'The chief thing, in which Christian people shew themselves priests': a Keble sermon, the Eucharistic sacrifice, and Old High teaching
My brethren, what an honour and blessing, what a Divine and comfortable invitation is this, that our Lord should call us, even the least of us, to be partakers of His Altar, and of the holy service there performed: ministers of "the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man". For such we certainly are, as often as we but say, Amen, at the giving of thanks and blessing, wherewith the Priest consecrates the Body and Blood of Christ. We join in the offering; we have part in the spiritual sacrifice: and accordingly when it is over, the Church puts into our mouths this word: we "entirely desire Thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving": i.e., this our Holy Eucharist, which we have just taken part in offering. How great a thing is this, when we come to consider it! that we are in spirit and truth, if we communicate worthily, joining not only with the Church of God on earth, but with the Son of God Himself at His Father's Right Hand in heaven: offering, in our measure, the same Memorial Sacrifice, which He, ever since His Ascension, is night and day presenting to His Father. How can we venture to stay away from this? and how can we dare to come unworthily?
There is no doubt that the chief thing, in which Christian people shew themselves priests, is devoutly joining in the Sacrifice of our Lord's Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.
None of this, however, represents Tractarian distinctives. Consider, for example, some aspects of Keble's words. Firstly, Keble evokes the long tradition of High Church thought when he describes the Eucharist as the 'memorial sacrifice', an expression of the Ascended Lord's heavenly offering. This is precisely the understanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice set forth by Taylor:
There he sits, a High Priest continually, and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice; that is, still represents it as having been once finished and consummate, in order to perpetual and never-failing events.
And this, also, his ministers do on earth; they offer up the same sacrifice to God, the sacrifice of the cross, by prayers, and a commemorating rite and representment, according to his holy institution.
It is similarly seen in Wheatly, in the early 18th century:
we intercede on earth, in conjunction with the great intercession of our High Priest in heaven, and plead in the virtue and merits of the same sacrifice here which he is continually urging for us there.
And Vicesimus Knox, while preferring the 'feast upon a sacrifice' theme, accepted the legitimacy of more explicitly sacrificial language, in the later 18th century, noting that "many pious and learned men have maintained, that the Eucharist itself is a sacrifice":
From very early times, even from the Apostles, it has possessed this name with qualifying epithets, and has been denominated the spiritual sacrifice, the sacrifice of praise, the holy sacrifice, the mystical sacrifice, the unbloody sacrifice, and the reasonable, or intellectual, sacrifice.
This [i.e. reception of the Holy Communion] done, the Priest offers up the Sacrifice of the holy Eucharist, or the Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the whole Church.
Thirdly, there is Keble's exhortation: "if we communicate worthily". While debates surrounding Article 29 were provoked by Tractarians - although, importantly, some Old High figures, as Nockles demonstrates, were often sympathetic to Tractarian concerns on this matter - Keble here reflects the teaching of Article 29 in a manner which would have been entirely uncontroversial to Old High opinion.
Lastly, there is a central characteristic in this extract from Keble: a rejection of a sacerdotalism, reflecting a significant aspect of the Old High vision. He is emphasising the role of the royal priesthood of all Christians in the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. When distinguishing this from the role of the ministerial priesthood, he refers to the latter as "priests by office" (again, very much a Prayer Book phrase) and defines the role of the priest in consecrating the Eucharist in terms very similar to Taylor:
The Church of England does most religiously observe it according to the custom and sense of the primitive Liturgies; who always did believe the consecration not to be a natural effect, and change, finished in any one instant, but a divine alteration consequent to the whole ministry: that is, the solemn prayer and invocation - Taylor;
the giving of thanks and blessing, wherewith the Priest consecrates the Body and Blood of Christ - Keble.
This reflects Taylor's insistence that consecration was not the consequence of a sacerdotal pronouncement of "a certain number of syllables".
It is the case that Keble's sermon, delivered from an Old High pulpit, would have been recognised as quite 'advanced': but, crucially, it certainly was not outside the well-recognised boundaries of the High Church tradition and would not have been thought, by High Church opinion, as in any way incompatible with the teaching of the Church of England. High Church clergy and educated laity would have immediately recognised the sources in the High Church tradition which Keble was drawing upon in his account of the Eucharistic sacrifice. In other words, even here Keble's preaching does not embody a Tractarian rupture with the Old High tradition.
(The picture is of Keble's parish church, All Saints, Hursley, Hampshire.)
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