V 
 
THE DOCTRINE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 ON THE 
 
 HOLY COMMUNION 
 

 Digitized by 
 
 the Internet Archive 
 
 
 
 
 in 2015 
 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/doctrineofchurchOOmeyr_0 
 
THE DOCTRINE 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 ON THE 
 
 HOLY COMMUNION 
 
 RESTATED AS A GUIDE AT THE PRESENT TIME 
 
 BY THE JtEV. 
 
 FREDERICK MEYRICK, M.A. 
 
 RECTOR OF BLICKLING, NORFOLK, AND 
 NOX-RESIDENTIAEY CANON OF LINCOLN CATHEDRAL 
 
 lyjTH A PREFACE BY THE RIGHT REV. 
 
 EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE, D.D. 
 
 « LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON 
 M DCCC LXXXV 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The great central act of worship, the great bond 
 of union and fellowship in the Early Church, was 
 Holy Communion. It told of Christ and of God's 
 love in Him, it gave fellowship in, and participa- 
 tion of Christ, and through Him it knit together 
 in one all members of His mystical Body, one 
 with Him and so one with each other. It was 
 therefore the great Sunday service, ministered 
 every Lord's Day at least, and round it gathered 
 all other worship and all other teaching (see 
 Acts ii. 46; XX. 7; 1 Cor. x. 16, 17; Justin M. 
 Apol. i. p. 98). Why has it become in later days 
 a feast at which few are gathered, and from the 
 bond of union a battle-field of strife ? The primi- 
 tive Christians were content to believe that the 
 bread was no longer common bread nor the wine 
 common wine, but that mysteriously they were 
 the means of conveying Christ to the Christian ; 
 the communion or participation {Koivwvla) of His 
 Body and the communion or participation of His 
 Blood (i Cor. X. 16; Justin M. Apol. i. p. 98). 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Later ages wore not satisfied to believe, they 
 must also enquire how Christ could be present 
 and how received by His people. The belief in 
 a carnal presence, that the elements become, in 
 everything except appearance, Christ's Body and 
 Blood, was an obvious error for popular accept- 
 ance. Philosophy invented a subtler explana- 
 tion, teaching that while everything that makes 
 bread to be bread continued unchanged, there 
 was an intangible (we may almost call it a spiri- 
 tual) substance beneath, which ceased to be the 
 substance of bread and became the substance of 
 Christ. Reasoning minds revolted from the ex- 
 treme credulity of the multitude, and from the 
 theory of what has proved to be an unsound 
 Philosophy, and fell back on a mere memorial, 
 not a mystical presence, but 'a bare sign, an 
 untrue figure of a thing absent ' (Homily concern- 
 ing the Sacrament). It has been ever the boast 
 of the English Church that in her Reformation 
 she in nothing departed from the principles of the 
 Church Catholic, but only swept away novelties 
 and returned as nearly as possible to Primitive 
 faith and practice. Whatever is unknown to Scrip- 
 ture and to the Church of the earliest centuries 
 is unknown to her. Hence she rejected and rejects 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 not only popular superstition, but also the pseudo- 
 philosophical theory of Transubstantiation and the 
 rationalising theory of the followers of Zuinglius. 
 There have been learned and able advocates of 
 both these theories. There could not but arise 
 contention and disunion from their controversy. 
 Untenable positions and the strife of tongues tend 
 to alienate from the truth those whose faith is 
 feeble, and who, as in the present day, are sur- 
 rounded by scepticism and unbelief. Hence a 
 clear exposition of primitive doctrine, and of 
 the doctrine of that Church which glories in re- 
 verting to and taking hold of primitive faith must 
 be useful to puzzled consciences, may assure those 
 who are in doubt, and may also help to the re- 
 uniting of the scattered members of Christ's divided 
 Body. On these grounds it is that I venture to 
 commend the following treatise, which has gathered 
 into a small compass and expressed in simple 
 language the results of intelligent study, of patient 
 thought, and of extensive learning. 
 
 E. H. WINTON. 
 
 Farnham Castlk, 
 August, 1SS5. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Holy Communion is a Remembrance, a Sacrifice, a means 
 of Feeding, a means of Incorporation, a Pledge. The 
 teaching of the formularies of the Church of England to 
 this effect 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 The Remembrance. The Holy Communion was ordained to 
 be and serves as a continual Remembrance, Commemora- 
 tion, and Memorial of the Sacrifice of the death of Christ, 
 and of the benefits that we receive thereby 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 The Remembrance. Testimony of theologians of the Church 
 of England on this point 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Sacrifice. What a Saciifice is. Various species of Sacri- 
 fices 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Sacrifice. In what sense the Holy Communion can be 
 regarded as a Material Sacrifice. The Sacrifice of Homage 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Sacrifice. The Holy Communion is a Spiritual Sacrifice. 
 The Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving. Testimony of 
 Anglican theologians 
 
X 
 
 COXTEXTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 'I he Sacrifice. The Holy Communion is a Commemorative 
 Sacrifice. Meaning of the term. Testimony of Anglican 
 theologians 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Sacrifice. Meaning of the expressions " Do this in remem- 
 brance of Me," " Ye do show the Lord's death ;" and their 
 bearing on the doctrine of Sacrifice . . . . .62 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Feeding. The water of the well of Samaria (John iv. 14). 
 The meat of Jesus (Jolin iv. 31-34). The Bread of Life 
 (John vi.). The Living Water (John vii. 38). The con- 
 nexion between our Lord's discourse in John vi. and the 
 institution of the Holy Communion 71 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Feeding. It is not effected by the Transubstantiation of 
 the Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ 
 before their consumption. Origin and growth of this hypo- 
 thesis .80 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Feeding. The meaning of the words "This is my Body." 
 
 They do not teach the doctrine of Transubstantiation . 90 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 The Feeding. St. Paul's teaching in the First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians incompatible with the theory of Transubstan- 
 tiation pS 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Feeding. The teaching of the Fathers of the Church in- 
 compatible with the theory of Transubstantiation. Wit- 
 nesses — St. Chrysostom. St. Augustin, Theodoret, Gelasins, 
 Facundus io5 
 
CONTEXTS. xi 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 The Feeding. Testimony of Anglican theologians against the 
 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation . . . . . .116 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Feeding. Resen'ation of the Sacrament for worship, a 
 
 result from the doctrines of Transubstantiation . . .125 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Feeding. Processions of the Host a result from the doc- 
 trine of Transubstantiation . . . . . • '.^4 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Feeding. Elevation of the Consecrated Elements a result 
 from the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Hearing Mass. 
 Non-communicaling attendance . . . . . ' 39 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The Feeding. Worship of the Sacrament a result from the doc- 
 trine of Transubstantiation . . . . . ■ '47 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Feeding. Fasting Communion, imposed as a necessity, a 
 
 result from the doctrine of Transubstantiation . . .155 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 The Feeding. Denial of the Cup to communicants a result 
 
 from the doctrine of Transubstantiation . . . .164 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 The Feeding. The tenet of the eating of Christ's Body by the 
 
 wicked a rebult of the doctrine of Transubstantiation . 176 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 The Feeding. It is not effected by the consubstantiation of the 
 Bread and Wine and the Body and Blood of Christ. The 
 term Objective Presence 185 
 
xii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIir. 
 The Feeding. In the Holy Communion we spiritually eat the 
 Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood. Anglican testimony 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 The Incorporation. The Holy Communion is a means by which 
 we are incorporated in the mystical Body of Christ, and 
 made more and more members one of another . 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 The Pledge. The Holy Communion is a pledge to us of past 
 forgiveness, of present acceptance, and of future inheritance. 
 Summary 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY 
 COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ^-wrf PROPOSE in the following pages to state 
 I ' what I believe to be the doctrine of the 
 Church of England in reference to the Holy 
 Communion. I propose to touch one after the 
 other on all the points connected with it that are 
 at present under discussion amongst us, but in 
 doing so I shall seek to avoid everything like the 
 heat or harshness of conti'oversy, and I will add 
 that, in stating what I hold to be the doctrine of 
 the Church of England, I shall express also my 
 own personal belief. The order in which I shall 
 deal with the different questions that arise, will 
 be rather that suggested by the Prayer Book of 
 the Church of England, than by the controversies 
 and disputes of the present day. 
 
 From the Catechism, the Communion Service, 
 and the Articles, we may gather that, according to 
 the mind of the Church of England, the Holy 
 
a 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Communion is — I. A remembrance of the sacrifice 
 of Christ on the cross. II. In some sense itself a 
 sacrifice. III. A means of feeding upon Christ. 
 IV. A means of incorporation with Christ and of 
 union with the other members of His mystical 
 Body. V. An assurance to ourselves, and a mani- 
 festation to others, that we are Christ's. That 
 these are the truths emphasized by the Church of 
 England is shown by the following extracts from 
 her formularies : — • 
 
 I. The Remembrance. On this point I quote 
 from the Catechism — " Why was the Sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper ordained ? For the continual 
 remcinbra7icc of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, 
 and of the benefits which we receive thereby." 
 " What is required of them who come to the Lord's 
 Supper ? . . . A thankful remembrance of Christ's 
 death." From the first warning in the Communion 
 Service — " I purpose, through God's assistance, to 
 administer to all such as shall be religiously and 
 devoutly disposed the most comfortable Sacrament 
 of the Body and Blood of Christ ; to be by them 
 received in rcmcinbrancc of His meritorious Cross 
 and Passion, whereby alone we obtain remission of 
 our sins, and arc made partakers of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven." From the second warning in the same 
 Service — "As the Son of God did vouchsafe to 
 yield up His soul by death upon the Cross for our 
 salvation ; so it is your duty to receive the Com- 
 munion in remembrance of the sacrifice of His 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 3 
 
 death, as He himself hath commanded." In the 
 first Exhortation at the time of the celebration of 
 the Communion we find — " To the end that we 
 should always rcmcnibcr the exceeding great love 
 of our Master, and only Saviour, Jesus Christ, thus 
 dying for us, and the innumerable benefits which 
 by His precious blood-shedding He hath obtained 
 to us, He hath instituted and ordained holy mys- 
 teries, as pledges of His love, and for a continual 
 I'cmcvibrancc of His death, to our great and endless 
 comfort." In the Prayer of Consecration — " Who 
 did institute, and in His holy Gospel command us 
 to continue, a perpetual memory of that His precious 
 death, until His coming again . . . grant that we 
 receiving these Thy creatures of bread and wine, 
 according to Thy Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ's 
 holy institution, in roiicmbraucc of His death and 
 passion, may be partakers of His most blessed 
 Body and Blood." In the form of Reception — 
 " Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ 
 died for thee. . . Drink this in remembrance that 
 Christ's blood was shed for thee." In the Articles 
 — " Christ came to be the Lamb without spot, who 
 by sacrifice of Himself once made, should take 
 away the sins of the world." ..." The Supper of 
 the Lord is ... a Sacrament of our Redemption 
 by Christ's death.^' (Art. xv., xxviii.) 
 
 What is meant by the word Remembrance in the 
 passages where it occurs above — whether it signifies, 
 as some maintain, a memorial before God, or as 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 others, a reminder to man — is a question which we 
 defer for the present ; all that we are here concerned 
 with is, that the Church of England places the Re- 
 membrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ as 
 the first end and object with which the Holy Com- 
 munion was instituted. 
 
 II. Besides being a remembrance of the great 
 sacrifice, it is in some sense a sacrifice itself. Thus 
 in the prayer which is now found in the Post Com- 
 munion, there occur the words : " We Thy humble 
 servants entirely desire Thy Fatherly goodness 
 mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and 
 thanksgiving." And again — " Here we offer and 
 present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and 
 bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice 
 unto Thee." And once more—" Although we be 
 unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto 
 Thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech Thee to accept 
 this our boimden duty and service." In this con- 
 nexion there will also have to be considered the 
 rubric, which orders an offertory to be made, and 
 desires the alms for the poor and other devotions 
 of the people to be reverently brought to the priest, 
 who shall humbly present and place them upon the 
 holy table ; and the next succeeding rubric, which 
 desires that the priest shall then place upon the 
 table so much Bread and Wine as he shall think 
 sufficient; and the words "Accept our alms and 
 oblations, " in the Prayer for the Church Militant. 
 In what sense the Holy Communion is, and in what 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 5 
 
 sense it is not a sacrifice, will have to be hereafter 
 elicited. 
 
 III. The Church of England also teaches that 
 the Holy Communion is an appointed means 
 whereby the Christian is enabled to feed upon 
 Christ. In the Catechism we find : " What are 
 the benefits whereof we are partakers by the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper? The strength- 
 ening and refreshing of our souls by the Body 
 and Blood of Christ, as our bodies are (strength- 
 ened and refreshed) by the Bread and Wine." 
 And again — " What is the inward part of the 
 Lord's Supper? The Body and Blood of Christ, 
 which are verily and indeed taken and received 
 by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." In the 
 first warning in the Communion Service : "It 
 is our duty to render most humble and hearty 
 thanks to Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for 
 that He hath given His Son our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our 
 spiritual food and susicnaiice in that holy Sacra- 
 ment." In the second warning: " Consider with 
 yourselves how great injury ye do unto God, and 
 how sore punishment hangeth over your heads for 
 the same, when ye wilfully abstain from the Lord's 
 Table, and separate from your brethren, who come 
 to feed on the banquet of that most heavenly foodT 
 In the first Exhortation, at the time of the celebra- 
 tion of the Communion : " If with a true penitent 
 heart and lively faith we receive that holy Sacra- 
 
6 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 ment, we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and 
 drink His blood." In the Prayer of Humble 
 Access : " Grant us, gracious Lord, so to eat the 
 flesh of Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, and to drink 
 His bloodj that our sinful bodies may be made 
 clean by His body, and our souls washed through 
 His most precious blood." In the Prayer of Con- 
 secration : " Grant that we, receiving these Thy 
 creatures of bread and wine, . . . may be partakers 
 of His most blessed body and blood." In the Form 
 of Reception : " Feed on Him in Thy heart by 
 faith with thanksgiving." In the Thanksgiving 
 Prayer in the Post Communion: "We most heartily 
 thank Thee for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed 
 us, who have duly received these holy mysteries, 
 with the spiritual food of the most precious body 
 and blood of Thy Son our Saviour, Jesus Christ." 
 In the Articles : "Sacraments are effectual signs of 
 grace. . . . Insomuch that to such as rightly, 
 worthily, and with faith receive the same, the 
 Bread wliich we break is a partaking of the Body 
 of Christ, and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a 
 partaking of the Blood of Christ. . . . The Body 
 of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, 
 only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And 
 the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received 
 and eaten in the Supper is Faith." (Art. xxv, 
 xxviii.) 
 
 How this feeding on Christ is effected — whether 
 by the elements being changed into His Body and 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 7 
 
 Blood, or by His Body and Blood being united to 
 the elements, or by their objective presence in the 
 elements, or by the spiritual presence of Christ in 
 the soul — will have to be hereafter considered. 
 
 IV. The Holy Communion is also a means 
 whereby we are more and more incorporated with 
 Christ, and united with the other members of His 
 mystical body. Thus in the first Exhortation we 
 read : " If with a true penitent heart and lively 
 faith we receive that holy Sacrament . . . then we 
 dwell in Christ, and Christ in us ; we are one with 
 Christ and Christ with us." In the Prayer of 
 Humble Access : " Grant us so to eat the flesh of 
 Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His blood 
 . . . that we may evermore dwell in Him and He 
 in us." In the Prayer of Thanksgiving in the Post 
 Communion : " That we are very members incor- 
 porate in the mystical body of Thy Son, which is 
 the blessed company of all faithful people." 
 
 V. The Holy Communion also serves as a pledge 
 that we are Christ's and Christ is ours. Accord- 
 ing to the Catechism, one of the characteristics of 
 a Sacrament is to be " a pledge to assure us " of 
 receiving the grace attached to the Sacrament. In 
 the first Exhortation the " holy mysteries" are said 
 to have been "instituted and ordained" by Christ 
 as "pledges of His love." In the Post Communion 
 Prayer we thank God " for that Thou dost assure 
 us," by permitting us to receive these holy mys- 
 teries " of Thy favour and goodness towards us." 
 
8 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION'. 
 
 Under one or other of the heads, Remembrance, 
 Sacrifice, Feeding, Incorporation, Pledge, all the 
 questions at present under discussion will be found 
 to range themselves. 
 
CHAPTER IL 
 
 HE primary end and object of the institution 
 of the Lord's Supper was " the continual 
 remembrance of the sacrifice of the death 
 of Christ." What does the word Remembrance 
 here signify ? 
 
 At the institution of the rite we find that our 
 Lord, after giving the bread, said to His disciples, 
 " Do this in remembrance of Me " (Luke xxii. 19); 
 and after giving them the cup, He said, " Do this 
 as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of Me" (1 
 Cor. xi. 35). What did He mean by remembrance? 
 
 The Greek word employed by the Evangelist and 
 the Apostle (ai'afxvrjaL^) as the equivalent of the 
 Aramaic word used by our Lord, has exactly the 
 same force as our English word Remembrance, by 
 which it is rendered ; and like it, includes three 
 ideas closely connected with each other, but not 
 absolutely identical. These are : ( i ) Remembrance -, 
 (2) Commemoration ; (3) Memorial. 
 
 I. The first object, then, with which the Holy 
 Communion was instituted, was that it might serve 
 as a means of keeping the Master's memory fresh 
 in the minds of His disciples during the many cen- 
 
lO THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 turics which were to elapse before He came to them 
 in bodily presence. 
 
 If we notice the circumstances under which the 
 rite was established, we shall see how natural it 
 is that Remembrance should be the first thought 
 connected with it. The Lord and His disciples 
 were eating the solemn Paschal Supper— the last 
 Paschal Supper, properly speaking, that ever was 
 eaten — the significance of which the Master knew 
 to be now exhausted. The object of this Paschal 
 Supper was Remembrance. Fifteen hundred years 
 ago the great event had taken place which delivered 
 the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt, and con- 
 stituted them a free nation ; and that great de- 
 liverance had been signalized by a special mercy 
 shown to the Israelites, who were saved from the 
 death of their first-born on their exhibiting the 
 blood of the Paschal lamb on the lintel and side- 
 posts of the doors of their houses. This deliverance 
 was never to be forgotten. " This day shall be 
 unto you for a memorial ; and ye shall keep it a 
 feast to the Lord throughout your generations ; ye 
 shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever. . . . 
 And it shall come to pass, when ye be come to the 
 land, which the Lord will give you, according as 
 He hath promised, that ye shall keep this service. 
 And it shall come to pass, when your children shall 
 say unto you, What mean ye by this service ? that 
 ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's Pass- 
 over, who passed over the houses of the children 
 
HOTA' COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, 
 and dehvered our houses" (Ex. xii. 14, 25-27). 
 Accordingly, for fifteen hundred years the Paschal 
 feast was kept ; each year the Paschal lamb and 
 unleavened bread and bitter herbs were eaten, and 
 four cups of wine were solemnly drunk ; and each 
 year in each company the youngest member present 
 inquired, "What mean ye by this service?" And 
 the president of the feast replied that it was a 
 commemoration of the Egyptian Passover, explain- 
 ing why they feasted on the body of a lamb, and 
 ate the unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and 
 calling on all the company to give thanks for what 
 God had wrought for them and for their fathers. 
 Thus the Remembrance of the great deliverance 
 was kept fresh and green in each generation as 
 though it had taken place but yesterday. 
 
 It was this solemn feast that our Lord was eating 
 with His apostles. He had eaten of the body of 
 the lamb, which was commemorative of the Iambs 
 slain in Egypt, and typical of the Lamb about to 
 be offered on the cross, and having thus remem- 
 bered the ancient deliverance as the law enjoined. 
 He solemnly took some of the bread which consti- 
 tuted a part of the Paschal feast, and one of the cups 
 of wine which custom had added to it, and giving 
 them to His disciples, ordered the latter to partake 
 of tliem in remembrance of Him. As the partak- 
 ing of the Lamb had been in remembrance of the 
 lambs slain in Egypt, so the partaking of the bread 
 
13 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 and the wine was to be in remembrance of Him 
 until He should come again ; and as the lambs 
 eaten at the Paschal feast had been to the par- 
 takers the lambs that were slain and eaten in 
 Egypt on the night of the Passover, so the 
 bread was to be to the partakers of the new 
 feast His Body, and the wine was to be to them 
 His Blood. The old remembrance was abolished, 
 and a new remembrance instituted ; the new re- 
 membrance to be kept up by the same means (in 
 kind) as the old — a means therefore with which the 
 disciples were quite familiar. 
 
 In more ways than one Holy Communion is the 
 Christian Passover, as Baptism is the Christian 
 Circumcision. 
 
 In what capacity is Christ to be remembered 
 therein ? It is evident, if we look to the circum- 
 stances of the institution, that it was in His essential 
 nature and in His relation to His disciples, that 
 Christ desired to be remembered by them. As 
 the Master whom they had followed, as the Teacher 
 to whom they had listened, as the Saviour by 
 whom they were delivered, as the Divine Son of 
 the Father, God of God, made Man, such as He 
 really was, as they now knew Him, and as they 
 were hereafter still more fully and perfectly to know 
 Him, He was by this ordinance to be remembered. 
 
 More than this — it was not Christ in His life 
 so much as Christ in His death, that was to be re- 
 membered. "The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 13 
 
 was ordained for the continual remembrance of 
 , . . the death of Christ." It is therefore in His 
 agony and bloody sweat, in the sufferings of His 
 cross and passion, that we are to remember Him in 
 the Holy Communion. 
 
 But further, "the Sacrament of the Lord's Sup- 
 per was ordained for the continual remembrance of 
 the sacrifice of the death of Christ." Not only 
 therefore must we fix our regards on Him as the 
 sinless Sufferer, awakening our compassion by His 
 meek endurance ; not only as One who, in the 
 midst of tortures, triumphed over the weakness of 
 the flesh, thus challenging our admiration no less 
 than by His patience our compassion, but we must 
 recognise the agony, the bloody sweat, the cross 
 and the passion as the means by which He offered 
 up His life as a sacrifice to God. He must be 
 remembered, therefore, as the Propitiator, the 
 Atoner, the Redeemer, the Reconciler, and, as 
 completing His work of propitiation, the Intercessor. 
 
 2. Commemoration differs from remembrance in 
 that the latter is an act of the mind alone, fixing 
 itself on some past event, or, as Tillotson has said, 
 " the actual thought of what we do habitually 
 / know," while commemoration is an outward act 
 J by which we celebrate the event by some special 
 observances. It is plain that the Holy Communion 
 is a commemoration as well as a means of remem- 
 bering. In it and by it we call to mind Christ, the 
 Incarnate Son of God, our Redeemer, our Saviour ; 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 in it and by it we commemorate His death. This 
 is what St. Paul teaches. He says: " For as often 
 as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show 
 (a.V.), proclaim (r.V.), the Lord's death till He 
 come" (i Cor. xi. 26). These words of St. Paul 
 derive light, like the words of institution, from the 
 circumstances under which the ordinance was ap- 
 pointed. The Paschal feast was a commemoration 
 of the deliverance from Egypt, and at each feast 
 the president of the company "proclaimed" or 
 "told forth" (St. Paul's word is Ka-ayyiWerf) the 
 events which were to be commemorated and the 
 propriety of the symbols by which they were com- 
 memorated : " This Passover that we eat," was the 
 proclamation or announcement, " is in respect of 
 the Lord passing over the houses of our fathers 
 in Egypt ; these bitter herbs that we eat are in 
 respect of the Egyptians making the lives of our 
 fathers bitter in Egypt ; this unleavened bread that 
 we eat is in respect of the lack of time for baking 
 the dough that our fathers had when the Lord 
 appeared unto them and redeemed them out of 
 the hand of the enemy, when they baked un- 
 leavened cakes of the dough which they brought 
 out of Egypt. Therefore are we bound to confess, 
 to praise, to laud, to glorify, to honour, to extol, to 
 magnify, and to ascribe victory unto Him who did 
 unto our fathers and to us all these signs, and who 
 brought us forth from servitude to freedom, from 
 sorrow to joy, from darkness to marvellous light, and 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 we may say before Him, 'Hallelujah'" (Mishnah). 
 The fact of the weekly gathering of the disciples, 
 for the purpose of eating the appointed bread and 
 drinking the appointed wine, was in itself a con- 
 tinued proclamation of the death of Christ. No 
 formal question and answer were required, as was 
 ordained in the case of the Jews ; the symbolical 
 action was a sufficient proclamation, announcement, 
 commemoration of the death of Christ, without 
 words of explanation. 
 
 But the Holy Communion is not only the com- 
 memoration of Christ's death, it is still more em- 
 phatically the commemoration of His sacrifice. It 
 commemorates, the fact that Christ did not only 
 die as heroes and martyrs have died, leaving 
 an animating example to those that came after 
 him, but that his death constituted a sin-offering 
 made to God, whereby the sins of man were ex- 
 piated, and the wrath of God propitiated. It 
 proclaims that "He died for our sins" (i Cor. xv. 
 3); that He "was delivered for our offences" (Rom. 
 iv. 25) ; that He " gave Himself for our sins " (Gal. 
 i. 4) ; that He "gave Himself a ransom for all"' 
 (i Tim. ii. 6); that He "gave Himself for us an 
 offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling 
 savour" (Eph. v. 2); that He "was our Passover 
 sacrificed for us" (i Cor. v. 7) ; that we "have been 
 redeemed with the precious blood of Christ as of a 
 lamb without blemish and without spot" (i Peter 
 i. 19); that He "is the propitiation for our sins" 
 
i6 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 (i John ii. 2) ; and "for the sin of the whole world" 
 (Heb. iv. lo) ; that we " are justified by His blood " 
 (i John i. 7); that He " reconciled us to God by 
 His cross" (Eph. ii. 16). In short, the Holy Com- 
 munion is the commemoration of the great Sacrifice 
 of the Cross, whereby God was once for all recon- 
 ciled to fallen man, and man to God. The question 
 whether, besides being a commemoration of the 
 great sacrifice, it is itself a commemorative sacri- 
 fice, belongs to the next division of our subject. 
 3. Being a Remembrance and a Commemora- 
 , tion, the Holy Communion is also a Memorial of 
 / Christ ; for the idea of a memorial differs little 
 i from that of a commemoration, the chief distinc- 
 tions between them being that a memorial is 
 rather of a person than of an event, while a com- 
 memoration is rather of an event than of a person, 
 and that the word memorial carries with it the 
 thought of greater permanency and stability than 
 commemoration, as a commemoration might be 
 made once or twice and then cease, whereas a 
 memorial when once instituted remains in per- 
 manence. 
 
 It has been maintained that the word memorial, 
 as here used, signifies more than this — that there is 
 in it a reference to " the memorial," which was a 
 small portion of the offering presented specially 
 to God in the Mosaic meat-offering, and in one sort 
 of sin-offering, and in the offering of the shewbread 
 (Lev. ii. 2, 9 ; v. 12; xxiv. 7). And hence it is 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 argued that the Holy Communion Is proved to be 
 a sacrifice presented to God. It is obvious that 
 this argument, taken alone, proves too little or too 
 much. If it proved anything as to the sacrificial 
 character of the material ofi'ering in Holy Commu- 
 nion, it would prove, not that it was a sacrifice, but 
 that it was one particular part of a sacrifice, and 
 that not the part which was to be eaten and drunk, 
 but that part which was never to be consumed by 
 either priest or people, and which could not have 
 been eaten or drunk without the greatest impiety. 
 
 But is riot the Holy Communion a " memorial 
 before God " as well as before man? Surely it is. If 
 Cornelius' prayers and alms were a memorial before 
 God (Acts X. 4, 31), as we know that they were, 
 and as all earnest pleadings with Him are, much 
 more is this the case with the Holy Communion. 
 The Church here, more than anywhere, pleads the 
 merits of the sacrifice of Christ, which is shown 
 forth and exhibited in the Sacrament, and joyously 
 commemorates before God that which Christ has 
 wrought for man, as the grounds of man's accept- 
 ance before God. And no time and place can be 
 better for the devout worshipper to offer his prayers 
 and intercessions to God than when the Church is 
 thus pleading before Him the merits of the Great 
 Sacrifice. 
 
 But this is quite a different thing from the 
 material elements being offered in it to God as 
 the technical "memorial" of the Levitical sacrifices. 
 C 
 
]8 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 So far we have seen that the Holy Communion 
 was ordained to be, and serves as, a continual 
 Remembrance, Commemoration, and Memorial 
 before God and man of the Sacrifice of the Death 
 of Christ, and of the benefits that we receive 
 thereby. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 *^^ITHERTO we have seen that the Holy 
 Communion is a Remembrance, a Com- 
 memoration, a Memorial of the Sacrifice 
 of the death of Christ. Before going on to the 
 consideration of it in its other aspects, I cite the 
 following authorities, to show that it is so regarded 
 by theologians who represent the teaching of the 
 Church of England. 
 
 Bishop Jewell — " ' As for our part,' St. Augustine 
 saith, ' Christ hath given us to celebrate in His 
 Church an image or token of that sacrifice for the 
 remembrance of His Passion.' Again, he saith : 
 ' After Christ's ascension into heaven, the Flesh and 
 Blood of this sacrifice is continued by a sacrament 
 of remembrance.' Eusebius saith : ' We burn a 
 sacrifice unto God, the remembrance of that great 
 Sacrifice on the cross, and Christ commanded us to 
 offer up a remembrance of His death instead of a 
 sacrifice.' . . . Chrysostom saith : ' We ofl'er indeed, 
 but in remembrance of His death. This sacrifice 
 is an example of that sacrifice. This that we do is 
 done in remembrance of that that was done. Wc 
 offer up the same that Christ offered ; or, rather, 
 we offef- up the remembrance of that sacrifice.' 
 C 'i 
 
20 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Thus we offer up Christ, that is to say, an example, 
 a commemoration, a remembrance of the death of 
 Christ."— of Apol. Part II, and Reply to Mr. 
 Harding?} This quotation from Bishop Jewell not 
 only teaches the doctrine of a Remembrance and 
 Commemoration, but also shows that in teaching 
 it the Church of England teaches the doctrine of 
 the early Church. 
 
 Bishop Bilson — " The very Supper itself is a 
 public memorial of that great and dreadful sacri- 
 fice, I mean of the death and bloodshedding of our 
 Saviour." — {On Snbjcctio7i and Rebellion.) 
 
 Bishop Buckeridge — " The Church, according to 
 Christ's commandment, keeps the memory of this 
 offering in the sacrament : ' Do this in remembrance 
 of Me;' but she does not reiterate the action or 
 take upon her to offer the Body of Christ." — {Dis- 
 course concerning Kneeling.) 
 
 Bishop Andrewes — "While yet this offering was 
 not, the hope of it was kept alive by the prefigur- 
 ation of it. And after it is past, the memory of it 
 is still kept fresh in mind by the commemoration 
 of it." — {Sermons of the Resurrection.) 
 
 Mason — " The sacrifice which the Fathers defend 
 in the Eucharist is not propitiatory nor properly 
 a sacrifice, but only a commemoration and repre- 
 sentation of the sovereign sacrifice of the cross. . . . 
 And whatsoever is a commemoration or represen- 
 tation of the sacrifice of the cross is different from 
 it (for nothing is a commemoration or representa- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 tion of itself)." — ( Vindication of tlie ClinrcJi of Eng- 
 land.) 
 
 Archbishop Laud — " As Christ offered up Him- 
 self, once for all, a full and all-sufficient .sacrifice 
 for the sins of the whole world, so did He institute 
 and command a memory of this sacrifice in a sacra- 
 ment, even till His coming again." — {Conference 
 zvitJi Fislicr.) "Nor doth any man of learning 
 question it that I know, but that according to our 
 Saviour's own command, we are to do whatsoever 
 is done in this office as a memorial of His Body 
 and Blood offered up and shed for us. Now it is 
 one thing to offer up His Body, and another to 
 offer up the memorial of His Body with our praise 
 and thanks for that infinite blessing." — [History of 
 Tronblcs.) " If by the oblation of the Body and 
 Blood of Christ, Bellarmine means that the priest 
 offers up that which Christ did, and not a comme- 
 moration of it only, he is erroneous in that, and 
 can never make it good." — [Ibid.) 
 
 Bishop Hall — "That is here (as Chrysostom 
 speaks) a remembrance of a sacrifice ; that is, as 
 Augustine interprets it, a memorial of Christ's 
 Passion, celebrated in the Church." — [No Peace 
 ivitli Rome.) 
 
 Bishop Cosin — "Who hast of Thine infinite 
 mercy vouchsafed to ordain this dreadful sacra- 
 ment for a perpetual memory of that blessed sacri- 
 fice which once Thou madest for us on the cross." 
 — [Devotions.) " We do not hold this celebration 
 
22 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 to be so naked a commemoration of Christ's Body- 
 given to death, and of His Blood thus shed for us, 
 but that the same Body and Blood is present there 
 in this commemoration (made by the sacrament of 
 bread and wine), to all that faithfully receive it." — 
 [Noics.) "We commemorate at the Eucharist the 
 sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood, once truly 
 offered for us." — [Dijfcrcnccs mid Agreements) 
 
 Hammond — " The end of Christ's instituting this 
 sacrament was on purpose that we might, at set 
 times, frequently and constantly returning, remem- 
 ber and commemorate before God and man this sacri- 
 f.ce of the death of Christ." — [Practical Catechism.) 
 
 Bishop Patrick — " This holy rite of eating bread 
 broken and drinking wine poured out, is a solemn 
 commemoration of Christ, according as He Him- 
 self saith to all His apostles, and particularly to 
 St. Paul, who twice makes mention of this com- 
 mand, ' Do this in remembrance (or for a remem- 
 brance) of Me.' His meaning is not that we should 
 hereby call Him to mind (for we are never to forget 
 Him), but rather that we should keep Him in mind, 
 and endeavour to perpetuate His name in the world, 
 and propagate the memory of Him and His bene- 
 fits to the latest posterity. Now this is done by 
 making a solemn rehearsal of His famous acts and 
 declaring the inestimable greatness of His royal 
 love. For o.v6.\xvi]ai<i doth not barely signify recor- 
 datio, recording or registering of His favours in our 
 mind, but covimcinoratio, a solemn declaration that 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 23 
 
 we do well to bear them in our hearts, and will 
 continue the memory and spread the fame of Him 
 as far and as long as ever we are able. . . . Now 
 of two things it is a remembrance ; and two ways 
 we commemorate or remember them: (1) It is 
 instituted for a remembrance that He was em- 
 bodied for those that believe on Him. ... (2) It 
 was instituted in commemoration of His passion 
 and sufferings for us. As the bread and wine do 
 commemorate the truth of His body, so do bread 
 broken and wine poured out commemorate the 
 truth of His sufferings for us. . . . This comme- 
 moration cannot be contained within the bounds 
 of this world, but we must make it reach as high 1 
 as heaven. ( i ) We do show it forth and declare it 
 unto men. ... (2) We do show forth the Lord's 
 death unto God, and commemorate before Him the 
 great things He hath done for us. We keep it 
 (as it were) in His memory, and plead before Him 
 the Sacrifice of His Son, which we show unto Him, 
 humbly requiring that grace and pardon, with all 
 other benefits of it, may be bestowed on us." — 
 {Mensa Mystica.) 
 
