Thine altar in some measure proportionable to the holiness of the work I am about,-of presenting the prayers of the faithful, of offering a spiritual sacrifice to God, in order to communicate the true bread of God to all His members." 1

"He then, at that instant, [that is, at the institution of the Eucharist,] gave His body and blood a sacrifice for the sins of the world. He then offered as a priest Himself under the symbols of bread and wine, and this is the sacrifice which His priests do still offer. And let it be observed that Jesus Christ did this before He was apprehended, when He was at His own disposal; it was then that He offered Himself a sacrifice to God." 2

VI.

Instances of somewhat different kinds of Eucharistic teaching may be given from three devotional books of the early part of the eighteenth century. In The Reasonable Communicant, the third edition of which was published in 1708, an explanation is given of the statement in the Catechism that "the body and blood of Christ" "are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper" which appears to define the body and blood of Christ as the power and grace of Christ.

"The real presence maintained by the Church of England is not the presence of Christ's natural body, but of His spiritual and mystical one, that is, the real presence of Christ's invisible power and grace so in and with the creatures of bread and wine as to convey spiritual and real effects to the souls of such as duly receive them." 3

In The Orthodox Communicant, published by the famous engraver John Sturt in 1721, the gift in Communion is thus described :

:

"The banquet thou art now about to feed on is no less than the pure and immaculate body and precious blood of Thy Saviour, which He instituted to support and comfort thee until His coming again. It is not a feast of earthly dainties, which give but an imperfect momentary pleasure, but it is a divine and spiritual banquet, which, if thou comest duly prepared, and with true faith feedest on it, will for ever satiate thy hunger and allay thy thirst. . . . With most profound gratitude and humility adore the divine goodness,

1 Sacra Privata, Works, v. 160.

2 Notes on the Holy Scriptures, on St. Matt. xxvi. 28, Works, vi. 423; cf. on Ezra vi. 10 and 1 Tim. ii. 1, Works, vi. 174, 643.

3 P. 12.

which offers thee this cup of reconciliation, this healing draught, which will cure thy infirmities and reconcile thee to thy offended God. With steadfast faith believe and be assured (for thy Saviour hath said it) This is His blood of the New Testament, which was shed for thee and for many for the remission of sins'. This is the heavenly draught, which alone can cleanse thee from all impurity and make thee white as snow. Drink this in pious memory of thy Blessed Saviour, that thou mayest obtain the grand benefit which He hath purchased for thee at the expense of His most precious blood. Implore the Father of mercies to impart such a share of grace to thee that thou mayest immediately feel the happy effects of it in a perfect and complete reformation of life; and beg of God such a continual supply of it that thou mayest enjoy the blessed presence of thy Saviour till the next opportunity of renewing this covenant with Him."1

In The Communicant Instructed how to Examine Himself in some Necessary Interrogatives for Worthy Receiving of the Lord's Supper, by Thomas Trott, the Rector of Barkston in Lincolnshire, which was published at Dublin in 1723, one of the questions in preparation for Communion was:

"Do I know the Lord's Supper as part of God's instituted worship? As a token, pledge, or seal of the covenant of grace, as representing Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, as having two parts, namely, the outward signs, bread and wine, with the actions thereunto belonging; the inward mysteries signified by those signs and sacramental actions, the nourishing, cleansing, enriching of my soul by the death of Christ ?" 2

VII.

In 1735 a book was published entitled A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. It was anonymous, but was understood to be the work of Benjamin Hoadly. Hoadly had been appointed Bishop of Bangor in 1716, Bishop of Hereford in 1721, Bishop of Salisbury in 1723, and Bishop of Winchester in 1734. He continued Bishop of Winchester until his death in 1761. He was a prominent member of the Latitudinarian party which by 1735 had become influential in the Church of England. There is little doubt that the Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacra

ment of the Lord's Supper was written by him. The main object of the book was practical. Its aim was to show that an exaggerated stress was laid by many on the need of preparation and devotion in connection with Communion, and that scruples which held back those who might otherwise communicate were unnecessary and groundless. In maintaining this thesis the writer stated his view of the doctrine of the Sacrament. He rejected any assertion of the presence of Christ or of a gift of grace. He advocated the purely Zwinglian position that our Lord's words at the institution of the Sacrament were wholly figurative, that an act done in remembrance of Christ required the bodily absence of Christ, and that a memorial could not be a sacrifice. He asserted that the Lord's Supper was a token and pledge of the promises of Christ and of the duties and privileges of Christians, and denied that it was anything more. Among the statements about doctrine which the book contained were the following:

"This remembrance of Christ, during the time of His bodily absence, was by Himself and His Apostles declared to be the end of this positive institution." 1

