'The general absolution': a 1796 Prayer Book Commentary and the Sacrament of Communion as absolution

Continuing with his account of the doctrine of Absolution in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume I (1796), John Shepherd turns to the Holy Communion:

The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was likewise an absolution, and was called το τελειον, the perfection of a Christian. To all who had never fallen into the greater sins, which required public penance, it was a general absolution. It was likewise an absolution from the penalties of excommunication.

To faithfully partake of the Lord's Supper is "a general absolution". This, Shepherd notes, was a patristic understanding:

To penitents at the point of death, it was, what the Latin fathers call viaticum, or provision for the passage from this life to the future. In case the sick penitent recovered, he was obliged to perform the rest of the prescribed penance: at least he was to receive the imposition of hands at the altar, which was accompanied with prayers for his absolution. But if he died, the Eucharist was deemed sufficient. In a time of persecution, an aged man of blameless manners, Serapion, had been prevailed upon to sacrifice to an idol. He often sued for pardon. At length falling sick he sent for a priest to absolve him in the night, the priest was likewise sick and could not go: but sent by the messenger a portion of the Eucharist. It was put into the mouth of Serapion, who immediately expired. This story is recorded by Eusebius (Ecc. Hift. L. VI. C. 44.) from Dionysius of Alexandria, whose observation upon it is, that God evidently preserved him alive, till he might be reconciled to Christ, and acknowledged by him for the many good works which he had done. 

The Eucharist, then, reconciles us to Christ. It is for this that we petition in the Prayer of Humble Access:

Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

It is this which is, of course, proclaimed in the Words of Institution:

for this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.

And for this we give thanks in the post-Communion Prayer of Oblation:

most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion.

When, therefore, I faithfully receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion, I receive "general absolution", for this is what it is to be "very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son". In his discussion of the Eucharist bestowing the remission of sins, John Jewel quotes Ambrose:

He that eateth this bread shall not hunger: it is the food of those that are holy. He shall not die the death of a sinner; because it is the remission of sins.

For Jewel, this was a crucial aspect of the doctrine of Article XXIX. The Eucharist is an absolution to those who - in the defining words of the absolution at Morning and Evening Prayer - "truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel". 

Shepherd, of course, would be in agreement. His focus here, however, is elsewhere. The fact the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is a "general absolution" again demonstrates the "purely ministerial" role of the ordained, for it is God alone who forgives:

In the absolution of baptism, and of the Eucharist, the office of the priest is to administer the outward and visible form.

The priest is not a mediator who bestows absolution in either Baptism or the Lord's Supper. The presbyter, rather, administers and - to use a term from the Ordinal - 'dispenses' the Sacraments: the work of grace accompanying the Sacraments is that of God alone. Shepherd's words bring to mind Cranmer's description of the ministry of the priest:

Therefore Christ made no such difference between the priest and the layman, that the priest should make oblation and sacrifice of Christ for the layman, and eat the Lord’s Supper from him all alone, and distribute and apply it as him liketh. Christ made no such difference; but the difference that is between the priest and the layman in this matter is only in the ministration; that the priest, as a common minister of the Church, doth minister and distribute the Lord’s Supper unto others, and others receive it at his hands.

Both Cranmer and Shepherd point, I think, to a key aspect of the Anglican experience of ordained ministry over centuries: it is not sacerdotal or cultic, but pastoral. Thus in the ministration of the Sacraments, the priest administers "the outward and visible form". The "inward part, or thing signified" is not the priest's work, but that of God only. This has had significant implications - positive and healthy - for how Anglicans view their clergy. There is "no such difference between the priest and the layman" that the former belongs to a sacramental, mediatorial caste apart from the laity. The priest is but "a common minister of the Church".