O the pity of it! Under this captivity, they take every precaution that no layman should hear these words of Christ, as if they were too sacred to be delivered to the common people. So mad are we[57] priests that we arrogantly claim that the so-called words of consecration may be said by ourselves alone, as secret words, yet so that they do not profit even us, or we too fail to regard them as promises or as a testament, for the strengthening of faith. Instead of believing them, we reverence them with I know not what superstitious and godless fancies. This misery of ours, what is it but a device of Satan to remove every trace of the mass out of the Church? although he is meanwhile at work filing every nook and corner on earth with masses, that is, abuses and mockeries of God's testament, and burdening the world more and more heavily with grievous sins of idolatry, to its deeper condemnation. For what worse idolatry can there be than to abuse God's promises with perverse opinions and to neglect or extinguish faith in them?
For God does not deal, nor has He ever dealt, with man otherwise than through a word of promise, as I have said[58]; again, we cannot deal with God otherwise than through faith in the word of His promise. He does not desire works, nor has He need of them; we deal with men and with ourselves on the basis of works. But He has need of this,—that we deem Him true to His promises, wait patiently for Him, and thus worship Him with faith, hope and love. Thus He obtains His glory among us, since it is not of ourselves who run, but of Him who showeth mercy [Ps. 115:1], promiseth and giveth, that we have and hold every blessing [Rom. 9:16]. That is the true worship and service of God which we must perform in the mass. But if the words of promise are not proclaimed, what exercise of faith can there be? And without faith, who can have hope or love? Without faith, hope and love, what service can there be? There is no doubt, therefore, that in our day all priests and monks, together with all their bishops and superiors, are idolaters and in a most perilous state, by reason of this ignorance, abuse and mockery of the mass, or sacrament, or testament of God.
For any one can easily see that these two—the promise and faith—must go together. For without the promise there is nothing to believe, while without faith the promise, remains without effect; for it is established and fulfilled through faith. From this every one will readily gather that the mass, which is nothing else than the promise, is approached and observed only in this faith, without which whatever prayers, preparations, works, signs of the cross, or genuflections are brought to it, are incitements to impiety rather than exercises of piety; for they who come thus prepared are wont to imagine themselves on that account justly entitled to approach the altar, when in reality they are less prepared than at any other time and in any other work, by reason of the unbelief which they bring with them. How many priests will you find every day offering the sacrifice of the mass, who accuse themselves of a horrible crime if they—wretched men!—commit a trifling, blunder, such as putting on the wrong robe or forgetting to wash their hands or stumbling over their prayers; but that they neither regard nor believe the mass itself, namely, the divine promise—this causes them not the slightest qualms of conscience. O worthless religion of this our age, the most godless and thankless of all ages!
Hence the only worthy preparation and proper use of the mass is faith in the mass, that is to say, in the divine promise. Whoever, therefore, is minded to approach the altar and to receive the sacrament, let him beware of appearing empty before the Lord God [Ex. 23:15; 34:20]. But he will appear empty unless he has faith in the mass, or this new testament. What godless work that he could commit would be a more grievous crime against the truth of God, than this unbelief of his, by which, as much as in him lies, he convicts God of being a liar and a maker of empty promises? The safest course, therefore, will be to go to mass in the same spirit in which you would go to hear any other promise of God; that is, not to be ready to perform and bring many works, but to believe and receive all that is there promised, or proclaimed by the priest as having been promised to you. If you do not go in this spirit, beware of going at all; you will surely go to your condemnation.
I was right then in saying[59] that the whole power of the mass consists in the words of Christ, in which He testifies that the remission of sins is bestowed on all those who believe that His body is given and His blood shed for them. For this reason nothing is more important for those who go to hear mass than diligently and in full faith to ponder these words. Unless they do this, all else that they do is in vain.
