As in the time of Elizabeth, so during the reigns of James I. and Charles I. there are instances of differing beliefs about the Eucharist held by eminent divines. It may be convenient to take in one group the writings of Andrewes, Laud, Mountague, and Herbert.
Lancelot Andrewes was born in London in 1555. He was successively Vicar of Alton, Vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate, Canon of St. Paul’s, and Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He was a chaplain of Queen Elizabeth and of King James I.; and became Bishop of Chichester in 1605, Bishop of Ely in 1609, and Bishop of Winchester in 1618. In 1626 he died. His beliefs as to the doctrine of the Eucharist are expressed for the most part uncontroversially in his Sermons and Devotions, and are stated more explicitly in the course of several controversies.
Andrewes’s Sermons contain many references to this Sacrament. It is the means by which pre-eminently we partake of the benefits of the Incarnation.
“Now ‘the bread which we break, is it not the partaking of the body, of the flesh, of Jesus Christ?’ It is surely, and by it and by nothing more are we made partakers of this most blessed union. A little before he said, ‘Because the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also would take part with them’—may not we say the same? Because He hath so done, taken ours of us, we also ensuing His steps will participate with Him and with His flesh which He hath taken of us. It is most kindly to take part with Him in that which He took part in with us, and that to no other end but that He might make the receiving of it by us a means whereby He might ‘dwell in us, and we in Him’; He taking our flesh, and we receiving His Spirit; by His flesh which He took of us receiving His Spirit which He imparteth to us; that, as He by ours became consors humanae naturae, so we by His might become consortes divinae naturae, ‘partakers of the divine nature’. Verily, it is the most straight and perfect ‘taking hold’ that is. No union so knitteth as it. Not consanguinity; brethren fall out. Not marriage; man and wife are severed. But that which is nourished, and the nourishment wherewith, they never are, never can be severed, but remain one for ever. With this act then of mutual ‘taking,’ taking of His flesh as He has taken ours, let us seal our duty to Him.”
It is the application of the sacrifice of Christ to the souls of the communicants.
“He is given to us in pretium, ‘for a price’. A price either of ransom, to bring us out de loco caliginoso; or a price of purchase of that where without it we have no interest, the kingdom of heaven. For both He is given; offer we Him for both. We speak of quid retribuam? We can never retribute the like thing. He was given us to that end we might give Him back. We wanted, we had nothing valuable; that we might have, this He gave us as a thing of greatest price to offer for that which needeth a great price, our sins, so many in number, and so foul in quality. We had nothing worthy God; this He gave us that is worthy Him, which cannot be but accepted, offer we it never so often. Let us then offer Him, and in the act of offering ask of Him what is meet; for we shall find Him no less bounteous than Herod, to grant what is duly asked upon His birthday. He is given us, as Himself saith, as ‘the living bread from heaven,’ which Bread is His ‘flesh’ born this day, and after ‘given for the life of the world’. For look how we do give back that He gave us, even so doth He give back to us that which we gave Him, that which He had of us. This He gave for us in sacrifice, and this He giveth us in the Sacrament, that the sacrifice may by the Sacrament be truly applied to us.”
The elements are both tokens of, and means of conveying, the body and blood of Christ; and the Eucharistic presence is not of Christ’s Godhead only but also of His flesh.
“How shall we receive Him? Who shall give Him us? That shall One that will say unto us within a while, Accipite, ‘Take, this is My body,’ ‘by the offering whereof ye are sanctified,’ ‘Take, this is My blood,’ by the shedding whereof ye are saved. Both in the holy mysteries ordained by God as pledges to assure us and as conduit pipes to convey into us this and all other the benefits that come by this our Saviour.”
“How may we better establish our hearts with grace, or settle our minds in the truth of His promise, than by partaking these the conduit pipes of His grace, and seals of His truth unto us? Grace and truth now proceeding not from the Word alone, but even from the flesh thereto united; the fountain of the Word flowing into the cistern of His flesh, and from thence deriving down to us this grace and truth, to them that partake Him aright.”
“ ‘Immanuel, God with us’ requires Immelanu, ‘us with God,’ again. He ‘with us’ now, I hope, for ‘where two or three are gathered together in His name, there is He with them’. But that is in His Godhead. And we are with Him; our prayers, our praises are with Him; but that is in our spirits whence they come. These are well, but these are not all we can; and none of these the proper ‘with Him’ of the day. That hath a special cum of itself, peculiar to it. Namely, that we be so with Him as He this day was ‘with us’; that was in flesh, not in spirit only. That flesh that was conceived and this day born (corpus aptasti mihi), that body that was this day fitted to Him. And if we be not with Him thus, if this His flesh be not ‘with us,’ if we partake it not, which way soever else we be with Him, we come short of the Im of this day.… This, as it is most proper, so it is the most straight and near that can be, the surest being withal that can be. Nihil tam nobiscum, am nostrum, quam alimentum nostrum, ‘nothing so with us, so ours, as that we eat and drink down,’ which goeth, and groweth one with us. For alimentum et alitum do coalescere in unum, ‘grow into an union’; and that union is inseparable ever after. This then I commend to you, even the being with Him in the Sacrament of His body, that body that was conceived and born, as for other ends so for this specially, to be ‘with you’; and this day, as for other intents so even for this, for the Holy Eucharist.”
The presence and gift in the Sacrament is that of Christ Himself, as Christ Himself was laid in the manger when He became incarnate.
