But perhaps some may still say, We are not convinced. The allusion to an altar here may yet be figurative, or only adapting language to the mind of the Jew, “while as the first tabernacle was yet standing;” and the sacrifice of praise need not necessarily mean the Holy Eucharist, or, if it do, may point to no altar or sacrifice by means of a priest, but merely denote the lifting the heart in sincerity to God.
Now, although putting the whole argument together and reading the passage by the light which the continuous belief of the Church throws upon it (as we shall see presently), nothing, I think, can be more unlikely or untenable than such an interpretation, still, for the moment, let us allow it to throw a doubt upon the sense of the passage. Let us, then, turn to yet another place, and see if the witness of the Apostle is not unmistakeable as to the doctrine of which we speak.
Take that passage in the first Epistle to the Corinthians in which our text occurs, and see if it be possible to understand it in any sense but in that which speaks of a present altar and a continually recurring sacrifice, in which Christians have an interest and bear a part: “Are not they which eat of the sacrifice,” says he, “partakers of the altar?” { 54} and this especially in contrast as to the conduct of those engaged in idol worship, and those in Christian worship. As truly, then, as the idolater partook of his altar (though his idol be nothing), so, only much more, does the Christian of the Christian altar. And this cannot be the one offering on the cross alone, however deriving all its virtue and power from it, because in that case the Christian could not be said to eat of the sacrifice in any continuous or recurring act. The sacrifice would be wholly past, and not present as the idol sacrifices were, and so there would be no true parallel between the two things brought into comparison. Mark the progress of the argument: “What say I then? that the idol is anything, or that which is offered in sacrifice to the idol is anything? But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God;” that is, under the symbol of the senseless wood or stone there lurked an acknowledgment of demoniac power, so that, in fact, in the heart of those worshippers there was a homage paid to Satan and his angels, and this was something wickedly real, even though the idol was nothing. For he immediately adds what shews that this worship was not without its effect, an effect impressing a character on those who shared in it; for he says, “And I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils,” and why? because thus they would lose all fellowship with God. “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils. Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.” { 55} Let it make no difficulty that it is called a table here, as an altar above. It is both, just as the other, the heathen altar, was both, because in each case there was not merely a sacrifice, but a feast upon a sacrifice. As truly, then, as the Apostle says that there is a heathen idolatrous sacrifice which Christians can never have to do with, because if they do they would have fellowship with devils, so does he, by the very parallel he draws, and the whole scope of his argument, imply that Christians have a sacrifice, at which they can be, and are to be, continually present; in and by which they have fellowship with the Lord, which also is offered continually in their assemblies, and of which they eat. For as in the one there were the heathen feasts upon the victims or offerings offered to devils; so in the other there is the feast upon the Christian sacrifice, the offering made in that continually recurring commemorative oblation to God of the body and blood of Christ. If this be not to be offered up continually, since the one sacrifice completed as the propitiation by blood made once for all upon the cross, then there is no coherency or force in the Apostle’s argument; for there would be nothing in the Christian dispensation like, or answering to, those sacrifices to devils which the heathen used, and in which they were forbidden to join. The teaching surely is, and must be, as they who join in the heathen altar-worship are partakers of it, and have fellowship thereby with those to whom it is really offered, so they who join in the Christian sacrifice (not so made and passed in point of time as to be incapable of continued and continual recurrence by commemorative but real act) are thereby partakers in and of their feast upon their sacrifice, and have therein fellowship with the Lord.