the real and spiritual presence of Christ do understand Christ to be present as the Spirit of God is present in the hearts of the faithful, by blessing and grace, and this is all which we mean besides the tropical and figurative presence.'

Dr. Hickes, speaking of the bread and wine as substituted and deputed in the Lord's Supper for Christ's Body and Blood, and in virtue of that deputation, to be deemed, taken, and received as His Natural Body and Blood, compares this to the putative and virtual presence of a King in all His Courts of Judicature. He elsewhere says, "It is impossible that a solemn commemoration of a fact or thing should be the fact or thing itself; or to speak otherwise in respect of the holy symbols by which we make the commemoration, that what represents should be the thing represented, the figure the verity itself, or the sign that which is signified thereby."

John Johnson's testimony is to the same effect: "This I apprehend is the only type of Christ's body which as to efficacy3 and virtue is what it represents; and therefore no wonder that this type does so frequently and usually carry the name of its Archetype, and that the bread and wine in the Eucharist do so currently pass under the name of Christ's Body and Blood. This way of speaking descended from the Apostles to the Church of Christ of the succeeding ages; and to offer, to receive, to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ are as familiar phrases in the ancient monuments of Christianity, when by the Body and Blood of Christ they meant only the symbols, as 'to receive the Sacrament' and 'to administer the Holy Communion' are now with us."4

I will bring forward one more witness only, and that shall be the pious Bishop Ken. In the first edition of his "Practice of Divine Love" (1685) he had used these words: "O God Incarnate, how Thou who art in Heaven art present on the altar, I can by no means explain, but I firmly believe it all." Finding that this passage had given offence, he altered it in this wise: "O God Incarnate, after what extraordinary manner Thou who art in Heaven art present throughout the whole Sacramental Action to

1 Two Treatises, ii. 158 seqq.

2 Ibid. p. 183.

8 Effectual signs of Grace." 25th Art.-ED.

4 Unbloody Sacrifice. Works, Oxf. vol. i.

every devout receiver-how Thou canst give us Thy Flesh to eat and Thy Blood to drink

I can by no means comprehend; but I firmly believe all that thou hast said."1

It is evidently, therefore, in good company that the Church of England declines to give any countenance to the idea of a real, substantial, propitiatory sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist; and well, indeed, she might so resolve, seeing the monstrous superstructure which the Church of Rome had built upon this foundation of sand, the dangerous deceits into which it had betrayed its too credulous followers. But let it not be supposed that this denial of a true sacrificial character to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, otherwise than in the sense that all acts of worship, and especially this most solemn act of worship, are real spiritual sacrifices, can derogate in the slightest degree from the vast importance of that gift, the magnitude of that blessing, which is bestowed upon the faithful recipient. Upon this our Church employs every variety of expression by which she can testify her estimation of it. She speaks of it as giving us an assurance that we are very members incorporate of the mystical Body of the Son of God; as the means of preserving our soul unto everlasting life; she certifies us that, by faithfully partaking of this holy rite, we may so eat the flesh of Christ and drink His Blood, that our sinful bodies shall be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood, and that we shall evermore dwell in Him and He in us; that by spiritually eating the flesh of Christ in faith we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, we are one with Christ and Christ with us; thus clearly setting forth that mystical union which must take place on earth between penitent believers and their Saviour, if they are to have their mortal bodies quickened and raised by His Spirit that dwelleth in them.

The following passage from the writings of Dr. Thomas Jackson, a divine of the highest repute, will show his opinion as well on the nature of the Real Presence as on the question how the benefits of the Sacrifice of Christ are applied to faithful recipients of the Holy Communion :- "This distillation of life and immortality from His glorified human nature is that which the ancient and orthodoxal Church did mean in their figurative and lofty speeches of

1 Ken's Prose Works, pp. 325, 212; and Ken's Life, by a Layman, vol. i. p. 335.

Christ's Real Presence, or of eating His very flesh and drinking His very blood in the Sacrament. And the Sacramental bread is called His Body, and the Sacramental wine His Blood, as for other reasons, so especially for this, that the virtue or influence of His bloody Sacrifice is most plentifully and most effectually distilled from heaven unto the worthy receivers of the Eucharist." » 1

What need, then, is there, we may well ask, of Christ's bodily presence in the Sacrament, or of any other presence than the influence or emission of virtue from the heavenly Sanctuary, conveying to us, through the outward symbols, remission of sins and all other benefits of His Passion?

