[Note 7] The mass service is a commixture of Scripture passages, long and short prayers, extracts from the gospels and epistles (pericopen,) liturgic forms, which are divided into several chief parts, designated by different names, Introitus, Offertorium, Canon missae,” &c. [Note 8] This whole service amounts to some fifteen or twenty octavo pages, including the directions for genuflections, crossings, tergiversations, &c., occupying about an hour in the reading, the performance of which by the priest was termed “reading mass,” as the listening of the audience was called “hearing mass.”

In view of these authorities, we may take for granted, what we suppose no one will deny, that in the Romish Church, not only of the present day, but since several centuries before the Reformation, and, therefore, in 1530, the most common and primary meaning of the word mass, was not Lord’s Supper; but that long ceremonial, including the consecration of the elements, elevation of the host, and self-communion of the priest, as an offering of the body of Christ a sacrifice for the sins of the living and dead, which preceded the distribution of the sacrament to the people.

Again, it will be admitted, that whilst among Papists the above specific meaning of the word mass was the most common one, that term was also not unfrequently used by synecdoche, as a part of the whole, to designate the sacramental celebration in general:  just as we use the word “preaching” which specifically signifies the delivery of a sermon, for the whole services of public worship in the phrase, “will you go to preaching to-day?”

Finally, it will be admitted, that the Reformers, having been educated as Papists, were trained up to this twofold use of the word mass, namely, specifically the extended services above described, which preceded the communion, and sometimes informally the eucharist, communion or sacrament in general.

The question then seems definitely to be reduced to these two inquiries; first, Did the Reformers retain this distinction in the use of the word mass at the time of the Diet at Augsburg; and, secondly, did they employ the word in its specific sense in the disputed passages of that Confession?

First Inquiry.

We shall first inquire whether this distinction in the use of the word mass was observed by the Reformers at and before the time of the Augsburg Diet?

I. And first let us listen to Luther himself.  In 1523, the great Reformer, 1, in his “Method of conducting Christian Mass,” addressed to Rev. Nicolas Hausman, after having rejected such portions of the Romish mass, as he thought wrong, he approved others, as explained by himself, such as the, Introitus, the Kyrie eleison, the Collecta or prayer epistles, the Singing of the Gradual, a short sequens, the Gospel, the Nicene Creed, and a number of other matters, including the elevation of