"The very essence of this institution being remembrance of a past transaction, and this remembrance necessarily excluding the corporal presence of what is remembered, it follows that, as the only sacrifice and the only sacrificer in the Christian dispensation are remembered, and therefore not present in the Lord's Supper, so the only Christian altar (the cross upon which Christ suffered) being also by consequence to be remembered, it cannot be present in this rite, because that presence would destroy the very notion of remembrance." 2

"Christians, meeting together for religious worship, and eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Christ's body and blood, and in honour of Him, do hereby publicly acknowledge Him to be their Master, and themselves to be His disciples; and by doing this in an assembly own themselves, with all other Christians, to be one body or society under Him the Head; and consequently profess themselves to be under His government and influence, to have communion or fellowship with Him as Head, and with all their brethren as fellow-members of that same body of which He is the Head." 3 "As bread and wine, taken at an ordinary meal, are the food of

our bodies, so this bread and wine, taken in a serious and religious remembrance of Christ as our Master, may (in a figurative, spiritual, or religious sense) be styled the food of our souls, or the nourishment of us considered as Christians; as the receiving them duly implies in it our believing and receiving the whole doctrine of Christ, which is the food of the Christian life; and leads our thoughts to all such obligations and engagements on our part, and all such promises on God's part, as are most useful and sufficient for our improvement in all that is worthy of a Christian. And Almighty God on His part requiring and accepting our due performance of this part of our duty, does by this assure us who come to profess ourselves the disciples of Christ that we are in His favour. Or, in other words, the Lord's Supper, being instituted as the memorial of His goodness towards us in Christ Jesus, may justly be looked upon as a token and pledge to assure us of what it calls to our remembrance, namely, that God is ready to pardon and bless us upon the terms proposed by His Son; and consequently that we are received by Him as the disciples of Christ, members of His body the Church, and heirs of His heavenly kingdom; in a word, as persons entitled to all the happiness promised to Christians, if we be not wanting to ourselves in other parts of our duty." 1

"This bread and wine, considered and taken as memorials of the body and blood of Christ our Master, lead us by their peculiar tendency to all such thoughts and practises as are indeed the improvement and health of our souls." 2

The publication of this book was followed by a vigorous controversy. Out of the large number of pamphlets which appeared in attack on and in defence of the Plain Account, it may be sufficient to mention only a few, selecting those which are representative of different lines of thought. Much of the controversy had to do with the practical questions which the writer of the Plain Account had raised, or with the allegations of disbelief in the doctrines of the Atonement and of the deity of our Lord which were brought against him; and it is often difficult to ascertain the opinions with regard to the doctrine of the Eucharist of those who took part in it. Several of the pamphleteers who attacked the Plain Account asserted with greater or less definiteness a gift in Communion. At any rate two of them took up a position. practically the same as that of John Johnson. Some of those who defended the Plain Account advocated Zwinglian views.

1

1Pp. 130, 131.

2 P. 162.

3 See pp. 474-77, supra.

The writer of Remarks on a Book lately published entituled A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, published in 1735, is one of the opponents of the Plain Account whose doctrinal views are expressed with little definiteness; but he held a fuller belief than the author of the Plain Account in regard to the Eucharist and the Eucharistic elements as sealing the covenant of God. In his first pamphlet just mentioned he says:

"It is true the blood of Christ is not itself present, but there is that present which is appointed by Christ to represent it, and which He Himself calls His blood. And why the bread and wine may not be called the seal of the new covenant for the same reason that they are called Christ's body and blood, I cannot for the heart of me see. Nothing is more common than to call the representatives of things by the names of the things themselves which they represent. If then the bread and wine are representatives of the seal of the new covenant, what forbids that they should be termed the seal? And, since we receive these by the express command of God, why may it not be said that we receive His seal, or that God puts to His seal?" 1

And in his A Second Letter to the Author of a Book entituled A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, published in 1735, he implies that the elements become "the representative body and blood of Christ" when "the Eucharistical Prayer" is said over them; and he calls them "the representatives of the great Christian sacrifice".3

A differently expressed explanation of the gift in Communion emphasising that Communion is the means not only of "a renewal of the new covenant between God and man ”4 but also of bestowing immortality, through the union of the Spirit of God with our spirits, is given by the author of A Letter to a Lord in Answer to his late Book entitled A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, published in 1736. After quoting passages from St. Ignatius and St. Irenæus," he goes

on:

"The assistance of God's Spirit is in them annexed by the promise of our Lord to the due partaking of the Sacrament of the

See Ad Eph. 20, and Adv. Haer. IV. xviii. 5, quoted on vol. i. pp. 25,

35, supra.