e ought to be encouraged
never to admit or pass over anything that may aid the preparers
of Antichrist in attaining such a degree of wickedness, when the
woman--i.e. the Catholic Church--as St. John saw in the Spirit, will
flee into the wilderness, where she will have a place prepared of God,
that she may be nourished there twelve hundred and sixty days, Rev.
12:6. Finally, St. Paul says, Heb. 5:1: "Every high priest taken from
among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he
may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." But since the external
priesthood has not ceased in the new law, but has been changed to a
better, therefore even today the high priest and the entire priesthood
offer in the Church an external sacrifice, which is only one, the
Eucharist. To this topic that also is applicable which is read,
according to the new translation, in Acts 13:1, 2: Barnabas, Simeon,
Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen and Saul sacrificed--i.e. they offered an
oblation, which can and ought justly to be understood not of an oblation
made to idols, but of the mass, since it is called by the Greeks
liturgy. And that in the primitive Church the mass was a sacrifice
the holy fathers copiously testify, and they support this opinion. For
Ignatius, a pupil of St. John the Apostle, says: "It is not allowable
without a bishop either to offer a sacrifice or to celebrate masses."
And Irenaeus, a pupil of John, clearly testifies that "Christ taught the
new oblation of the New Testament, which the Church, receiving from
the apostles, offers to God throughout the entire world." This bishop,
bordering upon the times of the apostles, testifies that the new
evangelical sacrifice was offered throughout the entire world. Origin,
Cyprian, Jerome, Chrysostom, Augustine, Basil, Hilary, etc., teach and
testify the same, whose words for brevity's sake are omitted. Since,
therefore, the Catholic Church throughout the entire Christian world
has always taught, held and observed as it today holds and observes, the
same ought today to be held and observed inviolably. Nor does St. Paul
in Hebrews oppose the oblation of the mass when he says that by one
offering we have once been justified through Christ. For St. Paul is
speaking of the offering of a victim--i.e. of a bloody sacrifice, of
a lamb slain, viz. upon the cross--which offering was indeed once made
whereby all sacraments, and even the sacrifice of the mass, have
their efficacy. Therefore he wa