On the French

By what I said of their religious or, rather, irreligious opinions, you must not conclude their people of quality atheists – at least, not the men.  Happily for them, poor souls, they are not capable of going so far into thinking.  They assent to a great deal because it is the fashion and because they don’t know how to contradict.  They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic religion because it is quite exploded.  But, I am convinced they believe it in their hearts. – Letter excerpt: Horace Walpole to the poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771) (January 25, 1766).

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was an English aristocrat and one of the 18th century’s greatest letter writers, several thousand of which have survived and have been published.

 

The Roman Catholic Mass

Any service, therefore, which purports to renew the sacrifice of Calvary is a plain denial of the overwhelming testimony of Scripture to the perfection of the Lord’s one offering.  The doctrine of the mass implies the imperfection and insufficiency of the sacrifice of Calvary, for the latter needs now to be supplemented by the daily offering at the altars of the Church of Rome.  But what need is there of any attempt to present a sacrifice to God?  The Lord has already presented it and has been accepted.  The ransom has been paid, and that payment is no mere event of past history, for, says Hebrews, “the ransom He has won lasts forever” (Hebrews 9:12, in Knox’s translation).  Let our blessed Lord speak the last word on this whole matter of the completeness, finality, and once-for-all character of His sacrifice.  That word comes in the shout of triumph which rang out from His lips in His closing moments on the cross: “It is finished” (John 19:30).  Such a consummation, accomplished by the great High Priest Himself, leaves no place for the sacrifice of the mass.

From: Dawn or Twilight?  A Study of Contemporary Roman Catholicism by H. M. Carson; 2nd edition (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1976), p. 119.  The first edition was published under the title Roman Catholicism Today in 1964.

Herbert M. Carson (died in 2004) was a pastor and the author of several books.  He also served as editor of The Gospel Magazine (1964-1975).