V

The teaching of Dr. Pusey and others met with great opposition, much denunciation, and some carefully considered and formulated argument. Among the more important works which thus appeared was a treatise, published in 1856, entitled The Nature of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist, or the True Doctrine of the Real Presence Vindicated in Opposition to the Fictitious Real Presence asserted by Archdeacon Denison, Mr. (late Archdeacon) Wilberforce, and Dr. Pusey, written by Mr. William Goode, then Rector of St. Margaret Lothbury, afterwards Dean of Ripon. Mr. Goode discussed at length and with much care the teaching of the fathers and of the authoritative documents of the Church of England. He stated and defended his belief that in the Eucharist there is a real presence to the receiver, not to the elements; that in the case of those who communicate worthily this presence is connected with the reception of the elements; that the faithful communicant receives in his soul at the time of his Communion the body and blood of Christ; and that Christ Himself is spiritually present, as the host at a feast, giving His crucified body and shed blood to the souls of those who communicate worthily. There was no detailed treatment of the Eucharistic sacrifice, but Mr. Goode shortly observed that, since the presence is to the receiver, not to the elements, there can be no sacrifice in the sense affirmed by Archdeacon Wilberforce and others.

“The doctrine … maintained in the formularies of the Church of England and, speaking generally, by all her great divines … is that, though the act of consecration makes the bread and wine sacred symbols or Sacraments of the body and blood of Christ, in the participation of which by the faithful there is vouchsafed a real spiritual presence to the soul of the body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed received and spiritually eaten and drunk to the soul’s health, yet that the presence of the body and blood of Christ is not communicated to (though in the case of the faithful connected with the participation of) the bread and wine, and His body and blood are not given to, or partaken of by, the faithless. In short, it is a real presence to the receiver and not to the elements.”

“The direction that we are to eat and drink the consecrated elements ‘in remembrance of’ Christ is hardly reconcilable with the notion that there is a real bodily presence of Christ, though unseen, in the elements.… Our Lord’s bodily absence is also clearly indicated by the phrase that in the celebration of His Supper we are to show His death ‘till He come’. The bread and wine represent His body as dead, the body broken and the blood shed, and we are thus to represent His death ‘till He come,’ which words necessarily imply His bodily absence. And, further, the admonition that in this rite we are to exhibit the Lord’s death till He come leads us again to the remark that the bread and wine, as representing the crucified body and the shed blood, cannot have the actual presence of that body and blood united to them; for our Lord rose with a glorified body, a body numerically the same but in condition very different, and therefore we cannot now have that body that was crucified and that blood which was shed actually and substantially with us. But it was that body and that blood that made the atonement, and it is of that body that we are to eat, and of that blood that we are to drink. And they are given to us by God that we may eat and drink them. It is therefore altogether a spiritual transaction, one in which our spirits only can take part. The eating and drinking are by that faith which is, as it were, the mouth of the soul. And the body broken and the blood shed 1800 years ago are made present to our faith by God, and given to our souls that we may be nourished by them, for that ‘flesh is meat indeed, and that blood is drink indeed’. And by thus partaking of the body broken and the blood shed upon the cross we are brought to union and communion with that living, exalted, and glorified Saviour who now sitteth on the right hand of God. And, while He is thus eaten as crucified and dead, He is also present as living and glorified. For the glorified Saviour is present with us in the rite. His human nature is, in a spiritual sense, really present with us, though not bodily. As the sun, though bodily far away from us, is really present with us when we have the presence of his light and heat, so the human nature of Christ, though bodily far away from us, is enabled by that Spirit to which it is united to be present in power and influence throughout the earth, and thus to communicate to those who by a living faith are united to it, as the members of a body to the head, those spiritual energies and graces that dwell in it abundantly for communication to the members of His mystical body, the true Church. If any man ask, What is the meaning of the phrase that the crucified body and the shed blood of our Blessed Lord are given to our souls for their nourishment, I would ask him again whether the acts of faith have never obtained for him, when by faith eating and drinking that body and blood, nourishment and strength for the spiritual life of his soul, and whether this has not arisen from our Lord having set before him, as a host sets food before his guests, His own broken body and shed blood for his soul to feed upon.… To help our weak faith, we are assisted by sensible objects, suited to impress us with some idea of the nature and character of the spiritual blessings derived to us thereby, but which, alas! some of Christ’s ministers would fain boast, to their own glorification, that they turn into the things which they represent, so that they instead of God should be the dispensers of the heavenly gift.”