“Of the Sacrament we may well say, Hoc erit signum. For a sign it is, and by it invenietis Puerum, ‘ye shall find this Child’. For finding His flesh and blood, ye cannot miss but find Him too. And a sign, not much from this here. For Christ in the Sacrament is not altogether unlike Christ in the cratch. To the cratch we may well liken the husk or outward symbols of it. Outwardly it seems little worth, but it is rich of contents, as was the crib this day with Christ in it. For what are they but infirma et egena elementa, ‘weak and poor elements’ of themselves? Yet in them find we Christ. Even as they did this day in præsepi jumentorum panem angelorum, ‘in the beasts’ crib the food of angels,’ which very food our signs both represent and present unto us.”
The bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ are alike as real as His manhood and His Godhead; and they are united without either of them being changed, as the two natures of our Lord were united in the Incarnation.
“We shall the better dispense the season, if we gather to prayers to God’s word, if we begin with them, if with the dispensation of His holy mysteries gather to that specially. For there we do not gather to Christ or of Christ, but we gather Christ Himself; and gathering Him we shall gather the tree and fruit and all upon it. For as there is a recapitulation of all in heaven and earth in Christ, so there is a recapitulation of all in Christ in the holy Sacrament. You may see it clearly: there is in Christ the Word eternal for things in heaven; there is also flesh for things on earth. Semblably, the Sacrament consisteth of a heavenly and of a terrene part (it is Irenæus’ own words); the heavenly—there the word too, the abstract of the other; the earthly—the element.… The gathering or vintage of these two in the blessed Eucharist is as I may say a kind of hypostatical union of the sign and the thing signified, so united together as are the two natures of Christ. And even from this sacramental union do the fathers borrow their resemblance to illustrate by it the personal union in Christ; I name Theodoret for the Greek, and Gelasius for the Latin Church, that insist upon it both, and press it against Eutyches. That even as in the Eucharist neither part is evacute or turned into the other, but abide each still in his former nature and substance, no more is either of Christ’s natures annulled, or one of them converted into the other, as Eutyches held, but each nature remaineth still full and whole in his own kind. And backwards; as the two natures in Christ, so the signum and signatum in the Sacrament, e converso. And this latter device of the substance of the bread and wine to be flown away and gone, and in the room of it a remainder of nothing else but accidents to stay behind, was to them not known; and had it been true had made for Eutyches and against them.”
With the reception of the body of Christ in the Sacrament there is also the reception of the Holy Ghost.
“I will show you a way how to say Accipite Spiritum to all, and how all may receive It. And that is by Accipite corpus Meum. For Accipite corpus, upon the matter, is Accipite Spiritum inasmuch as they two never part, not possible to sever them one minute. Thus, when or to whom we say Accipite corpus, we may safely say with the same breath Accipite Spiritum; and as truly every way. For that body is never without this Spirit: he that receives the one receives the other; be that the body, together with it the Spirit also. And receiving It thus, it is to better purpose than here in the text it is. Better, I say, for us. For in the text It is received for the good of others, whereas here we shall receive It for our own good. Now whether is the better, remission of sins, to be able to remit to others, or to have our own remitted? To have our own, no doubt. And that is here to be had. To the stablishing of our hearts with grace, to the cleansing and quieting our consciences. Which spiritual grace we receive in this spiritual food, and are made to drink (I will not say of ‘the spiritual rock,’ but) of the spiritual ‘vine’ that followeth us, which ‘vine’ is Christ. To that then let us apply ourselves. Both are received, both are holy, both co-operate to the ‘remission of sins’. The ‘body’—Matthew the twenty-sixth. The Spirit, here evidently. And there is no better way of celebrating the feast of the receiving the Holy Ghost than so to do, with receiving the same body that came of It at His birth, and that came from It now at His rising again.”
The opinion of many in England that in the Eucharist there is no actual partaking of the true body of Christ is contrary to the constant belief of the Church.
“To a many with us it is indeed so fractio panis as it is that only and nothing beside; whereas the ‘bread which we break is the partaking of Christ’s’ true ‘body,’ and not a sign, figure, or remembrance of it. For the Church hath ever believed a true fruition of the true body of Christ in that Sacrament.”
“Sacrifice,” “offer,” and “altar” are all words which may be used rightly about the Eucharist, though there is a sense in which each one of them must be refused.
“Many among us fancy only a Sacrament in this action, and look strange at the mention of a sacrifice, whereas we not only use it as a nourishment spiritual, as that it is too, but as a mean also to renew a ‘covenant’ with God by virtue of that ‘sacrifice,’ as the psalmist speaketh. So our Saviour Christ in the institution telleth us, in the twenty-second chapter of Luke and twentieth verse, and the Apostle, in the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews and tenth verse. And the old writers use no less the word sacrifice than Sacrament, altar than table, offer than eat; but both indifferently, to show there is both.”
