But adoration is not all, for there is yet a further result of the doctrine of the real objective presence, if possible, more dangerous even than adoration; I mean the assertion of a continued sacrifice. It is extremely difficult to ascertain exactly what is held by the Ritualistic party, for there is no document to which they all subscribe or for which they can be held responsible; but there is quite enough to show that a great number amongst them are teaching without reserve that there is in the Lord’s Supper a continuation, or repetition, of the propitiatory sacrifice of our blessed Lord. The extent to which this is carried may be gathered from a book called the Eucharist Manual, to which Archbishop Longley drew the attention of the Church in the year 1867, in which it is said that ‘a real, true, and substantial sacrifice is offered to God the Father, and not merely a spiritual or metaphorical sacrifice;’ that the Holy Eucharist is ‘a true, real, and substantial sacrifice offered to God the Father, offered for the quick and the dead;’ the meaning of which statement is proved beyond the possibility of a doubt by the following prayers: ‘Eternal Father, I offer thee the precious blood of Jesus Christ, in expiation of my sins, and for the wants of the whole Church;’ and ‘I now join Thy minister in offering Thee this oblation of the body and blood of Thy Son, in propitiation for my numberless sins, and for the salvation of all bound to me by kindred or affection.’ Nothing would be easier than to bring together almost any number of similar passages, and I feel persuaded that I am not misrepresenting the principles of the writers when I say that they teach the continuation or repetition of the sacrifice of our blessed Lord Himself as a propitiation for sin. Now is this the teaching of the Church of England, or is it not? Dr. Pusey’s own language may, I think, decide the question. In his book, on the Real Presence, p. 311, he says of the Church’s documents: ‘Although the great act of Eucharistic Sacrifice remains in the consecration itself, and it has been all along an object of belief in the Church of England, it is mentioned only when we pray to God to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.’ This then is the only passage in all the documents of the Church of England which we may presume can be produced as being in favour of this teaching, and I venture to say that Dr. Pusey is far too good a theologian not to know that the passage is dead against the doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice. Is it possible to suppose that such a learned man as he is does not know the distinction between a sacrifice of expiation and a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, between an atonement for sin and the free-will offering of a thankful and loving heart? And is it possible that there should be one moment’s doubt as to the teaching of the Church of England, when the words, which he himself acknowledges, are the only words which he can discover in support of the one are words which beyond all controversy refer exclusively to the other?

But is the Church of England as silent as he appears to consider it on this important subject? Are we left to gather its great principles from that one passage in the Communion Service? Does it teach nothing on the subject of propitiatory sacrifice but in that one short sentence which has in fact no connexion with it? The whole of the Church of God depends on a completed propitiation, and we might well tremble for the Church of England if that one great central fact were altogether out of sight in its teaching. But, thanks be to God! it is not thus ignored, for this is just one of those points for which our Reformers were called to suffer, and respecting which they were most explicit.

