Bicknell on Articles XXVIII, XXIX: Of the Lord's Supper; Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord's Supper

The original Article of 1553 on the Lord’s Supper coincided with the low-water mark of sacramental teaching in the Church of England. It was contemporary with the Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI containing the ‘ Black Rubric,’ which in its original form denied any “Real and Essential Presence of Christ’s natural flesh and blood’ in the sacrament. In its present form, as restored in 1662, it only denies the ‘ “corporal” presence of Christ’s natural flesh and blood,’ a most important change.

So the third paragraph of the Article denied ‘the real and bodily presence, as they term it, of Christ’s flesh and blood, in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.’ In 1563 this Article was altered to correspond with the changes made in the Prayer-Book of 1559. The original third paragraph was struck out and the present one substituted. The author of our present paragraph, Bishop Guest, expressly stated that it was drawn up not to ‘ exclude the Presence of Christ’s Body from the Sacra- ment, but only the grossness and sensibleness in the receiving thereof.’ The rest of the Article remained unaltered, except that the second para- graph was strengthened by the addition of ‘ overthroweth the nature of a sacrament.’

The Article excludes :

(i) Anabaptist views which made the Lord’s Supper a mere love feast ; (ii) Zwinglian views which made it a bare memorial of Christ’s death. (iii) The Roman doctrine of transubstantiation.

§1. All over the world men have expressed their fellowship with one another by a common meal. Further, these common meals have often had a religious significance. One of the earliest ideas underlying primitive sacrifice was that of communion between the god of the tribe and his people. The god was regarded as present as an honoured guest at the feast made upon the sacrificial victim. Among many tribes the god was also identified in some sense with the victim slain and it was supposed that by feeding upon the flesh of the god the divine life shared by him and the tribe was renewed and strengthened. This idea of communion with God through a common sacrificial meal was not absent from the religion of Israel. After the exile, with a fuller realization of the holiness of Jehovah and a deeper consciousness of sin, this aspect of sacrifice became less pro- minent. Stress was laid more on the propitiation and atonement that was needed before communion with God could be restored than on the communion itself. But the older idea survived. So, too, among the Gentiles sacrificial meals were quite common. Other ideas of sacrifice, such as that of a gift to the gods, are found, but the conception of fellowship was never lost. In the world into which our Lord came the ideas of communion with God by a sacred meal, of the receiving of divine life through participation in the sacrificial victim, of the perfecting of human fellowship through such participation and the like were perfectly familiar. Just as Jesus Christ summed up in Himself the fulfil- ment of the highest ideals alike of Jewish prophecy and Gentile morality, so in the Holy Communion He summed up the fulfil- ment of the highest ideals of worship, both Jewish and Gentile.

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(a) The institution of the Holy Communion is recorded by the three Synoptists and by St. Paul (1 Cor. 11). The title ‘ Lord’s Supper’ comes from 1 Cor. 117°. * It is noticeable that the accounts of Mt. and Mk. contain no command for its repetition. In Lk. 22! the words ‘This do in remembrance of me’ are absent in the Western text and may have been inserted from the account in 1 Cor. So the only undisputed evidence in Scrip- ture for our Lord’s command to celebrate it is that of St. Paul. But behind his words there stands the universal and continuous practice and tradition of the Church. Attempts have been made to assign the repetition of the Eucharist either to the Church or to St. Paul. For such views there is no real positive evidence. t

(b) When we turn to the evidence of Scripture it is by no means easy to give any very certain account of the practice of the first Christians in reference to the Eucharist. In 1 Cor. 1117*4 it is clear that at Corinth it was celebrated after and in close connexion with a common meal. The word Jdei7vov may include both. There is no suggestion that this combination was wrong or an innovation on the part of the Corinthians. St. Paul’s own words ‘ This do as oft as ye drink’ (the Greek contains no ‘ it’) may mean ‘ as often as ye hold a common meal together.’ When we turn to the Acts we find evidence of a similar custom. The familiar title the ‘ Last Supper’ reminds us that eating together had all through His ministry been a bond of union between our Lord and His disciples. At such common meals doubtless He was accustomed to break bread and give

• It is questionable whether the phrase ‘The Lord’s Supper ’ was used by St. Paul as a formal title. On the one hand, the use of the adjective kupiaxdy instead of rov xvpiov suggests this (cp. «vpiaxj for Sunday in Rey. 1%°). On the other hand, the words in the context may only mean that where division and selfishness are, a supper may indeed be taken, but it will never be the Lord’s.

• The words of 1 Cor. 11% ‘ For I (éya) received of the Lord (dé rod kuptov) that which I also delivered unto you’ hardly warrant us in supposing that St. Paul claims to have received a special revelation on the subject. If the emphatic ¢y# might be taken to favour such a view, the use of dd (not apd) and the use of the words ‘the Lord Jesus’ no less forcibly suggest that he received his information mediately through the Apostles. In any case, it is incredible that the Church should have received a new sacrament from St. Paul without any hint of enquiry or opposition. He was not such a univer- sally popular person, especially among Jewish Christians. Further, Acts 2” and ° imply that the Eucharist was being celebrated at Jerusalem long before St. Paul’s conversion,

thanks even as He did at the feedings of the multitude (Mk. 64 and 8%). His performance of these acts at the Last Supper was only in accordance with His regular habit. It was by the manner in which He performed these same acts, that He made Himself known to His disciples at Emmaus after His Resurrection, even though they had probably not been present at the Last Supper (Lk, 248081and 3, op. Jn. 218), So after the Ascension it was only natural that the disciples should continue to meet for the breaking of bread, the outward sign of fellowship. At first it would seem that the common meal of the Christian brotherhood was held daily. In Acts 24 we read that the first Christians ‘continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship (or ‘in fellowship’ R.V. mg. cal év ry Kowwvia) and in the (ry) breaking of bread and the prayers’ (the Bezan text has ‘ the fellowship of the breaking of the bread’). Again, in v. “, ‘ And day by day continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple and breaking bread at home (ka7’ oikov) they did take their food (tpodys) with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people.’ The probability is that by ‘the breaking of the bread’ is meant a common meal held in conscious imitation of the Last Supper and concluding with the Eucharist. The mention of food (Tod) in v. “ shows clearly that a meal is meant. The use of the article (rn kXacer)) in v. 4 suggests that the phrase ‘the breaking of the bread,’ in itself applicable to any meal, was beginning to acquire a technical meaning in the mouths of Christians. In such early days of Church life all was inchoate and unformed. The Church was feeling her way towards organized life and worship.

