XI

Cosin and Taylor and Bramhall and Thorndike may be taken as representative divines of the period of the restoration.

John Cosin was born at Norwich in 1595. In 1616 he became librarian and secretary to Bishop Overall. After being Prebendary of Durham and Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire, he became Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1634, and Dean of Peterborough in 1640. He suffered in the troubled times which followed that year; and from 1643 to 1660 he was in France. In July, 1660, he returned to his deanery at Peterborough, and on 2nd December, 1660, he was consecrated Bishop of Durham. In January, 1672, he died.

In the Articles of Enquiry issued for his Visitation of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding in 1627 Cosin referred to the consecrated elements as “the body and blood of our Lord” in the question, “Doth he deliver the body and blood of our Lord to every communicant severally?”

About 1652, when he was in France, Cosin wrote a book called Regni Angliœ Religio Catholica at the request of Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, with the object of giving Christians abroad a just idea of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. The English Church, he says, rejects “the table of Transubstantiation,” and “the repeated sacrifice of Christ to be offered daily by each priest for the living and the departed”. The Eucharist is celebrated on the greater festivals and on the first Sunday of each month; and, if those who can rightly communicate so wish, it can and therefore ought to be celebrated on any other Sunday, festival, or week-day. In describing the service, he mentions the retention of the ancient ceremonies, prayers, and vestments; that, after the Prayer for the Church Militant, those who are not about to communicate leave the church; that the communicants enter the chancel before the Confession; that at the Prayer of Consecration the priest “blesses each symbol, and consecrates them to be the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ”; that in the posture of kneeling at and after Communion the communicants “adore Christ, not the Sacrament”; and that this rite is “the solemn Eucharist or sacrifice of praise of the Church, offered to God Most High as a commemoration of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ once for all offered on the cross”.

Cosin wrote for the Countess of Peterborough A Paper Concerning the Differences in the Chief Points of Religion betwixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England, which was printed in 1705 by Dr. Hickes from the copy which Cosin had given to the Countess. It contains lists of “the differences” and of “the agreements” “between the Roman Catholics and us of the Church of England”. Among “the differences” are the Roman Catholic beliefs—

“That the priests offer up our Saviour in the Mass as a real, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead; and that whosoever believes it not is eternally damned:

“That in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the whole substance of bread is converted into the substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of wine into His blood, so truly and properly as that after consecration there is neither any bread nor wine remaining there, which they call Transubstantiation and impose upon all persons under pain of damnation to be believed.”

Among “the agreements” are that “Roman Catholics” and “we are at accord”—

“In commemorating at the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood once truly offered for us:

“In acknowledging His sacramental, spiritual, true, and real presence there to the souls of all them that come faithfully and devoutly to receive Him according to His own institution in that holy Sacrament.”

In 1656, while he was at Paris, Cosin wrote his Historia Transubstantiationis Papalis, which was published in London in 1675 three years after his death. An English translation by Luke de Beaulieu appeared in the following year. In this treatise Cosin associates the doctrine of the Church of England with that of those foreign Reformers who followed Calvin in asserting a real presence of the body and blood of Christ to faithful communicants. A few passages at first sight seem to imply that the consecrated Sacrament is the body and blood of Christ before Communion; but, when these are examined closely and viewed in their context, the meaning of them appears to be that it is the office of the consecrated elements to enable the communicant to receive Christ’s body and blood.

“The bread and the cup are in no way changed in substance, or removed, or destroyed; but they are solemnly consecrated by the words of Christ for this purpose, that they may most surely serve for the communication of His body and blood.… The words both of Christ and of the Apostle are to be understood sacramentally and mystically, and no gross or carnal presence of the body and blood can be supported by them.… It was the design of Christ to teach not so much what the elements of bread and wine are in their nature and substance as what they are in signification and use and office in this mystery; since not only are the body and blood of Christ most suitably represented by these elements, but also through their instrumentality Christ Himself by His own institution is most really presented (exhibeatur) to all, and is sacramentally or mystically eaten by the faithful.… None of the Protestant Churches doubt of the actual (reali), that is, the real (vera) and not imaginary presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist; nor is there any reason for suspicion that in this matter they have in the smallest degree departed from the Catholic faith. For it is easy to produce the consent of reformed writers and Churches by which it can be most clearly shown to all who have intellects and eyes that they are all most tenacious of this truth and that they have not in any way departed from the ancient and Catholic faith.”

After lengthy quotations from the documents of the English Church, English writers, the foreign Protestant Confessions, and from Calvin, Cosin goes on:—

“The result is that the body and blood of Christ are sacramentally united to the bread and wine in such a way that Christ is really presented (exhibeatur) to believers, yet not to be considered by any sense or by the reason of this world, but by faith resting on the words of the Gospel. Now the flesh and blood of Christ are said to be united to the bread and wine because in the celebration of the Eucharist the flesh is presented and received together with the bread, and the blood together with the wine.… The papists hold it an article of faith that in the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine is annihilated, and that the body and blood of Christ takes its place.… The Reformed are of a very different mind. Yet no Protestant altogether denies the conversion or change of the bread into the body of Christ, and similarly of the wine into His blood. For they know and acknowledge that in the Eucharist by virtue of the words and blessing of Christ the bread is wholly changed in condition and use and office; that is, of ordinary and common, it becomes our mystical and sacramental food; whereby they all assert and firmly believe that the real body of Christ itself is not only signified and represented in a figure, but is also presented (exhiberi) in actual fact, and is received in the souls of those who communicate worthily.”

“The reformed Churches place the constitution (formam) of this Sacrament in the union of the sign with the thing signified, that is, the presenting (exhibitione) of the body of Christ, the bread remaining bread and being dedicated to sacramental uses, whereby these two so become one by the appointment of God that, although this union is not natural or substantial or personal or local (by the one being in the other), yet it is so well adjusted (concinna) and real that in the eating of the consecrated bread the real body of Christ is given to us, and the names of the sign and of the thing signified are reciprocally changed, and what is of the body is attributed to the bread, and what is of the bread is attributed to the body, and they are together in time, though separated in place. For the presence of the body of Christ in this mystery is opposed not to distance but to absence; and absence, not distance, prevents the use and enjoyment of the object. Hence it is clear that the present controversy between the reformed and the papists can be reduced to four heads: first, concerning the signs; secondly, concerning the thing signified; thirdly, concerning the union of the signs and the things; fourthly, concerning the participation in them. As to the first, we differ from them, because they make the accidents only to be the signs, while we regard the substance of bread and wine as the signs in accordance with the nature of Sacraments and the teaching of Scripture. As to the second, we do not say that which they through misunderstanding our opinion ascribe to us. For we do not say that only the merits of the death of Christ are signified by the consecrated symbols, but that the real body itself which was crucified for us, and the real blood itself which was shed for us, are both represented and offered, so that our minds may enjoy Christ not less certainly and really than we see and receive and eat and drink the bodily and visible signs themselves. As to the third, since the thing signified is offered and presented (exhibetur) to us as really as the signs themselves, in this way we recognise the union of the signs with the body and blood of the Lord, and we say that the elements are changed into a different use from that which they had before. But we deny the assertion of the papists that the substance of bread and wine disappears, or is so changed into the body and blood of the Lord that there is nothing left but the bare accidents of the elements, which are united with the same body and blood. Further, we deny that the Sacrament outside the use appointed by God has the nature of a Sacrament so as to make it right or possible for Christ to be reserved or carried about, since He is present only to those who communicate. Lastly, as to the fourth point, we do not say that in this holy Supper we are partakers only of the fruit of the death and passion of Christ, but we join the ground with the fruits which come to us from Him, declaring with the Apostle, ‘the bread which we break is a Communion of the body of Christ, and the cup a Communion of His blood,’ yea, in that same substance which He took in the womb of the Virgin and which He raised on high to heaven; differing from the papists in this only, that they believe this eating and union to take place bodily, while we believe it to be not in any natural way or in any bodily manner, but none the less as really as if we were joined to Christ naturally and bodily.… The assertion of the papists that Christ gives us His body and His blood to be taken and eaten with the mouth and teeth, so that it is devoured not only by the wicked who are devoid of real faith but also by mice,—this we wholly deny with our mouths and our hearts and our minds.”

