X

fying it, reducing it to a legal ceremony, instead of a Gospel service.

The service therefore of the Eucharist, on the foot of ancient Church language, is both a true and a proper sacrifice, (as I shall show presently,) and the noblest that we are capable of offering, when considered as comprehending under it many true and evangelical sacrifices: 1. The sacrifice of alms to the poor, and oblations to the Church; which when religiously intended, and offered through Christ, is a Gospel sacrificea. 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 b. 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 d: 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 sacrificee. 6. The offering up the mystical body of Christ, that is, his Church, is another Gospel sacrifice f: 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

a Phil. iv. 18.

Hebrews xiii. 16. Compare Acts x. 4. Ecclus. xxxv. 2. b Revel. v. 8. viii. 3, 4. Compare Psalm cxli. 2. Malach. i. 11. iii. 4, 5. Hos. xiv. 2. Acts x. 4. Ecclus. xxxv. 2.

c Hebr. xiii. 15. 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9. Compare Ps. 1. 14, 15. cxvi. 17. lxix. 31.

d Psal. li. 17. iv. 5. Isa. i. 16. lvii. 15.

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

f 1 Cor. x. 17.

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

converts, or sincere penitents, to God, by their pastors, who have laboured successfully in the blessed work, is another very acceptable Gospel sacrificeh. 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.

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. Let it be supposed however for the present, in order to give the reader the clearer idea beforehand, of what I intend presently to prove. In the mean while, 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 sacrificek.

From hence likewise may we understand in what sense the officiating authorized ministers perform the office of proper, evangelical priests in this service. They do it three

h Rom. xv. 16. Phil. ii. 17. Compare Isa. Ivi. 20. cum Notis Vitring. p. 950.

This is not said in any single text, but may be clearly collected from many compared.

Nonne semel immolatus est Christus in seipso? Et tamen in sucramento non solum per omnes paschæ solennitates, sed omni die populis immolatur; nec utique mentitur qui interrogatus, eum responderit immolari. Si enim sacramenta quandam 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 quendam 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.

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 Father1. 3. As offering up to God all the faithful who are under their care and ministry, and who are sanctified by the Spirit m. 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.

Having thus far intimated beforehand what I apprehend to be in the main, or in the general, a just account of the eucharistical sacrifice, upon the principles laid down in Scripture, as interpreted by the ancients; I shall next proceed to examine the ancients one by one, in order to see whether this account tallies with what they have said upon this article.

I shall begin with St. Barnabas, supposed, with some probability, to have been the author of the Epistle bearing his name, penned about A. D. 71. This very early writer, taking notice of the difference between the Law and the Gospel, observes that Christ had abolished the legal sacrifices, to make way for an human oblation: which he explains soon after, by an humble and contrite heart, referring to Psalm li. 17. So by human oblation, he means the free-will offering of the heart, as opposed to the yoke of legal observances; the offering up the whole inner man, instead of the outward superficial performances of the Law. Therefore the Christian sacrifice, as here described by our author, resolves into the 5th article of the account which

1 Revel. viii. 5. Vid. Vitring. in loc.

m Rom. xv. 16.

• Hæc ergo [sacrificia] vacua fecit, ut nova lex Domini nostri Jesu Christi, quæ sine jugo necessitatis est, humanam habeat oblationem-nobis enim dicit, Sacrificium Deo, cor tribulatum, et humiliatum Deus non despicit. Psal. li. 17. Barnab. Epist. cap. ii. p. 57.

I have given above. Mr. Dodwell renders the words of Barnabas thus: "These things therefore he has evacuated, "that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is "without any yoke of bondage, might bring in the mys"tical oblation P." He conceived the original Greek words (which are lost) might have been λoyıxǹ λargeía, reasonable service: which however is merely conjecture. But he understood the place, of Christians offering themselves, their souls and bodies, instead of sacrificing beasts. Another learned man, who had an hypothesis to serve, understands by human oblation, an offering made with freedom; and he interprets it of the voluntary oblations made by communicants at the altar, viz. the lay oblations 9. The interpretation appears somewhat forced, and agrees not well with Barnabas's own explication superadded, concerning an humble and contrite heart; unless we take in both: however, even upon that supposition, the Christian sacrifice here pointed to, will be a spiritual sacrifice, or service, the sacrifice of charitable benevolence, and will fall under article the first, above mentioned. There have not been wanting some who would wrest the passage so far, as to make it favour the sacrifice of the mass: but the learned Pfaffius has abundantly confuted every pretence that way, and has also well defended the common construction; which Menardus had before admitted, and which Dodwell also came into, and which I have here recommended. There is nothing more in Barnabas that relates at all to our purpose, and so we may pass on to other Christian writers in order.

Clemens of Rome has been cited in a chapter aboves, as speaking of the lay oblations brought to the altar, and of the sacerdotal oblation afterwards made of the same gifts, previously to the consecration. No doubt but such lay offerings amounted to spiritual sacrifice, being acceptable

P Dodwell of Incensing, p. 33, &c.

4 Johnson's Unbloody Sacrifice, part i. p. 333. alias 338. r Pfaffius de Oblat. vet. Eucharist. sect. xxii. p. 239, &c. See above, chap. i. p. 26.

service under the Gospel; and they fall under article the first, in the enumeration before given. I cannot repeat too often, that in such cases the service, the good work, the duty performed is properly the sacrifice, according to the definition of sacrifice in St. Austint above cited, and according to plain good sense. When Cornelius's prayers and alms ascended up for a memorial, (a name alluding to the legal incense,) it was not his money, nor any material gifts that ascended, or made the memorial; but it was the piety, the mercy, the beneficence, the virtues of the man. Under the Gospel, God receives no material thing at all, to be consumed and spent in his own immediate service, and for his honour only: he receives no blood, no libation, no incense, no burnt offerings, no perfumes, as before. If he receives alms and oblations, (as in the eucharistical service,) he receives them not as gifts to himself, to be consumed in his immediate service, but as gifts to be consecrated for the use of man, to whom they go. All that is material is laid out upon man only; not upon God, as in the Jewish economy. But God receives, now under the Gospel, our religious services, our good works, our virtuous exercises, in the name of Christ, and these are our truly Christian and spiritual sacrifices. In this view, the lay oblations, which Clemens refers to, were Christian sacrifices. So also were the sacerdotal services, referred to by the same Clemens; though in a view somewhat different, and falling under a distinct branch of Gospel sacrifice, reducible to article the seventh in the foregoing recital. Those who endeavour to construe Clemens's προσφοραὶ and λειτουργίας (oblations and sacerdotal ministrations) as favouring the sacrifice of the mass, run altogether wide of the truth; as is plain from one single reason among many ", that all

Omne opus, &c. every good work. And it is observable that, conformably to such definition, that Father makes Baptism a sacrifice: Holocausto Dominicæ passionis, quod eo tempore offert quisque pro peccatis suis, quo ejusdem passionis fide dedicatur, et Christianorum fidelium nomine Baptizatus imbuitur. Augustin. ad Roman. Expos. cap. xix. col. 937. tom. iii. "The reader may see that whole question discussed at large in Buddæus, Miscellan. Sacr. tom, i. p. 45-49. Pfaffius de Oblat. vet. Euch. p. 254-269.