Such a daily common meal and Eucharist was not possible everywhere. It is doubtful whether it could have existed apart from the peculiar conditions of common life at Jerusalem. Accordingly, as the Church spread abroad such daily reunion was found to be impossible. The common meal became part of the distinctive worship of the first day of the week. It was doubtless so at Corinth. In Acts 207% this is expressly stated. St. Luke gives a typical instance at Troas. ‘ Upon the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul€discoursed with them.’ Then follows the incident of Eutychus. Finally, when Paul ‘ had broken the bread and eaten

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(yevoapevos) and had talked with them a long while even till break of day, so he departed.’ The order would seem to be a common meal, after which St. Paul took the opportunity of all the Christians being assembled to deliver a lengthy discourse, then the Eucharist (yevoauevos, meaning, as we should say, ‘having communicated’), followed by a final discourse.* The meal would thus be held on Saturday evening, since, according to the Jewish mode of reckoning, the first day of the week began at 6 P.M. on Saturday, the Eucharist would begin after midnight. We have only to imagine an interval for sleep between the two parts to get to the later custom of observing Saturday night as a preparation for Sunday and holding the Eucharist early on Sunday.

In Acts 2796 just before the shipwreck, we find an account of a meal. ‘When Paul… had taken bread, he gave thanks to God in the presence of all: and he break it and began to eat. Then were they all of good cheer and began to eat.’ The lan- guage is strangely Eucharistic, but the meal clearly did not include the Eucharist.¢ The company consisted almost entirely of unbelievers, and the confusion of a storm at sea is hardly the moment for such a celebration. The important point is that the passage shows that ‘to break bread’ could be used of an ordinary meal. In Jude ” and the parallel passage in 2 Pet. 238 we find the title ‘Agape’ or ‘love feast’ definitely given, according to the best reading, to the common meals of Christians. These are in danger of being polluted by the presence of immoral members. Probably the misbehaviour of such and drunkenness (1 Cor. 11) brought these love-feasts into bad reputation among the heathen. No light is thrown on their relation to the Eucharist. We conclude, then, that in apostolic times as a general rule the Eucharist formed the conclusion of a common meal or agape and was not sharply distinguished from it. The whole was considered sacred as being a representation of the Last Supper.

• Others, however, hold that the Eucharist preceded the meal. On this view in v. # ‘breaking bread ’ refers to the Eucharist and yevodyevos to the meal. It is true that St. Luke uses yevoua in the sense of ‘taking food’ but

the reversal of the order of the Last Supper is most improbable so long as the meal and the Eucharist were still combined.

• ‘The similarity is due, not so much to the fact that the Holy Eucharist is a meal, as that every meal has a sacred character and food “is sanctified by the word of God and prayer ” ’ (Rackham, Acts, p. 490).

Whether an Agape was ever held without a Eucharist or vice versa we cannot be certain. There is nothing improbable in such a separation. The phrase ‘breaking bread’ is in itself quite vague and might be applied either to a meal or to the Kucharist or to the combination of the two.

Outside Scripture the earliest evidence has been very differently interpreted. It is probable but not certain that in the Didache the Agape preceded the Eucharist, and indeed is included under the title evyapicria. So, too, Dr. Lightfoot held that in the time of Ignatius the two had not yet been separated.* In his letter to the Smyrnaeans he writes, ‘It is not permitted without the bishop either to baptize or hold a love-feast.’ The Eucharist is clearly included under the title Agape. It is inconceivable that it should be omitted, especially as it has been mentioned earlier in the letter. The first clear evidence for the separation of the two is in Pliny’s letter to Trajan (Hp. 96).t This makes it clear that in Bithynia by 112 a.p. Christians had come to hold two meetings on Sunday (stato die). At the first they met ‘before day and sang a hymn to Christ antiphonally as to a God and bound themselves by an oath (sacramento)’ not to commit certain crimes. This seems to be a somewhat vague account of the Eucharist, possibly mixed up with a confused recollection of the baptismal vow. At the second meeting later in the day they met ‘to take food’ but that ‘ ordinary and innocent food ’ (promiscuum tamen et innoxiwm—a refutation of pagan slanders) ; but in consequence of Trajan’s edict forbidding the existence of clubs or guilds, these last meetings had been abandoned. This last statement would refer to the Agape. Whether the separa- tion of Eucharist and Agape had taken place before Trajan’s edict or in consequence of it is not certain, but it is clear that the Eucharist had been transferred to the morning. Many authorities hold the result of Trajan’s edict was a general separa- tion of the Eucharist from the Agape and a giving up of the latter as being unessential.t This need not have taken place every- where at the same time. At any rate, Justin Martyr (150)

{ St. Augustine held that the separation was one of the reforms introduced by St. Paul when he came to Corinth. It is most probable that abuses connected

with the Agape favoured the separation.

describes the Eucharist without any mention of the Agape.* But the Agape still continued to exist. It tended to assume the character of a charity supper contributed by the rich: possibly from the earliest days it had been a means of providing sustenance for the poorer members of the society. It became increasingly distinct from the Eucharist and gradually lost its sacred character and become a common meal and nothing more. Hence by the canons of various councils it was forbidden to hold it in churches. It lingered on in Africa as late as the Trullan Council in 692.

This account in the main follows Lightfoot. Cp. also the excellent article ‘Agape’ in Hastings’ #.R.H. vol. i. Rackham, Acts (Westminster Commentaries), p. 35 ff. Lock, art. ‘ Love-feasts,’ Hastings’ D.B. vol. iii.

§ 2. We may now turn to the inner meaning of the Eucharist. This is determined by the position that Jesus Christ holds in the Church and by the closeness of union between Christians and Christ.

(a) As we have seen, eating together is everywhere a sign of fellowship. The Supper of the Lord is… a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another. This meaning is included in the title ‘Holy Communion.’ No one has ever attempted to deny it. This unity is symbolized by the one bread f and the one cup. ‘ Seeing that there is one bread (or loaf), we who are many are one body: for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Cor. 10%, R.V. mg., cp. Jn. 13® and 15%). The name ‘Agape’ which could include the Eucharist, was probably derived from our Lord’s command ‘ to love one another,’ given on the same night as the institution of the Eucharist. The many clubs existing under the Roman Empire showed their unity by common meals. But just as the Church is more than

• It is worth considering that this symbolism is lost where the quite late Western custom of separate wafers is adopted for Holy Communion. St. Paul’s language of the ‘one loaf’ no longer applies.

{ Cp. the beautiful prayer in the Didache (9): ‘As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered together became one, so may Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom ’ (Gwatkin’s Selections, p. 21).

a mere human society, so her common meal is more than a bare symbol of fellowship. Hence this view by itself is inadequate.

