I admit the Lord's Supper to be the center of true worship. I admit, and I adore such ineffable goodness, that Christ leads the praises of gathered spiritual worshippers: "In the midst of the church," we read, "will I sing praise unto thee." But as these essayists, have used neglected truths in other cases to pervert the minds of the simple, of those not guarded by the Word, so they have done here.
But we are speaking of worship, and to know what worship is, one must be a true worshipper; and in this case they have, from the very outset of their pretentious teaching, made statements which prove them wholly ignorant of what true worship is; and I must add that throughout the article there is that ignorance of Scripture and Scriptural truth which characterizes the school. I am not disposed to deny the existence of piety in many of those brought under the influence of these views.
Where redemption is not known and imagination is strong, piety naturally runs into ordinances and what are called mysteries, for ordinances are the religion of the flesh, and where redemption is not known, man, as to the state of his mind, must religiously be in the flesh.
There is, and can be, no walking in the light as God is in the light, for redemption must be experimentally known for that; nor the happy, childlike yet adoring confidence and liberty which cries for itself "Abba, Father;" and as the soul cannot be in liberty with God (a liberty which is exercised in adoration, for the nearer we are to God the more we adore His greatness, and have done with ourselves), it brings God by imagination, not faith, in an awful way near to us in our actual state, and we adore the image formed by our own minds, and are subject to ordinances, have a morbid delight in mysteries, "tremendous mysteries," "transcendant mysteries." I do not say there, is no piety in the article we are occupied with, but there is great pretension to spirituality:
"We speak of truths profoundly spiritual, and needing to be spiritually discerned, though liable, alas! like other high spiritual truths, to be unbelievingly rejected by unspiritual minds, or, if unspiritually embraced, to be perverted" (p.316).
Our essayist of course discerns spiritually these profoundly spiritual truths, neither rejects them as having an unspiritual mind, nor perverts them by embracing them unspiritually. His is a spiritual mind, embracing spiritually high spiritual truths, truths profoundly spiritual. Christ's acts are "embraced in all simplicity of devout affection." This good opinion of self is accompanied by slight and sarcasm cast on the authorities who are over them, the Anglican prelates.
"These would-be iron rulers, whose lightest word would now be obeyed with alacrity, did they know how to show themselves true 'Fathers in God,' would then (i.e., if they cause a schism by 'a mere cold, unsympathetic repression ') (p. 319), have time to reflect in the dull peace of the solitude they had made and might haply come at last to the conviction that, after all, they had ‘fought against God,' and with the usual result—'their own confusion'" (p. 319).
So previously, " Little do some of our Fathers in God seem to reek of the anguish, not unmixed with indignation, caused to faithful souls by the shallow denials of unpopular truths into which they allow themselves to be drawn"? This incessant threatening of ecclesiastical authorities, if they do not acquiesce in and further the movement, is characteristic of the party. Mr. Newman used the same unholy means, and it is now the common weapon to overawe those whom these high-worded men profess to obey, and force them to silence, at least while they carry on their schemes. Do not resist us, they say, or we will make a split in the church.
The utterly unchristian character of such a course is too evident to need comment. But let us see what these, if we are to believe their own account of themselves, profoundly spiritual men, these discoverers of high spiritual truths, have to say for themselves and their doctrine when soberly weighed in the light of God's Word to which they themselves appeal.
Let us do them justice. They declare that there is no repetition or reiteration of the sacrifice of Christ, but that Christ is always offering on high His one sacrifice, and that the ordained priest on earth is doing the same thing on earth, presenting the one unrepeated sacrifice constantly on the altar to God.
"And what does Christ now offer as our Ever-living Priest in the Heavenly Temple? What but His own most precious Body and Blood, the one saving Victim to make reconciliation for our sins and unite Heaven and earth in one " (p. 306).
"The continued offering of a sacrifice, made once for all, does not necessarily imply any repetition " (p. 307). "And this continual offering and presentation of a sacrifice once made, is itself a sacrificial act, and constitutes him who does it a priest" (p. 307). " It is a Propitiatory Sacrifice, as pleading before God for all the successive generations," etc. (p. 307).
"Thus, what the Christian priest does at the altar, is, as it were the earthly form and visible expression of our LORD'S continual action as our High Priest in Heaven " (p. 308). "The earthly priest ... does on earth that which Jesus does in Heaven. Rather we should say, according to that great principle which is the true key to the whole theory of the Christian ministry, it is Jesus who is Himself the Priest, the offerer of His own great sacrifice, in both cases " (p. 309).
This is connected with perpetual intercession.
"But though He repeats not the Sacrifice, nor can again offer Himself as a Victim unto death, yet in His perpetual intercession for us He perpetually, as it were, appealeth to it " (p. 307).
"Christian Worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual Intercession as the sole High Priest of His Church " (p. 299).
Thus intercession is, according to our essayist, the highest act of worship, Christ Himself carrying it on in heaven. Now, to say nothing else, the statement that Christ is worshipping in heaven, is itself a strange proposition. He is worshipped there, of which more anon; but where shall we find the blessed Lord worshipping in heaven? Not in Scripture, and not in any divinely taught mind, I believe. When He is brought into the world again, all the angels are called on to worship Him, and when the Lamb takes the book to open it in the Revelation, all fall down before Him and declare His worthiness. But who ever heard of Christ's worshipping in heaven? This, while pretending to be profound spirituality and high spiritual truth, flows from what shows total ignorance of what worship is, mistaking intercession for worship.