“Two things Christ there gave us in charge: 1. ἀνάμνησις, ‘remembering,’ and 2. λήψις, ‘receiving’. The same two St. Paul, but in other terms, 1. καταγγελλία, ‘showing forth’; 2. κοινωνία, ‘communicating’. Of which, ‘remembering’ and ‘showing forth’ refer to celebremus, ‘receiving’ and ‘communicating’ to epulemur here. The first, in remembrance of Him, Christ. What of Him? Mortem Domini, His death, saith St. Paul, ‘to show forth the Lord’s death’. Remember Him. That we will and stay at home, think of Him there. Nay, show Him forth ye must. That we will by a sermon of Him. Nay, it must be hoc facite. It is not mental thinking or verbal speaking, there must be actually somewhat done to celebrate this memory. That done to the holy symbols that was done to Him, to His body and His blood in the passover; break the one, pour out the other, to represent κλώμενον, how His sacred body was ‘broken,’ and ἐκχυνόμενον, how His precious blood was ‘shed’. And in corpus fractum and sanguis fusus there is immolatus. This is it in the Eucharist that answereth to the sacrifice in the passover, the memorial to the figure. To them it was, hoc facite in Mei prœfigurationem, ‘do this in prefiguration of Me’: to us it is, ‘do this in commemoration of Me’. To them prenuntiare, to us annuntiare; there is the difference. By the same rules that theirs was, by the same may ours be termed a sacrifice. In rigour of speech, neither of them; for to speak after the exact manner of divinity, there is but one only sacrifice, veri nominis, ‘properly so called,’ that is, Christ’s death. And that sacrifice but once actually performed at His death, but ever before represented in figure, from the beginning; and ever since repeated in memory, to the world’s end. The only absolute, all else relative to it, representative of it, operative by it. The Lamb, but once actually slain in the fulness of time, but virtually was from the beginning, is and shall be to the end of the world. That the centre, in which their lines and ours, their types and our antitypes do meet. While yet this offering was not, the hope of it was kept alive by the prefiguration of it in theirs. And after it is past, the memory of it is still kept fresh in mind by the commemoration of it in ours. So it was the will of God, that so there might be with them a continual foreshowing, and with us a continual showing forth, the ‘Lord’s death till He come again’. Hence it is that what names theirs carried, ours do the like, and the fathers make no scruple at it; no more need we. The Apostle in the tenth chapter compareth this of ours to the immolata of the heathen; and to the Hebrews habemus aram, matcheth it with the sacrifice of the Jews. And we know the rule of comparisons, they must be ejusdem generis.”
In a passage of some obscurity Bishop Andrewes connects the body of Christ which is received in the Eucharist with the state in which it was on the cross.
“Epulemur doth here refer to immolatus. To Christ, not every way considered, but as when He was offered. Christ’s body that now is. True; but not Christ’s body as now it is, but as then it was, when it was offered, rent, and slain, and sacrificed for us. Not, as now He is, glorified, for so He is not, so He cannot be, immolatus, for He is immortal and impassible. But as then He was when He suffered death, that is, passible and mortal. Then, in His passible estate did He institute this of ours, to be a memorial of His passibile and passio both. And we are in this action not only carried up to Christ (sursum corda), but we are also carried back to Christ as He was at the very instant, and in the very act of His offering. So, and no otherwise, doth this text teach. So, and no otherwise, do we represent Him. By the incomprehensible power of His eternal Spirit not He alone, but He as at the very act of His offering is made present to us, and we incorporate into His death, and invested in the benefits of it. If a host could be turned into Him now glorified as He is, it would not serve; Christ offered is it; thither we must look. To the Serpent lift up, thither we must repair, even ad cadaver; we must hoc facere, do that is then done. So, and no otherwise, is this epulare to be conceived. And so, I think, none will say they do or can turn Him.”
In his Devotions Andrewes describes the Eucharist as being all affording—
“a token of the fellowship, a memorial of the dispensation, a showing forth of the death, a Communion of body and blood, a participation of the Spirit, remission of sins, a riddance of adversaries, quieting of conscience, blotting out of debts, cleansing of stains, healing of sicknesses of the soul, renewal of the covenant, provision for the journey of ghostly life, increase of enabling grace and winning comfort, compunction of repentance, illumination of mind, a preparatory exercise of humility, a seal of faith, fulness of wisdom, a bond of charity, a sufficient ground of almsgiving, an armour of endurance, alertness for thanksgiving, confidence of prayer, mutual indwelling, a pledge of resurrection, acceptable defence in judgment, a testament of inheritance, a stamp of perfectness”;
as a remembrance of—
“the saving sufferings of Thy Christ, His quickening cross, right precious death, three days’ burial, resurrection from the dead, ascension into heaven, session at the right hand of Thee the Father, glorious and fearful coming”;
in which—
“we have held the remembrance of Thy death, we have seen the figure of Thy resurrection, we have been filled with Thine unending life, we have had fruition of Thine inexhaustible delight.”
In his first Answer to Cardinal Perron Andrewes repudiates alike the Zwinglian doctrine that the elements are only signs of the body and blood of Christ and the “carnal presence” which he thought to be implied in Cardinal Perron’s phrase, “la vraye et reelle presence et manducation orale du corps de Christ au Sacrament sous les especes et dans les especes sacramentales”; declares “the Sacrament to be venerable and with all due respect to be handled and received,” and that, while “no divine adoration can be used to” “the symbols so abiding” “in their former substance, shape, and kind,” “no Christian man” ought ever to “refuse” “to adore the flesh of Christ”; and explains the Eucharistic sacrifice in the following terms:—
“1. The Eucharist ever was, and by us is, considered both as a Sacrament and as a sacrifice. 2. A sacrifice is proper and appliable only to divine worship. 3. The sacrifice of Christ’s death did succeed to the sacrifices of the old Testament. 4. The sacrifice of Christ’s death is available for present, absent, living, dead (yea, for them that are yet unborn). 5. When we say the dead, we mean it is available for the Apostles, martyrs, and confessors, and all (because we are all members of one body): these no man will deny. 6. In a word, we hold with St. Augustine in the very same chapter which the Cardinal citeth, ‘quod hujus sacrificii caro et sanguis ante adventum Christi per victimas similitudinum promittebatur; in passione Christi per ipsam veritatem reddebatur; post adventum [leg. ascensum] Christi per sacramentum memoriae celebratur’. … If we agree about the matter of sacrifice, there will be no difference about the altar. The Holy Eucharist being considered as a sacrifice (in the representation of the breaking the bread and pouring forth the cup), the same is fitly called an altar, which again is as fitly called a Table, the Eucharist being considered as a Sacrament, which is nothing else but a distribution and an application of the sacrifice to the several receivers. The same St. Augustine that in the place alleged doth term it an altar saith in another place, ‘Christus quotidie pascit. Mensa Ipsius est illa in medio constituta. Quid causae est, O audientes, ut mensam videatis et ad epulas non accedatis?’ The same Nyssen in the place cited with one breath calleth it θυσιαστήριον, that is, an altar, and ἱερὰ τραπέζα, that is, the holy Table. Which is agreeable also to the Scriptures; for the altar in the Old Testament is by Malachi called Mensa Domini. And of the Table in the New Testament by the Apostle it is said, Habemus altare. Which, of what matter it be, whether of stone, as Nyssen, or of wood, as Optatus, it skills not. So that the matter of altars make no difference in the face of our Church.”