(6) Accordingly the Article proceeds: It is not only a sign of love ; but rather it is a Sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death. As the Catechism says, it was ordained ‘For the con- tinual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ and of the benefits which we receive thereby.’ It constitutes a pro- clamation before the world of the Lord’s death (1 Cor. 1128) and also a means of bringing it home to ourselves. Whether the Last Supper was in detail a Passover meal or not is doubtful. The evidence of St. John’s Gospel makes it clear that it took place the evening before the actual Passover. But it was in the closest connexion with the Passover and was instituted to take its place in the new Israel. The Passover was a means of keeping in mind and a public thanksgiving for Jehovah’s redemp- tion of Israel from slavery in Egypt. So the Eucharist was to be kept ‘ in remembrance of ’ Christ (1 Cor. 1125), and as a thanks- giving * for the redemption wrought by His death. Further, the deliverance from Egypt was but the prelude to the renewing cf the Covenant at Sinai. At the Passover-meal the individual Israelite claimed his share in the Covenant made by God with Israel. Christ’s words ‘ This is my blood of the covenant which is shed for you’ (Mk. 14%) look back to Exodus 248 and suggest that a new covenant was about to be ratified by the blood of a better Sacrifice. Every Eucharist is a memorial of this new Covenant made by God with a new and greater Israel, and each Christian who partakes of the Eucharist claims his share in the blessings won by Christ’s death. The very term for the Passover liturgy, Haggadah, or ‘ showing forth,’ is that used by St. Paul (1 Cor. 1128). So, too, the ‘cup of blessing’ was the regular name for the third cup at the Paschal meal (cp. 1 Cor: 710”), at least in later times.t In short, the Eucharist is the Passover of the Christian Church.

(c) Insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily and with farth receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the

• The actual title, eixaprla, is not found in the New Testament, though it occurs in Ignatius and the Didache, but edxapireiv is used of our Lord’s own giving of thanks (1 Cor. 11). Possibly, too, in 14*° etxapioria is used of thanksgiving at the Lord’s Supper.

• Edersheim, J’emple, c. xii. p. 232 and p. 243.

body of Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ. This statement is based on 1 Cor. 10%, “The cup of blessing which we-bless, is it not a communion (kowvwria) of the blood of Christ 2. The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?’ It asserts the reality of the gift bestowed on those who receive the sacrament rightly (rite), worthily (digne), and with faith. The Holy Communion is an ‘effectual sign,’ not only representing but conveying spiritual food. ‘ Rightly’ here refers to the due observance of all that Christ commanded, the right matter and form. *‘ Worthily ’ refers to the right inward disposition of the recipient. It would include ‘ with faith.’

What is meant by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ ?

(i) We turn first to Jn. 6. This was spoken exactly a year before the institution of the Eucharist, at the previous Passover. Moreover, by the time that the Gospel was composed, the Eucharist had been the centre of the life of more than one gener- ation of Christians. Hence we can hardly exclude all reference to the Eucharist. The true relation between this discourse and the Eucharist would seem to be that in the former Christ speaks primarily of the gift of His own life which men needed and which was to be bestowed through the Eucharist : a year later He insti- tuted the Eucharist to be the means of bestowing that life. The gift is spoken of as future, not present (6278”451), Christ connects it with the time after His Ascension and the coming of the Spirit (vv. 663). Throughout the discourse step by step greater stress is laid on the absolute need not only of Christ’s teaching but of Christ’s life. Our Lord begins with a contrast between the ‘meat that perisheth,’ the ordinary food of the body, and ‘ the meat that abideth unto eternal life,’ which He will give (v. 27). The condition of receiving it is faith (v. 2°). Such bread can only come, like the manna, by the direct gift of God (v. 8%), and He Him- self is this bread (v.°%). In v.1 this bread is further defined as ‘my flesh.” In v. 53 the objection of the Jews is met by an increased claim, ‘ Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves. … For my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me and I in him.’ With such language we compare | Cor. 1011’ and 112’. Throughout the

thought is of identity of life between the believer and Christ.

His * body and blood’ primarily represent His perfect humanity. The living Christ bestows upon His members the strength of a perfect human life, in order to cleanse and refresh our weak and tainted lives. In eating and drinking by a deliberate and volun- tary act we take into ourselves something that is outside ourselves, in order that it may become part of ourselves and so our bodies may bestrengthened. So in the Holy Communion by a deliberate and voluntary act we receive the life of Christ into our souls that it may become our life. The feeding of the 5000 which preceded the discourse was an acted parable of the spiritual truth laid down in the discourse. So in the Holy Communion our Lord took bread and wine, the typical ordinary daily food of the Galilean peasant, to be the outward sign of the normal food of the Christian soul. The visible reception is at once the parable and the means of the inward reception by faith. In each case the goodness is there first in the food outside ourselves and by the appropriate act we take it into ourselves. Again, all food corresponds to the nature of the life that it is to sustain. Our bodies can be strengthened by bread and wine, because bread and wine contain just those elements out of which the body is composed. In like manner the spiritual food of the Christian must correspond to the life of the Christian. But the life of the Christian is, as we have seen, none other than the life of Christ : we are members of His body, branches in the vine. So the food of the Christian must be Christ. The Christ-life can only be fed by new supplies of Christ. He alone can be the bread of life. Accordingly, in the Holy Communion the Christian, as a member of Christ, receives by faith through the outward and visible sign of the bread and wine the inward and spiritual grace of the perfect humanity of Christ. Partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ can mean no less than this.*

(ii) The further question may be asked : ‘Why are the body and blood spoken of in separation, and symbolized by the bread and the wine respectively ?’ The answer is that our Lord’s language and that of St. Paul is borrowed from the picture of a sacrificial feast. The reference to the body and blood in separation recalls the act of sacrifice in which the blood was poured out. In the Holy Communion we feed on the life of the living and glorified Christ who has become all that He is through

death.* He is eternally ‘the Lamb as it hath been slain.” The life that He imparts to us is, as it were, life that has passed through death. Hence it is fitly mediated through bread and wine.

(iii) As partaking of the perfect humanity of Christ, we also partake of all the blessings won by His sacrifice. ‘ What merit, force or virtue soever there is in His sacred Body and Blood, we freely, fully and wholly have it by this Sacrament.’ + We enjoy the manifold privileges of the new Covenant ratified by His death (Mk. 14%). So, by a right reception of the Holy Communion we are filled with all the fruits of His redemption. These blessings are not something apart from Christ, but in so far as our life in Christ grows, we enter more fully into their meaning.

§ 3. So far almost all Christians would agree. The language used might vary, but all are at one in holding that through the Holy Communion our union with Christ is deepened and strengthened, by faith we receive new life from Him and enter into the fulness of the heritage won by His death. Controversy has arisen on the question of the relation of the inward gift to the outward elements. The first thing that we must grasp is that this further question is relatively unimportant. In an age of bitter controversy Hooker could write: ‘Shall I wish that men would more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the Sacrament and less to dispute of the manner how?’ ‘What these elements are in themselves it skilleth not, it is enough that to me which take them they are the Body and Blood of Christ.’ ‘Let it therefore be sufficient for me presenting myself at the Lord’s table to know what there I receive from Him, without searching or inquiring of the manner how Christ performeth His promise.’ {

For 800 years there was no formal dispute on the subject. The earliest controversial treatise was by a certain Paschasius Radbert in 831, which was the beginning of a long and unedifying wrangle, leading up to the formal statement of the doctrine of transubstantiation at the Lateran Councilin 1215. The attempts

• We must resolutely put away the revolting idea that in any sense we feed on the body and blood of a dead Christ.

• Hooker, v. 67, § 7.

