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 The Lord's Supper 
 historically considered 
 
( 
 
 r F R <^^y TO 
 
 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. G. A. JACOB, D.D., 
 
 FOEMEELY HEAD MASTEE OF CHEIST'S HOSPITAL, 
 AUTHOE OF 'THE ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT,' ETC. 
 
 HENRY FROWDE, 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AMEN CORNER. 
 SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 
 
 FLEET STEEET. 
 
©iforti 
 
 PRINTED BY E. PICKARD HALL, M.A., AND HORACE HART 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
.,r^/€ri•r;;, 
 
 ^ AF.l 3 m5 
 PREFACE. K^v'(>.o--.-^M<^"?r'--- 
 
 Four years ago a remarkable book was published by Messrs. 
 Seeley and Co., entitled ' The Lord's Supper. History of Unin- 
 spired Teaching. By the Eev. Charles Hebert, D. D.' It consists 
 of extracts from the principal ecclesiastical authors who have 
 expressed themselves on tliis subject from a.d. 75 to 1875. It 
 thus brings before us within a comparatively small compass the 
 information which we could not otherwise acquire without a 
 very long and laborious search through several hundred volumes 
 not, in many cases, easily accessible. Dr. Hebert's Book, how- 
 ever, occupies two thick octavo volumes, and from the neces- 
 sarily disjointed nature of its contents may not seem to be very 
 attractive to the generality of readers. Yet the subject is at 
 the present time on many accounts well worthy of the serious 
 attention of all Christian men ; and I have thought that a short 
 continuous History of this sacred Ordinance, and of the manner 
 in which it has been dealt with during the last eighteen hun- 
 dred years, might bring it acceptably before a larger number 
 of persons ; and might possibly lead some of them afterwards to 
 study it more fully in Dr. Hebert's Book, or even to examine 
 at length the original authorities to which he introduces them. 
 
 In the following historical review the lines of Dr. Hebert's 
 Book have for the most part been followed ; but other sources 
 of information, when desirable, have also been consulted. 
 
 In references to Dr. Hebert's Work in foot-notes the volume 
 and pages are given without his name being repeated. 
 
 G. A. JACOB, D.D. 
 
 Teignmodth, 
 January, 1884. 
 
THE LOED'S SUPPER HISTORICALLY 
 CONSIDERED. 
 
 It is intended in the following pages to present the reader 
 with a short but comprehensive view of the History of the 
 Lord's Supper, from the commencement of the Christian Church 
 to the present time. And surely in these days, when strange 
 and dangerous doctrines and practices in connection with this 
 Sacrament are boldly and perseveringly exliibited in the Church 
 of England, such history well deserves the attention of Chris- 
 tians in general, and especially of all true Churchmen. The 
 more so inasmuch as the Eucharistic tenets and ministrations, 
 which have prevailed in any given period, have always acted 
 with a powerful influence upon the whole character of its 
 worship and religion : nor could our Church in the present day 
 make any wide departure from Scripture truth in this very 
 thing without a lamentable change being also wrought in the 
 entire body of Christian doctrines and devotions which it has 
 hitherto happily maintained. 
 
 The Lord's Supper in the New Testament.— In order to 
 form a just estimate of the different views of this holy ordin- 
 ance which we shall successively meet with in the course of this 
 History, it is necessary for us to look first of all to the New 
 Testament, and so to carry with us the lessons of its authentic 
 and inspired instructions as our standard of truth and of 
 wholesome action, whenever the exercise of our judgment is 
 required. On searching then the pages of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures we find the institution of the Lord's Supper, and the place 
 which it occupied in the religious life of the primitive Church, 
 pre-eminently characterised by a divine simjylicity. Bread 
 and wine, common elements of man's natural food, with no' 
 
 *» B 
 
2 THE LOED'S SUPPER 
 
 divinely appointed ceremonial to invest them with an adven- 
 titious solemnity, — only the bread to be broken and eaten, and 
 the wine to be drunk, in remembrance of the Saviour's body 
 being given and His blood shed for us, — were alone the visible 
 essentials of this Christian Sacrament. Yet it was not wanting 
 in a very real sanctity and a very real spiritual power, as it 
 was used by all faithful Christians ; and it is this union of 
 extreme simplicity of outward action with a deep solemnity of 
 spiritual meaning that specially distinguishes the Lord's Supper 
 as we trace its design and use in the inspired pages of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 It is further to be remarked that in the New Testament it 
 is not often alluded to, and never in any strong terms of exalt- 
 ation above other acts of piety and devotion. Besides the 
 record of its institution in the first three Gospels, it is only 
 mentioned three times in the Acts of the Apostles under its 
 most simple name ; and, of all the Epistles addressed to Chris- 
 tian communities, it is spoken of only in the first Epistle to 
 the Corinthians, and then only on account of abuses in the 
 administration of it^. 
 
 In the early part of the Apostolic times the administration of 
 this Sacrament seems to have been made as nearly as possible 
 to resemble, and as it were to reproduce, the very scene and 
 circumstances of its original institution at the close of the 
 Passover Supper. Hence it was preceded by an Agape, or 
 'Feast of Charity' (Jude 12), in which the distinctions of rank 
 and social position were laid aside, and all sat down together 
 with the free acknowledgment of equality in Christ, which 
 marked the Christian brotherhood of those days. And thus 
 the name of 'the Lord's Supper,' or the still more simple 
 appellation of ' the breaking of bread,' was given to this 
 
 ^ Chronologically speaking the earliest mention of the Lord's Supper is 
 that which is found in the fii'st Epistle to the Corinthians ; that Epistle 
 being probably of an earlier date than the publication of the first Gospel. 
 In the Acts the Lord's Supper is called 'The breaking of bi'ead/ in the 
 following passages — ii. 42, 46, and xx. 7, 11. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 3 
 
 ordinance, including apparently at first the whole social meal, 
 — the Agape itself, — as well as the sacramental celebration 
 with which it closed. It was in consequence of this that 
 (as we find it briefly alluded to in Acts ii. 46), among the first 
 Christians at Jerusalem, who were so united as ' to be together 
 and to have all things common,' and who were almost like one 
 large family, the hallowed ' breaking of bread ' in the Lord's 
 Supper seems to have taken place every evening ; the principal 
 meal of each Christian company being eaten together and con- 
 cluded with this sacred rite ^. 
 
 That this practice was not confined to these earliest converts 
 at Jerusalem, but was adopted as a general rule in Christian 
 Churches, is shown by what occurred at Corinth. For the dis- 
 orders and profanation which St. Paul reproved there (i Cor. 
 xi. 19—34) could not have happened, as they did, if an ordinary 
 supper — at which excess on the one hand, and a deficiency of 
 food on the other, could take place — had not preceded the 
 more strictly religious ceremony. These disorders, however, at 
 Corinth, together with the operation of some other causes, led 
 afterwards to the separation of the sacramental suj)per from the 
 ' Feast of Charity ' ; the former being then attached to the 
 principal public devotions of the Church which took place in 
 the morning, wliile the Agape was still held in the evening as 
 before. 
 
 This separation was possibly one of those things which St. 
 Paul arranged among other matters which he promised to ' set 
 in order' on his next visit to Corinth (i Cor. xi. 34). But no 
 
 ^ The Christians from the very first, as soon as the 3000 had joined the 
 Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, must have required several different 
 places for their religious and social meetings. No distinctly Christian 
 buildings being then in existence, they met in the most convenient rooms 
 that they could obtain in private houses. Such ' rooms ' are in the New 
 Testament called oIkoi — in our English Version 'houses'; and 'daily break- 
 ing bread from house to house,' in Acts ii. 46, denotes the daily meeting 
 of Christian companies in these different ' rooms ' for the Agape and Lord's 
 Supper. The word oIkos continued long after to be used for a Christian 
 place of worship, even when it was a church expressly built for this purpose. 
 — See Dr. Jacob's Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament, p. 192, &c."' 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 apostolic regulation to this effect is recorded, nor is it known 
 exactly at what time the earlier practice was generally discon- 
 tinued. When, however, the second Epistle of Peter and the 
 Epistle of Jude were written, the Agape seems to have been 
 already separated from the sacramental supper. For the dis- 
 graceful conduct so severely censured in these Epistles, though 
 occurring at the 'Feast of Charity,' does not appear to have 
 been connected with a profanation of the sacred Ordinance. 
 
 It is evident that in such a mode of celebrating this Sacra- 
 ment as the Apostles authorised and practised, the idea of its 
 being a ' sacrifice,' offered by a ' Priest,' upon an ' Altar,' could 
 have had no place. It was literally, as the name declares, a 
 * supper,' not a sacrifice. Although possibly the allusions made 
 by St. Paul, in i Cor. x. 16-21, may justify those who have 
 found in it some resemblance to ' a Feast upon a Sacrifice.' As 
 was the case with the Jewish Passover, into the place of which 
 the Christian ordinance was in some measure to succeed, no 
 Priest or church Officer of any grade or name was required to 
 preside at it. St. Paul associates the Corinthian Church- 
 members with himself in this office, when he says, ' The bread 
 which we break,' and ' the cup of blessing which ive bless.' 
 After the separation of the sacramental supper from the Agap6, 
 and its attachment to the morning service, it would naturally 
 follow that the Presbyter who conducted the public worship of 
 the congregation would also administer this sacred rite ; and so 
 this henceforth became the established rule. But no change in 
 the mode of its administration, or in the light in which it was 
 regarded, is traceable in the New Testament. 
 
 From the words of St. Paul in i Cor. x and xi we see Chris- 
 tians in the Church of the Apostles were infallibly taught — 
 
 (i) That this Sacrament was to be a memorial and represent- 
 ation of the Saviour's giving Himself to die for man ; and thus 
 continually to remind them of what He had done for them, until 
 He should come again. It was to be a memorial of Him during 
 His absence. 
 
HISTOKICALLY CONSIDERED. 5 
 
 (2) That by a due reception of this bread and wine, according 
 to tlie Lord's command, they had a ^rticipation (koivcovio) in 
 His body and blood through that spiritual reception of Him as 
 the divine Sin-bearer, Who had given His life for them, which 
 He had Himself declared to be the true and only way of eating 
 His flesh and drinking His blood (John vi. 35, 63). And thus 
 ' feeding on Him in their hearts by faith with thanksgiving ' they 
 were assured of their union with Him, and also with those who 
 joined with them in the Communion Service, — ' the blessed 
 company of all faithful people,' 
 
 (3) That this Sacrament, although so simple in its visible 
 actions, yet being an ordinance of so holy an import, was to be 
 used with serious thought, self-examination, and reverence ; 
 and that a careless and profane use of it, as if it differed not 
 from any common food, was an offence against the body and 
 blood of Christ which was therein commemorated ; and there- 
 fore such conduct deserved condemnation instead of bringing 
 any blessing with it ^. 
 
 It only remains to be noticed that there is nothing in the 
 New Testament to suggest the notion of any change being 
 effected in the sacramental elements. They are not even said 
 
 ^ An unfortunate mistranslation and misunderstanding of two verses in 
 I Cor. xi have helped to occasion and keep up some erroneous views and 
 scruples about the Lord's Supper. The words in verse 27, 'Whosoever 
 shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be 
 guilty of the body and blood of the Lord,^ have led to a vague but alarm- 
 ing supposition that a want of worthiness in a communicant makes him 
 guilty of putting Christ to death ! But the words really mean that dis- 
 orders, such as those at Corinth, and consequently any other profane treat- 
 ment of this holy ordinance, were an offence, not against good manners 
 merely or common decency, but against the person of Christ himself 
 therein represented, a desecration of a hallowed thing. The words should 
 be translated ' guilty concerning the body.' 
 
 The words in verse 29, 'Eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not 
 discerning the Lord's body,' have also often alarmed scrupulous minds. 
 The translation ought to be ' Eatefch and drinketh condemnation to himself 
 from not distinguishing the Lord's body' from any common food; such 
 condemnation being immediately afterwards declared to have brought upon 
 some of them temporal inflictions, sent to correct so grievous an error. 
 
6 THE LORD'S SUPPEE 
 
 to have been ' consecrated,' but only to have had words of 
 blessing or thanksgiving spoken over them. The Apostles took 
 their Master's words, * This is My body,' ' This is My blood,* just 
 as they must naturally have taken them when He was sitting 
 visibly before their eyes ; — ^just as they had always taken similar 
 forms of speech in their Scriptures, when they read, ' The seven 
 good kine are seven years, and the seven good ears are seven 
 years' (Gen. xli. 26); — and just as they received on many 
 other occasions from their Master's lips such sayings as ' The 
 field is the world ; the good seed are the children of the 
 kingdom ; the tares are the cliildren of the wicked one * 
 (Matt. xiii. 38) \ 
 
 Neither is there in the New Testament any indication that 
 Christ was regarded as in any sense present in, or in conjunc- 
 tion with, the bread and wine at this service ; on the contrary- 
 it was to be used only during His absence. ' Ye do show the 
 Lord's death till He come' 
 
 Such was the Lord's Supper as it appeared under the inspired 
 instruction of the Apostles, and as it was committed by them to 
 the use and keeping of the Church which they left behind them. 
 We have now to see how this ordinance was dealt with by that 
 Church in successive ages, under the teaching and guidance of 
 uninspired men. 
 
 THE LORD'S SUPPER IN THE POST-APOSTOLIC 
 
 CHURCH. 
 
 The eucharistic history of these eighteen centuries, which have 
 elapsed since the Apostles' times, may be conveniently divided 
 into two parts, suggested by the nature and circumstances of 
 the subject under our consideration. The ^rs^ part extends to 
 the full development of the Eucharistic teaching of Latin Chris- 
 
 ^ This is, in fact, the Bible mode of saying that anything is a symbol or 
 representation of something else. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 7 
 
 tianity which was autlioritatively enunciated in the thirteenth 
 century ; while the second part embraces the six centuries which 
 followed, and brings us down to the present generation. 
 
 The Fiest Paet— /rom a.d. 75 to 1264. 
 
 When we turn from the views of the Lord's Supper given us 
 in the pages of the New Testament, to the doctrines and prac- 
 tices afterwards taught and inculcated in connection with this 
 Sacrament, we soon feel that we are no longer in the hands of 
 inspired Apostles, — that we are breatliing a different religious 
 atmosjDhere from that which surrounds their teaching, — and that 
 we are brought into tracts of thought and faith very unlike the 
 paths in which they have bidden lis walk. 
 
 This change, as might be expected, comes on gradually, and 
 as it were step by step, along the successive stages of ecclesias- 
 tical history, exemplifying in a striking manner what Richard 
 Hooker says of superstition in general. ' The superstition 
 that riseth voluntarily and by degrees which are hardly dis- 
 cerned, mingling itself with the rites even of very divine 
 service done to the only true God, must be considered of 
 as a creeping and encroaching evil, — an evil, the first beginnings 
 whereof are commonly harmless, so that it proveth only then to 
 be an evil, when some farther accident doth grow unto it, or 
 itself come unto farther growth.' We may add that 'mis- 
 guided zeal and ignorant fear ' — those two affections which, as 
 Hooker further remarks, ' frame the stamp and character of 
 man's religion according to their influence on his heart,' wrought 
 their natural effects in this case with all the more pronunence 
 and power inasmuch as this Sacrament drew towards itself the 
 deepest and most lively feelings of Christian men. 
 
 Bearing this in mind it will afford some help towards an 
 apprehension of the whole subject under our consideration, the 
 details of which are spread over so many successive ages, if at 
 the outset we mark some natural divisions in the course of their 
 progress and development. There is observable here a certain 
 
8 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 periodicity. The twelve centuries from the close of the apostolic 
 age to the authoritative establishment of the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation by the Church of Rome, may be divided into 
 three periods, embracing about 400 years each, and terminating 
 respectively about the middle of the Jifth, the ninths and the 
 thirteenth century. 
 
 The first of these periods demands the greatest attention of 
 them all, for it exhibits the decadence of the Church in its 
 Eucharistic teaching, until it departed so widely from the 
 exemplar of the Apostles, that little was left to be afterwards 
 added in order to complete the full structure of Romish error. 
 By that time what may be termed the ' sacrificial ' doctrine of 
 the Lord's Supper, with most of its accompanying and supple- 
 mentary tenets, had been accepted, and had gained the force of 
 a consuetudinary law. 
 
 During the second period this doctrine was maintained and 
 stamped more deeply upon the Church system ; and towards the 
 close of it, in the ninth century, transubstantiation in /act, 
 though not yet in name — transubstantiation unqualified and 
 undisguised — was boldly enunciated. And after some efforts 
 unsuccessfully made by a few of the more enlightened men of 
 the time towards a return to some measure of scriptural sim- 
 plicity, this doctrine held its place in the Church, although not 
 yet dogmatically established by ecclesiastical authority. 
 
 After this, along the 400 years of the third period may be 
 traced from time to time some conflict of sounder opinions with 
 the prevailing superstitions, and some more or less subtle 
 explanations of the mode in which the sacramental elements 
 became the Lord's body and blood^together with some strong 
 denunciations of those who ventured to think otherwise ; until 
 transubstantiation in name as well as iny^c^ was permanently 
 settled and sealed in the Church of Rome by the fourth Lateral 
 Council in a.d. 12 15 under Pope Innocent III; and by the 
 appointment of 'Corpus Christi Day' in 1264 under Urban 
 IV, as an annual festival in honour of this doctrine. 
 
HISTORICALLY CO:,^Sir)EEED. 9 
 
 First Period — a.d. 75 to about 460. 
 
 1. The first symptom of a deviation from apostolic language 
 — very slight indeed, but still a deviation to be noticed — is 
 seen in the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians 
 (a.d. 67-77), where he uses 'thanksgiving' in a technical or 
 transitional sense for the Lord's Supper \ And this word 
 evxapLarla — in modern times Anglicised as 'the Eucharist ' — 
 was subsequently taken up more distinctly by Ignatius ; and in ^> 
 the following century, as we learn from Justin Martyr, it h^ 
 become the usual name for designating this sacrament. This 
 name ' the Eucharist ' has nothing objectionable in itself, yet it 
 was an innovation upon New Testament phraseology ; and it is 
 noticeable that being so it is never used in the formularies of 
 the Church of England. 
 
 2. Passing on to quite the end of the first century we come 
 to Ignatius, -commonly reckoned as an apostolic Father; and, 
 taking his Epistles as our authority for the sacramental doc- 
 trines of that time, we find the progress of uninspired teaching 
 marked, not so much by any positive error, as by dangerous 
 tendencies — seen in marked declensions from scriptural sim- 
 plicity, and in germs or roots of evil ready for aftergrowths 
 which but too surely sprang up from such beginnings. In 
 particular we see here (i) an inclination to adapt Judaistic 
 terms to Christian acts and doctrines ; as, ' Unless a man be 
 within the precincts of the altar he comes short of the bread of 
 God.' (2) The use of exaggerated and imaginative expressions 
 
 ^ Clement uses the verb €vxo.p^(^reoj in this technical sense in § 41. He 
 speaks also of Christian offerings (vpo(T(popai), but as he does not expressly 
 apply the word to the Lord's Supper he may mean nothing more than 
 * the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.' Some expressions of his, in 
 § 40 of his Epistle, have been thought to apply the terms, High priest, 
 Priest, and Levite to Christian ministers ; but this can hardly be the case, 
 especially as even Ignatius, half a century later, with all his fondness for 
 Jewish phraseology, does not adopt such language. Clement, in my 
 judgment, writes obscurely, but really refers in this passage to the well- 
 known officials of the Jewish Church, and not to the Christian ministry. -' 
 
10 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 descriptive of the Lord's Supper not warranted by the New 
 Testament, such as ' The bread of God ' ; ' An antidote against 
 dying ' ; ' A medicine of immortality.' And (3) a desire is 
 thus shown to exalt this Sacrament above all other means of 
 grace, and to make it as it were the one source of all spiritual 
 power in the Christian ^ 
 
 3. Another step brings us to Justin Martyi' and the middle 
 of the second century. In his interesting description of the 
 administration of the Lord's Supper in the church services of 
 his time everything savours of apostolic simplicity, except that 
 (i) water was mixed with the wine, and (2) absent miembers of 
 the congregation were included among the communicants by the 
 deacons carrying portions of the bread and wine to them. The 
 first of these practices probably arose from the supposition that 
 mixed wine and water had been used at the original institu- 
 tion ^ ; the second seems to have been innocent enough in 
 Justin's time, but became afterwards in the form of the ' reserved 
 sacrament ' a source of grievous superstitions. 
 
