We may now take up a pertinacious system of priestly ordinances which Irvingites share with all the bodies which claim to be Catholic. This assumes a more than ordinarily virulent character in the modern society, just because they after their manner own N. T. truth and power wholly inconsistent with those “old bottles.” In their hands it is no mere confusion, as with some Protestants, but a deliberate and radical error which undermines and destroys fundamental and distinctive privileges which the gospel of God confers on the Christian.
There is no question about their views, which they love (in this case at least) to state hi bold and open terms. Take the preface to Mr. Drummond's “Abstract Principles of Revealed Religion,” p. v. “That without priesthood there can be no sacraments, and without sacraments no spiritual life can be rightly imparted or adequately sustained; that the due worship of God can be carried on only by priests appointed by Himself; that all its parts are definite; forms of buildings in which it is carried on; rites therein performed; furniture appropriate to that end; vestments of those who officiate; hours of celebration, &c.; and that the single act which constitutes Christian worship, and distinguishes true from false worship in Christendom, is the offering up of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, without the eating and drinking of which no one can have part in Him.”
Were this a true standard, it would soon and certainly appear that the church of God as built on the foundation of His holy apostles and prophets must be pronounced by this self-constituted judge to have never been conformable to the mind of God! But believing the N.T. history and Epistles, we see that professing Christendom only adopted it as it fell into Babylonish corruption. For scripture demonstrates that, in principle as in fact, the assumption of the party as expressed by one whom they honor as alike apostle, prophet, and angel, is wholly and in every particular opposed to the revealed word as regards the church. One might venture fearlessly to say that the enemy could not forge an invention more antagonistic to the truth.
The testimony of the N. T. is plain, sure, and decisive. It tells us of Jewish and of heathen priests. But for the circle of the faithful there is a great High-priest, passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God; and none whatever on earth over the saints, for the very blessed and conclusive reason that the Christians themselves compose His house and are exhorted to draw near to the throne of grace (Heb. 4), as the old priestly house, the sons of Aaron, could not, and even with confident boldness, which was impossible for Aaron himself who only entered once in the year with atoning blood and incense lest he die (Lev. 16). They are not to be admired nor even endured who speak of a casual expression in scripture. The truth is uniform. It is the same doctrine, only if possible more emphatically enforced in Heb. x. 19 et seqq. after the one offering as well as the high-priesthood of Christ had been fully taught. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which He dedicated for as through the vail, that is, His flesh, and [having] a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” &c. This is unmistakable. The inspired writer couples the brethren as such with himself in equal and perfect liberty of access to God within the rent vail. Such is the habitual title of nearness which the gospel confers now on the believer. An intermediate class of priests on earth is not only unknown but quite excluded. Its assertion is an inexcusable slight of scripture, and a shameless ignorance of the grace of God to us, in answer to Christ's death which for us has brought in eternal reality of acceptance with God, Jewish shadows being now superseded and gone. The notion of intermediate priests between Christ and the Christian is apostasy from the gospel and return to Judaism. So bright is the truth in the scriptures that the simplest believer is responsible to see and hold fast his priestly privilege; so inevitable the inference that the subtlest disputer of this age essays in vain to deny it honestly. And Heb. 13:15, 1615By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. 16But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. (Hebrews 13:15‑16) cannot be evaded as further proof that the functions of priests are looked for in the offering up sacrifices, whether of praise or of well-doing and communication; not by priests for them, but by themselves as the only true priesthood on earth. He that opposes this is rebelling against the N.T.
But what of other scriptures? Peter is express to the same effect in his First Epistle, chap. ii. 5, 9. Christians are a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices, and a royal priesthood to show forth the virtues of Him Who called them out of darkness into His marvelous light. How wretched, how wicked, to imagine a fictitious order of priests in presence of such words of God!
The Revelation of John (the divine so-called) has no other voice, and this not merely in parts that speak of the future, like chaps. v. 10, xx. 6, but in what unequivocally bears on our present relations to God as in i. 5, 6: “Unto Him that loveth us, and washed [or, loosed] us from our sins in His blood; and He made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father.” This is the sole priesthood (besides Christ's) which the gospel owns. There is not a hint of an earthly priest for these priests, as the error assumes. The very idea is incompatible with Christian principles. To confound presbyter with priest is a fraud.
