III

An illustration of Eucharistic belief on the part of those whose Churchmanship was of a different kind from that of Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey may be seen in a volume of lectures entitled The Doctrine of the Church of England, as contrasted with that of the Church of Rome. The lectures contained in the volume were delivered in Manchester in 1839 and 1840; they are bitterly hostile to, and denunciatory of, the Church of Rome; their general standpoint is that of “Low Churchmen”; the first and last of the series are by the famous “Evangelical” leader Mr. Hugh Stowell. In the lecture on The Sacrifice of the Mass, there is a violent repudiation of Transubstantiation and of the statements of the Council of Trent in regard to the sacrifice of the Mass; and the lecturer does not suggest that the Eucharist is in any sense a sacrifice, or that the consecrated bread and wine are more, or convey more, than a “representation” of the body and blood of Christ. The lecturer on The Lord’s Supper joins to his emphatic and indignant reprobation of the doctrine of the Church of Rome, as he understood it, a no less emphatic assertion of what he calls “the Catholic doctrine of the real presence of the Saviour,” the doctrine, that is, that “Christ is really present to the true believer,” that the “faithful” “receive verily and indeed, in truth and in fact,” “after a spiritual manner,” “the body and blood of Christ”.