"The mediation of these elements": Another example of Lutheran tendencies in the Reformed eucharistic theology of Andrewes

Another example from Andrewes of a 1598 sermon on the Sacraments which holds together Lutheran and Reformed perspectives. Firstly, a more Lutheran emphasis on the significance of the elements which rather contrasts with Calvin's insistence that in the Sacraments the Lord cannot "be affixed to any earthly creatures" (Institutes IV.17.19):

Why doth not the blood of Christ immediately incorporate us into the Church, without the mediation of water in baptism, and drinking of Christ's blood in the Lords Supper?

... He useth this course to shew his power; which appears hereby to be great, in that albeit these elements of water, and bread and wine be weak and beggarly elements, yet by his power he exalts them and makes them effectual means, to incorporate us into his body, and so set us in that estate wherein we may be saved ...

Now the mediation of these elements are no less necessary to preserve and keep us as lively members of the mystical body of Christ than bread and water are to maintain natural life.

This, however, is side by side with the characteristically Reformed use of sign and seal:

Therefore is water used in the Sacrament of our regeneration ... The juice and nourishment that we suck out of the meat digested, is that which nourisheth our life; and therefore the element of wine is used in the Sacrament of our nutrition, that is after we are born anew and washed with water in baptism, to signify our new birth: then we must receive bread and wine in the Lords Supper, to confirm our faith in the body and blood of Christ, whereby we are sealed unto eternal life.

As mentioned on Friday, while the coherence and consistency of this stance may be questioned (although its coherence and consistency surely can be defended), holding such Lutheran and Reformed emphases together - this middle way between Wittenberg and Geneva - has the strength of ensuring that the relationship between sign and thing signified is understood as being 'without confusion, without change, without separation, without division'.

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