II

It is necessary next to consider the teaching of the writers of the anti-Nicene Church which bears on the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice.

1. Throughout this period the repudiation of carnal sacrifices is constant and is found in different quarters. As is natural, the emphasis on it is very strong in documents so hostile to Judaism as are the Epistle of Barnabas and the Epistle to Diognetus. “The Lord,” says the writer of the Epistle of Barnabas, probably not the companion of St. Paul but some later namesake,—

“hath made manifest to us by all the prophets that He wanteth neither sacrifices nor whole burnt-offerings nor oblations, saying at one time, ‘What to Me is the multitude of your sacrifices? saith the Lord. I am full of whole burnt-offerings, and the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and of goats I desire not, not though ye should come to be seen of Me. For who required these things at your hands? Ye shall continue no more to tread My court. If ye bring fine flour, it is vain; incense is an abomination to Me; your new moons and your Sabbaths I cannot away with.’ These things therefore He annulled, that the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ, being free from the yoke of restraint, might have its oblation not made with human hands. And He saith again unto them, ‘Did I command your fathers when they went forth from the land of Egypt to bring Me whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices? Nay, this was My command unto them, Let not any one of you bear a grudge of evil against his neighbour in his heart, nor love ye a false oath.’ So we ought to perceive, unless we are without understanding, the mind of the goodness of our Father; for He speaketh to us, desiring us not to go astray like them, but to seek how we may approach Him. Thus then He speaketh to us. ‘The sacrifice to God is a broken heart, the smell of a sweet savour to the Lord is a heart that glorifies its Maker’.”

In like manner the writer of the Epistle to Diognetus says:—

“He that made the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein, and furnisheth us all with what we need, cannot Himself need any of these things which He Himself supplieth to them that imagine they are giving them to Him. But those who think to perform sacrifices to Him by means of blood and fat and whole burnt-offerings, and to honour Him with these honours, seem to me in no way different from those who show the same respect towards deaf images; for the one class think fit to make offerings to things unable to participate in the honour, the other class to One who is in need of nothing.”

And in the Apology of Aristides it is said that “God asks no sacrifice and no libation, nor any of the things that are visible”.

This repudiation of carnal sacrifices does not depend on the particular point of view of the writers of the Epistle of Barnabas and the Epistle to Diognetus and possibly of Aristides, that in the establishment of such sacrifices even the Jews had misunderstood the commands and wishes of God. It is found also in the idea of St. Justin Martyr and Tertullian that the institution of the sacrifices of the Jewish law was a concession to the hardness of heart of the Jews and belonged to a past dispensation; in the assertions of St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenæus and Tertullian that God needeth not such sacrifices; and in the way in which Athenagoras and Clement of Alexandria express their scorn of the sacrifices of the heathen. Athenagoras writes:—

“Look ye, I pray, at each charge that is made against us, and first that we do not offer sacrifice. He who is Maker and Father of this universe needs not blood nor fat nor the sweet smell of flowers and incense, since He Himself is the perfect odour who needs nothing from within or from without.… What further need of a hecatomb is there?… What are whole burnt-offerings to me, since God needs them not?”

Clement of Alexandria picks out from the comic poets derisive descriptions of heathen sacrifices; and expresses his view on the subject in these terms:—

“As then God is not circumscribed in place nor made like to the form of any creature, so neither is He of like nature, nor lacks He anything after the manner of created things, so as because of hunger to desire sacrifices for the sake of food. Things to which suffering pertains are all mortal, and it is vain to offer meat to Him who is not nurtured.”