 Although the mode of administration was at this time so 
 simple, yet we find something of a suggestion of a change in the 
 bread and wine, when Justin says, ' We do not receive these 
 things as common bread or common drink, but we have been 
 taught that the food given thanks for by Him is the flesh and 
 blood of that Jesus who was made flesh ^.' And, in his Dialogue 
 with Trypho the Jew, though he rightly says in one place that 
 the only sacrifices off'ered up by Christians are their praises and 
 thanksgivings, yet in another place he affirms that the accept- 
 
 ^ By 'the precincts of the altar' Ignatius probably means the com- 
 munion of the visible Church, In his Epistle to the Philadelphians (§4) 
 the word ' altar ' seems more distinctly to mean the communion table ; 
 but it must be remembered that the only Ignatian Epistles which can be 
 relied upon as genuine are those addressed to Polycarp, the Romans, and 
 the Ephesians. 
 
 ^ That this supposition was correct is shown by the best authorities, 
 which leave no room to doubt that water was mixed with the wine at the 
 Passover feast. See Edersheim, The Temple, &c., p. 204, and the article 
 on the Passover in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
 =* Vol. i. p. 43. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 11 
 
 able sacrifices referred to in Malachi i. 1 1, as offered by Gentiles, 
 are the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. And when he 
 remarks that ' God does not receive sacrifices from any but 
 through His priests,' and then immediately goes on to speak of 
 ' sacrifices ordered by Jesus Christ in the Eucharist ^,' he seems 
 to imply that in some sense Christians have ' priests ' and offer 
 a ' sacrifice ' in this Sacrament. And so we may notice here 
 the first faint traces of an evil influence, which not long after- 
 wards, with an increase of power, wrought a widespread mischief 
 in the Church at large. The Christian religion, as taught by 
 the Apostles, was in its external aspect strikingly distinguished 
 from Judaism and all other surrounding religions by its having 
 no priesthood, no sacrifices, and consequently no altars. For 
 this Christians were reproached by their Pagan neighbours, who 
 could not imagine a religion without such appliances, and who 
 sometimes on this account looked upon them as Atheists ; while 
 a Jew found it a stumbling-block in his way, when Christianity 
 demanded a surrender of his cherished confidence in his sacer- 
 dotal and sacrificial rites. Hence in an evil hour Christians 
 sought to remove this ground of contumely, which was in reality 
 their glory ; and Justin, in his ' Dialogue with Trypho,' is in 
 some degree drawn in that direction. A weak and fatal yield- 
 ing to this temptation of surrendering the divine simplicity of 
 the Gospel, for the purpose of making it more attractive and 
 imposing to those who were without, soon after this, as we shall 
 see, was followed by its natural but most deplorable results. 
 
 4. We pass on to Irenaeus, the distinguished bishop of Lyons, 
 and a martyr in the persecution under Septimus Severus, to 
 learn from him the accepted Church teaching in the latter part 
 of the second century. We thus advance about forty years from 
 the time of Justin, and we find plain evidence of a further 
 growth in Eucharistic doctrine in the following particulars. 
 
 (i) The bread and wine are regarded as 'offerings to 
 God.' Thanks- offerings as firstfruits of His gifts, but likewise 
 
 1 Vol. i. p. 45. 
 
12 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 something more. For Irenaeus says, * We offer to God the 
 bread and the cup of blessing, giving thanks to Him that He 
 ordered the earth to bring forth these fruits for our food ; 
 and then having completed the offering we call forth the Holy- 
 Spirit to exhibit this sacrifice, both the bread as Christ's body, 
 and the cup as Christ's blood ^.' 
 
 (2) It naturally follows that such offerings are made upon, 
 or at, an ' altar ' ; and although Irenaeus makes his meaning 
 a little obscure by saying that ' the gifts and offerings are 
 directed to an altar in the heavens,' yet the altar at which they 
 were offered seems necessarily to refer to the Communion Table. 
 
 (3) That a change is effected in the sacramental elements by 
 their consecration is distinctly declared. ' The bread from the 
 earth receiving to it the invocation of God is no longer common 
 bread, but the Eucharist consisting of two things, both the 
 earthly and the heavenly.' And again, ' The mingled wine and 
 the made bread receives the Word of God, and the Eucharist 
 becomes the body of Christ.' Irenaeus evidently did not 
 believe that the nature of the bread and wine was changed ; 
 and he terms them in this very passage ' figures ' or ' resem- 
 blances ' {avTLTVTToi) ; but he represents the body and blood of 
 Christ as in some way added to them. 
 
 Yet even the comparatively moderate language of those days 
 led inconsiderate or ill-informed persons to suj)pose that a real 
 change of substance was intended ^. 
 
 5. The beginning of the third century presents us with some 
 fresh marks of the rising tide of Eucharistic doctrine, though 
 they are seen more in the Church practices than in dogmatic 
 teaching. Tertullian, the greatest Father of this time, whose 
 long life was equally divided between the second and third 
 centuries, like his contemporary Clement of Alexandria, can 
 supply us with expressions not out of harmony with Scripture 
 on the question of a change in the sacramental bread and wine; 
 thus he says, ' Christ gave to the bread the figure (or represen- 
 
 ^ Vol. i. p. 57. ^ See Vol. i. p. 56. Fragmentum ab Oecumenio. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 13 
 
 tation) of his body ' ; and again, ' He made the bread, which He 
 took and distributed to His disciples, His own body by saying 
 This is My body, i.e. the figure of My body.' Yet he does not. 
 at all recede from the position which sacramental doctrine had 
 reached before his time. Thus he speaks of idol-makers being 
 communicants and so ' touching the Lord's body with their hands.' 
 ' Christ's body,' he says, ' is considered {censetur) to be in the 
 bread.' * The flesh [of the communicant] feeds on Christ's body 
 and blood, that his soul may be enriched from God.' And he 
 further mentions that it was regarded as a distressing thing if 
 a drop of the wine or a particle of the bread happened to fall 
 to the ground. 
 
 But what is specially to be noticed is that by this time sacer- 
 dotalism had fastened itself upon the Church. The Christian 
 presbyter was now a 'priest,' the Communion Table an 'altar,' and 
 the bread and wine ' ofierings ' upon it ; and these offerings were 
 for the benefit oi the dead as well as the living. The germ observed 
 in the time of Justin Martyr has grown and gathered strength ; 
 and this distinct admission of sacerdotalism into the Church 
 system is the great step in advance to which we are brought at 
 the beginning of the third century. It was a fruitful and a 
 poisonous plant. It was introduced by the prevailing influence 
 of Jewish and Pagan sentiments overriding the plain teaching 
 of the New Testament. The consequences were inevitable. It 
 was henceforth only a question of time, — so many more or fewer 
 generations, — for the full ripening of sacramental superstitions. 
 
 6. But indeed the growth was rapid. One more generation 
 was sufficient to bring out the ' sacriHcial theory' of the 
 Lord's Supper still more plainly in the Church. By the middle 
 of the third century, as testified by the writings of Pontianus, 
 Hippol}i;us, and Cyprian, and other contemporary documents, 
 the Lord's Supper was presented as o^sacrifice — not of thanks- 
 giving merely — but of the precious body and blood of Christ 
 sacrificed for the remission of sins by ' priests,' who acted as 
 mediators between God and the people, — who * made the body 
 
14 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 and blood of Christ ^,' — and who thus offered acceptable victims 
 {Jiostias) for the benefit of the living and the dead ! 
 
 At the same time ( i ) the practice of mixing water with the 
 wine appears no longer as a harmless custom, as in Justin 
 Martyr's days, but as an essential part of the administration, 
 inasmuch as it was now declared that the communicants were 
 thereby united to Christ {Christo 2}opulus adunatur), and that 
 without it the Sacrament would be seriously impaired. (2) The 
 consecrated elements, being looked upon as in themselves the 
 body and blood of the Lord, and effectual by a corporal recep- 
 tion merely, it was usual to give them to infants. (3) Com- 
 municants were encouraged to take home portions of the 
 consecrated bread to be kept for private use ; and miraculous 
 powers were ascribed to them. (4) A feeling of mysterious 
 awe and dread towards this once apostolic feast of joy and con- 
 solation was beginning to appear. 
 
 7. The tide flowed on, — not without some ebbings or breaks 
 in its course, or some evidences that the progress of declension 
 from apostolic truth was not equally rapid in all localities. 
 Thus in the records of the Council of Elvira, or Illiberis, in 
 Spain ^ A.D. 305, we find more harmony with the sacramental 
 teaching of the New Testament than in the African Church as 
 represented by Cyprian fifty years before. But the unscriptural 
 doctrines and practices of the third century gradually extended 
 their influence more and more, until they were generally 
 adopted throughout Christendom ; and the time at which we 
 are now arrived, reaching on to the end of our first period, is 
 
 ^ This expression, 'To make the body and blood of Christ' {conficere 
 corpus et sanr/uinem Christi), so frequently used afterwards by Jerome and 
 others, seems to occur first in the writings of Pontianus, bishop of Rome, 
 who suffered martyrdom in A.D. 235. An attempt has been made in some 
 quarters to attach to the word conficio the meaning of ' consecrate,' but 
 this is refuted by the numerous passages in which it occurs. They do not 
 say conficere panem et vinam, which would be the case if consecration was 
 meant, but conficere corpus et sanguinem. The word efficio is also used in 
 the same sense. The patristic word for ' consecrate ' is consecro, sacro, or 
 sanctifico, and in Greek a-^i.a^<ii, ^ Vol. i. p. 145. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDEEED. 15 
 
 characterised by the deepening and intensifying of the sacra- 
 mental system, or by carrying out its natural results to a further 
 development, rather than by the introduction of departures from 
 Scripture truth altogether new and not begun before. 
 
 This time is in some respects the most illustrious age in 
 ecclesiastical history. The Church, now delivered from perse- 
 cution, and countenanced by imperial authority, was free to 
 carry out in unfettered action whatever it deemed to be edify- 
 ing or expedient. It is the time of the most distinguished 
 Fathers, and exhibits a long array of honoured names, including 
 those of Ambrose, Augustine, Basil, Chrysostom, Jerome, and 
 many more. It is not necessary, and it would be tedious, to 
 dwell upon their individual opinions or beliefs ; but from the 
 abundant materials which they supply we may obtain a suffi- 
 ciently comprehensive view of the Eucharistic doctrines and 
 practices which then prevailed, — which they helped to consoli- 
 date and firmly establish, — and which reached an acknowledged 
 measure of completeness by the middle of the fifth century. 
 
 It is of importance also for our present subject that we have 
 still extant some of the liturgies of those days. For, whereas 
 attempts are sometimes made to explain away the language of 
 the Fathers on the plea that their strong words are only 
 rhetorical expressions not at all meaning what they say, the 
 liturgies cannot be so dealt with. They introduce us into the 
 actual working and the popular form of the Church system, and 
 they show what was the teaching inculcated on and received by 
 the people. Moreover, the fact that the wisest of the Fathers 
 sometimes spoke of the Lord's Supper in scriptural and sober 
 terms can have no weight in our present consideration. For 
 our question is not what was the private or theoretical opinion 
 of this or that Father, but what, in the Church system which 
 they all supported, was the practical effect of their ordinary 
 teaching as a whole, — what the Church members received, 
 believed, and did under their sanction and approval ^. 
 
 •^ It is too much for any one to assume that the Fathers were always 
 consistent with each other or with themselves. We must take them aS 
 
16 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 The following particulars will suffice to give the reader somq 
 idea of the position occupied by the Lord's Supper at this 
 notable era of the Church : — 
 
 1 . Its administration was made in a more marked and decided 
 manner than before a sacrificial service, with every adjunct 
 and accompaniment that could give it an imposing effect as such 
 in the eyes of the congregation. The priest with his attendant 
 ministers, — the sacrificial altar, — the sanctuary or Holy of 
 Holies (in which the altar stood) separated from the rest of the 
 church by a screen and curtains as a place of pre-eminent 
 sanctity, — the burning of incense, — the lighted lamps, — the 
 whole demeanour of the officiating ministers, — the earnest 
 addresses of the preachers, — all helped to invest the scene with 
 awe and mystery, as the offering up of a literal, material, and 
 most solemn sacrifice after the Jewish or Pagan type. 
 
 2. The people were expressly taught that this was indeed an 
 awful, a terrific sacrifice ; that it was the Lord Jesus Christ 
 Himself who was offered up as a propitiatory sacrifice upon the 
 altar, who was taken into the hands of the priest, and who 
 was to be received by the communicants in a posture of adora- 
 tion, for which minute directions were given. 
 
 3. The consecration of the bread and wine was made in such 
 a maimer as necessarily to inculcate the belief that they were 
 changed into the very body and blood of the Lord. It was 
 declared that the priests had power, from their office, to make 
 Christ's body and blood ; and in particular the prayers of con- 
 secration found in the liturgies of this time, prayed in the 
 most solemn and emphatic words that the Holy Spirit might be 
 
 they are, and judge them fairly ; but it is no business of ours to attempt 
 to force them into a consistency which they decline. But if one of them 
 had been charged with self-contradiction in saying at one time that the 
 bread was changed into the Lord's body, and at another time that it was 
 a figure or representation of that body, he might have replied as Durandus 
 said in a later age, ' The bread may be really Christ's body in latent sub- 
 stance, and yet superficially and in its accident qualities a representation 
 or figure of it.' — See Dr. Hebert, i. p. 242. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 17 
 
 sent down to effect this change, — a change compared to our 
 Lord's turning the water into wine at Cana of Galilee ^ 
 
 It is possible for those who wish to do so to endeavour to 
 tone down the strong language of preachers such as Chrysostom 
 and others ; though why should they have used such language if 
 they did not mean their hearers to believe it 1 But it is not 
 possible that forms of prayer used in Liturgies under the direct 
 sanction of the Bishop and Clergy, and joined in by the con- 
 gregation every week or oftener, should mean, or be taken by 
 the people to mean, anything less than what they distinctly 
 expressed ^ ; — and that was in complete accordance with what 
 they heard from the pulpit. 
 
 4. It naturally followed from all this that portions of the 
 consecrated bread were ' reserved ' and freely used for purposes 
 of the grossest superstition, which was kept up by means of 
 marvellous legends of pretended miracles, recorded and pro- 
 pagated by the highest authorities of the Church. It was a 
 prevalent notion that the natural human body of Christ had in 
 itself an inherent power of working miracles ^ ; and so, as the 
 
 1 See Vol. i. p. i86. 
 
 ^ The following are extracts from Liturgies of this time : — 
 
 * Thyself, Lord, with Thy voice change the things lying before Thee. 
 Thyself being present perfect this mystic service. Thyself send down Thy 
 all-holy Spirit, that He may come and sanctify it with His holy, and good, 
 and glorious presence, and may change these honourable and holy gifts 
 into the very body and blood of our redemption.' — Liturgy of Gregory 
 Nazianzen. 
 
 * Have mercy upon us, God, according to Thy great mercy, and send 
 down upon us, and upon these gifts lying before Thee, Thy all-holy Spirit, 
 that He may come upon them, and sanctify them with His holy, and good, 
 and glorious presence, and may make this bread the holy body of Thy 
 Christ, and this cup the precious hlood of Thy Christ.'— Liturgy of St James. 
 
 How literally the popular belief understood such words, and regarded 
 them as fulfilled, is shown plainly by stories of the actual exhibition of 
 visible flesh and blood upon the communion table, such as that recorded 
 by Palladius, who lived A.D. 368-431. See Dr. Hebert, vol. i. p. 328. 
 
 " This notion has been called a 'Cyrillian' doctrine, from its having 
 been frequently dwelt upon by Cyril of Alexandria, who lived on the con- 
 fines of the fourth and fifth centuries, but it was not confined to him or to 
 this period. Vol. i. p. 369, &c. 
 
 C 
 
18 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 consecrated bread was His body, it likewise must have a similar 
 supernatural power. Accordingly, to carry a piece of the 
 ' reserved ' bread about one's person was considered an unfail- 
 ing protection from danger by land or sea ; and a morsel of it 
 dropped into the mouth of the dying was believed to be a sure 
 viaticum for the soul ^, 
 
 *To smooth its path from earth to heaven.' 
 
 5. Hence too was inculcated the necessity of ' Fasting Com- 
 munion ' out of respect for the body of Christ, which, in accord- 
 ance with the gross materialistic doctrines of the age, would be 
 dishonoured by the presence of ordinary food in the communicant. 
 And so even Augustine took upon himself to say that Fasting 
 Communion was ordered by the Holy Spirit ; and Eusebius 
 of Alexandria went so far as to say that an unfasting com- 
 municant was as bad as the traitor Judas ^. 
 
 6. The step from the belief that the consecrated bread was 
 the very body of the Lord to the adoration of it seems to be an 
 easy one ; but it was not taken, at any rate with firmness and 
 decision, during this period. Symptoms, however, and some 
 tendencies towards Host-worship had made their appearance ; 
 for Cyril of Jerusalem bids communicants observe ' a posture 
 of worship and adoration ^.' And Theodoret, though he admits 
 
 ^ For instances see Dr. Jacob's Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testa- 
 ment, p. 383. 
 
 ^ This conceit about 'Fasting Communion' led to a general discontinuance 
 of the administration of the Lord's Supper in the evening. ' Evening Com- 
 munions/ to which of late objections have inconsiderately been made, 
 were undoubtedly the rule at first, and they continued to be common in 
 the early Church, as testified successively by the remarks of Tertullian, 
 Cyprian, Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine. — See Dr. Hebert, vol. i. pp. 
 79, 80, 119, 213, 262, and Diet, of Christian Antiquities, art. Communion. 
 Indeed ' Evening Communion ' was never objected to as such. But when 
 it was thought necessary that communicants should have previously taken 
 no food during the day, the evening was usually found to be inconvenient. 
 Augustine expressly says, * It is offered in the morning for the sake of 
 those who have a morning meal, but in the evening for those who fast till 
 then.' — Ep. ad Januarium. 
 
 * The directions of Cyril, from which some modern clergymen take their 
 instructions to communicants, are as follows : — ' When you come forward 
 [to receive the bread] do not come with your hands stretched out, or your 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 19 
 
 that 'after consecration tlie mystic signs do not depart from 
 their own nature, for they remain in their former substance,' 
 yet immediately adds, ' But they are understood and believed 
 to be the very things which they have become, and are 
 wors7ii2)ped as being the very things which they are believed 
 to be.' (See Dr. Hebert, vol. i. p. 410.) 
 
 And here we may pause a moment : and looking back upon 
 the course which we have been tracing, we see very small 
 beginnings leading to very great and deplorable ends ; — the 
 path of deviation from Scripture teaching almost coincident 
 or parallel with it at first, but gradually turning away from it 
 more and more into a totally different direction at the last. 
 
 How slight and innocent seems the innovation of the new 
 name ' Eucharist,' though never so used in the New Testament ! 
 How unobjectionable, we might be inclined to think it, to 
 call this Sacrament an ' offering ' or a ' sacrifice ' ; for it might 
 be pleaded that there was in it the sacrifice of praise and 
 thanksgiving ! Yet by and by this grows into a regarding of 
 it as a material offering up of the bread and wine as first-fruits 
 of God's earthly gifts, — and then as an actual sacrifice of 
 Christ Himself! 
 
 The adoption of Judaistic terms for Christian acts and 
 ordinances might be thought a trivial error, but it opened the 
 door for the influx of Jewish and Pagan sacerdotalism, which 
 perverted the whole character of the Christian ministry and its 
 ministrations. 
 
 fingers separated from each other ; but make your left hand a throne for 
 your right hand which is going to receive your King ; and so making a 
 cavity in your palm receive the body of Christ ; and, after sanctifying 
 your eyes by touching them with it, partake of the holy body, taking care 
 not to lose any of it ; for if you were to do so, it would be as if you lost a 
 portion of one of your own limbs. Then after partaking of the body of 
 Christ, come forward for the cup of His blood, not stretching up your 
 hands, but bending down in a posture of worship and adoration, saying the 
 Amen, and be sanctified by partaking of the blood of Christ ; and more- 
 over sanctify your eyes, and forehead, and your other organs of sense by 
 touching them with some of the moisture that is on your lips.' — Catech. 
 Mystag. V. 18. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 A consecration of the sacramental elements may be excused 
 as meaning no more than setting them apart for a sacred use, 
 though it is a departure from the simple usage of the New 
 Testament ; but such consecration was turned into an engine of 
 priestcraft whereby (as men were taught) a divine change was 
 wrought in the bread and wine, and the priest was enabled to 
 make the body and blood of the Lord. 
 
