III

Another group of writers who may conveniently be considered together consists of Crakanthorp, Morton, Sutton, Jackson, and Hammond.

Richard Crakanthorp was born at Strickland, a village in Westmoreland, in 1567. He was a Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford. He and Thomas Morton were chaplains to Lord Eure, the ambassador extraordinary to the Emperor at the end of Elizabeth’s and beginning of James I.’s reign. In 1605 he was appointed Rector of Black Notley, and in 1617 of Paglesham also. He died in 1624. His most important work is the Defensio Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ contra M. Antonii de Dominis, D. Archiepiscopi Spalatensis, Injurias. In it he argues at great length against the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Together with Transubstantiation he rejects what de Dominis, against whom he wrote, had called “the real and bodily presence of the body and blood of the Lord”. He condemns the adoration of the body of Christ in the Sacrament, and contrasts the certainty of the presence of the Godhead of Christ in bread or wood or a stone or a priest or any man, in which cases no one suggests adoration, with the uncertainty of His presence as Man “in or under the species of bread”. He explains the purpose of the consecration of the elements as being to make them an effectual sign and instrument to enable believers to receive the body and blood of Christ.

“Let us see how beautifully you prove that you are not idolaters in this [Eucharistic adoration]. You say, ‘The real and bodily presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the most holy mysteries of the Eucharist is to us most certain’. Good heavens, ‘most certain’? Concerning this you have not the certainty of faith, which is infallible. One might well discuss with you whether it is moral certainty; yet the ‘certainty’ you have here is hardly conjectural. For listen to what I shall say seriously, and undertake to show by most sure and clear proofs when there is need. You have no certainty at all either that he who consecrates is a priest, or that he is baptised, or that he intends to do what the Church does, or that the bread is ever transubstantiated into the body of Christ, or that Transubstantiation is possible.… No one of these things do you know certainly and infallibly, nor can you know any one of them without a special revelation. I add that you either know or can know that it is not in accordance with Scripture, or the decrees and writings of the councils or fathers for six hundred years after Christ, or sense, or any reason, for the bread to be transubstantiated into the body of Christ; nay, the Scriptures and councils and fathers which I have cited, and reason and sense, assuredly show that the bread is not transubstantiated into the body of Christ. Yet you are ‘most certain’ concerning the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, though your ‘certainty’ is not derived from Scripture, nor from the testimony of the ancient fathers, nor from sense, nor from reason; but about this you are cherishing an opinion that is merely vain, and is foolish and impossible, and paying court to it as the idol of your hearts. But what is your excuse for your idolatry? You say, ‘We adore with real worship the body of Christ lying hid under the species, which is in itself adorable because of the personal union’. Well and significantly have you said, ‘lying hid’. For of a surety it lies hid from the eyes of the body, the eyes of reason, the eyes of men, the eyes of angels, the eyes that are glorified, the eyes of others, the eyes of Christ Himself.… Tell me seriously, do you adore that hidden body of Christ ‘in itself’? Is it ‘in itself’ adorable with worship? Take care lest you be men-worshippers, and come under the anathema of the holy Council of Ephesus.… Your words ‘We adore the body of Christ itself,’ and ‘we adore the body in itself,’ have a bad sound. I warn you, if your mind is right, to let your words be so also. In matters of faith I don’t want tricks about words. Say then (what I think you meant) ‘We adore Christ Himself, whose body is present in the species’. But there is something else which I very much want explained. Are we to think that the body of Christ itself is under the species, and that for this reason the body of Christ lying hid in them is to be adored by you in the host more than the deity of Christ itself lying hid in bread and in wood and in stone and in a priest and in any man is to be adored in them? The reason of your adoration is the presence of Godhead, because Christ who is God lies hid there. Since then there is the same reason for adoration in the other things of which I spoke, since Christ who is God is really and actually in bread and in stone and in any man, why do you not fall at the feet of any priest, of any man, that you may show worship to Christ lying hid in them. Concerning the presence of Christ, in that He is God, in all these you are most certain; concerning the presence of Christ, in that He is Man, in or under the species of bread you are most uncertain.”

“See how easy and clear is our explanation of Christ’s words. Christ took bread; He blessed the bread; by that blessing or prayer He consecrated it to this holy, lofty, heavenly, and mystic use, that it should be a sign not only signifying but also effectual and bestowing His body to believers instrumentally but spiritually. Of this bread so blessed, consecrated, and changed by the blessing of Christ … from common and ordinary use to this sacred and heavenly use He said, ‘This is My body’; this which I have taken, which I have broken, which I have consecrated, ‘This is My body’.… Because it is most certain that the bread is not the body of Christ properly speaking, it necessarily follows that the words of Christ are not literal but figurative and tropical, and that the bread was called His body by Christ because it is a sacred sign not only signifying but also bestowing the real body of Christ on believers instrumentally but spiritually.… There is no change in the substance, as there is none in the stones of the altar, or in a man elevated to the priesthood, or in water sanctified for Baptism; but the change is only accidental in the use, in the effect, in the power, in the office of the bread and wine, as is the change in the stones, in a priest, in the water of Baptism.”

Crakanthorp denies, though he evidently misunderstood, the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice affirmed by the Council of Trent. He allows a commemorative sacrifice in the Eucharist.