But there are dangers in an opposite direction. We are threatened with great changes from those who long to banish, as far as possible, all dogmatic teaching, and to open the doors of the Church of England so wide as to embrace all who call themselves Christianswho desire that everything save the bare truth of the historical statements of the New Testament, should be banished from our formularies, and that our Church, under the title of a National Church, should tolerate those who, having subscribed to the2 (bare?) historical facts, should be at liberty to impugn every doctrine at present held by the Church of England. I need hardly say that such a scheme as this, if carried out, would entirely fail of its object. Those who firmly believe in the leading doctrines of Christianity, as now held by our Church and by the chief dissenting bodies, could never consent to acknowledge themselves members of such a Church. There could be no principle of coherence in a body so constituted. It would foster divisions rather than obviate them; and in the vain attempt to found a National Church, it would finally issue in being no Church at all, no such Church as its Divine founder could recognize as His own, when He returns in power and glory.

It is to be a Church which "the Law Court and the Legislature can be relied upon to rid of any doctrine which the slow judgment of the nation has pronounced dubious or untenable," the nation consisting of Churchmen, Nonconformists, Jews, Unitarians, and Infidels.

I Works. Oxford, 1844, Vol. x, p. 41.

2 Word illegible in the M.B.

3 Essays on Church Policy, p. 107.

Articles of belief, as comprehensive as possible, are to be imposed as the condition of holding benefices-articles which shall suit the taste of such a tribunal; and when it is acknowledged by the propounders of this scheme for a National Religion and National Church, that the whole tendency of modern civilization is from dogmatism towards Rationalism, 1 we may well ask ourselves what shreds of truth would remain uncondemned? They tell us, indeed, that they are willing to leave the doctrine of the Incarnation as a dogma which they cannot surrender; but if the voice of the people is thus to supplant the voice of God, who can tell how soon that also may not be demanded as a surrender to their peremptory decision?

I have thus endeavoured to lay before you, my reverend and dear Brethren, a few hints which may possibly be of use to you, should you hear the Church of England blamed for the inadequate representation, as some maintain it to be, that she gives us of the Holy Eucharist; and if I shall have succeeded in clearing the views of any among you on this solemn and momentous question, I shall have an ample reward for my pains. Grievous are the divisions in our Church which have been engendered by these questions; but may we, amid the din of controversy, find our chief and most cherished occupations in meekly and earnestly fulfilling those sacred duties which it has pleased God to lay upon us, and in living to Him who died for us. It is at all times well, and at the present day especially necessary, that we should by careful and diligent study arm ourselves with such weapons as may enable us to defend our position as ministers of the Church of England against all attacks from every quarter; but in so doing, let us shun the spirit of controversy, so often in direct antagonism to the spirit of Charity. Let us not demean ourselves as though we were lords over God's heritage, enforcing upon our flocks the dictates of our own headstrong will, spite of the reasonable remonstrances of such as would walk in the old paths of the Church of England, and not adopt a poor imitation of the Ritual of the Church of Rome. Let the weight of our responsibilities be felt more than the weight of our dignity, remembering that the pastor's power really consists not in the assumption of authority, but in the influence which the spirit of love will always gain over 1 Essays on Church Policy, p. 111.

the hearts of men. Our great Exemplar came to teach us, that though He was the Lord of all, He was nevertheless the servant of all; and St. Paul gave full proof of his ministry, by being in labours more abundant. Let us be equally zealous with him in our Heavenly Master's service; equally mindful of the solemn account of our stewardship which we must one day give to Him to whom all hearts are open and all desires known. He alone can know whether I shall ever again be permitted to address you on an occasion like the present. If not, it will be an abiding satisfaction to me to have taken this last opportunity of bearing my testimony to that which I believe to be the mind of the Church of England touching the Blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as plainly set forth in her formularies of thus declaring my stedfast adherence to those principles upon which our Reformation was conducted, my rooted conviction that the doctrines respecting the Holy Eucharist enunciated by our Reformers are in full accordance with the language of Holy Scripture, as well as of the ancient Doctors of the Church.