 And so the simple memorial rite of the New Testament, 
 gathering Christians around a festive though sacred table, and 
 promotive of faith and love and spiritual joy in their absent 
 Lord, was turned into a terrific sacrifice of the Lord Himself, 
 present there, and offered up on an altar by a priest for the 
 dead and living, — a service full of awe and mystery, and 
 promotive of superstitious confidence and of superstitious 
 fear. 
 
 Second Period — from about a.d. 460 to about 860. 
 
 We have already seen to what a lamentable extent the 
 divinely simple ordinance of the Lord's Supper, as instituted 
 by our Lord, and exhibited in the New Testament, was changed 
 and disfigured during the course of four centuries. The 
 ' sacrificial theory ' had gained a firm hold. This Sacrament 
 had become a ' sacrifice * offered by a ' priest ' upon an ' altar,' 
 — a sacrifice of Christ Himself, — of His body and blood, into 
 which the bread and wine were said to have been changed by 
 the action of the priest, and the power of the Divine Spirit. 
 We have now to notice the condition of the Eucharistic question 
 during this second period of 400 years. And here it may at 
 once be said that, in contrast with the preceding period, we 
 find no marked, gradations indicating new positions occupied one 
 after another ; no strikingly new steps in advance of those which 
 had previously been taken ; but rather the natural continuance 
 of a system already wrought out in all its essential j)arts and 
 appliances, and henceforth only strengthening and deepening 
 its influence or adding some non-essential particulars to make 
 the exhibition of its true character more complete. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDEEED. 21 
 
 1. Among the few things which seem to show any symptoms 
 of progress in the treatment of this ordinance, what first 
 attracts our attention is the introduction of a more elaborate 
 ritual in its administration. Thus in the Gallican Liturgy of 
 the sixth century mention is made of 2^fOcessions, in which the 
 Lord's body is carried to the altar in towers ! — in turribus, i. e. in 
 vessels of a turreted shape in which the bread was placed. ' Cor- 
 poral palls ' for receiving and covering the bread are also named \ 
 
 In a Liturgy ascribed to Chrysostom, but evidently belonging 
 to a considerably later date, among other ceremonies is one which 
 represented the actual slaying of the sacrifice by the priest ^. 
 
 Later on in the seventh century the following account is 
 given of the arrangements about the ' altar,' which had usurped 
 the place of a simple Communion Table : ' Since we have to 
 speak concerning the rites wliich are used in the holy sacred 
 service, it is necessary first to say what the Church is, and what 
 is set forth by the "shell," the "joint-seat," the "recess," and 
 such things. The Church is so-called (iKKXrjo-ia) from the 
 orthodox being assembled and called in it ; but it is named a 
 casket (nepLoxr]) from having the wonders of God in it. The 
 shell is the cave in Bethlehem, and is like the cave where He 
 was buried. The joint-seat is a type of the Master's throne by 
 which He overcame the world, and was taken up with His flesh, 
 and sat on it ; but it is called a "joint-seat" and not a " seat," 
 because there sit together on it the Son with the Father. The 
 rest of the joint-seats show the honour which the just are 
 entitled to after the resurrection, according to the saying, 
 " I said ye are gods " ; and the priests sit together as crucified 
 with Christ in their passions and desires, the deacons standing 
 for a type of the angels. The holy table shows the holy 
 sepulchre in which He was buried ; and the holy Frothesis, the 
 " place of a skull " where He was crucified, and on this account 
 He is sacrificed on it. The Cihorium is for a type of Noah's 
 Ark, and the statues on the pillars are to imitate the four living 
 
 ^ Vol. i. p. 497. 2 Vol. i. p. 358. 
 
22 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 creatures that were seen by the prophet (Ezekiel). The altar 
 is so-called from the heavenly and mentally-seen altar, and on 
 it the priests in the body sacrifice the types of the mentally- 
 seen and spiritual services. The recess above the sanctuary is 
 a type of the first heaven ^.' 
 
 Later still, Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople (a.d. 648- 
 733), describes a peculiar ceremony not before noticed. The 
 whole quantity of bread and wine, from which a portion was 
 to be taken to be consecrated, was, according to an ancient 
 custom, brought as an offering of first-fruits ; and now this 
 whole ofi'ering was made to represent the Virgin Mary, and the 
 portion to be used was cut from it as the Lord's body. ' The 
 offering,' says Germanus, 'that is called bread, and blessing, 
 and first-fruits, out of which the Lord's body is cut, is received 
 as a sign of the ever-virgin Mother of God, who had to bear 
 perfect God and perfect man.' And again, the Lord's body is 
 cut apart hj the deacon, as if from the flesh of the Virgin's 
 body (I mean the whole bulk of bread, the blessing, and 
 offering), with an iron instrument, which they call a spear. 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 540. This is a fanciful explanation of the chvirch as a build- 
 ing, and especially of the ' chancel ' or ' sanctuary ' with the ' altar ' and 
 its surroundings, by Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, a.d. 629-638. 
 He calls the church irfpioxv, an ' enclosure,' or as we may possibly interpret 
 it, ' a casket,' as containing precious things. 
 
 The 'shell' {fcoyxv or conchula bematis) was the apse at the west end of 
 the chancel. 
 
 The 'joint-seats' {avvBpovos) were those on which the priests sat, ar- 
 ranged round the apse. The deacons had to stand. 
 
 The ' prothesis ' (irpoOeffis) was a side-altar, or credence-table, on which 
 the bread and wine were first placed, to be afterwards taken and set as 
 otferings upon the principal altar. The name seems to allude to the shew- 
 bread of the Jewish Temple, called npoOeffis, Heb. ix. 2 ; dproi ttjs vpoOicecus, 
 Matt. xii. 4. 
 
 The ciborium was the dome-shaped canopy over the altar, supported by 
 four pillars. (See Diet, of Christian Antiq.) Sophronius gives an absurd 
 derivation of the word from ki^, the first syllable of kiI3cut6s, an ark, and 
 wpios, seasonable, from its orderly arrangement. Ciborium was the name 
 of the cup-like flower of the Egyptian lily, and then the name of a large 
 drinking cup (Horace, Ode 2. 7. 22), and so in ecclesiastical language a 
 canopy ; Ital. haldachino. 
 
 The ' recess ' {fiva^) seems to have been the ceiling of the chancel. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 23 
 
 The deacon who cuts apart the sacred body from the blessed 
 offering imitates the angel who uttered to the Virgin the word 
 * Hail ': 
 
 And to give only one other example, Amalarius, archbishop 
 of Treves, at the end of the eighth century, tells us of the 
 practice of blessing candles and giving them to the people after 
 the Communion at Easter (see p. 35) ; and he adds : " concerning 
 2)utting the bread into the wine. By the little piece of bread 
 put into the wine is shown Christ's body, which presently rose 
 from the dead, and the little piece remains on the altar until 
 the end of the Mass itself, because the bodies of the saints rest 
 in their tombs to the end of the world. The cross which is 
 made on the cup marks out by the little piece of the offering 
 Christ himself before our eyes. The priest touches the four 
 sides of the cup, because by that the race of man in the four 
 climates [of the world] is signified ^.' 
 
 2. In the reception of the consecrated elements by the com- 
 municants the directions of Cyril of Jerusalem (see note 3, p. 18) 
 probably continued in general use for some centuries longer ; 
 yet some peculiarities are observable during this period. 
 
 In some places women were not allowed to receive the bread 
 in their bare hands, but were required to bring a clean white 
 najykin for that purpose ^ ; in others a custom for a time pre- 
 vailed for the communicants to bring little vessels of gold or 
 some other material, in which the bread was to be received by 
 them. This, however, was afterwards forbidden, and they were 
 directed to receive it in their hands placed in the form of a 
 cross *. But by the end of the ninth century it was ordered, at 
 any rate at Rome, that communicants should receive the bread 
 into their mouths ^. 
 
 To prevent the possibility of spilling a drop of the wine, each 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 552. ' Vol. i. p. 578. 
 ' See Council of Auxerre (Autissiodense), Canon 36, 42 ; a.d. 578. 
 
 * Council of Trullo, Canon loi ; a.d. 692. 
 
 ^ See Ordo Romanus ; date, latter part of ninth century. Referred to in 
 Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, arts. Communion, p. 417, and Fistula. 
 
24 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 communicant, at one time, had to draw it up from the chalice 
 into his mouth through a gold or silver tube ; a practice which 
 of course fell into disuse when the administration of * Com- 
 munion in one kind ' was enforced ^. 
 
 3. Some foolish speculative questions began to be entertained 
 and discussed in connection with the belief that the bread and 
 wine were changed into the real body and blood of Christ. 
 Such as that referred, to by John of Damascus, about a.d. 700, 
 that the consecrated bread, as the Lord's body, was liable to 
 corruption, might be broken, or gnawed by mice, &c., until it 
 was eaten by the communicants, and as it were buried in 
 them ; but after that it became incorruptible, and made the 
 recipients incorruptible also ; just as the body of Christ, while 
 He was upon earth, was corruptible and capable of suffering, until 
 after His burial and resurrection, when it was so no longer ^. 
 
 4. The very realistic views of the Lord's Supper which now 
 prevailed, led by a natural affinity to the worship of images^ 
 which in the latter part of this period was encouraged by the 
 highest Church authorities. And so even the material things 
 connected with the death of Jesus, such as the cross, the nails, 
 and the spear, were said to be deified {deoOevra), and to be 
 justly regarded as objects of a subordinate kind of adoration ^. 
 
 It may be noticed also that the worship of the Virgin Mary 
 had begun to connect itself with this sacrament. Before this 
 time exaggerated language had been used respecting her ; but 
 now, in the sixth century, in the Gothico-Gallican Missal, is 
 found the following prayer at the end of the sacramental ser- 
 vice. ' Be present, O Lord, to Thy faithful people, that the 
 Blessed Mary, who received Thee both with body and mind into 
 herself, may guard us by her intercession * ; ' while a century 
 and a half later stronger language is used, and the Virgin is 
 addressed as follows : ' Hail thou, through whom we dare to 
 draw near and partake of the pure and terrific flesh on the 
 
 ^ See note 5, on preceding page. ^ Vol. i. pp. 557-558. 
 
 ^ Vol. i. p. 574. * Vol. i. p. 496. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDEEED. 25 
 
 table of the terrific ritual. Hail thou by whom we taste the 
 true and immortal bread ^.' Similar expressions are also found 
 in the Liturgy erroneously ascribed to Chrysostom ^. 
 
 But the Eucharistic history of this period is principally 
 marked by tJw stronger hold which the materialistic views of 
 the preceding ages had now gained upon the Church. 
 
 \. Infant Communion, practised before even in Cyprian's 
 time, is now affirmed to be absolutely indispensable for the 
 salvation of infants, on the ground that the receiving of the 
 consecrated elements was that eating of the Saviour's flesh 
 and drinking of His blood, which He declared (in John vi.) to 
 be necessary for all ^. 
 
 2. Sacerdotalism had long before been brought into the 
 Church, and the Christian minister regarded as a ' priest ' ; 
 but now bolder language is found, and the priest, administering 
 this Sacrament, is expressly styled * a Mediator between God 
 and man, and one who thoroughly propitiates God in behalf of 
 the multitude of their sins *.' 
 
 3. Strong expressions had been previously employed in 
 asserting the change of the elements into the Lord's body and 
 blood, but they are surpassed by the still stronger words of 
 this later time, of which the following are examjDles. ' The 
 body of our Lord and God, of which we partake, Brethren, is 
 the very body {avTo to acofxa) which He received of our sub- 
 stance, which He took to Himself from the pure Mother of God.' 
 ' We are off'ering the same sacrifice [as Christ Himself did], the 
 same Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world ^.' 
 
 The change in the bread and wine is declared to be wrought 
 by the same divine power of the Almighty, as that by which 
 the world was created. ' If the word of God is living and of 
 mighty power, — if He said, Let there be light, and it came, — 
 can He not make bread a body for Himself, and the wine and 
 
 ' Vol. i. p. 563. 2 Vol i p 3^8. 
 
 ^ Vol. i. p. 475. * Vol. i. p. 506. 
 
 ^ From the writings of John of Damascus, vol. i. pp. 556-561. 
 
26 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 water His blood 1 ' And again, ' The bread and wine are not 
 a figure {tvttos) of the body and blood of Christ, — be it not 
 imagined, — but the very body of the Lord deified \' 
 
 And then on the confines of the eighth and ninth centuries 
 we are told, ' It is an act of detestable madness for the faithful 
 to have any doubt in their minds that the substance of the 
 bread and wine which is laid on the altar becomes Christ's 
 body and blood by the mystic action of the priest, God working 
 this by divine grace by His secret power. . . . Therefore the 
 unseen Priest (Christ) changes His own visible creatures into 
 the substance of His own flesh and blood by His secret power. 
 And in this body and blood of Christ indeed to prevent horror 
 in those that receive it, the taste and form of bread and wine 
 remain, the nature of their substance having been wholly 
 changed into Christ's body and blood ^.' 
 
 From such teaching as this it was but a very slight step 
 to the outspoken and completely unmistakable language of 
 Paschasius, abbot of Corbey, in the ninth century, who is 
 sometimes pointed out as the first of the Fathers that taught 
 the doctrine of Transuhstantiation, i. e. the change of the sub- 
 stance of the sacramental bread and wine to Christ's body and 
 blood. The fact is that ' transubstantiation ' was not even now 
 expressed in rmme, nor had it yet been dogmatically promul- 
 gated as an article of the faith by any Pope, Council, or other 
 Church authority, because it had never been called in question 
 with sufficient clearness and boldness to attract much atten- 
 tion ; yet it had long since, as we have seen, been virtually 
 prevalent throughout the Church. The time was now ripe for 
 the plainest language to be used ; and Paschasius only put 
 into words what had been for ages the common belief, when 
 he expressed himself as follows : — 
 
 ' These things [the bread and wine] must be believed to be 
 entirely and nothing else than Christ's flesh and blood after 
 their consecration.' Let those hear who desire to extenuate 
 
 ^ See note 5, on preceding page. ^ Vol. i. p. 594. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 27 
 
 this word, ' My Body,' as if it were not Christ's true flesh, 
 which is now exhibited in the Sacrament in Chri t's Church, 
 nor His true blood ;— who desire to approve or invent something 
 or other, as if there were only the virtue of His flesh and blood ; 
 so that Christ would be telling lies, when the Truth Himself 
 says, ' This is My body.' 
 
 Again, when speaking of the words, ' This cup is the New 
 Testament in My blood,' he says, ' The blood had not yet been 
 shed, and yet it will be handed in the cup, — the blood which 
 was presently to be shed.' This drives him to a further 
 assertion, ' That blood already in the cup, which was yet to be 
 shed ; and therefore the very same blood was in the cup that 
 was also in the body ; and also the body or flesh was in the 
 bread ^.' This was realism or literalism indeed ! 
 
 No one seems to have been shocked by Paschasius's words. 
 He incurred no Church censures. He was not pronounced 
 heretical or in any way reproved. But when he had presented 
 a copy of his writings to the King of France, Charles the Bald, 
 that monarch requested two of Paschasius's contemporaries, 
 John Scotus Erigena, and Bertram (or Ratram), a monk of the 
 abbey of which Paschasius himself was the abbot, to write 
 their opinions on it in reply. The former of these probably 
 wrote in a more enlightened and scriptural manner than was 
 otherwise known at that time ; but his works on this and other 
 kindred subjects were afterwards condemned as heretical, and 
 they have come down to us in so mutilated a state, that we can 
 only somewhat vaguely conjecture what they may have been. 
 Bertram fared better in this respect. His treatise on the 
 Lord's Supper has been allowed to survive. He professedly 
 opposed Paschasius, and many passages may be culled from his 
 work, which are much to be admired ; but others are entirely 
 out of harmony ivith them ; and on the whole he leaves the 
 subject in inextricable confusion. The followers of Paschasius 
 acted prudently in allowing this treatise to escape intact. 
 
 1 Vol. i. p. 597-598- 
 
28 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 They may have thought, and not without reason, that it would 
 strengthen their hands, and that its self-contradictory assertions 
 would drive its readers to prefer the monstrous but less incon- 
 sistent teachings of his opponent. 
 
 Bertram in this treatise appears as Transubstantialist, Con- 
 substantialist, and Protestant or semi-Protestant, by turns. 
 ' It is almost impossible,' as Dr. Hebert observes, ' for one 
 Church, much less for a single divine, to stand up free at one 
 effort from the encrusted errors of ages ; — to say nothing of 
 the temptation to let a part of the truth drop in the hope of 
 getting the rest received \' 
 
 And so this period was brought to a close. In the course of 
 it several Fathers might be pointed out here and there, who 
 spoke of the sacramental bread and wine as being Christ's body 
 and blood in a figurative sense "^ ; but such admissions not only 
 did not affect the general cui'rent of Church teaching and of 
 popular belief, but did not even hinder those who made them 
 from themselves believing and asserting that these elements 
 were changed into Christ Himself. As before remarked, it was 
 quite possible for men to acknowledge that the bread and wine 
 in their visible form were figures or re2)resentations^ — and yet 
 to believe that in a manner unappreciated by the senses they 
 were really the Lord's body and blood. ^ 
 
 Third Penod — from about a.d. 860 to 1264. 
 
 The efforts of such men as Erigena and Bertram, in their 
 dissent from the outspoken language of Paschasius, having failed 
 to produce any appreciable effect upon the Church at large, the 
 current of Eucharistic belief and practice flowed on as before. 
 Hence the general character of this third period differs but lit- 
 tle from that of the preceding, except that, according to the 
 natural course of man's religious history, the complexion of error 
 
 ' See Vol. i. 605-611. 
 
 ''■ Such were Gelasius, bishop of Rome, a.d. 495, Facundus, 570, Euty- 
 chuSj 580, Isidore of Seville, 600, and Beatus Flaccas, 800. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 29 
 
 grew darker still as time went on, and generation after genera- 
 tion was born and brought up in it. The doctrine of Transub- 
 stantiation, real, actual, unqualified, took more complete pos- 
 session of the minds alike of priest and people, as a necessary- 
 Article of the Christian faith. And then, as men of learning or 
 position exercised their thoughts, not to ascertain what the New 
 Testament taught them, but to explain, defend, or enforce the 
 traditional creed, some new outgrowths from the parent stock 
 of error appeared, and new speculative questions were discussed, 
 involving various degrees and combinations of subtlety and fool- 
 ishness. Meanwhile the priests, exalted before the end of this 
 period to almost superhuman honour, taught persistently the 
 Church traditions ; and the people knew nothing but what they 
 heard from such teachers and saw in the ministrations of their 
 Churches. 
 
 1. It is true that, notwithstanding the general subsidence of 
 the Church into the grossest materialistic doctrine of the Lord's 
 Supper, a few more enlightened men appeared from time to 
 time, who in a greater or less degree rose above the rest, as 
 they gained some clearer knowledge from the study of the Scrip- 
 tures, or strove after better things in the midst of the surround- 
 ing darkness. Thus, among other names that might be men- 
 tioned, iElfric, the Anglo-Saxon, in the tenth century, reached 
 so far towards the truth as to say that what is offered in the 
 Supper ' is Christ's body not bodily but ghostly ; not the body 
 which He suffered in, but the body of which He spake, when He 
 blessed the bread and wine \' In the eleventh century Theo- 
 phylact, archbishop of Bulgaria, sometimes called the last of the 
 Greek Fathers, says, ' Are we not always offering bloodless sa- 
 crifices % Yes ; but we make remembrance of His death. And it 
 is one, not many, since it was offered once for all. For we are 
 always offering the same ; or rather we are making a remem,- 
 brance of that offering, as if it were now taking place ^.' And 
 better still his contemporary Berengarius, teacher and treasurer 
 
 * Vol, ii. p. 3. ^ Vol. ii. p. 67. 
 
30 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 in St. Martin's Abbey at Tours, declared, ' There are seen on 
 the altar with the bodily eye after consecration the sensible 
 substances of bread and wine, but there are not seen Christ's 
 body and blood, which are laid up in heaven ; because if you 
 assert that before the restitution of all things, I say not merely 
 that the flesh of Christ is seen with the bodily eye, but even 
 that it is in the world at all, you do this in the teeth of David's 
 prophecy, Peter the apostle, his fellow-apostle Paul, and all 
 authentic Scriptures.' And again, referring to Erigena's trea- 
 tise, he expressed his entire approval of the statement contained 
 in it, ' The sacraments of the altar are a similitude, a figure, and 
 a pledge of the Lord's body and blood ^' 
 
 This is the bright side of the picture ; and it is gratifying to 
 know that there were some lights shining here and there in the 
 spiritual darkness which so widely prevailed. But there are 
 two considerations which the student of this period must bear 
 in mind, and which prove that the more enlightened sentiments 
 noticeable in a few better instructed men did not, and could not, 
 have any perceptible effect upon the general aspect of the Church 
 at large. 
 
