XI

It is probable that the Eucharistic doctrine of the Scottish theologians of the eighteenth century, who were chiefly responsible for the Communion Office of 1764, greatly resembled that of the Nonjuring divines. The revision of 1764 was perhaps chiefly due to the effect of the influence of Bishop Thomas Rattray, who became Bishop of Dunkeld in 1727, whose work The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, with an appendix An Office for the Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, being the Ancient Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, was published in 1744 after the death of its author. His opinions may be seen in his book Some Particular Instructions Concerning the Christian Covenant, which was published posthumously in 1748. His Eucharistic doctrine was that the Eucharist is a sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ in the sense that the elements are made to be the “symbols” and “antitypes” of the body and blood at the recital of the institution, are then offered to God the Father in the oblation as the representatives of the body and blood, and have “the virtue and power and efficacy” of the body and blood communicated to them at the invocation of the Holy Ghost; he also speaks of the elements after the invocation of the Holy Ghost as being “verily and indeed” Christ’s “body and blood,” and made “one with” Christ’s body. Like Bishop Seabury, he held that our Lord “did” “offer up Himself a free and voluntary sacrifice” at the institution of the Eucharist, that “this sacrifice of Himself was immediately after slain on the cross,” that He “entered into heaven” “to present this His sacrifice to God the Father and in virtue of it to make continual intercession for the Church”. He writes:—

“It is by the virtue of these words spoken by Christ [that is, the words of institution] that the following prayer of the priest is made effectual for procuring the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them whereby they become the spiritual and life-giving body and blood.… As Christ offered up His body and blood to God the Father under the symbols of bread and wine as a sacrifice to be slain on the cross for our redemption, so here the priest offereth up this bread and cup as the symbols of this sacrifice of His body and blood thus once offered up by Him, and thereby commemorateth it before God with thanksgiving; after which He prays that God would favourably accept this commemorative sacrifice by sending down upon it His Holy Spirit, that by His descent upon them He may make this bread and this cup (already so far consecrated [that is, by the recital of the words of institution] as to be the symbols or antitypes of the body and blood of Christ and offered up as such [that is, in the oblation]) to be verily and indeed His body and blood, the same divine Spirit by which the body of Christ was formed in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, and which is still united to it in heaven, descending on and being united to these elements, and invigorating them with the virtue, power, and efficacy thereof, and making them one with it. Then the priest maketh intercession in virtue of this sacrifice thus offered up in commemoration of, and union with, the one great personal sacrifice of Christ, for the whole Catholic Church, and pleadeth the merits of this one sacrifice in behalf of all estates and conditions of men in it, offering this memorial thereof not for the living only but for the dead also.”

A document entitled A Catechism Dealing Chiefly with the Holy Eucharist dated “Leith, February 25th, 1737–8,” which exists in a manuscript in the Library of the Theological College at Edinburgh, has the interest and importance of being the work of Robert Forbes, who was born in 1708, became Bishop of Ross and Caithness in 1769, and died in 1775, to whom, as mentioned above, together with Bishop Falconar, the compilation of the Scottish Communion Office of 1764 is due. The doctrine taught in this Catechism is that the consecrated bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ in power and virtue and effect. The most important parts are the following:—

“Q. What is the end and design of its institution?

“A. To keep up a constant lively remembrance in our minds of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby, which only can be done by frequent communicating.

“Q. What does the breaking of the bread represent?

“A. The breaking or piercing of the body of Christ.

“Q. What does the pouring out of the wine represent?

“A. The shedding of the most precious blood of Christ.

“Q. Is this Sacrament only a bare remembrance or memorial of Christ’s death and sufferings?

“A. No, it is more than that; for by receiving of it we solemnly renew our baptismal vow; and, if we partake worthily, we therein have the pardon of our former sins sealed unto us, and we receive new supplies of the grace of God to repair those breaches the enemies of our salvation have made, and to assist us to perform our duty for the time to come.”

“Q. Are not Christians to believe the consecrated bread in the Holy Eucharist to be the body of Christ, and the consecrated wine to be the blood of Christ?