2. In this repudiation of carnal sacrifices it is recognised that the place of them is taken by Christian belief and life and worship. The writer of the Epistle of Barnabas speaks of “the oblation not made by human hands” which pertains to “the new law of our Lord Jesus Christ”. St. Justin Martyr associates with his assertion that “the Creator needs not blood and libations and incense” a statement that Christians offer to Him prayer and praise and thanksgiving. Athenagoras links with his rejection of carnal sacrifices a description of “the greatest sacrifice of all” as recognition of the true God; and adds to his expression of contempt for whole burnt-offerings the words, “Yet it is right to offer a bloodless sacrifice and to present our reasonable service”. So also Clement of Alexandria defines “the sacrifice which is acceptable to God” as “unswerving separation from the body and its passions”; and after pouring ridicule on animal sacrifice, he proceeds to say:—

“If the Deity, being by nature exempt from all need, rejoices to be honoured, we have good reason for honouring God by prayer, and for sending up to the most righteous Word this sacrifice, the best and holiest of sacrifices when joined with righteousness, venerating Him through whom we receive our knowledge, through Him glorifying Him whom we have learnt to know. At any rate our altar here on earth is the congregation of those who are devoted to the prayers, having, as it were, one common voice and one mind.… The Church’s sacrifice is speech rising like incense from holy souls, while every thought of the heart is laid open to God along with the sacrifice.… The truly hallowed altar is the righteous soul, and the incense from it is the prayer of holiness.”

Elsewhere Clement, after describing a virtuous life of communion with God, says:—

“These virtues I affirm to be an acceptable sacrifice with God, as the Scripture declares that the unboastful heart joined with a right understanding is a whole burnt-offering to God.”

Elsewhere, again, he writes:—

“It is not then expensive sacrifices that we should offer to God but such as are dear to Him, namely, that composite incense of which the Law speaks, an incense compounded of many tongues and voices in the way of prayer, or rather which is being wrought into the unity of the faith out of divers nations and dispositions by the divine bounty shown in the covenants, and is brought together in our songs of praise by purity of heart and righteous and upright living grounded in holy actions and righteous prayer.”

Again, in his description of the most perfect Christian, Clement writes:—

“All his life is a holy festival. His sacrifices consist of prayers and praises and the reading of the Scriptures before dining, and psalms and hymns during dinner and before going to bed, and also of prayers again during the night. By these things he unites himself with the heavenly choir, being enlisted in it for ever-mindful contemplation in consequence of his uninterrupted remembrance of it. Moreover, is he not acquainted with that other sacrifice which consists in the free gift both of instruction and of money among those who are in need?”

In the Canons of Hippolytus the prayer at the consecration of a bishop and the ordination of a presbyter includes the supplication that “his prayers and oblations, which he offers day and night” may be accepted by God. So too Origen describes those whom the truth has set free from distraction as “offering to the God of the universe a reasonable and smokeless sacrifice,” and the true worshipper as “continually offering the bloodless sacrifices in his prayers to the deity”. In the Syriac Didascalia of the Apostles is an exhortation:—

“Hear therefore these things, ye also, ye laymen, the Church chosen of God.… Ye then, holy and perfect Catholic Church, royal priesthood, holy assembly, people of inheritance, great Church, Bride adorned for the Lord God. As therefore was said before, hear also now, Bring heave offerings and tithes and first fruits to the Christ, the true High Priest.… Instead of the sacrifices of that time, offer now prayers and supplications and thanksgivings; then were first fruits and tithes and oblations and gifts, to-day are offerings that are presented by means of the bishops to the Lord God, for those are your high priests. Priests and Levites, now presbyters and deacons, and orphans and widows. For the Levite and the high priest is the bishop.”

3. Christian belief and life and worship then are regarded as spiritual sacrifices by the very writers who are explicit in rejecting sacrifice that is carnal. It should not therefore excite surprise that in the ante-Nicene Church the Eucharist is constantly referred to as a sacrifice. To denote it and in connection with it, sacrificial phraseology is habitually employed. In the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles it is twice called without explanation “the sacrifice” of Christians. In the Epistles of St. Ignatius the word “altar” (θυσιαστήριον) is used five times in relation to Christian worship; and in two of the passages the connection with the Eucharistic food, with the celebration of the Eucharist, and with the liturgical prayer of the Church is too close to allow of the Eucharist being altogether out of sight in the use of the word. For St. Ignatius writes:—

“If any one be not within the precinct of the altar, he lacketh the bread of God. For, if the prayer of one and another hath so great force, how much more that of the bishop and of the whole Church.”

