THE ACTUAL RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST TO
CONSTANTINE.
_The One Episcopate Resting upon the One Sacrifice._
One of the points on which Pope St. Clement most strongly dwells is the
care with which our Lord communicated to His Apostles definite and
accurate instructions as to the kingdom which they were to set up. And
from this care he draws the conclusion that, if infringement of the
Mosaic law was punished by death, how much more guilty were they who
showed insubordination to a precept of Christ in the institution of
Christian rule? Thus St. Clement affirms that our Lord, far from leaving
the government of His Church to be evolved out of local circumstances or
individual temperaments or political affinities, determined it from the
beginning. We shall now further show that He enshrined in it the very
life of His people; and so that their worship, their government, their
belief, and their practice were wrapped up together. Their government
contained their doctrine, and set before their eyes in distinct vision
Him in whom they trusted, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It was not a
human device but a divine ordinance, and the preaching of Christ through
it was His action also. His words were deeds as much in the teaching of
His Church as they were in the days of His flesh.
Our Lord created the priesthood of His Church on the eve of His Passion.
It is the basis on which all spiritual power and all doctrinal truth rest
in His kingdom; and He willed that the episcopate should be the
instrument to communicate both power and truth to His people, and that
the priesthood should be stored up in the person of each bishop. This
plant of life, complete in itself, but only as a sucker of the One
Vine,[82] the Apostles deposited in every city and town by the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost; as St. Clement says, they passed on
themselves and left it to grow by virtue of the same Spirit. The result
was that when Constantine gave the acknowledgment of the Civil Power to
the great Spiritual Kingdom, its Episcopate had far outgrown the limits
of his empire.
In what does the High-priesthood of Christ consist? In two acts, which it
is well carefully to distinguish.
The first is that divine act of the Blessed Trinity by which the Second
Person, the Eternal Son of the Father, assumed a created nature into the
unity of His Person, and that the nature of man. The act whereby He
became man is the act constituting His Priesthood.[83] Before His
Incarnation He was not a Priest; in the divine nature in which alone He
is from eternity, He does not offer but receive sacrifice. St. Paul
describes the act, and the instantaneous acceptance by the Divine Son, as
man in His human nature, of the mission to be High Priest for the human
race in these words: "When He cometh into the world He saith: Sacrifice
and oblation Thou wouldest not: but a body Thou hast fitted to me:
Holocausts for sin did not please Thee. Then said I, behold I come: in
the head of the book it is written of Me, that I should do Thy will, O
God." The whole purpose of His Incarnation and the whole course of His
future human life are here summed up, as accepted by Him in the first
moment of His human existence, when He says: "A body Thou hast fitted to
Me--behold I come--that I should do Thy will, O God." The whole Christian
faith rests upon this divine act. It is the simply inconceivable
humiliation of the Divine Majesty, the simply unutterable effect of the
Divine Love. The angels, who have had it before them from their creation
in vision, and for more than eighteen hundred years in effect, have not
yet mastered its depths; nor is the Mother of fair Love herself--the
nearest to it--equal to the task either of expressing it or of
comprehending it. How, then, was it to be impressed on the human race in
a manner which should cause its full force to be received by those who
learnt it for the first time; and when it had been thus learnt what
further provision was to bring about that it should never be forgotten,
nor pass into the crowd of things which have once been and then cease to
be?
We have, first, in these words of St. Paul, the Divine Son accepting His
mission as the first act of His human nature, and, further, expressing
the nature of His mission--to do the will of His Father, that will being
that He should take the body which His Father had prepared for Him. In
that acceptance is comprised all the labours and sufferings of the
thirty-three years foreseen from the beginning, willed by the Father,
freely chosen by the Son in His manhood, as the first act of that
manhood, which yet is prolonged through His whole life.
After this the Apostle goes on to exhibit the second act of His
High-Priesthood, springing out of the first, and its consummation--the
abrogation of the ancient sacrifices, although divinely instituted, and
the substitution for them of that Body which God had fitted to Him. "In
saying before, Sacrifices and oblations and holocausts for sin Thou
wouldst not, neither are they pleasing to Thee, which are offered
according to the law: then said I, Behold I come to do Thy will, O God:
He taketh away the first, that He may establish that which followeth. In
the which will we are sanctified by the oblation of the Body of Jesus
Christ once." As the first act, the Incarnation, runs on into the second,
the Atonement, so the second depends on the first. Without the assumption
by God the Son of a created nature, the nature of man, there would be no
sacrifice for man and no reconciliation. The source of sanctification is
the offering of the Body of the God-man, of no other body; and without
the Godhead of Christ His religion would be the shadow of a dream.
How, again, was this second act of His High-Priesthood, the oblation of
His Body on the cross once for all for the sins of the whole world, to be
impressed upon the world?
Human acts pass away into the abyss of past time, and the ever-flowing
tide of successive existence sweeps them into the background. The
sufferings and teachings of our Lord Himself, even His death upon the
cross, would in themselves as human acts be subject to this lot. How were
they to be made ever-living and ever-present, rescued from oblivion,
carried in the heart and professed by the lips of men in every succeeding
generation until the day of doom?
Truly there was wisdom needed for this effect, and what did our Lord do?
He was at the very point of completing that will of God which He came to
do, and for which a Body was fitted to Him. Having celebrated the Pasch
of the Law, which had been instituted so many ages before, as the
speaking type of what He was to accomplish, He with a word made His
disciples priests to offer that Body which He then first gave to them,
which on the morrow He was to offer on the cross, and in doing this utter
the "Consummatum est." The Priesthood, which was to carry in itself the
whole power and virtue of His Church, He created before the sacrifice of
the cross, but in immediate view of it, as the first act, as it were, of
His Passion.
But the Priesthood which He created, and the offering in which it
consisted, sprung from the union of the two acts which formed His own
High-Priesthood, the assumption of the manhood for the purpose of
redeeming man, and the execution of that purpose by His death on the
cross. The Priesthood contained them both in itself, for the Body given
was the Body broken on the cross, the Blood given was the Blood shed on
the cross; and they were both the Body and Blood of a God-man. "Do this,
He said, in commemoration of Me;" and as long as it was done daily, the
double truth, the double benefit of God to man, the double marvel of
redeeming love, offering itself and offering what is divine for the
erring creature, could not fade from remembrance. It is as present now as
it was at the hour of the crucifixion, and will be equally present to the
end of the world.
But in order better to understand the force and meaning of our Lord's
action, it is necessary to consider the institution which, at the time of
it, was in existence and full operation all over the world, the
institution, that is, of bloody sacrifice.
From the beginning of history, and in all countries, the intercourse
between God and man consisted in two things, prayer and sacrifice, and
they were carried on together. For this much the Greek may fitly
represent all Gentilism. Now Plato represents Euthyphron as saying to
Socrates, "If any one knows how to say and to do things acceptable to the
gods by praying and by sacrificing, that is piety, and such conduct
preserves both private families and the commonwealth; and the contrary to
these acceptable things is impiety, which overthrows and destroys
everything." To which Socrates replies, "You call, then, piety a certain
knowledge of sacrifice and prayer." "I do." "Then sacrifice is giving to
the gods, and prayer asking of them."[84]
A most careful student[85] of the Greek mind tells us: "As the need of
the gods was felt by man in all the events of his life, in every work and
every purpose, sacrificial worship, the burnt-offering, or the briefer
libation-offering, ran through the whole of his being, and seemed to be
prayer clothed in action." And again, "We have shown that man conceived
of the Godhead not only as by its immortality infinitely exalted above
himself, but likewise as the Ruler and Administrator of the whole
universe and the being of man; and moreover, that man, in spite of all
doubt and error as to the nature of his gods, in spite of his allowing
impersonal powers to be at their side who threaten their dignity, yet
never detaches himself from them, because he always feels himself
impelled to seek a living personal Godhead. To this he was riveted by the
insoluble bonds of a spiritual and natural need; and the recognition of
this dependence, the expression of human subjection, the tribute of
homage which man offers in the certainty of needing its grace, that is
piety, as it is shown in action and in word, that is to say, in sacrifice
and in prayer." And "the whole worship, that is, all sacrifices and
divination, are made by Plato to be identical with the communion of gods
and men with each other."[86]
Another writer,[87] most learned in Greek and Roman antiquity, says:
"These two constitute the oldest and most general form of honouring God.
