I

An instance of a type of teaching probably widely prevalent in the Church of England between 1662 and the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century may be seen in the writings of the profoundly learned theologian Bishop Bull. George Bull was born at Wells in 1634. Before he was fourteen he went into residence at Exeter College, Oxford, but left Oxford in 1649, while only fifteen, in consequence of his refusal to take the oath required by the “Engagement” to “be true and faithful to the Government established without King and House of Peers”. In 1655 he was ordained deacon and priest by Dr. Skinner, the ejected Bishop of Oxford; and during the Common-wealth he did much to maintain the services of the Church, using the Church prayers, which he knew by heart, without book. Before and after the Restoration he was occupied in study and writing and pastoral work. In 1705 he was appointed Bishop of St. Davids. In 1710 he died. Concerning the Eucharist he appears to have combined a rejection of what he understood to be the Roman Catholic doctrine of the sacrifice with the assertion of a commemorative sacrifice, and the rejection of Transubstantiation with the assertion of some kind of virtual presence of the body and blood of Christ. The chief passages bearing on his Eucharistic beliefs are the following:—

“The consent of all the Christian Churches in the world, however distant from one another, in the prayer of oblation of the Christian sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist or Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which consent is indeed wonderful. All the ancient liturgies agree in this form of prayer almost in the same words but fully and exactly in the same sense, order, and method, which whosoever attentively considers must be convinced that this order of prayer was delivered to the several Churches in the very first plantation and settlement of them. Nay, it is observable that this form of prayer is still retained in the very canon of the Mass at this day used in the Church of Rome, though the form doth manifestly contradict and overthrow some of the principal articles of their new faith. For from this very form of prayer still extant in their canon a man may effectually refute those two main doctrines of their Church, the doctrine of purgatory and that of Transubstantiation.”

“We have an entire Sacrament, the cup of blessing in the Holy Eucharist, which was sacrilegiously taken from us by the Church of Rome, being happily restored to us. The ridiculous pageantry and fopperies of that Church are laid aside, and we have the Holy Sacrament purely, reverently, and decently administered.”

“Who sees not that the sacrilege is here chargeable on the Church of Rome, which hath robbed the faithful of one half of the Blessed Sacrament, the cup of our Lord, to which they had a right by the institution of Christ, and the happy enjoyment and possession whereof they were invested with by the prescription and practice of the Catholic Church for many ages together after the Apostles? For when they tell us that the people receive a perfect Sacrament only in one kind, because both the body and blood of Christ are truly and perfectly contained under each species of the Sacrament, they egregiously prevaricate in a matter of great concernment to the souls of men. For, 1. If this be true, then our Saviour did superfluously institute the Sacrament to be received in both kinds; for if there be a perfect Sacrament in one kind only, to what purpose did Christ institute the other? 2. It is most false that the body and blood of Christ are sacramentally in each element; for it is the bread only that doth sacramentally signify and exhibit the body of Christ, and the wine only that doth sacramentally signify and exhibit the blood of Christ 3. That which doth not perfectly represent and set forth the death and passion of our Lord is no perfect Sacrament; … but Communion only in one kind, namely, the bread, doth not perfectly represent the death and passion of our Lord Jesus.… The effusion and shedding of Christ’s blood on the cross … is in the Communion only of the bread so far from being perfectly that it is not at all represented but totally obscured.”

“If I can be infallibly certain that my senses, rightly disposed and all due requisites to sensation supposed, are infallible, and cannot be deceived about their proper objects, … then I may be infallibly certain that the Church of Rome is not infallible, yea, that she hath grossly erred in her doctrine of Transubstantiation, teaching the bread and wine after the words of consecration to be turned into the very flesh and blood of Christ, which yet all my senses assure me to remain still the same in nature and substance, that is, bread and wine.”

“They [that is, the Tridentine divines] anathematise and damn all those who shall dare so far to trust all their senses wherewith God hath blessed them as to believe that the bread and wine in the Sacrament do after the words of Consecration still remain in substance the same (though they confess them transcendently changed in use), that is, bread and wine. And consequently … they anathematise and damn all those who shall teach that the consecrated bread and wine ought not to be worshipped with divine worship (such as is due to the only-begotten Son of God Himself), or to be carried about in solemn procession to be so worshipped and adored by the people. A hard case! All our senses infallibly assure us of the truth of the former proposition, and upon the supposal thereof the papists do themselves confess the truth of the latter, and yet, nevertheless, we must be damned for thus teaching.”