“The body of Christ is as truly present to the soul, and given to and received by the soul, when the soul is enabled to feed upon it by faith and is spiritually united to it and made partaker of its life-giving efficacy by the Holy Spirit, as meat is truly present to the body and given to it and received by it, when the body receives it into the mouth and stomach, and there derives from it, by a natural process, the virtue which it contains. To spiritual union and communion, and therefore real presence to our spirits, local separation, if it so please God, need cause no bar. The agency of the Holy Spirit can render it complete, whatever the distance may be.”

“There is to the faithful a real, though not substantial, presence of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper, and a true spiritual eating and drinking of His body and blood, not because the elements are made by consecration to include within themselves, either locally or superlocally or spiritually or supernaturally or in any other way which men may like to imagine, a real substantial presence of the body and blood of Christ, for then the wicked would be partakers of the same, but because the faithful in receiving the consecrated elements do, through faith on their part and a gracious gift on Christ’s part, become in a spiritual way partakers of the body and blood of Christ.”

“If the views maintained in the preceding pages are correct, it is evident that there can be no such sacrifice in the Eucharist as Archdeacon Wilberforce supposes, because there is no such bodily presence as is required for that purpose.… If there is any validity in the arguments of the preceding work, they overthrow the foundations on which it [that is, the doctrine of the sacrifice maintained by Archdeacon Wilberforce] rests, the actual presence of Christ’s body and blood in or under the elements.”

Another important book was published in 1871 by Dr. Thomas S. L. Vogan, Canon of Chichester, entitled The True Doctrine of the Eucharist, being an enlargement of a book published in 1849 with the title Nine Lectures on the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Dr. Vogan contended that the consecrated bread is the body of Christ, and the consecrated wine is His blood, by representation and in spiritual power and effect, but not in literal fact; that the body denoted is the dead, not the glorified, body of Christ; that there is no real presence either of the dead or of the glorified body; that the body and blood are not received by the wicked; that Christ is not to be adored as present in the elements; and that the Eucharist is not a sacrifice but a feast on a sacrifice.

“The letter [that is, in the words of institution] does not speak of the Lord’s body in any other condition than in that of ‘being given for us,’ or of His blood in any other condition than in that of being poured out for sin. The letter sets forth the Lord’s body as a sacrifice for sin; it sets forth His blood as poured out from His body for sin. It sets forth His body and His blood separated from each other; and, since blood is the life of the body, the body from which the blood is poured out has its life taken away, and is dead.… As the bread and the wine were distinct things, and were given separately from each other, so He gave His body and His blood separately from each other, and therefore it was His dead body which He gave.… The bread is the body of Christ, and the wine is the blood of Christ, in a way beyond the nature of earthly things. The bread and the wine are the body and blood of Christ so far as one thing can be another, the nature of each being unchanged. They are what He called, and by calling made, them to all the intents and purposes for which He so made them. The wine is His blood poured out, the bread is His body given, the life being taken from it, and the body therefore dead, but both in spiritual effect, not in positive and absolute reality.… The dead body of our Lord, and His blood shed, cannot be, and therefore are not, present either in the Eucharist or in its elements. The letter speaks only of the given body and the poured out blood. It says nothing of our Lord’s living body or of His glorified body. It says nothing, and implies nothing, of His soul or His Godhead.… The ancient fathers of the Church for many centuries and … the great divines of the Church of England … agree that it is the body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for us which we receive, and that it is His blood which was shed for us which we receive. They do not teach that it is the living glorified body of our Lord, His living glorified body present in the bread and wine, which we receive. But they teach us that by receiving His body given, and His blood shed for us, we are made one with Him, are united to His glorious body, dwell in Him, and have Him also dwelling in us.… The letter … shows that our Lord was not, and is not, present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and therefore it compels the conclusion that He is not to be adored as present in them.… The literal interpretation admits of no sacrifice to be offered by us, in fulfilling His words that we should do as He did, but that which is comprehended in the sacrifice of thanksgiving.… Since there is not, nor can be, any real presence of the body and blood of Christ in or with or under the elements or their form, no sacrifice can be offered of Him, or of His body and blood, in or with or under them, whether they remain in their proper natural substances or do not. The Eucharistic sacrifice, therefore, which is offered by us is not of Christ or of His body and blood or of His presence. The letter has nothing of any such oblation to be made by us. He only could, He only Himself did, offer that all-sufficient sacrifice. And, having made it, He now makes us not offerers but partakers of it. And we plead that sacrifice before the throne of God. We rely on it as all-sufficient and all-prevailing with the Father. We embrace its benefits, and render all the return we can make for it, in the oblation of ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable, holy, and acceptable sacrifice to God.”

