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"This godly moderation about the mystery of the sacred Eucharist": Isaac Casaubon and the best reformed Church

For today's post, an extract from the Answer to Cardinal Perron (1612) of Isaac Casaubon, the Huguenot thinker who found refuge in the Church of James I/VI and was directed by the Crown to respond to Perron's assault on the English Church.  Reading Casaubon's section on "the mystery of the sacred Eucharist", it is difficult not to think of Charles Prior's statement that aspects of Laudianism were "deeply entrenched in Jacobean religious culture". Related to this, it is suggestive of how the irenic theological commitments of James were of particular significance to this.  What is more, it is a reminder that what could attract some significant French Protestants during these decades to the ecclesia Anglicana was not the recognition of merely another Reformed Church but, rather, something distinctive: that the ecclesia Anglicana was - as Clarendon would famously declare at the Restoration - "the best and the best-reformed church in the Christian world". Alongside the later ordinations of Daniel Brevint and John Durel, we might also think of Isaac's son Meric, who took orders in the Church of England, received patronage from Andrewes and Laud, remained loyal to the Crown during the civil wars, and was rewarded at the Restoration.

Now if his Majesty, and the Church of England doe use this godly moderation about the mystery of the sacred Eucharist, I pray you who ought to envy it? We read in the Gospels that our Lord instituting this Sacrament, took the bread, and said, This is my body: but that our Lord did so much as by one word explain how it was his body, we do not read. The Church of England doth religiously believe that which she reads, and with the same religion she is not inquisitive into that which she reads not. They acknowledge, and teach that this is a great mystery which cannot be comprehended, much less declared by the faculty of man's wit: but concerning the power and efficacy of it, their opinion is with all sacred reverence. 

They command those which come unto this holy table diligently to search all the secret corners of their consciences: to make confession of their sins unto God, and if need be to the Priest also. They carefully warn the comers that they compose their minds unto all humility, and devotion: they receive the Communion of the body of Christ upon their knees: and they do not only divide the mystical bread amongst the faithful in their public assemblies, but they give it also to those which be towards death, pro viatico; that is, for victuals in their journey, as the Fathers of the Nicene Council, and all antiquity do call it. 

Lastly, his Majesty, although he would have his to abstain from all manner of curiosity, yet alloweth also of whatsoever the holy Fathers of the first ages have spoken in the honour of that unspeakable mystery. Neither doth he reject the words of the Fathers, as transmutation, alteration, transelementation, and such like, if they be understood and expounded agreeably to their intention. 

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