XV. There is a beautiful passage in Plato, in which he treats of the ancient expiations among the heathen, and ridicules the foolish confidence of wicked and profligate men, who thought that such disguises would conceal their crimes from the view of their gods, and, as if they had made a compromise with their gods, indulged themselves in their vices with the greater security. This passage almost seems as if it had been written with a view to the missal expiation as it is now practised in the world. To defraud and circumvent another person, every one knows to be unlawful. To injure widows, to plunder orphans, to harass the poor, to obtain the property of others by wicked arts, to seize any one’s fortune by perjuries and frauds, to oppress a neighbour with violence and tyrannical terror, are universally acknowledged to be enormous crimes. How, then, do so many persons dare to commit all these sins, as if they might perpetrate them with impunity? If we duly consider, we shall find that they derive fresh encouragement from no other cause than the confidence which they feel that they shall be able to satisfy God by the sacrifice of the mass, as a complete discharge of all their obligations to him, or at least that it affords them an easy mode of compromising with him. Plato afterwards goes on to ridicule the gross stupidity of those who expect by such expiations to be delivered from the punishments which they would otherwise have to suffer in hell. And what is the design of the obits, or anniversary obsequies, and the greater part of the masses, but that those who all their lifetime have been the most cruel of tyrants, the most rapacious of robbers, or abandoned to every enormity, as if redeemed with this price, may escape the fire of purgatory?
XVI. Under the other kind of sacrifices, which we have called the sacrifice of thanksgiving, are included all the offices of charity, which when we perform to our brethren, we honour the Lord himself in his members; and likewise all our prayers, praises, thanksgivings, and every thing that we do in the service of God; all which are dependent on a greater sacrifice, by which we are consecrated in soul and body as holy temples to the Lord. It is not enough for our external actions to be employed in his service: it is necessary that first ourselves, and then all our works, be consecrated and dedicated to him; that whatever belongs to us may conduce to his glory, and discover a zeal for its advancement. This kind of sacrifice has no tendency to appease the wrath of God, to procure remission of sins, or to obtain righteousness: its sole object is to magnify and exalt the glory of God. For it cannot be acceptable and pleasing to God, except from the hands of those whom he has already favoured with the remission of their sins, reconciled to himself, and absolved from guilt; and it is so necessary to the Church as to be altogether indispensable. Therefore it will continue to be offered for ever, as long as the people of God shall exist; as we have already seen from the prophet. For so far are we from wishing to abolish it, that in that sense we are pleased to understand the following prediction: “From the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering; for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts.”[[1348]] So Paul enjoins us to “present” our “bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,” which is our “reasonable service.”[[1349]] He has expressed himself with the strictest propriety, by adding that this is our reasonable service; for he intended a spiritual kind of Divine worship, which he tacitly opposed to the carnal sacrifices of the Mosaic law. So “to do good, and to communicate,” are called “sacrifices with which God is well pleased.”[[1350]] So the liberality of the Philippians in supplying the wants of Paul was “an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable and well pleasing to God.”[[1351]] So all the good works of believers are spiritual sacrifices.
XVII. Why do I multiply quotations? This form of expression is perpetually occurring in the Scriptures. And even while the people were kept under the external discipline of the law, it was sufficiently declared by the prophets that those carnal sacrifices contained a reality and truth which is common to the Christian Church, as well as to the nation of the Jews. For this reason David prayed, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”[[1352]] And Hosea called thanksgivings “the calves of our lips,”[[1353]] which David calls “offering thanksgiving” and “offering praise.”[[1354]] In imitation of the Psalmist, the apostle himself says, “Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually;” and by way of explanation adds, “that is, the fruit of our lips,” confessing or giving “thanks to his name.”[[1355]] This kind of sacrifice is indispensable in the supper of the Lord, in which, while we commemorate and declare his death, and give thanks, we do no other than offer the sacrifice of praise. From this sacrificial employment, all Christians are called “a royal priesthood;”[[1356]] because, as the apostle says, “By Christ we offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.” For we do not appear in the presence of God with our oblations without an intercessor; Christ is the Mediator, by whom we offer ourselves and all that we have to the Father. He is our High Priest, who, having entered into the celestial sanctuary, opens the way of access for us. He is our altar, upon which we place our oblations, that whatever we venture to do, we may attempt in him. In a word, it is he that “hath made us kings and priests unto God.”[[1357]]
XVIII. What remains, then, but for the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and even children to understand, this abomination of the mass? which, being presented in a vessel of gold, has so inebriated and stupefied all the kings and people of the earth, from the highest to the lowest, that, more senseless than the brutes themselves, they have placed the whole of their salvation in this fatal gulf. Surely Satan never employed a more powerful engine to assail and conquer the kingdom of Christ. This is the Helen, for which the enemies of the truth in the present day contend with cruelty, rage, and fury; a Helen, indeed, with which they so pollute themselves with spiritual fornication, which is the most execrable of all. Here I touch not, even with my little finger, the gross abuses which they might pretend to be profanations of the purity of their holy mass; what a scandalous traffic they carry on, what sordid gains they make by their masses, with what enormous rapacity they gratify their avarice. I only point out, and that in few and plain words, the true nature of the most sanctimonious sanctity of the mass, on account of which it has attracted so much admiration and veneration for so many ages. For an illustration of such great mysteries proportioned to their dignity, would require a larger treatise; and I am unwilling to introduce those disgusting corruptions which are universally notorious; that all men may understand that the mass, considered in its choicest and most estimable purity, without any of its appendages, from the beginning to the end, is full of every species of impiety, blasphemy, idolatry, and sacrilege.