To begin with the Articles. The thirty-first consists of three parts. (1.) The perfect sufficiency of the great propitiation for sin. ‘The offering of Christ once made’ (observe the once) ‘is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual.’ (2.) The declaration that in consequence of that sufficiency there can be no further propitiation. ‘There is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone.’ (3.) The condemnation of the pretended sacrifice of the mass. ‘Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and dead, to have remission of past guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.’ I am not ignorant that an attempt has been made to represent this Article as referring to the abuses which had gathered around the sacrifice of the mass, and not against the principle of sacrifice itself. As I should be extremely sorry to misrepresent the opinions of those who differ from me, I quote Dr. Pusey’s words as I find them in his Eirenicon, p. 25: ‘The very strength of the expressions used, of “the sacrifices of masses,” that they were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits, the use of the plural, and the clause “in which it was commonly said,” show that what the Article speaks of is not the sacrifice of the mass, but the habit (which, as one hears from time to time, still remains) of trusting to the purchase of masses when dying, to the neglect of a holy life, or repentance, and the grace of God and His mercy in Christ Jesus while in health.’ To what desperate shifts are persons driven who would endeavour to represent the Church of England as teaching the sacrifice of the mass! The Article declares the sufficiency and finality of the one sacrifice of our blessed Lord and Saviour, and because that one sacrifice is sufficient and final, it condemns in the strongest possible language the opinion current at the time, that in some form or other there was a repetition of sacrifice in the mass. But because the language is strong, because there is an allusion to the current opinion, and because the plural number is employed so as to comprehend the numberless sacrifices supposed to be offered on the numberless altars of the Church of Rome, therefore it is argued that the Article does not refer to the doctrine of sacrifice at all, but simply to the purchase of the mass in the dying hour, instead of repentance and faith during the life. If the Article were meant to condemn the purchase of masses, it is very strange that it makes no allusion to the subject; and if it aimed at the neglect of repentance and faith, it is most extraordinary that neither repentance nor faith is once mentioned in its words. Our Reformers were very plain-spoken men, and it appears from the strength of their language that they meant to be plain-spoken in the Article. It is very strange if, after all, while they appeared to condemn one thing, they were really condemning another, and did it in such unintelligible language that their meaning was not discovered till three hundred years after the Article was written.In the Catechism there is not much said on the subject, but that little is decisive. There is only one allusion to sacrifice, and that is, to the one sacrifice of our blessed Saviour, while the Lord’s Supper is distinctly declared to be an act of remembrance of that great event. ‘Q. Why was the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper ordained?’ ‘A. For the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby.’ It is needless to stop to point out that remembrance cannot mean either continuation, repetition, or application; and with such a distinct passage before us, it is manifest that no one can claim the Catechism as teaching the doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice in the Lord’s Supper. There is an opinion in some minds that the language of the Catechism is less distinctly Protestant than that of the other documents. That opinion I believe to be thoroughly mistaken, and it certainly is very difficult to understand by what perversion of language the doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice can be wrung from such language as ‘The continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ,’ and a ‘thankful remembrance of His death,’ as we find in the answer with which the Catechism concludes.

From the Catechism let us turn to the Communion Service. And here we are met at the outset by Dr. Pusey’s remarkable admission, that the only passage teaching the doctrine is the language of thankful dedication in the prayer that follows the reception: ‘We, Thy humble servants, entirely desire Thy Fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.’ No person who understands the difference between propitiation and thanksgiving can fail to see at a glance that there is no reference in this passage to propitiatory sacrifice. The next sentence is: ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ ‘Ourselves, our souls and bodies,’ what are they to make a propitiation for sin? Nothing can be plainer than that the prayer is intended to be the language of the thankful heart surrendering itself as a thank-offering to God. If the language admitted of the smallest doubt, that doubt would be removed by the position assigned to it in the Communion Service of 1552. In that of 1549 it stood with certain additions before the administration of the sacramental elements, but the human mind is so prone to misunderstand the simplest documents, that our Reformers, to avoid all possibility of mistake, first removed from the prayer any expressions which they thought could be misunderstood, and then placed it after, instead of before, the reception of the elements. Thus they secured that there should be no room for doubt that the sacrifice referred to is the surrender of self, and the motive for that surrender, not the desire for forgiveness, but the deep gratitude of a thankful heart, when sin has been blotted out through a finished atonement, and the appropriation of that atonement has been sealed to the soul by the sacred emblems of His body and blood.

But these were not the only changes made in the Communion Service of 1552. There was another of a most important character in connexion with the subject of sacrifice. You never hear of sacrifice without an altar. The altar is, in fact, an essential adjunct of sacrifice, and accordingly in former times there was an altar, generally made of stone, against the eastern wall of the chancel. Accordingly in the Communion Service of 1549, there is frequent mention of the altar; but in 1552 all altars were abolished. There is no allusion to an altar now in any document of the Church of England. When persons speak of leading brides to the altar, they are not using the language of the Church, nor are they presenting the holy rite of marriage in a very happy aspect, for the expression really implies that the poor bride is led to sacrifice. There is now nothing but a table known in the Church of England. The altar has been removed, and the table introduced, in order that all might see even in the Church’s furniture, that the doctrine of sacrifice has been abandoned, and that the doctrine of communion is the true creed of the Church of England. It may be sufficient to refer to the fourth rubric as a specimen of the changes made. In 1549 it was, ‘The priest standing humbly afore the midst of the altar shall say,’ &c. In 1552, ‘The table having at the Communion time a fair white linen cloth upon it, shall stand in the body of the church or in the chancel, where Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer be appointed to be said. And the priest standing at the north side of the table shall say,’ &c.