In the Responsio ad Apologiam Cardinalis Bellarmini Andrewes maintains that the Anglican controversy with Rome is not as to the reality but as to the method of the presence of Christ; that neither the word nor the doctrine of Transubstantiation is to be found in the fathers; that not the Sacrament but Christ Himself really present in it is to be adored; that the Eucharist is a commemorative sacrifice; and that, if the doctrine of Transubstantiation should be abandoned, there would no longer be dispute as to the sacrifice.
“Christ said, ‘This is My body’. He did not say, ‘This is My body in this way’. We are in agreement with you as to the end; the whole controversy is as to the method. As to the ‘This is,’ we hold with firm faith that it is. As to the ‘This is in this way’ (namely, by the Transubstantiation of the bread into the body), as to the method whereby it happens that it is, by means of In or With or Under or By transition there is no word expressed. And because there is no word, we rightly make it not of faith; we place it perhaps among the theories of the school, but not among the articles of the faith.… We believe no less than you that the presence is real. Concerning the method of the presence, we define nothing rashly, and, I add, we do not anxiously inquire, any more than how the blood of Christ washes us in our Baptism, any more than how the human and divine natures are united in one Person in the Incarnation of Christ.”
“It is perfectly clear that Transubstantiation, which has lately been born in the last four hundred years, never existed in the first four hundred.… In opposition to the Jesuit, our men deny that the fathers had anything to do with the fact of Transubstantiation any more than with the name. He regards the fact of Transubstantiation as a change in substance (substantialis transmutatio). And he calls certain witnesses to prove this. And yet on this point, whether there is there a conversion in substance, not long before the Lateran Council the Master of the Sentences himself says ‘I am not able to define’. But all his witnesses speak of some kind of change (pro mutatione, immutatione, transmutatione). But there is no mention there of a change in substance, or of the substance. But neither do we deny in this matter the preposition trans; and we allow that the elements are changed (transmutari). But a change in substance we look for, and we find it nowhere.”
“At the coming of the almighty power of the Word, the nature is changed so that what before was the mere element now becomes a divine Sacrament, the substance nevertheless remaining what it was before.… There is that kind of union between the visible Sacrament and the invisible reality (rem) of the Sacrament which there is between the manhood and the Godhead of Christ, where unless you want to smack of Eutyches, the manhood is not transubstantiated into the Godhead.”
“About ‘the adoration of the Sacrament’ he stumbles badly at the very threshold. He says, ‘of the Sacrament, that is, of Christ the Lord present by a wonderful but real way in the Sacrament’. Away with this. Who will allow him this? ‘Of the Sacrament, that is, of Christ in the Sacrament.’ Surely, Christ Himself, the reality (res) of the Sacrament, in and with the Sacrament, outside and without the Sacrament, wherever He is, is to be adored. Now the King laid down that Christ is really present in the Eucharist, and is really to be adored, that is, the reality (rem) of the Sacrament, but not the Sacrament, that is, the ‘earthly part,’ as Irenæus says, the ‘visible,’ as Augustine says. We also, like Ambrose, ‘adore the flesh of Christ in the mysteries,’ and yet not it but Him who is worshipped on the altar. For the Cardinal puts his question badly, ‘What is there worshipped,’ since he ought to ask, ‘Who,’ as Nazianzen says, ‘Him,’ not ‘it’. And, like Augustine, we ‘do not eat the flesh without first adoring’. And yet we none of us adore the Sacrament.”
“Our men believe that the Eucharist was instituted by the Lord for a memorial of Himself, even of His sacrifice, and, if it be lawful so to speak, to be a commemorative sacrifice, not only to be a Sacrament and for spiritual nourishment. Though they allow this, yet they deny that either of these uses (thus instituted by the Lord together) can be divided from the other by man either because of the negligence of the people or because of the avarice of the priests. The sacrifice which is there is Eucharistic, of which sacrifice the law is that he who offers it is to partake of it, and that he partake by receiving and eating, as the Saviour ordered. For to ‘partake by sharing in the prayer,’ that indeed is a fresh and novel way of partaking, much more even than the private Mass itself.… Do you take away from the Mass your Transubstantiation; and there will not long be any strife with us about the sacrifice. Willingly we allow that a memory of the sacrifice is made there. That your Christ made of bread is sacrificed there we will never allow.”
