VI.
(The propitiatory blood, etc., [358]p. 566.)
The peril of confounding the early use of this idea of propitiation with the mediaeval theory, which is quite another, is well pointed out and enforced by Burbidge. 1 The primitive writers and the ancient liturgies "do not regard the Eucharist as being itself a propitiatory offering," but it is the perpetual pleading of the blood of propitiation once offered. Thus St. Chrysostom: "We do not offer another sacrifice, but always the same." So far, his words might be quoted to favour the Middle-Age doctrine; but he guards himself, and adds: 2 "or, rather, we make a memorial of the sacrifice."
The rhetoric of the liturgies and of the Fathers was unhappily made into the logic of the Schoolmen, and hence the stupendous system of propitiatory Masses, with Masses for the dead, and that traffic in Masses which so fearfully defiles the priesthood of Western Europe and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America. In vain does the pious Hirscher complain: 3 "The rich, then, are the happy sinners in this respect: they can buy innumerable Masses, and establish them in perpetuity; their privileges have no limit, and their advantages over the poor extend through all eternity." His book was put into the Index (Acts xvi. 19, xix. 27), but it was never answered.
