We are thus reduced to interpret the form scripturally; and we find that it has nothing in it peculiar to priests or elders, because our Saviour first addressed it to others, as well as to ten of the Apostles (Luke xxiv. 33, 36 = John xx. 24), but not to S. Thomas. Our ordaining Bishop, in repeating it, reminds the candidate priest of his ministry of reconciliation and condemnation, entrusted both generally to him, as to every other member, and likewise specially as to every other minister of the Church. But not entrusted to him as to a mediating priest, since none such, so far as we are told, were present before Christ, when first He spoke the words. Your “sacrifice by means of a priest” (p. 53) is unknown to S. Paul, who says, of Jesus only, “by Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually” (Heb. xiii. 15). And the privilege of forgiveness, which S. Paul exercised, he delegated, not to the priests of the Church of Corinth, but to the whole people (2 Cor. ii. 10). Even the Decretals allow that in necessity Christian lay people may both hear confessions and absolve. A layman, too, or a woman, may baptize; surely not without remission of sins, as Bishop Jewell remarks.
You ask (p. 89), what our Prayer-book means by “benefit of absolution,” if there be no power to absolve vested in the priest? Why do you not, in this case, relinquish “priest,” and adhere to the Prayer-book expression, “minister of God’s Word,” as it appears in the passage to which you refer? This is not a question of power in laying on a drastic absolvo te, but of skill in the use and application of God’s Word. Even as the Pharisees used the word to bind heavy burdens on men, and to unbind the fifth commandment; or as our Lord used it to unbind the law of the Sabbath and bind the law of murder; so the Christian minister shows his might, like Apollos, in the Scriptures.
Nor can you bind and loose consciences with anything less tenacious than Scripture, accurately declared and reasonably applied. All theological language, except that of Scripture, breaks down under the tension of strict use. Take, for instance, your own observation (p. 107), “the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful, that is, by the baptized Christian people; for so the word is always used, in strict theological language.” Yet this strict language, on which you rely, fails whenever the baptized happen to be void of a lively faith, in which case “they are in no wise partakers of Christ” (Article XXIX). Take, again, your quotation of “the brief but weighty saying of Jerome, Ecclesia non est, quæ non habet Sacerdotes” (p. 111); which is only true when reduced to S. Peter’s standard (1 Peter ii. 9), “ye are a royal priesthood,” or the “kingdom of priests,” of the Hebrew formula (Ex. xix. 16), exactly as interpreted by the Septuagint. In any other sense, Jerome’s dogma is liable to endless exceptions, whenever all the claims of the Church come to be conscientiously weighed.
The “Power of the Keys” is another slippery phrase, which you introduce (p. 114) rather in the way of suggestion than of argument. It means much in theological, and little in Scriptural language. In the latter, I read of the keys being given to S. Peter; he used them, and what he did with them afterwards I do not find; but the door which he unlocked to the Jews (Acts ii. 14) and Gentiles (Acts x.) has stood open ever since.
Hickes, the non-juring bishop of Thetford, was not perhaps the worse theologian for being a schismatical intruder into the diocese of Norwich; but to quote him page after page, as you have done (pp. 102, 103), in your orthodox Kensington pulpit too (pp. 109, 110, 121), was a grand experiment upon the historical predilections of your people, and a dubious addition to the authorities in support of your view.
We nowhere read in Scripture, though you appear to inform us that it was the fact (pp. 12, 86), that Jesus appeared to the Eleven between the resurrection and his breathing on the disciples. Though it is always worth while to be accurate, I should be far from making a man an offender for a word, did not your error, though minute, indicate a certain want of strength in the Scriptures. If the divine who said rúbricæ for rubrícæ, in the Jerusalem Chamber, could not be trusted to make a copy of verses in praise of Convocation, far less should an inaccurate student of Scripture venture on pulpit statements of Church doctrine. Strict, constant, indefatigable reference to those old Fathers, Matthew and Mark, Peter and John, James and Paul, is the only means of keeping the younger Fathers right, and of testing the miscellaneous coinage of terms and doctrines which have passed current from their day to ours. Such coinage as Theotókos, for instance, which appears in the fine argument of your closing Sermon (p. 140), never rings so truly as the words which have met and satisfied the ear of an inspired writer. The term may cover good doctrine, and it may escape the almost profane triviality of its Latin equivalent, Deipara, as well as the unreasoning coarseness of the English “Mother of God:” but, take it which way you will, it is a poor ambiguous piece of Greek, which must mean one thing in a Christian pulpit, and another on Mount Olympus, had Homer condescended to introduce it there.
Is it not refreshing to pass from the discussion into which you venture with Calvin, who fortunately is not alive to answer for himself, on the causes of grace (p. 118); or, again, your thesis on the causes of salvation (p. 153), wherein you do not mention, what the Schoolmen tell us, that most things have five kinds of causes; and to range at large in the simplicity of the Scriptures, which teach us that the cause of salvation is not only Jesus, His life, His love, His work, His blood; but also faith (Eph. ii. 8), hope (Rom. viii. 24), grace (Eph. ii. 5), the bath of regeneration (Tit. iii. 5), the engrafted Word (James i. 21), the gospel minister (Rom. xi. 14), and student (1 Tim. 16); and then, the hearer (Phil. ii. 12), his prayers (Phil. i. 19), and penitence (2 Cor. vii. 10); cause heaped upon cause with creative profusion, until we begin to see that your proposal of priestly mediation, in the Eucharistic way, as another cause of salvation, however kindly meant, is like the offer of a church candle in broad day.
To conclude. I have found fault with your Sacrifice, Altar, and Priest; but I think I can answer for it that you will find no fault with mine. The Christian Sacrifice was a sin-offering, once made eighteen centuries ago, without the gate of Jerusalem. It has often since been remembered, but never repeated. The Altar was of earth, the vast sin-burdened wreck of this fallen world, so well beloved of God, which drank up the blood. The Priest is Jesus; but He has made no sacrifice since, nor used an earthly altar.
So much for the doctrine. I will make you a free gift of all the poetry which attaches to the words Sacrifice, and Altar, and Priest, in the varied play of religious imagination and allegorical induction. But we cannot build anything so serious as the way of our acceptance with God, or the character of our ministry in the Church, upon such frail foundations as these. And if we will but avoid the inconvenient confusion of sacrificial and Eucharistic terms, and adhere to the accurate phraseology of Scripture, as in a great measure our Liturgy does, we shall clear our thoughts, and expedite our conclusions, upon the important points to which you have ably directed attention.
“For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.”—Malachi II. 7.