The fifth volume of the edition of Cosin’s works in the Anglo-Catholic Library contains three series of notes on the Book of Common Prayer ascribed to Cosin. There is nothing in the second and third series, both of which are the work of Cosin, to suggest any different doctrine from that indicated in the foregoing quotations from his other writings. The most important passages are the following:—

“Christ can be no more offered, as the doctors and priests of the Roman party fancy Him to be, and vainly think that every time they say Mass they offer up and sacrifice Christ anew as properly and truly as He offered up Himself in His sacrifice upon the cross.… Without shedding of His blood and killing Him over again no proper sacrifice can be made of Him, which yet in their Masses the Roman priests pretend every day to do.”

“We do not hold this celebration to be so naked a commemoration of Christ’s body given to death, and of His blood there shed for us, but that the same body and blood is present there in this commemoration (made by the Sacrament of bread and wine) to all that faithfully receive it: nor do we say that it is so nude a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving but that by our prayers also added we offer and present the death of Christ to God, that for His death’s sake we may find mercy, in which respect we deny not this commemorative sacrifice to be propitiatory. The receiving of which Sacrament, or participating of which sacrifice exhibited to us, we say is profitable only to them that receive it and participate of it; but the prayers that we add thereunto, in presenting the death and merits of our Saviour to God, is not only beneficial to them that are present, but to them that are absent also, to the dead and living both, to all true members of the Catholic Church of Christ. But a true, real, proper, and propitiatory sacrificing of Christ, toties quoties as this Sacrament is celebrated, which is the popish doctrine, and which cannot be done without killing of Christ so often again, we hold not, believing it to be a false and blasphemous doctrine, founding ourselves upon the Apostle’s doctrine, that Christ was sacrificed but once, and that He dieth no more.”

“True it is that the body and blood of Christ are sacramentally and really (not feignedly) present when the blessed bread and wine are taken by the faithful communicants; and true it is also that they are not present but only when the hallowed elements are so taken, as in another work (the History of the Papal Transubstantiation) I have more at large declared. Therefore whosoever so receiveth them, at that time when he receiveth them, rightly doth he adore and reverence His Saviour there together with the sacramental bread and cup, exhibiting His own body and blood unto them. Yet, because that body and blood is neither sensibly present (nor otherwise at all present but only to them that are duly prepared to receive them, and in the very act of receiving them and the consecrated species together, to which they are sacramentally in that act united), the adoration is then and there given to Christ Himself, neither is nor ought to be directed to any external sensible object, such as are the blessed elements. But our kneeling, and the outward gesture of humility and reverence in our bodies, is ordained only to testify and express the inward reverence and devotion of our souls towards our blessed Saviour, who vouchsafed to sacrifice Himself for us on the cross, and now presenteth Himself to be united sacramentally to us, that we may enjoy all the benefits of His mystical passion, and be nourished with the spiritual food of His blessed body and blood unto life eternal.”

“The Eucharist may by allusion, analogy, and extrinsical denomination, be fitly called a sacrifice, and the Lord’s Table an altar, the one relating to the other, though neither of them can be strictly and properly so termed. It is the custom of Scripture to describe the service of God under the New Testament, be it either internal or external, by the terms that otherwise most properly belonged to the Old, as immolation, offering, sacrifice, and altar.”

Of the first series of these notes Dr. Barrow, the editor of the edition of Cosin’s works in the Anglo-Catholic Library, wrote, “There can” “be no doubt that they are Bishop Cosin’s”; and he accounted for some peculiarities in them by the supposition that they were written in the earlier part of Cosin’s life, probably before 1638. It is, however, more probable that they are the work of a different writer, possibly a nephew of Bishop Overall named Hayward. They explicitly connect the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist with the consecration; and they describe the Eucharist as a propitiatory sacrifice. The following statements occur in them:—

“This is a plain oblation of Christ’s death once offered, and a representative sacrifice of it, for the sins, and for the benefit, of the whole world, of the whole Church; that both those which are here on earth and those that rest in the sleep of peace, being departed in the faith of Christ, may find the effect and virtue of it.… And in this sense it is not only an eucharistical, but a propitiatory, sacrifice.… Why should we then make any controversy about this? They love not the truth of Christ, nor the peace of the Church, that make these disputes between the Church of Rome and us, when we agree, as Christian Churches should, in our liturgies: what private men’s conceits are, what is that to the public approved religion of either Church, which is to be seen in their liturgies best of all?”

“It is confessed by all divines that upon the words of consecration the body and blood of Christ is really and substantially present, and so exhibited and given to all that receive it; and all this not after a physical and sensual but after a heavenly and invisible and incomprehensible manner: but yet remains this controversy among some of them, whether the body of Christ be present only in the use of the Sacrament and in the act of eating, and not otherwise. They that hold the affirmative, as the Lutherans in Conf. Sax., and all Calvinists, do seem to me to depart from all antiquity, which place the presence of Christ in the virtue of the words of consecration and benediction used by the priest, and not in the use of eating of the Sacrament, for they tell us that the virtue of that consecration is not lost, though the Sacrament be reserved either for sick persons or other.”

Jeremy Taylor was born at Cambridge in 1613. He was a member, and became a Perse Fellow, of Gonville and Caius College. In 1636 he was made Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, by Archbishop Laud; in 1638 he became Rector of Uppingham; and about the same time he was chaplain to the king. Dining the Commonwealth, being deprived of his benefice, he resided in Wales, London, and Ireland. On 27th January, 1661, he was consecrated Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dromore. He died in 1667. There are indications of his belief about the Eucharist in his Life of Christ, Holy Living, The Worthy Communicant, Dissuasive from Popery, Letters to Persons Changed or Tempted to a Change in Their Religion, and most fully in The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. In the Life of Christ, published in 1649, Taylor, in referring to the discourse at Capernaum, speaks of “the mysterious and symbolical manducation of Christ Himself”; in connection with the Last Supper says that our Lord “gave His body and blood in Sacrament and religious configuration”; and in his account of the institution of the Sacrament writes:—

