"The Real Presence spiritually, mystically, and sacramentally understood": Jelf's Bampton Lectures on the Holy Eucharist as true feeding

In the sixth of his 1844 Bampton Lectures, An inquiry into the means of grace, their mutual connection, and combined use, with especial reference to the Church of England, Jelf - one of those whom Nockles lists as the 'Zs', the post-1833 continuation of the Old High tradition - addresses Eucharistic doctrine.  

In this extract, Jelf critiques those whose account of the Sacrament avoids reference to a true feeding on Christ's Body and Blood. What immediately comes to mind in reading is John Williamson Nevin's restatement of classical Reformed eucharistic teaching in The Mystical Presence, published two years later in 1846.  To quote Nevin:

Not the benefits of the new covenant only; but Christ himself with the benefits.  Christ first, and then and therefore all his benefits; as inhering only in his person, and carrying with them no reality under any different view.

The distinct similarity between Jelf and Nevin is suggestive of how Old High eucharistic teaching was an expression of a high Reformed sacramental theology.  And so Jelf, like Nevin, insists on a true feeding:

According to this theory, the Holy Sacrament is only a means to our indefinitely obtaining pardon and acceptance in Christ, together with all other spiritual blessings which He hath purchased for us by His precious death. Now this opinion is partially true, and has been actually embodied in our own Communion Office. It may, indeed, imply the whole truth; for one benefit of the Passion is the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ. Yet when men studiously confine themselves to expressing this partial truth, it arises too often from an unwillingness to accept the full mystery. The express acknowledgment of the Real Presence spiritually, mystically, and sacramentally understood, the belief that "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper," is "an hard saying" for many; and they prefer a general formulary which, without explicitly denying the mystery, may be used consistently with not believing it.

We must also note how Jelf's reference to "the Real Presence spiritually, mystically, and sacramentally understood" would find an echo in Nevin's work:

A real presence, in opposition to the notion that Christ's flesh and blood are not made present to the communicant in any way. A spiritual real presence, in opposition to the idea that Christ's body is in the elements in a local or corporal manner. Not real simply, and not spiritual simply; but real, and yet spiritual at the same time.

Where there is a contrast is that Nevin was seeking to recover a eucharistic theology which he believed had been lost in the Reformed churches to "the modern Puritan theory", a consequence (he thought) of the influence of the Baptist and Methodist traditions.  By contrast, Jelf - a standard-bearer of a tradition dominant within the Church of England from at least 1760 until well into the mid-19th century - regards himself as merely stating the clear, uncontroversial teaching of the Church of England against Dissent and Roman Catholicism. Thus, contrary to Nevin's dismissive comment that "what may be styled the high sacramental doctrine, is not put forward with any special prominence in the teaching of" the Church of England, it was in the Church of England of R.W. Jelf that the high Reformed doctrine of the Eucharist was set forth without anything like the controversy (and rejection) which accompanied Nevin's work.