[155]. Tiers etat.—These were the three orders into which the people of France were divided; the tiers etat or third estate, corresponding to our commons.
[156]. With all respect for Pascal and his good intention, it is plain that there is a wide difference between the duty, illustrated by the apostle from the ancient law, of supporting those who minister in holy things in and for their ministrations, and the practice introduced by the Church of Rome, of putting a price on the holy things themselves. In the one case, it was simply a recognition of the general principle that “the laborer is worthy of his hire.” In the other, it was converting the minister into a shopman who was allowed to “barter” his sacred wares at the market price, or any price he pleased. To this mercenary principle most of the superstitions of Rome may be traced. The popish doctrine of the mass is founded on transubstantiation, or the superstition broached in the ninth century, that the bread and wine are converted by the priest into the real body and blood of Christ. It was never settled in the Romish Church to be a proper propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead till the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century; so that it is comparatively a modern invention. The mass proceeds on the absurd assumption that our blessed Lord offered up his body and blood in the institution of the supper, before offering them on the cross, and partook of them himself; and it involves the blasphemy of supposing that a sinful mortal may, whenever he pleases, offer up the great sacrifice of that body and blood, which could only be offered by the Son of God and offered by him only once. This, however, is the great Diana of the popish priests—by this craft they have their wealth—and the whole of its history proves that it was invented for no other purposes than imposture and extortion.
[157]. Heb. vii. 27.—It is astonishing to see an acute mind like that of Pascal so warped by superstition as not to perceive that in this, and other allusions to the Levitical priesthood, the object of the apostle was avowedly to prove that the great sacrifice for sin, of which the ancient sacrifices were the types, had been “once offered in the end of the world,” and that “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins;” and that the very text to which he refers, teaches that, in the person of Jesus Christ, our high priest, all the functions of the sacrificing priesthood were fulfilled and terminated: “Who needeth not daily as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” The ministers of the New Testament are never in Scripture called priests, though this name has been applied to the Christian people who offer up the “spiritual sacrifices” of praise and good works. (Heb. xiii. 15, 16; 1 Pet. ii. 5.)
[158]. Treatise 10, p. 474; ib., p. 441; Quest. 32, p. 457.
[159]. Tom. ii. tr. 25. n. 33. And yet they will pretend to hold that their Church is infallible!
[160]. Book of the Hierarchy, p. 611, Rouen edition.
[161]. Op. Mor. p. 1, disp. 2, p. 6. Ferdinand de Castro Palao was a Jesuit of Spain, and author of a work on Virtues and Vices, published in 1631.
[162]. This Letter was revised by M. Nicole.
[163]. In praxi: liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260.
[164]. De Just., liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79.