Nor is this all though such a three-fold cord cannot be broken, save to the self-will which blindly fights for superstition against God's word thus widely in evidence and harmony. For every scripture, which since redemption speaks of its results to the believer, implies a similar standing for the Christian. Thus in Rom. 5:22By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2) through Christ we also have obtained and possess (ἐσχηκαμεν) access by faith into this grace wherein we stand. In 1 Cor. 6 not only washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God, but our body the Holy Ghost's temple; and in chapter 12 ourselves members of Christ, which is yet more intimate and high than priests. So in Gal. 3 we are all one in Christ and sons with the Spirit of God's Son sent forth into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Of Ephesians one might cite a vast deal more and from perhaps every chapter; for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from the first is said to have blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. Suffice it to quote for those not familiar with scripture, not only that we are Christ's body, but words so distinct as chap. 2:13: “Now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh by [or, in] the blood of Jesus;” and again verse 18, “Through Him we both have access in one Spirit unto the Father;” and again 3:12, “In Whom we have boldness and access in confidence through faith of Him.” Further, Col. 1:1212Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: (Colossians 1:12) gives thanks to the Father Who made us meet [an accomplished fact] to be partakers of the saints in light, Who delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. What need of more? Of old the greatest privilege of a priest was the right to enter God's sanctuary. This is everywhere now the standing title of every Christian, in a measure wholly transcending the degree of a Jewish priest. And this it is which is necessarily undermined by the pretension of a priest on earth between the Christian and Christ or God. But it is a baseless figment; whereas the priesthood of all Christians, the antitype of Aaron's house (only far surpassed), is the clear and certain truth of God, and of the utmost practical value for every believer every day, of which the fiction would rob him to the deepest dishonor of His grace.
Indeed it is a solemn consideration, for those professedly Christian ministers who claim a sacerdotal place, to weigh the warning of Jude 1111Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. (Jude 11), lest they perish in the gainsaying of Korah. For his sin, so ruinous to himself and his followers, was proud discontent with Levitical service, and an impious pretension to the priesthood. It was rebellion against Moses and Aaron, types of Christ in this. Christian ministry is the exercise of a gift from the Lord, some, for the good of all, given and sent by Him. But all saints are priests made free equally of the true sanctuary. For some to usurp this nearness to God beyond and in denial of what grace has given to all the saints is without knowing it to misconceive and do away a prime blessing of Christianity. It is to deny the grace of Christ and the efficacy of His work and the anointing of His Spirit.
But next the oracle declares that as without priesthood there can be no sacraments (an utter absurdity), so “without sacraments no spiritual life can be rightly imparted or adequately sustained.” On this we join issue. They are alike dregs from the cup of “the great whore,” and the latter as irreconcilable with God's word as the former has been proved to be null and void. It is the careful object of the apostle Paul, in an epistle devoted to church questions more than any other, to warn unwary souls that the so-called sacraments, far from really imparting or adequately sustaining spiritual life, may be possessed and rested on and gloried in where there is no such life but mere profession. Such is the divinely given admonition of 1 Cor. 10. These institutions of our Lord, Baptism and His Supper, have their weighty place, one as the initiatory mark of the Christian, the other as the constantly recurring and corporate feast of the communion of Christ's body and blood. But to erect them into the channel and the sustainer of spiritual life is altogether to misunderstand (not these sacraments only but) Christianity itself, and to prove that those who thus pervert them are rather Jews or even heathen in their thought than Christians. These worshippers of ordinances ignore and resist and reverse the Spirit's warning. “I would not, brethren, have you ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples (or types)” (1 Cor. 10:1-61Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; 2And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; 3And did all eat the same spiritual meat; 4And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. 5But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 6Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. (1 Corinthians 10:1‑6)).
