'The Christians who use the Egyptian liturgy': Jeremy Taylor, the Eucharist, and breathing with both lungs
Something of this is seen in the Section I of his The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654). Here Taylor turns to another Eastern liturgy, that - I assume - of Saint Cyril (used by the Copts), to demonstrate how, as he states, "the spiritual sense [of the Lord's sacramental presence] is the most real":
For every degree of excellency is a degree of being, of reality, and truth: and therefore spiritual things, being more excellent than corporal and natural, have the advantage both in truth and reality. And this is fully the sense of the Christians, who use the Egyptian liturgy. "Sanctifica nos, Domine noster, sicut sanctificasti has oblationes; sed fecisti illas non fictas (that is for real); et quicquid apparet, est mysterium tuum spirituale (that is for spiritual)."*
That Taylor here also quotes from an Eastern liturgy - as he would do a few years later in The Worthy Communicant - is significant, indicating an interest in and attention to Eastern liturgies also evident in his Communion Office (as Nathan Jennings and Richelle Thompson have noted).
Section I of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament also invokes two prominent theologians of the East, Cyril of Alexandria and Cyril of Jerusalem. The former is quoted (in a Latin translation of the Commentary on John's Gospel) in order to support Taylor's contention that transubstantiation is an unwise, even impious speculation, to "inquire curiously" into the mystery, rather than "to believe the thing heartily":
But St. Cyril [Cyril, in Joh. lib. 4. c. 13.] would not allow so much liberty; not that he would have the manner determined, but not so much as thought upon. "Firmam fidem mysteriis adhibentes, nunquam in tarn sublimibus rebus, illud quomodo, aut cogitemus aut proferamus" [Employing a firm faith in the mysteries, we never think or speak about lofty things]. For if we go about to think it or understand it, we lose our labour.
Likewise, Cyril of Jerusalem is quoted to demonstrate that the use of 'corporal' to describe the Lord's presence in the Eucharist is acceptable in order to confess the reality - but not the mode - of that presence:
And thus we affirm Christ's body to be present in the sacrament: not only in type or figure, but in blessing and real effect; that is, more than in the types of the law; the shadows were of the law, "but the body is of Christ." And besides this; the word 'corporally' may be very well used, when by it is only understood a corporal sign. So St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his third catechism says, that the "Holy Ghost did descend corporally in the likeness of a dove;" that is, in a type or representment of a dove's body (for so he and many of the ancients did suppose): and so he [Dial. de Incar. Unig.] again uses the word: "Jesus Christ, as a man, did inspire the Holy Spirit corporally into his apostles;" where by 'corporally' it is plain he means 'by a corporal or material sign or symbol,' viz., by "breathing upon them and saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." In either of these senses if the word be taken, it may indifferently be used in this question.
The opening section of this work, therefore, does suggest a Laudian desire to 'breath with both lungs'; or, to change the metaphor, to drink deeply from the wells of the Christian East. Further posts will explore how this theme continues in subsequent sections of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
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*Taylor is, of course, using a Latin translation of the Liturgy of Saint Cyril. Checking online versions of that Liturgy (e.g. an English version of Renadout's translation and that provided by CopticChurch.net), I have not been able to detect the phrase Taylor quotes. If readers can make suggestions, I would be most grateful. The key point, for the purposes of this post, is that Taylor regarded himself as quoting from the Coptic liturgy.
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