“Be ye careful to observe one Eucharist; for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup for union with His blood; there is one altar, as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and the deacons.”

St. Justin Martyr says that the Jewish oblation of fine flour was a type of the Eucharist; and repeatedly calls the Eucharist a sacrifice (θυσίαι). St. Irenæus describes the Eucharist as “the new oblation of the new covenant,” “the oblation of the Church,” “the pure sacrifice”.

“Giving to His disciples counsel to offer to God first fruits from His creatures, not as to one who stands in need, but so that they themselves may be neither unfruitful nor thankless, He took that bread which is of created nature, and gave thanks, saying, ‘This is My body’. And the cup likewise which is of the same created nature as ourselves He declared to be His blood, and taught the new oblation of the new covenant; which the Church receiving from the Apostles offers throughout the whole world to God, to Him who affords us food. as first fruits of His gifts in the new covenant.”

“The oblation of the Church, which the Lord taught to be offered throughout the whole world, has been reckoned a pure sacrifice with God, and is acceptable to Him.… We ought to offer to God first fruits of His creation.… Oblation as such (genus Oblationum) is not condemned, for there are oblations among us as well as among the Jews, sacrifices in the Church as well as among the ancient people of God; but it is the way of sacrifice (species) only that is changed, since the offering is now made not be slaves but by freemen.”

“We ought to make oblation to God, and in all things to be found grateful to God the Creator … offering first fruits of those things which are His creatures. And this oblation the Church alone offers pure to the Creator, offering to Him of His creation with thanksgiving.”

Sacrificial phraseology then occurs throughout the second century in different parts of the Church. The sacrificial idea receives somewhat more definite expression in the third century from the Carthaginian writers, Tertullian and St. Cyprian. In a description of Christian life and worship Tertullian says, “We annually offer oblations (oblationes facimus) on behalf of the departed on the anniversaries of their deaths”. Elsewhere he mentions among the duties of a Christian husband that he “offers sacrifice” on behalf of his wife, and of a Christian widow that she “annually offers sacrifice on behalf of the soul” of her husband “on the anniversary of his decease”. The words “sacrifice,” “priest,” and “altar” are all used by him in a Christian sense; and in a case which he contemplates of a communicant on a fast day receiving the Sacrament in his hands but not consuming it till later in the day at home, he speaks of the communicant having taken part in the sacrifice. The writings of St. Cyprian are full of allusions to the Eucharist as a sacrifice. The priestly terms for the ministry, sacerdos for the bishop, sacerdotium for his office, are found. To celebrate the Eucharist is to “offer” and to “sacrifice”. The Eucharist itself is the “sacrifice,” or the “oblation,” or “the sacrifice of the Lord,” or “the victim of the Lord”. The place where it is offered is the “altar”. In a remarkable sentence, occurring when he is dealing with the point of practice that both wine and water are to be placed in the Eucharistic cup, St. Cyprian writes:—

“If our Lord and God Christ Jesus is Himself the High Priest of God the Father and offered Himself as a sacrifice to the Father and commanded this to be done for a memorial of Himself, certainly that priest truly performs his office in the place of Christ who imitates that which Christ did, and then offers in the Church to God the Father a real and complete sacrifice when he begins to offer as he sees Christ Himself offered.”

In the Statutes of the Apostles the Apostles are represented as saying of our Lord, “As He is the Chief Priest for us, so He offered spiritual sacrifice to God the Father before He was crucified, and He commanded us to do likewise.… After His ascension we offered according to the ordinance of the holy bloodless oblation.”

