above assigned. But, in fact, it is rather an inversion of it. It is not, in Scripture-language, the type that is called the mystery, but the antitype; not the sign, in any figurative speech or action, but the thing signified. It would, therefore, have corresponded better to the import of the Greek word, to say, "The "church of Christ is the sacrament of Noah's ark ;" το μυςήριον, To union, the secret antitype, which that vessel, destined for the salvation of the chosen few, from the deluge, was intended to adumbrate. This use, however, not uncommon among the fathers of the third century, has given rise to the definition of a sacrament, as the visible sign of an invisible grace; a definition to which some regard has been paid by most parties, Protestant as well as Romish. § 9. BUT to return to μvgnpiov: it is plain that the earliest perversion of this word, from its genuine and original sense (a secret, or something concealed), was in making it to denote some solemn and sacred ceremony. Nor is it difficult to point out the causes that would naturally bring ecclesiastic writers to employ it in a sense, which has so close an affinity to a common application of the word in profane authors. Among the different ceremonies employed by the heathen, in their idolatrous superstitions, some were public and performed in the open courts, or in those parts of the temples to which all had access; others were more secretly performed in places from which the crowd was carefully excluded. To assist, or even be present at these, a select number only was admitted, to each of whom a formal and solemn initiation was necessary. These secret rites, on account of this very circumstance, their secrecy, were generally denominated mysteries. They were different, according to what was thought agreeable to the different deities, in whose honour they were celebrated. Thus they had the mysteries of Ceres, the mysteries of Proserpine, the mysteries of Bacchus, &c. Now there were some things in the Christian worship, which, though essentially different from all Pagan rites, had as much resemblance, in this circumstance, the exclusion of the multitude, as would give sufficient handle to the heathen to style them the Christian mysteries. 10. PROBABLY the term would be first applied only to what was called in the primitive church, the eucharist, which we call the Lord's supper; and afterwards extended to baptism and other sacred ceremonies. In regard to the first-mentioned ordinance, it cannot be denied, that in the article of concealment, there was a pretty close analogy. Not only were all infidels, both Jews and Gentiles, excluded from witnessing the commemoration of the death of Christ; but even many believers, particularly the catechumens and the penitents; the former, because not yet initiated by baptism into the church; the latter, because not yet restored to the communion of Christians, after having fallen into some scandalous sin. Besides, the secrecy that Christians were often, on account of the persecutions to which they were exposed, obliged to observe, which made them meet for social worship in the night time, or very early in the morning, would naturally draw on their ceremonies, from the Gentiles, the name of mysteries. And it is not unreasonable to think, that a name which had its rise among their enemies, might afterwards be adopted by themselves. The name Christians, first used at Antioch, seems, from the manner wherein it is mentioned in the Acts ", to have been at first given contemptuously to the disciples by infidels, and not assumed by themselves. The common titles by which, for many years after that period, they continued to distinguish those of their own society, as we learn both from the Acts, and from Paul's Epistles, were the faithful, or believers, the disciples, and the brethren. Yet, before the expiration of the apostolic age, they adopted the name Christian, and gloried in it. The Apostle Peter uses it in one place 19, the only place in Scripture wherein it is used by one of themselves. Some other words and phrases which became fashionable amongst ecclesiastic writers, might naturally enough be accounted for in the same manner. § 11. But how the Greek uvcnpiov came first to be translated into Latin sacramentum, it is not easy to conjecture. None of the classical significations of the Latin word seems to have any affinity to the Greek term. For whether we understand it 18 Acts, xi. 26. 19 1 Pet. iv. 16. simply for a sacred ceremony, sacramentum from sacrare, as juramentum from jurare, or for the pledge deposited by the litigants in a process, to ensure obedience to the award of the judge, or for the military oath of fidelity, none of these conveys to us either of the senses of the word uvnρov explained above. At the same time it is not denied that, in the classical import, the Latin word may admit an allusive application to the more solemn ordinances of religion, as implying, in the participants, a sacred engagement equivalent to an oath. All that I here contend for is, that the Latin word sacramentum does not, in any of these senses, convey exactly the meaning of the Greek name μugnρiov, whose place it occupies in the Vulgate. Houbigant, a Romish priest, has, in his Latin translation of the Old Testament, used neither sacramentum nor mysterium; but where either of these terms had been employed in the Vulgate, he substitutes secretum, arcanum, or absconditum. Erasmus, though he wrote at an earlier period, has only once admitted sacramentum into his version of the New Testament, and said, with the Vulgate, sacramentum septem stellarum. Now, it is to this practice, not easily accounted for, in the old Latin translators, that we owe the ecclesiastical term sacrament, which, though properly not scriptural, even Protestants have not thought fit to reject: they have only confined it a little in the application, using it solely of the two primary institutions of the Gospel, baptism and the Lord's Supper; whereas the Romanists apply it also to five other ceremonies, in all seven. Yet, even this application is not of equal latitude with that wherein it is used in the Vulgate. The sacrament of God's will", the sacrament of piety", the sacrament of a dream ", the sacrament of the seven stars", and the sacrament of the woman", are phrases which sound very strangely in our ears. § 12. So much for the introduction of the term sacrament into the Christian theology, which (however convenient it may be for expressing some important rites of our religion), has, in none of the places where it occurs in the Vulgate, a reference to any rite or ceremony whatever, but is always the version of the Greek word uvçnpiov, or the corresponding term in Hebrew or Chaldee. Now the term μnion, as has been shown, is always predicated of some doctrine, or of some matter of fact, wherein it is the intention of the writer to denote that the information he gives either was a secret formerly, or is the latent meaning of some type, allegory, figurative description, dream, vision, or fact referred to. No religion abounded more in pompous rites and ordinances than the Jewish, yet they are never, in Scripture, (any more than the ceremonies of the New Testament) denominated either mysteries or sacra 20 Eph. i. 9. 22 Dan. ii. 18. 30. 47. 21 1 Tim. iii. 16. 23 Rev. i. 20. |