“There is … no real presence of the glorified body of Christ in the Eucharist for the one sufficient reason that He neither gave nor promised to give His glorified body. And there is no real presence of His dead body in the Eucharist for the one sufficient reason that His dead body now is not, and therefore cannot be present. That which is not cannot have a real presence.”

“They who have not faith are not ‘verily and indeed’ partakers of the inward part, the inward and spiritual grace, of the Sacrament; they do not receive or partake of that body of Christ which the bread is not, or of that blood of Christ which the wine is not.”

“We feast upon the sacrifice which He once made, upon a past and not upon a present sacrifice; and we are therein worshippers of God, and have communion in its benefits.”

“When we come to commemorate and feast upon the sacrifice of Christ, we also must bring corresponding sacrifices.… We offer ‘the sacrifice of God, a troubled spirit’.… Secondly, we offer the sacrifice of faith.… Thirdly, we make the sacrifice of thanksgiving.… Fourthly, … there is the offering up of ourselves to God.… Fifthly, we offer up all that we have, to hold it in God’s service, to use it to His glory.… Sixthly, we offer up the sacrifice of prayers, intercessions, and thanks for all men.… To these spiritual sacrifices we may add material oblations of our substance, for the house and service of God, for the sustentation of His ministers, for the succour of our fellow Christians, and for other ‘pious and charitable uses’.… The spiritual sacrifices are the true Eucharistic sacrifice. They are comprehended in the whole service of the Eucharist, which, therefore, in this sense is to be called and is a sacrifice. It is a thankful commemoration of the death of Christ, in which, by the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the wine, we declare our faith to God that the body of Christ was broken and His blood was shed, and by eating and drinking the symbols of His body and blood we declare also our faith that His body was given and His blood was shed for us. And we cannot doubt, but must be most certainly assured, that with this sacrifice of faith and thanksgiving God is well pleased. But as for a sacrifice of the bread and wine in that service, after all that can be said, it is not an actual, and therefore if a sacrifice it must be merely an imaginary sacrifice.”

In 1871 Dr. John Harrison, then Vicar of Fenwick, published An Answer to Dr. Pusey’s Challenge Respecting the Doctrine of the Real Presence, in which the Doctrines of the Lord’s Supper, as held by Him, Roman and Greek Catholics, Ritualists, and High Anglo-Catholics, are Examined and Shown to be Contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and to the Teaching of the Fathers of the First Eight Centuries, with the Testimony of an Ample Catena Patrum of the same Period. This elaborate work was wholly devoted to the examination and discussion of evidence, and to controversial handling of the inferences from evidence which had been drawn by Dr. Pusey and others. It did not contain any positive construction of Dr. Harrison’s own position. But the whole character of the book and the treatment adopted in it show clearly that the author regarded the consecrated elements as nothing more than memorials and representatives of the crucified body and the shed blood of Christ, and held that the faithful recipients by means of their faith using the picture thus presented to their minds were enabled to enter into a spiritual union with Christ at the time of their Communion.

A book of considerable learning and ability, though unfortunately greatly marred by want of accuracy, was published in 1879 by Dr. Charles Hebert, formerly Vicar of Ambleside, with the title The Lord’s Supper: Uninspired Teaching. Notwithstanding many deficiencies, it contained a very valuable collection of passages bearing on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Dr. Hebert’s own opinions are stated incidentally only. He maintained that the Eucharist is a means of the mental and spiritual realisation of the thought of Christ’s body and blood, and that even the faithful communicants do not receive the body and blood at their Communion. Thus, he writes:—

“The body and blood of Christ are now in heaven, and not here, except in thought. I can grasp no more than that the thought of the body and blood of Christ given and shed is in my mind, and moves my heart to gratitude and love, and in calling upon God in such deeply affecting meditations I receive all blessing and grace to enable me to feel my union with Him and with all His people in every age, and to supply me with power to overcome sin and to act after His pattern till He comes to earth again or I go to Him. The more I read and the more I meditate on the subject, and the longer my experience of this present earthly conflict continues, the more do I find this view fill the whole horizon.”

“I am once more obliged openly to confess that I cannot reconcile one answer in our Catechism with the rubric on kneeling and the rest of our Church’s utterance both in her services and her articles.”

