Thus, even such have received the priesthood, and its indelible impress, the χαρακτὴρ, (as it is theologically termed,) which cannot be destroyed in them by any act or will of theirs. Thus, their ministration at the altar (so long as it be according to the rule and order of the Church of England) is the offering a valid sacrifice, and their distribution of the consecrated elements is the giving to be “verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful, the Body and Blood of Christ.” However, therefore, we may mourn for them, however we may feel in addition to sorrow a godly shame on their account, yet we need not fear that the flock is deprived of the needful food, nor defrauded of the blessed intercession of the Lamb, pleading for His people at the right hand of God, as often as the oblation is made, and the dread and blessed sacrifice is (even thus) offered up.
As to such themselves (our second anxious question) what shall we say? I will say nothing of my own mind or thought, but rather adduce a weighty passage which I have found upon the matter in the work of the learned Dr. Hickes, whom I have mentioned more than once, as having so largely treated on our present subject. Even in his day, more than a hundred-and-fifty years ago, these deniers of the grace given them, were not unknown; and he thus speaks of them, going, you will observe, not so much as I have done here, into the question of the effect of their misbelief upon their ministrations to their flocks, but more particularly into its effect upon themselves. “I desire,” he says, “your late writer,” (the author whom, in his dissertation, he was answering,) “and such others as he, who have been led into their errors by these and other writers since the Reformation,” (Cudworth he means more particularly, and the novel theory propounded by him,) “to consider that, if the Holy Eucharist be a sacrifice, as the Catholic Church believed in all ages before that time, how far the defect of administering it only as a sacrament may affect the holy office and the administration of it; and whether the Communion administered by a priest, who neither believes himself to be such, nor the Sacrament to be an oblation or sacrifice, can be a Communion in or with the Catholic Church? I say, I leave it to themselves to consider these things, and I think they deserve their consideration, and hope they will seriously and impartially ruminate upon them, lest they should not ‘rightly and duly administer that Holy Sacrament.’ The best of the Jewish writers tells us” (i.e. Maimonides), “that it was a profanation of a sacrifice, if the priest thought, when he offered up one sacrifice, that it was another; as if, when he offered a burnt-offering, he thought it was a peace-offering; or if, when he offered a peace-offering, he thought it was a burnt-offering. Whether that obliquity of thought, when it happened, had such an effect or no, I shall not now enquire; but this I dare say, if a Jewish priest, who did not believe himself to be a proper priest, nor the Jewish altar a proper altar, nor the sacrifices of the Law true and proper sacrifices, had presumed to offer while he was in this unhappy error, that he had profaned the sacrifice, so far as he was concerned in it, and not offered it up ὁσίως καὶ ἀμέμπτως, (holily and unblameably,) according to the will of God, though according to all the appointed rites, nor in unity and conjunction with the Jewish Church. For the Jewish Church would not have suffered such priests, if known, to minister among the sons of Aaron and Zadoc; nor would the ancient Catholic Church have endured bishops and presbyters without censure, who durst have taught that the Christian ministry was not a proper priesthood, the Holy Eucharist, not a proper sacrifice, or that Christian ministers were not proper priests.” [123a]
Oh, my brethren, for those who may have fallen into such error (not knowing what they do), let us pray, in all tenderness and charity, that they may be forgiven and enlightened; and for us all, priests and people alike, let us make our petition that we may never fall into it; whilst, as to whatever truth or privilege or blessing God has shewn or given to us, let us “not be high-minded, but fear,” [123b] not being puffed up because of our advantages, but all the more careful, because we confess we have them, diligently to use them.
And this brings us to the great practical question to which this whole enquiry leads. “We have an altar.” Do we, as we ought, use and profit by our great privilege? Do we indeed, individually and one by one, value the altar, use the altar, bring our gift to the altar, join in the services of the altar, become partakers of the altar, and thereby have fellowship with the Lord?
Such questions, seriously considered, may furnish us with a most important test as to our true state, particularly whether we believe the doctrine, and whether we so live day by day as to be meet to take our place and part in the altar worship. Let me say a few words on these points before I conclude.