“Christ hath instituted two Sacraments in His Church, Baptism and His holy Supper, and both to seal the forgiveness of our sins. Of Baptism, that it is instituted for the forgiveness of sins, no one doubts; of the cup also in the Lord’s Supper, the Lord Himself hath said that it is His ‘blood of the New Testament, shed for the remission of sins,’ Matt. 26:27, 28. Hence the Catholic Church in her prayers at the altar prays for the forgiveness of sins on account of the merit of the sacrifice of Christ commemorated in the Eucharist.”

“These superadded articles of the Trent creed are so far from being certain truths that they are most of them manifest untruths, yea, gross and dangerous errors. To make this appear, I shall not refuse the pains of examining some of the chief of them. The first article I shall take notice of is this, ‘I profess that in the Mass is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly and really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is wrought a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic Church calls Transubstantiation’. Where this proposition (‘That in the Mass there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead’), having that other of the ‘substantial presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist’ immediately annexed to it, the meaning of it must necessarily be this, that in the Eucharist the very body and blood of Christ are again offered up to God as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of men. Which is an impious proposition, derogatory to the one full satisfaction of Christ made by His death on the cross, and contrary to express Scripture, Heb. 7:27, and 9:12, 25, 26, 28, and 10:12, 14. It is true that the Eucharist is frequently called by the ancient fathers προσφορά, θυσία, an oblation, a sacrifice. But it is to be remembered that they say also it is θυσία λογικὴ καὶ ἀναίμακτος, a reasonable sacrifice, a sacrifice without blood, which how can it be said to be if therein the very blood of Christ were offered up to God? They held the Eucharist to be a commemorative sacrifice, and so do we. This is the constant language of the ancient liturgies, ‘We offer by way of commemoration’ (μεμνημένοι προσφέρομεν: Commemorantes or Commemorando offerimus); according to our Saviour’s words when He ordained this holy rite, ‘Do this in commemoration of Me’. In the Eucharist then, Christ is offered, not hypostatically, as the Trent fathers have determined (for so He was but once offered) but commemoratively only; and this commemoration is made to God the Father, and is not a bare remembering, or putting ourselves in mind of Him. For every sacrifice is directed to God, and the oblation therein made, whatsoever it be, hath Him for its object, and not man. In the Holy Eucharist therefore, we set before God the bread and wine, as ‘figures or images of the precious blood of Christ shed for us, and of His precious body’ (they are the very words of the Clementine Liturgy), and plead to God the merit of His Son’s sacrifice once offered on the cross for us sinners, and in this Sacrament represented, beseeching Him for the sake thereof to bestow His heavenly blessings on us. To conclude this matter: the ancients held the oblation of the Eucharist to be answerable in some respects to the legal sacrifices; that is, they believe that our blessed Saviour ordained the Sacrament of the Eucharist as a rite of prayer and praise to God instead of the manifold and bloody sacrifices of the law.… Instead therefore of slaying of beasts and burning of incense, whereby they praised God and called upon His name under the Old Testament, the fathers, I say, believed our Saviour appointed this Sacrament of bread and wine as a rite whereby to give thanks and make supplication to the Father in His name.… This Eucharistical sacrifice, thus explained, is indeed λογικὴ θυσία, a reasonable sacrifice, widely different from that monstrous sacrifice of the Mass taught in the Church of Rome. The other branch of the article is concerning Transubstantiation, wherein the ecclesiastic professeth upon his solemn oath his belief that in the Eucharist ‘there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood of Christ’ a proposition that bids defiance to all the reason and sense of mankind, nor, God be praised, hath it any ground or foundation in divine revelation. Nay, the text of Scripture on which the Church of Rome builds this article, duly considered, utterly subverts and overthrows it. She grounds it upon the words of the institution of the Holy Sacrament by our Saviour.… Now whatsoever our Saviour said was undoubtedly true; but these words could not be true in a proper sense; for our Saviour’s body was not then given or broken, but whole and inviolate, nor was there one drop of His blood yet shed. The words therefore must necessarily be understood in a figurative sense; and then, what becomes of the doctrine of Transubstantiation? The meaning of our Saviour is plainly this: What I now do is a representation of My death and passion near approaching; and what I now do, do ye hereafter, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me’; let this be a standing, perpetual ordinance in My Church to the end of the world; let My death be thus annunciated and shown forth till I come to judgment.… As little foundation hath this doctrine of Transubstantiation in the ancient Church, as appears sufficiently from what hath been already said concerning the notion then universally received of the Eucharistical sacrifice. It was then believed to be an ἀνάμνησις, or commemoration, by the symbols of bread and wine, of the body and blood of Christ, once offered up to God on the cross for our redemption; it could not therefore be then thought an offering up again to God of the very body and blood of Christ, substantially present under the appearance of bread and wine; for these two notions are inconsistent, and cannot stand together. The ancient doctors, yea, and liturgies of the Church, affirm the Eucharist to be incruentum sacrificium, ‘a sacrifice without blood,’ which it cannot be said to be if the very blood of Christ were therein present and offered up to God. In the Clementine Liturgy the bread and wine in the Eucharist are said to be antitypa, ‘correspondent types,’ figures, and images of the precious body and blood of Christ. And divers others of the fathers speak in the same plain language. … We are not ignorant that the ancient fathers generally teach that the bread and wine in the Eucharist, by and upon the consecration of them, do become and are made the body and blood of Christ. But we know also that, though they do not all explain themselves in the same way, yet they do all declare their sense to be very dissonant from the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Some of the most ancient doctors of the Church, as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, seem to have had this notion, that by or upon the sacerdotal benediction, the Spirit of Christ, or a divine virtue from Christ, descends upon the elements, and accompanies them to all worthy communicants, and that therefore they are said to be, and are the body and blood of Christ, the same divinity, which is hypostatically united to the body of Christ in heaven, being virtually united to the elements of bread and wine on earth. Which also seems to be the meaning of all the ancient liturgies, in which it is prayed, ‘that God would send down His Spirit upon the bread and wine in the Eucharist’. And this doubtless is the meaning of Origen in his eighth book against Celsus.… But that neither Justin Martyr, nor Irenaeus, nor Origen ever dreamed of the Transubstantiation of the elements is most evident. For Justin Martyr and Irenaeus do both of them plainly affirm that by eating and drinking the bread and wine in the Eucharist ‘our bodies are nourished,’ and that ‘the bread and wine are digested and turned into the substance of our bodies,’ which to affirm of the glorified body of Christ were impious and blasphemous, and to affirm the same of the mere accidents of the bread and wine would be very absurd and ridiculous. And Origen expressly saith that ‘what we eat in the Eucharist is bread, but bread sanctified and made holy by prayer, and which by the divine virtue that accompanies it sanctifieth all those who worthily receive it’.”

