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"Christ is with us by his Spirit, but Christ is not with us in body": Jeremy Taylor, the Ascension, and the Sacrament

On this day after the Ascension Day, from Jeremy Taylor's The real presence and spiritual of Christ in the blessed sacrament proved against the doctrine of transubstantiation (1653), a robust affirmation of a fundamental characteristic of a Reformed Eucharistic theologies, that (in the words of the Black Rubric) "the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here":

The next argument from Scripture is taken from Christ's departing from this world; his going from us, the ascension of his body and soul into heaven; his not being with us, his being contained in the heavens: So said our blessed Saviour, Unless I go hence, the Comforter cannot come: and I go to prepare a place for you: The poor ye have always, but me ye have not always. S. Peter affirms of him that the heavens must receive him, till the time of restitution of all things. Now how these things can be true of Christ according to his human nature, that is a circumscribed body, and a definite soul, is the question. 

And to this the answer is the same in effect which is given by the Roman Doctors, and by the Ubiquitaries ... These men say Christ's human nature is every where actually, by reason of his hypostatical union with the Deity which is every where; the Romanists say no: it is not actually every where, but it may be where, and is in as many places as he please: for although he be in heaven, yet so is God too, and yet God is upon earth: says Bellarmine, in the same manner, the Man Christ although he be in heaven, yet also he can be out of heaven, where he please; he can be in heaven and out of heaven. 

Now these two opinions are concentred in the main impossibility; that is, that Christ's body can be in more places then one: if in two, it may be in 2000, and then it may be every where; for it is not limited, and therefore is illimited and potentially infinite. Against this so seemingly impossible at the very first sight, and relying upon a similitude and analogy that is not far from blasphemy, viz. that as God is in heaven and yet on earth, after the same manner is Christ's body; which words it cannot be easy to excuse.

Against this (I say) ... The words of Scripture, that affirm Christ to be in heaven, affirm also that he is gone from hence. Now if Christ's body not only could, but must be every day in innumerable places on earth, it would have been said that Christ is in heaven, but not that he is not here, or that he is gone from hence ... When Christ said, Me ye have not always, and at another time, Lo, I am with you always to the end of the World; It is necessary that we distinguish the parts of a seeming contradiction. Christ is with us by his Spirit, but Christ is not with us in body; but if his body be here too, then there is no way of Substantial, real presence, in which those words can be true.

(The photograph is of the Holy Table in The Middle Church, Ballinderry, built at the direction of Jeremy Taylor.)

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