B. Proof from Tradition
Harnack is of opinion that the early Church up to the time of Cyprian (d. 258) the contented itself with the purely spiritual sacrifices of adoration and thanksgiving and that it did not possess the sacrifice of the Mass, as Catholicism now understands it. In a series of writings, Dr. Wieland, a Catholic priest, likewise maintained in the face of vigorous opposition from other theologians, that the early Christians confined the essence of the Christian sacrifice to a subjective Eucharistic prayer of thanksgiving, till Irenaeus (d. 202) brought forward the idea of an objective offering of gifts, and especially of bread and wine. He, according to this view, was the first to include in his expanded conception of sacrifice, the entirely new idea of material offerings (i.e. the Eucharistic elements) which up to that time the early Church had formally repudiated.
Were this assertion correct, the doctrine of the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, c. ii), according to which in the Mass "the priests offer up, in obedience to the command of Christ, His Body and Blood" (see Denzinger, "Enchir", n. 949), could hardly take its stand on Apostolic tradition; the bridge between antiquity and the present would thus have broken by the abrupt intrusion of a completely contrary view. An impartial study of the earliest texts seems indeed to make this much clear, that the early Church paid most attention to the spiritual and subjective side of sacrifice and laid chief stress on prayer and thanksgiving in the Eucharistic function.
This admission, however, is not identical with the statement that the early Church rejected out and out the objective sacrifice, and acknowledged as genuine only the spiritual sacrifice as expressed in the "Eucharistic thanksgiving". That there has been an historical dogmatic development from the indefinite to the definite, from the implicit to the explicit, from the seed to the fruit, no one familiar with the subject will deny. An assumption so reasonable, the only one in fact consistent with Christianity, is, however, fundamently different from the hypothesis that the Christian idea of sacrifice has veered from one extreme to the other. This is a priori improbable and unproved in fact. In the Didache or "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles", the oldest post-Biblical literary monument (c. A.D. 96), not only is the" breaking of bread" (cf. Acts, xx, 7) referred to as a "sacrifice" (Thysia) and mention made of reconciliation with one's enemy before the sacrifice (cf. Matt., v, 23), but the whole passage is crowned with an actual quotation of the prophecy of Malachias, which referred, as is well known, to an objective and real sacrifice (Didache, c. xiv). The early Christians gave the name of "sacrifice"; not only to the Eucharistic "thanksgiving," but also to the entire ritual celebration including the liturgical "breaking of bread", without at first distinguishing clearly between the prayer and the gift (Bread and Wine, Body and Blood). When Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107), a disciple of the Apostles, says of the Eucharist: "There is only one flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, only one chalice containing His one Blood, one altar (en thysiasterion), as also only one bishop with the priesthood and the deacons" (Ep., ad. Philad. iv), he here gives to the liturgical Eucharistic celebration, of which alone he speaks, by his reference to the "altar" an evidently sacrificial meaning, often as he may use the word "altar" in other contexts in a metaphorical sense.
A heated controversy had raged round the conception of Justin Martyr (d. 166) from the fact that in his "Dialogue with Tryphon" (c. 117) he characterizes "prayer and thanksgiving" (euchai kai eucharistiai) as the "one perfect sacrifice acceptable to God" (teleiai monai kai euarestoi thysiai). Did he intend by thus emphasizing the interior spiritual sacrifice to exclude the exterior real sacrifice of the Eucharist? Clearly he did not, for in the same "Dialogue" (c. 41) he says the "food offering" of the lepers, assuredly a real gift offering (cf. Levit, xiv), was a figure (typos) of the bread of the Eucharist, which Jesus commanded to be offered (poiein) in commemoration of His sufferings." He then goes on: "of the sacrifices which you (the Jews) formerly offered, God through Malachias said: 'I have no pleasure, etc'. By the sacrifices (thysion), however, which we Gentiles present to Him in every place, that is (toutesti) of the bread of Eucharist and likewise of the chalice Eucharist, he then said that we glorify his name, while you dishonour him". Here "bread and chalice" are by the use of toutesti clearly included as objective gift offerings in the idea of the Christian sacrifice. If the other apologists (Aristides, Athenagoras, Minucius Felix, Arnobius) vary the thought a great deal -- God has no need of sacrifice; the best sacrifice is the knowledge of the Creator; sacrifice and altars are unknown to the Christians -- it is to be presumed not only that under the imposed by the disciplina arcani they withheld the whole truth, but also that they rightly repudiated all connection with pagan idolatry, the sacrifice of animals, and heathen altars. Tertullian bluntly declared: "we offer no sacrifice (non sacrificamus) because we cannot eat both the Supper of God and that of demons" (De spectac., c., xiii). And yet in another passage (De orat., c., xix) he calls Holy Communion "participation in the sacrifice" (participatio sacrificii), which is accomplished "on the altar of God" (ad aram Dei); he speaks (De cult fem., II, xi) of a real, not a mere metaphorical, "offering up of sacrifice" (sacrificium offertur); he dwells still further as a Montanist (de pudicit, c., ix) as well on the "nourishing power of the Lord's Body" (opimitate dominici corporis) as on the "renewal of the immolation of Christ" (rursus illi mactabitur Christus).
