Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/678

Rh 652 EUCHARIST wiue), and of the actual death of Christ as &quot; a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world,&quot; while the idea is also extended to the spiritual oblation of themselves by the faithful communi cants in the words &quot; Here we offer and present ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable sacrifice.&quot; 5. From &quot; oblation &quot; we are naturally led to the con sideration of the term Sacrifice, which from primitive times has been applied to the Eucharist. The original reference of this term, as of the term &quot; oblation,&quot; was to the bread and wine and other thank-offerings presented at the cele bration. But its application was gradually extended so as to embrace the whole rite, and especially the central act, the presentation of the elements to God as a memorial of the sacrifice of the death of Christ. In this sense the Eucharist is spoken of from the time of Tertullian down wards, as &quot; a commemorative sacrifice,&quot; i.e., a rite, instituted by Christ himself, in which the church commemorates and pleads before the Father the one all-sufficient sacrifice made by His Son on the cross. This is no fresh immolation of the body of Christ, but a representation of that sacrifice which was once for all accomplished on Calvary, by which, according to St Paul s words (1 Cor. xi. 26), we &quot;do show&quot; or proclaim&quot; (KarayyeAAere) &quot;the Lord s death till He come.&quot; The true sense in which the Eucharist may be called a sacrifice is clearly set forth in the following pas sage from the learned and pious Bishop Beveridge : &quot; The sacrifice that is most proper and peculiar to the gospel is the sacrament of our Lord s Supper, instituted by our Lord himself, to succeed all the bloody sacrifices of the Mosaic law. For though we cannot say, as some absurdly do, that this is such a sacrifice whereby Christ is again offered up to God both for the living and the dead, yet it may as properly be called a sacrifice as any that was ever offered, except that which was offered by Christ himself, for His, indeed, was the only true expiatory sacrifice that ever was offered. Those under the law were only types of His, and were called sacrifices only upon that account, because they typified and represented that which He was to offer for the sins of the world. And therefore the sacrament of Christ s body and blood may as well be. called by that name, as they were. They were typical, and this is a commemorative sacrifice. They foreshowed the death of Christ to conic; this shows His death already past This is pro perly our Christian sacrifice, which neither Jew nor Gentile can have any share in (Heb. xiii. 10). We have an altar where we par take of the great sacrifice which the eternal Son of God offered up for the sins of the whole world, and ours among the rest.&quot; (Sermon viii. vol. i. p. 50 ; Libr. Angl. Oath. Thcol.) 6. Finally, we have the names, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Altar. This is not the place to speak of the origin and meaning of the word sacrament as an eccle siastical term. Suffice it to say that the word &quot; sacra ment,&quot; when applied to the Eucharist, is used in its derived sense as an outward and visible symbol of some inward and spiritual truth, or work of grace, in the same sense in which Augustine says of the bread and cup that they are &quot; therefore called sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, another understood&quot; (Serm. cclxxi.). We must not altogether pass over the word mass, &quot; missa,&quot; by which the Eucharist is commonly known in the Roman church. Unlike the other designations of which we have been speaking, this has no essential connexion with the eucharistic rite, &quot;missa,&quot; originally meaning no thing more than the dismissal of a congregation. &quot; Ite, missa est,&quot;_ is the formula with which the Roman eucharistic service concludes. &quot; By degrees/ writes Waterland, &quot; it came to be used for an assembly and for church service. From signifying a church service in general, it came at length to denote the communion service in particular, and PO that most emphatically came to be called the mass &quot; (Of the Institution of the Holy Communion, ch. 1). This name is not found in Holy Scripture; it was unknown to the first ages of the church ; the earliest known example of its use is in Ambrose (Epist. 20 [33], 4&amp;gt; ad Marcelling &quot; missam facere coepi,&quot; and it is unmeaning and inappro priate as a name of the sacrament to which it has acci dentally attached itself, and it has been therefore wisely disused by the reformed church (cf. Scudamore, ii.s., p. 3) We now proceed to speak of the mode and time of the celebration of the Eucharist. It is evident from St Paul s words and practice (1 Cor. xi. 17-34; Acts xx. 7) that in the apostolic church the administration took place, after our Lord s pattern, in the evening, and in close connexion with an ordinary meal. The disorders referred to by the apostle, which indicated the clanger of this connexion, be fore long caused a separation of the religious from the ordi nary meal, and invested the Eucharist with a character of special sacredness. The time of celebration, we learn from the notices in the earlier fathers, was either after nightfall or before daybreak, these times being selected so as to avoid attracting the attention of their heathen neighbours. Pliny, in his well-known letter to Trajan, 104 A.D., speaks of the Christians in Bithynia coming together on a set day before it was light, &quot; to sing to Christ as God, and bind themselves by a sacrament (sacramento) to commit no crime.&quot; Tertullian also speaks of the reception of &quot; the sacrament of the Eucharist in assemblies even before dawn.&quot; (De Cor. Mil., c. iii.) The evening celebration lingered on for a while, but it was gradually given up, and entirely ceased by the 4th century, except on some special clays, such as the eves of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The earliest account of the celebration of the Eucharist, that of Justin Martyr, c. 140 A.D., shows the extreme simplicity of the rite at that time. The day of administration was Sunday. It took place at the conclusion of the common prayer, and was preceded by the kiss of peace. The cele brant was &quot; the president of the brethren &quot; (6 Trpoco-rw? roir dSeA-^wi/). The materials of the sacrament were &quot;bread and a cup of wine mixed with water.&quot; After prayer and praise offered by the president, to which the congregation responded &quot;amen,&quot; the &quot;deacons&quot; gave to each one present, &quot; to partake of the bread, and wine mixed with water, over which the thanksgiving had been pro nounced&quot; (eo ^apto-^evTos, &quot;consecrated as an eucharist&quot;), and carried away a portion to those who were absent from the rite. This food, he concludes, is &quot; called by us the Eucharist&quot; (Apolog., i. c. 65-67). St Cyril of Jerusalem furnishes us with a detailed description of the eucharistic celebration in the middle of the 4th century (c. 347 A.D.). By this time the ritual had become fixed, and of a some what elaborate character. The ceremonial commenced with the celebrant and presbyters washing their hands. This was followed by the kiss of peace, the &quot; Sursnm Corda,&quot; the &quot; Vere Dignum,&quot; the &quot; Sanctus,&quot; the &quot;Epiclesis,&quot; or invo cation to the Holy Spirit to sanctify the elements lying on the Holy Table, the Prayer for all conditions of men, and the Commemoration of the departed. These were succeeded forming the point of transition to the more distinctly sacramental portion of the service by the Lord s Prayer., the &quot; Sancta Sanctis&quot; (corresponding to the &quot;fencing the table&quot; of the Presbyterian Church), the Unns Sanctus, &c., and Communion. The minute directions Cyril gives aa to the manual actions in communicating, and the application of the consecrated elements to the eyes and other organs of sense, indicate a wide departure from primitive simplicity, and a growing tendency to regard the eucharist as a religious charm (Catech., xxiii. ; My- slayoy., v.). The account of the ritual presented by St Chrysostom (2 Cor., Ilomil. xviii.) corresponds in all essential points with that given by Cyril, and we gather from the writings of St Augustine that the canon of the Xorth African churches differed little from it. We may conclude, therefore, that by the middle of the 4th century