regard to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, and as others have repudiated its view of the Kenosis as impugning our LORD'S Incarnation. * Among whom Dr. Liddon would have certainly been found had he lived a year longer. 29 CHAPTER XII. Introductory: I. Three points established: S., SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. E have now before us evidence gathered from all the different fields in which testimony to WR the Eucharistic Sacrifice is found, and we are therefore in a position to draw some conclusions from our investigations. I. There are three points which we may consider as established beyond doubt by the consensus of the teaching of the whole Church at all times and everywhere: (1) The E. is a (1) The fact that the Eucharist is a sacrifice; (2) that it depends for its sacrificial character on its relation to our LORD's Sacrifice upon the Cross; (3) and that no on the S. of the theory which attempts to explain the mode in which the Eucharist is a sacrifice can claim to be in any sense de fide. (2) whose character depends Cross; (3) no theory of the mode "de fide." Summary of the results of For, to sum up the results of our investigation of Holy Scripture, the liturgies, the Fathers, medieval our investiga- writers, Anglican divines, and Tractarians : tion 1. Of Holy Scripture, 2. of the liturgies, 1. From Holy Scripture we learn that the Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice in that it is the showing forth. of our LORD's Death. Moreover, there is no passage in Holy Scripture which directly or indirectly connects the Eucharistic Sacrifice with our LORD'S action in heaven. 2. The liturgies bear evidence to the sacrificial char acter of the Holy Eucharist, but while they speak of a heavenly altar, the adjectives they use to qualify it show that they use this term in a figurative, not in a literal sense. Fathers, 3. The Fathers distinctly teach that the Holy Euchar- 3. of the ist is a sacrifice, but they formulate no theory in regard to the nature of the sacrificial act. They relate the Eucharist exclusively to the Passion and Death of our LORD upon the Cross, and never associate it with our LORD'S Mediatorial work in heaven. This work they regard not as an offering of His Passion in heaven, but as the presence of His glorified Humanity,-His Humanity itself pleading with GOD for us. They speak of our LORD in heaven as the Victim or Sacrifice in the passive sense of the word, but never of Him as offering sacrifice there. Indeed S. Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Euthymius explicitly disclaim this idea. They speak of our LORD's sacred Humanity as an altar from which rise up the prayers and offerings of the whole Church. 4. The mediæval writers, while carefully relating the sacrificial act in the Holy Eucharist to the Sacrifice on the Cross, introduce the conception of our LORD's Mediatorial work as a pleading of His Passion in heaven, and mystically interpret, not the Eucharistic Sacrifice, but the prayers and ceremonies of the liturgy by the ritual of the Day of Atonement, and take them as representing our LORD's life on earth and His Intercession in heaven; they do not, however, make the sacrificial character of the Eucharist in any way to depend upon this. 4 of mediæval writers, 5. The Anglican divines, with few exceptions, re- 5. of Anglican gard the Eucharistic Sacrifice as commemorating and divines, renewing the Death of our LORD on the Cross. The Pseudo-Overall is the first to relate the Eucharist to the Oblation in heaven, rather than to the Sacrifice of the Cross, and the words he uses show that he is quoting almost verbatim from Cassander, the earliest writer in whom this conception is found, and probably its author. This view is also set forth by Jeremy Taylor, although he is more guarded in his statements. He does not in any place say that the Eucharist is to be related rather to the Intercession than to the Sacrifice of the Cross, and in many passages speaks of the Church on earth offering to GOD in the Eucharist the Sacrifice of the Cross. William Johnson, the author of The Unbloody Sacrifice, is responsible for certain Nestorian and Socinian theories in regard to the Eucharist, which have been followed by some clergy in our own day. These Nestorian tendencies are well exposed by Keble in his Considerations.* 6. The Tractarian writers for the most part followed the teaching of the Fathers, and taught the identity (quoad substantiam) of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist and of the Cross, using the term "sacrifice" in its passive sense. In this sense also, like the Fathers, they speak of our LORD as a perpetual Victim or Sacrifice in heaven. As we have said, the historical treatment of the subject shows that no theory in regard to the mode of the Eucharistic Sacrifice can claim to be de fide; so that while the view so well expressed by Bossuet, that the sacrifice consists precisely in the Consecration, would be accepted by the theologians of the East, such as Cabasilas and Macarius, and in the West by Roman theologians and by most of those in the Church of England who recognize that the Eucharist is in any * Keble, Considerations, pp. 222–247. sense a sacrifice; yet we must remember that even this is only a theological opinion, whose weight depends upon the practical consensus of every part of the Catholic world, but which cannot claim the authority of antiquity. "contra fidem," While fully admitting that no theory on the sub- some theories, ject is de fide, we must also assert that some theories however, are may be contra fidem, in that they conflict with the accepted dogmas of the Catholic Faith. Of this we have an example in the more extreme view of the modern school as set forth by Mr. Brightman, which conflicts not merely with some theories of the Atonement, but with the very foundation of the doctrine of the Atonement itself, namely, that upon the Cross our LORD offered the full, perfect, and sufficient Sacrifice by which the world was redeemed. for they con flict with the Atonement. doctrine of the The modern school fall into four divisions, We must, however, recognize that there are many who, while inclining to that part of the Modern view which associates the Eucharistic Sacrifice with our LORD'S Mediatorial work in heaven, entirely reject the dangerous and objectionable features of the theory. Indeed we may trace no less than four different divisions of the Modern school, three of which recognize three of which the Sacrifice of the Cross as perfect in itself. There is the view with which Overall's name is unwarrantably associated that the Sacrifice of the Cross is not so much remembered in the Eucharist, though it is commemorated, as regard is had to the perpetual and daily offering of it by CHRIST now in heaven in His everlasting Priesthood.* While this view in no way conflicts with the Atonement, it can claim absolutely no support either from Holy Scripture, the Fathers, or theologians, and it seems to depend solely * Cf. pp. 343, 344. are entirely The school of |