[Sidenote: The External Sign, which is the Sacrament]
But while the mass is the word of Christ, it is also true that God is wont to add to well-nigh every promise of His a certain sign as a mark or memorial of His promise, so that we may thereby the more faithfully hold to His promise and be the more forcibly admonished by it. Thus, to his promise to Noah that He would not again destroy the world by a flood, He added His bow in the clouds, to show that He would be mindful of His covenant [Gen. 9:13]. And after promising Abraham the inheritance in his seed, He gave him the sign of circumcision as the seal of his righteousness by faith. Thus, to Gideon He granted the sign of the dry and the wet fleece, to confirm His promise of victory over the Midianites [Judges 6:36 ff.]. And to Ahaz He offered a sign through Isaiah concerning his victory over the kings of Syria and Samaria, to strengthen his faith in the promise [Isa. 7:10 ff.]. And many such signs of the promises of God do we find in the Scriptures.
Thus also to the mass, that crown of all His promises. He adds His body and blood in the bread and wine, as a memorial sign of this great promise; as He says, "This do in remembrance of me." [1 Cor. 11:24] Even so in baptism He adds to the words of the promise, the sign of immersion in water. We learn from this that in every promise of God two things are presented to us—the word and the sign—so that we are to understand the word to be the testament, but the sign to be the sacrament. Thus, in the mass, the word of Christ is the testament, and the bread and wine are the sacrament. And as there is greater power in the word than in the sign, so there is greater power in the testament than in the sacrament; for a man can have and use the word, or testament, apart from the sign, or sacrament. "Believe," says Augustine, "and thou hast eaten."[60] But what does one believe save the word of promise? Therefore I can hold mass every day, yea, every hour, for I can set the words of Christ before me, and with them refresh and strengthen my faith, as often as I choose. That is a truly spiritual eating and drinking.[61]
Here you may see what great things our theologians of the Sentences[62] have produced. That which is the principal and chief thing, namely, the testament and word of promise, is not treated by one of them; thus they have obliterated faith and the whole power of the mass. But the second part of the mass,—the sign, or sacrament,[63]—this alone do they discuss, yet in such a manner that here too they teach not faith but their preparations and opera operata, participations and fruits[64], as though these were the mass, until they have fallen to babbling of transubstantiation and endless other metaphysical quibbles, and have destroyed the proper understanding and use of both sacrament and testament, altogether abolished faith, and caused Christ's people to forget their God, as the prophet says, days without number [Jer. 2:32]. But do you let the others tell over the manifold fruits of hearing mass, and turn hither your mind, and say and believe with the prophet, that God here prepares a table before you, against all those that afflict you, at which your soul may eat and grow fat [Ps. 23:5]. But your faith is fed only with the word of divine promise, for "not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." [Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4] Hence, in the mass you must above all things pay closest heed to the word of promise, as to your rich banquet, green pasture, and sacred refreshment; you must esteem this word higher than all else, trust in it above all things, and cling firmly to it even through the midst of death and all sins. By thus doing you will attain not merely to those tiny drops and crumbs of "fruits of the mass," which some have superstitiously imagined, but to the very fountainhead of life, which is faith in the word, from which every blessing flows; as it is said in John iv: "He that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" [John 7:38]; and again: "He that shall drink of the water that I will give him, it shall become in him a fountain of living water, springing up into life everlasting." [John 4:14][65]
Now there are two things that commonly tempt us to lose the fruits of the mass: first, the fact that we are sinners and unworthy of such great things because of our exceeding vileness; and, secondly, the act that, even if we were worthy, these things are so high that our faint-hearted nature dare not aspire to them or ever hope to attain to them. For to have God for our Father, to be His sons and heirs of all His goods—these are the great blessings that come to us through the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. And who that regarded them aright must not rather stand aghast before them than desire to possess them? Against this twofold faintness of ours we must lay hold on the word of Christ and fix our gaze on it much more firmly than on those thoughts of our weakness. For "great are the works of the Lord [Ps. 111:2]; wrought out according to all His wills, who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." [Eph. 3:20] If they did not surpass our worthiness, our grasp and all our thoughts, they would not be divine. Thus Christ also encourages us when He says: "Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom." [Luke 17:32] For it is just this overflowing goodness of the incomprehensible God, lavished upon us through Christ, that moves us to love Him again with our whole heart above all things, to be drawn to Him with all confidence, to despise all things else, and be ready to suffer all things for Him; wherefore this sacrament is well styled "a fount of love."