"The want of a right notion of symbolical language": Waterland against the Non-jurors

A significant portion of Waterland's 1739 charge as archdeacon to the clergy of Middlesex - The Sacramental Part of the Eucharist Explained - refutes admiration for Eastern Eucharistic theologies and the related proposal of the need for an epiclesis in the Prayer of Consecration.   The context was the influence of Non-juror works and the suggestion emanating from Non-juror Usager circles of 'restoring' the invocation of the Holy Spirit found in the 1549 rite.  Elsewhere, Waterland had referred to this portion of the rite being "thrown out afterwards, upon prudential considerations, and at the instance chiefly of two learned and judicious foreigners, whom Archbishop Cranmer called in to assist at the review of our Liturgy in 1551".

At the opening of the charge Waterland refers to 1702, the beginning of Queen Anne's reign.  As the beginning of this reign witnessed the reconciliation of moderate Non-jurors to the Church of England, he seems to be using it as a means of dating a definitive Non-juring schism, from which emerged a rather naive admiration for the East and a view that the invocation of the Holy Ghost was necessary in the Prayer of Consecration.  Against this, Waterland notes how teaching regarding the invocation "of the Holy Ghost upon the elements" was associated with Eucharistic teaching incompatible with a key concern of the Formularies, that of worthy reception:

Great stress has, by some amongst us since 1702, been laid upon the invocation and illapse of the Holy Ghost upon the elements: not barely to make them sacred signs and pledges, or exhibitive symbols of Christ's body and blood to every faithful communicant, (which might reasonably be admitted,) but even to make them the very body, or verily the body of Christ: not the natural body, but another true body, called a spiritual body, consisting, as is presumed, of elements changed in their inward qualities, and replenished either with the Holy Spirit himself, or with the graces, or virtues, or energies of the Spirit; supposed to be intrinsic to them, inherent in them, permanent with them, and received both by worthy and unworthy communicants. 

He firmly rejects any suggestion of the antiquity of such invocation:

As to the Eucharist, for the three first centuries, and part of the fourth, nothing at all was said, so far as appears, of any descent of the third Person upon the elements.

While contrasting the Augustinian West with "eastern innovations", he points to the West falling under the influence of the East's Eucharistic theology, obscuring (if not overturning) the relationship between sign and thing signified:

Hitherto, however, the western parts appear to have retained just ideas of the holy Eucharist. But before the end of the ninth century, the eastern innovations, introduced by Anastasius and Damascen, and established by the Nicene Council, spread wide and far, both among Greeks and Latins. When it was once resolved that the consecrated elements should be no longer signs or figures at all, but the very body and blood of Christ, the symbolical language of Scripture and Fathers be came neglected, and in a while forgotten; and the old notion of a sacrament, as importing a sign and a thing signified, wore off apace.

Waterland, of course, does not exclude the Holy Ghost from the Eucharist, but affirms His role and presence in a sense which coheres with the Augustinian and Reformed concerns of Article XXIX:

The Holy Ghost prepares both the symbols and the guests: but still it is the Logos, the incarnate Logos, who is properly the spiritual food or feast, according to Scripture and all Catholic antiquity; and that not as residing, by his Divinity, in the elements, but as adsistant only, or concomitant; and that to the worthy only.

He concludes by warning of the "late notions of the Eucharist" associated with Non-juring influence:

From the accounts now laid before you, my Reverend Brethren, I take the liberty to observe, that some late notions of the Eucharist appear to be little else but the remains of that confusion which first began in the decline of the seventh century: and the fundamental error of all lies in the want of a right notion of symbolical language, as before hinted. 

Waterland here provides an important High Church critique of Non-juror Eucharistic doctrine and of a defining Non-juror practice.  In doing so, he exemplifies where the mainstream of the High Church tradition was to be found: not amongst the marginal Non-jurors and their liturgical innovations, but within the Church by law established and its authorised liturgy.  What is more, it demonstrates that the sacramental theology which nurtured the rich Eucharistic piety of the High Church tradition stood firmly within the Augustinian and Reformed tradition.  As Waterland states in the charge:

Our Divines, as Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, &c. ... understood this matter perfectly well.