The “Sacrifice of the Mass” by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 31, 1914

The “Sacrifice of the Mass”

By C. M. S.

“Rome Never Changes”—No. 8

The “Sacrifice of the Mass”

IN that service of the Roman Catholic Church which is known at the present time as “the sacrifice of the mass,” the center and soul of the ordinance is the wafer.

When Jesus instituted the service of the Lord’s Supper, of which the mass purports to be a replica, or reproduction, he “took bread, . . . and brake it,” and divided the pieces among those who sat at supper with him. It was not a whole, but a broken piece of bread which they received. But the wafer used in the mass is whole, not broken. The Saviour’s words, “This is my body, which is broken for you,” find nothing in the Roman Catholic service to fulfill them. The wafer is not broken.

This discrepancy in the ordinance shows in itself that the “sacrifice of the mass” is not the continuation of the Lord’s Supper as instituted by him, but finds its origin in some other source. If we begin to seek among the religions of ancient paganism, we have not long to search in order to find the key that unlocks the mystery. That we may understand just what the mass is, from an authoritative Roman Catholic viewpoint, I quote the following decree of the Council of Trent:—

And forasmuch as, in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner, who once offered himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross; the holy synod teaches that this sacrifice is truly propitiatory (canon 6), and that by means thereof this is effected that we obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid, if we draw nigh unto God, contrite and penitent, with a sincere heart and upright faith, with fear and reverence. For the Lord, appeased by the oblation thereof and granting the grace and gift of penitence, forgives even heinous crimes and sins. For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. The fruits indeed of which oblation, of that bloody one, to wit, are received most plentifully through this unbloody one; so far is this (latter) from derogating in any way from that (former oblation) (canon 4). Wherefore, not only for the sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities of the faithful who are living, but also for those who are departed in Christ, and who are not as yet fully purified, is it rightly offered, agreeably to a tradition of the apostles (canon 3).—Dogmatic Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, sess. 22, chap. 2, authorized translations.

Note in the above the expression “unbloody,” referring to the “sacrifice of the mass.” This is a peculiar expression to use in connection with a “sacrifice” which purports to be “propitiatory,” in view of the declaration of the Word of God that “without shedding of blood is no remission.” That one statement of Scripture completely wipes out the mass as a propitiatory sacrifice or as having any connection whatever with the remission of sins. But it is the key which unlocks the mystery of the origin of the mass.

Not without reason is the Roman Church called the Babylon of the Apocalypse. There are many of her practices which are of Babylonian derivation, and the “unbloody sacrifice” is one of them. We learn from Tacitus (Historia, lib. 2, cap. 3, Vol. III, page 106) that “no blood was allowed to be offered on the altars of Paphian Venus.” While they slew animals in order to discover future events by examining the entrails of the victims, “the altars of the Paphian goddess were required to be kept pure from blood.” Tacitus further shows that the haruspex of the temple of the Paphian Venus was brought from Cilicia, “the Cilicians having peculiar knowledge of her rites.” Hislop, in his work “Two Babylons,” says:—

Now Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, was built by Sennacherib, the Assyrian king, in express imitation of Babylon (Bunsen, Vol. I, page 718). Its religion would naturally correspond; and when we find “unbloody sacrifice” in Cyprus, whose priest came from Cilicia, that, in the circumstances, is itself a strong presumption that the “unbloody sacrifice” came to it through Cilicia from Babylon. This presumption is greatly strengthened when we find from Herodotus that the peculiar and abominable institution of Babylon in prostituting virgins in honor of Mylitta, was observed also in Cyprus in honor of Venus. But the positive testimony of Pausanias brings this presumption to a certainty. . . . The Assyrian Venus, then,—that is, the great goddess of Babylon,—and the Cyprian Venus were one and the same, and consequently the “bloodless” altars of the Paphian goddess show the character of the worship peculiar to the Babylonian goddess, from whom she was derived.—Page 157.

In other countries similar “unbloody sacrifices” were offered on heathen altars, but without question they also had their origin in Babylon, the mother of false religions. In India the goddess Lakshmi, “the Mother of the Universe,” and the consort of Vishnu, had her festivals and her sacrifices. But “in the festivals of Lakshmi no sanguinary [bloody] sacrifices are offered.”—Hindoo Mythology, page 61.

When Israel had forgotten Jehovah and had turned to the gods of the heathen world, we find them carrying on a system of worship very similar to that of the mass, Jeremiah testifies against their idolatry in these words:—

“Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, . . . which they committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?” Jer. 44:9.

