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Bramhall, the Eucharist, and a generous patristic orthodoxy

In An answer to Monsieur de la Militiere (1653) - a response to a Roman apologist - Bramhall invokes the diverse expressions of patristic eucharistic theology in East and West to defend the Church of England's rejection of transubstantiation.  He also points to diverse eucharistic practices in the patristic churches, justifying the historic diversity of practice East and West, and within the West after the Reformation.  Underpinning this generous orthodoxy are twin affirmations made by Bramhall prior to this section.  Firstly, that "The Holy Eucharist, which is the Sacrament of peace and unity, ought not to be made the matter of strife and contention". Secondly, the belief in "a true Real Presence; which no genuine son of the Church of England did ever deny ... Christ said, 'This is My Body'; what He said, we do steadfastly believe".

We may well find different observations in those days: as one Church consecrating leavened bread, another unleavened; one Churclı making use of pure wine, another of wine mixed with water; one Church admitting infants to the Communion, another not admitting them: but without controversies, or censures, or animosity one against the other. We find no debates or disputes concerning the Presence of Christ's Body in the Sacrament, and much less concerning the manner of His Presence, for the first 800 years.

Yet all the time we find as different expressions among those primitive Fathers, as among our modern writers at this present day: some calling the Sacrament 'the Sign of Christ's Body' [Augustine] - 'the Figure of His Body' [Tertullian] - 'the Symbol of His Body' [Victor of Antioch] - 'the Mystery of His Body' [Chrysostom] - 'the Exemplar', 'Type' [Augustine], and 'Representation, of His Body' [Tertullian], saying 'that the Elements do not recede from their first nature' [Theodoret]; others naming it 'the true Body and Blood of Christ' [Hilary], 'changed, not in shape, but in nature' [Cyprian]; yea, doubting not to say, that in this Sacrament 'we see Christ' - 'we touch Christ - 'we eat Christ' - 'that we fasten our teeth in His very Flesh, and make our tongues red in His Blood' [Chrysostom]. Yet, notwithstanding, there were no questions, no quarrels, no contentions amongst them; there needed no Councils to order them, no conferences to reconcile them; because they contented themselves to believe what Christ had said, 'This is My Body' - without presuming on their own heads to determine the manner how it is His Body; neither weighing all their own words so exactly before any controversy was raised, nor expounding the sayings of other men contrary to the analogy of Faith.

From The Works of The Most Reverend Father in God, John Bramhall, Volume I.

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