XV. The Epistle to the Hebrews

After this explanation, the weighty objections drawn from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and made to turn against us, will appear very unreasonable ; it is useless for our opponents to try to prove that we destroy the Sacrifice of the Cross, by quotations from this Epistle. But as the best proof that two doctrines are not at variance with each other, is to discover in exposing them, if any propositions of the one are contrary to those of the other, I think I am bound here to explain summarily the doctrine of Ihe Epistle to the Hebrews. The Apostle's intention, in this Epistle, is to teach us that the sinner could only escape death by substituting some one to die for him ; that as long as man could only appoint in his stead the slaughtered animal, their sacrifices were nothing more than public acknowledgments that they deserved to die; and divine justice not being satisfied by such an unequal exchange, they were obliged to sacrifice these victims daily, which was

S3 a sure evidence of the insufficiency of the substitute ; but since Jesus Christ had died for sinners, God being satisfied by the substitution of so worthy a Ransom, had nothing further to exact as the price of our redemption. Whence the Apostle concludes, that not only it was no longer necessary to offer any other victim since Jesus Christ became our Sacrifice, but that Jesus Christ Himself should only be offered Once in Death. Now, I beg the reader, who values his salvation, and is a friend to truth, to pass over in his mind what we have said of the manner in which Jesus Christ offers Himself to God for us in the Eucharist. I flatter myself he will find no propositions contained in it which are contrary to those I have quoted from the Apostle, or weaken his cause. So that in fact all that can be brought against us here is his silence. But those who would look well into the wise distribution which God has made of His secret counsels in the various books of His Scripture, would not wish to confine us to receive all our instruction from the single Epistle to the Hebrews, especially on a matter which was not necessarily connected with the subject of that Epistle ; for the Apostle proposes only to explain the perfection of the Sacrifice of the Cross, and does not enter upon the different means God has provided for our applying it to ourselves. And to take away all ambiguity, if we use the word " offer," as it is used in this Epistle, to signify the actual death of the victim, we agree that Jesus Christ is no more offered, neither in the Eucharist nor elsewhere. But as this word has a wider, signification in other passages of Holy Writ, where, for instance, it is said that we offer to God what we merely present to Him, the Church, who frames her language and her doctrine, not only on the Epistle to the Hebrews, but on the whole Code of Scripture, fears not to say that Jesus Christ offers Himself to God wherever He appears before God for us ; consequently He offers Himself in the Eucharist, as the Holy Fathers themselves express it. To think, therefore, that this mode of Jesus Christ's offering Himself to God does injury to the Sacrifice of the Cross, we answer that it cannot by any means, unless we overthrow the whole Scripture, and more particularly this Epistle ; for by the same reasoning we must conclude that, when Jesus Christ offered Himself to God, " on coming into the World"* in lieu of the victims, "in which He had no pleasure,"f He derogates from His Sacrifice on the Cross: and that "now appearing before God for us"J He thereby weakens that "oblation of Himself by which He puts away * Heb. x. '). f Ibid. + Ibid, ix. 24, sin ; "* and because " He ever maketh intercession for us,"f He must derogate from the superabundant intercession He once made by His Death "with strong crying and tears,"J which is evidently ridiculous as well as false. Therefore we must remember that Jesus Christ, who once offered Himself the humble Victim of Divine justice, does not cease to offer Himself for us; that the Infinite perfection of the Sacrifice of the Cross consists both in what went before and in what followed after it ; as the former was the preparation, so the latter is the consummation and application of it. And in truth, the real price of our Ransom is not reiterated, since it is fully paid once for all; still, the application of this Redemption to ourselves cannot cease. And lastly, we must learn to distinguish things which are repeated as imperfect, from those which are continuous as they are perfect and complete.