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 niissa Jidelium, in distinction from the missa catechunienoruni, Comp. S 90 above. 506 THIBD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. right hand of the Father, and the impossibility of a repetition of it (comp. X. 14 ; vii. 23, 24). We pass now to the more particular history. The ante-Ni- cene fathers uniformly conceived the Eucharist as a thank- offering of the church ; the congregation offering the conse- crated elements of bread and wine, and in tliem itself, to God.* Tbis view is in itself perfectly innocent, but readily leads to the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass," as soon as the ele- ments 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-chui'chly doctrine of the clerical priesthood. Sacerdoti- um and sacrijicium are with him correlative ideas, and a Ju- daizing conception of the former favored a like Judaizing con- ception of the latter. The priest officiates in the Eucharist in the place of Christ,^ and performs an actual sacrifice in the chjirch.' Yet Cyprian does not distinctly say that Christ is the sul)ject 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 de- veloped 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 encharistic sacrifice is the most solemn mystery of the church, and fills the faithful with a holy awe. Hence the predicates Ovcrla (f)o^epa, ^ptKTr], dva[fiaKTo<i, sacrificiuin tre- TYiendum^ which are frequently applied to it, especially in the Oriental liturgies and homilies. Thus it is said in the litur- . ' Comp. vol. i. § 102, p. 389 ff. ' " Vice Christi vere fungitur." * " Sacrificium verum et plenum offert in ecclesia Patrl." * Epist. 63 ad Csecil. c. 14. Augustine's view is similar: the church offering herself to God in and with Christ as her Head. § 96. THE SACRIFICE OF THE EUCHABIST. 507 gj of St. James : " "We oflfer to Thee, O Lord, this awful and unbloody sacrifice." The more surprising is it that the pe(»ple should have been indifferent to so solemn an act, and that Chry- sostoin should lament :