§ 96. THE SACEIFICE OF THE EUCHABIST. 50c
at the same time. The term mass, which properly dejioled tlio dismissal of the congregation [missio, dismdssio) at the close of the general public worship, became, after the end of the fourth century, the name for the worship of the faithful,' which consist ed in the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and the commU' nion. The corresponding terms of the Orientals are XecTovpyca^ 6v(ria, Trpocrcpopd.
In the sacrifice of the mass the whole mysterious fulness and glory of the Catholic worship is concentrated. Here the idea of the priesthood reaches its dizzy summit ; and here the devotion and awe of the spectators rises to the highest pitch of adoration. For to the devout Catholic nothing can be greater or more solemn than an act of worship in which the eternal Son of God is veritably ofl'ered to God upon the altar by the visible hand of the priest for the sins of the world. But though the Catholic worship here rises far above the vain sacrifices of heathendom and the merely typical sacrifices of Judaism, yet that old sacrificial service, which was interwoven with the whole popular life of the Jewish and Grseco-Roman world, exerted a controlling influence on the Koman Catholic service of the Eucharist, especially after the nominal conversion of the whole Koman heathendom, and obscnred the original simplicity and purity of that service almost beyond recognition. The sacramentuni became entirely eclipsed by the sacrijicium, and the sacrificium became grossly materialized, and was exalted at the expense of the sacrifice on the cross. The endless succession of necessary repetitions deti'acts from the sacrifice of Christ.
The Biblical support of the sacrifice of the mass is weak, and may be reduced to an unduly literal interpretation or a downright perversion of some such passages as Mai. i. 10 f. ; 1 Cor. X. 21 ; Heb. v. 6 ; vii. 1 f. ; xiii. 10. The Epistle to the Hebrews especially is often misapplied, though it teaches with great emphasis the very opposite, viz., the abolition of the Old Testament sacrificial system by the Christian worship, the eternal validity of the sacrifice of our only High Priest on the
' The missa Jjdelium, in distinction from the missa catechumenorurth Coe;: § 90 abovt.
506 THIKD PERIOD. A.I). 811-590.
right Land of the Father, and tlie impossibib'ty of a repctilior. of it (coCTip. X. 14 ; vii. 23, 24).
We pass now to the more particular history. 'Jlie ante-Nicene lathers uniformly conceived the Eucliarist as a thankoffering of the church ; the congregation offering the consecrated elements of bread and wine, and in tliem itself, to God.' This view is in itself perfectly innocent, but readily leads to the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, as soon as the elements become identified with the body and blood of Christ, and the presence of the body comes to be materialistically taken. The germs of the Roman doctrine appear in Cyprian about the middle of the third century, in connection with his high-churchly doctrine of the clerical priesthood, Sacerdotium and sacrificium are with him correlative ideas, and a Judaizing conception of the former favored a like Judaizing conception of the latter. The priest officiates in the Eucharist in the place of Christ,' and performs an actual sacrifice in the church.^ Yet Cyprian does not distinctly say that Christ is the subject of the spiritual sacrifice ; rather is the mystical body of Christ, the Church, offered to God, and married with Christ.*
The doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass is much further developed in the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers, though amidst many obscurities and rhetorical extravagances, and with much wavering between symbolical and grossly realistic conceptions, until in all essential points it is brought to its settlement by Gregory the Great at the close of the sixth century. These points are the following :
1, The eucharistic sacrifice is the most solemn mystery of the church, and fills the faithful with a holy awe. Hence the predicates duala (jjo/Sepa, <pptKTi], dvai/jLaKro<;, sacrificium tremendum^ which are frequently applied to it, especially in tbo Oriental liturgies and homilies. Thus it is said in the litu'
' Comp. vol. ii. § (>K (p. 2:i5 sqq.).
• "Vice Christi vere fungitur."
• " Sacrificium verum et plenum offert in ecclesia Patri."
• Epist. 63 ad Caecil. c. 14. Augustine's view is similar the church offering herself to (iod iu and with Christ as her Ile.id