Doctrine of Augustine.

23

presence in the hand of the dispenser, she points to the fact of a spiritual presence in the heart of the receiver."* When told that " one crumb or drop" "is worth more than the world itself," and that the body and blood of Christ are objectively taken by every communicant, "irrespective of faith," she answers with Augustine, that "the wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ."t For there are two parts in a sacrament, and the sign is not the same as the thing signified; for, while the one is outward and visible, the other is inward and spiritual. Bread and wine may indeed be eaten in faith, but to eat them by faith is, from the nature of the thing, impossible, yet not more impossible than that the eucharistic body and blood of Christ For "the body should be apprehended by any bodily sense.

of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper, ONLY after a heavenly and spiritual manner; and the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper, is faith."‡ So that he who doth "truly repent," "and stedfastly believe,' "doth eat and drink the body and blood of our Saviour Christ

against transubstantiation, which was concluded in these words :-" A faithful man ought not either to believe or openly confess the real and bodily presence, as they term it, of Christ's flesh and blood, in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper." And the original subscription of the articles in the reign of Elizabeth, by both Houses of Convocation, shews that at that time this paragraph formed a part of them. So that it is as certain as documentary evidence can make it, that in the reign of Elizabeth, as well as in that of Edward, the clergy of the Church of England abjured in the strongest terms the doctrine of a "real and essential," i. e. a "real and bodily" presence of Christ in this sacrament. And in the sentence which (as being less philosophical and more theological) was eventually substituted for this paragraph, we have the very same doctrine, although expressed (as it was thought) in more appropriate terms: The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner, and the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith."

"

"Feed on Him in thy heart by faith, with thanksgiving" (Words of Administration). The whole clause is couched in the "favourite words of the staunchest reformers, implying that each individual is to take, and eat, and drink, with an application of the merits of Christ's death to his own soul." Compare the Liturgia Peregrinorum (Pollanus; Frankfort Ed. 1555): Accipite, comedite, memores corpus Christi pro vobis esse fractum."

† Art. XXIX. Aug. Tract 26 in Joan. In another place (Lib. xxi. de Civ. Dei, c. 25) he says, "He that says, Whoso eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him, shews what it is, not only in a sacrament, but truly to eat the body of Christ and to drink his blood;" thus contrasting the mere eating sacramentally with the eating" truly." And Origen, after a discourse of the sacrament, which he calls the typical and symbolical body, (Comment. in Matt. c. 15). says, with equal plainness," Christ is the true food, whosoever eats him shall live for ever; of whom no wicked person can eat." "An ergo soli fideles corpore et sanguine Christi pascuntur? omnino; cum quibus enim corpus suum, cum iisdem et vitam eternam, ut dixi communicat" (Nowell's Catechist).

Soli

profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the sacrament with his mouth.”* What more explicit declaration can we have, that the presence of Christ is not in the elements, but in the heart of the faithful receiver?

It is important to observe, too, that the leaders of this popish party, when charged with the Tridentine character of their teaching, are careful not to repudiate the charge. Some of them make it their boast; few ever give it denial. This indeed is "necessary for their position.' Witness the avowed objects of the "E.C.U." and the "A.P.U.C.!" Hence such frank admissions as those of Mr Mackonochie :-" But, people tell you, all this must end in your becoming members of the Roman communion. In answer to this I honestly tell you, that if a man has no stronger ground against Rome than some contest about what he calls "Catholic and Protestant," or some isolated doctrines, however important, I can easily imagine his going to Rome in these days of convulsion in the spiritual world. Indeed, if he be an earnest man, it is difficult to see where else he is to find a rest!" We have italicised the last words for the sake of the question they suggest. Is it possible to recommend popery in stronger terms than these? But this is not all, for we are further told that, as against other churches, the Church of England "takes her stand, not on Acts of Parliament, or a royal injunction, or even a purer faith, or greater manifestation of the spiritual life-all this might one day fail her." What then? why this: when she has apostatised from her "purer faith" and lost her "manifestation of the spiritual life," she will still be "the only church in the world which can claim the joint British and Saxon succession!" So that the rising tide of popery is to be checked, if checked at all, by the Canute of St Albans, sitting on the shore and timidly waving the wand of an unacknowledged and unreal "succession !"