It might perhaps be said that the first word of the original man was a
prayer, and the first act of the fallen man a sacrifice. Moses in
Genesis, at any rate, carries the origin of sacrifice up to the first
history of man, to Cain and Abel; the Greek legends, to Prometheus and
the centaur Chiron, or to the eldest kings, Melisseus, Phoronæus, and
Cecrops.
"In Gentilism as in Judaism, actual sacrifices of animals are everywhere
the rule; beside them, in particular cases, offerings also of vegetable
substances. Indeed, sacrifices were offered not merely for expiation, but
wherever man had need of the gods, or reason to thank them, on all
important moments of life, at the beginning and end of every weighty
action, in order to maintain and make manifest the unbroken connection of
man with God.
"Those most ancient domestic precepts recorded by Hesiod enjoin on every
one, at declining and at dawning day, to conciliate the gods, with pure
and chaste heart, by holy sprinklings and fragrant perfume, that their
heart may incline to us with good-will and peace, and as often as thou
returnest from a journey, offer fair sacrifices to the immortal gods. In
family life sacrifices were made specially at birth, marriage, and death.
The Cretans, who considered human marriage as a transcript of the
heavenly marriage between Zeus and Hera, made offerings on occasion of it
specially to these gods. If a man wished to marry at Athens, he first
made his prayers and sacrifices to the so-called Tritapatores, the first
father's of life, for the happy generation of children, since no birth
takes place without God. At the marriage itself, again, there were
sacrifices, when the gall of the victim was thrown behind the altar to
signify that no bitterness should infect their union. Moreover, the bride
at Athens was introduced by a sacrifice into her husband's race; and
again, a victim was offered upon the inscription of children on the tribe
list. At Sparta mothers were wont, on the espousal of their daughters, to
make offerings to Aphrodité Hera, the goddess of married love; the
Boeotians and Locrians to Artemis Euklea; the maidens of Haliartus made a
preparatory gift to the fountain Kissoessa, according to ancestral
custom. If the marriage was blest by a child, a sacrifice was offered for
this on the seventh or tenth day after the birth, and thereupon the child
was named. At death, again, sacrifices were offered for the peace of
departed souls, as well by individuals as by the commonwealth. According
to Plato, it was an orphic doctrine that there were certain deliverances
and purifications which availed also for the dead. The gravestones were
anointed and crowned with flowers, pyres were erected, and victims
slaughtered on them, or cakes were thrown into the fire, holes made in
the earth, and libations of wine, milk, and honey poured into them. Only
no sacrifices were offered for children, because, as they had departed
unstained by intercourse with earthly things, they needed no further
reconcilement. Plutarch describes the great public sacrifice for the
dead which the Platæans, in late times, continued to offer yearly for
those who had fallen in battle against the Persians.
"In agricultural life, also, which is the beginning and foundation of all
religious habit, every important moment was sanctified by sacrifice. The
Athenians, at the beginning of tillage, before they turned up the land,
offered the preparatory sacrifice to Demeter[88] for the prosperity of
the future fruits, and are said on one occasion, in the fifth Olympiad,
at a time of general dearth, to have made such an offering for all Hellas
at the command of the Delphic god. So at the end of the winter, when the
fruits of the field began to grow, all the magistrates, from eldest time,
offered the previous thanksgiving[89] to Athené, the protectress of the
city. So they offered at Rome, at the time of the pear-tree blossom,
before ploughing, vows and grain cakes, for the health of the labouring
oxen; then before harvest offerings to Ceres of bread and wine, and so
again when a wood was cleared, at the digging and blessing of the fields.
So both peoples were wont in general to give the first-fruits of
everything which the favour of the gods gave to them; fruits of the field
as of the herd, of the vintage, and of the trees; the former liquid, and
the latter solid. These first-fruits represented the whole mass, for all
the productions of nature belong to the Giver thereof. Aristotle holds
the offering of such first-fruits of the field to be the oldest kind of
offerings in general, and a Roman writer finely says, since the ancients
lived in the belief that all nourishment, the fatherland, nay, life
itself, is a gift of the gods, they were wont to offer something to these
of everything, more to show their gratitude than because they believed
that the gods needed it. Hence, before they ate anything of the new
fruits, they consecrated a portion to the gods; and since they possessed
both fields and cities in fee from the gods, they dedicated to them a
portion for temples and chapels, and some were wont to offer to them the
hair, as the topmost portion of the body, for the sound state of the
rest. Thus the Bhagavadgita[90] says: 'Sacrifice to the gods; they will
give you the wished-for food. He who eats what they have given without
first offering therefrom is a thief; they who ate what remained of the
sacrifice are free from all sins.' The fathers of families made an
offering every month to Hecaté for reparation of sins committed in the
house. Certain dishes were prepared and carried through the whole house,
while the curse which rested on evil deeds committed was put therein, and
then they were placed at midnight upon a cross-road. Whoever ate of this,
it was believed he took the curse into him with the food. Only curs and
currish men did it.
"Sacrifices were connected not less with all important acts of political
life. 'Those before us,' says Philo, 'began every good action with
perfect victims, deeming this the best means to bring about a good end to
them,' In the consciousness that all were stained with sin, but that
sinful men could discover no good counsel, swine were sacrificed before
every assembly of the people at Athens, and their blood sprinkled as a
purification over the seats of the meeting. A priest then carried certain
parts of the victim round the assembly, and cast their sins into these
parts. When this was done, incense was offered, and the same priest went
with a vessel of holy water round, blessing the assembled people
therewith for the matter which it was to undertake. Then the herald
recited the customary prayers, and the consultation at last began. The
sacrifices by which the council, the generals, the Prytanes, and all
public magistrates entered on office were similar. In like manner
sacrifices preceded the sittings of justice and the taking of oaths. In
war no important step was taken before the sacrifices were prosperous and
announced a good result. Sacrifice was offered at the first start, at the
passage of boundaries and rivers, at making an advance, at taking ship,
at landing, before assault of besieged cities, before battle, and after
victory. The Athenian generals were wont specially to sacrifice to
Hermes, the leader. All truces, peace-makings, leagues, and treaties were
accompanied with sacrifice. A direction was attached to all sacrifices
ordered by law or oracular decrees, that they should be according to the
hereditary three customs, that is, take place on months, days, and years,
_i.e._, solar years, lunar months, and days of the month. Plato enjoins,
as in Athens was really the fact, that on every day of the year the
magistrate should offer sacrifice to a god or genius for the city and its
inhabitants, their goods and chattels. Of Julian, the last emperor
attached to the Hellenic worship, it is expressly said that he, not only
on new moons, but every day, welcomed the rising sun-god with a bloody
victim, and accompanied his setting with another, and served the gods not
by other hands, but himself took part in the sacrifice, ran about the
altar, took up the mallet and held the knife, and that, in order the
better to discharge these duties, he had built a temple to the sun-god in
the midst of his palace. The shedding of blood was everywhere the bond of
union between man and man, and between man and God; to the commonwealth
the guarantee of its security, the firmest pillar of its government."
