'At the offering of the bread and wine': interpreting the rubric regarding the bread and wine at the offertory

And when there is a Communion, the Priest shall then place upon the Table so much Bread and Wine as he shall think sufficient.

This rubric in the 1662 Holy Communion is not to be found in the 1559 rite. Last week, we saw how John Shepherd - in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - rightly emphasised the significance of the offering of alms in the 1662 Holy Communion. This, however, does not end the offertory. The above rubric, Shepherd states, indicates that the bread and wine are also a part of the offertory:

This Rubric was added at the last review in 1661, and at the same time was inserted in the prayer  following, an expression adapted to the particular action here enjoined, the words and oblations, being intended, as I conceive, more immediately to refer to the bread and wine, and the new order about placing them upon the table. In the ancient Church this act was performed with great solemnity, and though there be something improper in the prayers appointed by the Missals, to be said at the offering of the bread and wine, and no form of prayer is prescribed by our Church, yet the action itself is not to be neglected. The order that the priest, and no other shall place the bread and wine upon the table, and that he shall then do it, is positive; and it is, ordinarily speaking, capable of being complied with by every person, who has the honour to stand ministering at the Lord's table.

It seems difficult to fault Shepherd's reading and rationale. Admitting the difficulties associated with "the prayers appointed by the Missals" - probably a reference to suggestions both of merit and of an unacceptable account of eucharistic sacrifice - Shepherd sees in the 1662 rubric a form of the common patristic practice. Just as the alms are offered for God's service - without any claim whatsoever that this is meritorious - so too are the bread and wine, likewise fruits of creation, offered for the celebration of the Eucharist. 

A footnote indicates that this is confirmed by another 1662 addition, that of "and oblations" to 1559's "accept our alms":

If the alms only were meant, there was no adequate reason for the addition of the words "and oblations"; for on this supposition nothing more is expressed than was fully and clearly expressed before. Again, does not the disjunctive or, in the marginal Rubric imply, a distinction between alms and oblations.

That said, we might suggest that Shepherd's reading of both the rubric and the additional phrase in the Prayer for the Church Militant - that they can be understood as referring to an offering of bread and wine alongside the alms - is legitimate but not necessarily required. There is a perhaps surprising source of support for such a cautious interpretation: the Laudian Jeremy Taylor. In his Communion Office (published during the Interregnum, in 1658), Taylor has the following rubric and prayer:

There shall be made a Collection for the Poor, by the Deacon or Clerk, while the Minister reads some of these Sentences, or makes an exhortation to Charity and Alms ...

If there be none fit to gather, the Minister himself shall gather it: and when he hath done or received it from the hand of him that gathered it, let him in an humble manner present it to God, laying it on the Communion Table , secretly and devoutly saying,

Lord, accept the Oblation and Alms of thy people: and remember thy servants for this thing, at the day of Judgment.

It seems clear that Taylor is here using the phrase "the Oblation and Alms of thy people" to refer to the offering of alms alone. Similarly, in The Great Exemplar, we see the same use of 'oblation':

and it were also an excellent act of Christian communion, and agreeable to the practice of the church in all ages, to make an oblation to God for the poor.

Taylor's usage, therefore, seems to suggest that 1662's "alms and oblations" does not necessarily have to refer to the bread and wine alongside the alms, but could refer to the alms alone. Alongside Shepherd's admission that "no form of prayer is prescribed by our Church" regarding the bread and wine at the offertory, this could reassure our low church and evangelical friends, who firmly reject the idea of the offertory also including bread and wine.

On the other hand, however, there were pre-1662 Laudian voices who quite clearly understood that the offertory included the bread and wine. Cosin, in his Notes, states that in patristic Eastern rites, when the bread and wine were placed "upon the altar", "the bishop offereth in the name of the whole congregation". Likewise, Sparrow in his Rationale, again looking to the early Christian East, declares:

though the oblations there offered were not yet Consecrated, yet were they there fitted and prepared for Consecration, and were types of the body and blood of Christ.

Mindful that both Cosin and Sparrow influenced the 1662 revision, we can assume that their reading of both the rubric and 'oblations' conformed to their view of patristic practice.

Shepherd's 1801 work, pre-dating the Tractarians by over three decades, suggests that this understanding of the relevant rubric as part of the offertory, and that the phrase "alms and oblations" referred to the bread and wine for the Sacrament, was entirely mainstream in 18th century Anglicanism. Shepherd's wider commentary is entirely conventional and devoid of any 'high-flying' Nonjuror notions. Indeed, in a footnote, Shepherd quotes the Nonjuror Collier - a leading Usager - rather dismissively describing 'oblations' as meaning "no more than the offering of the unconsecrated bread and wine", whereas the Usager focus was on the oblation of the consecrated elements. This being so, it appears that there was nothing unconventional or controversial about Shepherd's interpretation.

One final piece of evidence also needs to be considered. The 1662 rubric is significantly more minimalist than that in the 1637 Scottish Communion Office:

And the Presbyter shall then offer up and place the bread and wine prepared for the Sacrament upon the Lords Table.

If the explicit intention of the 1662 revision was to necessarily understand the offertory to include the bread and wine then it would have been obvious to follow the wording of the 1637 Scottish liturgy. If, on the other hand, there was no intention at all to allow an understanding that the bread and wine were part of the offertory, why include any part of the Scottish rubric, knowing its meaning in that rite?

Perhaps the point of the 1662 rubric and phrase is they can can be interpreted in either way. The minimalist nature of the rubric and the absence of an accompanying offertory prayer, with the phrase in the Prayer for the Church Militant open to either construction, almost suggests that there was some intention for this to be the case. 1662, after all, was a form of common prayer and administration of the Sacraments to be "well accepted and approved by all sober, peaceable, and truly conscientious Sons of the Church of England" - some of whom regarded the bread and wine as part of the offertory, and some who did not. That the rubric and phrase are open to either construction fulfils, therefore, the aspiration of the 1662 revisers:

Our general aim therefore in this undertaking was, not to gratify this or that party in any their unreasonable demands; but to do that, which to our best understandings we conceived might most tend to the preservation of Peace and Unity in the Church.