What that particular wickedness consisted in is shown in the answer which the people gave to Jeremiah:—

“Then all the men who knew that their wives burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, . . . answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of Jehovah, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly perform every word that is gone forth out of our mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem. . . . And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our husbands?” Jer. 44:15–19.

Verse 15 of the above chapter shows plainly that Israel learned this abominable idolatry from Egypt; and Babylon was Egypt’s tutor in idolatry, as she was also of other nations. Those idolaters specify particularly the burning of incense to the queen of heaven and the making of cakes to worship her. The “cakes” were an “unbloody sacrifice.” “In the fourth century,” says Hislop, “when the queen of heaven, under the name of Mary, was beginning to be worshiped in the Christian church, this ‘unbloody sacrifice’ also was brought in. Epiphanius states that the practice of offering and eating it began among the women of Arabia (Epiphanius, Adversus Hæreses, Vol. I, page 1054); and at that time it was well known to have been adopted from the pagans. The very shape of the ‘unbloody sacrifice’ of Rome may indicate whence it came. It is a small, thin, round wafer; and on its roundness the Church of Rome lays so much stress that, to use the pithy language of John Knox in regard to the wafer god, ‘If, in making the roundness the ring be broken, then must another of his fellow cakes receive that honor.’” — Begg’s Handbook of Popery, page 259.

Why is stress laid upon the shape of the bread that is supposed to represent—or, rather to be—the body of our Lord that was broken for us? The cakes which Rome consecrates on her altars, like the cakes which the Israelites offered to the queen of heaven, are a reproduction in form of the cakes offered on the altars of the sun god in Egypt. Wilkinson, speaking of the altar service of the Egyptians, says: “The thin, round cake occurs on all altars.”—Wilkinson’s Egyptians, Vol. V, page 353. “The round disk, so frequent in the sacred emblems of Egypt,” says Hislop, “symbolized the sun.”—Two Babylons, page 160.

In a work entitled “Rites and Ceremonies,” by Hurd, we find this description of the embellishments of a Roman Catholic altar on which the wafer is placed:—

A plate of silver, in the form of a sun, is fixed opposite to the sacrament [or round wafer] on the altar; which, with the light of the tapers, makes a most brilliant appearance.—Page 196, col. 1.

What is the significance of this “brilliant” representation of the sun over against the round disk of the wafer on the altar? It is a reproduction of the altars erected to the worship of the sun in the land of Egypt, and a reproduction also of the altars and the worship of the sun god of Babylon.

In the great temple of Babylon, the golden image of the sun was exhibited for the worship of the Babylonians. In the temple of Cuzco, in Peru, the disk of the sun was fixed up in flaming gold upon the wall, that all who entered might bow down before it. The Pæonians of Thrace were sun worshipers; and in their worship they adored an image of the sun in the form of a disk at the top of a long pole. In the worship of Baal, as practiced by the idolatrous Israelites in the days of their apostasy, the worship of the sun’s image was equally observed; and it is striking to find that the image of the sun, which apostate Israel worshiped, was erected above the altar. When the good king Josiah set about the work of reformation, we read that his servants in carrying out the work, proceeded thus (2 Chron. 34:4): “And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and the images [“sun images,” Revised Version], that were on high above them, he cut down.”—Two Babylons, pages 162, 163.

The Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela, gives this description of sun worship and the sun altars among the Cushites of the East:—

There is a temple of the posterity of Cush, addicted to the contemplation of the stars. They worship the sun as a god, and the whole country, for half a mile round their town, is filled with great altars dedicated to him. By the dawn of morn they get up and run out of town, to wait the rising sun, to whom, on every altar, there is a consecrated image, not in the likeness of a man, but of the solar orb, framed by magic art. These orbs, as soon as the sun rises, take fire, and resound with a great noise, while everybody there, men and women, hold censers in their hands, and all burn incense to the sun.—Savary’s Letters, Vol. II, pages 562, 563, note.

The sun image on or above the altar, and the round wafer or cake on the altar, are thus seen to be the recognized symbols of Baal worship or sun worship. Whence, then, could have been derived the sun disk and the round wafer in the Roman Church, save from ancient Babylon, the mother of mysteries, through the unconverted heathen who flocked into the Christian church in the early centuries of the Christian era? The analogy is too close for a mere coincidence. Other striking features of the “sacrifice of the mass,” together with proof as to when this change came into the Roman Church, will be considered in another article.

C. M. S.