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TRINITY COLLEGE
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THE BODY OF CHRIST
AN ENQUIRY INTO THE INSTITUTION AND
DOCTRINE OF HOLY COMMUNION
BY CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D,
Of the Community of the Resurrection
Canon of Westminster
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS
153-157 FIFTH AVENUE
igoi
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., LD., PRINTERS,
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133915
PREFACE.
THIS enquiry into the institution and doctrine
of the holy eucharist was first announced under
the title of The Breaking of the Bread ; but as it
appeared that this title was already appropriated,
The Body of Christ was chosen for a title, because it
expresses two most important aspects of eucharistic
truth. It expresses the nature of the gift presented
to us in the sacrament (corpus Christi), and also
the nature of the holy society of which it is the
spiritual nourishment, and of which it is written,
" Ye are the body of Christ."
It is important in the case of any enquiry to
state what is its point of departure. I wish there
fore to make it plain at starting that I assume
the belief in Christ expressed in the Nicene Creed,
and I assume also the substantial truth of the
passages in the New Testament which bear upon
the institution of the eucharist. (Thus, as a minor
part of this assumption, it is taken for granted,
iv PREFACE.
though only incidentally, that however we deal
with the apparent discrepancy between the
synoptists and St. John, the eucharist must be
allowed to have its roots, in some way, among the
associations of the paschal meal.) There is of
course at the present moment a most real and
serious need to vindicate afresh the historical cha
racter of the Gospels : and the examination into
their trustworthiness, which must be the basis of
any such vindication, cannot be too stringent. But
the task is not attempted in this volume. I must
content myself with referring to the thorough
and impartial investigations of Dr. Sanday (see
page 310).
I ought also to explain that I have not traversed
again ground that I had gone over in a volume
entitled Dissertations. I had there discussed (for
instance) Tertullian s doctrine of the eucharist,
and given quotations to illustrate the history of
the doctrine of transubstantiation ; and I have
here simply referred to these discussions and
quotations. 1
1 In both volumes Migne s Patrologia Grccca and Latina
are referred to as P. G. and P. L. with the number of the
volume and column added.
PREFACE v
In the case of a book which does not claim to
be a complete treatise, I hope that the full Table
of Contents, prefixed to this volume, will be found
as useful as an index.
I am very well aware that to some people, more
or less theologically or ecclesiastically minded,
this book will seem in part too indefinite, and to
others of an opposite state of mind, if they should
happen to read it, by far too definite. To the
former I have said what I can in the course of the
argument. To the latter I would take this oppor
tunity of saying, that at a certain stage of religious
progress it seems to be better not to attempt to
think too accurately about the Holy Communion,
but to use, with what faith and devotion is possible,
a sacrament of which it was said at its institution,
" Do this" (not " think this ") "in remembrance of
me." But when the mind has become habituated
to the thought of the incarnation and of Christ s
life communicated to us by the Spirit a thought
which holds so central a place in the New Testa
ment it ought to become possible, nay neces
sary, for us, to exercise our minds also upon the
eucharist, and to gain as great clearness of intel
lectual apprehension upon this subject as upon
vi PREFACE.
any part of the divine method in the redemption
of man.
I should like to add that this book is in part the
result of an attempt to clear up my own thoughts
on eucharistic subjects in view of the " Round
Table Conference" to which I had been summoned
by the late Bishop of London, whose loss the
church has such profound reason to deplore ; and
my best prayer in sending it out is that it may
serve in some measure the object of that Conference
the promotion of mutual understanding and
unity among Christians.
CHARLES GORE.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY,
Quinquagcsima, 1901.
PAGE
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
i. The Christian sacrament ..... i
the idea (Goethe) ..... 2
the primitive celebration (Justin) . . 3
2. The eucharist among other sacrifices . . .12
root conception of sacrifice (W. R. Smith) 12
its development . . . . 15
3. The fundamental idea . . . . .21
meaning of John vi. . . . . .21
(Dr. Westcott) 24
other passages of N. T. . . . .26
(Dr. Moule) 27
intellectual problem . . . . -32
4. The sacramental principle . . . . 36
spiritualism false and true . . . 36
social meaning of sacraments . . .40
CHAPTER II.
THE GIFT AND PRESENCE IN HOLY COMMUNION.
i . The nature of the gift . . . . .48
(Hooker, Waterland) . -49
(Athanasius, Cyril Alex.) . . . -54
viii CONTEXTS.
PAGE
i continued.
(Hilary, Augustin, Leo) . . . . 56
(Cyril J., Ignatius) ... .57
(Thomassin s summary) . . . . 58
exceptions i. (Origen, etc.) . . -59
2. (Clement, Jerome,
Ratramn, etc.) . . 60
3. (Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.j. 62
the gift of the living, glorified, Christ . 66
connection of eucharistic with baptismal
gift (Fulgentius, etc.) . . . -67
2. The relation of the spiritual sift to the bread and
wine . . . . . . -71
the presence objective (Mozley) . . 72
evidence I. Treatment of elements. . 75
II. The prayer of consecration . 76
general form (Clementine). 77
exceptions
(1) words of institution
not reckoned (Cyril J.) 80
(2) Holy Ghost not men
tioned (Serapion,
Irenaeus) . . .81
(3) vagueness as to what
the elements become
(Ethiopic, Gallican) . 82
(4) Roman canon . . 83
(note on Troieli , d o^et /oa-vat, aTrtx^cuvctv) . 79
III. Language of fathers (Cyril J.,
Chrysostom) . . -87
CONTENTS. ix
PACE
2. Evidence III. continued.
localizing language . . 88
meaning of " symbol " (Har-
nack, Greg. Nyss.) . . 89
localization avoided (Op-
tatus, Chrysostom). . 91
(Xewman) . . -93
conclusion on evidence . 93
reason for objectivity . . . -94
as at Pentecost . . . -95
objections
(1) (Didache, etc.) 96
(2) absence of the worship of Jesus in
the consecrated elements . . 99
evidence of liturgies . . . 100
theologians (Chrys., Ambr., Aug.,
Cyril J., Theod.) . . . 103
explanation of this absence
(1) Christ already present as
priest . . . .104
(2) "Jesus-worship" not yet
much developed . .106
(Hort, Talbot, Bigg, West-
cott) 106
conclusion . . . . . . .109
3. Tyansubstantiation considered . . . .in
not the belief of fathers (Iren., Theod.) . 1 1 1
monophysite tendency in East (Greg.
Nyss., John of D.) 113
not so in West (Augustine) . . . 115
x CONTENTS.
PAGE
3 continued.
but later it prevails (Berengar) . . .116
superstitious period . . . . .116
scholastic reaction . . . . .118
total result . . . . . .120
4. The gift and presence spiritual . . , .124
meaning not merely "to our spirits" (J.
Taylor) . . . . . . .124
nor " non-material " ..... 125
but " that in which the purpose of the
spirit unrestrictedly dominates". . 126
the body of the risen Christ . . .127
application to the eucharistic presence . 130
consequent necessity for observing the
limits of the divine purpose . . 131
no hypostatical union of Christ with the
elements . .. . . . . 133
the purpose for which the sacrament was
given ... .134
risk of going beyond it . . . -136
the relation of the presence to the faith of
the recipient ..... 142
(Mozley, Aug., Orig., Cypr., Jer., Leo,
Paschasius, Rupert) .... 143
objectivity in natural and spiritual world
relative to persons . . . . 149
(note on degrees of presence) . . . 153
answer to objections . . . . . 153
CONTENTS. xi
CHAPTER III.
THE EUCHARIST A SACRIFICE.
PAGE
i. The church s sacrifices . . . . . 157
the eucharist called a sacrifice (Didache,
Justin, Iren.) . . . . . -157
note on " bloodless sacrifices " . . . 159
the Fatherson heathen and Jewish sacrifices 160
no further need for propitiation in Christian
church . . . . . . .164
but room for other sacrifices (Ep. to
Hebrews) . . . . . -165
(Clem. Rom., Orig., Iren.) . . . 169
relation of the church s sacrifice to the one
sacrifice . . . . . . . 173
2. No repetition of the sacrifice upon the cross . . 174
(Aug., Chrysost., P. Lombard, Aquinas) . 175
eucharist in what sense called propitiatory
(Orig., J. Taylor) . .177
uniqueness and sufficiency of the cross
imperilled
in popular mediaeval ideas . . .178
in post-Tridentine theology . . 179
by doctrine of dead Christ in the
sacrament (Rupert, Andre wes) . 181
3. The connection bet ween the earthly and the heavenly
offering . . . . . . 185
(i) earthly sacrifice accepted at heavenly
altar (Roman canon, Iren., Paschas.) 186
xii CONTENTS.
PAGE
3 continued.
(2) presence of heavenly Lamb amidst the
worshipping church . . . 192
intercessions postponed or repeated. 193
(Cypr., Cyril J., Chrys., Cabasilas,
Ambr., Bright, Wesleys) . . 194
(3) sacrifice consummated in communion . 199
(Aquinas) . . . . .201
"natural" and "mystical" body 204
(Augustine, etc.) .... 206
4. Summary . . . . . . .210
note on intercession for non-Christians .211
the sacrifice an act of the whole body (P.
Lombard) . . . . . .213
CHAPTER IV.
OUR AUTHORITIES.
i . Medieval authority . . . . . .215
its defects 217
use and abuse of ecclesiastical authority :
our Lord s attitude . . . .220
appeal to scripture ..... 222
2. Authority of the Reformation . . . .227
appeal of Anglican church to catholic
antiquity ...... 227
Anglican position as to
(1) eucharistic gift . .... 229
(2) objective presence (Keble, Arch.
Temple) ..... 230
CONTENTS. xiii
PAGE
2 continued.
(3) transubstantiation .... 235
(4) presence spiritual (J. Taylor) . . 235
(5) eucharistic sacrifice .... 236
3. Authority of the church at large. . . . 239
the Bible and the church .... 241
4. The test of scripture ..... 243
as to (i) the eucharistic gift . . . 243
" flesh " and " body " . . 244
(2) the objective presence . . . 246
(3) transubstantiation . . . 247
(4) presence spiritual . . . 248
(5) sacrifice (Ep. to Hebrews) . . 249
Melchizedekian priesthood . 255
St. Paul. Christ s institution . 262
note on " shewing the Lord s death " . 263
CHAPTER Y.
OUR PRESENT SERVICE OF HOLY COMMUNION.
Some subordinate doctrinal principles . . . 269
(1) community of priest and people . . 270
suppression of voice . . . .271
veiling of altar ..... 272
(2) communion of people . . . . 273
Sunday and daily eucharist . . . 275
presence of non-communicants . . 276
(3) the eucharist and "the word" . . . 278
(4) communion in both kinds . . . .278
the special gift of each kind (Raymundj 279
xiv CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER V. continued.
Defects in our anaphora or canon .... 280
note on meaning of " oblations" . . . 280
Need to restore corporate aspect of eucharist . 286
APPENDED NOTES.
1. Justin Martyr on the cucharistic " word of prayer " 289
2. Eating Christ s flesh explained to mean receiving His
teaching ....... 290
3. The ritual of the Roman church . . . . 292
4. 1 gnatius of Antioch on the eucharist . . . 292
5. The reverent care of the sacred elements in the early
ages 293
6. The language used by some of the fathers as to a
change in the ivatev of baptism and in the chrism,
similar to the change in the eucharistic elements 294
7. Ire-nans on the invocation ..... 295
8. Victorinus Afer on an objective presence of Christ in
the eucharist ...... 296
9. Later Westerns on the spirituality of the eucharistic
presence ....... 296
10. Reservation of the sacrament, and the treatment of
it after communion ..... 298
1 1 . Ivencem on the sacrifice in the eucharist . . 300
12. Passages in the fathers where the immolation of
Christ appears to be spoken of as repeated . 302
13. Errors current in the later middle ages about the
sacrifices of masses . . . . -304
14. Some later Roman teaching on the sacrifice of the
altar ........ 305
CONTENTS. xv
PAGE
APPENDED NOTES continued,
15. The glorious interchanges" of the encharist . 306
1 6. Presence at the encharist of non-communicants . 307
17. Effect of the Epistle to the Hebrews upon
eucharistic doctrine in Ambrose and Chrysostom 308
1 8. The four N. T. accounts of the institution . .310
19. The encharist before the passion and after . .312
20. On the sacrificial meaning of Troiiiv and dva/xv^o-ts 312
2 1 . The social aspect of the sacraments . . -316
THE BODY OF CHRIST.
CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
i. The Christian sacrament.
AT almost any point in the history of
the Christian Church on which the eye
rests, the worship, and in a great measure
the life, of Christians is found centring upon
a religious ceremony in which the chief
point is the presenting before God, and
blessing, and receiving in common, of bread
and wine. And in spite of great differences
in the ceremonial with which this sacra
ment has been celebrated, in spite of
varying types of teaching with regard to
it, which in later times of controversy have
become acutely distinguished and opposed,
the religious meaning attached to the rite
B.C.
2 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
on the whole has been remarkably similar
everywhere and throughout history. As
Goethe said, looking at the matter sym
pathetically, but, as we may say, from
outside, " The sacraments are . . . the
symbols to our souls of an extraordinary
divine favour and grace. In the Lord s
Supper earthly lips are to receive a divine
reality embodied, and under the form of
an earthly nourishment to partake of a
heavenly. This idea is just the same in
all Christian churches, whether the sacra
ment is taken with more or less submission
to the mystery, with more or less accommoda
tion to what is intelligible ; it always remains
a holy, weighty ceremony, which presents
itself in the actual world in the place of
[what one may call] the possible or the
impossible in the place of what man can
neither attain nor do without." 1
1 Goethe, A us Meinein Leben (Wahrheit and Dichtung),
Th. ii. B. 7. (Bohn s trans, vol. i. pp. 245 f.) The
context is a very interesting one. Goethe is emphasizing
the need of habit and sequence in religion. From this
point of view he is complaining of the paucity of Protestant
sacraments. " Such a sacrament (as the Lord s Supper)
THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT. 3
But from a point of view internal to the
Christian faith, we may speak more exactly.
The divine thing in this sacrament, the
spiritual nourishment imparted, has been
almost universally understood to be, in some
real sense, the flesh and blood, or .body
and blood, of Christ ; and by receiving it
Christians have believed themselves to be
bound into one, by being all together united
to God in Christ. "The cup of blessing
which we (Christians) bless," St. Paul had
written, " is it not a communion in the
blood of the Christ ? The loaf which we
break, is it not a communion in the body
of the Christ ? Seeing that there is one
loaf, we the many are one body : for we all
partake from the one loaf." 1
To make this common idea of the Christian
sacrament plainer at starting, we will read the
very early account of it which Justin Martyr,
in the middle of the second century, gave
should not stand alone (in the mature life) ; no Christian
can partake of it with the true joy for which it is given, if
the symbolical or sacramental sense is not fostered within
him."
1 i Cor. x. 16. 17. See R.V. margin.
B 2
4 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, as a part
of the "apology" by which he intended
to disabuse the minds of the non-Christian
world of their gross misconceptions of what
Christianity meant.
After describing the ceremony of baptism,
he continues thus 1 :
" And after we have thus bathed the
person who has become a believer and
adherent, we lead him to the brethren, as
they are called, where they are assembled
to offer up common prayers earnestly on
behalf of themselves and the newly en
lightened one and all others everywhere,
that it may be vouchsafed to us who have
learned the truth to be found also in our
conduct good members of the society, 2 and
keepers of the commandments, that we
may be saved with the eternal salvation.
1 Apol. i, 65-6.
2 The word is that of Phil. i. 27: " Let your conversation
be as becometh the Gospel." R. V. margin : "Behave as
citizens worthily." " The word ... at this time," says
Lightfoot, " seems always to refer to public duties devolv
ing on a man as a member of a body." Cf. Phil. iii. 20 ;
Ephes. ii. 19; and my Ephesians, p. 255.
THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT. 5
Then when we have done our prayers we
greet one another with a kiss. Then there
is presented to the president of the brethren
a loaf and a cup of water and wine ; and he,
after taking them, offers up praise and glory
to the Father of all things, through the name
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and he
gives thanks (eucharist) at length for these
favours of God to us. And when he has
ended the prayers and the thanksgiving
(eucharist) the whole assistant people
assent with an amen a Hebrew word
meaning so be it. (This thanksgiving is
described elsewhere as being made on behalf
of the benefits of our redemption as well
as our creation for indeed "Jesus Christ
our Lord gave us the eucharistic bread
to offer for a memorial of the passion which
He endured on behalf of the men whose souls
were being cleansed from all wickedness." 1 )
11 And when the president has given thanks,
and the whole people has assented, those
who are called deacons (ministers) among
us give a portion of the loaf and wine and
1 Dial. c. Tryph. c. 41.
6 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
water, over which the thanksgiving has been
made, to each of those who are present, and
they take it away to those who are not.
" And this food is called among us eucha-
rist, 1 and no one is allowed to partake of it
unless he believes that what we teach is
true, and has been washed in the laver for
the remission of sins and for regeneration,
and is living as Christ enjoined. 2 For we do
not receive these things as common bread or
common drink, but just as Jesus Christ our
Saviour, by the word of God made flesh,
had both flesh and blood for our salvation,
so we have been taught that the food over
which thanks have been given by the word
of prayer which comes from Him that food
from which our blood and flesh are by
assimilation nourished is both the flesh
1 The word eucharist, " thanksgiving," came very early to
be applied to the whole service, and so to mean the "service
or sacrifice of thanksgiving," and also (as here) the conse
crated elements themselves, which formed, as it were, the
material of the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
2 We should note that the three qualifications for com
munion are : (i) elementary faith in the creed ; (2) baptism ;
(3) good living.
THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT. 7
and the blood of that Jesus who was made
flesh."
The general meaning of this passage is
plain. A divine word was the instrument
in effecting the incarnation by which the
Son of God took our human flesh and blood.
And similarly in every eucharist a divine
word a word of prayer which Christ
delivered produces an analogous effect, i.e.
an analogous union of the divine and the
earthly. For the bread and wine which
correspond to the lower nature, the human
flesh and blood, of the incarnation, and
which indeed form by digestion the material
of our common flesh and blood become,
when blessed and consecrated, something
higher and diviner, the spiritual food of the
flesh and blood of Christ. 1
Then Justin continues: "For the apostles
delivered, in the memoirs compiled by them,
which are called Gospels, that this command
was iven to them that Jesus took bread
o >
1 As to what exactly Justin Martyr means by the "prayer-
word which is from Christ," by which the encharist is
blessed, see app. note i, p. 289.
8 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
and gave thanks and said, Do l this in
remembrance of me : this is my body ; and
took the cup likewise and gave thanks and
said, This is my blood ; and imparted it
to them only. And in the mysteries of Mithra
the evil spirits have instituted by imitation
a similar rite ; for you either know or can
learn how in their ceremonies of initiation
bread and a cup of water are produced
with certain invocations."
Then after the first communion with the
newly baptized Justin goes on to describe
the ordinary Sunday service of the church,
beginning with reading of scriptures, and
a sermon preached by their "president," and
common prayer. " And, as we said before,
when the prayers are over, bread is produced
and wine and water, and the president offers
up prayers and thanksgivings, according to
his power [the forms of prayer, we observe,
were not yet fixed] ; and the people assent
with the amen, and the distribution and
1 Justin Martyr (alone, apparently, among early Christian
writers) understands this word as meaning offer. See below,
P- 3i4-
\
THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT. 9
participation by each of the blessed food
takes place, and it is sent away to those who
are not present by the hands of the deacons.
. . . And if all this seems to you to be
agreeable to truth and reason, hold it in
honour. But if it seems to you trifling, then
as trifles despise it, but do not, as if we
were enemies, decree death against us when
we are doing no harm."
A modern reader will probably feel that this
is an exceedingly interesting, ingenuous and
matter-of-fact account of Christian worship
an account which, on the whole, could hardly
fail to be conciliatory to the more enlightened
or unprejudiced heathen. No doubt Justin
repeats the phrases about eating and drinking
the body (or flesh) and blood of Christ,
which had been a great occasion of blas
phemy ; but they would have been felt to
require some mystical interpretation as
remote as possible from cannibalism. And
yet this idea of eating Christ s flesh and
drinking His blood in the eucharist which,
we observe, Justin here puts forward without
any hesitation before the heathen as the
io THE BODY OF CHRIST.
accepted Christian idea is, for the imagina
tive or speculative intellect, a very difficult
one. As soon as the church began to specu
late about it she found its difficulty. All the
more remarkable, therefore, is the devotional
unanimity on the subject of this sacrament
which characterized the church for some
eleven centuries, and which, even since acute
controversy began, has characterized, and
still characterizes, the devotional attitude
or feelings of pious Christians, very much
more than the antagonism of combatants
would lead us to believe. At this moment
in history, so far as Christians are content
with believing, and feeling, and using the
Holy Communion devoutly as an appointed
means of grace, there is probably a surprising
unanimity amongst them.
But on this, as on every other important
subject, it is necessary, even at the risk of
controversy, to let devout feeling pass into
as much clearness of intellectual apprehen
sion and expression as the case admits of; or,
where we cannot gain any such clearness,
to perceive at least that this intellectual
THE CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT. n
limitation is no more than must be recognized
in other directions, and for similar reasons.
We must at least seek to understand as well
as to believe. And we will make a beginning
of our attempt to understand the Christian
mystery of the breaking of the bread with
the considerations suggested by Justin s
hint of its resemblance to one of the rites
of Mithra the consideration, that is to say,
of its affinities with the customs of religion
in general outside the area of the special
revelation which is the basis of the Christian
church. We will approach the eucharist
first from outside.
2. The cucharist among other sacrifices.
The sacrificial feast of Christians, for so
they conceived it from the earliest times,
has an obvious affinity with almost universal
practices in other religions. Most religions
have centred in sacrificial rites, which have
commonly culminated in sacrificial banquets.
From a variety of causes we to-day naturally
associate with sacrifice the idea of giving
something to some being believed to be
divine, whether in order to propitiate his
anger, or to maintain intercourse with him,
or to recognize his claim upon his wor
shippers. But recent investigation has
tended to show that at least one deep root
of sacrificial customs, if not the root, is
the idea of communion or common sharing
in a life believed to be divine. " We may
now take it as made out," writes Dr. Robert
son Smith, 1 " that throughout the Semitic
1 Religion of the Semites (Black, 1889), pp. 327, 418 ; cp.
SACRIFICES IN GENERAL. 13
field [the group of races to which the Jews
belonged] the fundamental idea of sacrifice
is not that of a sacred tribute, but of com
munion between the god and his worshippers
by joint participation in the living flesh and
blood of a sacred victim." " The one point
that comes out clear and strong .is that
the fundamental idea of ancient sacrifice
is sacramental communion, and that all
atoning rites are ultimately to be regarded
as owing their efficacy to a communica
tion of divine life to the worshipper, and
to the establishment or confirmation of
a living bond between them and their
God."
We must endeavour to grasp this thought.
The tribe or family, or later some group
of voluntarily initiated worshippers, believes
some plant or animal or thing to be divine,
or to be temporarily the habitation of the
divine presence ; and in consuming this, the
divine life is believed to pass into them
Encycl. Brit, (gth ed.) s.v. SACRIFICE, vol. xxi. p. 138, for
some excellent remarks on the religions value of savage
ideas.
I 4 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
all in common, and to strengthen with a
religious bond their social unity. As more
refined ideas of the divine being make such
identification of a god with anything that
can be eaten or drunk more difficult, the
unquenchable desire for divine communion
through eating takes the form of supposing
that the god and his worshippers feast
together ; as, for example, when part of a
sacrifice is burnt, and so rises up in a smoke
believed to be acceptable to the god, and
thus becomes his "bread," 1 or again is eaten
by the priests as representing the god, while
the residue is consumed by the worshippers,
who thus feast, if not upon, yet with, their
god. It is well known that in the case of
the peace offerings of the Jews the greater
part of the meat of the sacrifice was eaten
by the worshippers ; 2 and, though it is never
expressly stated, the probability is that the
idea was that of communion with Jehovah.
1 Lcvit. xxi. 6, 8, 17, 21.
2 It is plain (Levit. vii. 15 21) that the eating was part
of the sacrifice. See ver. 18, and cp. Deut. xvi. 2, 3 :
"Thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto the Lord. . . . Thou
shalt cat no leavened bread with it."
SACRIFICES IN GENERAL. 15
Thus the "altar" was also called the
"table" of the Lord. 1
On the whole, it is no doubt the case that
the development of the sacrificial system
among the Jews tended to bring to the front
the idea of giving to God in homage and
recognition, and propitiating Him by victims,
at the expense of the idea of communion
with Him. And the reason is most interest
ing. In the old natural religions there had
been little sense of the moral holiness of the
god worshipped. Consequently "the rela
tions of man to the gods were not troubled
by any habitual and oppressive sense of
human guilt." It was hardly conceivable
that the god could be permanently alienated
from his worshippers, for they belonged to
one another naturally. The conditions for
communion with him were physical and
ceremonial. But the Jews were to be taught
a new lesson the awful moral holiness of
Jehovah, their God, and the necessity of
being morally like Him in order to approach
Him. And they had to be taught this lesson
Ezck. xli. 22, xliv. 16 ; Mai. i. 712.
16 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
by the discipline of fear. The traditional
easy-going familiarity with the tribal god
was over. They were to fear Jehovah.
This fear was inculcated in part by the
moral law and teaching of Moses and his
successors, the prophets ; in part by divine
events and startling judgments ; but also in
part by the way in which the ceremonial
law, as it was gradually elaborated, fenced
the chosen people off from God, and
made them realize the awfulness of His
presence.
But the closeness ol communion with God
had been taken away from God s own people
only to be given back on a truer and surer
basis. When once they had learned to fear
God s righteousness, that very righteousness
was to manifest itself to them as a love com
municating itself and welcoming them into
closest and most indissoluble fellowship.
Prophecy had anticipated this, and the New
Testament is full of it. In fact, the idea of
communion with God through Christ, the
partaking of His life, the living in His life, is
a central idea of the New Testament. There
SACRIFICES IN GENERAL. 17
are certainly some difficulties belonging to
a famous passage in the Epistle to the
Hebrews which speaks of the "altar" which
Christians have, "whereof they have no right
to eat which serve the tabernacle." 1 But
there can be no doubt that it is intended to
point the contrast between the old covenant
and the new from this particular point of
view, that under the old covenant with the
Jews not even the priests could eat of their
great sin offering of the Day of Atonement,
but that under the new covenant, of which
Jesus is the mediator, that sacrifice by which
atonement was made for us is also that in
which we are admitted to share. Christ our
propitiation is also our new life, and He can
be the former in a true sense only because
He is the latter. Thus we Christians do
truly (in whatever sense) eat the flesh of
Christ offered for us and drink His out
poured blood, and are thus, through fellow
ship in the manhood of Christ, made
partakers of the divine nature which is
also His.
1 Heb. xiii. 10.
B.C. C
\
i8 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
From this point of view the Christian
eucharist, or " bloodless sacrifice " as it
was called the presenting before God and
consecrating the loaf and the wine (very
commonly recognized elements of sacrifice),
and then the common partaking of this
consecrated food by the whole church, with
the belief that in this sacrament or sacred
rite a divine life was, in some mystical
sense, partaken of and divine fellowship
enjoyed this Christian eucharist, I say,
would, so far, have appeared an easily intel
ligible rite to the well-disposed enquirers
of the Roman Empire. As to its origin,
indeed, it was wholly Jewish, not heathen.
Any other suggestion is quite unhistorical.
It was developed out of the rites and associa
tions of the paschal sacrifice and meal. But
the passover of the Jews, with their other
sacrificial rites, was akin to religious customs
which are universal. Thus both in the
national religions and in the private mysteries
of the Empire sacrifices more or less barbaric
or refined, which consisted in or culminated
in sacramental communion, were thoroughly
SACRIFICES IN GENERAL. ig
familiar. 1 Their familiarity must indeed be
assumed to render intelligible Augustine s
repeated definition of sacrifice as " any act
that is done in order by a holy fellowship to
inhere in God." 2 Thus, as we look back,
we recognize in the eucharist, in its outward
form no less than in its inward idea, the
divine consecration of an instinct belonging
to what, in the most historical sense, we can
call natural religion. Here is something
easily appreciable by all men the sacrificial
meal upon the food which symbolizes for
civilized man strength and refreshment the
"bread that strengthens," and "the wine
that maketh glad the heart of man." And
1 Cf. F. B. Jevons Introduction to the Study of Religion
(Methuen), cc. xii. and xxiii., which are largely based on
Robertson Smith, op. cit. Among older writers see John
Johnson s Unbloody Sacrifice (in the " Libr. of Anglo-Cath.
Theol.") ii. pp. 43, ff. In the passage from Justin Martyr
cited above, he points to the resemblance between the
eucharist and the very widely-spread rites of Mithra ;
but he attributes to Satanic imitation what we should
attribute to a universal human instinct, inspired and
used by God both under the types of the old covenant
and under the sacraments of the new.
- DC Civ. x. 5, 6.
C 2
20 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the ideas underlying the sacramental meal
have shown the power which belongs to the
deepest human ideas, to grow with man s
growth, and not to become antiquated.
3- The fundamental idea.
It is a broadly human idea, then, this
which Goethe describes as " partaking of
heavenly under the form of earthly nourish
ment " ; and yet, in its Christian form, it is
not easy to realize with any intelligence
not easy especially for the somewhat sluggish
imagination of us Englishmen. What does
it mean this " eating the flesh of Christ and
drinking His blood " ? Apart from any ques
tion as to how we do this in the eucharist,
what is the idea which the words are
intended to convey to our minds ; or again,
St. Paul s similar phrase, " the communion
in the body and blood of Christ" ? x
On the one hand, we shall not be satisfied
with any explanation of eating Christ s flesh
and blood, or body and blood, which makes it
a metaphor for believing in Him or receiving
1 The reasons for not making any broad distinction
between "flesh" and "body" are stated below, pp. 244 ft .
22 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
His words. 1 A metaphor or parable must
really illustrate what it is intended to explain.
Our Lord s metaphors and parables do this
pre-eminently and justly. He never, as many
of His interpreters have since done, over-
presses the figure. But if "eating Christ s
flesh and drinking His blood" were merely a
figure for believing in Him, it would be, as in
sisted upon in the discourse in St. John vi., an
overpressed andmisleadingfigure. Moreover,
as we examine the argument of that discourse,
we see that the heavenly food of the flesh and
blood of Christ is not an equivalent for faith,
but is the divine response to it or satisfaction
of it. Faith in the Christ is the "work " that
God demands of men : the true manna, the
bread of life, the flesh and blood of Christ, is
the divine gift given to faith, corresponding to
the wages given for work. Faith admits to
the gift, but is not the same thing with it.
Rather, the gift satisfies the spiritual appetite
of faith, as the manna satisfied the physical
appetite. 2
1 On this misapprehension, see app. note 2, p. 290.
2 See John vi. 27 29, 47 51, 58.
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 23
The flesh and blood of Christ, then, mean
a gift, corresponding with the manna a
heavenly food given by God to man, which
faith receives but does not create, and which
it cannot do without.
On the other hand, our Lord, as reported
by St. John, guarded against the disciples
misunderstanding in any gross sense the
meaning of His flesh and blood. He directed
their attention away from the flesh and blood
of His mortal and corruptible body upward to
His future glory. " What and if ye shall see
the Son of Man ascending where he was
before ? " l He told them that in the ordinary
sense human flesh could do them no good
"the flesh profiteth nothing": that only
spirit could impart true life to man, and that
the flesh and blood He had been speaking of
the flesh and blood of the Son, ascended
and glorified could impart life to them only
because they truly were spirit and life. Thus
He lifted their minds to a high and spiritual
region, where they could be in no danger of
low and carnal misconceptions. He "diverts
1 John vi. 60 64.
24 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
them," as Athanasius says, "from a bodily
conception." - 1 But none the less, He plainly
means them to understand that, in some
sense, His manhood is to be imparted to those
that believe in Him, and fed upon as a principle
of new and eternal life. There is to be an
"influence" in the original sense of the
word an inflowing of His manhood into
ours. Nothing less than this can be meant by
feeding on His flesh. 2 Shall we say, then,
1 Ad Scrap iv. 19. See my Dissertations, p. 305.
2 Cf. Westcott, Rev . of the Father, p. 40 : " Now it is easy
to say that eating of the flesh of Christ, is a figurative way
of describing faith in Christ. But such a method of dealing
with the words of Holy Scripture is really to empty them
of their divine force. This spiritual eating, this feeding upon
Christ is the best result of faith, the highest energy for
faith, but it is not faith itself. To eat is to take that into
ourselves which we can assimilate as the support of life.
The phrase to eat the flesh of Christ expresses therefore,
as perhaps no other language could express, the great
truth that Christians are made partakers of the human
nature of their Lord which is united in one person to
the divine nature, that He imparts to us now, and that we
can receive into our own manhood, something of His man
hood, which may be the seed, so to speak, of the glorified
bodies in which we shall hereafter behold Him. Faith, if I
may so express it, in its more general sense, leaves us
outside Christ trusting in Him ; but the crowning act of
I faith incorporates us in Christ."
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 25
that by His flesh we understand the spiritual
principle or essence of His manhood, as
distinguished from its material constituents?
and by His blood, according to the deeply-
rooted Old Testament idea, the "life thereof"
the human life of Jesus of Nazareth in His
glory ? Whether these phrases are thought
to be satisfactory or no, in some sense it is
the manhood which must be meant by the
flesh and blood.
At the same time, it is equally evident that
it is only because of the vital unity in which
the manhood stands with the divine nature
that it can be " spirit " and " life." It is the
humanity of nothing less than the divine
person which is to be, in some sense, com
municated to us, and not (what would be the
worst materialism) a separated flesh and
blood. What the Father is spoken of as
giving us is the whole Christ the whole of
1 Levit. xvii. n, 14 (R. V.) : "The life (or soul ) of the
flesh is in the blood ; and I have given it to you upon the
altar to make atonement for your souls ; for it is the blood
that maketh atonement by reason of the life. . . . As to the
life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life
thereof. . . . The life of all flesh is the blood thereof."
26 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
His indivisible and living self. " As the
living Father sent me, and I live because of
the Father : so he that eateth me, he also
shall live because of me. This is the bread
which came down out of heaven." 1
The glorified Son of Man, then, Christ
Jesus the Word and Son of the Father made
flesh and glorified is to impart His own
life to believers, and by this alone can they
hope to share in the true eternal life. This
is the central idea of St. John vi. Nothing
less than this can justify the startling em
phasis laid in the discourse upon eating
Christ s flesh and drinking His blood. And
the idea is in agreement with the teaching of
the last discourses of our Lord as St. John
also reports them. There too it appears
that the future coming of the Spirit as the
substitute for Christ the new advocate- is
to involve a coming of Christ also Himself
in a new way. The Father, our Lord says,
will send " another advocate," but also " I
come unto you ; " " Because I live, ye
shall live also ; " "I am the vine, ye are the
1 John vi. 57.
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 27
branches ; " " Abide in me, and I in you."
Plainly, all this language is exaggerated and
excessive, unless this is to be a characteristic
function of the Spirit in the church, to com
municate and so perpetuate the life of the
glorified Christ as the new life of the new
society of believers.
As Dr. Moule says, u I see in them [such
words as those just cited a remembrance
that what the Spirit does in His free and
all-powerful work in the soul which He
guides into new life, is, above all things,
to bring it into contact with the Son. He
roots it, He grafts it, He embodies it into
the Son. He deals so with it that there is
a continuity wholly spiritual indeed, but
none the less most real, unngurative and
efficacious, between the Head and the limb,
between the branch and the Root. He
effects an influx into the regenerate man
of the blessed virtues of the nature of the
second Adam, an infusion of the exalted
life of Jesus Christ, through an open duct,
living and divine, into the man who is born
1 John xiv. 16 19, xv. i, 4 6.
28 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
again into Him, the incarnate and glorified
Son of God." 1
And that Christ did really speak language
of the kind referred to by St. John, is
postulated, I cannot but think, by the
narrative of the institution of the eucharist
in the Synoptic Gospels, and by the language
which St. Paul finds ready to his hand. By
the language of the Synoptic Gospels, I say,
at the institution of the eucharist, for the
eucharist I suppose to be the appointed
means for realizing a relationship to Christ
already described in St. John vi. Such
unexampled language as " Take eat : this is
my body . . . Drink this: this is my blood,"
can hardly have stood isolated and un
explained ; and with the most inevitable
directness of force, it implies that it is
Christ s manhood of which we are to partake.
And this is the idea also upon which St. Paul
works. 2 It appears in his writings as the
revealed ground of his teaching about the
1 Moule, Vein Creator (Hodder and Stoughton), pp. 39 f.
- See (in order) i Cor. xi. 23 26, x. 16 18, xii. 12, 27,
Col. i. 18, ii. 19, Ephes. i. 23.
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 29
relation of Christ to the church which is His
body. We need not stop to enquire whether
in using the term "the body of Christ"
for the Christian society, St. Paul had chiefly
in mind the organic unity of the visible
society as a body of many members, or
the fact that what constituted its unity
was the communicated life of Christ the
head ; whether, that is to say, the metaphor,
as St. Paul used it, was mainly social,
as in other literature, or mainly Christo-
logical. Apparently it was at different
periods mainly the one or mainly the other.
But it is impossible to consider St. Paul s
language where he explains to us what he
received "from the Lord" about the insti
tution of the perpetual memorial of Christ,
and emphasizes the awful sacredness of the
bread and cup which are there presented to
us ; ] or where he speaks of the vital unity
of the church, as constituted and expressed
by the communion in Christ s body and
blood;- or where he speaks of being baptized
1 i Cor. xi. 23 to end.
- i Cor. x. 16 17.
3 o THE BODY OF CHRIST.
into the church as baptism "into Christ
Jesus" j 1 or of Christ in His glorified man
hood as "life-giving spirit"; 2 or of the
whole new life of the Church as "in Christ," 3
it is impossible, I say, to consider all this
language without feeling that what St. Paul
believed in was not a bare or mere gift of a
divine Spirit to the church, but a gift of
the divine Spirit with this for His special
function to communicate the nature of the
glorified Christ, and to perpetuate in the
world His divine and human life. Christ
is our example and our outward pattern :
He is again our propitiation with the Father :
but He is also our new life. And what
makes His example practicable for us in
spite of the gulfs of difference which sepa
rate His sinlessness from our sinfulness and
His glory from our shame, is the fact that
He is not only outside us as an example
in the history of the remote past, but alive
and at work in us at the present moment,
1 Rom. vi. 3.
- i Cor. xv. 45.
3 2 Cor. v. 17.
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 31
moulding us inwardly into His likeness.
Again, what makes it morally possible that
Christ should have acted and offered Himself
vicariously for us once for all, is the fact
that He who thus offered Himself as man
was to become the head of a new race, and
those for whom He offered Himself were to
belong to His manhood and share its power
and its motive. This the propagation of
Christ s manhood by the transmission of His
Spirit, or Christ in us the hope of glory is
truly the culminating point of our religion,
which alone explains the rest. It was felt
to be so at least through all the first twelve
centuries of our era.
But it will be said, Why labour this
point ? is it not universally agreed ? Among
theologians, perhaps, it is a common-place,
and among Christians of a certain kind.
But it remains very difficult language to a
great many Englishmen. And it is the lack
of this fundamental conception of the life of
the Son of Man imparted to His people by
the Spirit, which makes it so difficult to
secure a really vital belief in this particular
32 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
sacrament of Christ s body and blood.
We must labour to secure for it a funda
mental lodgment. We must try and get
the intelligence on to its side.
By eating Christ s flesh is meant, as we
have seen, receiving into ourselves and
appropriating by faith what we can only
describe as the spiritual principle of His
manhood ; and by " drinking His blood,"
receiving and absorbing His human but
God-united life. No doubt it may be said
that language like this appeals rather to the
spiritual imagination and feeling of believers
than to their speculative intellect. No doubt
also in its warmth and fulness it appeals
to some more naturally than to others to
St. Paul rather than to St. James, to Ignatius
of Antioch rather than to Clement of Rome;
but no one can be at home in the New
Testament language as a whole without
being able to dwell on it and give a
meaning to it ; and it may be doubted
whether, when we come to examine it, the
idea involves any more intellectual difficulty
than is involved in the mystery of human
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 33
life at its inception and at every stage of
itsj)ropagation.
