Jeremy Taylor Week: Taylor, Ussher, and a Reformed theology of the Lord's Supper
Taylor's statement in his The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654) is indicative of how he fundamentally shared with Ussher a Reformed understanding of the gift of the Lord in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The similarity with Ussher's account in his 1620 sermon to the House of Commons is very clear:
The bread and wine are not changed in substance from being the same with that which is served at ordinary tables: but in respect of the sacred use whereunto they are consecrated, such a change is made, that now they differ as much from common bread and wine, as heaven from earth. Neither are they to be accounted barely significative, but truly exhibitive also of those heavenly things whereto they have relation: as being appointed by God to bee a means of conveying the same unto us, and putting us in actual possession thereof. So that in the use of this holy ordinance, as verily as a man with his bodily hand and mouth receiveth the earthly creatures; so verily doth he with his spiritual hand and mouth (if any such he have) receive the body and blood of Christ.
And this is that real and substantial presence, which we affirmed to be in the inward part of this sacred action.
Ussher's explicit and unembarrassed use of the language of 'real presence' was also to be seen in Taylor:
That this is the doctrine of the church of England, is apparent in the church-catechism; affirming "the inward part or thing signified" by the consecrated bread and wine to be "the body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received of the faithful in the Lord's supper;" and the benefit of it to be, "the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine:" and the same is repeated severally in the exhortation, and in the prayer of the address before the consecration, in the canon of our communion; 'verily and indeed' is 'reipsa,' that is, 'really enough;' that is our sense of the real presence; and Calvin affirms as much, saying, 'In the supper Christ Jesus, viz. his body and blood, is truly given under the signs of bread and wine'.
The reference to Calvin, of course, merely confirms the Reformed eucharistic theology Taylor shared with Ussher. This is also seen in Taylor's explicit affirmation of the distinctive Reformed emphasis that "the wicked receive not Christ" in the Sacrament, because we partake of Christ spiritually not by the mouth:
The doctrine of the church of England, and generally of the Protestants, in this article, is, that after the minister of the holy mysteries hath rightly prayed, and blessed or consecrated the bread and the wine, the symbols become changed into the body and blood of Christ, after a sacramental, that is, in a spiritual real manner: so that all that worthily communicate, do by faith receive Christ really, effectually, to all the purposes of his passion: the wicked receive not Christ, but the bare symbols only; but yet to their hurt, because the offer of Christ is rejected, and they pollute the blood of the covenant, by using it as an unholy thing. The result of which doctrine is this: It is bread, and it is Christ's body. It is bread in substance, Christ in the sacrament; and Christ is as really given to all that are truly disposed, as the symbols are; each as they can; Christ as Christ can be given; the bread and wine as they can; and to the same real purposes, to which they are designed; and Christ does as really nourish and sanctify the soul, as the elements do the body.
Here was the distinctively Reformed 'spiritual and heavenly eating', also found in Ussher's 1622 work Answers to a Jesuit:
That in the receiving of the blessed Sacrament we are to distinguish between the outward and the inward action of the communicant. In the outward, with our bodily mouth we receive really the visible elements of bread and wine; in the inward, we do by faith really receive the body and blood of our Lord; that is to say, we are truly and indeed made partakers of Christ crucified, to the spiritual strengthening of our inward man.
Taylor and Ussher also both share the Reformed interpretation of John 6 and its relationship to the Sacrament. To again quote from Ussher's Answers to a Jesuit:
by the eating of the flesh of Christ and the drinking of his blood, there is not here meant an external eating or drinking with the mouth and throat of the body ... but an internal and a spiritual, effected by a lively faith and the quickening Spirit of Christ in the soul of the believer ... this spiritual feeding upon the body and blood of Christ is not to be found in the Sacrament only, but also out of the Sacrament.
Taylor likewise declared of John 6, "Christ does not speak of sacramental or oral manducation, or of the sacrament at all". As with Ussher, he saw the participation in Christ of which John 6 speaks as have a much wider reference than the Sacrament:
It cannot therefore be understood of oral manducation, but of spiritual, and of eating Christ by faith: that is, receiving him by an instrument or action evangelical. For receiving Christ by faith includes any way of communicating with his body: by baptism, by holy desires, by obedience, by love, by worthy receiving of the holy sacrament; and it signifies no otherwise, but as if Christ had said, 'To all, that believe in me and obey, I will become the author of life and salvation:' now because this is not done by all that receive the sacrament, not by unworthy communicants, who yet eat the symbols (according to us), and eat Christ's body (according to their doctrine), it is unanswerably certain, that Christ here spake of spiritual manducation, not of sacramental.