 (i) Those who, like ^Elfric and Theophylact, above named, 
 seemed to show that they had some knowledge of what is taught 
 in the New Testament, not only (for the most part) expressed 
 themselves without sufficient distinctness, but also neutralised 
 their words of more wholesome import, and made them merely 
 2)0werless inconsistencies, by maintaining at other times the pre- 
 valent doctrines of the day. Thus iElfric does not scruple to 
 say, ' Why then is the housel [sacrifice] called Christ's body, if 
 it be not truly what it is called?' — 'Without they be seen bread 
 and wine, both in figure and taste ; and tJiey be truly, after their 
 hallowing, Christ^ s body and blood through ghostly mystery ^.' 
 And Theophylact adopts still plainer language, and afiirms, 'The 
 bread eaten by us in the mysteries is not figurative of the Lord's 
 flesh but it is, as He says, My flesh. For this bread is changed 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 22. * Vol. ii. p. 4. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDEEED. 31 
 
 by the ineffable words, through the mystic blessings and the 
 coming upon it of the Holy Spirit into the Lord's flesh.' And 
 again ' The loaves are by divine grace changed into the very 
 body {avTo TO crcjfxa eKelvo), of the Lord \' The same was the case 
 with others also. Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mentz, and 
 a promoter of Bible learning in the ninth century, though he 
 opposed Paschasius, yet writes, ' It is Christ's body and blood in 
 the way in wliich it is either suitable for our use or sufficient 
 for our salvation. How ? — or by what mode of existence ? 
 Doubtless in name, fact, and effect ^' And Rupert, abbot of 
 Duytz, at the beginning of the twelfth century, who studied the 
 Scriptures, and some of whose words might seem to indicate 
 that he rejected the doctrine of Tran substantiation, nevertheless 
 writes as follows, ^We undoubtingly believe, all the clouds of 
 figures and similitudes being laid aside, that we eat, — not any 
 body you please, — nor that body of Christ which the Church 
 is, — but that body of the Lord, which was betrayed for us, and 
 drink that blood which was shed for us.' And again, * By the 
 operation of the Holy Spirit the bread becomes the body, the 
 wine the blood of Christ ^.' Indeed it was still to be seen, as 
 we had occasion to observe in the former period, that some 
 scriptural or spiritual views of this ordinance could, in the 
 better class of minds, be held without displacing or improving 
 the gross materialism with which it had been so inveterately 
 incrusted ; of which another notable example is seen in the case 
 of Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury in the latter part of the 
 eleventh century, who acknowledged a spiritual participation in 
 conjunction with a bonajlde reception of Christ's natural body ; 
 and who thus had not much difficulty, when required, in taking 
 his stand on the side of decided Transubstantialists ^ 
 
 (2) Secondly, from about the middle of this period and on- 
 wards anything like an avowal of sound doctrine, or a denial of 
 an actual transubstantiating of the Eucharistic elements, was 
 regarded by Church authorities as heretical, and exposed men 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. pp. 60, 62. ^ Vol. ii. p. 615. 
 
 3 Vol. ii. pp. 72, 75. * Vol. ii. pp. 17-19. 
 
32 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 to imminent danger. Lanfranc himself was summoned to 
 Rome as one sus2)ected of such heresy, though he was acquitted 
 by the Councils of Rome and Vercelli before whom he gave an 
 account of his belief. Berengarius, however, who had to 
 answer for himself at the same time as Lanfranc, was not so 
 fortunate. His views were too sound and clear, and had been 
 too plainly expressed, to escape condemnation at the hands of 
 his judges, and he only saved his life by retracting them, and by 
 signing the following recantation : — 
 
 ' I, Berengarius, believe with my heart and confess with my 
 mouth, that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar 
 are converted by the mystery of sacred prayer and the words of 
 our Redeemer into the true and own vivifying flesh and blood 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ which was shed from His side ; not, 
 however, through the sign or virtue of the Sacrament, but in 
 their own proper nature and the reality of their substance, as is 
 contained in this brief, and as I have read it, and as you have 
 understood it. Thus do I believe : and I will not teach 
 against this faith any further. So help me God and His holy 
 Gospels \' 
 
 These Councils, which thus dealt with Berengarius, con- 
 demned and burned the treatises of Erigena and Bertram, which 
 200 years before had attempted to restore some light of truth 
 to the Church ; thus confirming the plain teaching of Paschasius, 
 and fixing it as the acknowledged doctrine of the orthodox 
 faith. Nor was this only a solitary outburst of zeal and bigotry. 
 Henceforth the doctrines of Berengarius, whenever they ap- 
 peared, were denounced as heretical, blasphemous, and 
 pestiferous ; and those who held them were anathematised, and 
 threatened with vengeance unless they recanted '^. Wliat effect 
 then, under such circumstances, could be produced by a few 
 occasional words slightly tinged with sobriety and truth ! 
 
 2. If the more enlightened Fathers of the Church could 
 allow themselves to use such expressions as those which have 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 17. * See Vol. ii. pp. 55, 106, 109. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 33 
 
 been quoted from their works, what must we expect to find in 
 the rest who made no attempt to raise their thoughts or 
 teachings above the current divinity of their time ! It was 
 hardly possible indeed for stronger language to be used than 
 some that was found even in the former period ; suffice it there- 
 fore to say that the doctrine enunciated by Paschasius was now 
 generally accepted, proclaimed, and inculcated, without any 
 qualification or reserve ; of which the following are some 
 examples : — 
 
 'If God could create creatures out of nothing, much more 
 may He be able to change these creatures [bread and wine], 
 and to transfuse them into the substance of His own body ^.' 
 ' The Almighty God turns the substance of bread and wine 
 into the true substance of the flesh and blood of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ -.' ' Although three gifts are set on the Lord's 
 Table, there are only two after their consecration. There is water 
 mixed with wine before, but afterwards there will be only 
 blood to feed our inward spirit. The water is for a mj^stic 
 meaning, but Christ's blood absorbs it. For God transfuses our 
 ashes into His own body ^.' ' Heretics deny that the bread is 
 transubstantiated into Christ's body by the sacred words said 
 by the priest in the mass.' ' None of the bread's substance 
 remains, with regard either to matter or substance, but certain 
 accidental properties *.' 
 
 3. These gross materialistic views naturally manifested their 
 efi'ects in various matters of Church life, among which the 
 following may especially be noticed : — 
 
 (i) Eucharistic RituaL The belief that the body and blood 
 of Christ, — in fact the Lord Himself, — was actually and literally 
 present in the form of the consecrated bread and wine, could 
 
 ^ Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres, vol. ii. p. 34. He also dared to say to a 
 communicant 'you carry God in your body.' 
 ^ John, Bishop of Avranches, vol. ii. p. 22. 
 
 ^ Peter of Blois, vol. ii. p. 83. -^ 
 
 * Alanus of the Isles, vol. ii. p. 120. 
 
 D 
 
34 THE LOKD'S SUPPER 
 
 not fail to influence the ritual observances in the administration 
 of the Sacrament ; and they in turn greatly encouraged and 
 helped to maintain the popular belief. This indeed had been to 
 a great extent the case long before. It will be sufficient here 
 to allude to some of the more prominent features of this ritual 
 at the time now under our consideration ; and the reader who 
 desires further information will find useful extracts in Dr. 
 Hebert's book ^, with references to original authorities for those 
 who wish to consult them. 
 
 The * sanctuary ' with the ' altar/ even before the end of the 
 first period, was marked off by lattice-work {cancelli) from the 
 rest of the Church ; and curtains also were drawn during the 
 consecration of the elements, to create an idea of greater 
 mystery and awe in the minds of the people. In the later time 
 the altar was surmounted with a canopy ^ supported by pillars, 
 an image of Christ being placed in it ; and the altar itself was 
 further concealed by a veil. ' Corporals ' and veils were used 
 for covering the paten and the cup, as before. 
 
 The consecrated bread was divided into three parts ; one of 
 which was dipped in the cup (a custom found also at an earlier 
 date), and from this the lay communicants received their por- 
 tions ; this method being adopted, it is said, for fear any drops 
 of ' the Lord's blood ' might fall to the ground. And thus a 
 step was taken towards the later practice of denying the wine 
 to the laity altogether. A second part was destined for the 
 priests and other ministers ; while the third was ' reserved,' to 
 be used at any time for the sick, and as a viaticum for the 
 dying ^. This * reserved host ' was carefully preserved in a 
 ' pyx,' or in a little ' tabernacle,' which was sometimes made in 
 the form of a dove, and suspended over the altar ^ Incense 
 
 ^ See especially vol. ii. pp. 39, 48, 53, 96, 126. 
 
 ^ This canopy, called ciborium, was, as we have seen, in use as early, if 
 not earlier, than the seventh century. This and all other accompaniments 
 of the altar were continued or still further elaborated as time went on, see 
 note on p. 22. ^ Vol. ii. p. 40. 
 
 * See Diet, of Christian Antiquities, art. ' Dove, Eucharistic' 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 35 
 
 was used as an accompaniment of the sacrifice ^ ; and lighted 
 candles as emblematical of the presence of Christ, ' the Light of 
 the World.' In particular wax-candles were so regarded, the 
 wax being said to represent His body, the light His soul, and 
 the flame His divinity ^. 
 
 Of course the vessels used at the Mass, and every particle of 
 the consecrated elements adhering to them, the corporals, veils, 
 and everything connected with the altar, were treated with an 
 excessive reverence. The sacred vessels were to be washed by 
 no hands but those of a priest or deacon ; and the water of the 
 ablution was poured out into a place prepared for it near the 
 altar ^, where there was also a basin for the priest to wash his 
 hands both before and after the Communion. The whole ritual 
 by the end of this period tended to foster the great central doc- 
 trine of transubstantiation. 
 
 (2) Host-Worship. The adoration of the Eucharistic ele- 
 ments, as being in fact the Lord Himself, may be traced, at any 
 rate in an incipient form, as early as the fourth century (see 
 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Mystag. v. 18), although vv^ell- 
 meaning attempts are vainly made to explain away such ex- 
 pressions. But in the latter part of our present period the 
 practice was indubitably encouraged, and indeed was only a 
 legitimate outcome of the doctrine then distinctly held. Thus 
 Anselm, primate of England, who died in 1109, has left us a 
 prayer, 'to be used before receiving Christ's body and blood,' 
 in which the communicant is to say, ' I adore and venerate 
 
 ^ Incense was used at a mucii earlier time, but it is not certain whether 
 it was not then employed only as a supposed disinfectant. It is first ex- 
 pressly named as a part of a religious ceremonial by the pseudo-Dionysius. 
 See Diet. Christ. Antiq. art. ' Incense.' 
 
 2 Vol. ii. p. 48. 
 
 ^ The place for pouring away the water, properly named infundihidum, 
 was sometimes called the inscina, a name originally belonging to the bap- 
 tismal font. It was usually made in the side wall of the chancel, as may 
 still be seen in some old churches, or in modern imitations of them. In 
 some ritualistic churches the ablution of the vessels is considered an im- 
 portant ceremony, and the priest makes an infundihulum of his own body 
 by drinking the ivater. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 [adoro et veneror'] this Thy sacred body, and this Thy sacred 
 blood ^.' And a little later we read, ' As Christ was adored in 
 His own body [by the leper whom He healed], so also now He 
 should be adored as present in the same body, mighty to cleanse 
 him who adores and eats Him ^.' 
 
 The Elevation of the Host, for the people to see and worship 
 it, is said to have been adopted at this time as a significant form 
 of jDrotest against the better teaching of Berengarius. The cus- 
 tom of ringing a bell, in order to bid the people worship the 
 consecrated wafer, was introduced at a somewhat later time. 
 The lifting ui^ of the bread and wine, mentioned in the earliest 
 Liturgies, seems to have been intended, not for their adoration, 
 but as an act of offering them to God ; for it was done before 
 the curtains were drawn aside and the chancel opened to the 
 eyes of the people ^. 
 
 (3) Mariolatry. The invocation of the Virgin Mary as a 
 mediator, wliich was before noticed, does not appear more con- 
 spicuously, or seem to have made much advance, until near the 
 end of this period. Anselm, indeed, at the end of the eleventh 
 century is rather strong in this direction, and he addressed four 
 hjTuns and a salutation to the Virgin * ; and Innocent III in 
 his Order of the Mass joins her with other saints in the address, 
 ' Receive, Holy Trinity, the oblation of bread which we offer 
 to thee for the memory of the passion, resurrection, and ascen- 
 sion of Jesus Christ our Lord, in honour of Mary ever- virgin, 
 and blessed John the Baptist ^,' etc. But Nicetas a little later 
 goes beyond this, and says, 'I believe and say that the holy 
 Virgin Mary who bare Him after the flesh was properly and 
 truly Mother of God, when He put Himself in man ; and on this 
 account I worsliip [npoaKwo)) and honour her as having become 
 by grace the Sovereign Lady (/tvpi'a) and mistress of all crea- 
 tion <'.' 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 43. ^ Geroch, abbot of Eeichensberg, vol. ii. p. 109. 
 
 ^ See Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, art. ' Elevation.' 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 44. ^ Vol. ii. p. 126. * Vol. ii. p. 155. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 37 
 
 (4) Miraculous Legends. As even in earlier times miraculous 
 stories were related for the exaltation of this Sacrament in the 
 eyes of the people, it was not to be expected that miracles would 
 be omitted in these days of more advanced superstition ; and 
 accordingly we find them used especially ' to glorify the Lord's 
 body,' or to convince those who denied, or doubted about, the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation. Thus Rupert of Duytz relates 
 that in a great conflagration which destroyed a part of that 
 town, a ' corporal,' taken from a church, and thrown into the 
 raging fire, was cast back by the flames unconsumed and un- 
 injured ; and a pyx containing ' the Lord's body ' remained 
 whole and unscorched, while another pyx with unconsecrated 
 bread, and other vessels, were destroyed ^. Another marvellous 
 story is recorded by Bernard in his Life of St. Malachi in con- 
 nection with a clergyman of Lismore, who having, apparently 
 with great wisdom and good sense, maintained a spiritual view 
 of this Sacrament, was excommunicated as a heretic, and being 
 afterwards miraculously struck down by a divine judgment 
 acknowledged liis errors, and was forgiven ^. And it would 
 seem that the method of convincing gainsayers by producing 
 the actual appearance of flesh and blood upon the altar, which 
 was alluded to in the first period (p. 17) was not unfre- 
 quently resorted to at this time : since Alanus tells us that ' to 
 confound these heretics a miracle is wrought in many churches 
 by which the visible form of flesh has been seen in the 
 hostV 
 
 4. This grievous declension from the teaching of the New 
 Testament gave occasion to many foolish and unprofitable, or 
 even revolting, notions, put forward by divines of this period, 
 which never could have occurred to their minds, or found an 
 utterance from their lips, if the simple truth as given us in the 
 Scriptures had been adhered to by the Church. A few exam- 
 ples will suffice. 
 
 It was declared to be blasphemy and an inspiration of the 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 75. ^ Vol. ii. p. 107. ^ Vol. ii. p. 120."' 
 
38 THE LOED'S SUPPER 
 
 devil to say that the bread and wine received by a communicant 
 passed through the same natural processes as other food \ This, 
 however, was only the revival of a notion of a much earlier 
 date. 
 
 It was represented that Christ had two bodies, one in heaven, 
 and the other on the altar ; and that the Holy Ghost transfused 
 them together into one '^. 
 
 The doctrine of Imjpanation, i. e. Christ received into, and as 
 it were enclosed in the bread, is referred to by Guitmund at 
 the end of the eleventh century. ' Others,' he says, ' who do 
 yield to the Church's reasonings, and yet do not come back 
 from their folly, say that the Lord's body and blood are in 
 reality, but in a latent way, contained there ; and, in order 
 that they may be received by us, that they are in a certain 
 way so to say "impanated" [imjyanari) ^.' This notion is some- 
 times said to have originated with John of Paris two hundred 
 years later. But he in fact only reproduced an older doctrine. 
 
 The well-known Romish tenet that the consecrated elements 
 contain ' the body, soul, and divinity ' of the Lord finds an 
 authority in Abbot RujDert at the beginning of the twelfth 
 century, who says, ' Tliis true sacrifice of bread and wine is not 
 only flesh and blood, but spirit and life ; because it is the true 
 Word which is incarnate, and is true Godhead in bread and 
 wine *.' 
 
 So eminent a man as Hugo de St. Victor, who flourished on 
 the confines of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, tells us, ' We 
 cannot say that they [the appearance and taste] are in the sub- 
 stance of the bread and wine, for the substance of bread and 
 wine is not there, but Christ's true body ; nor do we dare to 
 say that they are in the body of Christ ^.' So here was a new 
 difficulty. 
 
 Such ' foolish and unlearned questions ' also as the following 
 were debated by leaders of Church opinion. 
 
 * Pope Silvester II, vol. ii. p. 7. * Fulbert, vol. ii. p. 34. 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 57. * Vol. ii. p. 69. ^ Vol. ii. p. 94. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 39 
 
 Whether the bread is the same body as was born of Mary or 
 a different one ^. 
 
 Whether Christ's body is broken when the bread is eaten 
 by the communicants ^. 
 
 Whether Christ at His resurrection received back again the 
 blood which He had shed on the cross ^. 
 
 Whether Christ present in the sacrament stands or sits on 
 the altar*. 
 
 Wliat a mouse eats when the sacramental bread is eaten by it ^. 
 
 It was only a natural and fitting conclusion of this deplorable 
 career of error and superstition, when at the Fourth Lateran 
 Council in 1 2 1 5 under the authority of Pope Innocent III, the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation was promulgated as the dogmatic 
 teaching of the Church of Rome, as follows : — 
 
 ' The universal Church of the faithful is one, outside which 
 there is no salvation. And in this Jesus Christ is at the same 
 time Himself priest and sacrifice ; and His body and blood are 
 truly contained under the appearance of bread and wine in the 
 Sacrament of the altar, being transubstantiated — the bread into 
 the body, the wine into the blood — by the divine power, in 
 order that to complete the mystery of unity we may ourselves 
 receive from what is His own that which He received from what 
 is ours. And also no one can make this Sacrament but a priest, 
 who shall have been ordained according to the keys of the 
 Church which Jesus Christ Himself gave up to the Apostles 
 and their successors ^.' 
 
 And when in 1264 Pope Urban IV instituted ' Corpus Christi 
 Day' as an annual commemoration of this monstrous figment, 
 he put upon it the final seal of Rome's authority, and left it to 
 darken and debase the minds and consciences of men, until the 
 dawn of the Reformation at length appeared, and men of God 
 turned to the wholesome teacliing of the New Testament to 
 displace the pernicious traditions of a fallen Church. 
 
 1 Vol. ii. p. 7. 2 Yoi. ii, p, loi. 3 Vol. ii, p. 129, 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 149. 5 Vol. ii. p. 171. ® Vol. ii. p. 136^, 
 
40 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 The Second Part — -from a. d. 1264 to the 'present time. 
 
 In the^rs^ part of this subject it was our task to trace the 
 Eucharistic doctrines and practices of the Christian Church, as 
 they led us on from the inspired simplicity of the apostolic 
 times and the teaching of the New Testament, through gradual 
 developments and accumulations of error, until they landed us 
 in the authoritative assertion of dogmatic transubstantiation, 
 and the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass, in the thirteenth 
 century. 
 
 After this there was very little more that Rome could do to 
 mar this sacred ordinance of Christ. It only remained for the 
 Council of Constance in 1 4 1 5 to pronounce authoritatively for 
 the denial of the cup to the laity. This was afterwards con- 
 firmed in 1562 by the Council of Trent, which declared, that 
 ' Holy Mother Church for weighty and just reasons approved the 
 custom of communion in one kind, and commanded it to be 
 observed as a law \' 
 
 In this second part, which is to embrace the six centuries 
 that have elapsed since that time, we have at first to reverse 
 the process before pursued. For we have now to mark the 
 course of a recovery from mediaeval errors, and of a return to 
 scriptural truth ; according as light broke in with the dawning 
 of the Reformation, increased with the progress of that great 
 religious movement in spite of obstacles and failures, and at 
 last in the sixteenth century displayed this sacramental rite in 
 the purity of its original institutions, and apostolic use, to the 
 Churches which were willing to receive it. 
 
