In view of all these facts it is impossible for us to doubt, that the word mass in the objected passages of the Article XXIV., signifies the mass in its specific sense, and not the Lord’s Supper in general:  and that when the Reformers affirm in their Confession, that “they are unjustly charged with having abolished the mass” they meant that they retained the mass on sacramental occasions, with the limitations and altered explanations of the nature and application of it, specified in different parts of the Confession; whilst they freely admitted, that they had rejected private and closet, masses, and indeed all masses, except on occasions when the sacrament was administered to the people.  What the Romanists considered as the essential doctrine of the mass, viz., its being a sacrifice of Christ, offered by the priest, and its being offered by him for others than himself, either living or dead, and its being performed at any other time, or for any other purpose than as a preparative for Sacramental Communion, the Confession rejects, but the outward rite itself, on public sacramental occasions, it professes to retain:  and this being the only charge made in the Platform on this subject, we appeal to every candid reader to decide, whether it has not been fully established.

Whether Melancthon and the princes had yielded more in this Confession than Luther approved, and whether any of the alterations confessedly made in the Confession after Luther had approved it, related to this Article, is quite a different question, and cannot affect the meaning of the Article itself.  It is not improbable that such was the case; but even the ritual, which Luther prepared in 1523, contained the greater part of the Romish mass, such as the Introitus, the Kyrie Eleison, the Collecta, or prayer and epistles, Singing of the Gradual, a Short Sequens, the Gospel, the Nicene Creed, and a number of other matters, not excepting even the elevation of the host, but not for adoration, which latter he retained till [sic] till twelve years after the Diet at Augsburg! Yet, even at that time, he had rejected the greater part of the most objectionable portions of the mass.  Hence, as the Platform charges the Confession only with favoring the Ceremonies of the Mass, the charge is not only sustained, but falls short, of what we have established in the preceding pages:  and all the vituperation aimed at us by different individuals, who have studied the subject imperfectly, or not at all, we cheerfully forgive, conscious that the aim of all we have published on this subject has been the prosperity of the church, and assured that it will be blessed by the Master to this glorious end.

Reference to the author’s former works containing representations of this subject.