Now will any one take this account of the liturgies and usage of the ancient Church, which on all hands confessedly is admitted to have held the doctrine for which we contend, and then, comparing these with the Eucharistic Service of our own Church, doubt for a moment that the Church of England at the Reformation intended to preserve, and did preserve, the ancient form and practice, and therefore the ancient faith, in this matter? { 102}
The Articles and Catechism of our Church are perfectly in accordance with this conclusion. Although the former, as we well know, were drawn up rather to guard against current errors of that day than to state doctrine upon points not brought into controversy, { 103} they indirectly confirm what has been said. For instance, the Twenty-fifth Article, guarding against the notion of a gross carnal presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, expressed by the term ‘transubstantiation,’ might not be called upon, within its proper scope, to say anything in the way of dogma asserting the doctrine of sacrifice; but yet we find in it the statement that sacraments “be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace,”—that is, signs effecting what they signify, and therefore, in the case of the Holy Communion, effecting or procuring for sinners pardon through Christ’s body broken and blood shed, even as there, “as often as we eat that bread and drink that cup we do shew the Lord’s death till He come,” { 104} all which is in perfect accordance and harmony with the doctrine of a true propitiatory commemorative sacrifice therein offered up to God.
One point further in relation to the Articles I will notice, lest I seem to overlook an objection. It is sometimes said, If the doctrine of a true and propitiatory sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist be admitted, there is a contradiction to the Thirty-first Article, which tells us that “the sacrifices of masses, in which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” It is assumed that any doctrine of a real and true sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist must come under this condemnation, and so it is sometimes thought that the whole question is thus decided. But, not to notice other points not without importance, but which we can hardly spare time to go into now, one thing surely is evident,—that the whole Article must be read together if we would rightly understand it. It is: “The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” Now it is plain that the contrast here is between the one satisfaction for sin made by agony and blood upon the cross, and any supposed repetition of that painful and bloody sacrifice. “There is none other but that alone;” wherefore, for which reason, such attempts at sacrifice as would repeat it, or such teaching as would imply that Christ repeats it and suffers again, “are blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” If, then, in anything we say there were a doctrine of its repetition, if we did not absolutely and entirely disclaim (as we all along have done) any such attempt and any such view of the sacrifice of the Christian altar, there would be a condemnation by the Article of our teaching. But certainly neither its terms nor its scope deal with any view of a merely unbloody commemorative sacrifice, appointed to be continually made in the Church of God so long as the world lasteth, by which the sacrifice upon the cross is never supposed to be repeated, but its sole merits applied to the believing and obedient heart, and the prevailing pleading and intercession of the Son of God presenting our prayers and praises, our penitence and offerings, before the throne of the heavenly grace are secured, and He Himself, our Advocate with the Father, is our propitiation. This no more interferes with the one “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, once offered” upon the cross, than His own continued intercession at the right hand of God (and certainly “He ever liveth to make intercession for us,”) { 106} interferes with, or is inconsistent with, the same.