“A. Yes, certainly they are; because our Saviour Himself in His institution of this most holy Sacrament has expressly declared the bread to be His body and the wine to be His blood.…

“Q. In what sense are we to believe this mysterious doctrine?

“A. Though we cannot believe that the bread and wine are the very natural and substantial body and blood of Christ that were upon the cross, yet we are to believe them to be so in a spiritual manner, that is to say, that the consecrated bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ in power, virtue, and effect.

“Q. By what power is this wonderful change made upon these weak elements of bread and wine?

“A.’ Tis certain (as I have already said) from the words of institution that Christ did make the elements to be His body and blood; for He expressly tells us they are so; but no power inferior to His own could make them so. As therefore the Holy Ghost is His divine Substitute upon earth, by which He is present with His Church unto the end of the world, so whatever operations He now performs in His Church are wrought by that divine Spirit. Therefore, that the bread and wine may become His body and blood, though not in substance, yet in power, virtue, and effect, it is necessary that this Holy Spirit should bless and sanctify them, and work in them and with them.… The bread and wine are the body and blood, not in themselves considered, nor merely by their resembling or representing the sacred body and blood of the adorable Jesus, but by the invisible power and operation of the Holy Ghost, by which the sacramental bread and wine, in the act of consecration, are made as powerful and as effectual for the ends of religion as the natural body and blood themselves could be, if they were present before our eyes.

“Q. Are there any similitudes in Scripture from the consideration of which this interpretation of our Saviour’s words can receive any light?

“A. There are several similitudes to be found there which might be condescended upon to clear up this point; but there is one in particular so much to the purpose that I shall pitch upon it without mentioning any of the rest; and it is this. St. John the Baptist is by our Saviour … called the prophet Elias, who had flourished so many hundred years before his time, for this could not readily be believed, seeing the time and place of St. John the Baptist’s birth were so well known. But the reason assigned why he is called Elias is this, namely, Because he came in the spirit and power of Elias. … Even so, in the Holy Eucharist the consecrated bread and wine are called by Christians, and believed to be, the body and blood of Christ according to His own positive declaration because attended with the same power, virtue, and effect for the ends of religion that His natural body and blood could be, were they existing with us.”

Like teaching is expressed by Dr. Alexander Jolly, who became Bishop of Moray in 1796 and died in 1838, in his book entitled The Christian Sacrifice in the Eucharist Considered as it is the Doctrine of Holy Scripture, Embraced by the Universal Church of the First and Purest Times, by the Church of England, and by the Episcopal Church in Scotland. Bishop Jolly there maintains, in opposition to the doctrine of Transubstantiation and to the view that the Eucharist is a merely figurative rite, that by the recital of the words of institution the bread and wine are made the representative body and blood of Christ, that as such they are presented to God the Father in sacrifice, and that at the invocation of the Holy Ghost as placed in the ancient liturgies and in the Scottish Communion Office they are made the virtual life-giving body and blood of Christ, the body and blood of Christ in power and virtue and efficacy. He maintains also that Christ offered Himself in sacrifice at the institution of the Eucharist, and not on the cross, where He was simply the passive Victim.

“If we examine the whole sacred history of His life and death, we shall nowhere find this act [that is, the oblation of Himself] performed by Him but at His Last Supper, when He made this oblation, or gave Himself to suffer and die, under the symbols or substitutes of bread and wine. We cannot without shuddering horror think that He would lay violent hands on Himself, wound or break His own body, or shed out His own blood; and therefore He did—under representatives of His own appointment, authoritative figures of His body and blood, sure pledges of the real substance—give His body to be broken, and His blood to be shed by the hands of His crucifiers. And, in order to show, of His transcendent love to lost mankind, that His death in their stead, to redeem them from death, was voluntary, and entirely of His own free will, He made the oblation of Himself while to the eye of the world He was perfectly at liberty.… That this sacrificed passover might be eaten as a feast to His household the Church ever after, He performed the oblation of it in bread and wine, which He made His virtual flesh and blood.… The sacrifice was first offered, and then it was slain, as our Redeemer, the true and only meritorious sacrifice in reality, was once offered to bear our sins, offered by His own voluntary oblation of Himself in the institution of the Eucharist, that He might passively bear our sins in His own body on the tree of the cross.”