Intercession is not worship at all. Christ surely intercedes for us, and His intercession is based on His perfect work, and carried on as the perfect one in heaven, whether we speak of a high priest with God, or an advocate with the Father; but intercession applies to infirmity or failure. We have a great high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, having been tempted in all points like as we are; "and having suffered being tempted, is able to succor those that are tempted." "He is able to save to the uttermost them that come to God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them."
I will touch upon the offering and sacrifice in which He is alleged to worship on high in a moment, but intercession never is worship. It is done for others, for their actual failures, or infirmities which make them liable to fail; its only connection with worship that can be alleged is the analogy of the golden plate on the high priest's forehead, and his bearing the iniquity of Israel's holy things; but this only confirms what I have said, that the priestly service of intercession applies to failure. It is the same as regards the analogous case of advocate with the Father. "If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins."
The abiding efficacy of this propitiation, no divinely taught soul denies. We cannot be too thankful for it; but the abiding, unchangeable, efficacy of Christ's propitiation for us, is not His worshipping, nor is intercession worshipping, but pleading for others in respect of infirmities and failures.
Worship is altogether another thing. It is the heart rising up through the power and operation of the Spirit of God in praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, for what God has done and does, and for what He is, as we know Him in Christ. The returning up by the Spirit from our hearts in adoration and praise of what has been revealed and descended in grace through Christ to us, expressed in our present relationship to God, the going up of the heart in spirit and in truth to our God and Father in the full knowledge of Him.
Worship is the expression of what is in our own heart to God according to the holy claim He has upon us, and the full revelation He has made of Himself to us. Intercession is intervention with God for another. Christ may be present in Spirit to lead the praises of His saints, and offer also their praises on high that they may be accepted.
It may be in the eternal state that He may lead our praises in glory, but to present Him as carrying on real worship Himself in heaven, and us as entering into it or doing the like sacramentally on earth, is nearer blasphemy and heresy than profound spirituality, though I may acquit the writer of being intentionally guilty of it, and is the result of the egregious blunder of making intercession to be worship. 1 will now consider what is said of the continual offering of the sacrifice. I will not retort the charge of scandalous carelessness or scandalous dishonesty, bandied against the opponent of the writer for his manner of quoting Tertullian.
It certainly is a more serious thing to deal so with Scripture than with that honest and able but heady and unsubdued writer, who, after proving by necessarily legal prescription that it was a sin to leave the great professing body of the church, left it himself (because it was so worldly and corrupt), to throw himself under the power of the fanatical reveries of Montanus, and was as ardent in condemning as once in maintaining the authority of what was held to be Catholic unity.
Let us see rather how our Essayist quotes Scripture to prove his point. I recall to the reader that they say there is no repetition of the sacrifice, only He is ever offering it to God.
The passage quoted is, " For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices; wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." After quoting the latter part of this, the writer adds, " And what does Christ now offer, as our Ever-living Priest in the Heavenly Temple? What but His own most precious Body and Blood, the one saving Victim to make reconciliation for our sins, and unite Heaven and earth in one?" I omit noticing the latter part of this, which, by its obscurity, defies analysis or answer.
Is Christ then a victim now? Is He now making reconciliation for our sins? If not, the sentence has
nothing to do with the matter, it is not applicable now. If it means that He is, it is a denial of the plain, positive, Christian doctrine that believers are reconciled.
Scripture, and I leave it to pursue the question of sacrifice.
Why did the writer omit what goes a few verses before "Who needeth not daily as these high priests to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once (εφαπαξ once for all), when he offered up himself." The passage speaks of the actual offering, as a sacrifice to God (αναφερει). He did, this (εφαπαξ) once for all. And on this the apostle insists as contrasted with the Jewish sacrifices, that the work was effectually, finally done by one single act of sacrifice, done only once and completely; once and once for all, excluding constant, subsequent, as well as repeated offering. Thus Heb. 10 By his own blood he entered in once (εφαπαξ) into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption. And again (and note here the passage refers to his entering into the holy place where it is pretended lie still offers his sacrifice): "For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us." Now here is the very place to lead us to that truth of profound spirituality, the constant offering of His sacrifice to God. Alas! rather, thank God, it is just the contrary. "Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world he bath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." That is, when His appearing personally in heaven is the subject, not only has the Holy Ghost not a word to say of this profoundly spiritual truth, but He negatives any such thought. It was once, in the end of the world, the sacrifice of Himself was made, and as it was appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.
It is not, He does not suffer as once, but He offers Himself continually; but He does not offer Himself; for if He did, He must suffer.
The doctrine of a perpetual sacrifice in any and every shape, is a simple denial of Christian truth on the subject and of the efficacy of Christ's one sacrifice. The once, once for all, is the especial theme of the teaching of the Holy Ghost on the subject when it is elaborately treated of, excluding continuation, as well as repetition. The Epistle adds: "But this man, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down (εις το διηνεκες) on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool; for by one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified." He was not standing offering often times, as the Jewish priests, but when He had offered one, forever sat down (εις το διηνεκες), i.e., He had not to get up and offer anything any more, and the reason was, by that one He had perfected forever the sanctified.