We know that our human life is not an
isolated product in each individual. We men
belong to a family, to a race, to humanity:
that is to say, we derive our life with all
its wonderful faculties and faults not only
physical but intellectual, moral and spiritual
from our parents and ancestors, back to
the beginnings of our race. We share a com
mon and a transmitted life. 1 The process of
its transmission the manner in which we
individuals carry in ourselves not only the
physical stock but the accumulated moral
and spiritual heritage of the manhood to
which we belong this permeation of the
individual by the race, is very mysterious.
It baffles our attempts at analysis at every
turn. It does not enable us fully to interpret
and explain the phenomena of individuality
which stand out against the fact of unity,
1 I touch here the edge of the old controversy between
traducianism and creationism. But I think, however much
emphasis we may lay on the individuality of each soul,
something like what is stated above must be admitted.
B.C. u
34 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
still less to forecast or anticipate them. But
it is a fact. It is the justifying principle of
St. Paul s teaching about the "first Adam"-
this fact of our natural organic unity. And
we must ask whether there is really anything
more mysterious or intellectually difficult
in the conception of the second Adam, of
the glorified Christ, healing the spiritual and
moral unsoundness of the human race by
infusing into it, through whatever means,
the recreative influences of His own manhood.
Nor will a reasonable man be surprised that
he cannot subject these influences of the
new manhood to analysis, for he cannot
subject life to analysis at any stage, so as
to find out its secret.
Thus we return and take our stand upon
what the language of the New Testament
involves that Christ declared His intention
to communicate to His church His own
human life ; that the apostles who first fully
expounded His intentions believed and
taught this, and transmitted the belief to
the best and deepest of Christians in all
generations ; and that it is this which
THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA. 35
alone makes intelligible the whole of the
Christian language about the eucharist,
which goes back for its certificate to the
institution of Christ. This fundamental
principle must be our first presupposition in
approaching the doctrine of the eucharist.
D 2
4- The sacramental principle.
Our second presupposition must be some
adequate perception of the meaning and
value of sacraments ; a condition of mind
such as renders it intelligible that a spiritual
gift should be communicated by God to man
through the medium of a material ceremony.
There is, it must be admitted, a tendency
in Protestantism, partly to be explained by
reaction, towards a conception of spirituality
which is certainly not completely Christian
a conception which puts the spiritual straight
off in opposition to the material, so that the
idea of a spiritual gift attached by divine
ordinance to material conditions is rejected
as unworthy of God. 1 It is questionable
whether those who hold such language can
ever have really reflected on the conditions
under which indisputably the most important
1 Cf. Mr. \V. Hay M. H. Aitken, The Mechanical versus
the Spiritual (Shaw, 1899).
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. 37
and fundamental spiritual gift given on this
earth, the gift which is the necessary founda
tion of all others the gift of the human
soul, capable of all spiritual activities, and
destined for an immortal fellowship with God
is actually given. The production on this
earth of a human soul or personality, with
all its tremendous and eternal possibilities
for good and evil, is by God s creative
will indisputably attached to material con
ditions ; and such conditions as are in
experience found to be the most liable to be
misused, and to become not material only
but carnal. This at least gives us something
to think about. It shows us something of
the mind of God. This dependence of the
immortal spirit --the only seat of human
spirituality upon material conditions, at its
origin and throughout.its existence upon the
earth, is the most convincing refutation of
a great deal of language used in repudiation
of the sacramental principle.
So inextricably, in fact, is the human
spirit implicated in the flesh, that it is only
through the perceptions of the senses that it
38 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
is able originally to act at all ; and in the
relations of men to one another their life
is carried on, to an extent which reflection
leads us to realize more and more, upon
a basis of what one may call natural sacra
ments. Thus handshaking is the sacrament
of friendship, and kissing the sacrament of
love. And each in expressing also intensifies
the emotion which it expresses. The spirit in
us feeds upon the material of its own symbols.
The flag again is the sacrament of the
soldiers honour, and can stimulate it to the
point of uttermost self-sacrifice. And it would
be easy to go on multiplying such examples.
Thus there can be no doubt that, on all
human analogy, a religion which, like the
Christian religion, exists to realize com
munion with God under conditions ol
ordinary human life, and which refuses to
confine its message to some select class
of philosophers who may claim (though it
is an idle boast) to live a life aloof from
the body such a religion for common men
must have developed, apart from any ques
tion of authority, sacramental ceremonies.
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. 39
They are, as all history shows, the natural
means for religion to use.
Would then the divine principles of the
Christian religion hinder such use of sacra
ments ? On the contrary, the religion ot
the incarnation the religion of a Christ
come in the flesh associates the lower and
material nature with the whole process of
redemption, and teaches us that not without
a material and visible embodiment is the
spiritual life to be realized either now or in
eternity. The spiritual, in the New Testa
ment, means not what is separated from the
material or the bodily, but that in which
the spirit rules, or that which expresses a
spiritual meaning. 1 Thus from the days
when the first Christian Fathers were fighting
their great battle against the false spirituality
of Gnosticism, it has been the sound argu
ment of Christian theologians 2 that the idea
of sacraments the idea of spiritual gifts
given through material means --is of a
1 See further, p. 126.
- See Ignatius ad Smyrn. 6; Irenaens c. liar. i. 21, 4,
iv. 17 18, v. a 3; Tertullian de res. earn. 8; Gregory of
40 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
piece with the whole method of God in the
creation and redemption of man ; of a piece,
to put the matter otherwise, with the two
fold nature of man, in which the body is asso
ciated most intimately with every spiritual
faculty, and in which every spiritual emotion
and capacity is made to depend upon external
and physical facts.
But the argument is enormously strength
ened when the social character of sacraments
is had in view. I suppose that if we ask
ourselves the tremendous question why God,
almighty and all-loving, should have attached
the production of a spiritual personality, so
awfully endowed, to conditions so precarious
and capable of degradation as sexual union,
the most satisfactory answer is, that this is
but one example of a universal law : that God
has willed (in spite of all the risks involved)
to bind individual beings together in social
relationship. God may indeed ultimately
Nyssa cat. mag. 33 35 ; Chrysostom in Matt. horn. Ixxxii. 4.
P. G. Ivii. 743. These passages, read in their continuity,
show a remarkable unity of teaching, and it would be easy
to add to them.
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. 41
take the soul into His own absolutely equit
able hands, to reconstitute it solely in view
of its individual possibilities and responsi
bilities ; but for this world, at least, its
whole condition, spiritual as well as material,
is, to a degree which it is not easy to exagge
rate, dependent upon the society which is
responsible for it, whether it be family, tribe
or nation. That the individual is to be the
product of the society, not indeed wholly, but
mainly and in most cases, is, I say, the lesson
which universal nature bears upon its face.
And this law passes unchanged into the
kingdom of redemption. There, also, the
individual Christian is to be what he is, and
to become what he can become, by relations
to the divine society, the church. And it is
in the method by which he is first brought
into "the household," and then fed there, that
this is apparent. That is to say, the sacra
ments, which are means of personal grace,
are also social ceremonies: ceremonies only
possible among members of a society. 1 The
attachment of the particular spiritual gifts,
1 See more at length app. note 21, pp. 316 ft.
42 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
by divine institution, to sacraments that is,
to social ceremonies is the divine provision
against spiritual individualism. Thus our
new birth into Christ is attached to a washing
of water. This is the "bath of regeneration,"
the being " baptized into Christ." But it is
also our introduction into the society; "by
one Spirit were we all baptized into one body."
Again, our confirmation, or " unction " by
the Holy Ghost, which is the completion of
our baptism, is attached to the laying-on of
the hands of the chief pastor of the society ;
and while it is the enriching of our personal
life, it is also our investiture with a kingship
and priesthood, which imply the full privi
leges and obligations of membership in the
society. Once more, the fullest personal
fellowship with Christ, the eating His flesh
and drinking His blood, is attached to the
pre-eminently social sacrament that is to
say, to " the breaking of the bread," the
fraternal sharing of bread and wine.
At first the social aspect of the eucharist
was unmistakable. As when it was insti
tuted at the last supper, so when it was
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. 43
celebrated in the first clays at Corinth,
it was the crowning event of a special
social meal the " Lord s supper." 1 It thus
extended its consecrating influence over all
meals which were " sanctified by the word
of God and prayer." But human weakness
very soon made such a mode of celebrating
it undesirable. The Corinthians by their
selfishness and greediness treated the supper
as "their own" and not "the Lord s."
Thus very early the eucharist had to be
detached from the love-feast, and pursued
its own independent development. In our
day we could not wish it otherwise. Such
a convivial background to the highest
1 See i Cor. xi. 20. The " Lord s supper" appears to
have been a name current for the meal, of which the
eucharist formed a part. As a name for the eucharist alone
it does not occur till much later first in St. Basil. It must
be remarked, that St. Paul s tremendous language (i Cor.
xi. 27 30) makes it impossible to suggest that so far as
the apostolic teaching went the spiritual meaning of the
eucharist was in any way imperilled by its social setting.
But in the Didache we probably have an example of a half-
Christianized church where this was the case.
- i Tim. iv. 4, 5. There are many indications in early
days how the consecration spread itself from the " Christian
sacrifice " over all Christian meals.
44 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
spiritual acts could only be maintained in
societies which are kept at a very high level
by the moral cost involved in joining them.
But the social symbolism of the " breaking
of the bread " was still apparent in Justin
Martyr s days and later on, 1 especially in the
dignified ritual of the Roman church. For
there the primitive custom survived into
the middle ages of taking the elements for
consecration out of the offerings of the
people ; and also the special solemnity of
the " fraction " of the consecrated bread, and
the sending of portions from the bishop s
mass to the other city churches, gave vivid
expression to the unity of the body. 2 And
even where the social symbolism of the
1 The idea is ritually expressed by the breaking of the
one loaf and the drinking of the one cup. Also, as Cyprian
explains it to us, by the addition of water (representing us
men) to the wine (of Christ s humanity). Might we not
nowadays have a compromise in the Church of England
by which one side should abandon the wholly unsymbolical
practice of separate wafers in favour of the one bread,
in some form leavened or unleavened ; and the other side
should accept the mixture of the chalice indisputably a
quite primitive custom ?
- See app. note 3, p. 292.
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. 45
ritual was less pronounced, still in all parts
of the world the teaching of the church gave
to the idea more or less of emphasis.
We ought to remember that a great deal
is lost more than can be easily calculated
if at any period this great idea of fraternity
is allowed to fade out of the eucharistic
language or ritual of the church. A system
hardly deserves the name of Christian at all,
which does not impress upon its worshippers
that communion with God is no otherwise
to be realized than in human brotherhood.
The more we dwell on the social meaning
of sacraments, the more profoundly satisfying
an answer does it supply to the difficulties
raised by such a false spiritualism as resents
the attachment of spiritual gifts to outward
conditions. On the other hand, there is
here no disparagement of the claim which
Christianity makes upon the individual
will and heart and intellect. Our social
opportunities, whether they be political or
religious, are only realized by the response
of the individual will by the reaction of the
man upon his surroundings. For example,
46 THE BODY OF CH RI ST.
the greater the birthright which belongs to
an Englishman because of the circumstances
of his birth, the greater the responsibility
in which he is involved, and the more mani
fest the failure if he is apathetic or worse.
Similarly also the greater the spiritual
opportunities of our baptism, the deeper the
requirement upon the faith of the individual
to claim and use them ; if need be, to be
converted or "turn," and use them. 1 And
the higher the gift which mere outward
participation in the sacrament of the holy
communion puts at our disposal, the more
certain it is that only according to our faith
will it be done to us. For faith only can
appropriate and make our own a spiritual
gift. But there will be further opportunities
for reflecting upon this side of the truth
when we come to speak of the presence in
the eucharist as a spiritual presence.
And again, this doctrine of sacraments
seeks to impose no restrictions on God,
1 The true teaching is expressed by Gregory of Nyssa in
few words in cat. mag. c. 36. Our salvation in its beginning
is by " faith and water."
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. 47
whether for this life or beyond it. God is
not tied by His own ordinances, but can
give where and as it pleases Him. We do
but declare that the sacramental method is
the stated and normal law of His kingdom,
and therefore the law to which we at least
are bound, alike in prudence and in love, to
conform our practice and our expectations.
We are now in a position to give closer
attention to the exact nature of the gift or
presence in the eucharist, on the basis of
these two presuppositions : (i) that a central
and essential feature of the Christian reli
gion is the communication to believers by
the Spirit of the life of the Christ, divine
and human, or, as we may call it, the spiri
tual principle and virtue of His manhood ;
(2) that the communication of this spiritual
life to us by means of a material and social
ceremony is quite analogous to the whole
of what we know about the relation of the
human spirit to bodily conditions, about the
relation of the individual to the society,
and about the principles of the pre-eminently
human and social religion of the Son of Man.
CHAPTER II.
THE GIFT AND PRESENCE IN HOLY
COMMUNION.
i. The nature of the gift.
Now we are in a position to examine
somewhat more definitely the nature of the
gift given in Holy Communion. And at
once we realize that on this the most
important matter there has been compara
tively little controversy. It is as to the
relation of this divine gift or presence to
the outward elements of bread and wine that
controversy has raged in one form or another
since the eleventh century with not much in
termission. In England since the Reformation
the question has chiefly been Is the spiritual
presence in the bread and wine indepen
dently of reception ? or is it simply that
a spiritual gift, as in baptism, accompanies
a symbolical act in this case an act of
THE NATURE. OF THE GIFT. 49
feeding ? This question will come forward
for consideration immediately. At present
we are only interested in the prior question
what is the spiritual gift given in Holy
Communion ; and about this there has been,
as was said just now, comparatively little
controversy. The gift of the eucharist is
precisely that gift of the flesh, or body,
and blood of Christ, the spiritual principle
and life of Christ s manhood, inseparable
from His whole living self the meaning
of which, apart from all question of ho\v
or when we receive it, we were just now
considering.
To prove a high degree of agreement on
this point, I will proceed to cite a few typical
witnesses. And as Richard Hooker stands
specially for the attempt to decline or shelve
what he describes as the only controverted
question that of a presence in the elements
independently of reception let Hooker first
bear his witness as to the nature of the gift
given, according to what he calls " the
general agreement." 1
1 Eccl. Pol, V. Ixvii. [3!.
50 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
Christ in the sacrament, he declares, "im-
parteth Himself, even His whole entire per
son, as a mystical head, unto every soul
that receiveth Him. . . . What merit, force
or virtue soever there is in His sacrificed
body and blood we freely, fully and wholly
have it by this sacrament ; " and " because
the sacrament being but a corruptible and
earthly creature must needs be thought an
unlikely instrument to work so admirable
effects on man, we are therefore to rest our
selves altogether upon the strength of His
glorious power who is able and will bring
to pass that this bread and cup which He
giveth us shall be truly the thing He
promiseth." Again he says, " The Sacra-
mentaries " [that is, the schools of Zwingli
and Calvin] "grant that these holy mys
teries . . . impart to us in true and real
though mystical manner the very person
of our Lord Himself, whole, perfect and
entire." 1
Waterland, again, is a cautious and
cold theologian of the eighteenth century,
1 L.c. [7] and [8].
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 51
who is specially identified with the positive
repudiation of any presence of Christ in the
elements: but as to the spiritual effect of the
act of communion his language is precise.
It is a union with Christ s flesh and blood,
i.e., His manhood, and so it is " a mystical
union with Christ in His whole person." l
And he speaks of " fixing the economy of
man s salvation upon its true and proper
basis, which is this : that in the sacraments
we are made and continued members of
Christ s body, of His flesh and of His bone.
Our union with the Deity rests entirely upon
our mystical union with our Lord s humanity,
which is personally united with His divine
nature, which is essentially united with God
the Father, the head and fountain of all.
So stands the economy ; which shows the
high importance of the principle before men
tioned. And it is well that Romanists and
Lutherans, and Greeks also, even the whole
1 Doctr. of the Euch. (Oxford, 1880), p. 192. Water-
land considers St. John vi. to refer to a divine gift, not
exclusively but specially bestowed upon us in the
eucharist.
E 2
52 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
East and West, have preserved it, and yet
preserve it." }
It would indeed be hard for English
churchmen to speak otherwise, the lan
guage of the Prayer Book being so con
stant and imperative as to the reality and
character of the gift conveyed through the
partaking of the bread and wine. But the
point needs to be made emphatic, because
with the holding of this doctrine, in such
real sense as admits of its being deliberately
and calmly stated and insisted upon, all real
intellectual difficulty about the eucharist
ought to be over. Beyond this we may
seek to conform our apprehension and our
statements as exactly as possible to the
general mind of the church and the lan
guage of the New Testament, and to avoid
errors and corruptions of which history
warns us, but the chief point of difficulty is
already past.
Both Hooker and Waterland are laying
down in these passages what they conceive
to be the point of agreement even among the
1 L.c., p. 520,
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 53
various schooLs of Christians who adhered
to the Reformation. No doubt there were
already Zwinglians or Socinians who made of
the Holy Communion only a symbolic repre
sentation of the death of Christ and of the
benefits which we receive thereby : only an
occasion when we solemnly eat the broken
bread and drink the outpoured wine and
in connection with these speaking symbols
mentally realize our union with our crucified
Lord. And it does not, I suppose, admit of
doubt that in the Protestant and Evangelical
bodies of the Continent and of England this
purely figurative view has since their day
obtained the widest diffusion as far as theory
goes; though the practical devotional attitude
of believers towards the sacrament has, we
may well believe, habitually reached a higher
level. But Hooker and Waterland could
appeal, not to the Lutherans only \vith their
(reputed) consubstantiation, but to the re
modelled doctrine of Calvin, when he had
separated himself from Zwingli and asserted
in the strongest language the actual and
substantial communication to us in the
54 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
sacrament of Christ s body and blood, His
life and self, to be our spiritual food. 1 This
was the substantial point of agreement, as
the outcome of all the controversies of the
Reformation, between the divided portions
of the ancient church, and nearly all the
Reformed bodies.
And this belief did but carry on the tradi
tion of the church from the days before the
controversy about transubstantiation, which
so painfully confused the intellectual issue.
This is specially apparent in the teaching of
the great theological fathers of the fourth
and fifth centuries. Athanasius is set to
vindicate the true godhead of Christ and the
unity of His person; and thus he explains
that the reason why we become partakers
of the divine nature (or, as he says, " are
deified ") by partaking of the body of Christ,
is because what we receive is not " the body
of some man, but the body of the Lord
Himself." 2 And in regard to the "eating
1 See, for a collection of passages from Calvin, Paget s
Introduction to Hooker B. v. (Clarendon Press, 1899),
pp. 180 ff.
2 Ep. Ixi. 2 (P. G. xxvi. 1085).
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 55
Christ s flesh," according to St. John vi., he
would have us remember that it is indeed
the flesh that Christ was wearing of which
He spoke, but that flesh as spiritualized and
raised to the heavenly region, and therefore
to be not " corporally" but spiritually con
ceived, as it is also for a spiritual nourishment
that it is distributed. 1 It is plain what Athana-
sius belief was both as to the reality and as
to the spirituality of the eucharistic gift ; as
to its being truly the body and the blood,
but the body and the blood of the whole
living and divine person, spiritually con
ceived and spiritually imparted.
These points are repeatedly asserted by
Cyril of Alexandria. 2 "When we celebrate
the bloodless worship in our churches and
approach the mystic gifts, and are sanctified
by becoming partakers of the holy flesh and
the precious blood of our common Saviour
Christ, it is not as common flesh that we
1 Ep. ad Scrap, iv. 19 (P. G. xxvi. 665). I have given
the passage in Dissertations, p. 305.
5 See Dissert, p. 306, and Ep. xvii. (ad Nest) P.G. Ixxvii.
113. I have used compression in translating.
56 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
receive it, God forbid ! or as the flesh of a
man in however close relation to God : it
is as being truly life-giving flesh that we
receive it, because it is His own flesh who is
the Word and Himself the Life." Or again,
" We receive within us the Word of the
Father, incarnate for our sakes, and both
life and life-giving." l
The same thoughts and arguments are
familiar in the western fathers, Hilary and
Augustine. 2 And when Leo is emphasizing
the counter aspect of the truth about our
Lord to that which had occupied Athanasius
and Cyril when he is emphasizing the per
manence and reality of our Lord s manhood,
there is still an argument to be drawn from the
familiar belief in the eucharist. " Can they,"
that is his opponents, he asks, " lie in such
depths of ignorance as not even to have
heard of what is so familiar in every one s
mouth in the church of God, that not even
infants lips are silent about the truth of the
body and blood of Christ in the sacraments
1 In Luc. Ixxii. ig,P.G. Ixxii. 908.
3 See Dissert, p. 306.
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 57
of communion ? For this is what is given,
this is what is taken, in that mystical distri
bution of spiritual sustenance ; that receiving
the virtue of the heavenly food, we should
pass into His flesh who was made our flesh." 1
I will make only one more quotation from
a theologian of this period St. Cyril of
Jerusalem (c. 345). "Therefore," he says,
"with full assurance let us partake of the
bread and wine as being the body and blood
of Christ. For in the figure of bread is
given thee the body, and in the figure of
wine is given thee the blood, in order that
by partaking of the body and the blood thou
mayest become of one body and one blood
with Him. For it is thus also we become
Christ-bearers, His body and His blood being
distributed over our limbs. 2 Thus, according
to blessed Peter, we become partakers of the
divine nature."
This same belief (only, as would be
1 Ep. lix. 2 ; cf. serin, xci. 3 (/ . L. liv. 452, 868).
- Or " having received of His body and blood into our
members." Catcch. xxii. 3. See, on reading and meaning,
Dr. Gifford in Nicene and Ante-Niccne Fathers, Cyril of
Jerusalem, pp. xxxvii. ff. ; and below, p. 63.
58 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
expected, less explicitly stated) runs back to
the beginning, 1 with certain exceptions, to be
mentioned directly. It is heard first of all,
outside the New Testament, in Ignatius of
Antioch. " The false teachers [who denied
the reality of our Lord s manhood] abstain
from eucharistand prayer because they do not
acknowledge that the eucharist is the flesh
of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for
our sins, which by His goodness the Father
raised up." " Take care then to frequent
but one eucharist (i.e., to avoid schism) ; for
there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ
and one cup for unity in His blood ; one altar,
as there is one bishop with the presbyters
and deacons." " Breaking one bread, which
is the medicine of immortality, the antidote
that we should not die, but live in Christ
Jesus for ever." 2
This is really, then, the catholic faith
about the eucharistic gift --so much so
that Thomassin, a theologian who has the
widest and profoundest knowledge of the
1 Cyprian de doinln. oral. 18 is very explicit.
- On Ignatius see app. note 4, p. 292.
THE NATURE OF THE GIET. 59
fathers, can find no other phrase to sum
marize his massive quotations from them
on the subject than by speaking of the
eucharist as " the extension of the incar
nation " the instrument for extending the
incarnate life. " The incarnation," he says,
" gaped, as it were, incomplete and sus
pended, until in all its parts and elements
it was fulfilled through the eucharist."
But there are three modifications which
must be given to any statement as to the
catholicity of this faith, before it can be
regarded as approximately complete.
(i) There was a tendency in the earlier
school of Alexandria, by a process of intel
lectual refinement, to explain I must say
to explain away the body (or flesh) and
blood of Christ as meaning no more than
His word or His spirit ; and thus even to
make the eucharist not much more than
an occasion for mystical contemplation.
This tendency was really influential, and
not heretical or schismatical, for it clung to,
1 Thomassin Theol. Dogm. " DC Incarn." lib. x. cap.
xxii. 4.
60 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
even while for its own purpose it refined
upon, the common belief and the com
mon worship. But it came to be judged,
and surely with justice, as an inadequate
mode of belief. For it is not merely the
Spirit for our spirits, or the teaching for
our intellects, that we ask for and receive,
but the whole Christ for our whole selves. 1
Nothing less than this, as we have already
seen, can satisfy the language of the New
Testament.
(2) There is a sporadic tendency as in
Clement of Alexandria, Jerome, Ratramn
and some of his contemporaries, 2 in our
1 For Origen s own tendency of belief the clearest pas
sages are in Matt, comment, scr. 82, 85 ; in Johan. xxxii. 16 ;
cf. Bigg Christian Platonists (Oxford, 1886), pp. 219 222.
He witnesses that his was not the common faith: " Let
the bread and the cup be conceived by the simple
according to the commoner acceptation of the eucharist ;
but by those who have learnt to hear with a deeper ear,
according to the divine promise, even that of the nourish
ing word of the truth." In fact Origen s depreciation of
the " flesh " goes with his depreciation of the historical
sense. It is part of his allegorism. The tendency described
above mostly accompanies, whether as cause or effect, the
misunderstanding of St. John vi. 62. See app. note 2,
p. 290.
Quoted in Dissertations, p. 239.
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 61
own English Aelfric (probably taught by
Ratramn) and in some later Anglicans,
such as John Johnson to distinguish the
eucharistic body and blood of Christ from
that in which He was born and suffered
and died, as being " spiritual," and not
"natural" or "real," and thus a different
body. The exact meaning of this language
is not always easy to fix. But (except
perhaps in the case of Clement, who
would be under the same influences as
Origen) what they mean is only what has
been expressed, and better expressed, by
Athanasius and the church generally, in
saying that the eucharistic body and blood
are the very body and blood in which Christ
lived and died and rose and ascended, only
bestowed on us in a spiritual and heavenly
manner ; the same body, only not now in
its material particles, but in its spiritual
principle and virtue. This, I say, is a
better mode of statement than that which
speaks of different bodies or different
kinds of blood, because St. John vi. would
plainly intimate to us that that with
62 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
which we are fed as the bread of life is
nothing else than what Christ is Himself
in His manhood glorified.
" In the explication of this question,"
says Jeremy Taylor, "it is much insisted
upon that it be enquired whether, when
we say we believe Christ s body to be
really in the sacrament, we mean, that
body, that flesh, that was born of the
Virgin Mary, that was crucified, dead and
buried. I answer, I know none else that
He had or hath : there is but one body
of Christ natural and glorified ; but he
that says that body is glorified that was
crucified, says it is the same body, but not
after the same manner ; and so it is in the
sacrament ; we eat and drink the body and
blood of Christ that was broken and poured
forth : for there is no other body, no other
blood of Christ ; but though it is the same
which we eat and drink, yet it is in
another manner." l
(3) There was an early tendency-
opposite to that of the Alexandrians
1 Jer. Taylor, Real Presence, i, n.
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 63
apparent in Irenaeus and, somewhat
differently, in Tertullian, and later in Cyril
of Jerusalem and more plainly in Gregory
of Nyssa, 1 to lay a one-sided emphasis on
the idea that the eucharist was given to
cleanse our bodies and nourish them for
the life immortal : it was to impart the
11 antidote of immortality " to the perishing
flesh. Pursuing this line of thinking, the
fathers mentioned above seem to identify
the body and blood of Christ with the
bread and wine considered as physical food.
These, as enriched by the divine Word or
Spirit with life-giving powers, are called,
and indeed become, Christ s body and blood
(Gregory postulates even a physical change
in the elements), and, as eaten or drunken,
nourish the human body with an immortal
life and divine fellowship with God. It
would be unjust to commit men, who
1 For Irenaeus see c. liar. iv. 18, 5, v. 2, 3. On Tertul
lian see Dissertations, pp. 308 ff. On Cyril see above,
p. 57, and Gifford s note referred to ; also Cat. xxii. 5.
For Gregory Cat. Mag. 37. Gregory makes baptism with
faith the salvation of the soul, and the communion of the
body and blood the salvation of the body.
64 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
were making the first attempt to express
mysterious truth, to all that their words
sometimes seem to imply. Indeed the
first use of theological language on any
subject, before it has been rigorously cross-
questioned from outside, is, except in the
case of the specially inspired authors, very
seldom accurate. But the tendency we have
been describing naturally makes these fathers
think of the eucharistic gift almost exclu
sively as a bodily gift a gift of body for
body, without thought for the wholeness of
Christ s person ; and represents therefore
a divergent tendency, similar to what has
been noticed in the Alexandrians though
in the opposite direction, and, like theirs,
on maturer reflection unacceptable.
For though in the Holy Communion our
body is sanctified through the sanctification
of our spirit, and transformed and endowed,
in subtle and secret ways which pass our
comprehension, with capacity for the life
immortal ; yet it is through the spirit and
not directly. Primarily the gift of Christ s
body and blood is a spiritual gift for the
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 65
spirit. Faith alone is the instrument which
can receive it, and not the mouth of the
body. The gift accompanies the material
bread and wine, but is to be distinguished
from it. And inasmuch as the body and
blood are spiritual, they are indistinguish
able or inseparable from the living person,
the whole Christ. " He that eateth me,
even he shall live by me."
Already we shall have seen that it was
no easy matter for the church to express
its common faith and feeling about the
eucharist in intellectual formulas. There
were more or less marked divergent theo
logical tendencies though there was little
consciousness of their divergence especially
in the second and third centuries. But the
only formulas in which the faith of the
church in general could ever find adequate
expression are such as declare that the gift
communicated to us in the eucharistic feast
is verily and indeed that of the flesh or body
and blood of Christ according to a spiritual
and heavenly manner ; that is to say the gift
of Christ Himself, in His whole person,
B.C. F
66 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
given to us for the sanctification of our
whole persons, that He may dwell in us
and we in Him.
It stands to reason that if there be thus,
as the Christian church so constantly
believed, a real communication to us of the
flesh and blood of Christ, it must be the
"flesh" and "blood" of the glorified Christ,
for no other exists. These mysterious things
are given to us in the eucharist under
conditions which recall a past state the
state of sacrificial death. It is our Lord
as dying that faith recalls : it is His death
for us that we "proclaim till He come" 1
in the breaking of the bread. But those
very words of St. Paul, "till He come,"
suggest that He is no longer dead, that
He is alive and in heaven. The person
who now feeds us with His own very life,
divine and human, is He who is set before
us in a vision of the Apocalypse as a
" Lamb as it had been slain," but alive
for evermore in the heavenly places. 2
1 i Cor. xi. 26.
2 See below also, p. 181.
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 67
There is only one other point that needs
touching upon at this stage of the argument,
and that is the special sense in which this
gift is connected with the eucharist. It may
be said What does this eating the flesh
of Christ and drinking His blood mean that
is not meant also by being baptized " into
Christ" and being " His members"? You
would admit that this eating does not mean a
consuming of any material atoms or elements
of Christ s body : it means absorbing the
spiritual forces of His humanity : but this is
what is also meant by membership of Christ.
Do we not, therefore, in the true sense eat
Christ s flesh and drink Christ s blood also
in baptism ?
This question is not sufficiently answered
with the simple negative. When Fulgen-
tius of Ruspe (A.D. 507) was confronted with
the question how, if the eating of Christ s
flesh and drinking His blood was necessary
to eternal life, could a baptized person, who
without fault of his own had died after
baptism without having received the Holy
Communion, obtain salvation, he gave the
F 2
68 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
not perhaps very adequate answer, that such
an one had already eaten Christ s flesh and
drunk His blood by the very fact of becoming
a member of His body ; and he claimed for
this answer the authority of "the fathers,"
and especially of St. Augustine. 1 The answer
is not morally adequate, for it fails to
recognize that God is free to give His gifts
of spiritual life to all "men of good will,"
apart from any sacraments ; but it suggests
an element of truth which it is important
to acknowledge. It is one and the same
spiritual process which is described as being
made a member of Christ or being baptized
into Christ, and also as eating His flesh and
drinking His blood : it is one and the same
process which is described as being regene
rated by the Spirit in baptism and as receiv
ing Him in confirmation. And the process is
1 Ep. xii. 24 26 (P. L. Ixv. 590 592). St. Augustine
in the passage he quotes does not do more than indi
rectly imply the answer ; but it is more clearly implied
in the language used by him and by Pope Innocent :
see Aug. Epp. clxxxvi. 28 29, clxxxii. 5 ; and also a
citation from Augustine, on Bede s authority, in Thomas
Aq. 5. Th. p. iii. qu. 73, 3.
THE NATURE OF THE GIFT. 69
a vital thing, which cannot be wholly sun-
dered into parts, and in which we cannot
draw sharp lines. We cannot say simply that
the inward gift of the eucharist (or of confirm
ation) is not given in baptism. 1 What we
can say is that the fellowship in the ever-
continuous supply of the new life is, for the
needs of our nature, given to us in stages
and by degrees of growing intensity and
power; and that each stage of the communi
cation is identified with a separate sacrament
which is thus positively characterized only in
a certain way.
Thus baptism is our regeneration, or our
incorporation into the new manhood by the
Spirit, and involves that deep breach with
the past which is expressed by the forgiveness
of sins : confirmation is the bestowal of the
unction of the Holy Spirit of Christ for the
full equipment of the personal life, both for
individual strength and social service : the
1 Except indeed by using the negative, as it is often
used in Scripture, when what is exactly meant is " not to
the same degree," or " not in the same sense." This use
of the negative is admirably noted and explained by
Berengar. See Dissertations, p. 257.
yo THE BODY OF CHRIST.
eucharist is the full and repeated communion
in His all-powerful manhood the eating His
flesh and drinking His blood and through
His manhood, the perfect communion with
God. Throughout it is the same gift, minis
tered by the same Spirit : but it is the same
gift in different stages of completeness : and
it is the completest degree of participation
in Christ s manhood which, in the language
of the New Testament, is identified with
Holy Communion. This is the truth which
was expressed by the African Christians
when they called baptism u salvation " and
the eucharist "life." 1
1 See Augustin etc pecc. iner. et rein. i. 34.
2. The relation of the spiritual gift to the
bread and wine.
But if the gift given in Holy Communion
is continuous with that given in baptism
and cannot be sharply separated from it,
how is it with the outward and visible sign
or sacramental channel ? In baptism the
spiritual gift is attached to an act of bathing
or washing defined by certain accompany
ing words. 1 In the " breaking of the bread"
is the spiritual gift merely, in the same way,
attached to the act or process of eating and
drinking?
Such has certainly not been the mind of
the church from the first. It has believed
that, by consecration of the portions of
bread and wine which have been solemnly
1 This is the meaning of the technical word " form "
applied by theologians to the sacred sacramental words.
They define or give form to the "matter" of an external
action which in itself is quite vague in its significance.
72 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
set apart or offered, the spiritual gift of
Christ s body and blood is, in some way,
attached to these elements (however the rela
tionship is to be described) before they are
eaten and drunken, and independently of such
eating and drinking. As Dr. Mozley says
and he was not a thinker who would be prone
to exaggerate this aspect of the question
11 Certainly the ground taken by the e^rly
church with respect to the spiritual part of
the sacrament of the Lord s Supper the
body and blood of our Lord was not that
that spiritual part was only an internal
matter, a moral effect of the act of partici
pation upon the mind. The Lord s body
and blood was regarded as a reality external
to the mind, even as the bread and wine
was ; it was considered as joined to the
bread and wine, and so existing with it in
one sacrament. The eating and drinking
of it in the sacrament, Thorndike says, pre
supposes 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
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 73
when he eats and drinks it, but by his eating
and drinking of it comes to be there.
The language of the early church on the
subject is so well known, and so large a
body of it meets us in the writings of the
early ages, that we need not dwell long upon
this characteristic of early teaching on the
subject of the eucharist."
Dr. Mozley proceeds to modify this state
ment by a counter-statement, that as the
gift was a spiritual gift, so faith only
could recognize or receive it. Some such
counter-statement some statement of the
" relativity" of the presence is most neces
sary, and will give us matter for serious
consideration. But for the present we are
concerned only with part of the question
the consecration of the elements themselves
to become sacramentally identified with the
body and blood of Christ.
This is what is called the doctrine of an
objectively real presence in the eucharist.
Of course this phrase might express equally
well the reality of the spiritual grace imparted
1 Lectures and Theol. Papers (Longmans), p. 202.
74 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in baptism. For .that too is objective ; in
the sense that it is not the product of the
receiver s mind, but is a real gift from God,
given and received ; and that it must be
conceived as given irrespective of the
state of mind or condition of faith of the
receiver ; so that an unconscious infant is
regenerated, and even a bad man really
receives the spiritual endowment of his
nature which he only ignores, or misuses to
his greater hurt. In this sense all who are
sacramental believers would admit the gift
in the holy eucharist to be objective that
is, to be a real divine gift communicated m
the act of eating and drinking. The word
however is generally used in a further sense
in which it is not applicable to baptism ; and
its use in this sense is so valuable for purposes
of distinction that it had better be retained.
"It expresses the belief that prior to reception,
and independently of the faith of the indi
vidual, the body and blood of Christ are
made present "under the forms of" bread
and wine, or in some real though undefined
way identified with them.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 75
That this was the belief of the early church
generally, as Dr. Mozley asserts, may be
shown by evidence of three kinds.
I. There is the evidence of the reverence
displayed towards the consecrated elements
not in the way of what is now called
eucharistic worship, as of the divine Christ
present under the forms of bread and wine,
of which, as will appear, the evidence is
ambiguous ; but of scrupulous care that no
fragment of the consecrated bread or drop
of the wine should fall. There is very early
evidence l of such care from Alexandria,
Africa, Jerusalem, and perhaps Rome : so
that it must represent an universal and
primitive Christian tradition of reverence.
Now it has nothing corresponding to it in
the case of the water of baptism. Indeed
an early method was to baptize in run
ning water. This is important, because
occasionally the language of early Chris
tian writers about the consecration of
the water in baptism, or of the chrism,
would suggest that the water or oil itself
1 *See app. note 5, p. 293.
76 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
was changed. 1 But (to go no farther) the
difference between the treatment of the water
or oil and the treatment of the bread and
wine points to a difference in what was
believed with regard to them : it indicates
that the particular portions of bread and
wine consecrated were regarded as having
become in themselves holy and sacred things.
II. The language of the eucharistic con
secration explains this belief. What we
may call the normal form of consecration
consists of three parts : there is (a) the
recitation of the narrative of the institution,
including the words which in the West have
come to be recognized as the instrument of
consecration, but which originally only formed
a part of the great "giving of thanks," the
solemn commemoration of the divine glory
and goodness as shown in nature and in the
whole history of redemption, and specially in
the passion and death of our Lord, and in
His institution of the eucharist in remem
brance of Himself. Next (b) there is a
1 This identity of phraseology has been much exaggerated :
see app. note 6, p. 294.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 77
solemn oblation of the elements in accord
ance with Christ s institution "wherefore
we, remembering His passion, death and
resurrection, etc., here offer and present."
Thirdly (c) there is an invocation of the Holy
Ghost, a prayer that God would send down
the Holy Ghost whose special function it
is to communicate the life of Christ to the
church 1 to make the elements to be the
body and blood of Christ for the reception
of the faithful. Here is a specimen of such
a consecration prayer from the directory
of worship known as the Apostolical Con
stitutions.
(a) " Calling therefore to remembrance
those things which He endured for our sakes,
1 This scriptural principle explains the instinct of the
church to invoke the Holy Ghost upon the elements. Thus
St. Cyril finds in the eucharistic invocation an instance of
the general principle that " every grace and every perfect
gift comes upon us from the Father through the Son by
the Holy Ghost" (in Luc. xxii. 19). See E. S. Ffoulkes
Primitive Consecration of the Eucharistic Oblation (Hayes,
1885), pp. 13, ff. Mr. Ffoulkes is right at any rate in his
contention that the church for many centuries both in
East and West attributed the consecration of the elements
to the action of the Holy Ghost invoked by the church.
78 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
we give thanks unto Thee, God Almighty,
not as we ought, but as we are able, and
fulfil His institution. For in the same night
that He was betrayed, taking bread into His
holy and immaculate hands, and looking up
to Thee, His God and Father, and breaking
it, He gave it to His disciples, saying, This is
the mystery of the New Testament ; take of
it ; eat ; this is My body, which is broken
for many for the remission of sins. Like
wise, also, having mingled the cup with wine
and water, and blessed it, He gave it to
them, saying, Drink ye all of it ; this is My
blood which is shed for many for the remis
sion of sins ; do this in remembrance of Me,
for as often as ye eat of this bread, and drink
of this cup, ye do shew forth My death till
I come.