 And this might have been the conclusion of all that needed 
 to be said, if men could only have been satisfied with receiving 
 this holy ordinance, thus once more presented to them in its 
 
 * The custom of giving the bread only to the laity had crept in some 
 time before, the way having been paved for it by the practice of dipping 
 the bread in the cup before giving it to them. (See p. 34.) Shortly before 
 the Council of Constance some good men had returned to the scriptural 
 mode of administration, and this the Council condemned as heretical. See 
 Mosheim, ii. p. 326. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 41 
 
 primitive simplicity ; and if, warned by the lamentable errors 
 of previous ages, they had not again been led away from the 
 inspired teacliing of the New Testament in their use and 
 exposition of it. 
 
 But as unhappily this has not been the case, it will be 
 necessary to take some notice of the Eucharistic doctrines which 
 have been put forward during the last three centuries, and thus 
 to bring down our historical sketch to the present time. 
 
 This portion then of our subject naturally divides itself into 
 two nearly equal periods of about three hundred years each. 
 Thej^rs^ of these reaches to the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 when the great Protestant Reformers had attained to their 
 final emancipation from the trammels of Rome, and had boldly 
 taken their stand upon the written Word of God instead of 
 Church traditions; when in the year 1552 the second Prayer- 
 book of King Edward VI embodied in its Communion Service 
 the most matured convictions of Cranmer and the other leaders 
 of English Protestantism ; and when, a few years later, in 1560, 
 the Church of Scotland, under the guidance of Jolin Knox,* 
 endeavoured to adhere still more closely, if possible, to the 
 institution of the Lord's Supper in their liturgical arrange- 
 ments for the administration of it. The second period extends 
 from these dates to the present time, and includes opinions 
 which have been prominently advocated within the compass of 
 our own generation. 
 
 First Period — from a.d. 1264 to 1552 and 1560. 
 
 In dwelling upon the events which will now be brought 
 before us it may serve to give a unity of thought and aim to 
 our consideration of them, and may present them with greater 
 interest to our readers, if we keep in view from the beginning 
 that restoration of the Lord's Supper to, as nearly as possible, 
 its primitive use, which was accomplished at the close of this 
 period. We can thus profitably mark how in the providence of 
 God, events led on, very slowly perhaps as we might think, but' 
 
42 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 surely, to their final consummation in the recovery of Christian 
 truth ; one generation preparing the way for another, — the 
 advantage gained in one century enabling still further advan- 
 tages to be secured in the next, — as the spiritual and moral 
 darkness of Christendom was gradually dispelled. 
 
 When the fourth Lateran Council in a.d. 12 15 had stereo- 
 typed in the form of acknowledged transubstantiation what had 
 been long before floating in Church opinion, it became a pro- 
 minent object of Rome's power and influence to fasten this 
 doctrine more and more completely upon the public mind, and 
 to make it apj)ear reasonable and self-consistent by elaborate 
 expositions of its mysteries. 
 
 Thus the recurrence of 'Corpus Christi Day,' before alluded to, 
 familiarised the people in general with this monstrous dogma ; 
 the cruel penalties enforced against so-called heretics deterred 
 dissentients ; while the scliolastic divines \ some of whose most 
 distinguished leaders flourished in the thirteenth century, 
 devoted a portion of their subtle reasonings to the task of 
 making it acceptable to the thoughtful and enquiring. 
 
 It seems marvellous that men of such accomplishments and 
 mental powers as some of these ' schoolmen ' were, should pre- 
 sent to us as truth such fallacies as they have done. But as 
 they set out with the assumption that the full doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation was a Catholic truth to be incontrovertibly 
 received, nothing could save them from such results. ' For a 
 
 ^ The most striking peculiarity of the scholastic divinity is that, in ex- 
 plaining or defending Church doctrines, the ' Schoolmen ' relied, not upon 
 the Scriptures or even Church traditions, but on human reason and phi- 
 losophy. This scholastic or philosophic theology is represented as having 
 been begun by the speculations of Origen in the third century. It was 
 adopted to a certain extent by John of Damascus, who died in a.d. 756. 
 The method was revived by Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, in the 
 eleventh century, and was carried forward by the most learned men of their 
 times to its culmination in Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth, who was 
 eminently the Philosopher of the Schools, the creature of the system which 
 had then obtained its full strength. — See the chapter on ' The Philosophy 
 of the Schoolmen' of the Ecclesiastical History, in the Encyclopaedia] 
 Metropolitana. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDEEED. 43 
 
 general corruption of reasoning will follow any bold outrage 
 upon a great sacred truth. Men cannot play false with con- 
 science and understanding and then recover their moral sense 
 and intelligence at will.' So men attempted to get rid of the 
 strange and absurd conclusions to which this doctrine brought 
 them, by the use of technical subtilties of language and a per- 
 verted logic ; — by an assumption of miracles at every turn ; — 
 or even by the promulgation of such theories as that of ' Im- 
 panation,' commonly ascribed to John of Paris as its author, 
 though it had been broached at a much earlier period. (See 
 page 38.) 
 
 In the meantime the venality and corruption of the Papal 
 Court, and the ignorance and gross vices of the clergy, with the 
 general depravity of morals which naturally ensued, reduced 
 the Church to the lowest state of degradation, and made the 
 early part of the fourteenth century the darkest period of the 
 pre-Reformation time. 
 
 Yet even then there were signs and tendencies indicative of 
 better things, though not so noticed at the time. Principles 
 were at work and events were taking place which we can now 
 see were preliminary to the Reformation, and helped to bring it 
 gradually to pass. And as the question of the Lord's Supper 
 is bound up in the wider subject of the general condition of the 
 Church, these must be, at any rate, briefly glanced at. 
 
 It has been truly said that ' a Reformation in the higher 
 sense of the word -is always a great historical result, the issue 
 of a spiritual process extending through centuries ^.' And thus 
 in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries preliminary work for 
 the great Reformation in the sixteenth was going on, in which 
 we may especially notice the following particulars. 
 
 1. The Scholastic Philosophy. — The labours of the scholastic 
 divines, before alluded to, were not directed to the discovery 
 
 ^ See some excellent remarks of Prof. Ullmann on ' Reformers before the 
 Reformation.' — Dr. Hebert, vol. ii. p. 236. 
 
44 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 of Christian truth as revealed in the New Testament ; for in- 
 deed appeals to the Scriptures were entirely neglected by them. 
 Yet they unconsciously acted as precursors of the Reformation ; 
 inasmuch as the very temerity of their speculations accustomed 
 men to think boldly ; and by endeavouring to satisfy human 
 reason, and magnify it against arbitrary authority, they en- 
 couraged departures from the long-standing custom of settling 
 everything by some dictum of the Christian Fathers and so 
 stoi:>piug all further enquiry. And thus they nurtured a spirit 
 wliich survived the system in which it had grown up ; a spirit 
 which only wanted more religious light and a right direction 
 to be given to it, in order to its wholesome operation. 
 
 2. The Universities. — The establishment of the Universities 
 on the footing on which they now continue to exist, was a marked 
 feature of these ' middle ages.' In them lectures were given 
 and examinations held ; colleges also were founded by Domini- 
 can and Franciscan friars, and others, in connection as now with 
 the Universities, for the accommodation of students. The 
 pursuit of learning was thus encouraged ; the revival of ancient 
 literature was fostered and made great progress, especially after 
 the overthrow of the Greek Empire at Constantinople in the 
 middle of the fifteenth century (1453) ? ^^^ ^ valuable field 
 was prepared, to be advantageously occupied at a later time for 
 the inculcation and dissemination of Reformation truths. And 
 even in the earlier days the disputations and contests between 
 the Dominican or Franciscan teachers in their schools and the 
 regular professors of the Universities could not fail to produce 
 some emanations of forbidden light, and thus helped to prepare 
 the way for larger admissions of sacred truth. 
 
 3. The moral corruption of Christendom. — The gross 
 depravity in the clergy of all ranks, the profligacy, arrogance, 
 and extortion of successive occupants of the Papal chair, and 
 finally the monstrous exhibition of rival popes, at Avignon and 
 Rome ^ had well-nigh exhausted the patience of princes and of 
 
 * This strange schism lasted for nearly 40 years : from 1378 to 141 4. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED, 45 
 
 peoples. A reformation began to be demanded. But at first 
 it was a reformation of the social and political corruptions of 
 the Roman system that the reformers aimed at. They were 
 not yet sufficiently enlightened by the Scriptures to attack the 
 religious corruptions of the Church. Accordingly the dogma 
 of Transubstantiation was not repudiated even by such martyrs 
 as John Huss and Jerome of Prague, nor afterwards by Savo- 
 narola, who was martyred in 1498. These good men, like some 
 others of that time, had their hearts full of all spiritual feel- 
 ings towards the person of Jesus Christ, while they still believed 
 that in the Lord's Supper they were eating and drinking His 
 very body and blood. They owed their martyrdoms to their 
 attacks on clerical corruption and the Papal rule ; — to their 
 demand for the restoration of the cup to the laity; — and to their 
 being preachers of righteousness in a crooked generation. 
 
 4. The Scriptures. — All the three particulars mentioned 
 above had their influence in their several ways as preliminary 
 and introductory to the great Reformation ; but that which was 
 its most immediate and most effectual precursor was the opening 
 of the Scriptures to the knowledge and acceptance of the Church 
 at large. And we may be permitted to rejoice that the honour 
 of being the first Translator of the Bible into the poj)ular 
 language of any modern nation belongs to our countryman 
 John Wyclifie, whose English Version of the Scriptures enabled 
 all who could read or hear it, to see the vast difference between 
 the teaching of the New Testament and that of Rome ^. 
 
 The influence of this and of other labours of Wycliffe extended 
 far beyond the limits of England. He was the greatest light of 
 his age, and the effects of his work were never lost, although 
 Papal opposition and persecution still delayed the Reformation 
 for more than a hundred years after his death. During this 
 time, however, Bible theologians were reared in greater numbers 
 than before. In the immediately preceding ages the ' Scholas- 
 tics ' only were held in estimation, and exerci ed great public 
 
 ^ Wycliffe's translation of the Bible was finished in 1380. 
 
46 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 influence ; but now students and expositors of the Scriptures 
 appeared upon the scene, and made their voices to be heard. 
 And this Bible theology was most essential for the accomplish- 
 ment of a religious Reformation in the Church, — and most of 
 all for that part of it which in these pages we are especially 
 considering,— the restoration of the holy ordinance of the Lord's 
 Supper to the purity of its original state. The gross moral 
 corruptions of the Church might have been combated by an 
 appeal to its own better teaching, and to the conscience and 
 judgment of its worthier members, but the false doctrines and 
 superstitious practices, with which the Lord's Supper had been 
 surrounded, — which had the support of venerated names, and had 
 grown up and gathered strength from age to age, — and which had 
 been wrought into the very texture of the Church system, — 
 could be met and dispelled by nothing short of a bold return to 
 the actual teaching of the New Testament ; and for this it was 
 needful not only that there should be Bible-theologians, but also 
 that some knowledge of the Scriptures should be widely spread 
 throughout the Church, and brought within the reach of its 
 ordinary members. Both these requisites began to be supplied 
 even in the fifteenth century. Wycliffe himself, taught by the 
 Scriptures which he translated, rejected the doctrine of 
 Transubstantiation, and declared that the sacramental bread 
 remained bread, and was only 'the Body of Christ figuratively^ ; 
 and others followed him, while his English Bible throughout 
 those years, in spite of difficulties and oppositions, was copied, 
 and read, and brought light to many souls ^. 
 
 And now we may turn to the first half of the sixteenth 
 century, which will introduce us to glorious times, and 
 Christian heroes valiant for the truth. The causes which had 
 previously been at work, more or less imperceptibly, now resulted 
 
 * John Wessel has been called 'the theological forerunner of the 
 Reformation,' and he was so for Germany. He was a noble advocate of 
 vital scri])tural theology ; but though he lived nearly a century later than. 
 Wycliti'e, his views of the Lord's Supper were not so near the truth as 
 tljose of his great English predecessor. — See UUmann's Reformers, Dr. 
 Hebert, vol. ii. p. 240. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 47 
 
 at last in the happiest effects. The seed sown for two centuries 
 before had grown up and ripened for the harvest. 
 
 Confining ourselves now to our particular subject we have to 
 mark how the truth of the New Testament teaching on the 
 nature and use of the Lord's Supper was during this half- 
 century searched after, examined, and clearly brought to light. 
 
 Church corru2)tions in doctrine and practice, prevailing 
 throughout large bodies of professing Christians, are seldom, if 
 ever, traceable to particular persons who had influence enough 
 to introduce them and to secure their general adoption. They 
 grow up by degrees from a widely spread and increasing declen- 
 sion from wholesome teaching and the true Christian life. But 
 Church reformations commence with the efforts of individual 
 men, who having themselves obtained from the Scriptures a 
 correct knowledge of what a Christian Church should teach and 
 do, have also faithfulness and courage enough to make it 
 publicly known, and to endeavour at all risks to gain for it an 
 authoritative reception. Such men were conspicuous at this 
 period of our history, and as the name of Martin Luther justly 
 holds the foremost place among them, as the most distinguished 
 and undaunted of all these Reformers, we may notice first the 
 Continental Reformation in its contributions towards the 
 recovery of Eucharistic truth. 
 
 L The Eucharistic teaching of the German and Swiss 
 E-eformers. — The three leading and representative names of 
 Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingel, will furnish us with the 
 three principal phases of Eucharistic doctrine exhibited in the 
 Continental Reformation. 
 
 (i) Luther, notwithstanding his high moral eminence, his 
 study of the Scriptures, which he translated for his countrymen, 
 and his clear enunciation of the great Gospel truth of ' Justifica- 
 tion by Faith,' never rose above the doctrine of ' Consubstantia- 
 tion,' i.e. (as he explains it) ' that the Body and Blood of Christ-* 
 are really in, or with, the bread and wine, which still retain 
 their own nature and substance.' It seems that this great man 
 
48 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 was incapable of perceiving the truth, or of reasoning correctly, 
 in a subject in which his feelings were deeply engaged. And 
 in maintaining his sacramental opinions in his sermon, De 
 Eucharistia, he substitutes assertion and re-assertion in various 
 forms for anything like true or solid arguments. And when 
 pressed on this question in the Conference at Marburg, he 
 exclaimed in his vehement way, * Christ has said, " This is My 
 body." Let them show that a body is not a body. I reject 
 reason, common sense, carnal arguments, and mathematics. God 
 is above mathematics.' And again, ' Christ's body is in the 
 Sacrament, but it is not there as in a place.' * Then,' said 
 Zwingel, ' it is not there at all.' But Luther rejoined, ' Sophists 
 say that a body may very well be in several places at once ^.' 
 
 Yet the influence of his name and authority has stamped this 
 doctrine upon the Lutheran Churches even to the present day. 
 
 (2) Melanchthon, perhaps, next to Luther, the most influential 
 of the German Reformers, drew nearer to the simple truth of 
 the New Testament ; and we find him writing as follows on 
 I Cor. xi : ' When Luke and Paul say, " This is the Cup of the 
 New Testament," it is, so to speak, the figure metonjTny, as if I 
 were to say, " the fasces are the Roman Empire." ' And again, 
 
 X ' No man's work earns for us those eternal blessings which are 
 bequeathed to us through His death. This rite [of the Su23per] 
 then is not a sacrifice to earn these blessings for him who 
 offers it, and for others ; but it testifies that they are furnished ; 
 and they must be received by faith that rests on the sacrifice 
 of the Son of God Himself ^.' Yet he was not able altogether to 
 disentangle himself from the patristic teaching of the fourth and 
 fifth centuries ; and in the Augsburg Confession which was 
 drawn up by him (1530) he asserts 'that the body and blood 
 of Christ are really 2)resent, and are administered in the Lord's 
 
 * Supper to those who partake of it ^.' And in the Saxon Confession 
 
 ^ See D'Aubignd's History of the Reformation, Book XIII. ch. vii. 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 304. 
 
 ^ D'Aubignd's Hist, of Reformation, xiv. 7, or Mosheim, vol. ii. p. 420. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 49 
 
 (1551) still more strongly, ' In the instituted use [of the Supper] 
 Christ is truly present in His substance [vere et suhstantialiter 
 adesse) ; and Christ's body and blood are truly supplied in this 
 Communion to the reci23ients ^/ 
 
 (3) Zwingel, the distinguished Swiss Reformer, of whom it has 
 been remarked that his reformation was directed against the 
 Pagan element in the errors of Romanism, while Luther's 
 Assailed the Jewish element-, took his stand upon the New 
 Testament alone, and thus gained a view of this divine 
 ordinance more clear and scriptural than either of his two 
 illustrious contemporaries had done. He was enabled to see 
 that, according to an acknowledged Bible usage, the words, 
 ' This is My body,* stand for, ' This sigmjies or represents My^ 
 body' ; and he therefore maintained that the sacramental 
 elements are signs or symbols of the Lord's body and blood, 
 which are not really present in them or combined with them. 
 
 The doctrine of Zwingel has often been misrepresented, as if he 
 denied that the Lord's Supper was in any sense a means of grace 
 or a participation in Christ's body and blood. But his own writ- 
 ings afford a sufficient answer to such misrepresentations. Thus, 
 in his ' Confession of Faith,' addressed to the Emperor Charles V, 
 he says, ' I believe that a Sacrament is a visible figure or form 
 of invisible grace produced and given by the gift of God. I be- 
 lieve that in the sacred supper of the Eucharist the true body 
 of Christ is present to the contemplation of faith : i. e. that 
 those who give thanks to God for so great a benefit conferred 
 1 on us of His kindness in His Son, recognise that He took to 
 ' Him true flesh, suffered truly in it, and truly washed away our 
 sins with His own blood ; and therefore that work done by 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 308. 
 
 2 * The Jewisli element prevailed chiefly in that part of the Christian 
 doctrine which relates to man. Catholicism had received from Judaism 
 the Pharisaical ideas of self-righteousness, of salvation by human strength 
 or works. The Pagan element prevailed especially in that part of the 
 Christian doctrine which relates to God. ... It had established in the 
 Church the reign of symbols, images, and ceremonies, and the saints had 
 become the demi-gods of Popery.' — D'Aubigne's Hist, of Ref. Book xi. 4. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 Christ is, as it were, made present to them by the contemplation 
 of faith. But that Christ's body in its essence and reality (i. e. 
 *His natural body itself), is either present in the Supper, or is 
 eaten by our mouth and teeth, we truly not only deny, but 
 fiiTuly maintain that it is an error adverse to God's word \* 
 
 If Zwiiigel had not unhappily been cut off by a sudden and 
 early death at the age of 47^, he might have exercised a still 
 deeper and wider influence than he was permitted to do. But 
 his labours were not in vain. He lived, at any rate, to see a 
 genuine religious reformation established in Zurich, and to 
 witness the first Protestant celebration of the Lord's Supper, 
 freed from remnants of Romish errors, and administered with a 
 truly apostolic simplicity and solemnity, which filled eveiy 
 heart with sacred joy. 
 
 Of this interesting service, wliich took place at Zurich in 
 April 1525, D'Aubigne gives us the following brief account : — 
 ' The altars had disappeared. Plain tables bearing the sacra- 
 mental bread and wine were substituted in their place, and an 
 attentive crowd pressed round them. There was something 
 particularly solemn in this multitude. On Holy Thursday the 
 young people, — on Friday, the day of the Passion, the adult 
 men and women, — and on Easter Sunday the aged, — celebrated 
 in turn the death of the Lord. The Deacons read aloud the 
 passages of Scrij^ture that relate to this Sacrament ; the Pastors 
 "addressed the flock in an earnest exhortation, calling upon all 
 to retire from this sacred feast, who by persevering in their sins 
 would pollute the body of Jesus Christ. The peoj)le knelt 
 down, the bread was carried round on large platters or wooden 
 plates, and each one broke off a morsel ; the wine was next dis- 
 tributed in wooden goblets. In this manner it was thought 
 they made a nearer approach to the simplicity of the primitive 
 supper. Emotions of surprise or joy filled everj- heart ^.' 
 
 ' Vol. ii. p. 312. 
 
 Zw-ingel was kiUed at the battle of Cappel in 1531. — D'Aubign^, xvi. 
 ^ Hist, of Reformation, 3d. 6. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDERED. 51 
 
 2. The Eucharistic teaching of the English Reformation. 
 — While the great Continental Reformers were making their 
 noble stand for Christian truth, and courageously encountering 
 the formidable obstacles which opposed them, the Reformation 
 was begun and carried forward in England with less promise 
 of success at first, but with a more complete victory at the end. 
 