“From what we have said about your Transubstantiation two, besides many other, consequences follow. First, the sacrifice of the Mass is not really a propitiatory sacrifice, as the Council of Trent defines, and your men teach; but it is only Eucharistic and commemorative. A properly propitiatory sacrifice is one which makes God propitious to sinners of its own force without relation to anything else, and obtains the forgiveness of sins and the grace of God of its own merit, value, price, and worth. Such a sacrifice there never was or will be except Christ alone, offering His body and blood to God on the cross. He Himself, and no one besides Him, is ‘the propitiation for our sins’. Christ is not in the Eucharist bodily, as we have already shown; and therefore His body and blood cannot be offered except in a figure and by way of commemoration. Therefore that which is offered actually and by the hands of the priest in the Mass cannot be really and properly a propitiatory sacrifice. Neither is there in the Mass any real and properly so-called sacrifice, not such as the Council of Trent defined and your men with one mouth profess. This is laid down as one of many requisites to the essence of a real and properly so-called sacrifice, and it is put in your own definition, that ‘what is offered to God is changed’; that is, as Bellarmine himself explains, ‘It is wholly destroyed, that is, it is so changed that it ceases to be that which it was before,’ in such a way that ‘not only its use but also its substance is consumed’. And in what way the substance of that which is offered is to be consumed he explains according to the differences in things which are offered.… See now on the showing of your own Cardinal either that, if Christ is not really and actually slain, there is no real and proper sacrifice in the Mass, or that, if He is really and actually slain by the priests, your priests are really sacrilegious and slayers of God.… The second consequence of which I spoke is that the Church of Rome is really idolatrous, and all those who belong to it are properly and formally idolaters. For you adore with the service of worship the Eucharist and that body which is contained under the species of bread and wine. That this body is in substance nothing else than bread and wine has already been abundantly shown. Therefore you give to bread and wine, that is, to creatures, the worship and service which are due to the Creator alone, than which there is nothing more properly idolatry.”

Thomas Morton was born at York in 1564. He was a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge; and, after being chaplain to Lord Huntingdon and, together with Crakanthorp, to Lord Eure when acting as ambassador extraordinary to the Emperor, and holding several ecclesiastical preferments, including the Deaneries of Gloucester and Winchester, he became Bishop of Chester in 1616, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in 1618, and Bishop of Durham in 1632. He died in 1659. Among his writings is an elaborate treatise entitled Of the Institution of the Sacrament of the Blessed Body and Blood of Christ, (by some called) the Masse of Christ, which was published in 1631. He denies Transubstantiation and the bodily presence of Christ; maintains that our Lord’s words at the institution of the Sacrament were used in a figurative sense; and asserts that faithful communicants receive the body of Christ spiritually by faith.

“What necessity there is to inquire into the true sense of these words [This is My body] will best appear in the after examination of the diverse consequences of your own sense, to wit, your doctrine of Transubstantiation, corporal, and material presence, propitiatory sacrifice, and proper adoration. All which are dependants upon your Romish exposition of the former words of Christ. The issue then will be this, that if the words be certainly true in a proper and literal sense, then we are to yield to you the whole cause; but if it be necessarily figurative, then the ground of all these your doctrines being but sandy the whole structure and fabric which you erect thereupon must needs ruin and vanish. But yet know withal that we do not so maintain a figurative sense of Christ His speech concerning His body as to exclude the truth of His body, or yet the truly receiving thereof.”

“Ten reasons for proof of the necessity of interpreting the words of Christ figuratively. First, we have been compellable to allow a figurative sense by the confessed analogy of Scripture in all such sacramental speeches of both Testaments.… Secondly, we are challengeable hereunto by our article of faith, which teacheth but one natural body of Christ, and the same to remain now in heaven. Thirdly, we are enforced for fear of such heresies as have followed in other cases upon the literal sense.… Fourthly, we are necessarily moved to reject your literal sense by a confessed impossibility.… Fifthly, we are persuaded hereunto by the former alleged interpretation of the ancient fathers both of the Greek and Latin Church calling the Sacrament a figure, and expounding ‘This is’ by ‘This signifieth’. Sixthly, we are urged by the rule set down by St. Augustine for the direction of the whole Catholic Church that, ‘Whensoever the precept,’ saith he, ‘seemeth to command that which is heinous’ (as to eat the flesh of Christ) ‘it is figurative’. … Seventhly, a motive it must needs be to any reasonable man to defend the figurative sense by observing the misery of your disputers in contending for a literal exposition thereof.… Eighthly, your own unreasonableness may persuade somewhat, who have not been able hitherto to confirm any one of your five former objections to the contrary by any one father of the Church. Ninthly, for that the literal interpretation of Christ’s words was the foundation of the heresy of the Capernaites, and hath affinity with divers other ancient heresies condemned by antiquity. Tenthly, our last persuasion is the consent of antiquity against the literal conversion of bread into Christ’s body, which you call Transubstantiation, against the literal corporal presence, against literal corporal eating and union, and against a proper sacrifice of Christ’s body subjectively. All which are fully presuasive inducements to enforce a figurative sense.”

“We, whom you call heretics, believe that the devout communicant, receiving Christ spiritually by faith, is thereby possessed of whole Christ crucified in the inward act of the soul.”

“There lieth a charge upon every soul that shall communicate and participate of this Sacrament, that herein he ‘discern the Lord’s body,’ which office of discerning (according to the judgment of Protestants) is not only in the use but also in the nature to distinguish the object of faith from the object of sense. The first object of Christian faith is the divine alteration and change of natural bread into a Sacrament of Christ’s body; this we call a divine change because none but the same omnipotent power that made the creature and element of bread can change it into a Sacrament. The second object of faith is the body of Christ itself sacramentally represented and verily exhibited to the faithful communicants. There are then three objects in all to be distinguished. The first is before consecration, the bread merely natural. Secondly, after consecration, bread sacramental. Thirdly, Christ’s own body, which is the spiritual and supersubstantial bread truly exhibited by this Sacrament to the nourishment of the souls of the faithful.”