When He rises up it will be to deal with His enemies as His footstool. As to His friends, the sanctified ones, God remembers their sins no more, and "where remission of these is there is no more offering for sins." Is there, or is there not? It is unconscious infidelity in the efficacy of Christ's one sacrifice to think there is;—there is no such thing as a προσφορα περι ἀμαρτιας now; no bringing anything to God about sin. It has been done once (εφαπαξ), once for all.
I repeat, it is a simple denial of the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice which purges the conscience and has obtained eternal redemption, the proof given by the Holy Ghost that it had been offered once for all, that it was eternally efficacious, and that there could be no more.
No doubt His intercession is founded on the efficacy of His sacrifice, but that is not the question. The question is, does He in any sense offer it now? The words of my author are, "the continual offering of a sacrifice made once for all," and, "it is a propitiatory sacrifice." Now this, the Epistle, in every shape and form denies.
He is speaking of offering sacrifice when he says "this he did once (εφαπαξ, once for all)?" He is speaking of it when he says, "there is no more offering for sin," where he declares that it cannot be, because "by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." We have its being once for all, as προσφορα, i.e. the presenting to God to be a sacrifice before Him; and with the word ανενεγκε, the technical word for actually offering up. We are told by the Essayist, He might offer it without being a suffering victim; the word says, “He must often have suffered if it was not once for all." It is a vital point, and handled consequently in every shape in which the devices of the enemy could undermine its efficacy. It is the keystone of Christianity as to acceptance with God and eternal redemption.
We are referred to the Apocalypse as introducing us to these scenes. Well, and what does it show us? The Lamb presenting His sacrifice and worshipping? Far from it. The Lamb in the midst of the throne, and beasts and elders falling down before Him. You may find angelical figures of priesthood it may be; but Christ presenting His offering, or worshipping, never. Did the writer ever read what he is referring to? But all is blundering in these statements. We have, by way of accurate Greek, This is My Body which is being given, This is My Blood which is being shed. That from John 13, the Lord is contemplating His going away and speaking in view of His heavenly position, is perfectly true, but the pretending that it means "is now being given," "now being poured out" (p. 305), that is in the last supper, is, save in the general sense that it was not yet, but was going to be accomplished, or that it was "a sacrificial act," is all a delusion; the very passage (p. 305) in which it is stated, proves the absurdity of it. "The declaration of Himself as the Lamb of God, the very Paschal Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world.... then and there offered by Himself," etc. Now "that taketh away the sin of the world" was spoken by John the Baptist at the very commencement of the blessed Lord's ministerial life, yet it is the ὁ αιρων, the present time. The fact is, such present tenses are characteristic, and do not refer to time. It is a broken body and a shed blood we feed on, not a living Messiah simply.
Thus ὁ σπειρων is the sower, he that sows. He that enters in by the door is the shepherd. He that enteretly not in by the door, where it is evidently characteristic. So in John 6, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood."
But it is useless to multiply examples. It is the commonest thing possible, and the rather that the case referred to by the Essayist proves the fallacy of it, because, "He that taketh away the sin of the world is, upon his own showing, not the sacrificial period, yet it is the present tense.
We are told that the Church triumphant and the Church on earth are all one, we are " the outer court;" both worship Christ presenting His offering in heaven actually, and on earth in the Eucharist; of this last we have spoken. But all is error. There is no Church triumphant. That all departed Christians, whose spirits are now with Christ, will finally make one body is quite true; and that when absent from the body they are present with the Lord, so that to depart and be with Christ is far better, this too it is most blessed to know. It has made death to be a gain. But there is no Church triumphant. For that we must wait till the resurrection. The saints in their complete state, that is, conformed to the image of Christ, bearing the image of the heavenly, are not yet ascended nor glorified. Their spirits happy with the Lord, await the day of glory, which Christ Himself, though glorified, is awaiting.
David is not yet ascended into heaven. And however confused and contradictory the ideas of the early doctors may have been, and on this point they were confusion itself, still early liturgies and all early teaching recognized this; for they prayed for the departed, what afterward, under Jewish traditions, became purgatory.
What subsequently was turned into the saints praying for us, was at first the Church on earth praying for the saints, and this was so distinctly the case, that Epiphanius makes it the proper difference of the person of Christ, that whereas even the Virgin Mary was prayed for, Christ was not. That all sorts of contradictions may be found in the Fathers as to it, I freely admit, but what I state is notoriously true, and known to every one who has a very slight knowledge of church history. You may find, even as a distinct privilege of saints, that they had at once the beatific vision, but a triumphant Church was contradicted by the early doctrine of prayers for the dead: that is certain. Nor is the notion of a triumphant Church scriptural, nor is Christ on His own throne now, but on the Father's throne, sitting at the right hand of God till His enemies are made His footstool. The distinction I have referred to of saints who do see God on high is wholly unscriptural. The whole Church is composed of saints, and none are glorified. The praying for them may be a superstition, but it proves that the early Church held what contradicts a triumphant one, worshipping in heaven while we do on earth. But not only is the especial teaching on the point of sacrifice contradictory to the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that there is a continual sacrifice, the Epistle declaring that there is none; saying that the Lord need not go through what He once went through, the Epistle that He must suffer often if His sacrifice, once for all, was not complete and final; saying that there is a continual offering now, and even that it is propitiatory, the Epistle that it was done once for all—not only is the teaching of the article exactly the opposite of the especial point of the reasoning of the Epistle, but it betrays a total absence of the knowledge of what sin is, what redemption, what reconciliation; so that the whole form and substance of thought is false.