“Making the voluntary oblation or sacrifice of Himself under the symbols of bread and wine, and calling them, and in effect making them, His body and blood, broken and shed, while His natural substantial body, with His blood in His veins, unbroken and unshed, stood divinely ministering, and as yet untouched by any hostile hand.”

“Our divine adorable Redeemer did of His own free will with love unspeakable give Himself for us under substituted symbols or representations, giving way and yielding Himself to the actual performance of the mactation or slaying of the sacrifice. In virtue of what He then did, and had given Himself up to suffer in His bitter agony and bloody death, He devoutly said in that most solemn prayer in the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel—the prayer for the whole state and perfect unity of His Church, as it may well be called—which followed the oblation of Himself, ‘I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.’ His part, by His thus willingly offering Himself to suffer and die, He had then finished. The remaining part was the bloody and malicious work of men and devils.”

“In the history of this divine institution, then, we clearly trace these three things which our Saviour did: 1. He took bread, and the cup of the Jewish paschal supper, and set them apart, separated or consecrated them so far as to be the representative figures, symbols, or substitutes of His body and blood. 2. He offered them in sacrifice to God, and thereby, or by these pledges, voluntarily gave or offered to God His body and blood as a sacrifice to be slain upon the cross for the sins of the whole world. 3. He blessed them that they might become His body and blood, not in bare figure or representation only, as they were made by His separation of them before, but in efficacy, power, and life-giving virtue. And as such He gave them with those words of delivery, which are the ground of our faith and hope, ‘This is My body, which is given for you’; ‘This is My blood, which is shed for you’.”

“The rehearsal of these words [that is, the words of institution], declaring the original institution, makes the first part of the consecration. The bread and wine are thereby separated and set apart from all common use, and raised to value beyond all the bread and wine in the universe, being by Christ’s institution and authority made the figures and symbols of His body and blood who, of His wondrous love and desire for our salvation, offered Himself a sacrifice for our redemption under such tokens or substitutes, and commanded that we should by the apostolic priesthood plead the merits of His death under these representations to the end of the world. This most ancient Liturgy [that is, the Clementine] goes on accordingly to offer the Christian sacrifice of bread and wine—not as bread and wine, but as the representative body and blood of Christ—in the following words, ‘Wherefore, having in remembrance His passion.…’ These are the oblatory words, by which the Eucharistic sacrifice is actually offered and presented to the Father as the memorial of the infinitely meritorious passion and death of His Son, in whom He is ever well pleased, and for His sake looks propitiously upon us. This then is the second step or degree of the consecration, by which the elements are still farther sanctified as being presented and given to God and made His in a special manner, the image of His Son, as the Council of Constantinople (assembled in the year 754 to repress image-worship) called the bread and cup of the Eucharist. And the office accordingly proceeds to beg His acceptance of them, and divine blessing upon them, thereby imparting to them the highest degree of consecration.… A prayer to this purpose [that is, the invocation of the Holy Ghost] and in this place we find in all the ancient liturgies, and we instantly see the piety and propriety of it. For surely that bread and wine, which have no natural virtue to that purpose, may be the means of conveying such inestimable blessings, they must have a supernatural virtue communicated to them by the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier, the Author of all benediction and grace.”

“By the almighty power and grace of this Spirit these elements without any change of their substance become the body and blood of Christ in spirit and power, in divine virtue and life-giving efficacy, to all intents and purposes of grace and glory.”

“Communion consists in giving and receiving; and this representative sacrifice of the Eucharist, accordingly, is, first, by Christ’s commissioned servant the priest offered or given to God as the mysterious body and blood of His Son, in whom He is ever well pleased, and then again given by God to us, the same bread and wine that were offered to Him, without any change of substance, but highly enriched and consecrated by the Holy Spirit, the Author of all consecration, and thus made Christ’s body and blood in virtue, power, and efficacy, conveying to the well-disposed receiver all the benefits purchased by the sacrifice of His death, pardon of sins, increase of grace, and pledge of eternal glory, upon the condition of repentance, faith, and future obedience.”

