But these facts represent but a small part of the resistance or objection virtually made by the English Church during these five centuries (1066-1549) to the Roman views of the Eucharist. It will be pointed out hereafter, that she adhered in many most remarkable points, and in some important ones, to the condition of her Eucharistic ritual, such as it had been when introduced by St. Augustine; refusing to admit various alterations both of text and rubric, of words and mode of administration, which were adopted elsewhere throughout the West. So wide indeed was the discrepancy, owing to this cause and to others of longer standing, between her rite and the Roman, that it may be safely affirmed that no Roman or continental priest can possibly, for many ages before the Reformation, have officiated at an English altar without making a special study of our formularies. We are only concerned at present with a single one, but that by far the most important of these discrepancies.

The claim of Divine adoration, as properly due to the Elements from the moment of their consecration was inculcated on English ground, as elsewhere, from about the time of the Lateran Council, or perhaps even earlier. But there was this remarkable and important difference between the English Church and all others throughout Europe,—that her regular, written, and authorized ritual contained no recognition of that claim. The consecrated Bread was indeed ordered to be elevated, so that it might be seen by the people; and there were various diocesan or episcopal injunctions for its being reverenced by them. But the direction which was embodied in the rubrics of all other Churches and monastic bodies of the West, for the celebrant to kneel and worship the Elements, never found footing in those of the English Church: and if not in her rubrics, we may be sure not in her practice either, since in all these points the rubric was always rigidly adhered to. And this peculiarity continued down to the very time of the Revision of the Offices in the sixteenth century. The Communion Offices of the various dioceses of Salisbury, of York, of Hereford, or of Bangor, in whatever else they might differ, agreed in this point-a unanimity, it must be admitted, most striking and even astonishing, when the universal prevalence of this direction elsewhere throughout the West, and the immense importance attached to it, are taken into consideration.

It is also very remarkable, that this fact

should never before, so far as I am aware, have been noticed by any writer, Roman or English. . .

Of the fact itself, however, there is no doubt. And as little question is there of the interpretation and significance to be attached to it. It clearly appears that the written ritual, at any rate, of the English Church, retained its original soundness in this particular, amid the universal corruption of the whole of Europe beside. It exhibited all along in the West an almost perfect parallel, as far as concerned its letter and its authoritative contents, to the Liturgies of the East. The doctrine of elemental annihilation, however proclaimed, almost from the very hour of its invention, from archiepiscopal thrones, and followed up by divers injunctions, based upon it, in diocesan decrees, wrought no material change in the liturgical forms of the English Church. From whatever causes, the accredited ritual expression of that doctrine, elsewhere universally imposed by the Roman See, found here no place. Viewed in its theoretic structure, the stream of Liturgical service in this country flowed almost unimpaired, in this particular, from the Apostolic fountainhead.

How far the reverence enjoined by the diocesan decrees referred to was carried, or intended to be carried, in this country, it is somewhat difficult to decide with any certainty. But the purpose of the elevation, as defined by the rubric, was simply that the Element "might be seen," and doubtless beheld with reverence, "by the people." Nor have I found any distinct order for its being worshipped, or for their prostrating themselves, even in the diocesan injunctions. The directions are, that "the people should behave themselves reverently at the consecration of the Eucharist, and kneel, especially after the elevation." Every priest was "frequently to instruct the people, that when the elevation takes place, they should bow reverently." Another enjoins that "it be so raised on high, that it can be beheld by those who stand around." The purpose is elsewhere defined to be "that devotion may be awakened, and charity inflamed."

These instructions do not necessarily point to anything beyond profound reverence 2 for the Elements, now consecrated. They also, by

2 On the real distinction to be made between such rever ence and actual worship, see P. D. S., Vol. II. Sect. xiii.

their varied expressions, bespeak the absence of any fixed and rigid rule on the subject. And on the whole, seeing that no example of worship was set by the celebrant, it seems not unreasonable to conclude that the practice of the laity also, as well as of the officiating clergy, in this country, was materially different from that which prevailed on the Continent.