The theory of these men, Irvingites, Papists, Tractarians, &c., is that the sacraments are, as the most philosophical of such theologians taught, “extensions of the Incarnation.” But first what has baptism to do with the Incarnation? The element is water, which in no way figures Christ's body, as the eucharistic bread does. Yet baptism, they insist, conveys life and is therefore the spring or basis of all! The theory therefore fails fundamentally at the outset. Baptism is not even a sign of the communication of Christ's humanity. There is no semblance of His sacramental presence in it. The truth of scripture is that baptism is burial to Christ's death, the manifest reverse of conveying His life. See Rom. 6; Col. 2; 1 Peter 3. Hence in the Acts baptism in His name is for the remission of sins (ch. ii.) and washing away of sins (ch. xxii.), never for quickening, as these false teachers always assume.
So in the Lord's Sapper we proclaim the Lord's death (1 Cor. 11:2626For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come. (1 Corinthians 11:26)), and hence in remembrance of Him we eat His body and drink His blood. Both are therefore sacraments of His death, not of Incarnation, as they wrongly say, wholly departing from God's mind. It is His body given (even if “broken” be rejected), His blood shed. This is not life, but death. And the difference is immense. For till Christ's death there was no bearing of our sins, no glorification of God about our evil, no redemption of the slaves of Satan. Both these divine institutions are grounded on that death of the Savior which alone has brought us to God and reconciled us by a perfect atonement. The self-styled Catholic idea is essentially false, for it expresses no more than Incarnation at best, when the only work which could blot out our sins righteously was not done, but only in hope. And such is the spiritual experience generated by the error. They do not possess the joy of accomplished redemption. They have, as they say, a humble hope. But this is Jewish, not Christian quite right when our Lord v as simply incarnate, and under the law; utterly and unbelievingly wrong now that He has died for our sins and is raised for our justification, having by one offering perfected forever—without an interruption, είς τό διηνεκές—those that are sanctified, which all believers are. It is not the open hostile skepticism that denies the Incarnate Word; but it is real incredulity as to our present resting-place on His work as well as person, as set forth in both sacraments.
The fact is that even real Christians feebly believe in the true gift to them of eternal life in Christ the Son of God. They lower it for the most part to an action by the Spirit on the mind and affections of man; so that he who was once indifferent, immoral, or hostile, now loves the Lord and devotes himself in repentance and faith to do His will. But this leaves out the all-important truth that we are truly born of God, and so are brought into the relation of His children by believing on Christ's name. “He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” Whatever the value of ordinances (and he who despises them despises His authority Who gave them), they are never in scripture treated as channels of life, but, as we have seen, as symbolic Is His death.
Faith alone gives life to the soul that hears God's word. Hence all the O. T. saints were spiritually quickened as truly as we who now believe the gospel. And our Lord lays down in John 3 the necessity of new birth (born of water and Spirit) as the indispensable condition of seeing or entering the kingdom of God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will surely be there, no less than we. There may be the unintelligent plea of circumcision, as in their case answering to baptism. But it is express that Abraham was justified in Gen. 15 before circumcision was instituted in Gen. 17, and the apostle as a certainty reasons on the importance of this fact in Rom. 4. Circumcision was but a seal of the righteousness of the faith he had whilst uncircumcised. The blessing was neither of the ordinance nor of the law which came in long afterward, but of the promise, and thus of faith that it might be according to grace—God's grace, not man's merit. And so it is now. It is judaizing and worse to substitute an institution, however precious, for the Son of God and faith in Him and His work, which both quickens and justifies.
But this school always slights faith. It may be that some of them have no experience of it as a true work of the Holy Spirit in the soul. Others who perhaps are believers have heeded the fond dream of succession and priesthood and saving ordinances, which can never mix with the truth of the gospel, and hence in their blindness disparage faith as well as the power of redemption, though, thank God, they may still cleave to the glory of Christ's person. Solifidianism is an idle slur on those who possess Christ as life and righteousness.