“We receive Him who is light and life, the fountain of grace, and the sanctifier of our secular comforts, and the author of holiness and glory.… The bread, when it is consecrated and made sacramental, is the body of our Lord; and the fraction and distribution of it is the communication of that body which died for us upon the cross. He that doubts of either of the parts of this proposition must either think Christ was not able to verify His word, and to make ‘bread’ by His benediction to become to us to be ‘His body’ or that St. Paul did not well interpret and understand this mystery when he called it ‘bread’.… We see it, we feel it, we taste it, and we smell it to be bread; and by philosophy we are led into a belief of that substance whose accidents these are, as we are to believe that to be fire which burns and flames and shines: but Christ also affirmed concerning it ‘This is My body’; and if faith can create an assent as strong as its object is infallible, or can be as certain in its conclusion as sense is certain in its apprehensions, we must at no hand doubt but that it is Christ’s body. Let the sense of that be what it will, so that we believe those words, and (whatsoever that sense is which Christ intended) that we no more doubt in our faith than we do in our sense, then our faith is not reprovable.… They that are forward to believe the change of substance can intend no more but that it be believed verily to be the body of the Lord. And, if they think it impossible to reconcile its being bread with the verity of being Christ’s body, let them remember that themselves are put to more difficulties, and to admit of more miracles, and to contradict more sciences, and to refuse the testimony of sense, in affirming the special manner of Transubstantiation. And therefore it were safer to admit the words in their first sense, in which we shall no more be at war with reason, nor so much with sense, and not at all with faith. And, for persons of the contradictory persuasion, who, to avoid the natural sense, affirm it to be only figurative, since their design is only to make this Sacrament to he Christ’s body in the sense of faith, and not of philosophy, they may remember that its being really present does not hinder but that all that reality may be spiritual; and, if it be Christ’s body, so it be not affirmed such in a natural sense and manner, it is still only the object of faith and spirit; and, if it be affirmed only to be spiritual, there is then no danger to faith in admitting the words of Christ’s institution, ‘This is My body’. I suppose it to be a mistake, to think whatsoever is real must be natural; and it is no less to think spiritual to be only figurative: that is too much, and this is too little.… His power is manifest in making the symbols to be the instruments of conveying Himself to the spirit of the receiver: He nourishes the soul with bread, and feeds the body with a Sacrament; He makes the body spiritual by His graces there ministered, and makes the spirit to be united to His body by a participation of the divine nature. In the Sacrament, that body which is reigning in heaven is exposed upon the Table of blessing; and His body, which was broken for us, is now broken again, and yet remains impassible. Every consecrated portion of bread and wine does exhibit Christ entirely to the faithful receiver; and yet Christ remains one while He is wholly ministered in ten thousand portions.… Our wisest Master hath appointed bread and wine that we may be corporally united to Him; that, as the symbols becoming nutriment are turned into the substance of our bodies, so Christ being the food of our souls should assimilate us, making us partakers of the divine nature.”

In The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, published in 1650, Taylor thus describes the consecration, and the benefits of receiving the Holy Communion worthily:—

“When the holy man stands at the Table of blessing and ministers the rite of consecration, then do as the angels do, who behold, and love, and wonder that the Son of God should become food to the souls of His servants; that He, who cannot suffer any change or lessening, should be broken into pieces and enter into the body to support and nourish the spirit, and yet at the same time remain in heaven while He descends to thee upon earth.… In the act of receiving, exercise acts of faith with much confidence and resignation, believing it not to be common bread and wine, but holy in their use, holy in their signification, holy in their change, and holy in their effect: and believe, if thou art a worthy communicant, thou dost as verily receive Christ’s body and blood to all effects and purposes of the spirit as thou lost receive the blessed elements into thy mouth, that thou puttest thy finger to His hand, and thy hand into His side, and thy lips to His fontinel of blood, sucking life from His heart; and yet, if thou dost communicate unworthily, thou eatest and drinkest Christ to thy danger and death and destruction. Dispute not concerning the secret of the mystery, and the nicety of the manner of Christ’s presence: it is sufficient to thee that Christ shall be present to thy soul as an instrument of grace, as a pledge of the resurrection, as an earnest of glory and immortality, and a means of many intermedial blessings, even all such as are necessary for thee, and are in order to thy salvation. And to make all this good to thee, there is nothing necessary on thy part but a holy life, and a true belief of all the sayings of Christ; amongst which, indefinitely assent to the words of institution, and believe that Christ in the Holy Sacrament gives thee His body and His blood. He that believes not this is not a Christian. He that believes so much needs not to inquire further nor to entangle his faith by disbelieving his sense.”

In The Worthy Communicant, which was published in 1660, there is teaching which closely resembles one part of the doctrine of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, by which the Eucharistic flesh and blood of Christ are identified with His word and Spirit.

“The flesh of Christ is His word; the blood of Christ is His Spirit; and by believing in His word, and being assisted and conducted by His Spirit, we are nourished up to life; and so Christ is our food, so He becomes life unto our souls.… As the body or flesh of Christ is His word, so the blood of Christ is His Spirit in real effect and signification.… The word and the Spirit are the flesh and the blood of Christ, that is the ground of all.… The word and the Spirit are ministered to us in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.… Christ’s body, His flesh and His blood, are therefore called our meat and our drink because by His Incarnation and manifestation in the flesh He became life unto us: so that it is mysterious indeed in the expression but very proper and intelligible in the event to say that we eat His flesh and drink His blood, since by these it is that we have and preserve life. But because what Christ began in His Incarnation, He finished in His body on the cross, and all the whole progression of mysteries in His body was still an operatory of life and spiritual being to us, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper being a commemoration and exhibition of His death, which was the consummation of our redemption by His body and blood, does contain in it a visible word, the word in symbol and visibility and special manifestation. Consonant to which doctrine, the fathers by an elegant expression call the Blessed Sacrament ‘the extension of the Incarnation’.”

In the Real Presence and Spiritual and the Dissuasive from Popery, which were published in 1654 and 1664 respectively, it is maintained at length that our Lord’s words at the institution of the Sacrament were figurative, and that He is present in effect to the souls of faithful communicants. The following are representative passages:—

“The doctrine of the Church of England, and generally of the Protestants, in this article is, that after the minister of the holy mysteries hath rightly prayed, and blessed and consecrated the bread and the wine, the symbols become changed into the body and blood of Christ after a sacramental, that is, in a spiritual real manner: so that all that worthily communicate do by faith receive Christ really, effectually, to all the purposes of His passion: the wicked receive not Christ, but the bare symbols only, but yet to their hurt because the offer of Christ is rejected, and they pollute the blood of the covenant by using it as an unholy thing.”

“We say that Christ’s body is in the Sacrament ‘really but spiritually’. They [the ‘papists’] say, it is there ‘really but spiritually’. For so Bellarmine is bold to say that the word may be allowed in this question. Where now is the difference? Here, by ‘spiritually’ they mean ‘present after the manner of a spirit’; by ‘spiritually’ we mean ‘present to our spirits only’; that is, so as Christ is not present to any other sense but that of faith or spiritual susception; but their way makes His body to be present no way but that which is impossible and implies a contradiction, a body not after the manner of a body, a body like a spirit, a body without a body, and a sacrifice of body and blood without blood, corpus incorporeum, cruor incruentus. They say that Christ’s body is truly present there as it was upon the cross, but not after the manner of all or any body, but after that manner of being as an angel is in a place: that is there spiritually. But we by the real spiritual presence of Christ do understand Christ to be present as the Spirit of God is present in the hearts of the faithful by blessing and grace; and this is all which we mean besides the tropical and figurative presence.”

“ ‘Take, eat’ and ‘This do’ are as necessary to the Sacrament as Hoc est corprus; and declare that it is Christ’s body only in the use and administration: and therefore not ‘natural’ but ‘spiritual’.”

“That the proposition is tropical and figurative is the thing, and that Christ’s natural body is now in heaven definitively, and nowhere else; and that He is in the Sacrament as He can be in a Sacrament, in the hearts of faithful receivers as He hath promised to be there; that is, in the Sacrament mystically, operatively, as in a moral and divine instrument, in the hearts of receivers by faith and blessing.”

“His body figuratively, tropically, representatively in being, and really in effect and blessing.”