The notions as to Adam and angels, are unfounded. That the angels worship may be freely admitted; that Adam would have done so, we do not doubt; but to attribute surrender of self to them, as if that too was worship, has no ground whatever; there is nothing to surrender; their duty is to stay in the place where they are, such as they are, and just as they are. They delight to serve according to their nature, they have nothing to give up, no selfish will to surrender. Christ could give up His place as to manifested glory and take upon Himself the form of a servant as man, for He was God.
We have to yield ourselves to God as those alive from the dead (and it is a blessed privilege of the liberty wherewith Christ has, made us free), because we have had a selfish will. But in neither case has it anything to do with worship. It may be sovereign grace, it may be duty, through sovereign grace towards us, never worship. Holy and innocent creatures have nothing to do with it. There may be in us a common source of both self-sacrifice and worship. God recovering His rights in the heart; but, save that, one has nothing to do with the other. But the writer's notion of sacrifice betrays his total ignorance of divine truth on these points, that conscience is wholly dead, and that darkness reigns in the mind. Cain, he tells us, did right in offering the fruits of the ground, only something else should be also offered. " This was right." ... . "But this was not enough" (p. 304).
God says to Cain, " If thou doest well shalt not thou be accepted?" but he was not accepted here, so that he did not do well. It is really monstrous, when it is written, " to Cain and to his offering God had not respect," to say, "this was right." Offering, worship, drawing near to God, is supposed not only possible, but right, only insufficient without redemption. It is a denial of all Christian truth. There was no faith in it, as we know from Hebrews; no sense that they were excluded from Paradise for sin, and could not, without redemption, draw near to God, and it slighted the appointed and needed sacrifice, instituted, our writer tells us, by God Himself, which I in no way dispute. He was bringing, so blinded in heart and conscience was he; the marks of the curse as an offering to God, and pretending to approach God in the very state in which God had driven out the man because be was in that state. In a word, an offering which proved that there was no faith, no sense of sin, no conscience of God's judgment executed against man, an entire passing by God's instituted and only way of coming back to Him—a state so really hardened as to bring the sign of the curse to God as an offering "was right."
Nothing can betray more completely the state of mind of the writer, his incompetency to speak on such a subject, than his declaring to be right what God had no respect to; what, if we examine its true character, was the demonstration of a hardened conscience and an utterly blinded heart, breaking out in open rebellion thereupon, and ultimate exclusion from the presence of the Lord, and a mark set upon him of perpetual memorial. We may reverently say, If his path was right, what was God's? But this is the expression of the great general principle of Ritualism—incarnation, reuniting man to God, and sacraments an extension of that, leaving out the place redemption has in the truth of God according to the necessity of His nature and character. So sacrifice, we are told, means the act of offering or presenting an oblation before Almighty God.
Now this very vague statement leaves all the truth untold. We can offer ourselves, everything, to God: our bodies a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God—not that this is worship; but must not Christ come first? That is the question. Can sinful man return to God without redemption? If not, if the nature and will and righteousness and holiness of God requires this, so that if the Son took up our cause He must suffer and die, what makes sacrifice thus vague, an act of offering without bringing in redemption is high treason against Christ, apostacy from the only truth. Besides, it is beguiling after all the English reader.
The word specifically rendered sacrifice Zebach, comes from "to slay," and is in contrast with meat offerings and burnt offerings. When the sacrifices are instituted representing Christ, the burnt offering comes first. Christ's offering Himself to death and the αναφερειν, or offering up to God, was on the altar; there was the sweet savor, an offering made by fire. The testing, consuming judgment of God brought out only what was the delight of God.
The προσφορα was the presenting an oblation before God, and this though a first preliminary was not the sacrifice in the true sense of the word, nor could any offering of a sacrifice come after the sacrifice was made. The altar and fire were needed, or there was no sweet savor, no offering made by fire, and this was true of the Mincha or unbloody sacrifice, it was burnt on the altar and so became a sacrifice. It was presented to be one, but it was not one before that. There was no sweet savor till then.
It was not an Ishah, an offering made by fire, a sweet savor to the Lord, and this is always kept up. The two leavened cakes of Pentecost were presented, but they could not be burnt on the altar for a sweet savor. And this Minchas or meal offerings, were offered with the other offerings, and as the burnt offering showed Christ's perfectness in death as an absolute offering to God, ever sinless, but now offered up, so the meal offering showed his perfectness unto death, the pure man, born of the Spirit, anointed with the Spirit, all the frankincense of His grace going up to the Lord, finally burnt on the altar to God, but the food withal of the priests. In its own way death, the altar, the fire was as much brought in here as for the burnt offering. No Christian doubts the perfectness, and perfect-obedience of Christ all the way along, but here it became a sweet savor perfected on the altar of God. And the peace offerings which witness communion, not simply the acting of Christ towards God, confirm this fully. The fat was burned to God, was the food of God, as expressed in the third of Leviticus, before the flesh became the food of the offerer and his guests, and if this feeding on the flesh was too far removed from God's part in it; from the burning of the fat on the altar, it was iniquity not communion, the sacrifice on the altar, the work of redemption. The fire of God consuming the sacrifice or its fat, must be, for any sweet savor or any communion. It is this that Ritualism is directed against. "The word ‘sacrifice’ means ‘a presenting an oblation before Almighty God,'" This is, whosever the sentence is, dishonesty or ignorance of divine things. There was no sweet savor but in offerings made by fire. Presenting it to God, was not the true sacrificial act, the sweet savor to God. There must for that be the hiktir as well as the hikriv, the αναφερειν, as well as the προσφερειν; and in the only case where there was not this because of leaven, it was not a sweet savor to God. Further, when application of sacrifice to man was made, it always began with the sin offering.