It were idle to quote 2 Tim. ii. 2, or to talk of the "succession" of apostolic doctrine as an integral and essential constituent of apostolic succession, to men who are so superbly superior to all considerations which affect merely "a purer faith." Were it otherwise, we might appeal to that very British and Saxon Church whose authority our opponents profess to claim. We will not cite the testimony of the Culdees; that would be too British-for (in the words of St Bernard) they " rejected auricular confession, as well as authoritative absolution," and therefore cannot possibly find favour with the authorities at St Albans. We will content ourselves with a Saxon authority of the tenth century. Elfric, a con

* Frater in hoc casu sufficit tibi vera fides et bona voluntas; tantum crede, et manducasti." (Maskell, Mon. Rit. i. p. 89.)

"Tantum crede, et manducasti."

25

temporary of St Dunstan, and an ecclesiastic of much celebrity, in a letter which, as it was addressed to Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, and at the request of that prelate, translated into the vernacular tongue, must be admitted as a document of no mean authority, expressly says, the "housel (host) is Christ's body, not bodily, but spiritually. Not the body which he suffered in, but the body of which he spake when he blessed the bread and wine, a night before his sufferings. The apostle has said of the Hebrews, that they all did eat of the same ghostly meat, and they all did drink of the same ghostly drink. And this he said, not bodily, but ghostly. Christ being not yet born, nor his blood shed, when that the people of Israel ate that meat, and drank of that stone. And the stone was not (a stone) bodily, though he so said. It was the same mystery in the old law, and they did ghostly signify that gospel housel of our Saviour's body which we consecrate now." In a homily by this same Elfric," appointed in the reign of the Saxons, to be spoken to the people at Easter," the allusion to the manna and the rock in the wilderness is repeated; the bread in the sacrament is said to be no more the body of Christ than the water of baptism may be said to be the Holy Spirit; the body which is hallowed in the bread is not that in which Christ suffered, for this latter was born of Mary, while the other is formed from a gathering together of many corns, and that "nothing therefore is to be understood therein bodily, but all is to be understood ghostly;" and this series of distinctions the writer brings to a close, by observing that the signs appealing to the senses in the eucharist are a pledge and figure of truth, while the body of Christ is truth itself. It was for disinterring this truth from the grave of popish doctrine, where it had been buried under "many superstitions," that papal inquisitors wreaked their impotent wrath on the bones of that grand old lion, Wycliffe. "For thus Christ saith, This is my body,' and these words must be taken as the words about the BaptistAnd if you will receive it, this is Elias" Christ does not, to avoid equivocation, contradict the Baptist when he declares, 'I am not Elias.' The one means to say that he was Elias figuratively, the other that he was not Elias personally. And so in the case of those who admit that this sacrament is not naturally the body of Christ, but insist that it is figuratively Christ's body, there is in reality no contradiction, but simply the use of the same words in two senses." And again: “You

"A Testimonie of Antiquitie, shewing the ancient faythe in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, here publicly preached, and also received in the Saxon tyme, above six hundred years ago. Printed by John Day, beneath St Martyn's. Cum privilegio Regiæ Maiestatis, 1587. † Trialogus, b. iv. c. 3.

know not what you ask, or what you do. For if ye did, ye would not blaspheme God as you do, setting up an alien God instead of the living God. Christ saith, I am a very (true) vine.' Wherefore do ye not worship the vine for God, as ye do the bread? Wherein was Christ a very (true) vine? Or wherein was the bread Christ's body? It was in figurative speech, which is hidden to the understanding of sinners." How exactly this language is the language of the formularies of the Church of England appears, on comparing it with the most authoritative expositions of those formularies. To take, e. g., a single instance: "By real we understand true, in opposition both to fiction and imagination; and to those shadows that were in the Mosaical dispensation. . . . In this sense, we acknowledge a real presence of Christ in the sacrament; though we are convinced that our first Reformers judged right concerning the use of the phrase real presence, that it was better to be let fall than to be continued, since the use of it, and that idea which does naturally arise from the common acceptation of it, may stick deeper, and feed superstition more, than all those longer explanations that are given to it can be able to cure."+

