THE PRESENT STATE OF PROTEST

ANTISM.

THE Protestant religion, the union of its several Churches having been shaken, and indeed entirely dissolved, by the multiplicity of confessions and sects which were formed during, and after, the Reformation, does not, like the Catholic Church, present an appearance of external unity, but a motley variety of forms. And we freely acknowledge that, as in outward appearance, our Church is split into numberless divisions and subdivisions, so also in her religious principles and opinions she is internally divided and disunited. The Lutheran Society resembles, in its separate Churches and spiritual power, a worm cut up into the most minute portions, each one of which continues to move as long as it retains power; but at last, by degrees, loses at once the life and the power of motion which it retained. Were Luther to rise up from his grave, he could not possibly recognize as his own, or as members of the society which he founded, those teachers who in our Church would fain, nowadays, be considered as his successors.

The dissolution of the Protestant Church is inevitable: her frame is so thoroughly rotten that no farther patching will avail. The whole structure of evangelical religion is shattered and few look with sympathy on its tottering or its fall.

Within the compass of a square mile you may hear four, five, six different gospels. The people, believe me, mark it well; they speak most contemptuously of their teachers, whom they hold either for blockheads or knaves, in teaching these opposite doctrines; because in their simplicity they believe that truth is but one, and can not conceive how each of these gentlemen can have a separate one of his own. Growing immorality, a consequence of contempt for religion, in many places concurs also as a cause to its deeper downfall. The multitude cut the knot which galls them, ma ch boldly forward, and fling themselves into the arms of Atheism in thought and deed. Oh, Protestantism, has it then, at last, come to this with thee, that thy disciples protest against all religion? Facts, which are before the eyes of the whole world, declare aloud, that this signification of thy name is no idle play upon words; though I know that the confession will excite a flame of ind'gnation against myself.

WILHELM MARTIN LEBERECHT DE WETTE.

SACRIFICE OF THE MASS.

IN In every sacrifice there is the person who offers, the thing which is offered, and the cause of offering. Now in this Sacrament of the Altar, the offerer is the Priest; and indeed the sovereign Priest is Christ himself, who not only offered Himself on the cross when He was suffering for us, but also exercises His priestly office forever to the consummation of ages, and now also offers Himself for us to God the Father through the ministry of the Priest. It is therefore He is called in Scripture, "a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedec"; in which offering of bread (as nothing can be more manifest) the Eucharistic sacrifice is allegorically prefigured in the Scripture itself. The thing offered, or the Victim or Host, is Christ himself, whose Body and Blood are subject to immolation and libation, under the appearance of e elements. Nor do I see what is wanting here to the nature of a true sacrifice. For why may not that be offered to God which is present under the symbols, since the sensible spe

cies of bread and wine are meet matter to be offered, and in them did the oblation of Melchisedec consist; and since that which is contained in the Eucharist is the most precious of all things, and the most worthy to be offered to God? Thus, by this most beautiful provision has the Divine mercy enabled our poverty to present an offering which God may not disdain; whereas He himself is infinite, and nothing would otherwise proceed from us bearing any proportion to His infinite perfection, no libation could be found capable of propitiating God, but one which itself should be of infinite perfection. For, by a mysterious disposition, it occurs that, as often as the consecration takes place, Christ, always giving Himself to us anew, may always again be offered to God, and thus represents and seals the perpetual efficacy of His first oblation on the Cross. For no new efficacy is superadded to the efficacy of the Passion, from this propitiatory Sacrifice, repeated for the remission of sins; but its entire efficacy consists in the representation and application of that first bloody Sacrifice, the fruit of which is the Divine Grace bestowed on all those who, being present at this tremendous Sacrifice, worthily celebrate the oblation in unison with the Priest. And since, in addition to the remission of eternal punishment

and the gift of the merits of Christ for the hope of eternal life, we further ask of God, for ourselves and others, both living and dead, many other salutary gifts (and among those, the chief is the mitigation of that paternal chastisement which is due to every sin, even though the penitent be restored to favor); it is therefore clearly manifest, that there is nothing in our entire worship more precious than the Sacrifice of this Divine Sacrament, in which the Body of our Lord itself is present.

GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNITZ,

Systema Theologicum.