 Bishop Bull — " In the ancient Church it was 
 believed to be an avdnvrjcn^ or commemoration, by 
 the symbols of bread and wine, of the Body and 
 Blood of Christ once offered up to God on the 
 cross for our redemption." — {Corruptions of tJie 
 Church of Rome.) 
 
 Bishop Beveridge — " By the breaking of the 
 
24 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 bread we declare Christ's Body to be broken and 
 wounded to death ; by the cup we declare His 
 Blood to be shed or poured out for the sins of the 
 world ; and by distributing both the bread and cup 
 to each communicant apart, we declare to every 
 one, particularly, that Christ died for his sins, and 
 that he may be saved by Christ's death, if he will 
 but receive and apply it to himself, as he ought, by 
 a quick and lively faith." — [Frequent Communion^ 
 
 Archbishop Wake — " Our blessed Saviour being 
 now about to work out a much greater deliverance 
 for us by offering up Himself on the cross for our 
 redemption, He designed by this sacrament to con- 
 tinue the memory of this blessing. . . . We eat 
 the bread which Christ appointed to be the remem- 
 brance of that deliverance v;hich He has purchased 
 for us, as the body of the lamb was commanded by 
 God to be the remembrance of the Jews' deliver- 
 ance." — [Exposition of the doctrines of the CJiurch 
 of England.) 
 
 Waterland — "Remembrance of Christ is un- 
 doubtedly a principal end of this sacrament. . . . 
 The Greek o.va[x.vr](ns in this case does amount to 
 a commemoration, and is better rendered by that 
 word than by remembrance, because the word will 
 bear it, and because the circumstances show that 
 remembrance alone without commemoration added 
 is short of the idea intended by it." — [Doctrine of 
 the Eucharist.) 
 
 Scudamore — '■ It is only because it was a sacri- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED, 
 
 25 
 
 fice that the death of Christ has procured us those 
 benefits ; and therefore it is as a sacrifice that He 
 bids us commemorate it. Thus Eusebius [Dem. 
 Evang. i. 10) calls the sacrament ' the commemo- 
 ration or memorial of the great Sacrifice.' ... St. 
 Augustine {c. Faust, xx. 21): 'Before the Advent 
 of Christ, the Flesh and Blood of this sacrifice were 
 promised by typical victims ; in the Passion of 
 Christ it was exhibited in the very reality ; after 
 the Ascension of Christ it is celebrated by the 
 Sacrament of Remembrance.'" — [Notitia EitcJia- 
 ristica.) 
 
 From the above passages it will be seen that it 
 is the teaching of Anglican theologians, and of the 
 early Fathers quoted by them, that the Holy Com- 
 mimion is a Remembrance of Christ, a Commemo- 
 ration of His Death, a Memorial of His Sacrifice, 
 made before God and man. The exigencies of 
 controversy having in later days forced into notice 
 other aspects of this Sacrament, it is well, before 
 dealing with them, to remind ourselves that, what- 
 ever else the Holy Communion may be, the prin- 
 cipal end and object with which it was instituted 
 by our Lord was this — to be a continual remem- 
 brance of the sacrifice of His death and of the 
 benefits which we receive thereby. Whensoever 
 and howsoever it best effects this, so that it be by 
 the appointed means, it best fulfils the purpose 
 with which it was established. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 S long as there exists so wide a divergence 
 of opinion as to what constitutes a sacri- 
 fice, it is hopeless that there should be an 
 agreement on the question whether the celebration 
 of the Holy Communion is or is not a sacrifice. 
 Even among professed theologians there are very- 
 few that have thought this matter out. Ordinarily 
 the word sacrifice does not represent any definite 
 conception of the mind, but it brings up a vague 
 and hazy idea of a sheep or an ox being killed 
 with solemn rites to propitiate the Divine Being. 
 As long as people are possessed by any such 
 notion as this, what wonder that they should indig- 
 nantly deny a sacrificial character to the Holy 
 Communion, unless they are prepared to adopt the 
 Roman theory of the Mass? 
 
 The first thing then that we have to do is to 
 determine what we mean by the word sacrifice. 
 Then we shall be able to decide whether we will 
 or will not apply it to the celebration of the Holy 
 Communion. 
 
 In seeking for a definition of sacrifice we must 
 first recognise the fact that there are many species 
 of sacrifice, and that we must not take the charac- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 27 
 
 teristic of any of these species for the dijfcrcntia of 
 the genus. There are sacrifices Patriarchal, Pagan, 
 Mosaic, Evangehcal (or Christian) ; there are sacri- 
 fices material and immaterial, extrinsic and intrin- 
 sic, bloody and unbloody, visible and invisible, 
 literal and spiritual, Aaronical and Melchisede- 
 chian, propitiatory and gratulatory. If we admit 
 into our definition any word expressive of a pro- 
 perty of one of these species but not of the others, 
 we shall not be defining sacrifice in general, but 
 one particular kind of sacrifice. This is a favourite 
 device with controversialists who argue for victory 
 only, as Hooker has pointed out with his usual 
 wisdom, when he warns us not to admit into the 
 definition of the Church any word designating the 
 character of one part of the Church instead of the 
 whole body. Bellarmine has practised it in the 
 present case. He defines sacrifice as " an external 
 offering made to God above, by which in acknow- 
 ledgment of human weakness and as a confession 
 of the Divine Majesty something visible and per- 
 manent is in mystical rite consecrated by a legi- 
 timate minister, and transmuted so as to be alto- 
 gether destroyed " [Dc lilissa, i. 2). Here it is 
 plain that Bellarmine, having composed a definition 
 applicable to one class of sacrifices and covering 
 the so-called sacrifice of the Mass, has adopted it 
 as the definition of sacrifice in general, and then 
 he has argued from his definition against the sacri- 
 ficial character of all sacrifices that do not belong 
 
28 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 to the one specific class of sacrifice that has been 
 defined by his formula. 
 
 Bellarmine's definition was framed for a contro- 
 versial purpose and must be rejected summarily. 
 Aquinas's definition is infinitely superior, but yet 
 it cannot be acquiesced in, because, like Bellar- 
 mine's, it defines one species of sacrifice instead of 
 the genus : " The term sacrifice," he says, " is pro- 
 perly applied to anything done for the honour 
 properly due to God with the view of propitiating 
 Him " {Suinma. Pars. iii. 9, 48). This definition 
 would exclude what are called gratulatory sacri- 
 fices, such as the peace offerings of the Jews, and 
 it is therefore defective as a definition. St. Augus- 
 tine comes nearer to what we require. He says : 
 " A true sacrifice is any work done to unite our- 
 selves in holy fellowship with God, that is, it must 
 be done with reference to that supreme good by 
 which alone we can be truly blessed " {Dc Civ. Dei., 
 X. 6). The chief objection to this definition is its 
 obscurity, but it will be seen at once how it rises 
 above the definitions which circle round the death 
 of an animal as though that made an essential part 
 of the idea of sacrifice. 
 
 A simpler, and in all respects a satisfactory 
 definition is, " A gift or offering to God made 
 as a religious act " (see Marriott's Grinfield Lecture 
 on Terms of Gift and Offering). Gift is the word 
 first used in Holy Scripture for sacrifice. " Cain 
 brought of the fruit of the ground an offering 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 29 
 
 (Heb. Minchah, i.e. a gift, LXX. Qvala) unto the 
 Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings 
 of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord 
 had respect unto Abel and his offering (LXX. l-nl 
 Tois boopoLs avTov). But unto Cain and to his offering 
 (LXX. dva-iai?) He had not respect " (Gen. iv. 3-5). 
 And when afterwards this word MincJiah came to 
 be appropriated to the meat offering, another word, 
 also meaning Gift [Coj'baii), was adopted as the 
 generic term for sacrifice. The Greek word dvaLa 
 is used by the LXX. as equivalent to Miiic/iah in 
 Cain's sacrifice and in the meat offerings (Lev. ii. 
 13), and thence it came to be commonly employed 
 by the early Christian writers, not as signifying the 
 slaughter of a victim, but as meaning a Minchah or 
 gift to God. 
 
 The definition that we have now arrived at will 
 take within its compass all the various species of 
 sacrifice that have been named above. The 
 Patriarchal, from the sacrifices of Cain and Abel 
 downwards ; the Pagan, whether expiatory or 
 gratulatory ; the Mosaic, whether burnt offerings 
 or meat offerings, or sin offerings, or trespass offer- 
 ings, or peace offerings ; the Evangelical, whether 
 the sacrifice of praise (Heb. xiii. 15), or of the com- 
 munication of our goods {^Ib. xiii. 16), or of ourselves 
 (Rom. xii. i). It comprehends within its extension 
 sacrifice material and immaterial, bloody and un- 
 bloody, visible and invisible, literal and spiritual, 
 Aaronical and Melchisedechian, propitiatory and 
 
3° 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 gratulatory. In short, it is a definition of the 
 genus sacrifice, not of only one or more of its 
 species. 
 
 We can now both understand and answer the 
 equivocal question, Is the Holy Communion (signi- 
 fying by that term the whole rite from beginning 
 to end) a sacrifice or not ? In the sense of Bellar- 
 mine and the Tridentine Church it is not. In the 
 sense of Aquinas and the mediaeval Church it is 
 not. In the sense of Augustine and (as we shall 
 sec) of the earlier Fathers it is. In the sense 
 in which it is so called by the theologians of the 
 English Church, and according to the definition 
 of the term that we have adopted, it is. 
 
 We must next enter rather more fully into the 
 distinctions which exist between the different 
 species of sacrifice in order to determine to which 
 class the Holy Communion belongs. 
 
 It will be found that, however many minor 
 diff'erences there may be, sacrifices fall for the 
 most part into one or the other of two great classes, 
 they are either material or immaterial. To the 
 material division belong the Pagan, Patriarchal, 
 and Jewish sacrifices, consisting as they did of 
 the oftering of an animal or of the produce of the 
 earth ; and they have the properties of being ex- 
 trinsic, visible, literal. Immaterial sacrifices, on 
 the other hand, are intrinsic, that is, they come 
 ab inlus, from within, as good thoughts, or words, 
 or acts. This, according to St. Augustine, is a 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 31 
 
 characteristic of true Christian sacrifices. " Shall 
 we offer nothing then?" he asks. "Are we so to 
 come to God ? And whence shall we have where- 
 with to appease Him ? " And then he replies, 
 " Certainly, offer : you have within you what you 
 may offer. Do not look outside you for frankin- 
 cense, but say, ' Within me, O Lord, are the offer- 
 ings of praise for me to render to Thee.' Do not 
 seek outside you for a sheep to slay. You have 
 something within you to slay. The sacrifice to God 
 is a troubled spirit." (/« Psal. li.) 
 
 Immaterial sacrifices are also invisible. St. Au- 
 gustine describes visible sacrifices as mere outward 
 signs or sacraments of invisible sacrifices, the last 
 of which are alone of any value under the Christian 
 dispensation [Dc Civit. Dei., x. 5). " Nothing," 
 says Waterland, " with St. Austin is true sacrifice, 
 or acceptable service, or evangelical service (for 
 these are so many phrases reciprocal and tanta- 
 mount), but the invisible sacrifice, the sacrifice 
 of the heart, of the mind, of the man, for the mind 
 is the man" {Cliargc, 1740). 
 
 Immaterial sacrifices are also spiritual, while 
 material sacrifices are comparatively earthly, and 
 in accordance with the latter only. Origen says : 
 " Spiritual sacrifice is that which we read of ' Offer 
 to God the sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows to 
 the Most Highest.'" [In Psal. 1.) "Therefore 
 to praise God and to offer our vows of prayer to 
 Him is to sacrifice to God " {Id. in Num. Hom.xi.) 
 
32 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Tertullian says : " God is to be served, not with 
 earthly, but with spiritual sacrifices, as it is written : 
 ' A broken and a contrite heart is the host (victim 
 or sacrifice) which should be offered to God ' ; 
 and elsewhere ' Offer the sacrifice of praise to 
 God, and render thy vows to the Most Highest.' 
 Spiritual sacrifices of praise are thus pointed to, 
 and a broken heart is shown to be an acceptable 
 sacrifice to God " (Adv. Jtid. ch. v.) 
 
 That Christian sacrifices should be immaterial is 
 argued by Justin Martyr : " We have received that 
 God does not need material offering from man, 
 seeing that He Himself supplies all things ; but 
 we have been taught and are persuaded and believe 
 that He accepts those only that imitate His ex- 
 cellencies, purity, and righteousness, and mercy, 
 and the other characteristics of God." {Apol. i.) A 
 little further on he adds : " God is not in need of 
 blood and libation and incense. . . . We praise Him 
 to the utmost of our power with prayer and thanks- 
 giving for all the things that He offers to us, count- 
 ing that the only way to honour Him suitably is 
 not to consume with fire the things that He has 
 given us for our sustenance, but to offer them to 
 ourselves and to those that are needy, and thank- 
 fully to send up to Him praises and hymns by 
 speech." [Ibid.) In like manner Lactantius says : 
 " There are two things that must be offered, sacri- 
 fice and offering, both incorporeal. . . . ' Offering' is 
 uprightness of soul, ' sacrifice ' is praise and hymn " 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 33 
 
 [Instit. vi. 24). St. Chrysostom speaks of Chris- 
 tians converted from Judaism as " having given 
 up the service which consists of sacrifices and 
 burnt offerings and other corporeal things." {Adv. 
 yjtd., Hom. vii.) St. Cyril, of Alexandria, having 
 contrasted the offerings of the law — oxen, sheep, 
 doves, pigeons, fruit, fine flour, calves, incense — 
 with the more intellectual and spiritual offerings of 
 the Christians — rneekness, faith, hope, charity, 
 righteousness, temperance, obedience, dutifulness, 
 praise, and all sorts of virtues, says : " For this 
 sacrifice being the most immaterial is the most 
 suitable for God, who is by nature uncom- 
 pounded and immaterial." {Contra Jul. lib. x.) 
 
 In what specific sense or senses the Holy Com- 
 munion is a sacrifice, is our next question. 
 
 D 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 N what sense or senses can the Holy Com- 
 munion (understanding by this expression 
 the whole Eucharistic rite) be legitimately 
 called a sacrifice ? 
 
 We have seen that the grand division of sacrifices 
 is into material and immaterial. Is it material, 
 like the Jewish sacrifices, in which there was offered 
 an animal or some product of the earth, or is it 
 immaterial, like the offering of prayer and praise? 
 
 The only sense in which the Holy Communion 
 can be regarded as a material sacrifice is that in 
 which the meat offering was a sacrifice of the Jews. 
 The five Mosaic sacrifices were the burnt offering, 
 symbolizing self-surrender ; the sin offering, cere- 
 monially effecting propitiation ; the trespass offer- 
 ing, which ceremonially made satisfaction ; the 
 peace offering, which was a pledge of reconciliation 
 already wrought ; and the meat offering. The 
 last-named sacrifice, or, as it was called in Hebrew, 
 Miiicltah, consisted of flour and oil, a small portion 
 of which was offered to God in token of His sove- 
 reignty over all things, and of loyal submission on 
 the part of the offerer to Him, the Giver of good. 
 
THE DOCTRIXE OF THE HOLV COMMUNTOX. 3,5 
 
 As in the meat offering, the flour and oil were 
 presented to God as gifts of homage, so in the 
 Holy Communion the offerings of bread and wine 
 and of the alms, while they sen,-e other ends, are 
 gifts of acknowledgment, recognising God as the 
 Sustainer of man's life and as the Owner of the 
 world and of all that it contains. Having defined 
 sacrifice to be a gift or offering made to God as an 
 act of religious worship, we must admit that the| 
 Holy Communion is in this sense a sacrifice, and 
 that, as something material is offered, it is a mate- 
 rial sacrifice. 
 
 It is so recognised by the earliest Christian 
 writers. Waterland, explaining a passage of St. 
 Clement of Rome, in which he speaks of the pre- 
 sentation of gifts and offerings, says, '• The gifts 
 were brought to the altar or communion table by 
 the people, and were recommended to God's ac- 
 ceptance by the officiating bishop or presbyter. 
 So there was, first, a kind of lay oblation, and next 
 a sacerdotal oblation of the same gifts to God. 
 Their gifts consisted partly of alms to the poor and 
 partly of oblations, properly so called, to the 
 Church ; and out of these last was usually taken 
 the matter of the Eucharist, the bread and wine." 
 Justin Martyr, in his famous description of the 
 Lord's Supper, says, "Then bread and a cup of 
 water and wine is offered to the officiating minister, 
 and he taking it, sends up praise and glory to the 
 Father of all through the name of the Son and 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 of the Holy Spirit, and gives thanks at length to 
 Him for having vouchsafed these gifts to us " [Apol. 
 I.). And he represents the bread and wine as pre- 
 sented " in memorial of our food, both dry and 
 liquid," as well as a memorial of the Passion, and 
 '• that we may thank God for having created the 
 world, with all the things therein, for the sake of 
 man " {Dial, cum TrypJi). 
 
 St. IrenjEus is still clearer. He says, " Shewing 
 His disciples that they were to offer firstfruits to 
 God of His creatures (not as though God needed 
 them, but that they might exhibit their fruitfulness 
 and gratitude) He took the creature bread and 
 gave thanks, saying, ' This is My body ;' and simi- 
 larly the cup, which is a created thing like our- 
 selves. He declared to be His blood, and thus 
 He taught the New Oblation of the New Testa- 
 ment ; this the Church received from the Apostles, 
 and offers to God throughout the world — to Him 
 who supplies us with sustenance — the firstfruits of 
 His own gifts in the New Testament. The obla- 
 tion of the Church, which the Lord taught, was to 
 be offered in all the world, is regarded by God as a 
 pure sacrifice, and is acceptable to Him ; not that 
 He requires a sacrifice of us, but because the offerer 
 is glorified in that which he offers, if his gift be ac- 
 cepted. For it is by a gift that we show our 
 honour and affection for a king, and the Lord 
 wishing us to offer this gift in all simplicity and 
 innocence, declared saying, ' When therefore thou 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 37 
 
 bringest thy gift to the altar, &c."' {Lib. iv. 17, 18). 
 And again, " The offering of the Eucharist is not 
 carnal but spiritual, and therefore pure. For we 
 offer to God the bread and the cup of blessing, 
 giving thanks to Him that He has commanded the 
 earth to bring forth these fruits for our food ; and 
 then having finished the offering, we call on the 
 Holy Spirit to exhibit this sacrifice, the bread the 
 body of Christ, and the cup the blood of Christ, in 
 order that those who participate in these emblems 
 may obtain remission of sins and eternal life" 
 {Fragvi. Sccu/id.). 
 
 So too the lately-recovered treatise called "The 
 Teaching of the Apostles " instructs the earliest 
 Christians to make use of the following Thanks- 
 giving after Reception : " We give thanks to Thee, 
 Holy Father, for Thy Holy Name, which Thou 
 madest to dwell in our hearts, and for the know- 
 ledge and faith of immortality which Thou madest 
 known to us through Jesus Thy Child. To Thee 
 be the glory for ever. Thou didst create all things 
 for Thy Name's sake, and didst give food and 
 drink to men for enjoyment, that they may give 
 thanks (Eucharist) to Thee ; and on us Thou 
 bestowedst spiritual food and drink and eternal 
 life, through Thy Child ; and above all we give 
 thanks to Thee that Thou art mighty. To Thee 
 be the glory for ever." (c. x.) Here it is plain that 
 the Eucharist is regarded as a sacrifice of thanks- 
 giving, made in joyous acknowledgment of God's 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 goodness and power in giving food to support 
 man's life and supplying spiritual sustenance to 
 Christians. 
 
 In short, we may say with Bishop Harold 
 Browne, "In all these Fathers (Clement of Rome, 
 Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of 
 Alexandria, Origen), we find no certain reference 
 to any offering in the Eucharist, except the offering 
 of the bread and wine in the way of gifts or obla- 
 tions to the service of God ; as the fine flour and 
 the meat or bread offering were presented by the 
 Jews, and with these, sacrifices of prayer and 
 thanksgiving." {^Exposition of Article xxxi.) 
 
 The fact here stated by the learned Bishop is 
 I worthy of much more notice than it has generally 
 received. It is without question that for 250 years 
 of the Church's life no trace of a sacrificial idea 
 being attached to the Holy Communion is found, 
 except so far as it was regarded as a sacrifice of 
 prayer and praise, and as an offering of the fruits 
 of the earth made to God in recognition of His 
 sovereignty, and in memorial of Christ's death. 
 Whether any new idea was or was not added when 
 the commemorative sacrifice came to be dwelt 
 on with greater emphasis, as was the case in the 
 immediately succeeding centuries, we shall have 
 presently to consider. At present, we cannot but 
 ask ourselves, if it be true that in this rite the 
 priest offers Christ Himself in sacrifice, is it possi- 
 ble that the Fathers for 250 years, while describing 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 39 
 
 its sacrificial character, should not have used lan- 
 guage capable of bearing such a meaning, but 
 should have been satisfied with stating that it was 
 a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for Christ's 
 death, and an offering to the Creator as of first- 
 fruits of the earth ? 
 
 Entirely in accordance with the primitive teach- 
 ing, the Church of England offers to God the alms 
 and the oblations. And this is the only material 
 oblation that she recognises in the rite. The whole 
 service is a spiritual oblation of praise and thanks- 
 giving, and of ourselves the worshippers, and it is 
 a commemoration of the great oblation of the 
 Cross ; but there is no material offering made 
 except that of the unconsecrated elements and the 
 alms. 
 
 So it was in the ancient Church Liturgies. The 
 unconsecrated elements were offered to God in 
 token of thankfulness for His gifts to man in the 
 natural order, and a memorial of Christ's Passion 
 in the spiritual order. The first idea is brought 
 out in the Clementine Liturgy, St. Basil's Liturgy, 
 St. Chrysostom's Liturgy, the Alexandrian Liturgy; 
 the second in St. James's Liturgy; but both ideas 
 are more or less present in all the Liturgies. The 
 form of oblation in the Liturgies of St. Basil and 
 St. Chrysostom is, " Through all and in all we 
 offer to Thee Thine own (things) out of Thine 
 own;" and similarly the Alexandrian, "We, O 
 Lord God, have set before Thee Thine own, out 
 
40 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 of Thy gifts;" and the Clementine, "We offer to 
 Thcc, our King and God, according to His institu- 
 tion, this bread and this cup . . . and we beseech 
 Thee that Thou wilt look graciously on these gifts 
 now lying before Thee, O Thou self-sufficient God, 
 and accept them to the honour of Thy Christ." In 
 the above oblations we have the very notion that 
 we have attributed to the meat offering of the Jews 
 and which we have found in Justin Martyr and 
 Irenaeus ; that is, the loyal acknowledgment of 
 God as the Giver of all good things, by giving 
 back to Him a portion of His gifts. The Liturgy 
 of St. James uses the formula — " We sinners offer 
 to Thee, O Lord, this tremendous and unbloody 
 sacrifice," which (unless it be a later interpolation 
 and to be interpreted in accordance with later doc- 
 trines^) puts forward the thought of the memorial 
 of the Lord's Passion ; it still, however, speaks of 
 the elements, after the oblation, as '-these proposed 
 gifts." 
 
 After consecration there was no oblation — nor is 
 there now in the East, where the consecration is 
 considered to be effected by the Invocation, which 
 succeeds the oblation. But when the idea became 
 prevalent that Christ Himself was offered to His 
 Father by the priest, it was necessary to introduce 
 
 ' There is nothing in the Liturgies which can be thereby proved 
 to be earlier than the seventh or eighth century. It is only when 
 they agree that we may feel some confidence that they represent 
 primitive doctrine. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 41 
 
 it. Accordingly, in the Roman Mass there are two 
 oblations, and it has become the fashion to call 
 them the Lesser Oblation (the gift of homage and 
 memorial offering before consecration), and the 
 Greater Oblation (the supposed offering of Christ 
 Himself after the bread and wine have been, as 
 alleged, changed into Him), which, however, still 
 testifies to its original intention by the words, " We 
 offer to Thy glorious Majesty of Thine own gifts 
 and of the things vouchsafed to us," &c. The 
 ^^hurch of England, to mark emphatically that she 
 recognises no oblation of the consecrated elements, 
 no actual sacrifice of Christ, has transferred the 
 prayer which makes mention of the Eucharist as a 
 sacrifice from its usual place immediately after the 
 consecration, to the Post-Communion, where it will 
 not admit of the misunderstanding which it might 
 otherwise have been liable to. " In removing the 
 remaining petitions from the Consecration Prayer 
 to the Post-Communion," says Canon Trevor, "the 
 Reformers (who must be allowed to know their own 
 meaning) explained beyond question that no obla- 
 tion of the gifts had ever been Jicre intended. The 
 ' bounden duty and service' of the seventh clause 
 related to the whole celebration, and is most appro- 
 priately presented when that act is completed by 
 communion. So too the reasonable sacrifice of 
 ourselves, our souls and bodies, is most suitably 
 offered when we have verily and indeed received 
 the body and blood of Christ, and are so united 
 
42 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 with Him in the sacrifice of the cross. On the 
 whole, the pretended mangling and displacing of 
 the older form not only gave the true interpretation 
 of its own meaning, but supplied a remedy for 
 some not unimportant and liturgical mistakes" 
 [Sacrifice and Participation of the Holy Etic/iarist). 
 
 So far as material sacrifice goes then, the Church 
 of England, following the Primitive Church, recog- 
 nises none but the offering to God of the alms and 
 the unconsecrated elements, in acknowledgment of 
 God's goodness to His creatures in supplying them 
 with the necessaries of life and in memorial of the 
 sacrifice of Christ. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 E have now to consider the Holy Com- 
 munion as a spiritual sacrifice. We have 
 seen that a spiritual sacrifice is as genuine 
 a sacrifice as a material sacrifice. It falls under 
 our definition, for it is a gift or offering to God, 
 made as an act of religious worship; and it is 
 recognised in the New Testament, and acknow- 
 ledged by the early Fathers, as the special sacrifice 
 of Christians, distinguishing them by its spiritual 
 character from Jews and Pagans, whose offerings 
 were material, and therefore inferior in kind. 
 
 The Bible teaches us that praise and thanks- 
 giving are a sacrifice. "By Him therefore let us 
 offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that 
 is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His Name" 
 (Heb. xiii. 15). In and by the service of the Holy 
 Communion we offer praise and thanksgiving to 
 God ; therefore, it is, in the words of the English 
 Communion office, "our sacrifice of praise and 
 thanksgiving." 
 
 Again, the Bible teaches us that the bestowal of 
 our worldly goods on the poor, or to supply the 
 needs of the Church, if done in the love of Christ, 
 
44 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 is a sacrifice. "To do good and to communicate, 
 forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well 
 pleased" (Heb. xiii. 16). " I have all and abound : 
 I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the 
 things which were seat from you, an odour of a 
 sweet smell, a sacrifice, acceptable, well pleasing to 
 God" (Phil. iv. 18). In the Holy Communion we 
 make to God an offering out of our worldly goods, 
 which offering is typical of our willingness to give 
 up all for His sake, if He should require it of us. 
 Therefore, the Holy Communion is a sacrifice out 
 of our substance. . 
 
 Further, the Bible teaches us that the giving up 
 of ourselves to God is a sacrifice. " I beseech you, 
 therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye 
 present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, accept- 
 able unto God, which is your reasonable service" 
 (Rom. xii. 1). In the Holy Communion we devote 
 ourselves afresh to God, praying Him " that we may 
 ever hereafter serve and please Him in newness of 
 life," and "we offer and present unto Him our- 
 selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, 
 holy, and living sacrifice" unto Him. Therefore 
 the Holy Communion is a sacrifice of ourselves. 
 Spiritually, then, the Holy Communion is an offer- 
 ing of the sacrifice of our praise and thanksgiving, 
 of charity, and of self-devotion. 
 
 We have seen that the earliest of the Christian 
 Fathers gave the appellation of sacrifice to the 
 Holy Communion, because in it bread and wine 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 45 
 
 were offered to God, the Creator of all, in acknow- 
 ledgment that all that sustains human life (repre- 
 sented by bread and wine) is His gift to man. 
 Another reason for their so calling it was, that in 
 their estimation it was a spiritual sacrifice, especially 
 a sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving, in which we 
 offer to God "the calves of our lips" (Hos. xiv. 2), 
 as a " reasonable service " (Aoyix); karpeia) (Rom. 
 xii. i). I have already shown that in the opinion 
 of the early fathers, the spiritual sacrifice is espe- 
 cially the Christian sacrifice in contrast with the 
 sacrifice of all other religious bodies. I shall not 
 go over this ground again, but will add a few more 
 passages to the like effect, in which the writers are 
 specially referring to the Holy Communion. 
 
 Athenagoras in the middle of the second cen- 
 tury says, " Now as to our not sacrificing, the 
 Creator and Father of all does not want blood or 
 fat, or sweet savour from flowers or incense, being 
 Himself the perfection of sweet savour, wanting 
 nothing, requiring nothing. But the greatest sacri- 
 fice that we can offer to Him is to know who 
 stretched out the vault of Heaven and fixed the 
 central earth, who gathered the waters into the 
 seas, who adorned the sky with the stars and made 
 the earth produce seed, who made the animals and 
 created man. When we apprehend the creative 
 God as sustaining and watching over the universe 
 with that wisdom and skill with which He ever 
 works, and raise up holy hands to Him, what 
 
46 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 hecatomb is then wanted? Why should I seek 
 after burnt sacrifices which God needs not? And 
 yet we should offer an unbloody sacrifice and bring 
 Him our reasonable service " {Leg. xiii.). If the 
 last sentence is not a note added by a later hand 
 (it has the air of one, but is counted genuine), we 
 have in Athenagoras the first example of the use 
 of the phrase " unbloody sacrifice," and he uses 
 it as equivalent to " our reasonable service," that 
 is, Athenagoras condemns material sacrifices and 
 approves of a spiritual sacrifice, with allusion, as it 
 would appear, to the Holy Communion. Or if it 
 be thought that the two expressions "unbloody 
 sacrifice" and "reasonable service" are not here 
 equivalent, but that the former relates to sacrifices 
 of the Jews called " unbloody," the passage would 
 still condemn all material sacrifices except the min- 
 clia, that is, an offering of bread and wine acknow- 
 ledging the sovereignty of God. 
 
 Tertullian is no less decisive in his declaration of 
 the spiritual character of the Christian sacrifice : 
 " We do sacrifice," he says, " but in the way which 
 God has commanded, that is, by prayer alone ; for 
 God the Creator of the Universe does not need any 
 incense or blood." {Ad. Scap.\\.) " I offer Him a rich 
 and greater host, which He has commanded, that 
 is, prayer from a chaste body, an innocent mind, 
 and a sanctified spirit, not pennyworths of frank- 
 incense, tears of the Arabian tree," etc. {Apol. xxx.). 
 " Prayer (with Psalmody) is the spiritual host which 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 47 
 
 has done away with the ancient sacrifices. We 
 (Christians) are the true worshippers, the true 
 priests, who praying in the Spirit, in the Spirit 
 offer God's proper and acceptable sacrifice of prayer, 
 which He has demanded and appointed for Him- 
 self: this we must bring to the altar of God, etc." 
 {De Orat. xxvii.) 
 
 It is probable that the word " host," different as 
 its significance now is, originally meant, as used in 
 the Liturgy, the sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
 giving. The "sacrifice of thanksgiving" in Lev. 
 vii. 13 is rendered by the Vulgate "host {kostia), 
 of thanks"; in Lev. xxii. 29 "sacrifice of thanks- 
 giving " is rendered as " host for thanksgiving " ; in 
 Psal. cxvi. 17 the LXX. has " sacrifice of praise," the 
 Vulgate " host of praise." In accordance with this 
 usage of the word we find in the Liturgies " victi- 
 mam laudis," the " victim of praise," and " kos- 
 tiain laudis," the "host of praise" (Altss. Goili. 
 xrii, xxxvii.). " In the Liturgy of Jerusalem " (I 
 quote Mr. Scudamore), " occur the words, ' Send 
 forth Thy good grace, O God, and sanctify our 
 souls, and bodies^ and spirits, and change our minds 
 to piety, that in a pure conscience we may offer to 
 Thee the oil of peace, the sacrifice of praise.' The 
 Liturgy of Caesarea : ' Fit us for the ministry by 
 the power of the Holy Ghost, that standing with- 
 out condemnation before Thy holy glory we may 
 offer unto Thee the sacrifice of praise.' In the 
 west the same expression occurs in the Leonian 
 
48 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Collect and in the Gelasian Canon : ' We offer unto 
 Thee, O Lord, this sacrifice of praise : Remember 
 Thy servants who offer unto Thee this sacrifice of 
 praise for themselves and all theirs.' In the Mo- 
 zarabic and the old Gallican rites : ' Bless and sanc- 
 tify this sacrifice of praise ' " {Notitia Eucharistica, 
 X. 4). 
 
 No one can help seeing how accordant with these 
 expressions are the words of the Anglican Liturgy : 
 / •' O Lord and Heavenly Father, we, Thy humble 
 I servants, entirely desire Thy Fatherly goodness 
 mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and 
 \ thanksgiving," and it only requires a little study, 
 as we have shown, to see that by "the Host" was 
 originally meant this sacrifice of praise. 
 , The idea of the sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
 / giving is dwelt on, as we should expect, by the 
 chief writers and divines of the English Church. 
 Thus Ridley says : " The whole substance of our 
 sacrifice, which is frequented of the Church in the 
 \ Lord's Supper, consisteth in prayer, praise and 
 giving of thanks, and in remembering and showing 
 forth of that sacrifice upon the altar of the Cross." 
 — [Disput. at Oxford) 
 
 Bishop Bilson : " We never denied the Eucharist 
 to be a sacrifice. The very name implies it to be 
 ' the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,' which is 
 the true and lively sacrifice of the New Testament." 
 — {Of Subjection and Rebellion.') 
 
 Bishop Buckeridge : "Although this sacrifice be 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 49 
 
 not an external proper sacrifice, as our adversaries 
 would make it, yet it hath in it spiritual sacrifices 
 of divers sorts, all which require all humility of 
 soul and body in the offerers." — [Discoui-se, etc.) 
 
