Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/411

 All must receive the communion. Proofs. Men must be communed over bread and wine, and not over bread alone. Again controversy and proofs. For this controversy Hus was burnt and his followers were tortured. I mention only in words the controversy and the proofs. But, O Lord, what a terrible book would be that history of theology, which should tell about all the violence, deceptions, tortures, murders, which have taken place because of each of these controversies! As one now reads about these controversies, all that seems so unimportant and ludicrous, but how much wrong they have done in the world!

219. The eucharist as a sacrifice: (a) the verity or actuality of this sacrifice. “In believing and confessing that the most holy eucharist is a true sacrament, the Orthodox Church believes also and confesses, in spite of the aberrations of the Protestants, that the eucharist is at the same time a true and real sacrifice, that is, that in the eucharist is the body and blood of our Saviour, which on the one hand are offered as food to men, and on the other are brought as a sacrifice to God.” (p. 414.)

220. (b) Relation of this sacrifice to the sacrifice on the cross, and its properties. “The sacrifice which is brought by God in the sacrament of the eucharist is precisely the same as the sacrifice on the cross.”

Further on it says that this sacrifice has the property of propitiating God, and so it is necessary immediately after it, and as soon as possible to remember men. That will cause God to help men.

“Since a bloodless sacrifice has the power of propitiating and inclining God toward us, it naturally has the power to gain for us various benefits from God, and, being propitiatory, it is at the same time precatory and intercessory. For this reason the holy church, in bringing a bloodless offering, not only prays God to remit sins and save the living and the dead, but also asks God for all kinds of