In this final extract from 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 - summarises what he describes as "this high mystical and spiritual doctrine" of the Sacrament. That phrase alone should make us again think of
Nevin's account of the High Reformed doctrine of the Supper,
The Mystical Presence (1846). Or, as Jelf puts it here, in more than an echo of Calvin, "uniting us mystically, but truly, with the glorified nature of our blessed Lord":
This grace we hold to be not a mere suggestion of goodness, nor mere instruction, nor an implanting of motives, nor a sense of mere gratitude in the remembrance of Christ's death; but the real reception of the Body and Blood of Christ, whatever that may mean, "after an heavenly and spiritual manner", which we do not attempt to understand or define; something neither carnal nor unreal, but the more real because wholly spiritual; a real grace, peculiar to this Sacrament, conveying the motions of God's Holy Spirit to our hearts and souls, because uniting us mystically, but truly, with the glorified nature of our blessed Lord. We consider the bread and wine to be, not indeed changed as to their substance, but consecrated and set apart, and potentially converted to a holy use, and therefore not meet to be profaned by any other application.
He continues:
It is, indeed, in the heart and not in the hands that we receive Christ - but we do receive Him really and spiritually; we receive Him by worthily partaking of the symbolical means.
This, of course, was the traditional Old High sacramental teaching from which the Tractarians were increasingly distancing themselves. That being so, it must have given Jelf some pleasure to quote Keble's The Christian Year in a footnote:
O come to our Communion Feast;
There present in the heart,
Not in the hands, th' eternal Priest
Will His true self impart.
After a final contrast between the Eucharistic teaching of the English and Roman churches, Jelf reaffirms the witness of the English Reformers, amidst increasingly public Tractarian criticism of the Reformation:
Let us only humbly and charitably ponder upon these contrasts, and the result will surely be increased gratitude to God for His merciful deliverance of our Church, and, under Him, to those venerable men, who, in the strength of God's Word, read by the light of the ancient Church, were His chosen instruments for removing from our Liturgy, and from our Church, the many theoretical and practical
errors, which thus hindered the free course of God's grace.
It is a reminder of how Old High teaching offered Anglicanism a rich and unifying Reformed Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, robustly grounded in Articles and Prayer Book, an alternative to both Anglo-Catholic dismissal of the Formularies and low church evangelical minimising of the gift of the Sacraments. The profound richness of this Reformed Catholic understanding, and the sacramental piety it could nourish, is wonderfully exemplified in Jelf's words - quoting Jewel and very similar to the conclusion to Hooker's account of the Sacrament in the Lawes V.67 - at the end of the sixth lecture:
The Body and Blood, which are the life of the world, which alone can cleanse our sinful bodies and wash our souls, (to use the words of the most eminent of our Reformers,) "we verily eat, we verily drink; we verily be relieved, and live by it; we are bones of His bones, and flesh of His flesh; Christ dwelleth in us, and we in Him". Mystery of mysteries! to be kept in our hearts, to be meditated on in silence, to shine forth in our lives!
What a medicine have we here provided against
every disease which may threaten to paralyze
our vital powers! The same Divine Person
is mystically within us, who, in the days of
His flesh, went about, healing all manner of
sickness and all manner of infirmities amongst
the people, - He who spake the word and
healed them. And can we be actually united
with Him, the very hem of whose garment,
touched with faith, was the vehicle of Divine
virtue, and yet find no medicine to heal our
sickness?
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