 Archbishop Laud : " At and in the Eucharist we 
 offer up to God three sacrifices : one by the priest 
 only — that's the commemorative sacrifice of Christ's 
 death, represented in bread broken and wine poured 
 out ; another by the priest and the people jointly, 
 and that is the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving 
 for all the benefits and graces we received by the 
 precious death of Christ ; the third by every 
 particular man for himself only; and that is the 
 sacrifice of every man's body and soul, to serve 
 Him in both, all the rest of his life for this blessing 
 then bestowed on him." — [Conference with Fis/ier.) 
 
 Mede : " I define the Christian sacrifice ex metite 
 antiques ecclesice in this manner : an oblation of 
 thanksgiving and prayer to God the Father, 
 through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice commemo- 
 rated in the creatures of bread and wine, where- 
 with God had been first agnized." — {The Christian 
 Sacrifice) " Furthermore, that the Christian sacri- 
 fice was an oblation of prayer, and consisted in 
 invocation, is also another way to be evinced ; 
 namely, because the Fathers, when they speak 
 thereof, used the terms of ' prayer,' ' oblation,' and 
 ' sacrifice,' promiscuously and interchangeably, one 
 for the other, as words importing the same thing." 
 —{Ibid.) 
 
 £ 
 
50 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Dean Brevint : " Sincere Christians must have 
 their hands full, at the receiving of the Holy Com- 
 munion, with four distinct sets of sacrifices, (i) 
 The sacramental and commemorative sacrifice of 
 Christ. (2) The real and actual sacrifice of them- 
 selves. (3) The free-will offering of their goods. 
 (4) The peace-offering of their praises." — {Christian 
 Sacrifice.) 
 
 Bishop Bull : " Instead of slaying of beasts and 
 burning of incense, whereby they praised God, and 
 called upon His name under the Old Testament, 
 the Fathers believed our Saviour appointed this 
 sacrament of bread and wine as a rite whereby to 
 give thanks and make supplication to His Father 
 in His name." — {Corruptions of the ClinrcJi of 
 Rome.) 
 
 Waterland : "The Eucharist is a Gospel sacri- 
 fice, not the material symbols, but the ser\'ice, 
 consisting of prayer, praise, contrite hearts, self- 
 humiliation, etc. As to any sacrifice of ours, it lies 
 entirely in the service we perform, and in the quali- 
 fications or dispositions which we bring, which are 
 all so much spiritual oblation or spiritual sacrifice, 
 and nothing else." — {Doctrine of the Eucharist.) 
 
 Before passing on, we may notice that the obla- 
 tion of "ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a 
 reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice" (in which 
 allusion is made to St. Paul's KoyiKr\ Xarpeia) is 
 recognised by the ancient as well as by our own 
 Church, as constituting a part of the offering made 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 5 1 
 
 in tlie Holy Communion, with this characteristic 
 difference. Whereas we of the modern world and 
 Church offer each our own individual self, or the 
 congregation assembled with us, the ancients 
 offered the whole collective body of Christians 
 under the name of the body of Christ. This is a 
 thought frequently brought forward by St. Augus- 
 tine. " The whole redeemed city, that is, the 
 congregation and fellowship of the saints, is offered 
 up to God an universal sacrifice through the Great 
 Priest. This is the sacrifice of Christians, many 
 constituting one body in Christ " {Dc Civ. Dei x.), 
 " If you want to understand what the body of 
 Christ is, listen to the apostle saying to the faithful, 
 " Ye are the body of Christ " {Scrni. ccxxix.). 
 "We ourselves, that is, the City of God, are the 
 most noble and best sacrifice " {De Civ. Dei xix.). 
 Carrying out this idea, Bishop Buckeridge writes : 
 " This offering up of ourselves to Him is indeed the 
 true and daily sacrifice of the Christian Church, 
 which, being the mystical body of Christ, cannot 
 offer Christ's natural body, which Christ offered 
 once for all upon the Cross ; but offereth His 
 mystical body, that is herself, by Christ, her High 
 Priest and Head, unto God." — {Discourse) 
 
 I will end this division of my subject with a pas- 
 sage from Eusebius, as translated and cited by 
 Waterland : " Therefore we oft'er both sacrifice and 
 incense, first celebrating the memorial of the grand 
 sacrifice by those mysteries which He has ordained, 
 E 2 
 
52 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 and presenting our thanksgivings for our salvation 
 by devout hymns and prayers. Next we offer up 
 ourselves to Him, and to the Logos, his High 
 Priest, resting upon Him both with body and soul. 
 Whereupon we endeavour to preserve to Him our 
 bodies pure and untainted from all filthiness, and 
 to bring Him minds free from all evil affection and 
 stain of maliciousness ; and take care to honour 
 Him by purity of thought, sincerity of affection, 
 and soundness of principles ; for these, we are 
 taught, are more acceptable to Him than a multi- 
 tude of sacrifices streaming with blood and smoke 
 and savour." — {Dan. Evatig. x.) 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 S the celebration of the Holy Communion a 
 Commemorative Sacrifice? Let us first under- 
 stand what the expression means. Does it 
 mean a sacrament commemorating the sacrifice of 
 Christ, or a sacrifice commemorating the death of 
 Christ? Aquinas defines the term; he writes: 
 " This sacrament is commemorative of the Lord's 
 Passion, which was a true sacrifice, and so it is 
 called a sacrifice " [Siimm. iii. 73, 4). And accord- 
 ingly Waterland says " that it is a mistake to 
 consider that the phrase commemorative sacrifice 
 imports that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, for " it 
 neither implies it nor contradicts it," being " a con- 
 tracted or compendious form of speech, which, 
 drawn out at full length, expresses a sacrament 
 commemorative of a sacrifice" {Charge, 1740). 
 There is no doubt that Aquinas and Waterland are 
 right in their explanation of the meaning of the 
 term. But even were it otherwise, the expression 
 might still stand, for we have seen that the cele- 
 bration of the Holy Communion is a spiritual and 
 in one sense (as offering the fruits of the earth to 
 the Creator) a material sacrifice. Sacrificially con- 
 
54 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 sidered, the celebration of the Holy Communion is 
 an offering of homage, an offering of ourselves, a 
 sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and a com- 
 memorative sacrifice. It is mainly in the last sense 
 that the Fathers, from the time of Cyprian, speak 
 of it as a sacrifice, as it was in the first sense or 
 senses, more particularly that the earlier Fathers so 
 spoke of it. 
 
 They are very poor controversialists who give up 
 to the Church of Rome all the Fathers who speak 
 of the celebration of the Holy Communion as a 
 sacrifice or oblation. Irenaeus calls it an oblation, 
 and he means by it a presenting of bread and wine 
 to the Creator, in acknowledgment of His goodness 
 to His creatures. How does that help the doctrine 
 of the iVIass? All the earliest Fathers speak of it 
 as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. How 
 does that affect Rome ? From Cyprian downwards 
 they speak of it commonly as a commemorative 
 sacrifice, but what do they mean by that? They 
 tell us they mean the commemoration of the great 
 sacrifice. Now to allow that the Fathers who thus 
 taught meant the Roman doctrine, and to offer 
 them as a gift to Romanist theologians on account 
 of the ambiguous meaning of a term that they 
 employ, /loc ItJiactts vclit ct inagno inerccnUir 
 AtridcB. That the Fathers of the first six centuries 
 did not mean, by the language which they use, that 
 in the celebration of the Holy Communion, Christ 
 is sacrificed, but only that a commemoration of 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 55 
 
 His sacrifice was made they teli us themselves. St. 
 Augustine, for example, explains that we may say 
 that Christ is sacrificed in the sacrament, but only 
 in the sense in which we say during Holy Week, 
 " To-morrow or next day is the day of Christ's 
 passion," or on Sunday, " To-day Christ rose," 
 although, in fact, so many years have passed since 
 He really suffered and rose, for sacraments {i.e. 
 signs of things) often take the name of the things 
 that they signify. {Epist. ad Bonif.) This is the 
 use of language known as metonymy, which is so 
 common as hardly to be called a figure. When we 
 look at a map, we say, " This is London, there is 
 Paris." What we mean is, "This spot represents 
 London, there is a sign representing Paris." We 
 may say, " This is London " a thousand times with- 
 out being misunderstood to mean that the material 
 city is standing on the canvas or paper. It is for- 
 tunate (for it was hardly to be expected) that such 
 a writer as Augustine should have explained that 
 it was in this sense that the celebration of the Holy , 
 Communion was called a sacrifice. The Euchar- 
 ist," says Bishop Harold Browne, "was a remem- 
 brance {av6.\ivr\<n'i) of the great sacrifice on the 
 Cross ; and so it was called by the name of that , 
 which it recorded." {Exp. Art.) St. Chrysostom, 
 like St. Augustine, has, as it were, gone out of his 
 way to explain the same point to us. He has used 
 very strong language, which might have been mis- 
 interpreted, but this danger has been obviated by 
 
56 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 his saying plainly that when he uses the expression 
 sacrifice in connexion with the Holy Eucharist, he 
 means by it the memorial of the sacrifice. " We 
 offer the same sacrifice constantly," he says, " or 
 rather, we celebrate a memorial of a sacrifice" 
 {Horn, in Hcb. xvii.), showing that, in his use of the 
 words, " sacrifice " and " memorial of a sacrifice " 
 are synonymous, but that the latter expression is 
 exact and the former is not. Theophylact, as 
 usual, follows St. Chrysostom, using the words, " or 
 rather, we offer a memorial of that sacrifice." 
 
 Thus it came about that, to use the testimony of 
 Waterland, " by the middle of the third century, if 
 not sooner, the Eucharist began to be called a sacri- 
 fice on account of the grand sacrifice represented 
 and commemorated in it : the sign, as such, now 
 adopting the name of the thing signified. In short, 
 the memorial at length came to be called a sacri- 
 fice as well as an oblation, and it had a double 
 claim to be so called, partly as it was in itself a 
 spiritual sei-vice or sacrifice, and partly as it was a 
 representation and commemoration of the high, 
 tremendous sacrifice of Christ, God-man. This last 
 view of it, being of all the most awful and endear- 
 ing, came by degrees to be the most prevailing 
 acceptation of the Christian sacrifice as held forth in 
 the Eucharist." — [Doctrine of tJie Endiarist, ch. i.) 
 
 It will be sufficient to quote a few examples of 
 the use of the expression Commemorative Sacrifice 
 by English divines : 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 57 
 
 Bishop Andrewes : " Our people believe that the 
 Eucharist was instituted by our Lord for the com- 
 memoration of Him, even of His sacrifice; or, if we 
 may so speak, for a Commemorative Sacrifice, and 
 not only for a sacrament or spiritual food." And 
 he speaks of " the commemoration there made of 
 the sacrifice " and " the commemorative sacrifice " 
 as identical in meaning. — [Resp. ad Bcllarvi.) 
 
 Casaubon : " That the Fathers of the ancient 
 Church recognised one sacrifice in the Christian 
 religion which had succeeded to the place of all the 
 sacrifices of the Mosaic law, the king (James I.) 
 knew and acknowledged. But he contends that 
 this sacrifice is no more than the commemoration 
 of that which Christ once offered on the Cross to 
 His Father." — {Epist. ad Perron.) 
 
 Mede : " Though the Eucharist be a sacrifice 
 (that is, an oblation wherein the offerer feasts with 
 his God), yet is Christ in this sacrifice no otherwise 
 offered than by way of commemoration only of 
 His sacrifice once offered upon the Cross." — {The 
 Christian Sacrifice.) 
 
 Archbishop Bramhall : " Protestants acknowledge 
 a commemoration or a representative sacrifice in 
 the Holy Eucharist." — {Protestants Ordination 
 Defended.) 
 
 Bishop Bull : " The ancient Fathers held the 
 Eucharist to be a commemorative sacrifice, and so 
 do we." — {Corrtiptions of the CInircIi of Rome.) 
 
 Bishop Stillingfleet : " If you will call the whole 
 
.58 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Eucharistical office a commemorative sacrifice, as 
 the ancients did, I shall never quarrel with you 
 about \tr —{Idolatry of the Cluuxh of Rome.) 
 
 Bishop Beveridge : " The sacrifices under the law 
 were typical, and this is a commemorative sacri- 
 fice." — {C/uarh Catechism Explained.) 
 
 Waterland: "The phrase of commemorative sacri- 
 fice in such a sense as Aquinas used it in, and as 
 signifying a sacrament commemorative of a sacri- 
 fice, has been admitted by the best learned Pro- 
 testants (Cranmer, James I, Andrewes, De Dominis, 
 Buckeridge, Morton, Field, Laud, Towerson, Payne, 
 Patrick, Brevint) all along, without scruple." — 
 Charge, 1740.) 
 / Mozley : " On the subject of the Eucharistic 
 sacrifice the language of our divines has been very 
 consistent and uniform ; they have almost with one 
 voice maintained a commemorative and representa- 
 tive sacrifice in agreement with the belief of anti- 
 quity." — {Lectures, life, 1883.) 
 
 It will be asked, In what sense, then, do we deny 
 the celebration of the Holy Communion to be a 
 sacrifice? The answer is, In the sense of the sacri- 
 fice of the Mass. At the time of the Reformation 
 it was the popular belief, as it is now — and the 
 belief is supported by authorized theological state- 
 ments of the Church of Rome — that the Holy 
 Eucharist was a practical reiteration of the sacrifice 
 of the Cross, in which— (i) "the priest did offer 
 Christ for the quick and the dead," (2) " to have 
 
HOLY COM.MUXIOX RESTATED. 59 
 
 remission of pain or guilt/' which the Church of 
 England declares to be a " blasphemous fable and 
 a dangerous deceit." (Art. xxxi.) Here, then, is 
 the essential difference between the two Churches 
 on this point. The Church of England says that 
 it is God's creatures, bread and wine, that are 
 offered to God, in commemoration of the sacrifice 
 of Christ upon the Cross, as an act of thanks- 
 giving. The Church of Rome practically teaches 
 that it is Christ Himself that is sacrificed, under 
 the form of bread and wine, as an act of expiation. 
 In condemnation of this doctrine of sacrifice the 
 words of the article are not a whit too strong ; and 
 " the language of our Divines " is as " consentient 
 and uniform " in condemning iJiis doctrine of sacri- 
 fice as in maintaining the doctrine of a commemo- 
 rative sacrifice. For example: 
 
 Ridley : " The Mass is a new, blasphemous kind 
 of sacrifice, to satisfy and pay the price of sins, 
 both of the dead and of the quick, to the great and 
 intolerable contumely of Christ our Saviour, His 
 death and Passion, which was and is the only suffi- 
 cient and everlasting available sacrifice, satisfactory 
 for all the elect of God, from Adam the first, to 
 the last that shall be born to the end of the world." 
 ■ — {Pitcoiis Lamentation.) 
 
 Jewell : " True it is the ministration of the Holy 
 Communion is oftentimes by the old learned 
 Fathers called a sacrifice, not for that they thought 
 the priest had authority to sacrifice the Son of 
 
6o 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 God, but for that therein we offer up unto God 
 thanks and praises for the great sacrifice once made 
 upon the Cross." — [Reply to Harding.) 
 
 Andrewes : " That a memory is there made of 
 the sacrifice we grant willingly; that your Christ 
 made of bread is sacrificed there we will never 
 grant. The word ' sacrifice ' the king knoweth is 
 used by the Fathers, nor doth he put it amongst 
 novelties, but that of your ' Sacrifice in the Mass,' 
 he dareth to put among them, and does so." — 
 {Resp. ad Bellarin.) 
 
 Mede : " The churches of the west, of the Roman 
 Communion, as in other things they have depraved 
 this mystery, and swerved from the primitive 
 pattern thereof ; so have they, for many ages, dis- 
 used this oblation of bread and wine, and brought 
 in, in lieu thereof, a real and hypostatical oblation 
 of Christ Himself. This blasphemous oblation we 
 have taken away, and justly." — Christian Sacri- 
 ficc.) 
 
 Bramhall : " The Protestants dare not say that 
 the Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice propitiatory in 
 itself by its own proper virtue, and expiatory effi- 
 cacy." — [Ordination Defended.) 
 
 Bull : " The meaning of it (the Trent Creed) 
 must necessarily be this, that in the Eucharist the 
 very Body and Blood of Christ are again offered 
 up to God as a propitiatoiy sacrifice for the sins of 
 men, which is an impious proposition, derogatory 
 to the one full satisfaction of Christ, made by His 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 6l 
 
 death on the Cross, and contrary to express Scrip- 
 ture." — [Corruptiotis of ike C/mrch of Rojne.) 
 
 Our conclusion on this head is the following : — • 
 The celebration of the Holy Communion may be 
 regarded as a sacrifice— (i) With all theologians, 
 ancient and modern, as being a sacrifice of Praise 
 and Thanksgiving; (2) With Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, 
 and the Fathers of the first two centuries and a-half, 
 as being an offering made to God out of His 
 creatures in acknowledgment of His sovereignty, 
 and in remembrance of Christ's death ; (3) With 
 Cyprian, Chrysostom, Augustine, and other Fathers 
 of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, as a com- 
 memorative Sacrifice. But it may not be regarded 
 with the Tridentine Church as a sacrifice, from its 
 being an offering of Christ to His Father for the 
 propitiation of His wrath and for the expiation of 
 sins. Such a view is not only condemned by the 
 Church of England as erroneous, but also as blas- 
 phemous and perilous to the souls of those who 
 hold it. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EFORE passing on to the next point of con- 
 sideration, I must pause to consider an 
 objection which has been put forward with 
 some persistency. It is urged that the very in- 
 stitution of the Holy Communion declares it to 
 be not only a sacrifice, in the senses in which we 
 have allowed that it may be properly so called, but 
 a sacrifice of the very Body and Blood of Christ 
 Himself. " This do in remembrance of Me " said 
 our Lord, and His words are repeated in every 
 form of consecration, ancient and modern, used by 
 the Church. What do the words mean? Probably, 
 had not the exigencies of controversy been very 
 severe, no one would have ever expressed a doubt. 
 A main purpose of the rite was unquestionably to 
 preserve a remembrance of Christ ; what more 
 natural, then, than the words, "Do this in remem- 
 brance of Me ? " Will they bear any other signifi- 
 cation than, " Do what I am now doing or com- 
 manding you henceforth to do, in remembrance, or 
 memorial, or commemoration of Me.'' ' It is thought 
 so. They are supposed by some to signify, " Sacri- 
 fice this my body, sacrifice this my blood, in 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 63 
 
 memorial of Me." How is such an interpretation 
 supported ? 
 
 Thus — the word irouiv, ordinarily translated " do " 
 or " make," is found in some passages of the LXX. 
 to be used for " offer " or " sacrifice." The argu- 
 ment is that it is so used here. Such passages are 
 the following: "Thou must give us also sacrifices 
 and burnt offerings that we may sacrifice unto the 
 Lord our God" (Ex. x. 25); "The one lamb thou 
 shalt offer in the morning, and the other lamb thou 
 shalt offer at even" (Ibid. xxix. 38); "And the 
 priest shall offer the one for a sin offering and the 
 other for a burnt offering" (Lev. xv. 30) ; "So they 
 feared the Lord and made unto themselves of the 
 lowest of them priests of the high places, which 
 sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places" 
 (2 Kings xvii. 32). Other passages may be found 
 of similar character ; why should not the present 
 passage be one of them ? 
 
 The question rather is, Why should it? The 
 reason why the word ■kouIv is so translated in those 
 passages is because the context requires it ; nor is 
 it unusual for a generic word, like "do," or "make," 
 to be used in place of the more suitable specific 
 word, when its sense is limited by the other words 
 associated with it. This very word -noitiv is trans- 
 lated in the New Testament by " ordain," " go," 
 " commit," " fulfil," " be," " purpose," " appoint," 
 "continue," and many other terms. But it does 
 not in itself mean any one of those words ; the 
 
64 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 various significations are imposed upon it by the 
 context in the various places in which they occur. 
 It would be perfectly unreasonable to translate it 
 "go," or " be," or " purpose," in any other sentence 
 than those in which it is so translated, and to 
 justify the translation by appealing to those pas- 
 sages. Elsewhere in the New Testament ttouIv is 
 used about 550 times, and not once in the sense of 
 "sacrificed" The only possible justification of 
 translating it by "sacrifice" here would be that the 
 context demanded that application of the general 
 meaning "do." This it is impossible to affirm. We 
 have already seen that the ordinary force of the 
 word gives a most apposite sense, and therefore by 
 every rule of interpretation it must be so under- 
 stood. 
 
 This point has been well worked out by the late 
 Wharton Marriott, in his Treaiise on the Holy 
 Ei{charist, published among his " Memorials." 
 " How do we know," he asks, " in any one of these 
 cases, that the meaning of ■noulv is what is asserted ? 
 Simply because the context is such as absolutely to 
 exclude the ordinary well-known meaning of the 
 word, and as absolutely to require some such mean- 
 ing as to offer or to sacrifice. And the fallacy of 
 the argument we are now considering lies in this, 
 
 * The only passages in which a claim is put in for the rendering 
 "sacrifice" are i Tim. ii. l ("I exhort that supplications, prayers, 
 intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men"), and Heb. xi. 28 
 ("He kept the Passover"). 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 65 
 
 that an interpretation of a word in an " improper " 
 sense, which is allowable when the context is such 
 as absolutely to require it, is represented as equally 
 allowable when there is nothing in the context, or 
 in the circumstances of the case, to exclude the 
 ordinary meaning of the word." 
 
 The weakness of the argument is made still 
 more plain by an examination of the other passages 
 in the LXX, where the word is supposed to be 
 used in the sense of sacrifice. They are the follow- 
 ing : Levit. vi. 23 ; ix. 7, 16, 22 ; xiv. 19, 30 ; xvii. 
 9; xxiii. 12; Numb. ix. 2; Deut. xvi. i ; Josh. 
 V. 10 ; I Kings viii. 64 ; 2 Kings x. 24, 25 ; xxiii. 
 21 ; 2 Chron. xxx. i, 2; xxxv. i, 17, 18, 19 ; Ezra 
 vi. 19; Psal. Ixvi. 15. These passages fall into 
 two, and only two groups. The first passage runs 
 as follows : " And the priest of his sons that is 
 anointed in his stead shall offer it" (the meat 
 offering). Similar in character are Exodus xxix. 
 38, and Levit. xv. 30, already quoted, and Levit. ix. 
 7, " Offer thy sin offering ; " " Offer the offering of 
 the people;" and Levit ix. 16, "And he brought 
 the burnt offering and offered it ; " and Levit. ix. 
 22, " Offering of the sin offering, and the burnt 
 offering, and peace offerings ;" and Levit. xiv. 19, 
 " Offer the sin offering ;" and Levit. xiv. 30, "Offer 
 the one of the turtledoves ; " and Levit. xvii. 9, 
 " To offer it (a burnt offering or sacrifice) unto the 
 Lord;" and Levit. xxiii. 12, "Offer a he lamb for 
 a burnt offering unto the Lord ; " and i Kings viii. 
 F 
 
66 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 64, "He offered burnt offerings and meat ofiterings;" 
 and 2 Kings x. 24, " To offer sacrifices and burnt 
 offerings ; " and 2 Kings x. 25, " Offering the burnt 
 offering;" and Psal. Ixvi. 15, "I will offer unto 
 Thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, with the incense 
 of rams ; I will offer bullocks with goats." The 
 other group of passages is the following : Numb. ix. 
 2, "Let the children of Israel also keep the Pass- 
 over;" Deut. xvi. I, "Keep the Passover unto the 
 Lord thy God;" Josh. v. 10, "The children of 
 Israel kept the Passover;^' 2 Kings xxiii. 21, 
 '•Keep the Passover;" 2 Chron. xxx. 1, 2, '-To 
 keep the Passover unto the Lord," " To keep the 
 Passover in the second month ; " 2 Chron. xxxv. 1. 
 "Josiah kept a Passover;" 2 Chron. xxxv. 17, 18, 
 19, " The children of Israel that were present kept 
 the Passover;" Ezra vi. 19, "The children of the 
 captivity kept the Passover." 
 
 Is it reasonable to argue that the words, " Do 
 this in remembrance of Me " mean " Sacrifice this 
 Body and Blood in remembrance of Me," because 
 the Alexandrian translator of the Hebrew original 
 occasionally preferred the expression " to do or 
 make an offering " to the more precise " to offer an 
 offering" (using the generic instead of the specific 
 word to avoid tautology), and because he preferred 
 the expression " to do or make the Passover " to 
 '• to celebrate the Passover " ? 
 
 Another sense in which the word t^ouiv is used in 
 the LXX. is to dress food. What should we think 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 67 
 
 of a scholar who for that reason proposed so to 
 translate it in the instance before us ? 
 
 " In each case of an unusual rendering of the 
 word," says Mr. Marriott, " the context puts as it 
 were a badge upon it, which says clearly and 
 unmistakeably, This word is not here to be under- 
 stood in its ordinary meaning. But shall we there- 
 fore conclude that we may employ the like liberty 
 of interpretation when no such badge , has been 
 supplied by the context.'' And thus we are brought 
 to the following canon of interpretation, applicable 
 to all language as such, whether inspired or unin- 
 spired : that an ordinary word of well - known 
 meaning is to be understood in that its ordinary 
 meaning, unless there be something in the context, 
 or in the circumstances of the case, by which that 
 ordinary sense is excluded." — [Treatise on the 
 Eucharist.) 
 
 If I drew any inference from the use of -roidv in 
 the phrase " Keep the Passover," it would be that 
 there was an intimation conveyed by our Lord's 
 employment of the word, that the Holy Communion 
 was similar in character to the feast of the Passover, 
 and in some respects a substitute for it. But that 
 does not imply that it is a sacrifice of the very 
 Body and Blood of Christ. Even this inference, 
 however, is so uncertain that it should not be 
 entertained except as a mere possibility, estab- 
 lishing no foundation firm enough to build a 
 doctrine upon. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 The argument is quite a modern buttress for a 
 pre-accepted dogma. It is not found in early 
 times ; it is not known to the Fathers either Greek 
 or Latin, nay, it is contradicted by the Liturgies. 
 The Roman Liturgy has, " As oft as ye do these 
 things, ye shall do them in remembrance of Me " 
 (Scudamore's Notiiia EucJiarisiica, vi. 2) ; the 
 Milanese, " Commanding also and saying unto 
 them, As oft as ye shall do these things, preach 
 My death, announce My resurrection, hope for 
 My advent, until I again come to you from heaven," 
 {Ibid.) ; the very ancient Theodore, " All, therefore, 
 take, eat of this bread and drink of this cup; and 
 do thus as oft as ye shall meet together, in re- 
 membrance of Me" {Ibid.). An unprimitive doctrine 
 has to be supported by an unprimitive wresting of 
 Holy Scripture. 
 
 The application and force of the pronoun "this" 
 is determined by the sense of the word "do." If 
 it meant "offer" it would refer to the Body and 
 Blood previously spoken of, if it means " do," it 
 relates to the word " thing," and signifies, " Do this 
 thing that is now being done." That the latter is 
 the true meaning cannot be reasonably doubted. 
 The only improvement that might be made in the 
 authorised rendering (and that is rather a matter 
 for the commentator than for the translator) is the 
 following : to express the force of the present tense 
 77oi€lj-f, which is here used, and not the aorist :toij;- 
 o-are, the words " continue to do this," might be 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 69 
 
 substituted for " do this," but even this would be 
 a piece of hyper- exactness of scholarship. The 
 words are rightly rendered, and they mean what 
 they express. 
 
 There is another expression to which a sacrificial 
 sense is attached which it will not bear. This is 
 the expression, " Ye do shew," in i Cor. xi. 26 : 
 " For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this 
 cup of the Lord, ye do shew the Lord's death till 
 He come." To remove this mistaken idea it is 
 only necessary to have recourse to the Greek text. 
 We there find that the word used is (carayye'AAere, 
 which means simply "announce." The eating and 
 drinking the bread and the cup announce to the 
 world, age after age, the Lord's death, because 
 it is a commemoration of it, and would have 
 no sense or meaning had not the Lord's death 
 taken place. But the fact that a symbolical act 
 constitutes of itself a publication of the Lord's 
 death does not make that act a sacrifice. " Would 
 it not have been thought a thing incredible," says 
 Mr. Marriott, " by one unacquainted with the phe- 
 nomena of controversy, that because our English 
 translators (inferring, probably, from the context, 
 as they legitimately might, that the particular 
 mode of the 'announcing' spoken of in the text 
 was by symbolic actions, viz. ' eating this bread ' 
 and drinking this cup,' as well as by words), rendered 
 KaTayyiK\eT( by a term, ' shew [forth],' which would 
 apply to either words or actions — on the strength 
 
70 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 of this critics and theologians, with the original 
 text and context to refer to, would deliberately 
 quote the ' shew [forth] ' of the English version as 
 a Scriptural proof of a sacrificial showing forth to 
 God of the death of the Lord." — {Treatise on the 
 Eucharist.) 
 
 Our conclusion is that neither the word avaixrriai9, 
 nor the word TToieiv, nor the word Karayye'AAere has 
 a sacrificial signification, although we readily allow 
 that the celebration of the Holy Communion may 
 be properly called a Sacrifice, as being a symbolical 
 acknowledgment of God's supremacy by an offer- 
 ing to Him out of His gifts to man, an offering of 
 praise and thanksgiving, and a commemoration of 
 the Sacrifice of the Cross. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 E have now to consider the Holy Com- 
 munion in another aspect, as a means of 
 feeding upon Christ. 
 Singularly enough it is that one of the Evan- 
 gelists who does not recount the institution of the 
 Holy Communion, from whom we learn most as to 
 spiritual eating and drinking. The first passage in 
 St. John's Gospel where this thought appears is 
 the conversation of our Lord with the woman of 
 Samaria. The drinking of natural water is there 
 used as a symbol of the drinking of living water. 
 The effects of the natural water are but passing 
 and temporary ; men drink, and then they again 
 become thirsty and have to drink again. Not so 
 with the living water ; its effects are permanent : 
 " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
 him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall 
 give him shall be in him a well of water, springing 
 up into everlasting life" (John iv. 14). The Sama- 
 ritan woman could not fully understand His words, 
 but H^e gave no plain explanation of them. He only 
 declared that the living water, symbolized by the 
 natural water, was " the gift of God," which, how- 
 ever, it was in His power to give to her on her 
 
72 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 asking Him for it. On hearing the effects of the 
 Hving water, she does ask Him for it, but He makes 
 no response, except by desiring her to summon her 
 husband, presumably that he as well as the other 
 Samaritans might listen to His teaching on the 
 subject. Here the matter is allowed to rest ; what 
 is to be gathered from it is that there is such a 
 thing as spiritual drinking, symbolized by natural 
 drinking, which has a powerful spiritual effect, 
 described under the figure of a well of water in 
 the heart springing up unto eternal life. 
 
 Immediately after this conversation with the 
 Samaritan woman, in which some as yet unde- 
 clared spiritual gift, whether it were spiritual truth 
 once imparted to the soul, or, as afterwards ap- 
 pears, the presence of the Spirit of Christ in the 
 soul, is likened in its satisfying effects to a perennial 
 supply of water once for all drunk by the thirsty 
 man, our Lord proceeds to declare that there is 
 also a spiritual eating symbolized by natural eating. 
 " In the meanwhile His disciples prayed Him, say- 
 ing. Master, eat. But He said unto them, I have 
 meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said 
 the disciples one to another. Hath any man brought 
 Him ought to eat ? Jesus saith unto them. My meat 
 is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish 
 His work" (John iv. 31-34). Here the sustaining 
 power of food for the body is made to indicate and 
 symbolize the sustaining power of obedience to 
 God's will for the soul. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 73 
 
 So far we find " meat " — i. c. solid food — used as 
 a symbol of the sustaining effects of a submissive 
 and active fulfilment of the Divine will, and water 
 as the symbol of a refreshing and satisfying spiritual 
 gift as yet unexplained. The idea of natural eating 
 and drinking being a sacrament of an inward and 
 spiritual feeding will no longer be strange to Christ's 
 hearers and disciples. 
 
 We now come to the sixth chapter of the same 
 Evangelist, so well known in this controversy. Our 
 Lord begins at the point already reached, namely, 
 that there is " meat that perisheth," and that there 
 is "meat which endureth unto everlasting life;" 
 in other words that there is natural food, and that 
 there is spiritual food symbolized by it ; and this 
 spiritual food He says that " He will give them," 
 just as before He had declared that He would 
 give the living water. Next follows an illustration. 
 The manna that had been " given " as " bread 
 from heaven " in the wilderness was food for the 
 body ; it supported the wanderers in the desert, 
 but nevertheless they that had eaten of it died. 
 But there was a bread from heaven, "the true 
 bread," symbolized by the manna, of which, if a 
 man ate, he should not die. His auditors under- 
 stood Him no more than the Samaritan woman 
 had done. " Evermore give us this bread," they 
 said, not knowing in the least what it was. Then 
 our Lord proceeds a step further. He identifies 
 Himself with the Bread from heaven ; "Jesus said 
 
74 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 unto them, I am the Bread of Life ; he tliat cometh 
 to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on 
 Me shall never thirst." This is tantamount to a 
 declaration (i) that it is Himself that is the spiritual 
 food of the soul, and (2) that He must be received 
 by faith. In their perplexity the Jews murmured, 
 on which He repeats both statements in plain 
 language : " I am that Bread of Life," " He that 
 believeth on Me hath everlasting life," adding, 
 however, to their perplexity, rather than removing 
 it, by the further words, " The bread that I will 
 give is My flesh," and on their striving among 
 themselves as to the possibility of eating His flesh. 
 He adds what would have been still harder of 
 comprehension to the Jew, to whom all blood was 
 forbidden : " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
 Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." 
 Knowing the hardness of such a saying to a Jewish 
 audience. He reiterates it again and again in dif- 
 ferent words, "Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh 
 My blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up 
 at the last day. For My flesh is meat indeed, and 
 My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My 
 flesh and drinketh My blood dwelleth in Me, and 
 I in him. As the living Father hath sent Me, and 
 I live by the Father ; so he that eateth Me, even 
 he shall live by Me. This is that bread which 
 came down from heaven ; not as your fathers did 
 eat manna, and are dead : he that eateth of this 
 bread shall live for ever." 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 75 
 
 One more passage from the same Evangelist 
 must be compared with those already cited. In 
 connexion with a well-known ceremony that took 
 place on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, 
 " Jesus stood and cried, saying. If any man thirst, 
 let him come unto Me and drink. He that be- 
 lieveth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of 
 his belly shall flow rivers of living water " (John vii. 
 37, 38). The especial value for our purpose of this 
 passage is that the Evangelist stops and explains 
 what it was that was symbolized by the water, 
 " But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that 
 believe on Him should receive ; for the Holy Ghost 
 was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet 
 glorified." From the above passages we learn (i) 
 that a sacramental meaning might be attached to 
 the natural acts of eating and drinking. (2) That 
 " meat " in the natural department symbolically 
 signified the Bread of Life in the spiritual de- 
 partment. (3) That the Bread of Life was Christ 
 Himself. (4) That it was His very flesh and His 
 very blood. (5) That this flesh and blood had not 
 yet been given, but were hereafter to be given " for 
 the life of the world." (6) That water in the 
 natural department symbolically signified Christ's 
 Spirit. (7) That the Spirit (like the flesh and 
 blood) had not yet been given, but was to be given 
 hereafter, namely, after Christ's ascension. (8) That 
 the condition or means of eating Christ's flesh and 
 drinking His blood, and of drinking of His Spirit, 
 
76 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 was faith. These were the antecedents of the 
 teaching of our Lord before the institution of the 
 Holy Communion. Are the rite and the teaching 
 connected together, and, if so, to what degree, and 
 in what manner 
 
 (1) It does not appear Hkely that the teaching 
 of John vi. had an immediate and direct reference 
 to the rite of the Holy Communion. The long 
 interval of time between the discourse and the 
 institution of the rite is in itself sufficient, if not 
 to prove, at least to indicate this in a manner 
 hardly to be mistaken ; and, further, the teaching 
 in it is all of a general character. It inculcates the 
 necessity of spiritual feeding on Christ, on His 
 Body and His Blood, but it does not enter into 
 any particulars as to the manner in which this is 
 to be effected, except by declaring faith to be 
 either a condition or the means. 
 