An instance of teaching which thus appears to have been traditional among some Scottish Churchmen is in The Christian Sacrifice in the Eucharist, or the Communion Office of the Church of Scotland Conformable to Scripture and to the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Christ in the First Four Centuries, an unfinished work by Mr. George Hay Forbes, the first part of which was published in 1844, the second in 1851, and the third in 1854. The doctrine affirmed by Mr. Forbes is that by the recital of the institution the bread and wine are made pledges and representatives of the crucified body and shed blood of Christ; that they are then offered as a memorial and sacrifice; and that they are made the body and blood of Christ in energy and spirit and power and efficacy and by some unique and incomprehensible change at the invocation of the Holy Ghost.

“The Catholic doctrine … is that the bread and mixed wine are solemnly devoted to God’s service, and offered as a thank-offering to Him for having bestowed upon us the fruits of the earth, by being placed upon His altar by a priest, with or without a verbal oblation, the want of which is supplied by the significant action.… By the recital of the institution our commission to celebrate this mystery is declared; and by the words used by our Lord at the delivery of the gifts the bread and mixed wine are deputed to be, and are made, the pledges and representatives of Christ’s natural body crucified and dead, and of His blood shed for us; as such they are straightway, in accordance with Christ’s command, which had just before been recited, offered or given to God as a memorial of our Lord’s own oblation of Himself, with a thankful commemoration of what He did and suffered, and thus become truly a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. God the Father is then besought to accept the sacrifice, and to send down upon the gifts the co-eternal Comforter, the Source and Fountain of all sanctification, by whom the body of Christ was formed in the womb of the ever-blessed Virgin, that He may perfectly sanctify and hallow them, and make the bread the body of Christ, and the mixed wine His blood, not only in symbol, type, and figure, but also in quickening energy, in spirit and power and efficacy, nay more, in such wise as no other thing in the whole creation, retaining its own proper substance and nature, can become another thing, and the precise mode and manner of which change is far above the comprehension, not only of men, but of angels also.”

In the middle of the nineteenth century the controversies which were going on in England were not unknown in Scotland; and they became acute in 1857. In that year Dr. Alexander Penrose Forbes, who had been appointed Bishop of Brechin in 1847, delivered his Primary Charge. In this Charge Bishop Forbes maintained that “the bread of the Eucharist is the flesh of the incarnate Jesus”; rejected Transubstantiation as involving “the terminology of a philosophy which may be wrong,” and, though “capable of an innocent interpretation,” yet tending “to promote a very material view” “as if a physical change took place in the consecration,” and not allowing for the testimony of the fathers concerning the continued existence of the outward part of the Sacrament; rejected also “the rationalistic theory of the real presence which makes it one of power and efficacy only,” albeit “the later Nonjurors and some of the ornaments of our own Church have used language which seems to advocate this imperfect view”; affirmed that “in some sense the wicked do receive Christ” at their Communion “to their condemnation and loss”; affirmed that “supreme adoration is due to the body and blood of Christ mysteriously present in the gifts which yet retain their own substance,” and that “worship is due not to the gifts but to Christ in the gifts”; and declared that “the Eucharistic sacrifice is the same substantially with that of the cross”. The Bishop strongly defended the use of the Scottish Office, though saying:—

“My own attachment to this Office is not a bigoted one. I have no sympathy with those few earnest men who scruple to use the English Office, nor with those who look upon the question as a national one. I use the English Office constantly myself; I believe its consecration is valid, and in validity there can be no question of degree. As it stands at present, I regard it as a sad mutilation of the first Office of the Reformers, as an Eucharistic service ‘more marred than any,’ but still, thanks be to God, preserving all the essentials of a true Sacrament.”

