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The Catholic Mass versus The Lord’s Supper*
By Harry Ironside
I am not here to say anything unkind against the Roman church. As my friend, Brother O’Hair, has reminded you, our government guarantees to every man the right to full liberty of conscience in regard to religious privileges. As we wish to enjoy that liberty ourselves, we are glad to accord it to others. But I simply desire to examine some of the teachings of the Church of Rome and compare them with the teaching of the Word of God, particularly on the great central doctrine of that church, which is called the Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist, or the Sacrament of the Mass.
THE CRUX OF THE MATTER
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. If 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 so that the communicant receiving the bread actually takes into his mouth and eats and digests the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ—if this is true—then the Church of Rome is the true church of Christ, and every one of us should be members of it. But if it is false, if it is absolutely opposed to the teaching of the Word of God, then the Church of Rome is an apostate church, and every faithful believer should come out of her in order that he might not be held accountable for her sins.
It was because some of the 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 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.
BASIC TRUTH
I want to call your attention first of all to a passage in Hebrews, which may not seem at first sight to have any reference to the subject in question, but I think we shall see that it not only has reference to it but presents the basic truth in regard to it:
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; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 10: 11-17)
Now here is the crucial text that I want you to get, “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (v. 18).
CHRIST’S FINISHED WORK
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the apostolic writer contrasts the ritual system of the Old Testament dispensation with the glorious work achieved by Jesus Christ when He offered Himself on Calvary’s Cross for our redemption. He draws our attention to the fact that under the old economy, the priest’s work was never done because the sin question was never settled. No sacrifice had been found that was of sufficient value to atone for the sins of the world; and so whenever men sinned afresh, they had to come with a new sacrifice. One offering followed another constantly; therefore, there was not even provision made for the priest to sit down in the tabernacle or in the temple of the Lord. The priest’s work was never done for sin was never put away. But the apostle goes on to say that in those sacrifices, there was an acknowledgment again made of sin from year to year. That is, the worshiper under the Old Testament dispensation came to God in faith, confessing his sin, and brought his animal sacrifice, whether a bullock from the herd, a sheep from the flock, or two birds. He confessed his sin, and these sacrifices were offered for him. They did not cancel his guilt. They did not cleanse his heart. They were rather in the nature of a note that a man gives to his creditor for a debt. A man is owing a certain sum of money. He makes out a note for that sum. He is unable to pay when it is due, so he makes out another note, and in those notes, there is an acknowledgment again made of the debt from year to year. So in the sacrifices of old, there was simply an acknowledgment of sin made year after year. Sometimes when a man must give a note for a debt, he has a wealthy friend who is good enough to endorse that note for him. By endorsing that note, his friend says, “If you are not able to pay when the note becomes due, I pledge myself to pay it for you.”
THE SIN QUESTION SETTLED
When these people of old gave their notes to God by bringing their sacrifices again and again, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son still ex-carnate, endorsed every note, and He said:
Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. (Hebrews 10:7)
In the fulness of time, He came, made of a woman, made under the law; and He went to Calvary’s Cross and there, may I say, gathered up and settled for all those notes of the past; and He undertook the full responsibility to the end of time and offered Himself a sacrifice for the sins of men. By that one all-sufficient offering of Himself upon the Cross, He settled the sin question so that now God can be justifier of him who believeth in Jesus.
The sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ had both a backward and a forward aspect. It put away all the sins of the past that had only been covered by the blood of the sacrifices and made ample provision to put away all the sins of the future for every one who would believe on Him. The means by which needy sinners avail themselves of an interest in the finished work of Christ is very simple. The sinner has to take his place before God as a lost, guilty man, owning his iniquity and putting his trust in the Man who died on the Cross; for, “By him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:39).
In this New Testament economy, Christ is the only sacrificing priest. He is the one all-sufficient victim. Christ, having made atonement for sins, rose from the dead, and God has manifested His righteous satisfaction in the work of the Cross by seating Him in Heaven at His own right hand.