 (2) That the connexion between the teaching 
 and the rite is very close is, however, clear. In St. 
 John vi. 51 we find the words, " I am the living 
 bread which came down from heaven : if any man 
 cat of this bread, he shall live for ever : and the 
 bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will 
 give for the life of the world." And in the institu- 
 tion we read, " Jesus took bread, and blessed it, 
 and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, 
 Take, eat ; this is My body " (Matt. xxvi. 26). 
 Can any one fail to see the similarity of expression 
 and of idea between the two passages ? Again, in 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 77 
 
 St. John are the words, " Except ye . . . drink of 
 the blood of the Son of man, ye have no life in you. 
 Whoso . . . drinketh My blood, hath eternal life ; 
 and I will raise him up at the last day. For . . . My 
 blood is drink indeed. He . . . that drinketh My 
 blood, dwelleth in Me and I in him." And in St. 
 Matthew: "And He took the cup, and gave 
 thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of 
 it ; for this is My blood of the new testament, which 
 is shed for many for the remission of sins." Is it 
 not plain that the subject of the two passages is the 
 same, and that there is a reference, though not in 
 the former to the latter, yet in the latter to the 
 former ? 
 
 What is the difference between feeding on Christ 
 as " the bread of life which came down from 
 heaven," and "eating His flesh and drinking His 
 blood?" The first formula emphasises the idea 
 that Christ in His Divine nature is the life and 
 support of the soul, the second that He is so by 
 means of His body given for us and of His blood 
 shed for us, that is, by the blessed effects wrought 
 by His death. When, therefore, the time of His 
 death was now so nigh that He regarded His body 
 as being already given and His blood already 
 being poured forth. He instituted a special means 
 by which that eating and drinking of Him, His 
 body and blood, which He had so long before de- 
 clared necessary for salvation, might be performed. 
 And this was the Holy Supper, in which those 
 
78 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 who are faithful, that is, penitent and beHeving com- 
 municants, symbolically eat and drink the Lord's 
 body and blood, and are thus made partakers of the 
 benefits of the atonement wrought by him. The 
 words long since spoken, " Except ye eat the flesh 
 of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have 
 no life in you," had meant, Except ye participate 
 in the effects of My Passion, ye have no life in 
 you ; and now at last a special method of parti- 
 cipating in these effects was appointed. Sacra- 
 mental eating is a means of spiritual eating — not 
 the only means, for there may be spiritual eating 
 outside the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper — but 
 a chief means, the means specially appointed by 
 our Lord Himself on the eve of His Passion. 
 
 On the one side, then, there are many who deny 
 that the discourse of St. John vi. and the Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper have any connexion 
 with each other, and on the other side there are 
 many who affirm that the discourse has primary 
 and immediate reference to that Sacrament. But 
 the true relation between them seems to be this — 
 the discourse teaches the necessity of spiritually 
 feeding on Christ, as the Redeemer who has given 
 His body to be broken and His blood to be shed 
 for us, and the Sacrament presents a means ap- 
 pointed by Christ Himself, whereby that spiritual 
 feeding may be effected. The rite, therefore, has 
 specifically relation to the discourse, while the dis- 
 course only generally applies to the rite, as one 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 79 
 
 means by which the duty inculcated in the dis- 
 course may be fulfilled. 
 
 I will end with two passages from Waterland's 
 treatise illustrative of what I have said above : 
 " Our Lord's general doctrine," he writes, " in the 
 chapter seems to abstract from all particularities, 
 and to resolve into this : that whether with faith or 
 without, whether in the Sacrament or out of the 
 Sacrament, whether before Christ or since, whether 
 in covenant or out of covenant, whether here or 
 hereafter, no man ever was, is, or will be accepted 
 but in and through the grand propitiation made 
 by the blood of Christ." And a little further on : 
 — "It is right to apply the general doctrine of 
 John vi. to that particular case of the Eucharist, 
 considered as worthily received ; because the spiri- 
 tual feeding there mentioned is the thing signified 
 in the Eucharist, yea, and performed likewise. 
 After we have sufficiently proved from other Scrip- 
 tures that in and by the Eucharist ordinarily such 
 spiritual food is conveyed, it is then right to apply 
 all that our Lord by St. John says, in the general, 
 to that particular case ; and this indeed the Fathers 
 commonly did." — [^Doctrine of the Euc/iarist.) 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HE first hypothesis for us to consider as to 
 the way in which we feed upon Christ in the 
 Lord's Supper is that of transubstantiation. 
 According to this hypothesis, the bread and wine 
 in the Holy Communion cease on consecration to 
 be bread and wine, and become the body and blood 
 of Jesus Christ, and consequently, when the com- 
 municant places in his mouth the appearances of 
 bread and wine, he really places in it the body and 
 blood of Christ, and thus he literally eats Him with 
 his lips and teeth, and throat, and stomach. 
 
 This doctrine — for it has become the doctrine of 
 a portion of the Christian Church — originated in 
 the gross and materialistic conceptions entertained 
 by the illiterate masses admitted within the bor- 
 ders of the Church of the eighth, ninth, and tenth 
 centuries, but not properly instructed in her doc- 
 trines nor interpenetrated with her spirit. It was 
 the way in which the rude and ignorant explained 
 to themselves Christ's words, " I am the Bread of 
 Life," " If any man eat of this bread he shall live 
 for ever," " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
 Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you," 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 8 1 
 
 "This is My body," "This is My blood." Better 
 instructed Christians knew that those words were 
 to be spiritually understood, but they allowed the 
 common people to continue in their superstitious 
 imagination, contemptuously believing them to be 
 unable to rise to the higher and truer conceptions 
 of educated men ; and thus there happened what 
 again and again has happened in the theology of 
 the Church of Rome — the popular superstition, 
 which had been connived at, became too strong to 
 be resisted. The priesthood had to choose between 
 either alienating from themselves, and from the 
 Church, the people, now wedded to their favourite 
 tenet, or accepting the superstition of the common 
 people, making the best of it afterwards by philo- 
 sophical distinctions and explanations. As always, 
 they chose the latter alternative, and so tran- 
 substantiation became the accredited doctrine of 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries, being handed 
 over to the schoolmen to manipulate and to bring 
 into a shape that would not absolutely shock 
 and revolt the intellect of the more educated 
 classes. 
 
 The first writer Avho (if all that is attributed to 
 him be genuine) maintained a doctrine not indeed 
 identical with, but approaching that of transub- 
 stantiation, was Paschasius Radbert, who, being 
 a monk of Corbey, probably expressed the senti- 
 ments of his illiterate but religious-minded brethren, 
 who belonged to the lower classes, and had not 
 G 
 
82 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 received a theological training. He lived towards 
 the beginning of the ninth century, probably about 
 the year 830. His views were at once controverted 
 by Amalarius, Archdeacon of Treves, Rabanus 
 Maurus, Archbishop of Mentz, John Scotus Eri- 
 gena, Walafrid Strabo, and Bertram, or Ratraninus, 
 all of whom lived in the same century. But it was 
 too late for men of education and position (though 
 Archbishop Rabanus Maurus and John Scotus 
 Erigena were the two most learned and able men 
 of the century) to stem the tide of the popular 
 superstition. By the year 1000 the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation had made good its claim to be 
 counted as one of the doctrines of the Church, 
 though its name was not invented for another cen- 
 tury and a half, nor was it sanctioned as a dogma 
 till A.D. 1216. 
 
 The chief opponent of the new tenet in the 
 eleventh century was the well-known Berengarius, 
 Archdeacon and Chancellor of Angers, who, sup- 
 ported by his Bishop, Bruno, maintained that the 
 Holy Communion was a means of spiritually feed- 
 ing on Christ, but denied that the elements were 
 changed into the body and blood of Christ. " The 
 consecrated bread and wine," he says, "remain in 
 their own substances, having a likeness of the 
 things of which they are sacraments, for otherwise ' 
 (here he is adopting St. Augustine's argument) 
 "they would not be sacraments at all." By the 
 desire of Leo IX, Berengarius was brought before 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 83 
 
 a synod, held at Verceil in 1050, and was there 
 condemned, together, with John Scotus Erigena, 
 who had been dead some two hundred years. As 
 he did not succumb, he was brought before another 
 synod, held five years later at Tours, and yet 
 another held at Rome in 1059. At this latter 
 synod Cardinal Humbert placed in his hands a 
 form of recantation, which he was obliged to sign, 
 framed as follows : — " I, Berengarius, agree with 
 the holy Roman and Apostolic See, and profess 
 with my mouth and heart, that I hold the faith on 
 the sacrament of the Lord's Table which my Lord 
 and Venerable Pope Nicholas and this sacred 
 synod by evangelical and apostolic authority have 
 delivered to me to be held, and have assured me 
 of, namely, that the bread and wine placed upon 
 the altar are after consecration not only the sacra- 
 ment, symbol, or figure, but also the very body and 
 blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and are sensibly 
 {seiisitalitcr), not only in sacrament, but in truth, 
 taken and broken by the hands of the priests, and 
 ground by the teeth of the faithful" {Lanfranc, De 
 Corp. et Sang. Dom.). Berengarius was the Galileo of 
 his day. As soon as he felt himself in safety he repu- 
 diated his enforced recantation, and again professed 
 his rejected doctrine. Again he was summoned 
 before Councils, this time by Hildebrand, who had 
 become Pope Gregory VI L At first Gregory was 
 disposed to deal mildly with him. "He was not 
 sure himself that what was taken at the Lord's 
 G a 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Table was really the body and blood of Christ by 
 conversion of substance." But after a delay of 
 three months the Pope, too, found that he must 
 adopt the popular view, and he compelled Beren- 
 garius once more to recant. " I believe in my 
 heart, and profess with my mouth," he was made 
 to say, " that the bread and wine placed upon the 
 altar are, by the mystery of holy prayer and the 
 words of our Redeemer, converted into the true, 
 actual, and life-giving flesh and blood of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and are, after consecration, the 
 true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin 
 and which hung on the cross an offering for the 
 salvation of the world, not only in the way 
 of sign and in virtue of a sacrament, but 
 also in propriety of nature and truth of sub- 
 stance." 
 
 Thus did the conception of the rude populace 
 supersede the traditional and Scriptural doctrine of 
 theologians, and take possession of the highest 
 places in the Western Church ; but, having won 
 this position, it had necessarily to undergo certain 
 modifications and explanations to enable men of 
 education to profess their belief in it. With this 
 end it was taken in hand by the " ScJiola tlieolo- 
 goruiii^' whose work it was to find or to create some 
 philosophical basis for the rude people's faith, 
 which had now become the faith of the Western 
 Church. This was done by a powerful section of 
 the schoolmen ; for at this time there flourished 
 
HOLV COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 85 
 
 the Realist school of philosophers, and Realism 
 seemed to be providentially intended to supply the 
 required basis. 
 
 Realism taught that there existed invisible, im- 
 palpable substances or essences, by partaking in 
 which individual things became what they were. 
 Thus it taught that there existed an essence of 
 man, quite apart from arms, legs, body, mind, 
 spirit, or any particular man, by partaking in which 
 a man became a man, all other things except this 
 essence being his "accidents." So there was a 
 tree-essence, quite apart from the trunk, branches, 
 and leaves of a tree, and from every individual 
 tree, which made a tree to be a tree, and there was 
 a table-essence, which made tables to be tables, 
 without any reference to material or shape. The 
 theory seemed to be created for the philosophical 
 explanation of transubstantiation. By " substance "' 
 it was said was meant the invisible and impalpable 
 essence of bread and of flesh ; these two essences 
 were interchanged, or rather the essence of flesh 
 took the place of the essence of bread on the words 
 of consecration being uttered, while all the visible 
 qualities of bread remained untouched. This theory 
 at least appeared to take the matter out of physics 
 into metaphysics, and to substitute a metaphysical 
 possibility for a physical impossibility. Accord- 
 ingly it was embraced with ardour and defended 
 with great subtlety by the Realistic schoolmen, 
 and it has been ever since the recognised theory 
 
86 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 adopted by theologians of the Roman Church in 
 the controversy. 
 
 But it has difficulties of its own. For, supposing 
 for the moment that Realism is true, it follows 
 that, when the substitution of the flesh-substance is 
 made for the bread-substance, the accidents of the 
 bread continue to exist without any subject in which 
 to inhere — a thing contrary to the first rules of the 
 very philosophy under which the doctrine shelters 
 itself, and to the plain dictates of reason ; for how 
 could shape, size, hardness, exist without something 
 to be of the shape, size, hardness ? And if you take 
 away the " thing," must not its size, shape, hard- 
 ness, disappear too ? Of course they must. It is 
 an axiom that, if you take away the subject, 
 you take away its accidents. Here, then, it was 
 necessary to bring in the agency of miracle, and to 
 pronounce that a special miracle of God had to be 
 wrought each time that the elements were conse- 
 crated to prevent the accidents of bread being re- 
 moved with the substance, and to make them con- 
 tinue, suspended, as it were, in the air, without 
 anything in which to be. God's hand was to 
 intervene, and keep in existence an assemblage of 
 accidents (answering in grammar to a number of 
 adjectives without any substantive), having the ex- 
 tension and all other properties and effects of bread, 
 and yet not bread ; nor, strictly speaking, anything. 
 Nor was this all, for when the flesh substance had 
 been substituted, another set of no less tremendous 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 miracles was to be assumed, namely, that the new 
 substance was (i) divested of all its own accidents 
 or properties, and (2) invested with the accidents 
 and properties of something else. This indeed was 
 a hard saying, harder than any that Christ had re- 
 quired His disciples to believe. It was Credc, quia 
 impossibile. 
 
 And, after all, this unlimited draft on faith was 
 of no avail, for after a very short supremacy the 
 whole structure of the Realistic philosophy came 
 down with a run, and was trampled in the dust. It 
 was proved — not by theological but by scientific 
 opponents — by Nominalists, Formalists (the school 
 of Duns Scotus), and Conceptualists (the followers 
 of Ockham), that there is no such alleged substance 
 apart from accidents, that no real severance between 
 a thing and its properties can be made, and that, 
 though we can intellectually conceive the existence 
 of some general nature or substance belonging to 
 all things of one class, the conception that we 
 thus arrive at subsists only in our minds, not 
 in the things about which we are thinking. It 
 is probable that there are now no believers in 
 the theory of Realism, among philosophers or 
 thinkers, but only Nominalists or (better) Concep- 
 tualists. But except upon the theory of the Realist 
 the notion of the substitution of the " substance " of 
 our Lord's body for the " substance " of bread, the 
 " accidents " of bread being retained, has absolutely 
 no meaning. All tliat it can signify is the substi- 
 
88 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 tution of one non-existent thing for another non- 
 existent thing, i.e., nothing for nothing, or at best, 
 the substitution of one idea in our minds for another 
 idea. Historically, then, the matter stands thus : 
 The idea underlying Transubstantiation grew up by 
 degrees in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries as 
 the explanation given to themselves by rude, un- 
 lettered, and unspiritual men of the way in which 
 Christ's flesh was to be eaten. It won its way to 
 acceptance by the heads of the Western Church in 
 the eleventh century. An attempt was then made 
 to reconcile it with natural phenomena by an un- 
 sound system of human philosophy, which has been 
 itself swept away by the progress of thought. And 
 now the Transubstantialist stands thus : He is 
 committed to the maintenance of a contradiction 
 to sensible phenomena, he is committed to a false 
 system of philosophy which vainly attempted to 
 remove that contradiction, and he is left in posses- 
 sion of an unintelligible and unfounded assertion in 
 place of a deep spiritual truth. 
 
 " Because the Church of Rome claims to be in- 
 fallible, she cannot repent of any falsehood which 
 she has uttered. Therefore the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation remains bound upon the necks of all 
 the children of God within her, together with all 
 the contradictions, confusions, and corruptions to 
 which it has given rise, and which cannot be got rid 
 of by any scholastic subtleties. . . . Dreadful in- 
 deed must be the confusion, when the human mind 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 89 
 
 first carnalizes deep spiritual truth, and then applies 
 unsound metaphysics to reconcile natural facts and 
 phenomena with its own carnal conceptions, to 
 which it has given tlie title of divine truth."— [Knott., 
 on the Supper of the Lord.) 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ^!j>i5HE first statement made by the Church of 
 ■ ^ijj England respecting the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation is that it " cannot be proved 
 by Holy Writ, but is repugnant to the plain words 
 of Scripture." And yet it is probable that it was 
 through a belief entertained by the vulgar that it 
 was taught by the plain words of Scripture that the 
 tenet arose and forced its way into the theology of 
 the Western Church. " This is My body," says 
 Scripture ; and the traditional teaching of the 
 Church was made to give wa)' to the private judg- 
 ment of the unlearned as to the true interpretation 
 of those words. 
 
 So it is with the doctrines of Purgatory and 
 Papal Supremacy, which established themselves by 
 means of an unlearned interpretation of special texts 
 of Scripture (t Cor. iii. 13 ; Matt. xvi. 18), in oppo- 
 sition to the primitive teaching as to the true mean- 
 ing of those texts; and so it is with almost all, if 
 not with all, of the dogmas of the Church of Rome. 
 
 To those who have not accustomed themselves to 
 notice the true force of the copula "is" in all its 
 width, and who have frequently found it to couple 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 9 1 
 
 together things that are identical, what wonder that 
 the expression, " This is My body," should seem 
 prima facie to be favourable to the theory of Tran- 
 substantiation ? Such an impression has to be re- 
 moved or confirmed by an examination of the force 
 of the copula " is " in other passages. " This is red." 
 What does it mean ? That the quality of redness 
 inheres in this thing. "This is a man." It means 
 that this individual is contained in the class man. 
 " This is Caesar." If spoken by one of his contem- 
 poraries, it means, This man is identical with Caesar. 
 If spoken by one who is looking at a statue, it 
 means, This represents Cjesar. " Corban is a gift." 
 It means, Corban signifies a gift. " This man is a 
 shining light." It means. This man in the moral 
 sphere is equivalent to a shining light in the 
 physical sphere. It would be endless to enumerate 
 all the shades of meaning which the copula " is " 
 expresses ; for, in fact, it signifies no more than that 
 there is some relation or other between the two 
 words which it unites, without in the least defining 
 what that relation is. It may be a relation of 
 identity, but it may also, and may as well, be a 
 relation of inherence, of comprehension, of repre- 
 sentation, of significance, of equivalence. 
 
 In the present case the proposition, " This is My 
 body," taken alone, may equally well express the 
 relation of (i) physical identity, in which case it 
 would mean. This is physically My natural body ; 
 and (2) equivalence or spiritual identity, in which 
 
92 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 case it would mean, This is virtually My body ; or, 
 This is in effect My body ; or, This is in power and 
 efficacy My body ; or, This is spiritually My body ; 
 and (3) representation, in which case it would mean. 
 This represents My Body ; or, This is a figure of 
 My body. And this is as far as grammar alone 
 will take us ; alone it cannot enable us to choose 
 between the hypotheses of physical identity, 
 spiritual identity, and representation. That must 
 be done by other considerations, as of possibility 
 or probability, and if such considerations make us 
 prefer the hypothesis of spiritual identity or of 
 representation to that of physical identity, grammar 
 has nothing to say to the contrary. 
 
 That the copula as used in Scripture may express 
 physical identity is granted. That it may express, 
 not physical identity, but either spiritual identity 
 or representation, is evident from the following 
 passages : — Matt. v. 13, " Ye are the salt of the 
 earth " (spiritually) ; Matt. v. 14, "Ye are the light 
 of the world" (spiritually); Matt. xi. 14, "This is 
 Elias" (spiritually); Matt. xii. 50, "The same is 
 My brother, and sister, and mother " (spiritually) ; 
 John X. 7, " I am the door of the sheep " 
 (spiritually); John xiv. 6, "I am the way" 
 (spiritually); John xv. i, "I am the true vine" 
 (spiritually) ; 2 Cor. iii. 2, " Ye are our epistle " 
 (spiritually); 2 Cor. vi. 16, "Ye are the temple of 
 the living God " (spiritually) ; Gal. iii. 7, " They 
 which are of faith, the same are the children of 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 93 
 
 Abraham " (spiritually) ; Eph. iv. 25, " We are 
 members of one another " (spiritually) ; Gal. iv. 24, 
 " These women are (represent) the two covenants ;" 
 Gal. iv. 25, "This Agar is (represents) Mount 
 Sinai ;" i Cor. x. 4, "That Rock was (represented) 
 Christ ;" Rev. i. 20, " The seven stars are (repre- 
 sent) the angels of the seven churches ;" Rev. iv. 5, 
 " Seven lamps, which are (represent) the seven 
 Spirits of God ;"' Rev. v. 6, " Seven eyes, which 
 are (represent) the seven Spirits of God ;" Rev. v. 
 8, " Vials full of odours, which are (represent) the 
 prayers of the saints." Matt. xiii. 37, " He that 
 soweth the good seed is (represents) the Son of 
 man. The field is (represents) the world. The 
 good seed are (represent) the children of the king- 
 dom, but the tares are (represent) the children of 
 the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is 
 (represents) the devil ; the harvest is (represents) 
 the end of the world ; and the reapers are (repre- 
 sent) the angels." 
 
 The plea that the proposition, " This (bread) is 
 My body,'' necessarily means, " This is physically 
 My body," when put forward in good faith, is the 
 plea of one unacquainted with the grammatical 
 force of the copula, and with its usage in Scripture 
 and elsewhere. The significations, " This is physi- 
 cally My body," "This is spiritually My body," 
 " This represents My body," are equally gram- 
 matical, equally in accordance with Scriptural 
 language. Which of these three significations is 
 
94 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 the true one must be decided by other considera- 
 tions than those of grammar. 
 
 The consideration which should have most weight 
 with us in this inquiry is this : What would the 
 apostles themselves have understood by the words 
 at the moment when they were addressed to them ? 
 Against the hypothesis of physical identity they 
 would have had the evidence of their senses (and 
 let those who disparage the senses, as true inform- 
 ants, recollect that they open the door to an 
 unbounded scepticism). They would have seen, 
 have felt, have tasted, that what they received was 
 bread and wine ; and they would have been unable 
 to fall back upon a distinction between substance 
 and accidents ; for the philosophy of Realism, on 
 which that distinction depends, was not invented 
 for a thousand years after that time. True, if the 
 words of their Lord had compelled them to under- 
 stand a physical identity, they might have refused 
 to admit the counter-evidence of their senses, but 
 when His words could equally well be understood 
 to signify spiritual identity or representation, there 
 was no reason for their doing anything so un- 
 natural. Again, they would have seen their Master 
 holding something in His hands ; and is it con- 
 ceivable that, when His words might equally well 
 be otherwise understood, they should have believed 
 that they saw Him holding Himself in His hands ? 
 Is not this idea as unthinkable as that of a two- 
 angled triangle, or of two straight lines enclosing 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 95 
 
 a space? In favour of the supposition that they 
 understood His words spiritually, we must remem- 
 ber that they were familiar with the thought of 
 spiritually feeding on Him ; they knew that He 
 was the Bread of Life, and that, if they were to 
 have life in them, they must feed on Him by faith 
 (John vi.). And, further, we must recollect the 
 figurative character of the feast at which the words 
 were spoken. The whole of the Paschal Supper 
 was symbolical. The Iamb, of which they had just 
 partaken, was regarded as representative of the 
 lamb slain by one of the Israelitish households in 
 Egypt, and was called " the body of the lamb." 
 Very possibly, therefore, our Lord, as Master of 
 the feast, had, according to Jewish custom, said to 
 them a little before some such words as " Take, 
 eat ; this is the body of the lamb slain in Egypt 
 on the night of the deliverance." And after they 
 had eaten it, knowing well that it was not the 
 original lamb, but a lamb that represented that 
 original lamb. He would have said, giving them the 
 bread, " Take, eat ; this is My body," implying 
 that, instead of eating of the lamb, they were 
 henceforth to eat of bread, and that this bread was 
 to represent His body, as the lamb had represented 
 the Egyptian lamb. 
 
 "As though He would say. Heretofore you ate 
 the body of the lamb, a type of Me to be delivered 
 to death for you. Now I abrogate this for ever ; 
 and instead, I give you My body, to be crucified 
 
96 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 and broken for you ; and so hereafter, when you 
 eat this bread, think not of the Paschal Lamb, 
 which, like all types, is now done away in Me ; but 
 believe that you feed on My Body broken to de- 
 liver you, not from Egyptian bondage, but from 
 the far worse bondage of death and hell." — [Bisliop 
 Harold Bro-ivne, Exposition of Art. xxviii.) 
 
 " The apostles could not fail to understand Him. 
 As that bread was broken, so was his sacred body 
 to be sacrificed ; as that wine was poured out, so 
 was His sacred blood to be shed on the morrow. 
 . . . They could not misunderstand Him. If they 
 had doubted for one moment about His meaning, 
 the recollection of those words He had spoken 
 twelve months before in the Capernaum synagogue 
 must have removed their doubt and made all clear. 
 . . . The apostles would be in no danger of lower- 
 ing His meaning, as the Jews at Capernaum had 
 lowered it to their own carnal level, asking, 'How 
 can this Man give us His flesh to eat?' nor would 
 they for one moment suppose that that thing in 
 His hand was His flesh." — {Archdeacon Noi-ris, 
 Manual of tlie Prayer Book.) 
 
 "The whole mystery is a spiritual touch-stone. 
 But in truth were it not for inveterate prejudice, 
 and teaching falsely calling itself catholic, all truly 
 godly men would soon be led to apprehend in their 
 true meaning our Lord's words, as well those in 
 St. John vi., as those of the Institution, as clearly as 
 they apprehend St. Paul's meaning when he says, 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 97 
 
 ' And that Rock was Christ,' in a mystery, a figure, 
 Christ, but really, because spiritually, powerfully, 
 efficaciously." — [Knott, The Supper of tlic Lord.) 
 
 The point that we have arrived at is this — the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation " cannot be proved 
 by Holy Writ," although our Lord used the words, 
 which are alleged as proving it, " This is My 
 body;" for these words do not favour the hypo- 
 thesis of transubstantiation any more than the 
 hypothesis of spiritual identification or representa- 
 tion. On the contrary, the circumstances under 
 which they were uttered, taken in conjunction 
 with other passages of Scripture, and the general 
 spiritual tenor of Holy Writ, exclude that hypo- 
 thesis. The word no more means that the bread 
 was substantially changed into flesh than the words 
 which our Lord used immediately afterwards : 
 "This cup is the new testament," meant that the 
 vessel in which the wine was contained was 
 changed substantially into a covenant or testament. 
 No more than the words of David, " Is not this the 
 blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives.' " 
 (2 Sam. xxiii. 17) meant that the water which he 
 poured out had become blood. No more than our 
 Lord's words, " Thou art a stone " {Petrtis) (Matt, 
 xvi. 18), meant that Peter was transubstantiated 
 into a stone, while he preserved his accidents as a 
 man. No more than St. John's v/ords, " God is 
 love" (i John iv. 8), meant that God had lost his 
 personality and become changed into an affection. 
 H 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 T may be (and has been) alleged that, 
 though the sixth chapter of St. John and 
 the words of institution do not prove tran- 
 substantiation, it can nevertheless be inferred from 
 the tenth and eleventh chapters of St. Paul's First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. In the first of these 
 chapters St. Paul asks, " The cup of blessing which 
 we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of 
 Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not the 
 communion of the body of Christ?" Do these 
 words, or do they not, declare that the wine con- 
 tained in the cup becomes when consecrated the 
 blood of Christ, and that the bread when broken 
 becomes the body of Christ ? They do not. They 
 state that they are "a communion " or "participa- 
 tion " of the body and blood. This signifies that 
 they are the means of conveying to the communi- 
 cant, when properly received, a participation of the 
 body and blood of Christ ; but that this is done 
 carnally to the mouth, according to the hypothesis 
 of transubstantiation, rather than spiritually to the 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 99 
 
 soul, according to the primitive doctrine, is not 
 proved or indicated by them. 
 
 In the eleventh chapter of the same epistle 
 St. Paul writes, " Whosoever shall eat this bread, 
 and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall 
 be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord " ; and 
 again, "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, 
 eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not 
 discerning the Lord's body." (A.V.) — " He that 
 eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment 
 unto himself, if he discern not the body" (R.V.). 
 Does this passage imply that the bread and wine, 
 which was not " discerned " as the Lord's body, 
 were actually and substantially the flesh and the 
 blood of the Lord ? Not at all ; it implies that 
 they might be regarded and might be called the 
 body and blood of the Lord in some sense, but 
 whether materially, or substantially, or spiritually, 
 or figuratively, is in no way indicated by the ex- 
 pression. To be "guilty of the body and blood 
 of the Lord," means to be guilty of an offence 
 respecting the body and blood of the Lord. Of 
 that offence those were guilty who "ate the bread" 
 which symbolized the Lord's body irreverently. 
 To "discern" means "to distinguish" or "set apart." 
 Of the offence of " not discerning the Lord's body," 
 those were guilty who consumed the sacred elements 
 together with the other materials of the Love-feast, 
 not distinguishing the former, which represented 
 the Lord's body, from the latter, which only served 
 n 3 
 
lOO 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 to indicate and promote Christian fellowship and 
 charity. To understand this more clearly we must 
 recollect that in the Corinthian Church the Love- 
 feast and the Holy Communion were at this time 
 celebrated together. The former was a banquet, 
 provided by the brethren according to their means, 
 the richer members giving more, the poorer less, 
 but all partaking alike of the viands that were 
 supplied. The practice was one which would have 
 grown up naturally among men who, in the first 
 fervour of their faith, felt strongly the bond of 
 brotherhood that held them together as the fol- 
 lowers of their one dear Lord. But it was open 
 to abuse, and great abuses had crept in. These 
 St. Paul reproves, and with respect to the joint 
 celebration of the Holy Communion with the Love- 
 feast, he tells them that any one eating and drinking 
 the sacred elements without distinguishing them in 
 his heart from the constituent parts of the Love- 
 feast, and recognising them as the Lord's body, 
 ate and drank judgment to himself, which ex- 
 hibited itself in visitations of varying intensity by 
 the hand of God. 
 
 Instead of proving transubstantiation, these pas- 
 sages prove that transubstantiation was not taught 
 by St. Paul or held by the first converts, while 
 equally disproving what is generally known by the 
 name of the Zwinglian hypothesis. What was the 
 offence of which the Corinthian converts had be- 
 come guilty Irreverence in respect to the bread 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 lOi 
 
 and wine which the Lord had commanded to be 
 received — an irreverence so great as to have led 
 them not to distinguish between the sacred elements 
 and common food. Had St. Paul taught them in 
 his first preaching that the bread and wine when 
 consecrated became the actual flesh and blood of 
 their Lord, is it likely, is it possible, that if an 
 abuse sprang up it should have taken the form of 
 irreverence ? We can imagine that such a doctrine 
 would result in the abuse of superstition or idolatry 
 — and we know by experience that such has been 
 the effect of it — but surely not irreverence. " That 
 men who had been so taught should in the course 
 of two or three years have come to regard this as 
 an ordinary feast, that they should have come to it 
 hungering and thirsting as for ordinary food, and 
 gone away drunken from what they had so lately 
 been taught was either changed into or contained 
 the actual flesh and the actual blood of their 
 crucified Lord — this is surely beyond all bounds 
 of probability, as it is beyond all suggestion of 
 experience." — [Marriott, Treatise on the Holy 
 Eucharist}) 
 
 And as the Corinthian converts could not have 
 fallen into this special error had transubstantiation 
 been originally taught them, so neither could St. 
 Paul's rebuke have been what it was had he held 
 or desired to inculcate the tenet when he wrote his 
 
 (epistle. The Corinthians were in the habit of cele- 
 brating the Holy Communion and the Love-feast 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 together. Does St. Paul forbid it ? No ; though 
 at a later time, when faith and love had grown yet 
 colder, it became necessary to do so. He tells them 
 that they commit a grievous sin if they do not 
 distinguish between the rite of Holy Communion 
 and the feast of brotherhood, and do not recognise 
 the sacred character of the former, and come to 
 it with self-examination and self-recoUectedness, 
 '• discerning the Lord's body." But he does not 
 use any of those expressions which are natural and 
 have become familiar since the introduction of the 
 dogma of transubstantiation, such as we can readily 
 imagine a transubstantialist to make use of under 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 So with regard to the passage in the tenth 
 chapter : "If there were a real change of the 
 elements into Christ's natural flesh and blood, it 
 seems altogether unaccountable that the force of 
 the argument should have been weakened by the 
 introduction of the word Koivmvia, pariicipatioti. If 
 the bread be literally and substantially the body, 
 it would have been more natural to say, ' Is not 
 the bread which we break Christ's body ? ' And 
 the inference would be immediate : Can we eat 
 Christ's body and demon sacrifices together ? The 
 word Koivoivia, on which the peculiar strength of 
 the passage depends, whilst it clearly points to the 
 Eucharistic elements as ordained means to enable 
 us to partake of the body and blood of Christ, yet 
 shows too that they are means of partaking, not 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 103 
 
 themselves changed into the substance, of that 
 which they represent. They are ordained that we 
 may partake of Christ, but they are not Christ 
 themselves." — [Bishop Harold Broivne, Exposition 
 of Art. xxviii.) 
 
 " The true, easy, natural and ancient interpreta- 
 tion of St. Paul's words," says Waterland, " is that 
 the Eucharist in its primary intention and in its 
 certain effect to all worthy communicants is a com- 
 munion of Christ's body broken and blood shed, 
 that is to say, a present partaking of, or having a 
 part in, our Lord's Passion, and the reconcilement 
 therein made and the blessed fruits of it." — [Doctrine 
 of the Eticharist.) 
 