A protest against the teaching contained in the Charge of Bishop Forbes was issued by Bishop Terrot of Edinburgh, Bishop Ewing of Argyll, and Bishop Trower of Glasgow; and in 1858, after a synod held at Edinburgh, a Pastoral Letter signed by those three bishops and by Bishop Eden of Moray and Ross, Bishop Wordsworth of St. Andrews, and Bishop Suther of Aberdeen, that is, all the Scottish Bishops except Bishop Forbes, was addressed to “all faithful members of the Church in Scotland”. Parts of the Pastoral commented in severe terms on the Charge of Bishop Forbes; it contained the following instructions to the clergy:—

“1. Instructed by Scripture and the formularies of the Church, you will continue to teach that the consecrated elements of bread and wine become in a mystery the body and blood of Christ, for purposes of grace to all who receive them worthily, and for condemnation to those who receive the same unworthily. But you will not, we trust, attempt to define more nearly the mode of this mysterious presence. You will remember that, as our Church has repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation, so she has given us no authority whereby we can require it to be believed that the substance of Christ’s body and blood, still less His entire Person as God and Man, now glorified in the heavens, is made to exist with, in, or under the material substances of bread and wine.

“2. You will continue to teach that this sacrifice of the altar is to be regarded no otherwise than as the means whereby we represent, commemorate, and plead, with praise and thanksgiving, before God the unspeakable merits of the precious death of Christ, and whereby He communicates and applies to our souls all the benefits of that one full and all-sufficient sacrifice once made upon the cross.

“3. You will continue to teach that the consecrated elements, being the Communion of the body and blood of Christ, are to be received with lowly veneration and devout thankfulness. And inasmuch as doubts have been raised with regard to the true interpretation of the rubric affixed to the Communion Office in the Book of Common Prayer, we desire to remind you of a canon which was passed by the Convocations of both provinces of the Church of England in 1640, and which we are satisfied to accept meanwhile for our own guidance in determining the sense of the aforesaid rubric, the matter not having been ruled by a general synod of our own Church. According to that canon, it was resolved that gestures of adoration in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist are to be performed ‘not upon any opinion of a corporal presence of the body of Jesus Christ on the Holy Table, or in mystical elements, but only for the advancement of God’s majesty, and to give Him alone that honour and glory that is due to Him, and no otherwise’.”

In 1859 Bishop Forbes was formally presented to the Episcopal College of the Scottish Church for teaching

“doctrines contrary and repugnant to, unsanctioned by, and subversive of certain of the said Articles of Religion, and by consequence contrary and repugnant also to the word of God; and also contrary and repugnant to, unsanctioned by, and subversive of certain parts of the said formularies for public worship in use in the said Episcopal Church in Scotland contained as aforesaid in the said Book of Common Prayer, and also contrary and repugnant to, unsanctioned by, and subversive of the said Scotch Communion Office”;

and, in particular, for his teaching in regard to the Eucharistic sacrifice, Eucharistic adoration, and the reception by the wicked. At the trial in 1860, Bishop Forbes put in an elaborate Theological Defence, in which he maintained at length the consistency of his beliefs with the teaching of the fathers, and with Anglican writings and formularies. The judgment of the court, which was delivered on 15th March, 1860, was to the effect that the teaching of Bishop Forbes in regard to the Eucharistic sacrifice and to Eucharistic adoration was “unsanctioned by the Articles and formularies of the Church” and “to a certain extent inconsistent therewith”; that the third charge relating to the reception by the wicked was “not proven”; and that the duty of the College of Bishops would be best discharged by limiting their sentence on Bishop Forbes to “a declaration of censure and admonition”. In his work entitled An Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles, the first edition of which was published in 1867, Bishop Forbes gave fresh expression to the doctrines which he had maintained in his Primary Charge and Theological Defence; and, to illustrate his position, it may be well to quote some passages from this book on the Eucharistic presence and sacrifice:—

