We brought our examination of this evidence to the fourth century of the Christian era by, as I think it must be allowed, the summary of an unexceptionable witness to the substance of the early Christian writings upon that point, and by a reference to the five most ancient liturgies of the Christian Church. It is unnecessary to say a word as to the same doctrine being the universally received doctrine of the Church from the fourth century to the sixteenth, because its very opponents adduce the teaching of that thousand or twelve hundred years, in this among other things, as proving the great darkness and corruption which had then fallen upon the Church, and obscured, in their view, the simplicity of the Gospel. So that, whatever may be thought of its orthodoxy, the fact is not disputed, that for such period the whole of Christendom, with the most insignificant exceptions, believed in the doctrine which we are considering. Whether, as is affirmed by such objectors, this universal belief were a mark of the corruption and ignorance of “the dark ages,” as the self-complacent pride of later times has designated them, (when perchance in God’s judgment they may be as light itself compared with much of the “philosophy and vain deceit” { 81a} of this free-handling nineteenth century, which so often “darkens counsel by words without knowledge” { 81b}); or whether such consent, following the track of the earliest ages, be not rather the mark of a true understanding of the mind of the Spirit pervading that body with which Christ has promised to be, “even to the end of the world,” is another question. It is one which I need not now pursue, as what we have to say of the course taken and the doctrine maintained by the Church of England at her Reformation will throw a light upon the whole matter, which ought, I think, to be sufficient for any understanding and faithful member of our Church.
Thus we are brought to the immediate subject of our further enquiry. It being admitted, as I think I have shewn it must be, that this doctrine of the priesthood, altar, and sacrifice, is a doctrine founded upon, and supported by, Holy Scripture; so understood by the Church at large from the earliest times, so maintained with no faltering lips to at least the sixteenth century; what, we ask next, is the evidence of the mind of our own Church at the Reformation and since, as to her preserving or rejecting it?