Sacraments

I believe that I have proved that the Ritualist School, in so far as they depreciate the Reformation, show tenderness to Rome, condone her false doctrines, hold the tenet of the Objective Presence in the elements, perform the rites and ceremonies thence flowing, and inculcate the practice of auricular confession as part of the normal religious life, find no justification in the teaching and acts of our seventeenth-century divines. The old historical High Church party in the Church of England is in direct conflict with the Neo-Anglicanism known as Ritualism.

I make not the least doubt in the world but that the Church of England before the Reformation and the Church of England after the Reformation are as much the same Church as a garden before it is weeded and after it is weeded is the same garden.

Let us bless God that we live in a Church wherein no other name is invocated but the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nor divine worship given to any but to the one true God through Jesus Christ the only Mediator. O happy we, if we knew and valued our own happiness!

If we inquire upon what grounds the primitive Church did rely for their whole religion, we shall find they knew none else but the Scriptures. Ubi Scriptum? was their first inquiry. “Do the prophets and the Apostles, the Evangelists or the Epistles, say so ?” Read it there, and then teach it, else reject it.

We have no unwritten faith, as Rome has, and admit no innovations of any sort in religion, for we have put aside the vain traditions of men and new-born dogmas, unsupported by Holy Scripture and by antiquity, and we rest in the one Catholic truth, faith and religion, as handed down to us from the first ages.

Is there no superstition in adoration of images? None in invocation of saints? None in the adoration of the sacrament? Is there no error in breaking Christ’s own institution of the sacrament, by giving it but in one kind? None about purgatory? About common prayer in an unknown tongue, none? These and many more are in the Roman religion. And it is no hard work to prove every one of them to be error or superstition or both.

Bishop Andrewes and Archbishop Laud are the two divines of the seventeenth century generally selected by medievalists of the present day as their patrons and protectors. They justify their own extravagances by claiming the authority of these learned theologians for them.

Hooker belongs more to the sixteenth than to the seventeenth century ; but the seventeenth-century divines, without exception, take their inspiration from him, and, indeed, after Cranmer, Ridley, and Jewell, he is the father of Anglican theology.

The king’s majesty is so brought up in knowledge, virtue, and godliness, that it is not to be mistrusted but that we shall have all things well, and that the glory of God shall be spread abroad throughout all parts of the realm, if the prelates will diligently apply their plough, and be preachers rather than lords.

Christ’s disciple ought to be on his guard against the fallacy of antichrist, when the following course of argument is pursued: Whatsoever Christ’s vicar shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, but this faithful layman who does not wish to give money for his absolution, him he binds on earth. Therefore, this layman is bound in heaven. Likewise, whatsoever Christ’s vicar shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven, but him who is not contrite and yet is willing to give money, him he looses on earth.

Let every man, therefore, conform himself to the usage prevailing in the Church to which he may come. For none of these methods is contrary to the Christian faith or the interests of morality, as favoured by the adoption of one custom more than the other. If this were the case, that either the faith or sound morality were at stake, it would be necessary either to change what was done amiss, or to appoint the doing of what had been neglected. But mere change of custom, even though it may be of advantage in some respects, unsettles men by reason of the novelty: therefore, if it brings no advantage, it does much harm by unprofitably disturbing the Church.

I am now to inquire, whether the synod’s overture is not the most proper, and least exceptionable means to promote frequent communicating. I shall not be stiff in asserting this: but hitherto no better plan has been proposed, that I know of.

If frequent communicating is a duty, then the danger of doing it with less advantage does not lessen our obligations to that duty. For whatever danger there is, God foresaw it, but yet did not see meet to guard against it, by enjoining us to communicate seldom. Shall we then pretend to be wiser than God? Have we found out better means for securing the honour of his institutions, than the means prescribed and practised by those who were under the infallible guidance of his spirit?

I shall only ask my reader, are our times better than the reformation and covenanting periods, when our church approached much nearer to the primitive simplicity in defending the Supper of the Lord? Has our church gained anything, has practical religion been increased by the change of the old for our present way? Does it not deserve inquiry, if our neglect of frequently communicating, be not one cause, why the love of many has waxed cold?

There is no restraint laid upon us, in the word of God, from partaking frequently of the Lord’s Supper. If no precise time is fixed in Scripture for dispensing and receiving it, and if no precise degree of frequency is enjoined, yet none dare allege, that there is any time in which we are prohibited to dispense and receive that ordinance, or that any degree of frequency is absolutely prohibited.

Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man that hopes in Him. In that sacrament is Christ, because it is the Body of Christ, it is therefore not bodily food but spiritual. Whence the Apostle says of its type: Our fathers ate spiritual food and drank spiritual drink, for the Body of God is a spiritual body; the Body of Christ is the Body of the Divine Spirit.

Your excellent Majesty inquireth, whether State of the Body and Blood of Christ, which in the Church is taken by the mouth of the faithful, in two be made so in a mystery or in truth; that is, whether it containeth any hidden thing, which lieth open to the eye of faith alone; or whether without the veil of any mystery, the sight gazeth on that Body outwardly, which the eye of the soul inwardly beholdeth, so that the whole matter standeth forth open and manifest. And, whether it be the very same Body which was born of Mary, suffered, died, and was buried, which rose again, ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.

Neither in Dalmatia nor in Cappadocia, neither in Rome, nor in Africa, was it then imperative on Christian parents, as it is now, to give baptism to their young children.

It is, therefore, the duty of all loyal churchmen to insist on the observance of a rule which has its foundations not merely in the distinctive traditions of the English Reformation, but in the fundamental distinction between Godʼs sacramental gift to man, and manʼs self-devised offering to God; between the function of an ambassador for Christ,” and that of a pretended mediator and ambassador to Christ.

So if it’s you that are the body of Christ and its members, it’s the mystery meaning you that has been placed on the Lord’s table; what you receive is the mystery that means you. It is to what you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent. What you hear, you see, is The body of Christ, and you answer, Amen. So be a member of the body of Christ, in order to make that Amen true.

It is not that the substance of the elements is changed, but that their significance is altered. As Hugh Latimer expressed it during his last trial at Oxford, “the change is not in the nature, but in the dignity”. This setting apart of the elements is, therefore, a simple act, and should not be shrouded in mystery. Indeed, it is not an accident that “the breaking of bread” was an early name for the Lord’s Supper.

A uniformity, which inevitably suggests a unity, would only succeed in blurring vital distinctions, in suggesting that those who look alike are in fact alike, in making the unity of the Church an organizational and liturgical matter, and in demoting doctrine to a subordinate place things which evangelicals should be the first to resist.

When His people are gathered together in His Name, Christ’s promise is to be in the midst of them; and that surely is where His Table should be placed, with His people gathered around it to meet Him, and to receive the pledges of His love; and not needing to walk half-way up the church when the time comes to partake.

It is to be hoped that these three short papers will be read by many who find the Northside position unfamiliar, or who have thought of it as an extraordinary whim of Cranmer’s which the Church was right to forget and to ignore when alternatives became available. The theme of these papers is entirely to the contrary. They seek to indicate not only the origins and meaning of the position, its essentially English character, and its proud position in the history of our Church, but also the weakness of suggested alternatives.