This conclusion is greatly strengthened by a closer examination both of the rubric and the diocesan injunctions, taken in connection with the ascertained history of the practice of elevation; which is briefly as follows. No such action was used upon consecration, until the middle of the twelfth century 3, at earliest. The first recorded recognition, or even mention of it, is at a council held at Paris in 1188 +. And it was introduced, as a new practice, into Germany, in 1203, by Cardinal Guido, acting as Papal legate at Cologne. But in none of these earlier instances of elevation, nor even in the famous decree of Pope Honorius III., circ. 1217, was the purpose of the elevation, or of the actions accompanying it, defined to be the actual worship of the Element: but, as in the English Rubrics, “that it might be seen by the people;" that they might show it "reverence;" or "might fall down and ask pardon"." It is about the latter part of the thirteenth century that stronger language begins to be used on this head as in the ceremonial of the date of Gregory X. (1271). Then, too, it is that the existence of the present Roman rubric begins first to be recognised by the ritualists; as by Durandus, (circ. 1286).

Now it is not difficult to assign reasons why the English Church would be likely enough, during the earlier part of the period here spoken of, to admit Roman variations into her Rubric, but to cease to do so in the latter part. Down to the year 1215, or somewhat later, was the palmy time of Roman ascendency in this country. A reaction against the national

3 Mabillon indeed says the middle of the eleventh (Iter. Ital., p. xlix.) ; but he alleges no clear instance earlier than the thirteenth.

4 Maskell, Anc. Lit., p. 92: "Tunc elevet eam, ut possit ab omnibus, videri."

5. Cum elevatur hostia, quilibet se reverenter inclinet, idem faciens cum eam defert presbyter ad infirmum."

6 So too the customs of Cluny (twelfth century): "All who meet the Priest bearing the Body of the Lord should demand pardon."

7 In the ordo Romanus, No. XIII. (Mabillon's Iter. Italic., p. 235): "In elevatione vero corporis Christo, prosternent se ad terram, et adorent reverenter in f a cies cadenco." 8 Rationale Div. Offic. iv. 41, ult.

spirit which had spoken in the Constitutions of Clarendon, was manifest in the triumph and canonization of à Becket, the acceptance of a grant of Ireland from the Pope by Hen. II., the interdict laid on the kingdom, the deposition of John, and the appointment and removal of Langton. All these were so many proofs of the revived influence of the Roman see, extending from about 1170 to 1215. But by the middle of this century, a national animus reappears in considerable vigour, as was marked by the appeal of the English ambassadors to the council of Lyons (in 1245), against Italian exactions; by the rise of Grostête (1345-1253); and by a variety of ordinances1 tending to restrain the Papal power in this country, during the next 300 years. Nothing was more natural than that the English Church, under such circumstances, should guard her ritual with the same jealousy as she guarded her spiritualty and temporalities; and should proceed no further in the course upon which she had lately entered, of conforming her Rubric to the Roman developments. Such is, at least, a very reasonable account to give of the phenonemon which her ritual certainly presents, of having admitted only in a germinal form, into her rubrics, the practice of shewing reverence to the newly-consecrated Elements. Her Eucharistic mind, which remained unalterated for the next three centuries, must be interpreted by the earlier, not by the later, significance attached to the practice of elevation. Her diocesan and extra-rubrical teaching may well have been intended to keep within those limits.