A FEAST OF LOVE
Before He went away, our Lord Jesus, foreseeing all this, gave to His disciples that feast of love, which we commonly call “The Lord’s Supper.” In the Lord’s Supper, this mystery of redemption is wonderfully and beautifully pictured. I want to read to you the various Scriptures in the New Testament that refer to it. I am going to read each passage that speaks of this feast of love in order that you, hearing them, may compare them in your own mind with the celebration—that idolatrous celebration; and I ask you to put the questions to yourself: Is there anything here that is remotely connected with this ceremony that myriads have been so occupied with? Is there in this a sin offering? Is there a sacrificing priest? Is there any provision here for incense, any provision for worshipping the Virgin Mary, any provision for a great hierarchy with their brilliant garments? I read the other day that $200,000.00 worth of priestly garments were ruined by the rain during the celebration at Mundelein. You could put all the apostles, and the 500 who saw the Lord after His resurrection, and all the Christians in the early days, out in the rain and hail, and they would not ruin $10.00 worth of priestly vestments! Is there anything that compares with the ceremony that has been enacted in this city, which is supposed to be the continuation of that of which our Lord speaks here?
In Matthew, our Lord had just eaten the Passover with His disciples. We read:
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:26-28)
How beautiful in its simplicity is this first celebration of the Lord’s Supper! How different to that mysterious ceremony, which is the very center of the Roman Catholic system!
OTHER VERSIONS
Now turn to the Gospel of Mark and get his account of the same Supper. See if there is anything that Matthew left out which he has inserted that might give some ground, some basis, for the doctrines that have gathered round the so-called Sacrament of the Mass:
And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. (Mark 14:22-24)
“And as they did eat.” I would draw your attention to that. Every Roman Catholic is instructed to take the Sacrament of the Mass fasting. Have you read that after “they did eat, Jesus took bread.” They were just concluding the Passover meal. And “Jesus took bread.” Mark you, not some special cake marked with the mystic letters “I.H.S.” which are supposed to mean “Iesus Hominum Salvator,” but that might just as well mean the Egyptian deities “Isis,” “Horus,” or “Seb,” as they did ages ago in a similar ceremony.
Now I turn you to the account given by our brother Luke, Doctor Luke, the beloved physician:
And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:19-20)
PAUL SPEAKS
The apostle John does not give us any account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper; but after Christ’s ascension and after the conversion of Saul of Tarsus when he became the apostle Paul, a special revelation was given to Paul, and in First Corinthians we get the full account of it:
When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. (1 Corinthians 11: 20-26; emphasis added)
Observe how this feast links together the two great facts of Christianity—the death of Christ and His second coming. The Lord’s Supper is taken in remembrance of One who died, but as we take it, we look forward to and wait for His coming again.
TILL HE COMES
A friend of mine, giving some lectures at a church not long ago, spoke of the second coming of the Lord, and the pastor came up to him after the service and said, “I am sorry that you touched that subject. We don’t believe here in the second coming of Christ.”
“Oh, you don’t?”
“No.”
“What is that table that you have down there in front of the pulpit?”
“That is the Lord’s Table.”
“What do you do with it?”
“We use it when we take the Lord’s Supper.”
“What do you take the Lord’s Supper for?”
“Because the Word of God tell us to.”
“How long are you going to take it?”
“As long as we are here, I suppose.”
“What does the Bible say?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“‘As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup ye do show the Lord’s death till He come.’ If you don’t believe He is coming again you’d better cut that out. It is a witness that the Christ who died is coming again. He says, While you are waiting for Me, do this in remembrance of Me.” Then in the same Epistle, we read:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? . . . 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. (1 Corinthians 10:16, 21)
THE TEACHING IS CLEAR
I have read these passages because they give you the verses in the New Testament that definitely refer to the Lord’s Supper. You can see just what they teach. Our blessed Lord was going out to die, and before He left His disciples, He gave them this memorial feast. There is a striking passage in the book of the prophet Jeremiah in which he is predicting dire judgments coming upon Israel, and he says that so many people will die that there will be none left to break bread for them (that is the marginal reading), nor to give them the cup of consolation. It evidently refers to an old custom that when somebody died, loving friends gathered together with those who were left, and they sat down and ate and drank in memory of the loved one and probably talked of his virtues and tried to comfort his loved ones.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ has come to the end of His thirty-three wonderful years here upon Earth. He is about to go out to die. He came for that purpose. He said, “[T]he Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Now He has His little company of disciples gathered about Him. They have kept the Pascal feast, the last Passover that God ever recognized. Actually, they kept the Passover, and Christ died on the same day because the Jewish day began in the evening and went on until the next evening. So the Lord ate the Passover with His disciples on the first evening and before the next evening—between the two evenings—He died on the Cross—Christ, our Passover, sacrificed for us.