XIX. The readers may now see, collected into a brief summary, almost every thing that I have thought important to be known respecting these two sacraments; the use of which has been enjoined on the Christian Church from the commencement of the New Testament until the end of time; that is to say, baptism, to be a kind of entrance into the Church, and an initiatory profession of faith; and the Lord’s supper, to be a continual nourishment, with which Christ spiritually feeds his family of believers. Wherefore, as there is but “one God, one Christ, one faith,” one Church, the body of Christ, so there is only “one baptism” and that is never repeated; but the supper is frequently distributed, that those who have once been admitted into the Church, may understand that they are continually nourished by Christ. Beside these two, as no other sacrament has been instituted by God, so no other ought to be acknowledged by the Church of believers. For that it is not left to the will of man to institute new sacraments, will be easily understood if we remember what has already been very plainly stated—that sacraments are appointed by God for the purpose of instructing us respecting some promise of his, and assuring us of his good-will towards us; and if we also consider, that no one has been the counsellor of God, capable of affording us any certainty respecting his will,[[1358]] or furnishing us any assurance of his disposition towards us, what he chooses to give or to deny us. Hence it follows, that no one can institute a sign to be a testimony respecting any determination or promise of his; he alone can furnish us a testimony respecting himself by giving a sign. I will express myself in terms more concise, and perhaps more homely, but more explicit—that there can be no sacrament unaccompanied with a promise of salvation. All mankind, collected in one assembly, can promise us nothing respecting our salvation. Therefore they can never institute or establish a sacrament.
XX. Let the Christian Church, therefore, be content with these two, and not only neither admit nor acknowledge any other at present, but neither desire nor expect any other to the end of the world. For as the Jews, beside the ordinary sacraments given to them, had also several others, differing according to the varying circumstances of different periods, such as the manna, the water issuing from the rock, the brazen serpent, and the like, they were admonished by this variation not to rest in such figures, which were of short duration, but to expect from God something better, which should undergo no change and come to no end. But our case is very different: to us Christ has been revealed, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,”[[1359]] in such abundance and profusion, that to hope or desire any new accession to these treasures would really be to displease God, and provoke his wrath against us. We must hunger after Christ, we must seek, contemplate, and learn him alone, till the dawning of that great day, when our Lord will fully manifest the glory of his kingdom, and reveal himself to us, so that “we shall see him as he is.”[[1360]] And for this reason, the dispensation under which we live is designated in the Scriptures as “the last time,” “these last times,” “the last days,”[[1361]] that no one may deceive himself with a vain expectation of any new doctrine or revelation. For “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath, in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son,”[[1362]] who alone is able to “reveal the Father,”[[1363]] and who, indeed, “hath declared him”[[1364]] fully, as far as is necessary for our happiness, while “now we see” him “through a glass darkly.”[[1365]] As men are not left at liberty to institute new sacraments in the Church of God, so it were to be wished that as little as possible of human invention should be mixed with those which have been instituted by God. For as wine is diluted and lost by an infusion of water, and as a whole mass of meal contracts acidity from a sprinkling of leaven, so the purity of Divine mysteries is only polluted when man makes any addition of his own. And yet we see, as the sacraments are observed in the present day, how very far they have degenerated from their original purity. There is every where an excess of pageantries, ceremonies, and gesticulations; but no consideration or mention of the word of God, without which even the sacraments themselves cease to be sacraments. And the very ceremonies which have been instituted by God are not to be discerned among such a multitude of others, by which they are overwhelmed. In baptism, how little is seen of that which ought to be the only conspicuous object—I mean baptism itself? And the Lord’s supper has been completely buried since it has been transformed into the mass; except that it is exhibited once a year, but in a partial and mutilated form.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FIVE OTHER CEREMONIES, FALSELY CALLED SACRAMENTS, PROVED NOT TO BE SACRAMENTS; THEIR NATURE EXPLAINED.
