may be the sacrifice, not the material things: and such service being evangelical, (not legal or typical,) is spiritual sacrifice. 3. The Cardinal has a third argument about elicit acts; which being highly metaphysical and fanciful, I choose rather to pass it off without further answer, than to offend your ears with it. 4. A fourth pretence is, that the sacrifice of the Church being but one, the spiritual sacrifices, which are many, cannot be that one sacrifice. Here he quotes Austin, Pope Leo, and Chrysostom, to prove that the Church's sacrifice is but one, and that one the Eucharista. He might have spared the labour, because the same Fathers assert the sacrifice of the Eucharist to be both one and many, diversly considered: one complicated sacrifice, taking in the whole action; many sacrifices, if distinctly viewed under the several particulars. And though the Eucharist might by common use come to be called emphatically, the sacrifice, as being most observable, or most excellent, or as comprehending more sacrifices in one, than any other service did, yet it does not from thence follow that the other less observable or less considerable sacrifices were not properly sacrifices. For has not the same Eucharist, in vulgar speech, and by custom, come to be emphatically called, the Sacrament, as if there were no other Sacrament? And yet certain it is, that Baptism is as properly a Sacrament as the other. Emphatical appellations therefore are rather marks of the excellency or notoriety of a thing, than of strict propriety of speech. But I return to Bellarmine. 5. A fifth pretence is, that spiritual sacrifices, being common both to clergy and laity, require no proper priesthood, and therefore cannot be justly esteemed proper sacrifices: for proper sacrifice and proper priesthood, being relatives, must stand or fall together. To which it may be answered, that even lay Christians, considered as offering spiritual sacrifices, are so far priests, according to the doctrine of the New Testament, confirmed by Catholic antiquity. But waving that nicety, (as some may call it,) yet certainly when spiritual sacrifices are offered up by priests, divinely commissioned, and in the face of a Christian congregation, they are then as proper sacrifices as any other are, or can be: and this is sufficient to our purpose. Let the Eucharist therefore, duly administered by sacerdotal officers, be admitted as a sacrifice properly so called, but of the spiritual a Bellarm. ibid. p. 712. b Ibid. c See my Review, vol. iv. p. 763. kind, and we desire nothing further. If a sacerdotal oblation of the people's loaf and wine, can be thought sufficient to convert them into proper sacrifices, though they had nothing at all of a sacrificial nature in them before such oblation; surely the like sacerdotal oblation may much more convert the people's prayers, praises, and devout services (which previously had something of a sacrificial nature in them) into real and proper sacrifices, yea the properest of any. Why then must our spiritual offerings be set aside as of no account in respect of proper sacrifice, only to take in other things of much lower account than they? Why should we take in those meaner things at all, as sacrifices, into our pure offerings, which are much better without them, and can only be defiled by such an heterogeneous mixture of legal and evangelical? Let the elements be signs (as they really are) of the sacrifice which we offer, as they are also signs of the sacrifice whereof we participate: that appears to be the end and use of them, (and great use it is,) and seems to be all the honour which God ever intended them. To be plainer, we ourselves are the sacrifice offered by those symbols; and the victim of the cross is the sacrifice participated by the same symbols. But I proceed. 6. It is further argued against spiritual sacrifices, that they require no proper altar, as all proper sacrifices do: therefore they are not proper sacrifices. This argument is faulty, more ways than one. For, 1. It can never be proved, that sacrifices and altars are such inseparable relatives, that one may not subsist without the other. An altar seems to be rather a circumstance of convenience, or decency, than essential to sacrifice. It was accidental to the Jewish sacrifices, that they needed altars: and the reason was not because all sacrifices must have altars, but because sacrifices of such a kind could not be performed d This matter is briefly and accurately expressed by our very learned and judicious Bp. Montague. In lege Christi sunt sacerdotes, non tantum illa laxa significatione, qua quotquot Jesu Christi sumus évvpoi, (Christiani nominati,) sumus etiam