A MEMORIAL FEAST
Jesus took bread and held that bread in His hand and said to the disciples, “This is my body which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). Observe: There He sat at the table. He is not indicating that any change takes place in the bread. He is there in His perfectly human body; and He holds this bread in His hand, and He says, “This is my body.” Surely anyone must be blind who cannot see what He is telling them is this: This bread, I want you to understand, is to bring before you the truth that my body is to be sacrificed for sin. He had not yet been sacrificed, and yet He speaks as though it had already taken place. “This do in remembrance of me.” And He passes the bread around to them. There is no mysterious priesthood; there are no costly vestments; there are no candles burning in a ceremonial manner; there is no smoking incense ascending. They have partaken of one meal, and then He gives them this beautiful memorial feast. He does not even appoint a clergyman to preside there. He addresses them as brethren, and He says, “This do in remembrance of Me.”
SIMPLE AND BEAUTIFUL
I think the simpler we can be in our thoughts of the Lord’s Supper the better. I read some time ago of a Hindu who was living in a village when a missionary came to that village for the first time and some said to him, “Come. You must see So-and-So.”
The missionary went to this man’s house. When the Hindu saw a white man coming with a Bible, he rose to greet him and bowed at his feet. The missionary said, “Stand up. I am just a man like yourself.”
“Oh,” said the Hindu, “you have come with the Book. I have waited for it for twenty years.”
“How is that?”
“Well, twenty years ago I took a long journey. I heard a man in the market place (he looked like you) read from a book. He told the story of the Great God of Love who sent His Son to die for sinners. I bought a book.” He produced a copy of Matthew’s Gospel all worn so that hardly a leaf was whole. “I took it home. I have eaten that book. I have read it over and over. I have read it to all the people in the village. I have been praying that God would send somebody to tell me more.”
The Hindu asked the missionary to eat with him. Now the host was a little embarrassed. He had a bowl of rice, and he turned to the other man and said, “Before we eat, I always do as Jesus said.”
The missionary did not understand. But he said, “Go ahead. Don’t let me interfere.”
The Hindu closed his eyes, thanked God that Christ had died for him, and then he said, “I eat this rice because the body of my Lord Jesus was nailed on the Cross for me.” Then he took the common drink of the land and said, “I drink of this because my Lord Jesus died for me,” and he gave some to the missionary, as he had given the rice, and they ate and drank together.
The missionary said, “How long have you been doing this?”
“For twenty years.”
“And how often!”
“Every time I eat a meal.”
He saw nothing in the Book that would tell him how often. So, I repeat, the simpler we can be the better. It is a memorial—that is all.
REMEMBERING HIS SACRIFICE
A Roman Catholic layman in St. Louis recently put out an advertisement like this: “Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; Protestants believe in the real absence.” But that is false. Protestants do not believe that the bread and wine undergo any mystic change, but they do believe that as you eat and drink in remembrance of Christ, Christ is present in His sweet and wonderful way, manifesting Himself to the hearts of His beloved people so that by faith they are enabled to feed upon Him. We feed upon Him in remembrance. We look back and think of the sorrows He bore. We contemplate His Cross and bitter passion, and as we do, we—figuratively speaking—eat of His flesh and drink of His blood.
NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANS
In this feast, Christ gives the bread, and then He gives the wine. He did not separate believers into a clergy and a laity and say to the clergy, “The wine is for you: the bread is simply for the laity.” There is no such distinction made in the Bible. For two and a half centuries after Christ’s Gospel began to be preached in this world, you will search reputable church history in vain to find such a distinction. There were officials in the church; there were elders; and there were deacons. Elders had a special oversight but no such distinction as the dividing of Christians into the laity and the clergy with the clergy having special access to God and special authority in dispensing divine mysteries. This was unknown in the early days of Christianity, and in those early days, the Lord’s Supper was observed in simplicity.