And now, in conclusion, I commend each and all of you to the holy keeping of Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. May grace and peace be with you all, that, being fervent in your Heavenly Master's work, serving the Lord in spirit and in truth, you may at length attain to that everlasting inheritance which He has prepared for them that love Him.

taken by the Church of England at the Reformation to be of vital importance for the maintenance of the truth of the Gospel of Christ. That Charge has challenged discussion of the points in question, both by its outspoken plainness of statement, and by its appeal to the formularies of our Church in support of positions which it has been long thought that the Church disavowed.

In putting forward the following remarks upon these disputed points, I desire first to express my sense of the debt of gratitude which is due to the Right Reverend Prelate for the plain and faithful assertion of the great doctrine of the Incarnation, and of the close spiritual relation which arises therefrom between ourselves and our Divine Head.

While, therefore, I am thankful for the plain explicit statement in the Charge of the great facts on which the Church and Christianity are founded,-viz., the Incarnation of the Son of God, the intimate union that is between Christ the Head and the members of the body, and the great truth of delegation by reason of that union, so that all His living members are, in their degree and place, capacitated and required to do that which He does, "because as He is, so are we in this world,"1-I feel at the same time compelled to express my dissent from the views which are put forward as consequences of these doctrines. Those consequences are, to my mind, not justly deduced from the premises, and contain doctrinal statements unknown to the Church of Christ in its purest times, and alien, I am convinced, both to the spirit and to the authoritative statements of our Reformed Church.

The subject of most importance discussed in the late Bishop of Salisbury's Charge, is the effect of the act of consecration in the Holy Eucharist. It is a subject of the deepest mystery, and I desire to approach it with the full conviction of the inadequacy of human reason to search it out to the bottom. There can be no doubt that a right understanding of this point, so far as such understanding is granted to us, is of the most vital importance; for from its misconception arises the great division of opinion in our own Church between those who value the doctrines of sacramental grace and those who depreciate them; and more than this, from error on this one point has grown the whole circle of superstitions which mark the corrupt Church of Rome, which have been repudiated

11 John iv. 17.

by our Reformed Church of England, but which are now being brought back into our communion by men who hate the Reformation, and who hold almost all, if not quite all, Roman doctrine upon the subject. In the train of these erroneous doctrines follows naturally and consistently the whole development of excessive Ritualism, which is but as the visible eruption upon the surface of the skin, indicating a deeper seated constitutional ailment. The mere local treatment of the symptoms, by legislation on vestments &c., will never remove the disease, but merely drive the evil in, to take a more dangerous form elsewhere. The disease must be treated at its root, and the Church of England must examine her position and views upon this deep and central truth. The Bishop's categorical statement of the doctrine, put, as he says, in the fewest words for the sake of clearness, is this: "that God has been pleased to give to certain men, as His ministers, the power of so blessing oblations of bread and wine as to make them the channels of conveying to the soul, for its strengthening and refreshing, the Body and Blood of Christ." This statement I accept most fully and without reserve. It is so completely in accordance with the teaching of the Church of England, so fully borne out by the very words of Holy Scripture and by the faith of the Primitive Church, that it ought to be accepted by all English Churchmen; and I think would be so accepted, were it not that there remains a manner of interpreting it, which brings in views and doctrines alien to our Church, unknown to Scripture or Christian antiquity, and so closely akin to the errors of Papal Rome that the most microscopic eye might fail to detect the differ

ence.

And this interpretation hinges upon the question which the Bishop afterwards enters upon : "What is that effect which our Church teaches us to look for from the consecration of the elements in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper?" He proceeds, "I answer without hesitation, because I think the evidence I can produce is very clear, that our Church witnesses that through consecration the Body and Blood of Christ become really present, and by this I mean present without us,' and not only in the soul, of the faithful receiver,' or to use words very familiar to you, my Rev. brethren, the Body and Blood of Christ are present objective and not subjectivé only" (p. 74).

There is here, it seems to me, an incorrect

opposition of terms, and no slight confusion of thought in connection with these familiar but little understood words, objective and subjective. My argument compels me to try to clear up this confusion.

By a subjective Presence, I understand merely the action of the believer's mind, by which he realizes the truth of Christ's death, and by faith feeds upon Christ, conceiving of Him as his Saviour and the food of his soul. This it is plain is no Real Presence at all, and has no actual relation to the bread and wine received, except that they by their significance suggest these thoughts to the mind of the believer. This, I suppose, is the Zuinglian view, and certainly is not that of the Church of England. The words of the Catechism are enough to exclude it-" verily and indeed taken and received."