 Here, as in the former case, individual reformers come pro- 
 minently upon the scene, and the names of Latimer, Cranmer, 
 and Ridley, can never be forgotten or unhonoured by British 
 Protestants. But the circumstances under which the English 
 Reformation grew up, and made its way, differed from those 
 which surrounded the work on the Continent ; inasmuch as this 
 great religious movement in England was at first partially 
 and afterwards fully promoted and enforced by the highest * 
 authorities of the realm in Church and State. The Con- 
 tinental Reformation began from below, and extended from the 
 people to their rulers, but the English Reformation began from 
 above, and was given by their rulers to the people ; so that here 
 we have to notice not so much the opinions and teaching of in- 
 dividual men, however distinguished, as the doctrines embodied 
 in the national profession of the Christian faith, and expressed 
 in the authorised formularies of the Church. 
 
 • 
 But before proceeding to trace the course of the actual 
 reformation in the Eucharistic teaching of the English Church, 
 it is desirable to mark the invaluable help which it derived 
 from the English Version of the Bible, at this time produced, 
 printed and disseminated throughout the land. For it is hardly 
 too much to say that without this preliminary aid the Reform- 
 ation could not have succeeded as it did. 
 
 Nearly 150 years had now passed away since Wycliffe's English 
 Bible had first appeared. During that time several provi- 
 dential events had happened, favourable to the labours of his 
 successors in the Bible field. For (i) the revival of learning 
 had promoted the study of Hebrew and Greek ; so that now 
 translations could be made from the original languages of the 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 Scriptures, instead of from the Latin Vulgate. (2) The in- 
 vention of printing supplied a most valuable instrument for 
 multiplying copies of the book, in place of the slow and expen- 
 sive method of hand-writing which alone existed in Wycliffe's 
 time. (3) The religious awakening on the Continent had pro- 
 duced a great demand for the Scriptures to which Luther had 
 so forcibly appealed. And (4) the culture and development 
 of the English language had made great progress during the 
 preceding century ; so that it was now still better fitted for 
 expressing and imparting religious knowledge. 
 
 Here, therefore, was a great occasion calling for a great man 
 to meet and use it. And such a man was found in William 
 T}Tidale, who was the first to translate the New Testament into 
 what may be called modern English, compared with that of 
 Wycliffe ; and who did this excellent work in the midst of harass- 
 ing difficulties, and of the greatest dangers, — and at the cost of 
 his life. Tyndale's version of the New Testament was first 
 printed in 1526. He did not live to complete the Old Testa- 
 ment. That was afterwards finished by Miles Coverdale ; and 
 the^rs^ ivliole Bible ever j^finted in English appeared in October 
 1535. And thus, by the labours of these two devoted men, the 
 foundation of the English Reformation was firaily laid. It 
 remained for this foundation to be built upon by other hands. 
 
 The casting off" of the Pope's authority by Henry VIII left 
 untouched the doctrine of Trausubstantiation and the Romish 
 Mass. Indeed no national religious progress was made during 
 his reign ; with the exception of the asserted independence of 
 the Anglican Church, — the appointed reading of the EngUsh 
 Bible in the Church Services, — and the public use of a revised 
 and partially improved form of an English Litany, which had 
 previously been in the hands of the people ^ Reformed opi- 
 nions, however, were making large advances in the minds of the 
 leading men, and to some extent in the country at large. 
 
 ' See Proctor 8 History of the Prayer Book, ch. iii. 
 
I 
 
 HISTOEICALLY CONSIDERED. 53 
 
 The short but most important reign of Edward VI witnessed 
 the beginning and the completion of the English Eucharistic 
 reformation. A marvellous work to have been so well accom- 
 plished in so short a time ! But preparations for it had in God's 
 providence been largely made before in many minds; and as 
 soon as a Protestant king ascended the throne, great results 
 rapidly followed, as the Reformers gained a clearer and clearer 
 insight into Scriptural truth, or as the mental eyes of the 
 peoj)le were able to bear the transition from the darkness of 
 Romish superstition to the light of the New Testament. 
 
 The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper having been the very 
 centre and stronghold of Rome's religious system and dominion, 
 one of the very first measures of reform on the accession of 
 Edward YI was the issuing of a provisional ' Order of the Com- 
 munion,' which at once restored the sacramental cup to the 
 laity who had been so long deprived of it ^ This did not, how- 
 ever, interfere with the Latin Office of the Mass ; but only added 
 to it some portions of an English service for the better edifica- 
 tion of the communicants. 
 
 No time, however, was lost in preparing a Protestant Book 
 of Common Prayer, which should entirely'- supersede the Homish 
 Liturgy. Two such books, altogether in the English language, 
 were successively produced during this short reign, in the years 
 1549 and 1552 respectively, and were sanctioned by the autho- 
 rities of the realm. The Communion Services of these Books 
 afford a clear and indisputable measure of the progress of the 
 Eucharistic reformation ; nor can we do better than to refer 
 to them, in order to see distinctly to what admirable conclusions 
 that progress at length arrived. 
 
 1. In the Communion Ser\dce of the first Prayer Book of 
 Edward VI the following particulars may be noticed. 
 
 (i) The retention of the word ' Mass.' The title of the ser- 
 vice was, ' The Sujoper of the Lord and the Holy Communion, 
 commonly called The Mass.' 
 
 ^ See Liturgies of Edward VI, Parker Society. 
 
54 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 (2) Certain vestments were specially ordered for this service, 
 » with the intention apparently of giving it a sacrificial charac- 
 ter. ' The Priest that shall execute the holy ministry shall 
 put on him the vesture appointed for that ministration, that is 
 to say a White A Ibe plain with a Vestment or Cope ' ; and any 
 assisting ministers were to have Albes with Tunicles. 
 
 (3) The Communion Table was called an 'Altar' in several 
 rubrics ; as, ' The Priest humbly standing afore the midst of 
 the Altar ' ; ' Then the Priest turning him to the Altar,' etc. J 
 
 (4) ' Auricular Confession ' and a reliance on ' Priestly Ab- ' 
 solution ' were encouraged, with some words of caution respect- 
 ing them. Thus any one troubled in conscience is directed to 
 
 * come to me or to some other learned Priest . . . that of us, as 
 of the Ministers of God and of the Church, he may receive com- 
 fort and absolution.' And those who are satisfied with a 
 general confession are ' not to be offended with them that do 
 use for their further satisfying the auricular and secret confes- 
 sion to the Priest.' At the same time those who continue in 
 malice or wrongdoing are warned that * Neither the absolution 
 of the Priest can avail them anything.' 
 
 (5) The bread was to be almost like the Romish Wafer ; for it was 
 ' to be unleavened and round as it was afore ; but without all man- 
 ner of print, and something more larger and thicker than it was.' 
 
 (6) The wine was to be mixed with water, according to the I 
 ""direction ' Putting the wine into the chalice, or else in some fair 
 
 convenient cup prepared for that use, putting thereto a little 
 pure and clean water.' 
 
 (7) The bread and wine were to be consecrated, (i) by a 
 special prayer, (ii) by the sign of the cross, and (iii) by the 
 Priest taking them in his hands; the prayer of Consecration 
 being as follows : ' Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech 
 Thee ; and with Thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bl>I<ess 
 and sanc»I«tify these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, 
 that they may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most 
 dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ, who in the same night that He 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDEEED. 55 
 
 l^Side Euhi^ic.^ ' Here the Priest must take the bread into his 
 hands.' 
 
 ' Likewise after supper He took the cup,' etc. 
 
 [Side Rubric.^ ' Here the Priest shall take the cup into his hands.' 
 
 (8) The words to be used in giving the bread and wine to 
 the communicants were, ' The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 which was given for thee, j)i"eserve thy body and soul unto 
 everlasting life.' 
 
 And similarly with the wine. 
 
 (9) It was directed that the communicants should ' receive 
 the Sacrament of Christ's body in their mouths at the Priest's , 
 hand,' in order to prevent the practice of carrying the bread 
 away and using it for ' superstition and wickedness.' 
 
 It will be seen that here was on the one hand a marked 
 improvement upon the Romish Missal, and yet on the other 
 hand a manifest need of still further reforms to bring the 
 service into a conformity with the teaching of the New Tes- 
 tament. For the Sacrament thus administered, among other 
 less important defects, encouraged the notion of a ' sacrifice ' 
 offered by a ' sacrificial Priest ' upon an ' Altar,' — of the efficacy 
 of sacerdotal absolution, — of a change wrought in the bread 
 and wine by a divine power through the performance of minis- 
 terial acts, — and, though not of actual transubstantiation, yet 
 of something which might be mistaken for it. 
 
 2. The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 
 
 It was perhaps necessary that some such intermediate ground 
 should be occupied, as that which is seen in the First Edwardian 
 Prayer Book, before the national mind could be at all prepared 
 to receive a more distinctly Protestant administration of the 
 Holy Supper. But the advanced scriptural knowledge of the 
 leading English Reformers, strengthened as they were by the 
 counsels of eminent foreign divines, especially of Peter Martyr 
 and Martin Bucer, would not allow them to stop at this imper- 
 fect stage of the Reformation \ In the year 1552 there was 
 
 ^ Martyr and Bucer were natives, the former of Florence, and the latter 
 of Schelstadt in Alsace. They had before this been invited to England 
 
56 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 given to the English Church a Second Prayer Book of a much 
 more distinctively Protestant character than the first had been. 
 In the Communion Service of this Second Book the following 
 important changes are to be seen. 
 
 ( 1 ) The word ' Mass ' was omitted from the title of the office. 
 
 (2) No special 'vestments' were to be used in this service, 
 as a rubric plainly showed. ' And here it is to be noted that 
 the minister at the time of the Communion, and at all other times 
 in his ministration, shall use neither Albe, Vestment, nor Cope ; 
 but being an Archbishop or Bishop shall have and wear a 
 Rochet ; and being a Priest or Deacon he shall have and wear 
 a Surplice only.' Thus not even a priestly garinent was allow^ed 
 to encourage the notion of a sacrifice or of any sacerdotal act in 
 the administration of this Sacrament. 
 
 (3) The word ' altar ' was carefully excluded from this service 
 and from all other parts of the book. 
 
 (4) ' Auricular confession ' and ' priestly absolution ' were 
 disallowed. For in the address to the people those parts, which 
 in the Book of 1549 had favoured such remnants of Romanism, 
 were now omitted. Only those who were troubled in conscience 
 were invited to ' come to me or to some other discreet and 
 learned minister of God's Word . . . that by the mitiistry of 
 God's Word he may receive comfort and the benefit of absolution.' 
 Comfort and absolution by the ministry of God's Word are some- 
 thing very different from ' comfort and absolution from a priest.' 
 
 (5) The sacramental bread was not to be ' unleavened and 
 round as it was afore ' ; but a rubric directed that, ' It shall 
 suffice that the bread be such as is usual to be eaten at the 
 fable with other meats, but the best and purest wheat bread 
 that may be gotten.' 
 
 (6) The direction for mixing water with the wine was omitted. 
 
 (7) There was no consecration of the sacramental elements 
 either by a prayer for their sanctification, or by the sign of the 
 cross, or by the minister's taking them in his hands. Every - 
 
 by Archbishop Cranmer, and had been made Professors of Divinity at Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge respectively. 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 57 
 
 thing was in fact omitted which could countenance the supposi- 
 tion that any change was wrought in the bread and wine, or 
 that any virtue was imparted to them through the ' priest.' 
 
 (8) The words to be used in delivering the bread to the 
 communicants were, ' Take and eat this in remembrance that 
 Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith 
 with thanksgiving.' And similarly with the wine. 
 
 (9) Instead of the direction that the communicants should 
 ' receive the Sacrament of Christ's body in their mouths at the 
 priest's hands ' the minister was to ' deliver the Communion to 
 the people in their hands kneeling.' 
 
 Furthermore a ' declaration touching the kneeling at the 
 Holy Communion ' (called sometimes 'the Black Rubric,' because 
 it was not printed in red letters like the rest) was added at the 
 last moment from the pen of Cranmer \ to the effect, ' that it is 
 not meant thereby that any adoration is done, or ought to be 
 done, either unto the sacramental bread or wine there bodily 
 received, or to any real and essential presence there being of 
 Christ's natural flesh and blood -.' 
 
 Surely this was an Eucharistic reform indeed ! There was 
 thus given to the Church of England a grandly simple and 
 nearly primitive Communion Service, with no teaching of tran- 
 substantiation or consubstantiation in it, — no ground for the 
 superstition that any change was wrought in the sacramental » 
 elements or any virtue imparted to them by the acts of the 
 officiating minister, — no unscriptural or materialising declara- 
 tion of the presence of Christ, — the very word ' altar ' carefully 
 excluded with all notions of a material or literal sacrifice 
 offered up in the service, — no prayers or offerings for the dead 
 or trust in their intercession, — no adoration of the consecrated 
 elements, — no directions for a fantastic or superstitious mode of 
 receiving them, — no administration of them to infants, — no 
 
 ^ See Dr. Hebert, vol. ii. p. 328. 
 
 ^ See the whole Declaration in the Liturgies of Edward VI, Parker 
 Society's edition. ^ 
 
68 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 reserving of them for superstitious purposes, — no encouragement 
 to a vain reliance upon a formal use of them. 
 
 The Reformation, therefore, as far as the Lord's Supper was 
 concerned, was complete. By going back to the New Testa- 
 ment for the doctrines which were to be held, and for the 
 ceremonial in which those doctrines were to be set forth, the 
 Reformers of 1552 showed to the universal Church how this holy 
 ordinance could be purified from the vain and worse than vain 
 traditions, from which it had so long suffered ; and they left this 
 'Office forthe Holy Communion' to be adopted or imitated by other 
 Christian communities, but by none of them ever to be surpassed^. 
 
 The form assumed at this time by the Eucharistic reforma- 
 tion in Scotland, under the leadership of John Knox, was nearly 
 identical with that of the English Church. Indeed ' it is 
 worthy of remark that during this period the worship of the 
 Church of Scotland was chiefly liturgical, and that the service 
 used for several years after the Reformation was the Prayer 
 , Book of Edward VI 2.' In the Lord's Supper, however, the 
 communicants received the bread and wine in a sitting jwsture, 
 as being, in Knox's view, most in accordance with the original 
 institution of this Sacrament. 
 
 A conference on this question between the great Scottish 
 reformer and Archbishop Cranmer, for the purpose of having, 
 
 ^ It is to be regi-etted that tlie word 'mysteries' should have been re- 
 tained in this Communion Service as an appellation of the Lord's Supper. 
 At the present day, at any rate, its meaning is apt to be misunderstood. 
 
 In the New Testament the word ' mystery ' means something once hid- 
 den or unknown, but now revealed to the knowledge of men. (See Eph. 
 iii. 3-6, and other places.) Among the Greeks the name 'mysteries,' in 
 the plural, had been given to certain secret rites, to which none but the 
 initiated were admitted ; and when the Christian Church had departed from 
 its apostolic simplicity the word was applied to Christian rites. In par- 
 ticular the name ' mysteries ' was given to the Lord's Supper, which indeed 
 from the fourth century onwards was made as far as possible analogous to 
 tlie secret mysteries of Greece. 
 
 In the Prayer Book the word is used in the sense of a holy rite, or 
 religious ordinance. 
 
 * See Russell, quoted in Mosheim, vol. ii. p. 493, ed. Stubbs. 
 
 i 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 59 
 
 if possible, the same form observed in both the national 
 Churches, was not productive of any result. Each Church has 
 continued to follow its own convictions, and to use its own 
 discretion in this matter. And those who have had personal 
 experience of both these modes of reception, have found that 
 both of them may be equally compatible with the propriety and 
 solemnity requisite in such a service ^. 
 
 Second Period — from a.d. 1560 to the present time. 
 
 In this last period, embraced in our short review of the 
 history of the Lord's Supper, our attention will be almost 
 exclusively occupied by our own country and the English 
 Church. It is well, however, to remark that it was at the 
 beginning of this period that the Church of Rome finally settled 
 and formularised its doctrines, and therein confirmed and per- 
 petuated all the Eucharistic teaching which had been promul- 
 gated about 350 years before by the fourth Council of Lateran 
 and Pope Innocent III. The Council of Trent convened for the 
 purpose of stopping and, if possible, extinguishing the Protest- 
 ant Reformation, was first assembled at the end of the year 
 1545; and having after this been twice interrupted, and twice 
 reassembled, it finally closed its sessions in December 1563. 
 And its decrees, supplemented and enforced by the creed of 
 Pope Pius IV, wliich gives in a condensed form the substance 
 of the council's principal decisions, have ever since been acknow- 
 ledged as containing the authoritative religious profession of the 
 Church of Rome. 
 
 ^ At the present time, among the orthodox Christian Communities who 
 are separated from the Church of England, the Wesleyans use a Service 
 essentially the same as that of the Anglican Prayer Book. The Congre- 
 gationalists adhere more to the Scottish mode of administration. With 
 them the presiding minister reads from one of the Gospels, or from i Cor. 
 xi. 23-26, an account of the institution of this sacrament, — delivers at his 
 discretion a short address, and offers a short prayer. Deacons, after the 
 breaking of the bread and giving of thanks, carry the bread, and after- 
 wards the wine, to the communicants, who take their seats in the centre 
 of the church and remain seated. The bread is previously divided into 
 small portions for each person to take one. "* 
 
60 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 The fifth article of this creed of Pius IV, which relates to the 
 Lord's Supper, is as follows : — 
 
 ' I profess likewise that in the Mass there is offered to God a 
 true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the 
 dead ; and that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist 
 there are truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood 
 together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; 
 and that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of 
 the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine 
 into the blood ; which conversion the Catholic Church calls 
 Transubstantiation. I also confess that under either kind 
 alone Christ is received whole and entire, and a true Sacra- 
 ment.' 
 
 The Protestant Reformation in England, after having been 
 suppressed in its national acceptance during the reign of Queen 
 Mary, was revived on the accession of Elizabeth, and was then 
 so firmly established, — at first by Royal and Parliamentary 
 authority, and afterwards by the enlightened convictions of the 
 nation at large, — that it has never ceased to be the cherished 
 inheritance of succeeding generations, or lost its hold upon the 
 national mind and life : while the ' Articles of Religion ' drawn 
 up and agreed to at the end of the year 1562, and promulgated 
 some months earlier than those of the Council of Trent, have 
 continued to the present time to testify to the Protestant and 
 Scriptural character of the English Church ^ 
 
 The four Articles relating to the Lord's Supper (28-31) ex- 
 hibit the Eucharistic doctrines of the Church of England, under 
 this their dogmatic form, in complete harmony with the ma- 
 tured convictions of the English Reformers, as seen in the 
 Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. And from this authorita- 
 
 * In the reign of Edward VI, in the year 1552, forty-two Articles were 
 drawn up, ' to root out the discord of opinions and establish the agreement 
 of true religion,' These were revised, under Queen Elizabeth, in 1562, 
 and were re-arranged, with some alterations and omissions, in thirty-nine 
 Articles. A final revision of them in 1571 made some slight verbal altera- 
 tions, and left them in their present state. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDERED. 61 
 
 tive exposition of its tenets it has never, as a Church, explicitly- 
 receded. 
 
 But in reviewing the Eucharistic history of the period with 
 which we are now engaged, this is not the only tiling which 
 has to be considered. There are besides tliis two important 
 topics demanding our attention from their intimate connection 
 with our general subject, and from their influence upon current 
 opinions respecting this sacred ordinance. 
 
 The Jirst of these is concerned with the alterations which have 
 at different times been authoritatively made in certain church 
 formularies relating to the Lord's Supper ; while under the 
 second we shall have to deal with sacramental acts and doc- 
 trines not directly sanctioned by Church authority, and there- 
 fore, strictly speaking, of a private nature, but yet too dan- 
 gerous in their tendencies, and too prevalent or influential in 
 their efi'ectSj to be left out of our consideration. 
 
 Alteeations in Foemularies relating 
 TO THE Loed's Supper. 
 
 The Second Prayer Book of Edward YI contained, as before 
 observed, ' an Office for the Holy Communion ' freed from all 
 the human traditions which contravened the truth and simpli- 
 city of this ordinance, as exhibited in the New Testament. 
 But the early death of the king in 1553 cut short the work of 
 the Reformation, before this Second Book had time to gain a 
 hold upon the minds of the joeople, or to be firmly established 
 in the use of the Church ; and the reign of Mary restored 
 Popery, and all Popish usages throughout the land. 
 