(6) " Wherefore having in remembrance
His passion, death, and resurrection from
the dead, His return into heaven, and His
future second appearance, when He shall
come with glory and power to judge the
quick and the dead, and to render to every
man according to his works : we offer to
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 79
Thee, our King and our God, according to
His institution, this bread and this cup,
giving thanks to Thee through Him, that
Thou hast thought us worthy to stand before
Thee, and to serve as priests unto Thee.
(c] "And we beseech Thee that Thou wilt
look graciously on these gifts now lying
before Thee, O Thou all-sufficient God, and
accept them to the honour of Thy Christ ;
and send down Thy Holy Spirit, the witness
of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, on this
sacrifice, that He may make 1 this bread the
body of Thy Christ, and this cup the blood
of Thy Christ, that all who shall partake of
it may be confirmed in godliness, may
receive remission of their sins, may be de
livered from the devil and his wiles, may be
1 Or "declare" (inrotf>-!i i/??). This word, with the similar
cbniSei/ci/tWi (or avaSfiKvvvai), is sometimes used indistin-
guishably from iroif ?/, " to make to be." But as used in
the liturgies it carries with it probably not only the idea of
making the elements to be what they were not before, but
also the idea of revealing or declaring what they have
become to the faithful. " He shall take of mine, and shall
declare it unto you." no(*<V, a,iro$tiKyvycu, avaSfiKvi/vai are all
found in the eucharistic invocation, and the language of
the fathers in describing it, more or less indiscriminately.
8o THE BODY OF CHRIST.
filled with the Holy Ghost, may be made
worthy of Thy Christ, and may obtain ever
lasting life, Thou, O Lord Almighty, being
reconciled unto them."
This is from an ideal rather than an
historical rite, but it is typical or representa
tive of the form common to the Greek litur
gies, which must go back along many lines
to very early days. It is just such a form
that St. Basil regards as derived from the
apostles by unwritten tradition. 1
Not that it is in all its parts to be regarded
as essential or universal. Thus
(1) St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his detailed
account of the liturgy 2 of his church and age
is strikingly silent about any commemora
tive recitation of the words of institution ;
and this at least shows, what he elsewhere
makes plain, that he did not attribute im
portance to them as a necessary part of the
form of consecration.
(2) There is not always explicit mention
1 De Spir. Sand. 66.
2 Cat. xxiii. 7; cf. Brightman Liturgies (Oxford, 1896),
p. 469.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 81
of the Holy Ghost. Thus in the prayers for
the eucharist ascribed to Bishop Serapion
(c. 350) the invocation is, "0 God of
Truth, let Thy holy Word come down upon
this bread, that the bread may become the
body of the Word, and upon this cup, that the
cup may become the blood of the Truth ; and
make all who communicate to receive the
medicine of life for the healing of all sickness
and the strengthening of all progress and
virtue." 1 We know that such a form was
exceptional, and that the Holy Ghost was
generally invoked in Egypt in the fourth
century ; 2 but in earlier days in Irenaeus
time (c. 1 80) all we can be sure of is that
there was some invocation of God to act in
His divine power upon the oblations. " The
bread from the earth," says Irenasus, " re
ceiving the invocation of God is no longer
1 Journal of Thcol. Stud., Oct. 1899, p. 106. Previously
there is a prayer : " Fill this sacrifice, O Lord, with Thy
power and the participation of Thee, for we have offered
Thee this living sacrifice, this bloodless offering."
2 See the language of Peter of Alexandria, Athanasius
successor, in Theodoret E. H. iv. 19 ; and of St. Theophilus
in Jerome Ep. xcviii. 13.
B.C. G
8 2 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
common bread but eucharist, made up of
two realities (things), an earthly and a
heavenly"; and twice elsewhere, "The
bread and the mixed cup, receiving upon
themselves the word of God, become
eucharist, that is the body and blood of
Christ." 1
(3) The prayer was not always explicit as
to what was the effect desired by consecration.
Thus the "anaphora" or prayer of obla
tion, of the Ethiopic Church, which appears
to be very ancient, runs: " We beseech Thee
that Thou wouldest send Thine Holy Spirit
on the oblation of this church : give it
unto all them that partake together for
sanctification and for fulfilling with the
Holy Ghost and for confirming true faith." 2
And in the Gallican rites (which, whatever
their origin, represent the worship of the
greater part of the West for a long period,
at least from the fourth century) the invoca-
1 C. liacr. iv. 18. 5, v. 2. 3: sec app. note 7, p. 295.
- Brightman I.e. p. 190 (cf. p. 287). Just below, after
invocation, occurs a prayer for those who receive " of the
holy mystery of the body and blood of Christ the Almighty
Lord our God," p. 191.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 83
tion-prayer is equally vague: "We pray
Thee that Thou wouldest bless with Thy
benediction this sacrifice, and water it with
the dew of Thy Holy Spirit, that it may
be to all those who receive it a legitimate
eucharist." 1 This vague phrase is described
by Duchesne as "characteristic" of the
Gallican rites. But there is no doubt that
the Gallican or Spanish writers of the period
to which it belongs would have interpreted
it precisely in the sense of the more explicit
Greek prayers. Their belief did not fall
below that of St. Ambrose of Milan, who
speaks of the " sacraments " or sacra
mental elements as being "by the mysterious
action of the sacred prayer [elsewhere de
scribed as an invocation of the Holy Ghost]
transfigured into the flesh and blood of the
Lord." 2
(4) The Roman canon stands apart in
having, or having had, no invocation. In
Africa there is evidence that the Holy Spirit
1 Neale and Forbes Ancient Lit. pp. 4, n, 15, etc.
Duchesne Origincs dit Cultc Chretien, Paris, 1895, p. 208.
- DC fule iv. 124, de S. S. iii. 114.
G 2
84 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
was formally invoked, for Optatus of Milevis
(c. 368) speaks of the altars as places "where
God Almighty is invoked ; where the Holy
Spirit descends at the church s prayer,"
and afterwards as "the seat of the body and
blood of Christ." 1 Now Africa got its eccle
siastical system from Rome, and it is there
fore, as well as for other reasons, probable
that the same was the case in the early
Roman church. But when the fixed Roman
canon was framed in Latin (possibly in the
fourth century), the place commonly occupied
by the invocation of the Holy Spirit was
taken by the prayer " that the oblations might
be carried by the hand of God s holy angel
to the heavenly altar, in the sight of His
divine majesty, that as many as received by
participation from the altar the holy body and
blood of His Son, might be filled with all
heavenly grace." 2 In the canon indeed as
it exists at present there is at an earlier
1 De schism. Don. vi. i., P. L. xi. 1065.
2 There is a somewhat similar prayer in the Clementine
liturgy and in the liturgies of St. James and St. Chrysostom,
but after, and independently of, the invocation or consecra-
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 85
point the prayer "that this oblation may
become to us the body and blood of Thy dearly
beloved Son" : but it does not belong to its
original form. 1
In the church of Rome then a prayer,
couched in rather imaginative language, for
the carrying up of the earthly elements to the
heavenly altar to be returned to earth again
as the life-giving body and blood, takes
the place of the normal prayer for the
descent of the Holy Spirit to consecrate the
elements visibly lying on the earthly altar.
And there is, consequently, much less
emphasis in the original Roman canon on
what the elements become by consecration,
apart from reception. Meanwhile however
the teaching at Rome was not uncertain.
" The elements," writes Gelasius 2 (A.D. 480),
tion : see Brightman op. cit. pp. 23, 58, 390. The right
interpretation of the prayer in the Roman canon is very
uncertain.
1 I.e. as quoted in the de sacramentis, see Duchesneo/>.a7.
p. 170.
a See quotation in Dissert, p. 275, and cf. the phrase in
the Leonine Sacrameritary (Christmas mass, P. L. Iv.
147) : " By the operation of the Holy Ghost, our sacrifice
is now the body and blood of the Priest Himself."
86 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
" pass into the divine substance by the action
of the Holy Spirit, remaining at the same
time in the propriety of their own nature."
And this Roman substitute for the invocation
is isolated and exceptional. The invocation
of the Holy Spirit or of the divine power
upon the elements, to make them Christ s body
and blood in order that they might be received
by the worshippers to their spiritual profit, was
the earlier form, and best represents the
earlier teaching. Certain evidence of this
lies in the statements, anterior to any of the
liturgical documents, of the fathers of the
second century Justin and Irenseus
already quoted. 1 And I will add the witness
of Origen : " Let Celsus, then, who knows not
God, render his thank-offerings to demons ;
while we, giving thanks to the maker of the
universe, eat also, with thanksgiving and
prayer over what has been given us, our
oblations of bread, which on account of the
prayer become a certain holy body that also
makes those holy who partake of it with a
sound disposition." 1
1 See pp. 6 ff, 81 f. 2 C. Cels, viii. 33.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 87
III. We may further illustrate the belief
of the ancient church in the objectivity of
the eucharistic gift by the language of
theologians. Justin, Irenasus and Origen
have been already cited to prove that in the
second and third centuries the bread and
wine were believed to become by consecration
for the reception of the faithful, no doubt,
but yet in themselves to become the body
and blood of Christ. And in the fourth
century this belief gains more abundant
expression.
It is chiefly among the Greeks however
that a strong devotional enthusiasm developed
itself for the eucharist, such as is apparent
in St. Cyril of Jerusalem s lectures on the
mysteries, and in St. Chrysostom s sermons
and writings. The special purpose for which
the sacred presence is given -sacramental
communion is always full in view ; indeed,
Chrysostom, as is well known, strongly
protested against Christians being present
without communicating. But before com
munion, through the consecrating action
of the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine,
88 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
of which these fathers speak with such
rapt devotion, Christ s body and His blood
become present, and Christ Himself is
there, our high-priest, our king, and our
sacrifice, in the midst of the worshipping
church. Occasionally this presence is spoken
of in language which represents precisely
the modern phrase u the whole Christ made
present in " or " under the form of bread
and wine"; 1 as when Cyril speaks of the
communicant " receiving the King in his
right hand" ; 2 or when Chrysostom speaks of
the priest " continuously manipulating the
common Lord of all," and of " Him who
sits with the Father, giving Himself to be
held in the hands of all." 3 But more often
the language is such as is suggested by the
words " symbol " or " type."
1 See Pusey Real Presence from the, Fathers (Parker, 1855),
pp. 131 ff . : "The term in as used by the Fathers does
not express any local inclusion of the body and blood of
Christ ; it denotes their presence there after the manner
of a sacrament." He compares " Christ dwells in onr hearts
by faith," "God dwelleth in us," " the Hoi)- Spirit dwelleth
in us," none of these phrases expressing local inclusion.
- Cat. xxiii. 21.
:< De sacerdot. iii. 4, vi. 4 (P. G, xlvii. 642, 681).
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 89
"What is nowadays understood by
symbol, " says Harnack, " is a thing which
is not that which it represents ; at that time
[i.e., the early Christian centuries] symbol
denoted a thing which, in some kind oi
sense, really is what it signifies ; but, on the
other hand, according to the ideas of the
period, the really heavenly element lay either
in or behind the visible form without in
vesting itself with it. Accordingly the
distinction of a symbolic from a realistic
conception of the Supper is altogether to be
rejected." 1
The symbol, or "outward and visible sign,"
then, is the evidence to the senses of a
divine reality actually present. It is for this
reason that the visible gifts and altar are
called " mystical " or " spiritual." For as
surely as with the outward eye you behold
the bread and wine lying on the table, so
1 Harnack Lehrbuch dcr Dogmeng- i. p. 360 [Eng. trans.
(Williams and Norgate) ii. p. 144 in this case not quite
trustworthy] ; cf. i. p. 149 : " The symbolic for that period
is not to be thought of as the opposite of the objective or
the real : but it is the mysterious and divinely-enwrought
which stands out against the natural or profanely clear."
go THE BODY OF CHRIST.
surely with the eye of faith you are to behold
heaven opened and brought down to earth,
and the angels worshipping, and the eternal
living priest exhibiting to you His once
offered sacrifice in His body and His blood,
and coming to you to feed you with the life-
giving food. Certainly the theologians of
that period, though they are highly rhetorical
and occasionally use language which could
not be rigidly justified, as a whole suggest to
us not precisely an image of a Christ con
tained in or under veils of bread and wine.
There can be no doubt that their theology led
them to shrink from any such formulation of
their belief as suggested a Christ sub
jecting Himself to limits of space. They
preferred the language which suggests the
breaking away of material limits before
the eye of faith. Thus, when Gregory of
Nyssa, in discouraging people from going
on pilgrimages, suggests that their own land
is thicker than Palestine with holy places,
because it has so many more altars " by
means of which our Lord s name is glorified" ;
the phrase which the eucharistic altar
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 91
suggests to him is that of " inferring God s
presence from visible symbols."
I do not think it can be denied that these
fathers would have shrunk front any formu
lated teaching of " Christ made present
on the altar under the forms of bread and
wine." They would rather say " The bread
and wine are types of spiritual realities really
present. As surely as you see the consecra
tion of the elements by the human priest with
your outward eyes, so surely with the eye of
faith you are to see the divine Christ present
amid the worshipping angels, Himself the
consecrating priest 2 as Himself the sacrifice
- present to feed you with the spiritual
food of His body and blood in the earthly
food of bread and wine."
It is a suggestive fact that they frequently
introduce into the immediate neighbourhood
of some particularly definite or local phrase
with reference to our Lord s eucharistic
presence, another of a vague character
which takes the edge off the seemingly
1 De peregin. (P. G. xlvi. 1012).
2 On this point Chrysostom and others continually insist.
92 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
local definition. Optatus, the African, for
example, when protesting against the viola
tion by the Donatists of catholic altars,
speaks of them, in a phrase already quoted,
as " the seat of the body and blood of
Christ," " where His body and His blood
used to dwell for certain moments of time."
But in the immediate context he adds,
"whereon the prayers of the people and
the members of Christ are borne," 1 which
destroys the exactness of the previous
phrases, for the "members of Christ" (the
church) do not, in any local sense, lie upon
the altar any more than their prayers. Or
again, when Chrysostom has told the
people that they can see Christ on the altar,
as the Magi saw Him in the manger, that
" here, too, will the Lord s body lie" he
adds, " not wrapped in swaddling clothes,
but encircled all round by the Holy Ghost;"
and goes on to speak of the altar as "full of
spiritual fire," like a fountain of flame. " Do
not therefore approach it with straw or wood
or hay, lest the conflagration become greater
1 Optatus dc schism. Don. vi. i. (P. L. xi. 1065 6).
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 93
and consume the soul which partakes." 1 In
this way they habitually blunt the edge of
their more definite or quasi-local expressions
about the eucharistic presence.
Now it has been a matter of general
agreement even in the later western church
that the presence of Christ in the eucharist
is not really local. " Our Lord," wrote
Cardinal Newman, " neither descends from
heaven upon our altars, nor moves when
carried in procession. The visible species
change their position, but He does not
move." 2 But there has often been very
considerable need to carry out this admission
of theologians into the current and popular
teaching of the church. And the fathers,
who were popular teachers, may be our
guides in doing this. They escaped the
perils of localization by a rich variety of
language.
But I do not think it is disputable that
the church from the beginning did, as a
whole, believe that the eucharistic elements
1 Chrys. de beat. Philog. 3, 4 (P. G. xlvii. 753, 756).
" See Via Media (Pickering, 1887), ii. p. 220.
94 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
themselves in some real sense became by
consecration, and prior to reception, the
body and blood of Christ in the midst of
the worshipping assembly; and that the
body and blood thus made present objec
tively, in undefinable identification with
the bread and wine, were the same body
(or flesh) and blood as the faithful hoped
to receive that is, the flesh and blood of the
living and glorified Christ, the flesh and
blood which are spirit and life, and are
quite inseparable from the living person
of Christ Himself.
Nor does it seem to me difficult to
suggest a reason, both practical and
spiritual, why, if the loving purpose of Christ
was to communicate to us the spiritual
food of His most blessed body and blood, He
should, on the institution of His sacrament,
have vouchsafed the gift, first of all, as
an objective presence in the church, and
not conveyed it directly to the individual
worshippers in connection with an act of
eating bread and drinking wine. For even
if the members of the church ate and drank
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 95
all together at the same meal, yet the act
of eating is separate to each individual, and
the divine gift would thus have taken the
character of an individual communication.
But the presence vouchsafed amongst them
emphasizes unity; as apparently the divine
Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, when He
came to make the church one, symbolized
His coming in a fire which appeared first
as one and then divided and distributed
itself in fiery tongues. 1 In each case that
which was to be distributed to all was given
first as one object, to make evident the
unity and unifying effect of the divine gift. 2
So can we give its most natural force to
the language of St. Paul about the one loaf
making us as we partake of it one body,
because breaking and eating the bread
we are partaking of Christ s body, as also
drinking of the cup we are partaking of His
blood. 3 So, again, can we most naturally
interpret the words of Ignatius already
1 Acts ii. 3 : " There appeared to them tongues like as of
fire, dividing (or R. V. marg. distributing ), themselves."
" See app. note 8, p. 296. :i i Cor. x. 16, 17.
96 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
referred to, and all the stream of Christian
language which has flowed out of those
words, "There is one flesh of our Lord Jesus
Christ and one cup for unity in His blood."
But, reserving for the present the indis
putable fact that the objective presence was
given, not absolutely, but for the church and
for the purpose of communion, even so
there are objections to the doctrine just
stated which demand consideration.
(i) The doctrine was not quite universal.
The practical, devotional, attitude, we
may say, was universal, but there are
doctrinal explanations of particular fathers
or schools of theologians of a divergent
kind. I leave out of sight that somewhat
mysterious document, the Didache^ because,
so far as appears on the surface of that
primitive manual, the eucharist is simply
a social meal, touched with a certain breath
of mysticism, but no more. The familiar
language about the body or flesh and blood
of Christ the language of all the Gospels
1 See however The Church and the Ministry (Longmans)
app. note L., pp. 377 f.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 97
and of St. Paul, and of the church as
a whole is not there : nor, to go farther
back, is there any such teaching about
Christ s person or sacrifice to be found there
as would make this language intelligible.
If the DidacJic is to be taken as it stands,
as a more or less complete document
speaking without deliberate reserve, we must
suppose that it emanates from some only
half-Christian community. But it need not
be considered here, because what is absent
from it is the whole language about the
body and blood of Christ which has given
its meaning to the Christian sacrament, and
which comes, we believe, from our Lord s
own lips. It is this language, and not any
thing short of this, which is the starting
point of explanation.
But there are other writers, as has been
already mentioned, who use the common
Christian language, and yet explain it dif
ferently from the church in general.
Thus some would almost have explained
away " body " or " blood " into doctrine
or spirit ; while others, with a one-sided
B.C. H
9 S THE BODY OF CHRIST.
tendency of an opposite sort, so fastened
their attention upon the divine grace com
municated by the eucharist to the human
body, as to think only of what is bodily or
for the body in the eucharistic gifts, and
almost ignored the whole Christ there present
for our whole manhood ; others, again, spoke
of the body and blood of Christ in the
eucharist as a different body to that which
really exists in heaven. Now on these types
of teaching something has been already said
justifying their rejection. But with reference
to the last it may be further pointed out that
the divine presence which is bestowed upon
the earthly elements at the altar and all
the advocates of this view believed in an
objective presence of some sort on the altar
is bestowed simply in order that it may be
received. Therefore we must never distin
guish the objective presence in the elements
from the gift that is communicated to us.
And if the gift as received by us is the
gift of the flesh and blood of the living
Lord inseparable from Himself, the same
must be the spiritual reality which co-exists
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 99
with the consecrated symbols of bread and
w*ine.
These are discarded types of doctrine,
which we may leave with the simple recogni
tion that they existed, and were rather found
inadequate than condemned as heretical. 1
(2) More cogent than the argument derived
from the exceptional positions of these theo
logians is the general absence of evidence in
the patristic period of the later tendency to
worship Christ in the sacrament.
In modern books of popular devotion, such
as proceed from circles in which the doctrine
of the real presence is accepted, a prominent
feature is the stress laid on the worship of
Christ, as, in virtue of consecration, made
present upon the altar, as upon a throne.
Thus going to the eucharist (apart from
the question of communion) is spoken of as
going to meet Jesus. He is said to be
" coming " in the earlier part of the service :
after consecration He has "come," and the
1 It is important to remember that Origen s view at least
did not claim to represent the common faith, but to be a
refinement of it for select natures.
H 2
ioo THE BODY OF CHRIST.
faithful must devoutly adore Him Jesus
present in His manhood but very God.
Now it is an admitted fact that this worship
of Jesus in the sacrament is absent from the
liturgies, almost entirely. Where it exists, and
so far as it exists, (i) it certainly represents
no original feature ; (2) it generally does not
correspond to the requirement of modern
sacramental worship. Thus it makes per
haps its first appearance in connection with
the solemn " entrance " of the unconsecrated
elements, which is treated as the entrance of
Christ, the King of kings, into the world (and
again and again "in a mystery" into the
church) accompanied with the angelic hosts,
to be offered and to become the food of
the faithful ; T and the bread and wine are
accordingly hailed already at their entrance
as the body and blood of Christ.- Or
again, in the present Mozarabic liturgy,
just before the act of consecration there is a
1 Lit. of St. James, Brightman, p. 41.
- Brightman, p. 267 : " The body of Christ and His
precious blood are upon the holy altar " (Nestorian) ; cf.,
for the Gallican rites, P. L. Ixii. 92, 93, and Duchesne,
P- 195-
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 101
prayer to Christ to be present as among His
disciples in the upper chamber, and Himself
to consecrate the gifts. 1 Or Pope Sergius
(c. 700) introduces the Agnus Dei, the appeal
to Christ, as Lamb of God, in connection
with the " breaking of the bread " just before
communion. 2 But these acts of worship
addressed to Christ are not to the point.
Even the Agnus Dei, which is comparatively
late, does not immediately follow the con
secration. And when these are set aside
there is very little left, and certainly nothing
original. 3
Thus, whatever unimportant exceptions are
to be allowed, the main fact is unmistak
able. The structure of the liturgy represents
first a great act of worship and sacrifice a
sacrifice of praise made in connection with
visible gifts of bread and wine offered to the
1 " Adesto, adesto, Jcsu bone pontifcx." / . L. Ixxxv.
55.
- See Duchesne Liber Ponlificalis, pp. 376, 381.
:i See prayers in the Coptic and Armenian Liturgies,
Brightman, pp. 180, 185, 438, 448. Among the Syrian
Jacobites, the sacrifice is offered to the Son, pp. 87 f., cf.
pp. 99, 102 : cf. Freeman Principles of Divine Service (Parker,
1872), vol. ii. Introd. pp. 181, 182.
102 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
Father, or in part to the Holy Trinity, in the
mediation of the Son and in commemoration
of His passion ; and then a response of the
Father^ who, as it were, restores to the
worshipping church their symbolic gifts of
bread and wine raised to a higher power by
the agency of the divine Spirit, and made to
be and[ to convey the life-giving body and
blood of the heavenly Christ for the spiritual
nourishment of the faithful. In the litur
gies, then, we have the highest expression
of Christian worship the worship of the
thrice-holy, Father, Son, and Spirit, one God,
and the worship of the Father, through the
Son, by the Spirit. And we find in them
constant and emphatic commemoration of
the Son as incarnate, because it is as man that
He has redeemed us by His sacrifice and
become our mediator to give us access to the
heavenly courts, and because it is as man-
through His flesh and blood --that He is
become the bread of life. But there is no
separate worship of the incarnate Christ as
specially made present on the altar in virtue of
consecration. The idea of Jesus coming to
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 103
be amongst us on His altar throne and of
our coming to meet Him (otherwise than in
receiving Him) is conspicuously absent. The
mind of the ancient church in general is
represented in the canon of the African
Council, " When we stand at the altar, let
the prayer always be directed to the Father." 1
If we seek to supplement the liturgies from
the writings of the great fathers of the fourth
and fifth centuries, we find remarkably little
to our purpose. St. Chrysostom continually
speaks in glowing words of the eucharistic
presence and gift, but very rarely does he
bid us adore or pray to Christ present to the
eye of faith upon the altar. 2 Only once St.
Ambrose and St. Augustine, each in inter
preting the phrase in the ggth Psalm, " Fall
down before (adorate) His footstool," speak
of worshipping Christ or the flesh of Christ
1 Hippo, A.D. 393 ; cf. Hefele, Eng. trans, iii. p. 398.
To make the words of the canon exact we should add " or
to the Holy Trinity."
- In I. Cor. Horn. xxiv. 5, xli. 4 (P. G. Ixi. 204, 361).
The latter passage speaks of " beseeching the Lamb who
lies there (in the mysteries), who took the sin of the world "
on behalf of our departed friends.
104 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in the sacrament. 1 Besides, Cyril of Jeru
salem and Theodoret each once allude to the
sacramental body and blood as to be " wor
shipped." These passages do indeed prove
a belief existing which might have been
developed ; but their rarity, considering the
whole bulk of the literature, proves that it
had not been developed in fact.
How is this phenomenon to be accounted
for that in the ancient church the consecra
tion of the bread and wine to be the body
and blood of Christ, inseparable from Christ
Himself, was not thought of as a special
occasion for adoring Christ thus really made
present ?
In part probably because Christwas believed
to be already present, and that too (in some
sense) in His manhood, as high-priest. Where
two or three should be gathered together in
His name, He had promised to be in the
1 Ambrose de S. S. iii. 79: "The flesh of Christ which to
this day we worship (adoramus) in the mysteries." Aug.
Enarr. in Ps. xcviii. g : " No one eateth that flesh unless
he hath first worshipped."
" Cyril Cat. xxiii. 22 (rpuTry irpoffKuv!](rf<as Kal <re;3a<ryUaTOs) ;
Theod. Dial, ii., P. G. Ixxxiii. 168 (wpoirKuvelTai,.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 105
midst of them. This was specially true in
the breaking of the bread the memorial
service of His own appointment. Thus,
whatever was done in the eucharist in His
name, He was believed to be present and
the doer of it. He was there to speak the
words and consecrate the gifts. This belief
in Christ already present as unseen minister
anticipated and so weakened the emotion
following upon the consecration. What that
brought about was not the presence of Christ
He was already there but His adoption
of the church s gifts to become His body and
His blood. Henceforth an attention and a
worship already given to Christ as present
among the worshippers was more or less
focussed upon these holy symbols and instru
ments. But if the ancients associated His
" coming" with any moment in the service,
it was with the first solemn entrance of the
elements, and the whole order and ritual of
the service fell in with this conception.
Now Catholics with one consent still
believe that Christ is in some special sense
present in the whole eucharistic service, as
io6 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the invisible celebrant and consecrating
priest; and the more this belief is realized
the less can His coming and presence be
represented to the imagination as merely the
result of consecration. The difference is not
one of doctrine, but of practical emphasis
on different parts of truth.
But also the absence of the worship of
Jesus in the sacrament can only be rightly
appreciated when it is viewed as part of a
larger fact: viz., that what Dr. Hort has
called "Jesus-worship" 1 as a whole the
distinctive feature alike of Protestant evan
gelicalism and Catholic sacramentalism
is not at all prominent in the theology of
the first five or six centuries. The phrase
"Jesus-worship" must not be misunderstood.
Christ in the ancient church was believed in
as God, the Son of the Father, the revealer
of the Father, the divine redeemer, the new
life of humanity He was believed in and
worshipped, very God and very man, the
second person of the Holy Trinity. But
1 Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hurt (Macmillan), vol. ii.
p. 50.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 107
the separate and distinctive worship of Jesus
in His manhood, with all the specially tender
associations of His human name the wor
ship which gives its special sentiment to so
much mediaeval and modern devotion was
but very little developed. Origen may be
said to have given an impulse to it in his
commentary on the Canticles, 1 and of course
it existed in germ and principle from the
first. L> But it received apparently very little
expansion even in popular devotion.
We cannot moreover conceal from our
selves that this type of devotion, whether
among Catholics or among Protestants,
whether in mission hymn-singing or in
sacramental worship, has belonged to the
emotional and devotional part of our man
hood, rather than to the moral or rational. 3
1 Bigg Christian Platonists (Oxford, 1886), p. 188.
2 Liddon Divinity of Our Lord, pp. 406 ff.
:t Cf. Bishop of Rochester The Holding of the Truth
(Rivington, 1900), p. 10 : " Devotion to His (Christ s)
person may be familiar and sentimental unless we feel
through Him the touch and presence of the awful, infinite,
all-holy God."
"Is it too much to assert that the graver danger has
more than once been perilously near at hand, that the
io8 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
It has belonged to that element in the
religious nature which has most strangely
showed its power not only to reinforce the
moral will, but also to divorce itself from it.
This divorce of devotion from morality has
been a familiar feature both of mediaeval and
modern life. Perhaps the severe moral and
ethical tone of the earlier Christianity the
tone which the danger of persecution enabled
the church at first to maintain held it in
check. And with the severer ethical tone there
went concurrently a severer theology, which
lasted on after the restraints of persecution
were gone. The danger of divorcing the
human from the divine aspect of Christ was
prevented by concentrating worship upon
Father has, in appearance at any rate, been obscured
behind the Son, as the Son in turn behind the Virgin and
the Saints ? " Bigg I.e.
" The tender devotion of Francis [of Assisi] to the Lord s
manhood became the occasion of grievous error. Everything
that is compassionate in the character of the Lord was
separated from His sovereign righteousness, and then these
attributes of tender love were transferred to His mother,
who seemed to be more within the reach of rude and simple
minds." Westcott Social Aspects of Christianity (Macmillan,
1877), p. in.
THE OBJECTIVE PRESENCE. 109
God, the Holy Trinity, and upon the Father
through the Son by the Holy Ghost, rather
than on Christ alone, much rather than on
Christ as represented in His human name
or His human blood.
But we are not here really concerned to
estimate the legitimacy of a change in the
colour of devotion. The point is only that
we must treat the worship of the early
church as a whole. We cannot reasonably
separate the worship of Jesus in the sacra
ment from our whole attitude towards Him.
If the early church had been in the constant !
habit of singing such hymns as " Jesus, |
Lover of my soul," is it not very likely it
would have also sung, "Jesus, I adore Thee
on Thy altar throne " ?
For it is not possible to argue that they
did not think of adoring Jesus in the sacra
ment because, though they spoke of the
bread and wine as the body and blood of
Christ, yet they did not believe this to be the
body and blood of the risen and glorified
Christ, very God and very man ; or because
they tended to conceive of the body and blood
no THE BODY OF CHRIST.
as separate from the whole person. The
evidence (with the exceptions already spoken
of) is strongly the other way. Certainly Cyril
of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa,
Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Hilary,
Ambrose, Augustine, Leo, believed that what
was present in the eucharist, in some not
easily definable relation to the bread and
wine, was the body and blood of the glorified
Christ, indiscerptible from His whole self.
" Christ is in that sacrament, for it is the
body of Christ." 1
1 Ambrose de mysteriis ix. 58. On the ancient treatment
of the consecrated elements, outside the service of
communion, see p. 299.
3- Transubstantiation considered.
The words of our Lord, " This is my
body : this is my blood," interpreted in
the light of the general mind of ancient
Christendom, must be taken to mean that
the elements in the eucharist become by the
operation of the Holy Ghost something mys
terious and holy that they were not before,
but without ceasing to be in all material
respects exactly what they already were.
The words of Irenaeus express this most
simply: "The bread which is of the earth
receiving the invocation of God is no longer
common bread, but eucharist made up of
two things, an earthly and a heavenly."
This very simple statement about the eucha
rist is introduced by Irenaeus as an element
in his general argument against the Gnostics,
or false spiritualists of his time that is to
say, as one point among many to prove
that there is no contradiction between the
ii2 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
spiritual and the material : that as they are
from the same divine Creator and Lord, so
they are compatible the one with the other.
The spiritual does not interfere with or over
throw the natural. " This opinion," he truly
says, " is consonant with the eucharist, and
the eucharist again confirms our opinion." 1
Irenaeus thus instinctively emphasizes the
permanent reality of the natural elements,
as he would emphasize the reality of Christ s
natural manhood ; though in each case, in
one manner or another, the natural thing
is used as an instrument or vehicle of what
is supernatural, spiritual and divine, and
in view of this higher use to which it is
put may be said to be changed. This prin
ciple, in all its applications, represents the
best and deepest and most truly philosophical
mind of Christendom. This it was that
guided the church aright in the fifth century,
when the belief in Christ s manhood was
really imperilled by a false supernaturalism
or " irreligious solicitude for God." And
at the period of this struggle the truth of
1 C. haer. iv. 18, 5.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 113
the incarnation again consciously finds its
analogy in the Christian belief about the
eucharist : for there, too, the natural sub
stance is not overthrown, though it has
become something which it was not before.
So Theodoret argued : " The bread and wine
do not depart from their proper nature ; for
they remain in their former substance and
shape and form." So the author of the de
sacramentis : " They are what they were, and
they are changed into something else." l
Nothing can be plainer than these expres
sions of the fathers and many others.
But the monophysite tendency that is,
the tendency to absorb and annihilate the
human in the divine, the natural in the
supernatural which Christian instinct, or
divine inspiration in the church, checked in
regard to Christ s person, so that the security
of dogmatic formula was added to keep out
1 See quotations in Dissertations, pp. 230, 274 ff. As I
have argued the whole matter there at length and quoted
authorities, I am only presenting it here in summary.
See also Pusey op. cit. note G., pp. 75 ff., and note Q.
pp. 162 ff. (on words implying change in the elements used
by the fathers).
B.C. I
ii 4 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the invading heresy, was unfortunately suf
fered to prevail in the secondary region of
the sacramental presence. We cannot help
perceiving how easily this might have been
prevented if into one of the dogmatic letters
or decrees of the fifth century the familiar
analogy between Christ s person and the
eucharist had been introduced. But in fact
the check was not provided, and the strong
monophysite tendency in the theology of the
Greeks went on its way in the direction of
what later was called transubstantiation.
It may be said to make its first appearance
in the somewhat materialistic theory of
Gregory of Nyssa, that the bread and w r ine
are, by a process analogous to that by which
Christ s mortal body was sustained, i.e., by
a process analogous to digestion, con
verted into the substance of His glorified
body in order that we may partake of it
for the nourishment within us of a physical
principle of immortality. But the first
evidence of its having gained a clear
position is to be found in by far the most
influential of the later Greek-writing theo-
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 115
logians John of Damascus (c. 750). For,
in spite of the indisputable habit of the
ancients, 1 he will not allow the elements
after consecration to be called types or
symbols of the body and blood. 2 Such they
were in their natural selves before consecra
tion. After consecration they have become
the things they typified in such sense that
they have no longer the reality necessary
for a symbol. For a symbol is a real thing
witnessing to something beyond itself.
But while this one-sided intellectual
process was going on in the East, St.
Augustine was dominant in the West, and
maintaining as he did a profoundly
spiritual and in the truest sense sacra
mental doctrine of the eucharist, he long
held the false or one-sided tendency in
check. Not till about the ninth century
did the flood from the East begin to prevail
1 See quotations in Pusey, pp. 94 ff. and above, p. 8cj.
3 Dissert, p. 231 ; cf. a very interesting i4th cent. Greek
writer, Nicolas Cabasilas, Lititrg. Exposit. c. 27, P. G. cl.
425. In the decrees of Trent (sess. xxii. c. i), however,
"under the symbol" is used as equivalent to " under the
species."
I 2
n6 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in the West, and not till the eleventh
century, in the famous controversy aroused
by Berengar, did it successfully overcome the
older tradition. Berengar, there can be no
doubt, believed in a real and objective, but
spiritual presence. But he contended also
for the permanence of the natural elements,
and that on principle. " The bread and
wine are, as all scriptures attest, by conse
cration turned into Christ s flesh and blood,
and it is certain that whatever is consecrated
or blessed by God is not absorbed or taken
away thereby or destroyed, but remains and
necessarily becomes something better than
it was." 1
But such language was no longer
tolerable. For at that period the mono-
physite tendency from the East coalesced
with an almost brutally superstitious dis
position in a very dark age of the West.
Thus transubstantiation 2 in its first form,
1 Dissert, p. 256.
- St. Peter Damian (c. 1072) appears to have been the
first to use the term, P. L. cxlv. 883. For the formula
(without the term) subscribed by Berengar, see Dissert.
P- 257-
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 117
as for example the weak and unhappy
Berengar was forced by the dominant power
in the church to subscribe to it, was indeed
a gross and horrible doctrine :
" I assent to the holy Roman and apostolic
see, and with mouth and heart I profess
to hold as to the sacrament of the Lord s
table the faith which the Lord and
venerable Pope Nicolas and this holy
synod, with evangelical and apostolical
authority, has given me to be held and
has confirmed to me : namely, that the
bread and wine which are placed upon the
altar are after consecration not only a
sacrament but the true body and blood of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and sensibly (scnsu-
alitcr), not only in a sacrament but in
reality, are handled by the hands of priests
and broken and bruised by the teeth of the
faithful."
Most of the contemporary writers against
Berengar assert that the body and blood
of Christ are to be eaten and drunken
"with the mouth of the body as well as
the mouth of the heart"; and, like some
nS THE BODY OF CHRIST.
of the earlier Greeks, they deny that the
elements after consecration retain their
natural properties of nourishing or becoming
corrupted or being digested. The nature of
the bread and wine was understood to be
destroyed in everything but appearance.
Miracles were recklessly postulated, and
it was sufficient objection to any more
reasonable treatment of the mystery that
in diminishing the difficulty of belief it
reduced the merit of faith. Certainly the
atmosphere in which the doctrine of tran-
substantiation grows into a dogma is cal
culated to send a shiver through one s
intellectual and moral being. 1
But the rising scholasticism, or perhaps
the evidence of facts, 2 very quickly corrected
this extreme tendency. The use indeed of
the distinction of substance and accidents,
for the purpose of assisting the doctrine
of transubstantiation, was already familiar
1 Dissert, p. 258.
- Painful mischances to the consecrated hosts appear to
have been very common " negligentia ininistrorum evenire
solet," says Abelard : see Dissert, p. 260.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 1 1 9
to Berengar, and he excellently combats the
proposed use of it, denying that accidents
can exist apart from their substance (or
"subject"), or apart from that of which they
are attributes. But the later scholastics used
the distinction with a more laborious pre
cision to formulate the doctrine. By the
act of consecration the substrata or sub
stances of the bread and the wine were
changed into the substances of the body
and blood of Christ : but the accidents or
qualities of bread and wine all that we
are cognizant of in our experience of bread
and wine remained with all their natural
properties and defects ; remained (in the
compassion of God) as veils under which
the awful realities should be screened. 1
In later days a still further refinement has
led Roman theologians to say that the re
maining species or accidents of the bread and
\vine constitute a real object "something
1 Not, however, as accidents of the new substances of
the body and the blood, but as accidents inhering in no
substance. This is declared to be defide, and Roman writers,
modern as well as mediaeval, exult in the numerous viola
tions of the natural order involved in transubstantiation.
i2o THE BODY OF CHRIST.
objectively real." But this is in fact to
explain away the doctrine and the phrase.
Plainly modern philosophy of all schools
recognizes no distinction between substance
and accident knows no substance other
than that "something objectively real"
which is constituted by the qualities or
relations under which alone any object
is known in experience. Thus the modern
Roman theologians allow to the consecrated
bread and wine all the reality which any one
believes any bread and wine to possess, or,
in other words, explain away trarisubvStantia-
tion, till it remains as little more than a
verbal incumbrance due to an inopportune
intrusion into church doctrine of a
temporary phase of metaphysics. In its
original and more natural meaning, tran-
substantiation the overthrowing of the
natural substance by the spiritual is truly
contrary to a fundamental Christian philo
sophy, and really " overthroweth the nature
of a sacrament."
But even in its minimized sense tran-
substantiation does not remain onlv as an
T R A X S U B ST A X T I AT I O N . 121
incumbrance in terminology, witnessing to
a mistake in the dogmatic action of the
mediaeval church: for its really materialistic
and unspiritualizing effects cannot be done
away. As soon as the accidents or species
have reached a certain stage in the process
of being digested by the communicant, or of
being destroyed in some other way, it is felt
to be irreverent to imagine that they can still
be veils of the divine substances. Thus a
reversal of the process of transubstantiation
is postulated, by which the supernatural
substances are withdrawn, and the natural
substances (of bread and wine in process of
digestion or corruption) are restored, and the
accidents have again "asubject toinhere in." }
But the result of so materialistic a way
of conceiving the relation of the spiritual
gift to the outward part of the sacrament is
that the corruption of the material elements
involves the withdrawal of the divine gift.