 We should notice, too, that St. Paul speaks in 
 these passages of one of the consecrated elements, 
 after consecration, as "bread." Why should he 
 do so, if it was not bread but flesh ? And our 
 Lord Himself speaks of the other element, not 
 merely as wine, but specifically as " the fruit of the 
 vine." At the time of institution, after He had 
 taken the cup and given thanks and given it to 
 them, saying, " This is My Blood of the New 
 Testament which is shed for many for the remission 
 of sins," He added in immediate sequence, " But 
 I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this 
 fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new 
 with you in My Father's kingdom " (Matt. xxvi. 
 29) : whence it follows that the wine given to His 
 Apostles by our Lord, and drunk by them at His 
 
I04 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 command, was in His estimation " the fruit of the 
 vine," that is, actually and physically, wine con- 
 stituted by the juice of the grape. 
 
 Were it otherwise, that is, were transubstantia- 
 tion true, the sacrament would cease to be a sacra- 
 ment ; for a sacrament must consist of two parts — 
 the outward and visible sign, and the inward and 
 invisible thing signified. But if the sign passes 
 into the thing signified, where are the two parts? 
 When the sign has been changed into the thing 
 signified, the sign has ceased to exist. That which 
 was the res sacrainenti, the reality of which the sacra- 
 ment was the sign, subsists independently of the 
 sacramcntnm as a spiritual, or carnal, reality apart 
 from any sign, but the sacranientuin or sign has 
 entirely disappeared after consecration ; therefore, 
 the Holy Eucharist is to the transubstantialist no 
 longer a sacrament. It may be a strange weird 
 miracle, contrary (as we hold) to physics, meta- 
 physics, tradition, and revelation, or it may be a 
 sacrifice, practically indistinguishable from that 
 made on the Cross, which is the aspect it wears 
 in the Roman Mass, but it cannot be a sacrament. 
 The sacrament is gone ; the thing of which the 
 sacrament was a sign alone remains. Any hypo- 
 thesis which does not preserve the separate exist- 
 ence of the outward part and the inward part, 
 whether it be an hypothesis which denies the latter, 
 or the hypothesis of transubstantiation which re- 
 moves the former, is incompatible with the funda- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 mental idea of a sacrament. We may conclude with 
 words of the Church of England : " Transubstantia- 
 tion (or the change of the substance of Bread and 
 Wine) in the Supper of the Lord cannot be proved 
 by Holy Writ ; but is repugnant to the plain words 
 of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacra- 
 ment, and hath given occasion to many supersti- 
 tions." — (Art. xxviii.) 
 
c 
 
 HAPTER XIII. 
 
 JFTER the text of Scripture we turn to the 
 
 testimony of the early Fathers, but here we 
 
 ^^fei are necessarily met by a difficulty. How 
 is it to be expected that theologians should be 
 found condemning a doctrine which had no ex- 
 istence in their time ? It is the same as requiring 
 that divines of the present day should have in their 
 writings a condemnation of some tenet that has 
 not yet emerged, e.g. that the water in baptism 
 is changed into the 'ood of Christ. Should such 
 a tenet be adopted as a dogma by any part of the 
 Church — which is not impossible — there are several 
 passages in the Fathers which might be brought 
 forward as favourc ble to it, but we should have 
 to search their works, and the works of our modern 
 theologians, for denials of it, which could be only 
 incidentally made, because it would not have come 
 into their minds directly to oppose an idea which 
 did not yet exist, or at least had not yet formulated 
 itself. This is the case with transubstantiation. 
 The Church held that the participation of the con- 
 secrated elements was a means of feeding on 
 Christ, but the belief that these elements actually 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. I07 
 
 were Christ had not yet emerged. On the one 
 side, therefore, the Fathers spoke freely and un- 
 guardedly, without any apprehension of their 
 words being misunderstood in a carnal sense ; and 
 on the other, they did not trouble themselves with 
 denying that which they did not believe any one 
 to hold. Occasionally, however, their arguments 
 against the various heresies of the day required 
 them to state their views with exactness on the 
 nature of the Holy Communion, and these views, 
 thus incidentally expressed, are found to be incom- 
 patible with the theory of transubstantiation. 
 I will cite five of such passages, taken from 
 St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, Theodoret, Gelasius, 
 and Facundus. 
 
 (i) St. Chrysostom during his final banishment 
 wrote to one Cajsarius against the heresy of the 
 Apollinarians. In his letter occur the words : 
 " Before the consecration of the bread we call it 
 bread, but when by the priest's action the grace of 
 God has sanctified it, it loses the name of bread and 
 is counted worthy to be called the Lord's Body, 
 although the nature of bread continues in it''' (p. 137, 
 ed. Wake). Here is a formal denial of the doctrine 
 of transubstantiation. What is the transubstanti- 
 alist to do ? The authority of Chrysostom is too 
 great for him to reject his doctrine as heresy, 
 and the words are too plain to be explained away. 
 There remains only one course — to deny the 
 genuineness of the letter. And to this Roman 
 
io8 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 controversialists have been driven — those who dare 
 not commit themselves to a declaration of their 
 own belief in the spuriousness of the letter sheltering 
 themselves under the name of someone less scrupu- 
 lous. Thus, Cardinal Newman, in a book published 
 in 1882, speaks of " the famous Epistle to Csesarius, 
 which is ascribed to St. Chrysostom on the au- 
 thority of St. John Damascene, Anastasius, and 
 Nicephorus ; but Le Quien and Montfaucon, men 
 of critical minds, which the ancients were not, give 
 various reasons from internal evidence in proof that 
 it is not the writing of St. Chrysostom." — {Note to 
 Pabncr''s Visit to ike Russian Church.) 
 
 It will be noted that Cardinal Newman does not 
 here express any opinion of his own, but he casts a 
 slur on the authority of the document as surely as 
 though he had done so. Cardinal Bellarmine was 
 braver, and he was answered two hundred years 
 ago by Bishop Cosin : — " Bellarmine not being 
 able to refute this clear testimony of this great 
 Father, satisfied himself with denying that it was a 
 letter of Chrysostom's. B-it his words are idle, as 
 well as Possevin's, when they say that it is not to be 
 found among the works of Chrysostom. For, be- 
 sides that it was at that time to be found at 
 Florence and elsewhere, it is quoted in the Collec- 
 tanea contra Scverianos of H. Canisius, and at the 
 end of John Damascene's book against the Ace- 
 phali." — {Hist. Transubstantiationis.) The Epistle 
 was printed by M. Bigot at Paris in 1680, and 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. \og 
 
 reprinted in England by Archbishop Wake in 
 1686. 
 
 (2) St. Augustine says, " Sacraments are signs 
 of realities, being one thing and signifying some- 
 thing else." — {Contra Maximin. ii. 22.) And again, 
 " Ye are not about to eat this Body which ye see, 
 nor are ye about to drink that Blood which those 
 who will crucify Me will shed. It is a sacrament" 
 (i.e. a sign of something beyond itself) " which I 
 have delivered to you : spiritually understood, it 
 will give you life." — (/« Psal. xcviii.) "The Lord 
 did not hesitate to say, This is My body, when He 
 gave the sign of His body." — [Contra Adivianttini.) 
 
 (3) Theodoret has left us among his works a 
 remarkable discussion between an Orthodox be- 
 liever and an Eutychian. The Eutychian heresy 
 was that after His incarnation the nature of our 
 Lord was but one. His human nature being merged 
 in the Divine nature. The Eutychian argues for 
 his tenet from the Holy Communion, inasmuch as 
 after consecration, he says, the bread ceases to be 
 bread and becomes the Body of Christ. The 
 Orthodox answers him, " You are caught in the 
 net that you have made yourself. For the mystic 
 symbols do not depart from their own nature after 
 consecration, but remain of the same substance and 
 shape and form, and are visible and tangible, just 
 as they were before."— [Dial, ii.) 
 
 It is very interesting to see the use made of this 
 passage by the late Mr. William Palmer during his 
 
no 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 visit to Russia in the year 1840, when arguing with 
 a Russian archpriest who had unconsciously adop- 
 ted views akin to transubstantiation : — "I spoke of 
 those passages of Theodoret, St. John Chrysostom, 
 St. Eprhem Syrus, and Gelasius, which assert the 
 nature or substance of bread to remain after con- 
 secration. He had never heard of those passages, 
 and doubted if there were any such. ... I quoted 
 that passage in which the Eutychian argues that as 
 the bread ceases and passes into the Body of 
 Christ, so the human nature of Christ ceases 
 and passes into the Divine. Before I could go on, 
 he accepted the assertion of the Eutychian, saying 
 that it was perfectly true, though improperly 
 adduced to defend a heresy. When I told him 
 the answer of the Orthodox he was quite aston- 
 ished ; the whole was new to him. I went on 
 to obsei-ve that the nature of this argument makes 
 it impossible to ascribe to the Orthodox answer 
 any more than to the Eutychian any meaning 
 short of the very substance of the bread. It would 
 be nothing to the purpose for the Orthodox to 
 reply : ' You are caught in your own net ; for 
 though what you say is true, yet the appearances 
 or accidents remain after consecration.' The Euty- 
 chian had been arguing not about accidents, but 
 about the very things themselves, and as, he said, 
 the bread — the very bread itself — ceases and be- 
 comes the Body of Christ, so the very human 
 nature of Christ ceases and passes into the Divine 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 Ill 
 
 nature " (chap, xxviii.). Cardinal Newman tries to 
 do away with the force of the argument as follows : 
 — "The passage from Theodoret to which Mr. 
 Palmer refers, is genuine, but admits of explanation. 
 Theodoret certainly says, or implies, that after con- 
 secration the nature or substance oi Bread and Wine 
 remains, but he seems to use the words not in their 
 theological sense, but for what we now call ' acci- 
 dents' of a thing, that is, for its qualities, properties, 
 belongings, surroundings, externals, for all that 
 makes up its description, or is the medium of 
 communication between one thing and another." 
 
 That is all that the keenest intellect in the 
 Roman Church can allege : that Theodoret, when 
 he said "substance," meant — no, not meant, but 
 seems to have meant — "accidents." It is impossible 
 to say what an author may or may not seem to 
 mean to a man who comes to him with a theory 
 incompatible with the hypothesis that he means 
 what he says ; but it would be quite as reasonable 
 to suppose that when he says body he means soul, 
 or when he says wine he means water, as to suppose 
 that when he says substance he means qualities. 
 And the antecedent improbability, that when an 
 author used one word he meant another, is increased 
 indefini ely when we find that the word that he 
 used when taken in its ordinary acceptation makes 
 sense, and when taken otherwise makes nonsense of 
 the argument. Cardinal Newman is not original 
 in his method of extricating himself from the 
 
112 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 difficulty caused by Theodoret's words. He has 
 borrowed it from Bellarmine. Bishop Cosin wrote 
 two hundred years ago : — " Some Romanists — but 
 it really is too foolish — object that by the nature 
 or substance of the symbols which is declared to 
 continue and not to be changed, Theodoret meant 
 the nature and (as Cardinal Bellarmine has very 
 absurdly expressed himself) the substance of the 
 accidents. But the whole context entirely refutes 
 this gloss ; for Theodoret joins together nature, 
 substance, form, and figure. And how would the 
 Eutychian argument have been overthrown by 
 conceding that the mere accidents of bread and 
 not the substance itself remained after conse- 
 cration ? But transubstantialists take the liberty 
 (which we do not allow ourselves) of changing the 
 creature into the Creator, substances into accidents, 
 accidents into substances, anything into anything." 
 — {Hist. Transubstantiatioiiis.) 
 
 (4) Gelasius (probably the Pope of A.D. 480, but 
 possibly a contemporary writer of the same name) 
 arguing, like Theodoret, against Eutychianism, 
 writes : — " Certainly the sacraments which we re- 
 ceive of the Body and Blood of Christ are Divine 
 things by which we are made partakers of the 
 Divine nature, and yet the substance or nature of 
 bread and wine does not cease." — {Bibl. Pat. Max. 
 viii. 703.) Bellarmine again suggests that "by the 
 substance of the bread is meant not the real sub- 
 stance, but only the nature and essence of the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 113 
 
 accidents " — which Cosin describes as minim 
 ejfiigiinii ct miscn/vi. 
 
 (5) Facundus, Bishop of Hermiana, in Africa, 
 in the middle of the sixth century, says: — "The 
 sacrament of adoption can bear the name of 
 adoption, just as we call the sacrament of the Body 
 and Blood of Christ, which consists of the conse- 
 crated bread and cup. His Body and Blood ; not 
 that the bread is actually His Body and the cup 
 His Blood, but because they contain in themselves 
 the mystery " (mystical representation) " of His 
 Body and Blood. Hence it was that the Lord 
 Himself called the bread and cup which He blessed 
 and delivered to His disciples, His Body and 
 Blood." — [Dc dcfciis. trium Capit. Cone. Chalccd.) 
 
 The following passages may be referred to by 
 those who desire to trace this matter further. 
 They will be found to be in some cases irre- 
 concilable with, in other cases directly contra- 
 dictory of, the hypothesis of transubstantiation. 
 Justin Martyr (a d. 144), Apol. i. 65; IrcnjEus (a.d. 
 160), Contra H(cr. iv. 32, v. 2; Tertullian (a.D. 
 200), Adv. Marcion.'w. 40; Origen(A.D. 220), Horn. 
 vii. in Lcvit. § 5 ; St. Cyprian (a.d. 250), Epist. ad 
 Ccecilitcm ; St. Athanasius (a.d. yyS), Epist. w. ad 
 Serapioucm, § 19; St. Cyril of Jerusalem (a.d. 
 350), CatccJi. ]\Iyst. iii. dc sacro Clirismatc, § 3 ; 
 St. Basil (a.d. 360), Anaphora ; St. Gregory Nyssen 
 (.\.D. 370), Oratio in baptismuin Clirisli ; St. 
 Jerome (a.D. 390), In Eplics. i. 7 ; St. Ephrcni 
 I 
 
114 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 (a.d. 540), Dc sacris Antiochia Icgibiis apitd PJiotit 
 Myriobiblon, ccxxix. ; Isidore of Seville (A.D. 630), 
 Dc Off. Eccl. i. 18 ; Rede (a.d. 720), Comm. in Luc. 
 xxii. ; Charlemagne (a.d. 778 ). lipist. ad Alcniniim ; 
 Amalarius (a.d. X20, Dc Ecclcs. Offic. i. 24; Rab- 
 anus Maurus (a.d. 825), Dc Instit. Clcr. i. 31 ; 
 Walafrid Strabo (a.d. 860), De Exordiis Rcritm 
 Ecclcsiast. ch. xvi. ; Bertram (a.D. 860), Dc Corpore 
 et Sanguine Domini ; /Elfric (a.d. 990), Epist. ad 
 Wulfstanum ; Berengariiis (a.d. 1050), in Lanfranc's 
 Dc veritatc Corporis Domini in Eucharistia ; St. 
 Bernard (a.D. i 120), Scrmoncs de Purificatione ct de 
 St. Martina. These passages, and others of like 
 tenor, may be seen quoted in Bishop Cosins 
 History of Transubsfantiation and in Bishop Harold 
 Browne's Exposition of Art.^^vVn. Cosin appends 
 to his citations and references the following re- 
 marks : — " Hence it is plain that the gangrene of 
 Transubstantiation had not yet (at the end of the 
 tenth century) eaten into the Churches of the 
 Christian world, but that sound doctrine was every- 
 where retained about the Body and Blood of the 
 Lord, and His true (but spiritual and mystical, not 
 carnal) presence, together with the symbols of 
 bread and wine, which were regarded as remaining 
 in their own substance after consecration. Though 
 the ancient Fathers used both ways of speaking, 
 namely, that the bread and wine are the Body and 
 Blood of Christ, into which they are mystically 
 changed, and also that they are the signs, symbols, 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 types, pledges, images, figures, likenesses, repre- 
 sentations, copies of the true Body and Blood of 
 Christ, retaining their own proper substance ; yet 
 there was no contradiction or difference in their 
 meaning. For no one was so wanting in faith as 
 to believe these only empty or bare signs or 
 elements, nor so gross and rude as not to dis- 
 tinguish the sacramental and mystical from that 
 carnal and natural presence of Christ which is now 
 taught by the transubstantialists. For they under- 
 stood that exactly such a change as is common to 
 all sacraments takes place here, namely, that the 
 outward symbols are said to be turned into the 
 Divine realities for this reason only, because they 
 truly and efficaciously represent them, and the 
 faithful are made truly to partake in the latter, 
 while they receive the former in their mouths, and 
 by the power of the Holy Spirit and the institution 
 of Christ, the symbols acquire a Divine privilege, 
 which of their own nature they have not. And 
 this it is that learned and sacred antiquity delivered 
 out of the canonical Scriptures about the holy 
 mystery of the Eucharist for a thousand years and 
 more." — {Hist. Traiisnbstantiatioiiis.) 
 
 I 2 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ASSAGES directly for or against the tenet 
 of transubstantiation may be much more 
 readily quoted from modern than from 
 ancient divines ; for when once that doctrine had 
 been formulated at the Council of the Lateran, A.D. 
 1 216, theologians, who touched on the subject at 
 all, could no longer fail to declare their acceptance 
 or their rejection of it. From the time of that 
 Council transubstantiation has been the acknow- 
 ledged doctrine of the Church of Rome. The 
 definition of it was not indeed framed by the 
 Council, but it was propounded to the Council 
 by Innocent III, and having been heard in silence 
 was considered to have received the Council's 
 sanction. The definition ran as follows : — " The 
 Body and Blood of Christ in the sacrament of the 
 altar are truly contained under the appearances 
 (species) of bread and wine, the bread having been 
 transubstantiated into the Body and the wine into 
 the Blood." All who denied the statement were 
 to be handed over to the secular authorities for 
 due punishment ; inquisition was to be made as to 
 those suspected of not holding it, and the secular 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 11 J 
 
 powers were to be compelled by ecclesiastical 
 censure to banish disbelievers in it, and on their 
 neglecting to do so, to be themselves excom- 
 municated, their subjects absolved from obedience 
 to them, and their territories occupied by faithful 
 sons of the Roman Church. From henceforth 
 the argument from Scripture and the Realistic 
 Philosophy was allowed to fall into the background, 
 and the authority of the Roman Church was sub- 
 stituted in its place. "The chief thing," said Duns 
 Scotus, with the later schoolmen, "is to hold about 
 the sacrament what the Holy Roman Church 
 holds." — [Covim. in lib. iv. Sent. disp. xi.) "I 
 prove," says another, " that the bread is changed 
 into the Body of Christ, because we must hold what 
 the Roman Pontiff says must be held." — {joati. 
 Bacon, in lib. iii. et iv. Sent.) The Council of 
 Constance, A.D. 1415, which condemned Wycliff 
 and burnt Huss, renewed the declaration of 
 transubstantiation, and so did the " Instruction 
 to the Armenians," composed by Pope Eugenius 
 IV, some months after the Council of Florence, 
 A.D. 1439, and often quoted as part of the acts 
 of that Council. At the Council of Trent, A.I). 
 1551, it was decreed that "by consecration there 
 is effected a change of the whole substance of the 
 bread and wine into the substance of Christ's 
 body and blood " {Scss. xiii. de Encliaristia), and 
 the Creed of Pope Pius IV. summed up the 
 whole matter in the following words : — " In the 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is 
 truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, 
 together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and there takes place 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." 
 
 The first man who set his face as a rock against 
 the medijEval doctrine, consciously regarding it as 
 a corruption or, as he terms it, a heresy, was 
 Wycliff, A.D. 1324. " Do we believe," he writes, 
 " that John the Baptist, who was made Elias by the 
 word of Christ, ceased to be John? ... In the 
 same manner this sacrament is not naturally the 
 Body of Christ, but this same sacrament is Christ's 
 Body figuratively. . . . Let the believer rouse him- 
 self and demand strictly from our heretics what the 
 nature of this venerable sacrament is, if it be not 
 bread ; since the language of the Gospel, the evi- 
 dence of our senses, and arguments that have in 
 their favour every probability, say that so it is. . . . 
 That this venerable sacrament is in its own nature 
 veritable bread and sacramentally Christ's Body, is 
 shown to be the true conclusion. Hardness, soft- 
 ness, &c., cannot exist pa- sc, nor can they be the 
 subjects of other accidents ; it remains, therefore, 
 that there must be some subject as bread. . . . Oh, 
 how great diversity is between us that trow that 
 this sacrament is very bread in its kind, and be- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 119 
 
 twecn heretics that tell us that it is an accident 
 without subject ! For before that the fiend, father 
 of hes, was loosed, was never this gabbing con- 
 trived." — [Trialogtis, Book IV.) 
 
 Tyndall, A.D. 1477 : " Neither let it offend them 
 that est is taken for significat. For this is a com- 
 mon manner of speech in many places of Scripture, 
 and also in our mother tongue, as when we see 
 many pictures or images, which we know well are 
 but signs to represent the bodies whom they be 
 made like; yet we say of the image of our Lady, 
 This is our Lady, and of St. Katherine, This is St. 
 Katherine ; and yet do they but represent our 
 Lady or St. Katherine. The three baskets arc 
 three days, &c., &c. Marvel not, therefore, though 
 est likewise in this sentence ' Hoc est corpus vicnni ' 
 be taken for significat, as much as to say, 'This 
 signifieth my body.'' " — ( Works, Parker Society.) 
 
 Latimer, A.D. 14H5 : "As for that which is feigned 
 of many concerning the corporal presence, I, for 
 my part, take it for a papistical invention, and, 
 therefore, I think it is utterly to be rejected. ' 
 — {Dcmmis' Life of Hugh Latimer). 
 
 Cranmer, A.D. 1489 : "The rest is but branches 
 and leaves, or the cutting down of weeds, but the 
 very body of the tree, or rather the roots of the 
 weeds, is the popish doctrine of transubstantiation." 
 — [Doctrine of the Sacravicnt.) 
 
 Ridley, A.D. 1 500 : " The words of the Lord's 
 Supper, the circumstances of the Scripture, the 
 
I20 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 analogy of the sacraments, and the sayings of tlie 
 Fathers' do most effectually and plainly prove a 
 figurative speech in the words of the Lord's Sup- 
 per. The Fathers do quite overthrow transub- 
 stantiation, but of all others most evidently and 
 plainly Ireneeus, Origen, Cyprian, Chrysostom (to 
 Ciesarius), Augustine (against Adimantus), Gelasius, 
 Cyril, Epiphanius, Chrysostom (on Matt, xx.), 
 Rabanus, Damascene, and Bertram." — {Discussions 
 at Oxford.) 
 
 Becon, A.D. ijii: "He that goeth about to 
 pluck from the sacrament of the Body and Blood 
 of Christ the bread and wine, destroyeth utterly the 
 aforesaid sacrament and maketh it no sacrament." 
 — {On the Sacraments.) 
 
 Hall, A.D. 1574: "How mad, yea, how impious 
 is this, that they will overturn the very principles 
 of nature, the order of things, the humanity of the 
 Saviour, the truth of the sacrament, the constant 
 judgment of Scripture, and, lastly, the very founda- 
 tions of the Divinity, and confusedly jumble heaven 
 and earth together, rather than they will, when 
 necessity requires it, admit but of a tropical kind of 
 speech." — {A'o Peace ivit/i Rome.) 
 
 Usher, A.D. 15H0: "In the receiving of the 
 blessed sacrament we are to distinguish between 
 the outward and the inward action of the communi- 
 cant. In the outward, with our bodily mouth we 
 receive really the visible elements of bread and 
 wine ; in the inward^ we do by faith really recei\ e 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 121 
 
 the Body and Blood of our Lord." — (Answer to 
 CJiallcngc by Jesuit.) 
 
 Mede, A.D. 1586 : "If the Fathers ate the same 
 spiritual meat which we do, then we eat not the 
 real Body nor drink the real Blood of Christ. For 
 the manna they ate was the same manna still, 
 though a sacrament of Christ. The water of the 
 rock was verily water still, though a sacrament of 
 His Blood. If, then, we eat the same spiritual 
 bread, wc eat bread still, though spiritual bread. 
 If we drink the same spiritual drink, our drink is wine 
 still, though it is a spiritual wine.'' — [Discourses). 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, A.D. 1613 : " When it is equally 
 affirmed to be bread as to be our Lord's Body, and 
 but one of them can be naturally true and in the 
 letter, then shall the testimony of our senses be of 
 no use in casting the balance? The two affirma- 
 tives are equal. One must be expounded tropically. 
 Which will you choose.' Is there anything more 
 certain and expedite than that what you see, and 
 feel, and taste, natural and proper, should be judged 
 to be that you feel and taste naturally and properly, 
 and that, therefore, the other should be expounded 
 tropically.?" — {07i t/ie Real Presence.) 
 
 Tillotson, A.D. 1630 : " Transubstantiation is like 
 a millstone hung about the neck of Popery, which 
 will sink it at the last. It will make the very 
 pillars of St. Peter's crack, and requires more 
 volumes to make it good than would fill the "Vati- 
 can." — [Discourse.) 
 
122 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Beveridge, A.D. 1636 : '-Scripture and the Fathers 
 holding forth so clearly that whosoever worthily 
 receivcth the sacrament of the Lord's Supper doth 
 certainly partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 the devil thence took occasion to draw men into an 
 opinion that the bread which is used in that sacra- 
 ment is the very Body that was crucified on the 
 Cross, and the wine after consecration the very 
 Blood that gushed out of His pierced side. ' — [On 
 tlic Tliirty-ninc Articles.) 
 
 Wake, A.D. 1657: "To state the notion of the 
 Real Presence as held by the Church of England, I 
 must observe, first, that our Church utterly denies 
 our Saviour's Body to be so really present in the 
 blessed sacrament as either to leave heaven or to 
 exist in two several places at the same time. Again, 
 secondly, we deny that in the sacred elements which 
 we receive there is any other substance than that 
 of bread and wine distributed to the communi- 
 cants, which alone they take into their mouth and 
 press with their teeth. In short, all which the 
 doctrine of our Church implies by this phrase is 
 only a real presence of Christ's invisible power and 
 grace, so in and with the elements as by the faithful 
 receiving of them to convey spiritual and real 
 effect to the souls of men." — {Discourse.) 
 
 Waterland, A.D. 1638: "To say that the com- 
 munion of our Lord's Body and Blood means the 
 receiving His natural flesh and blood into our 
 mouths, under the forms, accidents, or appearances 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 1^3 
 
 of bread and wine is manifestly a forced and late 
 interpretation, not heard of for eight hundred years 
 or more, and, besides, absurd, contradictory, and 
 impossible. If we may trust to our reason or to 
 our senses (and, if we may not, what is there that 
 we can trust to?) the bread and wine do remain 
 after consecration the same in substance as before, 
 changed only as to their uses, relations, or offices." 
 — [Doctrine of the Eucharist.) 
 
 Mozlcy, A.D. 1 87 1 : "The whole was simply a 
 subtle and barren philosophical speculation, ending 
 in mere words, without sense or meaning, and en- 
 tirely foreign to a spiritual ordinance and to a 
 channel of Divine grace. Our Church, therefore, at 
 the Reformation rejected transubstantiation and 
 fell back upon the earlier and more indefinite idea 
 of a change in the elements, as a change, namely, 
 which was true and real for all the purposes of the 
 sacrament, by which the elements became, from 
 beingmere physical food, spiritual food." — [Lectures.) 
 
 Goulburn, A.D. ih!8j : '' The whole history of the 
 Lord's Supper, culminating as it does in the heresy 
 of transubstantiation, shows a sad tendency in the 
 human mind to localize and materialize the blcs.s- 
 ings of this ordinance. I mean by localizing and 
 materialising the blessing, the placing of it entirely 
 in the outward and visible sign, the imagining 
 some mysterious charm, a virtue half physical half 
 spiritual, to reside in the crumbs of bread and in 
 the drops of wine. ... If there is in the human 
 
124 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 mind a tendency, which has made itself only too 
 manifest in the history of the Church, to crave after 
 the bodily visible presence of our Lord, who can 
 doubt that this tendency is at the bottom of the 
 Roman doctrine of transubstantiation ?" — {On the 
 Comin7inion Office.) 
 
 These strong and unequivocal condemnations of 
 the doctrine of transubstantiation by English 
 divines (and others might readily be added to 
 them) are so much the more valuable as they are 
 not the utterances of men who in a panic have fled 
 from one extreme into another, but are accom- 
 panied, as we shall see further on, by declarations 
 equally strong, maintaining the doctrine of a 
 spiritual presence, and affirming that the outward 
 signs are means appointed by God, whereby those 
 who duly receive them are made partakers of 
 Christ and of the benefits of His atoning death. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 HE Church of England objects, in Article 
 XXVIII, to the doctrine of Transubstan- 
 tiation, not only that it is contrary to 
 Scripture and overthrows the nature of a sacra- 
 ment, but also that it has given occasion to many 
 superstitions. Four of these superstitions it goes 
 on to name. They are the reservation of the 
 sacrament, its being carried about, lifted up, and 
 worshipped. 
 
 It is said, How can you consistently object to 
 Reservation when it cannot be denied that it was a 
 practice of the earliest ages of the Church ? This 
 argument is well worthy of careful attention — the 
 more as it is an instance of the method not un- 
 frequently resorted to by the controversialists of 
 the Church of Rome, when required to justify her 
 doctrines. This method is that of taking a word 
 which was used in primitive times in one sense, 
 employing it in another sense, and arguing that the 
 thing meant by the later signification of the word 
 is primitive, because the word itself is primitive, 
 although it then meant something quite different. 
 For example, the original meaning of the word in- 
 
126 
 
 THE DOCTRIXE OF THE 
 
 dulgence was very innocent ; it meant excusing or 
 forgiving a certain portion of a penance imposed 
 upon a sinner on assurance of bis having become 
 fully penitent. But after a time indulgence came 
 instead to mean, first, forgiveness of sins, then 
 when that was no longer tenable, the forgiveness 
 of the temporal punishment for sin already for- 
 given, involving the application of the supererogatory 
 merits of the saints to the souls in purgatory, and 
 much more to the like effect. It is plain that the 
 use of the word indulgence in its first sense is no 
 justification for the doctrine of indulgences in the 
 latter sense. 
 
 So here. There was a Reservation in the Earlj- 
 Ages, but it differed in kind from the Reservation 
 afterwards and still practised, and consequently, the 
 earlier " Reservation " cannot be appealed to as 
 justifying the latter " Reservation." 
 
 The Reservation of the Early Church was made 
 for the purpose of giving Communion to the sick or 
 those who, from persecution or other causes, were 
 unable to present themselves at the table of the 
 Lord with their brethren. A part of the conse- 
 crated elements was carried by the deacons to those 
 who were not present, we are told by Justin Martyr, 
 A.n. 140 [Apol. i. 65). Dionysius, of Alexandria, 
 A.D. 254, spoke of a small portion of the Eucharist 
 being sent to a sick man named Serapion {Euseb. 
 Hist. Eccl. vi. 44) ; there are indications of the conse- 
 crated elements being allowed to be taken away by 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 127 
 
 the communicants for after consumption [Tcrtiillian, 
 Ad Uxor. ii. 5 ; Cyprian, Dc Oral. cli. xix.), and we 
 find that they were sometimes sent by bishops and 
 priests to each other as tokens of communion and 
 charity at Easter [Irciurns, Fragm. iii. ; Coucil. Laod. 
 can. xiv.). This practice might, or might not, have 
 been edifying, but we see what it was. The warm 
 love of the early Christians could not bear that an 
 absent brother should be deprived of his share in 
 the sacred feast through sickness, or because he 
 would be unable to attend at the next meeting of 
 the congregation, and therefore some part of the 
 consecrated elements was kept for them — in the 
 first case sent to them by the church officers, and 
 in the second, carried away by themseh'es — and 
 they loved to show the unity of the Christian body 
 by interchanging the elements consecrated at the 
 altars of one and another church, or of the churches 
 of one and another diocese, as an indication that "we 
 are all partakers of that one bread." (i Cor. x. 17.) 
 "The state of things at first," says Burnet, " made 
 it almost unavoidable : they neither could nor durst 
 meet all together, especially in the times of perse- 
 cution ; so some parts of the elements were sent 
 to the absent, to those in prison, and particularly to 
 the sick, as a symbol of their being parts of the 
 body and that they were in the peace and com- 
 munion of the Church." — [Expos, of Art.) 
 
 On the other hand, the Reservation which 
 existed at the time of the Reformation, and which 
 
128 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 exists now. has for its object something quite dif- 
 ferent. Its purpose is to form and keep a local 
 presence of Christ, in His flesh and blood, but 
 under the forms and appearances of bread and 
 wine, in each church in which the host is reserved. 
 There He could be seen, though under the veil 
 whicli He chose to adopt. There He could be 
 bowed down to. There He could be worshipped 
 close at hand. And growing out of this idea came 
 th£ modern form of devotion, the Qiiaranta ore, 
 when the devotees combine to adore the Lord 
 present in His Sacrament unceasingly for forty 
 hours, one relay of worshippers relieving the other : 
 and again the Perpetual Adoration, when this 
 worship is constantly kept up in the same manner. 
 
 The idea of Reservation for the purpose of keep- 
 ing a continual local presence of Christ in the 
 material Church is the natural result of the doctrine 
 of Transubstantiation. For if Christ's natural 
 body and blood, if He Himself, can be found apart 
 from reception and from the faith of the receiver, 
 why should He not be thus constantly reserved for 
 the worship of His followers? Why should Chris- 
 tians be without His bodily presence which they 
 can themselves create ? 
 
 And yet this worship of Him carnally and ma- 
 terially present in the material Church, what is it 
 but a parody of the true idea of spiritual worship 
 offered to Him spiritually present in His spiritual 
 Church ? Spiritual worship lifts the soul up and up 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 1 29 
 
 to the highest heavens, where dwells the glory of 
 God, whom no man hath seen or can see, in light un- 
 approachable. Material and carnal-minded worship 
 brings down, or fancies that it brings down, its 
 deity from the heaven of heavens, places it close 
 before the worshippers, and says : See, feel, touch, 
 handle. And the feeble faith which demands this 
 degradation of the object of worship, flutters down 
 into lower and lower depths of superstition ; while 
 the brave, strong faith, which dares to launch itself 
 upwards towards that which it cannot see, elevates 
 its possessor, and lifts him up with itself till he 
 breathes the atmosphere which surrounds the very 
 throne of God. 
 
