Again, divine institution is necessary for true and efficacious sacrifice; the victim must be chosen of God, and the priest or person who offers. "For no man doth take

the honour to himself, but he that is called by God as Aaron was" (Heb. v. 4).

The Scriptural grounds on which the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist as a sacrifice rests, are mainly the following:

1. The prophecy of Malachias. "I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will not receive a gift of your hand; for from the rising of the sun, even to the going down, My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean oblation; for My name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts" (Mal. i. 10, 11). Two things are here announced: the rejection of the Jewish legal sacrifices, and the substitution of a new sacrifice to be offered throughout the whole world. But how is the latter fulfilled if not in the Holy Eucharist, the pure and clean oblation which is offered among all nations from east to west?

2. Again, in Heb. vii. and Ps. cix., Christ is called a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedech. Now Melchisedech is described in Gen. xiv. as offering a sacrifice of bread and wine; therefore Christ is called a priest after the order of Melchisedech, because He too offered a sacrifice under the species of bread and wine. This will be obvious, if we consider that Christ could not be called a priest after the order of Melchisedech for any other reason; not on account of the accordance of Melchisedech's title, King of Salem, with our Lord's title, Prince of Peace; not on account of Melchisedech's being without genealogy, which was typical of Christ's Divinity; nor on account of the other attributes of Melchisedech, enumerated in the 7th chapter of the Hebrews. For all these things show, indeed, that Melchisedech was a type of Christ, and foreshadow the dignity of His priesthood, but do not prove that Christ was a priest after his order; to constitute a similarity of order or rite, there must be a similarity in the thing offered, and not merely a typical relation between

the persons offering. Thus Abel, Isaac, and Aaron were types of Christ, but we cannot say that Christ was a priest after their order; the Jewish sacrifices were types of the sacrifice of the cross, but Christ is not called a priest after the order of Aaron, because there is no likeness in themselves between the legal victims and that offered on the cross. Christ then, and then only, fulfilled the order or rite of Melchisedech, when He instituted the Holy Eucharist; and the Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice, otherwise He would not be a priest after that order.

3. The words at the institution, "This do in commemoration of Me," in the original are full of sacrificial meaning. The word we translate "do" is both in sacred and profane writers quite an ordinary expression for “offer sacrifice." It is so used many times in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, e. g. Exod. xxix. 36-39; Lev. vi. 22, ix. 7; Exod. x. 25; and as applied to the paschal sacrifice, Num. ix. 2; Deut. xvi. 1-4; 4 Kings xxiii. 21; 2 Para. xxx. 1, 2. Again, the words, "for a commemoration of Me," point to the victim set before God as a memorial to Him, as well as a reminder to us of the passion and death of His Son. So that the whole injunction, according to the usage of the language in which it was uttered, may well signify, "Offer this sacrifice as a memorial of Me." Our Lord had just been celebrating the paschal sacrifice of the old covenant; now He bids His Apostles offer that far more excellent one of the New Testament. It is as if He had said: "As offered that passover in remembrance of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, so offer this in remembrance of Me; that blood was shed for the preservation of the first-born, this for the remission of the sins of the whole world" (St. Chrys. Hom. on St. Matt. xxvi., lxxxii.).

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It is objected, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that, under the new law, there is but one priest and one sacrifice, that of the cross: "And the others indeed were made many priests, because by reason of death they were not suffered to continue; but this, for that He continueth for ever, hath an everlasting priesthood, whereby He is able also to save for ever them that come to God by Him;

always living to make intercession for us. Who needeth not daily, as the other priests, to offer sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people's: for this He did once, in offering Himself" (Heb. vii. 23-27).

But there is nothing here opposed to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice. According to that doctrine, Christ is the real offerer in the Mass; others do but offer in His name and as His, vicars, and the Mass is not another sacrifice, distinct in substance from that of the cross, but is the sacrifice of the cross applied. In the passage quoted, all repetition is not denied, but only such a repetition as took place under the old law; in which, by reason of the imperfect nature of the preceding sacrifices, it was necessary to repeat them again and again, in order to accumulate fresh merit and satisfaction; but in this way the sacrifice of the Mass is not offered, nor for this end. It is offered by Christ, not now standing, but sitting at the right hand of God, i. e. no longer meriting or satisfying, but applying the merits and satisfactions of His sacrifice on the cross, by means of the daily oblation of the unbloody sacrifice. And this repetition, so far from derogating from the sacrifice of the cross, shows in the strongest way its infinite and exhaustless efficacy, since its virtue is not diminished by such repeated applications of it.

