Edward Bouverie Pusey · 2 of 21

Main Body · Part 2

The doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice depends upon the doctrine of the real objective Presence. Where there is the Apostolic succession and a consecration in our Lord’s words, there, it is held by Roman authorities too, is the Eucharistic sacrifice. The very strength of the expressions used of “the sacrifices of masses,” that “they were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits,” the use of the plural, and the clause “in the which it was commonly said,” show that what the Article speaks of is not “the sacrifice of the Mass,” but the habit (which as one hears from time to time, still remains) of trusting to the purchase of Masses when dying, to the neglect of a holy life, or repentance, and the grace of God and His mercy in Christ Jesus, while in health. I have been obliged to speak negatively, in order to explain what it is which is denied. But the

Church of England, acknowledging the belief of the fathers whose teaching we are required to follow, and the doctrine of the Councils which it recognizes as “received by all men,” receives what they taught. One thing alone she is jealous of, that nothing should seem to overshadow, or interfere with, or supplement the meritoriousness of the One Sacrifice of Our dear Lord upon the Cross. This is what she everywhere guards: “The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the world, original and actual, and there is none other satisfaction for sin but this alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, &c.” Plainly then, by the force of the word wherefore, she rejects no sacrifice which does not interfere with this. In celebrating the Holy Eucharist she pleads to “God, Who, of” His “tender mercy did give” His “only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption, Who made there, by His one oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.” But that sacrifice, once made, lives on in Heaven. There our Lord, who shall come down to judge, as He went into Heaven, still bears the marks of the wounds which for us and our salvation He received, effulgent with the glory of His Godhead, irradiant with His Divine love. There He pleads that all-Atoning Sacrifice; there, for these 1800 years, has He lived to make intercession for us, generation after generation, yea, for each one of our sinful race. But since His perpetual intercession for us (which is an article of faith contained in plainest words of Holy Scripture) does not interfere with that one atonement made upon the Gross, neither does any pleading of that One Meritorious Sacrifice which was finished there, in that to the Merits of that One oblation our dear Lord Himself adds nothing. It sufficed for the sins of the whole world. That One Sacrifice we plead in every “through Jesus Christ our Lord,” with which we end each prayer. Our Lord, as we confess to God, “did institute, and in His Holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that His precious Death until His Coming again,” that we might plead to the Father that same Sacrifice. In the Holy Eucharist we do in act what in our prayers we do in words. I am persuaded that, on this point, the two Churches might be reconciled by explanation of the terms used. The Council of Trent, in laying down the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass, claims nothing for the Holy Eucharist but an application of the One meritorious sacrifice of the Cross. An application of that sacrifice the Church of England believes also. Many years have flowed away since we have taught this, and have noticedhow the words, “sacrifice,” “proper,” or “propitiatory sacrifice,” have been alternately accepted or rejected, according as they were supposed to mean that the Eucharistic sacrifice acquired something propitiatory in itself, or only applied what was merited once and for ever by the One sacrifice of our Lord upon the Cross. “If you say,” said even the Lutheran

Pfaff, “that the Eucharist applies to the faithful the propitiation made by the sacrifice on the Cross, no Protestant will dispute this. But if you believe that the devotion of the Eucharist acquires and obtains propitiation, you may be saying what is per haps at variance from the opinion of the Roman Church. For the Council of Trent says that, ‘our Lord, in order that He might leave to His Church a visible sacrifice, whereby that bloody Sacrifice, which was to be once accomplished on the Cross, might be represented, and its memory abide to the end of the world, and its salutary efficacy be applied to the remission of our daily sins, declaring Himself a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, offered to God the Father His Body and Blood under the forms of bread and wine.’”