If we extend this description of the prevalence of sacrifices among the
Greeks and Romans to all the nations of antiquity, we shall be able to
form a conception which, after all, will be very feeble when compared
with the reality, of the degree in which the whole religious life between
man and God, the national life in the various nations, the social life in
each nation, the domestic life in each family, was alike dominated by the
idea and practice of bloody sacrifice.
The ceremonial of sacrifice was as follows: "The sacrificial usages
themselves were very solemn. Everything expressed that the sacrifice was
made freely and joyously. Those who offered to the heavenly gods wore
white robes, and crowns on the head and in the hands. Those who offered
to the gods beneath the earth were robed in black. The victim was also
crowned and adorned with ribbons, and on solemn occasions its horns were
gilt. It was led by a loose cord, to indicate that it followed willingly
and of its own accord. If the animal took to flight, that was a bad
prognostic. It had to be put to death, but might not be led up again to
the altar. Before touching the sacrificial utensils, the hands were
washed in order to approach the holy with purity. As with us, a boy
poured water over the hands of the sacrificant. Then the sacrificial cake
or sacred salt-meal and the knife of sacrifice were brought in a basket
and carried round the altar. A branch of laurel or olive, symbol of
purification and peace, was dipped in the water-stoup and the bystanders
sprinkled therewith. The holy water itself was consecrated with prayers
and the dipping into it of a firebrand from the altar. Silence was then
enjoined, and when the profane had been dismissed with such words as
'Depart, depart, whoever is a sinner,' the herald cried with a loud
voice, 'Who is here?' those present answered, 'Many, and they pious.'
Then the proper prayer of sacrifice began for the gracious acceptance of
what was offered; and after the victim had been proved sound and
faultless, a line was drawn to mark its willingness with the back of the
sacrificial knife from the forehead to the tail, and grain was poured
over its neck until by nodding it seemed to give its consent to be
sacrificed. Then there were fresh prayers; the priest took a cup of red
wine, tasted the blood of the vine, allowed also those present to drink
of it, and poured the remainder between the animal's horns. Then the hair
of its forehead was cut off and cast into the fire as a firstling;
incense was kindled, and the remaining grain finally poured upon the
altar with music of pipe and flute, that no ill-omened word might be
heard during the sacred action. In specially solemn sacrifices there were
also choral hymns and dances. The animal was struck with the axe and its
throat cut; when the sacrifice was to the gods above, with hands raised
towards heaven; when to the gods below, with head bowed to the earth. The
blood was then received in a vessel and partly poured out upon the altar,
partly sprinkled on those around, that they might be delivered from sin.
Especially all who wished to have a portion in the sacrifice had to touch
the victim and the sacrificial ashes. According to the oldest usage the
whole victim was burnt; later only certain portions--the head and feet
(the extremities for the whole), the entrails, especially the heart as
the seat of life, the shanks as the place of strength, and the fat as the
best portion. Then red wine, unmixed, was poured upon the flames. The
sacrificers consumed the rest, as in the Hebrew thank-offerings and among
the Egyptians and Indians, in a sacred festive meal; among the Arcadians,
masters and slaves altogether. Such meals were usual from the most
ancient time after the completion of the sacrifice, and in them
originally the gods were considered to sit as guests with men. All sang
thereby, as law and custom determined, sacred hymns, that during the meal
moral comeliness and respect might not be transgressed, and the harmony
of song might consecrate the words and the conduct of the speakers. By
this common partaking of the pure sacrificial flesh, the communion of the
offered meats, a substantially new life was to be implanted in the
partakers; for all who eat of one sacrifice are one body.
"Hence the first Christians obstinately refused to eat of the flesh of
heathen victims. 'I had rather die than feed on your sacrifices.' 'If any
one eat of that flesh he cannot be a Christian.'[91] At the end of the
feast, as it seems, the herald dismissed the people with the words laois
aphesis--Ite, missa est."
Thus we find that sacrifice existed from the beginning of history in all
nations, and was associated with prayer; the two together made up
worship, and the spiritual acts of the mind, expressed in prayer, were
not considered complete without sacrifice, a corporeal act as it were, so
that the homage of soul and body together constituted the complete act of
fealty on the part of man to his Maker. But we find also more than this.
The spiritual acts which are contained in prayer, as the expression of an
innocent creature to his Creator, are three: adoration, which recognises
the supreme majesty of God; thanksgiving, which specially dwells on the
benefits received from Him; and petition, which speaks the perpetual need
of Him felt by the creature. And with these in a state of innocence
prayer would stop. But if the harmony between the Creator and the
creature has been broken, if sin has been committed, and a sense of guilt
arising from that sin exists, then prayer expresses a fourth need of the
creature, which does not exist in the state of innocence--the need of
expiation. Now offerings of the natural fruits of the earth, of whatever
kind, correspond, it is plain, to the three former parts of prayer--to
adoration, thanksgiving, and petition for support; but the bloody
sacrifice of living creatures, in which occurs the pouring out of their
blood in a solemn rite, the presentation of it to God, and the sprinkling
of the people with it, can only be accounted for by a consciousness in
man of guilt before God. The existence of a rite so peculiar in so many
nations, and its association everywhere with the most solemn act of
prayer, is not accounted for even by such a consciousness alone; for what
power had the shedding of an animal's blood to remove the sense of guilt
in man or to propitiate God? There was no doubt the consciousness of
guilt on man's part, but what should ever lead him, of himself, to
conceive such a mode of expiating his guilt, such a mode of propitiating
God? It was much more natural for him to conceive that the act of pouring
out the blood of a creature, in which was its life, the most precious
gift of the Creator, would be an offence to that Creator, the Lord of
life, its Giver and Maintainer. Thus the act of bloody sacrifice can only
be accounted for as in its origin a directly divine institution, a
positive law of God. As such it is plainly recognised by Moses when he
introduces it in the history of Cain and Abel, where, in the first man's
children, it appears as already existing. God alone, the absolute Lord of
life, could attach together prayer and bloody sacrifice, and enact that
the worship which He would receive from His creature, the worship which
not only adored Him as Creator, thanked Him as Benefactor, asked His
help as Preserver, but likewise acknowledged guilt before Him for sin
committed, should be made up of a compound act, that of solemn prayer,
and that of shedding and offering blood, and partaking of a victim so
offered. The rite of bloody sacrifice is, therefore, the record of the
Fall stamped by the hand of God on the forehead of the human race at its
first starting in the state of guilt. The death of a vicarious victim was
the embodiment of the doctrine that man had forfeited his life by
disobedience to God his Creator, and that he should be restored by the
effusion of the blood of an innocent victim. The fact of the
concentration of these four acts of prayer about the rite of bloody
sacrifice, through all Gentilism, as well as in Judaism, has no end of
significance.
This conclusion was drawn by St. Augustine,[92] who says: "Were I to
speak at length of the true sacrifice, I should prove that it was due to
no one but the one true God; and this the one true Priest, the Mediator
of God and men, offered to Him. It was requisite that the figures
promissive of this sacrifice should be celebrated in animal victims, as a
commendation of that flesh and blood which were to be, through which
single victim might take place the remission of sins contracted of flesh
and blood, which shall not possess the kingdom of God, because that
self-same substance of the body shall be changed into a heavenly quality.
This was signified by the fire in the sacrifice, which seemed to absorb
death into victory. Now such sacrifices were duly celebrated in that
people whose kingdom and whose priesthood were both a prophecy of the
King and Priest who was to come, that He might rule, and that He might
consecrate the faithful in all nations, and introduce them to the kingdom
of heaven, the sanctuary of the angels, and eternal life. Now this being
the true sacrifice, as the Hebrews celebrated religious predictions of
it, so the Pagans celebrated sacrilegious imitations; for in the
Apostle's words, what the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils and
not to God. For an ancient thing is that immolation of blood, carrying an
announcement of the future, testifying from the beginning of the human
race the Passion of the Mediator that was to be, for Abel is the first in
sacred writ recorded to have offered this."
