the name of Christ. Christ therefore now really offers because the priest by the institution of Christ offers in the name of Christ, which is enough for this action, morally speaking, to be called the action of Christ, as the reverence which the ambassador of a king shows to the pontiff is morally the reverence of the king towards the pontiff. So also Christ by means of the priest whom He has substituted as His ambassador and minister exercises this act of reverence and worship towards God, which consists in the offering of the sacrifice; and therefore this offering is deemed morally the action of Christ worshipping God by means of His minister." 1

3

III.

It was observed in a former chapter that in the proceedings of the Council of Trent any idea of a connection between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the heavenly life of our Lord was almost wholly out of sight, although such an idea was referred to in the reports of three of the theologians made to the council, in two cases in terms of approval, in one case in terms of condemnation." Any such idea is absent from the writings of the theologians whose teaching has so far been discussed in the present chapter except Melchior Cano; and, while it would not be inconsistent with the explanations of the sacrifice given by Salmeron, Vasquez, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Lessius, it would be wholly precluded by the teaching of De Lugo with its assertion of the complete independence of the Eucharistic sacrifice of any present action of Christ. But in the same century in which De Lugo was developing and extending the idea of destruction as an essential element in the sacrifice, and was making the Eucharist wholly independent of the present life of our Lord in heaven, a very different way of regarding the sacrifice was receiving careful expression in France.

Charles de Condren was born in 1588 at Vauxbuin near Soissons. After studying at the Sorbonne he held the office of professor of philosophy at the University of Paris for a year. In 1614 he was ordained priest. In 1617 he entered the Congregation of the Oratory. In 1629 he succeeded Cardinal de Berulle, the founder of the Oratory, as General of the Congregation. In 1614 he died. The treatise The Idea of the Priesthood and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ was published in 1677 after his death; 2 See pp. 99, 100, supra.

1 XIX. vii. 93.

3 See, however, the passage concerning the "altar on high" quoted from Bellarmine on p. 367, supra. For Melchior Cano, see p. 357, supra.

and, though it may not in every part give his own actual words, it may be taken as indicating his teaching. Sacrifice is here described as having been instituted chiefly for four ends,-to honour God, to give Him thanks, to make satisfaction for sin, and to obtain gifts. As a recognition of the sovereign dominion of God it requires the destruction of the victim. Of the spiritual and divine sacrifice of the Christian religion our Lord is the Priest, being the Mediator of the new covenant, exercising the functions of priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. His first public act as Priest was on the cross; the priesthood there used was completed at the ascension; as High Priest He abidingly offers in heaven.2 Between the cross and the ascension was His resurrection, wherein His body was consummated as the victim in the sacrifice; and His resurrection thus corresponded in His sacrifice to the consuming of the body of the victim by fire in the burnt offerings of the Jews.3 The sacrifice of the Mass, which the Church on earth offers by Christ is the same as the sacrifice which the risen and ascended Christ offers in heaven; and this sacrifice thus now offered in heaven and on earth is the same as the sacrifice of the cross.5 Our Lord Himself is the "altar on high," on which the offering made on the earthly altar is presented in heaven; and the angel whose hands bear the sacrifice to the “altar on high" is either our Lord or an angel of sacrifice representing Him and acting in His name and authority. In the future this sacrifice of Christ will be the eternal offering of the courts of heaven. The characteristic feature in this teaching-the close association of the earthly with the heavenly offering and the abiding activity of our Lord in the sacrifice-may be illustrated by the following quotations :-

"Jesus Christ being High Priest in heaven necessarily offers there. Since every priest is appointed to offer gifts and victims, He too must have something to offer. What can this be but that which He once offered on earth, the sacrifice of His own body, of which He perpetually renews and continues the oblation in heaven? The oblation of Jesus Christ has not been so completed and exhausted

1I. i. Cf. the devotional use of these four ends of sacrifice in the Paradisus animæ Christianæ, V. iv., of Jacques Merlo, usually known as Horstius, from his birthplace in Holland (born 1597, died 1644).

2 I. v. 51. x.

3 I. viii.

6 II. iv. v.

*I. ix.

7 II. viii.-xi.

on earth as to have no further exercise in heaven; but rather it was only begun here below in order to be continued in heaven, where the perfection of sacrifice is found." 1

"The spiritual Jews knew that the victim should be consumed in the most worthy way possible; for, besides the command of God to consume it by fire, they knew that fire was the symbol under which God was hidden; but only Christians know by faith the true fulfilment in the glorious resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ, the consummation of the adorable Victim in the truth which was symbolised by the fire. For after the immolation of His body on the cross and the destruction of His mortal life, it was still necessary that all the traces of mortality in the wounds which He had received, all disfigurement and lowliness and earthiness which He still retained, and all the likeness of the flesh of sin and of the infirmity of the children of Adam, should be entirely destroyed and consumed in glory. Thus the body of Jesus Christ as Victim was consummated and glorified in the resurrection. He rose from the dead by means of the glory of the Father.' He was raised by the divine fire of the glory of the Father, by which was consumed all that in His body, mortal and dead on the cross, was not worthy of the body of God." 3

