retaining sins. Meanwhile the first sentence of cap. i. in this session connects, in indissoluble fashion, the two words 'sacrifice' and 'priesthood': 'Sacrificium et sacerdotium ita Dei ordinatione coniuncta sunt, ut utrumque in omni lege exstiterit1;' while in Sess. xxii. c. i. and the following canons the sacrifice of the Mass is a 'real and proper sacrifice,' and 'really propitiatory,' and (as above), 'for the living and the dead?.' And in the Catech. ad Paroch. II. cap. vii. quaest. xxiv., the 'munus' of the priest is said to be 'To offer sacrifice to God, to administer the Sacraments of the Church"," And after reference to the Ordinal, culminating in the 'Accipe potestatem offerendi,' &c., it is added,' By which words and ceremonies he is constituted a mediator and representative between God and man, which is to be reckoned the principal function of priesthood. Then 'ad extremum vero' the absolving power is added: 'Haec sunt sacerdotalis ordinis propria et praecipua munera.'

Now I may say at once that it is no part of my object to try and convict the Tridentine statements of being wrong. I am quite aware that both on this and other subjects there are statements of more than one kind, which are not always easily reconcilable, and which may perhaps be capable, in more directions than one, of a considerable, and perhaps unexpected, amount of explanation. Neither is it any part of my duty to endeavour to enter upon such explanations, or to determine how

1 So Morinus, Pt. III. Exercit. vii. cap. i. p. 102: 'Cum sacerdotio Dei ordinatione sacrificium semper conjunctum fuit, ut nos docet Conc. Trid. Itaque sacerdotium totius religionis Christianae fundamentum esse nemo dubitare potest.'-Most true language-though probably not quite in Morinus' sense! And again, Exercit. ix. cap. i. p. 132: 'Diacono semel et necessario propter sacrificium et sacerdotem constituto, multa alia tribuuntur in quibus praeter sacrificium Ecclesiae ministrat,'-which is a rather audacious way of putting the history.

2 Verum et proprium sacrificium,' 'vere propitiatorium,' 'pro vivis et defunctis.'

3 'Deo sacrificium facere, ecclesiastica sacramenta administrare.'

4 'Quibus caeremoniis et verbis interpres ac mediator Dei et hominum constituitur, quae praecipua sacerdotis functio existimanda est.'

far explanations, which ought to be satisfactory, could be furnished, either of most, or even of the whole, of the language I have quoted. That which concerns my task is rather to see the impression which language like this was most calculated to produce, and particularly when the Council of Trent is regarded as a Roman Reformation, and its language as either the prudent modification or at least as the most scientific and guarded statement-of popular doctrines which certainly had stood in need of a guarded expression. I do not forget that in Sess. xxii. c. ii. the Council had declared 'That the victim offered, and the offerer of the victim, are one and the very same, as in His self-oblation upon the Cross, so in the ministry of His priests in the Church, the method only of offering being changed1'; and that each part of this statement stands somewhat amplified in the Cat. ad Par. II. c. iv. quaest. lxxiv. and lxxv2. If the doctrine insisted on were to the effect that the Eucharist is the Church's divinely ordered ceremonial method of self-identification with the sacrifice of Christ, which itself therefore may legitimately be called the sacrifice with which it is divinely identified (not being a sacrifice 1 'Una eademque est hostia, idem nunc offerens sacerdotum ministerio, qui se ipsum tunc in cruce obtulit, sola offerendi ratione diversa.'

2 It will be observed that the Catechismus, going somewhat further, does in fact explicitly deny that the Eucharist is a sacrifice other than the sacrifice of the Cross: Unum itaque et idem sacrificium esse fatemur et haberi debet, quod in missa peragitur, et quod in cruce oblatum est; quemadmodum una est et eadem hostia, Christus videlicet Dominus noster, qui se ipsum in ara crucis semel tantummodo cruentum immolavit. Neque enim cruenta et incruenta hostia duae sunt hostiae, sed una tantum; cuius sacrificium, postquam Dominus ita praecepit: "Hoc facite in meam commemorationem" in Eucharistia quotidie instauratur.' Qu. lxxv.: 'Sed unus etiam atque idem sacerdos est, Christus Dominus; nam ministri qui sacrificium faciunt, non suam sed Christi personam suscipiunt quum eius corpus et sanguinem conficiunt. Id quod et ipsius consecrationis verbis ostenditur. Neque enim sacerdos inquit "Hoc est corpus Christi," sed "Hoc est corpus meum"; personam videlicet Christi Domini gerens, panis et vini substantiam in veram eius corporis et sanguinis substantiam convertit.' It would be a fuller expression of the truth to say that it is 'the Church' which 'Christi personam suscipit'; and that the Priests act herein as the divinely authorized representatives and organs of the Church.

directly 'in itself,' but indirectly by virtue of that beyond itself with which it is made one), there would be nothing to criticize. But could there in that case be any emphasis upon the word 'proprium'? At least the apparent force of the word 'proprium' seems to be to deny the dependence and to assert an independent character, as though the sacrifice of the Eucharist were a sacrifice per se. When, then, the conclusion is repeatedly emphasized, that the Eucharist is a 'verum et proprium sacrificium' and that this 'proprium sacrificium' is 'vere propitiatorium,' alike for the remission of sins of every kind on earth, and for souls in purgatory not yet fully ‘purged' or 'expiated,' it must I think be admitted that even the guarded definitions of Trent in 1562 lend only too much of apparent colour to certain popular views of sacrifice and priesthood which (to put it very mildly) had tended not a little to exaggeration 1.

