requently alludes to the Sacrifice of the
Mass. "We have an altar," he says, ""whereof they cannot eat who serve the
tabernacle."(398) The Apostle here plainly declares that the Christian
church has its altars as well as the Jewish synagogue. An altar
necessarily supposes a sacrifice, without which it has no meaning. The
Apostle also observes that the priesthood of the New Law was substituted
for that of the Old Law.(399) Now, the principal office of Priests has
always been to offer sacrifice. Priest and sacrifice are as closely
identified as judge and court.

St. Paul, after David, calls Jesus "a Priest forever, according to the
order of Melchisedech."(400) He is named a _Priest_ because He offers
sacrifice; a Priest _forever_ because His sacrifice is perpetual;
_according to the order of Melchisedech_ because He offers up consecrated
bread and wine, which were prefigured by the bread and wine offered by
"Melchisedech, the Priest of the Most High God."(401)

Tradition, with its hundred tongues, proclaims the perpetual oblation of
the Sacrifice of the Mass, from the time of the Apostles to our own days.
If we consult the Fathers of the Church, who have stood like faithful
sentinels on the watch-towers of Israel, guarding with a jealous eye the
deposit of faith, and who have been the faithful witnesses of their own
times and the recorders of the past; if we consult the General Councils,
at which were assembled the venerable hierarchy of Christendom, they will
all tell us, with one voice, that the Sacrifice of the Mass is the centre
of their religion and the acknowledged institution of Jesus Christ.

Another remarkable evidence in favor of the Divine institution of the Mass
is furnished by the Nestorians and Eutychians, who separated from the
Catholic Church in the fifth century, and who still exist in Persia and in
other parts of the East, as well as by the Greek schismatics, who severed
their connection with the Church in the ninth century. All these sects, as
well as the numerous others scattered over the East, retain to this day
the oblation of the Mass in their daily service. As these Christian
communities have had no communication with the Catholic Church since the
period of their separation from her, they could not, of course, have
borrowed from her the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; consequently
they must have received it from the same source from which the Church
derived it, viz., from the Apostles thems