to explain what his own view is, considerable obscurity rests on his statements.  The elements, he says, are not mere signs or tokens, as Zwingli, at least in his earlier teaching, maintained; but signs which convey what they signify, viz., the body and blood of Christ.  Yet they do not convey it independently of the faith of the receiver; and, moreover, they do not convey it independently of the act of reception, it is in the use of the sacrament that the gift is conveyed.  Not by oral manducation, as if it were inherent in the elements, does the gift pass; the bread and wine remain bread and wine throughout; but simultaneously with the worthy reception of the symbols Christ, and Christ in His humanity, is received as the food of the soul.  This is the real point of difference between the Reformed and Lutheran doctrine on the subject.  According to the former, Christ does not communicate Himself until the moment of reception, and only if lively faith is found in the receiver; according to the latter, Christ is immanent in the elements, and is partaken of by all the communicants, whether with or without lively faith.  This spiritual union with Christ is effected, Calvin continues, by the mysterious operation of the Holy Ghost, and not by mechanical manducation; which, of itself, proves that the unworthy do not enjoy it, for in none but Christ’s living members (according to Calvin, the elect) does the Holy Ghost dwell.  Faith is the sine qua non of a beneficial reception, and yet faith is not exactly the same as the sacramental feeding on Christ; the latter is the effect of the former.  In the extract above quoted from the reply to Hesshus, Calvin admits that by faith, too, we feed on Christ, and apart from the sacrament; but still not mystically, as we do in the sacrament.  And now comes the main difficulty.  If Christ in His glorified body never leaves heaven, how is He present at each celebration?  How does He feed us sacramentally with His flesh?  The answer is, either that the Holy Ghost, by His almighty power, raises our souls to feed on Christ in heaven, or that by the same power an emanation of virtue from Christ’s body above, a kind of sacramental duplicate, is brought down to us on earth.  Calvin does not express himself uniformly on this point; but on the whole he prefers the former alternative, the ascent of the soul to heaven to feed on Christ there.  Anyhow, it is, we see, the soul that feeds on Christ; the manducation is not oral, but spiritual; and yet the body shares in the blessing; Christ’s flesh is life-giving, and His life communicated to us becomes the seed of immortality.

