proving that the Eucharist is the same as the Sacrifice of the Cross.

If at first sight he seems to give some countenance to the second proposition, by saying that there is a sacrifice in heaven, he takes very great care to explain in what sense he means it,—that it is the holocaust of our LORD'S mystical Body which He is offering, His Body the Church, represented by its first-fruits, His Human Nature, taken into the fires of the Deity, and there ever burning but never destroyed. This sacrifice, he tells us, will not be absolutely complete until the general resurrection of the dead, when the Body of CHRIST will be lacking in no member, and the supreme holocaust will be offered through eternity. Here there is no trace of a sacrificial act, no trace of a presentation of our LORD's Blood, nothing which in any wise corresponds to the "heavenly sacrifice" of Thalhofer and the modern school.

We have devoted so much space to the view which Thomassin sets forth in regard to the heavenly sacrifice, that we shall do no more than quote a passage from de Condren and one from M. Olier to show that their view was precisely similar.

De Condren says: 'After the Sacrifice of that Body 2. De Conimmolated on the Cross, after the destruction of His dren's view human life, it was still needful that all that remained there of the traces of His mortality in the wounds which He had received, all that He still retained of disfigurement, of meanness, and of earthiness, all the likeness to the flesh of sin and to the infirmity of the children of Adam, should be entirely destroyed, effaced, and consumed in glory. The consumption and burning of the Body of JESUS CHRIST as the Victim is, therefore, accomplished in His Resurrection. He' was

3. and Olier's view

For the burning, as

raised up
from the dead by the glory of the FATHER.'*
He has been raised to life by this Divine Fire of the
glory of His FATHER, which has consumed all that
was not worthy of the Body of a GOD in the Body of
JESUS CHRIST dead on the Cross.
has been said, took place for this reason, that the Vic-
tim might be as it were changed and transformed into
GOD. There was nothing in nature which was better
able to represent this in the sacrifices of the Law than
the fire, which was the symbol of GOD. But the burn-
ing of the Sacrifice in the New Law, which is without
comparison more perfect, and is no longer in figure but
in truth, is so effected that the Victim has not only been
changed into the type of GOD, but has been as it were
transformed into the glory of GOD Himself, nevertheless
without losing anything of the reality of His Human
Nature. For it is by the Resurrection that this sacred
Victim has been freed from all which was of earth and
mean; that He has been entirely reclothed and pene-
trated with such glory as becomes the only SON of the
FATHER; that He no longer lives but for GOD(vivit Deo);
that He has been laid in the Bosom of GOD Himself; and
that He has entered into a state altogether Divine."†

The following passage is from M. Olier: "On the
day of the Resurrection, finding His SON immolated in
the tomb, the FATHER came in the glorious light of His
Divinity, to complete in Him the Sacrifice, not leaving
in Him any remains of His weakness and of His former
state, of His state of flesh, dense, passible, mortal; so
that, consuming it entirely, He causes it to pass into a
Divine state, as iron passes into the very state of fire."
* Rom. vi. 4.

† De Condren, L'Idée du Sacerdoce, Part II., chap. iv.
Olier, Explic. des Cerem., 1. vii, c. ii.

These two passages show how faithfully both Thom- Both are idenassin and Olier have reproduced the teaching of their tical with that

master.

A century later we find probably a trace of this teaching in Benedict XIV. (ob. 1758), who, in his work De Sacrificio Missa, writes: "In the Jewish sacrifices the victim was burned upon the altar of burnt offering, so that whatever there was in it of imperfection might be consumed in the flames, and the smoke might rise to heaven as an odour of sweetness, as Holy Scripture says. In the New Law the Victim was consumed in the Resurrection and Ascension of CHRIST; for in the Resurrection all that in CHRIST belonged only to this mortal life was consumed, as S. Paul says, 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality;'* and in the Ascension the Victim, received by GOD as an odour of sweetness, was placed at His Right Hand." t

of Thomassin.

4. Traces of the

same idea in

Benedict XIV.

suet.

