philosophical and theological, on which Malebranche and Arnauld were opposed to each other, one was that so often alluded to in these pages, on the motive of the Incarnation. In his Treatise on Nature and Grace, the great Oratorian maintains, that Jesus Christ, though His birth among men occurred in the fulness of time, is, in the eternal counsels, the Beginning of the ways of God, the Firstborn of all creation, and the predestined Model whereon our humanity was formed after the image of His. The Word and Wisdom of God, foreseeing among all possible creatures none other that was worthy, offered Himself, to establish as Sovereign Priest an everlasting worship in honour of His Father, and to present a Victim deserving of His acceptance. The world was created for the sake of the Church, that is of Christ who is its Head, and man was formed after the image of Christ, to be the ornament of this visible temple. So far Malebranche said no more than had often been said before him. But he goes on to observe, that it was requisite for the fulfilment of His design that man should be subject on earth not only to trials and afflictions, but to the movements of concupiscence, in order to illustrate the victories of grace; and that the sin of the first man was necessary, because for making the elect merit that glory which shall be one day theirs no means could be comparable to leaving them for a while immersed in sin (de les laisser tous envelopper dans le pêche pour leur faire à tous miséricorde en Jésus Christ), inasmuch as the glory they acquire by resisting concupiscence through the grace of Christ is greater than any other.* This need not, and per

* Malebranche Traité de la Nature et de la Grâce, ii, 24, 30, 31, sqq. Arnauld replied in his Réflexions Philosophiques et Theologiques.

haps did not, mean more than St. Paul's statement, that God has concluded all under sin, or in unbelief, that He may have mercy upon all, or than the somewhat poetical exclamation of the Roman ritual, O certe necessarium Adæ peccatum quod Christi morte deletum est. Indeed Malebranche seems to have moulded his language on such expressions as these. Still he certainly laid himself open to the retort, which was actually made, that on this theory the Fall was not simply permitted but predestined by God, and that 'humanity was sacrificed for Christ, not Christ for humanity.' Arnauld, however, by no means contented himself with objecting to this part of his opponent's system. He appealed to the authority of Aquinas-which is of course on his side-against the Scotist idea of the Incarnation as independent of the Fall; and, with less prudence, asserted in reliance on Thomassin-what is unquestionably incorrect-that the Fathers are unanimous in making the decree of the Incarnation depend on the prevision of sin. It was not to be expected that theologians, whose characteristic principle it was to grudge the universality of redemption, should appreciate what must have appeared to them the very superfluous charity of assuming a nature which did not need to be redeemed. And Arnauld, highly as we may and must respect him as a man and a writer, was, unhappily, deeply imbued with the theological idiosyncracies of his school. He seems on some points to have had the better of his antagonist, whose antipathy to the Jansenistic scheme of predestination did not preserve him from starting another theory, on the relations of grace to the human Soul of Christ, equally arbitrary and in its results equally

*

objectionable. But, on the whole, we may fairly consider Malebranche as representing in this dispute the patristic and Catholic tradition, while the great champion of Jansenism, like the Lutherans and Calvinists before him, adopts the narrower system, which had found favour with some of the Schoolmen, and which till of late has generally prevailed in the more orthodox Protestant theology.†

Here, then, our record of the past may be closed. For the future, since the fall of the old Sorbonne, and during the present lull of theological energy in Italy and Spain, we look with anxious hope to the Catholic thinkers of Germany, that nation once the sovereign power of Christendom, but into whose hands in these later days the torch of sacred as of secular science has been committed, and which, like Greece of old, in the decay of political greatness is conquering for itself a nobler and more enduring empire in the leadership of European thought. We turn to the land where Boniface preached and suffered, the cradle of the AngloSaxon race, and ask its people to repay their kinsmen in the fruits of sanctified intellect, from whom in earlier days they received the heritage of faith.

