'He is virtually present': a Laudian's Reformed eucharistic theology

Our journey through The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), by Henry Charles Groves, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland, concludes today. The work, as has hopefully been seen in the various posts, is a splendid example of Old High critique of Tractarian eucharistic teaching. 

We end with words from Thomas Jackson, born in 1579, a chaplain to the 'Arminian' Bishop Neile, becoming a leading anti-Calvinist theologian at Oxford, one of the Durham House Group, and appointed Dean of Peterborough in 1635. When Laud was challenged for appointing "popishly inclined" clergy, he countered by invoking the name of Jackson as representative of "divers good and orthodox" appointments.

Jackson, in other words, was characteristic of a second-tier of Laudian clergy, not in the episcopate or at court, but influential, through their place in the universities and cathedrals, in how the movement (insofar as 'Laudianism' was a 'movement') shaped and influenced the Caroline Church of England. What was the sacramental theology of Laudians in the universities and cathedrals? Jackson's writings assist in answering the question. What is more, as with many Laudians, Jackson's anti-Calvinist credentials reach back into the reign of James I/VI and thus pre-date 'Laudianism'. As such, his writings testify to the eucharistic theology of this longer tradition of anti-Calvinism within the Jacobean Church. 

Two of the extracts from Jackson provided by Groves are particularly revealing, quite explicitly indicating that Jackson the Laudian adhered to Reformed eucharistic teaching. Here we see Jackson offering a standard Reformed critique of Roman and Lutheran eucharistic doctrine, and point to Calvin as giving voice to a patristic sacramental understanding:

This present efficacy of Christ's Body and Blood upon our souls, or real communication of both, I find as a truth unquestionable amongst the antient Fathers, and as a Catholic confession. The modern Lutheran and the modern Romanist have fallen into their several errors concerning Christ's Presence in the Sacrament, from a common ignorance; neither of them conceive, nor are they willing to conceive, how Christ's Body and Blood should have any real operation upon our souls, unless they were so locally present, as they might agere per contactum, that is, either so purge our souls by oral manducation, as physical medicines do our bodies, (which is the pretended use of transubstantiation, ) or so quicken our souls, as sweet odours do the animal spirits, which were the most probable use of the Lutheran consubstantiation. Both the Lutherans and Papists avouch the authority of the ancient Church for their opinions, but most injuriously. For more than we have said, or more than Calvin doth stiffly maintain against Zuinglius and other sacramentaries, cannot be inferred from any speeches of the truly orthodoxal or ancient Fathers.

In the second extract, Jackson uses the 'virtualism' of Reformed eucharistic theology to affirm that while Christ is "locally absent" - because "His human nature [is] now placed in His [heavenly] sanctuary" - He is yet, by faith (again, a Reformed emphasis), "virtually present":

We may consecrate the elements of bread and wine, and administer them, so consecrated, as undoubted pledges of His Body and Blood, by which the new covenant was sealed, and the general pardon purchased; yet, unless He grant some actual influence of His Spirit, and suffer such virtue to go out from His human nature now placed in His sanctuary, as He once did unto the woman that was cured of her issue of blood - unless this virtue do as immediately reach our souls as it did her body, we do not really receive His Body and Blood with the elements of bread and wine; we do not so receive them as to have our sins remitted or dissolved by them; we do not, by receiving them, become of His flesh and of His bones; we gain no degree of real union with Him, which is the sole use or fruit of His real presence. Christ might be locally present, as He was with many here on earth, and yet not really present. But with whomsoever He is virtually present, that is, to whomsoever He communicates the influence of His Body and Blood by His Spirit, He is really present with them, though locally absent from them. Thus He was really present with the woman which was cured of her bloody issue, by touching the hem of His garment. But not so really present with the multitude that did throng and press upon Him, that were locally more present with Him ...

And the reason why she alone did more immediately touch Him than any of the rest, was, because virtue of healing did go out from Him to her alone. It is true then for our Saviour saith it - her faith did make her whole; and yet she was made whole by the virtue which went out from Him: this was the fruit or effect of her faith, or rather the reward or consequent of her faith. In like sort, as many as are healed from their sins, whether by the sacrament of baptism or the Eucharist, are healed by faith relatively or instrumentally. Faith is as the mouth or organ by which we receive the medicine; but it is the virtual influence derived from the Body and Blood of Christ which properly or efficiently doth cure our souls, and dissolve the works of Satan in us.

Jackson, therefore, epitomises how Laudians adhered to a quite standard Reformed eucharistic theology. As such, his words bring us back to a comment in the opening post in this series: both illustrations accompanying this post shared the same doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. The first illustration (and do read Drew Keane's superb article on its background and meaning) can be seen as embodying a Reformed Conformist sacramental piety. The second illustration is, of course, a celebration of a Laudian sacramental piety. Reading Jackson leaves us in little doubt of a central theme of Groves' work: despite Tractarian wishful thinking and selective quotations, the Laudians belonged to - indeed, were forceful and leading advocates of - the Reformed eucharistic consensus in the Jacobean, Caroline, and Restoration Church of England.