offer Him to God, and present, as it were, his bleeding Saviour to His Father, and desire him for His sake to be merciful to him, and forgive him his sins. This internal oblation of Christ and His passion is made by every faithful Christian in his particular private devotions, and especially at the more solemn and public ones of the blessed sacrament, when he has the sacred symbols of Christ's death before him, and does then plead the virtue of Christ's sacrifice before God; not of the sacrifice then before him, but of the past sacrifice of the cross. This is all done by the inward acts, the faith, the devotion of the mind, whereby, as St. Austin says, Christ is then slain to any one, when he believes Him slain; and when we believe in Christ from the very remains of this thought, Christ is daily immolated to us.'t As St. Jerome says, 'when we hear the word of our Lord, His flesh and blood is, as it were, poured into our ears;' and so St. Ambrose calls 'the virgins' minds those altars on which Christ is daily offered for the redemption of the body.'"§-Payne's Sacrifice of the Mass.

What has been said, then, will sufficiently explain all such passages as assign to the ministers of the New Testament the offering of sacrifices; for it is not alone theirs, in the sense in which it is true of all Christians as "kings and priests to God," to offer their own prayers and praises, but they act ministerially in offering those of the Church; and still further they seem, not inappropriately, to be said to "offer the sacrifice of the Lord's body and blood," seeing it belongs to them peculiarly to celebrate the sacramental representation of Christ's sacrifice in the Eucharist. The significance of all such phrases, as when Ignatius says, "It is not lawful for the priest to offer without the bishop;" and when the Council of Nice decrees, "Deacons are forbidden to offer the

Tum Christus cuique occiditur, cum credit occisum. Augus. Quæst. Evang. 1. 2. + Cum credimus in Christum ex ipsis reliquiis cogitationis, Christus nobis quotidie immolatur. Idem in Psal. 73.

Cum audimus sermonem Domini, caro Christi et sanguis ejus in auribus nostris funditur. Hieron. in Psal. 147. [vol. 7. Append. p. 385. Veron. 1737.]

§ Vestras mentes, confidentur altaria dixerim, in quibus quotide pro redemptione corporis Christus offertur. Ambros. de Virg. 1. 2. [vol. 2. p. 166. Par. 1690.]

body of Christ," it is easy to understand. Every mention of Christ's merits and work in prayer, is truly an offering to the Father of the sacrifice of His Son, whether by priest or people; and the representation of Christ's death in the breaking of bread and the outpouring of the wine, may be called all that the Fathers call them. It is only when these phrases are bound down to literal interpretation, and Christ's body and blood, which are offered as objectively sacrificed in heaven, are declared to be subjectively present on the altar and in the elements, that we not only "withhold our assent," but emphatically protest against a doctrine which, by destroying the efficacy of the sacrifice of the cross, destroys man's hope of mercy, and still further jeopardises his salvation, by demanding supreme worship for one of the Almighty's perishable creatures.

I have thus at some length examined the circumstances under which the Fathers call the sacrament of the Lord's Supper a sacrifice, and the various senses in which they apply the word to it. There are, doubtless, other points of view in which it is made to bear the same name; but there is not one passage in which the sense of the Church of Rome is borne out by the context. The patient and sensible Waterland waded leisurely through almost all the texts of the Fathers of the first three centuries, which bore in any degree upon the subject, and has given the result of his investigation in his work, entitled "A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, as laid down in Scripture and Antiquity." To his work, then, I beg to refer any one wishing more thoroughly to investigate this matter, and shall conclude this branch of my subject by giving his summary of the various senses in which the words sacrifice, offering, and oblation, are applied by the Fathers of the anti-Nicene period to the Eucharist :

"The service, therefore, of the Eucharist, on the foot of ancient Church language, is both a true and a proper sacrifice (as I shall shew presently), and the noblest that we are capable of offering, when considered as comprehending under it many true and evan

* Can. 14.

gelical sacrifices: 1. The sacrifice of alms to the poor, and obla tions to the Church; which, when religiously intended, and offered through Christ, is a Gospel sacrifice. Not that the material offering is a sacrifice to God, for it goes entirely to the use of man; but the service is what God accepts. 2. The sacrifice of prayer, from a pure heart, is evangelical incense.† 3. The sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God the Father, through Christ Jesus our Lord, is another Gospel sacrifice. 4. The sacrifice of a penitent and contrite heart, even under the Law, (and now much more under the Gospel, when explicitly offered through Christ,) was a sacrifice of the new covenant:§ for the new covenant commenced from the time of the fall, and obtained under the law, but couched under shadows and figures. 5. The sacrifice of ourselves, our souls and bodies, is another Gospel sacrifice.|| 6. The offering up the mystical body of Christ-that is, His Church-is another Gospel sacrifice; or rather, it is coincident with the former; excepting that there persons are considered in their single capacity, and here collectively in a body. I take the thought from St. Austin,** who grounds it chiefly on 1 Cor. x. 17, and the texts belonging to the former article. 7. The offering up of true converts, or sincere penitents, to God, by their pastors, who have laboured successfully in the blessed work, is another very acceptable Gospel sacrifice. 8. The sacrifice of faith and hope, and self-humiliation, in commemorating the grand sacrifice, and resting finally upon it, is another Gospel sacrifice, and eminently proper to the Eucharist.

