"3 mystical and Divine Table, being sacrificed for a memorial of that ever-to-be-remembered and first Table of the mystical Divine Supper." He who says that the Body and Blood of Christ are sacrificed in the Eucharist, must necessarily view it as a sacrifice for that reason. In S. Cyprian we have a reference to both grounds. (1.) Rebuking a wealthy woman who brought no offering to the Celebration, he says, "Thou art wealthy and rich, and dost thou believe that thou art keeping the Lord's ordinance, who hast no regard whatever to the offering, who comest into the Lord's house without a sacrifice, who takest a part of the sacrifice which a poor person has offered?"2 (2.) "In the priest Melchizedech we see prefigured the sacrament of the Lord's Sacrifice. . Who is more a priest of the Most High God than Our Lord Jesus Christ, who offered a sacrifice to God the Father, and offered that same which Melchizedech has offered, that is, Bread and Wine, to wit, His own Body and Blood." "It is clear that the Blood of Christ is not offered if there be no wine in the chalice, and that the Lord's Sacrifice is not celebrated by a lawful consecration unless our Oblation and Sacrifice shall correspond to the Passion." "We make mention of His Passion in all sacrifices; for the Sacrifice which we offer is the Lord's Passion "5 [i.c. the commemoration of it]. With S. Cyril of Jerusalem, the "Sacrifice" is the commemoration:-"After the completion of the spiritual Sacrifice, the bloodless worship, over that Sacrifice of the propitiation, we beseech God for the common peace of the Church," etc. And so with S. Ambrose:-"Though Christ is not now seen to offer, yet He is Himself offered on the earth when the Body of Christ is offered: yea, He Himself is manifestly seen to offer in us, Whose word hallows the Sacrifice that is offered."7 'Would that the angel were present with us also, when we heap the Altars, when we bring the Sacrifice; or rather would allow himself to be seen; for doubt not that the angel is present when Christ is present, when Christ is sacrificed; for Christ our Passover is sacrificed."8 S. Chrysostom," explaining the words, Do this in remembrance of Me:-"We offer, indeed, but making 1 Fragm. in Prov. ix. 1, p. 282. 2 De Op. et Eleem. p. 203. 4 Ep. lxiii. p. 152. Catech. Myst. v. § vi. p. 297. 7 Enarr. in Ps. xxxviii. n. 25, tom. iii. p. 114. 8 In Ev. S. Luc. L. i. n. 28, tom. iv. p. 22. 9 Hom. xvii. in Ep. ad Hebr. (x. 9), tom. xii. p. 241. a remembrance of His death. . . . We offer not another sacrifice, like the High Priest of old, but always the same; -or rather we perform a commemoration of a sacrifice." S. Augustine, while maintaining the Sacrifice, thus illustrates its commemorative character:-"We often speak so as to say, when Passion-tide is drawing near, that to-morrow or next day will be the Lord's Passion; though He suffered so many years ago, and that Passion has only once altogether taken place. Again, on the Lord's day itself we say, To-day the Lord hath risen; though many years have passed away since He rose. Was not Christ once sacrificed in His own Person, and yet in a Sacrament is sacrificed for the people, not only throughout all the Paschal solemnities, but every day, so that he certainly does not speak falsely who, when questioned, shall reply that He is sacrificed? For if sacraments had not some likeness to those things of which they are sacraments, they would not be sacraments at all. But from this likeness they for the most part receive the names of the things themselves." The prospective character of the Legal sacrifices and the retrospective of the Christian are thus distinguished by this Father:-"The Hebrews in victims of their cattle, which they offered to God in many and various ways, as was worthy of so great a thing, celebrated a prophecy of that future Victim which Christ offered, whence Christians now celebrate the memorial of the same Sacrifice accomplished, with most sacred oblation and participation of the Body and Blood of Christ."2 The contrast between the old and the new rite here barely presented to us by S. Augustine is thus more emphatically brought out by the very learned and pious Beveridge, in whose words we may