(c) It involves the denial of the completeness of Christ's past sacrifice, and the assumption that a human priest can repeat or add to the atonement made by Christ once for all (Heb. 9:28—ἅπαξ προσενεχθείς). The Lord's Supper is never called a sacrifice, nor are altars, priests, or consecrations ever spoken of, in the New Testament. The priests of the old dispensation are expressly contrasted with the ministers of the new. The former “ministered about sacred things,” i. e., performed sacred rites and waited at the altar; but the latter “preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:13, 14).
Heb. 9:28—“so Christ also, having been once offered”—here ἅπαξ means “once for all,” as in Jude 3—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”; 1 Cor. 9:13, 14—“Know ye not that they that minister about sacred things eat of the things of the temple, and they that wait upon the altar have their portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.” Romanism introduces a mediator between the soul and Christ, namely, bread and wine,—and the priest besides.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:680-687 (Syst. Doct., 4: 146-163)—“Christ is thought of as at a distance, and as represented only by the priest who offers anew his sacrifice. But Protestant doctrine holds to a perfect Christ, applying the benefits of the work which he long ago and once for all completed upon the cross.” Chillingworth: “Romanists hold that the validity of every sacrament but baptism depends upon its administration by a priest; and without priestly absolution there is no assurance of forgiveness. But the intention of the priest is essential in pronouncing absolution, and the intention of the bishop is essential in consecrating the priest. How can any human being know that these conditions are fulfilled?” In the New Testament, on the other hand, Christ appears as the only priest, and each human soul has direct access to him.
Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 22—“The adherence of the first Christians to the Mosaic law makes it plain that they did not hold the doctrine of the modern Church of Rome that the bread of the Supper is a sacrifice, the table an altar, and the minister a priest. For the old altar, the old sacrifice, and the old priesthood still remained, and were still in their view appointed media of atonement with God. Of course they could not have believed in two altars, two priesthoods and two contemporaneous sets of sacrifices.” Christ is the only priest. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 257—“The three central dangerous errors of Romanism and Ritualism are: 1. the perpetuity of the apostolate; 2. the priestly character and offices of Christian ministers; 3. the sacramental principle, or the depending upon sacraments, as the essential, initial, and ordinary channels of grace.” “Hierarchy,” says another, “is an infraction of the divine order; it imposes the weight of an outworn symbolism on the true vitalities of the gospel; it is a remnant rent from the shroud of the dead past, to enwrap the limbs of the living present.”
(d) It destroys Christianity by externalizing it. Romanists make all other service a mere appendage to the communion. Physical and magical salvation is not Christianity, but is essential paganism.
Council of Trent, Session VII, On Sacraments in General, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the sacraments of the New Testament are not necessary to salvation, but are superfluous, and that without them, and without the desire thereof, men attain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification; though all [the sacraments] are not indeed necessary for every individual: let him be anathema.” On Baptism, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church doth, is not true baptism, let him be anathema.” Baptism, in the Romanist system, is necessary to salvation: and baptism, even though administered by heretics, is an admission to the church. All baptized persons who, through no fault of their own, but from lack of knowledge or opportunity, are not connected outwardly with the true church, though they are apparently attached to some sect, yet in reality belong to the soul of the true church. Many belong merely to the body of the Catholic church, and are counted as its members, but do not belong to its soul. So says Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto; and Pius IX extended the doctrine of invincible ignorance, so as to cover the case of every dissentient from the church whose life shows faith working by love.
Adoration of the Host (Latin hostia, victim) is a regular part of the service of the Mass. If the Romanist view were correct that the bread and wine were actually changed into the body and blood of Christ, we could not call this worship idolatry. Christ's body in the sepulchre could not have been a proper object of worship, but it was so after his resurrection, when it became animated with a new and divine life. The Romanist error is that of holding that the priest has power to transform the elements; the worship of them follows as a natural consequence, and is none the less idolatrous for being based upon the false assumption that the bread and wine are really Christ's body and blood.
The Roman Catholic system involves many absurdities, but the central absurdity is that of making religion a matter of machinery and outward manipulation. Dr. R. S. MacArthur calls sacramentalism “the pipe-line conception of grace.” There is no patent Romanist plumbing. Dean Stanley said that John Henry Newman “made immortality the consequence of frequent participation of the Holy Communion.” Even Faber made game of the notion, and declared that it “degraded celebrations to be so many breadfruit trees.” It is this transformation of the Lord's Supper into the Mass that turns the church into “the Church of the Intonement.” “Cardinal Gibbons,” it was once said, “makes his own God—the wafer.” His error is at the root of the super-sanctity and celibacy of the Romanist clergy, and President Garrett forgot this when he made out the pass on his railway for “Cardinal Gibbons and wife.” Dr. C. H. Parkhurst: “There is no more place for an altar in a Christian church than there is for a golden calf.” On the word “priest” in the N. T., see Gardiner, in O. T. Student, Nov. 1889:285-291; also Bowen, in Theol. Monthly, Nov. 1889:316-329. For the Romanist view, see Council of Trent, session XIII, canon III: per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:585-602; C. Hebert, The Lord's Supper: History of Uninspired Teaching.