"They have the very thing": Bramhall on the Eucharistic sacrifice

From Bramhall's Protestants' Ordinations Defended, a response to a Roman apologist who claimed that Anglicans have "pared away" all sacrifice from the Church's life. Particularly interesting is Bramhall's statement that the Anglican understanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice as "a means ordained to apply" Christ's propitiatory sacrifice is also that of "the moderate Romanists":

First, they acknowledge spiritual and eucharistical sacrifices, as prayers, praises, a contrite heart, alms, and the like.

Secondly, they acknowledge a commemoration, or a representative Sacrifice, in the Holy Eucharist.

Thirdly, they teach, that this is not "nuda commemoratio" - "a bare commemoration" without efficacy, but that the blessed Sacrament is a means ordained by Christ to render us capable, and to apply unto us the virtue, of that all-sufficient Sacrifice of infinite value, which Christ made upon the Cross; which is as far as the moderate Romanists dare go in distinct and particular expressions.

But the Protestants dare not say, that the Holy Eucharist is a Sacrifice propitiatory in itself, by its own proper virtue and expiatory efficacy. Whatsoever power it hath, is in relation to the Sacrifice of Christ, as a means ordained to apply that to true believers .

In sum, the essence of the Roman Sacrifice doth consist, according to the doctrine of their own schools, either in the consecration alone, or in the manducation alone, or both in the consecration and participation; but not at all either in the oblation before consecration, or in the oblation after consecration, or in the fraction or mixtion. Seeing therefore the Protestants do retain both the consecration, and consumption or communication, without all contradiction, under the name of a Sacrament, they have the very thing, which the Romanists call a Sacrifice.

(The drawing of the Heavenly Altar, emphasising how the holy Eucharist is a representation of the eternal offering of Christ the High Priest, is from Wheatly's A Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer, 1714.)

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