sum up the lesson gathered from the foregoing brief extracts from the Fathers:-"The sacrifice that is most proper and peculiar to the Gospel is the sacrament of our Lord's Supper, instituted by our Lord Himself to succeed all the bloody sacrifices of the law. For though we cannot say, as some absurdly do, that this is such a sacrifice whereby Christ is again offered up to God both for the living and the dead, yet it may as properly be called a sacrifice as any that was ever offered, except that which was offered by Christ Himself; for His, indeed, was the only true expiatory Sacrifice that was ever offered. Those under the law were only types of His, and were called sacrifices only upon that account, because they typified and represented 1 Ep. xcviii. ad Bonif. n. 9, tom. ii. col. 351. that which He was to offer for the sins of the world. And, therefore, the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood may as well be called by that name as they were. They were typical, and this is a commemorative Sacrifice. They foreshowed the death of Christ to come; this shows His death already past. For as often,' saith the Apostle, 'as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come." This is properly our Christian sacrifice, which neither Jew nor Gentile can have any share in, as the Apostle observes, 'We have an Altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.'2 An Altar where we partake of the great Sacrifice, which the eternal Son of God offered up for the sins of the whole world, and ours among the rest."3 7. THE PASSOVER.]-The legal sacrifice to which our Christian Sacrifice of Thanksgiving bears the greatest resemblance, and to which it is most nearly related, is the Passover, and for this reason it was often itself called the Passover in early times. Thus Origen:-"No one who keepeth the Passover as Jesus wills is below the Upper Chamber... But if thou go up with Him to keep the Passover, He both giveth thee the Bread of Blessing, His own Body, and bestoweth His own Blood." S. James of Nisibis:" Our Saviour ate the Passover with His disciples on that fourteenth night on which He was taken, and gave His disciples the Sacrament of the true Passover; for after Judas was gone out from them He took bread," etc. S. Athanasius: "We, my beloved, the shadow having received its fulfilment, and the types being accomplished, should no longer consider the feast a figurative feast, neither should we go up to Jerusalem which is beneath to sacrifice the Passover... . Our Saviour, since He was changing the typical for the spiritual, promised them that they should no longer eat the flesh of a lamb, but His own, saying, ‘Take, 1 1 Cor. xi. 26. 2 Heb. xiii. 10. 3 Serm. viii. Works, vol. i. p. 149; Oxf. 1842. 4 Hom. xviii, in Hierem. § 13, tom. xv. p. 343. Compare S. Jerome :"Let us reject Jewish fables, and go up with the Lord into the large upper room, furnished and cleansed, and let us receive from Him up there the cup of the new testament, and keeping there with Him the Passover, let us be inebriated with the wine of soberness."-Ep. ad Hedib. c. ii. tom. ii. p. i. col. 172. 5 Serm. xiv. de Pasch. § 4, p. 341; Rom. 1756. Compare with S. Jerome also in the text. Festal Epistles, Ep. iv. p. 34, Engl. Tr.; Oxf. 1854. B eat and drink, this is My Body and My Blood.' When we are then nourished by these things, we shall also, my beloved, properly keep the feast of the Passover." S. Hilary,1 A.D. 354, speaking of the Institution:-"The Passover is celebrated by the taking of the Cup, and the breaking of the Bread." S. Gregory Nazianzen :2"We shall now still partake of the Passover typically, though more plainly than [they partook of] the old (for the legal Passover (I venture and say it) was a more obscure type of a type); ere long, however, more perfectly and purely, when the Word shall drink that new [wine] with us in the kingdom of the Father." S. Jerome, of the Institution:-" After the typical Passover had been finished, and He had eaten the flesh of the lamb with the Apostles, He takes Bread, which strengtheneth man's heart, and passes over to the true Sacrament of the Passover." S. Gaudentius:-"This sacrifice of the salutary Passover do ye all