et dicimur sacerdotes, sed et illa magis stricta, qua qui populo acquisitionis præsunt ἐν νόμῳ Θεοῦ, καὶ εἰς Θεόν, Dei sunt et populi μεσίται. Habemus autem et altare, ad quod offerimus oblationes et sacrificia commemorationis, laudationis, orationis, VOL. V. nos, nostra Deo, per sacerdotem. Montacut. Orig. tom. ii. p. 313. e The sacrifice of the cross, or Christ himself, may also be said to be offered in the Eucharist. But then it means only offered to view, or offered to Divine consideration: that is, represented before God, angels, and men, and pleaded before God as what we claim to; not offered again in sacrifice. See Field on the Church, p. 204, 205. and my Review, vol. iv. P. 758. K Bellarmin. ibid. p. 712, 713. without them; otherwise, an altar appears no more necessary to a sacrifice, considered at large, than a case or a plate, a pix or a patin, is to a gift, or present. 2. Besides, how will it be made appear that the table on which our Lord consecrated the Eucharist, or the cross on which he suffered, was properly and previously an altar? The Cardinal's argument proves too much to prove any thing: for it does not only strike at the spiritual sacrifices, but at the mass sacrifice too, and even at the sacrifice of the cross, which had no proper altars. But if it be said, that both the table and the cross were proper altars, as being the seats of proper sacrifices, then whatever is the seat of a spiritual sacrifice (which we now suppose to be proper) will, by parity of reason, be a spiritual altar also, and proper in its kind so then, take the thing either way, the argument is frivolous, and concludes nothingh. I have now run through the Cardinal's subtilties on this head; excepting that some notice remains to be taken of his artful contrivance to elude St. Austin's definition of sacrifice, and therewith all the old definitions which had obtained in the Church for fifteen hundred years before. 7. He pretends, that that Father defined only true sacrifice, not proper sacrifice; and that therefore his definition comes not up to the point in hand: good works may be true sacrifices, in St. Austin's sense, but they will be improper, metaphorical, or nominal only, notwithstanding. This is the substance of the pretext, laid down in its full force, and it will require a clear and distinct answer. First, I may take notice, that it is very odd, in this case especially, to make a distinction between true and proper, and to oppose one to the other. St. Austin, most un * Some make the cross itself the altar, which has been the current way of speaking from Origen of the third century. Others say, the Divine nature of our Lord was the altar, grounding it upon Hebr. ix. 14. Others take in both, in different respects: but neither of them seems to have been an altar in strict propriety of speech, but rather in the way of analogy, or resemblance. This article has been minutely discussed by Cloppenburg. Opp. vol. i. p. 82, &c. Witsius, Miscellan. tom. i. p. 509. In Symb. Apostol. p. 146. Vitringa, Obs. Sacr. lib. ii. cap. 13. lib. iv. cap. 15. Deylingius, Obs. Sacr. tom. ii. p. 393. Miscellan. 559, 567. h The Lord's table is by the ancients frequently called an altar, as being the seat of the elements, and so an altar in the same metonymical meaning, as the elements were body and blood, or the grand sacrifice itself. The Lord's table might also more properly be called an altar, as being that from which, or at which, prayers and praises and commemorations (spiritual sacrifices) were offered. See my Review, vol. iv. p. 749. Bellarmin. ibid. p. 713. conf. Vasquez, tom. iii. p. 507. Suarez. tom. iii. p. 886. Bapt. Scortia, p. 18. doubtedly, intended, under the word true, to take in all Christian, all evangelical, all salutary or acceptable, yea all allowable sacrifices and what can it signify to talk of any proper sacrifice (Jewish, suppose, or Pagan) as opposed to true, so long as such proper sacrifice is no sacrifice at all in Christian account, but a sacrilege rather, or a profanation? But I answer further, that there is no reason to imagine that St. Austin did not intend to include proper under the word true. It would not have been sufficient to his purpose to have said proper sacrifice, because Jewish and Pagan sacrifices might come under the same appellation but he chose the word true, as carrying in it more than proper, and as expressing proper and salutary, or authorized, both in one. As true religion implies both proper and authorized religion, and as true worship implies the like; so true sacrifice implies both propriety as to the name, and truth as to the thing k. The The point may be further argued from hence, that the