John Philip Gell

“ The Altar was of earth, the vast sin-burdened wreck of this fallen world, so well beloved of God, which drank up the blood. The Priest is Jesus; but He has made no sacrifice since, nor used an earthly altar.
So much for the doctrine. I will make you a free gift of all the poetry which attaches to the words Sacrifice, and Altar, and Priest, in the varied play of religious imagination and allegorical induction. But we cannot build anything so serious p. 24as the way of our acceptance with God, or the character of our ministry in the Church, upon such frail foundations as these. ”

“ Hebrew distinguishes sacrifice from sacrifice, sin from sin. You argue, for instance, in your Second Sermon, that if Job offered a daily sacrifice, before the coming of the Law, then Christians also, after the Law, may probably offer the like. But Job made a sacrifice for sin (Job i. 5) , which was all burnt; we offer nothing for sin, and our oblation is all eaten. And though the Eucharistic sacrifice of praise might perhaps have been deemed, as a peace-offering, to be also in some sense an offering of blood (Lev. vii. 12) , yet S. Paul has carefully obviated the idea. ”

“ Your “sacrifice by means of a priest” (p. 53) is unknown to S. Paul, who says, of Jesus only, “by Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually” (Heb. xiii. 15) . And the privilege of forgiveness, which S. Paul exercised, he delegated, not to the priests of the Church of Corinth, but to the whole people (2 Cor. ii. 10) . Even the Decretals allow that in necessity Christian lay people may both hear confessions and absolve. A layman, too, or a woman, may baptize ”

“ But, leaving S. Paul, “the whole sense,” you say (pp. 60, 77) , “and usage of the Church from the beginning is explained and justified,” will we but see more in Scripture than Scripture says, and assume the existence of the Christian priesthood. But your “beginning” is not the very beginning. You omit the Apostolical Fathers again, a generation of good men, who never mention Christian priests. ”

“ And we have determined, by God’s grace, out of the said Scriptures to instruct the people committed to our charge; and to teach nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salvation, but that which we shall,” each of us, “be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture.” (Ordination Vow, II.)
The Established Church of England knows only of the “lawful” priest, whose character is evident to all men reading Holy Scripture and ancient authors. He has been spoken of from the time of the Apostles, at first by the name of Elder, and afterwards by that of Priest ”

“ But you urge that “the doctrine was maintained continuously for fifteen hundred years” (p. 99) ; and let me rejoin, opposed continually, upon scriptural grounds. Not seventy years after the decease of S. John, the Christian Athenagoras tells the Emperor Aurelius (Legat. 13) , “The Framer of the Universe needs not blood, nor the fragrance of flowers and incense; the noblest sacrifice to Him is to know Him:” (here we have S. Paul’s “treasure”) “offering bloodless sacrifice,” (here is S. Paul’s “fruit of the lips,”) “and reasonable service,” (meaning, after S. Paul, our own bodies. Rom. xii. 1.) ”

“ You truly observe (p. 94) , that “if we can discover what are the truths which have been held always, everywhere, and by all, we may be certain p. 18we shall run into no serious error nor perverted interpretation of Holy Scripture dangerous to our souls.” Caution, therefore, is requisite in handling the divine words used by our Bishops for the ordination of our lawful clergy: “whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained;”—this form not having been employed always, for we do not find our Church using it till the twelfth century ”

“ Often do I wonder at the artless boldness with which our homilists quote those Nicene Fathers, whose uncertain authority is just as much opposed to the p. 17Scriptures in some places, as it sustains them in others. ”

“ But to proceed to your more serious proofs.
p. 12“We have an altar” (Heb. xiii. 10) is a strange text for you to adduce in the second place (p. 97) ; for it is S. Paul’s illustration of the fact that Christian hearts are “not established with meats, which do not profit those who have been occupied therein” (v. 9) ; as we find in parochial experience, when a more than Scriptural emphasis is put upon the Eucharistic bread and wine. The Apostle simply observes, in the text you quote (v. 10) , that the ministers of the (Christian) tabernacle cannot eat, like Jews, of their altar ”