XIII

Obscure as are some details, it is not difficult to state briefly the main lines of thought in regard to Eucharistic doctrine in England in the times of King James I., King Charles I., the Commonwealth, and King Charles II. The additions made to the Catechism in 1604 and the Prayer Book of 1662, like the Elizabethan Prayer Book, require a belief in the reception of the body and blood of Christ by faithful communicants, and incline towards the doctrine that the body and blood are present in the Sacrament at consecration and before reception without explicitly insisting on the acceptance of this doctrine. The existence during the reigns of James I. and Charles I. of a theology which included the rejection of Transubstantiation, the assertion of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament before reception, and the affirmation of sacrifice in the Eucharist may be known from the writings of Bishop Andrewes, Archbishop Laud, Bishop Mountague, George Herbert, and Bishop Forbes. With their teaching may be compared that of the divines of the restoration, Archbishop Bramhall and Herbert Thorndike. Instances of those who accepted some form of receptionism or virtualism have been seen in the times of King James I. and King Charles I. in Crakanthorp, Bishop Morton, Sutton, Jackson, and Hammond; and among the divines of the restoration in Bishop Cosin and Bishop Jeremy Taylor. Cudworth suggested that the Eucharist is a feast on a sacrifice and a federal rite. The teaching of Hales was explicitly Zwinglian; but it is significant of the extent to which the extreme form of Zwinglianism had become discredited that a receptionist doctrine is taught in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and in the Directory for the Public Worship of God, and in the Irish Articles of 1615.