Thus the coming of Christ to the Christian
through Holy Communion is in Roman
1 See Dissert, p. 270, 271. and J. R. Milne Doctrine and
Practice of the Holy Euch. (Longmans, 1895), p. 67.
122 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
theology and books of devotion spoken of
as a temporary visit which, though certain
fruits may remain, is yet in its primary
sense, as an indwelling of Christ, over when
the digestion of the material food begins
it is suggested after a quarter of an hour.
" This day," so devotion is taught to express
itself, " my Lord
" Came to my lowly tenement
And stayed awhile with me."
Or
"Oh, when wilt Thou always
Make our souls Thine own ?
We must wait for heaven,
Then the day shall come."
Now such an idea of a temporary visit of
Christ to the soul is in most marked con
tradiction to the teaching of the undivided
church. " He is held for a moment in your
hands, but He is wholly resolved into your
heart," says Chrysostom. " What you see "
in the sacrament, says Augustine, " passes
away, but the invisible thing signified does
not pass away but remains." 1 The whole
1 Chrys. Hem. in Ephes. iii. 4 (P. G. Ixii. 281) : Aug.
Serm. 227. Similar language is used by later Western
TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 123
teaching of the fathers on the subject seems
indeed to be a loving commentary upon our
Lord s words about His abiding in us and we
in Him.
Enough has probably been said. Apart
from the degree of authority which transub-
stantiation has obtained in the West, and to
a certain extent in the East, there is truly
on the grounds of antiquity, or Scripture, or
reason, nothing to be said for it. And we
cannot admit the weight of an authority
which fails in these supports. 1
theologians : e.g. Raymund of Sabunde Theol. Nat. tit. 285
(in the i5th cent.) speaks of Christ as the spiritual food
of the eucharist converting the Christian gradually and
permanently into Himself. This implies an abiding union.
But the doctrine stated above is, I believe, now accepted
in the Roman church.
1 See also below, p. 220.
4- The gift and presence spiritual.
It is the general assertion of the church
that the presence of Christ, or of His body
and blood, in the eucharist is spiritual
"not bodily but ghostly," as our English
Archbishop Aelfric so earnestly contended. 1
And I may assume at this stage that the
word spiritual as applied to the eucharistic
presence means something more than
presence " to our spirits. 1 2 It describes a
certain condition of the thing given, in
itself; though its relation to our spirits
belongs, as will appear, to its very essence.
What then is it that is to be understood in
this connection by the word " spiritual " ?
Of course it expresses not what is unreal,
but what is profoundly real. The things
that are not seen, of which the whole of
1 For his position and teaching, see Hunt Hist, of the
Engl. Church to 1066 (Macmillan, 1899), pp. 375 f.
- So Jeremy Taylor, see below, p. 235.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 125
visible nature is in a manner the symbol and
the sacrament, are for the Christian the
supremely real and actual and present
things. In whatever sense then we approach
and receive the body and blood of Christ
in the eucharist as spiritually present, it
is certain that they are in the deepest sense
real and really present.
Beyond this it is easy enough to say that
by calling them spiritually present we mean
that they are present in such a way as is to
be quite dissociated from any idea of the
movement of material particles a spiritual
presence is a non-material presence. And
this may well be perfectly true though the
more the modern physicist investigates the
ultimate nature of matter, the more he breaks
down all the supposed barriers between
matter and spirit ; but it is not in any case
the most important truth. It is possible
to maintain a profoundly unspiritual view of
the presence of Christ, and still to erect a
supposed safeguard by asserting that He is
present under the form of bread and wine,
in His body indeed, but after the manner
i 2 6 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
of spirit and without any interference with
material law, and not locally or materially
as in heaven. Certainly if the spirituality
of Christ s presence means this, it means
also something more positive and more
moral : something more on the lines of the
scriptural use of the word spiritual.
Any thing or process then, whether
material or no, is, according to the New
Testament use of the word, spiritual in which
the Holy Spirit, or generally spiritual pur
pose, effectively manifests itself, and which it
effectively controls. Isaac was born " after
the Spirit" by contrast to Ishmael,who was
born " after the flesh," 1 not because he was
less materially born, but because the divine
Spirit was specially evident in the circum
stances of his birth. Thus even Christ s
mortal body we should call in one sense
spiritual, because it acted according to a
controlling spirit of holiness, and all He did
in the body He did spiritually. It was " in
eternal spirit " that He offered Himself with
out spot to God. But, on the other hand, the
1 Gal. iv. 29.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 127
grossness of our earthly nature, the likeness
of the flesh of sin, still except so far as He
was miraculously exempted from its restric
tions --more or less limited Him. "All
authority " was not yet "given Him in heaven
or in earth." " The Spirit was not yet given,
because Christ was not yet glorified." He
had a baptism to be baptized with, and how
was He " straitened till it was accom
plished." 1
Thus the risen body fo Christ was
spiritual in a very different sense ; not
because it was less than before material, but
because in it matter was wholly and finally
subjugated to spirit, and not to the exigencies
of physical life. Matter no longer restricted
Him or hindered. It had become the pure and
transparent vehicle of spiritual purpose. He
rose from the dead (as is apparently implied
in the narrative of St. Matthew), 2 leaving the
gravestone undisturbed. The angel rolled
it away to show that He was risen. He
1 Matt, xxviii. 18 ; John vii. 39; Luke xii. 50.
" He is not here," the angel says, "for he ruse " (yyepQii).
Matt, xxviii. 6. This the fathers insist upon : Pusey I.e. p. 56.
128 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
appeared immediately, and apparently in
familiar form, to the faithful women, and
later in the day " in another form " to the
two disciples on the way to Emmaus un
recognizable by their yet carnal eyes. His
outward appearance, as St. Gregory remarks,
was relative to their inner mind ; l and sub
sequently, when " their eyes were opened, He
vanished out of their sight." Immediately
after, He is present in Jerusalem among the
apostles without any opening of their closed
doors, but yet to exhibit to them the attributes
even of the mortal body, by eating with them
as of old. Henceforth, during the forty
days, He never lived with them in the life of
earth, but was manifested from time to time
as His spiritual purpose required.
Now, from the physical point of view, such
spiritualization of matter as is involved in
this conception of a spiritual body, is becom
ing perhaps I will not say more imaginable,
but more and more conceivable : less out of
1 " Hoc egit foris Dominus in oculis corporis quod apud
ipsosagcbaturintusin oculis cordis." Hum. in Ei-ung. xxiii. i.
P. L. Ixxvi. 1182.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 129
analogy with our ultimate conceptions of
matter. But the important point to notice
is that the spirituality of the risen body of
Christ lies not so much in any physical
qualities as in the fact that His material
presence is absolutely controlled by His
spiritual will. The disciples, for example,
could no longer argue with any approach
to security that He was where they had last
seen Him, until they had evidence that He
had left that spot. All such subservience to
conditions of space was over for ever. His
manifestations were manifestations to special
persons i.e., those whose faith He willed
to rekindle under special forms for special
purposes.
And if all subjection to conditions of
space was over for the body of the resur
rection, even more certainly was it over for
the glorified body (if any distinction is to be
drawn), the body in which He through His
whole person hasbecome "quickening spirit,"
and even His flesh and blood are " spirit and
life." As to what the "body of glory" is,
silence is our best wisdom. We feel sure
B.C. K
130 THE T.ODY OF CHRIST.
indeed that He retains " all things appertain
ing to the perfection of man s nature " ; and
with St. John we believe that He not only
has come, but also is to come again in the
flesh. 1 But it is not in the flesh and blood
of our present conceptions, which " cannot
inherit the kingdom of God" ; nor have we
any faculties to conceive the glory of which
even our material nature in Him is suscep
tible. It is enough for us to know that in the
perfection of our nature, but in glory incon
ceivable, He still exists ; and it is out of this
glory that He feeds us with the flesh and
blood which are spirit and life.
Once more then what do we mean by the
spirituality of this gift or presence of Christ
in the eucharist ?
It is commonly asserted both by Romans 2
and Anglicans that His presence in the
eucharist is different in manner from His
presence in heaven : that He is not present
in the eucharist materially, nor after the
1 i John iv. 23, 2 John 7. "Cometh" means "is to
come again." See Westcott in loc.
- See app. note 9, p. 296.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 131
manner of a body, nor strictly locally
though no doubt the Anglican would be
clearer and more unimpeded in these denials
than the Roman. As was remarked above,
our notions of what materiality fundamentally
means are becoming increasingly vague.
But at any rate the presence is " after a
spiritual and heavenly manner," of which
we can learn nothing by scientific analysis.
But it is of much more importance that in
claiming spirituality for Christ s presence we
claim for it that, though He condescends to
use material means, the. sacramental elements,
yet He is never subject to them. As in the
risen and glorified body in itself, so in its
sacramental application to our necessities,
spiritual purpose dominates everything with
an absolute freedom. The presence is con
trolled by the purpose. And in a matter
where the evidence of the senses is denied
us, our only right to be confident that the
presence abides with us, depends on our
remaining under the shelter of the purpose.
Thus it seems to me to be illegitimate and
insecure to argue that because the presence,
K 2
132 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
admitted to be spiritual, is vouchsafed to us
(so to speak) under conditions of bread and
wine, therefore I am justified in assuming
that it abides under those conditions so long
as the bread subsists, or till I am informed
to the contrary. For such an argument is
wholly based on the limiting and restricting
conditions of material existence on con
ditions of existence to which Christ was
subjected in His mortal body, but not in
His resurrection body ; and still less (if the
two are distinguishable) in His body of glory.
If the disciples could not with any degree of
security argue after His resurrection that
He must still be in Jerusalem or in Galilee,
or in such and such a spot, for He was seen
there and they had no reason to believe that
He had stirred much less is it open to us
to argue that His presence under conditions
of bread and wine abides till we have reason
to believe it is removed. The bread and wine
are instruments of His will which He can at
pleasure use or discard ; and to which He
is in no subtlest way subjected. The only
secure argument is that the gift was given
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 133
for a certain purpose, and so long as that
purpose is observed we have absolute reason
to trust that His promise will not fail us. So
long as that which controls our actions is
His "name," and that means in part His
will and purpose, so long, and so long only,
can we be sure that He is " in the midst
of us." 1 And if this condition applies to
His presence in all assemblies of the church
for worship, it applies specially to His special
presence in the holy eucharist.
It may be worth while in this connection
remarking that we have no right to carry
out the analogy of the incarnation and the
eucharist so far as to say that the union of
the supernatural and the natural elements is
an indissoluble union in the latter case as in
the former. It is not indissoluble, just as
also it is not personal, or " hypostatical " as
the technical phrase goes. There is in fact
an analogy in fundamental principle between
the incarnation and the sacraments, but it
does not admit of being carried out in detail.
A spiritual presence in the eucharist then,
1 Matt, xviii. 20.
134 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
whatever else it may mean, means this :
like the appearances after the resurrection,
it is a presence to certain persons for certain
purposes. What then, we proceed to ask,
is the purpose of the gift and presence ?
It is plain that the purpose for which the
divine gift in Holy Communion is given is
indicated by the symbolism of bread and
wine it is that we may (in Goethe s words)
partake of a heavenly under the form of an
earthly nourishment. The sacrament was
instituted in order to be eaten. It was not
" by Christ s ordinance," or in accordance
with any expressed intention of His, " re
served " (except so far as the reserving is
necessary for the communion of sick or absent
brethren), 1 " lifted up, or worshipped " con
stituted, that is to say, an external object or
centre of worship here on earth. And, indeed,
1 Of reservation for the purposes of communion, such as
the ancient church practised, I do not think it can with
any fairness be denied that it falls inside the scope of
Christ s revealed intention ; though no doubt also it falls
within the competence of any part of the church to decide
how the sick or absent are to* be communicated : see app.
note 10, p. 298.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 135
the intention with which the bread and wine
are consecrated to become for the church
the body and blood of Christ is constantly
expressed in the liturgies. With one consent
the church in her prayers of consecration has
prayed that the elements of bread and wine
may by the power of God be made or declared
to be Christ s body and blood for a certain
purpose, yiz., "in order that those receiving
them may be confirmed to holiness ; may
obtain remission of sins and . . . eternal
life," l " for the remission of sins and eternal
life to them that receive," 2 " that as many of
us as by participation from the altar shall
have received the holy body and blood of
Thy Son, may be fulfilled with all heavenly
benediction and grace," 3 "that it may be a
legitimate eucharist for all those who receive
it." 4 The same restricted intention is con
stantly and almost without exception illus
trated in the language of the fathers. They
1 Clementine, Brightman I.e. p. 21 ; so the Lit. of St.
James, p. 54; of St. Mark, p. 135, cf. p. 180, etc.
- Syrian Jacobites, p. 89.
:! Roman canon.
4 Gallican: Neale and Eorbes up. cit. p. 4.
136 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
but expressed Christ s words : " Take, eat ;
this is my body : drink ye all of it ; for
this is my blood."
Thus admittedly the gift of the body and
blood are given to the Church under the
forms of bread and wine, in order to be
received. What we are to "do in remem
brance of Him " includes, as its chief feature,
the taking and eating the bread and wine
which are declared to be His body and blood.
Even the sacrificial efficacy of the eucharist
depends, as will appear, upon reception ; and
the adoration of Christ s body and blood in
the sacrament occasionally spoken of by the
fathers is so spoken of mostly as a prepara
tion for the act of communion " no one
receives without first adoring."
This being the clearly-expressed original
and catholic idea of the sacrament, we can
not fail to be struck with the apparently
light-hearted security with which this obvious
intention of the sacrament according to
the mind of Christ has been enlarged in
later practice. Communion of the people in
1 See p. 104.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 137
western Christendom came to be an occa
sional and exceptional feature in the celebra
tion of the eucharist, or an additional service.
The sacrifice and the worship were largely
divorced from the communion. But more
than this : the wholly legitimate reservation
of the consecrated elements, that the absent
sick folk might be communicated from the
one altar and the one loaf, became what was
quite unknown to the ancients, and remains
alien to the customs of the orthodox East a
reservation of the sacramental body in order
that, inasmuch as with His body Christ is
present in His whole person, the church
might have a permanent external presence
of Christ in the midst of her in a parti
cular spot in the church. Thus the sons of
faith might go to be near Him and adore
Him, for His "delight is with the sons of
men"; and His loving condescension has
made Him the "prisoner of the tabernacle,"
and leads Him to give Himself to be
"exposed" for worship, and in the service
of Benediction to bless His people with
a blessing like that of His uplifted hand,
138 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
behind the veil, so to speak, of the enshrining
wafer.
No doubt the theologians of the Roman
church have had an uneasy conscience about
these developments. They have not been
developments of theological science, properly
so-called ; they have been developments of
popular devotion which, because they could
not be restrained, theological authority has
more or less reluctantly sanctioned. Yet in
effect the sanction has been given. This devo
tion to the sacrament in the modern Roman
church is, I do not say the most real, but
the most conspicuous form of Christian
devotion, or has no rival except that to the
mother of our Lord. Yet it is a most serious
lowering of the level of Christian devotion
if a permanent external presence of Christ
amongst Christians comes to be the most
usuallv entertained idea of the manner of
J
His "abiding with us," instead of the only
sort of abiding which the New Testament
suggests the indwelling of Christ in the
members of His body, of which it is the
glory of the sacrament to be the earthly
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 139
instrument. This institution of an external
shrine of the divine presence among Chris
tians, with its subtle but profound influence
on Christian thought and language and
devotion, is, I repeat, a tremendously bold
development in view of Christ s institution.
It ought to raise in all minds a deep ques
tioning of the authority of the Church to
innovate so freely upon His intention : but
also it cannot but raise in many minds the
question whether, where the purpose of the
sacramental presence is so vitally changed,
we have the right to feel secure of the
permanence of the presence itself.
Does not the conception of a spiritual
presence, with its absolute independence of
its material vehicles, with its unshackled
liberty from moment to moment to be or
not to be at the will of Him whose presence
it is, lead us to believe that fidelity to the
declared purpose for which it is given is
the sole security for its permanence ? Does
not any other standard of security really
reduce the presence to material conditions
to conditions, that is, of attachment to
140 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
physical nature such as belonged to Christ
only in His mortal body ?
I know it is said by some practical persons,
Is it not a pity to argue the question ? What
real difference does it make whether there be
in fact any presence in the tabernacle other
than exists anywhere else ? Is not God
everywhere present ? Is it not true of the
whole Christian life that we " are come unto
Mount Zion, and to the heavenly Jerusalem
. . . and to Jesus, the mediator of the new
covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling" ?
What if the truth be that the little flickering
lamp and the tabernacle do but enable the
worshipper to realize what, after all, in the
tabernacle and out of it, is, apart from
theological refinement, substantially true ?
To which the answer seems to be : it may
matter very little in the case of this or
that individual at this or that moment. But
the devotion as a whole has a general ten
dency, and the general tendency is hardly
that of enabling one to realize the universal
presence of God in the world, or the constant
presence of all Christians, at all times and in
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 141
all places, to the heavenly things, or the
indwelling of Christ in the soul of the
individual and in the living church. The
indisputable tendency of this devotion, and
of the theology which reduces even the gift of
communion to a temporary visit, is towards
a conceiving of Christ s presence with the
church as local and external a conceiving of
it which becomes more and more remote from
St. Paul s or St. John s or St. Augustine s.
And if uses of the sacrament other than
those strictly covered by the divine intention
are, in a high degree, alluring and comforting
and popular, we must remember that the
easiest sort of Christian devotion is not
always the truest. Christian worship may
be, nay must be, meant to involve spiritual
effort. It is God s intention that we should
be spiritually lifted up to realize that Christ s
presence with us now is a presence in the
church, as the life of the body, not amongst
Christians as in an outward shrine ; and that
nearness to Him, or remoteness from Him, is a
matter of faith and holiness, and not of place.
The eucharistic presence then, because it is
142 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
spiritual, is a presence for a certain divinely-
defined purpose ; and (as a consequence of
this) it is a presence to certain persons
that is, the sons and daughters of faith. So
the risen Christ appeared only to those who
had faith, or in whom it could be reawakened,
and He appeared, according to His will,
differently to different people.
In other words the eucharistic presence,
because it is spiritual, is relative to the faith
of the church, and presupposes "holy per
sons" to receive " holy gifts."
This appears in the prayers of the liturgy.
Thus in the Roman mass the prayer runs
"that this oblation may become to us
(jiobis] the body and blood of Thy dearly
beloved Son " : and in Greek liturgies there
is a prayer for the consecration of the
communicants as well as the gifts, "that
the Holy Spirit may come upon us and
upon these, gifts " : and the solemn cry just
referred to, which invites to communion, is
" the holy things for the holy persons." 1
1 Cf. Brightman op. cit. pp. 59, 135, "329, and St. Cyril s
comment on ra. ayia TO II ayiois. Cat. X.xiii. 19.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL 143
This follows indeed from considerations
already entertained ; for the gifts are given to
be eaten, and while the outward elements are
received by the lips and eaten like other
food, it is plain that no physical organs
can appropriate the accompanying spiritual
in ft. Plainly u the means wherebv it is
O J *f
received " must be faith. Thus Mozley
when, in the passage already quoted, 1 he
has emphatically asserted that the fathers
held " the objectiveness, as we now call it,
of the inward part or thing signified in
the sacrament," yet continues : " We see
at the same time, upon examination of their
language, that this objectiveness was held
with a very important modification, which
gives a double aspect to the doctrine of the
fathers. The modification was this, that the
body and blood of Christ could not be eaten
except by faith, which was the medium by
which this spiritual food had any operation
or function as food. Although, therefore, the
body and blood itself followed an external test
of presence, as being the concomitants of the
1 Sec above, pp. 72 3.
i 4 4 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
material elements, the eating of this body
and blood followed an internal test, and was
the concomitant entirely of the state of mind
of the recipient." . . . " To suppose that a
man s natural mouth and teeth can eat a
spiritual thing would be a simple confusion
of ideas." This is the point of Augustine s
celebrated phrase " Believe and thou hast
eaten." 1
There is, indeed, in patristic language
on this subject a certain ambiguity, as in
the original language of Scripture. In
St. John vi. the eating Christ s flesh and
drinking Christ s blood is plainly regarded
as possible only for those who thereby
" have eternal life " who " abide in Christ
and Christ in them " : the wicked and such
as are void of a lively faith plainly are
excluded from this eating. On the other
hand, our Lord said, " This is my body,"
simply, and St. Paul talks of the evil-disposed
"not discerning the [Lord s] body " not
appreciating, that is to say, what at the
1 In. Jo. xxv. 12 : Quid paras denteset ventrem ? Crede
et manducasti.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 145
same time he received like the others. 1 This
ambiguity continues in the fathers some
saying that the same gift is received to
profit or to condemnation, or with varying
degrees of profit according to the pro
portion of faith ; others using language
such as definitely implies that without faith
there is no reception of the spiritual realities.
Thus Origen writes about " the Word who
became flesh and the true food, which whoso
eateth shall certainly live for ever, no bad
man being able to eat it. For if it were
possible for a man while he remains bad to eat
the Word who was made flesh and the living
bread, it would not have been written that he
that eateth this bread shall live for ever.
And Cyprian records a miracle how a
defaulter from Christ attempted to eat the
holy body of the Lord and found a cinder in
his opened hand ; and this he takes for "proof
by a single instance that the Lord with-
1 There is a similar ambiguity in the N. T. language
about baptism : for St. John always speaks of "him who is
begotten of God," i.e., the regenerate, as if he must be
living accordingly : see i John iii. 9 10, v. 4, 18.
2 In Matt. torn. xi. 14.
B.C. L
146 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
draws when He is denied, and that which is
received is of no profit to salvation to those
who do not deserve it, since the Holy One
fleeing away, 1 the saving grace is turned to
a cinder." And Jerome says : " All who are
lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God
... do not eat the flesh of Jesus nor drink
His blood." 2 And Leo the Great warns his
hearers against doubting the reality of the
body of Christ in the sacrament, because " it
is what you believe with your faith that you
receive with your mouth ; and in vain that
they say A-men who argue against what is
received." 3 And Augustine repeatedly : " He
who abides not in Christ and has not Christ
abiding in him, without a doubt neither eats
His flesh nor drinks His blood, but rather eats
and drinks to his judgment the sacrament of
so great a thing." " It is as if Christ said :
He who does not abide in Me and in whom
I do not abide, must not say or imagine
that he eats My body or drinks My blood." 4
1 De laps. 26 : sancto (a. I. sanctitate) fugiente.
- In Isai. Ixvi. 17 (torn. iii. p. 506, Paris, 1706).
8 Serin, xci. 3.
4 In Jo. xxvii. 18 ; de civ. xxi. 25. Cf. Dissert, p. 234.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 147
Elsewhere, however, both St. Jerome and
St. Augustine express themselves as if the
faith of the recipient made no difference to
the thing received. " It was none the less
the body of the Lord and the blood of the
Lord even to those to whom the apostle
said, He that eateth unworthily eateth
and drinketh judgment to himself." l There
is, in fact, an ambiguity in their language
like the ambiguity of the Scriptures on
which they comment. The gift on the
one hand is what it is by divine conse
cration, and on the other hand it is what
it is for faith ; and it requires faith not /
only to appreciate but to entertain and
receive it.
This question whether the wicked receive
the body or flesh of Christ in the Holy
Communion long remained an open one.
Paschasius Radbert in the ninth century
speaks with great ambiguity.- Rupert of
Deutz (c. 1130) uses almost contradictory
1 Aug. de bapt. c. Donat. v. 9. Cf. Jerom. adv. Jovi::. ii.
torn. iv. pars ii. p. 218).
" DC corp. ct sung. vi. 2.
L 2
i 4 8 THE BODY OF CHRIS]T.
phrases. 1 At some subsequent date later
than the twelfth century the solution arrived
at was that the wicked receive the " res
sacramenti " (the body and blood), but not
the "virtus" or beneficial effects. The
English church in the 2Qth Article returns
to the earlier and more ambiguous language
of Augustine.
In fact, if we hold on the one hand with
the ancient church the obj ectiveness of the
gift, and on the other hand not only that
men can derive no benefit from sacraments
except so far as they receive them well,
but also that the eating of Christ s flesh and
blood is (in St. John vi.) a spiritual act of
which only those who have a living faith are
capable, the remaining differences can only
really be verbal. We cannot really define
what occurs when a personal gift of God
1 See P. L. clxix. 470. where he says : " The bread once
consecrated never afterwards loses the virtue of its conse
cration, or ceases to be the body of Christ ; but it does not
profit an unworthy person." But see also clxx. 40, where
he says : " Into him who has no faith nothing of the
sacrifice can enter except the visible species of bread and
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 149
which is meant for faith, is presented to some
one totally without faith or the desire of it
totally without fellowship in the faith of the
Church. The question is only one stage
removed from the question of what would
occur if the sacrament were eaten by an
animal without reason to which the Master
of the Sentences replies, " God knows."
And it is of real importance that we
should recognize that faith the common
faith of the church probably plays the
same part in actually constituting the
spiritual reality of the sacrament as the com
mon reason of man does in constituting the
objects of the natural world : that is to say,
we should expect spiritual objectivity to
1 Peter Lombard Sententt. lib. iv. dist. 13. The deter
minations of St. Thomas Aquinas on these points (S. Th.
iii. qu. 80, art. 3) in which he disowns " some of the
ancients" are plainly based upon considerations involved
in transubstantiation which really subject Christ to material
conditions. Dr. Pusey I.e. p. 37, says : "The belief in the
real presence may indeed be maintained without it [the
belief that the faithless eat the body of the Lord] , if it be
held that God withdraws that presence in such cases." So
Cyprian seems to have held, and Ephrem Syrus and others
are quoted in the same sense.
150 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
follow the same law of relation as natural
objectivity.
No doubt to hold that the faith of the
church goes to constitute the spiritual
reality of the presence, so that for one who
is altogether outside that faith the spiritual
reality cannot be said to exist to hold this,
some men would say, is equivalent to denying
its objective character. But they would say
this in their haste ; because it had not
fallen in their way to study metaphysics,
which is the science of first principles of
reality as known to us.
Metaphysical study makes us conscious
how much the mind (the perceptive or intel
lectual faculties in us as distinct from the
moral or spiritual) has to do with actually
constituting the objects of the outward
world the trees, the animals, the persons.
Mind, as it is in me and in all men, not
only perceives these things as ready-made,
but also has to do with making them to be.
God, we commonly say, creates things in
nature, and He creates mind. But in fact
the two creations are inseparable. The
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 151
things have no existence apart from the
minds which know them, for it is only as
held together by the mind of the observer
that all the sensations of colour, taste,
hardness, softness, shape, etc., coalesce into
an object held together in relations to the
whole orderly world. Relations are the
work of mind, and relations are necessary
to make objects. On the other hand, it is
only the sensations given from outside which
enable the mind to perceive and know, and
so to become a mind at all. This is a per
plexing and irritating conclusion perhaps,
but it is apparently inevitable if one likes to
think. And it would be of a piece with this
if we are to suppose that a similar rela
tion exists between the spiritual presence of
Christ in the eucharist and our corre
sponding faculties of spiritual perception :
if we are to suppose that, though it is God
who makes the bread to be the body of
Christ and not man (as it is God who makes
the objects in the natural world and not
man), yet He makes this spiritual reality
to exist relatively, not absolutely : in such
152 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
sense as to exist only for faith, the iaith
of the believing and worshipping Church,
just as He creates the world relatively, not
absolutely, that is, to exist for rational
beings and by the action of thought.
And we observe that this doctrine of
relativity makes the reality of objects, neither
in the sphere of nature nor of the spiritual
world, to depend upon the precarious state
of mind of any individual. The trees and
flowers do not depend on my mind for their
existence, but on the action of that common
reason in which all men more or less
effectively share, but which, at the bottom,
has its origin out of the divine reason.
Upon mind in general, however, the exist
ence of the world as we know it does
depend ; and for irrational creatures such
as in no way share in reason it cannot in
any real sense be said to exist ; for existence
on analysis proves to mean a relation to
mind. So the spiritual presence of Christ
in His body and His blood (and all that
goes with it) rests not on the precarious
faith of any individual, but is so relative to
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 153
the faith of the church as a whole that
common faculty which rests at bottom on
the activity of the Holy Ghost as that
apart from faith, or for one who in no way
shares it, it can no more in any intelligible
sense be said to exist than the beauty of
nature can be said to exist for what is quite
without reason. For here again existence
proves to mean a relation to a consciousness
only now it is not mere rational sensibility,
but spiritual faith. 1
A few words in conclusion may be said to
those who will feel a lack of definiteness in
the account of the real presence just given.
You have asserted, they will say, an objective
presence but at the same time have pleaded
against phrases being exclusively or freely
used which suggest a localized presence.
You insist that the presence is not physically
1 It is interesting to reflect how any right doctrine of
the spirituality or relativity of the divine presence enables
us to recognize that there can be degrees of divine presence,
such as are postulated in St. Matt. v. 34-5 and in many
other places. Degrees of divine presence are possible in
proportion as it expresses divine purpose and is relative to
human faith.
154 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
attached to the elements, but is secure only
in proportion as we abide under the shelter
of the purpose for which it is given. You
claim that it is a presence for faith in such
sense that it may be said only to exist in
relation to faith. But by making these and
the like qualifications you are taking away
the sharp outline of the Catholic belief
and leaving it hazy and dim. To which
the reply, I think, is threefold.
First, some such qualifications are found
in almost all careful theological statements
on this subject such as the statement
already quoted from Cardinal Newman.
Surely it takes the edge off the later western
way of regarding the sacrament, if Christ
does not descend from heaven upon our
altars, and does not move when the host is
carried ? And if this is the accurate truth,
it needs surely to make its influence felt on
the popular faith perhaps, as the fathers
seem to have felt, by the simultaneous use
of different kinds of metaphors for the
presence, more or less neutralizing one
another.
THE PRESENCE SPIRITUAL. 155
Secondly, and more generally, there is a
kind of clearness of statement which suits
material objects but which simply does not
apply to spiritual things, and it is plain that
such clearness is, both in the Bible and the
fathers, avoided as a danger. Nothing is in
fact more striking than the constant anxiety
of the fathers to make men feel that human
language can but dimly adumbrate, and
not fully or precisely define, divine mysteries.
They continually appear to shrink from being
too clear-cut in their explanations. In our
days we seem greatly to need the reminder
of Hooker (applicable to other parts of the
revealed truth besides the incarnation) that
" because this divine mystery is more true
than plain, divers having framed the same
to their own conceits or fancies are found
in their expositions thereof more plain than
true."
Thirdly, I should like to suggest that it is
a shallow rationalism and intellectual indo
lence, rather than the simple faith of the poor
(or poor in spirit), which crave for clearness
of statement beyond the measure allowed to
156 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
us who " see through a glass, darkly " ; and
the craving must be gratified only with great
reserves. We have admirable examples of
ancient teaching about the sacraments,
among other things. Who ever taught a
town congregation of average intelligence
better than St. Chrysostom, or simple people
better than St. Augustine? And they use
great plainness of speech without material
izing truth or brushing aside the atmosphere
of mystery which blunts the too sharp edge
of doctrinal statement.
CHAPTER III.
THE EUCHARIST A SACRIFICE.
i. The church s sacrifices.
THERE can be no question that from the
earliest days the Christian church thought
of the eucharist as a sacrifice. 1 This is
implied by Clement of Rome when he sees
in the eucharistic worship of the church,
and the " offering of the gifts," a continua
tion under new conditions of the ordered
sacrificial worship of the old covenant. 2
And the word is plainly used of the eucharist
(however inadequately conceived) in the
Didache : " On the day of the Lord come
together and break bread and make your
eucharist, after having first confessed your
transgressions that your sacrifice may
be pure." 3 And Justin Martyr speaks
1 Harnack Dogmeng. Bd. i. 152, n. .
2 Clem. Rom. ad Cor. 4044. 3 Did. xiv. i.
158 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
repeatedly of "the sacrificeswthrough* His
name, which Jesus the Christ delivered to
us to make that is at the thank-offering
(eucharist) of the bread and of the cup " ;
and of " the bread of the eucharist which
for a memorial of His passion Christ our
Lord delivered to us to offer." 1 Finally, to
go down no farther than the second century,
Irenaeus is emphatic that it is not that sacri
fices are abolished under the new covenant,
but only that their character is changed ;
for Christ "took the bread which is of this
(lower) creation and gave thanks, saying,
This is my body : and likewise the cup . . .
and confessed it to be His blood, and taught
the new oblation of the new covenant which
the church receiving from the apostles offers
to God over the whole world." There was
no doubt about it. The eucharist was a
sacrifice. It was the eucharist which the
prophet foretold when he said, from God,
1 Justin dial. c. Trypli. 41, 117. The word "eucharist"
passed from meaning simply thanksgiving to mean the
specially ordained thank-offering of the Christians as above ;
and then the consecrated elements : see above, p. 6.
- Iren. C. haer. iv. 17, 5.
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 159
" In every place . . . shall be offered unto
my name . . . a pure offering." 1 And the
eucharist was specially called the "spiritual"
(or " rational ") and " bloodless " sacrifice :
spiritual a worship "in spirit and in truth"
none the less because it was a visible and
corporate act, offered in connection with
visible symbols ; and bloodless in the first
sense, no doubt because the symbols were
bread and wine and not the flesh and blood
of animals, but also because these clean
and less gross elements had been asso
ciated already with spiritual conceptions of
worship. 2
The fathers used this sacrificial language,
we must remember, while at the same time
the Greek and Roman world was looking
upon them as eccentric for holding a religion
1 Didachc xiv. 3 ; Justin, Irenasus, Clement, Tertullian, etc.
- " Bloodless " is used by Philo, of the meal offerings
(de anim. sacrific. ed. Mangey, ii. 250), but also of inward as
opposed to outward worship (de ebreit. i. 370 ; cf. ii. 254).
Similarly it is used in the Test, of xii. Pair. (Levi, 3) of the
worship of the angels, " a rational odour of sweet savour
and a bloodless offering." There is an obvious ambiguity
which remains in the earliest Christian use of the word.
160 THEBODYOF CHRIST.
without altars and temples, as well as with
out images. 1 And indeed they are constantly
proclaiming that (in the sense of the heathen)
they had none of these. For they interpreted
their sacrifices to mean, as in fact in their
origin they did, that God had physical appe
tites and needed animal or material suste
nance. " They sacrifice fat victims to God as
if He were hungry, and pour out wine as if
He were thirsty." 2 But the Christians knew
that God does not stand in need of any
material offering of blood or sweet savours.
He made all things and needs none of them. 3
"We offer Him (what alone He asks) a
bloodless sacrifice and the rational service."
" We approach Him only with pure prayer."
The purified heart and the acceptable
prayer are the only sacrifices He asks for,
and sanctified hearts and bodies the only
temples in which He will dwell. 4 This is
1 Origen c. Cds. viii. 17 ; Minucius Felix Octav. 10.
- Lactantius, Divin. Instil, vi. -z.
a Justin M. ApoL i. 13; Athenagoras Lcgatio, 13;
Tertullian Scap. 2.
4 Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. 3, 14 ; Greg. Naz. Unit. ii.
9495-
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES 161
the constantly reiterated Christian protest
against heathendom.
And it must be borne in mind that the
fathers of the first four centuries mostly took
a low view of the sacrificial system of the
Jews, which they regarded as not directly
ordered by God, seeing it had its origin from
" Gentile grossness," but as something
which God at the best tolerated among
them to avoid worse things, or even laid
on them for a punishment; 1 so that on
this side also they are anxious to separate
themselves from fellowship with a sacrificial
system as commonly understood.
But all this language of disparagement of
material sacrifices still leaves them on their
own ground recognizing that the worship in
spirit and in truth is not a mere inward and
individual approach to God, but a corporate
and therefore outward thing a worship
which publicly acknowledges God in all His
1 See Lux Mundi (small ed.), p. 241, n. J ; and Freeman,
Principles, vol. ii. p. 56. In spite of Augustine s influence,
the view appears still in Rupert of Deutz Dial. int. Christ,
et Jitd. ii. (P. L. clxx. 581-2) : " Deus legem illam non jussit
sed admisit; non voluit sed permisit."
B.C. M
162 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
gifts, though He needs them not; 1 and a
worship which finds its central expression
in the eucharist, in which, according to
the ordinance of Christ, bread and wine are
presented to the Father, in the name of the
Son, and in memorial of His passion, with
the adoration and prayer and thanksgiving
of sons, and blessed by the Holy Spirit to
become the Lord s body and blood, and
partaken of by the worshippers that they
may be bound all together in Him. That
was for the Christians the chief and central
expression of rational service and bloodless
sacrifice.
Now we must examine somewhat more
closely what the eucharistic sacrifice does
and does not mean, on the background of
the New Testament teaching, but post
poning for the moment the question of the
witness of the New Testament to the eucha
rist in particular.
Whatever may have been the original and
1 Iren. C. haer. iv. 18, 6 : " For we offer to Him, not as if
He needed ought, but giving thanks to His supremacy and
sanctifying the creature."
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 163
fundamental meaning of sacrifice, it had
come among the Jews to mean especially
something given to God in homage and
recognition, or to recover His favour. The
prophetic teaching, which especially in
fluenced the early Christian church, had
already purged this practice of offering
material gifts from the notion that God
in any sense needed material things for
Himself. " I will take no bullock out of thy
house, nor he-goats out of thy folds. For
every beast of the forest is mine. . . . The
world is mine, and the fulness thereof.
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the
blood of goats? Offer unto God the sacrifice
of thanksgiving." Thus it had become plain
to any thoughtful Jew of the later period
that, if God required sacrifices, that was
because of what they represented -- the
obedient will and spirit; the private, and still
more the corporate, acknowledgment of God
as the source of all blessings; the desire to
hold communion with Him ; above all the
desire to recover His favour where it had
been lost by sin. For this idea of propitiation
M 2
164 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
had come to predominate among all the
possible conceptions of sacrifice.
But here was a chief point of contrast
between Jew and Christian. For when the
Jewish passed into the Christian church,
it became a first principle that there was
no more need for propitiating God. God,
without any co-operation from the race He
was redeeming, had provided His own pro
pitiation. He had sent His own Son, in our
flesh, and " given Him up " to be the
voluntary victim of human sin, and thereby
also the expiation for it. By His willing
offering of Himself as Son of Man, in a
perfect obedience through life and unto the
shedding of His blood, He had made repara
tion in man s name for man s sin. He had
done, spiritually and effectually, once and
for all, what the one inaugural sacrifice of
the old covenant and the annually recurring
day of atonement had done symbolically, but
outwardly only and ineffectually : He had
set the redeemed humanity, the church of
the redeemed His own body on a new
basis with God. They, as associated with
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 165
Himself, had in Him been once for all
effectually reconciled to the Father ; and so
long as they retained their hold on Christ
by faith, and the obedience which springs
of faith, they were accepted " in the
beloved."
For the Christian, therefore, there was no
more need of any propitiation. Christ, their
effective propitiation, was triumphant and
alive at the right hand of the Father in all-
powerful intercession. It remained for them
only and in all ways to make thankful com
memoration of His victorious passion and
resurrection, by their whole bearing " to
proclaim the Lord s death till He should
come again," and to intercede and plead
in fellowship with His intercession - - in
His name and in the power of "the blood
of sprinkling," the " blood of the eternal
covenant."
But the abolition of any further need
for propitiation was not equivalent to the
abolition of sacrifice. Those sacrifices of
the old covenant to which in the Epistle
to the Hebrews Christ s sacrifice is chiefly
166 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
compared, are, we should notice, the inaugural
sacrifice at which Moses spoke the words
" This is the blood of the covenant which
the Lord hath made with you," 1 and the
sacrifice of the great day of atonement.
And these were not simply two among many
sacrifices ; they held a position of their own.
