Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A demonstration that God, not for his own sake, nor because he needed their service, commanded the Levitical law; for what does God, who lacks nothing, require of man? That God did not need their service, but on their own account prescribed certain observances in the law, the prophets very fully show. And again, that God does not need their offering, but requires it for the sake of the man who offers it, the Lord plainly taught, as we have shown. For whenever he saw them neglecting righteousness and abstaining from the love of God, while supposing that they propitiated God by sacrifices and the rest of the typical observances, Samuel told them: "The Lord takes no delight in burnt offerings and victims, but wants his voice obeyed. Note well, compliance outweighs sacrifice, and heeding him outweighs the fat of rams." And David states: "You wished for no sacrifice or offering, but you have shaped ears for me; you asked no burnt offerings even for sin" — instructing them that God wants the compliance that keeps them safe, rather than victims and burnt offerings, which add nothing to their righteousness, while at the same moment foretelling the New Testament. He speaks of this yet more openly in the fiftieth Psalm: "Had you wished for a victim, I would have given one; burnt offerings would not please you. A crushed spirit is a sacrifice fit for God; a heart broken and humbled the Lord will not scorn." And since God is in want of nothing, in the Psalm just prior he states: "I will not accept calves out of your household, nor he-goats out of your pens. Every beast of the forest belongs to me, the herds upon the hills and the oxen; every bird of the air is known to me, and the loveliness of the field is mine. Were I hungry, I would not say so to you; for the world and everything filling it is mine. Would I feed on the meat of oxen, or take the blood of goats as drink?" Then, so none might think he spurns these out of wrath, he continues with counsel: "Bring God a thank-offering, and render your vows to the Most High; call on me on your day of distress, and I will rescue you, and you shall render me glory" — thereby, on the one hand, rejecting the things by which sinners imagined they won God's favor, and showing he lacks nothing at all, and on the other, urging and warning them toward what brings man to righteousness and draws him near to God. [The Latin text breaks off here in a corrupt and fragmentary line: "But you have pierced my ears for me, and you have prepared a body for me..." — the source is unreadable beyond this point.]
Isaiah says the same thing: "What are your many sacrifices to me? says the Lord. I am full." And after refusing the burnt offerings, the sacrifices, the oblations, and further the new moons, the sabbaths, the feast days, and all the rest of the observance that goes with them, he added, urging on them what is truly salutary: "Wash, be clean, put away your wickedness from your hearts, from before my eyes; cease from your evil deeds, learn to do good, seek judgment, deliver the one who suffers wrong, judge the orphan's cause, and do justice for the widow, and come, let us argue it out, says the Lord." For it was not, as many dare to say, that he turned away from their sacrifices out of some human passion; rather, pitying their blindness and pointing them toward the true sacrifice, by offering which they would propitiate God so as to receive life from him.
As he says elsewhere: "A sacrifice to God is a broken heart; a fragrance of sweetness to God is a heart that glorifies him who formed it." For if he had refused these sacrifices of theirs out of anger, as though they were unworthy to obtain his mercy, he would certainly not have urged upon them these same means by which they could be saved. But because God is compassionate, he refrained from severing them from wholesome guidance. For through Jeremiah, after saying, "Why do you bring me frankincense from Sheba and cinnamon from a distant land? Your burnt offerings and your sacrifices have not pleased me," he went on: "Listen to what the Lord speaks, O Judah in its entirety. Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Set right your paths and your undertakings, and in this place I will make you dwell securely. Put no confidence in deceitful sayings, such as, 'Here is the Lord's temple, the Lord's very temple' — none of this will do you any good whatsoever." And again, to show that his purpose in bringing them up out of Egypt was not so they could present him sacrifices, but rather that, having left behind Egyptian idol-worship, they might become capable of heeding the Lord's voice, in which lay their deliverance and their glory, so through that same Jeremiah he says: "Thus speaks the Lord: Take your burnt offerings and pile them with your sacrifices, and consume the meat yourselves. For I gave your ancestors no command whatever about burnt offerings and sacrifices, on the day I brought them out of Egypt; rather this was the charge I gave them: Listen to my voice, so that I may be God to you and you may be a people belonging to me, and follow every path I have laid down for you, so that things will go well for you. Yet they neither listened nor paid attention; instead they followed the counsel of their own wicked hearts, and turned their backs toward me instead of their faces." And again through the same prophet, saying: "But whoever boasts should boast of this alone — that he grasps and knows me as the Lord, who works mercy, justice, and right judgment throughout the earth," he added: "For it is in such things that I take pleasure, declares the Lord; not in sacrifice, nor in burnt offering, nor in oblation." For these were not what the people had as a matter of first importance, but only as a consequence, and for the reason already stated. So too Isaiah again says: "I take no delight in the rams of your burnt offering, nor has your sacrifice brought me glory; you have not honored me through your sacrifices, nor exhausted yourself for my sake with incense, nor purchased incense for me with money, nor have I craved the choice fat of your victims; instead you have stood before me bearing your transgressions and your sins. On whom then, he says, shall I fix my regard, but on the one who is humble, still, and trembles before my sayings? For it is not richness of meat and fat that will lift your wrongdoing from you. Here is what I have chosen, says the Lord. Untie every cord of wickedness, release the knots of harsh contracts, set the crushed at liberty, and cancel every unjust bond. Divide your loaf with the one who hungers, and welcome the wandering poor beneath your roof. Should you spot someone unclothed, wrap him, and do not turn away from your own kin. Then your dawn light will burst forth, your recovery will hasten to appear, your uprightness will march ahead of you, and the Lord's splendor will enclose you round about; and even as you are speaking still I will answer, Here I am."