The rite of bloody sacrifice, thus enacted by God, and set by Him upon
flesh and blood as a perpetual prophecy, is one of those acts of supreme
worship which may be offered to God alone. "Genuflexions," says St.
Thomas,[93] "prostrations, and other indications of such-like honour, may
be offered also to men, though with a different intent; but no one has
judged that sacrifice should be offered to any one unless he esteemed him
to be God, or pretended so to esteem him. But the external sacrifice
represents the internal true sacrifice, according to which the human mind
offers itself to God. Now, our mind offers itself to God as being the
Source of its creation, as being the Author of its operation, as being
the End of its beatitude; and these three things belong to the supreme
principle of things alone. Whence man is bound to offer the worship of
sacrifice to the one supreme God alone, but not to any spiritual
substances."
The Gentile world broke this primary law of worship in offering the rite
of bloody sacrifice to numberless false gods. It is, therefore, no wonder
that, falling so low in its conception of the Godhead as to divide God
into numberless parts, it fell likewise into oblivion of the meaning and
prophecy contained in the sacrifice itself; yet though it might forget,
it could not efface the idea enshrined in the act, so long as it
preserved the material parts of the act, which in so striking a manner
exhibited to the very senses of man the great doctrine that without
effusion of blood there is no remission of sins. And this was declared
not merely in the Hebrew ritual, divinely instituted for that very
purpose, and in full operation down to the very time of Christ; but in
all those sacrifices of the dispersed and corrupted nations, which,
debased in the persons to whom they were offered, and performed with a
routine oblivious of their meaning, yet bore witness to the truth which
God had originally impressed on the minds of men, and committed to a
visible and prophetic memorial.
If we survey the whole world at the coming of Christ, we may say that the
institution of bloody sacrifice is the most striking and characteristic
fact to be found in it. This conclusion will result in the mind if four
things be noted which are therein bound up together. The first of these
is its specific character; for surely the ceremonial of sacrifice, as
above described, deserves this title, if anything ever did. It is a very
marked and peculiar institution, conveying an ineffaceable sense of guilt
in those who practise it, and a quite singular manner of detaching from
themselves the effects of that guilt. Secondly, it is found everywhere;
without sacrifice no religious worship is complete; its general diffusion
has with reason been alleged as a proof of its true origin and deep
meaning. Were it only found in single or in rude nations, it might have
been attributed to rude and barbarous conceptions; but all nations had
it, and the most civilised offered it in the greatest profusion. Thirdly,
it had the most astonishingly pervading influence; from the top to the
bottom of the social scale it ruled all; the king made it the support of
his throne; the father of the family applied it to his children; bride
and bridegroom were joined together in its name; and warring nations made
peace in the blood of the sacrificed victim. Fourthly, the three notes
just given are indefinitely heightened in their force when we consider
that the institution, far from being of itself in accordance with man's
reason, is quite opposed to it. Reason does indeed suggest that the
fruits of the earth should be offered in mark of honour, gratitude, and
dependence to that Almighty Lord by whose gift alone they are received;
but reason of itself, far from suggesting, flies back from the notion
that the Giver of life should accept as a propitiatory offering from His
creature the blood of animals, in which, according to the general sense
of antiquity, their life itself consisted. That this blood should be
poured out, and sprinkled on those present as an act of religious faith;
that it should be accompanied by words expressing adoration,
thanksgiving, and petition; and further, that it should be considered to
remove guilt,--the whole of this forms a conception so alien from reason,
that he who reflects upon it is driven to the conclusion of a positive
enactment, bearing in it a mysterious truth, which it was of the utmost
importance for man to know, to bear in mind, to practise, and not to
forget. And if we put together these four things, the specific character
of the bloody sacrifice, its universality, its pervading influence, and
the token of unreason, apart, that is, from the significance of a deep
mystery, which rests upon it, we must feel that there is nothing in the
constitution of the world before our Saviour's time more worthy of
attention than this. There is no solution of it to be found but that of
St. Augustine, "that the immolation of blood, carrying an announcement of
the future, testified from the beginning of the human race the Passion of
the Mediator that was to be."
But there is likewise a series of portentous facts, bearing upon the
institution of bloody sacrifice, which runs through all human history.
This is the offering of human sacrifices in expiation of guilt, or to
ward off calamities. The religious ideas which lie at the bottom of this
are, that as life is a gift of God to man on the condition that he
fulfils God's commands, every sinner has thereby forfeited his life. The
rule of inexorable justice is set forth in strongest language by the
Greek tragedians, as when Æschylus says, "It abides, while Jove abides
through the series of ages, that he who has done a deed shall suffer for
it. It is an ordinance."[94] But as all men stand in a real communion of
life to each other, and as members of one living whole are bound in one
responsibility to the Godhead, the idea also prevailed that one man's
life could be given for another's; that one might offer himself in
expiation for another, and the willing sacrifice of the innocent was
esteemed to have the more power in proportion as the vicarious will of
the offerer was pure, and therefore acceptable to the gods: "For I think
that a single soul performing this expiation would suffice for a
thousand, if it be there with good-will," says Oedipus in Sophocles. So
kings offer themselves for their people; so the royal virgin gains for
the host with her blood prosperous winds. But from such acts of
self-devotion, freely performed, we proceed to a further step, in which
men are sacrificed against their will. At Athens is found the frightful
custom that two miserable human beings, one of each sex, were yearly
nourished at the public cost, and then solemnly sacrificed at the feast
of the Thargelia for expiation of the people. Not only did the Consul
Decius, at the head of his army, solemnly devote himself for his country,
but so often as a great and general calamity threatened the existence of
the Roman State human sacrifices were offered, and a male and female
Gaul, a male and female Greek, or those of any other nation whence danger
threatened, were buried alive in the ox-market, with magic forms of
prayer uttered by the head of the college of the Quindecemviri. Nay, the
human sacrifices yearly offered upon the Alban Mount to Jupiter Latiaris
were continued down to the third century of our era.
What thus took place in Greece and Rome is found likewise amongst almost
all the Eastern and Western peoples. The most cruel human sacrifices were
nowhere more frequent than among the idolatrous races of Shem, whether
Canaanites, Phoenicians, or Carthaginians. These specially offered the
eldest or the only son. Egyptian, Persian, Arabian, the most ancient
Indian history, and that of the Northern peoples, Scythians, Goths,
Russians, Germans, Gauls, British, and the Celts in general, give us
examples of the same custom.
The conclusion from all this is, how strong and general in the religious
conscience of all ancient peoples was the sense of sinful man's need to
be purified and reconciled with God, and that the means of such
reconcilement were thought to be in the vicarious shedding of human
blood.
At any rate, we may draw from this custom a corroboration of the meaning
which lay in the rite of bloody sacrifice of animals, that the vicarious
offering of an animal's life, which was deemed to be seated in the blood,
was made in the stead of a human life as a ransom for it, as is exactly
expressed in the lines of Ovid--
"Cor pro corde precor, pro fibris accipe fibras,
Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus,"
--_Ovid_,_Fasti_, 6, 161.
The vicarious character of animal sacrifice is shown in the Egyptian
usage, wherein a seal was put upon oxen found pure and spotless for
sacrifice, which represented a man kneeling with hands bound behind his
back, and a sword put to his throat, while the bystanders lamented the
slaughtered animal and struck themselves on the breast. The same idea
that the victim was a ransom for man's life is also found in the Indian
sacrificial ritual.[95]
The institution of bloody sacrifice, then, was not merely an instinctive
confession by man of guilt before God, though this confession was
contained in it in an eminent degree, but sprung from a direct divine
appointment. This conclusion is borne in upon the mind by its existence
every where, and by the astonishing force with which it seemed to hold
all parts of human life in its grasp. Such an influence, again, shows the
extent to which, in the original constitution of things, all human life
was bound up in a dependence upon God. Not mental acts only, acts of
adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and expiation were enjoined, but all
these were expressed in a visible, corporeal action, and associated with
it. It is precisely in this association that I trace the stamp of the
divine appointment, as well as a seal of permanence, which is shown in
the unbroken maintenance of the rite through so many shiftings of races
and revolutions of governments in the lapse of so many centuries.