The preceding discussion respecting the sacraments might satisfy persons of docile and sober minds, that they ought not to carry their curiosity any further, or without the sanction of the word of God, to receive any other sacraments beside those two which they know to have been instituted by the Lord. But as the opinion of seven sacraments has been so generally admitted in the common conversation of mankind, and pervaded the controversies of the schools, and the sermons of the pulpit,—as it has gathered strength from its antiquity, and still keeps its hold on the minds of men,—I have thought I should perform a useful service by entering into a closer and distinct examination of the five ceremonies, which are commonly numbered among the true and genuine sacraments of the Lord, by clearing away every fallacy, and exhibiting to the view of plain Christians the real nature of those ceremonies, and how falsely they have hitherto been considered as sacraments. Here, in the first place, I wish to declare to all believers, that I am not induced to enter on this controversy respecting the term, by the least desire of contention, but that I am urged by important reasons to resist the abuse of it. I am aware that Christians have power over names as well as things, and may therefore apply words to things at their own pleasure, provided they retain a pious meaning, even though there be some impropriety of expression. All this I admit, though it would be better for words to be subject to things, than for things to be subject to words. The case of the term sacrament, however, is different. For those who maintain seven sacraments, give them all the same definition—that they are visible forms of invisible grace; they make them all alike vessels of the Holy Spirit, instruments of communicating righteousness, causes of obtaining grace. And the Master of the Sentences, Lombard, denies that the sacraments of the Mosaic law are properly designated by this appellation; because they did not communicate that which they prefigured. Is it to be endured, that those symbols, which the Lord consecrated with his own mouth, and which he adorned with excellent promises, should not be acknowledged as sacraments; and, at the same time, that this honour should be transferred to those rites which are merely inventions of men, or, at least, are observed without any express command of God? Either, therefore, let them change their definition, or abstain from this abuse of the term, which afterwards generates false and absurd opinions. Extreme unction, they say, is a figure and cause of invisible grace, because it is a sacrament. If we ought by no means to admit their inference from the term, it certainly behoves us to lose no time in resisting their application of the term itself, that we may not be chargeable with giving any occasion to such an error. Again: to prove that ceremony to be a sacrament, they allege this reason—that it consists of the external sign and the word of God. If we find neither command nor promise respecting it, can we do otherwise than oppose it?
II. Now, it appears that we are not debating about the word, but raising a necessary and useful controversy respecting the thing itself. We must strenuously maintain, therefore, what we have already established by irrefragable argument that the power to institute sacraments belongs to God alone; for a sacrament ought to exhibit the certain promise of God, for the assurance and consolation of the consciences of believers; which could never receive such assurance and consolation from man. A sacrament ought to be a testimony to us of the good-will of God towards us—a testimony which no man or angel can ever give, as none has been “his counsellor.” It is he alone, therefore, who, with legitimate authority, testifies to us concerning himself by means of his word. A sacrament is a seal by which the testament or promise of God is sealed. But it could not be sealed by corporeal things and the elements of this world, unless they were marked out and appointed for this purpose by the power of God. Therefore man cannot institute a sacrament; because it is not in human power to cause such great and Divine mysteries to be concealed under such mean symbols. “The word of God must precede,” as is excellently remarked by Augustine, “in order to make a sacrament to be a sacrament.” Moreover, if we would avoid falling into many absurdities, it is requisite to preserve some distinction between a sacrament and other ceremonies. The apostles prayed on bended knees; shall we, therefore, never kneel without making it a sacrament? The early Christians are said to have turned their faces towards the east when they prayed; shall looking towards the east, then, be regarded as a sacrament? Paul says, “I will that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands,”[[1366]] and the prayers of the saints appear to have been often made with uplifted hands; shall elevation of hands also be made a sacrament? On this principle all the gestures of the saints would become sacraments. I would not insist on these things, however, if they were not connected with those greater inconveniences.
III. If they wish to press us with the authority of the ancient Church, I assert that this is a groundless pretence. For the number of seven sacraments can nowhere be found in the ecclesiastical writers, nor is it clear when it was introduced. I grant, indeed, that the fathers sometimes make too free a use of the word sacrament; but they use it indifferently to signify all ceremonies and external rites, and all exercises of piety. But, when they speak of those signs which we ought to regard as testimonies of the grace of God, they are content with these two, baptism and the eucharist. That this may not be supposed to be a false allegation, I shall here cite a few testimonies from Augustine. To Januarius he says, “First, I wish you to know what is the principal point of this controversy—that our Lord Jesus Christ, as he says in the gospel, has laid upon us an easy yoke and a light burden. And, therefore, he has linked together the society of the Christian Church by sacraments, very few in number, most easy to observe, and excellent in signification. Such are baptism, consecrated in the name of the Trinity, and the communion of the body and blood of the Lord, and if there be any other enjoined in the canonical Scriptures.” Again, in his treatise On the Christian Doctrine: “Since the resurrection of our Lord, our Lord himself, and the practice of his apostles, instead of many signs, have given us few, and those most easy in performance, most excellent in signification, and most pure in observance; such are baptism, and the celebration of the body and blood of the Lord.” Why does he make no mention here of the sacred or septenary number? Is it probable that he would have omitted it, if it had then been instituted in the Church; especially as, in other cases, he was more curious in the observation of numbers than was at all necessary? And, when he names baptism and the Lord’s supper, and is silent respecting any others, does he not sufficiently indicate, that these two mysteries possess superior and peculiar dignity, and that all other ceremonies occupy an inferior station? Wherefore I affirm that these advocates for seven sacraments are not only unsupported by the word of the Lord, but also by the consent of the ancient Church, however they may boast of such consent. Let us now proceed to the particular ceremonies.