• Cp. the whole passage, v. 67, §§ 5-7 and 12-13.

made to state the relation of gift in Holy Communion to the outward elements may be summed up as follows :

(a) The ‘ Receptionist ’ view. On this theory the bread and wine in the Holy Communion are merely tokens not channels of the inward grace that is given. They are like the water in baptism, outward signs ordained in order to assist faith, but brought into no vital relation to the divine realities that they represent. The devout communicant does indeed by an act of faith receive the body and blood of Christ at the moment that he receives the bread and wine, but in no real sense by means of them. Thus Christ is present only in the hearts of the faithful recipients. His coming is connected not with the consecration of the elements but with the reception. This view was taught by Calvin: it was the necessary corollary of his doctrine of grace. If grace is given only to the few elect, it clearly cannot be possible for all to receive it who receive the bread and wine. So its reception must be essentially independent of the reception of the visible elements. The theory has been largely held in the Church of England * and was expounded at length by Waterland. It represents one side of the teaching of St. Augustine and can be supported by isolated sentences of other Fathers. It is per- fectly tenable by loyal members of the Church of England. There is nothing in the Prayer-Book that definitely contradicts it. Quite rightly the Church of England excludes only a Zwinglian view of the Sacrament—a view, that is, which is

• Hooker is usually claimed as a receptionist. He certainly writes, ‘The real presence of Christ’s most blessed Body and Blood is not therefore to be sought for in the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament’ (c. 67 § 5). But other passages qualify this statement. He also writes, ‘This bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes behold’ (c. 67 § 12), and ‘The power of the ministry of God… by blessing visible elements, … maketh them invisible grace’ (c. 77 §1). Further, Hooker’s great object was to allay contention by fixing the minds of all Christians on those great truths concerning the Eucharist about which they were all agreed. He refused to join in a bitter and barren controversy about the mystery of the Eucharist. Accordingly, as Bishop Paget wrote, ‘He should have the credit of having really meant what he said. On the ground of some passages in his argument he is claimed as supporting one side in the very controversy from which he urged men to refrain… . Those who know Hooker’s ways and do him justice will not easily think him so careless or so disingenuous as to break the bounds which he was strenuously appealing to other men to keep’ (see Paget, Intro- duction to Hooker, bk. v. p. 176).

not only inadequate, but positively denies a part of the truth. Cp. Waterland, A Review of the Doctrine of the EHucharist. For a clear and short statement, Griffith Thomas, The Catholic Faith, pp. 172-177. For a vigorous defence of a view similar to Hooker’s, J. G. Simpson, The Thing Signified.

(6) The Real Presence. On this view we hold that we receive through the bread and wine the Body and Blood of Christ, because in answer tothe prayers of His Church and in fulfilment of His own promise, He has brought the elements into a mysterious union with Himself. He has, as it were, taken them up into the fulness of His ascended life and made them the vehicle of imparting that life to His members. Thus He is in a real sense present not only in the devout communicant but in the conse- crated elements. Of the manner of this union we affirm nothing. The Presence is spiritual, not material.

This, in some form, is the teaching of the Roman and Eastern Churches, of Luther, of the Fathers and earlv liturgies, and has always been held by many within the Church of England. It would appear to be the most consistent with Scripture and the tradition of the Church, and also to be a safeguard of certain great Christian principles.

(i) Let us turn first to Scripture. An enormous amount of labour has been wasted in attempting to get back to the actual words spoken by Christ and to interpret the meaning of ‘is’ in ‘This is my body’ and ‘ This is my blood.’ Our Lord pro- bably spoke in Aramaic, in which there would be no copula at all. The important point is that St. Paul understood these words to contain a promise of a divine gift. He bases on them the solemn warning ‘ Wherefore (#7Te) whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord ’ (1 Cor. 112’). Ifthe existence of the gift is made conditional upon the faith of the individual communicant, as receptionists teach, the unworthy recipient can hardly be said to be ‘ guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.’ Ifthe presence of Christ is to be sought only in the heart of the faithful recipient, there can have been no presence for him to profane. As being unworthy he has drawn near only to bread and wine. Further, if the words mean only ‘ This repre-

sents my body,’ we have only a parable, not a promise: they contain no pledge of any sacramental gift. The words are not really parallel to such allegorical statements as ‘I am the bread’ or ‘the door.’ These last couple together an idea and a concrete reality. But the words of institution couple together two concrete realities of the external world. Again, in 1 Cor. 10% St. Paul connects the ‘ communion of the body ’ and ‘ the blood ’ not with reception but with consecration. He speaks of ‘ The cup which we bless’ and ‘the bread which we break,’ ‘ we being the minister as the organ of the assembled Church.

Cp. Strong, Real Presence, c. ii. Goudge, 1 Corinthians, pp. 102-103.

(ii) Again, if we turn to the Church as the interpreter of Scripture, the main stream of Christian teaching is quite clear. We find a singular absence of theological controversy about the Eucharist, but the general line of thought may be exemplified by these words of Irenaeus, ‘The bread which is of the earth receiving the invocation of God is no longer common bread. but EKucharist, made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly.’ * No doubt certain individuals or schools of thought exhibit a tendency to lay a one-sided emphasis on particular aspects of the truth, as, for instance, to dwell on the Eucharist as imparting the gift of bodily immortality, but such teaching did not express the mind of the Church as a whole and was corrected by the corporate consciousness. The early liturgies all attest a belief in the Real Presence. There is a marked difference between the treatment that was accorded to the water in Baptism and the elements in the Eucharist. No special care was taken of the water. Indeed, baptism was often administered in streams. But the consecrated elements were by a natural instinct always treated with the utmost reverence.f In Baptism there are no words that in any way are the counterpart of the words of institution.

Mozley, Lectures and Theological Papers, p. 202 ff. Gore, Body of Christ, pp. 75-94.

• Trenaeus, Adv. Haer. iv. 18, § 5.

• Cp. Gore, Body of Christ, p. 76 and note 5.

• It is worth noting that when the Fathers speak of the bread and wine as ‘signs ’ or ‘symbols’ of the body and blood of Christ, they do not in any way imply a merely receptionist view. To us a ‘symbol’ at once suggests that the

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(iii) The Sacraments are an extension of the Incarnation, in so far as through them the Incarnate Lord still offers His own saving grace to men. But the Incarnation was an event discerned by faith but in no way produced by faith. When Christ walked on this earth, those who discerned the divine in Him, discerned what was really there. Their faith enabled them to see and grasp the truth. It was quite possible for men to be blind to His divinity and to miss the blessings that He brought within their reach through lack of faith, but that does not prove their unreality. In other words, faith is a capacity for intuition or apprehension. It can recog- nize and respond, but not create. It can rest upon and surrender itself to what already exists, but it calls nothing into being. So with the gift promised in the Holy Eucharist. It is contrary to all analogy to make the existence of the gift in any sense dependent on faith. Rather the gift is there, objectively: those who approach with faith discern and appropriate it, those who have not faith are, as it were, blind to the gift, and fail to claim it.*