When it presents Christ abstractedly, the burnt offering is first, then the Mincha, then the peace offering, then the sin offering. Christ was made this, made sin for us, but having become a man, all that He was for God as sacrifice, began with blood-shedding, and in every case its being burnt on the altar made it to be a sweet savor as an offering made by fire; but where there is application, that is, where man profits by it, the. Sin offering comes first; till this is done there cannot be any other, no enjoyment of Christ as a perfect offering of sweet savor to God, for the sin offering was not an offering for a sweet savor, though as a general rule the fat was burnt on the altar, for Christ was thus Himself perfect for God in that wherein He was made sin. Still for the sinner there must be the perfect putting away of sin by the work of the cross before he can enter into God's presence in the sweet savor of Christ's work. Redemption in the work, redemption in application, must come first, before there can be any approach of a sinner to God, though God be love, yea because He is so.
To say therefore that a sacrifice is the act of offering or presenting an oblation before Almighty God, is
utterly false; for the presenting of the victim, the προσφορα, did not make it a sacrifice at all, nor the presenting of the fine flour or cakes even. It was when ανενεγκε, when it had been offered up on the altar, that it became a sweet savor to God, a true sacrifice. It was not always a living creature, for there was a meal offering added, Christ's perfect human nature and offering as born and anointed of the Spirit, but it was made by fire on the altar of God, or was no sacrifice. The whole paragraph (p. 302) ignores the true nature of sacrifice, though necessary for the system of the continual presenting of Christ on no altar at all. We are told Melchisedek offered bread and wine. This however often repeated is a mere fable. He brought forth (hoze) bread and wine. There is no hint of a sacrifice, no sacrificial word. People may have repeated it till they believed it, but there is not a hint of it in the passage, but the contrary, and so entirely excluded is redemption and the efficacious work of Christ by which it is wrought, in order to introduce this idle notion of Christ's sacrificial worship in heaven, so entirely is the value of His person as of the essence of true sacrifice ignored, that we are told that "the essence of sacrifice as such, that which has made it, and we can hardly doubt, by God's original primeval appointment, to be the chiefest and most important act of worship in every religion, whether Patriarchal, Jewish, Gentile, or Christian, is not the material thing offered, but the inward disposition of devout, adoring homage, and perfect surrender and dedication of ourselves, and our whole will and being, to God, of which the outward sacrifice of the most precious of our material possessions is but the visible symbol and embodiment " (p. 302). Now, could Christ made sin for us, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world the bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, be more completely ignored. That Christ through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, that He did blessedly give Himself up, surrender Himself and His will to God, is most true; but God made Him to be sin for us. The writer is speaking of devout and adoring homage, of an act of worship, so that Christ's sin-bearing sacrifice is wholly excluded, for however perfect His love to His Father and giving Himself up to His glory, sin-bearing is not an act of worship, nor is enduring wrath. And could we speak of the material thing offered being comparatively immaterial where Christ
offered Himself without spot to God? That His inward disposition was perfect no one doubts; but is it not evident that Christ was not in the thoughts of the writer when he wrote this passage? Yet he is treating of what is important in sacrifice and its true nature. Now Christ's sacrifice is the only true key to all sacrifice developed in the law in figures in all its parts and in its application, and here God's original, primeval appointment is referred to. This surely points to Christ. The certain difference of this was that it was the fat of lambs and not the fruit of the ground, on which, without redemption, the curse rested (compare too Gen. 8:2121And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)); and if the covering the nakedness of Adam with skins was the occasion on which the divine appointment of sacrifice took place, as is very naturally thought by many thoughtful and learned Christians, the nature of sacrifice is plain. One thing is sure, the meat-offering, or Mincha, was an adjunct to other sacrifices and in itself is never called a sacrifice. And on such a subject Scripture alone can be allowed to have any weight. If God appointed sacrifice, it is there it must be learned: But though the connection of all true worship with sacrifice is evident from what I have said, and that it is founded on it, yet sacrifice is not worship. It is as a gift that it approaches the nearest to it, as bringing such a gift is a homage done to the majesty of God; but as a sacrifice it is not worship. There death, as meeting the righteous claims of God, comes in, and the fire of His judgment which tests the worthiness, or judges the guilt laid upon the victim, and this, in which God has the principal and essential part, is not worship. The προσφορα or oblation for free-will offering, alone has at all this character. The moment it gets into the place of sacrifice, the altar of God, the testing fire of God is applied, His claims on that which is offered. And such an offering comes, so to speak, from without. It may be perfect. I need not say in Christ it was so, but as coming on the part of a rebellious race it must be tested by the majesty of God. "It became Him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering." Corning for man, in behalf of man, He must be dealt with as the majesty and truth of God claimed. The result was to prove His absolute perfectness, but He was tested and tried. And He presents Himself as so coming, and this was true of the meat-offering, the Mincha, though not called a sacrifice. Worship is the free adoration, and for us in the holiest, of those who have been brought High by sacrifice, who know God as love, who know Him as a Father who has sought in grace worshippers in spirit and in truth, and brought them in cleansed, to do so. The worshippers once purged should have no more conscience of sins. By one offering Christ had perfected them forever, such is Scripture truth (see Heb. 10), and then they worship, adore, praise in the sense of perfect, divine favor and a Father's love. They have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of
