Eight Sermons on the Priesthood, Altar, and Sacrifice

by Mayow Wynell Mayow

[95c] Ibid. xxviii. 20.

[95d] Ps. cxxii. 6.

[97] Sermon III.

[101] Carter on the Priesthood, p. 61.

[102] Some attempts have been lately made to throw doubt upon the authenticity of the copies of the ancient liturgies which have come down to us, as not certainly uninterpolated in places in later times. But whether there may be any ground at all for such suspicion or not, it is evident that the inferences drawn from the liturgies, both in this passage and in a former sermon, will not be affected. For the argument, as used in these sermons, is not dependent upon a phrase or a sentence here or there, which, it may be alleged, is open to question, but is based upon doctrine interwoven with their whole system, and pervading their whole structure, and is what moreover is borne witness to, as thus pervading them, by the whole mass of contemporary Christian writing. The liturgies, therefore, must not merely have been interpolated in places, but almost entirely re-written in another sense, and the great bulk of the writings of the Fathers forged to agree with this change, if the argument above is to be shaken by the question raised concerning them.

I find a passage in Hickes’s Treatise, “The Christian Priesthood Asserted,” which, though written more than a hundred and sixty years before Mr. Carter’s book, seems almost as if it were a comment upon the passage just cited, and the application which I have made of it. He says, “I believe no man in the world that was of any religion where sacrifice was used, and that by chance should see the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist administered among Christians, as it was administered in the primitive times, or as it is administered according to the order and usage of the Church of England, but would take the bread and wine for an offering or sacrifice, and the whole action for a sacrificial ministration; and the eating and drinking of the holy elements for a sacrificial entertainment of the congregation at the table of their God. To see bread and wine . . . so solemnly brought to the table, and then . . . brought by the deacon, in manner of an offering to the liturg or minister, which he also taking in his hands as an offering, sets them with all reverence on the table; and then, after solemn prayers of oblation and consecration, to see him take up the bread, and say, in a most solemn manner, ‘This is My Body,’ &c., and then the cup, saying as solemnly, ‘This is My Blood,’ &c., and then to hear him with all the powers of his soul offer up praises, and glory, and thanksgiving, and prayers to God the Father of all things, through the Name of His Son, and Holy Spirit, which they beseech Him to send down upon that bread and cup, and the people with the greatest harmony and acclamation saying aloud, ‘Amen:’ after which also, to see the liturg, first eat of the bread and drink of the cup, and then the deacon to carry about the blessed bread and wine to be eaten and drunk by the people, as in a sacrificial feast; and, lastly, to see and hear all concluded with psalms and hymns of praise, and prayers of intercession to God with the highest pomp-like celebrity of words; I say, to see and hear all this would make an uninitiated heathen conclude that the bread and wine were an offering, the whole Eucharistic action a sacrificial mystery, the eating and drinking the sanctified elements a sacrificial banquet, and the liturg who administered a priest.”—Hickes’s “Priesthood Asserted,” Library of Anglo.-Cath. Theol., Oxford, vol. ii. p. 105–7.

[103] The scantiness of statements in the Articles, as to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, may illustrate this. Had it been possible to foresee the boldness of unbelief which these days have brought to light on this subject, or had our Reformers been now drawing up the Articles, we may feel very certain they would not have been content to leave that matter as it there stands. But they were engaged with practical errors of their own day, and not in stating all dogmatic truth upon other points. Many things were so fully assumed to be true as to need no assertion of their truth.

[104] 1 Cor. xi. 26.

[106] Heb. vii. 25.

[107] Mede’s “Christian Sacrifice,” lib. ii. cap. 4, quoted in Carter, p. 65.