The Lord's Supper in the Theology of Martin Chemnitz Bjarne - Logia

0 | The Lord’s Supper
church may have mediators who can plead their cause before Christ, the
supreme Judge, and by this act of sacrifice placate the wrath of the Father
and obtain for the church propitiation and other gifts, both such as are
spiritual and necessary for salvation and also bodily gifts that pertain to
this life, yes, the liberation of souls from purgatory, (Ex. 2, 679),
237 The Roman church holds that “through sacred ordination (which
is performed through words and outward signs) grace is conferred”
(Session 23, Chapter III; Ex. 2, 691). This gives the priest and him
alone the power of consecrating (potestas consecrandi) and offering
the body and blood of the Lord, and of remitting and retaining sins
(Session 23, Chapter I; Ex. 2, 677). It is, as Chemnitz observes, “To
these external signs and rites about which there is neither a command
nor promise, they tie the grace of God in such a way that they imagine
that anyone to whom not all the rites of papalist ordination have been
applied have not the grace necessary to forgive sins, nor to consecrate
the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ” (Ex. 2, 696; emphasis
added). This obviously makes the consecration and the absolution
partly the work of God and of man (the ordained priest). There is
cooperation here between man and God, with the result that the consecration
and the absolution are an integral part of the whole Roman
synergistic system. The consecratory power does not lie in Christ’s
words themselves but rather in the power given to the priest at his ordination.
Chemnitz is well aware of this, for he writes, “The Papalists
ascribe the consecration or hallowing in part also to the work of the
priest, indeed not only to the outward recitation of the words but also
to other actions of the priests, as the spreading, folding, lifting up,
and gesticulations of the hands, the bending of the neck, the turning
of the body, etc.” (Ex. 2, 231).
238 It should further be noted that the consecration is at the same time
the sacrifice of the Mass, and this, Chemnitz declares, “is not only
fabricated but injurious to and blasphemous against Christ” (Ex. 2,
679). This destroys the Sacrament of the Altar as God’s free gift of the
forgiveness of sins certified by the very purchase price which won this
for man, namely, Christ’s body and blood.
239 From this papistic perversion there follows “two not unimportant
pillars of the Papalist kingdom, namely, that when the Words of Institution
have been spoken over the bread, then also apart from the use
divinely ordained and commanded in the institution, Christ, God and Man,