Now if I should preach in the country, among the unlearned, I would tell
what propitiatory, expiatory, and remissory is; but here is a learned
auditory: yet for them that be unlearned I will expound it. Propitiatory,
expiatory, remissory, or satisfactory, for they signify all one thing in
effect, and is nothing else but a thing whereby to obtain remission of
sins, and to have salvation. And this way the devil used to evacuate the
death of Christ, that we might have affiance in other things, as in the
sacrifice of the priest; whereas Christ would have us to trust in his
only sacrifice. So he was, _Agnus occisus ab origine mundi_; "The Lamb
that hath been slain from the beginning of the world;" and therefore he
is called _juge sacrificium_, "a continual sacrifice;" and not for the
continuance of the mass, as the blanchers have blanched it, and wrested
it; and as I myself did once betake it. But Paul saith, _per semetipsum
purgatio facta_: "By himself," and by none other, Christ "made purgation"
and satisfaction for the whole world.
Would Christ this word, "by himself," had been better weighed and looked
upon, and _in sanctificationem_, to make them holy; for he is _juge
sacrificium_, "a continual sacrifice," in effect, fruit, and operation;
that like as they, which seeing the serpent hang up in the desert, were
put in remembrance of Christ's death, in whom as many as believed were
saved; so all men that trusted in the death of Christ shall be saved, as
well they that were before, as they that came after.
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