But the "real presence"-where is it? Do we deny the maxim of St Ambrose, "Ubi corpus, ibi Christus"? By no means. But his presence as the God-man is by the Holy Ghost; "and of the Holy Ghost place is not predicted, save in the souls of the faithful." "I mean not that Christ is spiritually either on the table, or in the bread and wine that is set on the table. . . . . No more truly is he corporeally or really present in the due ministration of the Lord's Supper, than he is in the due ministration of baptism." "The real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament. . . . . I see not which way it should be gathered by the words of Christ, when and where the bread is his body, or the cup his blood; but only in the very heart and soul of him that receiveth him."§ For "the grace of God is not necessarily tied to the sacrament;" and "the bread and wine are not the true body and blood of Christ, but the sign

* Concluding paragraph of Wycliffe's "Wyckett."

† Burnet: Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. 28. In this workhowever it may commonly be undervalued-Burnet has a consensus of archbishops, bishops," and a great many learned divines," from Jewel to Tillotson, to which no other expositor has any pretension. (See his Preface). Those, however, who seek something still more authoritative, may find it in the decision of the Arches Court, in the case of "Ditcher v. Denison."

Abp. Cranmer: Answer to Gardiner.

Hooker: " Eccl. Pol." b. v. c. 67.
Whitgift: "Against Cartwright."

Testimony of the Bishops.

27

and token of them.” "* "So great a difference is there between the sacrament and the body of Christ. The sacrament passeth into the belly, Christ's body passeth into the soul. The sacrament is upon earth, Christ's body is in heaven. The sacrament is corruptible, Christ's body is glory. The sacrament is the sign, Christ's body is the thing signified." In a word, the efficacy of the "effectual signs "acknowledged by the Church of England, is not the 'ex opere operato' of the Church of Rome, or the more intellectual impression of the Church of Zurich, but a spiritual benefit, the force and virtue of which depend subjectively on the moral condition of the recipient."§ And that spiritual benefit we may well expect to possess in increasing measure while we maintain-not the vain attempt to repeat a sacrifice offered "once for all," but—" the perpetual memory of that his precious death, until his coming again."

But we have fallen on perilous times. This alone has induced us to point again to the old paths. The battle of the Reformation, in England, has to be fought over again. "The whole purpose of the great revival has been to eliminate the dreary Protestantism of the Hanoverian period, and restore the glory of Catholic worship; the churches are restored after the mediæval pattern, and our ritual must accord with the Catholic standard." Such is the plain declaration of "The Church and the World," endorsed by a bishop; nor does it stand alone. Speaking in Convocation, in February of last year, the Bishop of Llandaff said, "I cannot but consider this a Rome-ward movement, and a very rapid movement." And the Bishop of St David's, with his usual well-weighed and weighty words, says, "Nothing, in my judgment, can be more mischievous, as well as in more direct contradiction to notorious facts, than to deny or ignore the Rome-ward movement." Let it be well understood from the minute instructions of the Directorium Anglicanum what Ritualism really is. Let Archdeacon Denison¶ be heard avowing that Ritualism means "belief in the doc

Abp. Ussher; "Body of Divinity." Cf., too, Art. XXV. on sacraments as "Effectual Signs ;" and Wycliffe's First Proposition in his Challenge to the University of Oxford (1381): "Hostia consecrata quam videmus in Altari nec est Christus nec aliqua sui pars sed efficax ejus signum."

† Bp. Jewel: Defence of the Apology," p. 222.

It is hardly necessary to observe that, while differing from Zuingle, the Church of England is (at least on this question) in close agreement with the great Genevan Reformer. Yet it is refreshing in days like these to read again, "Institutionis, lib. iv.," especially such portions as section 15 of chapter xiv. (De externis mediis ad salutem), on St Augustine's distinction, "inter Sacramentum et rem Sacramenti."

Canon Boyd: "Confession, Absolution, and The Real Presence," p. 133. Salisbury: On presenting the book to the Upper House of Convocation. "Ritualism and the Real Presence: a Letter to the Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol." Rivingtons.