It is of interest to compare with the teaching of Bishop Andrewes about the Eucharistic sacrifice that contained in the sermon preached at his funeral by John Buckeridge, who had formerly been President of St. John’s College, Oxford, was at that time Bishop of Rochester, and afterwards became Bishop of Ely. It is there taught that on the cross and in the Eucharist there is the “same sacrificed thing, that is, the body and blood of Christ,” but not the same “action of sacrifice”; and that the Church offers in the Eucharist “the Church itself, the universal body of Christ,” and does not “sacrifice the natural body of Christ otherwise than by commemoration”.
“As Christ’s cross was His altar where He offered Himself for us, so the Church hath an altar also where it offereth itself, not Christum in Capite, but Christum in membris, not Christ the Head properly but only by commemoration, but Christ the members. For Christ cannot be offered truly and properly no more but once upon the cross, for He cannot be offered again no more than He can be dead again; and dying and shedding blood as He did upon the cross, and not dying and not shedding blood as in the Eucharist, cannot be one action of Christ offered on the cross, and of Christ offered in the Church at the altar by the priest by representation only, no more than Christ and the priest are one person: and therefore, though in the cross and the Eucharist there be idem sacrificatum, the same sacrificed thing, that is, the body and blood of Christ offered by Christ to His Father on the cross, and received and participated by the communicants in the sacrifice of the altar, yet idem sacrificium quoad actionem sacrificii, or sacrificandi, it is impossible there should be the same sacrifice, understanding by sacrifice the action of sacrifice. For then the action of Christ’s sacrifice, which is long since past, should continue as long as the Eucharist shall endure, even unto the world’s end, and His consummatum est is not yet finished; and dying and not dying, shedding of blood and not shedding of blood, and suffering and not suffering, cannot possibly be one action; and the representation of an action cannot be the action itself.”
“This then is the daily sacrifice of the Church in St. Augustine’s resolute judgment, even the Church itself, the universal body of Christ, not the natural body, whereof the Sacrament is an exemplar and a memorial only, as hath been showed.… We deny not then the daily sacrifice of the Church, that is, the Church itself, warranted by Scriptures and fathers. We take not upon us to sacrifice the natural body of Christ otherwise than by commemoration, as Christ Himself and St. Paul doth prescribe.”
William Laud was born at Reading in 1573. He was ordained deacon in 1600, and priest in 1601. He became President of St. John’s College, Oxford, and Chaplain to King James I. in 1611, Bishop of St. Davids in 1621, Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1626, Bishop of London in 1628, Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1630, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. In 1640 he was accused of high treason; after many delays Parliament passed an act of attainder in which he was declared guilty, and he was beheaded on 10th January, 1645.
Most of Laud’s teaching in regard to the Eucharist is to be found in his work entitled A Relation of the Conference between William Laud, then Lord Bishop of St. Davids, now Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr. Fisher the Jesuite, which he published in 1639.
Laud explicitly rejects Transubstantiation in at any rate the more obvious meaning of the word.
“Transubstantiation … was never heard of in the primitive Church, nor till the Council of Lateran, nor can it be proved out of Scripture; and, taken properly, cannot stand with the grounds of Christian religion.”
“The primitive Church never … nor did it … dream of a Transubstantiation, which the learned of the Roman party dare not understand properly, for a change of one substance into another, for then they must grant that Christ’s real and true body is made of the bread, and the bread changed into it, which is properly Transubstantiation; substantiation; nor yet can they express it in a credible way, as appears by Bellarmine’s struggle about it, which yet in the end cannot be, or be called, Transubstantiation, and is that which at this day is a scandal to both Jew and Gentile, and the Church of God.”
Yet, in rejecting Transubstantiation as he understood it, he appears to have accepted the positive doctrine which the more theologically minded advocates of Transubstantiation had at heart. He quotes Bellarmine’s statement that—
“The conversion of the bread and wine into the body and the blood of Christ is substantial, but after a secret and ineffable manner, and not like in all things to any natural conversion whatsoever”;
and comments on it that—
“if he had left out ‘conversion,’ and affirmed only Christ’s ‘real presence’ there, after a mysterious, and indeed an ineffable, manner, no man could have spoken better”;
and he allows “the true substantial presence of Christ”.
In passages which to some extent recall the position of Hooker, Laud recognises that Calvin affirmed the reception of “the true and real body of Christ” “in the Eucharist”; points out that “the Church of England” “believes and teaches the true and real presence of Christ in the Eucharist”; and makes an appeal, though perhaps somewhat grudgingly, for peace on the ground of the common belief that faithful communicants spiritually receive the body of Christ in the Sacrament.
“But, ‘mark this,’ how far you run from all common principles of Christian peace, as well as Christian truth, while you deny salvation most unjustly to us, from which you are farther off yourselves. Besides, if this were, or could be made, a concluding argument, I pray, Why do not you believe with us in the point of the Eucharist? For all sides agree in the faith of the Church of England, That in the most blessed Sacrament the worthy receiver is by his faith made spiritually partaker of the ‘true and real body and blood of Christ, truly and really,’ and of all the benefits of His passion. Your Roman Catholics add a manner of this His presence, ‘Transubstantiation,’ which many deny; and the Lutherans, a manner of this presence, ‘Consubstantiation,’ which more deny. If this argument be good, then, even for this consent, it is safer communicating with the Church of England than with the Roman or Lutheran; because all agree in this truth, not in any other opinion.”
Laud calls the doctrine of concomitance a “fiction of Thomas of Aquin,” and rejects it because Christ instituted the Sacrament in both kinds, and because—
“the Eucharist is a Sacrament sanguinis effusi, of blood shed and poured out; and blood poured out, and so severed from the body, goes not along with the body per concomitantiam”.