The one inaugurated a whole covenant of
worship, and the other (in the fully developed
ritual system) maintained it in being by
annually purging first the priesthood, and
secondly the holy place, the altar and the
whole tabernacle, from the uncleanness of the
people. 2 Thus the purpose of the ritual of
the day of atonement was to purge and renew
the whole sphere of sacrifice, and enable
the various offerings of the year following
to be made without offence.
All this, according to the teaching of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, was an ineffective
shadow, but a real shadow of what was to
come. Christ Jesus, our great high priest
and victim, self-sacrificed upon the cross
1 Exod. xxiv. 8: cf. Hebr. ix. 15 24; Matt. xxvi. 28.
- Levit. xvi. n, 16, 18, 20.
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 167
and self-presented in the heavenly place,
has for those who belong to Him by faith
made all things new. He has " taken
away" their sin. He has inaugurated for
them an everlasting covenant of worship.
He has opened heaven. He has given
them " freedom of approach." That is to
say, He has made possible in perpetual
reliance on His merits and His Spirit the
life of sacrifice as it belongs to accepted
sons and not to trembling slaves.
We must remember that it is specially
appropriate for our present purpose to quote
the Epistle to the Hebrews, because in this
epistle, alone among the books of the New
Testament, the atonement wrought by Christ
is approached from the side of ritual and
worship ; l because there alone is the expla
nation of the sense in which the worship of
the old covenant was to be fulfilled and not
destroyed under the new : there is the climax
of all that teaching about the holy and
priestly people consecrated to the worship
1 See Dr. A. B. Davidson s admirable commentary
(Clarks), pp. 196 ff.
168 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
of Jehovah, of which the ritual law as a
whole, especially " the law of holiness," l and
the prophecy of Ezekiel and many of the
Psalms are the gradually deepening expres
sion. And I may add (by anticipation) that
the Epistle to the Hebrews has special points
of affinity with the language of our Lord s
institution of the " breaking of the bread."
Thus the abolition of any further need for
propitiation is not the abolition of sacrifice.
It is but the setting free of humanity to offer,
unimpeded by the alienation which sin had
caused, the sacrifices proper to man not
because he is a trembling sinner, but because
he is a forgiven and accepted son, and knows
what he owes to God for his creation and
his redemption.
The New Testament then is full of the
idea of the church as a priestly body, or
(what is the same thing) of the church as
offering sacrifices. It is "the continual
sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips which
make confession to God s name"; or it is
1 See Exod. xix. 6 and Lev. xvii. xxvi. ; also Ezekiel
(with commentary by A. B. Davidson, Cam. Bible for Schools).
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 169
the sacrifices of almsgiving and of doing
good " with which God is well pleased " ; a or
it is the sacrifice of ourselves, that is, our
bodies offered by ourselves " as a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which
is our reasonable service " ; 2 or it is the sacri
fice of prayers and intercessions ; 3 or the
sacrifice of sufferings borne on behalf of
the whole church in fulfilment of Christ s
sufferings; 4 or, finally, it is the sacrifice of
other men won and consecrated and offered
to God individually and collectively. 5 And
the first Christian theologians were full of
this thought. Christ, according to Clement
of Rome and Origen of Alexandria, is "the
high priest of our oblations." 6 He has
entered into the holy place for us once for
all, says Origen again, and our day of
atonement lasts till the end of the world ;
but we must supply Him with the spiritual
counterpart of the " sweet incense beaten
1 Hebr. xiii. 15 16. 2 Rom. xii. i.
3 Rev. vi. 8 : cf. i Tim. ii. i, i Pet. ii. 5.
4 Col. i. 24 in the light of Phil. ii. 17.
5 Rom. xv. 16 ; Col. i. 28.
6 Clem. Rom. ad Cor. 36 ; Origen de Orat. 10.
170 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
small " wherewith the high priest of the old
covenant filled his hands. As He stands
before God, He looks to see with what sort
of offering every church and every individual
is filling His hands. 1
Irenseus, again, comparing the new cove
nant with the old, declares that " it is not
that sacrifices as a whole have been abolished,
but only that the kind of sacrifices has been
changed." And the characteristic of the
Christian kind of sacrifices he finds in this,
that they are the " sacrifices of sons," accept
able not in themselves but for their sakes
who offer them. " Sacrifices do not sanctify
a man ; but his conscience who offers, being
pure, sanctifies the sacrifice and makes God
accept it as from a friend." 2 Thus if we
1 In Levit. Hom. ix. 5, 8: " considerat quid offeratur."
He is spiritualizing the meaning of Leviticus xvi. 12.
" Iren. C. haer. iv. 18, 2 3. This may sound strange, but
it is the ultimate Christian principle; and of course what
makes it possible is that behind the Christian offerers, and
embracing them in Himself, is the one priest in whom
alone is any offering acceptable. Cf. the prayer of the
Leonine Sacramentary : " Mercifully, O Lord, look upon the
offerings (hostlas) of Thy people, and thatthey may become
acceptable to Thee, let the sautary coming of Thy Holy
Spirit cleanse our consciences." P. L. Iv. 41.
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 171
want a general heading under which to bring
the sacrifices of the new covenant, we should
say that they are spiritual sacrifices, i.e., sacri
fices in which the enlightened and redeemed
will or spirit is at work ; sacrifices, therefore,
which are always of persons, and of things
or rites only as adjuncts and expressions of
persons. And to this principle we shall find
ourselves brought back later on.
But because these redeemed persons are
not isolated individuals, but an organized
body, this sacrificial life of theirs must find
a corporate expression, and such expression
the eucharist is. The eucharist may be
viewed therefore, first of all, as an occasion
(such as, without any divine institution,
the church might have devised for herself)
for representing corporately her sacrificial
character a service in which the church as
a body comes before the Father, conscious
of her sonship, and offers the sacrifice of
praise and thanksgiving, commemorating
God s mercies in creation and redemption ;
and the sacrifice of prayer in the name of
Christ and the power of His propitiation ; and
172 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the sacrifices of alms for the poor and fruits
of the earth and products of her skill, to
symbolize that "all things come of God,
and of His own do we give Him" ; and,
finally, offers herself as a glad instrument
of the purpose and kingdom of God. 1 And
all this the eucharist was. Irenaeus makes
a great deal of one aspect of the eucharist
the offering of the fruits of the earth
which might have belonged to a Christian
service without any special institution of
Christ or any special eucharistic gift or
presence. 2 And early canons suggest that
a Christian eucharist in the first age must
have frequently resembled a modern harvest
thanksgiving. 3
1 It ought to be remarked that the assumption of
eucharistic worship always was that the worshippers were
" in a state of grace." Where this standing-ground had
been lost the church ordinance designed for its recovery
was penitence or penance, followed by readmission to
communion.
See app. note n, p. 300.
3 See Canones Hlppolyti iii. (29), xxxvi. (186 ff.) ; Can.
Apost. 3 ; Const. Apost. viii. 39 f. At Rome till the ninth
century the people, and the clergy too, continued to bring
their offerings of bread and wine; and, in a certain form,
THE CHURCH S SACRIFICES. 173
But of course these associations of
sacrifice only gathered round the eucharist
because Christ had, at His last paschal
supper, taken the bread and cup of wine,
and blessed them, and said, "Take, eat:
this is my body ; drink this : this is my
blood"; and "This do in remembrance of
me." Here we have a " continual remem
brance of the sacrifice of the death of
Christ" ordained by Christ Himself, both in
word and act. And it is plain that what
from the first gave special efficacy and
meaning to the prayers and worship of the
Christian eucharist was this central fact :
that is to say, the fact that Christ instituted
in the "breaking of the bread" a special
memorial of His sacrifice ; and, secondly,
announced the bread and wine of this
memorial to be His body and His blood,
to be eaten and drunken by His disciples.
What bearing, then, has this ordained
consecration and communion upon the
eucharist considered as a sacrifice ?
the custom survives at Milan and in parts of France
Duchesne I.e. p. 165.
2. No repetition of the sacrifice upon the
cross.
First, we will set aside an effect which
consecration does not have. It does not
effect any renewal of the sacrifice of the
cross any renewed surrender of Christ
to death. Symbolically, no doubt, in
the breaking of the bread and the out
pouring of the wine, and in the separate
consecration of the bread and of the wine, 1
there is represented the violation of Christ s
body and the outpouring of His blood, and
the separation of the blood " which is the
life" from the body in death; and this
symbolical representation is accompanied by
the sacred words of Christ which point its
meaning ; and the whole of this sacramental
action is directed Godwards, to the accom
paniment of a prayer, and not manwards as
1 Thomas Aq. S. Th. p. iv. qu. Ixxvi. 2, Ixxviii. 3. This
idea, however, is not apparently ancient.
NO REPETITION OF CHRIST S SACRIFICE. 175
a (so to speak) dramatic or instructive
action. We have thus a solemn com
memoration before God of the sacrificial
death of Christ. But the death, or the
humiliation which belongs to the death, is
commemorated only, not renewed orrepeated.
When the fathers speak of an " immola
tion " i.e. a fresh sacrificing of Christ in
the eucharist they are referring only to
the symbolism of the sacrament, not to its
inward reality ; and this, in the language
of the church taken as a whole, is quite
unmistakable, and continues to be so as
late as the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.
A few quotations will make this plain. 1
" The flesh and blood of this sacrifice,"
says Augustine, " before Christ s coming was
promised in victims that were types : in the
passion of Christ it was rendered up in very
reality : since Christ s ascension it is cele
brated in the sacrament of memorial." 2
" We offer," says Chrysostom, " but as
making for ourselves a memorial of His
1 See also app. note 12, p. 302, on some ambiguous
language. * Aug. c. Faust, xx. 21.
176 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
death . . . We make always the same sacri
fice ; or rather we effect a memorial of the
sacrifice." 1 ".That which is offered and
consecrated by the priest," says Peter
Lombard, " is called a sacrifice and oblation
because it is a memorial and representa
tion of the true sacrifice and of the holy
immolation made once for all upon the cross :
and Christ once died upon the cross and
was there immolated in Himself: but He is
daily immolated in the sacrament, because
in the sacrament is a remembrance of what
was once done." " It is called a sacrifice,"
says St. Thomas, "with reference to what
is past : inasmuch as it is commemorative
of the Lord s passion which was the true
sacrifice." " It is a representative image of
Christ s passion, as the altar represents the
cross on which He was once immolated." 3
The eucharist then is not in the stricter
1 Chrys. ad Hebr. Horn. xvii. 3.
2 Petrus Lorn. Sentt. iv. 12, 7.
3 Tho. Aq. S. Th. Pars iv. qu. Ixxiii. art. 4, qu. Ixxxiii.
art. i. The schoolmen, it may be mentioned, paid immense
attention to the doctrine of transubstantiation, but very
little to that of the eucharistic sacrifice.
NO REPETITION OF CHRIST S SACRIFICE. 177
sense of the term propitiatory. It is cer
tainly in accordance with the language
of the New Testament to reserve this
term for the initial act by which Christ
gave humanity a new standing before God
and opened the kingdom of heaven to all
believers.
It is, however, impossible to deny that the
word propitiatory in a wider sense may be
applied, and from the days of Origen has
been applied, to the eucharist. Thus Jeremy
Taylor says : "As all the effects of grace and
the titles of glory were purchased for us
on the cross and the actual mysteries of
redemption perfected on earth, but are
applied to us and made effectual to single
persons and communities of men by Christ s
intercession in heaven ; so also are they
promoted by acts of duty and religion here
on earth, that we may be workers together
with God, as St. Paul expresses it, and in
virtue of the eternal and all-sufficient sacri
fice may offer up our prayers and our duty ;
and by representing that sacrifice may send
up, together with our prayers, an instrument
N
178 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
of their graciousness and acceptation. . . .
It follows that the celebration of this sacri
fice (the eucharist) be in its proportion an
instrument of applying the proper sacrifice
to all the purposes which it first designed.
It is ministerially, and by application, an
instrument propitiatory ; it is eucharistical,
it is an homage and an act of adoration ;
it is impetratory, etc." 1
The use of the word propitiatory of the
eucharist, or the refusal to use it, may thus
be said to be a mere matter of language.
But there are deep reasons of religion, as
well as scriptural authority, to move us to
restrict its application ; and of course still
deeper reasons for guarding the truth, which
the restriction expresses, of the unique
ness and all-sufficiency of the sacrifice of
Calvary.
Only comparatively late in the history of
theology does this truth, that the sacrifice
once made was " full, perfect, and sufficient,"
seem to have been imperilled. First, at the
end of the middle ages, when the idea was
1 Life of Christ, pt. iii. 15.
NO REPETITION OF CHRIST S SACRIFICE. 179
widely current that the sacrifice of the altar
was a distinct addition to the sacrifice of the
cross ; for while the sacrifice of the cross
had been offered once for original sin, the
sacrifice of the altar was daily offered for
actual sins. This doctrine is unhesitatingly
asserted in sermons ascribed in one form
to Albertus Magnus, and in another to
St. Thomas Aquinas, but really representing
a later and lower opinion ; and its currency
is attested by the way in which the early
Reformers speak of it, and by the repudia
tion of it in the Confession of Augsburg,
and in our Thirty-first Article. 1
And again, in the later and deliberate
theology of the Roman church, a view has
come to prevail I believe that is not too
strong a term of which it is exceedingly
difficult to bear the statement : a view which
involves in each mass in some real sense a
re-sacrificing of Christ.
To constitute a sacrifice it is supposed
quite contrary to ancient opinion that
there is required some destruction of the
1 See app. note 13, p. 304.
N 2
i8o THE BODY OF CHRIST.
object sacrificed in honour of God. 1 Thus
if the mass is a proper sacrifice, and if the
subject offered in sacrifice is Christ, it
follows that in each mass Christ must
surrender Himself to a certain sort of
destruction in other words, that though
the victim in the sacrifice of the altar is
identical with the victim of the cross, yet
the act of being sacrificed is distinct. In
the mass we have always the same perfect
victim, but in each mass a re-sacrificing of
Him. And, further, it appears that the
essence of this renewed sacrifice lies in this :
that Christ in the mass submits at the
priest s hands to become food for man under
the form of bread. And this submission to a
condition of becoming food, a condition
unnatural to the human body, is on each
occasion a fresh self-emptying a fresh con-
1 " Communiter decent doctores intervenire debere
destructionem aliquam rei oblatae." Einig (see below,
p. 306), p. 108, who gives quotations. It is in part this
narrowing of the idea of sacrifice which has brought with
it in later Roman theology the almost exclusive attachment
of the mass to the moment of Calvary rather than to
Christ s perpetual presentation of Himself in heaven.
NO REPETITION OF CHRIST S SACRIFICE. 181
descension to an inferior state, and thus
a fresh sacrificing of Christ. 1
Such views as these whether popular
misconceptions or theological errors which
involve in each eucharist some addition to
the sacrifice of Calvary or some real renewal
of it, there can be very little need to combat
in this country to-day. But it has been
necessary to mention them in order to show
that in maintaining with care and anxiety
that the sacrifice by which we were re
deemed upon the cross was one, full,
perfect and sufficient, so that it can need
no supplementing and admits of no renewal,
we are not now, and our forefathers in
the sixteenth century were not, fighting a
phantom.
And there is a third view, exceedingly
difficult to understand, for which a number
of Anglicans have undoubtedly made them
selves responsible, and which is evidently still
current among us, according to which there
is postulated in the eucharist some real
presence of the flesh and blood of Christ
1 See quotations in app. note 14, p. 305.
1 82 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
as they were when He was dying or dead
upon the cross.
The true view, as I cannot but call it, is
expressed in a phrase of Rupert of Deutz :
" It is the whole Christ who is present, the
whole Christ who lies upon the altar : not
that He may again suffer, but that to faith,
to which all past things are present, His
passion may be represented by way of a
memory." That is to say, it is the " whole "
or living Christ, Christ as He is, that is made
present to us, and given to us in the eucharist ;
but it is a certain momentous event in the
past, an event of eternal significance which to
faith is ever a present reality, which is there
specially commemorated His death upon
the cross. It is the living Christ who feeds
us with His own life : but it is as alive out of
death: it is "the Lamb as it had been slain."
Now it is natural enough that those who
adopt a merely commemorative view of the
eucharist should say that it is the dead
Christ Who is presented to us there, in the
sense that a past event in history is presented
1 See de Trin. it ofip. in Gen. lib. vi. (P. L. clxvii.
NO REPETITION OF CHRIST S SACRIFICE. 183
to our contemplation. But it seems wholly
unintelligible how divines who in any sense
believe in a real presence can speak of the
eucharistic body one hesitates even to write
the words as " the corpse " of Christ, or use
language which is certainly highly misleading,
unless they mean which God forbid that
there is in every eucharist a body sacrificed
afresh and blood shed anew in death. 1
Now we may dismiss these painful mis
takes. For there is welcome at all hands,
in the Roman Church as well as outside it,
for the truth of the sufficiency of the once
made atonement. The sacrifice of the Son
of Man once offered in death has been
accepted in glory. In the power of that
sacrifice Christ ever lives, our high priest
and perpetual intercessor, the continually
1 Andrewes, Sermons of the Resurrection, vii. (vol. ii.
p. 301 f.) : "Christ s body that now is. True; but not
Christ s body as now it is, but as then it was, when it was
offered, rent and slain. ... By the incomprehensible
power of His eternal Spirit, not He alone, but He as at
the very act of His offering is made present to us ... we
must repair even ad cadaver." Cf. Freeman I.e. ii. Introd.
pp. 152, 153; see also Report of Round Table Conference
(Longmans, 1900), pp. 44 f., 49 f.
184 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
accepted propitiation for our sins unto the
end of time. All that we need to do or can
do is to make .thankful commemoration, in
His way and by His Spirit, of His redemp
tive sufferings, and to unite ourselves to His
perpetual intercession, where He presents
Himself for us in the heavenly places, or
as He makes Himself present among us
in our eucharistic worship. " Ye are come
unto Jesus the mediator," and to " the blood
of sprinkling " that is, of perpetual applica
tion. Meanwhile, if the church has been
offering many sacrifices at many altars,
whatever value they have or have had must
be because the church which offers is a
priestly body by union with Christ s unique
high priesthood, and what she offers obtains
its ratification through union with His
sacrifice.
3- The connection between the earthly and
the heavenly offering.
Having thus got rid of a great misappre
hension, we must now return to the question
In what way does the consecration of the
elements to be the body and blood of Christ,
and the communion in these holy and effec
tual symbols, affect the sacrificial action in
the eucharist ?
There was in ancient days no single
and precise answer to the question. But we
can trace three, not incompatible, attempts
to express the truth.
(i) The consecration of the earthly offer
ings to become, for the church s food,
Christ s body and blood, in accordance with
the institution of Christ, was understood to
mean that they had been accepted, with all
the accompanying prayers, at the heavenly
altar, and united to Christ s heavenly
offering.
i86 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
This conception may be made plain by a
little explanation. It has been already noticed
that the form of consecration most commonly
in use in the ancient church was a prayer
for the descent of the divine Spirit, or the
outpouring of the divine power, to conse
crate the elements upon the earthly altar.
But in the Roman canon the place of this
prayer is apparently taken by another which
expresses the idea that the earthly elements
are to be conveyed by the hands of the holy
angel to the heavenly altar in the sight
of the divine majesty, and so united to the
divine realities within the veil that they
shall be returned for the Church s participa
tion as Christ s body and His blood.
This idea was in Irenseus mind when he
asserts the existence of the heavenly altar
as necessarily presupposed in eucharistic
worship, and says "Thither our prayers and
offerings are directed." 1 It is the same
thought which is expressed in many of the
liturgies where they dwell upon the " glorious
1 Iren. C. haer. iv. 18, 6 : "There is therefore an altar in
heaven ; for it is thither," etc.
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 187
interchange" or " commerce " between earth
and heaven, and pray that God having
received the oblations of the church upon
His heavenly altar for the savour of a
spiritual sweet smell, like the sacrifices of
the fathers of old, would send down in return
the gift of divine grace, or give us in their
place for corruptible things incorruptible,
for earthly heavenly, for temporal eternal. 1
For whether the effect of consecration is
expressed as the descent of a heavenly
presence to earth, or as the lifting up of
earthly gifts and hearts to heaven and
both expressions were understood to be
only attempts to render with the imperfect
instrument of human language what was
not really any process in space at all 2 in
either case the reality to be expressed in
volved the mingling of earthly and heavenly
1 See the prayers in Brightman I.e. pp. 23, 59, 129, 390,
and the western secreta at the offertory P. L. Iv. 29, 148;
also app. note 15, p. 306.
2 Ambrose de S.S. i. n : " He appears to descend when
we receive Him to dwell in us. ... To us He appears to
descend, not that really He descends, but that our minds
ascend to Him." Ambrose, however, is not specially
referring to the eucharist.
i88 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
things ; the acceptance of earthly gifts and,
as the evidence of their acceptance, the
fulfilling of them with a heavenly power.
It is this view that the human prayers
and sacrifices are, by eucharistic oblation and
consecration, accepted at the heavenly altar
and returned to the church as the spiritual
food of Christ s body and blood which
appears to underlie the original structure
of the liturgies. For all the intercessions
appear originally to have stood more or
less exactly where they stand in the Gallican
rites, 1 and in our own Communion Service,
at the beginning of the service. And after
the oblation of the earthly elements to God
and the invocation of the Holy Ghost upon
them, all mention of sacrifice and all inter
cession was over except, indeed, in the
saying of the Lord s Prayer. The giving
back of the gifts as Christ s body and blood
1 For the Gallican rite see Duchesne, pp. 189, 199. The
same position for the intercessions is implied in the Ethiopic
anaphora where they are presupposed (Brightman, p. 189).
In St. Mark s liturgy and the Nestorian they appear within
the anaphora, but at the beginning only and before the
invocation.
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 189
was the evidence that the sacrifice was
accepted and united to the eternal sacrifice.
Of this view of the acceptance of the
sacrifice, a late and interesting expression
may be quoted from Paschasius Radbert, 1
somewhat at length. The man who is
living apart from God and yet comes to
the altar "thinks," Paschasius says, "only
of what he sees, and does not understand
that the flesh of Christ is really received
from nowhere except from His hand, and
from the heavenly altar at which He, as
the high priest of good things to come,
stands on behalf of all. Therefore the
priest, when he begins to offer (immolare)
these gifts, says among other words : Com
mand that these things may be carried by
the hand of Thy holy angel to Thy heavenly
altar, etc. And dost thou imagine, man,
that thou canst receive that thing from
anywhere else than the altar on high where
it is taken to be consecrated ? "
Then explanation is made of the local
1 Paschasius de corp. et sang. viii. i, 2 (P. L. cxx.
1286 f.).
igo THE BODY OF CHRIST.
terms-" carrying up," etc. It is of the very
essence of a mystery or sacrament that
something should be transacted beyond what
is seen. This invisible transaction is out
side conditions of space. " God is a Spirit,
and is illocally present everywhere. So you
must understand that these spiritual gifts
are neither locally nor carnally carried on
high before the presence of the divine
majesty." Their lifting on high is their
being consecrated. " Do you imagine that
the altar at which Christ stands as high
priest is anything else than His body,
through which and in which He offers to the
Father the prayers of the faithful and the
faith of the believers ? And if the body of
Christ is truly believed to be the heavenly
altar, you will perceive that from nowhere
else than Christ s body can you receive His
flesh and blood."
Again he insists that, because Christ is
the real consecrator, the value of the con
secration is independent of the merits or
demerits of the earthly priest. " For before
it [the oblationj becomes by consecration
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 191
the body of Christ, it is the oblation of the
priest, as he professes, or of the whole
Christian family which offers it : but by
the word and truth of the Holy Spirit it
becomes a new creature in the body of our
Creator for our restoration s sake. There
fore He is shown by the evidence of Scripture
always to stand by the heavenly altar ; that
from His offering of Himself (immolatio) we
may receive His body and His blood. But
the priest, because he seems in outward
appearance to take the part of Christ be
tween God and His people, sends up the
gifts of the people by the hand of the angel
to God and receives them back again,
made effectual by the body and the blood,
and distributes them to one and all, not
as being what the outward vision suggests,
but what faith apprehends."
This then was a view of the sacrifice
which maintained itself for a long time.
We present our gifts and sacrifices, and in
doing this we have done all that we can. We
offer them for acceptance on the heavenly
altar in the name of Christ, and they come
192 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
back to us as His body and His blood,
fulfilled with all the fruits of His passion.
And this means that all our prayers and
offerings have been united to the abiding
sacrifice and offered by the Heavenly Priest.
(2) But a second view followed in the
wake of the first at no long interval, differ
ing perhaps rather in words than in reality,
a view which associates itself naturally
with the Greek, or as we may say the normal,
as against the unusual Roman, manner of
consecration. The Holy Ghost is, according
to the normal rite, invoked to consecrate the
elements lying upon the earthly altar. And
in virtue of this consecration they become
for the church the body and blood of Christ ;
that is to say, the " Lamb as it had been
slain," but who is alive for evermore, our
perpetual and never-failing propitiation-
becomes present in the midst of the wor
shipping people in His body and blood of
sacrifice, and they become present to Him.
In a special sense they " are come unto . . .
Jesus the mediator and the blood of sprink
ling." Thus the consecration, of itself and
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 193
prior to communion, effects a special nearness
of the church to the one sacrifice: a near
ness expressed in the well-known modern
hymn :
" And now, O Father, mindful of the love
That bought us once for all on Calvary s tree,
And having with us Him that pleads above,
We here present, we here spread forth, to Thee
That only offering perfect in Thine eyes,
The one true, pure, immortal sacrifice."
For, granted this view of a near, but as yet
external, presence of the One Sacrifice among
the worshippers, it naturally followed that
this should become the special occasion for
the church to offer, though only in the sense
of presenting or pleading, this sacrifice the
special occasion, that is to say, for the
body to join with the Head in His un
ceasing heavenly action ; and, once more,
it became equally natural that the sacrificial
intercessions of the church should be moved
forward to this solemn point from their
position at the beginning of the liturgy, or
should be repeated after the consecration.
And this doctrine of the effect of conse
cration is found from early days. Already
B.C. o
194 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in Cyprian we find the teaching though
it admits of somewhat different interpre
tations that Christ, as the high priest after
the order of Melchizedec, in offering bread
and wine at the institution of the eucharist
offered also His own body and blood, or
Himself, to the Father, and that what He
did the priests of the church are to do, and
that thus the passion of the Lord is the
sacrifice which we offer." 1 And already in
the Clementine liturgy, and in the eucharistic
prayers of Serapion, and in the liturgy de
scribed by St. Cyril (all about A.D. 375), the
intercessions are reiterated and completed
after the consecration. And St. Cyril gives
the reason. It is when by the consecration
"the spiritual sacrifice, the bloodless service,
is perfected," that " over that sacrifice of
1 See Cypr. Epp. Ixiii. 4 : "He offered bread and wine, that
is His own body and blood." 14 He " offered Himself to
the Father and bade this be done in commemoration of
Him ; so that that priest truly fulfils the functions of Christ
who imitates what Christ did, and he offers in the church a
true and full sacrifice to the Father in so far as he begins to
offer as he sees Christ to have done" (i.e., with the mixed
cup). 17 "The passion of the Lord is the sacrifice which
we offer."
THE OFFERING IN HI-: A YEN. 195
propitiation we entreat God on behalf of
the common peace of the churches, for the
tranquillity of the world," and generally for
the living and the dead : and he repeats, it
is because " we believe that it will be the
greatest benefit to the souls for whom the
prayer is offered, while the holy and most
awful sacrifice lies before God." 1
It must be admitted that, in the deepest
sense immediately to be considered, the
"spiritual sacrifice" is not "perfected"
except in communion ; and it might be
supposed that doctrine such as St. Cyril s
would lead more easily than that previously
described to the separation of the idea of
sacrifice from that of communion a sepa
ration always disastrous where it is allowed
to prevail. It is interesting, therefore, to
observe that St. Chrysostom, in whom this
second view of the sacrifice is specially pro
minent, is also specially insistent against the
1 Cyril Cat. xxiii. 8, 9. This remains the standard doctrine
of the sacrifice in the East : see Nicolas Cabasilas Liturg.
Expos. 27 (P. G. cl. 425) ; and cf. John Johnson Unbloody
Sucr. (Libr. of Anglo-Cath. Theol.) i. p. 341.
o 2
ig6 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
separation. He loves to teach how, when the
priest "invokes the Holy Spirit" upon the
elements, and so " completes the sacrifice,"
the worshippers are with the eye of faith
to "see Christ sacrificed and lying," and
"the priest standing and praying over the
sacrifice, and all reddened with the precious
blood." They are to realize that they "have
come near to the blessed and uncorrupted
nature," to the " things in heaven," to the
body which is at the right hand of the
Father, but which is present in the power
of the Spirit representing His death, who
is " a Lamb as it had been slain." 1 " And
how," he asks, " when the whole people
stands stretching out their hands, a priestly
body all complete, and the awful sacrifice
lies there in view, how can we fail to gain
God s favour by our intercessions " (for the
departed of whom he is speaking) ? Yet, as
is well known, he was most emphatic in
resisting the rising practice of attending at
1 Chrys. de sacerdot. vi. 4, iii. 4, 5, de bap. Chr. 4, de ccem.
et critc. 3, in Phil. horn. iii. 4 (P. G. xlvii. 681, 642 3, xlviii.
369, 398, Ixii. 204).
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 197
the eucharist without communicating. He
certainly will not allow that we can take our
proper share in the sacrifice except by com
municating. " Art thou not worthy of the
sacrifice or of the participation ? Then
neither art thou worthy of the prayer,"
/.., of assisting at the service. Those
who cannot receive should go away with
the penitents. 1
In fact, if it be kept in clear view that
our real fellowship in the sacrifice is only
maintained by communion of which more
hereafter ; and if it be remembered that
the phrase about the earthly sacrifice being
carried up for consecration to heaven, and
that about the Holy Spirit coming down to
consecrate the sacrifice on earth, are both
of them figures of speech to express a
mingling of earthly and heavenly things
\vhich cannot really be rendered in terms of
space, the difference between the two views
which we have been considering fades away
and vanishes. The earlier practice expressed
1 In Eplus. horn. iii. 4 (P. G. Ixii. 29). This was not, how
ever, the opinion of all the fathers : see app. note 16, p. 307.
ig8 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in the liturgies was to present the earthly
prayers and sacrifices at the heavenly altar,
in view of an acceptance already guaranteed
for them by the general freedom of approach
which belonged to Christians, as well as by
the particular eucharistic promise and insti
tution of Christ. The later practice was to
repeat these sacrificial prayers when the
consecration of the elements according to
Christ s institution had given the church a
fresh assurance that their priest and sacri
fice was in the midst of them. The dif
ference is rather imaginative than real.
In both views what gives its value to the
church s sacrifice is its being offered on the
heavenly altar of Christ s perpetual self-
presentation. " He offers Himself as priest.
. . . Here in image or under a veil, there
in naked truth where He presents Himself as
our advocate with the Father." l Both alike
avoid the great pitfall in eucharistic doctrine
the putting the eucharistic sacrifice in line,
so to speak, not with the heavenly presen
tation or pleading of the sacrifice of Christ,
1 Ambrose, see app. note 17, p. 308.
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 199
but with the slaying of it on Calvary. And
we have a good deal of reason to be thankful
that what is indisputably the true background
of eucharistic doctrine not the Lamb being
slain, but the Lamb as it had been slain is
what our best and most popular eucharistic
hymns present to the imagination of English
churchmen. 1
(3) It is common to both the views of the
eucharistic sacrifice which have just been
stated though the second leaves perhaps
more opportunity for ignoring it to recog
nize that the sacrifice is consummated in com
munion. That this must be so in the deepest
sense a little consideration will show us.
The end of Christ s offering of Himself for
us, as our propitiation and our representa
tive, is that humanity as a whole all men,
so far as they will allow it to be so may
finally in Him be brought back into union
with God and with one another. What He
1 We owe in this matter a debt of gratitude hardly to
be exaggerated to Dr. Bright, but also, before him, to
the Wesleys, whose Eucharistic Manual for Methodists
(republished by Hodges, 1880) contains remarkable hymns
on the EitcJiarisl as a sacrifice, pp. 112 ff.
200 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
does first for us, He must ultimately do in us.
" For their sakes I consecrate myself, that
they also may be consecrated in truth." l And
the way in which we are brought to share
Christ s acceptance with God is, not merely
by an external imputation of His merits, but
by a real incorporation into His life by His
Spirit. " Now in Christ Jesus ye that once
were far off are made nigh in the blood of
Christ : . . . reconciled," St. Paul explains,
" in one body " by the working of one Spirit;
"for through Him we both (Jew and Gen
tile) have our access in one Spirit unto
the Father." "The Father hath reconciled
you in the body of Christ s flesh through
death, to present you holy and without
blemish and unreproveable before him." 2
Thus our Lord cannot be our representative
priest and sacrifice in an effective sense
unless we go on to share His life. His
sacrifice for us can only be " consummated
in " us. 3 We must share it both actually and
1 John xvii. 19. - Eph. ii. 13 18, Col. i. 22.
3 This expression is actually quoted from Pseudo-Diony-
ccl. hLr. iii. 12 (P. G. iii. 444) ; but it represents the
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 201
morally. Actually we must become " of His
body," and morally we must share in the life
of His Spirit. And this participation can
come about through no effort of ours. It
must be purely a gift of the divine grace.
And it is this gift which in fact is communi
cated in " the breaking of the bread." There
we eat His flesh and drink His blood, and
so are admitted to share in fullest measure
the fruit of His sacrifice, which is nothing
less than the fellowship in His life. Thus
only by communion can we in any effec
tive sense share the eucharistic sacrifice,
so far as that sacrifice is not a merely
human effort, but is identified with Christ s
offering, and attains thereby its spiritual
validity. Only in Christ can we offer and
plead Christ. We have an altar whereof
we are to eat.
It is because it expresses so fully this
principle that the essential end of sacrifice
is communion with God and in God, the
sharing of the divine life a principle which
whole theology of the fathers : see Thoniassin s admirable
section, Dogin. Thcol. " De Inc. Verb. Dei," lib. x. cc. xxi. f.
202 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
had been obscured under the old covenant
that the eucharist is really the realization
of all that the untaught, or half-taught,
instincts of man had been feeling after in
the practice of sacrifice all over the world.
And that this is the principle of the eucharist
is what all the best Christian theology main
tains. St. Thomas Aquinas will have it that
the pre-eminence of Christ s priesthood over
that of the old law lies in its effects : and that
its effects are communicated by participation :
"wherefore in the new law the sacrifice of
Christ is communicated to the faithful under
the species of bread and wine." ; Again,
"He who offers the sacrifice must participate
of the sacrifice" that is, communicate."
It needs to be observed that when Chry-
sostom and other ancient writers are speak
ing of persons being present at the whole
eucharistic service without communicating,
they do not speak of their "taking part in
the sacrifice," but of their " taking part in the
1 Tho. Aq. S. Tli. pars iii. qu. xxii. art. 6.
L.c. qu. l.xxxii. art. 4. Unfortunately he only applies
this to tlic/nVs/ : but sec below, p. 213.
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 203
prayers." l It may be much better for church-
people to take part in the prayers than to be
absent altogether ; but we can never allow
ourselves to use language which implies that
those who do not communicate can really
take part in the sacrifice, or that "non-
communicating attendance " is the normal
Christian act, without giving currency to a
view of sacrifice which is less than Christian.
That the sacrifice is completed in communion
is the effective witness of all the liturgies.
It is rooted in the vital principles that what
in our manhood Christ is, that we are through
and in Him to become. " Hear us, God
of our salvation," says an ancient eucharistic
prayer, " because we trust that through these
holy interchanges that is to be effected in
the body of the whole church, which took
place first of all in its Head."
The church, in the well-known formula,
is to be the extension of the incarnation.
The whole Christ is to consist of the Head
1 See pp. 307-8, and cf. canon. Nicacn. 13, Ancynm. 4, 5, 6.
- P. L. Iv. 37 reading commcrcia for mysteria according to
the MS.: cf. Felloe s edition.
204 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
and the members sharing the same life.
And from this point of view it is impossible
to doubt that the fathers would have resented
the sharp distinction drawn in recent theology
between the "natural" body of Christ in
heaven and (according to the terminology
referred to) also in the eucharist and the
mystical body, the Church. They are per
petually reiterating that we become His body
by sharing His body : that by eating His
flesh we pass into His flesh. 1 They do really
make the spiritual principle of Christ s man
hood the new life of the Church, and think
of Christ as making us His body by (as it
were) gradually absorbing us into Himself.
" If you are the body of Christ and His
members, it is the mystery (or sacrament) of
yourselves that is laid upon the altar. It is
the mystery of yourselves that you receive.
It is to what you are, that you say Amen.
For you will hear The body of Christ, and
you will reply Amen." 2
Thus it is the teaching of the fathers that
1 Thomassin (I.e. cc. xiv.,xxi., xxii.) multiplies quotations.
- St. Augustine Serin. 272.
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 205
in the eucharist we are offered in and with
Christ, and only so can we offer Christ.
Writer after writer follows St. Cyprian in
seeing this principle symbolized in the fact
that the bread and wine, which are to become
Christ s body and blood, are made up of many
grains or berries brought into one : or again
in the fact that water is added to the wine to
represent the addition of the people to Christ
in the sacrifice. " For if we should offer
wine alone, then the blood of Christ begins
to be separated from us ; but if it be water
alone, then the people begin to be separated
from Him ; but when both are mingled, . . .
then is it a spiritual and heavenly sacra
ment." l The idea that the church must be
offered in Christ appears in the liturgies for
example, in the prayer of the Leonine Sac-
ramentary "that God would propitiously
sanctify the church s gifts, and, accepting
the oblation of their spiritual sacrifice, would
make the worshippers themselves an eternal
offering to Him." 2 It recurs constantly in
1 Cyprian Ep. Ixiii. 13, and Thomassin I.e. cap. xix. 8, 9.
2 P. L. Iv. 40 " nosmet ipsostibi perfice munus aeternum."
206 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
writers of many epochs. 1 But it is identified
with St. Augustine as with no one else.
That great father of course recognizes
that what is presented in the eucharist is
"the sacrifice of our ransom," "the sacrifice
of the body and blood of Christ." 2 But the
whole of his emphasis is laid upon the fact
that we are joined to Him in one body, that
not without ourselves can we offer Christ,
that the " body " which is represented in the
bread, and which is offered upon the altar,
is, in Christ, also the church. " The bread
which you see on the altar," he says to the
children, " sanctified by the word of God, is
the body of Christ. The cup, or rather
what the cup contains, sanctified by the
word of God, is the blood of Christ. By
means of these things Christ our Lord
willed to offer us His body and the blood
which He shed for us for the remission of
sins. If you have received well, you are
1 Cf. Optatus and Gregory, pp. 92, 303.
2 Confess, ix. 12 (32), de an. et ej. orig. L 10, 13, iv. 38.
But here he is arguing, " You cannot offer the body of Christ
except for those who are His members."
T H K O F V i: R I X C, I X H K A V K X . 207
what you have received. . . . He willed that
we ourselves should be His sacrifice." The
thought recurs frequently in his great work
On the City of God. " The whole redeemed
city, that is the congregation or society of
the saints, is offered as a universal sacrifice
to God by the High Priest, Who offered
nothing less than Himself in suffering for
us, so that we might become the body of so
glorious a head, in that form of a servant
(our human nature) which He had taken.
For it was this that He offered, in this that
He was offered, as it is in virtue of this (His
humanity) that He is mediator, priest, and
sacrifice." Then, after a reference to St.
Paul s words about presenting our bodies a
living sacrifice, he continues : " This is the
Christian sacrifice : the many become one
body in Christ. And it is this that the
church celebrates by means of the sacrament
of the altar, familiar to the faithful, where
it is shown to her that in what she offers,
she herself is offered." Again, of Christ s
perfect sacrifice of Himself, " He willed the
church s sacrifice to be a daily sacrament.