There remains then the objective Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament. By the objective Presence I understand a presence of the thing itself, as distinguished from our thought or conception of it, that which comes to us, not that which exists only by our mental action; that which has real existence of itself,-whereas the subjective Presence may be in the imagination, even though the thing con ceived of has no real being, and never had. The objective Presence alone is Real Presence. But where is that Real Objective Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ to be found! The Bishop says "really present, and by this I mean 'present without us' not only 'in the soul,'that is objectively, not subjectively only." I think there is here a slight confusion, the clearing up of which will furnish, I believe, the clearing up of the whole difficulty and of the whole controversy.

"Present without us" is not co-extensive with "objective" and cannot be interchanged with it, as in this passage. Things may be present within us and yet be objective to us. The bread that we eat to support natural life, has, not only when without us, an objective existence, but when taken within us it still exists objectively until, being digested and absorbed, it is assimilated by us, and, being taken up into our system, becomes subjectively part of ourselves. Food does not cease to be objective when it ceases to be without us. In the fossil pike which had swallowed a smaller fish and was overwhelmed before it had assimilated its prey, the smaller fish was found to have an ob

A careful investigation of this matter will show the importance of rejecting this imperfect definition of objectivity. The whole question and controversy is concerned with the character or condition of the elements between consecration and reception. Let attention be fixed upon this interval, for in it, I am convinced, lies every difficulty of the sacramental controversy. It is just within this interval that every error and every superstition connected with this subject comes in. All that is said about the objective Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ without us-the doctrine of transubstantiation, the practice of adoration of the elements, elevation, prostration, reservation, the statement that "Jesus lies upon the altar" that "Christ is present in our hands"-all these find their lurking place in the interval between consecration and reception. Observe this, and then observe that whatever is said of the elements of bread and wine during this interval is said without any authority or warrant of Holy Scripture, for this plain reason, that in Scripture no such interval is mentioned or recognised. If you say "After consecration and before reception the condition of the elements is such and such, and to them such and such conduct is due on our part," you must be saying things of man's invention only, for Holy Scripture says nothing whatever on the subject. The activity of the mind of man, his desire to define and ascertain the mystery, his yearnings, as in all ages, after visible objects of worship, have led him to widen and extend this interval more and more, and to introduce into it, of his own invention, doctrines and practices which, above all others, have agitated and divided the Church of Christ for the last 900 years.

But in the Word of God there is no such interval. In the original institution, consecration and reception were close together, most intimately connected: they formed one timeless

transaction; indeed, according to the Roman theory, they in a manner overlapped each other. For it is most important to observe, that the words of Institution spoken by our Lord Himself, commanded reception before they declared the Presence. "Take, eat," then "This is My body," which last words are the essence of consecration, says the Roman Church, and their omission, say ritual writers, invalidates any liturgy. And not only do the words "Take, eat," come before these words of consecration, but the Lord had already given the elements before He spoke the words at all; and it is to be further much observed, that S. Mark, who is always specially exact in the relation of minute particulars of time and circumstance, says that the words of consecration, "This is My Blood,” were spoken by the Lord after the disciples had received and consumed the element of wine"He gave it to them, and they all drank of it, and He said unto them This is my Blood." The several inspired accounts of the institution vary in many minor particulars, but they all agree in this, that the declaration of the Real Presence always follows the giving of the elements and the order to receive them. The interval now made between consecration and reception is thus annihilated-the two are so closely united as to leave no room for the different doctrines and practices to come in which have raised the whole sacramental controversy. Would that the Church had always borne this in mind, and followed exactly the Master's example! And at first, indeed, in the Primitive Church, reception followed immediately upon consecration, or rather the two were complicated together, as we shall presently see more exactly. The dogmatic dictum of Tertullian places the consecration by our Lord after distribution. Lord having taken bread and distribused it to His disciples, made it His own body by saying 'This is My Body."" In fact, in the original institution, the reception took place after the benediction-which the Eastern Church considers to constitute consecration, and before the words "This is My Body"-to which the Roman Church attributes consecration: so closely are consecration and reception inter

18. Mark xiv. 23, 24.

"2

"The

2 "Acceptum panem et distributum discipulis, Corpus Summ illum fecit, Hoc est Corpus Meum' dicendo." Tertull. adv. Marcion, ii. 40, quoted by Archdeacon Freeman, P. D. S. ii. 369. But Jewel quotes the important additional words of Tertullian, "hoc est, figura Corporis Mei."