And Zechariah too, among the twelve prophets, showing them the will of God, says: "Thus says the Lord Almighty: Render judgment that is true, and deal in kindness and compassion, each man toward his own brother. Do not grind down the widow, the fatherless child, the foreigner, or the destitute, and let no one of you plot harm against his brother within his heart." And again: "These are the things you must do: let each speak truthfully to his fellow, and hand down verdicts that are honest and bring peace within your gates, and let no one among you scheme wickedness against his brother deep in his heart, and cherish no false oath; for I detest every one of these things, says the Lord Almighty." And David likewise: "Who is the man, he says, who longs for life, and desires to behold good days? Guard your tongue against wickedness, and keep your lips from uttering falsehood. Depart from wrongdoing and practice what is good; go after peace, chasing after it."
From all of this it is clear that God was not seeking sacrifices and burnt offerings from them, but faith, and obedience, and justice, for their salvation — God teaching them his will, saying: "Mercy is what I want, not sacrifice; acquaintance with God rather than burnt offerings," as stands in the prophet Hosea. And our Lord too pressed the same lesson on them when he said: "Had you grasped the meaning of 'mercy is what I want, not sacrifice,' you would not have passed judgment on those who bore no guilt" — bearing witness that the prophets truly proclaimed, while charging them with foolishness for their own fault. And to his own disciples he also gave the counsel to offer the first fruits to God from his own creatures, not as though he needed them, but so that they themselves might be neither unfruitful nor ungrateful. So he took bread, which is part of creation, and gave thanks, in acknowledgment of his supreme lordship over all things; and after the consecration, that it might be the mystical body and blood of Christ, representing the bloody offering of his own personal body and blood upon the cross, and the benefits of his death to be obtained by all for whom it was offered. And that this was the teaching and practice not of one private church or teacher, but of the whole universal Church — received by that Church from the Apostles, and by the Apostles from Christ himself — Irenaeus expressly teaches in the following chapter, as did Justin Martyr before him, partly in his Apology to Antoninus, but more clearly and at greater length in his work against Trypho the Jew. It is unnecessary to quote here the words of these and other writers, so often cited both by Catholic and by the more learned Protestant scholars. I choose only to bring forward the words of Clement of Rome — words neither spurious nor doubtful, of the kind Feuardent notes elsewhere, but most certainly genuine, from his letter to the Corinthians — since this matter has been cited from only one such early writer, and even then not in full. And lest this be taken to concern only the offerings of Jewish priests, or only those of Christian laypeople, I add that this same Clement appears to be the one whose name is written in the book of life, of whom Paul writes to the Philippians; and since he wrote the passage just cited only two or three years after the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and some twenty years before the death of Saint John, no room for doubt remains that this doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice flowed from the Apostles themselves, and is therefore to be firmly held, even if no explicit statement to that effect could be produced from the writings of the Prophets or Apostles. For Paul's precept to the Thessalonians is a general one. Later theologians, not only Catholic but also Protestant — especially doctors of the Church of England — have brought forward passages of Scripture in support of the eucharistic sacrifice, following Irenaeus and the other Fathers; among these I name one man, eminent both for learning and piety, and by no means friendly to the errors and abuses of the Roman Church, nor to the personal presence and offering of Christ in the Mass — Joseph Mede, who in a special treatise on the Christian Sacrifice, written in English, proved and illustrated this matter admirably, and is therefore worth the attention of all students of theology, especially of the sacred kind. To this man's view, and also to the wish he expresses at the end of his chapter, I subscribe with all my heart, and I hope that, since many pious and learned men among the Protestants have now rightly recognized this error of Luther and Calvin and the true doctrine of the Apostolic Church, they will also bring back into use those most holy liturgical formulas by which the said sacrifice is offered to God — formulas wrongly banished from their assemblies — and will duly render this highest honor to the Divine Majesty. [Grabe.] Taking bread, he gave thanks over it, declaring, "This represents my body"; and likewise the cup, drawn from that same created order to which we too belong, he pronounced to be his own blood, teaching thereby the fresh offering that belongs to the new covenant — the one which the Church has taken up from the apostles and presents to God across the whole earth, to him who furnishes us with sustenance, giving him the first portion of his own gifts under the new covenant, concerning which Malachi, one of the twelve prophets, foretold in these terms: "You bring me no delight, says the Lord, nor will I take any offering out of your own hands. For from where the sun rises to where it sets, my name has won honor among the Gentiles, and incense together with a spotless offering is brought to my name in every region; for my name has become great among the Gentiles, says the Lord Almighty" — most plainly signifying by this that the former people would cease bringing offerings to God, while in every region a sacrifice would instead be brought to him, one that is spotless; and that his name would win honor among the Gentiles.