“There may be observed four kinds of truths of Christ His presence in this Sacrament. One is veritas signi, that is, truth of representation of Christ His body; the next is veritas revelationis, truth of revelation; the third is veritas obsignationis, that is, a truth of seal, for better assurance; the last is veritas exhibitionis, the truth of exhibiting and deliverance of the real body of Christ to the faithful communicants. The truth of the sign in respect of the thing signified is to be acknowledged so far as in the signs of bread and wine is represented the true and real body and blood of Christ, which truth and reality is celebrated by us and taught by ancient fathers in contradiction to Manichees, Marcionites, and other old heretics, who held that Christ had in Himself no true body but merely phantastical.… A second truth and reality in this Sacrament is called veritas revelationis, as it is a sign in respect of the typical signs of the same body and blood of Christ in the rites of the Old Testament, yet not absolutely in respect of the matter itself but of the manner, because the faithful under the Law had the same faith in Christ, and therefore their Sacraments had relation to the same body and blood of Christ, but in a difference of manner.… As … the truth of history is held to be more real than the truth of prophecy because it is a declaration of a real performance of that which was promised, so the evangelical Sacrament may be said to contain in it a more real verity than the Levitical.… Besides the former two, there is veritas obsignationis, a truth sealed, which maketh this Sacrament more than a sign, even a seal of God’s promises in Christ.… A fourth reason to be observed herein, as more special, is veritas exhibitionis, a truth exhibiting and delivering to the faithful communicants the thing signified and sealed.… Vain therefore is the objection made by your Cardinal in urging us with the testimony of Athanasius to prove that Christ His body is exhibited to the receivers, as though there were not a truth in a mystical and sacramental deliverance of Christ His body except it were by a corporal and material presence thereof, which is a transparent falsity, as any may perceive by any deed of gift which by writing, seal, and delivery conveyeth any land or possession from man to man, yet this far more effectually.”

“A Christian man consisting of two parts, the outward or bodily, and the inward which is spiritual, this Sacrament accordingly consisteth of two parts, earthly and heavenly, as Irenæus spake of the bodily elements of bread and wine as the visible signs and objects of sense, and of the body and blood of Christ, which is the spiritual part. Answerable to both these is the double nourishment and union of a Christian, the one sacramental by communicating of the outward elements of bread and wine united to man’s body in his taking, eating, digesting, till at length it be transubstantiated into him by being substantially incorporated in his flesh. The other, which is the spiritual and soul’s food, is the body and blood of the Lord (therefore called spiritual because it is the object of faith) by an union wrought by God’s Spirit and man’s faith, which (as hath been professed by Protestants) is most real and ineffable.”

“All our premised sections throughout this fifth book do clearly make up this conclusion that the body of Christ which Protestants do feed upon as their soul’s food is the body of Christ once crucified and now sitting in glorious majesty in heaven; and that body of Christ believed by you is of corporal eating indeed and in truth of bread.… Wherefore let every Christian study with sincere conscience to eat the flesh of Christ with a spiritual appetite as his soul’s food, thereby to have a spiritual union with Him proper to the faithful, not subject to vomitings or corruption and not common to wicked men and vile beasts, but always working to the salvation of the true receivers: so shall he abhor all your Capernaitical fancies.”

Morton denies that the Eucharist is a “proper sacrifice” on the ground that a “proper sacrifice” involves destruction. Misunderstanding, like Crakanthorp, the teaching of the Council of Trent, and assuming that a “propitiatory sacrifice” must be propitious in its own force and of itself, he denies alto that the Eucharist is a “propitiatory sacrifice”. He allows that it is a spiritual and commemorative sacrifice, representing and applying the sacrifice of the cross.

“Every proper sacrifice is properly visible, of profane is made sacred, and properly suffereth destruction. (This is your own proposition in each part.) But the body of Christ in the Eucharist is neither properly visible, nor properly of profane made sacred, nor suffereth any proper destruction. (This is also your own assumption.) Therefore the body of Christ in this Sacrament is not a proper sacrifice nor properly sacrificed. This (except men have lost their brains) must needs be every man’s conclusion. And that so much the rather because it cannot be sufficient that Christ’s body be present in the Eucharist to make it a sacrifice without some sacrificing act. A sheep is no sacrifice whilst it remaineth in the fold, nor can every action serve the turn except it be a destructive act; for the sheep doth not become therefore a sacrifice because it is shorn, nor yet can any destructive act be held sacrificing which is not prescribed by divine authority, which only can ordain a sacrifice, as hath been confessed. But no such divine ordinance hath hitherto been proved.”

“Protestants in their celebration profess four sorts of sacrifices. For proof hereof we may instance in our Church of England, most happily reformed and established. First, the sacrifice of mortification in act, and of martyrdom in vow, saying, ‘We offer unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a holy, lively, and reasonable sacrifice unto Thee’. Next, a sacrifice Eucharistical, saying, ‘We desire Thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept of our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving’.… Thirdly, a sacrifice latreutical, that is, of divine worship, saying, ‘And although we be unworthy to offer up any sacrifice, yet we beseech Thee to accept of our bounden duty and service’. This performance of our bounden service is that which ancient fathers called an unbloody sacrifice.… Now wherein and in what respect we may furthermore be said to offer to God a sacrifice propitiatory, improperly, will after appear when we consider Christ’s body as the object herein.”

“Now we come to the last, most true, and necessary point, which is the body and blood as the object of our commemoration. Still, still do you urge the saying of fathers where they affirm that we offer unto God the same body and blood of Christ on this altar, even the same which was sacrificed on the cross, which therefore you interpret as being the same subject matter of our commemoration.… We as instantly, and more truly, proclaim that we offer (commemoratively) the same, undoubtedly the very same body and blood of Christ His all-sufficient sacrifice on the cross, although not as the subject of His proper sacrifice, but yet as the only adequate object of our commemoration.… It will be easy for us to discern the subject sacrifice of Christ from ours, His being the real sacrifice on the cross, ours only the sacramental representation, commemoration, and application thereof.”