Jesus, by the new and living way He has consecrated for them through the vail. It is not that Christ is doing it in heaven actually in the triumphant church, and they on earth in the militant. They enter in spirit into the holiest, in heaven itself, to worship there; and hence a high priest made higher than the heavens was needed for them, because their worship is there, they do not offer the sacrifice in order to come in, they are within in virtue of the sacrifice. And this is the place the symbols of Christ's broken body and blood have in worship. The worshippers are in spirit in heavenly places, Christ in spirit in their midst as it is written. "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee," and they own and remember that blessed and perfect sacrifice by which they can so worship, by which they have entered in. Doubtless they feed on Christ in spirit, but that is not the point we are on now. The Christ that is represented in the Eucharist is a Christ with a broken body, and the cup is His shed blood, not a glorified Christ in heaven. It is His death, a broken body and the blood separated from it, life given up in this world, that is before us; we may in spirit eat also the old corn of the land, be occupied with a heavenly Christ, assuredly we may, and blessedly so, but that is not the Christ that is here. We eat His flesh and drink His blood, i.e. separate from His body—not only the manna which was for the desert and ceased in Canaan, the bread that came down from heaven, but the additional and necessary truth of His death. Hence His going up is only spoken of in John 6 as an additional, subsequent truth. We worship as belonging to heaven and own that by which we got there, that perfect, blessed work which He, who could speak what He knew there, and testify what He had seen, could tell was needed that we might have the heavenly things, and not only tell but in infinite love, accomplished. But no such Christ as the one whose symbols lie before us in the Lord's Supper exists now. It is specifically, solely, and emphatically as a dead Christ that He is remembered there. They were to do that, i.e., use the emphatic symbols of His death, in remembrance of Him. Hence it is the center of worship because hereby know I love, because He laid down His life for us. Here He glorified the Father for me, so that I can enter into the holiest, then the veil was rent and the way opened—but here was the perfect work accomplished, by which I, as risen together with Him, can say I am not in the flesh. In the heavenly Christ I say, by the Holy Ghost, I am in Him and He in me. It is being in Him, being united to Him, He in our midst in grace, a dead Christ I remember. I do not, in the joy and glory in which I have a part, through and with Him, forget that lonely work in which He bore the sorrow and drank the cup of wrath. I remember with touched affections the lowly rejected Christ, now that I am in
heavenly-places through His solitary humiliation. The offering Him up now is a presumptuous denial of Christianity. The remembering Him, that divine person, in His solitary suffering and perfect love to His Father is the most touching of Christian affections, the basis and center of all true worship, as the efficacy of the work wrought there alone admits us to worship at all. The drinking of the blood apart points it out as shed. We show forth the Lord's death, emphatically, not a glorified Christ, but we do so as associated with Him the glorified man, who Himself purged our sins, remembering with thankful hearts, how we got there, and, above all, Him who gave Himself up that we might.
It is a singular instance of Satan's power which Romish superstition has occasioned among those who have carried the Eucharistic sacrifice to its full extent. The cup is denied to the laity. To comfort them under this, they are assured that the body, blood, soul and divinity, a whole Christ, is contained under both species, i.e. in the bread and in the wine. But if the blood be still in the body, there is no redemption. It is a Christ as living on earth which is celebrated, when He had shed no blood to redeem us. It is a sacrament of non-redemption.
I understand these Ritualists being angry with Archdeacon Freeman for having presented this view, though he be as ritualist as they could wish; but it is as evident as truth can make it, to any one who respects the truth, that it is a Christ sacrificed, a Christ who has died, a body broken and blood shed, which is celebrated in the Eucharist, and false as the Essayist's Greek may be in it his testimony confirms it, for he makes it, My body now being given (or broken), My blood now being shed. If so it is not a living, glorified Christ, but a dying, and in real truth a dead Christ, for the blood is clearly presented as shed, and to be drunk apart. But they also see clearly that in this case it can be no carrying on an offering now, as Christ does in heaven for there is no dead Christ there, no body broken, or being broken, and they see clearly enough that this view of Archdeacon Freeman's upsets the real presence, for there is no such Christ to be present, nor can we think of a dead Christ present thus perpetually in the Eucharist.
Finally, the Christian's giving up what he has is not worship, nor is it what an intelligent Christian does. He yields himself to God as alive from the dead, and his members as instruments of righteousness. It is giving himself up to God for service, not worship. Nor is it giving up self, self-surrender. That is surely our part, but that is departing from the wickedness of self-will, from possessing ourselves in will, in spite of God. That is given up when conversion arrives. The Christian has the privilege, when freed by grace, of yielding himself to God, to be the instrument of His will. That is another thing; but though a just homage to God, neither is it worship. That is adoration and praise to God for what He has done, and what He is, as standing in His perfect favor in Christ, and in the consciousness of it, by the Holy Ghost owning Christ's work as that through the perfect efficacy of which we are brought there; and hence the place of the Eucharist in worship, as we have seen, the memorial of His death, of His having died for us, and the truth it refers to, whether actually celebrating it or not, awakening withal every affection which refers to His love and perfect work.
