How gloriously different is the one sacrifice of the Son of God! It, and it alone, was sufficient for all the sins of the whole world. The substitution of the Son of God for the sinner satisfied the whole law, and cleared away the whole curse. It not only in God’s counsels removed the guilt, but it reaches the very depths of the human heart, and gives peace to the conscience wounded for sin. Observe the words in ix. 13, 14, as contrasted with those in x. 2. In x. 2 we are taught, that if those sacrifices could have purged the conscience, they would have ceased. But in ix. 14 we read, that through the sacrifice of our blessed Lord, this very thing is done; for the Apostle says:—“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” The one sacrifice was effective to purge the conscience; while all the whole multitude of often-repeated offerings left the conscience just where it was; without rest, without peace, without any real satisfaction, under the painful pressure of a deeply-felt sin. Let us never forget this great result; for it shows that we have that which the Jew, in his sacrifices taken alone, could never have—a conscience at rest, a conscience set free, because all sin is blotted out for ever; a conscience released from its burden, because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was a divinely-appointed substitute for guilt.
Such, then, is the contrast, and such the reason for it. What, then, are we to think of the teaching of the Church of Rome when it says,—“In this divine sacrifice which is performed in the Mass, that same Christ is contained, and sacrificed without blood, who once, with blood, offered Himself upon the altar of the Cross?” [27] And again:—“If any man shall say that the sacrifice is not propitiatory, and profits the receiver only, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfaction, and other necessities, let him be anathema?” Now, what do these passages teach?
1. That the sacramental bread is changed into the Lord Jesus Christ, the Living Saviour, God and man.
2. That whenever the Mass is administered, He, the living Saviour, is again sacrificed and put to death.
3. That this sacrifice is a sacrifice of propitiation for sin. There is a sacrifice of self-dedication, which every loving heart is required to offer: as in the words after the Lord’s Supper,—“Here we offer and present unto Thee ourselves, out souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee.” But in that case the offering is ourselves, and the motive is not propitiation, but dedication. According to the teaching of Rome the offering is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the object is to make a propitiation for sin.
Now, this is the doctrine that persons are striving to reintroduce into our land and church. The real object of this modern movement is to re-establish the belief in transubstantiation and propitiatory sacrifice. Those vestments of which we have heard so much are not introduced simply from a love of ornament and decoration, but they are folds in which to wrap the doctrine of the Mass; and that doctrine, as I have just stated it, is, that the bread is first changed into a living Saviour, and then the living Saviour offered afresh as a propitiation for sin. [29]
Now, such a doctrine seems to me so utterly contrary to all that we are taught in the Scriptures respecting the perfection and consequent oneness of the one offering of our Blessed Lord upon the Cross, that I am utterly unable to comprehend how any person who takes the Scriptures as their authority can, by any process of mind, be brought to believe it. As I have already said, these chapters seem to have been written with a prophetic reference to it; and I do not hesitate to express my firm and fixed conviction, that if we mean to abide by God’s word as our guide, we must protest against the whole movement. Nor must we allow ourselves to be led away by the religious feelings of pious and earnest men; or permit the holy reverence with which, as believing communicants, we regard the holy communion of the body and blood of Christ, to induce us to think lightly of a deadly error, even though men make use of it in order, apparently, to exalt the peculiar sanctity of the sacrament. We must stand firm to the great principle of Scripture; the principle for which our martyred Reformers did not hesitate to shed their life-blood, that the bread is bread, and the wine wine, after consecration, just as they were before it; that neither the one nor the other is changed into the Lord Jesus Christ; that the Lord Jesus Christ is not sacrificed in the sacrament; and that there never can be, so long as the world lasts, any further sacrifice for sin. When the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, to use the language of our Church, He “made there (by His one oblation of Himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world:” and, unless we are prepared to deny the sufficiency of the one complete atonement, we must set our face with a holy determination against all ideas of repetition, or perpetuation, of any propitiatory sacrifice for sin.
But we must not leave the matter there, for it is not enough for us to be deeply convinced that the doctrine of the Mass is opposed to the whole truth of God, for such a conviction, though it may keep us clear of Rome, will not, if it be all, bring us to God. What we want is not merely a conviction of the truth, but a personal appropriation of it in our own hearts. It is a blessed thing to know that a perfect sacrifice has been offered, and that no further sacrifice is either necessary or possible; but that knowledge, blessed as it is, may leave the heart dissatisfied, and the conscience ill at ease. When that is the case, we cannot be surprised at persons restlessly feeling after anything that promises peace; and I believe there is no state of mind in which persons are so liable to be led away by Rome, as when the conscience is awakened, but the heart not at rest in Christ the Saviour. It is when we can look to that cross of Christ, assured that the atonement there made was sufficient even for us, and when we can rest in the conviction that, because the atonement was sufficient, we, even we, are free; and when we learn to rest, not on feelings, not on sacraments, not on our doings of any kind whatever, but simply on the great, grand, glorious fact, that a full propitiation has been made even for the chief of sinners, so that we, though the chief of sinners, are no longer under the guilt of sin; then it is that we discover the strength of the rock under our feet, and, resting on it, we need no other stay. It is enough, for Christ hath died, and through Him God is reconciled. Blessed! oh, blessed that Christian believer, who can thus rest in a perfect Saviour; and be kept in perfect peace through the Saviour’s perfect work!
SELF-SACRIFICE.
Rom. xii. 1.
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”