Of the Eucharistic sacrifice, he writes:—
“As Christ offered up Himself once for all, a full and all-sufficient sacrifice for the sin of the whole world, so did He institute and command a memory of this sacrifice in a Sacrament, even till His coming again. For, at and in the Eucharist we offer up to God three sacrifices: One by the priest only, that is, 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 receive 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 thus bestowed on him. Now, thus far these dissenting Churches agree, that in the Eucharist there is a sacrifice of duty, and a sacrifice of praise, and a sacrifice of commemoration of Christ. Therefore, according to the former rule (and here in truth too) it is safest for a man to believe the commemorative, the praising, and the performing sacrifice, and to offer them duly to God, and leave the Church of Rome in this particular to her superstitions, that I may say no more. And would the Church of Rome stand to A. C.’s rule, and believe dissenting parties where they agree, were it but in this, and that before, of the real presence, it would work far toward the peace of Christendom.”
A passage in Laud’s Speech Delivered in the Starr-Chamber on Wednesday, June 14, 1637, at the Censure of John Bastwick, Henry Burton, and William Prinn, Concerning Pretended Innovations in the Church bears on his Eucharistic doctrine. Speaking of the practice of bowing before the altar, he says:—
“And you, my honourable Lords of the Garter, in your great solemnities, you do your reverence, and to Almighty God, I doubt not; but yet it is versus altare, towards His altar, as the greatest place of God’s residence upon earth. (I say the greatest, yea, greater than the pulpit; for there ’tis Hoc est corpus Meum, ‘This is My body’; but in the pulpit ’tis at most but Hoc est verbum Meum, ‘This is My word’. And a greater reverence, no doubt, is due to the body than to the word of our Lord. And so, in relation, answerably to the throne where His body is usually present than to the seat where His word useth to be proclaimed.)”
In the same speech, in alluding incidentally to “bowing themselves and adoring at the Sacrament,” he added, “I say, ‘adoring at the Sacrament,’ not ‘adoring the Sacrament’ ”.
Further illustration of Laud’s belief may be seen in the Scottish Liturgy of 1637. On 21st October, 1610, three of the titular Scottish bishops—Archbishop Spotswood of Glasgow, Bishop Lamb of Brechin, and Bishop Hamilton of Galloway—were consecrated bishops in London by Bishop Abbot of London, Bishop Andrewes of Ely, Bishop Neile of Rochester, and Bishop Parry of Worcester. They consecrated other bishops, and in this way an episcopal succession was restored to Scotland. On 20th December, 1636, King Charles I. signed a document authorising the use of a Scottish Book of Common Prayer. In July, 1637, an unsuccessful attempt was made to introduce this Book in Scotland. It was supposed by many that the characteristic features of the Book were due to the influence of Laud; and this was one of the charges brought against him at his trial. In the History of the Troubles and Tryal of the Most Reverend Father in God William Laud, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, which he himself wrote during his imprisonment in the Tower, while not admitting that the Book was his work, he expresses his willingness to “bear the burden” of it, and defends in detail the parts of it which were attacked. The Scottish Liturgy followed the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. rather than the Second Book of Edward or the Book of Elizabeth, and thus suggested the doctrine of the presence of Christ in the consecrated elements, as distinct from the implied rejection of that doctrine in the Book of 1552, or the toleration of differing beliefs in the Book of 1559. The service was not broken up by the intermingling of the parts relating to Communion with the liturgical action, as in the Books of 1552 and 1559. The Eucharistic sacrifice was implied in the words—
“We Thy humble servants do celebrate and make here before Thy divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, the memorial which Thy Son hath willed us to make, having in remembrance His blessed passion, mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension.”
The invocation of the Holy Ghost was used before the recital of the institution:—
“Hear us, O merciful Father, we most humbly beseech Thee, and of Thy almighty goodness vouchsafe so to bless and sanctify with Thy word and Holy Spirit these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine that they may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most dearly beloved Son, so that we, receiving them according to Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of His death and passion, may be partakers of the same His most precious body and blood.”
The words of administration were those used in the Book of 1549:—
“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life,”
“The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life,”
without the clauses substituted for these in 1552 and combined with them in 1559.
Of the order of the prayers Laud wrote:—
“Though I shall not find fault with the order of the prayers as they stand in the Communion-book of England (for, God be thanked, it is well), yet, if a comparison must be made, I do think the order of the prayers as now they stand in the Scottish Liturgy to be the better, and more agreeable to use in the primitive Church; and I believe they which are learned will acknowledge it.”