“First, although the whole act of our celebration in commemoration of Christ’s death as proceeding from us be a sacrifice propitious, as other holy acts of devotion, only by God’s complacency and acceptance, yet the object of our commemoration being the death and passion of Christ in His body and blood is to us, by the efficacy thereof, a truly and properly propitiatory sacrifice and satisfaction for a perfect remission of all sins. Thus concerning Protestants. As for you, if we consider your own outward acts of celebration (where in ten circumstances we find ten transgressions of the institution of Christ, and therefore provocatory to stir up God’s displeasure), we think not that it can be propitiatory so much as by way of God’s acceptance. Next, when we dive into the mystery of your Mass, to seek out the subject matter of your sacrifice in the hands of your priest, which according to the faith of your Church is called a proper propitiatory sacrifice in itself, it hath been found (besides our proofs from Scriptures and your own principles) by ten demonstrations out of ancient fathers to be sacramental bread and wine, and not the body acid blood of Christ. Wherefore the subject of your sacrifice can be no more properly (that is, satisfactorily) in itself propitiatory than natural bread can be Christ.”

Morton is careful to repudiate the notion of any who might lay such stress on the difference between the Church of England and Roman Catholics being only as to the manner of the presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament as to consider the Roman Catholic doctrines to be tolerable or open to reconciliation.

“It would be a wonder to us to hear any of our own profession to be so extremely indifferent concerning the different opinions of the manner of the presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament as to think the Romish sect therefore either tolerable or reconciliable upon pretence that the question is only de modo, that is, of the manner of being, and that consequently all controversy about this is but vain jangling. Such an one ought to enter into his second thoughts, to consider the necessity that lieth upon every Christian to abandon divers heresies, albeit their difference from the orthodox profession were only de modo.… That the Romish manner of eating Christ’s body is Capernaitical; her manner of sacrifice sacrilegious; her manner of divine adoration thereof idolatrous; and all these manners irreconciliable to the manner of our Church, is copiously declared in the books following.”

Christopher Sutton was born about 1565; he was a member of Lincoln College, Oxford; he held a number of benefices and was Canon of Westminster and of Lincoln; he died in 1629. His Godly Meditations upon the Most Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which was published in 1630, a year after his death, was one of the most popular devotional books of the seventeenth century. He strongly deprecates controversy about the Eucharist, and describes the true doctrine as a mean between Transubstantiation and a view that it is merely a badge and token and remembrance. He appears to have believed that there is no change in the elements at consecration except in regard to their use, but that those who receive them faithfully partake spiritually of the body and blood of Christ in a manner which passes human explanation and understanding.

“Consider the divine wisdom of the Son of God, who respecting our weakness hath conveyed unto us His body and blood after a divine and spiritual manner under the forms of bread and wine.”

“Consider the high and worthy effect of this heavenly food, which is not so much changed into the substance of the eater as it doth rather change the eater into the substance of it; the meat being divine doth make us also divine.”