“Come we now to the principal part of the Christian worship, the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. How lamentably hath the Church of Rome vitiated the primitive institution of that most sacred rite! She hath taken from the laity the blessed cup, contrary to our blessed Saviour’s express command as expounded by the practice of the Apostles and of the Universal Church of Christ for the first ten centuries, as hath been above observed.… Besides, the whole administration of it is so clogged, so metaphorized and defaced by the addition of a multitude of ceremonies, and those some of them more becoming the stage than the Table of our Lord that, if the blessed Apostles were alive and present at the celebration of the Mass in the Roman Church, they would be amazed, and wonder what the meaning of it was; sure I am they would never own it to be that same ceremony which they left to the Churches. But the worst ceremony of all is the elevation of the host to be adored by the people as very Christ Himself under the appearance of bread, whole Christ, Θεάνθρωπος, God and Man, while they neglect the old sursum corda, the lifting up of their hearts to heaven, where whole Christ indeed is. A practice this is which nothing can excuse from the grossest idolatry but their gross stupidity, or rather infatuation, in thinking that a piece of bread can by any means whatsoever, or howsoever consecrated and blessed, become their very God and Saviour. A very sad excuse indeed. Moreover, by what reason, by what Scripture, by what example or practice of the primitive Churches, can the Romanists defend their carrying about the Holy Sacrament in procession, or the mockery of their solitary Masses?”

The life of Bishop William Beveridge was almost exactly contemporary with that of Bishop Bull. He was born in 1637, became a sizar of St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1653, took the degree of B.A. in 1656 and of M.A. in 1660, and was ordained deacon and priest in 1661. After holding the benefices of Ealing and of St. Peter’s, Cornhill, and being Archdeacon of Colchester, he was offered the Bishopric of Bath and Wells in 1691, when Bishop Ken had been deposed from that see. After hesitation and once accepting, he eventually declined it. In 1704 he was appointed Bishop of St. Asaph. In 1708 he died. His Eucharistic teaching is much the same as that of Bishop Bull, though he affirms that those who communicate worthily receive the body and blood of Christ, and lays stress on the realisation by faith that in the administration of the Communion the gifts are received from our Lord Himself. His opinions are shown in the following extracts:—