Thus on the original human society, the family of the first man, God had
impressed the idea that man by sin had forfeited his life before God;
that there must be reparation for that forfeiture; that such reparation
was one day to be made by the offering of an innocent victim; that in the
meantime the vicarious sacrifice of animals should be offered to God as a
confession of man's guilt; that their blood poured out before Him and
sprinkled on the sacrifices should be accepted by God in token of an
expiation.
Now what we have seen of the original institution of sacrifice will help
to show how absolutely divine an act it was which our Lord took upon
Himself in establishing a sacrifice for His people. But He was not only
ordering a new worship; He was likewise at once fulfilling and abolishing
by that fulfilment the old, that which had prevailed from the beginning
of man's race. Instead of the blood of animals poured out profusely all
over the world, He said, "This is the chalice, the new testament in My
Blood, which shall be shed for you;" and speaking as the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world, using also the special sacrificial term,
He said, "This is My Body, which is given for you; do this for a
commemoration of Me." The act was doubly a divine act, in appointing a
sacrifice for the whole human race, and in making His own Body that
sacrifice; the first an act of divine authority, the second not that
only, but pointing out the personal union of the Godhead with the
Manhood, in virtue of which the communication of His flesh gives life to
the world, as He had foretold a year before: "The bread which I will
give is My flesh for the life of the world."[96] Thus the Christian
sacrifice is the counterpart of the original institution, and throws the
light of fulfilment upon that offering of the blood of bulls and goats
which seemed in itself so unreasonable; which would have been so, but
that it earned in itself the mystery hidden from the foundation of the
world. Thus it was that the animal creation placed below man was chosen
to bear witness in its flesh and blood to the offering which was to
restore man, and the Lord of life made use of the life which He had given
to signify in a speaking prophecy that supreme exhibition of His mercy,
His justice, and His majesty, which He had purposed from the beginning.
If the earth without Calvary might seem to have been a slaughter-house,
Calvary made it an altar.
But if this be the relation of the Christian sacrifice to the original
institution in general, it has a special relation to that whole order of
hierarchy and sacrifice which was established by Moses. The whole body of
the Mosaic law, from head to foot and in its minutest part, was
constructed to be fulfilled in Christ. It was alike His altar and His
throne, prepared for Him fifteen hundred years before His coming. Moses
found the patriarchal priesthood and the patriarchal sacrifice, and drew
out both so as to be a more detailed picture of the Priesthood and
Sacrifice which were to be.
Then as the whole ancient worship, whether Patriarchal, or Jewish, or
Gentile, had been concentrated in sacrifice, the Lord of all, coming to
create the world anew, in the night of His Passion, and as the prelude of
it, instituted the new Priesthood, and made it the summary of His whole
dispensation. The Priest according to the order of Melchisedec came forth
to supply what was wanting in the Levitical priesthood. Signs passed into
realities, and the Precious Blood took the place of that blood which had
been shed all over the earth from the sacrifice of Abel onwards.[97] St.
Paul has told us how the King of justice and of peace, fatherless,
motherless, and without genealogy in the sacred narrative, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life, as then recorded, was the image of the
Son of God, who remains a Priest for ever. For though He was to offer
Himself once upon the altar of the cross, by death, to God His Father,
and to work out eternal redemption, His Priesthood was not to be
extinguished by His death. Therefore in the Last Supper, on the very
night of His betrayal, He would leave to His beloved bride the Church a
visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man required. This should
represent the bloody sacrifice once enacted on the cross; this should
preserve its memory fresh and living to the end of time; this should
apply its saving virtue to the remission of sins daily committed by human
frailty. Thus He declared Himself a Priest for ever after the order of
Melchisedec. He presented His Body and His Blood under the species of
bread and wine to God His Father. Under these symbols He gave them to
His Apostles to receive, and so doing He made them priests of the new
testament, and charged them, and those who should succeed them in this
priesthood, to make this offering, by the words, "This do in
commemoration of Me;" thus, as St. Paul adds, "showing the death of the
Lord until He come."[98] For when He had celebrated that old Pasch which
the multitude of the children of Israel immolated in memory of their
coming out of Egypt, He made Himself the new Pasch, that this should be
celebrated by the Church through her priests in visible signs, in
commemoration of His passage from this world to the Father, when by the
shedding forth of His own Blood He redeemed us and delivered us from the
power of darkness and translated us into His own kingdom. This is the
pure oblation, incapable of being stained by the unworthiness or malice
of those who offer it, which God by the mouth of His prophet Malachias
prophesied, saying, "From the rising of the sun even to the going down
thereof My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is
sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean oblation." This St.
Paul pointed out with equal clearness when he wrote, "The things which
the heathens sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God; and I
would not that you should be made partakers with devils. You cannot drink
the chalice of the Lord and the chalice of devils: you cannot be
partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of devils." For as in
the one case the table indicates the altar on which the heathen
sacrifice was offered, so on the other it indicates the altar on which
the sacrifice of Christ is offered; and the reality asserted in the one
case is equally asserted in the other. And this, in fine, is that
offering, the figure of which was given by those various similitudes of
sacrifices in the time of nature and the time of the law; for, as the
consummation and perfection of all these, it embraces every blessing
which they signified.
All the force which sacrifice originally had to represent doctrine in a
visible form, in accordance with the twofold nature of man, belonged in
the most eminent degree to the sacrifice thus instituted. It became at
once the centre of the Church's worship, being celebrated by the Apostles
daily,[99] as we are told, while the Liturgies of the East and West make
any question as to the character of the sacrifice impossible, and show
how the great acts of adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and expiation
were united in it and with it. It was the voice of the Christian people
evermore mounting to the Eternal Father, and representing to Him in an
action of infinite solemnity how He "so loved the world as to give His
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish but may
have life everlasting."[100]
But more particularly let us observe the doctrines which our Lord taught,
and as it were clothed with flesh in the daily sacrifice of the Church.
First, the cardinal doctrine of religion from the beginning, as it is
equally the certain witness of human reason, the unity of the Godhead;
for the sacrifice is offered to the one God alone. It is the guardian of
this great primary truth from all corruption, whether the polytheistic
corruption of division and limitation, or the pantheistic corruption of
vagueness and impersonality. Wherever this sacrifice is offered, the
great Christian unity of the one living and holy God, the God who knows,
the God who wills, the God who creates, is maintained by those who offer
it.
Secondly, the Trinity of the Divine Persons; for the sacrifice consists
in the offering of God the Son in His human nature as a sin-offering for
man to His Father: "Wherein the same Christ is contained, and immolated
without blood, who once on the altar of the cross offered Himself with
blood;"[101] which, moreover, is accomplished by the descent of the Holy
Ghost upon the gifts. Thus the three Divine Persons enter into the
sacrifice, He to whom it is offered, He who offers it, and He by whose
operation it is consummated. So distinct yet so interwoven is their
action, so divine in each, that the sacrifice guards the doctrine of the
most Blessed Trinity as it guards that of the Divine Unity, and those who
offer this sacrifice are faithful in the maintenance of the second
mystery as in that of the first. But the Divine Unity and Trinity is the
very life of God, the very source of beatitude, to the knowledge and the
faith of which this sacrifice subserves. It preaches these truths as no
mere word could preach them; for action and word enter into each other
and complete themselves reciprocally in the sacrifice.