2 o8 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
For as she is the body of Him the head,
she learns through Him to offer up her
self." Again, " God s most glorious and
best sacrifice is we ourselves, that is His
city, of which we celebrate the mystery
in our oblations which are known to the
faithful." Once more, arguing that the
eucharistic sacrifice cannot be offered to
the martyrs, he says : " The sacrifice itself
is the body of Christ, which is not offered to
them, for they themselves are it." 1
And it is plain enough that this doctrine
of the church herself being the sacrifice of
the altar, as offered there in and with Christ,
brings us back to the fundamentally Chris
tian point of view, that the only acceptable
sacrifices of the new law are the sacrifices
of persons, and of things or rites only as
adjuncts or expressions of persons. " The
sacrifice " again to quote Augustine "is
the man consecrated and devoted to God,
dying to the world that he may live to
God."
In its most characteristic and historical
1 Aug. Serin. 227, dc civ. Dei, x. 6, 20, xix. 23, xxii. 10.
THE OFFERING IN HEAVEN. 209
sense, indeed, sacrifice is a corporate act
of many persons --a nation or a church.
And such corporate acts must needs be
external. But, all the same, the outward
sacrifice is valueless unless it be " in spirit
and in truth " unless, that is, it be the sac
rifice of persons. " The visible sacrifice is
the sacrament or sacred sign of the invisible
that is, of what goes on in us " the
movement of human wills towards God, and
behind all and in all, of Christ offering to
the Father our manhood perfected in Him. 1
1 DC civ. Dei, x. 5, 6.
B.C.
4- Summary.
Now we are in position to answer the
question as to the sense in which the Church
of the first four or five centuries understood
the eucharistic sacrifice leaving room for
individual variations in some such sum
mary as this.
First of all, the eucharist is a sacrifice
because in it the Christian church the
great priestly body, and "soul of the world"
- exercises her privilege of sonship in
free approach to the Father in the name
of Christ. She comes before the Father
with her material offerings of bread and
wine, and of those things wherein God
has prospered her, bearing witness that
all good things come of Him ; and though
He needs nothing from man, yet He ac
cepts the recognition of His fatherhood
from loval and free hearts. She comes
j
with her wide-spreading intercessions for
SUMMARY. 211
the whole race of mankind, 1 and for her
members living and departed. She offers
her glad sacrifice of praise and thanks
giving for all the blessings of creation and
redemption. She solemnly commemorates
the passion in word and in symbolic action,
through the bread broken and the wine out
poured, the appointed tokens of Christ s
sacrificed body and blood, reciting before
God His own words and acts in instituting
the holy eucharist. This is the church s
sacrifice ; and it is all that she can do. She
can but make the appointed remembrance of
Christ s passion and death and resurrection
and of His second coming which she awaits,
and offer to the Father the appointed
1 St. Augustine has been referred to above (p. 206) as
declaring that it was no practice of the church to offer for
any except those who belong to the church. Elsewhere he
takes a broader line (Ep. 217, 2), and asserts that the church
does pray for those outside at the altar. And this was the
fact: see Bp. Wordsworth Holy Communion (Parker, 1891),
pp. 63 ff. and Epiphanius quoted in Brightinan, p. 469, n. 13.
But St. Thomas (S. Th. p. iii. qu. Ixxix. art. 7) accepts
Augustine s first position, and adds : " Wherefore also in
the canon of the mass there is no prayer for those who
arc outside the church."
P 2
2 i2 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
symbols, praying Him by the consecrating
power of the Holy Ghost to fill the sacrifice
with a divine power by accepting the earthly
elements at the heavenly altar. Then is
the time for God s response to the church s
uplifting of her heart and gifts ; and He by
His Spirit consecrates the gifts to be, in the
midst of the worshipping church, the body
and blood of the Lord.
Now the eucharist is a sacrifice in a
second and deeper sense, for God has united
the offerings of the church to the ever-living
sacrifice of the great High Priest in the
heavenly sanctuary, or has given His pre
sence among them who is their propitiation
and their spiritual food.
Then once more, united afresh in one
body to God by the communion in Christ s
body and blood, the church offers herself,
one with Christ as a body with its head,
living in the same life and indwelt by the
same Spirit : she offers herself that her whole
fellowship, both the living and the dead,
having their sins forgiven through the pro
pitiation of Christ, may be accepted with
SUMMARY. 213
all their good works and prayers " in the
beloved." And in the self-oblation of the
church is the culmination of the sacrifice.
The sacrifice is the sacrifice of the whole
body, and the communion is the communion
of the whole body. The celebrating priest
is indeed the necessary organ of the body s
action. He is the mouth with which she
prays, and the hand by which she offers and
blesses in the name of Christ. But the sacri
fice is the church s sacrifice. "We bless the
cup," " n c break the bread," St. Paul says.
"We offer,"" we do sacrifice, "is the language
of the liturgies. 1 " No priest," says Peter
Lombard, " says I offer, but we offer, in
the person of the whole church." Again in
the gift communicated all are on a level.
The utmost that God can give the very
being of His own Son is given to all
alike to bind them all together in one
divine and human life. " Sometimes," says
1 Brightinan I.e. p. 20, 53, 133, 190: and in the Roman
canon, " offerimus," " ineam ac vestrum sacrificium,"
" oblationem . . . cunctae familiae tuae," etc.
- Sentt. iv. 13.
2i4 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
St. Chrysostom, "there is no difference
between priest and people ; for example,
when we partake of the awful mysteries.
(It is not as under the old covenant) for
all alike are given the same things : for
all it is one bread which lies in view, and
one cup." 1
1 Chrys. in ii. Cor. Horn, xviii. (P. G. Ixi. 527). The
whole passage is apposite.
CHAPTER IV.
OUR AUTHORITIES.
I. Mcdiczval authority.
THROUGHOUT the argument of the previous
chapters the appeal has been mainly to the
mind of the church, and especially to the
mind of the ancient church, on the subject of
the eucharist. The inquiry has disclosed ap
preciable differences in the eucharistic teach
ing of the ancient fathers : a different tone
of teaching in the early Alexandrians, Clement
and Origen, as compared with Irenasus and
Cyprian ; and in the great Greek theologians,
St. Gregory and St. Chrysostom, as compared
with St. Augustine. It has disclosed variation
and ambiguity, and one-sided tendencies in
opposite directions in certain early schools of
thought ; but on the whole, and behind these
differences, a clear tradition of belief about
the eucharist has been apparent which has
216 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the best title to be called catholic. And it
is to this normal ancient tradition that the
primary appeal has been made. I want to
find myself, in the church in England, now
in the twentieth century, of one mind across
the ages with the ancient Christian church.
Beyond this it will remain for me to make
good my appeal to the ultimate authority, the
books of the New Testament. But before
doing this, the ground must be secured from
the objections which will make themselves
heard from two sides.
I have not appealed to the theologians of
the Reformation, whether English or foreign,
as if their views on any matter could be taken
to represent a settlement of the question ; and
I have also found myself unable to rest in
the mediaeval positions. It has appeared
plainly enough that, with regard both to
the doctrine of the gift given to us by God
in Holy Communion and to that of the
sacrifice there offered, some specially charac
teristic elements in the teaching of the West
in the middle ages and later period will have
to be abandoned.
MEDIAEVAL AUTHORITY. 217
Indeed it is not too much to say that if
the development of eucharistic teaching and
practice in the church, from the time of St.
Cyril and St. Chrysostom in the East, and
from that of St. Augustine and his followers
in the West, down nearly to our own
time, were to be obliterated, hardly any
thing that is valuable would have been
lost, and a great deal that is a most serious
hindrance and cause of division would have
dropped out.
But though this appeal to ancient teaching
is characteristically Anglican, there are those
among us who, both from the Protestant
and from the Catholic side, are dissatisfied
with it ; and I will endeavour to deal first
with those who would plead that sufficient
respect has not been shown to mediaeval
authority.
On the ground of free historical exami
nation the early mediaeval development of
eucharistic teaching in the East appears to
have been coloured by a seriously monophy-
site tendency a tendency, that is, to represent
the supernatural and the divine as absorbing
2i8 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
and annihilating the natural and the human
which it uses as its vehicle. It is also indis
putable, that when this tendency reached the
West and superseded, on the subject of the
eucharist, St. Augustine s hitherto dominant
influence, it coalesced \vith a markedly super
stitious and irrational spirit in the church ;
and that it was in the atmosphere thus gene-
ratea that the doctrine of transubstantiation
secured its ground in its original form. Thus
even if later scholastic theology had suc
ceeded more completely than in fact was the
case, in remedying the faults of the original
doctrine, the term, as a dogmatic definition,
would remain as a pure mistake, the legacy
of a deplorable moment in church history.
On the subject of the eucharistic sacrifice
there was almost no intellectual inquiry in
the middle ages or up to the time of the
Reformation : but the phrasing of the Triden-
tine dogma as to a sacrifice " propitiatory in
the true sense" offered in the mass; 1 the
teaching that it is through the sacrifice offered
1 Sess. xxii. capp. 1.2; " vere propitiatorium " ; cf. above,
pp. 176 ff., and app. note 14, p. 305.
MEDIEVAL AUTHORITY. 219
by the priests of the church on earth that
Christ realizes His priesthood after the order
of Melchizedek; and the complete obliteration
from view in this connection of the heavenly
intercession and self-presentation of Christ,
which had been so prominent in the patristic
theology all this prepared the way for
what has become the perilously dominant
tendency of speculation about the sacrifice
in the later Roman church. Thus on the
subject both of the gift and of the sacrifice,
the eucharistic development of the middle
ages, as compared with the less formulated
teaching and belief of the early church,
represents loss and not gain, deterioration
and not advance.
But occasionally, even among Anglicans,
our right thus to go back behind the authority
of the mediaeval church is vigorously chal
lenged. " The authority of the church in
the thirteenth or sixteenth centuries," we
are told, "is identical with its authority in
the fourth or third." To this I should reply,
first, that there is no decision of the whole
church of any period about the eucharist such
220 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
as in any way corresponds in weight to the
decrees of the general councils, for example,
about our Lord s person. In fact, without
attempting to estimate precisely to what sort
of belief, as to a change in the bread and wine,
the orthodox East is committed, 1 it is doubtful
whether there has been any period subsequent
to the division of East and West when they
could have been brought to an agreement
on the subject of the presence or the sacrifice,
even if they had consented to meet in fair
and open synod on the ancient terms. And
secondly, I should reply that the tone of
church authority in the middle ages becomes
so changed ; its abandonment of ancient safe
guards or limitations becomes so marked ;
that especially in the absence of any formal
canonical decree it loses weight as authority
almost altogether.
The lesson which we are intended to learn
from the church of the old covenant appears
to be that a real religious authority admits of
being so much misused as to become com-
1 See, however, an admirable paper by Mr. Birkbeck in
Report of Round Table Conference, p. 15.
MEDIEVAL AUTHORITY. 221
pletely misleading. The Scribes and Phari
sees who sat in Moses seat had, according to
our Lord, a real authority. He would have it
recognized and obeyed by His disciples. But
their whole tone and teaching had developed
along a false and narrow line. It had practi
cally ceased to represent the spirit of ancient
prophecy. They had "taken away the key
of knowledge." They had "made the word
of God of none effect because of their tradi
tion." Thus the ecclesiastical authorities in
the church of the old covenant did, in
effect, reject the Christ, for whose coming
they existed to prepare a people.
Now though this misuse of ecclesiastical
authority was under our Lord s eyes all the
time, He deliberately reinstituted ecclesias
tical authority in the church of the new
covenant. One of His perfections is the
total absence in His manhood of the undue
influence of reaction. He gave then to His
church a renewed lease of authority to bind
and loose that is, to legislate which has
been accepted as applicable to doctrine as well
as to practice. But the deplorable failure of
222 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the ecclesiastical authority of the old cove
nant to accomplish the end for which it existed
ought to have acted as a much more serious
warning to the authority of the new than in
fact, at some periods, it has shown itself to
be. It ought to have made it a first instinct
with the bishops of all ages to be on their
guard against gradual departures from the
original spirit of Christian prophecy. It
ought to put the matter in definite terms
to have made them specially careful to main
tain the constant appeal to Scripture, the
record of the first inspired pattern of teaching,
which the church exists to guard and to
perpetuate, but to which it has no authority
to add.
Now the ancient church did faithfully
and continually recur to this pattern, and
faithfully recognized the limitation of its
function. It is evident how constant is
the effect of the scriptural pattern, on which
they are mainly occupied in commenting,
in moulding and restraining the teaching
of Origen and Chrysostom and Augustine.
The appeal to Scripture is explicit and
MEDIAEVAL AUTHORITY. 223
constant. These fathers knew that they
existed simply to maintain a once-given
teaching, and that the justification of any
dogma was simply the necessity for guarding
the faith once for all delivered and recorded.
There can be no doubt of their point of view. 1
But when we turn to the period which fixed
on the western church the dogma of tran-
substantiation, all is changed. The specific
appeal to the scriptures of the New Testament
to verify or correct current tendencies is gone.
The scriptures, so far as they are referred
to, are merged in a miscellaneous mass of
authorities. 2 The safeguard has vanished.
In regard to this particular dogma it
cannot be plausibly argued, either that it
represents the view of the fathers, or that it
as distinct from any other view of the real
presence was necessary to safeguard the
original position. There is nothing in the
New Testament even to suggest the vanishing
of the original substances. The more it is
examined, the more clearly it appears that
1 I have sought to show this in Roman Catholic Claims
(Longmans, 1900), chap. 3. - Dissertations, p. 250.
224 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
this dogma, at least, was arrived at by the
authorities of the church through the neglect
of all those precautions and safeguards which
a true idea of church authority, and a true
appreciation of its dangers, would have
suggested, and which in patristic days were
so abundantly observed. Or again, no one
can maintain, with any degree of plausibility,
that a doctrine of Christ s priesthood after the
order of Melchizedek which neglects to put
His presentation of Himself in heaven in the
first place, can find in the New Testament
any degree of confirmation.
Now Christ has guaranteed the permanence
in the world of the grace and truth which
came by Him. But He never came near to
guaranteeing His church against misuses of
ecclesiastical authority akin to those which
rendered the scribes and Pharisees and chief
priests so wholly inadequate for the fulfilment
of their divine function. Thus, when we see
the authorities of the Christian church at any
period ignoring the real appeal to Scripture
as at once the motive and the limit of their
dogmatic action, we are much more than
MEDI/EVAL AUTHORITY. 225
justified in appealing back behind them to
that on which we all alike rest the founda
tion of the apostles and prophets. And if
we find cause to mistrust ecclesiastical autho
rity in a few instances, this tends to modify
our whole attitude towards it. It comes to
occupy a place in our minds in our whole
idea of religion and the church propor
tionate to that which it appears to occupy in
the mind and teaching of Christ that is to
say, we recognize its reality and its func
tion in the order of the church ; but we can
never regard it as absolute or final, except
when it can justify its action or utterance
by the appeal behind itself to the word of
God the record of the original apostolic
teaching.
But it is important to remember that,
though the mediaeval church overlaid the
really catholic traditions with some mislead
ing accretions, and though we must claim
our freedom to treat them as accretions, yet
none the less the underlying substance of
its teaching as to the individual and social
meaning of Holy Communion and as to the
B.C. Q
226 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
presenting before God of the one sacrifice,
remained what it had ever been in the church.
It required purging but not reversing. 1
1 In the eucharistic teaching of some mediaeval writers
there is very little of these accretions at all : for instance, in
so late an author as Ravmund of Sabunde.
2. The authority of the reformation.
What has been said of the mediaeval
authority is at least as true of the authority
of the Reformation theology, and of the
special type of Reformation theology which
was characteristic of the English church.
It cannot be taken by itself as constituting
our standard or court of appeal.
No doubt we in the Anglican church
have contracted certain specific obligations,
doctrinal and ceremonial, with regard to the
eucharist, by which we are unmistakably
bound. But the principle of authority to
which the Anglican church has almost con
sistently appealed is the very one which it is
the object of this book to emphasize. The
Convocation of 1571, which imposed upon
the clergy subscription to the Articles of
Religion, issued a canon to preachers enjoin
ing them to " teach nothing in their sermons
which they should require to be devoutly held
o 2
228 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
or believed by the people, except what is
agreeable to the doctrine of the Old or New
Testament, and what the catholic fathers
and ancient bishops have collected out of
the said doctrine." l And the formal appeal
of the Anglican divines has always been
to the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab
omnibus, as well as to Scripture.
But on the subject of the eucharist in
particular it required time before this general
appeal could be made good in detail. Mean
while reaction from Rome was the domi
nant tendency, and reaction is seldom well
balanced. It must be obvious to any one
reading our divines of the sixteenth or
seventeenth centuries that it is often extremely
difficult to ascertain their positive teaching
except, perhaps, in the case of Hooker; or
to reconcile what they assert positively at
one time with what they say by way of
rejection of Roman doctrine at another; or
again, to reconcile them among themselves.
The phrase, the " Reformation settlement,"
expresses well enough a provisional arrange-
" Cardwell Synodalia, i. p. 126.
AUTHORITY OF THE REFORMERS. 229
ment or compromise arrived at to enable
the Anglican church to go on working,
but " settlement " is the last word one would
choose to describe the general condition of
the Reformation theology.
Thus I am content to prove that nothing
in what has been said about the eucharist in
the preceding chapters is inconsistent with
any positive or negative declaration of the
Anglican authorities ; while on the other hand
it is my main contention that it is the fullest
and frankest expression of that mind of the
fathers to which the Anglican Church con
sistently appeals.
There is nothing, then, in the doctrine of
the eucharist as expressed above which is
inconsistent with Anglican formulas.
(i) As to the substance of the eucharistic
gift (chap. ii. i) I have but restated and
developed the theology of Hooker, who so
richly and profoundly reasserts the teaching
which came from the great doctors of the
incarnation in the fourth and fifth centuries.
And again it is wholly agreeable to the
language of our authoritative formulas. Thus
230 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in them it is declared that the " inward and
spiritual grace " of the Lord s supper is the
" body and blood of Christ which are verily
and indeed taken and received by the faith
ful: " T that Christ is " our spiritual food and
sustenance in that holy sacrament," that
"banquet of most heavenly food." 2 And
this "body" of Christ is identified with
His " flesh," and associated with His whole
person; we "spiritually eat the flesh of
Christ, and drink His blood ; we dwell in
Christ and Christ in us; we are one with
Christ and Christ with us." :i And by this
eating we are no less incorporated with one
another, in " the mystical body, which is the
blessed company of all faithful people," than
into Christ Himself. 4
(2) The teaching of the objective presence
(as explained above, chap. ii. 2) of the body
and blood of Christ, and so of Christ Him
self, as sacramentally identified with the
consecrated elements the teaching that the
1 Catechism.
2 Exhortations i. and ii. in the Communion Service.
3 Exhortation iii. and Prayer of Humble Access.
4 Prayer i. after Communion.
AUTHORITY OF THE REFORMERS. 231
bread and wine are themselves consecrated
to be, prior to reception, spiritually and really
the body and blood of Christ is at least
allowed doctrine according to the Anglican
formulas. The objectiveness of the presence
in this sense is indeed at least suggested
by their language in several places. Thus
in the Catechism it is to be noticed that,
whereas in dealing with baptism there are
only two questions and answers, one as to
the " outward visible sign or form," and
the second as to "the inward and spiritual
grace " ; in dealing with the eucharist there
are three : one as to " the outward part or
sign," another as to "the inward part or
thing signified," and a third as to "the
benefits of partaking." And this difference
certainly suggests a distinction, applicable to
the eucharist but not to baptism, between
the res sacraincnti, or its inward reality, and
the virtus, or moral effect of receiving it
worthily.* In the eucharist then, the Cate
chism suggests, there is an invisible thing,
given to us in order to be received, but itself
1 Cf. Raymund of Sabunde op. cit. tit. 286.
232 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
present in the sacrament before reception.
This is the u ghostly substance " of the
sacrament, spoken of in the homily u of the
worthy receiving and reverent esteeming of
the sacrament of the body and blood of
Christ." 1 And again, in the 28th article, the
body of Christ is said to be " given " and
"taken," as well as " eaten," though, as all
would admit, " only after an heavenly and
spiritual manner."
We must admit, on the other hand, that
the doctrine of the objective presence in,
under, or with, the consecrated elements is
plainly evaded and not asserted in the revised
Declaration about kneeling appended to the
Communion Service in i66a; 2 and, what is
more important, it is evaded by the special
turn given in the form of consecration to the
1 This appears to be the true reading, rather than
"ghostly sustenance": see The Witness of the Homilies
(S.P.C.K. 1900), p. 37 a publication of the Church
Historical Society.
2 Which, however, was revised so as to condemn the
belief in a " corporal presence of Christ s natural flesh and
blood " such as exists in heaven (which the Romanists also
reject), instead of condemning the belief in a "real and
essential presence."
AUTHORITY OF THE REFORMERS. 233
prayer for the blessing of the elements. This
now runs, not as in the first Prayer Book of
Edward VI. "with Thy Holy Spirit and word
vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these Thy gifts
and creatures of bread and wine that they may
be unto us the body and blood of Thy most
dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ"- a form
completely in accordance with most ancient
precedents ; but " grant that we receiving
these Thy creatures of bread and wine . . .
may be partakers of His most blessed body
and blood." And this, though it is not far
removed from some ancient forms already
referred to, 1 certainly does evade the question
of the effect of consecration upon the elements
themselves.
It appears to be therefore certain that
Hooker would still be justified, as far as the
Anglican standards taken by themselves are
concerned even since the revision of the
Prayer Book in 1662 in seeking to shelve
the question of any presence in the elements
apart from the act of receiving ; and that
even Waterland, in going further and denying
1 See above, pp. 82 f.
234 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
any such presence, was not transgressing
the limits of allowed opinion : but no one,
on the other hand, is justified in denying to
others the right to hold and teach what is
the accepted doctrine of the ancient church
as to an objective presence prior to the act
of reception and independent of it.
This conclusion, that our present formulas
leave the question of the objectiveness of the
presence an open one, so that we are not
justified in calling one another heretics for
holding or denying it, commanded the assent
of John Keble ; l who moreover justified this
open position by the absence of any really
catholic decision on the subject. And the
same conclusion has recently been clearly
reaffirmed in the Archbishop of Canterbury s
charge.- It is, however, surely unfortunate
that the Archbishop identified the objective
1 Keble s Spiritual Letters (Parker, 1885), cxviii cxxi.
Keble also thought that the questions of what exactly the
wicked eat and drink, and whether " the whole Christ" is
present " in each particle of either kind" were left open
questions.
" Charge delivered at his first visitation by Frederick
Archbishop of Canterbury (Macmillan, 1898), p. 10.
AUTHORITY OF THE REFORMERS. 235
doctrine as Luther s view, for Luther s view
called consubstantiation by its opponents
is a very ambiguous matter ; and if he
held such a view as is expressed in this
book, it was no more his view than the
doctrine of the incarnation can be called his
doctrine because he held it. The ancient
church held the doctrine of a real presence
without transubstantiation ; and it is to
antiquity that the Church of England makes
her appeal.
(3) It will not be denied that in rejecting
the doctrine of transubstantiation (chap.ii. 3)
in the form in which it best deserves that
name, and in which it " overthroweth the
nature of a sacrament," we are supported by
the Anglican article and tradition.
(4) It will also hardly be denied that what
has been said about the meaning of a spiritual
presence (chap. ii. 4) is thoroughly in
accordance with Anglican language. There
is a passage in Jeremy Taylor 1 in which he
contrasts two meanings of the word spiri
tual as applied to the eucharistic presence :
1 Real Presence, sect, i, 8.
236 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
(a) the presence of the body after the manner
of a spirit, and (b] a presence to our spirits
only ; and he declares only the latter to be
what " we [Anglicans] mean." But the
latter explanation proves to be highly am
biguous when analysed, because, as already
shown, subject and object cannot be thus put
in contrast to one another ; and also it is not
congenial to the language of the Prayer Book.
The Prayer Book language suggests a real gift
given by God to us which in its own nature
is spiritual and heavenly, and which, for
that very reason, only believing spirits can
appreciate and appropriate. As to the relation
of the gift given to the faith of the receiver,
a preference has been confessed above for the
Augustinian language recited in the body of
the 2Qth article over the more sharply denned
mediaeval language.
(5) On the subject of the eucharistic sac
rifice our 3ist article only excludes any
treatment of it which in any way suggests
the insufficiency of the one offering of Christ,
and of such a suggestion the treatment of it
in this book (chap. iii. 2) could not be
AUTHORITY OF THE REFORMERS. 237
accused. Beyond this our formulas are
silent. Under the influence of reaction, in
our later Prayer Books there was an unfor
tunate suppression of the ancient language of
the commemorative oblation. The address
to the Father -- " Therefore, O Lord and
heavenly Father, according to the institution
of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Saviour
Jesus Christ, we Thy humble servants do
celebrate, and make here before Thy divine
Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, the
memorial which Thy Son has willed us to
make, having in remembrance His blessed
passion, mighty resurrection, and glorious
ascension" which was retained in Edward s
first Prayer Book, and which has recovered
its place in the Prayer Books of the Scottish
and American churches of our communion,
has unhappily vanished. But we still recite
the words and acts of Christ s institution
before God as part of a prayer, and not
before men as an instruction ; and the rich
prayer of oblation which follows the com
munion and the Lord s Prayer admirably
expresses what to the mind of St. Augustine
238 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
was the culminating point in the eucharistic
sacrifice.
The estimate just made of the positive
teaching of the present Anglican formularies
no doubt compels the admission that they
fall somewhat short of the ancient language.
But they reject no authoritative formula of
the whole church, and they appeal behind
themselves to ancient consent. We ought
not to interpret antiquity or force its meaning
from the point of view of our present formu
laries; but, abiding by their positive require
ments and limitations, to read them in the
light of " the catholic fathers and ancient
bishops." That, I submit, is the most truly
Anglican method.
3- The authority of the church at large.
In what has been said above, it is the
ultimate authority of which I have been
speaking. No doubt for an ordinary private
Christian it is enough to follow the guidance
of the authority of his own part of the
church, as he can read it in plain documents,
as it is interpreted and made alive for him
by the pastors whom the providence of God
has given him to feed him with the divine
word, and as his own private study of the
sacred scriptures can further enlighten him.
But there is a special vocation for scholars,
and this vocation lies in great part in purg
ing the current tradition, or enlarging it, by
perpetual recurrence to the divine originals.
Thus the real security of a church, as
against the constant tendency to doctrinal
deterioration, lies in giving free scope to this
the scholar s " gift of knowledge " : and the
requirement which this lays upon the ordinary
240 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
members of the church is that they should
be ready to mortify the desire (so natural
to human laziness) to be exempted from
the moral and spiritual trouble involved in
relearning old truths in a completer or purer
form, and so taking their part in "testing
all things " and " holding fast that which is
good." For in fact no church is ever safe
unless in its whole bulk, and by the spiritual
labour of minds of every kind of quality, it is
perpetually undergoing what by an applica
tion of a biological term with a somewhat
changed intention we may call " reversion
to type," the perennial " type," or pattern of
apostolic teaching.
The student, then, especially where, as on
the subject of the eucharist, he has to deal
with a doctrine which has never become
matter of ecumenical definition, will be
perpetually comparing the existing teaching
of a church, or school of theology, with the
teaching of past ages, to see whether it is
not in need of revision whether forgotten
elements and aspects of the truth have not to
be recovered, or deteriorations and accretions
CATHOLIC AUTHORITY. 241
noted and corrected or banished. But this
very process will only increase his sense of
the reality of a catholic tradition about the
eucharist a teaching really universal and
original which is most plainly discerned
in the ancient and undivided church ; and
for this he will claim, with all reason, the
greatest deference. All reason demands that
the New Testament should be read in the
light of this ancient catholic tradition. For
in fact nothing is more certain than that a
sound historical criticism will not allow us
to tear the New Testament documents out
of the heart of the first Christian literature
as a whole. These documents indeed bear
it upon their faces that they presuppose the
existence of a church tradition and that they
are written, not to give primary instruction
in Christian principles, but to enlighten and
correct those who had already inherited the
common elementary teaching. 1 This does
not mean that we are to force the meaning
1 See Luke i. i 4, i Cor. xi. 2, 23, xv. i, 2, Gal. i. 8, g,
2 Thess. iii. 6, Hebr. vi. i, 2, James i. ig, i John ii. 24, 27,
Jude 3.
B.C. R
242 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
of the New Testament. But it does mean
that the common and original mind of the
church is to give us our point of view in
approaching the Scriptures, and that we are
far more likely to be right if we approach
them in this way than if we merely approach
them as isolated "documents." They repre
sent the mind of the church at its best and
freshest : they represent the utterance of its
highest inspiration : but none the less the
spirit of the church as a whole is the same
spirit which inspired the apostles, and is far
more likely than any isolated point of view
any " private interpretation " to give us
the clue to their meaning. We come back
always to approve the reasonableness of the
old formula the church to teach, the Bible
to prove.
4- The test of scripture.
Does the New Testament then verify the
account of the eucharist which has been
given in the earlier chapters of this book ?
And, first, does it verify the account of the
nature of the gift of God therein given ?
(i) That the eucharist is the divinely
provided occasion for realizing the relation
ship to our Lord described in the sixth
chapter of St. John for eating the flesh of
the living Christ and drinking His blood,
and so receiving Christ in His whole person
into ourselves, to abide in us that we may
abide in Him is the natural, and the
most widely accepted, conclusion, from the
language of the New Testament. The only
important argument against it is that the
word used in the accounts of its institution,
and therefore also in the liturgical language
which follows them, is " body," not flesh" :
and accordingly some of recent years have,
R 2
244 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
with more or less distinctness, interpreted
"this is my body" to mean that this loaf
which is broken and distributed, is or repre
sents the church, which is Christ s body,
the many members sharing a single life.
Now in a certain sense this is true.
St. Augustine teaches that what we receive
in the eucharist is the flesh of Christ, which
is also called His body : and that by the
flesh or body of Christ received, we, the
many, become one body in Christ. And, as
has been already said, St. Augustine would
refuse to draw a sharp line of separation
between Christ s " own " body and the
church. The church, in Him, becomes
His own body. And this truth he would
emphasize to the uttermost. "We become,"
he says, "what we receive." In a real sense,
but using rather extreme language, he even
says that the inner part or thing signified in
the eucharist is the church. 1 But it is this
secondarily, because primarily it is Christ s
own flesh. The word "flesh" describes, we
See Serin. 227, 272, and above, p. 206. Rupert of Deutz
(P. L. clxix. 182 3) discusses this view excellently.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 245
may say, the principle of His manhood in a
more abstract form. " This is my body "
describes it as presented in concrete reality.
But His "body" no less than His flesh
means the manhood of His own person first
of all. And St. Paul s expression about
" not discerning the body," means primarily
not discerning Christ s own personal man
hood given us in the sacrament.
What seems to me to make this certain is
that just as Christ s "flesh" in St. John vi.
is coupled with His "blood" His manhood
with His life so the eucharistic "body" is
coupled with the "blood": and this must
mean that the primary reference of the latter
as well as the former pair of terms is to
elements in Christ s own person. For " the
blood" of Christ in the New Testament
language receives no extension of meaning
such as is given to " the body " : it means
only Christ s own life as offered through
death and so rendered efficacious to save
and to quicken His brethren.
Thus when St. Paul says that "the bread
which we break " is "a communion of (or
246 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
{ in ) the body of Christ," no doubt the word
" communion " is not precisely identical with
" communication," but it implies it. It is
only because the bread first of all is Christ s
own body, that we by sharing it together
have one fellowship in that holy unity. 1
(2) When we examine into the belief of
the church in an objective body and blood
of Christ sacramentally identified with the
bread and wine, we find it to have been
simply due to our Lord s language, rein
forced by St. Paul s. Our Lord said, " This
is my body my blood." It is, I venture
to think, useless to argue with too great
exactness about the word is. It describes
very various kinds of identification. It is a
sufficient warning against laying too much
stress upon it, that in one report our Lord
is made to say, "This [cup] zs," not "my,
blood," but " the new covenant in my
blood." The copula, therefore, is clearly
indeterminate. But the language used cer
tainly suggests what the Church has believed,
that the spiritual gifts of Christ s body and
1 i Cor. x. 16 : contrast Did. ix. 4, see p. 325.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 247
blood ares identified* with the elements, as
blessed and consecrated, before they are given
to the receivers ; and St. Paul s language of
stern instruction to the irreverent and selfish
communicants at Corinth that they eat and
drink judgment to themselves, because in
the outward elements they do not " discern "
their spiritual counterpart, suggests the same
conclusion. The New Testament at least
confirms the church s belief.
(3) Again nothing in the New Testament
suggests transubstantiation. " This (bread)
is my body: this (wine) is my blood," 1
suggests some sort of identification of cer
tain things bread and wine with certain
other things of a higher order, viz.,
Christ s body and blood ; but it does not
suggest that these natural objects in any
sense cease to exist. I will not urge, in
accordance with St. Matthew and St. Mark s
1 Certainly among the most wearisome pages in theology
are those filled with the discussion of these words by
Romanist theologians. Do they mean " This bread (or
wine) becomes at this moment by transubstantiation My
body (or blood)" or what precisely? Ex hypothesi they
cannot be at once both bread and Christ s body, both wine
and Christ s blood.
248 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
account, that our Lord, after the wine had
been declared to be His blood, still spoke
of it as "this fruit of the vine"; for St.
Luke s account, taking into consideration
the doubt about the text, is at least am
biguous. 1 But St. Paul has no hesitation
in calling the bread, after it had been
blessed, " this bread " or saying, " there is
one bread." 2
(4) What was said above, in attempted
correction of some later tendencies in
eucharistic theology, about the meaning
of a spiritual presence, as involving sub
servience to a divine purpose, was expressly
grounded on New Testament language. And
certainly the purpose of the eucharistic gifts,
as represented in the New Testament, is
exclusively what has been maintained above
that they may be partaken of. And if some
doubts were expressed as to the justification
of saying explicitly and certainly that those
who are wholly faithless do receive, though
they do not benefit by, the body and blood
1 See Luke xxii. 18 20, Matt. xxvi. 289, Mk. xiv. 24 5 ;
cf. p. 211. 2 i Cor. x. 17, xi. 28.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 249
of Christ, that was because St. John s
language, in reporting our Lord, certainly
implies, as to His flesh and blood, that
only those who have faith can eat and
drink them.
I should contend, therefore, that a doctrine
of the Real Presence, such as is maintained
in this book, at least gives a natural inter
pretation to the whole language of the New
Testament and is in conflict with none of it.
But no doubt there is some justification
at first sight for saying that the New Testa
ment does not suggest that the eucharist is
a sacrifice.
(5) The doctrine of the sacrifice of the
eucharist was found above (chap, iv.) to
involve, first of all, a sacrifice of prayers
and offerings, and thankful commemorations
and symbolical rites made by the church
on earth. But the consecration of the
earthly elements of bread and wine, in
accordance with the institution of Christ our
high priest, to become the body and blood
of His own sacrifice, for the reception of
the faithful this was found to translate
250 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the church s earthly sacrifice into a region
of higher power : it becomes identified with
Christ s heavenly offering ; it is exalted in
Him to the heavenly places, and accepted
through Him by the Father.
The enquiry then into the scriptural
basis of this doctrine involves two chief
points : (a) Is the doctrine of Christ, as our
perpetual high priest in the heavenly court,
interceding for us in the power and merits
of a once made sacrifice, scriptural ? And
(6) is there scriptural ground for saying that
in the eucharist in a special and pre-eminent
degree we are brought into union with Christ
as our eternal priest and sacrifice ?
(a] Now, as to the first point, our appeal
is primarily to the Epistle to the Hebrews,
an epistle written by an unknown hand in
the apostolic circle, and perhaps we may
say specially in the circle of St. Paul, before
the destruction of Jerusalem ; an epistle
already cited by Clement, in the subapostolic
generation, as a document of authority on
which he models his thought and language.
It is, in fact, in a unique sense the primary
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 251
authority for the doctrine of Christ s priest
hood, which is nowhere else in the New
Testament so explicitly stated ; and it is of
special importance for the doctrine of the
eucharist because it is, as has been already
remarked, 1 the only one of the writings of
the Ne\v Testament in which our religion is
considered as a covenant of worship under
which all the imperfect principles of ritual
which belonged to the old covenant are
realized in the perfected church, the church
which, even here and now, belongs to the
world to come, and the institutions of heaven. 2
Plainly then in this epistle the central
idea is that the Son of God was made man
to qualify Himself by human sympathies for
human priesthood; and that in our manhood
He suffered death He must needs have
suffered it for the perfecting of His human
sympathy with pain, ;? for the fulfilment of
His obedience to the Father s will, 4 to
accomplish the victory over our tyrant Satan
1 See p. 167, and A. B. Davidson s Hebrews, pp. 196 7.
2 Hebr. vi. 4 5, ix. n, 23.
3 ii. 10, 17. 4 v. 8, x. g 10.
252 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
through that which had been his chief instru
ment of enslavement, 1 and finally because
death was the penalty of sin and the shedding
of blood the legal cost of remission. 2 Now
in suffering death the Son made in our
nature an offering of Himself, and this His
act of offering Himself is sometimes appa
rently attached, even in this epistle, specially
to the moment of death, which was the
moral crisis of self-sacrifice; 3 but the domi
nant point of view is based upon the sacrificial
ritual of the day of atonement. There the
moment of offering and of atonement was
not the moment of the slaying of the victim,
but that of the entrance of the high priest
with the blood of the victims into the most
holy place to sprinkle it upon the mercy
seat. 4 Accordingly in the Epistle to the
Hebrews all that goes before the ascension
is the preparation of Christ for His priestly
work. His work as the great high priest,
and His entrance into at least the effective
ness of His office, begins with His entrance
1 Hebr. ii. 14. - ix. 15.
:t x. 10. 4 ix. 7.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 253
into the true holy of holies, in the power
of His own blood once for all surrendered
in death. 1 In the power of that once made
sacrifice, once made in " eternal spirit," and
now become eternally effective in the indis
soluble life of His resurrection, and lifted
into the heavenly places in the glory of His
ascension, He presents Himself for us, our
intercessor, our eternal king-priest after the
order of Melchizedek. It is at His entrance
into heaven, and not upon the cross, that
He accomplishes His atonement for us,
according to the Epistle to the Hebrews ;
and His work as high priest, which begins
with His entrance into heaven, is perpetual.
His propitiation and His intercession are
identical : and both consist in His " appear
ing " or presenting Himself for us. Or, as
it may be ritually described, they consist in
the sprinkling of the blood; for "the blood
of sprinkling" (which is only an expression
for the permanent efficacy of the sacrifice
and priesthood) is, as well as "Jesus the
mediator," represented as among the abiding
1 Davidson op. cit., pp. 150 ff., 196 ff.
254 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
objects of the heavenly place to which
already we have been brought near. 1
The ideas of the author of this epistle
have had strange violence done to them,
because the speciality of his point of view,
as compared to that of the other New Testa
ment writers, has not been observed. It is
true of St. John to say (with Dr. Westcott)
that " the simple idea of the death of Christ,
as separated from His life, falls wholly into
the background." 2 With him, too, our
" advocate " and " propitiation " is one who
died indeed, but is alive for evermore the
"Lamb as it had been slain."- 5 But it is
even more conspicuously true of the author
of this epistle. The death with him is part
of the preparation of the high priest to
fulfil His sacrificial ministry in heaven in the
power of an indissoluble life, human as well
as divine : " ever living to make intercession
for us," a priest for ever after the order of
1 See, on this whole paragraph, ii. 17 18 (where the
suffering is vie wed as past), iv. 14, v. 6 io,vi. 20, vii. 16 17,
24 28, viii. i 4, ix. n 14, x. 19 23, xii. 22 24.
2 Westcott St. John s Epistles, p. 36.
3 i John ii. i 2, Rev. v. 6.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTUEE. 255
Melchizedek, in the " blood of sprinkling,"
the "blood of an eternal covenant."
For the perversion of his ideas, in order
to make the moment of death the chief
moment of sacrifice, mediaeval and Protes
tant theology are equally responsible. In
part it was due to the misunderstanding of
the idea of the priesthood after the order
of Melchizedek. Melchizedek, said St.
Cyprian and St. Clement, followed by the
majority of the fathers, 1 offered bread and
wine. That was the substance of his priestly
sacrifice. It was therefore when Christ
offered bread and wine at the Last Supper
that He became a priest after the order of
Melchizedek. In spite of this idea, how
ever, the fathers because the scriptural
language is so constantly their pattern-
clearly see that the priestly action of Christ
is now in heaven, and that the earthly
eucharists are to be viewed simply on the
background of Christ s heavenly action. 2
But from the medievalists this scriptural
! See Westcott Hebrews, pp. 200 ff.