It is an Ultra-montanist Bishop, a Penitentiary of Pope John XXII., who, in the 14th century, in his work “On the moaning of the Church,” said, “Our Church is full and over-full of altars, masses, and sacrifices, and therewith is, in the sacrifices, full of homicides, sacrileges, uncleannesses, and simonies and other wickednesses, excommunications and irregularities to the very utmost.—For at this day so many masses are said for gain, or custom, or complaisance, or to cover wickednesses, or for their own justification, that both among priests and people the holy Body of the Lord is now held cheap. Whence also S. Francis willed that the brothers everywhere should be content with one mass, foreseeing that the brothers would wish to justify themselves by masses, and reduce them to a matter of gain as we see done at this day. And now through custom or rather corruption it has indurated, that a mass, priced at three or four denars or one shilling, is bought and sold by a blind people and by wicked simoniacal priests.”

This is but the echo of a part of what was said over and over again twenty-six years ago; and our dear friend’s tract has done good and lasting service, by breaking off a mass of unauthorized traditional glosses, which had encrusted over the Thirty-nine Articles. The interpretation which he then put forth, and which in him was blamed, was at the time vindicated by others without blame. The blame was occasioned by two circumstances, owing to which Tract 90 was thought to intend to admit much more than our friend meant. 1) There was in regard to Art. XXII., a purposed vagueness in the first edition, occasioned by his own diffidence in that he did not wish, to suggest how much of any practice, disused but not forbidden by the Church of England, might be resumed by individuals in her. 2) It was misinterpreted in an extreme Roman sense by Mr. Ward. But the principle of Tract 90, viz. that we are not to bring into the Articles, out of any popular

W. B. Heathcote. I vindicated it in my letter to Dr. Jelf, as the natural grammatical interpretation of the Articles; Mr. Heathcote, as their only admissible interpretation.

system, any meanings which are not contained in their words, rightly and accurately understood, was not and could not be condemned. Sound teaching has been condemned, not when it was put forth distinctly, but while there was any indefiniteness about it. Dr. Manning alludes to the censure of our friend, Bishop Forbes, by the Scotch Bishops. But when he explained himself elaborately in his defence, he was censured no more. The doctrines which he taught have been vindicated in the Church of Scotland, with the whole breadth and depth of Patristic teaching and the paper, which censured his teaching before he was heard, is admitted to be only the private opinion of those who signed it.

iv. Dr. Manning says, “The Church of England, in the Articles, affirms, that all Churches have erred, that General Councils may err.” In saying that “General Councils may err,” she affirms less than Bellarmine, and indeed all Roman Divines, who affirm that General Councils have erred. For they speak of “General Councils which have been disapproved,” and of “General Councils which have been partly approved, partly disapproved.” The Gallican Church held, as our Homilies also imply, that reception by the Church constitutes the true validity of a General Council. The language of the Homilies, “those six Councils which were allowed and received of all men,” agrees with that of Bossuet, “that Is a lawful Council, with which, while acting as Œcumenical, the whole Church communicates, and the matter being dijudicated, holds it to be adhered to, so that the authority of the Council rests on the authority and consent of the universal Church, nay, is the very authority of the Catholic Church.”

But then Dr. Manning gathers up Article XIX. into the formula “All Churches have erred.” True, in one sense; there has been error everywhere. Satan has sown his seed everywhere. But not all at once, nor collectively, nor in any formal decision, so that the whole Church should agree in sanctioning what is untrue, which seems to be contrary to our Lord’s promise, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against her.” The Article says nothing about formal errors or decrees. This Article was a puzzle to me when young. Having received the then traditional interpretation, that the Article meant certain errors contained in decrees of the Church of Some, I inquired what were the erroneous decrees of “the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch,” in the corresponding clause. I could obtain no information, and thought it was my own ignorance. The two clauses, being put antithetically, must correspond. “Since,” I argued, “they were decrees in the one case, they must have been decrees in the other.” When upon fuller information I found that there were no canons of “Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch,” which were intended, then it followed, on the same principle of the correspondence of the two clauses, that neither were canons of the Church of Rome spoken of. The Article, moreover, does not say that “the Church of Rome is in error” in the present, but, “hath

erred,” in time past, just as it says of the other Patriarchates, that they “have erred,” i. e. in time past. But whether its object is to state that corruptions had crept in, in the Roman Church also, as a ground of the need of a Reformation, or whether it was meant as a protest against the infallibility of that Church by itself, in neither case does it militate against the inerrancy of the whole Church collectively. The fact that practical corruptions had crept in, was virtually owned by the Roman Church too, by the reforms which it instituted.