And now for the Homilies, the last authority to which we have to refer in this inquiry. I am not surprised that those who maintain the doctrine of a continuation of propitiatory sacrifice preserve a prudent silence with reference to the Homilies. I do not know of any one passage ever quoted by them in support of their opinions, while every allusion to the subject in the Homilies is of a distinctly opposite character. Let us turn to one or two passages from the 15th Homily of the Second Book. In the first page of that Homily we have a general description of the Sacred Feast. ‘Amongst the which means is the public celebration of the memory of His precious death at the Lord’s Table: which, although it seems of small virtue to some, yet being rightly done by the faithful, it doth not only keep their weakness, but strengtheneth and comforteth their inward man with peace and gladness, and maketh them thankful to their Redeemer with diligent care and godly conversation.’ Here we have the description of the same two purposes as are mentioned in the Articles and Catechism, but not one syllable respecting sacrifice, for no one who values correctness in language can maintain that memory is continuation, or that the memory of His precious death can be a renewed act of propitiation. But this may be thought to be only an omission. Let us pass on then to the following page, when we read, ‘For as that worthy man, St. Ambrose, saith: “He is unworthy of the Lord that otherwise doth celebrate that mystery than it was delivered by Him. Neither can he be devout that otherwise doth presume that it was otherwise given by the Author.” We must, therefore, take heed lest of the memory it be made a sacrifice; lest of a Communion it may be made a private eating; lest of two parts we have but one; lest in applying it for the dead we lose the fruit that be alive.’ In the Homily for Whit Sunday, the self-same truth is taught, with almost equal clearness. When it is said of the Church of Rome that they ‘have so intermingled their own traditions and inventions, by chopping and changing, by adding and plucking away, that now they (the Sacraments) may seem to be converted into a new guise. Christ commended to His Church a Sacrament of His body and blood; they have changed it into a sacrifice for the quick and the dead.’ And yet notwithstanding all these statements and many others, there are those who hold office as clergymen of the Church of England, who are not ashamed of circulating such a book as the ‘Eucharist Manual,’ in which it is said: ‘The Holy Eucharist is a true and substantial sacrifice offered to God the Father, offered for the quick and dead.’

Here, then, I may conclude. My object, let it be well remembered, has not been to discuss the subject from the Scriptures, but to ascertain the real teaching of the Church of England respecting it. Let it not be supposed for one moment that I have taken this position from any idea that there is any infallible rule of faith but God’s own Word as revealed in Scripture; but I have done so because the Church of England is at this present time sorely tried by internal difficulties, and it seems only due to her to ascertain with the utmost care what is the real character of her teaching. While some are loudly claiming her as teaching those very doctrines in opposition to which our Reformers went to the stake, and while others of a tender conscience are forsaking her because they partially believe those bold statements to be true, it is of the utmost possible importance that those who are faithful to the Church of England should take the trouble to make themselves acquainted with her true principles. If it is a fact that she is identical with Rome, and that the Reformers were martyrs for a merely imaginary metaphysical distinction of no importance whatever; then, indeed, we may stand aghast at the ignorance and folly of all the theologians of all schools and all countries who have been weak enough to suppose that in the Reformation there was a doctrinal separation from the Apostasy of Rome. But if, on the other hand, the Reformers knew what they were doing, and why they did it; if they drew up these documents with the utmost care, and these documents so provoked the doctrinal antipathies of Rome, that while their authors were sacrificed at the stake their principles were branded by the anathemas of the Council of Trent; if none of our most thoughtful students for the last three centuries ever for one moment doubted that there was direct antagonism between the Church of England and that of Rome; then it is too sad to be borne that devout men, dearly beloved in the Lord, staunch to the great principles of the Gospel of the Grace of God, should have their consciences wounded, and their allegiance shaken, by the unproved assertions of men who, without any appeal to the Church’s documents, claim to be the only expositors of its principles. It is moreover most deeply to be deplored that those who have a real, true, and faithful love for the Church of England should be led into error by the unproved assertion that the Church of England teaches that which she most emphatically denies. It is for the sake of both classes that I have been led to this investigation. If any are unsettled in their mind and disposed to distrust the Church of England, I shall rejoice if they are led to see how sound, how clear, and how perfectly Scriptural she is upon the subject. And if any have been led by mistaken ideas of the Church’s teaching to hold opinions at variance with the great principles of the Reformation, I shall thank God more than I can express if they may be led to see what the Church which they love really teaches, that so the love of their Church may confirm them in the love of truth, and help to establish them as steady and consistent Churchmen in the faith once delivered to the saints.

London: Printed by John Strageways, Castle St. Leicester Sq.