"A real spiritual banquet": Waterland's defence of Cudworth on the Sacrament

From Daniel Waterland's A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, as laid down in Scripture and Antiquity (1737), Chapters XI and XII, a defence of Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth's understanding of the Eucharist as 'a feast upon a sacrifice' (the mainstream 18th century High Church view). Waterland here particularly addresses the criticisms of Cudworth voiced by John Johnson's The Unbloody Sacrifice (1714) and Lutheran theologians.

It is further pleaded [quoting Johnson], that Dr, Cudworth’s notion seems "much of a piece with that conceit of the Calvinists, that we receive the natural body of Christ in the Eucharist, though as far distant from us as heaven is from the earth". But that conceit, as it is called, is a very sober truth, if understood of receiving the natural body into closer mystical union, as explained in a preceding chapter ...

For how could Dr. Cudworth be supposed to make the Eucharist a bare memorial, when he professedly contends for a real spiritual banquet, a real feasting upon all the benefits of the grand sacrifice? Is partaking of the sacrifice nothing more than commemorating? Or is the feast ever the less real, for being spiritual and heavenly, and reaching both to soul and body; both to this world and the world to come? It is plain enough that Dr. Cudworth ’s notion is no way favourable to the figurists or memorialists, but much otherwise ...

In the year 1642, the no less learned Dr. Cudworth printed his well-known treatise on the same subject; wherein he as plainly denies any proper or any material sacrifice in the Eucharist; but admits of a symbolical feast upon a sacrifice, that is to say, upon the grand sacrifice itself commemorated under certain symbols. This appears to have been the prevailing doctrine of our Divines, both before and since.

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Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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