“The commandment to worship God alone is so express, the distance between God and bread dedicated to the service of God is so vast, the danger of worshipping that which is not God, or of not worshipping that which is God, is so formidable, that it is infinitely to be presumed that, if it had been intended that we should have worshipped the Holy Sacrament, the Holy Scripture would have called it ‘God’ or ‘Jesus Christ,’ or have bidden us in express terms to have adored it; that either by the first as by a reason indicative, or by the second as by a reason imperative, we might have had sufficient warrant direct or consequent to have paid a divine worship. Now that there is no implicit warrant in the sacramental words of ‘This is My body,’ I have given very many reasons to evince by proving the words to be sacramental and figurative.”

“We think it our duty to give our own people caution and admonition; 1. That they be not abused by the rhetorical words and high expressions alleged out of the fathers calling the Sacrament ‘the body or the flesh of Christ’. For we all believe it is so, and rejoice in it. But the question is, After what manner it is so; whether after the manner of the flesh or after the manner of spiritual grace and sacramental consequence? We with the Holy Scriptures and the primitive fathers affirm the latter. The Church of Rome against the words of Scripture and the explication of Christ and the doctrine of the primitive Church affirm the former. 2. That they be careful not to admit such doctrines under a pretence of being ancient.… 3. We exhort them that they remember the words of Christ … that He tells us, ‘the flesh profiteth nothing, but the words which He speaks are spirit and they are life’. 4. That if those ancient and primitive doctors above cited say true, and that the symbols still remain the same in their natural substance and properties, even after they are blessed, and when they are received, and that Christ’s body and blood are only present to faith and to the spirit, that then whoever tempts them to give divine honour to these symbols or elements (as the Church of Rome does) tempts them to give to a creature the due and incommunicable propriety of God; and that then this evil passes further than an error in the understanding; for it carries them to a dangerous practice which cannot reasonably be excused from the crime of idolatry.”

In the third of the three Letters Written to a Gentleman that was Tempted to the Communion of the Romish Church, which is dated 13th March, 1658, Taylor says:—

“We may not render divine worship to Him (as present in the Blessed Sacrament according to His human nature) without danger of idolatry: because He is not there according to His human nature, and therefore you give divine worship to a non ens, which must needs be idolatry.… He is present there by His divine power, and His divine blessing, and the fruits of His body, the real effective consequents of His passion: but for any other presence, it is idolum, it is nothing in the world. Adore Christ in heaven; for the heavens must contain Him till the time of the restitution of all things.”

A comparison of the different parts of this teaching of Jeremy Taylor about the Eucharistic presence makes it clear that he held some such receptionist doctrine as that of Calvin, or virtualist doctrine as that of Cranmer.

Taylor held a fuller doctrine concerning the Eucharistic sacrifice than might have been thought likely merely from the consideration of his views as to the presence of our Lord in the Sacrament. And he laid stress on the connection of the Eucharist with the pleading of Christ’s sacrifice in heaven which was known to the fathers and Western liturgical and Greek writers of the Middle Ages, which was to a large extent obscured in the schoolmen and in the later Western theology.

In his Life of Christ he writes:—

“As it is a commemoration and representation of Christ’s death, so it is a commemorative sacrifice.… Whatsoever Christ did at the institution, the same He commanded the Church to do in remembrance and repeated rites; and Himself also does the same thing in heaven for us, making perpetual intercession for His Church, the body of His redeemed ones, by representing to His Father His death and sacrifice. There He sits, a High Priest continually, and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice; that is, still represents it as having been once finished and consummate, in order to perpetual and never failing events. And this also His ministers do on earth; they offer up the same sacrifice to God, the sacrifice of the cross, by prayers, and a commemorating rite and representment, according to His holy institution.… Our very holding up the Son of God, and representing Him to His Father, is the doing an act of mediation and advantage to ourselves in the virtue and efficacy of the Mediator. As Christ is a priest in heaven for ever, and yet does not sacrifice Himself afresh, nor yet without a sacrifice could He be a priest, but by a daily ministration and intercession represents His sacrifice to God, and offers Himself as sacrificed, so He does upon earth by the ministry of His servants; He is offered to God; that is, He is by prayers and the Sacrament represented or ‘offered up to God as sacrificed,’ which in effect is a celebration of His death, and the applying it to the present and future necessities of the Church as we are capable by a ministry like to His in heaven. It follows, then, that the celebration of this sacrifice be in its proportion an instrument of applying the proper sacrifice to all the purposes which it first designed. It is ministerially and by application an instrument propitiatory; it is eucharistical, it is an homage, and an act of adoration; and it is impetratory and obtains for us, and for the whole Church, all the benefits of the sacrifice, which is now celebrated and applied; that is, as this rite is the remembrance and ministerial celebration of Christ’s sacrifice, so it is destined to do honour to God, to express the homage and duty of His servants, to acknowledge His supreme dominion, to give Him thanks and worship, to beg pardon, blessings, and supply of all our needs. And its profit is enlarged not only to the persons celebrating, but to all to whom they design it, according to the nature of sacrifices and prayers and all such solemn actions of religion.”

In The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living he writes:—

“The celebration of the Holy Sacrament is the great mysteriousness of the Christian religion, and succeeds to the most solemn rite of natural and Judaical religion, the law of sacrificing. For God spared mankind, and took the sacrifice of beasts together with our solemn prayers for an instrument of expiation. But these could not purify the soul from sin, but were typical of the sacrifice of something that could.… This the Son of God, Jesus Christ, God and Man, undertook, and finished by a sacrifice of Himself upon the altar of the cross. This sacrifice, because it was perfect, could be but one, and that once: but, because the needs of the world should last as long as the world itself, it was necessary that there should be a perpetual ministry established, whereby this one sufficient sacrifice should be made eternally effectual to the several new arising needs of all the world, who should desire it, or in any sense be capable of it. To this end Christ was made a priest for ever: He was initiated or consecrated on the cross, and there began His priesthood, which was to last till His coming to judgment. It began on earth, but was to last and be officiated in heaven, where He sits perpetually representing and exhibiting to the Father that great effective sacrifice, which He offered on the cross to eternal and never-failing purposes. As Christ is pleased to represent to His Father that great sacrifice as a means of atonement and expiation for all mankind, and with special purposes and intendment for all the elect, all that serve Him in holiness: so He hath appointed that the same ministry shall be done upon earth too in our manner, and according to our proportion; and therefore hath constituted and separated an order of men who by ‘showing forth the Lord’s death’ by sacramental representation may pray unto God after the same manner that our Lord and High Priest does; that is, offer to God and represent in this solemn prayer and Sacrament Christ as already offered; so sending up a gracious instrument whereby our prayers may for His sake and in the same manner of intercession be offered up to God in our behalf, and for all them for whom we pray, to all those purposes for which Christ died. As the ministers of the Sacrament do in a sacramental manner present to God the sacrifice of the cross by being imitators of Christ’s intercession, so the people are sacrificers too in their manner; for, besides that by saying Amen they join in the act of him that ministers, and make it also to be their own, so, when they eat and drink the consecrated and blessed elements worthily, they receive Christ within them, and therefore may also offer Him to God, while in their sacrifice of obedience and thanksgiving they present themselves to God with Christ, whom they have spiritually received, that is, themselves with that which will make them gracious and acceptable. The offering their souls and bodies and services to God in Him, and by Him, and with Him, who is His Father’s well-beloved, and in whom He is well pleased, cannot but be accepted to all the purposes of blessing, grace, and glory. This is the sum of the greatest mystery of our religion; it is the copy of the passion, and the ministration of the great mystery of our redemption.”

