XIV. Of the Sacrifice of the Mass

These things being granted, the sacrifice we acknowledge in the Eucharist presents no particular difficulty. We have said there are two actions in this Mystery, which though they are distinct in themselves, bear a kind of relation to one another. The first is the Consecration by which the Bread and Wine are changed into the Body and Blood ; the second is the manducation, by which it is partaken. In the Consecration, the Body and Blood are mystically separated, because Jesus Christ said separately, " This is My Body,"—" This is My Blood ; " and this seems to convey a more lively and effective representation of the violence of the death He underwent. Thus the Son of God descends upon the Holy Table in virtue of these words, clothed in the signs which represent His death ; and this is the operation of Consecration. This act is a confession of the sovereign power of God inasmuch as Jesus Christ being present therein renews and perpetuates in some degree the memorial of His obedience even unto the death upon the Cross, so truly that nothing is wanting to make it a real Sacrifice. This act independently of the manducation, cannot but be of itself highly agreeable to God, and doubtless, inclines Him favourably towards us, because it brings before His sight the voluntary Death His dearly Beloved Son suffered for sinners, or rather it recalls to His view His very Son under the symbols of that Death, by which He was pacified.

All Christians will allow that the Presence alone of Jesus Christ is a most powerful means of intercession for the whole human race with ai

God, according to the Apostle, " Christ is entered into Heaven, now to appear in the presence of God for us." Thus we believe that Jesus Christ being present upon the Holy Table in this figure of His Death, intercedes for us, and represents continually before His Father the Death He suffered for His Church. It is in this sense we say that Jesus Christ offers Himself for us to God in the Eucharist : it is in this way we believe this Sacrifice renders God more propitious, and therefore we called it a propitiatory Sacrifice.

When we take into consideration what it is that Jesus Christ effects in this Mystery, and that we actually behold Him by faith, verily present upon the Holy Table with these signs of His Death, we unite ourselves to Him in this condition ; we present Him to God as our sole Victim, and our only Propitiation through His own Blood, at the same time protesting that we have nothing to offer to God but Jesus and the merits of His Death. We consecrate all our prayers to Him in this Divine oblation, and in presenting Jesus Christ to God we are enabled to offer ourselves as living victims to God in Him and through Him.

Such is the "Sacrifice" of Christians; for many reasons totallydifferent from that which was offered under the Law — a Divine Sacrifice and fitted for the New Covenant, where the Victim, though present, is only perceived through Faith, where the knife is the Word which severs mystically the Body from the Blood ; where that Blood consequently is only shed in Mystery, and where Death is represented in figure. Yet a real Sacrifice in that Jesus is therein verily contained, and presented to God under this representation of Death. Still, a Commemorative Sacrifice, which far from weaning us, as is objected to it, from the Sacrifice of the Cross, unites us to It by all these circumstances, since not only it attributes everything entirely to It, but really it is, and it subsists only by its relation to It, and from It alone it derives all its efficacy. This is the teaching of the Catholic Church, set forth in the Council of Trent, which declares that this sacrifice was only instituted, that " by representing that sacrifice which was once consummated on the Cross, it might serve to keep it alive in our memories to the end of ages; and in virtue of it we might apply its healing properties for the remission of those sins which are of daily incursion." And the Church, far from believing there to be anything lacking to the Sacrifice of the Cross, esteems it so fully sufficient and so perfect, that all she does concerning it, is to celebrate the memorial, and apply the efficacy.

Moreover, the Church fully recognises that all the merit of the Redemption of the human race is to be attributed to the Death of the Son of God ; and after all we have said it must be understood, that, when we say to God, at the time of the Celebration of the Divine Mysteries, " We present Thee this Holy Victim," we do not intend by this oblation, to offer or to make any fresh addition to the price of our Ransom, but to plead the merits of Jesus Christ really present with us, and the Infinite price He paid once for us upon the Cross. The Reformers do not imagine that they offend our Lord Jesus Christ in offering Him to Almighty God as present by faith, and if they knew Him to be present in very Substance, what difficulty could they feel in offering Him, as being really present ? Thus, in common candour, the whole dispute should be confined to the Real Presence. After this, all the false notions the Reformers have thought fit to form respecting the sacrifices we offer up, ought to be expunged. They should frankly acknowledge that the Catholics do not pyetend to make a further propitiation to appease the Justice of God, as though the Sacrifice of the Son of God upon the Cross was not alone sufficient for us, or by way of adding some supplementary price to our redemption, as though it was not perfected for us. All these things are quite foreign to our doctrine ; and all we do here is simply by means of intercession and application of the one great atoning Sacrifice, as we have just now fully explained.