But neither is “Papal Infallibility” an article of faith anywhere. The Eastern Church, in its whole length and breadth, agrees, of course, with us. But in the West too, the Gallican Church, also, which holds the consent of the Universal Church to be essential to infallibility, could not hold the infallibility of the Pope, by himself, without such an Œcumenical Council. You remember how Bossuet not only adduces instances in which questions remained open after the Bishop of Rome had expressed his decided opinion (as the question of rebaptizing heretics was settled by the Council of Arles, or that of the keeping of Easter by the Council of Nice), or how questions were decided by the joint authority of a Bishop of Borne and another Patriarch (as when the Origenists were condemned, first by Theophilus, and, through his influence, by Anastasius), such judgment being accepted by the universal Church; or how the judgment of the Bishop of Rome was confirmed by a subsequent Council; or appeal from him was, in principle, allowed by S. Augustine,—and not only this, but you will recollect how Bossuet even presses the case, in which Popes pronounced wrongly in matters of faith too. He urges the terrible and utter fall of Liberius (who not only subscribed a heretical creed and condemned S. Athanasius, but owned all the worst Arians, whence S. Hilary pronounced Anathema on him), or how Zosimus, himself orthodox, approved the Pelagian confession of Cœlestius;or Hormisdas, without enunciating wrong doctrine, yet, when appealed to in common with other Bishops, censured those who taught the right faith, as was afterwards owned by all.

He insisted also on the case of Honorius, who was anathematized by the sixth General Council, in that, when formally consulted by three Patriarchs, he approved of the heretical letter of Sergius, and condemned the orthodox letter of Sophronius, and the true

doctrine equally with the false. Bossuet showed too how Gregory II. and Stephen II., and Celestine III., formally gave wrong responses on questions touching marriage, and sanctioned what was in fact adultery;how Stephen II. and Nicolas I. gave wrong answers as to the Sacrament of Baptism—Stephen as to its form, Nicolas as to its words. In the long Franciscan controversy about poverty, Bossuet shows that Nicolas III. praised that, as conformable to the example of Our Lord, which John XXII. subsequently declared it to be erroneous and heretical to ascribe to Him; and that he alleged that Our Lord did that, taking on Himself the “person of the weak,” which was just and right. Lastly, John XXII. preached that publicly, and caused it (it is thought) to be preached at Paris, and defended it to the French king; the contrary of which, he, when convinced by the French Theologians sent to him, confessed, “together with the Catholic Church,” to be true.

Bossuet himself held the distinction between “the see” and “him who sat thereon,” maintaining that what Roman Bishops “taught believed, declared, was not as yet (the teaching, belief, declaration) of the Roman Church and of the Apostolic See, until, being promulgated by the Roman Pontiff, and received by the whole Church, it obtained; and that this was the Roman faith, the faith of Peter, and of the Apostolic See, which could not fail.” It is apparent that Bossuet and our Articles are, in this, speaking of different things, since Bossuet affirms that only to be de fide, which is received and sanctioned by the whole Church, our Article speaks of that which is not so received, since it compares the Roman Church with the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, as distinct from them. But the Church of England, equally with Bossuet, maintains that which has been received by the whole Church to be certainly true.

v. And this is, in fact, an answer to Dr. Manning’s statement, that “the Church of England weakens the hold of the truths which it teaches, by detaching them from the Divine voice of the Church.” The statement in the Articles, “The Church hath authority in controversies of faith,” in itself implies a Divine authority; for none but a Divine authority can have any power to decide in matters of faith. It also implies a necessary preservation of the Church, as a whole, from error (according to our Lord’s true promise, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against her,” “Lo, I am with you alway, until to the end of the world”), because it would be sinful to say that the Church has authority to declare what is untrue. The Athanasian Creed, of course, implies the same. “Whosoever will be saved, before all things, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith.” “We are forbidden by the Catholic religion to say.” “This is the Catholic faith, which, except a