Thirdly, the stupendous mystery of God the Creator assuming a created
nature for the sake of the creature enters into the very substance of the
sacrifice. This can scarcely be expressed more distinctly than by the
very words of St. Justin Martyr in the second century, who says, "We
receive not these as common bread or common drink, but as by the word of
God Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh, had both flesh and
blood for our salvation, so we have been taught also that the food which
has been blessed by the word of prayer made by Him, from which our blood
and our flesh are by their change nourished, are the flesh and the blood
of that incarnate Jesus. For the Apostles, in their memorials called the
Gospels, have handed down that thus Jesus enjoined them: that He took
bread, and having blessed it, said, This do in commemoration of Me: this
is My Body; and that He took likewise the chalice, and having blessed it,
said, This is my Blood."[102] Here the martyr appeals to the reality of
the flesh assumed by the Word, as a supposition necessary to understand
the reality of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist, as St. Ignatius had
done before him, and as St. Irenæus and others did after him.[103] In
this connection, Eusebius of Cæsarea, setting forth the typical character
of the Jewish Pasch and its fulfilment in the new covenant, says, "The
followers of Moses sacrificed the Paschal Lamb only once a year, on the
fourteenth day of the first month about evening tide, but we in the new
covenant celebrating the Pasch every Sunday, are ever satisfied with the
Body of the Lord, and ever take part in the Blood of the Lamb."[104] And
here, once more, wherever this sacrifice is truly offered, the offerers
show themselves truly penetrated by that belief which comes next in
preciousness and dignity to the belief in the Divine Unity and
Trinity--the belief of that assumption by the Divine Son of human nature,
on which the Christian faith rests.
Fourthly, the sacrifice in St. Paul's words, "Sets forth the Lord's death
till He come," that is, the divine act of redemption; for in it our Lord
lies upon the altar in the state of a victim, the flesh and the blood
separated, as in the state of death, which He took upon Himself
voluntarily for the sin of the world, being offered because He willed it
Himself. The sacrifice exhibits most directly this act of the divine
love, which with that other act just treated of, the assumption of human
nature, makes up the double mystery of God's love to man--the double
mystery which, boundless and immeasurable as are the power and the wisdom
disclosed to man's reason in the structure of the visible universe,
disclosed equally in the infinity of smallness as in the infinity of
greatness, disclosed in every branch of science and every portion of
nature, makes both power and wisdom to pale before the greatness of
condescendence and affection; for truly it is greater that the Maker of
all these things should, for the sake of one of them, descend from His
greatness, and that the Lord of life and Author of beauty should
encounter death and embrace dishonour, than that He should have created
the universe in all its magnificence by the word of His power. But here,
in this sacrifice, He lies before His people in the state of
annihilation, dishonour, and death. The world's ransom is ever in the
sight of those whom He has ransomed, in the very act of paying their
debt: the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world goes through its
unfolding centuries, ever presenting to His Father the price which He has
paid for the salvation of His brethren. And it may be noted that those
who offer the Divine Sacrifice in the complete faith of the Church
preserve at the same time their full assurance in that redemption which
separated sects seem to lose as a consequence of their division, it being
too great and awful a doctrine for their weak and paralysed condition to
bear.
For it is impossible, fifthly, to separate the gift of adoption from the
Divine Sacrifice, which contains it and imparts it. Wherefore does the
Son of the Eternal Father lie upon the altar in the state of death? He
cries out aloud there, "Behold I and my children whom God has given Me."
It is precisely out of the act assuming our nature, and out of the act
offering that nature to death, that He draws His human family. It is
after the detailed account of His sufferings in the 21st Psalm that He
concludes with the words which St. Paul has quoted in this
connection:[105] "I will declare Thy name to My brethren: in the midst
of the Church will I praise Thee." It is in the act of priesthood that He
creates His race. "Because the children are partakers of flesh and blood,
He also Himself in like manner has been partaker of them, that through
death He might destroy him who had the empire of death." Thus, "It
behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He
might become a merciful and faithful High Priest before God." And the
daily act of His Priesthood thus performed, the unbloody immolation for
ever presented before God in the eyes of His people, is the bond and
pledge to them of the communicated sonship. They who have the Church's
daily sacrifice have never fallen from the belief of the divine
brotherhood, have never substituted for it the natural kinship of fallen
man. They have not sunk away from the bond of redemption giving sonship,
to the phantom of brotherhood, dispensing with faith, and vainly calling
on men to unite in the midst of national enmity, broken belief, and
thirst for material enjoyment. The Divine Sacrifice, as it is the
instrument, so also it is the guardian of divine adoption, and
perpetuates it upon the earth.
There are three parts, so to say, of adoption which are further
distinctly contained in the Divine Sacrifice. The first of these is the
derivation of spiritual life from the Person of Christ; for here
especially is fulfilled what He said of Himself, "The Bread of God is
that which cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world." In the
act of sacrifice He becomes also the food of His brethren: here He was
from the beginning daily; here He is to the end. This is the inmost
junction of life with belief, so that the faithful people by its presence
attesting belief in the Divine Unity and Trinity, in the Incarnation of
the Son of God, in His redemption of the race, in the adoption of man by
God, at the same time become partakers of the life which these doctrines
declare. The perfection of the divine institution consists in this
absolute blending of belief, worship, and practice. The unbelieving Jews
strove among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to
eat?" Our Lord answered by establishing a rite on which His Church lives
through all the ages, in which He bestows Himself on each believer
individually, being as much his as if He was for him alone. Space and
time disappear before the Author of life in the act of communicating
Himself, and He is the sole Teacher of His Church, in that He alone feeds
it with the Divine Food, which is Himself.
But this food is the source of sanctification: as that by which man fell
away from God was sin, so that which unites him to God is holiness. It is
from the Incarnate Son in the act of sacrifice that this holiness
emanates to His people; and the gift of His flesh, the banquet at the
sacrifice, dispenses it. No teaching of words could so identify the
Person of our Lord with the source of holiness as the bodily act of
receiving His flesh. It is the command, "Be ye holy, for I am holy,"
expressed in action. This is the perennial fountain of holiness which
wells forth in the midst of His Church; and beside it, as subordinate and
preparatory, is the perpetual tribunal of penance: one and the other
given to meet and efface the perpetual frailties of daily life, first to
restore the fallen, and then to join them afresh with the source of
holiness.
There is yet another gift consequent upon adoption, which completes as it
were the two we have just mentioned. It is that the flesh of our Lord
given in the Blessed Sacrament is the pledge and earnest of eternal life.
This He has Himself said in the words, "He that eateth My Flesh and
drinketh My Blood hath everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the
last day." And St. Thomas, in the beautiful conclusion to the grandest of
hymns, has summed up numberless comments of the Fathers on these divine
words, where he sings--
"Bone Pastor, panis vere,
Jesu nostri miserere,
Tu nos pasce, nos tuere;
Tu nos bona fac videre
In terra viventium:
Tu qui cuncta scis et vales,
Qui nos pascis hic mortales,
Tuos ibi commensales
Cohæredes et sodales
Fac sanctorum civium."
The Fathers[106] with great zeal insist that the physical Body of Christ
in the Eucharist, being one in all the receivers, is a principle of unity
of Christ's mystical Body. St. Augustine especially dwells upon this
effect in Christ's mystical Body, but the effect presupposes the cause,
which is that physical Body of Christ received by each.