 On the accession, therefore, of Elizabeth, the queen found 
 herself in a position of difficulty, which required much caution 
 as well as firmness. She was determined never to submit to 
 the authority of the Pope, yet she felt no such bigoted aversion 
 to Romanism as would have inclined her to extirpate it with 
 fire and sword, as her sister had done with the Reformation. 
 The problem consequently to be solved was how, without 
 
62 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 violence and bloodshed to re-establish the Reformed religion in 
 a countiy where many bishops and clergy, and a large portion 
 of the people were opposed to it. 
 
 ' The Romanists were in all the places of jDower and influ- 
 ence, and were not only left in the quiet occuj)ation of them, 
 but they had also discovered that there were many circum- 
 stances connected with the character of Elizabeth, and the 
 security of her crown, which would make her desirous of re- 
 taining their good opinion ^' And when it is further borne in 
 mind that, according to the notions then prevalent about 
 national religion, all persons were to be compelled by law to 
 conform to the use of a national Liturgy, we see how inevit- 
 ably the Queen and her advisers must have been inclined to 
 make some compromise, and to recede a little from the position 
 to which the Reformation had advanced in King Edward's 
 reign, — to endeavour, in short, to conciliate the adherents of 
 Rome, or at any rate not violently repel them, while at the same 
 time her Protestant subjects should not be shocked or alienated 
 by any open countenance given to Romish superstition. 
 
 1. The Prayer Booh of Queen Elizabeth, in a.d. 1559. 
 
 The English Prayer Book was accordingly revised ; and it 
 was the Queen's wish that the Commission appointed for that 
 purpose should ' favour the first Service-book of Edward VI ^.' 
 This the Commissioners were not at all inclined to do, but after 
 they had completed their work and given in their Report, some 
 changes in a compromising direction were made in it by the 
 Queen in Council before it was presented to Parliament. The 
 changes made in this Revision (in 1559) were principally con- 
 nected with the administration of the Lord's Supper — the great 
 practical ground of contention between Rome and the Reform- 
 ation — and these included — 
 
 * Cardwell, Hist, of Conferences, p. 18. 
 
 ^ For a fuller account of this Commission, see Past Revisions of the 
 Prayer Book, published by the Prayer Book Revision Society, and Cai'd- 
 well's History of Conferences, p. 21, &c. 
 
HISTOKICALLY CONSIDERED. 63 
 
 (i) The restoration of tfie sacerdotal dress by the new ' Vest- 
 ments rubric' ' And here it is to be noted that the minister 
 at the time of the Communion, and at all other times in his 
 ministration, shall use such ornaments in the Church as were in 
 use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign 
 of King Edward VI V 
 
 (2) The union of the two formulas of the First and Second 
 Books, the Minister being directed to say in delivering the 
 bread to the Communicants, ' The body of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto 
 everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ 
 died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with 
 thanksgiving.' And then similarly with the cup. 
 
 (3) The omission of the ' Black Rubric ' about the posture 
 of kneeling. 
 
 These changes were not very great ; but they were sufficient 
 for the Queen's purpose. They were in reality of a graver im- 
 port than, on a superficial view, might seem to be the case. 
 The first and third were favourable to Romanists : for the 
 former encouraged the belief that in tliis Sacrament a material 
 sacrifice was ofi'ered up by a priest : and the latter made room 
 for the admission that in the posture of kneeling the conse- 
 crated elements might be adored. And with regard to the 
 second change, Protestants, it is true, could and can still use 
 the words without offence ; for to them, ' Take and eat tliis ' 
 means. Take and eat this bread ; but Romanists could acquiesce 
 in the use of the same formula, for to them it would mean, 
 
 ^ This was a return to the vestments ordered in the first Edwardian 
 Prayer Book. See Liturgies of Edward VI. (ed. Parker Society), pp. 76, 157. 
 The Queen afterwards modified this Rubric, as she was expressly authorised 
 to do by the Act of Uniformity. Her 'Injunctions,' issued in 1564, con- 
 tained the following directions : ' In the ministration of the Holy Com- 
 munion in Cathedral and Collegiate Churches the principal Minister shall 
 use a Cope with Gospeller and Epistoler agreeable ' — i. e. the Ministers who 
 read the Gospel and Epistle should wear ' the vestures appointed for their 
 ministry, that is to say, Albes tvith Tunicles' But in parish churches 
 ' Every Minister saying any public prayers, or ministering the sacraments 
 or other rites of the Church, shall wear a comely Surplice with sleeves.' 
 
64 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 ' Take and eat this Body of Christ,^ just before mentioned, and 
 now put into their hands. 
 
 Elizabeth's object was so far gained that ' for ten years ' as 
 Heylin informs us, ' the Papists repaired to the parish churches 
 without doubt or scruple/ But the Queen's policy was not 
 acceptable to the feelings and convictions of the best informed 
 among her Protestant people, including the most enlightened 
 bishops of the Church ; though they generally submitted to it 
 in the hope that a better state of things would ere long ensue. 
 * The reluctant divines of the Queen's Commission,' says Bishop 
 Burnett, ' reckoned that if that generation could on any terms 
 have been separated from Popery, though with allowances for 
 many superstitious conceits, it would once unite them all, and 
 in the next age none of these should any more remain.' But 
 these hopes proved to be delusive. These retrograde steps were 
 not retraced, with the exception of such relief as was afforded 
 by the Queen's ' Injunctions.' 
 
 This Revision of the Prayer Book at the beginning of the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth was followed, in the course of the 
 seventeenth century, by the other Revisions, both of which left 
 some mark upon the Eucharistic formularies of the Church. 
 
 2. The Prayer Book o/" James I, in a.d. 1604. 
 
 The Hampton Court Conference, which, if it had been wisely 
 conducted, might have resulted in much good to the Church 
 and nation, was on the whole a sad failure. The Prayer Book, 
 however, was revised, and a few improvements were made in it ; 
 but the only noticeable result of this Revision, as far as our 
 subject is concerned, was the addition to the Catechism of the 
 concluding portion about the Sacraments, in which the follow- 
 ing answers appear : — 
 
 * The body and blood of Christ which are verily and indeed 
 taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.' And, 
 'The strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body 
 and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine.' 
 
 These words confirmed and still further carried out the com- 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDERED. 65 
 
 promise wliicli had been made in Queen Elizabetli's Revision. 
 They may, it is true, by some amount of pressure, be explained 
 in a Protestant sense ; and they have been, and are, so received 
 by Protestant Churchmen ; but they do not harmonise well with 
 the sacramental teaching of the 39 Articles, and a Romanist 
 might use them as not inconsistent with his creed. In Ar- 
 ticle 2 8 the words ' The body of Christ is given, taken, and 
 eaten in the Supper,' are by the immediate context shown to be 
 figuratively used, just as similar expressions are in the 6th 
 chapter of St. John's Gospel ; but to say, ' verily and i7ideed 
 taken and received,' suggests the idea of a literal and cor- 
 poral presence of Christ in the Sacrament; and, however 
 explained, such words are apt to produce an unsatisfactory 
 confusion of thought, as we shall have to notice more fully in 
 subsequent pages. 
 
 The second answer quoted above seems to imply that the 
 Lord's body and blood by some power inherent in them act 
 upon the souls of men, as bread and wine do upon their bodily 
 fi'ame — a belief quite unwarranted by Scripture, though it 
 found its way into the Church by the end of the fourth century ^, 
 frequently appeared afterwards in the course of Church his- 
 tory, and has been revived with more or less indistinctness in 
 modern times. And so the words of this answer have a tendency 
 to encourage a materialistic view of this Sacrament, as if there 
 were some natural or supernatural action of the Lord's body 
 upon the communicant. 
 
 3. The Prayer Book of Charles II, in a.d. 1662. 
 
 After the close of the Savoy Conference in 1661 the Prayer 
 Book was again revised, when the following alterations were 
 made in connection with the Communion Service. 
 
 ^ The writings of Cyril of Alexandria, who died in a.d. 444, abound with 
 assertions to the eflfect that the body of Christ had an inherent power of 
 giving life from its union with Him who is ' the Life.' He ascribes some 
 of the miracles of Jesus recorded in the Gospels to this power of His human 
 body. — Seep. 17. ^ 
 
 F 
 
66 THE LOED'S SUPPER 
 
 (i) The direction was added for placing the bread and wine 
 upon the Communion Table, taken from the first book of 
 Edward YI, and suggesting the idea of an offering or sacrifice. 
 
 (2) The bread and wine were to be consecrated by the * priest,' 
 who was to ' say the prayer of Consecration ' ; while the side 
 rubrics ordered a manual consecration by his laying his hands 
 upon them. Such consecration had not previously been used 
 for more than a hundred years in the Church of England ; and 
 though quite capable of being taken in a Protestant sense, as 
 meaning nothing more than a setting apart of the bread and 
 wine for a sacred use, yet it equally admits the inference, which 
 persons of Romanizing tendencies like to make, that a change 
 in the sacramental elements is herein wrought by the action of 
 the priest ; and a door is thus opened for advancing still 
 further. 
 
 (3) A rubric was added at the end of the service to show 
 what was to be done with any consecrated bread or wine 
 which might remain after all had communicated. 
 
 (4) The ' Black Rubric ' was restored, with the significant 
 alteration of the original words ' any real or essential presence,' 
 into ' any corjyoral presence,' of Christ's natural flesh and blood. 
 
 (5) The rubric which ordered the vestments of Edward VI's 
 First Book to be used was re-enacted, although it had been 
 long before superseded by Queen Elizabeth's ' Injunctions.' And 
 this has of late years been the occasion of many unhappy disputes 
 and difficulties. 
 
 And now, on looking back on these successive alterations in 
 the Eucharistic formularies of the English Church, we can see 
 how they all tended in the same direction to deviate fi'om the 
 scrijitural simplicity to which our great Reformers had brought 
 back the administration of the Lord's Supper. Alterations 
 they were, — some very slight, and none of them in themselves 
 very great or striking, — immediately connected with action 
 rather than doctrine ; — yet altogether they could not fail to 
 influence Church opinion, and so indirectly to influence Church 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 67 
 
 teaching. Their gradual introduction during the space of more 
 than a hundred years made the acceptance of them by the 
 Church at large all the more easy ; and Protestant Churchmen 
 acquiesced in, and at last used without reluctance, these altered 
 formularies, and they do so still. Taking their stand upon the 
 Articles and Homilies, and the sound doctrines therein main- 
 tained, they insist that it is in accordance with these that the 
 services in the Prayer Book must be interpreted and used. 
 But this does not remove all difficulty or d^inger. We have still 
 to ask, ' Why then were these alterations made 1 ' Certainly 
 they were not introduced in order to bring the Liturgy into a 
 closer conformity with the Articles or with the known convic- 
 tions of the great Reformers. These alterations, as we have 
 seen, were at the beginning framed in a spirit of compromise, 
 so as to be acceptable to Romanists ; and afterwards they were 
 adaptations to prevalent opinions, which had lost a clear and 
 simple view of the New Testament teaching on this subject, and 
 which, while they were the cause of such liturgical changes, 
 were themselves encouraged and perpetuated by them. And 
 hence trouble was sure sooner or later to ensue. 
 
 No great mischief seemed indeed at first to result from them ; 
 just as, ages before, the same thing had happened with the first 
 departures from primitive truth and simplicity in the early 
 Church. During the eighteenth century the Anglican Church 
 was for the most part too fast asleep for much evil or good 
 to be actively stirred within it. But when a time of awaken- 
 ing came, there was found in the Prayer Book, by those who 
 wished to find it, a standing-ground, or base of operations, for 
 holding and extending anti-Protestant doctrines and practices 
 in the very bosom of the Church, and for advancing nearer and 
 nearer to the very errors against which that Church especially 
 protests. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 EucHAKiSTic Doctrines not sanctioned by the Church. 
 
 The history of the Lord's Supper, even in the short view of 
 it presented in these pages, would not be complete without our 
 considering not only the authorised formularies of the English 
 Church, but also the more private and individual opinions (i) 
 of the great Church Reformers ; and (2) of some others of a later 
 date who have more or less widely influenced religious thought 
 and action in the use of this Sacrament ; till we come (3) to 
 the latest phase of doctrine and profession, which in a manner 
 beyond all former precedent has appeared in the most recent 
 times, and is even now extensively exhibited in the Church. 
 
 (i) The opinions and assertions of the early Reformers, 
 although standing outside of authoritative Church teaching, 
 nevertheless had a sensible effect upon the times in which they 
 lived, — extended their influence to other generations, — affected 
 to some extent the liturgical changes which we have already 
 noticed,— and helped to hand down to us some traditional 
 sentiments, which few persons unfortunately have the courage 
 to bring to the test of Scripture truth, and to reject when at 
 variance with it. 
 
 It could not be reasonably expected that even the wisest 
 and most enlightened of the Reformers would invariably keep 
 their minds entirely free from the influence of the Patristic 
 divinity which they had long studied, and of the Church 
 traditions in the midst of which they had been brought up. 
 And it was natural for them in those times of conflict with long- 
 established authority to desire to show, as far as possible, that 
 the doctrine which they held was not opposed to that of the 
 earlier Church. Moreover, when under examination on the 
 charge of heresy, with life and death hanging on their answer, 
 it is not surprising that they were sometimes led to represent 
 'iheir tenets as less diametrically at variance with those of their 
 examiners, than they were thought to be. Hence they were 
 sometimes betrayed into using expressions which were deficient 
 
 ] 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDEEED. 69 
 
 in clearness, and might easily be turned to a meaning very- 
 different from what they intended, — playing fast and loose, as 
 it were, witli words, where the greatest precision was desirable. 
 Thus even good old Latimer, notwithstanding his solid learn- 
 ing and steady self-possession, fell into the mistake of admitting 
 that there is ' a real presence ' of Christ in the Lord's Supper. 
 
 In answer to Grardiner s assertion that ' There is really pre- 
 sent the natural body of Christ,' he had replied, ' There is none i 
 other 2)t'ese7ice of Christ required than a spiritual presence ; 
 and this presence is sufficient for a Christian man, as the 
 presence by which we abide in Christ and Christ abideth in us.' 
 But then he unguardedly added, ' And tliis same presence may 
 most suitably be called a real presence, for it is a presence not 
 feigned but true and faithful ^.' And again on another occasion 
 he said, 'A spiritual presence may be called a real presence, 
 because to the faithful believer there is the real sjnritual 
 presence of the body of Christ ^.' 
 
 It is evident that Latimer meant to deny altogether a bodily 
 presence, or the presence of Christ's body, and to assert a true 
 and genuine presence of Christ as a Spirit, i. e. as God. But 
 he unfortunately took words which were well understood and 
 commonly employed in one sense, and used them in another. 
 The word ' real ' was well known as signifying the res ipsa of 
 the question, i. e. the 2)resence of the natural body actually there, 
 which Latimer strongly denied, and yet he used this same word,' 
 putting upon it a very different meaning. And then what a 
 shadowy expression is ' the spiritual presence of Christ's body ' 
 to denote His presence as a divine Spirit in the soul. What is 
 the sjdritual presence of a body ^ 1 
 
 This ambiguous use of language could be productive of 
 nothing but confusion and mischief ; and such results the more 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 319. 
 
 ^ Even the word ' spiritual ' may have two significations, for besides the 
 sense in which Latimer used it, a ' spiritual presence ' may be taken to 
 mean the presence of Christ's spiritual body — His glorified body, like the 
 future body of His people. • 
 
70 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 readily followed inasmuch as Latimer's unfortunate words did 
 not stand alone. We find Cranmer asserting that ' The hody 
 of Christ is present in them that worthily receive the Sacra- 
 ment,' — and then exj)laining his words as meaning that Christ 
 is j)resent there * not corporally, but only in force, grace, virtue, 
 and benefit, really and efi'ectually present ■^.' What but some 
 confused and misty meaning eluding all attempts to grasp it, — 
 if any meaning at all, — can be attached to such words 1 ' A 
 body present, but not corporally, i. e. not as a body ' — ' really 
 present, yet there only in force and grace,' &c. Then again 
 Cranmer says, ' In that Supjoer, as we in our body receive true 
 bread and wine, so in our spirit we are nourished with the true 
 hody and blood of our Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ^/ 
 Words wliich may be explained to mean the same as ' My flesh 
 is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed,' in John vi. 55 ; 
 or as the expression in our Communion Service, ' Feed on Him 
 in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving ' ; but standing as they 
 do without any qualifying or explanatory terms, they rather 
 indicate the notion, so often noticed, that the natural body of 
 Christ had a power or virtue for acting upon the souls and bodies 
 of men. 
 
 Ridley also says with great truth and distinctness, 'The 
 natural substance of Christ's human nature is in heaven and 
 not here enclosed under the form of bread ' ; and again, * If He 
 be now present in the body of His flesh, the Supper must cease ; 
 for a remembrance is not of a thing present, but of a thing past 
 and absent '^.' Yet in his last examination before the com- 
 missioners he replied * Both you and I agree herein that in the 
 Sacrament is the very true and natural body and blood of Christ; 
 we only difi'er in modo, — in the way and manner of being.' And 
 he added, ' In the Sacrament of the altar is the natural body 
 and blood of Christ vere et realiter, indeed and really, by grace 
 and efiicacy ; for so every worthy receiver receiveth the very 
 true body of Christ ; but (lie adds) if you mean really and indeed, 
 
 ' Vol. ii. p. 324. 3 Vol. ii. p. 325. 3 Vol. ii. p. 334. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDEEED. 71 
 
 so that you would include a lively and movable body under the 
 forms of bread and wine, then, in that sense, is not Christ's body 
 in the Sacrament really and indeed ^.' But it was in that sense, 
 and in that sense alone that they used these words ' really and 
 indeed ' ; and to use the words in another sense, as Ridley did, 
 conduced most surely to ambiguity and misunderstanding. 
 
 How much better if these great and good men, — the founders 
 of the English Church of the Reformation, — could have confined 
 themselves to such clear and unmistakable language as that of » 
 Lady Jane Grey, who said, ' I think that I neither receive flesh 
 nor blood, but bread and wine ; which bread when it is broken, 
 and wine when it is drunken, putteth me in remembrance how 
 that for my sins the body of Christ was broken, and the blood 
 shed on the cross ; and with that bread and wine I receive the 
 benefits that came from breaking His body and shedding His 
 blood. God forbid that I should say that I eat the very na- 
 tural body and blood of Christ ; else there were two bodies, 
 two Christs. One body was tormented on the cross; and if 
 they did eat another body, then had He two bodies. If God 
 would have done any miracle at His sujoper, He might have 
 done so. But I say He minded no work or miracle, but only to 
 break His body and shed His blood on the cross for our sins. 
 But I pray you to answer me this one question, Where was 
 Christ when He said. This My body 1 and what took He but 
 bread 1 what brake He but bread ? and look, what He brake 
 He gave ; and look, what He gave they did eat ; and yet all 
 this while He Himself was alive and at supper before His dis- 
 ciples, or else they were deceived ^.' 
 
 Equally clear too and satisfactory were those words of John 
 Rogers, the first of the martyrs in the Marian persecution, who 
 said in his examination, ' I cannot understand really and sub- 
 stantially to signify otherwise than corporally. But corpor- 
 ally Christ is only in heaven ; so cannot Christ be corporally 
 also in your Sacrament ^.' 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 334. 2 Vol. ii. p. 476. ^ Vol. ii. p. 47S. 
 
72 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 (2) THs unfortunate adoption of ambiguous and mystified 
 terms, so calculated to hinder a clear apprehension and enunci- 
 ation of the truth, inflicted great mischief upon succeeding genera- 
 tions. Indeed it infected the whole current of the Eucharistic 
 theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the religious 
 history and literature of those times abundantly shows. 
 