“Scripture and fathers holding forth so clearly that whosoever worthily receives the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper doth certainly partake of the body and blood of Christ, the devil thence took occasion to draw men into an opinion that the bread which is used in that Sacrament is the very body that was crucified on the cross, and the wine after consecration the very blood that gushed out of His pierced side.… The words ‘This is My body’ prove no more than that the bread was the sign or Sacrament of His body, not at all that it is really changed into His body.… The very words of institution themselves are sufficient to convince any rational man, whose reason is not darkened by prejudice, that that of which our Saviour said ‘This is My body’ was real bread, and so His body only in a figurative or sacramental sense; and by consequence that the bread was not turned into His body, but His body was only represented by the bread.… That which we eat at the Sacrament is bread, and not the very body of Christ; that which we drink, the cup or wine, and not the very blood of Christ.… It being so clear a truth that the bread and wine are not turned into the very body and blood of Christ in the Holy Sacrament, we need not heap up many arguments to prove that it is only after a spiritual, not after a corporal manner, that the body and blood of Christ are received and eaten in the Sacrament.… If the primitive Church was against the reservation, surely it was much more against the adoration of the Sacrament, holding … that no person or thing under any pretence whatsoever ought to be worshipped besides God. I know it is not bare bread our adversaries say they worship, but Christ in the bread, or the bread in the name of Christ. But I wish them to consider what Gregory Nyssen long ago said, ‘He that worshippeth a creature, though he do it in the name of Christ, is an idolator, giving the name of Christ to an idol’. And therefore let them not be angry at us for concluding them to be idolators, whilst they eat one piece of the bread, and worship the other.… Though godly and spiritual men may feed upon the body and blood of Christ out of the Sacrament as well as in it, yet wicked and carnal men miss of the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament as well as out of it.… The papists … agree, … avouching that in this Mass they offer up a true and perfect sacrifice to God, propitiatory for the sins of the people, even as Christ did when He offered up Himself to God as a propitiation for our sins. This, I say, is that which the Church of Rome confidently affirms, and which our Church in this article doth as confidently deny.… As this doctrine is contrary to Scripture, so is it repugnant to reason too, there being so vast a difference betwixt a Sacrament and a sacrifice; for in a Sacrament God offereth something to man, but in a sacrifice man offers something to God. What is offered in a sacrifice is wholly or in part destroyed, but what is offered in a Sacrament still remaineth. And there being so great a difference betwixt the one and the other, if it be a Sacrament it is not a sacrifice, and if it be a sacrifice it is not a Sacrament, it being impossible it should be both a Sacrament and a sacrifice too.… It is Transubstantiation that is the ground of this fond opinion, therefore do they say the body of Christ is really offered up to God, because the bread is first really turned into the body of Christ; but now it being proved before that the bread is bread still after as well as before consecration, and not the very body of Christ, though the bread be consecrated by man, the very body of Christ cannot be offered to God in the Sacrament; and therefore, if they will still call it a sacrifice, they must acknowledge it is such a sacrifice wherein there is nothing but bread and wine offered to God, and by consequence no propitiatory sacrifice; for, as we have seen, ‘without shedding of blood there is no remission,’ and in the breaking and pouring forth of bread and wine there is no shedding of blood, and not, therefore, any remission of sin.… We may see in what sense the ancients called the Eucharist a sacrifice, not as if it were a true or proper sacrifice itself, but only the commemoration or representation of that one and only true and proper sacrifice offered up by Christ Himself; and so all the sacrifices of Mass are at the best but dangerous deceits.”

“The outward part or sign in this Sacrament is only bread and wine, which the Lord commanded to be received, that is, to be received into our bodies.… But the inward part, or thing signified by that sign in the Lord’s Supper, is ‘the body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper’.… He [that is, our Lord] plainly signified that what He now gave them to eat and drink, He would have them look upon it and receive it, not as common bread and wine, but as His body and blood, the one as broken, the other as shed, for their sins. Which therefore are not in show and appearance but verily and indeed (according to the sense wherein the Lord instituting the Sacrament spoke those words) taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper; by the faithful, even by all such, and only such, as believe the Gospel, and what our Lord said, and accordingly receive what He now gives them with a true faith. Which being ‘the substance of things hoped for’ as well as ‘the evidence of things not seen,’ it causeth that which our Lord said, and what they therefore hope for and receive upon His word, to subsist really and effectually in them, to all intents and purposes to which the body and blood of Christ can possibly be communicated and received.… Though the thing signified in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper be the body and blood of Christ, yet it is not received, as the sign is, into our bodies only, but into our souls. It is the inward and spiritual part in the Sacrament, and therefore hath respect only to the inward and spiritual part of him that receives it.… Our souls are strengthened by the body and blood of Christ received by faith in this Sacrament, because by this means we have Christ Himself to dwell in our hearts by faith.”