man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved.” For the “Catholic faith” can plainly mean nothing else than the faith held by the Catholic Church, which in our creeds we equally confess. It is a body of faith set before us on authority; confessed by us now, as it was centuries ago; immutable; which we own that they who have received would incur the loss of their souls by wilfully casting it away, and, in it, rejecting God Who gave it. There is no room left for inquiry here. And so again, when, in the exhortation to godparents in the Baptismal Service, they are bidden to provide that “the child may learn the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and all other things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul’s health,” the Church of England plainly teaches, that there is a body of faith, beyond the Apostles’ Creed, which to “know and believe” is essential to the well-being of all Christians. “When asserting also the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation, it defines on the one side the power of the Church, but it recognizes the power which it defines. “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” The Church of England would not have said, that certain things are “not to be required of any man that they should be believed,” unless it held that other things, which are read in Holy Scripture, and which may be proved thereby, may be so required. So that the Article which sets forth the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, agrees with that which declares, that “the Church hath authority in matters of faith.” It implies the authority of the Church, while it lays down certain limits to it.

Nor is this limitation other than what the old Catholic fathers, to whom in the homilies she so often appeals, have from the first so often and emphatically said. There was no contrast between Tradition and Holy Scripture. “We willingly acknowledge,” says Bp. Usher too, “that the word of God, which by some of the Apostles was set down in writing, was both by themselves and others of their fellow-labourers delivered by word of mouth; and that the Church in succeeding ages was bound, not only to preserve those Sacred “Writings committed to her trust, but also to deliver unto her children viva voce the form of wholesome words contained therein. Traditions, therefore, of this nature come not within the compass of our controversy, the question being de ipsa doctrina tradita, not de tradendi modo, ‘touching the substance of the doctrine delivered, not of the manner of delivering it.’ Again, it must be remembered, that here we speak of the doctrine delivered, as ‘the “Word of God,’ that is, of points of religion revealed unto the Prophets and Apostles, for the perpetual information of God’s people; not of rites and ceremonies and other ordinances, which are left to the disposition of the Church, and consequently be not of Divine, but of positive and human right. Traditions, therefore, of this kind likewise are not properly brought within the circuit of this question.”

The authority of the Church was given to her by her Divine Lord within certain

limits. “Teach them,” He said, “whatever I command you.” All must admit then, that she could not command any thing which should be really contrary to Holy Scripture. ]STor must she contradict herself. The Fathers of the later General Councils began their office by expressing their assent to the earlier, and considered their own work as only expanding what was contained in the earlier, with a view to meet the new heresy which had emerged. So neither is it any undue limitation of the authority of the Church to lay down another limit, that the Church may not require “as necessary to salvation” what is not read in Holy Scripture, or may be proved by it, This only implies the historical fact, that the same body of saving truths which the Apostles first preached orally, they afterwards, under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, wrote in Holy Scripture, God ordering in His Providence that, in the unsystematic teaching of Holy Scripture, all should be embodied which is essential to establish the faith. This is said over and over again by the Fathers. This limitation of the power of the Church does not set individuals free to criticise, on their private judgments, what the whole Church has decided. It is an axiom, “God cannot contradict Himself;” yet this does not set Rationalists free to deny any truth in Holy Scripture, because, in their private misjudgments, they think it at variance with some other favourite truth. And yet nothing is more common. “How apt are we,” says Bp. Hall,“if Thou dost never so little vary from our apprehensions, to misknow Thee, and to wrong ourselves by our misopinions!” “God is love;” but we may not argue thence, that He did not create Hell. Bather; Hell itself is a portion of His love to those who will be brought to love Him. None will be shut out from the Love of God, who do not formally reject God. But the Day of Judgment will alone reveal how many millions will love Him for ever, who would never have loved Him, unless the fear of Hell had first scared them to seek Him, and so to know Him and to love Him. Nay, since fear is here almost inseparable from love, it alone will declare how many exalted spirits there will have been quickened in their higher degrees of love by the awe lest they should endlessly lose Him. The truth does not justify its abuse, “nor does the abuse take away the use.” As the truth, “God cannot contradict Himself,” does not set men free to criticise any portion of His revelation, so neither does the truth, “His Church may not lay down as necessary to salvation what God has not revealed in His “Word,” set men free to criticise what He has taught His whole Church to declare and to receive as saving truth, any more than that other maxim (which also limits the power of the Church, but which all receive), “His Church may not contradict His Word.”

