'That Christ's body and blood may preserve all the receivers thereof': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and the words of administration
Quoting his opponent, Lindsay noted how he alleged that because kneeling to receive the Sacrament was accompanied by words of administration, this replaced the Words of Institution:
The fift breach of the institution made by kneeling is, the altering of the enunciatiue words of Christ, This is my body which is broken for you: This is my bloud which is shed for you, in a prayer, To blesse our body and soule, saying, The body of our Lord Iesus Christ, &c.
This was no new debate. Hooker had responded to a similar criticism of the liturgy and practice of the Church of England by Cartwright, offering a robust defence of the words of administration:
seinge God by sacramentes doth applie in particular unto everie mans person the grace which him selfe hath provided for the benefit of all mandkine, there is no cause why administeringe the sacramentes wee should forbeare to expresse that in our formes of speech which by his word and gospell teacheth all to believe (LEP V.68.2).
Before echoing Hooker's defence of the words of administration, however, Lindsay also refuted the notion that they displaced the Words of Institution. In doing so, he provided a classical Augustinian understanding - common to Reformed thought - that "the word is added to the element, and there results the Sacrament":
This also is a calumny, for these words wee vse not in stead of the sacramentall words, because then there should be no Sacrament at all: for by the sacramentall word, This is my body, the bread is made the Sacrament of Christs body: and by this word, This Cuppe is the New Testament in my bloud, the Cuppe is made the Sacrament of his Bloud; and without this word, whereby the will of our Sauiour is declared, which makes the Sacrament, all our prayers and wishes should serue to no vse.
Having refuted the notion that the Words of Institution were replaced by the words of administration spoken to each communicant kneeling, Lindsay, after Hooker, then expounded the meaning of those words of administration:
It is true, after the Sacrament is made by the sacramentall word, these, or the like words are vttered by the Pastor at the deliuery of the Elements, whereby the generall prayer and blessing, wherewith the action beginnes, is applyed particularly to euery Communicant, and they admonished, and instructed to apply it to themselues. This is the dutie both of the Pastor and of the people: for as in the prayer it is our duetie to wish in generall, that all who are to participate the bodie and bloud of Iesus, may be preserued thereby to euerlasting life: so it is our duetie to wish the same to each one seuerally at the instant when he is receiuing. And as it is the Peoples dutie, when the prayer is conceiued for all, to wish that Christs body and bloud may preserue all the receiuers thereof: so, when they receiue seuerally, to wish, that themselues in particular may be preserued thereby: For, if this be one of the principall ends, wherefore they come to receiue, can they receiue worthily without this or the like wish? No man without blasphemie can call this an idle battologie [i.e. a vain repetition].
It seems quite clear that Lindsay was guided by Hooker's defence of the words of administration, both in the extract above from the Lawes and as Hooker went on to state:
the reason taken from the use of the Sacraments is that they are instruments of grace unto everie particular man may with good congruitie leade the Church to frame accordingly her words in administration of Sacraments, because they easily admit this forme.
What is obviously apparent here, of course, is that both Lindsay and his opponent are familiar with the words of administration also known by Hooker from the 1559 Book of Common Prayer:
in a prayer, To blesse our body and soule, saying, The body of our Lord Iesus Christ, &c. (the opponent);
these, or the like words are vttered by the Pastor at the deliuery of the Elements ... that all who are to participate the bodie and bloud of Iesus, may be preserued thereby to euerlasting life (Linsday).
These words were also known in Scotland from the liturgy that was proposed and drafted seemingly in 1616. This was in contrast to Knox's Book of Common Order, which had no words of administration. While the 1616 liturgy had been drafted, at the direction of the General Assembly and at the request of James VI, the controversy provoked by the agitation against the Articles of Perth meant that canons requiring its use were not adopted. That said, the evidence from this exchange in Lindsay's work does suggest that it (or something very similar) was in use, for that liturgy - while its Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper was significantly different to BCP 1559 - used the 1559 words of administration.
This practice also helps us to again place the Jacobean Church of Scotland in a broader context. We might consider that many of the contemporary Reformed liturgies in continental Europe used words of distribution when administering the Bread and Cup. Thus, the Jacobean Scottish practice defended by Lindsay could be viewed as placing the Church of Scotland within the continental Reformed mainstream.
Kneeling to receive, however, was not a common practice amongst the continental Reformed. Placing the two practices together - words of administration as communicants knelt to receive - leads us to consider the Jacobean Church of Scotland in the context of the Churches of the Three Kingdoms. Words of administration said to kneeling communicants was a practice shared by these Churches of James' realms. In all three of those realms, this was how the Churches administered the holy Sacrament.
(The first picture is of a late 17th century drawing of Brechin, Lindsay's See.)
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