WHEN THE CHANGE OCCURRED
But you go down through the Christian era a few centuries, and you find everything is changed. You enter a Christian church. The Lord’s table is conspicuous by its absence. Instead of a table, you have an altar. An altar in a Christian church! The altar belonged to Judaism. But the altar is typical of Christ Himself whose glorious person sanctifies the offering He gives; and second, it typifies the Cross upon which He was uplifted. The Christian’s altar is the Cross of Christ, but in these churches of the centuries after Constantine, we find an altar again and, serving there, is a priest with special vestments, not such as were used by the Jewish priesthood, but vestments which were identical with those worn by the priests of Babylon centuries before. What had brought about the change? Simply this: As long as Christianity was persecuted, as long as the Christian company was under the ban of the Roman government, simplicity and reality prevailed. But the day came when the state became the patron of Christianity, and an effort was made to unite the ancient heathen religion and the Roman Empire with the new Christianity. The result was that little by little pagan forms and ceremonies were brought in and displaced the early Christian forms which were so simple, so beautiful, and so scriptural. The altar was not even taken from Judaism, for no such altar as the altars of Judaism was ever found in so-called Christian churches.
HEATHENISM
A few years ago, I had a company of Indian youths in Oakland, California, that I was educating. I was teaching these young men church history, and one day, to give them a practical lesson, I took them to San Francisco through three Chinese [Buddhist] temples, and then I took them through two Roman Catholic churches. After our visits, I said to these youths, “Now tell me what you saw in each place.”
They wrote it all out. They said, “In each building, we found holy water at the door. Each building had an altar. Each building had priests in costly vestments bowing below the altar. Each building had candles and incense. In each building, a bell rang when the worshipers were to kneel down.” The Romanist and pagan temples were practically alike!
Anyone who familiarizes himself with the history of the ancient heathen cults can see where all these forms and ceremonies came in that are now linked up with what is called the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The identical customs were practiced by Babylonish priests over 500 years before Christ. There was in the Babylon temples and on the altars an image of a woman with a child in her arms. This woman was said to be the Queen of Heaven. Her child was called the Seed, which was evidently Satan’s imitation of the truth involved in the words, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” To this woman was sacrificed a bloodless offering consisting of round moon-shaped cakes, and these being presented to her were put upon the altar and the faithful bowed down in reverence before them.
In the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the people had read of the same cult transferred to Palestine and observed afterwards among the dispersed Jews in Egypt:
Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. (Jeremiah 7:17-18)
The people had turned from their idolatry, but they declare that they are going back to it. In Jeremiah, we read:
Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own 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: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. (Jeremiah 44:15-17)
COMPROMISE
This ancient custom of offering these round cakes was taken up by the apostate church. They said, “The best way is to get all the different religions into one, and we can take this heathen rite and turn it into a Christian ceremony. This round cake we will call the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.” That is what is called the host. It must be absolutely round. It is taken into the church and the priest blesses it. If it has a piece broken off of it, anybody can eat it.
The Roman Catholic Church will tell you that this is taught by our Lord when He said, “This is my body which is given for you.” But as He said that, He was there with them. He handed them this bread, and they partook of it, clearly giving us to understand that the bread was God’s wonderful way of illustrating the value of feeding upon Christ. We feed upon bread, and we get physical strength. We feed upon Christ, and we get spiritual strength.
But now they tell us that the bread is changed when the priest blesses it. We charge that to fall down and worship that piece of bread is an act of idolatry. The Roman Catholic Church says that bread is actually Christ.
They say that at the moment of consecration, Christ comes and enters it. Here is a man making images. You say, “Are these images actually gods?”
“No, not yet.”
“When will they become gods?”
“When the priest takes them and blesses them and consecrates them to the deity they represent. Then the deity will come and dwell within them so that when the worshiper bows down he is not worshipping the image but the soul of the divinity that dwells within.”
BLASPHEMY AGAINST CHRIST’S SACRIFICE
Is there any difference between that [the ancient heathen traditions] and the Romish doctrine? None whatever. The bread was bread until the priest blessed it, and then in some mystical way, Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity became identified with it. Worship in the New Testament is only given to God the Father and God the Son in the energy of the Holy Ghost. Then the Roman church tells us that this host is a continual unbloody sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead. Christ died once on the Cross, but Christ is offered daily upon the altars of the Roman church. This, we maintain, is a denial of the all-sufficiency of the one offering of our Lord Jesus Christ. As long as sacrifice had not been found that could put away sin, it was necessary for one offering to follow another, but when Christ came into the world and offered Himself without spot unto God, then the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom (Matthew 27:51) thus signifying that the way into the holies is made manifest and every believer is entitled to enter into the very presence of God, washed from every sin and justified from all things through the infinite value of the atoning work of the Son of God. [See Hebrews 6:19; 10:19-22.]