2 App. note 17, p. 308.
256 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
background fell away out of sight. At the
Council of Trent therefore Christ was sup
posed to exercise His priesthood according
to the order of Melchizedek through offer
ing first in His own person at the Last
Supper, and subsequently by His earthly
ministers, bread and wine on earthly altars,
i.e., bread and wine transubstantiated into
His body and blood. And there is no sug
gestion of any exercise of His priesthood
in heaven at all. " Because His priesthood
was not to be extinguished by His death,"
runs the Tridentine decree, " in the Last
Supper, on the night in which He was
betrayed that He might leave to His own
beloved spouse, the church, a visible sacri
fice, such as the nature of man requires,
whereby that blessed sacrifice once to be
accomplished on the cross might be repre
sented, and the memory of it remain, even
unto the end of the world, and its salutary
virtue be applied to the remission of those sins
which we daily commit declaring Himself
constituted a priest for ever according to the
order of Melchizedek, He offered up to God
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 257
the Father His own body and blood under
the species of bread and wine ; and under the
symbols of those same things He delivered
His own body and blood to be received by
His apostles, whom He then constituted the
priests of the New Testament : and by the
words Do this in remembrance of Me
He commanded them and their successors
to offer, even as the catholic church has
always understood and taught." 1 Here,
as I say, the heavenly priesthood has
passed out of the field of conception
altogether.
But in the Epistle to the Hebrews the
supposed offering by Melchizedek of bread
and wine as elements of sacrifice, which at
least it must be admitted does not appear
distinctly in the narrative in Genesis, 2 is
wholly ignored. The sole points in the
narrative which are seized upon for com
parison with Christ, are the union of king
ship and priesthood in one person : the
eternal life, which is symbolized in the abrupt
manner of his appearance in history : and
1 Decrees of Trent, Scss. xxii.. cap. i. 2 Gen. xiv. 18.
B.C.
258 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
his superiority to the Levitical priesthood
as contained in Abraham the first two
points being suggested in the noth Psalm.
The Protestants, however, when they rejected
the Tridentine doctrine of the Melchizedekian
priesthood, failed for the most part to fall
back upon the plain ideas of the epistle.
They still were bent upon finding the cul
minating moment of sacrifice on earth that
is, upon the cross of Calvary. Now viewed
morally, in a case of self -sacrifice in which
priest and sacrifice are necessarily one, the
climax of sacrifice does occur at the point
where the moral effort culminates in the
passion and on the cross. And it is so
represented in the New Testament generally.
But the New Testament as a whole refuses
to allow us to separate the death from the life
to which it leads up. Even in St. Paul it is
Christ alive out of death who " reconciles us
to God in one body," and " through whom we
have access unto the Father in one Spirit,"
and " who maketh intercession for us " at the
right hand of God. 1 More obviously this is
1 Eph. ii. if), 18; Rom. viii. 34.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 259
so in St. John. And in the special treatment
of our atonement with God in the Epistle to
the Hebrews, which to a great extent formed
the basis for the eucharistic worship of
the church, this is most abundantly true.
Here the death is, for the most part, only
regarded as the preparation of the priest
and of His sacrifice, that He may enter
into the true holy of holies in eternal
effectiveness.
(b) Further, in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
we Christians belong to, nay we constitute,
the temple or house of God in which Christ
offers Himself. 1 The veil which shrouds the
mOvSt holy place is at least rent and laid
open. 2 We have freedom of speech ; bold
ness of approach ; 3 and that because we
are " partakers of the Christ " and u partakers
of the Spirit," 4 having been qualified for ap
proaching the Most Holy by the " washing of
water " and the " sprinkling of the blood." 5
Therefore we are admitted to all "the
heavenly things " of the courts above : " we
1 Hebr. iii. 6. - vi. 19 20, ix. 8, x. 20.
3 iii. 6, iv. 16, x. 19. 4 iii. 14, vi. 4. 5 x. 22.
S 2
260 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
are come unto . . . Jesus the mediator and
the blood of sprinkling." l We can make
our spiritual sacrifices "through Christ."
All this affords the most natural atmo
sphere for eucharistic doctrine ; and when
therefore the author, incidentally and by
implication, alludes to the privilege which all
the children of the new covenant have, by
distinction from even the priests of the old.
namely that they can eat of their great
offering for sin " We have an altar, whereof
they have no right to eat which serve the
tabernacle," 3 but we, it is implied, have it
cannot reasonably be disputed that he is
referring to the familiar but solemn rite of
the Holy Communion in which the Christians
ate of the body and blood of their atoning
sacrifice. The " altar " must mean the place
where atonement is made, and this, according
to the idea of this writer, is rather in the
heavenly place than on the cross. Accord
ing to the local imagery which he employs,
1 Hebr. xii. 224. 2 xiii. 15.
* xiii. 10. It is in this connection that the writer speaks
of a "sacrifice of praise," and of beneficence, vv. 15 16.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURJE. 261
it is something in heaven corresponding to the
" golden altar " which belonged to the Jewish
holy of holies. 1 But in a secondary sense
it must mean the actual " table of the Lord "
at which the Christians were fed with the
sacrificial food, and which gained all its
significance from being the earthly image
of the reality in the heavens.
Thus, by the help of this epistle, we are
brought back again to the central idea of
the eucharist. It is a feast upon a sacri
fice : but the feast upon the sacrifice is
the culmination of the sacrifice. A sacrifice
of which the worshippers may not eat can
only be regarded as one in which the wor
shippers are admitted to imperfect fellow
ship with the God. To partake of the
sacrifice is the way to have the most real
share in its merit or efficacy. Therefore
simply because the eucharist is a feeding
upon the flesh and blood of our heavenly
1 Hebr. ix. 4 (see the notes of Westcott and Davidson).
For the altar in heaven see Rev. viii. 3. The fathers speak
both of the altar in heaven (see pp. 84, 186, 189), and also
more rarely of the cross as an altar, see Westcott Hebrews,
p. 438, Johnson Unbloody Sacr. i. p. 80.
262 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
sacrifice, it is the occasion when we have
the special right to bring all our offerings
to be united to Him and offered by Him
within the veil.
The same idea is suggested by St. Paul. 1
To " eat of a sacrifice " is, among Jews and
Gentiles alike, to " have communion with
the altar," and with the object of worship at
the altar, the being to whom the sacrifice is
offered. This set of ideas St. Paul applies
to "the Lord s table" of the Christian
church, as well as to the Jewish altars
(whence the phrase, "the Lord s table," is
derived) 2 and to the sacrificial banquets of
the heathen. To St. Paul then, as to the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, our
eucharistic feeding on Christ implies a
perfect fellowship in His sacrifice.
But this implication of the language of
the apostolic writers carries us back to the
words of Christ s institution. 3 These words
1 i Cor. x. 18 22.
2 Ezek. xliv. 16; Mai. i. 7, 12 ; Is. Ixv. n, R. V.
3 On the critical and textual questions involved see
app. note 18, p. 310.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 263
give a rich depth of meaning to St. Paul s
assertion that what is "proclaimed" at the
eucharistic meal is the sacrificial death of
the Lord. 1 For at the Last Supper our Lord
solemnly blessed and broke and distributed
to His disciples a certain loaf or portion
of bread, and blessed and gave to them a
certain cup of wine, and He declared that
this bread and this cup were to be identified
by the faith of His disciples with His body
and His blood. Where their bodily eyes saw
these outward symbols, with spiritual eyes
they were to see the body and the blood ;
while with the mouth of the body they were
to eat and drink the earthly food, with the
mouth of faith they were to eat and drink
the spiritual realities. But how were this
body and blood characterized ? Was it as
"the body given to them," and "the blood
given to them ? " No, it was as " the body
which is [given] on their behalf" the body,
1 i Cor. xi. 26. Dr. Edersheim, The Temple (Rel. Tract
Soc.) p. 199, remarks : " The very term for the Paschal
liturgy itself, the haggadah, which means showing forth
(cf. Exod. xiii. 8), is exactly the same as that used by
St. Paul in describing the service of the Lord s Supper."
264 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
that is, as given in sacrifice for them. And
it was " the blood which is being poured out
for many with a view to the remission of
sins," that is the blood as sacrificially offered.
The spiritual objects, therefore, which faith is
to " discern " in the eucharist are not merely
our spiritual food. They are that because
first of all they are something else our
eternal and perfect sacrifice. That it is
which is spiritually present in the midst of
the worshipping church.
This appears more clearly as we examine
our Lord s words with more exactness.
" This is my body which is" (or "is being
given ") "on your behalf." Our Lord was
then and there already at the Last Supper
offering His body as a sacrifice for the salva
tion of mankind in will and intention. 1 He
was going to offer it next day in the horrible
reality of death. Raised and glorified, it
was to be for ever the body of our eternal
priest and sacrifice in the heavenly places.
But, without special reference to those
1 On the Last Supper in its relation to future eucharists
see app. note 19, p. 312.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 265
different moments of offering, it is certainly
the body as being made a sacrifice on our
behalf which is presented to our faith, and
for our partaking, in the eucharist. We
turn to the words spoken over the cup. At
the inauguration of the old covenant, victims
had been sacrificed, and half of their blood
Moses had sprinkled on the altar, and the
rest he " sprinkled " on the people, and said
" Behold the blood of the covenant which
the Lord hath made with you." So now
at the inauguration of the new covenant
our Lord says, " This is my blood which
is being poured out with a view to the
forgiveness of the world s sins." It is the
blood of our propitiation which He was
already offering in will and intention ; which
He was to shed next day upon the cross in
physical fact ; and in the power of which
the power of life surrendered and thereby
made efficacious He was to enter for ever
into the heavenly place.
The word which is rendered " shed " in
our versions should probably be rendered
(as above) "poured out." It has in fact in
266 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
the Greek of the Old Testament both mean
ings. It is used abundantly of blood as
shed in slaughter, as in the phrase "their
blood have they shed like water on every
side of Jerusalem : " but it is also used of
the blood of victims as "poured out" at the
altar, 2 that is, of blood as having passed
through death and become available as an
instrument of propitiation. No doubt, in
the case of our Lord, the unity of moral will
through every stage of the s acrificial action
takes the edge off the clearness of the
distinction. In shedding His blood He was
also offering it. Still the precise force of
the word 1 * is, in all probability, " This is My
blood, which is being sacrificially poured out "
which again is equivalent to " This is the
blood of sprinkling of the new covenant"
the blood of sacrificial efficacy.
1 Ps. Ixxix. 3, and in about forty other places.
2 Exod. xxix. 12 ; Lev. iv. 7, 18, 25, 30, 34, viii. 15, ix. 9 ;
2 K. xvi. 15. Dr. Edersheim remarks how the blood of
the Paschal lambs was poured out "jerked in one jet at
the base of the altar " (I.e. p. 191).
3 As in the case of the similar words alp.arfKxvffia and
irpoffxvo-is in Hebr. ix. 22, xi. 28.
THE TEST OF SCRIPTURE. 267
Here, then, we have the profoundest justi
fication for the doctrine of the eucharistic
sacrifice, especially as it is held and taught
in the East, and, at least of recent years,
among ourselves. What, according to this
teaching, especially constitutes the eucha
ristic sacrifice is the fact that the eternal
sacrifice is made present to faith in the
midst of the worshipping church. " Ye are
come unto Jesus the mediator and to the
blood of sprinkling." Granted this, all the
lower earthly sacrifices of prayers, alms,
oblations and commemorations group them
selves naturally and inevitably round this
central moment. All that is necessary to
keep this doctrine in full touch with the
institution of Christ is the frank recognition
that the bond of union or point of connec
tion with Christ our sacrifice lies in com
munion, and now r here short of this, except
in a very secondary and inferior sense : and
that this applies to the Christian people as
much as to the priest who is the minister
of the eucharistic liturgy.
It is possible that other words of Christ
268 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
at the institution of the eucharist yield the
sacrificial meaning with at least as great
directness: that the word translated "do"
("This do in remembrance of me") really
means "offer," and "remembrance" really
means " commemoration before God " : but
on these points the evidence is conflicting,
and does not warrant assertion. 1 But cer
tainly the argument securely derived from
the language of Christ, as explained above,
is strengthened when we consider that the
background of His new institution was the
chief annual sacrificial meal of the old
covenant. It was by feasting on the paschal
victim that the Israelite annually renewed
his fellowship in the covenant of the ancient
people ; and similarly the object of feasting
upon the true paschal victim is to renew
our fellowship in the covenant which is
inaugurated in His blood the covenant of
free and unhindered approach to the Father.
1 On the sacrificial meaning of iroitlv and a.vd/j.vncns see
app. note 20, p. 312.
CHAPTER V.
OUR PRESENT SERVICE OF HOLY COMMUNION.
IF the contentions of the previous chapters
are in any measure sound, the eucharistic
doctrine which they have been intended to
express corresponds accurately with what
our portion of the church catholic lays it
upon her clergy to teach that is to say,
it is " agreeable to the doctrine of the
Old and New Testaments, and it is what
the catholic fathers and ancient bishops
have collected out of the said doctrine."
It remains for us, therefore, to return upon
our present liturgy and seek to form an
estimate of it in the light of the principles
to which it appeals ; but now only so far
as concerns what one may call its secondary
doctrinal features. For with ceremonial
questions we arc not in these chapters con
cerned, except as they represent doctrine :
270 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
and on the position of our present Prayer
Book with regard to the main aspects of
eucharistic doctrine enough has already
been said. But its subordinate doctrinal
features are specially characteristic. 1
It represents a reformation of the mediaeval
liturgy and practice of the church in England
on the basis of certain principles: especially
its object was (i) to make the worship " com
mon " to priest and people; and (2) to restore
the communion of the people to its original
prominence.
(i) The community of worship between
priest and people was emphasized chiefly
by the translation of the service into the
vernacular ; by the abolition of stated prayers
to be said secretly by the priest, which
means that all the appointed service is to be
" rehearsed distinctly " ; and by the require
ment that the great central action of " the
breaking of the bread " is to be performed
" before the people."
1 For a most thorough and comprehensive review of the
Prayer Book liturgy, I very thankfully refer to the new
edition of Procter s Book of Common Prayer, by W. H. Frere
(Macmillan, 1901), pp. 430 ff.
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 271
It cannot be doubted that these changes
and requirements are justifiable and repre
sent the original principle of catholic wor
ship. For that principle certainly was that
the ministerial priest is but the divinely
appointed and empowered organ of the
whole priestly body, and that the offering
belongs to the body as a whole and is its
common act. For example the secret saying
of the anaphora, or specially of the prayer
of consecration, which began to gain ground
in the sixth century and^ which Justinian
sought to check as an abuse, 1 is quite out of
harmony with the language of St. Paul and
of the liturgies, which certainly makes the
breaking and the blessing and the offering
the acts of the whole body, though the
celebrating minister is both the voice which
blesses and the hand which breaks and
offers. 2 In the great Amen which from
apostolic times has closed the eucharistic
prayer the people are to identify themselves
with the action and words of the minister
1 See Brightman, p. 533, n. 4 . 2 See above, p. 213.
272 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
in which throughout they have been taking
intelligent part. 1
The concealing of the altar and the
central eucharistic action by a veil was a
practice which went back at least to the
fourth century, and was intended to express
not any isolation of the priest from the
people but the truth that " the mysteries "
were heavenly things, and that the veil which
hid the true holy of holies, though it had
been rent, had not been removed. The
voice of the unseen celebrant sounded as
Christ s voice in heaven, and when he came
out to administer the gifts he came as
" in the person of Christ " out of heaven. 2
Moreover the removal of the front portion
of the veil in the middle ages in the West
leaving the altar only with wings, or veils
at the side was due to a desire that
the people should see the elevation of the
1 i Cor. xiv. 16.
2 See Bingham Anliq. VIII. vi. 8. This " mystical
veil" is under various names mentioned by Athana-
sius, Synesius, and Chrysostom, who also indicates its
meaning.
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 273
host. 1 It was thus one result of what must
be called the lowering of theological con
ception by which the eucharist was brought
down from heaven to earth.
Our present liturgy however will have
neither the suppression of the priest s voice,
nor any veiling of his action, nor any con
cealment of the meaning of the service in
a dead language. In this respect it has
returned to what was doubtless the original
method of Christian worship ; the method
which expresses as simply as possible the
idea of a common worship " in spirit and in
truth." The idea and method then are good
and sound. All that we have to deplore
is that the idea is so inadequately realized
amongst us : that corporate eucharistic
worship is so little understood.
(2) In restoring to its proper prominence
the communion of the people and their com
munion in both kinds, those who fixed our
present service were still aiming at the same
end of making the whole action, up to its
1 A practice which began with the thirteenth century
in England.
B.C. T
274 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
culminating point in communion, common to
priest and people according to their several
functions. And here there is no room at all
for doubt that they were true to the real
intention of the eucharist and the proper
mind of the church. This has already been
made abundantly plain.
So strongly was this intention enforced
that the directions of our Prayer Book were
deliberately calculated to make the com
munion of the people, or of a sufficient
number of their representatives, an indis
pensable element in a celebration of the
eucharist ; so much so that, when communi
cants were not forthcoming, the celebration
was not to take place.
The result of this was that, unaccustomed
as the people had become before the Refor
mation to anything more than very infrequent
communions, 1 they were not to be prevailed
upon very largely to alter their practice :
and the great Christian service the only
1 The demand of the Devonshire rebels (1549) was to
" have the sacrament of the altar but at Easter delivered
to the lay people."
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 275
service of our Lord s special institution-
became, after an ineffectual struggle to
secure the celebration each Sunday, 1 an
occasional affair; a sort of occasional appen
dage to the Sunday worship instead of its
manifest and central act. Certainly nothing
could have been more contrary to ancient
catholic custom and principle than this.
We have to be thankful that recovery has
now reached to a point at which it may be
said that in very few places is it difficult to
secure a sufficient number of faithful com
municants to make possible the Sunday
eucharist. As to week-day eucharists, or
the continual daily eucharist, the habits of
the church catholic have presented such
varieties that one part of the church is
thoroughly justified in making the frequency
of celebration normally dependent upon the
presence of a certain number of persons
desiring to communicate. There is nothing
in principles that can be called catholic
which justifies us in rebelling against such
a prescription.
1 See Frere I.e. pp. 498 f.
T 2
276 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
It still remains for us however to restore
the eucharist to its central place as the chief,
if not the most largely attended, 1 act of Sun
day worship. With nothing short of this
may we be content. But also we must not
be content with restoring as our chief act of
worship a eucharist at which the communion
of the people does not form an important
part. It cannot be said too strongly that
any practice which divorces eucharistic wor
ship and sacrifice from communion, or which
rests content at the " high service " with the
communion of the priest alone, really repre
sents a seriously defective theology.
No doubt with our modern habits of late
rising on Sunday it is extremely difficult to
make the common parochial communion
appear in any sense as the chief act of
1 For it cannot be said that catholic principle justifies
our encouraging those who are not occasional communi
cants, nor preparing to become so, to be present at the
eucharist. The right point in the service for such people
to withdraw is surely after the sermon, but before the pre
sentation of the oblations. This the structure of the ancient
liturgies suggests, and such was the English custom until
recently.
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 277
worship, without an undue disregard of the
very ancient and venerable tradition of com
municating fasting. But the fact is that
hitherto the difficulty has not been seriously
faced by any considerable body of people
who are prepared equally to insist upon all
the elements necessary to a right solution.
There is in our present service book no
direction for those to withdraw who are not
at the moment intending to communicate ;
and they have a perfect right to exercise the
liberty to remain without communicating,
which, as appears elsewhere, was commonly
exercised by the faithful as early as the end
of the second century. 1 We may well feel
that to " assist in the prayers " is better
than to be absent. But the principles of
eucharistic worship which run deepest into
the theology of the incarnation and of the
Holy Spirit will never allow us to raise such
attendance without communion to a very
much higher level of principle than attend
ance at other kinds of corporate worship.
It is a matter which must be looked at
1 See quotation from Clement, pp. 307 8.
278 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
impartially from the point of view of educa
tion in worship.
Among other principles which our present
service emphasizes we may notice
(3) The combination in one act of worship
of preaching the word with celebrating the
sacrament. This principle was expressed
in the exhortations which are so abundantly
supplied, as well as in the provision for a
sermon or homily at every celebration. We
have somewhat wearied of this perhaps
more than abundant provision. But it can
not be doubted that the principle of coupling
the food of the divine word with that of the
grace of sacraments is justified by appeal to
our Lord s institution, to apostolic practice,
and to the ancient traditions of eucharistic
worship. 1
(4) The restoration of communion in both
kinds. With regard to the importance of
this it would be hard to use too strong
language. And, in restoring to the laity
the communion in the blood of Christ, the
idea was again brought forward in the
1 See also pp. 8, 291.
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 279
" prayer of humble access " that a distinct
kind of spiritual effect is to be attributed to
the gift of the body and of the blood of
our Lord a cleansing of our sinful bodies
by His body, and a washing of our souls
by His blood i 1 and in each case a spiritual
effect intended for all alike.
The mediaeval doctrine that " the whole
Christ is present in each particle of either
kind " 2 can hardly be denied by any one who
affirms the indivisible spiritual unity of the
living Christ ; but in view of our Lord s
1 This idea of the distinction is not original : cf. in the
ancient and well-known prayers ascribed to St. Ambrose or
St. Anselm, " We are washed [by the blood] and sanctified
[by the body] " : and also Raymund of Sabunde I.e. tit. 287,
" The bread signifies the body and the wine signifies the
soul (or life anima); because bread appertains to flesh
and wine to blood, in which is the seat of the soul (or
life )." The idea admitted of being abused, as if the
body of Christ was directly for our body only, and the
blood only for our souls : see Frere I.e. p. 494. This is
guarded against by the language of the catechism, which
declares that as our bodies are strengthened by both bread
and wine, so are our souls by both the body and the blood
our souls directly, and our bodies only indirectly through
the renewal of our spirits.
- First found in Hildebert and Anselm ; see Dissert,
p. 266,
280 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
institution of the communion in two kinds,
it is indeed wonderful how Christians can
prefer to trust a very fallible logic of sacra
mental presence rather than the manifested
intention of our Lord.
With regard to the details of our service
a very few points call for notice here and
those only in the central part of the service,
where alone questions of eucharistic doctrine
are suggested.
The position assigned in our service to
the intercession at the beginning of the
eucharistic portion proper, and as an accom
paniment to the presentation of the elements
on the altar and the offering of the alms and
oblations 1 of the people was, in fact, whether
the reformers knew it or not, a return to the
original practice of the church in general
and the Gallican rite in particular.
But the omission of any clear prayer for
1 The " oblations " meant strictly the offerings made for
the support of the clergy ; see Frere I.e. p. 482, and reff.
But the word was interpreted almost from the time of its
insertion, and probably in accordance with the intention
of some of those responsible for it, of the bread and wine, in
accordance with primitive language.
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 281
the departed is a grievous departure from
primitive and universal practice : a grievous
instance of ill-regulated reaction, for the
reversal of which, with all proper safeguards,
we may now hopefully pray.
No doubt it must also be admitted that
the whole of our anaphora represents a wide
departure from the primitive type.
The solemn appeal of the Sursiun corda,
leading on to the great thanksgiving for the
revelation of God in creation and redemption,
which included the angelic hymn of adora
tion addressed to the Thrice-Holy; and then
the recital before the Father of the words
of our Lord in instituting the eucharist
before His passion, leading on, in obedience
to the command to do this in remembrance
of Him, to the solemn commemoration by
the church of His passion, death, resurrec
tion, and ascension, and the expected second
coming ; and the offering of the representative
gifts of bread and wine, and the invocation
of the Holy Spirit, or of the divine power, to
consecrate them to be the body and blood
of Christ for the reception of the faithful;
2 8 2 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
then, whether preceded or no by renewed
intercessions for the living and the dead, the
recitation of the Our Father as the prayer
proper to accepted sons ; and lastly, after a
prayer of preparation, the breaking of the
bread, and the communion all together in the
holy gifts this unbroken order of ancient
eucharistic worship seems to express all the
truth which, in this connection, the church
knows how to express, and to leave nothing
out. Any omission or alteration appears to
be for the worse.
It had never been so strikingly or richly
represented in the Latin as in the Greek
service. All its elements however had been
represented in the West, and continued to be
so adequately enough in our service of 1549 ;
but the subsequent alterations have certainly
made our service singularly unprimitive in
structure and by no means suggestive of
those deeper doctrines which are the best
correction of mediaeval errors.
For the service of the mass simply trans
lated w r ould not have suggested these errors
neither transubstantiation nor the renewal
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 283
of the sacrifice of Calvary. The canon is
indeed actually impatient of the interpreta
tion which the theology of transubstantiation
requires. For after that the words of institu
tion, which are believed to be the specific
instruments of transubstantiation, have been
recited, the canon still speaks of the elements
as offerings of an earthly sort like the offer
ings of Abraham and Melchizedek : and by
its commemoration of the resurrection and
ascension of our Lord, and its subsequent
mention of the heavenly altar, it afforded an
admirable opportunity for a return to the
ancient way of thinking of the mingling of
earthly and heavenly things, and the ancient
idea of fellowship with the heavenly Christ.
But our present service has split up the
order of the continuous eucharistic action by
transposing the "prayer of humble access"
from its earlier and natural place before
communion to its present place between the
Sanctns and the prayer of consecration ; and,
what is of greater importance, also by inter
posing the communion between the conse
cration and the Lord s Prayer with the
284 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
prayer of oblation. But, what is most to
be lamented, it has suppressed all com
memoration and mention of the resurrection
and ascension and the heavenly ministry and
the Holy Ghost. The whole action, as far as
words can do it, is brought down to earth as
in no other liturgy. The mediaeval western
idea that the words of institution constitute
alone the form of consecration is stereotyped
as in no other liturgy by the abrupt termina
tion of the prayer of consecration as soon
as they are recited, and by the directions
given for additional consecration with the
bare use of these words, when more of the
consecrated gifts are needed for distribution.
As for our present prayer of oblation, if
we had been preserved from the grave mis
takes which have just been deplored, it might
in its present position have admitted of some
thing more than justification. For in itself
it expresses admirably and richly the doc
trine of which St. Augustine is the special
exponent the doctrine that the culmination
of sacrifice is in the oblation of the faithful,
made more deeply than before members
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 285
of the body by their communion in the
Lord s body, and thus becoming themselves
the sacrifice which, in Christ, is offered to
the Father. And the prayer directly following
(which surely should be additional and not
alternative), the prayer of thanksgiving for
communion, is again Augustinian in the
emphasis that it lays upon membership in
the church as the gift of communion.
Of course, we must remember that there
was strong pressure upon the Reformers to
make even more trenchant and disastrous
alterations than in fact were made : and that
the movement since Elizabeth s accession
has been continually one of recovery, which,
as far as the eucharist is concerned, has
taken fuller effect in Scotland and America
than in England itself. We must be thankful
indeed for the restraining and restoring
hand of God. But we must not suffer our
selves to forget that the appeal to antiquity is
not, either in our doctrinal statements about
the eucharist or in our rite for celebrating
it, adequately carried out. It is an appeal
which leaves us still much to do. And what
286 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
there is still to be done, as has appeared
already, will put a strain on both of the parties
and tendencies which have always, since the
Reformation, existed among us, and not on
one only. It will lay upon all alike the duty
of learning old truths anew.
Finally, if there is one element of eucha-
ristic doctrine more than another which we
need to strive to restore, it is what our prayer
of thanksgiving after communion so nobly
expresses, the idea that fellowship in Christ
is fellowship in the church that by receiving
His body from above, we are to become His
body on earth. A miserable individualism
in our thoughts of holy communion has
taken the place of the rich and moving
thought which in ancient days was so
prominent, that through fellowship in the
perfect sacrifice of the Son of Man, we
ourselves become that sacrifice. That is to
say, we can only plead His passion if we
are prepared to enter into unity of spirit and
life with Him who offered and presents it.
And the unity of spirit and life means a
sacrificial manner of living. And the way
OUR PRESENT COMMUNION SERVICE. 287
in which the sacrificial manner of living is
to show itself is in real brotherliness : it is
in those habitual and considerate good
works of love by which the body of Christ
on earth is to be bound together. It is by
mutual kindness and sociability, real and
equal consideration, large forbearance and
toleration of differences of disposition and
taste and opinion ; by a vivid belief that if
one member suffer all the members suffer
with it ; and by true regard for the whole
interests of each other, in body as well as
spirit, in respect of outward conditions as
well as those that are inward. It is by a
love which, as St. Augustine says, recognizes
no limit, but grows till it is as large as the
world, and which hates nothing so much as
schism in the body, or division of any kind
between man and man : but which manifests
itself primarily not by any action of the church
on the world without, but by the love she
shows within her own wide and catholic mem
bership, because the common Spirit who dwells
within makes a fellowship possible which,
apart from this union with God, could not
288 THE BODY OF CHRIST.
be. " By this shall all men know that ye are
my disciples, if ye have love one to another."
" We know that we have passed from death
unto life because we love the brethren." 1
It does not indeed need saying that, if
St. Augustine is right in making the doctrine
of brotherhood the ultimate goal of eucha-
ristic teaching, there is a great deal for us
to do and teach : and that what we have
to do and teach is exactly what both coin
cides with the best tendency of our times
towards the ideas of divine fatherhood and
human brotherhood, and is also best calcu
lated to correct its inherent weaknesses.
For the weaknesses inherent in mere
philanthropy and in the current conceptions
of brotherhood require for their correction
exactly that of which the eucharist is the
very instrument and perpetual renewal the
life of fellowship and intercourse with God
in Christ, the life which is " hid with Christ
in God," and which draws its strength and
its inspiration from the divine sacrifice
perpetually renewed within.
1 See further app. note 21, p. 316.
APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE i, see p. 7.
Justin Martyr on the eiicharistic " word of prayer."
WHAT exactly Justin Martyr means by the
" prayer-word which is from Christ," by \vhich
the eucharist is blessed, is, and will probably
remain, uncertain. Any form of benediction of
the elements believed by the church to be sub
stantially what Christ used, or any form of prayer
repeating His words of institution, would answer
sufficiently to Justin s description. The sugges
tion that Justin means the Lord s Prayer is surely
improbable. The Lord s Prayer is not a form
of thanksgiving or benediction over food.
No doubt Gregory the Great (Epp. ix. 12,
P. L. Ixxvii. 957) gives it as the reason why he
had introduced the Lord s Prayer into the Roman
canon immediately after the consecration, "that
the custom of the apostles was to consecrate the
sacrifice of the oblation with this prayer only
ad ipsam solummodo orationem" But Gregory s
authority is hardly adequate to substantiate his
assertion, or to interpret Justin. Justin must
B.C. u
2 go APPENDED NOTES.
mean by his "word of prayer" what Irenaeus
calls a "word of God" (see C. hacr. v. 2. 2 3).
" The cup which is from nature He confessed to
be His own blood, from \vhich He invigorates our
blood ; and the bread which is from nature He
asserted to be His own body, from which He
makes our bodies grow. Since therefore both
the mingled cup, and the bread which has been
made, receives upon itself the word of God and
becomes the eucharist of the blood and body of
Christ (or the eucharist becomes the body of
Christ ) and the substance of our flesh grows and
consists of these, etc." The same circle of ideas
and phrases is common to Justin and Irenaeus.
And "a word of God" must mean some formula
of benediction and not the Lord s Prayer.
Irenseus repeats the phrase just below the passage
quoted.
NOTE 2, see p. 22.
Eating Christ s flesh explained to mean receiving
His teaching.
This proposed explanation is based on a mis
understanding (as I am persuaded it is) of St. John
vi.63: " The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that
I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life."
Some, in early as well as later times (see Disserta
tions, pp. 303 ff.), have interpreted these words:
" By My life-giving flesh and blood I did not really
mean flesh at all, for it could do you no good : I
meant My spiritual, life-giving teaching." ^Butthis
APPENDED NOTES. 291
explanation renders our Lord s strong insistence
upon the figure one may venture to say the
misleading figure of flesh and blood quite unin
telligible. It is more in accordance with the whole
context and the Greek words to understand " The
flesh profiteth nothing as equivalent to "mere flesh
flesh of itself profiteth nothing." Then the
whole verse will mean, "Merc flesh, as you naturally
think of it, profits nothing. But the things I have
just spoken to you of the flesh and blood of the
glorified Son of Man (ver. 62) are something
much more than mere flesh and blood ; they are
spirit and (therefore] life." See Dissert, p. 305, and
cf. Lk. ii. 15 17, where " word" (/%<-<*) is used both
for the word as uttered and for the thing spoken
about. This is a Hebraism. See also John iii. n,
" We speak (AaAoiyxev, i.e., speak about) that we do
know."
Of course it remains true that the words of
God are spiritual food and a real nourishment of
the intelligence, as " the flesh and blood of Christ "
are of the whole manhood: cf. Jer. xv. 16, Ezek.
iii. i 3, Ps. xix. 10, Rev. x. 9. Indeed it is a
matter which needs very careful consideration,
that the sacramental feeding cannot profitably
continue without the "reading, marking, learning
and inw r ardly digesting " of the words of God,
Unless our intelligence is continually being spiritu
ally nourished and enlightened, our whole nature
is starved and withered, and the sacramental
nourishment is comparatively ineffectual.
u 2
292 APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE 3, see p. 44.
The ritual of the Roman church.
On this subject we should consult Duchesne
I.e. pp. 165, 175 ff., and Liber Pontifical^ i. 169,
on the fermentum. Also a most interesting paper
by Mr. Edmund Bishop on The Genius of the
Roman Rite (Beaufort House Printing Works).
He points out the extreme simplicity of the
pure Roman rite until it was largely interpolated
with elements from Gallican sources. The Gloria
in Excclsis, the Creed, the censing of the altar,
the elevation, adorations, etc., the Agnus Dei
(probably), with other prayers and chants, are
such interpolations. The element of ritual pomp
was concentrated in the original rite upon the
two moments: (i) the first solemn entry of the
celebrant and his ministers, especially on great
feasts, with torches, incense, etc., and (2) the
preparation for the reading of the Gospel. The
two points in the rite which are most elaborately
described in the early Roman ordincs are the
collection of the oblations of bread and wine
from the people, and the " fraction " of the bread
preparatory to the communion, i.e., the two points
at which the corporate aspect of the service is most
conspicuous.
NOTE 4, see p. 58.
Ignatius of Antioch on the cucharist.
The passages quoted already in the text are
from ad Smyrn. 7, ad Philad. 4, ad Eph. 20. There
APPENDED NOTES. 293
can, I think, be no legitimate dispute as to the
realism of Ignatius belief in the eucharist. No
doubt he sometimes used expressions which are
hard exactly to define : as " faith which is the
flesh of the Lord, and love which is the blood of
Jesus Christ " (Trail, 8) ; " the bread of God which
is the flesh of Jesus Christ and His blood which
is incorruptible love" (Rom. 7); "the blood of
Christ which is eternal and abiding joy" (Philad.
tit.). But these expressions are probably intended
to describe vividly the moral quality or substance
of the life of union with Christ. And on the
whole one cannot but feel that Ignatius of all men
was most penetrated with the sense of a union
of Christ with His church " both in the flesh and in
the spirit." See Eph. 10, Magn. 13, Smyrn. 12.
NOTE 5, see p. 75.
The reverent care of the sacred elements in the early
ages.
The evidence from Alexandria is supplied by
Origen in Exod. horn. xiii. 3. He is exhorting his
hearers to be as reverent in receiving the word of
God in sermons as in receiving the sacramental
body. " You know, you who are accustomed to
assist at the holy mysteries, how, when you receive
the Lord s body, you hold it with all caution and
veneration, lest any fragment of it should fall, or
any portion of the consecrated gift be lost. For
you think yourselves guilty, and you justly think
2g4 APPENDED NOTES.
so, if any of it through negligence be allowed to
fall. But if you use such caution, and rightly,
in holding His body, why do you think it is
less impiety to treat with contumely the word
of God ? " For Africa, see Tertullian s precisely
similar language, de cor. mil. 3. For Jerusalem,
see Cyril, catech. xxiii. 21. For Rome, (?) c. 200
(probably), see Canones Hippolyti xxix. 209 with
the superstitious reason " ne potiatur eo spiritus
malignus," instead of the ethical motive of
reverence. Dom Morin has recently (Revue Bene
dictine, July, 1900, pp. 243 ff.) argued that the
so-called Canons of Hippolytus are really the
" ministerial letter " mentioned by Eusebius as
sent to Rome by Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 260)
through a certain Hippolytus. In that case they
would not supply evidence of Roman customs.
But, in any case, the African custom would
presumably be derived from Rome.
NOTE 6, see p. 76.
The language used by some of the Fathers as to a
change in the water in baptism- and in the chrism,
similar to the change in the cncharistic elements.
Waterland (op. cit. p. 159) and many others
have made use of this language to prove that the
fathers did not really believe in any objective
presence in the eucharistic elements any more
than in the water of baptism or the chrism. But
the language referred to is admirably discussed by
APPENDED NOTES. 295
Dr. Gifford (see above, p. 57, n. ~). He shows that
the "change" described by Cyril of Jerusalem,
who is chiefly relied upon in this connection, is a
change of use only. "The water acquires a power
of sanctity," later described as "the grace given
by the water" (Cat. iii. 3, 4): "the ointment
becomes a gift of Christ and effectual to impart,
by the presence of the Holy Ghost, His divine
nature" (xxi. 3). But neither the water nor the
chrism are said to become something which exists
by itself, as the bread is said to " become the body
of Christ," and the wine to "become the blood of
Christ," to be treated with religious worship (as
Cyril would have the eucharistic elements to be,
see p. 104) as in some sense identical with those
heavenly substances.
NOTE 7, see p. 82.
Irenaus on the invocation.
In the first of the passages referred to above
ZKK\T](TLV (evocation), not e-n-iKX-rjo-iv (invocation), has
been commonly supposed to be the reading of
the Greek fragment cited by John of Damascus.
But Harnack has recently discovered that this
is a mistake of the printed texts -the MSS. read
iriK\r)<riv ; see Textc n. Untersuch., Neue Folge, v. 3,
p. 56. This discovery is one point in his over
whelming indictment of the Lutheran Pfaff of
having forged the fragments of Irenaeus which he
professed to discover. Certainly they must no
longer be quoted as words of Irenaeus.
296 APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE 8, see p. 95.
Victorinus Afer on an objective presence of Christ
in the eucharist.
In this connection I should like to refer to
a phrase which Victorinus Afer quotes from the
(presumably Roman) " prayer of the oblation " of
his day (c. 360) both in Greek and Latin. See
adv. Ar. ii. 8 (P.L. viii. 1094) "Oratio oblationis
intellectueodemprecatur Deum : o-wo-ov -mpiovcnov Xaov
^rjXuTrjv KctAwv epywv." But previously (I.e. i. 30,
col. 1063) : " Sicuti et in oblatione dicitur : Munda
tibi populum circumvitalem aemulatorem bonorum
operum circa tuam substantiam venientem." And
in this barbaric version of 7rep<Wo-iov he interprets
" substantia " of the substance, or life, of Jesus as
given in the eucharist, which the Christian people
are represented as " coming around."
This reference of Victorinus to the two languages
probably implies that in his day both Greek and
Latin were in use in the liturgy of the Roman
church.
NOTE 9, see p. 130.
Later Westerns on the spirituality of the
eucharistic presence.
Hildebert of Tours (i2th century) de sacr.
altaris, c. 2 (see 55. Pair. Opusc. Sel. xxxix. 276 f.):
"The body of Christ is in one place only in a natural
manner, but in many places in a virtual manner.
APPENDED NOTES. 297
In one place by nature, in many by grace and divine
virtue. In one in a corporal manner, in many in a
spiritual manner. For it belongs not to a body,
but to a spirit, to be in many places at once."