ancient Fathers did not only call spiritual sacrifices real and true, but they looked upon them as the best, the noblest, the most perfect sacrifices, the most suitable and proper gifts or presents that could be offered to the Divine Majesty: and they never dropped any hints of their being either improper or metaphorical. Romanists knew this very well; and it may be useful to observe their exquisite subtilty in this argument. For after they have exploded, with a kind of popular clamour, all that the Fathers ever called true sacrifice, under the opprobrious name of improper and metaphorical", and have raised an odium against Protestants for admitting no other, then, (as if they had forgot all that they had been before doing,) they fetch a round, and come upon * In this sense St. Austin called our Lord's sacrifice true. Contr. Faust. lib. xx. cap. 18. xxii. 17. Contr. advers. Leg. &c. lib. i. cap. 18. 1 Justin. Dial. p. 389. ed. Thirlb. Irenæus, lib. iv. cap. 17. p. 248. ed. Bened. Origen. tom. ii. p. 362. ed. Bened. Clem. Alex. p. 686. ed. Ox. Lactant. Epit. 169, 204, 205. edit. Dav. Philastrius, Hær. cap. cix. p. 221. ed. Fabr. Hieronym. in Amos, cap. v. p. 1420. ed. Bened. Augustin. tom. x. p. 94, 242, 243, 256. ed. Bened. Gregor. Magn. Dial. lib. iv. cap. 59. p. 472. ed. Bened. m Justin. Dial. p. 387. Athenagoras, p. 48, 49. ed. Ox. Clem. Alex. p. 836, 848, 849, 860. Tertullian, Apol. cap. xxx. De Orat. cap. 27, 28. Minuc. Felix, sect. xxxii. p. 183. Cyprian, Ep. lxxvii. p. 159. ed. Bened. Lactantius, Epit. cap. lviii. de vero Cultu, lib. vi. cap. 24, 25. Eusebius, Demonstr. p. 40. Hilarius, Pictav. p. 154. ed. Bened. Basil, tom. iii. p. 207. ed. Bened. Nazianzen. tom. i. p. 38, 484. Chrysostom. tom. v. p. 20, 231, 316, 503. vii. 216. ed. Bened. Augustin. tom. v. p. 268. de Civit. Dei, lib. x. cap. 20. lib. xix. cap. 23. Isidorus Pelus. lib. iii. Ep. 75. n Vide Suarez, tom. iii. p. 886, 891, 892, 893, 896. us with the high and emphatical expressions of the Fathers, asking, how we can be so dull as to understand them of metaphorical, nominal sacrifices? Yet we are very certain, that all those high expressions of the Fathers belonged only to spiritual sacrifices; the very same that Bellarmine and the rest discard as improper and metaphorical. But they here play fast and loose with us: first, pretending that the true and noble sacrifices of the ancients did not mean proper ones, in order to discard the old definitions; and then again, (to serve another turn,) pretending that those very sacrifices must have been proper, (not metaphorical,) because the Fathers so highly esteemed them, and spake so honourably of them. In short, the whole artifice terminates in this, that the self-same sacrifices as admitted by Protestants shall be called metaphorical, in order to disgrace the Protestant cause, but shall be called proper and true as admitted by the Fathers, in order to keep up some show of agreement in this article with antiquity. But I return to the Cardinal, whom I left disabling all the old definitions, in order to introduce a new one of his own, a very strange oneP; fitted indeed to throw out spiritual sacrifice most effectually, (which was what he chiefly aimed at,) but at the same time also overthrowing, undesignedly, both the sacrifice of the mass and the sacrifice of the cross. Again, our I. As to the sacrifice of the mass, the subject of it is supposed to be our Lord's natural body, invisible in the Eucharist; and yet, by the definition, the sacrifice should be res sensibilis, something visible, obvious to one or more of the senses. Lord's body is not liable any more to destruction; the definition, the sacrifice should be destroyed. But I shall insist no longer upon the Cardinal's inconsistencies in that article, because he has often been called to account for them by learned Protestants". • Vide Petavius, Eccl. Dogm. tom. iii. p. 130. PA definition of one kind of sacrifice, (Jewish, as it seems,) rather than of sacrifice in general, or of Christian in particular. It is giving us a species for the genus, like the making a definition of man, and then calling it a definition of animal. a Sacrificium est oblatio externa, facta soli Deo, qua ad agnitionem humanæ infirmitatis, et professionem and yet, by Divinæ majestatis, a legitimo ministro res aliqua sensibilis et permanens, in ritu mystico, consecratur, et transmutatur, ita ut plane destruatur. Bellarm. p. 715, 717. r Johann. Forbesius, p. 615. Montacutius, Orig. tom. ii. p. 302, 357. Bishop Morton, b. vi. cap. 6. p. 467, 468, &c. Hakewill, p. 8. Brevint. Depth and Mystery, &c. p. 133, 144. Payne on the Sacrifice of the Mass, p. 70. Bishop Kidder, p. 316, 415. |