To call the Eucharist 'the Church's sacrifice' (in the sense e. g. of the Church's identification with the sacrifice of Christ) is one thing: to call it 'verum sacrificium' may point only a most legitimate contrast between it and the Old Testament sacrifices which were certainly not 'vera': but to call it (under anathema) 'proprium sacrificium' either is, or certainly may seem to be, another 2. Again to 1 Compare the exaggerations quoted in the Appendix, p. 312, note.

2 It may be said, no doubt, that the Eucharist can be called a sacrifice, even when regarded in itself, as the offering of our worship, or of our gifts, or simply of the elements of bread and wine. Without denying the truth of such thoughts, I must still urge that it is really a sacrifice in these subordinate senses, only in dependence upon, and in consequence of, its being the Church's divinely ordained identification with the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ. If it were not, in this far deeper sense, the Church's 'sacrifice,' the word sacrifice, seriously applied to it in these lesser senses only, would be a somewhat misleading overstatement. But when it is realized first as the Church's ceremonial method of identification with the perpetual offering of the Sacrifice of Christ, then every lesser act which, in greater measure or in less, expresses or symbolizes the surrender or homage of men-illumined, as it now is, by the light of the one transcendent reality-becomes itself also, according to its capacity, a true mode or aspect of the spirit of sacrifice in the Church. The Eucharist is a sacrifice, primarily and essentially, in exactly the sense or measure in which it can be said to be the Sacrifice of Christ. If in relation

point out that that with which it is identified is the offering of Christ which is the atonement for the sins of the world is one thing; to fortify by anathema the definition of the Eucharistic celebration as a sacrifice 'vere propitiatorium' is, or at least may seem to be, another. To say that the sacrifice of Christ was indeed for all, for the quick and the dead, 'pro vivis ac defunctis,' is one thing; to anathematize those who hesitate or decline to lay down that the earthly celebrating of the sacrifice produces an effect upon souls in purgatory, can hardly fail to be felt to be another. In each of these points even Trent may be said to appear, and the Romanism of the Tridentine generation was, without doubt, popularly understood, to identify itself only too completely with the extreme and most doubtful form of assertion; and having thus tied up the idea of 'sacrificium ' just to its own most questionable possibilities, then to find in the 'offering of sacrifice,' so explained and defined, the one differentiating conception and definition of 'priesthood.' That, then, which was before the mind of the Reformers was a completeness of view, conceived with only too painful a sharpness of logical precision; a view which the Tridentine fathers either did-or did not -succeed in adequately limiting; a view according to which the 'priesthood,' consisting of the power of offering actual atoning sacrifices (sacrifices which could be indefinitely repeated and arithmetically appraised), constituted a real propitiatory mediation between the lay people and their God. In context with any such conception as this or the suspicion of it-to say, with the Catechismus, that the principal function of a priest is to be interpres ac mediator Dei et hominum,' or, with Morinus, that, because it means sacrifice, therefore 'no one can doubt that the priesthood is the foundation of the entire Christian religion' (though both phrases in themselves

to that sense the word 'proprium' is a doubtful one, it cannot, in virtue of the subordinate senses taken (as they cannot really be taken) apart, be made to be satisfactory.

may be capable of an excellent meaning), will at least be to open the way to misconceptions of a very serious kind.

What then was the truth? Was all this language about the sacrifice and the priesthood wholly wrong; and, as wrong, to be wholly swept away? Unquestionally this was the view of unbridled Protestantism. Or was it, on the other hand, as Romanism has maintained, not only not wrong, but altogether right, and rightly proportioned?

Beyond all question it is clear that the Anglican Reformers took neither of these two lines. What they did clearly implies (1) that they did not judge it wholly wrong nomenclature, and (2) that its conception and statement had nevertheless, in their eyes, so far fallen out of due proportion as, if not to contradict, yet at least to jeopardize, the right balance of Christian truth.

Take the importance of the retention of the nomenclature. It requires perhaps no slight effort of imagination for us at the present time fully to realize how great the pressure must have been upon reformers who were themselves Protestants, in the midst of the rising tide of destructive Protestantism, to 'abolish priesthood'; and how very much more is meant than might at first sight appear by the deliberate retention, in the reign of King Edward VI., of the three orders of 'Bishops, Priests, and Deacons' as immemorial 'from the Apostles' time,' and therefore perpetually to be retained and revered in the Church of Christ. I say the deliberate retention, for that this was no piece of inattentive conservatism the detail of the circumstances makes abundantly clear. It has been several times pointed out, and it is certainly well to remember, into what exaggerations Archbishop Cranmer had himself been prepared to go some years earlier in the direction of denying the spiritual character of Order1. Here again it requires a real effort of imagination to judge

1 'We know as matter of history that the inadequate conceptions of ordination to which Canon Estcourt alludes were before the Reformers of the Church of England, and had met with considerable countenance among them. But