“The Apostle doth not say that Christ’s death is repeated, or that He is offered up again every time this Sacrament is administered, but only that the Lord’s death is shown by it. And therefore, that this is not, as the papists absurdly imagine, a ‘propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead,’ but only ‘commemorative’ and ‘declarative’ of that one sacrifice which Christ once offered to be a propitiation for the sins of the whole world.… We do not eat the very body that hung upon the cross, nor drink the blood which was there spilt for us, but only in a sacramental sense, which quite overthrows the ‘doctrine of Transubstantiation’.… The elements are not transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ, as the papists absurdly imagine, but the substance of the bread and wine still continues the same; and therefore without faith no man can receive any more than plain, though consecrated, bread and wine. But they who have, and at the same time act, that faith which is the substance of things hoped for do by that verily and indeed receive the body and blood of Christ according to His word when He said ‘This is My body, and this is My blood’. This Christ said, and this they believe, and by their believing it have it verified to them. It is to them that body which was broken, and that blood which was shed, for their sins: they receive it as such upon Christ’s word, and accordingly partake of all the merits of it, whereby their sins are all as fully remitted to them as if they themselves had already undergone all the punishments which the law had threatened against them; for Christ having undergone them all in their stead, and He having now communicated that body and blood in which He did it unto them, and they having by faith accordingly received it, the law is now satisfied as to them, and can no more require that they should suffer the punishments which were due to their sins than it can require that Christ’s body and blood, which they have received, should be broken and shed again for them.… When we hear the words of consecration repeated as they came from our Lord’s own mouth, … we are then steadfastly to believe that, although the substance of the bread and wine still remain, yet now it is not common bread and wine as to its use, but the body and blood of Christ in that sacramental sense wherein He spake the words, insomuch that whosoever duly receives these His creatures of bread and wine according to Christ’s holy institution in remembrance of His death and passion are partakers of His most precious body and blood, as it is expressed in the prayer of consecration. When we see the minister distributing the sacramental bread and wine to the several communicants, we are then by faith to look upon our Lord as offering His blessed body and blood and all the benefits of His death to all that will receive them at His hands, entertaining ourselves all the while others are receiving with these or suchlike meditations: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world! Behold the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, who loved us and gave Himself for us, who Himself bare our sins in His own body on the tree, and washed us from them in His own blood!… Methinks I see Him yonder going about by His minister from one to another, and offering His most blessed body and blood with all the merits of His most precious death to all that will receive them faithfully.… Thus we may employ our thoughts while others are receiving; but when it comes to our turns to receive it, then we are to lay aside all thoughts of bread and wine and minister and everything else that is or can be seen, and fix our faith, as it is ‘the evidence of things not seen,’ wholly and solely upon our blessed Saviour as offering us His own body and blood, to preserve our bodies and souls to everlasting life, which we are therefore to receive by faith, as it is ‘the substance of things hoped for,’ steadfastly believing it to be, as our Saviour said, ‘His body and blood,’ ‘which,’ as our Church teacheth us, ‘are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper,’ by which means, whatsoever it is to others, it will be to us who receive it with such a faith the body and blood of Christ our Saviour, the very ‘substance of all things hoped for,’ upon the account of His body that was broken, and His blood that was shed, for us.… Our Church requires us to receive the Holy Sacrament kneeling, not out of any respect to the creatures of bread and wine, but to put us in mind that Almighty God, our Creator and Redeemer, the only object of all religious worship, is there specially present, offering His own body and blood to us, that so we may act our faith in Him, and express our sense of His goodness to us, and our unworthiness of it, in the most humble posture that we can.… How can I pray in faith to Almighty God to preserve both my body and soul to everlasting life, and not make my body as well as soul bow down before Him? How can I by faith behold my Saviour coming to me, and offering me His own body and blood, and not fall down and worship Him? How can I by faith lay hold upon the pardon of my sins, as there sealed and delivered to me, and receive it any otherwise than upon my knees?”

Similarly, in the Thesaurus Theologicus, a series of notes on passages of Holy Scripture composed by Bishop Beveridge for his own use and published in 1711, three years after his death, he rejects Transubstantiation, denies that what we receive is “the real body and blood of Christ,” affirms that those who receive worthily feed spiritually on the body and blood of Christ, and interprets the word “body” in the sentence “This is My body” to mean the figure or sign or Sacrament of the body.