 Thus we see that even such a mind as that of Richard Hooker 
 did not altogether escaj)e its unhaj)py influence, when we read 
 some of the sections in his Fifth Book. To find fault with any- 
 thing that he has written is looked upon by some persons as an 
 unwarrantable presumption ; but truth is more to be revered 
 than even ' the Judicious Hooker ' ; and what are we to think of 
 such passages as the following ? In section 55 he distinctly and 
 rightly affirms, ' The substance of the body of Christ hath no 
 presence, neither can have any, but only local. It was not there- 
 fore everywhere seen. It is not every^vhere now, being exalted 
 to heaven. There is no proof in the world strong to enforce that 
 Christ had a true body, but by the true and natural properties 
 of His body. Amongst which j^rojoerties, definite or local pre- 
 sence is chief.' Again, ' His human substance in itself is natu- 
 rally absent from the earth ; His soul and body not on earth 
 but in heaven only.' And then after these sound and sensible 
 words, he immediately adds, ' Yet because this substance is in- 
 separably joined to that personal Word, which by His very 
 divine essence is present with all tilings, the nature, which can- 
 not have in itself universal presence, hath it after a sort by 
 being nowhere severed from that which is everywhere present.' 
 And further in section 67, while declining to admit distinctly 
 the Romish or the Lutheran doctrine, he does distinctly affirm 
 ' The real j^resence of Christ's most blessed body and blood in 
 ♦ the worthy receiver of the Sacrament ' ; and declares that ' these 
 holy mysteries impart unto us in true and real though mystical 
 manner the very person of our Lord Himself whole, perfect, and 
 entire.' With such expressions as these, and much more to the 
 same effect, from a divine so highly and universally esteemed, 
 it is no wonder that the stream of Eucharistic theology should 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 73 
 
 not subsequently have been very clear. Nothing can with truth 
 be predicated concerning a body in its relation to a given 
 space, but presence or absence ; and to attempt to mix up these 
 two together in a cloud of words, is equally bad in philosophy, 
 theology, and common sense \ 
 
 Yet we have the same sort of thing in Jewel, who uses the 
 ambiguous words, 'By faith we verily receive His body and 
 blood.' And again, ' we do expressly pronounce that in the 
 Lord's Supj)er there is truly given into the believing the body 
 and blood of our Lord, — the flesh of the Son of God ^ ; ' — and 
 so on, without one hint that it is only in a figurative or meta- 
 jphorical sense that the bread given and received is called the 
 Lord's body, as being a symbolical representation and memorial 
 of it ; moreover the body and blood of Christ are not ' given 
 into the believing.' They ' feed on Christ in their hearts by 
 faith ^' 
 
 Throughout the seventeenth century the same thing is seen. 
 The addition to the Catechism in 1604 (see p. 65) from the 
 pen of Dean Overall gave countenance to both the elements of 
 indistinctness and confusion of thought and language, which are 
 abundantly traceable in the Eucharistic theology during the 
 whole period from the time of Queen Elizabeth to the present 
 day. For ( i ) the words ' verily and indeed ' favoured the 
 belief in an actual presence of the Lord's body ; and (2) the 
 wording of the other answer, quoted on p. 65, suggested the 
 Cyrillian doctrine about the power and operation of Christ's 
 natural body upon the bodies and souls of men. And one, or 
 the other, or both of these, again and again appear in the jDages 
 of the numerous theological writers of the seventeenth century. 
 The list of their names includes those of Andrewes, Thorndike, 
 
 1 Vol, ii. p. 378. ^ Vol. ii. p. 350. 
 
 ^ Archbishop Sandys is one of the clearest and most satisfactory of the 
 Elizabethan divines on this subject, but even he is not quite so clear and 
 outspoken as could be wished, and he does not appear to have kept quite 
 free from the Cyrillian doctrine so often alluded to. — See Dr, Hebert, 
 vol. ii. 402. 5 
 
74 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 Usher, Bishop Hall, Joseph Mede, Bramhall, Cosin, Reynolds, 
 Jeremy Taylor, Stillingfleet, Barrow, Bull, Beveridge, Ken, 
 Baxter, and others, from whose works extracts are given by 
 Dr. Hebert ; and among them Barrow and Beveridge alone 
 seem to have risen above their fellows into a clearer atmosphere 
 of Eucharistic truth. 
 
 Of the rest some draw nearer than others to the doctrine of 
 Rome ; thus Thorndike justifies the adoration of the Eucharis- 
 tic elements, or at least of Christ presumed to be present in 
 them ; and Cosin says, ' I cannot see where any real difference 
 is betwixt us (i.e. Anglicans and Romanists) about the real pre- 
 sence ; the body of Christ is taken by us sacramentally, spiri- 
 tually, and really, but not corporally.' 
 
 Of the more moderate divines Bishop Jeremy Taylor may 
 suffice for an example, and even he says, ' The symbols become 
 changed into the body and blood of Christ, after a sacramental, 
 i.e. a spiritual real manner, so that all that worthily com- 
 municate do by faith receive Christ really^ effectually, and to all 
 the purposes of His passion ^' 
 
 The remarks of Bishoj) Heber upon these words, in his Life of 
 Jeremy Taylor, are so good and forcible, that I will give them 
 here as a clear and full answer to all such exj)ressions, whenso- 
 ever and by whomsoever used. ' With sacramental,' says 
 Heber, ' in this sense the term real is utterly inconsistent. 
 The word " real," as Taylor has introduced it, is unmeaning or 
 worse ; inasmuch as for the elements to be really changed into 
 the body and blood of Christ is the very thing for wliich the 
 Romanists plead, and which is at complete variance with 
 Taylor's previous statements, as well as with all his subsequent 
 arguments. What indeed is the meaning of anything being 
 present under its symbols and representations, unless it be that 
 the thing itself is not there, but that there is something else 
 which supplies its place ? Or what but this can be the 
 meaning of the spiritual presence of a substance ' 1 ' 
 
 » Vol. ii. p. 578. 2 Vol. ii. p. 579. 
 
 ^ Dean Goode points out that it is a sophism to make the ' real and 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 75 
 
 With Archbishop Wake, whose life was nearly equally divided 
 between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we may almost 
 say that there began a new era in the history of the Eucharistic 
 controversy. Instead of 'the real presence of the body and 
 blood of Christ,' which had hitherto been currently maintained, 
 the Archbishop adopted the assertion of 'the real presence of 
 Christ,' which became a popular expression, and without 
 altogether superseding the older phrase survives even to the 
 present day ^ This seemed to relieve the question of some dif- 
 ficulties ; yet it is in fact as objectionable as the former phrase, 
 and as fruitful in confusion of thought and error. For, if the 
 presence of Christ in His divine nature be intended, the word 
 ' real ' is, as before shown, out of place and misleading ; and, 
 besides, that is a presence which no one denies. But if some- 
 thing more than this is meant, then the presence of our Lord in 
 His human nature — His body and blood — is brought in after all, 
 although seemingly denied. And so the evil was not removed, 
 but continued, under this slightly altered form, to be handed 
 down to other generations. 
 
 The eighteenth century was one of slumber rather than of 
 theology in the Church. Waterland was one of the best divines 
 of that time ; but though his work on the Lord's Supper is 
 in many respects commendable, yet he could not keep clear of 
 this all-prevailing mistiness of language, and he tells us that 
 'the body of Christ [i.e. as he affirms. His glorified body in 
 heaven] is verily and indeed received, and consequently is said 
 to be really present, notwithstanding its local absence ^.' 
 
 spiritual presence ' mean the real presence of a body after the manner of 
 existence of a spirit. This is not merely a thing beyond our comprehen- 
 sion, but it involves nonsense. — Dr. Hebert, vol. ii. p. 699. 
 
 ^ Archbishop Wake is credited with the first direct enunciation of this 
 form of speech, but the idea which it sought to express seems to have been 
 in the minds of those divines who altered the Black Rubric in the Re- 
 vision of 1662. For they worded it so as to deny 'a corporal presence,' 
 but not ' a real or essential presence,' leaving room for ' a presence of 
 Christ ' in some way to be maintained. 
 
 ^ Vol. ii. p. 673, where Dr. Hebert well remarks, 'Will not plain lay- 
 men say that we are mad.' ' 
 
76 THE LOED'S SUPPER 
 
 And this kind of wavering, halting, ambiguous theology, — 
 this swaying to and fro between Rome and the Bible, — this 
 self-contradictory and delusive style of thought and utterance, — 
 has never been swept away. It prevails in some form or other 
 even to this present time. Numbers of Christian people, 
 clergy and laity alike, even men who in other respects are well- 
 informed in Biblical knowledge, and have a clear apprehension 
 of evangelical truth, are evidently not free from the influence 
 of such vague, unsettled and unsettling doctrine, and have never 
 gained a clear, simple, straightforward understanding of the 
 truth in this subject, which they would have gathered from the 
 New Testament, were it not for the disturbing effects of these 
 ' traditions of men.' 
 
 And thus we witness the remarkable fact that in the Church 
 of England, with its Articles Scriptural and Protestant, and with 
 the Bible freely circulated among all its members, we have a 
 diverging current of traditional opinion running on from the 
 time of the Reformation to our own days, leaving its mark here 
 and there upon the Church's Liturgy, and tending to mystify 
 the Church's teaching, or even to throw it back into some of 
 the earlier forms of error which it was the express object of 
 that great religious revolution to displace. 
 
 Strange as this fact may seem to be, it would be more than 
 useless to ignore it. It affords a striking example of the 
 tenacity with which false notions, once deeply-rooted, hold on 
 their power from age to age. And it helps also to throw some 
 light upon the manner in which the Lord's Supper has been 
 dealt with in the last remarkable movement within the Church, 
 with which our present historical review must be concluded, 
 and which could hardly have developed itself, as it has done, if 
 there had been nothing in the formularies of the Church for it 
 to lay hold of for its support, and if the simple teacliing of the 
 New Testament, recovered at the Reformation, had not been to 
 some extent afterwards overlaid and obscured in the theological 
 literature of subsequent years, and in the minds of the present 
 and some former generations. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDEEED. 77 
 
 (3) It does not fall within the scope of our present subject to 
 trace at any length the rise and progress of the religious system, 
 which, under the different names of ' Tractarianism,' ' Puseyism,' 
 ' Anglo-Catholicism,' and ' Eitualism,' has grown up in the midst 
 of us during the last half-century. We are concerned only with 
 the Eucharistic doctrines and practices which it inculcates and 
 promotes, and which occupy a prominent position in this new 
 school of Anglican divinity. 
 
 The originators and earliest leaders in this movement began 
 some fifty years ago with an attempt to reproduce among us the 
 Church system of the fourth and fifth centuries. But neither 
 they themselves, nor their disciples and successors, did or could 
 stop there. The Eucharistic peculiarities of that Church period 
 gradually led on, as we have seen, to the full-blown Komish 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation with all its accompaniments ; and 
 in a similar manner the old Tractarian school passed on beyond 
 the original teaching of the ' Tracts for the Times ' ; and 
 modern ' E-itualism ' is now essentially Romish in fact, if not 
 always in undisguised profession. 
 
 There are indeed some different varieties to be seen in the 
 issues, to which this Anglo-Catholicism has led its votaries. 
 
 1 . Some with a conscientious honesty have ' gone over to 
 Rome,' as the proper place for those who had already embraced 
 its tenets. 
 
 2. Others, a larger number, continue in the Church of 
 England, holding its benefices, teaching from its pulpits, minis- 
 tering or worshipping in its sacred buildings, while they 
 avowedly celebrate ' the Mass,' or join in its celebration, as far 
 as possible, in the very style of Rome, with altar and sacrificing 
 priest, with vestments, incense, crossings, prostrations, and 
 every other mediaeval embellishment, and with the adoration of 
 the consecrated elements, as containing or exhibiting under their 
 form the Lord Himself upon their altar \ This Romanism 
 
 * Mr. Bennet of Frome, whose case came before tlie Court of Arches 
 a few years ago, described the usual practice of his party,, when he said, 
 
78 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 pure and simple is maintained in a considerable number of 
 English Churches ; and in many more, although this is not seen 
 in all its completeness, yet approaches towards it are made with 
 different degrees of nearness both in doctrine and in act. 
 
 3. With Romanism thus carried out in action, full and dis- 
 tinct Romish doctrine may consistently be proclaimed ; but this 
 is not always the case. Thus Dr. Pusey, whose name and 
 memory are so highly esteemed in the ranks of Anglo- 
 Catholicism, and who may justly be regarded as representing a 
 large section of its adherents, does not in express terms agree 
 with Rome. He maintains indeed that ' the body and blood of 
 Christ are literally and really, and not in any figurative sense, 
 present in the consecrated elements.' But he further explains 
 this view by saying, * The same body which is locally at the right 
 hand of God, is supra-localJy, under a different mode of exist- 
 ence, present with us really, truly, substantially, though spiri- 
 tually ; and since His body is there, there must be His soul also, 
 there also His Divinity.' And again, 'It is a great mystery of 
 His love, that being for ever in His natural mode of existence in 
 His human body at the right hand of God, He should so delight 
 to be among the sons of men, that He should invent, so to speak, 
 another mode of existence in order to be with us, to be with 
 each of us, so as to be wholly with each of us, as if He were 
 with none besides ^.' 
 
 So far as any sense can be extracted from such fantastic and 
 self-contradictory language, it seems to be designed to avoid 
 the acknowledgment of actual Romanism, and yet all the while 
 to hold forth the very same thing, slightly disguised in another 
 form of words. So that practically it makes no difference whe- 
 ther this strange doctrine of Dr. Pusey or simple Romanism is 
 theoretically held. 
 
 ' Who myself adore and teach the people to adore, the consecrated elements, 
 believing Christ to be in them, believing that under their veil is the sacred 
 body and blood of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.' 
 
 ^ See Dr. Pusey's Eleven Addresses during a Retreat of the Companions 
 of the Love of Jesus. 
 
HISTOEICALLY CONSIDERED. 79 
 
 And this the latest form of Eucharistic teaching, — this last 
 mode in which men have taken upon themselves to deal with 
 the most simple as well as most sacred rite of primitive Chris- 
 tianity, — brings us down to our own days. It is rife amongst 
 us now in this last portion of the nineteenth century. And it 
 appears in the very midst of the Church of England, which 
 authoritatively declares the Bible to be its ' Rule of Faith,' and 
 which is supposed to be the very home of Bible truth, — the 
 strongest fortress of the Protestant Reformation. 
 
 Surely there is something here for earnest Christians to 
 regard with more than a passing thought or hasty word. 
 
 Let us look back upon the whole path along which this his- 
 tory has led us. It shows us first of all a divinely simple 
 ordinance, clear and bright, and overflowing with Gospel grace 
 and truth, in the hands of the Apostles, and in the inspired 
 pages of the New Testament. And then, as the traditional 
 teaching of uninspired men prevailed more and more in the 
 post-apostolic Church, there came declension and error creeping 
 on and on, and gradually overlaying it and distorting it with 
 their evil work, and at last utterly changing its character and 
 purpose, and making it a very centre and source of idolatrous 
 superstition. Again, from the darkness with which Christen- 
 dom had been overspread, light, by the good providence of God, 
 began to dawn ; and with the opening of the Scriptures, and 
 the general reformation of religion, tliis hallowed rite was 
 restored, especially for British Christians, to substantially its 
 primitive use and its apostolic simplicity. But alas some germs 
 of error again crept in. Unguarded expressions and ambigu- 
 ous words obscured the simple truth which had been so hap- 
 pily regained, and left some impression even on the formularies 
 of the Church. A stream of man's traditions flowed on. It 
 seemed as if men could not keep themselves from again inter- 
 fering with the Saviour's legacy, and marring its simple purity 
 with their subtleties and imaginations. The way was thus pre- 
 pared for greater mischief. And now we have the old mediaeval 
 Church system, which the Reformation cast off, appearing again 
 
80 THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 more or less thinly disguised, if disguised at all, and putting 
 itself forward with yearly increasing influence, and claiming to 
 have an acknowledged place on the platform of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 Is this to continue and go forward, and to be welcomed or 
 acquiesced in as one of the legitimate aspects of many-sided 
 truth, — one of the forms of Scriptural Catholicity 1 
 
 Let us not deceive ourselves about the gravity of this ques- 
 tion. Tliis doctrine of the Lord's Supper never stands alone. 
 It came in former times, and it comes now, with a train of will- 
 worship, idolatries, and other debasing superstitions behind it ; 
 with the whole dominion of a false priesthood arrogating to 
 itself an unscriptural and superhuman power, and corrupting 
 and enslaving the consciences and lives of men, women, and 
 children through the contaminating influence of the Confes- 
 sional, and by the assumption of a power to forgive sins. It 
 came in former times, and it comes now, as a most essential part 
 of a religious system which makes the word of God of none 
 effect by its traditions, and has proved itself the enemy of man 
 by its hostility to civil and religious liberty. 
 
 No earnest and j^atriotic Christian then should make light of 
 the dangers which thus confront us in these strange times. And 
 whatever else we may be able or may desire to do to meet them, 
 we may certainly gather from the instruction of the past that 
 nothing but the teaching of the New Testament can be safely 
 trusted to guide us in the use of this sacred ordinance, which 
 has always had so powerful an influence upon the whole reli- 
 gious life of individuals and of churches. It is not to the 
 * Fathers ' of early times that we must betake ourselves, or 
 to Churches of any post-apostolic age, or to any favourite writers 
 of ancient or modern date, however revered for their piety or 
 learning ; but we must go reverently, yet boldly, to the written 
 word of inspiration. And in following its guidance it will be 
 good for us to mark the footprints of those deviations from the 
 path of Scriptural teaching by which others went astray, that 
 we may avoid treading in their steps. We shall then remember — 
 
HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 81 
 
 1 . That the Lord's Supper is not a sacrifice ; and therefore 
 no ' Altar ' or * sacrificing Priest ' (lepevs) has any place in its 
 administration. But it is a remembrance or memorial of the 
 one all-sufficient sacrifice offered once for all ; the only Chris- 
 tian sacrifices being those ' of praise and thanksgiving,' — of 
 ' ourselves, our souls and bodies,' — and of self-denying acts of 
 kindness done for Christ's sake. 
 
 2. That no change whatever is made in the sacramental 
 bread and wine through any acts or words of the officiating 
 minister ; and that no ' consecration ' of them has any scrip- 
 tural authority ; so that, if used, it must be regarded as only 
 setting them apart for a sacred purpose. 
 
 3. That there is no presence of Christ's real body and blood 
 in, or with, or under the form of, the bread and wine. There is 
 no ' real presence,' but a rea/ absence, of Christ as the Son of 
 God made man ; for it is only during His absence that this 
 Sacrament is to be used — ' Ye do shew the Lord's death till He 
 come.' The Lord Jesus in His divine nature is present in the 
 heart of the faithful communicant, as He dwells in our hearts 
 by faith in other devotions also. But the body and blood of 
 Christ here represented are His body which died, and His blood 
 which was shed, upon the cross, and they are now nowhere \ 
 for the glorified body of Christ, like that which His people will 
 one day have, is no longer ' the body of His humiliation,' con- 
 sisting of flesh and blood ^ but a spiritual body, ' the body of 
 His glory ^.' 
 
 4. That there was not at any time, and is not now, any 
 inherent power or efficacy in the human body of our Lord to 
 act beneficially upon the bodies or souls of men ; but with 
 respect to His natural body. He was bone of our bone, and flesh 
 of our flesh, in all points like unto His brethren ; and we should 
 be on our guard against this ' fond conceit,' that the body of 
 Christ comes and acts upon us or in us for our good. 
 
 5. That the words used by our Lord in the institution of 
 
 1 See I Cor. xv. 50. ^ See Phil. iii. 21. 
 
 G 
 
82 THE LORD'S SUPPER. 
 
 tliis ordinance, and all the kindred or associated expressions 
 taken from John vi, are altogether figurative and symbolical. 
 The bread and wine re2)resent to us His body and blood given 
 and shed for us in His atoning sacrifice for our sins ; and to 
 take, eat arid drink them is, by a striking figure of speech which 
 transfers bodily acts to the soul, to receive into our hearts, and 
 believe in the Lord Jesus here presented to us, as having thus 
 given Himself for us, and so by faith to be united to Him, and 
 to have all the benefits of His salvation. 
 
 And lastly, seeing the mischief that so often has been caused 
 by the use of ambiguous words or mystified expressions which 
 outrage common sense and sober judgment, let us endeavour to 
 gain, and to keep, clear and simjyle views of this divine ordi- 
 nance, and to express them in j^jZam words. Such clearness and 
 simplicity will not in the least derogate from the sacredness or 
 solemnity of this hallowed service, or from the reverence with 
 which we use it. We shall indeed thus all the more firmly take 
 our stand upon the Word of God given to us in the Scriptures, 
 and from that standing-ground nothing should ever induce us 
 to depart. 
 
By the same Author. 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY OF THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT. Second Edition : to be had of Mr. R. 
 Dickinson, Faningdon Street. Price 35. dd. pp. 434. 
 
 THE SABBATH MADE FOR MAN. Published by 
 Partkidge & Co. 
 
 GREEK AND LATIN GRAMMARS. Published by 
 SiMPKiN & Marshall. 
 
 Larger Greek, 7s. 
 Elementary Greek, 2s. 
 Larger Latin, 56. 
 Elementary Latin, 2 s. 
 
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