4. This use of sacrificial language in connection with the Eucharist must be viewed in the light of the interpretation frequently found of a passage in the book of the prophet Malachi. Malachi proclaimed in the name of the Lord of Hosts, “From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same My name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered unto My name, and a pure offering: for My name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of Hosts”. Whatever the exact meaning of this declaration for Malachi’s own generation, a prophetic anticipation of the extension of the kingdom of God to include the Gentiles appears to have been involved in it. Early Christian writers give it a more specific interpretation. They regard it as a prophecy of Christian worship, and in particular of the Eucharist. In The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, after referring to the Eucharist, and calling it a “sacrifice,” the writer goes on, “For this is the sacrifice which was spoken of by the Lord, ‘In every place and at every time offer to Me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great king, saith the Lord, and My name is wonderful among the Gentiles’ ”. A like foreshadowing of the Eucharist in the prophecy is observed by St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenæus. It is interpreted of the spiritual sacrifices of the prayer and praise and thanksgiving of Christians by Tertullian, and of the new sacrifice of the Christian Church be St. Cyprian. The mark made on early Christian thought by these prophetic words ought not to be left out of account in any consideration of the Christian use of sacrificial phraseology.

5. In this early period no explanation is found of the sense in which the word sacrifice is applied to the Eucharist. Yet both the general setting of the references and the repudiations of carnal sacrifices imply that some deeper thought is involved than the simple notion of the oblation of the elements, the offering of the first fruits of created thing, as an act of thanksgiving for the material blessings of life; and there are hints of two lines of thought, different but not inconsistent, which at later times are more fully developed.

The first of these hints suggests an association of the Eucharist with the sacrifice of the cross. When St. Ignatius says that the Eucharist is “the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ,” he adds, “which suffered for our sins”. St. Justin Martyr speaks of “the bread of the Eucharist, which our Lord Jesus Christ commanded us to offer (ποιεῖν) for a memorial (εἰς ἀνάμνησιν) of the passion, which He suffered for those who cleanse their souls from all wickedness”; and in another place, after mentioning the Eucharistic sacrifice as the fulfilment of the prophecy of Malachi and the prayers and thanksgivings which are the only sacrifices of Christians, he says, “In the memorial (ἐπʼ ἀναμνήσει) made by their food, both dry and liquid, in which there is remembrance also of the passion, which the Son of God suffered for their sakes”. When Tertullian describes our Lord as consecrating the wine “as a memorial of His blood,” the reference may be to the blood of the Lord as shed on the cross. In an obscure passage in which Origen describes the Eucharist as “the only memorial which makes God propitious to men,” his description of our Lord as “that shew-bread which God set forth as a propitiation through faith in His blood” may allude to the passion. St. Cyprian quite definitely connects the Eucharist with the commemoration of the passion, and says that “the passion is the sacrifice of the Lord which we offer”.

The second hint afforded in this early period is that of the association of the Eucharist with our Lord’s risen and heavenly life. St. Ignatius, St. Justin Martyr, and Tertullian all suggest that the memorial in the Eucharist is not restricted to the passion. St. Ignatius adds to his statement that the Eucharist is “the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins” the further comment, “which the Father of His goodness raised”. St. Justin Martyr, in addition to the descriptions already quoted of the Eucharistic sacrifice as “a memorial of the passion,” shows that he regards the “memorial” as of wider significance by saying also that Christ commanded Christians “to offer (ποιεῖν) it as a memorial (εἰς ἀνάμνησιν) of His Incarnation for the sake of those who believe in Him, for whose sake also He became capable of suffering”. Tertullian, in describing the Priesthood of our Lord, says that He “after His resurrection was clad with a garment down to the feet and named a Priest for ever of God the Father”. In the Epistle of St. Clement of Rome the life and worship of Christians are regarded as spiritual sacrifices; our Lord is called “the High Priest of our offerings,” and viewed as abiding in “the heights of the heavens”; all Christians are said to hate their own place and part in the giving of thanks; the offering of the gifts is mentioned as a distinctive work of the ministry; and these offerings of the Christian ministry are compared with the ministrations commanded in the Jewish law. If these passages are combined with one another, the most reasonable explanation of them is seen to be that St. Clement of Rome regarded the whole of Christian worship as sacrificial, as having its centre in the offering of the Eucharist on earth and the presentation by Christ the High Priest of His offering in heaven. The heavenly centre of Christian worship is more explicitly asserted by St. Irenæus. In close connection with his assertion of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist he explains that there is “an altar in the heavens,” to which “our prayers and oblations are directed,” and “a temple,” and “a tabernacle”. The same idea is found in characteristically mystical interpretations of Holy Scripture in the Homilies of Origen. Students who have made a serious attempt to master the theology of Origen will hardly be confident that they have fully understood the intricacies and versatility of his thought or exhausted the meaning of a thinker so enterprising and eccentric, so subtle and profound. But amid all that is doubtful this much seems clear. To Origen the centre of Christian life and worship was in the perpetual pleading of the ascended Lord at the Father’s throne. In the heavens are an altar and a sacrifice, not an altar of wood or stone or a sacrifice of carnal things, but the abiding offering of that sacred Manhood which the Son of God took for the salvation of the creatures in the Incarnation, the blood of which He shed in His death. In that offering the holy dead and the priestly society of the Church on earth have their place and share. Into it are gathered all the elements of the sacrificial life which Christians live, the sacrifices of praise and prayers, of pity and chastity, of righteousness and holiness. To it there is access in Communion, and he who keeps the feast with Jesus is raised to be with Him in His heavenly work. So Origen says, with the emphasis of constant repetition, that our Lord in His heavenly life “is the advocate for our sins with the Father,” “approaches the altar to make propitiation for sinners,” presents in the inner sanctuary, the true Holy of Holies, the heaven itself, all those sacrificial offerings which Christians in the outer sanctuary on earth bring to God’s altar, so that they “come to Christ, the true High Priest, who by His blood made God propitious to” man “and reconciled” man “to the Father,” and “hear Him saying, ‘This is My blood’ ”; and that “the souls of the martyrs” and “those who follow Christ” “stand at the divine sacrifices” and “reach to the very altar of God, where is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the High Priest of good things to come”. Moreover,—