* Some account of the controversy may be found in Sainte Beuve's Port Royal (Paris, 1859), tom. v. ch. 6. The author seems, strangely enough, to imagine that Malebranche first invented the idea of the Incarnation being predestined independently of the purpose of redemption.

† See Note at the end of Chapter on Recent Lutheran Theology.'

NOTE I. ON CHAP. VI.

ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SACRIFICE OF THE CROSS AND THE EUCHARIST.

It has been already observed that Sacrifice, that is, the self-devotion of the whole being, is the rightful homage due from the creature to the Creator, and therefore was from the beginning the proper idea of divine worship (Aarpɛía.) It is what constitutes, in technical language, the differentia of the supreme worship of God, as distinguished from all subordinate and derivative kinds of worship, some of which may also be offered to our fellow-creatures, whether living or departed. Thus, incense is not only presented at the altar, but to the officiating clergy and congregation also; so, again, we may ask the Saints at rest or friends on earth to pray for us, which is a kind of worship; or, to take another instance, outward acts of devotion, as bending the knee, are paid to earthly sovereigns. But to offer sacrifice, if only by an internal act of the mind, to any created being is the essence of idolatry, and a sin against the first and great commandment. The true worship of God, then, always consisted in sacrifice, both internal and external; though the outward expression might vary according to time and circumstance, and was in fact essentially changed by the sacrifice of Christ. Meanwhile the idea itself had been modified by the introduction of sin into the world, which gave it a new character of reparation (cf. Chap. IV.) and made all human sacrifice imperfect. One alone could now offer a full and perfect satisfaction and oblation in the life and death of Christ the idea received not merely its highest, but its sole adequate fulfilment. In the eternal purpose of God He was 'the Lamb Slain from the foundation of the world,' and all acts of human worship were accepted, so far as they were accepted, in and through

that One spotless Sacrifice, though the worshippers knew it not. But when in the fulness of time the Lamb had been slain, not in predestination but in fact, that One Sacrifice once offered became, from the nature of the case, and in reality not in symbol, the true and characteristic worship of the Catholic Church. Types were necessarily abolished; commemorations there might be, but they are not properly sacrifice, and are therefore insufficient; to repeat the One Sacrifice is impossible; to attempt a supplement or a substitute would be both useless and profane. Therefore the same Sacrifice must abide for ever in the Church.

Two things then are clear: (1) that the distinctive and supreme worship of the Church must still, as of old, be a worship of sacrifice, or it would not, strictly speaking, be worship at all; (2) that since the One great Oblation has been actually offered, to which nothing can be added, and which cannot be repeated, the Christian Sacrifice must be, not prefigurative like those of the law, or commemorative merely, but identical with that of the cross. For no other sacrifice is henceforth possible, or conceivable. Every Christian prayer, indeed, commemorates the Sacrifice of Christ, and is accepted through it; but the central act of worship must be that very Sacrifice itself, though offered in a different manner on the altar and on the cross. It is not repeated but continued in the Church on earth, through the ministry of His representatives, as in the courts of Heaven directly by Himself. And from this follows also the reality of His Presence. The same Body and Blood which were offered on Calvary must be offered in the Christian Sacrifice (though the manner of the Presence as of the oblation differs), or the Sacrifice could not be the same. Bread and wine, however sacred from consecration to a sacred use (like the water of baptism or the oil of confirmation or of the last unction), could never become the material of more than a commemorative rite. If the oblation is the same, the thing offered must be the same too. And therefore the Real Presence of the divine Victim is essential to the reality of the Sacrifice.*

Hence, again, it follows, that the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, often quoted against the truth of the Eucharistic Sacrifice,

*This is not the place to enter on the Doctrine of the Real Presence. The philosophical side of the question is discussed with great acuteness in Dalgairns' Holy Communion (Duffy, 1862); Cardinal Wiseman has exhibited the scriptural argument, with special reference to Oriental languages, in his Lectures on the Blessed Eucharist (Dolman, 1836); and the patristic argument is drawn out in Wilberforce's Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (Mozley, 1853).