receive with us, going forth from the power of Egypt and Pharaoh." S. Chrysostom5 calls it "our" Passover, and says (speaking of the Institution), "At the same table both Passovers are celebrated, both that of the type and that of the reality." S. Augustine :-"One thing is the Jews' circumcision of the flesh, but another that which we celebrate on the eighth day of the baptized; and one thing is the Passover which they still celebrate off a sheep; but another that which we receive in the Body and Blood of the Lord." "The Eucharist now in the Gospel," says Bishop Andrewes,7 "is that the Passover was under the Law, the antitype answering to their type of the Paschal lamb. It is plain by the immediate passage of it from the one to the other, that no sooner done, than this begun. Look, how soon the Paschal lamb eaten, presently the holy Eucharist instituted to succeed in the place of it for ever. . . . It is not mental thinking or verbal speaking, there must be actually somewhat done to celebrate this memory. That done to the holy symbols that was done to Him, to His Body and His Blood in the Passover; break the one, pour out the other, to represent how His sacred Body was broken,' and how His precious Blood was 'shed.' . . . This is it in the Eucharist that answereth to the Sacrifice in the Passover, the memorial to the figure." 1 Comm. in S. Matth. c. xxx. n. 2, col. 740; ed. Ben. 2 Orat. xlv. § xxiii. Opp. tom. i. p. 863 ; ed. Ben. Par. 1842. 3 Comm. in S. Matt. L. iv. (c. xxvi.) tom. iv. p. i. col. 128. 4 Serm. ii. p. 45; Pat. 1720. 5 De Prod. Judæ, Hom. i. tom. ii. pp. 451-2. 6 C. Litt. Petil. L. ii. c. xxxvi. n. 87, tom. xii. col. 316. 7 Serm. vii., Of the Resurr., Works, col. ii. p. 299; Oxf. 1841. 8. THE SACRAMENT OF THE BODY (OR FLESH) AND BLOOD OF CHRIST, THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST, THE SACRAMENT OF THE LORD'S TABLE, THE SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR. (1.) THE SACRAMENT OF THE BODY, etc.-This was very common in the early writers; e.g. S. Hilary, refuting an argument against the doctrine of the Trinity, founded upon the doctrine of our union with God, points out that it proceeds on the assumption that "no natural and proper communion is granted to us through the Sacrament of the Flesh. and Blood." S. Gaudentius:2" When he says that it (the Passover) is to be eaten in haste, he commands that we receive not the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood with sluggish heart and languid mouth, but with all eagerness of mind, as truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness." Very often also the Consecrated Elements are severally called the Sacrament of the Body (or Flesh), and the Sacrament of the Blood or Cup. S. Hilary teaches that Christ, “under the Sacrament of the Flesh to be imparted to us, hath united the nature of His Flesh to the nature of His Eternal Being." S. Augustine :" As therefore in some wise the Sacrament of the Body of Christ is the Body of Christ, the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ is the Blood of Christ, so the Sacrament of faith is faith." S. Cyprian,5 relating what occurred at the Communion of an infant:-"The little one . . . refused the Cup. The Deacon nevertheless persisted and poured into her mouth, though struggling against it, of the Sacrament of the Cup." Hence such expressions as to give and receive, etc., the Sacraments, though the Eucharist only be meant. Thus S. Laurence the Deacon, entreating Xystus, his Bishop, to allow him to share his martyrdom :-" Dost thou deny a fellowship in thy blood to one to whom thou hast committed ... a fellowship in the consummation of the Sacraments?"6 (2.) THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST.-Tertullian :7"The Sacrament of the Eucharist, which was commanded at the time of taking food, and to all, we receive even at our meetings before dawn, and from the hand of none but those who are set over us." 1 De Trin. L. viii. c. 17, col. 957. 2 Serm. ii. p. 46. 3 De Trin. L. viii. c. 13, col. 954. 4 Ep. xcviii. ad Bonif. § 9, tom. ii. col. 351. 5 De Lapsis, p. 132. 6 S. Ambr. De Offic. Min. L. i. c. xli. n. 214, tom. iv. p. 404. 7 De Cor. Mil. c. iii. tom. iv. p. 293. |