Now, to talk of any man on Earth offering a continual sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead is not only blasphemy against the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it is absolute nonsense for the Word of God says, “[W]ithout shedding of blood is no remission [of sins]” (Hebrews 9:22). It is worthless because being bloodless, it has no value to atone for sin; and it isn’t needed to atone for sin because Jesus’ atonement has already been made [in full].
A REVIVAL OF DOCTRINAL PREACHING
Therefore, I say, there is a tremendous chasm between the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass and the biblical doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial feast. Christians, members of the body of Christ, come together to remember the One who died for them and who put away their sins; and they do this because their sins have been put away. No instructed Christian would approach the Lord’s Table to get forgiveness. I come because my sins have been forever put away [as a finished work] by the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus, and I desire gratefully to remember the One who offered that mighty sacrifice and so fitted me for the presence of a holy God.
There can be no compromise between the two systems. While Protestant churches have been sleeping, Rome has been . . . getting a great many weak Protestants who have looked in vain for spiritual help because they have not been hearing the precious Gospel of the grace of God.
But let there be a revival of doctrinal preaching; of the universal priesthood of all believers, doing away with anything like a special priesthood; of the membership in the body of Christ of all who have been washed in the blood of Jesus, justified from all things, by faith in the one offering that has forever settled the sin question; of the Lord’s Supper not as a sacrament but a memorial feast. Let these great truths be re-emphasized, and wherever the Word is preached in faith and dependence upon the Holy Ghost, God will use it to bring joy and peace and gladness to souls.
The Acts of the Early Church
By Roger Oakland
The early church celebrated communion frequently, and their actions are recorded in the Book of Acts. Let’s look at how the apostles and disciples celebrated communion after Jesus’ ascension. In Acts, we read:
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. (Acts 2:42)
And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness. (Acts 2:46)
The Lord’s apostles, the very same ones that were present at the Last Supper, broke bread daily, celebrating communion, and not once did they refer to the bread as the literal body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. Even on Sunday, which is the day that the Lord rose, they referred to communion as mere bread. In a key verse in the Book of Acts, we read, “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread . . .” (Acts 20:7).
Notice that the disciples broke bread on Sunday in remembrance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Search as we might, there is no hint in the entire Book of Acts that the disciples considered the communion service as anything but a memorial service. This does not lessen its importance; rather it emphasizes the reason for the communion celebration—to remember the completed work of the Cross and that Jesus is now in Heaven as our triumphant King!
The biblical Gospel teaches that Jesus died once for all time for the sins of the world, having paid the full penalty for sin through the shedding of His blood. Eternal life is promised freely to all who receive Him by faith and are born-again (a spiritual birth). This salvation in no way depends on any of our own works. In contradiction to this, the Catholic way of “salvation” acknowledges an intellectual belief in Christ’s atonement but does not make it accessible by faith alone, but is rather pivotal on the recipient’s participation in the sacraments, as explained in the Baltimore Catechism when it says: “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation.”1 Consequently, the Catholic’s salvation rests in his own performance, and this is why the Catholic Church also teaches that you can never be sure of your own salvation—and it would be a sin of presumption to think so.
Having elevated the breaking of bread to a position God never intended, the Catholic Church has mistakenly deified bread into becoming a pseudo-Christ, whose pseudo presence is a substitution for the born-again experience, offering false hope in another Jesus.2
“Mrs. Prest”
By John Foxe (from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs)
During the Reign of Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) in England – [1553-1558]
Mrs. Prest for some time lived about Cornwall, where she had a husband and children whose bigotry compelled her to frequent the abominations of the Church of Rome. Resolving to act as her conscience dictated, she quitted them and made a living by spinning. After some time, returning home, she was accused by her neighbors and brought to Exeter to be examined before Dr. Troubleville and his chancellor Blackston. As this martyr was accounted of inferior intellect, we shall put her in competition with the bishop and let the reader judge which had the most of that knowledge conducive to everlasting life. The bishop bringing the question to issue respecting the bread and wine being flesh and blood, Mrs. Prest said, “I will demand of you whether you can deny your creed, which says that Christ does perpetually sit at the right hand of His Father, both body and soul, until He comes again; or whether He be there in heaven our Advocate and to make prayer for us unto God His Father? If He be so, He is not here on earth in a piece of bread. If He be not here, and if He do not dwell in temples made with hands but in heaven, why shall we seek Him here? If with one offering He made all perfect, why do you with a false offering make all imperfect? If He is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, why do you worship a piece of bread [the Eucharist]? Alas! I am a poor woman, but rather than to do as you do, I would live no longer. I have said, Sir.”