A shorter and less important book than any of the four works last mentioned was published in 1885 by Mr. Frederick Meyrick, who was Rector of Blickling and Non-residentiary Canon of Lincoln, under the title The Doctrine of the Church of England on the Holy Communion Restated as a Guide at the Present Time, to which a preface was contributed by Dr. Edward Harold Browne, the Bishop of Winchester. There are features of Mr. Meyrick’s treatment of evidence which lessen the value of his book; but his clear summary of the doctrine which he held may be cited as a good instance of the teaching of those who, while rejecting the theology of the Oxford Movement, affirmed that the Eucharist is in some sense a sacrifice, and that it is a means whereby the soul may feed spiritually on Christ.

“The Holy Communion is a remembrance, a sacrifice, a means of feeding, a means of incorporation, a pledge.

“It is a remembrance in so far as its object is to recall to the minds of Christians the love of Christ as exhibited in the sacrifice of His death; in so far as it commemorates by an outward act that divine sacrifice; and in so far as it is a memorial of Christ and His death before man and before God.

“It is a sacrifice inasmuch as it is an offering made to God as an act of religious worship—a spiritual sacrifice, as being a sacrifice of prayer and praise to God for the benefits received by the sacrifice of the death of Christ; a material sacrifice, in so far as the bread and wine are regarded as gifts of homage to God in acknowledgment of His creative and sustaining power; a commemorative sacrifice, inasmuch as it commemorates the great sacrifice of the cross—the words ‘commemorative sacrifice’ meaning in this acceptation a commemoration of the sacrifice. But it is not a sacrifice of Christ to His Father, whereby God is propitiated and man’s sins expiated.

“It is a means of feeding upon Christ; but this feeding is not effected by the elements to be eaten being changed into Christ.… Nor is our feeding on Christ effected by our eating His material body together with the bread and wine.… But it is effected by the spiritual presence of Christ, and the benefits of the blood-shedding on the cross being conveyed to the soul of the humble recipient qualified by faith and love towards God and man.

“It is a means of incorporation, inasmuch as by it we are more and more made part of the mystical body of Christ, and united with its other members.

“It is a pledge inasmuch as it serves to the humble Christian as a symbolical assurance of God’s past forgiveness, and of His present favour towards Him, and of a future inheritance graciously reserved for him.”

There are clear statements in the undated book A Sacrament of Our Redemption, and the manual The Catholic Faith published in 1905, both by Dr. W. H. Griffith Thomas, the Principal of Wycliffe Hall. Dr. Thomas holds that the change effected by the consecration is a change only of use and purpose; that faithful communicants receive grace directly from Christ and feed upon Him in their hearts; and that the Eucharist is not a sacrifice but the commemoration of a sacrifice. The following quotations from the latter of these two books illustrate the teaching contained in them both:—

“Our faith looks back on Calvary as the bread is broken and the wine poured out; our love looks up to the throne and holds fellowship and sweet communion as we appropriate to ourselves the spiritual benefits of our Lord’s redemption; our hope looks forward to the day of our Master’s coming as we in union with our fellow-Christians ‘do this in remembrance of’ Him ‘until the day dawn and the shadows flee away’. Thus the whole of our Christian life and experience may be said to be summed up, symbolised, and expressed in the Supper of the Lord. The three great truths of union, communion, and reunion are all found here, and past, present, and future are all beautifully included and summed up in this holy ordinance. We remember our Lord, we appropriate Him, we confess Him, and we expect Him. The Lord’s Supper appeals to every part of our nature, to our intellect, to our imagination, to our heart, to our conscience, to our soul, to our will, to our life, to our social instincts, and to our steadfast hope. Truly, then, it is a means of grace. Our souls are undoubtedly strengthened with the power and grace of God, and refreshed by the joy and peace and hope of the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour.… Our Church always clearly distinguishes between the outward and the inward parts of the Lord’s Supper, otherwise it could not possibly be a Sacrament according to the definition of the Catechism and the Article. This distinction is plainly seen in the language of the Catechism already quoted, and it is as evidently brought before us in Article xxviii. In the Holy Communion Service we are said to receive ‘these Thy creatures of bread and wine,’ and we pray to be made ‘partakers of His most blessed body and blood’. The words of administration said to the communicant make the same clear distinction. First, the minister speaks of ‘the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee,’ and ‘the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee,’ clearly referring to the sacrifice of our Lord, the inward part or thing signified in the Holy Communion. Then He says, ‘Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee’; ‘Drink this in remembrance of Christ’s blood that was shed for thee’. This clear distinction between the outward and the inward is maintained from first to last in our Communion Service. The prayer of consecration which immediately precedes the reception of the Holy Communion teaches the same truth. The bread and wine are then set apart or consecrated for the special purpose of being symbols, pledges, and seals of the grace of God in Christ. Consecration involves no change in the substance of the bread and wine, only a change of use and purpose, the ordinary bread and wine being thus separated from common use for the purpose already indicated. There are thus two givers in the Holy Communion; the minister gives the elements which are received into the body, the Lord gives direct from heaven His own grace and power, ‘the body and blood of Christ,’ and these are received into the soul. These two gifts are never to be identified or confused. The minister cannot possibly give the body and blood of Christ, for this is a spiritual act which the Lord Jesus Christ has never delegated, and cannot delegate, to any human being. In the case of worthy receivers, the reception of the wine and bread into the body, and the grace of our Lord into the soul, are always parallel and concurrent, but never identical. Our faith must, therefore, be ever occupied with the Lord Jesus Christ; the visible sign of bread and wine has annexed to it the promise of grace and blessing, and, if only our faith looks up to Christ on the throne and feeds upon Him in our hearts, blessing always comes. We can see this truth still more plainly set before us in Article xxix.… Faith remembers Calvary and finds peace with God. Faith rests on Him who once died and who now lives for ever. Faith receives the gift of the Holy Spirit as the indwelling divine fount of holiness. Faith realises our fellowship with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Faith rejoices in our Lord Jesus Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King; and the language of the adoring, trusting, grateful soul is ‘O my God, Thou art true! O my soul, thou art happy!’ ”