“The word κοινωνία everywhere in Holy Scripture means an actual participation or communion of that which is spoken of. The Scripture word κοινωνία, as applied to the body and blood of Christ, means not only that we receive that body and blood, but that we become one body and blood with Him.… This patristic explanation of the word κοινωνία disposes of the formula whereby Calvin endeavoured to steer a middle course between the Lutheran teaching on the one hand, and that of Zwingli and Oecolampadius on the other. He taught that the body of Christ is truly present in the Lord’s Supper, and that the believer partakes of it; but he only meant that simultaneously with the bodily participation of the material elements, which in every respect remained what they were, and merely signified the body and the blood, a power emanating from the body of Christ, which is now in heaven only, is communicated to the spirit. Framed originally under the pressure of the confusions among the Reformed, this middle opinion made its way among them, and included many of the Lutherans themselves, as its advocates employed without hesitation the expression that Christ is really present in the Eucharist, and His body and blood given to believers for participation. In England, in consequence of the great authority of Richard Hooker, who, in the gradual process of working himself out of Puritanism, had on this mysterious doctrine attained to Catholic feeling, while he adhered to Calvinistic definition, this view has obtained to an extent remarkable in view of its intrinsic inanity.… The word κοινωνία disposes also of what has been termed the theory of virtualism or equivalence. … It is not said in the Article that we are partakers of Christ, or of a grace from Christ, but the bread which we break, that is, the bread which has been blessed and consecrated by our Lord’s words, ‘This is My body,’ through the operation of the Holy Ghost is the communion or participation of the body of Christ; and the cup of blessing, that is, the cup blessed by the words, ‘This is My blood,’ is the partaking of or communication of the blood of Christ.”

“The doctrine of the real objective presence being certainly true, as being contained in our Blessed Lord’s words, ‘This is My body,’ and attested by the whole Christian Church from the times of the Apostles, it follows that some sort of change must have taken place as to the elements through consecration.… This change was in the oldest time expressed by the simplest terms, ‘It is,’ ‘It becomes,’ or in prayer to God ‘consecrate,’ ‘perfect,’ ‘appoint,’ ‘make’. The Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, and others following him, use the words, ‘changing by Thy Spirit’. There are also other more emphatic, yet rare words, occurring once or twice only in each father who used them, ‘transmake,’ ‘transelement,’ ‘transfashion,’ ‘re-order,’ ‘transfigure,’ ‘transfer’. Against any of these the English Church has never made any exception, but only to a specified sense of the word ‘transubstantiate,’ which is popularly taken, not as implying a change in the οὐσία or ‘essence’ of a material thing, but the desition of the material substances of which that creature of God is composed.”

“The Article does not charge Transubstantiation with the common incorrect argument that it contradicts the senses, but that it overthrows the nature of a Sacrament. Now this greatly helps us in our view that it is not the abstract theory of a change, but the incorrect physics which are condemned. Such a change only is excepted against as would involve a physical desition of what before existed in such wise that the visible sign of That which is invisible should have no real existence.”

“There is but one belief [that is, of the Church of England and the Church of Rome] as to the presence of Christ, that He, ‘our Saviour, who now sitteth at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to His natural mode of existence, is yet present to us by His substance sacramentally’. The question [that is, whether there is difference between the Church of England and the Church of Rome] has relation only to the bread and wine, what the Roman Church means by the ‘substantia’ which it affirms to cease to remain, and we by the ‘substances’ which we affirm to remain. If ‘substance’ means no more than its Greek equivalent, οὐσία, ‘essence’; and if the term ‘is transubstantiated’ means no more than those old words, ‘becomes,’ ‘is’; and if, by it, the Roman Church only means to guard with greater accuracy our Blessed Lord’s words, ‘This is My body,’ not contradicting anything which we know by experience, not basing a theology upon a supposed illusion of our senses, but only asserting that that ‘quidditas’ (whatever it be) whereby the bread was bread is removed, leaving all those forces of which alone we are cognisant, then God be thanked, who has said to a great mountain which stood between us, ‘Be thou a plain’. There is nothing in such a statement which our Article denies, or which could form a difficulty to any soul which believed the blessed presence of our Saviour, of His body and His blood.”

“The sacrifice in the Eucharist is substantially the same as the sacrifice of the cross, because the Priest is the same in both, and the Victim is the same in both, just as the sacrifice which Christ the eternal Priest is now presenting to His Father in heaven is the same which He offered upon the cross, because He Himself is the same Victim and Priest both in one. But there is a difference. There is a difference in the manner of offering. In heaven Christ is not offering Himself in the same manner as He did upon the cross.”