Take an instance of the first statement, that is, the presence of
Christ's physical Body, in St. Chrysostom. Commenting on the words, "How
can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" he says, "Let us learn what is
the marvel of the mysteries, what they are, why they were given, and what
is their use. We become, He says, one body, members of His flesh and of
His blood. Let those who are initiated follow my words. That we may be
so, then, not only by charity but in actual fact, let us be fused with
that Flesh. For it is done by that Food which He bestowed on us in the
desire to show us the longing which He had for us. He mingled Himself
with us, and made His Body one mass with us, that we may be one thing, as
a body united with its head. This is what Christ did for us, to draw us
to closer friendship and to show His own longing for us; He granted those
who desired Him, not only to see Him but to touch Him, and to eat Him,
and to fix their teeth in His Flesh, to be joined in His embrace, and to
satisfy all their longing. Parents often give their children to be
nourished by others; I not so, but I nourish you with My own Flesh; I set
Myself before you. I wished to become your Brother, I have partaken of
flesh and blood for you; again, I give to you that Flesh and Blood
whereby I became your kinsman."[107]
Of the effect proceeding from this cause St. Augustine says, "The whole
redeemed city, the assembly and society of the saints, is offered as an
universal sacrifice to God by the Great Priest, who also offered Himself
in His Passion for us, according to the form of a servant, that we might
be the Body of so great a Head. For this form He offered, in this He was
offered, because according to this He is Mediator, in this Priest, in
this Sacrifice. When, therefore, the Apostle exhorted us to present our
bodies a living sacrifice: 'For as in one body we have many members, but
all the members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body
in Christ, and every one members one of another:' this is the sacrifice
of Christians, many one body in Christ. Which also the Church constantly
performs in the sacrifice of the altar, as the faithful know, where it is
shown to her that she is offered herself in that which she offers." As he
says a little further on, "Of which thing (that is, Christ being, in the
form of a servant, both Priest and Victim) He willed the daily sacrifice
of the Church to be the Sacrament; for she being the Body, as He the
Head, she learns to offer herself by Him. To this supreme and true
sacrifice all false sacrifices have given way."[108]
Thus, then, the question has been answered how our Lord impressed for
ever on the world the double act of His Priesthood, the assumption of
human nature to His Divine Person, and the offering of that assumed
nature in sacrifice. For whereas He made the bloody sacrifice once for
all upon the altar of the cross, He ordered the daily sacrifice of His
Church to represent it for ever in the name of His people to God the
Father, wherein He immolates Himself without blood. "What then?" says
St. Chrysostom; "do we not offer every day? We do offer, but making a
commemoration of His death. And this is one sacrifice, and not many. How
is it one and not many? Because that was once offered which entered into
the Holy of holies. This is the figure of that. For we offer ever the
same; not to-day one lamb and another to-morrow, but always the same. So
that the sacrifice is one. Otherwise, according to the objection, 'Since
it is offered many times,' are there many Christs? By no means, but there
is one Christ everywhere, complete here and complete there, one Body. As
then He, being offered in many places, is one Body and not many bodies,
so there is one sacrifice. Our High-Priest is He who offered the
sacrifice that cleanses us; that same we offer now which was then
offered, which is inconsumable. This is done for a commemoration of that
which was then done; for, 'Do this,' He says, 'in commemoration of Me.'
We offer not another sacrifice as the (Jewish) high-priest, but ever the
same; or rather we make a commemoration of the sacrifice."[109]
The one perpetual sacrifice thus instituted in His Church, to be offered
from His first to His second coming, carrying in it indissolubly the
great truths of His religion, the life and the unity of His people, this
is the instrument which He used to impress His High-Priesthood on the
world; and He set up the one episcopate as the bearer of the one
priesthood. The government of His Church is not an external magistracy,
but rests on the mass of worship and doctrine intimately blent together,
so that the outward regimen and the inward belief form an indissoluble
unity in the daily practice.
In this unity we must likewise comprehend the jurisdiction expressed in
planting and maintaining belief and worship throughout the world. For our
Lord is a King, and came to establish a kingdom; not several kingdoms,
nor a confederation of states, but one kingdom, concerning which His
people confesses for ever, in the words of the angel who announced His
coming, "Of His kingdom there shall be no end." But without jurisdiction,
that is, without the power which says to one man, "Go here," and to
another, "Go there," the first foundation of a kingdom was as impossible
as was its continuance and permanence.
All the records of that ancient Church which fought a victorious battle
with the Roman Empire and received a civil enfranchisement from the
Emperor Constantine tend to show that the principle of hierarchical order
was very strong in it, and was most severely maintained. It could not be
well stated in a more absolute form than in the letter of Pope St.
Clement above quoted. But the Church which met in representation at the
great Nicene Council offers a perfect picture of what that order was,
working itself out in absolute independence of the Civil Power through
three centuries from the Day of Pentecost.
In the diocese the bishop's jurisdiction was complete. No priest was
independent in the exercise of his functions. Thus jurisdiction in the
interior forum entered into the daily dispensing of the sacraments. For
a long time the Holy Eucharist was dispensed by the bishop from one
altar, and sent from him to the sick. He was the imposer of penance, and
when, as churches and priests multiplied, the system of parishes and
parish priests arose, they executed all their functions in complete
subordination to the bishop, whose title in those early times was taken
from the rite on which all his power rested, when he is called
pre-eminently Sacerdos, _i.e._, the sacrificing priest. Within the limits
of the diocese there can be no sort of doubt that the idea of
jurisdiction was perfectly realised in practice.
But did it stop with the diocese? Was the bishop independent in the
exercise of his powers? In the first place, he exercised them all within
a certain district. He had no power to encroach upon the district of a
neighbouring bishop, nor to execute therein functions which were
perfectly lawful and usual in his own. It is plain that had he possessed
any such power, the whole system established would not have made one
kingdom of Christ, but would have been a congeries of similar
governments, not tied together but agitated by perpetual rivalries.
Nothing could be more unlike the actual system of government as disclosed
by the bearing of the Church of Rome to that of Corinth in the letter of
St. Clement, or to that orderly division into provinces which is seen in
its full development at the Nicene Council. We may conclude that the tie
which held the bishops together was at least as strict and as defined as
that which formed the unity of the particular diocese.
We now behold that marvellous spiritual fabric of which St. Chrysostom
and St. Augustine, at the head of the Fathers of the fourth century,
spoke with such affection, acknowledging that its existence was to them
an absolute proof of the Godhead of its Founder. It was not its material
extension alone, but its inmost nature and character which moved them
thus. It was the evolution of the one indivisible power in its threefold
direction of Priesthood, Teaching, and Jurisdiction. It was that the one
episcopate tied together in a hierarchy of several thousand bishops was
but the outward regimen of an inward polity in which the One Sacrifice is
offered, and the one Body of Christ communicated by the work of the one
Priesthood, which lives upon and dispenses one doctrine, proclaiming it
from age to age to the whole earth.
