Hebrews 9:28; Romans 6:9,10; Hebrews 10:10-12; Isaiah 66:3
Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.
Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once.
We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God.
He that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations.
JOHN FOXE (1517-1587): In the year 1538, one Collins, a madman, suffered death with his dog in Smithfield. The circumstances were as follows: Collins happened to be in church when the priest elevated the host; and Collins, in derision of the sacrifice of the mass, lifted up his dog above his head. For this crime, Collins, who ought to have been sent to a madhouse…was brought before the Bishop of London; and…such was the force of popish power, such the corruption in the Church and state, that the poor madman, and his dog, were both carried to the stake in Smithfield, where they were burned to ashes.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): No one knows, but he who has endured it, the solitude of a soul which has outstripped its fellows in zeal for the Lord of hosts: it dare not reveal itself, lest men count it mad…We do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it.
JOHN KNOX (1514-1572): The Papists have boldly affirmed that the Mass is the ordinance of God, and the institution of Jesus Christ, and a sacrifice for the sins of the quick and the dead. We deny both the one and the other. We affirm that the Mass, as it is now used, is nothing but the invention of man, and, therefore, is an abomination before God, and no sacrifice that ever God commanded.
C. H. SPURGEON: To invent our own forms of worship is to insult God; and every mass that is ever offered upon the Romish altar is an insult to heaven, and a blasphemy to God―the blasphemy of supposing that any so-called “priest” can offer up Christ. There are men who say that, in the unbloody sacrifice of the mass, “there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead.”
H. A. IRONSIDE (1876-1951): The Roman Catholic priests declare that, in the mass, they offer a continual sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead. There are many things that Protestants might be able to condone. But this is the central, the root blasphemy―the denial of the finished work of the Lord Jesus on Calvary’s cross―the one, only and all sufficient offering for the sins of a guilty world. Every time the priest stands at Rome’s altar to offer the sacrifice of the mass, he denies the unchanging efficacy of the work wrought by the Lord Jesus on Calvary’s cross.
C. H. SPURGEON: This He did once, when He offered up himself, Hebrews 7:27; and yet these shavelings say that they offer him again―then it follows that the great High Priest, when “when he offered up himself,” did not perform an effectual work. That would be a terrible imputation upon His honour. God forbid that we should entertain it for a single moment!
H. A. IRONSIDE: Every Roman Catholic priest will tell you that all the claims of the Church of Rome stand or fall with the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Mass―[that] the bread and wine used in the Sacrament of the Mass, when consecrated by the priest, are changed in some mysterious way into the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ…I have often pressed this question home to Catholic priests: “What is your function as a sacrificing priest?” They say, “It is my privilege to offer up the Lord Jesus from time to time as a continual sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead.”
I generally put it like this: “Well, Christ has to be slain that He may be offered up; doesn’t He?”
“Yes.”
“You claim then that every time you pronounce the blessing, you are sacrificing Christ for the sins of the living and the dead?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, you kill Christ afresh every time you offer that sacrifice!”
Then they begin to hedge. But there is no escape from that horrible conclusion. The Roman priest says that when he offers the sacrifice of the mass he is presenting Christ again for the sins of the living and the dead. And the only way the Christ can be a sacrifice is to be put to death; therefore, the priest kills Him afresh every time he offers. They cannot get away from it. The apostle Peter said at Pentecost, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: whom God hath raised up...” If Christ has to be offered continually, then every priest is guilty of murdering the Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God.
JOHN KNOX: What our Master Jesus Christ did, we know by His Evangelists; what the priest doeth at his Mass, the world seeth. Now, doth not the Word of God plainly assure us, that Christ Jesus neither said Mass, nor yet commanded Mass to be said, at His Last Supper, seeing that no such things as their Mass is made mention of within the whole Scriptures?
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): It’s man adding his works to the grace of God, which is essentially Roman Catholic teaching―the grace of God plus―what man does, what the church does, and so on. Well, my friends, let’s get rid of it; let’s not waste our time on it.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): The abolition of the mass, as you say, is conformable to Scripture.
C. H. SPURGEON: A ‘mass’ of profanity, indeed it is!
MARTIN LUTHER: Agreed…The mass is a bad thing: God is [opposed] to it: it must be abolished, and I wish that over the whole world it were supplanted by the supper of the Gospel.
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ (1794-1872): So long as the mass remains, Rome has gained everything: so soon as the mass falls, Rome has lost all. The mass is the creative principle of the whole system of Popery.
H. A. IRONSIDE: It was because the great reformers of the sixteenth century saw this clearly and were assured in their own hearts that the doctrine of the Church of Rome in regard to the Eucharist or the Mass was absolutely opposed to the Word of God and was not only blasphemous but idolatrous, that they came out in protest against that apostate system and they won for us at a tremendous cost of Christian blood the liberty that we now possess. And yet we, unworthy children of such worthy sires, are frittering away our liberty and we are allowing our children to be ensnared again by this evil system from which our fathers escaped with such tremendous effort.