Of the attack on the Book on the ground that “the corporal presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament is” “to be found here,” he says:—
“They say, ‘the corporal presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament is to be found in this Service-book’. But they must pardon me; I know it is not there. I cannot be myself of a contrary judgment, and yet suffer that to pass. But let’s see their proof. ‘The words of the Mass-book, serving to that purpose, which are sharply censured by Bucer in King Edward’s Liturgy, and are not to be found in the Book of England, yet are taken into this Service-book.’ I know no words tending to this purpose in King Edward’s Liturgy, fit for Bucer to censure sharply; and therefore not tending to that purpose; for did they tend to that, they could not be censured too sharply. The words, it seems, are these: ‘O merciful Father, of Thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe so to bless and sanctify with Thy word and Holy Spirit these Thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine that they may be unto us the body and blood of Thy most dearly beloved Son’. Well, if these be the words, how will they squeeze corporal presence out of them? Why, first, ‘the change here is made a work of God’s omnipotency’. Well, and a work of omnipotency it is, whatever the change be. For less than Omnipotence cannot change those elements, either in nature or use to so high a service as they are put in that great Sacrament. And therefore the invocating of God’s almighty goodness to effect this by them is no proof at all of intending the ‘corporal presence of Christ in this Sacrament’. ’Tis true this passage is not in the prayer of consecration in the Service-book of England; but I wish with all my heart it were. For though the consecration of the elements may be without it, yet it is much more solemn and full by that invocation. Secondly, ‘these words,’ they say, ‘intend the corporal presence of Christ in the Sacrament because the words in the Mass are ut fiant nobis,’ ‘that they may be unto us the body and the blood of Christ’. Now for the good of Christendom I would with all my heart that these words ut fiant nobis,—that these elements might be ‘to us,’ worthy receivers, the blessed body and blood of our Saviour,—were the worst error in the Mass. For then I would hope that this great controversy, which to all men that are out of the Church is the shame, and among all that are within the Church is the division of Christendom, might have some good accommodation. For if it be only ut fiant nobis, that they may be to us the body and the blood of Christ, it implies clearly that they ‘are to us’ but are not transubstantiated in themselves into the body and blood of Christ, nor that there is any corporal presence in or under the elements. And then nothing can more cross the doctrine of the present Church of Rome than their own service. For as the elements after the benediction or consecration are, and may be called, the body and blood of Christ without any addition in that real and true sense in which they are so called in Scripture; so, when they are said to become the body and blood of Christ nobis, to us that communicate as we ought; there is by this addition, fiant nobis, an allay in the proper signification of the body and blood: and the true sense, so well signified and expressed that the words cannot well be understood otherwise than to imply not the corporal substance but the real and yet the spiritual use of them. And so the words ut fiant nobis import quite contrary to that which they are brought to prove.”
Of the words of administration he says that he sees “no hurt in the omission of those latter words, none at all,” and quotes with approval from Dr. Wetherborne’s notes:—
“There is no more in King Edward VI. his first Book. And if there be no more in ours, the action will be much the shorter. Besides, the words which are added since, ‘Take, eat, in remembrance, etc.,’ may seem to relish somewhat of the Zwinglian tenet that the Sacrament is a bare sign taken in remembrance of Christ’s passion.”
In regard to the charge that the Scottish Book contained “the oblation of the body and the blood of Christ, which Bellarmine calls Sacrificium laudis quia Deus per illud magnopere laudatur,” he writes:—
“First, I think no man doubts but that there is and ought to be offered up to God at the consecration and reception of this Sacrament sacrificium laudis, the sacrifice of praise; and that this ought to be expressed in the Liturgy for the instruction of the people. And these words, ‘We entirely desire Thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise andthanks giving,’ etc., are both in the Book of England and in that which was prepared for Scotland. And if ‘Bellarmine do call the oblation of the body and the blood of Christ a sacrificium of praise,’ sure he doth well in it; (for so it is) if Bellarmine mean no more by the oblation of the body and the blood of Christ than a commemoration and a representation of that great sacrifice offered up by Christ Himself, as Bishop Jewel very learnedly and fully acknowledges. But if Bellarmine go further than this, and by ‘the oblation of the body and the blood of Christ’ mean that the priest offers up that which Christ Himself did, and not a commemoration of it only, he is erroneous in that, and can never make it good.”
The Summary of Devotions Compiled and Used by Dr. William Laud, which was published in 1667 from his manuscript, illustrates that Laud’s theology was a deep influence in his life. The section headed “Eucharistia” includes the following prayers:—
“O Lord, into a clean, charitable, and thankful heart give me grace to receive the blessed body and blood of Thy Son, my most blessed Saviour, that it may more perfectly cleanse me from all dregs of sin.”
“Behold, I quarrel not the words of Thy Son my Saviour’s blessed institution. I know His words are no gross unnatural conceit, but they are spirit and life, and supernatural. While the world disputes, I believe. He hath promised me, if I come worthily, that I shall receive His most precious body and blood, with all the benefits of His passion. If I can receive it and retain it (Lord, make me able, make me worthy), I know I can no more die eternally than that body and blood can die, and be shed again.”
“How I receive the body and blood of my most blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, the price of my redemption, is the very wonder of my soul, yet my most firm and constant belief upon the words of my Saviour.”
“Lord, I have received this Sacrament of the body and blood of my dear Saviour. His mercy hath given it, and my faith received it into my soul. I humbly beseech Thee, speak mercy and peace unto my conscience, and enrich me with all those graces which come from that precious body and blood, even till I be possessed of eternal life in Christ.”
Richard Mountague was born in 1577. After being Fellow of Eton, Rector of Stanford Rivets, Dean of Hereford, Canon of Windsor, Archdeacon of Hereford, and Rector of Petworth, he became Bishop of Chichester in 1628 and Bishop of Norwich in 1638. He died in 1641. His Eucharistic doctrine, as shown in his A Gagg for the New Gospel? No. A New Gagg for an Old Goose and Appello Cœsarem: a Just Appeale from Two Unjust Informers, published in 1624 and 1625, appears to have been much the same as that of Laud. He rejects Transubstantiation with great explicitness and vehemence, and calls it a “monster of monsters”. He says that our Lord’s teaching in the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel is not contrary to “This is My body” but only to “This is My body by this means,” that is, Transubstantiation; that some of St. Chrysostom’s statements about the Eucharist “cannot be understood literally”; that there is “no difference” between the Church of England and the Church of Rome “in the point of real presence,” but that the disagreement is “only in de modo prœsentiœ”; that “change,” “alteration,” “transmutation,” and “transelementation” are not to be denied; that the consecrated elements are “somewhat more than mere ordinary bread and wine,” since there is “a sacramental being of them, and not only a natural, in their use and designment,” and “no man otherwise believeth but that the natural condition of the bread consecrated is otherwise than it was; being disposed and used to that holy use of imparting Christ unto the communicants”. He exhorts his Roman Catholic opponents, “Be contented with That it is, and do not seek nor define How it is so; and we shall not contest or contend with you”. He maintains that the Eucharist is a “sacrifice,” but that is “not propitiatory for the living and dead” and “not an external, visible, true, and proper sacrifice, but only representative, rememorative, and spiritual sacrifice”; and that there is “no such sacrifice of the altar,” and there are “no such altars,” as the Church of Rome teaches.