Ecclus. xxxv. 2.

Malachi i. 11. iii. 4, 5. Hos.

Compare Psalm 1. 14, 15. cxvi, 17. lxix. 31. lvii. 15.

Rom. xii. 1. vi. 13. Phil. ii. 17. 2 Tim. iv. 6.

1 Cor. x. 17.

Augustin. de Civit. Dei, lib. x. cap. 6. p. 243. Cap. xx. p 256. Epist. lix. alias cxlix. p. 509. edit. Bened.

++ Rom. xv. 16. Phil. ii. 17. Compare Isa. lvi. 20. cum notis Vitring. p. 950. ‡‡ This is not said in any single text, but may be clearly collected from many compared.

"These, I think, are all so many true sacrifices, and may all meet together in the one great complicated sacrifice of the Eucharist. Into some one or more of these may be resolved (as I conceive) all that the ancients have ever taught of Christian sacrifices, or of the Eucharist under the name or notion of a true or proper sacrifice.

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Supposing this account to be just, from hence may easily be understood how far the Eucharist is a commemorative sacrifice, or otherwise. If that phrase means a spiritual service of ours, commemorating the sacrifice of the cross, then it is justly styled a sacrifice commemorative of a sacrifice, and in that sense a commemorative sacrifice: but if that phrase points only to the outward elements representing the sacrifice made by Christ, then it means a sacrifice commemorated, or a representation and commemoration of a sacrifice.*

"From hence, likewise, may we understand in what sense the officiating authorised ministers perform the office of proper, evangelical priests in this service. They do it three ways: 1. As commemorating in solemn form the same sacrifice here below, which Christ, our High Priest, commemorates above. 2. As handing up (if I may so speak) those prayers and those services of Christians to Christ our Lord, who, as High Priest, recommends the same in heaven to God the Father. 3. As offering up to God all the faithful who are under their care and ministry, and who are sanctified by the Spirit. In these three ways the Christian officers are priests, or liturgs, to very excellent purposes, far above the legal ones, in a sense worth the contending for, and worth the pursuing with the utmost zeal and assiduity."

Et tamen in sacramento non populis immolatur; nec utique Si enim sacramenta quandam

* Nonne semel immolatus est Christus in seipso? solem per omnes paschæ solennitates, sed omni die mentitur qui interrogatus, eum responderit immolari. similitudinem earum rerum, quarum sacramenta sunt, non haberent, omnino sacramenta non essent: ex hac autem similitudine plerumque etiam ipsarum rerum nomina accipiunt. Sicut ergo, secundum quandam modum, sacramentum corporis Christi corpus Christi est, sacramentum sanguinis Christi sanguis Christi est; ita sacramentum fidei fides est.-Augustin. Epist. ad Bonifacium xcviii. alias xxiii. p. 267. ed Bened, Rom. xv. 16.

+ Revel. viii., 5. Vid. Vitring, in loc.

I HAVE purposely avoided saying much hitherto on the subject of the ancient Liturgies, intending to devote a separate chapter to their consideration. There can be no doubt but that these documents are most important, and their contents must materially influence the controversy in which we are engaged. Extending, as they do, over nearly the whole area of ancient Christendom, and exhibiting a faithful picture of the Church engaged in its solemn Eucharistic service, it is impossible but that they must be felt to be exceedingly interesting in themselves, and most weighty as far as they afford any testimony upon the questions which are now agitated amongst us.

The earliest writer, who goes at any length into the rites and ceremonies observed in administering the Lord's Supper, is Justin Martyr. Justin was a Greek, and a native of Sichem, the ancient capital of Samaria. Having, at Ephesus, tried the round of the Stoic, Peripatetic, Pythagorean, and Platonic philosophy, he became fully convinced of the insufficiency of them all for happiness, and tried Christianity as a last resource. Still, bearing the philosophic cloak of the heathen schools, he undertook to teach and to defend the truths of his new creed, and it is in the first of two apologies for his religion, addressed to the Roman emperor, Antoninus Pius, that we find a circumstantial account of the mode in which the Eucharist was administered. Being the most ancient, it is in all probability the most pure, and is, therefore, of great importance in our controversy. The following summary of this