One Anglican standard eucharistic order: the historic centrality of 1662

... it stretches the evidence to suggest that there is in fact one Anglican standard eucharistic order.

The words are from a fine essay by Ben Crosby reviewing ACNA's BCP 2019.  Ben points to two streams of Eucharistic thinking in classical Anglican liturgy:

the Scots-American prayer of consecration (which one finds in the US 1928 BCP) and the English prayer of consecration of 1662 (which also appears in the Canadian 1962) are not, in fact, the same. While much of the text is identical between the two prayers, their ordering is significantly different, and the Scots-American prayer includes an epiclesis, or invocation of the Holy Spirit, and an oblation, or offering, of the elements which the English prayer does not.

Leave aside, for the time being, that for the vast majority of Anglicans until the mid-20th century, 1662 was the normative Eucharistic order, with the Scotch-US prayer of consecration an oddity.  Even this, however, fails to fully capture the much greater consensus amongst Anglicans regarding Eucharistic doctrine and practice.

To begin with, can we really refer to a unified Scotch-US tradition regarding the prayer of consecration?  The Concordat between the Scottish bishops and Seabury stated "Bishop Seabury would endeavour all he can" to make an American liturgy "conformable" to "the pattern of the Church of Scotland".  Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Scotch liturgy was the invocation of the Holy Spirit in the prayer of consecration (from the 1764 Scotch Communion Office):

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and of thy almighty goodness vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy word and holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine, that they may become the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son. 

Note, however, the contrast with the invocation in PECUSA's 1789 Holy Communion:

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us; and, of thy almighty goodness, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify, with thy Word and Holy Spirit, these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine; that we, receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood.

PECUSA conformed the invocation to the norm of 1662, with a distinctly different emphasis to the Scotch liturgy.  This most controversial aspect of the Scotch rite thus drew much closer to 1662, crucially petitioning for that petitioned by 1662.  Which might lead us to suggest that the Scotch rite, rather than appearing as the fount of a separate stream of Eucharistic thinking in classical Anglican liturgy, is actually something of a rather insignificant liturgical backwater, with 1662 normative even when revised as in PECUSA 1789.

This aspect of the Scotch rite was subject to sustained criticism from within the High Church tradition throughout the 18th century.  I have previously pointed to Daniel Waterland's critique.  It is also worth considering the refusal of the Non-usagers within the Non-Juror movement to embrace such an invocation in the prayer of consecration.  Charles Leslie, noting how the 1662 petition - "may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood" - "does not satisfy some", was stinging in his criticism of the proposal to reintroduce the 1549 form which became standard in Non-juror liturgies, including Scotland:

And where is the difference? Ours seem more express, “To “eat the body, and drink the blood;” which, no doubt, is meant spiritually, according to John vi. 63. - But they would have some wonderful transmutation in the very elements, which has introduced transubstantiation.

Even when, in PECUSA, the (much modified) invocation was placed in the prayer of consecration, it was quite clear that the normative boundaries of 1662 were retained.  Within those boundaries was the Virtualism of some within the High Church tradition, and seen in Seabury interpreting the invocation in the explicitly Virtualist terms:

For after the bread and wine are set apart, to be the symbols of Christ's body and blood, and after we have solemnly offered them to God, we then proceed to invoke on them the descent of the Holy Ghost, to sanctify them, and to make them, not indeed in substance, but in power and efficacy, the body and blood of Christ. 

The doctrinal norms of 1662 shaped classical Anglican liturgy even when the form of the liturgy was altered.  To refer to "one standard Anglican eucharistic order", therefore, can be appropriate precisely because 1662 continued to determine and shape doctrine in other rites.

Ironically, this could be true even of the Scotch liturgy.  Despite its Non-juror innovations, defences of the Scotch liturgy insisted that it conformed to the Reformed doctrine of 1662 (even if critics - including High Church critics - thought otherwise).  Thus Bishop Alexander Jolly:

WHEN the real truth of our Saviour's presence in the Eucharist—not in the substance of His humanity, which the heavens must receive till the times of the restitution of all things, but in the real Presence of His divine power and virtue by the Holy Ghost;—when this most salutary and saving truth began to revive out of its darkened and obscured state, in the sixteenth century, the doctrine of transubstantiation, which had usurped its place, appeared particularly monstrous to the awakened sense; and rather than embrace it again, after they had seen its deformity, many holy men and women em braced the stake, and died in tormenting flames.

As to the invocation itself, his claims for it are very modest indeed:

perfecting the consecration, and standing as a guard and antidote against the misinterpretation of our Saviour's words. Yet that prayer, as it was expressed in the first reformed Book, plainly precluded the imagination of any change of substance, by its supplicating for the sanctification of the bread and cup, not the change of them into the substantial body and blood—utterly incapable as they were of any additional sanctification, being already holy in infinite perfection.

Critical of the revision of 1552, yet affirming that it contained "the primitive doctrine, however dimly", he regards the work of the 1662 revisers as a "matter of congratulation" and favourably quotes Jebb on their work:

Those wise and pious men had a deep reverence for catholic antiquity; and, from this reverence, they omitted no fair opportunity of giving prominence to the great principles, which constitute the tie between the Church of England and the purest ages of Catholicity.

Finally, perhaps the most significant indication of his determination that the Scotch liturgy does not depart from the doctrine of 1662 is his declaration that it conforms to the teaching of Article XXV:

This bread, therefore, so blessed, and declared to be Christ's body, is much more than a bare representation, or mere figure. It is, as the Church, taught by Scripture, declares, in her 25th Article of Religion, an “effectual sign,” in virtue and effect, though not in substance, the thing which it represents. It is bread quickened by the Spirit, who is the Giver of life,—that Divine Person, who renders effectual to our spiritual health and soul's salvation, all that our Redeemer has done and suffered for us, and by the means of His own appointment. 

He continues by stating that the "purpose" of the invocation also coheres with the need for worthy reception:

The virtue is certainly in the life-giving Spirit, which is communicated to the bread and cup in their consecration, and operates in them, and with them, as means of grace and instruments of salvation; making them the nourishing food of our souls, provided they be in good habit to receive it.

The distinctiveness of the Scotch liturgy, then, seems to be rather illusory, conforming as it does to the same doctrinal commitments of 1662, with its invocation having no meaning beyond the Virtualism which was entirely compatible with the English Communion Office.  This being so, even with the diversity represented by the Scotch and PECUSA Communion Offices, there is a clear case for the 1662 rite being understood as the "standard eucharistic order" for Anglicans until the mid-20th century: standard for the vast majority in terms of its form, and standard for all - until the Oxford Movement rejected what Nockles describes as the "near consensus ... regarding eucharistic doctrine" - in doctrinal terms.