“Now of long time, yea, too, too long, O holy Christ, have we Christians contended about Thy holy institution; from the fathers to Thy Apostles: yea, O blessed Saviour, we come with all reverence, and let us come hand in hand, to consider the first pattern instituted by Thyself. And here first, let the devout Christian call to mind that He that said of the wine, ‘This is My blood,’ and of the bread, ‘This is My body,’ said also of St. John the Baptist, ‘This is that Elias,’ and of Himself, ‘I am the door,’ ‘the true vine,’ etc. These—‘Receive My covenant in your flesh,’ ‘By Baptism we are buried with Him,’ ‘Being many, we are one bread, one body’—are usual phrases in Holy Writ. Again, what more meet than in a spiritual food to admit a spiritual sense? ‘We did all eat of the same spiritual meat,’ saith the Apostle. Was it not given after supper, and in small quantity? It is the Spirit that giveth life. I go forward, but by the way this pious consideration gathered out of the words of Christ our Saviour concerning His own institution doth easily show that to be the nourishment of our souls which is delivered in the Lord’s Supper, and doth withal manifest the great excellency thereof. From the words of Christ I come unto the Apostle St. Paul, a good interpreter of the same words, one who wanted not care of stirring up the Corinthians to reverence and devotion about this mystery. Now, what saith the Apostle? He commands no adoration; he speaks not a word of Transubstantiation; but only showeth the dignity thereof in showing both the Author and the end.… To break off the mentioning of the fathers, lest in multiplying their names we might seem ambitious, we hear them all, as it is meet, speaking with great reverence of so great a mystery: but for disputing or reasoning about Transubstantiation we hear not a word. Let their writings be read over, and read over again, and we shall find that they admit of a change, but what a one? of the substance? nothing less; for it remains the same: of the use? it is right, for sure in the Lord’s Supper it is heavenly and divine. Whereas oftentimes in the fathers we meet with the words ‘nature,’ ‘substance,’ applying them to the efficacy of the Sacrament, we are to understand that by these words they intended, first, to draw the people from the outward signs to the substance, and next to kindle in their affections both reverence and love. Antiquity therefore is silent in the plea or the defence of Transubstantiation. Sure, yea, most sure it is that the figurative speeches of the ancient fathers do no way patronise this paradox. The sobriety of the same fathers let us, their posterity, praise and imitate.… We acknowledge that the dignity of this Sacrament is greater than words can express, yea, than the mind of man is able to conceive. If any will exact the efficacy of those five words, ‘For this is My body,’ we answer, It is a great mystery. Truly we give, and that justly, great respect and reverence to the Holy Eucharist; for whereas bread and wine are elements naturally ordained for the sustenance of the body, by the power of divine benediction they do receive a virtue that, being received of the faithful, they become nourishment of the soul, nay, they become means whereby we are sanctified both in body and soul, and are made the members of Christ. But Christ, some say, in express words calleth the bread His body, and the wine His blood; true, in express words also He calleth Himself a rock. Right well with Eusebius Emisenus, ‘Comest thou to the Sacrament, consider there the body and blood of Christ: wonder at it with reverence, touch it with thy mind, receive it with the hand of thy heart’; do not say with the Capernaites, Master, how comest Thou hither? but with the disciples asking no question be glad thou dost enjoy Him. He is honoured in this mystery that was once offered upon the cross. Yea, but how can this be that Christ sitting at the right hand of God in heaven should dispose of His body to us poor inhabitants of earth? Take here the answer of the angel Gabriel, The Holy Ghost hath overshadowed it. ‘From hence,’ saith St. Bernard, ‘to search is temerity, to know is life eternal.’ Is it not a hard saying, ‘Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of God,’ etc.? It is a hard saying to them that are hard of believing. The disciples hearing that of their Lord and Master, ‘Take, eat, this is My body,’ they take, they eat, asking no question.… The Capernaite hearing dreameth of eating naturally, grossly; the godly are assured of eating spiritually, and yet withal really.… The sun remains a splendent body, though bats and owls cannot endure it; the Holy Sacrament remains an unspeakable mystery, though the carnal man doth not perceive it. In this case silence is the safest eloquence, and the best expressing is not to express. A godly meditation is safer than a Socratical disputing. Discourse of controversy doth often abate devotion: discourse of piety about this mystery is sweeter than the honey or the honey-comb.… To take a survey of the beginning and progress of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, … one Berengarius in the year 1028 was the first that came upon the stage to act this tragedy, by him were kindled such sparks as after brake out into great and fearful flames.… In the year 1040 Berengarius abjured his former assertions: were his later thoughts the wiser? This I stand not to discuss, dispute it that will. The Church in the meanwhile, who ought to have followed the counsel of St. Paul to Timothy in suppressing questions that cause strife, did clean contrary in adding more and more daily a multitude of questions so long that those sparks kindled by Berengarius began to increase, and set all as it were into a most hideous combustion.… The Council of Lateran … promulgates a new and unheard of doctrine of Transubstantiation.… After this the question comes to be handled by the Master of the Sentences, whom the school divines do follow.… At one time the doubt is about the power of God, at another about His will; now of the existing of substance with accidents, then of accidents without a substance; sometimes of annihilating of former natures, sometimes of transelementing the same. In this chaos there is nothing found certain save that uncertain dream of Transubstantiation.… The Church of Rome was happy while it enjoyed the presence of this holy mystery, had she known her own happiness when for a thousand years together there was never heard of the name of ‘ubiquity,’ ‘sacramentary,’ or the like; no division of the East against the West Church, or of the West against the East; all agreed about the truth of this holy mystery; but when once men would press into depths inaccessible, rend away the veil, and intrude themselves into the Holy of Holies, good Lord, with what a spirit of giddiness were they whirled to and fro.… In this mean space all things now tossed and turmoiled there arise upon the contrary part a kind of men prone and apt not so much to the alteration as indeed to the utter ruinating of things.… Is the Communion celebrated well? A badge it is of our profession, a familiar assembly of guests, a remembrance of somewhat passed: Take ye, eat ye, stand ye, there is no other gesture required than what is used at public meetings; what need any mention of the body of Christ, which was broken and given for us, of the blood of Christ, which was shed for us? Take ye, eat ye, drink ye:—O blessed Paul, if thou didst live, thou wouldest tell these men they ought upon fear of judgment to discern the Lord’s body.… Albeit then the manner be not of us over curiously inquired or searched after, yet the same presence of Christ is acknowledged which Christ Himself would have to be acknowledged. We say with St. Ambrose that there is not taken from bread the substance thereof, but that there is adjoined the grace of Christ’s body after a manner ineffable.… Concerning the controversy about the Holy Eucharist, between two extremes, whereof we have heard, let us embrace the means, let us with a sincere faith apprehend the truth; apprehending, let us keep it; keeping, let us adore it with godly manners.… Let us forbear on both sides needless and unprofitable disputes. Unless thou, Lord, hadst said it, ‘This is My body, This is My blood,’ who would have believed it? Unless thou hadst said, O holy Christ, ‘Take, eat, drink ye all of this,’ who durst have touched it? Who would have approached to so heavenly a repast, hadst Thou not commanded it, hoc facite, ‘do ye this’; but Thou commanding, who would not joyfully come and communicate? Let us then hold captive human reason, and prepare ourselves unto the fruit of this heavenly manna. Unnecessary disputes bring small profits; we may with greater benefit wonder than argue. Then are the works of God most truly conceived when they are devoutly admired.”

Thomas Jackson was born in 1579. He was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was repeatedly Vice-President of that College. He held the benefices of Newcastle-on-Tyne and Winston in the diocese of Durham, and was Chaplain to Bishop Neile of Durham and to King Charles I. In 1630 he became President of Corpus Christi College, and held that office till his death in 1632. For some years he held also the benefice of Witney, and was Prebendary of Winchester and Dean of Peterborough. His chief work is a series of treatises which make up a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed. The references to Eucharistic doctrine in it appear to give expression to a belief that the elements are not changed at consecration, but that by rightly partaking of them communicants spiritually receive the body and blood of Christ and the benefits of His sacrifice.