In The Worthy Communicant he says:—

“When Christ was consecrated on the cross, and became our High Priest, having reconciled us to God by the death on the cross, He became infinitely gracious in the eyes of God, and was admitted to the celestial and eternal priesthood in heaven, where in the virtue of the cross He intercedes for us, and represents an eternal sacrifice in the heavens on our behalf.… Since it is necessary that He hath something to offer so long as He is a priest, and there is no other sacrifice but that of Himself offered upon the cross, it follows that Christ in heaven perpetually offers and represents that sacrifice to His heavenly Father, and in virtue of that obtains all good things for His Church. Now what Christ does in heaven, He hath commanded us to do on earth; that is, to represent His death, to commemorate this sacrifice, by humble prayer and thankful record; and by faithful manifestation and joyful Eucharist to lay it before the eyes of our heavenly Father, so ministering in His priesthood and doing according to His commandment and His example; the Church being the image of heaven; the priest the minister of Christ; the Holy Table being a copy of the celestial altar; and the eternal sacrifice of the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world being always the same; it bleeds no more after the finishing of it on the cross; but it is wonderfully represented in heaven and graciously represented here; by Christ’s action there, by His commandment here.”

John Bramhall was born near Pontefract in 1594. He was ordained about 1616. After holding several preferments in England, he became Archdeacon of Meath in 1633, and Bishop of Derry in 1634. During the Commonwealth, except for a short visit to Ireland, he was abroad, chiefly at Paris and Brussels and in Spain. In October, 1660, he returned to England; and on 18th January, 1661, he was translated from the see of Derry to the archbishopric of Armagh. He died on 25th June, 1663. His works, a large part of which treat of the controversy with Rome, contain many references to the doctrine of the Eucharist. His teaching on this subject differ, considerably from that of Cosin and of Jeremy Taylor, and at times shows a tendency to leave open both Transubstantiation and the question whether the presence of the body of Christ in the Sacrament is to be connected with the consecrated elements before Communion or restricted to the reception by the faithful communicants.

In his Answer to an Epistle of M. de la Milletiere, published in 1653, A Just Vindication of the Church of England, published in 1654, A Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon, published in 1656, and in Schism Guarded and Consecration of Protestant Bishops Vindicated, both published in 1658, Bramhall writes in regard to the Eucharistic presence and to adoration as follows:—

“I find not one of your arguments that comes home to Transubstantiation, but only to a true real presence, which no genuine son of the Church of England did ever deny, no, nor your adversary himself. Christ said, ‘This is My body’; what He said, we do steadfastly believe. He said not, after this or that manner, neque con neque sub neque trans. And therefore we place it among the opinions of the schools, not among the articles of our faith.”

“We deny not a venerable respect unto the consecrate elements not only as love-tokens sent us by our best Friend but as the instruments ordained by our Saviour to convey to us the merits of His passion; but [?and] for the Person of Christ, God forbid that we should deny Him divine worship at any time, and especially in the use of this Holy Sacrament; we believe with St. Austin that ‘no man eats of that flesh but first he adores’; but that which offends us is this, that you teach and require all men to adore the very Sacrament with divine honour.… We dare not give divine worship unto any creature, no, not to the very humanity of Christ in the abstract (much less to the host), but to the whole Person of Christ, God and Man, by reason of the hypostatical union between the Child of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the eternal Son, ‘who is God over all blessed for ever’. Show us such an union between the deity and the elements or accidents, and you say something. But you pretend no such things. The highest that you dare go is this; ‘as they that adored Christ when He was upon earth did after a certain kind of manner adore His garments’. Is this all? This is ‘after a certain kind of manner’ indeed. We have enough. There is no more adoration due to the Sacrament than to the garments which Christ did wear upon earth. Exact no more.… We rest in the words of Christ, ‘This is My body,’ leaving the manner to Him that made the Sacrament. We know it is sacramental, and therefore efficacious, because God was never wanting to His own ordinances, where man did not set a bar against Himself: but whether it be corporeally or spiritually (I mean not only after the manner of a spirit but in a spiritual sense); whether it be in the soul only or in the host also; and if in the host, whether by Consubstantiation or Transubstantiation; whether by production or adduction or conservation or assumption or by whatsoever other way bold and blind men dare conjecture; we determine not.”

“The Council of Trent is not contented to enjoin the adoration of Christ in the Sacrament (which we never deny), but of the Sacrament itself (that is, according to the common current of your schoolmen, the accidents or species of bread and wine), because it contains Christ. Why do they not add upon the same grounds that the pix is to be adored with divine worship because it contains the Sacrament? divine honour is not due to the very humanity of Christ as it is abstracted from the deity, but to the whole Person, deity and humanity, hypostatically united. Neither the grace of union nor the grace of unction can confer more upon the humanity than the humanity is capable of. There is no such union between the deity and the Sacrament neither immediately nor yet mediately mediante corpore.”

“The opinions of the lawfulness of detaining the cup from the laity, and of the necessity of adoring the Sacrament, have by consequence excluded the Protestants from the participation of the Eucharist in the Roman Church.”

“Wherein then have we forsaken the communion of the Roman Church in Sacraments? Not in their ancient communion of genuine Sacraments, but in their septenary number and supposititious Sacraments; which yet we retain for the most part as useful and religious rites but not under the notion of Sacraments: not in their Sacraments, but in their abuses and sinful injunctions in the use of the Sacraments; … as their injunction to all communicants to adore, not only Christ in the use of the Sacrament, to which we do readily assent, but to adore the Sacrament itself.”

“ ‘The Sacrament is to be adored,’ said the Council of Trent: that is, ‘formally the body and blood of Christ,’ say some of your authors; we say the same; ‘the Sacrament,’ that is, ‘the species of bread and wine,’ say others; that we deny, and esteem it to be idolatrous.”

“Grossly is he mistaken on all sides when he saith that ‘Protestants’ (he should say the English Church if he would speak to the purpose) ‘have a positive belief that the Sacrament is not the body of Christ,’ which were to contradict the words of Christ, ‘This is My body’. He knows better, that Protestants do not deny the thing, but their bold determination of the manner by Transubstantiation, themselves confessing that the manner is incomprehensible by human reason. Neither do Protestants place it among the articles of the faith, but the opinions of the schools.”

“We ourselves adore Christ in the Sacrament, but we dare not adore the species of bread and wine.”

“They bring the very same objection against our priestly ordination,—‘The form or words whereby men are made priests must express authority and power to consecrate, or make present, Christ’s body and blood’.… Thus far we accord, to the truth of the presence of Christ’s body and blood, so they leave us this latitude for the manner of His presence. Abate us Transubstantiation, and those things which are consequents of their determination of the manner of presence, and we have no difference with them in this particular. They who are ordained priests ought to have power to consecrate the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, that is, to make them present after such manner as they were present at the first institution, whether it be done by enunciation of the words of Christ, as it is observed in the Western Church, or by prayer, as it is practised in the Eastern Church, or whether these two be both the same thing in effect, that is, that the forms of the Sacraments be mystical prayers and implicit invocations. Our Church for more abundant caution useth both forms as well in the consecration of the Sacrament as in the ordination of priests. In the Holy Eucharist our consecration is a repetition of that which was done by Christ and now done by him that consecrateth in the person of Christ; otherwise the priest could not say, ‘This is My body’.”

In the same works Bramhall explains the sense in which he considers that the Eucharist is to be regarded as a sacrifice, namely that it commemorates and represents the sacrifice of the cross, and is a means of obtaining and applying the benefits of the passion and death of Christ.