Bossuet (ob. 1704) also, while most accurately defin- 5. and in Bosing the Sacrifice of the Eucharist as depending entirely upon its relation to the Sacrifice of the Cross, as we have seen, speaks of it as related to what our LORD is now doing in heaven in His great Intercession. His words are: "JESUS CHRIST having said that He sanctified Himself for us,§ that is, that He offered and devoted Himself in order that we might become saints, let us not be afraid to say that this sanctification and this offering of JESUS CHRIST still continues on our altars, and that it consists essentially in the Consecration. And it is easy to understand it, since the placing before GOD the Body and Blood, into which the

† Benedict XIV., De Sacrificio Missæ, 1. ii., c. xi., n. 5;

Opera, tom. 8, p. 71.

P. 76.

S. John xvii. 19.

III. The witness of two

Eastern

writers.

1. Cabasilas,

cent. XIV.,

bread and wine were changed, was in effect to offer it to Him. It was to imitate on earth what JESUS CHRIST does in heaven when He prays for us in the presence of His FATHER."*

While many of the theologians of this age and school speak of a sacrifice being offered in heaven, they explain, as we have seen, the sense in which they use this expression, and thus show that they have no real affinity with the Modern view. †

III. Before we close this chapter we would call attention to some extracts from the writings of two theologians of the Eastern Church, to whom reference has already been made in Chapter VII.

In the middle of the fourteenth century Nicholas Cabasilas, Bishop of Thessalonica, wrote a treatise on the liturgy, which was the first systematic work on tempt to form that subject produced by the Greek Church.

the first to at

ulate a

theory of the E. S.

The value of his testimony

Mr.

Brightman alludes to this treatise as "the first formal attempt" "to formulate the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice." It will therefore be interesting and very much to our purpose to inquire what view of the subject is set forth in it. The testimony of the Greek Church has always a special value on account of the

* Bossuet, Explication de quelques Difficultés sur les Prieres de la Messe, No. 8, tom. 5, p. 685.

† We would here again call attention to a very striking and thoughtful treatise by M. l'abbé Lepin, entitled, L'Idée du Sacrifice dans la Religion Chrétienne, principalement d'après le Père de Condren et M. Olier. In this work the views of the French theologians of the seventeenth century are most brilliantly elaborated. In a letter to the author (cf. Appendix F), M. Lepin clearly shows where he parts company with the Modern view.

Nich. Cabas., Sacræ Liturgia Interpretatio; Migne, P. G.,

tom. 150.

the Greek Fathers.

tenacity with which its theologians have clung to the to the views of views of the early Greek Fathers. Indeed, it has sometimes been said that they have made no advance in dogmatic theology since the time of S. John of Damascus.

In Nicholas Cabasilas, therefore, we may expect to find an authoritative presentation of the mind of the Greek Fathers. The fact that he wrote shortly after the Council of Florence, and was strongly opposed to the Latins and to the views expressed by them in that Council, would almost certainly ensure his bringing forward such a doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as the Modern school claims to discover in the Greek Fathers, —that is, of course, if he had ever heard of such a view. And the fact that he does not is in itself no inconsiderable evidence that the Greek Fathers never held any such doctrine.

Cabasilas is

strongly anti

Latin.

in Cabasilas which refute

man's

ments.

argu

There are two passages in Cabasilas's work on the Two passages liturgy which unmistakably meet two of the main arguments in Mr. Brightman's paper. First, Mr. Bright- Mr. Brightman holds that because we find in the liturgies a commemoration of our LORD'S Resurrection and Ascension, and sometimes of His Incarnation, as well as of His Passion, therefore the words of the Institution, "Do this in remembrance of Me," do not suggest a special reference to our LORD'S Death," but "suggest rather the thought of His whole work, of His Person in the fulness of Its significance as perfected in that work."

In chapter xvi. † Cabasilas says incidentally that the Sacrifice shows the Death and the Resurrection and Ascension of our Blessed LORD, since the precious

* Brightman, p. 1.

† Migne, P. G., tom. 150, col. 404.

Incidentally he sees in the H.E.

a commem

oration of the