Again, the Incarnation was God’s gift to His people as a whole. Some availed themselves of it, others did not. So the Holy Eucharist, like all the blessings bestowed through Christ, is primarily a gift not to the individual Christian but to the whole body of Christ. The individual as a member of the body is bidden to claim and appropriate his share of it. This truth is of the highest value as emphasizing the corporate nature of all true Christianity. We may compare the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The fire first appeared as one and then

reality symbolized is absent. To them a ‘symbol’ was rather ‘the evidence to the senses of a divine reality actually present.’ ‘The really heavenly element lay either in or behind the visible form without investing itself with it’ (Gore, p. 89, quoting Harnack). The Fathers do indeed avoid any such language as would speak of Christ as present in or under the bread and wine. They rather speak of the bread and wine as ‘types’ or ‘symbols’ of spiritual realities invisible to the eye of sense, but most truly present. St. Cyril of Jeru- salem, for instance, writes: ‘ Under the sign (év riw) of bread is given thee the body, under the sign of wine is given thee the blood.’ (Cat. xxii. 3.)

• Cp. the words of Thorndyke, ‘The eating and drinking of it’ (7.e. the Lord’s Body and Blood) ‘in the sacrament, presupposes the being of it in the sacrament… unless a man can spiritually eat the flesh and blood of Christ in and by the sacrament, which is not in the sacrament when he eats and drinks it, but by his eating and drinking of it comes to be there.’

as ‘tongues parting asunder’ * (Acts 23). The receptionist view weakens the social aspect of the Eucharist by making it a number of separate donations to individuals. The doctrine of the Real Presence vindicates the unity of life which is to be realized in brotherhood.

Cp. Strong, Real Presence, c. iii. Gore, Body of Christ, p. 94 ff.

The opposition to any such phrase as ‘real presence’ is due in the main to the fear that it means presence in space and involves materialistic ideas. Let us admit that the primary idea of the Eucharist is that of Christ active rather than of Christ present, of Christ as bestowing a gift rather than of the gift bestowed. But it still remains true that our imaginations are unable to conceive of Christ as active unless He is in some sense present and of the gift as bestowed unless it is there to be bestowed. No doubt Christ is present always and everywhere, behind all the processes of nature and human life. But that was not inconsistent with a presence in a new way and for a new act of divine grace in the Incarnation. Again, Christ promised to be with His Church ‘all the days’ (Mt. 282°), yet He could say, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am [ in the midst of them ’ (Mt. 18°). That promise does not imply a previous absence, but rather a presence in a special way and for a special purpose. So, too, in the Holy Communion Christ acts in fulfilment of a special promise and vouchsafes to His Church a special presence of Himself. Christ is still Man. He did not lay aside His human nature at the Ascension. Nor yet was His body then removed to an infinitely distant part of the universe, rather it was raised above the limita- tions of space altogether. ’ It became the perfect self-expression of spirit. Heaven is a manner of life, not a place. So in His Heavenly life Christ still possesses all the capacities of perfect manhood. He can still render His humanity active at will and act through it in our world of space and time. Only the Lutherans have ever pictured Christ’s manhood as, so to say, automatically and unconditionally omnipresent. It is nearer to truth to assert that Christ can act through it at will, and, as it were, make it a present power in the world wheresoever He is pleased to do so.

• Not ‘cloven’ as A.V., an impossible sense for the present participle.

Now in the Holy Communion He gives us His Body and Blood. Here, if anywhere, He acts through His glorified humanity. We must try therefore to conceive of Him as present not only as God but as Man, present by an act of will to bestow upon us the gift of His own Manhood. This act, or this presence—in whichever way we view it, is no fresh humiliation. It is in no way on a level with the submission to the limitations of our present world made at the Incarnation. Rather it is on a level with the ascended life: it is Christ’s very heavenly presence itself.* There is no opposition between a ‘real’ and a ‘spiritual’ pre- sence. The most ‘real’ things are not those that belong to the material world. A ‘spiritual’ presence is presence in the manner of a Spirit, a manner outside our earthly experience, but not therefore imaginary or unreal, any more than Heaven is unreal.

The manner of this Presence and its relation to the outward elements we cannot define, except in so far as we reject certain attempts of our imagination to picture it. Thus, it involves in no sense a movement in space. Norisit in any sense comparable to the chemical changes to be viewed in our laboratories. It is rather analogous to the spiritual changes that take place in ourselves. If we say that Christ is present ‘in’ the sacrament, we use ‘in’ metaphorically, as when we say that Christ abides in the Christian and the Christian in Christ. Wherever we study the relation between spirit and matter, whether between God and the world, or our souls and our bodies or here, our reason and our imagination are always baffled. We can only

• Cp. the words of Cardinal Newman (Via Media, vol. ii. p. 220): ‘If place is excluded from the idea of the Sacramental Presence, therefore division or distance from heaven is excluded also, for distance implies a measurable interval and such there cannot be except between places. Moreover, if the idea of distance is excluded, therefore is the idea of motion. Our Lord then neither descends from heaven upon our altars, nor moves when carried in procession. The visible species change their position, but He does not move. He is in the Holy Eucharist after the manner of a spirit. We do not know how; we have no parallel to the ‘how ’ in our experience. We can only say that He is present, not according to the natural manner of bodies, but sacramentally. His Presence is substantial, spirit-wise, sacramental; an absolute mystery, not against reason, however, but against imagination, and must be received by faith.’

speak in symbolical language borrowed from space. It is a real source of strength to the Church of England that she refuses to speculate on the question or to make the acceptance of human speculations a condition of membership.*

(c) The Roman doctrine of ‘ Transubstantiation,’ condemned in our Article, is an attempt to define the relation of the gift to the elements in the Eucharist. As a formal definition it has its roots far back in Church history. Just as Monophysitism was the culmination of a tendency to exalt our Lord’s divinity at the expense of His humanity and to reduce the latter to a mere semblance, so we find a tendency among certain early writers to exalt the divine gift in the Eucharist in such a way as to minimize or even explain away the reality of the bread and wine after consecration. This appears first in the Hast: in the West it was kept in check by the influence of St. Augustine, who unmistakably believed in the permanence and reality of the elements. A new stage began with the treatise of Paschasius Radbert composed in 831. He taught beyond all doubt a doctrine of ‘transubstantiation.’ By consecration the natural substance of the elements is annihilated: there is on the altar ‘nihil aliud quam corpus et sanguis Domini.’ Only the appear- ance of bread and wine remains to test faith and afford a screen to the awful realities. This teaching was opposed at the time, especially by Ratramnus, a monk of Corbey, but the controversy died down for some two centuries. Then it was rekindled by the teaching of Berengar, Archdeacon of Angers, who attacked the crude popular language about the Eucharistic presence. He himself held the doctrine of an objective but spiritual presence in the elements. In 1059 Berengar was forced to recant, and the decree which was forced upon him at Rome in the presence of the Pope is sufficient evidence of the dangerously materialistic view taken by the Church as a whole at that time. He was made to assert that ‘ The bread and wine after consecration are not only a sacrament but also the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and are sensibly not only in sacrament but in truth touched

• Cp. the lines attributed to Queen Elizabeth :

His was the Word that spake it : He took the bread and brake it : And what that Word did make it, I do believe and take it.