“You say we have renounced your sacrifice of the Mass. If the sacrifice of the Mass be the same with the sacrifice of the cross, we attribute more unto it than yourselves; we place our whole hope of salvation in it. If you understand another propitiatory sacrifice distinct from that (as this of the Mass seems to be; for confessedly the priest is not the same, the altar is not the same, the temple is not the same); if you think of any new meritorious satisfaction to God for the sins of the world, or of any new supplement to the merits of Christ’s passion; you must give us leave to renounce your sacrifice indeed, and to adhere to the Apostle, ‘By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified’. Surely you cannot think that Christ did actually sacrifice Himself at His Last Supper (for then He had redeemed the world at His Last Supper; then His subsequent sacrifice upon the cross had been superfluous); nor that the priest now doth more than Christ did then. We do readily acknowledge an Eucharistical sacrifice of prayers and praises: we profess a commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross: … we acknowledge a representation of that sacrifice to God the Father: we acknowledge an impetration of the benefit of it: we maintain an application of its virtue: so here is a commemorative, impetrative, applicative sacrifice. Speak distinctly, and I cannot understand what you can desire more. To make it a suppletory sacrifice, to supply the defects of the only true sacrifice of the cross, I hope both you and I abhor.”

“The Holy Eucharist is a commemoration, a representation, an application of the all-sufficient propitiatory sacrifice of the cross. If his sacrifice of the Mass have any other propitiatory power or virtue in it than to commemorate, represent, and apply the merit of the sacrifice of the cross, let him speak plainly what it is.”

“We acknowledge an eucharistical sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; a commemorative sacrifice, or a memorial of the sacrifice of the cross; a representative sacrifice, or a representation of the passion of Christ before the eyes of His heavenly Father; an impetrative sacrifice, or an impetration of the fruit and benefit of His passion by way of real prayer; and, lastly, an applicative sacrifice, or an application of His merits unto our souls. Let him that dare go one step further than we do; and say that it is a suppletory sacrifice, to supply the defects of the sacrifice of the cross. Or else let them hold their peace and speak no more against us in this point of sacrifice for ever.”

“We have a meritorious sacrifice, that is, the sacrifice of the cross; we have a commemorative and applicative sacrifice, or a commemoration and application of that sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist. A suppletory sacrifice, to supply any wants or defects in that sacrifice, he dare not own; and unless he do own it, he saith no more than we say.”

Herbert Thorndike was born in 1598, probably in Suffolk, though he came of a Lincolnshire family. In 1618 or 1619 he was appointed minor Fellow, and in 1620 middle or major Fellow, of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was ordained priest not later than 1627. He was University Preacher in 1631, Greek Reader of Trinity College in 1632, Senior Proctor in 1638, and Head Lecturer of Trinity College in 1639. He received the appointment of Prebendary of Layton Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral in 1636, but resigned this prebend because of a requirement of the College statutes in 1640. In 1639 he became Vicar of Claybrook, near Lutterworth, and in 1642 Rector of Barley in Hertfordshire. He was ejected from Barley in July, 1643, under the Commonwealth. In September, 1643, the Fellows of Sidney Sussex College elected him Master by a majority of one; but before the formalities of the election were completed the parliamentary soldiers interfered and forcibly took away one of the Fellows who had voted for Thorndike, with the result of a tie of votes and the eventual appointment of the other candidate, Richard Minshull, to the office of Master. Thorndike was ejected from his Fellowship at Trinity in May, 1646. Until the Restoration he probably lived chiefly in Cambridge and London. In 1660 he was reinstated as Fellow of Trinity and Rector of Barley. He resigned Barley on being appointed Prebendary of Westminster in September, 1661. He was a member of the Savoy Conference, and assisted in the revision of the Prayer Book. He died on 11th July, 1672.

Many references to the doctrine of the Eucharist are scattered about in Thorndike’s very able writings. The most complete and systematic treatment of this subject is contained in the first five chapters of the third part of his great treatise entitled An Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England, being a Necessary Consideration and Brief Resolution of the Chief Controversies in Religion that divide the Western Church; occasioned by the Present Calamity of the Church of England; in three books, viz. of I. The Principles of Christian Truth; II. The Covenant of Grace; III. The Laws of the Church, which was published in 1659.

In this treatise Thorndike refers in somewhat slighting terms to the “opinions” of the “factions” which maintain (1) Transubstantiation; or (2) Zwinglianism, which he describes as “the opinion of the Socinians” or of the “Sacramentaries”; or (3) Calvinism; or (4) Lutheranism. As it is of some importance to observe exactly what he meant by Transubstantiation, his definition of that “opinion” may be quoted.

“The opinion of Transubstantiation … which importeth this,—that, in celebrating this Sacrament, upon pronouncing of the words with which our Lord delivered it to His disciples, ‘This is My body, this is My blood,’ the substance of the elements, bread and wine, ceaseth and is abolished, the substance of the body and blood of Christ coming into their stead, though under the species of bread and wine; that is to say, those accidents of them, which our senses witness that they remain.”

After describing these four “opinions,” Thorndike proceeds to affirm, and to support by arguments from Holy Scripture, the statement, in opposition to Transubstantiation—

“that the bodily substance of bread and wine is not abolished nor ceaseth in this Sacrament by virtue of the consecration of it.”

His next point is that, while “the nature and substance of bread and wine” remain “in the Sacrament of the Eucharist even when it is a Sacrament, that is, when it is received,” yet it is no less true and supported by Scripture that there is also the presence

“of Christ’s body and blood, brought forth and made to be in the Sacrament of the Eucharist by making it to be that Sacrament.”

It is, he maintains, contrary to Scripture to hold either that “the Sacrament of the Eucharist is a mere sign of the body and blood of Christ without any promise of spiritual grace,” or that the elements are not the body and blood of Christ “when they are received, but become so upon being received by living faith”. Against these Zwinglian and Calvinistic views he asserts that—

“we receive the body and blood of Christ, not only when we receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist, but also by receiving it”;

that—

“the flesh and blood of Christ be” “in the Sacrament” “by virtue of the consecration of the elements into the Sacrament”;

and that—

“the flesh and blood of Christ is necessarily in the Sacrament when it is eaten and drunk in it, in which if it were not, it could not be eaten and drunk in it.”

Explaining his meaning more fully, he says:—

“Supposing the bread and the wine to remain in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, as sense informs and the word of God enforces; if the same word of God affirm there to be also the body and blood of Christ, what remaineth but that bread and wine by nature and bodily substance be also the bodily flesh and blood of Christ by mystical representation (in that sense which I determined even now) and by spiritual grace?”

The “sense” of “representation” “determined even now” is thus stated:—

“Which kind of presence you may, if you please, call the representation of the sacrifice of Christ, so as you understand the word ‘representation’ to signify, not the figuring or resembling of that which is only signified, but as it signifies in the Roman laws, when a man is said repræsentare pecuniam who pays ready money: deriving the signification of it a re præsenti, not from the preposition re; which will import, not the presenting of that again to a man’s senses, which once is past, but the tendering of that to a man’s possession, which is tendered him upon the place.”