      Calvin’s exegetical tact seems for once to have here deserted him.  He indulges in something like the paralogism which some modern writers employ, that because Christ’s body is mentioned in the words of institution, and His Church is termed His mystical body, there must be a quasi-physical connection between the two, effected in and by the sacrament.  Again, the Christ whom he supposes the believer to feed upon in the Lord’s Supper is the glorified Christ; whereas the Eucharist is never spoken of in Scripture except in connection with Christ in His stage of humiliation.  He is compelled to adopt the scholastic doctrine of concomitance, in order to make Christ’s body and blood equivalent to the whole Christ, soul and Deity as well as body; whereas in the words of institution nothing appears but the separation of the two constituent elements of the physical organization, body and blood, that is, the approaching death of the Speaker.  He speaks of the “flesh” of Christ as life-giving, in spite of our Lord’s warning that “the flesh,” whether the body of His humiliation or His glorified body, “profiteth nothing,” and His explanation that the strong figure which He had used in speaking to the Capernaites was to be understood as “spirit and life,” that is, figuratively (John 6:63).  Calvin might possibly have replied that he, too, uses the word “flesh” figuratively; but how can a figure give life, and especially to the body of the recipient?  The resurrection of the body is in Scripture assigned, not to union with Christ’s humanity, but to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:11).  Nor does 1 Cor. 15:45, “The last Adam became a quickening spirit,” lead to a different conclusion.  The Saviour, on His ascension, if not immediately after His resurrection, became in His human nature fully glorified, the type and pattern of what the Church will be at the resurrection of the dead; and became, too, and not previously, the Author and Giver of the Holy Ghost, whose office it is to quicken the spiritually dead, and raise Christians when the “voice of the Son of God” shall give the signal (John 5:25).  In this sense it is true that “as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself” (Ibid., 5:26); but it is not affirmed that Christ’s humanity in the sacrament, and imparted therein, is the elixir of immortality.  Christ in His glorified humanity, Calvin tells us, is not present in the bread and wine by any word of priestly consecration, but, at the moment of reception, the Holy Ghost raises the believing soul to heaven to feed on Christ there.  As we cannot suppose that the soul leaves the body and is locally transferred to where Christ is, and then returns to the body again, what is this but expressing in figurative language the same truth which those whom Calvin opposes as holding that “eating His flesh and drinking His blood is merely believing on Him” (Zwingli and OEcolampadius) would have cordially accepted, viz., that to faith Christ in His atonement is in the sacrament present, and is spiritually appropriated by the faithful receiver?  The usually clear intellect of the Genevan reformer moves, on this subject, in a cloudy and mystical atmosphere, and the speculations of the schools, as described in former sections, manifestly revive in him.  Such, however, was his authority that the reformed Churches acquiesced in this middle position, or rather phraseology, between Luther and Zwingli.  Thus the Scottish Confession expresses itself in language almost identical with that of Calvin: “Although there is a vast interval of space between Christ’s body in heaven and us on earth, nevertheless we firmly believe that the bread which we break is the communion of His body, and the cup the communion of His blood; and that He dwells in us and we in Him, so that we become flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, and that as the Deity communicated life and immortality to the flesh of Christ, so His flesh and blood partaken of confer the same prerogatives on us.  This union is effected by the operation of the Holy Ghost, who translates us above all terrestrial things that we may feed on the body and blood of Christ now in heaven.” [Art. xxi., Augusti.  Comp. Conf. Helv., i., c. 21; Conf. Gall., xxxvii.; Conf. Tetrap., xviii.; Decl. Thorun, De sac. coen.]  It may be thought that our own formularies are, to some extent, framed after the same model.  They certainly are so rather than after the Lutheran.  We are reminded of Calvin when we read, “Then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood; we dwell in Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ and Christ with us”; or, “Grant us so to eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His body and our souls washed through His most precious blood”; or, “What is the inward part and thing signified?  The body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”  Yet the influence of Bucer and OEcolampadius is also visible.  Art. xxii takes care to add that “the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten only after a heavenly, spiritual manner; and the means whereby the body of Christ is received and taken in the Supper is faith”; which last statement is exactly that which Calvin professes himself not quite in accordance with.  To feed on Christ in the Supper by faith – what can this mean, divested of figure, but to believe that Christ became incarnate, died for our sins, and made thereby a perfect atonement for them; and in the sacrament to appropriate by faith these benefits?  Fortunately for the peace of our Church, what is meant by “the body and blood of Christ taken and received” is not defined; nor is the distinction between the “natural” and the “sacramental” presence stated; nor does the expression “real presence” occur in either Articles or Liturgy.  Nor do we meet there with any such physical conception as that of Calvin, that “by a true communication of Himself in the sacrament the life of Christ,” as the incarnate Son, “passes into us and becomes ours.”  Upon this statement some remarks have been made in the last section.  If it is not a mystical mode of expressing the Scriptural faith, that the Holy Ghost, “the Author and Giver of (spiritual) life,” the active Administrator of this dispensation, proceeds from the Son as well as the Father, it amounts to a transfer of the special functions of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity in the economy of grace to the Second; and is not only without warrant of Scripture, but of dangerous dogmatical tendency.  It virtually reduces the operation of the Holy Ghost to the incarnation, and to the miracle of the bread and wine becoming Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist. [See the theory fully developed in Wilberforce, Euch., c. x.  It is argued that because relations of the Holy Trinity ad intra exist antecedently to any work ad extra, the Son and the Holy Ghost are both concerned, in different ways, in the work of communicating spiritual life.  Rather, it may be inferred from these internal relations, that different offices in the work of man’s restoration belong to each Person.  The schoolmen were better theologians when they laid down (1) that opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt, but (2) that redemption “terminates” in the Son, sanctification (including the whole work of the application of redemption) in the Holy Ghost.]  Christ in the Eucharist becomes the “Giver of Life,” the Quickener, Sanctifier, Teacher of Christians; the Holy Ghost retires from the place and offices which our Lord Himself assigns to Him, and becomes but a subordinate Agent in the economy of grace; or, to express it more accurately, He dwells indeed in the Church, but only indirectly, viz., so far as He cooperated in the incarnation, and cooperates in the real presence in the Eucharist of the incarnate Son, from which presence life directly proceeds.  But the first truths which a Christian child is taught to confess are, “I believe in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind; and in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the elect people of God.”  If the lesson is forgotten, or thrust aside by unauthorized theories, nothing but damage to the Church can ensue.  The language of some parts of our Communion Service and of the Catechism, though, with Waterland, it may receive a Scriptural interpretation, seems to require revision.

 

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