Indifferent poetry, but admirable theology.

and broken by the hands of the priests and bruised by the teeth of the faithful.” Berengar’s opponents asserted even that the body and blood of Christ were physically eaten with the mouth.

But his protest had not been in vain. The gross and super- stitious teaching was at once defended and refined by the teaching of the Schoolmen. They took advantage of the current philo- sophical distinction between substance and accidents * to formu- late a theological statement of transubstantiation. The philo- sophy of the day held that our senses can only perceive the qualities or ‘ accidents’ of things. Beneath these qualities or ‘accidents’ there is an underlying reality, the thing itself, to which was given the technical name of ‘ substance.’ For instance, bread possesses certain ‘accidents’ of which our senses inform us, hardness, colour, taste, smell, etc. But these are not the bread itself. Behind them is the ‘ substance ’ of bread in which they cohere. This ‘substance’ is beyond the range of all our senses, touch included. So the Schoolmen laid down that through consecration the ‘substance’ of the bread and wine was by the almighty power of God changed into ‘the substance’ of the body and blood of Christ. No change can be detected by the senses. The ‘accidents’ of the bread and wine remain in order to veil the divine gift.

No doubt this philosophical speculation does not necessarily involve a materialistic view of the sacrament. ‘Substance,’ as so used, is intangible. But it could do nothing to correct the debasing influence of popular superstition, and there can be no denying that the ordinary view of transubstantiation in the Middle Ages was absolutely carnal and materialistic, as, indeed, it is in popular Romanism to-day. The actual word ‘ transubstantia- tion ’ is first found in use in the eleventh century. It received official sanction at the Lateran Council in 1215. Despite the obvious misunderstandings and abuses that attached to it, it was retained and re-asserted at the Council of Trent,f and has remained as an article of faith in the Roman Church.

• Berengar had known of this distinction and had combated in advance any use of it for this purpose. He held that ‘accidents ’ could not exist apart

from the ‘substance’ in which they inhered. That was also the argument of Wycliffe.

• H.g. ‘Tf anyone shall say that in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine remains together with the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and shall deny that wonderful and singular

Our Article rejects the doctrine on four grounds :

(a) Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the Supper of the Lord cannot be proved by Holy Writ. Scripture knows nothing of any philosophical distinction between ‘ substance ’ and ‘ accidents.’ The words of institution may reasonably be interpreted as the promise of a divine gift, but they throw no light whatever on the manner in which that eift is related to the outward sign. Roman controversialists have indeed admitted that transubstantiation cannot be proved from Scripture. It is at best one explanation of Scripture.

(8) It is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture. That is to say, Scripture speaks of the bread after consecration as still bread (1 Cor. 112 2”4 28) We may add that the Canon of the Roman Mass does the same, since it goes back to an age that knew nothing of transubstantiation.

(y) It overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament. In the words of the Catechism a sacrament has two parts: ‘the outward visible sign,’ here bread and wine, and the ‘ inward spiritual grace,’ the body and blood of Christ. But if, as on the Roman view, the substance of the bread and wine is annihilated, the reality of the outward sign is destroyed, 7.e. the nature of the sacrament is overthrown as lacking one of its two parts.

(0) It hath given occasion to many superstitions. As the Bishop of Oxford has said, ‘The atmosphere in which the doctrine of transubstantiation grows into a dogma is calculated to send a shiver through one’s intellectual and moral being.’ Paschasius Radbert drives home his teaching by recounting a series of miracles in which drops of blood flowed from the consecrated Host as the form of the infant Christ appeared. A similar miracle was opportunely registered in order to forward the institution of the Festival of Corpus Christi in 1264. The gross imagination of mediaeval theologians did not shrink from dis- eussing the precise relation of the reception of the Lord’s Body to the processes of physical digestion. In answer to the objections of opponents, miracles were lavishly postulated. It was supposed

conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood, the appearance only of the bread and wine remaining, which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most fittingly calls Transubstantiation, let him be anathema’ (Council of Trent, Session xiii.

Canon 2).

that the more contradictions that were offered to reason, the greater was the opportunity given for the meritorious exercise of faith.

As against the popular idea of transubstantiation as held and taught in the Roman Church both in the Middle Ages and to-day, these objections are conclusive. Attempts, however, are made by educated Romanists to escape them. They point to the fact that the Canon of the Mass calls the Host after the recital of the words of institution ‘ bread,’ as St. Paul does, and therefore claim that the Roman Church still in some sense recognizes it as bread. Again, they argue that the ‘accidents’ that remain are real and therefore constitute a true outward visible sign. Further, as we all should admit, the fact that anything has given rise to superstition is not conclusive against it. The Bible itself has given rise to many superstitions, but that is no reason for abolishing it or denying its value.

In this way it is possible to get a refined doctrine that is not open to the charge of materialism. But although it may be held in this form by subtle and educated minds, we must repeat it is not the ordinary teaching of popular Romanism. Further, it practically explains away the mediaeval doctrine altogether. ‘Thus the modern Roman theologians allow to the consecrated bread and wine all the reality which anyone believes any bread and wine to possess, or, in other words, explain away transub- stantiation, till it remains a verbal incumbrance due to an in- opportune intrusion into Church doctrine of a temporary phase of metaphysics.’ * Further, in however refined a form it is held it is open to very grave objections.

(4) It not only attempts to define what Scripture leaves mysterious, but binds men down to one particular form of philo- sophy. At best it is a pious opinion. We should not wish to condemn those who choose to hold it or to expel them from the unity of the Church. But the Church has no authority to add to the divine revelation a mere philosophical opinion.

(8) It ‘detracts from the kingdom of nature in order to magnify the kingdom of grace.’ On the Roman view the natural is destroyed to make room for the supernatural: the bread and wine are not really consecrated to be the vehicle of divine blessings, they are annihilated. Such a view as this is at

bottom akin to Gnosticism, not Christianity. Christianity has always taught that the material attains to its highest end in becoming the means and expression of the spiritual. The super- natural completes and perfects the natural. In the Incarnation our Lord’s manhood was not absorbed or destroyed by His divinity. Rather He alone was perfect man. In the controversies about the Incarnation the Fathers use the analogy of the Hucharist in order to prove this. According to the Roman doctrine the analogy of the Eucharist would prove just the opposite. ‘Transubstantiation’ is in its whole conception essentially unspiritual. It treats our Lord’s ascended and glorified Humanity as on a level with the things of earth which must needs make room for its coming.*

An apology is needed for such a lengthy discussion of an explanation so utterly unhelpful either to Christian devotion or Christian intelligence. Christian experience attests the reality of the Eucharistic gift. Christ most truly comes to fulfil His promise. That is all that we need to know.