 The reservation of the ancient Church, although 
 liable to many objections, did in fact witness 
 against Transubstantiation, while the modern prac- 
 tice known by the same name springs out of it. 
 For it is inconceivable that if the early believers 
 had held that that bread and that wine were Christ 
 Himself, they would have sent, and carried it about, 
 and made presents of it to each other as tokens of 
 brotherly union. We see in foreign churches the 
 pains bcnis distributed among the congregation for 
 the people to take away with them after a mass 
 has been celebrated ; but is it imaginable that the 
 consecrated hosts should be so distributed ? No, 
 when the theory of Transubstantiation has been 
 adopted, it becomes impossible. On any theory 
 the practice was open to the dangers of sacrilege 
 K 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 and profanity, and therefore as soon as the first 
 love of Christians had cooled, and when necessity- 
 could no longer be pleaded for it, it was well that 
 it should be given up. It was indeed always the 
 exception, not the rule. The usual habit seems to 
 have been for the clergy to consume all the conse- 
 crated elements that remained ov^ri^Psendo-Ckmcnt, 
 Epist. ii. ad Jac; St. Jerome in i Cor. xi.). At 
 Constantinople the theological students consumed 
 them [Evagriiis, Hist. Ecclcs. iv. 36). Sometimes 
 they were burnt {Hcsycli. in Lcvit.). It is not till 
 the end of the ninth century, when Transubstantia- 
 tion was now beginning to creep in, that we hear 
 of a pyx being ordered to be set on the altar for 
 holding the Body of the Lord {Lahb. Concil. viii. 
 34; ix. 1271). Even yet, however, it is only as 
 " a viaticum for the sick," "a viaticum to those de- 
 parting out of the world," that "the Lord's Body" 
 is ordered to be " stored" in it. The time had not 
 yet come for the Lord's Body to be exhibited for 
 the sake of being worshipped or of giving benedic- 
 tion. That would be when the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation had fully established itself, as it did 
 after the Lateran Council, A.D. 1216. 
 
 The Fathers, following and interpreting Scrip- 
 ture, formally deny the fact of the bodily presence 
 of Christ on earth, on which the practice of the 
 later Reservation rests. St. Augustine says : " In 
 regard to His majesty. His providence, His ineffable 
 and invisible grace, the promise, 'Lo I am with you 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 131 
 
 always, even unto the end of the world,' is fulfilled; 
 but in respect to the flesh which the Word took — 
 that other saying is fulfilled, 'Me ye shall not 
 always have with you.' How so? Because He 
 went in and out with His disciples forty days in 
 respect to bodily presence, and while they accom- 
 panied Him with their eyes, but could not follow 
 Him, ascended into Heaven, and is not here. For 
 He is there : He sits at the right hand of the 
 Father ; and He is here, for by the presence of His 
 majesty He has not gone away. In other words, 
 according to the presence of His majesty we have 
 Christ always ; according to the presence of the 
 flesh it was rightly said to his disciples : ' Me ye 
 shall not have always.' For the Church had Him 
 according to the presence of His flesh for a few 
 days ; now she holds Him by faith, she does not 
 see Him with the eye." — {Tract in S. Jokau. 
 vi. 13.) 
 
 St. Cyril of Alexandria: "Although He be absent 
 from the world in regard to His flesh. He neverthe- 
 less will come again to those that are in Him, and 
 His Divine and ineffable nature will be over all." — 
 {In Evang. S. Johan. vi.) And again, "Although 
 He is absent from us in the flesh, having departed 
 unto the God and Father, yet by His Divine 
 power He governs all things and is present with 
 them that love him." — [Ibid. ix. %\.) 
 
 Vigilius Afer, A.D. 484 : " He is both with us and 
 not with us ; for those whom He left, and whom 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 He departed in His humanity, He neither left nor 
 forsook in His divinity. For through the form of a 
 servant, which He withdrew from us into heaven, 
 He is absent from us ; through the form of God, 
 which does not depart from us. He is present to us 
 on earth." — {Contra Eutych. i.) 
 
 Other passages of like nature will be found in 
 Origen, Fulgentius, and, in more or less clear lan- 
 guage, in almost all the Fathers. But, says Scuda- 
 more, " Had the contemporaries of Origen and 
 St. Augustine held the modern Roman view of 
 Christ's presence in the Holy Eucharist, they could 
 not have spoken thus without incurring the charge 
 of heresy. It would certainly have been said to 
 them — granted that He went away in the flesh on 
 His ascension, yet you forget that in that same 
 flesh, in its very substance, form, and matter. He is 
 still present to His Church as literally and truly as 
 before ; and that, not in one place only, as then, but 
 on every altar in Christendom. According to the 
 Roman doctrine, the human nature of Christ is 
 continually and everywhere present on the earth, 
 i. e. whenever and wherever the Holy Eucharist is 
 celebrated. Can it for a moment be doubted that 
 writers who could use such language as we have 
 now cited would have been among the foremost, 
 had they now lived, to accuse the modern Church 
 of Rome of confounding the properties of the 
 Divine and human natures in our blessed Lord, 
 when she teaches and affirms that in His human 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. I33 
 
 nature — in the true substance of His soul and body 
 — He can be and is present on many altars at the 
 same instant of time?" — [Notitia Euckaristica.) 
 
 The ancient form of Reservation then — (i) is in- 
 compatible with Transubstantiation. (2) Is doctri- 
 nally innocent. (3) Sprang out of the necessities 
 of the times. The modern form of Reservation — 
 (1) springs from Transubstantiation. (2) Is doc- 
 trinally heterodox. (3) Embodies an idea totally 
 different from that of the ancient Reservation. The 
 modern practice cannot, therefore, justify itself by 
 appealing to the ancient practice, which it resembles 
 only in name. 
 
 In the Church of England Reservation has been 
 authoritatively forbidden, and an attempt to re- 
 introduce it, though in its least objectionable form, 
 was prohibited in 1885 by the Upper House of 
 the Convocation of Canterbury. After a careful 
 consideration of the question by a Committee of 
 the whole House, the Bishops of the Southern 
 Province declared "that the practice of Reservation 
 is contrary to the wise and carefully revised order 
 of the Church of England, as expressed in the Book 
 of Common Prayer," and that "no Reservation for 
 any purpose is consistent with the rule of the 
 Church of England."— of Convocation, 
 Feb. 3, 1885.) 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 '^^N 1230, Juliana, a nun of Liege, while looking 
 Slf^ at the full moon, saw a gap in its orb ; 
 
 and by a peculiar revelation from heaven, 
 learned that the moon represented the Christian 
 Church, and the gap the want of a certain festival 
 — that of the adoration of the body of Christ in the 
 consecrated host — which she was to begin to cele- 
 brate and announce to the world." — [Hook's Church 
 Dictionaiy.) Such is said to be the origin of the 
 festival of Corpus Christi, in which the sacramenium 
 — the consecrated element of bread — is " carried 
 about " in procession, as though it were the 7ts 
 sacramenti — the Body and Blood of Christ, or 
 rather Christ Himself in His full Divinity and 
 Humanity. 
 
 That such an origin should be assigned for such 
 a practice is noticeable, for it is not an indifferent 
 ceremony ; it is a practice teaching a doctrine, 
 which was made popular by it. So other practices 
 involving doctrine, such as devotion to the dolours 
 of St. Mary, originated from a supposed revelation 
 made to St. Bridget, and the worship of the Sacred 
 Heart, from a revelation alleged to be made to 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 1 35 
 
 St. Mary Alacoque. Thus we see that doctrines, 
 or practices involving doctrine, are allowed to re- 
 ceive their sanction in the Church of Rome, not 
 only from Holy Scripture, not only from tradi- 
 tion, but from the visions of women regarded as 
 saintly. 
 
 Juliana's vision was, however, more the occasion 
 than the cause of the institution of the festival, and 
 was itself the result of an already operating cause, 
 which produced both vision and ceremony. For, 
 as we have seen, in the year 1215, the dogma of 
 Transubstantiation was enunciated at the Lateran 
 Council as the doctrine of the Western Church, and 
 from this doctrine sprang ^rj^ the practice of Reser- 
 vation (in the mediaeval sense of that word), and 
 tJien the practice of carrying the reserved Host in 
 procession. If that which is in the Pyx is the 
 Person of Christ, why should He not have His 
 royal progresses like other Eastern kings, saluted 
 as He goes by prostrate multitudes, and honoured 
 with the clang of music and the melody of song? 
 What wonder that, till this was done, Julianas should 
 see gaps in the moon and have revelations as to 
 their meaning? In 1264, Pope Innocent IV in- 
 stituted the Festival. Thus it took a short half 
 century for the dogma to produce the practice. 
 And as the doctrine created the practice, so the 
 practice propagated the doctrine. To this day, 
 the procession on this festival is one of the most 
 popular in the Roman calendar, and few travellers 
 
136 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 can have failed to be struck by the joyous ap- 
 pearance that it puts on in Roman Catholic 
 countries. The first warmth and brightness of 
 summer are just come, and the little children 
 dressed in their white gauzy frocks, the various 
 confraternities vieing with each other in their 
 numbers and their costumes ; the floating ban- 
 ners, the measured progress, and occasional pauses 
 for prayer; the chanting priests, and the royal 
 canopy overshadowing the supposed presence of 
 the descended Deity, are adapted to create an im- 
 pression on the imagination of the vulgar, and of 
 the young, not easily removed. 
 
 Though the " carrying about of the sacrament " 
 culminates in the procession of Corpus Christi day, 
 it is not confined to it. In every Roman Catholic 
 country, when the law of the land permits it, "the 
 Sacrament," under the name of the Host, is carried 
 in procession to the sick instead of being consecrated 
 in the sick man's house, every one that meets it 
 being required to salute it by at least baring the 
 head. This too, as well as the Procession of Corpus 
 Christi, is condemned by the Twenty-eighth Article. 
 The difference of the ceremonial observed in it 
 from that which prevailed in the Early Church 
 when the sacrament was sent to the sick, is sufl^cient 
 in itself to indicate the difference of the doctrine of 
 the Church in primitive times, and its doctrine after 
 Transubstantiation had been adopted as a dogma. 
 No ceremony was used at all in the first ages. As 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 137 
 
 we have seen in the last chapter, the consecrated 
 elements were sent sometimes by a deacon [Jtistin 
 Martyr, ApoL), sometimes by a boy [Eiiseb. Hist. 
 Ecclcs. vi. 44), and St. Jerome speaks of their being 
 carried in a wicker basket and a glass [Epist. xv. 
 ad Rustiaini). This absence of ceremony in the 
 first and second centuries teaches one lesson as 
 plainly as the magnificent processions of the middle 
 ages teach another. 
 
 It is not only on the Festival of Corpus Christi, 
 and in going to visit the sick, that the sacramentum, 
 or outward sign of the Lord's Body, is carried in 
 procession as though it was the Lord Himself. 
 When once the doctrine of Transubstantiation had 
 come to be accepted, it was but natural thus to 
 seek the divine presence in all cases of danger. 
 Instead of lifting up his heart to Christ in heaven, 
 the man who was in peril sent for Him from the 
 next church. We may take as as illustration F. 
 von Matthis.son's well-known account of the chamois 
 hunt of the Emperor Maximilian the First. Maxi- 
 milian, the story runs, pursuing a chamois amidst 
 rocks, found himself in a place where he could move 
 neither backwards nor forwards. His retinue was 
 in the valley beneath, but could not help him, and 
 after two days and nights spent in vain efforts to 
 extricate himself, the Emperor made up his mind 
 to die. We should naturally expect to hear that 
 with this object he raised his soul to God, and sub- 
 mitted to his will. But no ! We read, " So stark 
 
l^H THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 als es nach so langer Abwarterung moglich war, er 
 rief zu den Seinen kommen zu lassen die Priester 
 mit dem heiligen Sakrament und ihm solches zu 
 zeigen ;" that is, "he called as loud as he could to 
 His attendants to get the priests to come with the 
 holy Sacrament and show it to him." Instead of 
 placing himself by an effort of his spirit in the 
 presence of God, by a brave act of faith launching 
 itself upwards, he calls for his object of worship, and 
 summons it into /lis presence. It was quite natural, 
 but we cannot but see how unspiritual is the con- 
 ception which underlay the Emperor's demand. He 
 cannot transport his soul to Christ, but Christ under 
 the form of the sacrametitiim must be brought to 
 him. 
 
 A second consequence, then, of the doctrine of 
 Transubstantiation, is the carrying about the Sacra- 
 ment of the Body of Christ, as though it was Christ, 
 on the festival of Corpus Christi, in visiting the 
 dying, and in succouring those in danger. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 rf!li2>HE third result of Transubstantiation is the 
 I tI) Elevation of the Elements after consecration. 
 
 This practice commenced in the West in the 
 thirteenth century and has continued since that 
 time in the Roman Church. What is the evidence 
 as to the existence of the practice before that date ? 
 Holy Scripture does not contain the slightest indi- 
 cation of it. We read that our Lord took bread 
 and gave it to His disciples, and that He took the 
 cup — one of the cups of the Paschal Feast — and 
 gave it to them. It is not stated, nor is it imagin- 
 able, that He first held them up for the worship of 
 His disciples before they ate and drank them, and 
 yet that no word of such an astonishing act should 
 have been spoken by the Evangelists or by St. 
 Paul. Nor is it possible that such a thing could 
 have been done without its becoming the universal 
 practice in the first century, and therefore in all 
 subsequent centuries. But Cardinal Bona acknow- 
 ledges, " it is not clear what was the first origin in 
 the Latin Church of the Elevation of the sacred 
 Mysteries as soon as they were consecrated. For 
 not any trace of it is found in the ancient Sacra- 
 
I40 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 mentaries, or in the Codices of the Ordo Romanus, 
 whether printed or manuscript, nor in the old 
 expositors of rites, Alcuin, Amalarius, Walafrid, 
 Micrologus. and others " (Lib. ii. c. xiii.). We can fix 
 the date of its introduction. It was the year 1179 
 in which it is first heard of. In that year were 
 framed the Constitutions of Odo, Bishop of Paris, 
 and they contain the following injunction, which 
 is the first notice of the practice to be found : 
 "Presbyters are ordered when they have begun, 
 'Who in the same night,' etc., holding the Host, 
 not to raise it too much at once so as to be seen 
 by the people, but to keep it about at the level of 
 the breast until they have said, ' This is my Body,' 
 and then to raise it, so as to be seen by all " {Labbe 
 and Cossart, tom. x. 1808). Contemporaneously 
 with, or a little subsequently to, the growth of the 
 belief in Transubstantiation, grew up the practice of 
 elevating the Host for worship, and it was enforced 
 as a protest against the sounder views of Beren- 
 garius and the upholders of the older theology. 
 Odo was the first to regulate it, and this he did 
 eighteen years before the authoritative enunciation 
 of the dogma of Transubstantiation, which took 
 place in 1215. Eleven years subsequently to the 
 Constitutions of Otho, Guido, a Papal Legate in 
 Germany, made a further step towards the modern 
 custom by enjoining the use of a bell at the time 
 of the Elevation, and desiring the congregation to 
 prostrate themselves at its sound till after the con- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 141 
 
 secration of the Cup {Ccesarius Hcisterbacensis, 
 Historia, ix. 51). These injunctions were repeated 
 by Wilham, Bishop of Paris, in 1228 [Hard., Cone. 
 vi. 1979), and by a Synod of Worcester in 1240 
 ( Wilkins, i. 667). Throughout the thirteenth cen- 
 tury the command to elevate is reiterated again 
 and again, for the purpose of insinuating the new 
 doctrine, and Gregory IX introduced it into the 
 Decretals, by which it acquired binding force in 
 the Latin Church. The connexion between Ele- 
 vation, and Transubstantiation, and Adoration is ex- 
 hibited by a declaration of a Synod of Exeter in 
 1287. " Because by these words 'This is my Body,' 
 and by no other, the bread is transubstantiated 
 into the Body of Christ, let not the Priest elevate 
 the Host until he has brought out those words, lest 
 the creature be worshipped by the people for the 
 Creator" (IVi/kms, ii. 132). No doubt, the main 
 purpose with which Elevation was first introduced, 
 and has since been maintained, in the Latin Church, 
 is to give occasion of worshipping the Sacramcutnvi, 
 presented to the people no longer as a Sacranien- 
 tum, but as Him of whose Body it is the outward 
 sign. And, in fact, we see that those who have 
 been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith are 
 deeply impressed by the ceremonial. When the 
 bell rings and the priest lifts up the dimly seen 
 Host, a hush sinks down upon the congregation, 
 while the people fall upon their knees and worship 
 what they believe to be a present and visible 
 
142 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 deity. If Transubstantiation be true, and Adora- 
 tion of the Sacrament be right, then Elevation is 
 a most natural and appropriate ceremony. 
 
 There is another practice which Elevation natu- 
 rally accords with, that of " gazing " on the Sacra- 
 ment instead of partaking of it. In the Latin 
 Church this is called "hearing Mass;" in England 
 it is known under the name of " non-communicat- 
 ing attendance." The logical result of this practice 
 is Adoration of the Sacrament, but it is often al- 
 lowed and adopted by those who are not prepared 
 to worship the consecrated elements. It is thought 
 by some that "gazing" on the Mysteries is adapted 
 to create a reverential frame of mind suitable for 
 prayer, and therefore that it is at least a harmless 
 and perhaps an edifying custom. By others it is 
 defended on the plea that it takes away the dis- 
 comfort coming from timidity that is felt by those 
 who for the first time approach the Lord's Table. 
 These and other like topics may be urged by the 
 advocates of the practice, but those who adopt it 
 for such reasons must be men of great simplicity 
 of mind. The effect of it, whether intended or not, 
 and whether understood or not, must be to abolish 
 the idea that reception of the consecrated elements 
 is the necessary condition of deriving benefits from 
 the Holy Communion, and to substitute for it the 
 idea that presence at the time that the Priest 
 consummates the Unbloody Sacrifice and offers 
 Christ to His Father is the essence of the Rite, 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 reception being a further, and so far as the sacrifice 
 is concerned, an indifferent act, following after the 
 act of sacrifice. The reasoning on which this prac- 
 tice is foiuided is unsound, even if we regard the 
 sacrificial side of the Holy Communion alone, and 
 it ignores those other aspects of the rite — the Feed- 
 ing on Christ, the Incorporation, the Pledge. 
 
 The Jewish Sacrifices were of four kinds — the 
 Burnt offering, the Meat offering, the Sin and Tres- 
 pass offering, and the Peace offering. Of these the 
 Sin offering and the Burnt offering, typified and 
 shadowed forth the Sacrifice of Calvary, when the 
 great self-surrender was made, man's sins expiated 
 'and God's wrath against sin propitiated. The Meat 
 offering set forth the same thing as the Eucharist, 
 in so far as the latter is an acknowledgment to God 
 of His goodness in the gifts of creation. The 
 Peace offering answers to the Holy Communion 
 as the Sacrifice or Gift which signified that the 
 worshipper was in peace with God. Now of the 
 Peace offering it was necessary that the offerer 
 should eat in order that the Sacrifice should be 
 accepted {I^cv. vii. 18, xxii. 30). They that ate of 
 the sacrifices were partakers of the altar (i Cor. x. 
 18), that is, it was by eating of the victim that men 
 took part in the Sacrifice. This was the recognised 
 rule of the Paschal Sacrifice. Presence was of no 
 avail without participation in the lamb ; whoever 
 failed to eat a part of it was " excluded, as if he 
 had not been in the mind of him who slew the 
 
144 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 victim " {Maimonides, Tract I. de PascJi. c. ii.). 
 Bishop Andrewes dwells with emphasis on this 
 point. " It is," he says, " an Eucharistic Sacrifice, 
 and the law of that kind of Sacrifice is this — that 
 the offerer must partake of it, and he must partake 
 of it by taking and eating, as the Saviour enjoined, 
 for your ' partaking by praying ' is modern and 
 new-fangled, newer even than your private Masses" 
 {licsp. ad Bell. p. 250). " The law of a Peace offer- 
 ing isj he that offers it must take his part of it, eat 
 of it, or it doth him no good " [Serm. iv. of the 
 Restirrectioit). " I see not how we can avoid that 
 the flesh of our Peace offering must be eaten in this 
 feast by us, or else we evacuate the offering utterly 
 and lose the fruit of it " [Scrm. vii. of t/ie Resur- 
 rection). In accordance with this teaching the 
 Church of England declares, " In such only as 
 worthily receive Sacraments they have a whole- 
 some effect or operation " [Art. xxv.). 
 
 The following are passages quoted by Scuda- 
 tnore [Noiitia Euckaristica, xiii. 2) from the Fathers, 
 to show that we commemorate the sacrifice of 
 Christ only when we partake of the appointed 
 symbols of His Body and Blood. "St. Basil, 'we 
 must cat the Body and drink the Blood of the 
 Lord for a memorial of His obedience unto death ' 
 {Moralia, Reg. xxi. ciii.) ; St. Augustine, ' Christians 
 celebrate the memorial of that same accomplished 
 sacrifice by the most holy oblation and participation 
 of the Body and Blood of Christ ' (Contr. Faust, xx. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 145 
 
 18); 'We call that only the Body and Blood of 
 Christ which, taken from the fruits of the earth and 
 consecrated by the mystic prayer, we duly receive 
 to our spiritual health for a memorial of the Lord's 
 passion for us ' [De Trin. iii. 4) ; St. Cyril of Alex- 
 andria, ' The Table with the Shewbread signifies 
 the Unbloody Sacrifice through which we receive 
 blessing when we eat the Bread from heaven ' {De 
 Adorat. in Spir. et Ver. xiii.) ; ' The participation 
 of the holy Mysteries is a true confession and com- 
 memoration of His dying and rising again for us'" 
 {Comm. in S. J oh. Ev. xx. 16). 
 
 Mr. Scudamore concludes his review of the sub- 
 ject with the following impressive words : " Those 
 who do not communicate derive no special benefit 
 from their presence at the celebration. The Sacra- 
 fice is not imputed to them, because it is only 
 through partaking that any one can appropriate it 
 to himself. The Altar must be to us the Table of 
 the Lord also, or it ceases to be an Altar. Rather 
 may we not fear a further secret loss of grace and 
 blessing if we attempt to use tlie most holy ordin- 
 ance of Christ in a manner or for a purpose which 
 has no sanction from Holy Scripture or from the 
 uninspired records of the Primitive Church?" — [No- 
 titia Eticharisiica, p. 402.) 
 
 It will be seen that I have spoken in this chapter 
 of the act of Elevation as it is practised in the 
 Western or Latin Church. I have done this in 
 L 
 
146 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUXIOX- 
 
 order to avoid a sophism which might arise from a 
 practice of the Eastern Church sometimes known 
 under the same name. In most of the Oriental 
 Liturgies, it is enjoined that after the Lord's Prayer, 
 which in these Liturgies follows the Prayer of Con- 
 secration and precedes the Fraction, the Priest 
 shall say, " Holy things for those that are holy," 
 and as he says it, shall lift up the consecrated 
 elements. But this is a totally different ceremony 
 from that of the Latin Church. It is done within 
 the iconostasis, the doors of which are closed. 
 Consequently the congregation do not see the 
 action at all. It cannot therefore be done in order 
 that they may the better " gaze upon " or " wor- 
 ship" the Host. It is a ceremony in which the 
 holy things (i.e., the consecrated gifts or elements) 
 are taken up and laid down again in a reverential 
 manner, and that only in the presence of the min- 
 isters at the altar within the Bema. This Elevation 
 (if it may be so called) not being the " lifting up " 
 which resulted from the doctrine of Transubstan- 
 tiation, but a harmless ceremonial rite, I need not 
 dwell upon it further than to point out the dis- 
 tinction that exists between it and the Western 
 practice. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 H E fourth practice condemned in the 
 XXVIIIth Article is the adoration of the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. This 
 practice is the natural and direct product of the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation. If the Sacrament 
 be Christ, how should we not worship it — if it be 
 only the appointed means of conveying Christ to 
 the duly qualified soul, how should we ? In the 
 later case, it would be as reasonable to worship the 
 water made use of in the Sacrament of Baptism, 
 which conveys the Holy Ghost to the duly qualified 
 recipient ; in the former case, who could refuse to 
 worship ? 
 
 The arguments in favour of Adoration are of two 
 classes: (i) Arguments founded on the ambiguous 
 use of the word Adoration ; (2) Arguments boldly 
 advanced in defence of Adoration, as ordinarily 
 understood. 
 
 Controversialists who take the first line, put to- 
 gether the passages where the word Adoration, or 
 worship, is used in an inferior sense : e.g. Gen. xxiii. 
 7, " Abraham bowed himself to the people of the 
 land," which in the Vulgate version is adoravit 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 popiilum terra;; i Kings i. i6, " Bathsheba did 
 obeisance to the Kings," adoravit regcin ; " Esther 
 iii. 2, " The King's servants reverenced Haman," 
 adoraverunt Haman. The common title of a 
 magistrate, "Your worship," is quoted, and the 
 passage in the Marriage Service, " With my body 
 I tliee worship," is cited. What do these passages 
 prove ? That if the word " adore " or " worship " 
 be used not in the sense in which it is now 
 ordinarily used, but as it was occasionally used 
 three centuries ago, then it may be applied to the 
 Sacrament, for there is no doubt that it should be 
 treated reverently. And so Ridley, " We do handle 
 the sign reverently. There is a deceit in this word 
 adorannis. We 'worship' the s}-mbols when rever- 
 ently we handle them." — ( Works, p. 236.) But the 
 word is not now used in the meaning which it 
 occasionally had three centuries ago, and if it be 
 used in that meaning without explanation, it must 
 mislead. The fallacy at the bottom of arguments 
 of this nature, is the assumption that because a word 
 may be innocently used in one sense, it may be used 
 in another sense which is not innocent. All that 
 can be allowed to disputants of this class is that 
 they may use the word " adore " or " worship," if 
 invariably they append to the use of the word the 
 parenthetical explanation that it is employed in the 
 antique sense of "reverence."' If this be done, it 
 will at once be seen that no argument for the 
 adoration of the Sacrament, in the accepted sense 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 149 
 
 of the phrase, has been advanced, but only that 
 attention has been drawn to a change that has 
 occurred in the meaning of a word in the course of 
 three centuries. 
 
 I proceed to the real defence of the practice of 
 the Adoration of the Sacrament. This can be only 
 based on the idea that the Sacrament either is 
 Christ or contains Him under the form of Bread 
 and Wine ; in other words, it requires the assump- 
 tion of the truth either of Transubstantiation or of 
 Consubstantiation. With one of these two hypo- 
 theses, or some other hypothesis so similar as to be 
 practically undistinguishable from one or the other 
 of them, stands or falls the practice of Eucharistic 
 Adoration. But Transubstantiation has been 
 already shewn to be untenable, and the same will 
 appear as to Consubstantiation. Nay, more, even 
 if these hypotheses were accepted as true, the prac- 
 tice would even still be idolatrous, for the worship 
 offered could not be dissociated from the accidents 
 of bread and wine, which are not God, even if their 
 substratum were supposed to have become divine. 
 
 The difference between, the worship of God in 
 Heaven and the worship of Christ in the Sacrament 
 is the difference between a spiritual and an uii- 
 spiritual religion. What is the moral purpose of 
 the prohibition to worship God under any visible 
 form contained in the Second Commandment 
 Bishop Moberly has pointed out in a most valuable 
 little work, less known than it ought to be— the 
 
150 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 " Law of the Love of God " — that the tendency to 
 seek after some visible representation of the Unseen 
 God is the result of a feeble faith. A brave, bold 
 faith launches itself outwards and upwards, and 
 soars as in a moment to the throne of God. But a 
 weak faith cannot do this. It falls back, flags, 
 droops, and then it cries out for some nearer object 
 of worship, to reach which will not be so great an 
 exertion, to apprehend which will not need so pro- 
 longed an effort. This is the rationale of Image 
 worship, Icon worship, and the worship of the 
 Sacrament. 
 
 Is there anything in Holy Scripture to justify 
 the practice ? Let us go back to the night of the 
 Institution. The first and second cup of the 
 Paschal Supper had, as usual, been drunk, and the 
 body of the lamb, which served as a memorial 
 of the lambs sacrificed in Egypt, had been eaten, 
 and then our Lord took some of the bread lying on 
 the table and gave it to His disciples to eat, saying, 
 "Take, eat, this is My body" (just as the Paschal 
 lamb was the body of a lamb slain in Egypt). 
 Is it imaginable that before eating it the disciples 
 worshipped it as being, or as containing, God ? 
 Then, after a pause, He took the wine that was on 
 the table, and which was always ceremonially 
 drunk — either the third or the fourth cup of the 
 feast — and gave it to them to drink, saying, " Drink 
 ye all of it," and using words which shewed that 
 it was henceforth not to be a mere part of the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 151 
 
 Paschal Supper, but a memorial of His blood- 
 shedding. Is there any indication of their worship- 
 ping it first? Or again, when it was the custom to 
 combine the feast of Charity with the Lord's 
 Supper, and a portion of the offerings brought for 
 the first were taken and consecrated for the Lord's 
 body, do we find that the latter were worshipped ? 
 On the contrary, we find that great scandals arose 
 from the Corinthians not distinguishing between 
 the Lord's body {i.e., the consecrated part of the 
 gifts) and the remainder, and St. Paul had to rebuke 
 them sharply for their irreverence. Would such 
 confusion between the sacred elements and the 
 unconsecrated food have been possible if the 
 Christians' practice had been to worship the 
 former } 
 
 Next, as to the teaching of the early Church, we 
 have seen that the Fathers of the first two centuries 
 and a half regarded the Holy Communion as an 
 offering of praise and thanksgiving, and an oblation 
 of bread and wine in thankful recognition of God 
 as the giver of food to man and the sustainer of his 
 life. In other words, they looked on the presenta- 
 tion to God of bread and wine in the Holy Com- 
 munion as the Jews looked on their meat (i.e., flour) 
 offering, as a gift offered to the Creator out of His 
 own, symbolically acknowledging that all came 
 from Him and His bounty. Can we imagine the 
 Jews worshipping the flour that they presented 
 through the priest as a meat offering? Can we 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 imagine the early Christians worshipping what was 
 to them an earnest or representation of the food of 
 Man, which they offered to God in thankful ac- 
 knowledgment of His goodness in supplying their 
 bodily and spiritual necessities? 
 
 When, after the year 250, the idea of a com- 
 memoration of Christ's Body broken and Blood 
 shed, which had never been absent from the rite, 
 began to supersede the more primitive view of an 
 offering of a portion of the fruits of the earth to 
 the Creator and Sustainer, the possibility of con- 
 founding the symbol and the thing symbolized 
 became for the first time possible. But no such 
 confusion was in fact made for another 300 years. 
 Rhetorical expressions were however used which 
 led not unnaturally to error. St. Ambrose, whose 
 want of early theological teaching occasionally 
 exhibits itself, finding the words " fall down before 
 His footstool," in Psal. xcix. 5, translated in the 
 Vulgate version Adorate scabelUim ejus," thought 
 it necessary to find an explanation for the apparent 
 injunction to worship God's footstool. Seeing that 
 elsewhere the earth was called God's footstool, he 
 asked himself how it could be right to worship the 
 earth, and came to the strange conclusion that as 
 God's footstool meant the earth, so the earth meant 
 the flesh of Christ which, he says, " we worship 
 (adoramus) in the mysteries" {De Spir. Sancto, iii. 
 11). St. Augustine, knowing no more than St. Am- 
 brose the real translation of the original, and led 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. T53 
 
 by the authority of his master, interpreted the 
 words in the same strange fashion [Eiiarr. in Psal. 
 xxxviii.), while at the same time protesting strongly 
 against materialistic views of the Sacrament. What 
 sense those doctors assigned to the word worship, 
 in the passage in which they have been led into 
 error by their ignorance of Hebrew, it is difficult to 
 say. Probably they meant no more than that 
 Christ's Person in His Flesh, and His Soul, and 
 Divinity, was an object of worship, and that His 
 flesh was sacramentally — i.e. in a sign — manifested 
 in the Holy Communion, or they might have used 
 the word worship in its lower signification as mean- 
 ing reverential treatment. But it is plain that their 
 words might be easily misunderstood, and they 
 may have given support to the error which began 
 to spring up a century or two later, and developed 
 itself pari passu with Transubstantiation. 
 I It is not necessary to quote the words of the 
 I English Reformers on this point. Allowing the 
 use of the word when employed in the sense of 
 reverential treatment, they point out that it is in- 
 expedient to use an ambiguous expression (see 
 \ Ridley as quoted above), and they deliberately 
 i and firmly set down their united judgment in the 
 I words of what is called the Black Rubric, appended 
 to the service for the Holy Communion. " It is 
 hereby declared that by kneeling no adoration is 
 intended, or ought to be done, either unto the 
 sacramental bread or wine there (in the Lord's 
 
154 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 Supper) bodily received, or unto any corporal 
 presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood. For 
 the sacramental bread and wine remain still in 
 their very natural substance, and therefore may 
 not be adored : (for that were idolatry to be ab- 
 horred of all faithful Christians;) and the natural 
 Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in hea- 
 ven and not here ; it being against the truth of 
 Christ's natural Body to be at one time in more 
 place than one." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 'ASTING Communion, as it is understood 
 
 by many in the present day, is a natural 
 
 ^^^^ result of the two doctrines of the Sacrifice 
 of the Mass and Transubstantiation. I say, as it is 
 understood by many, for there are two grounds 
 quite distinct each from the other on which the 
 practice is justified or recommended. Some find 
 the habit a help in bringing their own minds into 
 a proper state of reverence and devotion for the 
 holy rite. If experience proves that in their case 
 the custom is a good one, by all means let them 
 persevere in it, provided that they do not thereby 
 injure their health or encourage themselves or 
 others in superstitious or heterodox imaginations, 
 and provided that they are able to do so without 
 turning the weekly festival of the Lord's Day into 
 a fast. 
 
 But there is another view on which this practice 
 is not only defended but insisted upon. Accord- 
 ing to this view it is irreverent and wrong to allow 
 any food to enter the stomach before that which is 
 considered to have become, not only to the soul 
 and to faith, but to the teeth and to the digestive 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 organs, the Body of the Lord. Why, upon this 
 principle, it should be more irreverent that ordinary 
 food should precede the taking of the Body of the 
 Lord, than that it should immediately succeed it, 
 does not appear, but so it is arbitrarily laid down. 
 
 That Fasting Communion, as ordinarily under- 
 stood, is not scriptural is demonstrable. Let us 
 look first at the institution. Our Lord and His 
 Apostles had eaten the bitter herbs and the Paschal 
 Lamb, and had drunk two cups of wine in accord- 
 ance with the ceremonial of the Paschal Supper, 
 when our Lord took the bread that was upon the 
 table, and one of the cups which had still to be 
 drunk as part of the Paschal Feast, and having con- 
 secrated them as memorials of His Body broken 
 and His Blood shed, gave them to be eaten and 
 drunk by His Apostles. They therefore were not 
 fasting. 
 
