CHAPTER XVIII.06

XVI. Under the other kind of sacrifices, which we have called the sacrifice of thanksgiving, are included all the offices of charity, which when we perform to our brethren, we honour the Lord himself in his members; and likewise all our prayers, praises, thanksgivings, and every thing that we do in the service of God; all which are dependent on a greater sacrifice, by which we are consecrated in soul and body as holy temples to the Lord. It is not enough for our external actions to be employed in his service: it is necessary that first ourselves, and then all our works, be consecrated and dedicated to him; that whatever belongs to us may conduce to his glory, and discover a zeal for its advancement. This kind of sacrifice has no tendency to appease the wrath of God, to procure remission of sins, or to obtain righteousness: its sole object is to magnify and exalt the glory of God. For it cannot be acceptable and pleasing to God, except from the hands of those whom he has already favoured with the remission of their sins, reconciled to himself, and absolved from guilt; and it is so necessary to the Church as to be altogether indispensable. Therefore it will continue to be offered for ever, as long as the people of God shall exist; as we have already seen from the prophet. For so far are we from wishing to abolish it, that in that sense we are pleased to understand the following prediction: “From the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering; for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts.”

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So Paul enjoins us to “present” our “bodies, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,” which is our “reasonable service.”

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He has expressed himself with the strictest propriety, by adding that this is our reasonable service; for he intended a spiritual kind of Divine worship, which he tacitly opposed to the carnal sacrifices of the Mosaic law. So “to do good, and to communicate,” are called “sacrifices with which God is well pleased.”

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So the liberality of the Philippians in supplying the wants of Paul was “an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable and well pleasing to God.”

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So all the good works of believers are spiritual sacrifices.

XVII. Why do I multiply quotations? This form of expression is perpetually occurring in the Scriptures. And even while the people were kept under the external discipline of the law, it was sufficiently declared by the prophets that those carnal sacrifices contained a reality and truth which is common to the Christian Church, as well as to the nation of the Jews. For this reason David prayed, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

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And Hosea called thanksgivings “the calves of our lips,”

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which David calls “offering thanksgiving” and “offering praise.”

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In imitation of the Psalmist, the apostle himself says, “Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually;” and by way of explanation adds, “that is, the fruit of our lips,” confessing or giving “thanks to his name.”

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This kind of sacrifice is indispensable in the supper of the Lord, in which, while we commemorate and declare his death, and give thanks, we do no other than offer the sacrifice of praise. From this sacrificial employment, all Christians are called “a royal priesthood;”

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because, as the apostle says, “By Christ we offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.” For we do not appear in the presence of God with our oblations without an intercessor; Christ is the Mediator, by whom we offer ourselves and all that we have to the Father. He is our High Priest, who, having entered into the celestial sanctuary, opens the way of access for us. He is our altar, upon which we place our oblations, that whatever we venture to do, we may attempt in him. In a word, it is he that “hath made us kings and priests unto God.”

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XVIII. What remains, then, but for the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and even children to understand, this abomination of the mass? which, being presented in a vessel of gold, has so inebriated and stupefied all the kings and people of the earth, from the highest to the lowest, that, more senseless than the brutes themselves, they have placed the whole of their salvation in this fatal gulf. Surely Satan never employed a more powerful engine to assail and conquer the kingdom of Christ. This is the Helen, for which the enemies of the truth in the present day contend with cruelty, rage, and fury; a Helen, indeed, with which they so pollute themselves with spiritual fornication, which is the most execrable of all. Here I touch not, even with my little finger, the gross abuses which they might pretend to be profanations of the purity of their holy mass; what a scandalous traffic they carry on, what sordid gains they make by their masses, with what enormous rapacity they gratify their avarice. I only point out, and that in few and plain words, the true nature of the most sanctimonious sanctity of the mass, on account of which it has attracted so much admiration and veneration for so many ages. For an illustration of such great mysteries proportioned to their dignity, would require a larger treatise; and I am unwilling to introduce those disgusting corruptions which are universally notorious; that all men may understand that the mass, considered in its choicest and most estimable purity, without any of its appendages, from the beginning to the end, is full of every species of impiety, blasphemy, idolatry, and sacrilege.

XIX. The readers may now see, collected into a brief summary, almost every thing that I have thought important to be known respecting these two sacraments; the use of which has been enjoined on the Christian Church from the commencement of the New Testament until the end of time; that is to say, baptism, to be a kind of entrance into the Church, and an initiatory profession of faith; and the Lord’s supper, to be a continual nourishment, with which Christ spiritually feeds his family of believers. Wherefore, as there is but “one God, one Christ, one faith,” one Church, the body of Christ, so there is only “one baptism” and that is never repeated; but the supper is frequently distributed, that those who have once been admitted into the Church, may understand that they are continually nourished by Christ. Beside these two, as no other sacrament has been instituted by God, so no other ought to be acknowledged by the Church of believers. For that it is not left to the will of man to institute new sacraments, will be easily understood if we remember what has already been very plainly stated—that sacraments are appointed by God for the purpose of instructing us respecting some promise of his, and assuring us of his good-will towards us; and if we also consider, that no one has been the counsellor of God, capable of affording us any certainty respecting his will,

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or furnishing us any assurance of his disposition towards us, what he chooses to give or to deny us. Hence it follows, that no one can institute a sign to be a testimony respecting any determination or promise of his; he alone can furnish us a testimony respecting himself by giving a sign. I will express myself in terms more concise, and perhaps more homely, but more explicit—that there can be no sacrament unaccompanied with a promise of salvation. All mankind, collected in one assembly, can promise us nothing respecting our salvation. Therefore they can never institute or establish a sacrament.