Thus the words of our Lord, spoken immediately after He had instituted
the priesthood according to the order of Melchisedec, committing to it
the sacrifice of His Body and Blood, were marvellously accomplished. "I
am the true Vine, and My Father is the husbandman.--Abide in Me, and I in
you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the
vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine, you the
branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much
fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." The human nature which He had
taken had sent forth, in virtue of the Person who took it, the triple
power bestowed upon it: His priesthood, His teaching, and His rule had
occupied the earth. All the nations composing the Roman Empire had
brought in their first-fruits to form clusters of the mystical Vine. They
had made the triple offering of the Eastern kings from the peoples of
Europe, Asia, and Africa to the Royal Infant; to the King they had given
their gold, for His sake and after His likeness becoming poor; to the God
their frankincense, worshipping Him at the altar of His love; to the
Victim their myrrh, presenting to Him their bodies as a sacrifice, in
repetition of His martyrdom. It was the very scoff of the heathen
philosopher and magistrate that any one could think to reduce to one
worship the various rites of the Empire, a conglomeration of European,
Asiatic, and African superstitions. Out of that seemingly hopeless
diversity, that endless antagonism, He had constructed a divine unity, a
table at which the children of Scipio knelt side by side with the vilest
slave, at which many an Aspasia became a penitent, and a Boniface sent
back as holy relics to his mistress, Aglae, the body in which he had
sinned with her. The vine of the synagogue, planted of old with the
choicest care, and protected from the inroads of wild beasts in the
security of a single nation of brethren, had brought forth but wild
grapes, and therefore it had been plucked up; its hedge had been broken
down and its tower ruined. Instead of it, the Vine of His Body had grown
abundantly, and from its single root, to use Tertullian's application of
the parable, suckers had been carried everywhere, and the harvest of its
vintage rendered the earth fruitful; the hills and the valleys of many
vast regions were covered with its grapes. But this itself was but the
beginning of a vaster growth in the future, the first realisation of an
ever-expanding kingdom. Only it was a complete specimen of all that
should be. This generation of the Christian people from the person of
Christ was the one miracle which St. Chrysostom thought no heathen could
deny.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the centre and instrument of all this work;
the other Sacraments lead up to it or attend upon it. That which is most
intimate in man, the forming his soul after a divine type, and the
sanctifying it with all its affections; that which is most intellectual,
the doctrine of God made man, surpassing all knowledge in its development
as in its conception; that government which is necessary to the
well-being of every kingdom; that worship which is most exalting, the
worship of the Infinite One, the source, example, and giver of
personality, which is the last and highest gift of the Creator to the
rational creature,--all these were here joined together by the simple act
of God when He perpetuated in a visible rite the double power of His
High-priesthood, the assumption of our nature, and the dying for our
sins, and brought out of it the generation of His people, wherein the
resurrection of one Man to bodily life became the resurrection of a
countless host to spiritual brotherhood, and created the Family of the
Incarnate God.
I have been exhibiting the institution of the most blessed Eucharist, and
the planting of it throughout the Church in the three centuries which
ended with the Nicene Council. Throughout these it was the life of the
Church; all the marvels of faith, endurance, zeal, and charity spring
from it; the works of the Saviour were hidden in it. But since then
fifteen centuries and a half have elapsed, and the Church which filled
the Roman Empire has dilated itself over the whole earth. In all the
countries which it has thus occupied, in all the races of which it has
converted the first-fruits, the same blessed Eucharist--that divine
banquet of the Flesh and Blood of the Word made man--has continued to be
the life of the Church. Upon it the race of martyrs, saints, doctors, and
virgins have been nurtured, and the power which in each one of them was
supernatural has to be also estimated in its aggregate. Among all the
proofs of the Godhead of the Son of Man, that Divine Food which He
foretold to the multitude satisfied with the miraculous multiplication of
the natural food on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, and which He first
gave to His Apostles in the upper chamber on the eve of His Passion, is
in its results the most transcendent. It is enough by itself to quench
all the doubts of unbelief, to kindle all the fires of an endless
charity. It is the Church's unparalleled possession, of which no false
religion possesses even a shadow; her testimony, which grows not old; her
youth, which never fails. Unnumbered myriads of people of all times and
countries have been supported by it through the desert of this world, and
been led in its strength to the Paradise in which the Son of God in the
glory of His humanity communicates Himself face to face to those whom He
has redeemed, and imparts to them the vision of God in His Unity and His
Trinity.
But if this Church, possessing this Divine Sacrifice and Sacrament, was a
wonder to minds such as St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine in their day of
the fifth century, what ought it to be to us at the end of the
nineteenth? The Roman Empire broke up, and the tribes of the North dashed
into fragments its unrivalled organisation, and destroyed that peace
under which the fairest regions of the earth, washed by the inland sea,
dwelt for centuries, rich in all the arts of commerce, in all the
security of civilisation. The Blessed Eucharist survived this convulsion;
far more, it restored this ruin. By founding religious houses through the
whole extent of the countries occupied by the German tribes, whose
indwellers, in virtue of it, lived _the common life_ under the safeguard
of the three great vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, it produced
a Christian France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England, and Poland out of the
torn and bleeding members of the Empire. This was its work in the Western
half of the Roman broken statue.
In the Eastern the savage power of the Mahometan Califate arose, denying
at once the redemption of Christ, and the sacrifice in which He had
enshrined that redemption, and the divine banquet which ensued upon it.
Thousands of Christian Sees fell not before its persuasive power, but its
ruthless sword of conquest. The Mahometan Califate has for hundreds of
years trampled on the fairest regions of the earth, and turned the Roman
peace into a desolation. At length it trembles for its existence; the
divine Eucharist remains unimpaired in strength, and is ready to enter
into the desolated territory and repeat its work of restoration, to turn
the foulness of the Mahometan harem into the sanctity of the Christian
home.
Again, when iniquity abounded and the love of many had waxed cold, there
arose a defection in the West as terrible as that of the East 900 years
before, and it was marked by special enmity to the Blessed Eucharist. It
cast down and trampled under the feet of those who approached the
desecrated churches the very altars at which for a thousand years the
generations of a Christian people had worshipped. It denied the great
mystery which was the heart of the doctrine; it enrolled the denial in
the coronation oath of its sovereigns; it abolished the belief which had
soothed all sorrows as it had made all saints. But that defection has
broken into innumerable wavelets against the Rock of the Christian
Church, upon which rises, as of old, the impregnable citadel of the
faith--the faith which dispenses, as in the first ages, to the children
of all the races of the earth that sacred Body and Blood, in virtue of
which now, as in the upper chamber, the Word of God declares, "I am the
Vine; ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me and I in him, the same
beareth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."
Can there be any proof of the Godhead of the Word made flesh to compare
with that which has been the life of the living and the hope of the
dying to sixty generations of men for eighteen centuries and a half? "For
this is the chalice in My Blood of the new and everlasting testament, the
mystery of faith, which shall be shed for you and for many, for the
remission of sins."
FOOTNOTES:
[82] "A quibus traducem fidei et semina doctrinæ cæteræ exinde ecclesiæ
mutuatæ sunt." _Tradux_, the vine branch carried along above the ground
from the parent stem, so that there is but one tree. Tertullian, De
Præscrip. Hæret. 20.
[83] Franzelin, De Verbo Incarnato, p. 520.
[84] Plato, Euthyphron, 14.
[85] Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie, 207; Id., Nachhomerische Theologie,
193.
[86] The Banquet, p. 188 _e_.
[87] Lasaulx, Die Sühnopfer (extracts from), pp. 234-270.
[88] proêrosia.
[89] procharistêria.
[90] 3, 12.
[91] Ruinart, Acta Martyrum, pp. 350 and 527.
[92] Contr. Faustum, l. 22, s. 17, tom. viii. 370.
[93] S. Tho. contr. Gentilis, 3, 120.
[94] Agamemnon, 1520.
[95] The above account of human sacrifices is drawn from Lasaulx's
treatise, pp. 237-255. He gives a profusion of examples, with their
references in ancient authors.
[96] Luke xxii. 20; John vi. 52.
[97] See Council of Trent, sess. 22, cap. i.
[98] 1 Cor. xi. 26.
[99] Acts ii. 46.
[100] John iii. 16.
[101] Council of Trent, sess. 22, cap. ii.
[102] Justin. Apol. i. 66.
[103] Franzelin, De SS. Eucharistiæ Sacramento et Sacrificio, p. 81.
[104] Eusebius Cæs.: peri tês tou Pascha heortês, cap. 7.
[105] Heb. ii. 12.
[106] Franzelin, De SS. Eucharistiæ Sacramento, p. 111.
[107] S. Chrys. Hom. in Joan, 46, c. 3, tom. viii. 272.
[108] St. Aug. De Civitate Dei, lib. 10, c. 6 and 20.
[109] S. Chrys. 16 Hom. on the Hebrews, tom. xii. p. 168.