(3.)—The Spirituality of the Sacraments.
I am often surprised that staunch Protestants appear sometimes to speak with a certain measure of distrust of the Church Catechism, for there are few documents which contain clearer, or more decisive, statements as to great Protestant principles. What, e.g., can be clearer than the definition given of a sacrament, “An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”? That definition teaches two truths—(1) That the grace is inward and spiritual, and (2) That the sign is distinct from it, being outward and visible. In that short sentence is contained one of the great principles of the reformation. Rome had confused the sign with the grace when it decreed that the whole substance of the elements was changed into the whole substance of the body and blood of Christ, in which case it is obvious the sign must cease to be a sign, being changed into the thing signified. The Church of England taught, Article 28, that such “transubstantiation was repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, and overthroweth the nature of a sacrament.” Rome had decreed, “If any one shall say that in the Eucharist Christ is received only spiritually (observe the only), let him be anathema.” The Church of England replied, “The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.” Rome said, “If any one shall say that faith alone is a sufficient preparation for receiving the Lord’s Supper, let him be anathema.” The Church of England replied, “The mean,” i.e., the only mean “whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper, is faith.” Pages of other passages might be quoted had I time, but these are enough to show the real point at issue. Rome taught that the sign was transubstantiated into the thing signified, and so ceased to be a sign as it became a living Saviour, localised on the altar with body, soul, and even bones and nerves. The Church of England taught that the risen Lord is “in heaven and not here,” that the sign remains a material, visible sign, and that the grace is a spiritual grace. So that, as is well said in the homily, “The meat we seek for in this supper is spiritual food; and nourishment of our soul, a heavenly refection, and not earthly; an invisible meat and not carnal.” And again, “Look up with faith upon the body and blood of thy God, thou marvel with reverence, thou touch it with the mind, then receive it with the hand of thine heart, and thou take it fully with thy inward man.”
(4.)—The Final Completeness of the one Propitiation.
We hear a great deal in modern times of the mass. The Church of England calls the holy sacrament “the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.” But some faithless sons of hers call it “the mass,” and some amiable men are so enamoured of visible unity that they actually memorialize the Archbishop for a recognized toleration of all the paraphernalia of what the Reformers used to call “massing priests.” Now let us clearly understand what is the real point of the controversy respecting the mass. It is associated in people’s minds with the Eastward position, and with candles, with incense, with chasubles and tunicles, with thurifers, acolytes, and priests, &c., &c., &c. But it was not for such things as these that our martyrs died. They are all bad enough, but in themselves they were not worth dying for. They died for a truth, and the great truth for which they died was the complete, final, everlasting sufficiency of the one Divine Sacrifice for sin. It was this that put the Church of Rome and the Church of England into direct and irreconcilable antagonism. It was not till the year A.D. 1562 that Rome drew up her decrees on this subject, so that in this instance England was first. Our Reformers were well acquainted with all that was being taught by Rome, and so drew up the noble and uncompromising words of article xxxi. in the year A.D. 1552:—“The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of masses, in the which, it was commonly said, that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” Well spoken words were those, burning words from glowing hearts. Those men knew the value of a finished, complete, all-sufficient, and final propitiation by the Son of God, and their trumpets gave no uncertain sound as they swept to the winds the man-made fiction of a propitiatory sacrifice in the mass. And it was in direct opposition to these noble words that Rome decreed, “If any man shall say that the sacrifice of the mass is not propitiatory, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfaction, and other necessities, let him be anathema;” (Sep. xxii.–3), and thereby taught that there was a necessity for some further propitiatory sacrifice; and that the remission of sin is not granted, as England had declared it was, through the one complete, final, and all-sufficient propitiation and that alone; but that for the remission of sins and punishments there is required a continuation of sacrifice in the mass.
It would be a very easy thing to shew how all the other fictions of Rome must melt away if these four great truths are established in the heart. Let them be known in their power, and all the rest, mariolatry, saint worship, purgatory, priestly absolution as a means of forgiveness of sin, and all the complicated network of superstition will disappear of themselves; but for that I have no time now, for I must hasten to that which seems to be the great object of the Committee in the selection of the subject, the practical bearing of these blessed truths on the spiritual life of all classes in the Church. What, then, is that practical bearing of these great and most important principles? Is it possible to gather them together, as it were, into one focus and to sum up the result in one simple proposition? I believe it is, and that the practical result of the whole matter it this, that on these distinctive principles we are brought face to face with God himself, and that there is nothing intermediate between God and the sinner, so that the whole result may be summed up in two very simple words. “Nothing between.”
Observe for a few moments how this result follows from every one of the four points.
Are we earnestly desiring truth? and do we long to know the revelation of God respecting the way of life? We are not called to search for it in that vast bundle of hay, the unanimous consent of the fathers, or to apply to a priest to convey to us an authoritative interpretation even of passages which the Church has never interpreted, but we are taught to go straight to the fountain-head of truth at it wells up from God himself, and as He has given it in His own inspired Word. We are not dependent on what man tells us of God’s revelation, but we go direct to the revelation itself. We do not rely on any intermediate authority who may discolour the truth as a painted window discolours the sunbeam, but we look straight at the truth itself in all its brilliant purity, and, though sometimes we may be dazzled by its brilliancy, we rejoice in the fact that there is nothing between.
Are we anxious on the subject of our acceptance with God? and asking the question, How can a man be justified with God? We are again brought face to face with Himself. We are not called to look outside for any sacerdotal act to introduce us to God, or even inside for any work of the Holy Spirit in our own hearts to recommend us to His mercy. But without strength, without godliness, sinners, and even enemies, we are permitted in His boundless mercy to receive the reconciliation, to throw ourselves, with nothing between, into the arms of Him who has redeemed us, and as we are, and just as we are, trust Him at once for a full, complete, and all-sufficient justification before God.
Are we longing to live feeding on the Lord Jesus Christ, and nourished by that which in the sixth chapter of St. John he sometime describes as the bread of life, and sometimes as his body and blood? Again we are taught that for that sacred food and sustenance we must be brought into direct and immediate contact with himself. We are not to look for any mystical change in the elements supposed to be accomplished by some miraculous power in a priest, or suppose that it is Christ in the elements that is the real food of the soul when hungering and thirsting after life. But we are taught that it is the soul itself that feeds on Christ himself, and so enjoys his promise, “He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.”
And lastly, does the soul tremble under the consciousness of sin? Sin of the nature? Sin of the heart? Sin of the thought? Sin of the act? Sin of the whole man and every part of him? Does the horrid, dreadful thought of sin rise up as an impassable barrier between the conscience-stricken sinner and the holiness of God? Once more the great principle of a complete and final propitiation proclaims without reserve the joyful tidings that in Christ Jesus there is nothing between, that the veil of the temple is rent from the top to the bottom, and that now there stands open a new and living way leading direct to the mercy seat of God. To remove that awful barrier of unforgiven sin, we need no saints, no masses, no purgatorial fire. We need no priests to make a propitiatory offering by what he claims as his sacerdotal power. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we have received the reconciliation from the Son of God himself. It is his own blood that was shed, and his own hand that has given the pardon. And, though Satan may accuse, and conscience convict, though it may seem impossible to our own judgment that such as we are should ever be permitted to find fellowship with God, we may thank him with profound thanksgiving that he has removed the curse by bearing it himself upon the cross, and may venture to draw near in the words of that most incomparable hymn—