“In the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood there is a propitiation for our sins because He is really present in it, who is the propitiation for our sins. But it in no way hence follows that there is any propitiatory sacrifice for sin in this Sacrament. He becomes the propitiation for our sins, He actually remits our sins, not directly and immediately by the elements of bread and wine, nor by any other kind of local presence or compresence with these elements than is in Baptism.… Neither of these elements or sensible substances can directly cleanse us from our sins by any virtue communicated unto them or inherent in them, but only as they are pledges or assurances of Christ’s peculiar presence in them, and of our true investiture in Christ by them. We are not then to receive the elements of bread and wine only in remembrance that Christ died for us, but in remembrance or assurance likewise that His body which was once given for us doth by its everlasting virtue preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life, and that His blood which was but once shed for us doth still cleanse us from all our sins, from which in this life we are cleansed or can hope to be cleansed. If we then receive remission of sins or purification from our sins in the Sacrament of the Eucharist (as we always do when we receive it worthily), we receive it not immediately by the sole serious remembrance of His death, but by the present efficacy or operation of His body which was given for us, and of His blood which was shed for us.… This present efficacy of Christ’s body and blood upon our souls, or real communication of both, I find as a truth unquestionable amongst the ancient fathers and as a Catholic confession. The modern Lutheran and the modern Romanist have fallen into their several errors concerning Christ’s presence in the Sacrament from a common ignorance; neither of them conceive, nor are they willing to conceive, how Christ’s body and blood should have any real operation upon our souls unless they were so locally present as they might agere per contactum, that is, either so purge our souls by oral manducation as physical medicines do our bodies (which is the pretended use of Transubstantiation), or so quicken our souls as sweet odours do the animal spirits, which were the more probable use of the Lutheran Consubstantiation. Both the Lutherans and Papists avouch the authority of the ancient Church for their opinions, but most injuriously. For more than we have said, or more than Calvin doth stiffly maintain against Zuinglius and other Sacramentaries, cannot be inferred from any speeches of the truly orthodoxical or ancient fathers. They all agree that we are immediately cleansed and purified from our sins by the blood of Christ, that His human nature by the habitation of the deity is made to us the inexhaustible fountain of life. But about the particular manner how life is derived to us from His human nature, as whether it sends its sweet influence upon our souls only from the heavenly sanctuary wherein it dwells as in its sphere, or whether His blood which was shed for us may have more immediate local presence with us, they no way disagree, because they in this kind abhorred curiosity of dispute. As for Ubiquity and Transubstantiation, they are the two monsters of modern times, brought forth by ignorance and maintained only by faction.”

“The truth … is … that Christ by His bloody sacrifice upon the cross was consecrated to be an everlasting priest; and that this consecration was not accomplished until His resurrection from the dead. For it is not conceivable that He should be an everlasting priest before He became an immortal Man, and by His rising, etc., opened the gate of everlasting life. After He was thus consecrated by death and by the resurrection from the dead to be an everlasting priest after the order of Melchizedek, He was not to offer any sacrifice; nor do we read that Melchizedek offered any. Wherein then did Melchizedek’s priesthood consist? Only in the dignity of authoritative blessing.… This exercise of Christ’s spiritual priesthood in the heavenly sanctuary was foreshadowed by sundry services and sacrifices of the Law.… He consecrated the way itself by His bloody sacrifice upon the cross; from the very moment in which the veil did rend asunder the door was opened and the way prepared. But we must be qualified for walking in this way and for entering into this heavenly sanctuary by the present exercise of His everlasting priesthood, which is a priesthood of blessing not of sacrifice. And yet He blesseth us by communicating the virtue and efficacy of His everlasting sacrifice unto our souls. This participation and this blessing by it, the full expiation of our sins, we are to expect from His heavenly sanctuary.… We may consecrate the elements of bread and wine, and administer them so consecrated as undoubted pledges of His body and blood, by which the new covenant was sealed and the general pardon purchased; yet, unless He grant some actual influence of His Spirit, and suffer such virtue to go out from His human nature now placed in His sanctuary as He did once unto the woman that was cured of her issue of blood, unless this virtue do as immediately reach our souls as it did her body, we do not really receive His body and blood with the elements of bread and wine. We do not so receive them as to have our sins remitted or dissolved by them; we do not by receiving them become of His flesh and of His bones. We gain no degree of real union with Him, which is the sole use or fruit of His real presence. Christ might be locally present as He was with many here on earth, and yet not really present. But with whomsoever He is virtually present, that is, to whomsoever He communicates the influence of His body and blood by His Spirit, He is really present with them, though locally absent from them.… As many as are healed from their sins, whether by the Sacrament of Baptism or the Eucharist, are healed by faith relatively or instrumentally. Faith is as the mouth or organ by which we receive the medicine; but it is the virtual influence derived from the body and blood of Christ which properly or efficiently doth cure our souls and dissolve the works of Satan from us.… A matter as easy for the Son of God, or for the Man Christ Jesus ‘in whom the Godhead dwelleth bodily,’ though still remaining at the right hand of God, to know the hearts and secret thoughts of all such as present themselves at His Table here on earth as well as He knew the secret thoughts of this woman which came behind Him. What need then is there of His bodily presence in the Sacrament, or of any other presence than the influence or emission of virtue from His heavenly sanctuary unto our souls? He hath left us the consecrated elements of bread and wine to be unto us more than the hem of His garment. If we do but touch and taste them with the same faith by which this woman touched the hem of His garment, this our faith shall make us whole.”

“This distillation of life and immortality from His glorified human nature is that which the ancient and orthodoxal Church did mean in their figurative and lofty speeches of Christ’s real presence, or of eating His very flesh and drinking His very blood in the Sacrament. And the sacramental bread is called His body, and the sacramental wine His blood, as for other reasons so especially for this, that the virtue or influence of His bloody sacrifice is most plentifully and most effectually distilled from heaven unto the worthy receivers of the Eucharist.”

