are so mingled in red-hot iron, that in every part of it are both fire and iron. Why may not the
glorious body of Christ much more be in every part of the substance of the bread?" Common people
do not understand the difference between substance and accidents, nor argue about it, but "believe
with simple faith that the body and blood of Christ are truly contained in the elements." So also the
incarnation does not require a transubstantiation of the human nature, that so the Godhead may be
contained beneath the accidents of the human nature; "but each nature is entire, and we can say
with truth, This man is God; this God is man."
(c) The sacrifice of the mass: that is, the offering to God of the very body and blood of
Christ by the hands of the priest when he pronounces the words of institution; in other words, an
actual repetition of the atoning sacrifice of the cross, only in an unbloody manner. This institution
is the very heart of Roman-Catholic (and Greek-Catholic) worship. Luther attacks it as the third
bondage, and the most impious of all. He feels the difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of a task
which involves an entire revolution of public worship. "At this day," he says, "there is no belief in
the Church more generally received, or more firmly held, than that the mass is a good work and a
sacrifice. This abuse has brought in an infinite flood of other abuses, until faith in the sacrament
has been utterly lost, and they have made this divine sacrament a mere subject of traffic, huckstering,
and money-getting contracts; and the entire maintenance of priests and monks depends upon these
things." He goes back to the simplicity of the primitive institution of the Lord’s Supper, which is
a thankful commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, with a blessing attached to it, namely,
the forgiveness of sins, to be appropriated by faith. The substance of this sacrament is promise and
faith. It is a gift of God to man, not a gift of man to God. It is, like baptism, to be received, and not
to be given. The Romanists have changed it into a good work of man and an opus operatum, by
which they imagine to please God; and have surrounded it with so many prayers, signs, vestments,
gestures, and ceremonies, that the original meaning is obscured. "They make God no longer the
bestower of good gifts on us, but the receiver of ours. Alas for such impiety!" He proves from the
ancient Church that the offering of the eucharist, as the name indicates, was originally a
thank-offering of the gifts of the communicants for the benefit of the poor. The true sacrifice which
we are to offer to God is our thanks, our possessions, and our whole person. He also objects to the
use of the Latin language in the mass, and demands the vernacular.
- The sacrament of Baptism. Luther thanks God that this sacrament has been preserved
uninjured, and kept from "the foul and impious monstrosities of avarice and superstition." He agrees
essentially with the Roman doctrine, and considers baptism as a means of regeneration; while
Zwingli and Calvin regarded it merely as a sign and seal of preceding regeneration and
church-membership. He even makes more of it than the Romanists, and opposes the prevailing
view of St. Jerome, that penitence is a second plank of refuge after shipwreck. Instead of relying
on priestly absolution, it is better to go back to the remission of sins secured in baptism. "When we
rise out of our sins, and exercise penitence, we are simply reverting to the efficacy of baptism and
to faith in it, whence we had fallen; and we return to the promise then made to us, but which we
had abandoned through our sin. For the truth of the promise once made always abides, and is ready
to stretch out the hand and receive us when we return."
As to the mode of baptism, he gives here, as elsewhere, his preference to immersion, which
then still prevailed in England and in some parts of the Continent, and which was not a point of
dispute either between Romanists and Protestants, or between Protestants and Anabaptists; while
on the question of infant-baptism the Anabaptists differed from both. "Baptism," he says, "is that