"At the feast of the Eucharist": the meaning of High Church Receptionism

In his Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Rochester, 1800, Horsley referred to one particular work on the Sacrament of the Eucharist:

It is with much satisfaction that I recommend to your perusal a work not long since published upon this sublime subject, by a learned divine of this diocese, under the title of “Considerations on the Nature and Efficacy of the Lord's Supper.”

The author was Vicesimus Knox (ordained deacon in 1775, priest in 1776), and the work in question was published in 1799. It is another example of the rich Eucharistic doctrine present in the late Georgian Church:

Man, through Divine mercy, is rendered, in the Eucharist, a partaker of the Divine nature. A food to the soul is supplied by the Sacrament, in consequence of which it is nourished, and arrives at that wonderful improvement in goodness and purity, which resembles in kind, though not in degree, the Divine; hence the Eucharist has been named, by great divines, THE SACRAMENT OF NUTRITION ... the principle of life will be extinct without this food; and this food is afforded in the greatest plenty, at the feast of the Eucharist ; a feast for ever to be repeated after the one great sacrifice.

... though the bread continues bread still, and the wine is but wine, yet, whatever our Lord intended, is verily and indeed received by the faithful, without the necessity of transubstantiation; to all intents and purposes of affording spiritual nourishment to their souls; sustentation of the heavenly life, and union with the divine nature. This spiritual nourishment is that which is called grace, the grace of sanctification. The real presence is not indeed in the sacramental elements, but it is in the worthy receiver; man becomes Christ's by this glorious privilege of divine union, through the Spirit's influence, and this constitutes the PRIME benefit of the Sacrament; which is undoubtedly the Holy Ghost's indwelling or assistance.

Of particular significance is the fact that Knox regards the Receptionism of Hooker's famous dictum to lead not to a low, 'memorialist' view of the Sacrament, but to this dramatic and exalted understanding: "sustentation of the heavenly life, and union with the divine nature". It was not in spite of but precisely because of High Church Receptionism that this tradition rejoiced in the "the feast of the Eucharist".

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