The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

The parallel in the thought in Heb. xiii. 10-12 is also well worthy of
notice: "We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat, which serve
the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into
the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin, are burnt without the camp.
Wherefore, Jesus, also, that He might sanctify the people with His own
blood, suffered without the gate." Here is altar over against altar, body over
against body, blood over against blood, sacrifice over against sacrifice,
eating over against eating. We have the true altar over against the typifying
altar, the true body, blood, and sacrifice of Christ over against the typifying
body, blood, and sacrifice of beasts, the true sacramental and
communicating eating over against the typifying eating, which
foreshadowed, but could not consummate a communion.
If language can express a thought unmistakably,'the words of Paul (I
Cor. x.) imply that, in the Lord's Supper, there is a supernatural reality, a
relation between the bread and the body of Christ, which makes the one
the medium of the reception of the other; that our atoning sacrifice, after a
different manner, but a manner not less real than that of the sacrifice of Jew
and Pagan, is communicated to us in the Holy Supper, as their sacrifices
were given in their feasts. The Lord's Supper, indeed, may be regarded as a
summing up of the whole fundamental idea of Old Testament sacrifice, a
covenant consummated by sacrifice, and entered into by the covenanting
parties, receiving, each after the mode appropriate to him, that which is
sacrificed; the Almighty Father accepting His Son, as the Victim offered
for the sins of the whole world, and the world accepting in the Holy
Supper the precious body and blood which apply in perpetual renewal,
through all generations, the merits of the oblation made, once for all, upon
the Cross.
The interpretation of these passages implied by our Church in her
Confession is sustained by the universal usage of the Church Catholic, by
the judgment of the greatest of the fathers, Greek and Latin, by the opinion
of the most eminent dogmaticians and expositors, ancient and modern, and
even by the concessions of interpreters who reject the Lutheran faith.