Let us next consider in what action of the Mass the sacrifice takes place.

From the nature of the case the act of sacrifice must be (1) one which produces a moral destruction of the victim; (2) one which is performed in the name of Christ, who is the chief offerer; (3) one which Christ Himself performed at the time of the institution; and (4) which represents His death. Hence it is not the oblation which precedes, nor that which follows consecration; it cannot be the elevation of the species, nor the breaking the Host, nor the admixture of the species, nor their distribution; but it consists (1) principally in the consecration, and perhaps, also, in the consumption, as its completion. The consecration is performed in the person of Christ, as the forms show: "This is My body;" "This is the chalice of

My blood." (2) Christ Himself instituted it; the words are His very words. (3) It morally destroys the victim, by placing Christ on the altar as it were dead, for, by virtue of the words, the body is separated from the blood under the species of bread, and the blood from the body under the species of wine; and (4) thereby the death of Christ is shown forth, for it is the body broken and the blood shed which are set before us. Again, the consumption completes the sacrifice, because it completes the destruction of the victim, Christ, in His sacramental life; hence the Church so carefully provides that both species be consumed by the celebrant, or by another priest if the celebrant become by any accident incapacitated.

The consecration of both species is essential to the sacrifice, for Christ is a priest after the order of Melchisedech, who offered not bread alone, but bread and wine; and the consecration of one species would not sufficiently show forth the death of Christ.

CHAP. CV, On the relation of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist to other Sacrifices.

THE sacrifice of the Eucharist differs from the sacrifices of the old law (1) on the part of the things offered. The victim therein is not a sheep or an ox, but the body and blood of Christ; no creature, but the Incarnate God. (2) The principal offerer in those sacrifices was the visible human priest who stood ministering; but in the Mass it is Jesus, our invisible High Priest, who sitteth at the right hand of God. (3) The sacrifices of the law were but types and shadows of the true sacrifice (Heb. viii. 5), and had no efficacy in themselves "as to the conscience, to make him perfect that served" (ix. 9, x. 1); "for it is impossible that with the blood of oxen and goats sins should be taken away." But in the sacrifice of the altar, "the blood of Christ, who, by the Holy Ghost, offered Himself unspotted unto God, does cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God," and we are therein sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once.

The sacrifice of the Gospel is the true spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to the Father for its own sake; the sacrifice of the law was only acceptable as a figure of the true. Hence the Eucharistic sacrifice differs essentially from all that had gone before in the old dispensation.

The Eucharistic sacrifice differs also in some respects from the sacrifice of the cross: (1) Christ was offered on the cross mortal and passible; on the altar, immortal and impassible. (2) On the cross Christ offered Himself by His own hands; on the altar, through the ministry of His priests. (3) On the cross He offered Himself with, on the altar without, shedding of blood. (4) On the cross the price of our redemption was paid, and the sacrifice was propitiatory in virtue of its own merits; on the altar that which was purchased is communicated to us, and the sacrifice is propitiatory in virtue of the sacrifice of the cross. These differences are, however, only accidental, for in both cases not only is the victim the same, and the principal offerer, but the immolation of the victim to declare God's supreme dominion is, in the sacrifice of the altar, the very death of Christ upon the cross, mystically presented to God. The two sacrifices, then, are really one and the same sacrifice, offered in different ways.

CHAP. CVI. On the ends of the Sacrifice of the Mass. THERE are four religious duties we owe God. (1) We have to pay Him honour, and acknowledge His infinite dignity: (2) We have to thank Him for His goodness and mercy towards us: (3) We have to propitiate His majesty, justly offended by our sins: (4) We have to ask Him to supply our needs spiritual and temporal. To discharge these obligations there were, under the old covenant, various sacrifices.

1. The Holocaust, or whole burnt-offering, by its complete destruction, expressed God's supreme dominion and unlimited claim over the offerer.

2. The sin-offerings were to expiate offences against the law.