Our Essayist admits Christ to be the one only great High Priest, and all Christians to be priests. And the special priesthood which offers Christ as a sacrifice on the Eucharistic altar, we are told, belongs to that “view of Christian worship. And that without trenching in the least, when rightly understood, on either of those two cognate truths, the sole and unique Priesthood of the one true Priest, Jesus Christ, or the common priesthood of all Christian people" (p. 301). But I can find no explanation of why it does not, nor proof of this third kind of priesthood. Not one word is condescended on the subject. He enlarges with a strange jumble of truth and error on the two first kinds of priesthood, and then says (p. 302), " the special functions of the ordained priest, which distinguish him alike from the deacon and layman." But how we get this priesthood, or what is its authority, whence derived, by whom instituted, where found in Scripture, not a word is uttered. Every one knows that priest is a corruption of presbyter, or elder; but as to what made elder into a priest, in the modern sense, we are left wholly in the dark. There are three priesthoods—Christ's, all Christians, and ordained priests. Where is this found? These poor Christian priests, of whom Scripture speaks, are quite incompetent to perform the "functions of the ordained priest" (p. 302). But where are the three found? If Christ has given to all of us His own titles of kings and priests to God and His Father, how comes it that we cannot do what God's priests have to do? and that another kind of priest, never hinted at in Scripture, is to represent Christ in what is alleged to be the solemn act of priesthood, but that those whom God has made kings and priests, given Christ's titles, cannot? How comes it that He has named the sacrifices which His priests are to offer; that they are a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, but that He never mentions that as a sacrifice which the priests He never names are to offer. That He is perfectly silent as to both; yet we are to believe that God's priests are laymen, and those that he has not named are, after all, exclusively priests who have supplanted them. Is all this not very strange? Is it not very like an invention? Is it not an invention of man, or Satan? The result being an offering of Jesus Christ now, denying the value or His one offering of Himself once for all, and the solemn declaration founded on it, that there is no more offering for sin; yet there is, according to these men, and a sacrifice and a propitiatory sacrifice. If a propitiation is needed now, Christianity is not true. The allegation that it is said He is, not was, the propitiation for our sins, is but poor sophistry. That the value of the propitiation is constant and eternally so, is quite true; but for that very reason He is not offering a propitiatory sacrifice now, because He did it once on the cross. But sacrifice, we are told, is the central and important word; and it is alleged that 1 Cor. 10 is a proof that the Eucharist must be one, for it is compared to the idol sacrifices. But it is no such thing; the passages prove just the contrary. It is eating of the sacrifice which it is compared with, and the writer of the article is drawing our attention from that to its being itself a sacrifice. Every true Christian admits of course Christ to have been the true sacrifice, and the passage insists that the priests, who eat of the altar (ver. 18), were partakers with the altar; but it was their eating, not their sacrificing, which did this. It was the same with the Gentiles, they eat of the sacrifices; so of Christians, they eat at the Lord's table; but in no case was it the sacrifice itself which is spoken of, but of feeding on what had been sacrificed. In a word, the passage shows that the Spirit and Word of God look at it as a feeding on what had been sacrificed, and not as a sacrifice. It teaches the contrary of that which the writer insists on in a way than which nothing can be plainer.
It is not very material to our present subject, but the vulgar error of Christ's being the ladder on which angels descend, uniting heaven and earth, being repeated here, I notice it. Christ has Jacob's place, not the ladder's. Jacob was at the foot of the ladder, and these messengers were coming down and going up from God to him, and from him to God. Now the Son of man was to be the object. God's angels would have the Son of man for the object of their service from an open heaven. There is no ladder thought of. Christ, the Son of man, is the object. Nathaniel had recognized Him as Son of God, King of Israel, according to Psa. 2. Christ carries him on to His title in Psa. 8 (being rejected), and says he would see greater things than that, even heaven open, and the Son of man the object of the service of the angels, of God Himself.
I have pretty much examined the material points of this article, though I have passed over many objectionable passages; but the great principle is what is in question. The continuous offering of a propitiatory sacrifice, and that in heaven by Christ, and on earth by the priest in the Eucharist; and further, what is involved in it, the nature of worship. Sacrifice is that by which we approach to God as coming from without; worship, adoration, and praise when we have got within. The Jewish temple-service had the character of sacrifice in general, because they could not go within, the Holy Ghost signifying by the unrent vail that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest. But we pass through the rent vail into the holiest, and worship there as in the holiest. Knowing withal God as our Father, we recognize—remember with adoring thankfulness—that sacrifice, that rending of the vail, that breaking of the body, that shedding of the blood, through which we can so enter, purged from all our sins and reconciled to God. Christ is in the midst of two or three gathered in his name, but it is a living Christ in spirit, not His body broken and shed blood. Having Him in our midst in spirit, we celebrate His precious death; we do this in remembrance of Him. We cannot have a dead Christ in our midst; and, above all, we cannot have both a dead and a living one.