 Again, the Epistle to the Corinthians shows us 
 that it was the practice of St. Paul's converts to eat 
 the feast of Charity (consisting of unconsecrated 
 food), and also the bread and wine which had been 
 consecrated as the Body and Blood of Christ at the 
 .same time, carefully discerning the one from the 
 other, or committing the gravest sin if they did not 
 so discern them. At what time in the feast of 
 Charity the reception of the sacred elements took 
 place cannot be proved, but it is probable, as is 
 pointed out by Cave {Primitive CJiristianity, Part 
 1, ch. xi.), that in imitation of our Lord's action at 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 the Paschal Supper it took place towards the end 
 rather than at the beginning of the feast ; and 
 this too is indicated by St. Paul's repro\al of the 
 Corinthians for not tarrying one for another, 
 which implies that they began their feast of 
 Charity before all were assembled, whereas the 
 sacred part of the feast would not have taken place 
 until the whole congregation was gathered to- 
 gether. Moreover, St. Paul's injunction that if they 
 were hungry they should eat at home, would pro- 
 bably mean that they were to eat in case they were 
 hungry before coming to the feast of Charity, at 
 which the Holy Communion was also dispensed. 
 Again, the custom of celebrating the Holy Com- 
 munion late at night, after an evening service, of 
 which we have an indication in Acts xx. 7, is in- 
 compatible with Fasting Communion in the later 
 sense of the words. 
 
 The testimony of early Church History is on the 
 same side. Perhaps the most ancient document 
 that we have is the newly-found "Teaching of the 
 Apostles." In this treatise fasting is enjoined upon 
 adult candidates for baptism before they are bap- 
 tised, but no such injunction is given in respect to 
 the other sacrament, the description of which indi- 
 cates that the practice, which we have seen prevail- 
 ing among the Corinthians, of combining the love 
 feast and the reception of the sacred elements were 
 still continued, the Thanksgiving Prayer being 
 offered after the conclusion of both feasts. 
 
158 THE DOCTRIiXE OF THE 
 
 There is no evidence of Fasting Communion be- 
 ing a practice in the Church (I say this after a 
 careful consideration of all the passages usually- 
 alleged on the other side) until the close of the 
 fourth century. Then it would appear that there 
 was an ecclesiastical rule enjoining that the clergy 
 and laity should be fasting at the time of reception. 
 Here we have to consider two things — (i) What 
 is the meaning of the word fasting? (2) Whether 
 or no a regulation of the fourth century respecting 
 a matter of discipline is binding at the present 
 day? 
 
 (i) The rule of the Roman Church, as may be 
 seen in the Trent Catechism, Part II. 4. 44, is that 
 no food be taken from the previous midnight until 
 the time of reception. This rule was first formu- 
 lated by Thomas Aquinas, A.D. 1270; and it is 
 evidently grounded upon a principle laid down by 
 Bartholomew of Brescia in 1250, that a person is 
 fasting when the digestion of his previous meal is 
 complete. In passing, let it be noticed that the 
 man who was the great advocate for Transub- 
 stantiation was also the author of the modern rule 
 of Fasting Communion. But in the earlier Church 
 fasting did not mean an entire abstention from 
 food from the previous midnight. It meant such 
 moderate use of food as would best prepare a man 
 for communion with God in prayer. In the fourth 
 century the ordinary meals were taken at about the 
 same hours as at present in many parts of the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 1 59 
 
 Continent, that is, there was a slight early refection 
 called '• jentaculum," a dejciiner at about 10 or 11 
 called " prandium," and an evening meal called 
 " coena." A man was regarded as fasting as long 
 as he was " impransus," that is, until he had taken 
 his "prandium" or luncheon. Thus we see the 
 meaning of the first rule of Fasting Communion 
 ever issued in the Church of Christ. This was done 
 by the local Council of Hippo, in the year 393, to 
 this effect : " That the Sacraments of the Altar be 
 not celebrated save by fasting men," the anniver- 
 sary being excepted on which the Lord's Supper 
 was instituted : " for if the commendatory of any 
 dead persons, whether Bishops or others, must be 
 held, let it be done with prayers only, if those 
 who hold it are found to have dined or lunched." 
 At the end of the fourth century, then, it was the 
 practice, if not the rule of the Church, that the 
 Holy Communion should not be administered after 
 luncheon except on Maundy Thursday, when, in 
 memory of the circumstances of the institution, it 
 was allowed even after dinner. This practice or 
 rule we find referred to by St. Augustine, who de- 
 sired that men should not come to receive the 
 Sacrament " pransi aut coenati," that is, after early or 
 late dinner, and says that it was always received by 
 fasting men ; and St. Chrysostom denies with great 
 vehemence that he had given the Holy Communion 
 to men after they had eaten. St. Chrysostom's 
 words are so strong that it is not surprising that 
 
l6o THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 they have been misunderstood by those who con- 
 tent themselves with extracts and do not look to 
 the context. " If I have done any such thing," he 
 says, " let my name be blotted out of the roll of 
 Bishops, and not be inscribed in the book of the 
 orthodox faith, for behold if I have done any such 
 thing, Christ shall also cast me out of His kingdom." 
 But in the very next sentence St. Chrysostom de- 
 clares that there is nothing wrong in itself in so 
 doing, since St. Paul had baptized a whole house- 
 hold after supper, and our Lord had given the 
 Communion to the Apostles after supper. It is 
 plain then that in St. Chrysostom's eyes the fault 
 of administering to people not fasting consisted in 
 its being contrary to the then rule of the Church. 
 The vehemence of the words which he uses may be 
 perhaps explained by their being a quotation from 
 the cry raised against him by his adversaries, 
 " Let his name be blotted out of the roll of 
 Bishops," &c. Very possibly he may himself 
 have regarded the practice of administering after 
 luncheon with the same disfavour that many 
 among us now regard evening Communion. That 
 his objection did not arise from any idea of im- 
 propriety or irreverence in the juxtaposition of 
 unconsecrated food and the sacred elements is 
 made plain by his placing the administration of 
 Baptism and the Eucharist upon the same footing. 
 If it was wrong to administer the Eucharist, so also 
 was it wrong to administer Baptism to men not 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. l6l 
 
 fasting. The object of the Church rule existing 
 in the time of St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom 
 plainly was to bring about that disposition of mind 
 on the part of the recipients which would make 
 them meet partakers of that holy sacrament, and 
 would save them from the risk of coming un- 
 worthily when surfeited with food and wine. 
 
 (2) We have next to consider whether a rule, 
 because it was a rule of the fourth century, is 
 binding on the Church of the nineteenth century. 
 Here we must make a careful distinction between 
 matters of faith and matters of discipline. The faith 
 changes not. Disciplinary regulations change ac- 
 cording to circumstances, and by the will of those 
 who have authority to impose or abrogate such 
 regulations. One instance is sufficient in proof. 
 The Nicene Council desired that men should stand 
 instead of kneel on Sundays and in the season 
 between Easter and Pentecost. No one would 
 dream of the Church of the present day being 
 bound by that regulation, even though we cannot 
 point to any law abrogating the Nicene injunction. 
 St. Augustine says, " Let there be one faith in the 
 inner life of the whole Church in every place, 
 although the unity of the faith is blended with 
 varieties of ritual. For ' the King's daughter is all 
 glorious within : her clothing is of wrought gold.' 
 The Church is beautiful in the unity of her inner 
 life of faith, and this inner beauty is not blemished, 
 but rather adorned, by the embroidered needle- 
 M 
 
l62 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 work of ritual variety." The obligation of a pre- 
 cept, which is solely a positive precept, rests upon 
 the duty of obeying those in authority in matters 
 indifferent. Church authority in the first century 
 determined that the Holy Communion was to be 
 received after food ; it was right therefore for 
 Christians of the first century so to receive it. 
 Church authority in the fourth century determined 
 that the Holy Communion was to be received before 
 luncheon, or, as it was otherwise expressed, by men 
 who were fasting. It was right therefore for 
 Christians of the fourth century to receive it before 
 luncheon and to refuse, as St. Chrysostom did, to 
 administer it after luncheon. A precept which is 
 simply positive may without hesitation be abro- 
 gated or varied by those in authority. A precept 
 founded upon moral considerations may also be 
 varied, but on the condition that the moral end in 
 view be still attained, although by other means. 
 If the rule of fasting Communion be regarded as 
 not merely a positive, but also a moral precept, we 
 know that its end was to put a stop to abuses and 
 scandals, such as exbibited themselves in the Church 
 of Corinth, and to cause, so far as regulations could 
 do so, a reverent state of mind on the part of the 
 recipients. If this end then be kept in sight, any 
 reasonable alterations may be made by due au- 
 thority. To sum up — The ordinary practice of Eng- 
 glish Churchmen of communicating after breakfast 
 and before luncheon is as closely assimilated to the 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 practice of the early Church as a change of habits 
 admits. Primitive Christians communicated after 
 their " jentaculum," before their " prandium" ; and 
 because they communicated before their " pran- 
 dium " they were regarded as receiving " impransi," 
 or fasting. English Churchmen ordinarily com- 
 municate after their breakfast and before their 
 luncheon, and because they communicate before 
 their luncheon they would have been regarded by 
 the early Christians as receiving "impransi," or fast- 
 ing. The only difference is that the modern 
 Churchman receives somewhat later in the day 
 than the ancient Churchman, because modern and 
 Western habits have made the day practically 
 begin and end later than it did in ancient times, 
 and still does in the East. Further, we may observe 
 that had the change been greater than it is (for it 
 is infinitesimal), yet the modern Church would 
 have been fully justified in making it, provided 
 that it kept in view the main object of the regu- 
 lation, viz. the maintenance of a reverent state of 
 mind on the part of the recipient, not disturbed by 
 the effects of food and drink lately taken. 
 
 M 2 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 NOTHER practice which grew up contem- 
 poraneously with the doctrine of Transub- 
 stantiation, and as a logical result from it, 
 is the Denial of the Cup to communicants. Such a 
 thing had not been heard of in the Church, except 
 indeed to be condemned as a heresy by Pope Gela- 
 sius, until the twelfth century. At the beginning 
 of that century a step was taken in the direction of 
 the practice by giving the bread dipped in wine to 
 the communicant instead of offering him each of 
 the elements separately — a thing that had never 
 been done before except in the case of sick persons 
 and infants incapable of swallowing the bread in 
 its dry state. This combination of the elements 
 was forbidden by Pope Paschal in the year iiio 
 {Epist. xxxii, Ad Poniinm : Mansi, xx. ioi3\ who 
 desired that they should be administered sepa- 
 rately, as they were separately instituted by Christ. 
 Ten years later Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester 
 {Epist. ii. Ad Lanibcrtiini : UAclicry, Spicileg. iii. 
 470), is found arguing for the new custom, on the 
 plea — aftenvards commonly urged— that otherwise 
 some of the wine would probably be spilt if taken 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 165 
 
 by people with moustaches, and might possibly be 
 spilt even by smooth-shaven men and by women. 
 The practice of mixing the elements was forbidden 
 in England by a Council held in London in the 
 year 1 1 7,5 (c. xvi.). 
 
 For the further step of forbidding the Cup only 
 two authorities are found in the twelfth century. 
 One of these is Rudolph, Abbot of St. Trone in the 
 territory of Liege, in the year 1130, who proposed 
 the innovation on two grounds — first, lest the wine 
 should be spilt, and secondly, lest the laity should 
 suppose that "the whole Christ did not exist in 
 each species." The latter argument was derived 
 from Anselm, who was the first to affirm that " the 
 whole Christ was taken under either species " 
 {Epist. iv. 107). The other authority in the twelfth 
 century is Robert Pulleyn, in the year 1140, who 
 gives the injunction that " the flesh of Christ alone 
 should be distributed to laymen " [Sciitcnt. p. viii. 
 c. iii.). The Schoolmen, as a rule, as yet supported 
 the traditional practice of communicating in both 
 kinds, but they had a difficulty in explaining why 
 both kinds should be required, when, according to 
 Anselm's dictum, Christ existed equally in either. 
 Peter Lombard suggested that the bread had re- 
 ference to the flesh, and the wine to the soul of 
 Christ, for which reason both should be received, 
 and this view was commonly adopted for a certain 
 period. Even still Gratian did not hesitate to 
 adopt and convert into a law of the Church (which 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 use immediately abrogated) the statement of Pope 
 Gelasius, that men must either receive in both 
 kinds or not at all, for that division of one and the 
 same mystery could not be made without great 
 sacrilege. 
 
 In the thirteenth century all this is changed. 
 Transubstantiation had now been declared a dogma 
 of the Church, and its logical consequen'cs were 
 more boldly defended. Alexander of Hales, in 
 the year 1220, declared it to be sufficient to com- 
 municate in the bread alone, inasmuch as Christ 
 was received under each kind, and in order to 
 prove his point he tells a tale of some monks who 
 desired to communicate in both kinds, but were 
 convinced of their error by seeing the paten on 
 which a priest broke the host filled suddenly with 
 blood, which retired again when the priest rejoined 
 the parts of the broken host. From this time 
 forward this sort of miracle became very common, 
 taking place wherever laymen clung obstinately to 
 their ancient privilege. Another device for wean- 
 ing people from their old habit and inducing them 
 to accept the innovation, was that of giving unconse- 
 crated wine in place of consecrated (see Council of 
 Lambeth held in 1281; Lmdwood, Prov. Anglic. 
 p. 9). Alexander of Hales, however, still regarded 
 it as more meritorious to receive under both kinds 
 though not necessary, and no longer customary (/« 
 Soiiciit. lib. iv. qu. 53). Albert the Great and Du- 
 randus {Rat. Div. Off. iv. 54) were still in favour 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 167 
 
 of both kinds ; but Thomas Aquinas ruled that one 
 kind was sufficient for the laity provided the priest 
 took both [Sunima. TIicol. p. iii. qu. 76, 80), and 
 Bonaventura argued on the same side, on account 
 of the risk of the wine being spilt and because 
 laymen would not otherwise believe that the whole 
 Christ was received under one kind. The authority 
 of these two doctors closed the question, but yet it 
 was not till the beginning of the fifteenth century 
 that a Council of Constance could publicly sanction 
 the practice by the following decree: — 
 
 " Since there are some who presume audaciously 
 to assert that the Christian people ought to take 
 the Sacrament of the Eucharist under both kinds 
 of bread and wine, and commonly communicate the 
 laity not only under the species of bread, but also 
 under the species of wine . . . although this sacra- 
 ment was received in the Primitive Church by the 
 faithful in both kinds, nevertheless, henceforth let it 
 be received by the officiating priests in both kinds, 
 and by the laity only under the species of bread, 
 inasmuch as it is most firmly to be believed, and 
 no way to be doubted, that the whole Body of 
 Christ and His Blood are truly contained as well 
 under the species of bread as under the species of 
 wine." — {Scss. xiii., A.D. 141,5.) 
 
 From this historical review we see that the 
 practice of the whole Western Church was revo- 
 lutionized in the twelfth and thirteenth century, 
 and that for this revolution two reasons were 
 
t68 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 assigned ; the first, that there was danger of spilling 
 the consecrated wine ; the other, that Christ was 
 contained in either species equally. With regard 
 to the first of these it maybe asked, Whether there 
 was any reason why the consecrated wine should 
 be more likely to be spilt in the twelfth or thir- 
 teenth century than in the previous eleven centuries ? 
 And this question being answered in the negative, 
 the further question arises, Why it should have been 
 considered so much more heinous an offence in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries than before ? The 
 reason was the conclusion that Anselm had drawn 
 from the doctrine of Transubstantiation, namely, 
 that Christ in all the integrity of His Divinity, His 
 human soul. His Body, and His Blood was contained 
 in each of the elements, in the bread separately, 
 and in the wine separately. If this were so, most 
 embarrassing questions must arise, which not even 
 the subtlety of the Schoolmen could answer. If 
 a part of the wine adhered to the moustache or 
 otherwise was not swallowed, what was it.'' Natural 
 reverence shrank from saying that it was a part of 
 Christ, and yet what else could it be? By the use 
 of wafers it became possible to guard against the 
 fall of crumbs, and therefore in the administration 
 of the bread the difficulty did not arise, or at least, 
 did not force itself upon the notice of the Commu- 
 nicants ; but if the wine were administered, it could 
 neither be concealed nor answered. Therefore, the 
 administration of the wine was given up, in defer. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 169 
 
 ence to the logical needs of the new faith, although 
 it had been commanded by Christ and practised 
 by the Church for more than a thousand years. 
 Anselm's proposition follows necessarily from Tran- 
 substantiation. If the bread be changed into Christ 
 when the priest utters the words of consecration 
 and holds up the host for adoration, Christ must 
 be in the Host in His integrity, and the same is 
 true with regard to the wine. This being so, it 
 became unreasonable to give Christ to the commu- 
 nicant twice over in different forms — once must be 
 sufificient, and if the practice of Christ's apostles 
 and of the universal Church had been otherwise, it 
 must be corrected. There is a ring of dogged 
 determination in the wording of the decree of the 
 Council of Constance, which seems to witness to a 
 secret consciousness on the part of its framers that 
 they could find no justification either in Holy 
 .Scripture or in the earlier Church for the innova- 
 tion in practice which novelty in belief had caused, 
 and consequently that they must rest it solely on 
 the basis of their own authority. 
 
 The Scriptural and historical evidence on this 
 point is irrefutable. Before the Institution, if our 
 Lord spoke of the necessity of eating the flesh of 
 the Son of Man, He spoke in the same breath of 
 the necessity of drinking His blood {Jolm vi. 53-56). 
 At the Institution, if He gave bread to the disciples, 
 saying, " Take, eat," He also gave the cup to them, 
 saying, " Drink ye all of it" [Matt. xxvi. 26, 27). And 
 
170 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 here we may remark, that the injunction to drink of 
 the cup is specifically made of universal obligation, 
 vvliile that universality is implied only, not ex- 
 pressed, with regard to the bread, and accordingly 
 the Evangelist states that ''they all drank" of the 
 cup, while he does not pause to make a similar 
 statement with respect to the bread [Mark xiv. 23). 
 So in the account of the Institution imparted to 
 St. Paul, drinking the cup is put upon a level 
 with eating the bread as the means of "shewing 
 the Lord's death " uninterruptedly " till He should 
 come" again (i Cor. xi. 26). There is an indication 
 indeed, not amounting to a proof, that in the first 
 century the cup was, occasionally at least, partaken 
 of before the bread, for St. Paul speaks of the cup 
 of blessing before the broken bread (i Cor. x. 16), 
 and of drinking the cup of the Lord, before he 
 speaks of partaking of the Lord's Table {Ibid, xxi.); 
 and in the ancient document called "The Teaching 
 of the Apostles" the Eucharistical prayer is ordered 
 to be offered first in respect to the cup and then in 
 respect to the bread. With regard to the practice 
 of the early Church, Bellarmine acknowledges that 
 no examples of communicating in one kind can be 
 found in the first five hundred years except it were 
 in one of four classes : (i) converted Nazarites ; (2) 
 Manichees ; (3) those who had taken home Avith 
 them a small part of the Eucharist ; (4) the sick. 
 Of the existence of the first class there is no 
 evidence whatever; the second supply no prece- 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 171 
 
 dent for Christians. In the third case those who 
 had reserved a part of the bread for private con- 
 sumption were not regarded as communicating 
 afresh when they eat it, but as consuming that 
 which remained from the sacred feast in which they 
 had participated, nor is there any proof whether or 
 no they were in the habit of reserving wine also ; 
 in the fourth case wine was administered with the 
 bread. That these are the only examples that 
 Bellarmine can adduce shows what was the constant 
 practice of the Church. 
 
 The following are the essential parts of Bishop 
 Andrewes' argument against Bellarmine on the 
 subject : — ■ 
 
 " Christ, says the Cardinal, instituted the Eucha- 
 rist, in so far as it is a sacrifice in both elements, 
 in so far as it is a sacrament in either of the 
 two. For the essence of a sacrifice, he says, both 
 are required, neither can be absent ; if one be 
 absent, the sacrifice is mutilated. For the essence 
 of a sacrament either of them is enough ; which 
 you please of the two is sufficient ; either one or 
 the other may be away, and yet the Sacrament 
 is not mutilated. This is magisterial enough, but 
 it is the arbitrary dictum of the Cardinal. What 
 Father says so ? Where is the appeal to the first 
 five hundred years ? 
 
 " Under the .species of bread, says the Cardinal, 
 the Sacrament is entire ; under the species of wine 
 the Sacrament is also entire, and yet these two 
 
172 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 entire Sacraments are not two entire Sacraments, 
 but only one entire Sacrament. Nay, more sur- 
 prising still, under the species of bread there is 
 the Sacrament, under the species of wine there 
 is also the Sacrament, and yet they are not 
 two Sacraments, and nevertheless they are two 
 Sacraments ; they are not two, but one, if haste is 
 used, if a man takes them together at one time ; 
 they are not one, but two, if there is delay, if a 
 man takes them at two separate times, or if two 
 people take them at one time. When they are 
 taken together, they are two parts of a whole, 
 neither of them is itself a whole ; when they are 
 taken separately they are two wholes, neither of 
 them is a part — and so a part is equal to the whole. 
 He receives as much who takes either element by 
 itself as he who takes both at the same time. Who 
 can understand this? — 'one not one,' 'two not 
 two,' ' two wholes taken together are not two,' 
 ' two are one if taken together,' ' two are not two 
 unless taken separately.' Why should the Sacra- 
 ment be affected so much by time when it is not 
 affected by place ? 
 
 "Then I have this inquiry to make: Why, on the 
 theory that the Blood is always with the Body, 
 and the Bod)' with the Blood, should the Sacrifice 
 be regarded as mutilated unless both kinds are 
 present, and the Sacrament not ? What becomes of 
 the Cardinal's doctrine of Concomitance? In the 
 Sacrifice he rejects it ; let him reject it therefore in 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 1 73 
 
 the Sacrament. Eut in the Sacrament he will not 
 do so. ' llicrc' says he, ' either one of the two is 
 sufficient,' just as if Concomitance was kept at the 
 door while the Cardinal was offering the Sacrifice, 
 and called in as soon as it had been finished. How 
 are these things to hold together ? 
 
 " In fact, the Sacrament is the partaking of the 
 Sacrifice ; for this is a peace-offering and Eucha- 
 ristic Sacrifice. ' Behold Israel after the flesh ; are 
 not they who cat of the Sacrifice partakers of the 
 altar' (i Cor. x. 18)? and as the Sacrifice is not 
 perfect unless the Body is broken and the Blood 
 shed, but the Cardinal himself confesses it muti- 
 lated, so neither is the partaking of the Sacrifice 
 perfect unless we receive both the broken Body 
 and the Blood shed. The apostle finds the symbol 
 of the Body in ' the bread which we break ;' of the 
 Blood, in ' the cup which we bless.' Reception of 
 the bread is partaking of the Body ; the cup is the 
 communication of the Blood. A little below he 
 says, ' Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and 
 the cup of devils,' regarding the drinking of the 
 cup with as great solicitude as the eating of the 
 bread. But if the Sacrament is perfect, as you say, 
 under the species of bread, why is the priest when 
 he comiCS to taking the Sacrament not content with 
 that which is perfect ? Why should he take more 
 than that which is already perfect? Why should 
 that not be perfect for him which is perfect for the 
 people.? or why should he not be contented him- 
 
174 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 self with what he desires them to be contented 
 with ? 
 
 " There is no analogy between this case and single 
 or trine immersion. There is but one act of im- 
 mersion in baptism, but there are two acts in the 
 Eucharist — of eating and drinking, and two subjects 
 — bread and wine. Besides, here there is a posi- 
 tive command — there, there is none. Christ gave 
 no command about the number of immersions in 
 baptism, whether it should be once or three times ; 
 but He did give a command about both kinds in 
 the Eucharist. He gave an express command-- 
 a command expressly obligatory on all. He said, 
 ' Drink,' as well as ' Eat,' and when He said, 
 ' Drink,' He added ' all of you.' If the Saviour 
 had used that word 'all' after 'Eat,' it would 
 have been a great help to the Cardinal's argument. 
 But where Christ gives a command and uses the 
 words of injunction, there there is no room for the 
 Church's legislation, but only in cases where, as in 
 the case of immersion, he leaves it undecided. For 
 if He had said, ' Dip once only,' or if He had 
 said, ' Dip three times,' I suppose the Church 
 would not have changed the rule — nor would the 
 Cardinal maintain that it would have a right to 
 change it. But He did say, 'Eat,' and He said 
 also, 'Drink,' and 'in like manner;' and He said, 
 'Do this,' both in regard to one and the other. By 
 saying that, Christ closed the question, nor has the 
 Church the right of leaving open that which Christ 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 175 
 
 closed, nor of ordering that one kind only be re- 
 ceived when Christ twice ordered that it should be 
 taken in both kinds, nor when Christ enjoined, ' Do 
 this,' in respect of both, expunging his words in 
 respect to one and forbidding men to ' do it.' We 
 may act as we please where no command has been 
 given, but when He gives the command ' Drink,' 
 ' Drink ye all,' — ' Do this/ it is no longer per- 
 missible or justifiable to refuse obedience."— (/v^'.v/'. 
 ad BcUarminnni, p. 251.) 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ^-jf^ WILL mention one other corollary on the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation. This is the 
 tenet of the Eating the Body of Christ by 
 the wicked. If it be true that the Bread is 
 objectively, physically, and substantially changed 
 into the Body of Christ, so that, according to An- 
 sclm's doctrine, the whole Christ is received under 
 the form either of the Bread or of the Wine, and if 
 this change takes place on the pronunciation of the 
 words of consecration without respect to the faith 
 of the recipient, it cannot but follow that whosoever 
 eats the consecrated Bread, whether he be good or 
 bad, must eat the Body of the Lord. Nay, not 
 only does it follow that wicked men must receive 
 Christ when they consume the wafer, but that brute 
 creatures must do so also, if, as sometimes happens, 
 mice should find their way to the reserved Host, or 
 other animals should accidentally swallow it, or 
 have it thrown to them by wicked men. On the con- 
 trary, if faith be " the means whereby the body of 
 Christ is taken and received in the Supper," then 
 it is impossible that it can be eaten by the wicked, 
 because one of the two conditions of the Bread's 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 1 77 
 
 becoming to the recipient the Body of Christ is 
 wanting. The Church of England, therefore, is 
 consistent with itself when, having denied Transub- 
 stantiation, and having declared that " the Body of 
 Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, 
 only after a heavenly and spiritual manner, and the 
 mean whereby the Body of Christ is eaten and 
 received in the Supper is faith " (Art. xxviii.), she 
 adds (Art. xxix.), "the wicked and such as be void 
 of a lively faith, although they do carnally and 
 visibly press with their teeth the Sacrament of the 
 Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they 
 partakers of Christ." 
 
 Our Lord's words appear to prove the truth of 
 this statement. He says, " Whoso eateth My Flesh 
 and drinketh My Blood hath eternal life, and I will 
 raise him up at the last day" (John vi. 54). But 
 we know that the wicked man hath not eternal life, 
 therefore he does not eat the Flesh of Christ and 
 drink His Blood. Again, " He that eateth My 
 Flesh and drinketh My Blood dwelleth in Me, and 
 I in Him." But the wicked man does not dwell in 
 Christ, nor Christ in him, therefore he does not eat 
 His Flesh, nor drink His Blood {Ibid. ver. 56). And 
 in the next verse, " He that eateth Me, even he 
 shall live by Me." Therefore whosoever eats Him 
 has life, and whoever has not life hath not eaten 
 Him. 
 
 It is argued that St. Paul teaches otherwise when 
 he writes, "Whosoever shall eat this Bread and 
 N 
 
178 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 drink this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of 
 the Body and Blood of the Lord " (i Cor. xi. 27) ; 
 and again, " He that eateth and drinketh, eateth 
 and drinketh judgment to himself, if he discern 
 not the Lord's Body," that is, if he distinguish not 
 the consecrated from the unconsecrated feast {Ibid. 
 ■ ver. 29). But these words clearly will not bear the 
 ! weight of the argument built upon them ; for seeing 
 j that the Bread and Wine are the symbols of the 
 j Body and Blood of the Lord, and the means of con- 
 I veying them to the recipient, whoever receives 
 them unworthily is undoubtedly "guilty of sin in 
 regard to the Body and Blood of the Lord," and 
 brings judgment on himself, if, like the Corinthians, 
 he confounds them with the constituent parts of 
 an ordinary feast. 
 
 It is plain that Origen understood our Lord's 
 words in the sense above assigned to them, for he 
 says, "The Word was made flesh and true food, 
 which whoso eats shall assuredly live for ever ; but 
 no wicked man can eat it, for if it were possible 
 for a man remaining in his wickedness to eat Him 
 who is the Word made flesh and living bread, it 
 would not have been written that whoever eats 
 that Bread shall live for ever" {Comment, in Matt. 
 XV.). Similarly St. Hilary, "The Bread which 
 comes down from Heaven is only received by him 
 who has the Lord, and is a member of Christ" 
 {De Trill. Lib. viii,). And St. Jerome, " None that 
 are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God eat 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 179 
 
 the Flesh of Jesus, or drink His Blood," for He 
 Himself says, " Whoso eateth My Flesh and drink- 
 eth My Blood hath eternal life" {In Isai. Ixvi. 17). 
 And St. Augustine, " Christ's words are as though 
 He said, he who does not abide in Me, and I in 
 him, let him not say or think that he eats My 
 Body or drinks my Blood " {De Civit, Dei, xxi. 25). 
 
 The question of the reception, or the non-recep- 
 tion of the Body of Christ by the wicked and by 
 brute creatures, resolves itself into the further 
 question, whether the priestly consecration does or 
 does not make the consecrated bread to become 
 Christ objectively, locally, and altogether apart 
 from the faith of the recipient. Passages in the 
 ancient liturgies are relied upon in which prayer 
 is made that the Holy Spirit will cause the Bread 
 and Wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ. 
 It is impossible to tell at what date these passages 
 were inserted in the Liturgy, or reduced to their 
 present form. Another form of the prayer is a 
 supplication that they may become " to us " the 
 Body and Blood of Christ. This formula, which is 
 found in the Roman Mass, shows us how the clause 
 is to be understood even where they are not found, 
 and serves as a protest against the idea of an 
 objective change of nature in the elements. A 
 change no doubt there is, but it is a change in 
 their use and purpose, which purpose is not ful- 
 filled without the further qualification of a living 
 faith on the part of the recipient. There is a very 
 N % 
 
l8o THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 general misunderstanding with respect to the mean- 
 ing of consecration in relation to things. It means 
 that they are set apart for God's service or for the 
 purpose of bringing about some end determined by 
 God. Thus, the consecration of a church does not 
 change the nature of the stones and mortar with 
 which it is built, but sets it apart for a particular 
 use in the service of God. So the consecration of 
 the water in baptism is not intended to change the 
 water into anything else, but to adapt it for its use 
 in washing away sin. In like manner the conse- 
 cration of the Bread and Wine makes no change in 
 the nature of the elements, but adapts them for 
 becoming the means of conveying to the duly 
 qualified soul the benefits of the Body broken and 
 the Blood shed upon the cross. The Invocation 
 of the Spirit on the water for holy baptism was as 
 customary in the Early Church as the Invocation 
 of Him on the Bread and Wine for the Holy 
 Eucharist ; nay, we have earlier proof of the former 
 than of the latter, and we have stronger expres- 
 sions as to the effect produced upon the water by 
 the illapse of the Holy Spirit than on the Bread 
 and Wine by His illapse upon them. As no one 
 believed that the water was changed into the Blood 
 of Christ or any other material by the Holy Spirit 
 invoked over it, but only that it was made con- 
 ducive to the sacred end for which it was employed 
 in baptism, so no one in the purer ages of the 
 Church believed that the Bread was changed into 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 181 
 
 the Flesh of Christ or any other material by the 
 analogous invocation, but only that it was made 
 conducive to the sacred end of Holy Communion. 
 
 It may be asked how then can it be so grave 
 a sin as St. Paul represents it, to partake un- 
 worthily, if that which is partaken of by the 
 wicked is not the Body of the Lord, but bare 
 Bread and Wine ? To this we may answer, It is not 
 bare Bread and Wine ; although to the unfaithful 
 or to one in malice, it is not the Lord's Body, it 
 is yet the Sacrament of the Lord's Body, and he 
 who eats it without faith or in malice "eats to his 
 condemnation the sign or sacrament of so great 
 a thing." Again, although the Bread and Wine 
 are not the actual Body and Blood of Christ, they 
 yet are the means of conveying to the soul rightly 
 qualified the benefits of the death of Christ. If, 
 then, they are consumed by one disqualified by 
 want of faith or by malice, he is profanely mis- 
 using that which might have been the means of 
 conveying to his soul the spiritual food of the 
 Body and Blood of Christ. On both these grounds 
 the sin of the unworthy communicant is very great 
 before the Lord, making him in St. Paul's words 
 " guilty concerning the Body and Blood of the 
 Lord," " eating and drinking condemnation to him- 
 self," and bringing upon himself temporal judg- 
 ments (i Cor. xi. 30). The profanation of the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Body by the unworthy 
 communicant is a sin of so awful a nature that it 
 
l83 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 does not require to be made still more terrible by 
 the supposition that Christ's Body is itself given 
 together with its Sacrament. 
 
 We have dwelt upon the carrying about, lifting 
 up, gazing upon, and worship of the Holy Eu- 
 charist, of the denial of the cup to the laity, and 
 of the belief in the partaking by the wicked of 
 the Lord's Body as the direct consequences of 
 the doctrine of Transubstantiation, springing up 
 contemporaneously with, and as the results of, 
 that doctrine. Bishop Cosin does not speak too 
 strongly when he says " As soon as ever Tran- 
 substantiation was established, a foundation was 
 laid for a number of superstitions and errors which 
 God-fearing men could not sanction or endure ; 
 and amongst the believers in Transubstantiation 
 themselves there grew up a forest of questions, 
 inextricable and portentous, with which the 
 schoolmen occupied themselves to such a degree 
 that it may be truly affirmed that a perfectly 
 new and monstrous theology, unheard of by all the 
 ancients, about the Holy Eucharist and the 
 adoration of the Host, then took its birth." — 
 (" Historia TransubstaJiiiationis, vii. 22.) 
 
