"I come to God's Altar": Brevint on the sacrificial nature of the holy Eucharist
Of particular note is Brevint's willingness to describe the "sacramental mystery" as a presentation of the Lamb's offering "as effectually and truly" as it was upon the Cross:
The other time most favourable and proper, next to that of his real passion, is that of the holy Communion, which ... is a sacramental passion, where, though the body be broken, and the blood shed, but by way of representative mystery, yet both are as effectually and as truly offered for our own use, if we go to it worthily, as when that holy and divine Lamb did offer Himself the first time ...
Therefore, whensoever Christians approach to this dreadful mystery, and to the Lamb of God, lying and sacrificed, (as some say that the holy Nicene Council speaks,) upon the holy table, it concerns their main interest, in point of salvation, as well as in other duties, to take a special care not to lame and deprive the grand Sacrifice of its own due attendance; but to behave themselves in that manner, that, as both the principal and additional sacrifices were consumed by the same fire, and went up towards heaven in the same flame, so, Jesus Christ and all his members may jointly appear before God; this in a sacramental mystery, these with their real bodies and souls, offering themselves, at the same time, in the same place, and by the same oblation.
Similarly, Brevint is prepared to describe the holy Eucharist as, in some way, a 'reiteration' of the Lord's offering upon the Cross, whereby "that same holy and precious oblation" is presented by the Father:
All comes to this; first, that the Sacrifice, as it is itself and in itself, can never be reiterated; yet, by way of devout celebration and remembrance, it may, nevertheless, be reiterated every day. Secondly, that whereas the holy Eucharist is by itself a Sacrament wherein God offers unto all men the blessings, merited by the oblation of his Son, it likewise becomes, by our remembrance, a kind of Sacrifice also, whereby, to obtain at his hands the same blessings, we present and expose before his eyes that same holy and precious oblation once offered.
Also noticeable, of course, is Brevint's insistence that 'altar' can be applied to the holy Table precisely because of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Mindful of the 'altar controversies' that had been provoked in opposition to Laudianism in the 1630s, Brevint's use and defence of the term indicates the extent of his embrace of the Laudian vision:
To men, it is a sacred table, where God's minister is ordered to represent from God his master the passion of his dear Son, as still fresh and still powerful for their eternal salvation; and to God it is an altar whereon men mystically present to him the same Sacrifice, as still bleeding and still suing for expiation and mercy.
Hooker had very cautiously noted that the Eucharist was termed a sacrifice by "the fathers of the church of Christ" because it was "proportionable" to the sacrifices of Israel, before going on to state of the Church's ministry "although it hath properly now no sacrifice" (LEP V.78.2). Brevint, with other Laudians, embraced the patristic insight and, freed from the constraints imposed by the Reformation era polemics, restored a richly patristic theology and piety regarding the Eucharistic sacrifice. The Laudian divine who had presented and preached at Brevint's ordination exemplified this. As Cosin said:
This is a plain oblation of Christ's death once offered, and a representative sacrifice of it, for the sins, and for the benefit, of the whole world, of the whole Church; that both those which are here on earth, and those that rest in the sleep of peace, being departed in the faith of Christ, may find the effect and virtue of it. And if the authority of the ancient Church may prevail with us, as it ought to do, there is nothing more manifest than that it always taught as much ... And in this sense it is not only an eucharistical, but a propitiatory, sacrifice.
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