Let it fully be remarked that expiatory sacrifice (p. 304) is only added to the precious, unbloody sacrifice and worship. Hence, we have seen, it is stated that Cain was right, only wrong in neglecting the other. "This was not enough." Christianity teaches that the sinner cannot come at all but by a true atoning sacrifice; this offering of Cain was the neglect, was the denial of that. It is said God accepted Abel's repentance and faith. Scripture does not say so. He accepted Abel, bore witness that he was righteous on the ground of his gift (Heb. 11), and whatever the homage paid, acceptance and the enjoyment of Divine favor is the fruit of sacrifice, not worship. And so we see in Leviticus, our High Priest must be one higher than the heavens. As Priest He is separated from us, acting for us, not amongst us. This is certain in all priesthood. The statement that all He did from the moment when He said, "This my body," to the moment when He said, "It is finished," was one long-continuous, sacrificial action (p. 305), is necessarily false. First, His surrender of all to God, so far as true was always perfect, the sacrifice was always " made in purpose and in intention"; so far as it was a special act, it was in Gethsemane. As the Lord's agonizing prayer demonstrates, and the discourses in John 14, 15, and 16 are in no sense sacrificial. The priest had, in ordinary sacrifices, nothing to do with the offering till the blood was shed; he received that, and sprinkled it on the altar. The προσφορα was not a priestly act at all, and this προσφορα (oblation) is what we have, even on the writer's own showing, before us here. In the great day of atonement the priest confessed the people's sins on the head of the scape-goat, as representing a guilty people, not as between them and God as priest, but as high priest standing in the place of them all to make their confession. He stood as the guilty person, inasmuch as he represented the people. So did Christ on the cross. He offered Himself, through the eternal Spirit, without spot to God, to be the victim. God made the spotless one to be sin for us. Except as thus representing the guilty people, the priest did not slay the victim, and the offering a victim or himself to God was quite another thing. In no case was the offering of a victim, or surrender of self to God, a priestly act. The statement (p. 307), that "the act of offering or presenting a victim is a sacrifice," is simply a blunder; this was done by the one who offered the victim, not by the priest. I notice these things to clear the ground by Scripture statements; the confusion of the author, by his ignorance of the whole subject, making the analysis of all his statements an unprofitable labor. I have already said a πποσφορα, after the victim had been offered (αναφερεφαι) on the altar, is a thing unknown in Sacrifice. We read again: "As the most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, the alone acceptable Victim to make our peace with God, are offered... ' (p. 308). Now He has made peace by the blood of His cross. All this subverts Christianity.
In result, the propositions of the author are that Christ is to be adored with the profoundest homage in
the Eucharist. Secondly: There is "the solemn pleading.... of that once-sacrificed Body and Blood for ourselves ... .. as our only hope of pardon, reconciliation, and grace" (p. 315) As to the last, I have spoken of it. We are pardoned, we are reconciled, we stand in grace, if Christianity be true. This theory is not Christianity, but denies it. The former proposition requires a little attention. That Christ is to be adored, every true Christian cordially accepts; but the sting is in the tail, "wherever He is." His body and blood, it is alleged, are in the Eucharist. He is where His body and blood are (p. 315), and, consequently, He is to be adored in the Eucharist. It is the common argument for idols, the divinity is present there. In death, though Godhead may hold its title over the body, nor suffer it to see corruption, yet the soul was separate from the body, or it was not death. The Eucharist, let them say what they will, is a symbol and sign of the dead Christ—a broken body and shed blood. Christ is personally in heaven. He is present in spirit in the congregation; as He expresses it, "In the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto thee." Do they mean to say that He, though in our midst, leads us to worship the signs of what He was when dead. That His body is now to come down from heaven to be broken, for that is what is done in the Eucharist; and that He returns into life before death to be broken and His blood shed, for that they avow is what was doing when He instituted the Eucharist. Christ's place, if we speak of "where" as to Him, is in heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Father, nowhere else. God has said, " Sit at my right hand till," and there accordingly He sits, nor will He leave it till the time appointed of the Father. Is He present alive in the bread before it is broken, and then does He go through death, there symbolized by the broken bread and the wine to be drunk? If so, then His soul is separated from His body. Or is He not present then, that is before breaking the bread, but only after His body is broken and His blood is shed. Then it is not He in any sense who is given and His blood shed. I can understand well that such inquiries offend them, as they talk of the devout and simple affections of faith: Reverence is our place, the right spirit to be in when one thinks of the Blessed One given for us. But if they invent false and erroneous views, which pervert the truth, which pretend to bring Christ down from heaven, when God has said to Him, as to His person and glorified
body, "Sit on my right hand," it is right to put questions which have no irreverence for Christ, but expose the fallacy of their views, which show that it is a false, pretended Christ of their own imagination—that there can be no such Christ, for He is glorified in heaven, and not now broken and shedding His blood on earth, nor ever will again. If death is symbolized, and partaking of Him in that character—and it certainly and evidently is so—there is no such Christ now. He is alive for evermore. In death His soul was separated from His body. It is not so separated now. It is of faith, the moment you use a circumscribed where, to say He is in heaven, and nowhere else, till He rises up from the throne of God—"whom the heavens must receive till the time of the restitution of all things of which the prophets have spoken."