Some persons present convinced the bishop she was not in her right senses and she was permitted to depart. The keeper of the bishop’s prisons took her into his house where she either spun, worked as a servant, or walked about the city discoursing upon the Sacrament of the altar. Her husband was sent for to take her home, but this she refused while the cause of religion could be served. During the liberty granted her by the bishop, before-mentioned, she went into St. Peter’s Church and there found a skillful Dutchman who was affixing new noses to certain fine images which had been disfigured in King Edward’s time. To him she said, “What a mad man you are to make new noses for those who shall all lose their heads.” The Dutchman accused her and laid it hard to her charge. But she said to him, “You are accursed, and so are your images.” He called her a whore. “No,” said she, “your images are whores and you are a whore-hunter; for doesn’t God say, ‘You go a whoring after strange gods, figures of your own making’? You are one of them.” After this she was ordered to be confined and had no more liberty.
During the time of her imprisonment, many visited her, some sent by the bishop and some of their own will. Among these was one Daniel, a great preacher of the gospel in the days of King Edward, but who, through the grievous persecution he had sustained, had fallen off. Earnestly did she exhort him to repent with Peter and to be more constant in his profession.
Mrs. Walter Rauley, Mr. William, and John Kede, persons of great respectability, bore ample testimony of her godly conversation, declaring, that unless God were with her, it was impossible she could have so ably defended the cause of Christ. Indeed, to sum up the character of this poor woman, she united the serpent and the dove, abounding in the highest wisdom joined to the greatest simplicity. She endured imprisonment, threatenings, taunts, and the vilest epithets, but nothing could induce her to swerve; her heart was fixed; nor could all the wounds of persecution remove her from the rock on which her hopes of felicity were built.
Such was her memory that, without learning, she could tell in what chapter any text of Scripture was contained: on account of this singular property, one Gregory Basset, a rank papist, said she was deranged and talked as a parrot, wild without meaning. At length, having tried every manner without effect to make her nominally a Catholic, they condemned her.
When sentence was read condemning her to the flames, she lifted up her voice and praised God, adding, “This day have I found that which I have long sought.” When they tempted her to recant, she said, “That will I not. God forbid that I should lose the life eternal for this carnal and short life. I will never turn from my heavenly husband to my earthly husband; from the fellowship of angels to mortal children; and if my husband and children be faithful, then am I theirs. God is my father, God is my mother, God is my sister, my brother, my kinsman; God is my friend, most faithful.”
Being delivered to the sheriff, she was led by the officer to the place of execution without the walls of Exeter called Sothenhey, where again the superstitious priests assaulted her. While they were tying her to the stake, she continued earnestly to exclaim “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Patiently enduring the devouring conflagration, she was consumed to ashes and thus ended a life which in unshaken fidelity to the cause of Christ was not surpassed by that of any preceding martyr.
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Endnotes:
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York, NY: Doubleday, First Image Books edition, Second Edition, April 1995), para. 1129, p. 319.
- This section by Roger Oakland is from his book Another Jesus: the eucharistic christ and the new evangelization (Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2007, 2nd printing 2020), pp. 51-52, 61-62.
*This booklet is taken from a sermon that Harry Ironside gave at Moody Memorial Church in Chicago on June 27, 1926. He gave the talk in response to a Catholic Eucharistic meeting that had just been held in Chicago. Lighthouse Trails editors have made certain small grammatical edits in order to convert a spoken sermon to a written text that is consistent with Ironside’s fine writing style in his written works. The last two sections of the booklet are from Roger Oakland’s book, Another Jesus and John Foxe’s book, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.