“He who keeps the feast with Jesus is above in the great upper room, the upper room swept clean, the upper room garnished and made ready. If you go up with Him that you may keep the feast of the passover, He gives to you the cup of the new covenant, He gives to you also the bread of blessing, He bestows His own body and His own blood.

6. An important part of the teaching of Origen is that in which he dwells on the priestly character of the whole Christian body.

“In accordance with the promises of God, ye are the priests of God, for ye are a holy nation, a holy priesthood.”

“He has given command that we may know how we ought to approach the altar of God. For that is an altar on which we offer our prayers to God, that we may know how we ought to offer, that is, that we may lay aside filthy garments, which are the foulness of the flesh, the vices of character, the defilements of lust. Or, are you ignorant that to you also, that is to the whole Church of God and a nation of believers, the priesthood has been given?… You have then a priesthood, because you are a priestly nation, and therefore you ought to offer to God the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of prayers, the sacrifice of pity, the sacrifice of chastity, the sacrifice of righteousness, the sacrifice of holiness. But that you may offer these worthily, you have need of clean garments, … and you require divine fire, not any fire alien from God, but that which is given by God to men, of which the Son of God says, ‘I came to send fire on earth, and how I wish that it were kindled’ ” (St. Luke 12:49).

The same thought, based of course on the First Epistle of St. Peter, is found in Clement of Alexandria when he says that the true Christian is a “royal man, the holy priest of God”; that “the true presbyter and real deacon of the will of God” are those who “do and teach the things of the Lord”; and that “the only true priests of God are those who live a holy life”. Tertullian exaggerated it in his Montanistic days when he, contrary to the tradition of the Church and his own earlier mind, allowed to the Christian layman the right to celebrate the Eucharist in some circumstances. Before all these St. Justin Martyr had expressed it in a fashion not unlike that in which it is found in the writings of Origen.

“We, who through the name of Jesus believe as one man on God the Creator of the universe, have put off our filthy garments, that is, our sins, through the name of His first-begotten Son, and are set on fire by the word of His calling, and are the true high-priestly race of God, as God Himself testifies, saying that in every place among the Gentiles they offer unto Him acceptable and pure sacrifices. But God receives not sacrifices from any except through His priests. God therefore testifies beforehand that all who through this name offer the sacrifices which Jesus the Christ commanded, that is, at the Eucharist of the bread and the cup, which are offered in every part of the world by Christians, are acceptable to Him.”