 The bishop having made mention of the crop 
 of false miracles which immediately sprang up, 
 sets down some of these " portentous questions " 
 as follows : — " Whether mice eat the very Body 
 of Christ when they nibble the reserved Hosts 
 which have not been carefully locked up. Whether 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 183 
 
 if a dog or pig should swallow the whole of a 
 consecrated Host, the Body of the Lord would 
 not pass into their stomachs with the species ; to 
 which some of them answer that, though the Body 
 of Christ cannot enter the mouth of an animal 
 as food for his body yet it does enter ivith the 
 species, because one cannot be separated from the 
 other (not knowing what they say), for they argue 
 that as long as the species of bread continues to 
 exist, so long the Body of Christ remains in- 
 separably with it. Others answer, that brute 
 animals cannot eat the Body of Christ sacra- 
 mctitally, but that they do so accidentally, as a 
 man would who took a consecrated Host not 
 knowing that it was consecrated. Another ques- 
 tion is about Hosts which become corrupted or 
 mouldy. To this they answer that the thing 
 cannot happen, but that it only seems to do so, 
 the Body of Christ being incorruptible. Another 
 question is about undigested Hosts, to which the 
 answer is that the Body of Christ is inseparably 
 connected with them, the contrary opinion being 
 
 condemned by Gregory XI Further, this 
 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation has given occasion 
 to wicked men of treating in a shameful manner 
 what they believe to be the Body of Christ. 
 There have been bad priests, who have sold con- 
 secrated Hosts to Jews or magicians, by whom 
 they were pierced, or burnt, or used for incantations. 
 Nay, we read that St. Lewis himself delivered a 
 
184 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 Host to the Turks and Saracens as a pledge of 
 his fideHty. But who can beheve that our Lord 
 Christ willed to institute a Presence of His Most 
 Holy Body in His Church of such a nature that 
 He Himself or His Body could be given into 
 the hands of unbelieving Jews and Turks, or 
 could be swallowed by dogs and mice, or cast 
 into the fire, or burnt, or used for magical in- 
 cantations? I cannot go on. I shudder at what 
 I have already quoted. — {Ibid. 24.) 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 NOTHER method by which it has been sup- 
 posed that men may be able to feed upon 
 Christ in the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper, is that which is impHed in the theory of 
 Consubstantiation. This means not that the sub- 
 stance of the Bread and Wine is removed and its 
 place taken by the substance of flesh and blood — 
 which is required by the tenet of Transubstantiation 
 — but that the Bread and Wine continuing still in 
 their own substance or nature, there is added to 
 them the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 so that both substances co-exist in the consecrated 
 elements. The origin of this tenet seems to have 
 been, first, a desire to define and explain what Scrip- 
 ture has left as a mystery. Secondly, a desire to 
 accept and interpret the words, " This is my Body, 
 This is my Blood," in the most literal way possible. 
 Thirdly, a desire to retain the doctrine of an 
 objective Presence, while avoiding the physical 
 and metaphysical difficulties and self-contradictions 
 of Transubstantiation. 
 
 No doubt it does obviate some of those diffi- 
 culties. We are no longer required to believe in 
 
i86 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 the permanence of accidents after the substance in 
 which they inhere has been removed, and we are no 
 longer required in so flagrant a manner to reject 
 the evidence of our senses ; but, on the other hand, 
 it has difficulties of its own from which the theory 
 of Transubstantiation is free. If it be impossible 
 by a law of our mind to believe in the existence 
 of accidents apart from their substance, so too 
 is it impossible to believe in the co-existence of 
 two substances under the phenomena, and with 
 the accidents of only one of the two. This is 
 evidently demanded by the theory of Consub- 
 stantiation, for the phenomena of bread, and of 
 bread only, are present, and yet there are sup- 
 posed to be underlying them two substances, to 
 one only of which they belong. The other 
 substance, therefore, on this hypothesis has no 
 phenomena at all. This would be sufficiently 
 difficult to understand — nay self-contradictory — 
 even on the supposition that the theory of 
 Realism was true. Without Realism it has in- 
 tellectually no ground at all to stand upon, and 
 philosophically means nothing. 
 
 The Scriptural foundation for the doctrine is 
 as defective as its philosophical basis. For we 
 have already seen that the words, " This is my 
 Body, This is my Blood," need not mean that 
 the Bread and Wine are materially flesh and 
 blood, and do not bear that meaning in the 
 present case. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 187 
 
 The origination of the doctrine is generally 
 attributed to Luther. It is probable that it was 
 held by many before him. Certainly some of the 
 expressions used by the later Fathers are more 
 in accordance with the doctrine of Consubstan- 
 tiation than of Transubstantiation, or of the 
 spiritual Presence, but these writers did not define 
 their views, while Luther, having on the one side 
 to repudiate the doctrine of Transubstantiation, 
 and desiring on the other to cling to the tenet 
 of an objective Presence, was driven into formu- 
 lating the doctrine known by the name of Con- 
 substantiation. But the word Consubstantiation 
 was not adopted by him or by his followers. 
 The phrase authorised by the Confession of 
 Augsburg is that " with the Bread and Wine, 1 
 there are truly exhibited the Body and Blood 
 of Christ to the Communicants in the Supper | 
 of the Lord " ; and the Saxon Confession says | 
 that " Christ is truly present and His Body and 
 Blood truly exhibited to the Communicants." 
 Luther's own words are somewhat stronger. He 
 says that " the true Body and Blood of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ are in and under the Bread and Wine 
 by the word of Christ" [Catechismus Major). 
 Melancthon softened the teaching of Luther and 
 brought the Lutheran doctrine nearer to the tenet 
 of a spiritual Presence, so that Hooker was able 
 to contemplate the likelihood of an agreement 
 between the earlier school of the Calvinists and 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 the Lutherans in all essential points {Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, V. 67). "The Lutherans," says Waterland, 
 " when pressed to speak plainly, deny every 
 article almost which they are commonly charged 
 with by their adversaries. They disown as- 
 sumption of the elements into the humanity of 
 Christ, as likewise augmentation and impanation, 
 yea, and consubstantiation and concomitancy, and 
 if it be asked at length what they admit and abide 
 by, it is a Sacramental union, not a corporal 
 Presence, but as a body may be present spiritu- 
 ally " {Doctritie of the Eucharist, chap. viii.). In 
 accordance with this view, Buddaeus has written, 
 '■ Sacramental union is the one, true, genuine mode 
 of the Real Presence, the nature of which is that 
 according to the institution of our Saviour Him- 
 self, the Body is united to the Bread blessed as 
 a divinely appointed means, and the Blood of 
 Christ is united to the wine blessed as a di- 
 vinely appointed means, in a way that reason 
 cannot comprehend, so that in a sublime mystery 
 we take and eat the Body of Christ together with 
 that bread in one sacramental act of eating, and we 
 take and drink the Blood of Christ together with 
 that Wine in one sacramental act of drinking " 
 {Miscellan. Sacr. ii. 86). Dr. Waterland justly 
 observes that this seems to mean little else than 
 " a mystical or moral union, an union as to virtue 
 and efificacy, and to all saving intents and pur- 
 poses." "So far," he continues, "both parties 
 
HOLY COMMUXION RESTATED. 
 
 are agreed ; and the remaining difference may 
 seem to lie chiefly in words and names rather 
 than in ideas or real things— but great allowances 
 should be made for the prevailing prejudices of 
 education, and for a customary way of speaking 
 or thinking on any subject." [Ibid.) 
 
 The origin both of Consubstantiation and of Tran- 
 substantiation appears to have been a restless 
 desire on the part of the human mind to explain 
 the manner of Christ's Presence in the Sacrament, 
 on the assumption of a material or at least an 
 objective Presence. If we believe in a local, ex- 
 ternal, objective Presence, the conclusion to which 
 the logical faculty pitilessly drives us is either 
 Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation. Aquinas 
 adopted the first. Luther, abhorring Papal doctrine, 
 and yet resolved to maintain the objective Pre- 
 sence, fell back upon Consubstantiation. Many 
 individuals who profess belief in a local, objective 
 Presence, hold neither Transubstantiation nor Con- 
 substantiation, but this is because their reasoning 
 faculty has not compelled them to draw conclusions 
 from their premisses. It will be well to examine 
 into the history of the word objective as thus em- 
 ployed. Until about two centuries ago, the words 
 objective and subjective were used interchangeably, 
 or the word objective was specifically used for that 
 which is now termed subjective. About the middle 
 of the seventeenth century a German school began 
 to use the word objective for that which exists 
 
190 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 I externally to the mind of the percipient, and sub- 
 /jective for that which owed its existence to the 
 I notions of the mind. Coleridge introduced this 
 distinction into English philosophy, and it has been 
 seized upon by theologians and imported by them 
 into the science of theology. But let it be noted 
 (i) that it is not a Scriptural term ; (2) that it is not 
 used by the Fathers ; (3) that it is an ambiguous 
 term, used in various and sometimes contradictory 
 senses ; (4) that it is a philosophical, not originally 
 a theological term ; (5) that even if it should con- 
 tinue to be used in the sense in which it is at 
 present used, which is not probable, it would yet be 
 inadequate as applied to the Holy Communion. 
 '} An objective Presence would mean a Presence 
 brought about in the elements by the act of conse- 
 cration. But consecration is only one of two con- 
 ditions under which we have a right to expect that 
 that Presence will be vouchsafed. The other con- 
 dition is reception by a duly qualified soul. On 
 the other hand the word subjective Presence is 
 equally inexact, for though it might be applied to a 
 Presence brought about by a due qualification of 
 the human soul, it does not take into account the 
 other condition of the Presence, viz. consecration. 
 Let both conditions be fulfilled and we may be 
 assured of the Sacred Presence. Let either of them 
 be absent, and we have no such assurance. Both 
 of the words therefore — objective and subjective — 
 should in this connexion be avoided. It is not 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 191 
 
 merely objective, for it depends upon the state 
 of the recipient's soul ; it is not merely sub- 
 jective, for it depends upon something external 
 to the mind of the communicant. It is safer to 
 retain the recognised terminology of the Church, 
 and not to corrupt it by an attempt at enriching it 
 by words gathered in the fields of German 
 philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 AVING put aside the doctrine of the Church 
 of Rome, known by the name of Transub- 
 stantiation, and the Lutheran doctrine 
 which commonly goes under the designation of 
 Consubstantiation, as being, though in different 
 degrees, erroneous representations of the mode in 
 which we feed upon Christ in the Lord's Supper, 
 we come to the doctrine of the Church of England, 
 which teaches that we spiritually feed upon Him 
 in that Sacrament. I have already indicated the 
 passages in the Liturgy and Formularies of the 
 Church, which represent the Holy Communion as 
 the means of feeding on Christ. The following 
 passages show that that feeding is in the mind of 
 the Church spiritual in its nature. " He has given 
 His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die 
 for us, but also to be our spiritual food and susten- 
 ance in that Holy Sacrament " {First Exhortation in 
 the Communion So'vice). " For then we spiritually 
 eat the flesh of Christ and drink His Blood " 
 {Third Exhortation). " Feed on Him in thy heart 
 by faith with thanksgiving" {Form of Administra- 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 1 93 
 
 tion). " Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us who have 
 duly received these holy mysteries with the spirittial 
 food of the most precious Body and Blood of our 
 Saviour Jesus Christ" {Thanksgiving Prayer in the 
 Post Communion). " The Body and Blood of 
 Christ which are verily and indeed taken and 
 received by the Faitlifnl in the Lord's Supper " 
 . . . . " The strengthening and refreshing of our 
 souls by the Body and Blood of Christ" [Catechism). 
 " To such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive 
 the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking 
 of the Body of Christ, and likewise the cup of 
 blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ "... 
 " The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in 
 the Supper only after a heavenly and spiritual 
 manner, and the mean whereby the Body of Christ 
 is received and eaten in the Supper is faith " 
 (Art. xxviii.). " In no wise are the wicked partakers 
 of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do eat 
 and drink the sign bfc Sacrament of so great a 
 thing" (Art. xxix.). The above passages show 
 what is the mind of the Church of England in 
 respect to the manner in which we may feed upon 
 Christ. " It teaches," says Bishop Harold Browne, 
 '• That Christ is really received by faithful com- 
 municants in the Lord's Supper, but that there is no 
 gross or carnal, but only a spiritual and heavenly 
 presence there — not the less real, however, for being 
 spiritual. It teaches, therefore, that the Bread and 
 Wine are received naturally, but the Body and 
 O 
 
194 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 Blood of Christ are received spiritually " {Exp. of 
 the Arts.). 
 
 The Scriptural argument may be shortly stated. 
 It is certain that when our Lord spoke of Himself 
 as the Bread of Life (St. John vi.) He meant that 
 He was spiritually, not carnally, bread. When He 
 said at the institution of the Lord's Supper, " This 
 is My Body," it is certain that the words taken by 
 themselves are as open to a spiritual as to a carnal 
 interpretation, and that taken in connexion with 
 the events that accompanied them, the carnal in- 
 terpretation is excluded. It is certain that the 
 words of St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, 
 which have been forced into the support of the 
 material hypothesis, do not bear any such mean- 
 ing. It is plain too, that the general tone and 
 tendency of the Apostolic teaching delivered to us 
 in the New Testament is in its spirituality more in 
 accordance with the spiritual than with the carnal 
 hypothesis. 
 
 The patristic teaching amounts to this. There 
 are some passages to be found in the Fathers 
 which might have been written by men who held 
 the theory of a material feeding on Christ in the 
 Eucharist, but those passages are susceptible of an 
 interpretation which makes them accord with the 
 theory of spiritual eating, whereas there is a series 
 of passages which teach the doctrine of spiritual 
 feeding, but will not bear the sense of a material 
 eating. A freedom of expression is sometimes 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. I95 
 
 found which may be accounted for by the supposi- 
 tion that the danger of misinterpretation in the 
 direction of materialism had never occurred to the 
 writers. Whether this be the rightful explanation 
 of such words, or whether it might have been that 
 individuals may here and there have adopted 
 carnal views, it may be affirmed that the general 
 or Catholic teaching of the Church for the first 
 thousand years was to the effect that the faithful 
 Christian was spiritually nourished and fed upon 
 Christ in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 But it is important to know with some exactness 
 what we mean by the word spiritually. It does 
 not simply mean non-naturally or siipernatu rally, 
 for thus men might still believe in the carnal 
 delivery to them of the Body of Christ, brought 
 about in an extraordinary or miraculous manner, 
 which is only an undeveloped form of the theory 
 which finds its realisation and logical outcome in 
 the tenet either of Transubstantiation or of Consub- 
 stantiation. Still less does it mean unreally, for 
 then spiritual reception would be no reception at 
 all. The word spiritual is not merely a negation of 
 natural, nor is it a negation of real ; it has a 
 positive meaning of its own. This is, in the present 
 connexion, that the Body and Blood of Christ 
 are conveyed to the recipient in such manner 
 as spirit communicates with spirit. An object 
 is spiritually fed upon, not by being carnally 
 eaten, but by being inwardly digested, and so 
 O 3 
 
196 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 supplying strength to the affections and intellect of 
 him who mentally and morally lives upon it. In 
 the Holy Communion we eat the symbolical Body 
 of the Lord, that is, the bread which in a figure 
 represents His Body, naturally: namely, with our 
 teeth, and throat, and stomach. We eat the spiri- 
 tual Body of the Lord spiritually: namely, by faith 
 and love ; and as Bread and Wine strengthen 
 and refresh that which receives them, namely, 
 the body, when it is in a fit state of health to re- 
 ceive them, so the Body and Blood of Christ 
 strengthen and refresh that which receives them, 
 namely, the soul, when it is qualified by faith and 
 love to take and derive benefit from them. 
 
 Archbishop Cranmer writes : " You think a man 
 cannot receive the Body of Christ verily unless 
 he take Him corporally in his corporal mouth. 
 My doctrine is — that He is by faith spiritually 
 present with us, and is our spiritual food and 
 nourishment, and sitteth in the midst of all them 
 that be gathered together in His name ; and this 
 feeding is spiritual feeding, and an heavenly feed- 
 ing, far passing all corporal and carnal feedings, in 
 deed and not in figure only " {^Remains, vol. iii. p. 
 288). In the next generation. Bishop Jewell says: 
 "We assert that Christ exhibits Himself really pre- 
 sent in His Sacraments: in Baptism that we may 
 put Him on, in the Supper that we may eat Him 
 in faith and in spirit, and have eternal life from 
 His Cross and Blood" (Apologia). "From the time 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 197 
 
 of the Reformation to the present," says Bishop 
 Harold Browne, "all the great luminaries of our 
 Church have maintained the doctrine which appears 
 on the face of our formularies, agreeing to deny a 
 corporal and to acknov/ledge a spiritual feeding in 
 the Supper of the Lord. It is scarcely necessary 
 to recount the names of Mede, Andrewes, Hooker, 
 Taylor, Hammond, Cosin, Bramhall, Usher, Pear- 
 son, Patrick, Bull, Beveridge, Wake, Waterland. 
 All these have left us writings on the subject, and 
 all have coincided, with a very slight diversity, in 
 the substance of their belief" [Exposition of the 
 Articles, Art. xxviii. sec. ]). 
 
 Spiritual religion must have sunk to a very low 
 ebb before the hypothesis of a carnal reception 
 could have been adopted, and this we know was the 
 case in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, 
 when that tenet first sprang up and forced itself 
 into the theology of the Western Church. The 
 half educated masses with whom it originated, 
 whose feeble faith and gross minds could not lift 
 themselves up to high and heavenly things, dragged 
 down to the level of their own vulgar conceptions 
 the spiritual mystery which was delivered by the 
 Master to His Church. Once having been debased, 
 it was difficult indeed to lift it again out of the mire 
 by which its wings were plastered down to the 
 earth ; for Superstition is by nature timorous, and 
 when once a divine character has been attributed 
 to that which is not divine, it shrinks with an ex- 
 
198 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 ceeding dread from stripping it of its false character, 
 and shudderingly calls such an act irreligious. It 
 is not irreligious — it is an act of boldest, bravest, 
 truest faith. It was not profanity, but faith, 
 which led Hezekiah to remove the Brazen Serpent 
 from the Temple. It was not irreligion, but en- 
 lightened zeal for God's worship, which made the 
 Reformers of the sixteenth century break to pieces 
 the images of Saints which had been made objects 
 of popular adoration. And it was not irreligion, 
 but faith, which, recurring to primitive doctrine, 
 taught that His people were to feed on Christ, not 
 by eating Him with the mouth under the form of 
 bread, but by receiving Him into the soul, and there 
 feeding upon Him as our true spiritual food and 
 sustenance. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 HE idea of Incorporation with Christ is one 
 that is common to the two sacraments. 
 In Baptism " we are made members of 
 Christ ;" by the Holy Communion we receive assur- 
 ance of " being very members incorporate in the 
 mystical Body of God's Son." The act of incor- 
 poration could not begin with the Holy Communion 
 any more than remission of sins begins with it ; 
 but when by the initiatory Sacrament the ingrafting 
 has been made, and sins, actual and original, have 
 been washed away, then, in the second Sacrament 
 we are first reassured as to the original incorporation 
 having taken place, and remission of sins having 
 been already given ; and next, provided that we 
 come with hearts duly qualified by faith and charity, 
 we are still more intimately incorporated into the 
 mystical Body, and we receive remission of those 
 sins which, in the daily course of our life, by our 
 frailty we commit. Thus, in the Holy Communion 
 there is, if we may so speak, an extension of that 
 work of the Holy Spirit which belongs especially to 
 Baptism, and also a joyous acknowledgment that 
 that work has been wrought — that we are indeed 
 
200 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 members of Christ, and as such pardoned by and 
 reconciled to our Heavenly Father. 
 
 Union with Christ is in part taught, in part 
 effected, by Holy Communion. It is taught sym- 
 bolically in it, as we learn from St. Paul, when he 
 says, " For we being many are one Bread and one 
 Body, for we are all partakers of one Bread" (i 
 Cor. X. 17). The one Bread or loaf distributed 
 among many was counted as symbolising the unity 
 which ought to exist among Christians numerically 
 distinct. This idea is found very prominent in the 
 early document entitled, " The Teaching of the 
 Apostles," where the Eucharistical prayer over the 
 broken bread is represented as consisting solely of 
 the following thanksgiving and supplication : '■ We 
 give thanks to Thee, our Father, for the life and 
 knowledge which Thou madest known unto us 
 through Jesus Thy Child. To Thee be the glory 
 for ever. As this Bread which we break was 
 once scattered over the hills, and gathered together 
 it became one, so may Thy Church be gathered 
 from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom ; for 
 Thine is the glory and the power, through Jesus 
 Christ for ever" (Chap. ix.). 
 
 Besides teaching the lesson of unity, the Holy 
 Communion was regarded as a means of bringing 
 it about. As bread and wine become assimilated to 
 the body, so Christ and the soul were considered 
 by the Fathers to become interpenetrated each 
 with the other by the solemn act of Communion. 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 201 
 
 Thus, St. Cyril of Alexandria writes : " By one 
 Body, His own, blessing through the mystical 
 Communion those who believe in Him, He makes 
 us incorporated with Himself and with one another. 
 For who should separate and remove from a natural 
 oneness with one another those who through the 
 one Holy Body are bound up into oneness with 
 Christ? For if we all partake of the one Bread, 
 we are all made one Body ; for Christ cannot be 
 divided. Wherefore the Church is called also the 
 Body of Christ, and we too are members in par- 
 ticular. . . . But if we are all concorporate one with 
 another in Christ, and not only with one another, 
 but with Himself, in that He is in us through His 
 own Flesh, now are we not all clearly one, both 
 with each other and with Christ ? For Christ is 
 the bond of oneness, being in one, God and man ; 
 and again, although in us being many, Christ giveth 
 the Father's and His own Spirit to dwell in each of 
 us, yet is He one and indivisible, holding together 
 in oneness through Himself the spirits which in 
 their several existences are severed from oneness, 
 and making all to appear as one in Himself, for as 
 the power of the Holy Flesh maketh those concor- 
 porate in whom it is, in likeway, I deem, the one 
 indivisible Spirit of God dwelling in all bringeth all 
 together to the spiritual unity." (/;/ St. JoIian.Evan. 
 c. xvii., Dr. Pusey's translation.) And so again, 
 "Just as if anyone having kneaded one piece of 
 wax with another and melted them together with 
 
202 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 fire, one thing is made out of both. In like manner 
 through participation of the Body of Christ, and of 
 His precious Blood, He in us. and we again in Him 
 are made one." — [Ibid, in c. xv.) 
 
 If the faithful communicant is united to Christ, 
 and incorporated into His Body, he must also be 
 united at the same time with his brethren, who, to- 
 gether with himself, make up the mystical Body of 
 Christ. Accordingly, we find in the Liturgy of St. 
 Basil, " Do thou unite us all who are partakers of 
 the one Bread and Cup to each other in the fellow- 
 ship of the one Holy Ghost." And in the Liturgy 
 of St. Mark, "By the participation of Thy undefiled 
 Body and Thy precious Blood unite us to the 
 company, altogether most blessed, that is well 
 pleasing unto Thee." And in the Sacramentary of 
 Leo, "We beseech Thee Almighty God that we 
 may be numbered among the members of Him 
 of whose Body and Blood we are partakers." 
 
 This aspect of the Holy Communion, which had 
 been obscured by the preachers of the doctrines of 
 Transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass, 
 was again dwelt upon with emphasis at the Refor- 
 mation. Cranmer writes, " As the bread and wine 
 which we do eat be turned into our flesh and blood, 
 and be made our very flesh and very blood, and so 
 be joined and mixed with our flesh and blood, that 
 they be made one whole body together ; even 
 so be all faithful Christians spiritually turned into 
 the Body of Christ, and so be joined unto Christ 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 
 
 and also together among themselves, that they do 
 make but one mystical Body of Christ, as St. Paul 
 saith, We be one bread and one body as many as 
 be partakers of that one Bread and one Cup." — 
 {Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the 
 Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, Bk. i. 
 c. xiv.) And still earlier, in the " Institution of a 
 Christian Man,-" we find, " By the communion and 
 participation of the Sacrament of the altar we be 
 inserted into the Body of Christ, and so we be in- 
 corporated in Christ and Christ in us." And again 
 in the " Necessary Doctrines and Erudition for any 
 Christian Man," "As in the receiving of this Sacra- 
 ment we have most entire communion with Christ, 
 so be we also joined by the same in most perfect 
 unity with the Church and all the members thereof." 
 And so in the Second Book of Homilies, " Resort- 
 ing to this Table, we must pluck up all the roots of 
 infidelity, all distrust of God's promises ; that we 
 make ourselves living members of Christ's Body. 
 For the unbelievers and faithless cannot feed on that 
 precious Body ; whereas the faithful have their life, 
 their abiding in Him, their union, and, as it were, 
 their incorporation with Him." — [On the JVorthf 
 Receiving, &c., Part I.) 
 
 How Christians are combined together into the 
 one Body of Christ by the Holy Ghost, which is at 
 once the Spirit of Christ and of each and all of His 
 members, is a mystery which we cannot penetrate. 
 But we may believe that this effect is produced by 
 
204 THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY COMMUNION. 
 
 His operation, as otherwise and elsewhere, so espe- 
 cially in the two Holy Sacraments of Baptism and 
 the Lord's Supper, wherein and whereby He is im- 
 parted to the souls of the faithful. 
 
 "We in the outward action," says Barrow, "par- 
 take of the symbols representing our Saviour's 
 Body and Blood ; we in the spiritual intention 
 communicate of His very person, being intimately 
 united to Him." — [^Doctrine of the Sacraments — The 
 Eucharist^ 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 HERE is one other aspect in which we have 
 still to regard the Holy Communion. The 
 Church teaches us that it is not only a 
 Remembrance, not only an Offering, not only a 
 means of Feeding and of Incorporation, but also a 
 Pledge. It is a pledge of something past, of some- 
 thing present, and of something future. In the past 
 of our forgiveness by God, in the present of our 
 favour with Him, in the future of our obtaining the 
 eternal inheritance. 
 
 It may be asked what need is there for any 
 such pledge of God's graciousness in the past, 
 in the present, or in the future, and hoiv can a 
 visible, external sign, such as admission to God's 
 table, serve to us as an assurance of His favour 
 
 Now, with respect to the need, it may be freely 
 conceded that the whole sacramental system is a 
 concessuvi propter infirniitatcvi. We can imagine 
 beings whose nature was such that they would not 
 require sacraments at all — nay, we believe that our 
 own nature will be such hereafter, when we no 
 longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face, 
 knowing as we are known. But the fact that they 
 
206 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 might not be required by beings constituted other- 
 wise than we are, is no argument against their use 
 and necessity for us. Our spiritual natures are not 
 so framed that we are conscious of each stage and 
 act in our growth and nourishment. We do not 
 feel the growth even of our natural life. We look 
 back, and see that we have been born, and that we 
 have grown, but birth and growth elude our notice 
 as they occur, and in this respect the spiritual life 
 is in most cases similar to that of the body. But it 
 differs in this way — the natural life grows and 
 grows, and we feel no anxiety about our birth and 
 growth ; but devotion is a tender, anxious thing ; 
 it fears that the spiritual growth of which it is not 
 each hour conscious, is not proceeding at all, and in 
 this state of tremor a religious man thankfully 
 accepts the external visible sign of being admitted 
 to God's board as assurance — not evidence to un- 
 belief, but assurance to humility — that he has been 
 brought into God's kingdom, and made God's child, 
 and that he is now in favour with Him, and may 
 hope for His promised blessing hereafter. If God 
 thus deigns to indicate to him that He is his Father, 
 he feels a comforting assurance that he is His son. 
 If God symbolically holds out to him the food of 
 life, he believes that he receives at His hands the 
 spiritual food symbolised. If God gives to him the 
 Bread of Life, he believes that he will not die 
 eternally. 
 
 As to the Jioiv — Whatever Christ appointed as a 
 
HOLY COMMUNION RESTATED. 207 
 
 pledge and sign of His love would be so regarded 
 by His people for ever, just as the bow in clouds, 
 though arbitrarily selected, was a pledge of God's 
 mercy ; but we may see some special reason why 
 Sacraments should serve as pledges while they are 
 much more ; for Sacraments are, as it were, the 
 last link in the chain of assurances let down from 
 Heaven to earth to make man feel and know that 
 he is truly united to God. The God revealed by 
 natural science is a terrible power, inspiring awe 
 and fear, far away from any contact with man, who 
 is unable to determine whether the ruler of the 
 universe whom he contemplates be a person or a 
 law. The God of the philosopher and of the non- 
 Christian religions is not much nearer to man, 
 although He has now become recognised as a 
 Person, and as probably exercising the providential 
 government of the world. Christianity teaches the 
 union of God and man in the person of Jesus 
 Christ, and so the divine nature touches the human 
 nature and the human nature the divine. There is 
 yet another step whereby God and man are brought 
 nearer, when Christ, in whose person the divine 
 nature exists, gives Himself to be mystically put 
 on by man in one Sacrament, and to be mystically 
 I the spiritual food of man in the other. These 
 ' sacraments, visible and external rites as they are, 
 thus serve as a pledge of that union between God 
 and himself that the soul of man longs after. They 
 are not, they cannot be in themselves, demonstrative 
 
208 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 proofs of that union; they speak to faith, and to faith 
 they are an assurance inexpressibly comforting and 
 consoling. Hooker, with his usual breadth of view, 
 takes in this as well as the other aspects of the 
 Holy Communion. He writes, " This Supper is 
 received as a seal unto us that we are His house and 
 His sanctuary, that His Christ is as truly united to 
 me and I to him, as my arm is united and knit 
 unto my shoulder — that He dwelleth in me as 
 verily as the elements of bread and wine which are 
 within me ; which persuasion, by receiving these 
 dreadful mysteries, we profess ourselves to have — a 
 due comfort if truly, and if in hypocrisy, then woe 
 worth us." — {Scrvi. vi. i o.) 
 
 Under the old Dispensation a similar aid was 
 extended to man's weakness by the Divine tender- 
 ness and mercy. When the pious Jew ate of the 
 sacrifice which had been offered as a peace offering, 
 he felt assured thereby that he had been admitted 
 into covenant with God, and that he was at that 
 time in the favour of God, who thus received him 
 to partake of his board, and that the virtue of the 
 sacrifice was imputed to him in all its far-reaching 
 value; and in like manner the humble Christian, 
 who comes in faith and love and self-distrust to 
 the Holy Communion, feels himself assured of his 
 sonship in Christ, of the forgiveness of his sins, 
 and of his acceptance with God, and that he has 
 an interest in the sacrifice of the broken Body and 
 poured out Blood by which the world was redeemed. 
 
IIOLV COMMUNION RESTATED. 209 
 
 But this is not all, for Christ brought hfe and 
 immortality to light, of which the Jew had no clear 
 vision. Not only therefore is the Holy Commu- 
 nion a pledge to the Christian of his forgive- 
 ness by God and of his being a living member of 
 His kingdom on earth, but it is also an assurance 
 of his future resurrection and of his being heir to 
 the eternal inheritance in the heavens. 
 
 In His discourse at Capernaum Our Lord unites 
 very closely the doctrine that He is the Bread of 
 Life with the doctrine of the Resurrection. Who- 
 ever ate that Bread, He taught, should not die, but 
 should live for ever. "Whoso eateth My Flesh and 
 drinketh My Blood hath eternal life, and I will 
 raise him up at the last day" (John vi. 54). The 
 humble believer coming to eat the Bread of Life in 
 the manner appointed by Christ may therefore 
 have a comforting assurance — not only for this 
 life — but for the next, that Christ will, according 
 to His promise, raise him up at the last day, and 
 grant to him to live for ever with Him, provided, of 
 course, that he continue throughout his life eating 
 of that Bread in faith and love, that is, feeding spi- 
 ritually upon Him. Thus it is that the Holy Com- 
 munion becomes the viaticum to the dying Chris- 
 tian; not that its mere physical and mechanical 
 reception can profit anything either to soul or 
 body, but that the spiritual feeding on Christ sym- 
 bolised and effected by the eating and drinking of 
 the bread and wine, the outward means by which 
 r 
 
2IO 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 
 the inward reality is conveyed to the duly qualified 
 soul, does so fill the faithful Christian with the life 
 of Christ that the death of the body can have no 
 material effect upon him. The life that he lives is 
 already that eternal life over which the changes of 
 the body have no power, — that life which the spi- 
 ritual body, raised up at the last day, is to partake 
 of, together with the soul, in the never-ending 
 kingdom of God. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 The Holy Communion is a Remembrance, a 
 Sacrifice, a means of Feeding, a means of Incor- 
 poration, a Pledge. 
 
 It is a Remembrance in so far as its object is 
 to recall to the minds of Christians the love of 
 Christ as exhibited in the sacrifice of His death, 
 in so far as it commemorates by an outward act 
 that divine sacrifice, and in so far as it is a memo- 
 rial of Christ and His death before man and before 
 God. 
 
 It is a Sacrifice, inasmuch as it is an offering made 
 to God as an act of religious worship — a spiritual 
 sacrifice, as being a sacrifice of prayer and praise 
 to God for the benefits received by the sacrifice of 
 the death of Christ ; a viatci-ial sacrifice, in so far as 
 the bread and wine are regarded as gifts of homage 
 to God in acknowledgment of His creative and 
 sustaining power ; a covnncmorative sacrifice, inas- 
 
IIOLV COMMUNION RESTATED. 211 
 
 much as it commemorates the great Sacrifice of 
 the Cross ; the words commemorative sacrifice 
 meaning, in this acceptation, a commemoration of 
 the sacrifice. But it is not a sacrifice of Christ to 
 His Father, whereby God is propitiated and man's 
 sins expiated. 
 
 It is a means of Feeding upon Christ; but this 
 feeding is not effected by the elements to be eaten 
 being changed into Christ — an hypothesis which 
 grew up in the ninth century among a rude and 
 nninstructed populace, forced its way into the 
 theology of the Western Church in the eleventh 
 century, although opposed to the tradition of the 
 Church, the true interpretation of Scripture, and 
 the tenets of philosophy — an hypothesis which has 
 led to the practices of Reservation, Procession of 
 the Sacrament, Elevation, Adoration, Communion 
 in one kind. Fasting Reception (when imposed 
 as of necessity), and the belief that Christ's Body 
 is eaten by the wicked. 
 
 Nor is our Feeding on Christ effected by our 
 eating His material Body, together with the bread 
 and wine, which is the theory of Consubstantiation. 
 
 But it is effected by the spiritual Presence of 
 Christ, and the benefits of His bloodshedding on 
 the Cross being conveyed to the soul of the humble 
 recipient qualified by faith and love towards God 
 and man. 
 
 It is a means of Incorporation, inasmuch as by it 
 we are more and more made part of the mystical 
 
212 THE DOCTRINE OF THE IIOLV COMMUNIOX. ' 
 
 Body of Christ, and united with its other mem- 
 bers. 
 
 It is a Pledge, inasmuch as it serves to the hum- 
 ble Christian as a symbolical assurance of God's 
 past forgiveness, and of His present favour towards 
 him, and of a future inheritance graciously reserved 
 for him. 
 
 Remembrance, Sacrifice, Feeding, Incorporation, 
 Pledge. Regard any one of these ideas as an 
 adequate expression of the doctrine of the Holy 
 Communion, and we shall have only a partial con- 
 ception of it. Combine them, and we attain as 
 nearly to a complete notion and apprehension of it 
 as the nature of a mystery will admit. 
 
 'r 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed at the University Press, Oxford 
 By HORACE Hart. Primer to the I'ttrverstiy