“All that are partakers of this Sacrament eat Christ’s body and drink His blood sacramentally, that is, they eat that bread which sacramentally is His body, and drink that cup which sacramentally is His blood, whether they eat or drink faithfully or unfaithfully.… May we say then that Christ is really present in the Sacrament as well to the unworthy as to the faithful receivers? Yes, this must we grant; yet must we add withal that He is really present with them in a quite contrary manner, really present He is, because virtually present to both, because the operation or efficacy of His body and blood is not metaphorical but real in both. Thus the bodily sun, though locally distant for its substance, is really present by its light and heat as well to sore eyes as to clear sights, but really present to both by a contrary real operation; and by the like contrary operation it is really present to clay and to wax, it really hardeneth the one, and really softeneth the other. So doth Christ’s blood by its invisible but real influence mollify the hearts of such as come to the Sacrament with due preparation, but harden such as unworthily receive the consecrated elements.… When we say that Christ is really present in the Sacrament, our meaning is that as God He is present in an extraordinary manner, after such a manner as He was present before His Incarnation in His sanctuary; … and by the power of His Godhead thus extraordinarily present He diffuseth the virtue or operation of His human nature either to the vivification or hardening of their hearts who receive the sacramental pledges.… No man can spiritually eat Christ but by believing His death and passion; yet sacramental eating adds somewhat to spiritual eating, how quick and lively soever our faith be whilst we eat Him only spiritually. But though our faith were in both the same as well for degree as quality, yet the object of our faith is not altogether the same in sacramental and in spiritual eating. Christ’s body and blood are so present in the Sacrament that we receive a more special influence from them in use of the Sacrament than without it, so we receive it worthily or with hearts prepared by spiritual eating precedent, that is, by serious meditation of Christ’s death and passion.”

Henry Hammond was born at Chertsey in 1605. He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards Rector of Penshurst, Canon of Christ Church, and Chaplain to King Charles I. He was nominated one of the divines of the Westminster Assembly, but never acted in that capacity, and his nomination was afterwards revoked. In 1648 he was Sub-dean of Christ Church; but was expelled from his office, and for a short time imprisoned, under the commonwealth, when he was a great support to the deprived clergy. He died in 1660. His beliefs may be seen in his works A Practical Catechism, published in 1644, and Of Fundamentals, published in 1654. He regarded the Eucharist as a commemoration of the death of Christ and of the abiding sacrifice of Christ in heaven, and as a means whereby through the whole action of the rite God bestows on the faithful communicants the body and blood of Christ.

The treatise A Practical Catechism contains the following passages:—

“This Sacrament, which was after the commemorative passover, is so conceived a confederation of all Christians one with another, to live piously and charitably, both by commemorating the death of Christ, … and by making His blood, as it was the fashion in the eastern nations, a ceremony of this covenant, mutual betwixt God and us.… The full importance of the words ‘Do this in remembrance of Me’ is, first, a commission to His Apostles to continue this ceremony now used by Him as a holy ceremony or Sacrament in the Church for ever. Secondly, a direction that for the manner of observing it they should do to other Christians as He had now done to them, that is, ‘take, bless, break this bread, take and bless this cup,’ and then give and distribute it to others, settling this on them as part of their office, a branch of the power left them by Him, and by them communicable to whom they should think fit after them. Thirdly, a specifying of the end to which this was designed, a commemoration of the death of Christ, a representing His passion to God, and a coming before Him in His name, first, to offer our sacrifices of supplications and praises in the name of the crucified Jesus (as of old, both among Jews and heathens, all their sacrifices were rites in and by which they supplicated God. See 1 Sam. 13:12), and, secondly, to commemorate that His daily continual sacrifice or intercession for us at the right hand of His Father now in heaven.”

“Scholar.… What now is that which is the more substantial difficulty to be explained in those Gospels?

“Catechist. It is to resolve what is the meaning of Christ’s words of institution, ‘This is My body,’ etc.

“Scholar. And what is that?

“Catechist. Not that the bread was His body, and the wine His blood, in strict speaking, for He was then in His body when He so spake; and when His disciples distributed it among themselves, He was not bodily in every of their mouths. And now His body is in heaven, and there to be contained till the day of ‘restitution of all things,’ and is not to be corporally brought down in every Sacrament, either to be joined locally with the elements or for the elements to be changed into it; many contradictions and barbarisms would be consequent to such an interpretation. Every loaf of consecrated bread would be the body of Christ, and so the same thing be two cubits long, and not two cubits long; and many the like contradictory propositions would be all true, which it is generally resolved to be impossible even for God, because it would make Him a liar, and be an argument not of power but imperfection. So, again, every communicant must carnally eat man’s flesh and blood, which is so savage a thing that St. Austin saith that whensoever words of Scripture seem to sound that way, they must be otherwise interpreted.

“Scholar. What sense then may or must be put upon them?