First, do we really believe the doctrine? If we do, surely we must frequent the sacrifice. We must see in the altar service the highest act of our devotion. We must perceive that here is the crown and completion of all other worship, the sum and substance of our praises and thanksgivings, the prevailing mode of petition for ourselves and of intercession for others, the greatest and highest means of applying to our individual wants and individual sins the mercies of God through the ever-availing sacrifice of Christ. Such persuasion of their dignity and power has ever pervaded those who have believed in a priesthood, an altar, and a sacrifice. Heathen testimony witnesses to this, even amidst all the corruption and debasement of idol worship. The solemn, gorgeous, awful sacrifice has ever been the central act of all devotion, that to which all the people congregated, and to which, if they had any religion, they delighted to be called. We cannot here, and we need not, go into the proofs of this from the poets or historians of antiquity. We hardly need adduce any proofs further than we have done already from Holy Scripture to it. We may, however, just recall the manner of the sacrifice offered by Samuel previous to the anointing of Saul to be king over Israel, when all the people would not eat until the Prophet came, “because he doth bless the sacrifice.” [125a] And the majesty of the great feast and sacrifice at the dedication of Solomon’s temple; [125b] and again, the solemn renewal of the covenant and worship of God by Josiah, King of Judah, when he held the feast of the Passover unto the Lord, such as had not been “from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor of the kings of Judah.” [125c] Let us remember, too, that the great Paschal sacrifice and feast, itself the type of the true Lamb of God, was ordained to be annually kept under the earlier dispensation, and was assuredly so great and central a scene and act of Jewish devotion that to it the whole nation was called, and called so stringently that he who observed it not was to be cut off from the people. [125d] What an intimation that he who keeps not its far greater antitype, the Christian Passover in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and feast, is cutting himself off from the people of God under the new and better covenant! Do we, then, all of us thus frequent and delight in the Christian altar? and if not, why not? Do we suppose that holiness of life, less than that which may allow us to come worthily to the Holy Eucharist, will be sufficient to let us come to heaven? Do we think that, though we are without the marriage garment which we feel is needful for us to go to the Supper of the Lord on earth, we can enter without it, to sit down at the great marriage of the Lamb in the courts of heaven? Can we believe that a heart less devoted to God, and a love and obedience less perfect toward Christ than will permit us to join in the highest act of thanksgiving in this world, will allow us to join in the everlasting Hosannas of the world to come? Or do we imagine that such a service as that of the Christian altar is not intended for us all, but is to be restricted to a certain few out of the whole body of the baptized? Surely, however widely such may seem to be the practical belief (rather, I should say, unbelief) of our day, there is no support for any such notion in either the Holy Scripture, or the faith and usage of the Church Catholic, or in the principles of the Reformation. Not only is the whole teaching of the Bible, of the primitive Church, and of our Articles, Canons, and Catechism against any such view, but our very Eucharistic Office itself speaks plainly against it also. Not to mention more direct proofs in other ways, it is a great mistake to suppose that office to design any division in its midst where ordinary Christians have licence to depart, and a few select or chosen are bidden to remain. The not unfrequent custom of using a collect and benediction after the sermon may perhaps, however well intended, have fostered an error here. This may seem to make an authorized close to the service at that point, as if one service were now ended and another were to begin. It has, therefore, enabled people the more easily to forget that we are then in the middle of the Office for Holy Communion, whilst the usage itself (as well as the custom of saying a collect and the Lord’s Prayer before the sermon) is certainly without authority, and rather against than according to the mind of our Church; and although we may perhaps not unreasonably, to avoid confusion, make a pause whilst children and those who may be unable, at any particular time, to remain for the celebration may leave, we are not to think that a certain barrenness or awkwardness felt by such as then depart is without its value in instruction. If they who thus habitually absent themselves from the sacrifice and feast of the altar, may be led to reflect from this very feeling that the Church herself, by the gentle remonstrance of the structure of her service, reminds them that they are leaving before the service in which they are engaged is ended, this may surely give a wholesome lesson. Oh, if any one even may be thus led to think, Why do I depart? why need I go away? why do I refuse to join in the Christian sacrifice, the highest act of thanksgiving and praise? why do I turn my back upon my Saviour, present to pardon, to feed, and to save me?—if any feel this, until meditating upon the love and the command of Christ, he resolves, instead of departing, to come with his gift to the altar, and taste and see how gracious the Lord is, shall he not find reason to bless and praise God that He thus brings him to himself, and thankfully acknowledge the wisdom of our Church, which has not appointed even the semblance of a finished service in the middle of her holy Eucharistic Office?