He repeatedly emphasises that the presence is “mystical”; that this “mystical” presence of the body and blood of Christ is a “means to convey His Spirit,” and that the Holy Ghost “makes the elements” “the body and blood of Christ”. He rejects the view that the “mystical and spiritual presence of the flesh and blood of Christ in the elements” depends on the faith of the communicants. Consequently, the body and blood of Christ are in some sense received even by those who communicate unworthily. “For,” he says—

“that the body and blood of Christ should be sacramentally present in and under the elements (to be spiritually received of all that meet it with a living faith, to condemn those for crucifying Christ again that receive it with a dead faith), can it seem any way inconsequent to the consecration thereof by virtue of the common faith of Christians, professing that which is requisite to make true Christians, whether by a living or a dead faith?”

He rejects also the doctrine ascribed to the Lutherans, that—

“the omnipresence of Christ’s Godhead is communicated to His flesh by virtue of the hypostatical union, so that the body and blood of Christ, being everywhere present, necessarily subsisteth in the dimensions of bread and wine in the Eucharist.”

In a long and elaborate argument Thorndike maintains that the consecration is effected, not by the recital of the words, “This is My body,” “This is My blood,” but by the use of prayer. He supports this position by urging that when our Lord said these words He had already by His acts of blessing and thanksgiving made the elements to be His body and blood, and by pointing out that the ancient liturgies and the fathers agree in representing prayer as the means of consecration.

After this, he repeats, in many varying ways of expression, his rejection of the “opinions” of the four “factions,” and his affirmation of the presence of the body and blood of Christ. To quote passages which are representative of what he elaborates and illustrates at great length, he says:—

“If it can any way be showed that the Church did ever pray that the flesh and blood might be substituted instead of the elements under the accidents of them, then I am content that this be counted henceforth the sacramental presence of them in the Eucharist. But, if the Church only pray that the Spirit of God, coming down upon the elements, may make them the body and blood of Christ, so that they which received them may be filled with the grace of His Spirit; then is it not the sense of the Catholic Church that can oblige any man to believe the abolishing of the elements in their bodily substance: because, supposing that they remain, they may nevertheless become the instrument of God’s Spirit, to convey the operation thereof to them that are disposed to receive it, no otherwise than His flesh and blood conveyed the efficacy thereof upon earth. And that, I suppose, is reason enough to call it the body and blood of Christ sacramentally, that is to say, as in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is not here to be denied that all ecclesiastical writers do with one mouth bear witness to the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Neither will any one of them be found to ascribe it to anything but the consecration; or that to any faith but that upon which the Church professeth to proceed to the celebrating of it. And upon this account, when they speak of the elements, supposing the consecration to have passed upon them, they always call them by the name, not of their bodily substance, but of the body and blood of Christ which they are become.”

“The fathers … all acknowledge the elements to be changed, translated, and turned into the substance of Christ’s body and blood; though as in a Sacrament, that is, mystically; yet therefore by virtue of the consecration, not of his faith that receives.”

“The canon of the Mass itself prays that the Holy Ghost coming down may make this bread and this cup the body and blood of Christ. And certainly the Roman Mass expresses a manifest abatement of the common and usual sense of the body and blood of Christ unto that sense which is proper to the intent and subject of them who speak of this Sacrament; when the Church in the consecration prays, ut nobis corpus fiat dilectissimi Filii Tui Domini nostri Jesu Christ, ‘that they may become the body and blood of Thy most dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to us’. No man, that understands Latin and sense, will say it is the same thing for the elements to become the body and blood of Christ as to become the body and blood of Christ to those that receive; which imports no more than that which I have said. And yet there is no more said in those liturgies which pray that the Spirit of God may make them the flesh and blood of Christ to this intent and effect, that those which received them may be filled with the grace of His Spirit. For the expression of this effect and intent limits the common signification of the words to that which is proper to this action of the Eucharist; as I have delivered it.”

“As it is by no means to be denied that the elements are really changed, translated, turned, and converted into the body and blood of Christ (so that whoso receiveth them with a living faith is spiritually nourished by the same, he that with a dead faith is guilty of crucifying Christ), yet is not this change destructive to the bodily substance of the elements, but cumulative of them with the spiritual grace of Christ’s body and blood; so that the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament turns to the nourishment of the body, whether the body and blood in the truth turn to the nourishment or the damnation of the soul.”

In the same treatise Thorndike discusses the nature of the Eucharistic sacrifice. He connects the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist with the doctrine of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated Sacrament which he has already maintained.

“Having showed the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist because it is appointed that in it the faithful may feast upon the sacrifice of the cross; we have already showed by the Scriptures that it is the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross in the same sense and to the same effect as it containeth the body and blood of Christ which it representeth; that is, mystically and spiritually and sacramentally (that is, as in and by a Sacrament) tendereth and exhibiteth. For seeing the Eucharist not only tendereth the flesh and blood of Christ, but separated one from the other, under and by several elements, as His blood was parted from His body by the violence of the cross; it must of necessity be as well the sacrifice as the Sacrament of Christ upon the cross.”

In discussing “for what reasons the Sacrament of the Eucharist may be accounted and called a sacrifice,” and “in what sense and for what reason it may be accounted propitiatory and impetratory without prejudice to Christianity,” he explains that there are four distinct parts or stages in the sacrifice of the Eucharist. There four stages are: (1) the oblation of the unconsecrated elements in the offertory; (2) the offering of prayer in connection with the intercession of Christ in heaven; (3) the consecration; and (4) the dedication to the service of God of the bodies and souls of those who receive the Sacrament. Of these stages he writes:—

“Those species, set apart for the celebration of the Eucharist, are as properly to be called sacrifices of that nature which the Eucharist is of (to wit, commemorative and representative) as the same are to be counted figurative under the Law from the time that they were deputed to that use. This is then the first act of oblation by the Church, that is, by any Christian that consecrates his goods, not at large to the service of God, but peculiarly to the service of God by sacrifice; in regard whereof the elements of the Eucharist before they be consecrated, are truly counted oblations or sacrifices.”

“After the consecration is past, having showed you that St. Paul hath appointed that at the celebration of the Eucharist ‘prayers, supplications, and intercessions, be made for all’ estates of the world and of the Church; and that the Jews have no right to the Eucharist (according to the Epistle to the Hebrews) because, though eucharistical, yet it is of that kind the blood whereof is offered to God within the veil, with prayers for all estates of the world, as Philo and Josephus inform us: seeing the same Apostle hath so plainly expounded us the accomplishment of that figure in the offering of the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross to the Father in the highest heavens to obtain the benefits of His passion for us; and that the Eucharist is nothing else but the representation here upon earth of that which is done there: these things, I say, considered, necessarily it follows that whoso believes the prayers of the Church made in our Lord’s name do render God propitious to them for whom they are made, and obtain for them the benefits of Christ’s death (which he that believes not is no Christian), cannot question that those which are made by St. Paul’s appointment at the celebration of the Eucharist, offering up unto God the merits and sufferings of Christ there represented must be peculiarly and especially effectual to the same purposes. And that the Eucharist may very properly be accounted a sacrifice propitiatory and impetratory both in this regard—because the offering of it up to God with and by the said prayers doth render God propitious, and obtain at His hands the benefits of Christ’s death which it representeth—there can be no cause to refuse, being no more than the simplicity of plain Christianity enforceth.”