"This great sacrifice which Jesus Christ in union with the saints offers to God in heaven, offering Himself with them, is the same sacrifice which the priest offers on earth, and which the whole Church offers by Him in the holy Mass. For the Victim which they offer is the same, being the body and blood of Jesus Christ really present, united to God, existing in the Word and in this mystery. It is the same Priest who offers it by His ministers; it is offered on the same altar, which is the Subsistence or Person of the Eternal Word, in the same temple, namely, the bosom of the Eternal Father, to the same God on earth as in heaven; and the Victim is not merely the same but is in the same state of consummation and glory. The only difference is that, though present here as really as in heaven, He is not so after a visible manner." 4

"The sacrifice of the Mass is the same as that of the cross, inasmuch as the one contains the other; for it is Jesus Christ immolated on the cross who is present on the altar after the consecration, and is there offered as having been immolated for us. He has in the Mass the state of death which the Jews inflicted on Him in His crucifixion, inasmuch as He there offers Himself as once immolated on the cross; and it is in memory and in virtue of that immolation 3 I. viii.

1 I. v.

2 Ro. vi. 4.

41. ix.

that He is offered by the Church. This state of immolation and death is moreover shown and represented by the mystical separation of His body and blood under the different species of bread and wine separately consecrated; nevertheless the divine Victim is no longer there in the likeness of the flesh of sin but in glory and immortality." 1

...

In

"The true altar of sacrifice in heaven is Jesus Christ. the canon of the Mass, . . . Jesus Christ is without doubt intended by the altar on high which is before the majesty of God. . . . The true altar of the great sacrifice is the Person or Subsistence of the Word, that is, of Jesus Christ. It was on this altar that the victim, His humanity, was laid in the mystery of the Incarnation. . . . On this altar all the parts of the sacrifice are carried out. . . . On this altar the oblation was made from the moment of the Incarnation. . . . On this altar the Victim was immolated, and the cross which bore Him in His death deserves to be called an altar only because it represented the invisible altar from which the sacred Victim was never separated. . . . On this altar the Victim was consummated and sanctified in the resurrection. . . . On this altar the blood of the Victim was carried into the invisible sanctuary by Him who is the High Priest when returning to His Father He re-entered as it were into His bosom. . . . Lastly, on this altar will the Victim, perfected by the union of all His members, be eternally presented to God, will adore Him, rendering to Him the love and praise and thanksgiving which are His due, and will continue for ever the sacrifice in which the eternal joy of the saints consists." 2

John James Olier was born in Paris in 1608. At the age of eighteen he received the ecclesiastical preferments of the priory of the Holy Trinity at Clisson and the abbey of Our Lady at Pébrac. In 1633 he was ordained priest. He was the friend and disciple of De Condren. After De Condren's death in 1641 he attempted to form a seminary for priests at Chartres with a view to raising the standard of life among the French clergy, but the attempt failed. A further attempt of the same kind at Vaugirard in the outskirts of Paris was somewhat more successful, and in 1642 Olier was appointed curé of the parish of Saint Sulpice, where he founded the famous Congregation and Seminary of Saint Sulpice, and in 1646 began the building of the new church. In his work at Saint Sulpice he had much to do with the revival of a true spirit of priestly life in France. He died in

1657. Olier's book entitled Explanation of the Ceremonies of the Parochial High Mass contains teaching concerning the Eucharist which closely resembles that of De Condren; and it will be sufficient to quote a few passages from it:

"To understand the mystery of the most holy sacrifice of the one must know that this sacrifice is the sacrifice of

Mass,

heaven.

It is a statement strange to a great part of the world to say that there is a sacrifice in heaven, I mean for people as a whole, since those who know in what religion and its first duty of sacrifice consist have no doubt that there is a sacrifice in heaven... Our Lord, made a High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, is with God His Father to offer to Him the sacrifice always. . . . There is a sacrifice in heaven, which is at the same time offered on earth, since the victim which is presented is borne to the altar in heaven; and the only difference is that here it is presented under veils and symbols, and there it is offered without cover or veil." 1

"In heaven our Lord offers Himself in a glorious state; He does not present Himself to God as prepared for death, which is the first state of a victim, but as a victim once immolated and already completed in God." 2

"On the day of the resurrection, finding His Son immolated in the tomb, the Father came in His light and divine glory to complete the sacrifice in Him, not leaving in Him any trace of His weakness and of His former state, of His state of carnal (grossière) and passible and mortal flesh, so as by wholly consuming it to make it pass into His divine state, as iron passes into the state of fire." 3 "This victim [in the Jewish sacrifices] changed in the fire is raised towards heaven to signify that Jesus Christ, once completed in His Father at His resurrection, is afterwards raised to Him at His ascension." 4

"The altar of the sacrifice is the Person of the Word, who bears Jesus Christ in His sacred manhood, and ever shows Him as smoking and consumed by the glory of God on His Person, as on an altar." 5

1 Preface (pp. 11, 12, 14, edition Paris, 1858). 3 VII. ii. (pp. 396, 397).

4 II. iv. (p. 120); cf. VII. ii. (pp. 398, 399).

2 VII. i. (p. 380).

5 Preface (p. 13). It is not without interest that, although with many theological differences, Jeremy Taylor was laying stress on the heavenly sacrifice of our Lord in the same century as De Condren and Olier: see pp. 334-37, supra.