The statement that the three Creeds “ought thoroughly to be received and believed; for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture,” is, in fact, only an application of that principle. The Athanasian Creed, indeed, was received tacitly, not formally, by the Church, embodying, as it does, the faith authoritatively set forth in the four first General Councils. But the General Councils themselves acknowledge the principle. The words, “according to the Scriptures,” in the Nicene Creed, involve it. The

Council of Ephesus says, “The Holy Synod approved the letter written to him (Nestorius) by the most holy Bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, as written rightly and unexceptionally, and in no wise unharmonizing with the inspired Scriptures, or with the faith set forth at Nice.”i The Council of Chalcedon “ratifies the doctrine on the Substance of the Holy Spirit delivered by the 150 holy Fathers met at Constantinople; which they made known to all, not as if they added any thing which was deficient in that before them, but making clear by testimonies of Scripture their thought of the Holy Spirit against those who essayed to annul His dominion.” S. Athanasius mentions this, as a principle of the fathers at Nicæa, in answer to the Arians who tried to shake the Creed of Nicæa. “Vainly do they (the Arians) run about with the pretext that they have demanded councils for the faith’s sake. For Divine Scripture is sufficient above all things. But if a council be needed on the matter, there are the proceedings of the Fathers. For the Nicene Bishops did not neglect this matter, but stated the doctrine so exactly, that persons reading their words honestly, cannot but be reminded by them of the religion towards Christ announced in Divine Scripture.” “If the expressions are not in so many words in the Scriptures, yet, as we said before, they contain the sense of the Scriptures, and, expressing it, they convey it to those who have their hearing unimpaired for religious doctrine.” So that Constantine expressed a truth which he had been taught, when he exhorted the assembled Fathers to unity, “having the written teaching of the All-Holy Spirit. For the books of the Gospels and Apostles, and the oracles of the ancient Prophets, instruct us clearly what we ought to think of the Divinity.” S. Leo expressed his surprise that “some calumniators spoke of his letter, which was approved by the whole world” (being received by the Council of Chalcedon), “as obscure, since its doctrine was so plain and solid as to admit of no novelty either in substance or language, because whatever he had written is shown to have been taken from the teaching of Apostles and Gospels.” S. Leo in the Epistle itself ascribes the heresy of Eutyches to his ignorance of Holy Scripture; hip own wonderful statement of doctrine is full of it.

Bishops,” all, accordingly, throughout the whole world, east and west. In our Ember Weeks, we pray “Our Heavenly Father, Who hast purchased to Thyself an Universal Church by the precious Blood of Thy Dear Son, mercifully look upon the same, and at this time so guide and govern the minds of Thy servants, the Bishops and Pastors of Thy flock.” We pray accordingly for God’s special guidance of the Bishops of the Universal Church. At Holy Communion we pray God to “inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord,” and for “all Bishops,” not our own only. Certainly, since prayer is the voice of the soul to God, we express riot our inmost belief only, but a loving belief, that the Church is one.

How it is one, the Church nowhere defines; but the faith is kept alive by prayer more than by definitions. Yet, whatever duties may follow upon the Unity of the Church, it is plain that no harmony of men’s wills can constitute a supernatural and Divine Unity.

Unity, in part, is the direct gift of God; in part, it is the fruit of that gift in the mutual love of the members of the Church. In part, it is a spiritual oneness wrought by God the Holy Ghost; in part, it is a grace, to be exercised by man, a consequence and fruit of that gift. In one way, it is organic unity derived from Christ, and binding all to Christ, descending from the Head to the Body, and uniting the Body to the Head;

in another, it consists in acts of love from the members one to another. Christ our Lord, God and Man, binds us to Him by the indwelling of His Spirit, by the gift of His Sacraments, administered by those to whom He gave the commission so to do, by the right faith in Himself. “We are bound to one another, in that we are members of Him, and by the love which He sheds abroad in our hearts through the Spirit which He giveth us, and by common acts of worship and intercommunion.