“Having maintained that the elements are really changed from ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ mystically present as in a Sacrament; and that in virtue of the consecration, not by the faith of him that receives: I am to admit and maintain whatsoever appears duly consequent to this truth:—namely, that the elements so consecrate are truly the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, inasmuch as the body and blood of Christ crucified are contained in them, not as in a bare sign, which a man may take up at his pleasure, but as in the means by which God hath promised His Spirit; but not properly the sacrifice upon the cross, because that is a thing that consists in action and motion and succession, and therefore once done can never be done again, because it is contradiction that that which is done should ever be undone. It is therefore enough that the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, as the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is represented, renewed, revived, and restored by it, and as every representation is said to be the same thing with that which it representeth; taking ‘representation’ here, not for barely signifying, but for tendering and exhibiting thereby that which it signifieth. … Let it therefore have the nature of a sacrifice so soon as the consecration is past. It shall have that nature improperly, so long as it is not the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross; though truly, so long as the Sacrament is not empty of that which it signifieth.… I will not therefore grant that this sacrificing (that is, this consecrating the elements into the sacrifice) is an action done in the person of Christ: though they are agreed that it is done by the rehearsing of the words of Christ. For the rehearsing of Christ’s words is not an act done in the person of Christ; nor do I take upon me His person whose words I recite. And I have showed that the consecration is done by the prayers of the Church immediately; though these prayers are made in virtue of Christ’s order, commanding to do what He did, and thereby promising that the elements shall become that which He saith those which He consecrated are.… Having proved the consecration of the Eucharist to be the production of the body and blood of Christ crucified, or the causing of them to be mystically present in the elements thereof, as in a Sacrament representing them separated by the crucifying of Christ; and the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross being necessarily propitiatory and impetratory both; it cannot be denied that the Sacrament of the Eucharist, inasmuch as it is the same sacrifice of Christ upon the cross (as that which representeth is truly said to be the thing which it representeth), is also both propitiatory and impetratory by virtue of the consecration of it, whereby it becometh the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.”

“Hereupon ariseth a fourth reason why this Sacrament is a sacrifice; to wit, of the bodies and souls of them who, having consecrated their goods to God for the celebration of it, do by receiving it profess to renew that consecration of themselves to the service of God according to the law of Christ, which their Baptism originally pretended.”

“Breaking, pouring forth, distributing, eating, drinking, are all parts of the sacrifice; as the whole action is that sacrifice, by which the covenant of grace is renewed, restored, and established against the interruption of our failures.”

After affirming that “the Sacrament of the Eucharist” is “a propitiatory and impetratory sacrifice by virtue of the consecration,” Thorndike proceeds:—

“If from hence any man would infer that, seeing the Sacrament of the Eucharist (that is to say, the body and blood of Christ crucified there present by virtue of the consecration) is a propitiatory and impetratory sacrifice for the congregation there present, for their relations, and for the Church, therefore it is so whether they proceed to receive the Eucharist or not; therefore it is so, whether they proceed to offer up the Eucharist present by their prayers for the necessities of the Church or not; therefore it is so whether they pray with the Church or not; the consequence will straight appear to fail; because those reasons which make it such a sacrifice make it so in order to the receiving, or to the offering of it by the prayers of the Church in behalf of the Church.”

He maintains, further, that all the parts of the sacrifice are found in the Eucharist as celebrated in the Church of England in accordance with the Book of Common Prayer.

In several passages in the early chapters of the third part of the Epitome, two of which have been quoted above, Thorndike closely connects the reception of the Holy Communion with participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice. In the latter of the two passages already quoted he does not seem to make the reception of Communion a necessity for share in the sacrifice if there is the offering of the Eucharist by prayer. In a later chapter he writes strongly on the need of all who are prepared receiving Communion at each celebration, but recognises that circumstances may justify some who are present at the Eucharist not communicating on all occasions.

“If the virtue and efficacy of these prayers be grounded upon nothing else than the fidelity of the congregation in standing to the covenant of Baptism (as, if Christianity be true, it consists in nothing else); and if the celebration of the Eucharist be the profession of fidelity and perseverance in it: what remaineth but that the efficacy of the sacrifice depend upon the receiving of the Eucharist? unless the efficacy and virtue of Christian men’s prayers can depend upon their perseverance in that covenant which they refuse to renew and to profess perseverance in it, that profession being no less necessary than the inward intention of persevering in the same. For the receiving of the Eucharist is no less expressly a renewing of the covenant of Baptism than being baptised is entering into it; so that whosoever refuses the Communion of the Eucharist, inasmuch as he refuses it, refuses to stand to the covenant of his Baptism, whereby he expects the world to come. I say not, therefore, that whosoever communicates not in the Eucharist, so oft as he hath means and opportunity to do it, renounces his Christianity, either expressly or by way of construction and consequence. For how many of us may be prevented with the guilt of sin, so deeply staining the conscience that they cannot satisfy themselves in the competence of that conversion to God which they have time and reason and opportunity to exercise before the opportunity of communicating? How many have need of the authority of the Church, and the power of the keys, not only for their satisfaction but for their direction, in washing their wedding garments white again? How many are so distracted and oppressed with business of this world that they cannot upon all opportunities retire their thoughts to that attention and devotion which the office requires? How many, though free of business which Christianity enjoineth, are entangled with the cares and pleasures of the world, though not so far as to depart from the state of grace, yet further than the renewing of the covenant of grace importeth? Be it therefore granted that there is a great allowance to be made in exacting the apostolical rule for all that are present to communicate.”

The many references to the Eucharist elsewhere in Thorndike’s voluminous writings add little to what is contained on this subject in the third part of the Epitome, from which the above quotations are all taken. But there are a few passages which deserve notice for their bearing on special points.

In the twenty-fifth chapter of the treatise The Reformation of the Church of England better than that of the Council of Trent, written during the last two years of his life, Thorndike endeavoured to find some common ground of agreement for those who disagree in much as to the doctrine of the Eucharist. This common ground he sought for, not, like Hooker, in the reception of the body and blood of Christ by faithful communicants, but in the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament by virtue of the consecration in accordance with the institution of our Lord.

“If this were agreed upon, which cannot be resisted but by Socinians and Fanatics;—that the body and blood of Christ become present in the Sacrament by the institution of our Lord, by celebrating the Sacrament, whereby His institution is executed by consecrating the elements to the purpose that the body and blood of Christ may be received;—the whole dispute concerning the manner of presence in the nature of the formal cause might be superseded. For then all parties must agree that they are present sacramentally, as the nature of a Sacrament requireth. And that, as it would be enough to make them ‘guilty of the body and blood’ of Christ that ‘eat and drink unworthily,’ so it would still require living faith to make that presence effectual to all that receive it; which all parties are obliged to require to the effect as much as they are obliged to require consecration to the sacramental presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament.”

In the thirty-ninth chapter of the same treatise Thorndike refers incidentally to the reservation of the Sacrament for the Communion of the Sick.

“Thus far I will particularise as concerning the Eucharist, that the Church is to endeavour the celebrating of it so frequently that it may be reserved to the next Communion. For in the mean time it ought to he so ready for them that pass into the next world that they need not stay for the consecrating of it on purpose for every one. The reason of the necessity of it for all, which hath been delivered, aggravates it very much in danger of death. And the practice of the Church attests it to the utmost. Neither will there be any necessity of giving it in one kind only, as by some passages of antiquity may be collected, if common sense could deceive in a subject of this nature.”

In the forty-second chapter of the same treatise he condemns the practice of carrying the Sacrament through the streets for the purpose of adoration, and also the command of the Church of Rome for adoration at the consecration for the reason that this command was based on the enforcement of the acceptance of Transubstantiation in “commanding to believe that which was not delivered from the beginning”; but asserts that it is right and in accordance with patristic teaching for “reverence” to be “tendered to our Lord as present in the Sacrament,” and allows adoration of our Lord in the Sacrament “when it passes the streets in order to Communion,” since “it may be then so well understood that it may be then but due reverence to that great office”.