The Decree of Trent (sess. xiii., c. i) declares that
Christ is " in heaven according to the natural
mode of existence, and that nevertheless He is, in
many other places, sacramentally present to us in
His own substance by a manner of existing which,
though we can scarcely express it in words, yet
can we by the understanding illuminated by faith
conceive, and we ought most firmly to believe to
be possible with God." " If place," writes Cardinal
Newman, " is excluded from the idea of the sacra
mental presence, therefore division or distance
from heaven is excluded also. . . . 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."
(Via Media, ii. p. 220. ed. 1877.) A "corporal
presence of Christ s natural flesh and blood," as it
exists in heaven, is all that the Declaration on Kneel
ing, appended to our Communion Service, excludes.
The Revisers of 1662 declined to exclude a "real
and essential " presence. On the other hand, the
Declaration gives a positive reason for kneeling
which involves no objective presence at all. It
leaves the question open. (See p. 232.)
2 9 8 APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE 10, see p. 134.
Reservation of the sacrament, and the treatment oj
it after communion.
The carrying of portions of the sacrament to
absent brethren from the common eucharist is
mentioned by Justin Martyr (see above p. 9.) Ter-
tullian also assures us that in Africa the Christians
habitually carried the sacrament home to com
municate themselves : see p. 307 and ad uxor. ii. 5.
And the following letter of St. Basil (cp. 93), which
is less familiar, is worth transcribing :
" It is good and profitable to communicate
every day and receive the holy body and blood
of Christ ; He Himself plainly saying, He that
eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal
life. For who can dispute that continually to par
take of the life is nothing else than abundantly to
live ? For ourselves, we communicate four times a
week Sunday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday ;
and other days if they are saints -days. But that
in times of persecution, where there is no bishop
or priest present, a man should be compelled to
take the communion with his own hand that this
is no grievous matter it is superfluous to prove,
for long custom confirms what we say by the
evidence of facts.
" All those who live in solitude, as monks or
hermits, where there is no priest, communicate
themselves. And in Alexandria and Egypt each
APPENDED NOTES. 299
one of the lay people for the most part has the
communion in his own house, and,. when he will,
communicates himself. For when once the priest
has consecrated the sacrifice and delivered it, he
who has once received it as a whole and partakes
of it day by day ought to believe that he partakes
and receives from the hand of him who first gave it.
For even in the church the priest gives each man his
portion, and he who receives it holds it with full
control, and so carries it to his mouth with his
own hand. It is then the same thing virtually,
whether a man receives only one portion from the
priest or several portions at once." Elsewhere
St. Basil gives rules for reverence in private
reception.
It appears to be certainly true that the reserved
sacrament was not the object of outward worship
in the ancient Church, as indeed, apart from the
use of it to communicate the sick, it still is not in
the orthodox East. This at least I believe, and
to a small extent have observed, to be the case.
And the portions of the consecrated elements that
remained after communion were treated in a way
that suggests an attitude towards them different
from the modern. Thus it was an ancient custom
at Constantinople in A.D. 590 (see Evagrius, H. E.
iv. 36; P. G. Ixxxvi. (2), 2770) which subsisted
up to 1333 to give them to children fetched from
the school. (In A.D. 588 a council at Macon strove
to introduce the practice into France, but would
have the children fasting.) At Jerusalem it was the
300 APPENDED NOTES.
custom to consume them with fire ; see Scudamore
Notit. Euch. (Longmans, 1892), pp. 782 ff.
But strange as these customs may appear they
were not based upon disbelief in the permanence
of the effect of consecration, for Evagrius tells
us of the practice thus " It is an ancient practice
at Constantinople that as often as a great quantity
of the sacred portions of the undefiled body of
Christ our God be left over, unpolluted children
be sent for from the school to eat them." And the
reason of his telling us this is to record a miracle
which occurred in the case of a Jewish child who
had received among the rest. Moreover Cyril
of Alexandria condemns those who in his day
suggested "that the mystic gift is of no avail if a
remnant of it be left till the morrow. For they
who say this talk madly, for neither is Christ
changed nor will His holy body be altered, but
the virtue of the gift and His quickening grace are
permanent in it." (Ep. ad Calosir, P. G. Ixxvi.
1063 f.)
NOTE n, see p. 172.
Irenczus on the sacrifice in the cucharist.
Irenaeus quite certainly regards the eucharist
as a sacrifice to God of the firstfruits of the
ground, bread and wine, directed by prayer
towards the heavenly altar, and consecrated to
become the body and blood of Christ. Does he,
like Cyril or Chrysostom, regard the presence of
the bodv and blood not onlv as the occasion for
APPENDED NOTES. 301
communion, but also as the special occasion for
pleading or presenting Christ as our sacrifice ?
One passage (iv. 18. 4) is alleged for an affirmative
reply. " This oblation (of firstfruits) the Church
alone offers pure to the Creator, offering to Him,
with giving of thanks, what is of His own
creation. But the Jews do not offer it ; for their
hands are full of blood: for they did not receive
(or have not received ) the word which is
offered [to God]." The Greek does not remain.
The Latin is: "non enim receperunt verbum [per]
quod offertur [Deo]" the words in brackets being
uncertain. How are we to interpret the phrase ?
The point of the passage is to speak of the out
ward offering as commended by the pure heart
of the offerers. Irenasus goes on to speak of the
bread and wine as being, in virtue of the thanks
giving (eucharist) made over it, the body and blood
of the Lord who is the Son and Word of the Father,
Himself the instrument of their creation. Later
he speaks of the Word as having given orders
to make sacrifices (iv. 18. 6). Elsewhere he
speaks of the bread and wine as " receiving upon
themselves the word of God," i.e. the prayer of
invocation, and becoming eucharist, the body
and blood of Christ (v. 2. 3). Thus, according
to what reading we adopt, four interpretations of
the phrase in question suggest themselves :
i. [Omitting per] " They have not received the
Word who is offered to God " : i.e., the Christ who
is present in His body and blood as the substance
302 APPENDED NOTES.
of the sacrifice. But this is alien to Irenseus
language in general. He does not in fact any
where speak of Christ as present in the elements
(cf. above, p. 63). Nor could "the Word" be a
natural expression for the incarnate Christ, as
present in the eucharist. Moreover this inter
pretation does not harmonize with the context.
2. [Reading per] "They have not received the
word (i.e., the gospel message) through which the
offering is made to God." This makes good sense,
and is probably right, if this reading is justified.
3. [Still reading per] " They have not received
the "\Yord [Christ] through whom the offering is
made to God " ; cf. iv. xvii. 6 : " in Deo omni-
potente per Jcsuin Christium offert eclesia."
4. [Omitting per and Deo] " They have not re
ceived the Word coming to them " (cf. John i. u)
or " the message of God proffered to them." The
Greek would have been rov 7rpoa-(f>ep6/jLfvov Ao yov, and
may have been misunderstood by the translator :
cf. Justin, Apol. i. 13, for two ambiguous uses of
in a sacrificial context.
NOTE 12, see p. 175.
Passages in the Fathers where the immolation of
Christ appears to be spoken of as repeated.
It is obvious that the language of dramatic repre
sentation easily slides into that of real repetition.
A good example of ambiguous language, the real
meaning of which remains, nevertheless, sufficiently
APPENDED NOTES. 303
plain, is to be found in the following famous passage
from St. Gregory the Great (Dial. iv. 58). " For
this victim [the eucharistic sacrifice] in a unique
manner saves the soul from eternal death. It in
fact renews (rcparat) for us in a mystery the death
of the Only-Begotten, who, though rising from
death He dieth no more and death shall have no
more dominion over Him, yet, living in Himself
immortally and incorruptibly, is immolated for us
over and over again, in the mystery of the holy
oblation. For there His body is taken and His
flesh is shared for the salvation of His people, and
His blood is poured out not now into the hands
of unbelievers, but into the mouths of the faithful.
In view of this therefore let us weigh the magni
tude of the sacrifice for us, which for our deliverance
continually imitates the passion of the only-begotten
Son. For which of the faithful can doubt that at
the very hour of immolation, at the voice of the
priest, the heavens are opened; that in that mystery
of Jesus Christ the choirs of angels are present,
the things highest and lowest are associated, the
things earthly united with things heavenly, and the
things invisible and visible made one ? 59. But it
is necessary, when we enact (agamns) these things,
that we should sacrifice (mactemus) ourselves in
contrition of heart, because we who celebrate the
mysteries of the Lord s passion ought to imitate
what we enact. For then (only) will He truly be
the victim for us to God, when we have made
ourselves a victim."
3 o 4 APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE 13, see p. 179.
Errors current in the later middle ages about the
sacrifices of masses.
On this subject an important passage is in de
ss. cnch. sacr., serm. i, printed with the works of
Albertus Magnus (Lyons, 1651), torn. xii. p. 250 :
" The second cause of the institution of this sacra
ment is the sacrifice of the altar, against a certain
daily ravage effected by our sins : that as the
body of the Lord was once offered on the cross for
original guilt (debilum), so for our daily offences
(delictis) it might be continually offered on the
altar, and the church might have in this a gift to
make God propitious to herself (ad placandnm sibi
Deum], precious and acceptable beyond all the
sacraments and sacrifices of the Law." On the
authorship of these sermons which are not. by
Albertus see Vacant, Histoire de la conception du
sacrifice de la mcsse (Paris and Lyons, 1894), p. 41.
The Confession of Augsburg, pt. ii. art. 3, says,
" The opinion came in vogue (accessit) which gave
an infinite increase to private masses namely,
that Christ by His passion satisfied for original
sin and instituted the mass as an oblation for
daily mortal and venial offences." Similar but
not precisely the same views are ascribed by
Vasquez to Ambrose Catharinus, and denounced
by Latimer (Serm. iv. ed. Parker Soc., vol. i.
p. 36); and Bishop Gardiner in 1548 says:
" When men added to the mass an opinion of
APPENDED NOTES. 305
satisfaction and of a new redemption, they put
it to another use than it was ordained for "
(Dixon Hist, of the Cli. of E. iii. p. 264).
NOTE 14, see p. 181.
Some later Roman teaching on the sacrifice of
the altar.
For the view referred to above the following
references ma)* be given De Lugo Ac veritate
sacramenti encJiaristia, disp. xix. 5 (Lyons, 1636) :
" Corpus Christi . . . destruitur humano modo,
quatenus accipit datum dcdhiorcm et talem quo
reddatur inutile ad usus humanos corporis humani
et apt um ad alios diversos usus per modum
cibi : quare humano modo idem est ac si fieret
verus panis et aptaretur ac condiretur in cibum,
qine mutatio sufficiens est ad verum sacrin-
cium : fieri enim comestibile illud quod non erat
comestibile et ita fieri comestibile ut jam non sit
utile ad alios usus nisi per inodum cibi major
mutatio est quam alite quae ex communi hominum
mente sufficiebant ad verum sacrificium." Fran-
zelin tract, dc ,ss. cuchanstia: sacramcnto ct sacrificio,
p. 380 (Rome, 1868) : " Dat se ipsum ecclesia; suae
per suos ministros sacerdotes constituendum cor-
pore et sanguine suo in tali existendi modo sub
speciebus panis ac vini ut vere sit in statu cibi ac
potus : ut (formaliter quatenus constituitur sub his
speciebus) desinat omnis actus connaturalis vita:
B.C. x
306 APPENDED NOTES.
corporeae pendens a sensibus : ut nihil secundum
corpus possit agere connaturaliter : ut corpus ejus
ac sanguis in quantum prsesentia ejus alligatur
speciebus permittatur quodammodo arbitrio crea-
turarum, ac si esset res inanimata. . . . Atqui
talis exinanitio . . . non solum satis intelligitur
ut vere et proprie sacrificalis, sed etiam excepto
sacrificio cruento in cruce nullam sublimiorem ac
profundiorem rationem veri et proprii sacrificii
concipere possumus." To support the phrase " ex-
inanitio " Franzelin appeals only to a passage in
certain Rcsponsiones ad Paulum Samos. (ap. Labbe.
Condi, i. 896) wrongly attributed to Dionysius
Alex., where Phil. ii. 7 is interpreted of our Lord s
condescension to us in communion. Cf. Einig,
tract, de ss. eucharistice mysterio (Treves, 1888),
pp. 132 7. This little book is very useful for
understanding the later Roman theory.
NOTE 15, see p. 187.
The "glorious interchanges" of tJtc eucharist.
Some specimens of this language may be quoted
from collects of the Leonine Sacramentary. See
P. L. Iv. 29, 148.
" Exercentes, Domine, gloriosa commercia offeri-
mus quae dedisti ut te ipsum mereamur accipere."
" Altaribus tuis, Domine, munera terrena gra-
tanter offerimus ut caelestia consequamur ; damns
terrena ut sumamus aeterna."
APPENDED NOTES. 307
NOTE 16, see p. 197.
Presence at the cucharist of non-communicants.
Chrysostom, as is well known, condemns the
practice of persons coming to the eucharist and
not communicating : see ad Ephcs. horn. iii. 4, 5
(P. G. Ixii. 29 f.). But he would have admitted
it in the case of the consistentes -i.e. those in the
last stage of ecclesiastical penance. And while
declining to admit to communion some monks
banished from Alexandria, " till their case had been
judicially decided," he allowed them "to partake
in the prayers," i.e., to be present at the eucharist :
see Socrat. H. E. vi. 9. Chrysostom s words,
moreover, are not the only ones bearing on the
subject. Thus Tertullian, at the beginning of the
third century, considers the case of those who
would not come to the eucharist " the prayers
of the sacrifices " on station (fast) days, because
receiving the Lord s body would put an end to their
station. He however would have them on these
days stand at the altar as usual for the prayers of
the eucharist and receive the Lord s body into
their hands, reserving it for subsequent communion
at home. " Thus by receiving and reserving the
Lord s body both ends are secured, the participa
tion in the sacrifice and the fulfilment of your
service" (de orat. 14). And Clement of Alexan
dria, about the same date, contemplates its being
left to the conscience of the persons present at
the eucharist to receive or not. " Some, after
X 2
3 o8 APPENDED NOTES.
dividing the encharist according to custom, lay
it upon each individual among the people to receive
his portion [or not]. For it is best left to con
science to determine reception or avoidance "
(Strom, i. i. 5.) Later, Eusebius (of Alexandria?
5th or 6th century) takes the line opposed to
Chrysostom s, and would have those not fit to
receive " stay through the prayers " and not go out
"before the dismissal." See Die. of Chr. Biog. ii.
307 ; Scudamore Notit. Euch. p. 393. Before the
beginning of the middle ages this had become the
established usage.
NOTE 17, see pp. 198, 255.
Effect of the Epistle to the Hebrews upon cucharistic
doctrine in Ambrose and Chrysostom.
The effect of the Epistle to the Hebrews upon
the fathers in forcing them to view the eucharistic
worship and sacrifice upon the background of
Christ s continual intercession and presentation of
Himself in heaven, and not upon the background
of the cross, is very marked. Thus St. Ambrose
in the West (in Psalm xxxviii. 25, and de offic. i.
248), commenting on Hebr. x. i, says " The
shadow was in the law ; the image (i.e., the reality
under a veil) is in the Gospel ; the truth (i.e. the
unveiled reality) in the heavenly places." Then,
in the first passage, he continues "We have seen
the chief of the priests coming to us ; we have
APPENDED NOTES. 309
seen and heard Him offering for us His own blood :
we priests follow as we may to offer sacrifice for
the people, though weak in desert yet honour
able in sacrifice. Because although Christ is not
now seen to offer, yet He is Himself offered on
earth \vhen His body is offered : or rather He is
Himself manifested as offering among us, it being
His own word which sanctifies the sacrifice which
is offered. He Himself stands by us, our advocate
with the Father ; nevertheless, we see Him not
now : then we shall see Him when the image shall
have passed and the truth come." Plainly the
unseen reality of the eucharist is Christ as He is
in heaven. So in the second passage. " Of old a
lamb or a bullock was the offering, now Christ is
offered ; offered, that is, as man, as if accepting
suffering: and He offers Himself as priest, that
He may forgive our sins : here in image, there in
truth, where with the Father He presents Himself
for us as our advocate."
And St. Chrysostom, among Greeks, has noble
passages to the same effect : see in FIcbr. horn.
xiv. i, 2 ; cf. Horn. xvi. 2 (P. G. Ixiii. in, 112, 125).
His point is to identify " spiritual as applied
to the church s worship with " heavenly." It is
celebrated in a mystery on earth, but in fact all is
heavenly or " in heaven " priest and altar and all.
Indeed "the church is heavenly: yea, it is nothing
else than heavenly." Commenting on " the shadow
of heavenly things " (Hebr. viii. 5), he says " What
things does he call heavenly ? The spiritual things
3 TO APPENDED NOTES.
which, though they are celebrated upon earth, are
yet worthy of heaven. For when our Lord Jesus
Christ lies slain (Rev. v. 6), when the Spirit
comes, when He who sits at the right hand of the
Father is here . . . are not all these things
heavenly ? "
NOTE 18, see p. 262.
The four N. T. accounts of the institution.
I do not attempt to deal in this book with a
tendency among some recent critics to deny that
our Lord at the Last Supper really instituted the
solemn commemoration of His death, and the com
munion in His body and blood. This is a matter
which belongs to the general discussion of the
historical character of the Gospels, and the trust
worthiness of St. Paul s witness. I must content
myself with referring to Dr. Sanday, in Hastings
Die. of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 638.
Assuming, however, the historical value of our
records, it will be convenient to have the four
accounts beside one another for purposes of
comparison.
The words in the third column which are
enclosed in brackets are not contained in some
ancient authorities, and their right to stand in
St. Luke s text is not quite certain.
APPENDED NOTES.
311
HS.H a 035*O,
A _.cn O 4)15.5 5"
? f 2 ^~* y ^ofs
jd r . L. Q - 5 . a
l 6
,
d
o ^
C J3
C -6
a
3 T2 APPENDED NOTES.
NOTE 19, sec p. 264.
The eucharist before the passion and after.
The whole argument of this book assumes that
the eucharist is a communion in the spiritual
body of the risen and living Christ ; and therefore
that it could only be rightly celebrated in the
power of the Spirit, which was not given before
Christ was glorified. How then could it be insti
tuted before the passion ? How could Christ,
while yet in His mortal body, give His disciples
His flesh and blood to eat and drink ? To this
question there is, I think, no answer, except by
regarding the institution of the eucharist as an
anticipation of glory akin to the Transfiguration.
It is a natural interpretation of the Transfiguration
to see in it an evidence that the glory already
belonged to Christ s person, but was deliberately
being suppressed that He might suffer and die. In
any case it was an anticipation of the state of glory,
and the institution of the eucharist was a like
anticipation; just as, on the other hand, the eating
and drinking after the resurrection was a (per
haps miraculous) reversion to the conditions of
mortality.
NOTE 20, see p. 268.
On the sacrificial meaning of iroitlv and avd^infns,
I.
The same Hebrew word asah means " to do,"
and, in a special sense, " to offer in sacrifice."
APPENDED NOTES. 313
See Driver on Deut. xii. 27. " Offer 1 lit. do in a
sacrificial sense, as often in P. (the " priestly
document " of the Hexateuch), and occasionally
besides." Thus the Greek word TTOICIJ/ bears in
the LXX. the same sacrificial meaning, almost
always as a translation of the Hebrew word, like
/>eeiv in classical authors and facer e in Latin.
This is habitual and indisputable. For instance,
in Exod. xxix. 38 f., " Now this is that which
thou shall offer upon the altar : two lambs, etc.
The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning ; and
the other lamb thou shall offer at even" the
word in the Greek for offer is TrouiV. So it is in
Leviticus ix. 7, "Offer the sin-offering . . . offer
the oblation of the people." So where in i Kings
xi. 33, we read " They have worshipped Ashtoreth"
(from the Hebrew shachah) it is in Greek eVot^o-e TT?
So in 2 Kings XVll. 32, errowytrav eavrois ev
if/rjXuv stands for "they sacrificed for
themselves in the high places." (See Gesenius,
s.v. Asah.) Of this use of Ti-oieu/ there are from
sixty to eighty instances in the LXX.. and it
is used of meal offerings as well as of animal
sacrifices.
Does this use extend into the New Testament ?
It may be found in St. Luke ii. 27, TOV Troir/o-at
Ut TOVS K(IT(L TO \BuTpXVOV TOV VOfJMV 7Tpi O.VTOV "that
they might offer according to the custom of the
law on his behalf" : for if 7roo}o-cu merely means
"to do " it would naturally have been followed
immediately by -n-epl O.VTOV. And in the passages
3 i4 APPENDED NOTES.
about the institution of the eucharist where the
word occurs (i Cor. xi. 24, 25, Luke xxii. 19),
if we translate "offer," the construction o.f the
sentence becomes more easy. (See Mason Faith
of the Gospel, p. 309.) Thus roiVro fj.ov fo-TLV TO
. . TOVTO TTOLCLTC . . . TOVTO TO Trorr/piov . . . TOVTO
is certainly a more natural sentence if TOVTO
throughout has the same meaning " This is
my body (blood); this offer," instead of "This is
my body (blood) ; do this (action)." And in the
Case of the following words, TOVTO Troien-e, 6o-a;as eai/
TriV/TTe, it is awkward to translate " Do this as
often as ye drink (absolutely) " ; or " Do this
action, as often as ye drink (the cup)." The
sentence runs more easily if we translate " offer
this (cup of wine) as often as ye drink it."
The weak point, however, in this argument is
the fact that this sense of -n-oLtlv is very rarely
recognized in the literature of the early church.
Certainly Justin (dial. c. Try ph. 41) so interprets
the word in the institution of the eucharist. The
offering of the fine flour, he says, was a type of
the bread of the eucharist "which Christ Jesus
gave to US to offer," TOV aprov TT/? ei xapio-Tt us ov
... I. X. TrapeSwK-e Troietv. He makes the object
of the verb to be the bread and not the
action. And this is repeated later, c. 70. Also in
the Byzantine Liturgy there is one use of the
word in this sense (Brightman, op. cit., p. 362) :
Kcu/aos TOV TroiT/crai TW Kvplw. Otherwise it does not
appear to be recognized. Harnack thinks that
APPENDED NOTES. 315
the "Gentile Christians might suppose that they
had to understand -n-oielv in the sense of $iW" (see
Hist, of Dogni. Eng. trans, i. p. 209, n. ~), but I
know no grounds for this opinion.
On the whole, then, there is not sufficient
evidence to entitle us to say that Troifiv bears
the sacrificial sense in the New Testament.
II.
The matter stands similarly with
is the regular word for a sacrificial
memorial before God in the LXX. (cf. Acts x. 4),
but on two occasions dva/xv^o-t? is used in the text
of the canonical books, and both times in this
sense: Lev. xxiv. 7, "They (the shew bread) shall
be for loaves for a memorial lying before the Lord " ;
and Numb. x. 10 : The blowing of the trumpets
" shall be a memorial for 3-011 before your God."
Besides this it is used in the titles of Psalms
xxxvii. and Ixix., probably in a similar sense. But
in Wisdom xvi. 6 it is used for a reminder to
men, and in Heb. x. 3 the use is ambiguous.
In the phrase TOVTO Trotetre ets TT]V /AT/V dva/xvryrrtv
the sense of " memorial before God " is quite
in place, but the weak point again in the
case of those who maintain it, is the fact that it
was not apparently so understood by the Christian
church. The phrase of the anaphora, "There
fore we remembering Thy blessed passion," etc.
ovv), implies that they understood our
316 APPENDED NOTES.
Lord s words to mean, "This do to remember
Me." And this phrase probably goes back to very
early times.
NOTE 21, see pp. 41, 288.
The social aspect of the sacraments. 1
The phrase " Extra ecclesiam nulla salus "
("outside the church no salvation"), has been
taken as the very badge of an intolerant and
narrow churchmanship. Yet I cannot but think
that recent study of the earliest Christian litera
ture is bringing us back to recognize how very
large a measure of truth it expresses. This result
has been partly due to the direct or indirect
influence of Albrecht Ritschl, both in Germany
and in England. He perceived afresh that the
visible community was of the essence of Chris
tianity from the first, and that it was through
membership in the Christian commonwealth that
men were to find their salvation. In other words,
if by " the salvation " we mean that state in which
the redeemed abide under the shelter of the divine
covenant in Christ, then the books of our New
Testament would lead us to believe that the only
subject of the salvation is the community that
the new covenant, as truly as the old, is a covenant
with a people and with individuals only as mem
bers of the people. Therefore " extra ecclesiam
1 This note is substantially a reprint of an article
contributed to the Pilot of March 3rd, 1900.
APPENDED NOTES. 317
nulla salus," if by " salus" we mean the security
of the covenant.
The recent recognition of this truth in Protestant
circles in England is likely in the long run to lead
to important results. Thus the recent repudiation
by the editor of " The Evangelical Free Church
Catechism" of the idea of the invisible church as
being an " invention of the sixteenth century," and
the emphasis laid by both the catechism and its
editor on membership in the one visible catholic
church even if from our point of view the unity
of the church is somewhat inadequately conceived
may well mark an epoch in English religion.
But there is little use in bringing it about that
the important function of the church should be
recognized again in the original purpose of Christ
and in the teaching of His apostles, unless it is
also brought home in its positive meaning to
the contemporary conscience ; and unless we can
obviate the plain moral objections which are felt
to any proposal to identify fellowship with Christ
with membership in any particular community or
set of communities. The fundamental moral con
science in us which is the only secure ground on
which any positive religious belief can be based
imperatively demands that no one who is morally
sound in heart and will should be regarded as out
side the approval of Christ. Yet multitudes of
good men are, and have been, outside the church,
however freely the church be conceived, so long
as it be taken to mean anything visible at all.
3i8 APPENDED NOTES.
Now on this point we are practically all agreed.
There is hardly a thoughtful Christian of any
denomination, however strict in orthodoxy, who
could bring himself to doubt, under any pressure
of external authority, that a sincerely good man
a man really following the best light he has got
was certain of the approval of God and of
ultimate fellowship in the kingdom of Christ.
Here then we are all agreed. Yet in popular
estimation it is just this fundamental moral prin
ciple which conflicts with any exclusive spiritual
claim made on behalf of the visible church. What,
therefore, we have got to make good men see is
that though we cannot judge one another before
the time, and are bound to believe that to follow
the light is to be finding Christ ; though again the
church of the new covenant has plainly, like the
church of the old, fallen so far short of its ideal
as to have given men at times no slight excuse for
identifying it rather with Babylon, or with the
State, than with the City of God yet still, after
the largest acknowledgments have been made
under these heads, the intention of Christ remains
clear to found one visible society as the sphere
of His covenant of love ; and the obligation there
fore upon loyal disciples to seek to realize this
intention is still paramont ; and its moral meaning
is still perspicuous.
For its moral meaning is to declare that there
is no divine fellowship except in human brother
hood ; it is to refuse to separate acceptableness
APPENDED NOTES. 319
with God from the actual service of man. This
is the moral meaning of saying your salvation
shall lie in the life of a community. Our Lord,
the great Master of human life, chose to test men s
religious seriousness by their willingness to endure
the discipline involved in membership in a body
which both acknowledged a lofty moral and social
standard, and also, because it was catholic, required
its members to " receive " into actual fellowship
men and women of all sorts.
We easily see how very real a discipline in
patience and forbearance is involved in the idea
of a catholic society. A catholic must be a
tolerant, large-hearted person. If the original
Jewish disciples found it sorely hard to tolerate
the Gentiles in equal fellowship ; if the Gentile
Christians at Rome a little later were disposed to
be intolerant of Jewish scruples ; if it put a strain
upon the masters to welcome their slaves into the
brotherhood these were but examples of the
severe discipline which was to be laid on men all
down the ages by membership in a catholic body.
Of course, the church may in practice so lower
her moral and social standard, and may grow so
acquiescent in the divisions of Christendom, as
effectually to annul both forms of moral discipline.
When you have got a different communion for
each nation and class, and a lax moral require
ment in all alike, membership in the Christian
church has, no doubt, so far ceased to involve any
moral effort, and ceased accordingly to have any
320 APPENDED NOTES.
moral value. But the intention of Christ abides,
and its moral meaning abides. His faithful ser
vants will continually recur in heart and intellect,
with profound penitence and prayer, to their
Master s intention of the One Body and the moral
meaning which it is meant to carry.
My object in writing this is to urge all those who
are interested in the course of Christian thought
to recognize that merely to proclaim as a dogma
the obligation of the church and the sin of schism
will have no effect at all grounded though the
proclamation be securely enough on the books of
the New Testament unless the moral meaning
of the church, the moral and social meaning of
the catholic brotherhood, is brought home to
people s hearts simultaneously or antecedently.
And it is of the greatest importance to apply this
general principle to the particular subject-matter
of the sacraments. Church and sacraments are
intimately and necessarily bound up together.
There is a great deal perhaps a disproportionate
amount of teaching about the sacraments being
given in many of our Anglican pulpits to-day.
They are enforced from the side of authority.
They are enforced as means of grace to help the
individual life. Their adaptation to our two-fold
nature- material as well as spiritual is ably and
truly set out. But I cannot but think that their
moral appeal to what is best in men would be
made infinitely greater if their connection with
the church as an organized brotherhood, if their
APPENDED NOTES. 321
obvious social bearing, were both better appreciated
and more dwelt upon.
For, in fact, if we consider them one by one
we shall perceive easily enough how exceedingly
important a part of their meaning and efficacy
lies in the fact that they are ceremonies of a
society.
i. This is conspicuously true of baptism, which
as a sacrament of initiation was taken over from
the Jewish church. The child of Jewish parents
was born a Jew. He required no second birth,
but only obedience, beginning with circumcision,
to the law of the covenant to which he already
belonged. 1 But the Gentile who desired fellow
ship with the people of God was certainly before
our Lord s time initiated by a series of ceremonies
of which the most universal was a baptism of
purification ; the most universal because, of the
ceremonies which accompanied it, circumcision
only applied to men, and the sacrifice was only
possible at Jerusalem while the temple stood.
This ceremonial initiation was characterized as a
"new birth." The proselyte was born again;
that is to say, he was to forget his own people and
his father s house and make a fresh start on a new
tradition, with a new faith, and a changed set of
1 Thus the Christian counterpart of the painful rite of
circumcision is, strictly speaking, not baptism, which corre
sponds to birth in a Jew, but self-denial or mortification.
In Genesis xvii. 14, the uncircumcised male is to be cut off
because he has broken the covenant.
B.C. Y
322 APPENDED NOTES.
social customs and duties. He was a new man
because he was a member of a new society. 1
When Nicodemus expresses his difficulty at the
idea of an old man re-born, as suggested by our
Lord, it is at least probable that by introducing
the thought of initiation into the kingdom by
baptism, by being born of water, our Lord intends
in part to meet his difficulty. 2 At any rate, it is a
certain fact, as Schurer and Edersheim prove to
us, that the baptism of a proselyte was a necessary
part of his new birth as a Jew. Now Christian
baptism of "the Spirit" as well as " of water "
is a far deeper thing, and involves a far deeper
change in the basis of the personal life, than
Jewish baptism, which was only a social change.
But the idea of regeneration is far more intelligible
if its social bearing is still kept prominent ; and
that Christian baptism was as early and as neces
sarily thought of as being baptism into the body, as
it was as baptism into Christ, appears in St. Paul s
phrase : " By one Spirit were we all baptized into
one body." It appears also in the fact that
Christianity took over from Judaism, and very
likely from the first, the institution of sponsors
the baptismal witnesses of the Talmud; an institu
tion which is meant to emphasize the acceptance
of the newly-baptized into a society and the
1 See on the baptism of Jewish proselytes Schurer
Jewish People, Div. ii. Vol. ii. pp. 319 ff. and Edersheim s
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Vol. ii., app. xii.
- John Hi. 35.
APPENDED NOTES. 323
obligation of the society for the education of its
members. In fact, the more we realize the social
bearing of baptism the more reasonably we shall
value the practice of infant baptism, but also the
more emphatically shall we insist on again giving
prominence and reality to the institution of
sponsors.
2. Baptism puts at our disposal new spiritual
power for our personal life, but it does this because
it incorporates us into a new society. And the
new "member," thus incorporated, proceeds either
at once, or, in the case of an infant, as his powers
mature, to receive his full citizenship in the New
Jerusalem by his " sealing " in confirmation. This
laying on of hands again conveys an individual
endowment it is the strengthening of the
individual life by the gift of the Holy Ghost.
But it is also a social ceremony with a social
meaning. It is outwardly a benediction from the
chief officer of the society, and it conveys to the
confirmed his full right in the royal and priestly
body. From very early days it was accompanied
by anointing : it was at least called an " unction "
from St. John s days. This meant, what the
early mediaeval ritualists expressly stated, that the
member on whom hands were laid was being con
secrated king and priest consecrated, that is, to
his full civic and religious rights. 1 This primitive
1 Cf. quotations in The Church and the Ministry (Long
mans), ed. 4, p. 82.
324 APPENDED NOTES.
idea makes thoroughly reasonable the novel
ceremony of our present Anglican rite, which
associates with confirmation the formal accept
ance by the now responsible individual of the
moral duties of his Christian position. But we
have lamentably let slip the accompanying idea
of the lay priesthood and citizenship, an idea so
essential to that reform of the church on really
representative lines which is so widely desired,
and for which confirmation ought to afford so
significant a basis.
3. The now fully-initiated churchman con
tinually renews and intensifies in the eucharist
this new life, which is the divine and human life
of Jesus communicated to him His "flesh " and
"blood" and which for this very reason is also
the cementing and deepening of the social cohesion
of the brotherhood. The root of the Semitic
tradition of sacrifice lies in the idea of a divine
life sacramentally communicated by the God who
is worshipped to the tribe, or society of some sort,
which worships Him, and which is His own people,
in some special relation of covenant with Him.
It is this fundamental human instinct of sacrifice
which the eucharist expresses anew in a perfect
form. It binds those who share it to one another
in binding them to God. It is a " communion "
a common sharing. The intimate association,
at the beginning, of the holy sacrament of Christ s
body and blood with the fraternal meal, which at
first preceded it and afterwards followed it at a
APPENDED NOTES. 325
later hour, of course kept intensely alive its social
meaning. It was the sacrament of fraternity.
" Because the bread is one, we, the many, are
one body," wrote St. Paul. And others by a
different road reach the same conception : "As this
bread was once scattered upon the mountains, and,
having been gathered together became one, so let
Thy church be gathered together from the ends
of the earth into Thy kingdom." l " By which
very sacrament (of the bread) our people is
exhibited as made one ; so that as many grains
collected into one and ground together and
mingled make one loaf, so in Christ, who is the
heavenly loaf (bread), we should hold that there
is one body to which our company is joined and
united." 5 " For as this bread was scattered upon
the mountains, and having been gathered together
became one, so also, O Lord, gather together
Thy holy church from every race and every
country and city and village and household, and
make it a living catholic church." 3
St. Augustine realized, as hardly any one else,
the meaning of the catholic church as the embodi
ment of "love as wide as the world"; and he
abominated the sin of schism as being the viola
tion of love and tolerant fellowship by narrowness,
pride and selfishness. We should expect him,
1 Didache ix. 4. - Cyprian cp. 73, 13.
:! Bishop Sarapion s Prayer of the Oblation, in his newly
discovered liturgy ; also Ap. Const, vii. 25.
326 APPENDED NOTES.
therefore, to realize pre-eminently the social
bearings of the eucharist ; and, indeed, he does
so not least in connection with the eucharistic
sacrifice. The very spirit and essence of St.
Augustine s teaching about the eucharistic sacri
fice is what we find in the two post-communion
prayers would that they were not merely alter
native prayers ! of our Communion Service ; for,
according to Augustine, the chief point about the
eucharist is that therein the church offers herself
through Christ, as His body, to the Father the
body identifying itself with the sacrifice of the
head, and realizing in her "holy fellowship" the
identity of spirit which binds her to Christ.
4. The normal sacraments, which alone as
"generally necessary for salvation" were in the
age of Rabanus Maurus reckoned " the sacraments
of the church," were baptism, confirmation, and
the eucharist. But there were other sacred rites
of spiritual efficacy suited to a more or less
abnormal need, or to states of life which, however
common, were special, and these too, had been,
or came to be, reckoned sacraments ; and their
significance also was largely social. Thus to say
nothing of marriage, the social significance of
which cannot fall out of sight from the first
Christians were liable to fall into sins so grave as
to be "unto death " : the moral equivalents, that
is, of those sins for which, under the old covenant,
there was no atoning sacrifice but the penalty of
death. These involved excommunication, which
APPENDED NOTES. 327
was, especially at first, a social act a judgment
on an offender by the whole community acting as
a body through its officers ; and the excommuni
cated member was subjected to a punishment or
penance which tested the sincerity of his penitence;
and, when his penitence was approved, he was
readmitted to communion or absolved, again by
the society acting through its officers. The history
of this institution of ecclesiastical penance must
be traced elsewhere. Here it is only necessary to
point out that it is in its very essence a social
judgment. Sin is not only sin against God. It
is also an offence against the life of the community.
The community is to judge it and punish it, and
then absolve from it by readmitting the offender
into the common life. It is often said that eccle
siastical absolution is either a "charm," i.e. an
arbitrary power committed to a priest apart from
moral conditions; or a mere declaration of what is
in any case true, that God forgives a penitent
person. But this is no true dilemma. Absolution
(or its refusal) is a moral judgment passed by the
society through its officer upon an offender. The
point is that Christ has attached to the judgment
by the society, of condemnation or acquittal, so
divine a sanction and meaning, as to make it
evident to us that He willed our fellowship with
Himself to be normally dependent upon our
admitted fellowship in the body. This principle
inheres in " the sacrament of penance " and
ecclesiastical absolution, however administered.
328 APPENDED NOTES.
It is always administered more or less amiss
except where this principle is kept in distinct
view. And it must never be forgotten how
prominent among the objects of our reformers
was the restoration of the old corporate discipline.
The directions of the Prayer Book for dealing with
the individual penitent, whose sins lie heavy upon
his private conscience, can only be rightly viewed
upon the background of the public discipline which
it was sought to restore.
5. Finally we come to Holy Orders. Raymund
of Sabunde, the fifteenth century schoolman, gives
us the true point of view for estimating the apostolic
succession in the ministry when he says : " Because
the spiritual life consists in love and unity, there
fore it was most suitable that it should be ordained
that men should, in Christ s stead, administer the
sacrament of salvation to men, in order that their
mutual unity might thus be provided for." 1 The
cohesion of the body, that is to say, was secured
by providing a succession of persons down the
ages who should be authorized stewards of the
divine gifts for man s salvation ; because, by the
necessity laid upon men to look for these gifts at
the hands of certain authorized stewards, their
tendency to follow merely private inclinations into
separation would be counteracted and checked.
The official ministry was thus to be in each com
munity a centre of unity, and by the mutual
1 Theol. Naturalis, tit. 303.
APPENDED NOTES. 329
cohesion of these officers of the churches the unity
of the whole catholic body was to be secured.
The church must needs have had its officers who
would be representatives of the people ; but the
necessity that they should also derive their autho
rity in due succession from those who had gone
before them, was to provide a backbone of con
tinuity for each church, and for the church as
a whole, which should be capable of resisting the
centrifugal tendencies of the individual and the
congregation.
Now these ideas with regard to the sacraments
are indisputably catholic. They are the ideas of
the undivided church. But if this is so, there is
surely grave need that they should be more con
sidered than they are at present by those of us who
are most keenly sacramentalist. It is not only
within the area of Protestantism that an over-
individualistic way of thinking about religion has
prevailed. It prevailed also in the unreformed
theology of the Reformation period and the sub
sequent epoch. There, too, the tendency was to
regard the salvation of the individual as the main,
or almost sole, object of religion. The same
tendency dominated the revival of the sacramental
teaching in the Tractarian movement. But that
movement restored to us the idea of the church.
And what we now need is to let our thought of the
church and of the sacraments recover its original
social colouring, so that we may restore the con
ception of human brotherhood to its true and
B.C. ^
330 APPENDED NOTES.
dominant place among Christian conceptions.
For indeed the best modern conscience is to be
reached and touched and won in no way so effec
tively as by a strong and consistent appeal to the
principle of brotherhood.
THE END.
BRADBURY, AGNEW, CO LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIL1GE.
BV 825 G6 1901 TRIN
Gore, Charles,
The body of Christ
BV 825 G6 1901 TRIN
Gore, Charles,
The body of Christ
