It did not, like modern ritualism, tend towards the view that the Eucharist is a sacrifice in the heathen sense—a continued offering by a human priesthood of the sacrifice of Christ.[141] On the contrary, it represented this sacrament as commemorative of the death of Christ, and as symbolic of the professed communion on the part of men with Christ, and with one another.[142] It did not set forth the sacrament of baptism as modern ritualists are so fond of doing, as effecting there and then the regeneration of the person baptized. But it regarded baptism as a symbolic profession of change of heart—as the ceremony in which the believer openly takes his soldier’s oath to Christ, and promises amended life.[143] It did not represent the sponsors as promising or professing in the child’s stead, that he is then and there regenerated, but promising that they themselves will do all they can to bring him up as a child of God.[144] It did not admit in any sacerdotal order, any power to remit or retain sin, to bind or to loose. On the contrary, it regarded the priests as God’s ministers, who ought to keep in communion with Him, so that receiving intimation by the Spirit of what is already bound or loosed in heaven, they may disclose it on earth.[145]
If any sacerdotal theory could be believable, it must be confessed, there is an intrinsically rational and Christian tone about the Dionysian theory according to Colet’s rendering of it, strangely lacking in that of modern sacerdotalists.
Forgetting for the moment the speculative adjuncts to the theory, the professed knowledge of mysteries unknown, which Colet’s belief in Dionysius obliged him to accept, but which did not add any force to the theory itself, it will be seen at once how powerful a rebuke he must have felt it to be to the ecclesiastical scandals of the closing years of the fifteenth century. It assumed, as the essential attribute of any sacerdotal order laying claim to apostolic institution, the attribute of a really pure and personal holiness. No merely official sanctity imputed outwardly to a consecrated order, by virtue of its outward consecration, could possibly satisfy its requirements.[146] And in the same way the sacraments were nothing apart from the personal spiritual realities which they were meant to symbolize.
Religion consists in love.
Underneath, therefore, the wild excess of symbolism and speculation which lay on the surface, and formed, as it were, the froth of the Dionysian theology, Colet seems to have found this basis of eternal truth, that religion is a thing of the heart, not of creed nor of ceremonial observances; that, in Colet’s own rendering of the Dionysian theory:—‘Knowledge leads not to eternal life, but love. Whoso loveth God is known of Him. Ignorant love has a thousand times more power than cold wisdom.’[147]
Colet’s abstracts of the Dionysian treatises abound with passages expressive of the purity and holiness of heart required of the Christian, and of the necessity of his love not being merely of the contemplative kind, but an active love working for Christ and his fellowmen. The following extracts may be taken as illustrations of this.
The purity of Christians.
In concluding the chapter on the meaning of baptism Colet exclaims:—‘Gracious God! here may one perceive how cleansed and how pure he that professes Christ ought to be; how inwardly and thoroughly washed; how white, how shining, how utterly without blemish or spot; in fine, how perfected and filled, according to his measure, with Christ himself.... May Jesus Christ himself bring it to pass, that we who profess Christ may both be, and set our affections on, and do all things that are worthy of our profession.’[148]
Self-sacrifice for others a blessed thing.