George Herbert was born in 1593. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Public Orator at Cambridge. He was appointed to the Prebend of Layton Ecclesia in the diocese of Lincoln in 1625, and became Rector of Fugglestone with Bemerton in 1630, three years before his death in 1633. There are occasional allusions to the Eucharist in his poems, and in his treatise, A Priest to the Temple, or the Country Parson, his character, and rule of holy life. In the Priest to the Temple he writes:—
“The Country Parson being to administer the Sacraments is at a stand with himself how or what behaviour to assume for so holy things. Especially at Communion times he is in a great confusion as being not only to receive God but to break and administer Him. Neither finds he any issue in this but to throw himself down at the throne of grace, saying, ‘Lord, Thou knowest what Thou didst when Thou appointedst it to be done thus; therefore do Thou fulfil what Thou didst appoint; for Thou art not only the Feast but the way to it’.”
Herbert’s poem entitled The Holy Communion is as follows:—
“Not in rich furniture, or fine array,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who from me wast sold,
To me dost now Thyself convey;
For so Thou should’st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sinne:
But by the way of nourishment and strength,
Thou creep’st into my breast:
Making Thy way my rest,
And Thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
Meeting sinnes force and art.
Yet can these not get over to my soul,
Leaping the wall that parts
Our souls and fleshly hearts;
But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying Thy name,
Affright both sinne and shame.
Onely Thy grace, which with these elements comes,
Knoweth the ready way,
And hath the privie key,
Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms:
While those to spirits refin’d at doore attend
Despatches from their friend.
Give me my captive soul, or take
My body also thither.
Another lift like this will make
Them both to be together.
Before that sinne turn’d flesh to stone,
And all our lump to leaven;
A fervent sigh might well have blown
Our innocent earth to heaven.
For sure when Adam did not know
To sinne, or sinne to smother;
He might to heav’n from Paradise go,
As from one room t’ another.
Thou hast restor’d us to this ease
By this Thy heav’nly blood,
Which I can go to, when I please,
And leave th’ earth to their food.”
One of the verses in the poem The Priesthood is—
“But th’ holy men of God such vessels are,
As serve Him up, who all the world commands.
When God vouchsafeth to become our fare,
Their hands convey Him, who conveys their hands:
O what pure things, most pure must those things be,
Who bring my God to me!”
The Invitation is as follows:—
“Come ye hither all, whose taste
Is your waste;
Save your cost, and mend your fare.
God is here prepar’d and drest,
And the feast,
God, in whom all dainties are.
Come ye hither all, whom wine
Doth define,
Naming you not to your good:
Weep what ye have drunk amisse,
And drink this,
Which before ye drink is blood.
Come ye hither all, whom pain
Doth arraigne,
Bringing all your sinnes to sight:
Taste and fear not: God is here
In this cheer,
And on sinne doth cast the fright.
Come ye hither all, whom joy
Doth destroy,
While ye graze without your bounds:
Here is joy that drowneth quite
Your delight,
As a flood the lower grounds.
Come ye hither all, whose love
Is your dove,
And exalts you to the skie:
Here is love, which, having breath
Ev’n in death,
After death can never die.
Lord, I have invited all,
And I shall
Still invite, still call to Thee:
For it seems but just and right
In my sight,
Where is all, there all should be.”
In The Banquet Herbert writes:—
“Welcome sweet and sacred cheer,
Welcome deare;
With me, in me, live and dwell:
For Thy neatnesse passeth sight,
Thy delight
Passeth tongue to taste or tell.
O what sweetnesse from the bowl
Fills my soul,
Such as is, and makes divine!
Is some starre (fled from the sphere)
Melted there,
As we sugar melt in wine?
Or hath sweetnesse in the bread
Made a head
To subdue the smell of sinne,
Flowers, and gummes, and powders giving
All their living,
Lest the enemy should winne?
Doubtlesse neither starre nor flower
Hath the power
Such a sweetnesse to impart:
Onely God, who gives perfumes,
Flesh assumes,
And with it perfumes my heart.
But as Pomanders and wood
Still are good,
Yet being bruis’d are better scented;
God, to show how farre His love
Could improve,
Here, as broken, is presented.
When I had forgot my birth,
And on earth
In delights of earth was drown’d;
God took blood, and needs would be
Split with me,
And so found me on the ground.
Having rais’d me to look up,
In a cup
Sweetly He doth meet my taste.
But I still being low and short,
Farre from court,
Wine becomes a wing at last.
For with it alone I flie
To the skie:
Where I wipe mine eyes, and see
What I seek for, what I sue;
Him I view
Who hath done so much for me.
Lest the wonder of this pitie
Be my dittie,
And take up my lines and life:
Hearken under pain of death,
Hands and breath,
Strive in this, and love the strife.”