“That one sacrifice [that is, the sacrifice of the cross] and its all-sufficient merits live on, as in our Lord’s perpetual presentation of Himself in heaven, so in our Eucharistical oblation of His body and blood sacramentally present on our altars. We have nothing apart from that one sacrifice; our Eucharistic oblation is not something in and for itself, something independent of that one sacrifice, even while it pleaded it. Such is its union with that sacrifice that it is a perpetual application of its virtue, yet not as something distinct, but as united with it through the oneness of that which is offered, that same body of Christ offered on the cross to make atonement for the sins of the whole world and for each one of us, offered and presented to the Father in heaven and in the Church below, on the ‘altar above’ and on the Holy Table, in pleading and for application of the atonement once wrought upon the holy cross. On the cross that offering was made once for all with shedding of blood; on earth the offering is made in an unbloody manner, as the ancient Church attests. On the cross that offering merited the salvation of the world; on the altar Christ being risen from the dead dieth no more, but the fruit of that death is made over to the faithful. On the cross the full satisfaction was paid; on the altar the memorial of that satisfaction is made to the Father in correspondence with the memorial made upon the celestial altar.”

“He offered Himself by anticipation at the Last Supper; He offered Himself in deed by His meritorious death on the cross; He offereth Himself by presenting Himself, our High Priest for ever, in the presence of the Father in heaven; He mystically offereth Himself in the Holy Eucharist, not only in that He consecrateth by His word the gifts which He has taught us to offer for a memorial of Himself, but that being sacramentally present He is ‘precious in the eyes of the Father’. Yet because He is the agent in all, it follows not that He acts in the same way in all. On the cross He made the offering; in heaven He presents it, and as God-Man pleads it; on earth He giveth it to us to plead in that He consecrates that offering whose very presence pleads, in that it is in a mystery the body which was broken, the blood which was shed for us.”

“He is not in such wise a High Priest that He can be imagined separate from the sacrifice which He once offered. For that sacrifice was Himself. That sacrifice is His manhood, never to be divided from His Godhead. He has carried within the veil that holy body, once wounded for our transgressions, and those very wounds, which He showed to St. Thomas, now resplendent in glory, still move the Father to look upon the face of His anointed, and for His sake freely to give us all things. And as this is no derogation from the oneness and completeness of our Lord’s atoning act on Calvary, so neither is a derogation therefrom that we in the Holy Eucharist with all our prayers present unto the Father the same holy body present in an ineffable way by the words of consecration.”

At the time of the presentation of Bishop Forbes to the Episcopal College of the Scottish Church for alleged false teaching in 1859, as already mentioned, all the other Scottish bishops were opposed to the Eucharistic doctrines advocated by him; and, although the diocesan synod of the diocese of Brechin passed a resolution approving his teaching with only two dissentients in 1860, it is probable that the opinions of the majority of the bishops were shared by very many Scottish Churchmen. In the years which have elapsed since, acceptance of the doctrines taught by Bishop Forbes has become more widely prevalent, though resisted or not assented to by a large part of the whole number of members of the Scottish Church; and some instances of like belief may be given from the Book of the Charges of the late Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, Dr. Chinnery Haldane, who died in 1906, which was published after his death.

“Have we realised that the sacrifices of the Old Testament, though they were divinely appointed and graciously accepted, were in comparison with the Eucharist, poor and weak? Have we realised that upon our altars we have no mere type or figure of an absent Christ, but the real presence of the Lamb of God who once for all died upon the cross, but who now ever lives, the abiding propitiation for our sins? Remembering all this, have we been eager on every possible occasion to offer up this holy sacrifice and to plead continually with the Eternal Father the merits and death of His dear Son, in order that we and all His whole Church, both the living and the departed, may obtain remission of our sins and all the other benefits of His passion?”