And as John 3 is totally misunderstood, so is John 6 where the Lord sets forth, not an ordinance but His own person, first as the bread of God coming down from heaven, and giving life not to Israel only but to the world (32-50); next, giving His flesh for the life of the world, so that there was no life in themselves without eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking His blood. It is not His incarnation only but His death; it is communion by faith with that precious death. Over and over again He shows that this is not a rite but to believe on Him and have eternal life. It is not the Lord's Supper, but the infinite truth itself of which the Supper is the sign. Hence, only understood thus, the words are absolutely true; whereas applied to eating and drinking sacramentally they become false every way. On the other hand we who believe in the Incarnate Word rejoice with solemn joy in His death, without which neither God could be vindicated nor our sins be effaced; and assuredly one has life and looks for the Lord to raise him at the last day, as he meanwhile abides in Christ and Christ in him. On the other, who can be so infatuated as to say either that it is impossible to have life without the eucharist? or that a man, eating the eucharist, has necessarily eternal life and must be raised for the resurrection of those that are Christ's? The fourth Gospel does not occupy itself with external forms, but what is characteristically vital and bound up with the Father's grace and the Son's glory. Whereas these false teachers, knowing neither the scriptures nor the power of God, still less His sovereign grace and glorious counsels, are blind to the truth and pervert what they can in His word to exalt man, especially their own vain, self-assumed, priestly orders, and the superstitions they have picked up and espoused from the most corrupt streets of “the great city.”
It may be added that while the Lord's Supper is in the strictest sense and fullest way the calling of Christ to mind, there is much more to the faithful than a sign or symbol. He vouchsafes His presence to be enjoyed there and then as nowhere else. Call this a real presence if you will; but it is not the grossness of a presence in the bread and wine, a dream worthy of a heathen. Consubstantiation is only less heinous than transubstantiation. There is simply “blessing” or thanksgiving—terms equally used when the Lord gave the bread and fish to the hungry multitudes. Consecration, as a sacerdotal act, is a mere superstition, a prelude to the mass.
There is another antichristian doctrine, common (it is true) to the sacerdotal system of all ritualists, on which it may be well to say a little—the notion of offering up Christ's body and blood to God in the eucharist. No doubt Popery goes farther in the deadly evil both by the fable of transubstantiation (which naturally if not necessarily leads to direct idolatry) and by claiming for the offering the character of a true propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead. But, even in the most modified shape, any offering to God of the sacrament is not only opposed to all scripture but destroys the truth of its proper nature and aim. The appeal to the original of 1 Cor. 11:2424And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. (1 Corinthians 11:24) and Matt. 26:2828For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:28) ("now” broken and “now” shed) is mere ignorance in Mr. Cardale (Readings upon the Liturgy, p. 32). It is the present participle, not of time, but of character, whenever the time might be, like John 1:2929The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. (John 1:29) and crowds of instances. He Whom God made sin for us sits at God's right hand, Who needs no memorial of that perfect and accepted propitiation for our sins. This memorial He has made His Supper to be to us and our forgetful hearts. It is not for a moment to be doubted too that He is in the midst of His own when gathered to His name, and in the happiest way for this holy feast. Such is His true and only real presence. That it is in the bread and the wine is a baseless and base idea, not worthy of a Jew or even a pagan. We are there invited to eat and to drink. It is in no way an offering of His body and blood, but communion with both: just as Jews partook of what had been sacrificed, and Gentiles too in their dark way. But our God is love as well as light, and gives us to sit at a feast on the great sacrifice of Christ's redemption. Thereupon Christ sits on high, because it is done once for all, as its efficacy endures forever, and even its application. There is no repetition. If there were renewed offering, there must be renewed suffering (Heb. 9:2626For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26)). But it is finished; and we feast with thanksgiving and praise, doing this in remembrance of Him, and showing forth His death till He come. Presentation before God is a vain addition which spoils the revealed intent; and so does the mixing up our worship with Christ's priestly intercession, which has another and wholly distinct object.
