'The cup in the Eucharist': Le Mesurier's Bampton Lectures, the common cup, and Old High rejection of sacerdotalism

In the sixth of his 1807 Bampton Lectures, On the Nature and Guilt of Schism, Le Mesurier's questioning of Roman Catholic claims, in traditional Old High fashion, can (obviously) leave us, in a radically changed ecumenical context, very uncomfortable. That said - as, hopefully, this series of posts has demonstrated - there are significant explorations of Anglican piety amidst the polemics. This is also the case with today's short extract:

I must bid you recollect that other act of most abominable presumption, by which, in express derogation of our Lord's institution, the cup in the eucharist is denied to the laity; thus also unduly exalting the clergy above their brethren: which practice they themselves justify only as a mere ordinance of the church.

It is a reminder of how receiving in both kinds - fundamental to Anglican eucharistic practice - exemplifies, and is very close to the heart of, the domesticity of Prayer Book piety, with its rejection of a sacerdotal and clerical elite. Priest and faithful alike receive in both kinds, in the hand. Such a rejection of sacerdotalism was an enduring feature of the Old High vision, to be emphasised in R.W. Jelf's 1844 Bampton Lectures. 

For Martin Thornton, the domesticity - "a sane 'domestic' spirit" - of Anglican piety has significant cultural and ecclesial roots, bearing fruit in the Prayer Book, in a very Benedictine manner, serving as a rule for "an integrated and united community", in which the distinction between priest and lay person is solely in terms of ministerial function, with no "priest-lay gulf". In the words of Jelf:

True, the priest must intercede for the people; but so also must the people intercede for the priest; even as we find St. Paul, while he is careful to assure his disciples that he makes mention of them in his prayers, so does he likewise entreat their special intercessions for himself, and this upon the plain principle, that the prayers of all the faithful were as effectual as his own. 

The domesticity of Anglican piety, the Old High rejection of sacerdotalism, the Prayer Book as common rule for cleric and lay person; all this finds a quiet, homely but potent focus - as Le Mesurier suggests - in the Cup being given into the hands of the laity at the holy Sacrament.