For the history of the doctrine see : Article ‘ Eucharist’ in Hastings’ H.R. L. Gore, Dissertations, p. 229 ff. (summed up in Body of Christ, pp. 111-123). For a complete statement : Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Hucharist (2 vols.).

§ 4. The third paragraph affirms the great truth that safe- guards and is the complement of the doctrine of the ‘ Real Presence.’ ‘The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten wm the Supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper os fatth.’

• Some mention must be made of the unhappy doctrine maintained by Roman ’ theologians ot repute that the presence of Christ bestowed in the Eucharist is withdrawn as soon as the elements begin to be digested. By a second miracle transubstantiation is reversed. The ‘substance’ of Christ’s Body is with- drawn. The ‘substance’ of the bread is replaced. So the coming of Christ is only a temporary visit, for about a quarter of an hour, not a permanent deepening of that union with Christ that only sin can weaken or destroy. Nothing could be in flatter contradiction to the true Christian teaching as given by St. Augustine, ‘What you see in the Sacrament passes away, but the invisible thing signified does not pass away but remains.’ Christ abides in us and we in Him,

Just as the giving and receiving of Christ’s body and blood involve no movement in space, so their eating and drinking involve no physical processes. We can no more eat and drink them with our mouth than we can eat bread and butter by faith. Each food, the food for the body and the food for the soul, has its own means of reception. In each case the strength and goodness are there apart from and outside ourselves and we take them into ourselves.

(a) This truth is further explained by Article XXIX, ‘Of the wicked which do not eat the body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper.’ The phrase ‘eat the body’ clearly refers to the spiritual eating spoken of in Article XXVIII. ‘ The wicked and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as St. Augustine saith) the Sacra- ment of the body and blood of Christ; yet m nowise are they partakers of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.’ ‘The wicked and the faithful alike receive the elements that have been brought into union with the body and blood of Christ. Neither wicked nor faithful carnally and visibly press with their teeth more than the bread and wine. But only the faithful receive the body and blood of Christ, since only they possess that faith which is the indispensable means of receiving them. This Article does not in any way deny the ‘real presence,’ it only rules out any carnal view of it. To give an illustration: when our Lord was on earth He possessed healing power quite independently of the faith of men: but only those who possessed faith could get into touch with it. Many touched His garments, but only the woman who had faith was healed (Mk. 5°°ff.). The healing power was there: the touch of faith did not create it, but faith, as it were, opened the channel to appropriate the blessing. So in the Eucharist, Christ in all His saving power is present. The wicked are only capable of receiving the visible and material signs of His presence. But those who approach with faith can receive the inward grace and become partakers of Christ by feeding on His Body and Blood. Attempts have, indeed, been made to distinguish between ‘eating the body of Christ’ and ‘partaking of Christ.’ It has been claimed that the wicked do the former to their soul’s peril, but cannot do the latter. No such distinction, however, can be drawn, and Scripture seems

to know of no feeding upon Christ that is not unto life (cp. Jn. 6° ff.). The wicked only receive the outward ‘sign or sacra- ment ’ that has entered into the closest relation with the divine gift. The gift itself is withheld or withdrawn, we know not how.*

(6) The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was not by Christ’s ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped. This last section of the Article is carefully worded. It is based on a sound and intelligible principle. The Holy Communion was given to us by Christ for a definite purpose. We can only be secure of its blessings so long as we respect the limits of that purpose. The faithful Christian is assured that in receiving the Holy Eucharist he is brought face to face with Christ. The Lord’s presence is guaranteed by the Lord’s promise. But it is a spiritual presence: and a spiritual presence, however real, is not necessarily controlled by the same laws as an earthly presence. The appearances of our Lord after His Resurrection during the great forty days did not obey the same laws as those that limit and govern our present earthly humanity. Though He condescended to use material means, He was not subject to them. So we must not presume to argue about our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist as if it were in any way an earthly presence. We are sure that He is present to bestow His body and blood. We cannot be certain that that Presence abides when we use the consecrated bread and wine for a new and entirely different purpose, a purpose not ordained by Christ, but prompted by the fallible logic of human devotion. If our Lord could at will enter or withdraw Himself from the Upper Room, so at will He comes to fulfil His promise in the Eucharist and at will He can depart when that promise has been fulfilled. We cannot, as it were, bind Him to earth by our treatment of the elements. Such thoughts lie behind the very cautious statements of the Article. The practices mentioned are not condemned as sinful.

+It is often argued that the value of Reservation for purposes of adoration is proved by the sense of the nearness to our Lord felt by those who practise it. Unhappily the departure from before the Reserved Sacrament is followed by the sense of having left our Lord behind. Is this sense equally valid?

No anathema is levelled at those who retain them. All that is asserted is that they are precarious, as going outside the ordinance of Christ.* The Church of England, therefore, was perfectly justified in abolishing them. At best they are practices enjoined by a part of the Catholic Church.

(i) Reservation purely for the communion of the sick or absent is thoroughly primitive and natural. It is in full accord with the spirit of Scripture and the revealed purpose of Christ and was the custom of the primitive Church. Justin Martyr tells us that a portion ‘is sent to them that are absent, by the deacons.’ In an age of persecution, and when perhaps the majority of Christians were slaves, members were often unavoidably pre- vented from being present. So, too, the Communion was sent to Christians in prison. Again, we read of Christians taking away the consecrated elements in order to communicate them- selves at home during the week or carrying them with them when on a journey. ‘Tertullian speaks of a Christian woman at home ‘ secretly, before all food’ tasting the Lord’s Body.t So, too, as late as the time of St. Basil the monks in the desert where there was no priest communicated themselves with the reserved sacrament. In times of persecution such a practice of private communion was necessary. But it was liable to abuse, and from the fourth century onward the Church took steps to suppress it.t We hear also of the Eucharist being sent as a sign of fellow- ship to distant churches. This custom was familiar to Irenaeus. In the East it was forbidden by the Council of Laodicea in 365, but lasted on longer in the West. Such practices did not com- mend themselves to the mature judgment of the Church. The practice of reservation continued, but under due restrictions in church. The canon law required that it should be kept under lock and key. According to the first Prayer-Book of Edward VI

• Cp. the similar statement of Article XXV: ‘The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon or to be carried about.’

• ‘Ante omnem cibum’ must surely mean ‘before all food,’ not ‘ before every meal,’ though great names can be cited to support the latter translation. There is no evidence for communicating ordinarily more than once a day.