The opposite conduct to that of those who depart without communicating, I mean that of such as remain without communicating, has, as we know, been the subject of no small controversy in the present day. I do not desire here to enter into that dispute, but just so much I would observe: first, that if any desire to remain, having perhaps already communicated at an earlier service, or in a serious anxious wish to learn the will of God better as to the Christian sacrifice, with a view to the becoming a partaker of it; or, if any desire to join so far in it as to unite his heart and voice with those who offer it, being a communicant, though he may not design on that occasion to communicate, I do not conceive that the priest would have the wish, or if he had, would have any authority, to bid him depart. Whilst, nevertheless, I deem it needful to observe, secondly, that I see no warrant to think they are in anything but a dangerous error who imagine (if, indeed, any do so) that the presence of any one as a gazer upon, or witness of, the holy mysteries, is in any way equivalent to communicating. I do not see how such presence of one looking on, even joining in words of praise, but habitually and constantly doing no more; of one who is not a communicant, nor seeking to become a communicant; of one who does not eat of the sacrifice though present, perhaps often, at the offering of it, can be an act of worship or adoration well-pleasing to Almighty God; can, in any way, make up for his lack of understanding, or preparation, or obedience in that he does not “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood,” without which, our Lord Himself has told us, we have “no life in us.” [129] To be present in order to learn, and to learn in order to obey, we may indeed hope will be an acceptable service, so far as it goes; but to gaze constantly without obeying ever, and then to think nevertheless that we “are partakers of the altar,” seems to me nothing less than a dangerous self-deceit, and therefore certainly a practice not to be encouraged.
I sum up our remarks then, brethren, in this conclusion, that we should all of us, with a depth of feeling beyond our words to express it, thank our merciful God for His tender care and providence over us in this our Church of England. He has given us the treasure of the priesthood, though in earthen vessels, handed down from His very Apostles themselves by the laying on of hands, even according to the powers of their own commission from Christ Himself. He has shewed us the witness to the doctrine of sacrifice, as exhibited in the world from Adam to Christ. He has confirmed the doctrine and the usage of the sacrifice and altar in the Christian Church by His holy Word in the New Testament, and by the records preserved to us of the early Church, telling us unmistakeably how the Church, from the Apostles’ time downward, understood the Scriptures in this respect. He has let us know the mind of the Church at large to have been one upon the doctrine for nearly sixteen hundred years; and, blessed be His name, He “so guided and governed the minds” of those in authority among us at the momentous period of our Reformation, and in all revisions since, that our Church has ever maintained, and does maintain, the doctrine of the Church Universal on the deep and mysterious, but, at the same time, most important practical subject of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice. Thus, in His mercy, our Church has made no “new thing,” nor departed from “the old paths.” She is one with the Church of God in all times in this matter, and we need have no fears but that if we come, one by one “with true penitent hearts and lively faith,” to the altar of God and the table of the Lord among us, we may and do eat of the sacrifice, are partakers of the altar, and have fellowship with the Lord; that we have indeed preserved to us, in spite of the unbelief among us, and the strife of tongues around us, all that true and holy thing which the Church has ever had as Christ’s own appointed means for the pardon of our sins and the sustainment of our spiritual life, by the which we, with His “whole Church militant here on earth,” are allowed to offer up the never-ceasing, unbloody, commemorative, propitiatory sacrifice which the Church has ever offered, and by which she pleads before the throne of God the power of the one great sacrifice upon the cross for the pardon of sin, yea, even procures the pleading thereof for our individual sins and transgressions by the Son of God Himself, our “High Priest set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens,” [131a] who “ever liveth to make intercession for us;” so that we thus, in common with the whole Church of God, fulfil the Prophet’s word, “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.” [131b]
And if God has been thus gracious to us in all straits and perils in time past, it would surely be a grievous want of faith not to put our trust in Him for the time to come. Though we know that for sin persisted in the candlestick of a church may be removed, yet we will hope confidingly that where He has preserved His truth so long He will still watch over it and keep it; where, too, in the ordering of His providence, so great a door seems set open before us; where, by our power and extended empire, our vast colonial possessions and daily increasing colonial Church, (all His own gift,) we seem fitted to be the means of His “way being known upon earth, His saving health among all nations,” He will still cause the light of His countenance to shine upon us; where, again, thousands, as we verily believe, come before Him daily in humility, penitence, and prayer, (like Daniel, interceding for his country and his people,) “crying mightily unto Him” for support in all dangers, and aid in all adversities; I say, we will hope indeed that He “will hear their cry and will help them.” Even in the day of thick darkness He can cause that “at evening time it shall be light.” [132] Whatever be our trial we need not, on that account, deem ourselves forsaken. Nay, unless we see it plainly written that for our sins He has turned His face wholly from us, we will not doubt, in all faith though in all humility, that He will allow us to hand on to our children’s children, and to the “generations which are yet for to come,” the same good deposit which we have ourselves received. If ever we seem to be disheartened or ready to faint by the way, we will remember on whose word we rely and on whose arm we lean; we will call to mind His wonders of old time; we will ever with all faith and hopeful trust, knowing how with Him “all things are possible,” make the prayer of the Psalmist continually our own, saying, “Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts: shew the light of Thy countenance, and we shall be whole.” [133]