“As to the Blessed Sacrament itself, what reverent care should we not exercise! Can we believe the words of our Lord Himself, ‘This is My body, This is My blood,’ and yet allow ourselves to be guilty of the very least act of irreverence or of carelessness with regard to that bread and that cup? What is true of the whole is true of every particle on the paten, and of every drop in the chalice. When, therefore, we think or speak about taking the ablutions, or about cleansing the sacred vessels, let us not allow ourselves to imagine that we are merely considering some minute details of ritual, to be observed only for form’s sake, or ancient custom’s sake, but let us realise that by doing or not doing our duty in this matter, we are honouring or dishonouring the sacred body and the precious blood of our Lord and only Saviour.”

“We cannot insist too earnestly on the objective reality of the presence of the body and blood of Christ our Lord in His Holy Sacrament, a reality which makes that holy mystery life and salvation to those who draw near with humility and penitent faith, but condemnation and death to those who in unbelief or pride presume to receive the same most Holy Sacrament unworthily, and who are thus in no wise partakers of Christ. But all this relates to what we may call the manward aspect of the Eucharist. There is, however, another aspect of that holy mystery, of which we must never lose sight, an aspect concerning which I think I may venture to say that it is the more prominent of the two in the words uttered by our divine Lord at its institution, and in the general teaching of His Church. For the Holy Eucharist is not only a feast; it is also a memorial. Regarded in this light, we have its Godward aspect, and we thus recognise it as an act of worship, or rather as the one great and divinely appointed act of worship, the pure sacrifice of the Church foretold by the prophet Malachi, the sacrifice which immeasurably exceeds in reality and power the figurative sacrifices of the Old Testament, even as the blood of Christ our God, who once for all suffered upon the cross, is infinitely more precious than the blood of bulls and goats shed in those sacrifices of the law of Moses, which could never make the comers thereunto perfect. And this brings us to the root of the matter. The Eucharist is what it is because it is the showing of the Lord’s death, the pleading of His all-prevailing merits.… It cannot be denied that both anciently and modernly there has been the disposition … to deny or to obscure the vital truth of redemption through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Now, against all such baneful tendencies the Holy Eucharist has been a perpetual witness from the beginning.… The sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist is thus essentially the divinely appointed memorial of Christ’s propitiatory death. Here is its prominent characteristic. There can be in the Holy Eucharist no communion with our risen and ascended Lord, nor with one another as members of His mystical body, no partaking of His flesh and blood, no eating and drinking at His Table, apart from that sacrifice.… All our hopes as sinners are built upon that sacrifice which our Blessed Saviour has offered for us by His death upon the cross, and which He ever lives to plead on our behalf in the heavenly sanctuary.”

“The thought of the Holy Eucharist, in which we thus show the Lord’s death till He shall come again, very naturally leads us on to the thought of His second and glorious appearing. The Lamb of God, to whom we now offer worship in the Blessed Sacrament, hidden beneath the veils of bread and wine, and seen only by the eye of faith, will then be manifested to all, for every eye shall see Him.”

“It is a certain truth that at all times and under all circumstances we live and move and have our being in the divine presence of our Blessed Saviour, because He is true God as well as true Man. For, if we believe that He is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the undivided glory of the ever-blessed Trinity, we must also of necessity believe that He is omnipresent. But, guided by His holy word and by His Church, we believe something besides this. For we believe that, though He has ascended into heaven in His human nature—in which nature He there lives and reigns according to His natural mode of existing (juxta modum existendi naturalem)—yet that in His condescending love He, the same Lord Jesus Christ, gives to us under the forms of bread and wine, and through the operation of the Holy Ghost, a supernatural presence of His most blessed body and of His most precious blood.… It is in response to this great love and divine condescension on the part of our Blessed Saviour that His people are impelled to render to Him in His Holy Sacrament, and in all that concerns that Holy Sacrament, I will not say reverence merely—for that would be too cold a word—but every token of adoring love by which it is possible to manifest the most entire devotion of which the human heart is capable. For He, the Lamb that was slain, is worthy to receive honour and glory and blessing for ever and for ever both in the unveiled majesty of His heavenly kingdom and also wherever on this poor earth, which is the footstool of His throne, He manifests to the faith of His humble disciples the sacramental presence of His most holy body and of His most precious blood.”