Never in scripture is either the Lord's baptism or Supper treated as a mystery, “the great spiritual mystery” as these men say of the latter. There are mysteries in abundance, once hidden, now made plain, precious, practical. Sacraments are not included in that category. One initiatory, the other constant, they had their wise and good place as His institutions; but, being external forms, they afforded a handle to religious imagination; and Christendom has made them into calves of gold to worship its own handiwork. If divine order is prized by believers, how can they depart from the holy and beautiful simplicity of that feast Christ bequeathed to us, and took care to give in three Gospels, and to reveal afresh to and by the apostle Paul? A more systematic and chilling departure can hardly be conceived than these “Readings” disclose to one imbued with the unworldly order of the scripture accounts. Are we not to believe His will therein reflected for us to follow? Let us hold fast the traditions as Paul delivered them to us.
On the theory put forth to justify as well as explain the sacramental system, insuperable difficulties confront these superficial theologians. They are self-deceived in their thought of effectively opposing rationalism by the truth. They ignore divine grace and scripture. Their own scheme is no better than religions rationalism, as opposed to that of profane skeptics who deny even a mediator, and especially the one Mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus a man. No believer contests that blessed and cardinal truth, the all-importance for God and man of the Incarnate Word. But the sacramentalists reason on the Incarnation simply, and reason wrongly, instead of believing that the Incarnation only presents the Savior in that condition which was essential to effect redemption, but which in itself by no means did or could effect it. On the contrary the manifestation of God as light and love in Christ was more and more hateful to man, to Israel in particular; because it condemned their dark selfishness and utter insubjection to God, the end of which was the cross. Therein God laid the sole, adequate, perfect, and everlasting ground of deliverance for all that believe. The blood shedding of Christ vindicated God's long forbearance, and made it righteous, not only to go out with the gospel to every soul, but to justify him that has faith in Jesus. This is certainly not man's righteousness (which was just then proved wholly wanting in Jew or Greek) but God's. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the divinely given and standing expressions of the Savior's death, not merely of His Incarnation. Judaism ends with that cross which is the basis of Christianity. The initiatory sign as truly sets before the soul the death of Christ, as does that central feast of thanksgiving which the Christian observes, on the Lord's day especially, till He come. Apart from His death the signs have no meaning but a false one. They are founded on His finished work and proclaim His death. Till then the full trial of man was not a fact; nor the complete proof of divine love shown; nor God glorified to the uttermost, any more than man's wickedness consummated; nor sin judged before God and borne away to faith by the only availing sacrifice. Only in the cross was this done and more.
Hence it is evident and certain that the sacramental system stops short of Christianity, by its own avowal that the sacraments are extensions of the Incarnation; because, if so, all these essential truths of Christianity are not the ground, but only the hope as under the legal system. These men abide on the Jewish side of the cross, not on the Christian. They are still under law, and priesthood, and offerings. By their own showing, if the sacraments are but the continuation of the Incarnation, they cannot express the privileges of accomplished redemption. They retrograde. Such is sacramentalism in principle. It is not Christianity, but a mongrel superstition.
The whole doctrinal basis, essential to keep up earthly priesthood and worldly sanctuary, stops short of the saving grace of God. that characterized the gospel; according to which baptism and the Lord's Supper have their true place and right meaning as expressions of that death which delivers alike from sin and the law and the world by the dead and risen Savior.
Even on their own ground of religious speculation, which is blind to the force of the rent veil, and shrinks back unbelievingly from that one sacrifice that purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, the theory fails at the threshold. For how is baptism an extension of the Incarnation? Whatever appearance there may be in the eucharist, here is none in the water. Again, the theory is that, while Baptism gives life, the Supper sustains it. But this does not agree with John 6; for the eating there is not sustenance but quickening without the smallest reference to baptism. “For the bread of God is He that cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world” (ver. 33). This contradicts the theory. Still plainer is ver. 51, and ver. 53 most conclusive, where all else is excluded, and eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking the blood are said to be such, that otherwise “ye have no life in you.” In every respect the sacramental theory breaks down at the touch of scripture.
Popery alone can boast complete consistency of error; for to make good the refusal of the cup, they tall back on eating all without drinking; that is, the theory is that the blood is still in the body. Theirs therefore is, with fatal unconsciousness, a sacrament of non-redemption, as another has well shown. How true the Savior's decision: “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned"!