In another shared Reformed eucharistic emphasis, Ussher and Taylor both declare the significance of the senses and reason in understanding our feeding upon Christ in the Supper. In the words of Ussher:
We are, therefore, here put to prove that bread is bread, and wine is wine; a matter, one would think, that easily might be determined by common sense.
Taylor likewise:
That in Scripture it is as plainly affirmed to be bread, as it is called Christ's body. Now then, because it cannot be both in the proper and natural sense, but one of them must be figurative and tropical; since both of the appellatives arc equally affirmed, is it not notorious, that, in this case, we ought to give judgment on that side, which we are prompted to by common sense?
It is very clear indeed that Taylor and Ussher shared and together expounded a Reformed understanding of the presence and gift of Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
What, however, the heated controversy between Laudians and Reformed Conformists that has come to be called the 'altar wars'? While Taylor and Ussher, Laudians and Reformed Conformists, shared a Reformed understanding of the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, did they not robustly disagree on the nature of the eucharistic sacrifice? Taylor, after all, in the late 1630s published a tract entitled On the Reverence due to the Altar. Ussher, by contrast, led those Reformed Conformist divines who in 1641, as a Westminster gathering, decried and rejected "The turning of the holy Table Altarwise, and most commonly calling it an Altar".
That there were ceremonial disagreements between Laudians and Reformed Conformists is obvious. But what is not at all obvious is that such disagreements exposed profound theological differences. In this particular case - 'altar or table?' - I think the evidence overwhelmingly suggests not. Consider, for example, Taylor's account in On the Reverence due to the Altar, of the nature of the eucharistic sacrifice:
the Altar be highly Holy, because it is Christ's Memorial, there we commemorate his Death, and passion in the dreadful, and mysterious way that himself with greatest mysteriousness appointed ... do this for my memorial ... the Christian Altar is placed, and our Sacrifice commemorated.
The emphasis is entirely on commemoration of the Lord's Sacrifice. This would be a consistent theme in Taylor's writing. In 1649, in The Great Exemplar, he would say of the Sacrament:
it is a commemoration and representment of Christ's death, so it is a commemorative sacrifice ... a commemorating rite and representment according to his holy institution.
In 1660, in The Worthy Communicant, the same understanding is again encountered:
Now what Christ does in heaven he hath commanded us to do on earth, that is, to represent his death, to commemorate this sacrifice, by humble prayer and thankful record.
Taylor's emphasis on the Eucharist as commemorative sacrifice also reflects wider Laudian thought, as seen in the Laudian Canons of 1640:
And we declare that this situation of the holy Table, doth not imply that it is, or ought to be esteemed a true and proper Altar, whereon Christ is again really sacrificed: but it is, and may be called an Altar by us, in that sense in which the Primitive Church called it an Altar, and in no other.
It is against this background that we must read the statement by Ussher and the Reformed Conformist divines of 1641:
Some have published, that there is a proper Sacrifice in the Lords Supper, to exhibit Christs death in the Postfact, as there was a sacrifice to prefigure in the old Law in the Antefact, and therefore that we have a true Altar, and therefore not only metaphorically so called.
'A proper Sacrifice ... a true Altar': such was not the view of Taylor or the Laudian mainstream. In fact, as we have seen, the relevant canon of 1640 made it explicit that the Christian altar was not "a true and proper Altar". It is also worth noting that Stephen Hampton's summary, in his study of Jacobean and Caroline Reformed Conformist thought:
Reformed orthodoxy had plenty of room for sacrificial language, so long as that sacrifice was understood in a representative or commemorative sense.
Somewhat ironically, Hampton's commentary on this matter fails to recognise that this was also the Laudian understanding. The crucial point, however, is that Taylor's language of 'commemorative sacrifice' was well within the bounds the "Reformed orthodoxy" expounded by Ussher.
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