"I come to God's Altar": Brevint on the ministerial Priesthood
In ministering the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood, the priest has "as much power ... as any prophet or angel":
The body and blood of Jesus Christ is, in full value, and heaven with all its fulness is, in sure title, instated on true Christians by those small portions which they receive at the blessed Communion: the minister of Christ having, as to this effect, as much power from his Master for what he acts, as any prophet or any angel ever had for what they did.
In also setting forth the Lord's Sacrifice in the Eucharist, there "sacramentally offered again to God", the ministerial priesthood similarly handles that which has made "the powers of heaven shake":
So shall the new Israel tread in the pious steps of the old, who ever, from time to time, reiterated, either in Mispah or in Gilgal, &c. that covenant which the Lord hath made with him in Sinai. It is true, the Lord did not then again repeat the thunder that once made the mountains tremble, as in our churches He doth not reiterate that very passion that made the powers of heaven mourn and shake. Nevertheless, as Joshua, Asa, Josias, Jehoiadah, and other such holy men, could from their Master assure the people, that the covenant which they did renew, for example, in Shechem, was not less powerful, either to bless the observers, or to destroy the offenders thereof, than it was when Moses and the holy angels published it, at the first, upon Sinai; so now the ministers of our Lord Jesus Christ, having in their hands the Sacraments of the Gospel, (true seals and tables of the new Law,) may both produce and give them out as evidences that the Sacrifice of their Master is not less able to save men's souls, when it is offered to men, and sacramentally offered again to God, at the holy Communion, than when it was newly offered upon the cross.
That the Church's self-offering is an integral part of the Eucharist sacrifice, leads Brevint to point to the Apostle's description of the "evangelical office as ... a sacrificing priesthood", for the self-offering of the Christian can only be accepted when united to the Lord's sacrifice sacramentally present to the Church through the ministry of the priest in the holy Eucharist:
as soon as the prophet had preached the coming of this everlasting Sacrifice, and the propitiation and happiness which it would spread over all the world, he foretels at the same time that the apostles and their successors, (whom he designs by expressions proper to that economy under which he did live,) should bring the nations from all parts of the earth, as an offering unto the Lord (Isaiah lxvi.): and, to the same purpose, St. Paul himself speaks of his evangelical office as of a sacrificing priesthood, and of the Gentiles whom he did convert to Christ, as of so many sacrifices which he presented to the Lord: I exercise, says he, in the Gospel, a holy sacerdotal priesthood ... that the oblation of the Gentiles may be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Rom. xv. 16.) Hence proceeds that method which he observes most constantly, never to preach the faith in Jesus Christ without inviting presently the believers to offer up unto God either their bodies and souls, as Romans xii., or their work of holiness, of praise, of charity, &c. as everywhere else. And these are the spiritual offerings which every true Christian must join to cast upon the fundamental Sacrifice of Christ Jesus.
Another characteristic Laudian feature is seen in Brevint's emphasis upon the offertory. The 1662 revision of the BCP followed Laudian thinking and practice when it stated that the people's offerings are to be "reverently" brought in "a decent bason ... to the Priest who shall humbly present and place it upon the holy Table". This was reflected in the subsequent Prayer for the Church referring not only to "our alms" but "our alms and oblations". For Brevint this reflected patristic practice, illustrating how the priest presented the people's self-offering at the offering of the Eucharist:
And when the Christians had offered up to God their goods, the priest who did receive them did solemnly pray to God, that he would be pleased to look on their oblations, as he did once on those of Abel, of Noah, and of Abraham. Out of these oblations, the elements of the holy Communion were taken forth, and presented ... where they were blessed by the Bishop or priest, and distributed by him to the people, as from God, to assure them he had accepted of both their persons and offerings; and that instead of the bread and wine, which they had offered upon his altar, as either the first fruits, or the representatives of all their goods, he was pleased to return to them, not simple bread and simple wine, but such blessed bread and wine as were both the sacred mysteries of the body and blood of his Son, and an infallible surety of all things depending thereon. This is the reason why, because primitive Christians never received those holy mysteries but after they had made their offerings, and because those very mysteries which they received were commonly taken, as to the matter, from that bread and wine which they had before offered, the holy fathers, (for instance, St. Irenaeus,) who then had no occasion to be so exact or cautious as to distinguish precisely the nature of two sacred offices, which went constantly together, do not scruple to speak of the blessed Communion promiscuously, as Sacrament or Sacrifice.
Throughout his references to the ministerial priesthood and its ministry of presenting the Lord's sacrifice and - united to it - the Church's self-offering in the holy Eucharist, Brevint consistently points to this as fulfillment of the types in the Old Testament. Here too, he is following Cosin and other Laudians who evoked this patristic reading of the "pure offering" that the prophet foresaw being presented among the nations. In the words of Cosin, who preached at Brevint's ordination, this is that "which the ancient fathers with one consent understand of the sacrifice of the Eucharist, and the priests of the gospel".
Comments
Post a Comment