“Catechist. In answering this question, I shall first give you an observation taken from the Jewish phrases and customs used in this matter; and it is this, that the lamb that was dressed in the paschal supper, and set upon the table, was wont to be called the body of the passover, or the body of the paschal lamb; and that Christ seems to allude to this phrase when He saith, ‘This is My body’; as if He should say, The paschal lamb, and the body of it, that is, the presentation of that on the table in the Jewish feast, the memorial of deliverance out of Egypt, and type of My delivering Myself to die for you, I will now have abrogated, and by this bread which I now deliver to you, I give or exhibit to you this other Passover, My own self, who am to be sacrificed (My body which shall presently be delivered to death) for you, that you may hereafter, instead of that other, retain and continue to posterity a memorial and symbol of Me. This for the words, ‘My body’; but then for the whole phrase or form of speech, ‘This is My body,’ it seems to be answerable to, and substituted instead of, the paschal form, ‘This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in Egypt,’ or ‘This is the unleavened bread,’ etc., or ‘This is the passover’; not that it is that very identical bread which they then ate, but that it is the celebration of that anniversary feast which was then instituted, as when in ordinary speech we say on Good Friday and Easter Day, ‘this day Christ died,’ and ‘this day Christ rose,’ when we know that it was so many hundred years since He died or rose; which example is adapted to the point in hand by St. Austin in his Epistles. Thus much for the phrase or form of speech; now for the sense or full importance of the words, ‘This is My body,’ I shall by the authority of the ancient fathers think myself obliged to acknowledge that the highest sense that will not be subject to those intolerable inconveniences mentioned in the answer to your last question may possibly be the sense of them; and that that which most belongs to other places of Scripture speaking of the same matter must in any reason be resolved to be the sense of them. For the former of these, it is certain that many of the ancient fathers of the Church conceived very high things of this Sacrament, acknowledged the bread and wine to be changed, and to become other than they were, but not so as to be transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ, to depart from their own substance or figure or form, or to cease to be bread and wine by that change; and that the faithful do receive the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament, which implies not any corporal presence of Christ on the Table, or in the elements, but God’s communicating the crucified Saviour, who is in heaven bodily, and nowhere else, to us sinners on the earth, but this mystically and after an ineffable manner. And generally they make it a mystery, but descend not to the revealing of the manner of it, leaving it as a matter of faith but not of sense, to be believed but not grossly fancied or described. I shall leave these then, and apply myself to the latter sort, the other places of Scripture which speak of this matter, resolving that that must be the meaning of the words of Christ, ‘This is My body,’ which by examination shall appear to be most agreeable to those other places. And of this sort of places, you may first take the passages in the Gospels themselves, where Christ saith of the cup (not the wine but the cup, which refers to the action, the pouring out and drinking), that it is a new covenant in His blood which was shed for us. Which it seems is all one in sense with that other, ‘This is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for many,’ and in Matthew, ‘This is My blood, that of the new covenant,’ etc. Which being put together, as parallels to interpret one the other, will conclude that Christ’s blood was truly shed for our benefit, particularly to seal a new covenant betwixt God and us, and that this Sacrament was the exhibiting that covenant to us, as when God with to Abraham, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with you, every male among you shall be circumcised’; this circumcision is in effect called the covenant, as here the cup is the covenant, that is, not only the sign of the covenant, but a seal of it, and an exhibition of it, a real receiving me into covenant and making me partaker of the benefits of it. And this you shall more fully see, if you proceed to the places in St. Paul, especially that 1 Cor. 10:16.… I conceive the literal notation of the words will bear this observation, that as the word ‘this’ in the latter words signifies not the bread but the whole action or administration, ‘do this,’ that is, do you all that I have done in your presence, take bread, break, bless it, give it to others, and so commemorate Me. So the word ‘this’ in the former speech, ‘This is My body,’ may signify the whole action too, namely, that the breaking and distributing, taking and eating this bread, is the body of Christ, in what sense you shall see anon.… ‘The cup of blessing which we bless’ or, as the Syriac, ‘the cup of praise,’ that is, the chalice of wine which is in the name of the people offered up by the bishop or presbyter to God with lauds and thanksgiving, that is, that whole eucharistical action (and that expressed to be the action of the people as well as the presbyter by their drinking of it) is the communication of the blood of Christ, a service of theirs to Christ, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, commemorative of that great mercy and bounty of Christ in pouring out His blood for them, and in making them—or a means ordained by Christ to make them—partakers of the blood of Christ, not of the guilt of shedding it, but, if they come worthily thither, of the benefits that are purchased by it, namely, ‘the washing away of sin in His blood’; so in like manner the ‘breaking and eating of the bread’ is a communication of the body of Christ, a sacrifice commemorative of Christ’s offering up His body for us, and a making us partakers, or communicating to us the benefits of that bread of life, strengthening and giving us grace.… This ‘breaking, taking, eating of the bread,’ this whole action, is the real communication of the body of Christ to me; … that, as verily as I eat the bread in my mouth, so verily God in heaven bestows on me, communicates to me, the body of the crucified Saviour.… God’s part is the accepting of this our bounden duty, bestowing that body and blood of Christ upon us, not by sending it down locally for our bodies to feed upon, but really for our souls to be strengthened and refreshed by it, as, when the sun is communicated to us, the whole bulk and body of the sun is not removed out of its sphere, but the rays and beams of it, and with them the light and warmth and influences, are really and verily bestowed or darted out upon us. And all this is the full importance of ‘This is My body,’ or ‘This is the communication of His body’.”

“In that Sacrament God really bestows, and every faithful prepared Christian as really and truly receives, the body and blood of Christ. As truly as the bishop or presbyter gives me the sacramental bread and wine, so truly doth God in heaven bestow upon me on earth the body and blood of Christ, that is, the crucified Saviour, not by local motion but by real communication, not to our teeth but to our souls, and consequently exhibits, makes over, reaches out unto us all the benefits thereof, all the advantages that flow to us from the death of Christ.”

In his treatise Of Fundamentals Hammond summarises five ways in which the “Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ” may be “considered”:—

“1. as an institution of Christ for the solemn commemorating of His death; … 2. as a sacrifice eucharistical performed by the Christian to God; … 3. as the κοινωνία ‘communication’ of the body and blood of Christ, the means of conveying all the benefits of the crucified Saviour unto all that come fitly prepared and qualified for them; … 4. as a federal rite betwixt the soul and Christ, eating and drinking at His Table, and thereby engaging our obedience to Him; … lastly, as an emblem of the most perfect divine charity to be observed among all Christians.”