II. But the English Eucharistic ritual, in various other respects besides that which has been now specified, contrasted remarkably with that of the Roman Church and of the continent of Europe. That disuse of whole elements and features of Eucharistic Service (such as the ancient Litanies) which, as we saw, paved the way for the reception of unsound doctrine, and greatly aggravated its effects, had never been carried to the same lengths in England. The Litany more especially, which in the Roman Use, from the tenth century, ceased to be said (except on a single day in the year, and at Ordinations and Consecrations,) in its proper Eucharistic connection, had retained it in Eng

9 July 17. See Landon's Councils, p. 382.

1 Such were the trial of clerks by jury, 1275; statute of mortmain, 1279; appeal of the Commons against presentation of foreigners, 1297; statutes of provisors, 1352-1399.

land, in the season of Lent, down to the time of the Reformation: while another and somewhat briefer form of intercession was appointed, according to the Use of Sarum, on all Sundays and Festivals. But besides this, the ordinary Offices of the Church continued to be in use on Sundays and Festivals at least, as a prelude to Eucharistic celebration. There was therefore a far less degree of ejection of the popular and congregational element out of the Eucharistic Office. And besides this, a higher standard as to frequency of lay communion was prescribed in at least some parts of this country, than elsewhere. The Lateran decrees of 1215 require but one Communion in the year. The diocesan synod of Salisbury, 1217, already referred to, (while endorsing the Lateran decree as to the Elements,) required three, which was continued as the rule of the English Church down to the time of the Revision of her Offices. Thus did the English Church exhibit, during that mournful period of Europe's Eucharistic history, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, the nearest approach which the annals of the West afford, to the proper retention of the ancient Eucharistic views and practice. . . Throughout the rest of the Western Church, the Eucharist had long ceased to be customarily celebrated with any reference, such as the pri mitive forms2 contained, both in East and West, to the entire Economy: to the Incarnation, the Nativity, and the other earlier events of it, as well as to the Passion and other later and crowning ones. Nor, for the same period, had any detailed intercession been made for the Church and for mankind; any deprecation of particular evils, or any petition for particular needs, temporal or spiritual: any prayer for those in sickness or danger, for the traveller, the fatherless or widow, and such like cases of need. All this solemn Eucharistic memory and pleading of Christ's Divine Actions; all this kindly and bounden care for the necessities of the world, was cut off by the disuse of the Litany, and not restored in any other shape. In this country alone, more especially during a portion of the year, it had its ancient place, and thus maintained a solitary witness in the West to the

proper constitution of Eucharistic Service. And when we add to this, that another great Eucharistic element, that of praise, never slumbered here to the same extent as elsewhere, but was perpetuated on all high Eucharistic days, (as Sundays and chief festivals,) in the Psalms and Hymns, the Scripture and Canticles, of the Ordinary Office, long after these had fallen, as it should seem, into disuse in other parts of the West; we surely discern, in the English national worship of the middle ages, a breadth and justness of Eucharistic conception, up to a certain point, quite peculiar to it. That misdirection of the Eucharistic rite, as to its purpose and design; that narrowing of its range, which elsewhere proceeded to the utmost lengths, was never quite without alloy or abatement here. And it is unlikely that they who were taught to associate the Eucharist with this wider range of ideas, could really receive, as its almost exclusive conception, the creation by it of an object of Divine Worship; or could fail to recognise, as one very important function of it, the presentation, in mysterious union with the One Sacrifice, both of the individual member, and of the body of the faithful, acceptable to God in Christ.

Other countries of Europe, being more completely committed to views and practices properly subversive of the old verity, with far less of alloying circumstances, might well be expected, in whatever reaction they might experience, either to fall short of a genuine recovery and working back to the truth, or, in the rebound, to run into excess in the other direction.

And such, as a matter of fact, has been the case. The Roman Church, though largely reacting all along, as far as concerns theoretical statement of doctrine, against her earlier and more extravagant positions of the eleventh century, and though manifesting, at the epoch of the Reformation, some desire of retracing her already ancient error of five hundred years' standing, has nevertheless been so far from winning her way back to the whole truth, that she has ended by binding upon herself ritual prac tices which can only be properly based on the entire denial of one whole side of it.