“The only sacrifices other than that of Calvary known to our Church formularies are the sacrifices of ourselves, our substance and our praises.… Strictly and accurately, the Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice, but a Sacrament. It has sacrificial aspects and relations because it is so closely associated in thought and purpose with the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and because it is the standing testimony to the world and to ourselves of our constant need of and perpetual dependence on that sacrifice in all our near approach to God. But the ordinance in itself and alone cannot with accuracy be called a sacrifice. It is a Sacrament of a sacrifice, ‘the Sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death’.… It is a feast on that sacrifice. The essential difference between a sacrifice and a Sacrament is that in the former God is the Receiver (or the terminus ad quem), while in the latter God is the Giver (or the terminus a quo). In a sacrifice we give, we yield up; in a Sacrament we receive, we appropriate.… The ideas of a sacrifice and a Sacrament are so distinct and different that the Lord’s Supper, unless Scripture warrants it, cannot be both at the same time. The passover was both sacrificial and sacramental; but the proper antitype to that is not the Lord’s Supper, but the Lord Himself, who is at once our sacrifice and our feast.… The Lord’s Supper is not strictly and fully the antitype of the passover; it is the rite of our life and worship which is analogous to it in the sacramental but not in the sacrificial aspect.… The Lord’s Supper is not a commemorative sacrifice; it is the commemoration of a sacrifice; and, if the words Eucharistic sacrifice mean some sacrifice which is offered only at and in the Lord’s Supper, then we assert that no such idea occurs in Bible or Prayer Book. The cardinal error of the Church of Rome and those who think with her on this subject is that the Sacraments ‘contain’ grace, that by the consecration the elements contain the grace they signify, and that by the reception of the elements grace is conveyed in them.… The whole position is un-Scriptural, un-Anglican, un-historical, unreal, untrue. It ministers to superstition, tends to materialism, and is perilous to the soul in relation to God and Christ.”

A clear statement of the positive side of the doctrine held by many who reject the teaching associated with the Oxford Movement occurred in a Charge delivered in 1906 by Dr. Edmund Arbuthnott Knox, the Bishop of Manchester.

“The true keynote to the service seems to be that of union with the living Christ by the spiritual and faithful partaking of His body and His blood. Such a reception, and such union, has no meaning apart from the idea of sacrifice. Nor is the thought of sacrifice obliterated, rather is it strengthened, by the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ, by His death upon the cross, made there a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. That solemn truth we neither wish nor dare to question. But for the partaker the conception is that by the act of consuming he becomes one with the Victim, its death is his death, its life-blood is his life. In this sense, and in this only, is it true that the sacrifice offered once for all, and once for all accepted, yet remains for us an ever-continued life-giving sacrificial feast. We are partakers of the sacrifice that was offered upon the cross, partakers not merely by an effort of memory, or by an effort of imagination, but by an act of faith. The Lamb of God is, spiritually but really, the food of which we are partakers in that heavenly banquet; and the Sacrament, with its signs, is the means whereby we are thus fed. The sacrifice has been offered and accepted; but the sacrificial feast, which is part of the sacrifice, must continue and be carried on into the marriage supper of the Lamb.”