With Irenaeus of Lyons there comes a turning point, in as much as he, with conscious clearness, first puts forward "bread and wine" as objective gift offerings, but at the same time maintains that these elements become the "body and blood" of the Word through consecration, and thus by simply combining these two thoughts we have the Catholic Mass of today. According to him (Adv. haer., iv, 18, 4) it is the Church alone "that offers the pure oblation" (oblationem puram offert), whereas the Jews "did not receive the Word, which is offered (or through whom an offering is made) to God" (non receperunt Verbum quod [aliter, per quod] offertur Deo). Passing over the teaching of the Alexandrine Clement and Origen, whose love of allegory, together with the restrictions of the disciplina arcani, involved their writings in mystic obscurity, we make particular mention of Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235) whose celebrated fragment Achelis has wrongly characterized as spurious. He writes (Fragm. in Prov., ix, i, P. G., LXXX, 593), "The Word prepared His Precious and immaculate Body (soma) and His Blood (aima), that daily kath'ekasten) are set forth as a sacrifice (epitelountai thyomena) on the mystic and Divine table (trapeze) as a memorial of that ever memorable first table of the mysterious supper of the Lord". Since according to the judgment of even Protestant historians of dogma, St. Cyprian (d. 258) is to be regarded as the "herald" of Catholic doctrine on the Mass, we may likewise pass him over, as well as Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) and Chrysostom (d. 407) who have been charged with exaggerated "realism", and whose plain discourses on the sacrifice rival those of Basil (d. 379), Gregory of Nyssa (d. c. 394) and Ambrose (d. 397). Only about Augustine (d. 430) must a word be said, since, in regard to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist he is cited as favouring the "symbolical" theory. Now it is precisely his teaching on sacrifice that best serves to clear away the suspicion that he inclined to a merely spiritual interpretation.
For Augustine nothing is more certain than that every religion, whether true or false, must have an exterior form of celebration and worship (Contra Faust., xix, 11). This applies as well to Christians (l. c., xx, 18), who "commemorate the sacrifice consummated (on the cross) by the holiest oblation and participation of the Body and Blood of Christ" (celebrant sacrosancta oblatione et participatione corporis et sanguinis Christi). The Mass is, in his eyes (De Civ. Dei, X, 20), the "highest and true sacrifice" (summum verumque sacrificium), Christ being at once "priest and victim" (ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio) and he reminds the Jews (Adv. Jud, ix, 13) that the sacrifice of Malachias is now made in every place (in omni loco offerri sacrificium Christianorum). He relates of his mother Monica (Confess., ix, 13) that she had asked for prayers at the altar (ad altare) for her soul and had attended Mass daily. From Augustine onwards the current of the Church's tradition flows smoothly along in a well-ordered channel, without check or disturbance, through the Middle Ages to our own time. Even the powerful attempt made to stem it through the Reformation had no effect.
A briefer demonstration of the existence of the Mass is the so-called proof from prescription, which is thus formulated: A sacrificial rite in the Church which is older than the oldest attack made on it by heretics cannot be decried as "idolatry", but must be referred back to the Founder of Christianity as a rightful heritage of which He was the originator. Now the Church's legitimate possession as regards the Mass can be traced back to the beginnings of Christianity. It follows that the Mass was Divinely instituted by Christ. Regarding the minor proposition, the proof of which alone concerns us here, we may begin at once with the Reformation, the only movement that utterly did away with the Mass. Psychologically, it is quite intelligible that men like Zwingli, Karlstadt and Oecolampadius should tear down the altars, for they denied Christ's real presence in the Sacrament. Calvinism also in reviling the "papistical mass" which the Heidelberg catechism characterized as "cursed idolatry" was merely self-consistent since it admitted only a "dynamic" presence. It is rather strange on the other hand that, in spite of his belief in the literal meaning of the words of consecration, Luther, after a violent "nocturnal disputation with the devil", in 1521, should have repudiated the Mass. But it is exactly these measures of violence that best show to what a depth the institution of the Mass had taken root by that time in Church and people. How long had it been taking root? The answer, to begin with is: all through the Middle Ages back to Photius, the originator of the Eastern Schism (869). Though Wycliffe protested against the teaching of the Council of Constance (1414-18), which maintained that the Mass could be proved from Scripture; and though the Albigenses and Waldenses claimed for the laity also the power to offer sacrifice (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", 585 and 430), it is none the less true that even the schismatic Greeks held fast to the Eucharistic sacrifice as a precious heritage from their Catholic past. In the negotiations for reunion at Lyons (1274) and Florence (1439) they showed moreover that they had kept it intact; and they have faithfully safeguarded it to this day. From all which it is clear that the Mass existed in both Churches long before Photius, a conclusion borne out by the monuments of Christian antiquity.
Taking a long step backwards from the ninth to the fourth century, we come upon the Nestorians and Monophysites who were driven out of the Church during the fifth century at Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). From that day to this they have celebrated in their solemn liturgy the sacrifice of the New Law, and since they could only have taken it with them from the old Christian Church, it follows that the Mass goes back in the Church beyond the time of Nestorianism and Monophysitism. Indeed, the first Nicene Council (325) in its celebrated eighteenth canon forbade priests to receive the Eucharist from the hands of deacons for the very obvious reason that "neither the canon nor custom have handed down to us, that those, who have not the power to offer sacrifice (prospherein) may give Christ's body to those who offer (prospherousi)". Hence it is plain that for the celebration of the Mass there was required the dignity of a special priesthood, from which the deacons as such were excluded. Since, however, the Nicene Council speaks of a "custom that takes us at once into the third century, we are already in the age of the Catacombs with their Eucharistic pictures, which according to the best founded opinions represent the liturgical celebration of the Mass. According to Wilpert, the oldest representation of the Holy Sacrifice is the "Greek Chapel" in the Catacomb of St. Priscilla (c. 150). The most convincing evidence, however, from those early days is furnished by the liturgies of the West and the East, the basic principles of which reach back to Apostolic times and in whch the sacrifical idea of the Eucharistic celebration found unadulterated and decisive expression (see LITURGIES). We have therefore traced the Masses from the present to the earliest times, thus establishing its Apostolic origin, which in turn goes back again to the Last Supper.