Nor have those continental bodies which, in various times and countries, drawing off from allegiance to Rome, have undertaken to reform and restore Eucharistic doctrine, been at all more successful A contest of opposite excesses

In England it was otherwise. Here, besides some earlier and less clearly defined instances of reaction, we have seen that the first half of the fourteenth century abounded to an unexampled degree in the free expression of opinion in this country as to the untenableness, on philosophical grounds, of the doctrine of elemental annihilation; and perhaps also in a somewhat widely spread loosening of the hold which that opinion possessed on the general mind. All these mauifestations of opinion, however, at least in the case of the schoolmen referred to, were accompanied by a ceding, real or nominal, of the point at issue, in consideration of the decision, or what was decreed to be such, of Rome and the West. They did not result in any clear re-statement, in the ancient manner, of the Eucharistic Mystery; nor did they exercise any influence on the English Ritual; which was indebted, as it should seem, to other and somewhat earlier causes for whatever of superior purity or soundness it preserved.

Hitherto, all instances of reaction against the Eucharistic doctrines of the eleventh century had either been unsound in degree, (whether in the way of defect or excess), or, if sound, were confined to personal expressions of opinion, and found no utterance in the ritual of any body of Christians.

:

The great English movement of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was absolutely discriminated from all those instances by two notes of difference namely, first, by the full and equal enunciation of both terms of the Eucharistic Mystery, with only such limitations as the subject itself prescribes ; and next, by the embodiment of the recovered Verity in the ritual of an entire Church and nation.

In proof of this, it will only be necessary to point to deliberate statements, or more incidental indications, contained in authorized forms of the English Church, from the year 1548 onwards; such, more especially, as either virtually, or in so many words, continue a part of her principles and teaching at the present day. And it must be clearly understood that we are not concerned with the ebb and flow of opinion on the subject, whether in the minds of particular persons, or in the temper of the

times at certain periods; but only with the accredited expressions of the mind of the Church herself.

It is to be observed,—and it is perhaps somewhat characteristic of the English mind,—that the dogmatic re-affirmation of Eucharistic doctrine in this country was preceded, in point of time, by the virtual reinstalment of it in ritual. It was, as it should seem, by the practical use of a purer Office,-an Office from which the confessed additions of later times, (such as the elevation of the Elements immediately on consecration,) had been removed, while ancient features long obsolete in the West, (as the Communion in both kinds, and the Litany,) had been restored to it, that the English Church won her way back to a sound conception and statement of the Mystery. And this was, in truth, the just order of events. As ritual unfaithfulness, in ages long past, had prepared the way for the influx of unsoundness in doctrine; so the repairing of the old defences of this kind left the Church of this country at leisure to ponder and weigh, under circumstances favourable to a pure and right judgment, the great question which lay before her, and which it was ultimately granted her to replace, in the dogmatic no less than the ritual form, on its ancient and properly immoveable foundations. 3

SECT. 4.-EUCHARISTIC ADORATION ADDRESSED TO OUR LORD, OTHERWISE THAN AS NOW ENTHRONED IN HEAVEN, CONTRARY TO THE TESTIMONY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. II. CONSEQUENCE OF THE TENET OF CHRIST'S PRESENCE IN THE ELEMENTS, SUBVERSIVE OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT. III. THE SACRIFICIAL DEATH OF CHRIST, ALONE SET FORTH IN THE ORDINANCE.

1. I proceed to speak of one or two consequences which have been supposed to flow from the mauner of holding the Eucharistic Mystery here set forth as that of the Church Universal for the first thousand years, and of the English Church for the last three centuries. is well at all times-at the present time it is perhaps very especially needful—that such supposed consequences should be duly examined.

It

First, then, if the Elements become by consecration [sacramentally] the Body and Blood of Christ, so that we may say that That Body and Blood are thereafter truly present [i.e., mystically, in such manner as was ordained by Christ for His own purpose, viz., our faithful reception3], does it not follow that They must

3 [Sect 10 and 11 (Vol. II. Part II. Pr. D. S.), omitted:-On the Revision of the English Ritual.-Ed.]

be worshipped with Divine adoration, since He, whose Body and Blood they [thus] are is Very God? Or, if not the Elements themselves, by reason of their retaining the nature of creatures, so that to worship them would be idolatry* ; yet must not the Presence of that Body and Blood be worshipped, even as the Presence of Christ Himself in Heaven, as in the days of His Flesh? Does not Their Presence involve the proper Presence of Christ; and is not That Presence, at any rate, to be worshipped?