Of these, the highest and chief is that which binds us to Christ Himself. Our highest union with one another is an organic union with one another through union with Him. It is not chiefly an union of will, or of mind, or of love, although these ought to be the fruits of it in its most perfect state, but an union through His indwelling Spirit. It is an union, in a degree, corresponding with the union of the Father and the Son. “As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.” It was the perverseness of the Arians to say, that the oneness of the Father and the Son was no other than that of Their creatures with Them, that either we too are of the Father’s own substance, or the Son is not so. The words do not express identity, nor equality. Else it might be said, that “to be perfect as the Father is perfect,” implied that the creature would become such as the Creator; or, that to be “harmless as doves,” implies that we should have the harmlessness of irrational animals, not that which is inwrought through the Holy Spirit of God. The words do express a certain relation and analogy, an actual real oneness, not in ourselves, but with God. As we are called “sons by adoption and grace,” as being members of the Son, and are even called “gods,” says S. Athanasius, through the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost; so we become one in Them, in that the Father is in the

Son, and the Son cometh to be in us. “Since Thou,” our Lord saith (it is S. Athanasius’s paraphrase of His words), “art in Me, because I am Thy Word, and I in them, because of the body, and for Thee the salvation of man is perfected in Me, according to its perfection, I ask that they too may become perfect, having oneness with It, and having become one in It, that all, carried as it were by Me, may become one body and one Spirit, and may grow up into a perfect man.” This oneness, then, is an actual mystical oneness, inwrought by Christ our Head, uniting the whole Church together in one with Himself in His Body; an actual oneness produced by grace, corresponding to the Oneness of the Father and the Son by nature. S. Cyril points out more distinctly the way of this union: 1st, with our nature, through the Incarnation, and then, with us, through His indwelling, by the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and by His Spirit. S. Cyril speaks first of imitation, next of indwelling. “Above,” he says, “we have said, that the union of believers through likeness of mind and soul ought to imitate the manner of the Divine Unity, and the essential identity of the Holy Trinity. But on these words we will essay to show that the oneness, according to which we are bound to one another and all to God, is, in a manner, one of nature, and, may be, not lacking in a bodily oneness with one another, although our bodies are different from one another, and each has his own personal being. There-being confessedly a natural oneness of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (for One Godhead in the Holy Trinity is believed and glorified), let us consider in what way we too are found one, both bodily and spiritually, both towards each other and towards God. The Only-Begotten, having shone upon us from the very Essence of God the Father, and having in His own Nature all which the Father is, became Flesh according to the Scriptures, having, as it were, mingled Himself with our nature, through the ineffable concurrence and union with this body which is from the earth. Thus He, by nature God, was truly called and became a Heavenly Man (not ‘bearing God,’ as some say who do not accurately understand the depth of the mystery, but) being, in one, God and Man, that having, in a manner, co-united in Himself what by nature was far apart and alien from all sameness of nature, He might make man to communicate in and partake of the Divine Nature. For the communication and abiding of the Spirit passed through to us also, having taken its beginning through Christ and in Christ first, being, as Man, anointed and sanctified, although, as He was by Nature God (as He appeared from the Father), He Himself with His own Spirit hallowing His own temple and the whole creation made by Him, and whatsoever admits of being hallowed. The mystery of Christ, then, was made a sort of beginning and way whereby we too might partake of the Holy Spirit, and of oneness with God. For in Christ are we all hallowed in the way afore spoken. In order, then, that we ourselves too, although differing both in souls and bodies through that which is personal to each, might come together and be commingled into an unity with God and one another, the Only-Begotten contrived a way, devised through the wisdom befitting Him, and through the counsel of the Father. For by One Body, His own, blessing