"All the benefits of that sacrifice": an 1826 High Church account of the Eucharist
In his sixth lecture, Vaux set forth a traditional High Church account of the Eucharist as a 'feast upon a sacrifice', drawing out the significance of this description against "the Hoadleian theory". It illustrates the vitality and depth of High Church sacramental theology in the late Georgian Church and the decade before the Oxford Movement.
It cannot therefore, as has been contended by Hoadley and his followers, be a sufficient account of the observance, to consider it as a simple memorial, or bare act of commemoration ...
It is therefore of his body, as offered and sacrificed for us upon the cross, that he enjoins us to eat; it is of his blood, as poured out in atonement of transgression, that we are commanded to drink, in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ...
We should have little cause to rejoice in the death of our Lord, considered as a mere martyr to truth; though we might in consequence venerate his memory, and feel grateful for such an instance of his disinterested love to us. But viewed in its true light, as the great sacrifice of atonement and peace, a very different foundation for mutual congratulation is laid, and the propriety of commemorating the death of our Lord, as an eucharistic service, becomes at once apparent. And hence too we derive, with clearness and facility, the most important benefits annexed to a participation in the rite. For hence, if the previous reasoning be correct, it inevitably follows, that in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, all the benefits of that sacrifice, of which it is an inseparable appendage, are communicated to the faithful participant.
... it is, in fact, a feast upon the body and blood of Christ, symbolically represented by the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and considered as the sacrifice of atonement, redemption, and peace-offering for the whole race of mankind; communicating to those, who faithfully partake of it, under this idea and in conformity with the injunction of their Lord, remission of sin and all other benefits of his passion ...
If the sacrament of the Lord's Supper be rightly considered as a feast upon a sacrifice, it will follow, that in it are communicated generally to the participants all the benefits of that sacrifice, of which they become partakers in its due celebration. And the sacrifice of Christ, being a sacrifice of atonement and peace-offering, pardon of sin and reconciliation to God, would seem to be the immediate fruits of a participation in it, the primary and fundamental benefit annexed to the ordinance; while our restoration to the hope of eternal life, and the assurance of the aid of the Holy Spirit to enable us to secure the verification of our hope, would seem to be the necessary consequence of the reconciliation thus effected.
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