These questions are asked, by persons differently minded, in a very different spirit. By some, the affirmation of them is eagerly pressed as an inevitable conclusion from the premises by others it is no less earnestly deprecated; while yet they see no escape from such a conclusion, except by rejecting the premises themselves.5

Wor

Now as to the question in its first and most stringent form, we know how it is answered by the Western Church of the last six hundred years. From about the year 1200, or a little later, the claim of the consecrated Elements to be worshipped with the self-same adoration as God Almighty sitting upon His Throne in Heaven, has been openly affirmed both by Divines and Councils. That portentous conclusion has not, it is true, been carried out in all its results, but only in some of them. ship of some kind is indeed prescribed, and doubtless, both by outward gesture and inward affection of the mind, habitually offered. But by an inconsistency for which we may well be thankful, no prayer or other service is in public authorized rituals addressed to the Elements, but still, as of old before this doctrine was heard of, to God and to Christ in Heaven, and in Heaven only. This, however, makes no difference as to the speculative tenet, which is avowed and maintained without any limitation or qualification whatever.

In this form, the tenet of Eucharistic adoration is little likely to be entertained by members

4 This is all but universally admitted by Roman writers, viz, that if it were conceded that the elements retained their substance after consecration, it would be idolatry to worship them. 5 See Pr. D. S., Vol. II., sect. vi. p. 56, and p. 87.

6 See Note C. APPENDIX.

7 The exceptions are so rare as to prove the rule; which, indeed, is strongly insisted upon. Thus Bona remarks, that the hymn "O salutaris hostia," was sung during the elevation in some Churches of France, and sanctioned by a provincial council at Cologne; but that another Synod, Augustana, c. 18,) while permitting this, commended silent adoration in preference. Rer. Lit. ii. 13, 2.

of the English Church, since it is so clearly and emphatically rejected in her formularies, as already referred to. To worship the Elements themselves would be, it is admitted among us, idolatry. But the other and more modified claim, of Divine adoration being due, after the consecration of the Elements, to the Presence of Christ's Body and Blood, or to the Presence of Christ Himself, as involved therein, stands on somewhat different grounds. It is alleged on its behalf, that it does not contravene any admitted principle of Christianity ;—it is found, rightly or wrongly, to have peculiar attractiveness for a deeply reverential order of mind;the countenance of antiquity is confidently claimed for it ;—and it is openly avowed and acted on by members of the English Church. On this account, however devoid of foundation it may be, it demands our serious consideration.

Since, however, there is manifestly a close connexion, with whatever of real distinction, between the two kinds of adoration which are thus, without the English Church and within it, claimed as a consequence of the consecration of the Elements, it will be best to survey the subject as one whole, and in all its bearings.

It will be admitted, then, in the first place, that all manner of Eucharistic tenets ultimately stand and are based upon the original Institution of Christ Himself, as recorded in the Gospels, and further unfolded or alluded to in them, and in the Apostolic Epistles. All that any Church, or any Liturgy, even to the most elaborate, can legitimately aim at, is to render the Mind of Christ as intended and expressed in that awful Institution. To watch His Hand, His Eye, His Voice,-to gather His Intent, to understand His Action, to do as He bade us do; -this, since the days of the Apostles themselves, has been, and ever must be, the Church's only study,-all her lore, all her wisdom,-in the matter of Eucharistic celebration. What He did, and said, and intended, and left for us to imitate in our measure,-that is the text and the rubric of all our Eucharistic ritual; the form and measure of all our Eucharistic thoughts, and words, and actions.

Accordingly, the particular opinion to be held, and the practices to be adopted, as a result of the consecration of the Eucharistic Elements, depend solely and entirely upon what He divinely intended, and was from the first