{ Was the sacrament always or ever reserved in both kinds? Probably, as a rule, only the Bread was reserved, but at the time of receiving a fragment was placed in a cup of wine, which was thus regarded as consecrated. This certainly was the usage in some places. (See Wordsworth, Holy Communion, p. 266.)

the sick might be communicated with the reserved sacrament on the same day as a celebration in church. In the second Prayer-Book this permission was withdrawn: there was a very real danger of conveying the sacrament away and using it for superstitious purposes.* In 1662 the present rubric was added enjoining the consumption in church of all the consecrated elements at the close of the service. The primary object of this was to forbid not reservation but the irreverent carrying of the elements out of church for ordinary consumption, which the Puritans were quite capable of doing. But indirectly the rubric forbids all reservation, and even the primitive custom of taking away their portion to the sick. This is a real loss, since every communion of the sick involves a separate private celebration. Happily many bishops have allowed reservation for this purpose under proper conditions—a great relief in crowded parishes, especially as all sick-rooms are not adapted for private celebrations.

The Article is aimed at reservation when practised not for purposes of communion, but in order to provide a localized object of worship. This is a comparatively modern and entirely distinct practice. It is a use of the sacrament that diverges widely from the declared intention of Christ. It arose in the dark ages and received a great impulse through the assertion of Tran- substantiation. The Pyx, or receptacle, at or above the altar containing the reserved sacrament, came increasingly to take a prominent place in the eyes of worshippers. In 1264 the festival of Corpus Christi was instituted and the Blessed Sacra- ment was exposed for worship. So the central act of the modern Roman service of Benediction is the blessing of the congregation by the priest with the consecrated Host.

(ii) Carrying about the Host in procession is only an extension of the same practice. Such a procession came soon to be one of the chief ceremonies of Corpus Christi, though it appealed too largely to the popular taste to be confined to that day. niaicd

(iii) The lifting up or elevation of the Host after consecration in order to be adored by the people was first introduced about 1100 a.p. and is on a level with the previous practices. This elevation must not be confused with the manual acts during the prayer of consecration, when the priest solemnly reproduces the action of Christ at the Last Supper and takes up the bread

and the cup. Nor yet again has this elevation any connexion with that usually found in oriental liturgies, where, after the Lord’s Prayer and before the Fraction, the priest lifts up the elements with the words ‘ holy things for holy men,’ as a pre- liminary to communion. Elevation for adoration was supposed to signalize the actual moment of consecration.* It was expressly forbidden in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI.

(iv) If Christ is present in the Eucharist, most certamly He is then as always to be adored. But this, as we have seen, is quite different from adoration of the Blessed Sacrament divorced from Eucharistic worship. We have no ground for believing that He gave us the Eucharist in order to dwell among us to-day by an abiding external presence as during His earthly life or to afford a visible object of adoration. Nor, again, are we justified in that absolute identification of our Lord with the outward sign that is implied in modern Roman devotions.

Finally, let us gladly admit that in these practices as allowed by the Church of Rome to-day we do find the expression of very deep and real devotion to our Lord. But we maintain that that devotion is purchased at a great cost.

Such practices are inconsistent alike with the reserve that marks a sound theology and with the highest instincts of worship. Our devotion no less than our study requires training and dis- cipline. What is at first the most easy and attractive, is not necessarily the most bracing and conducive to progress. Just as theology, if it is to remain alive and human, must keep in the closest touch both with devotion and with practical Christian effort, so, too, devotion, if it is to escape becoming one-sided and sentimental, must not be divorced from the work of the intellect and the conscience.t Piety may become soft

• Our human imaginations can hardly avoid picturing a definite moment of consecration. In the West this came to be regarded as the Words of Institution, in the East the Invocation of the Holy Spirit. This divergence is enough to warn us against regarding any particular phrases of the prayer as possessing, as it were, a magical efficacy or marking the precise moment of Christ’s coming.

{ ‘ The chief principle regulating worship is the balance between the various elements of human nature. It is the very essence of zeal and enthusiasm that they destroy the balance through a certain impatience of God’s way. They tend to assume that man is what he is not—to forget his inevitable limitations —to assume that God’s purpose for his sanctification can be hurried on by assumptions of our own. Tae danger of this process is to assume that our

and sentimental, a mere pursuit of pleasant sensations. History shows that the practices in question began in popular devotion - and were at once opposed by the best minds in the Church. But the rulers lacked the courage or the principle to refuse to humour the taste of the masses. Hence the services of the Church, instead of being schools where men might learn new lessons of devotion, were degraded to the devotional level of the ignorant multitude. The important truth that our devotions ought to be above—but not too far above—our present spiritual attamment was forgotten. The result has been an unhealthy devotional atmosphere strangely alien from that of the New Testament.

Again, it is part of God’s discipline for us that we should walk by faith, not by sight (Jn. 16’). The result of concentrating devotion unduly on the presence of our Lord in His sacrament has been to obscure His presence in His Church and in the baptized Christian. Modern Romanism in practice minimizes the work of the Holy Spirit. The spiritual fibre of the soul is relaxed by an undue reliance on devotions that excite the senses. The soul comes to shrink from the sterner efforts of faith. There is a danger that worship may be divorced from life. The unity of morality and devotion is impaired. Christianity becomes sentimentalized, a pursuit of pious feelings rather than a life of constant effort lived in the presence of God.*

In favour of Reservation for purposes of adoration, see Darwell

Stone, Zhe Reserved Sacrament. On the other side, Reservation, by the Bishops of Oxford and Chelmsford.

On the history of Reservation, Freestone, The Sacrament Reserved.

emotions which are temporary can be made permanent by elevating their dictates above those of our intelligence, which is the most permanent part of our being… . Now reservation as a help to worship raises the question in a most acute form. Hence its importance. The reception of the Holy Com- munion is a moment of spiritual uplifting to the recipient. Reservation is an attempt by outward appeal to extend this over a larger time: as carried out by the Church of Rome, it aims at making this moment permanent or renewable at pleasure. Is this possible ? Does it work? Does it not impair the sacrament itself and those ordinary means of communion with our Lord which the sacrament itself was meant to impress and strengthen ?’ (Creighton, Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 312. Cp. Church, Pascal, pp. 17-18).

• The modern Roman custom of ‘ visits’ to our Lord in the Tabernacle is the corollary of the view mentioned above that the presence bestowed in the Eucharist is withdrawn as soon as processes of digestion have begun. Cp. a paper by Father Thurston, S.J., in The Month, May 1917,

Notes

• Lightfoot, Ignatius, vol. ii. p. 313, and vol. i. p. 401. + Lightfoot, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 52-53.
• Trenaeus never mentions the Agape. Tertullian speaks of the Eucharist as celebrated before daybreak (De Cor. c. 3) and treats the Agape as quite distinct
• Cp. Westcott, The Revelation of the Father, p. 39 fi.
• The early liturgies use language both about the Body and Blood of Christ as being present at our earthly altars and of our oblations of bread and wine as being carried up to the heavenly altar and there united with His Body and Blood. (Cp. Gore, op. cit. pp. 84-85.)
• Gore, op. cit. p. 120,
• On the materialistic view current in the Midlde Ages theologians found it very difficult to say what did happen when the wicked received the sacrament. The usual view was that they did receive the res sacramenti, i.e. the Body of Christ, but not the virtus or benefits of it. (Cp. Gore, op. cit. p. 147 ff.)
• Op. the last rubric at end of the Communion Office of 1549.