'The same purpose is that of Origen': Taylor, the Eucharist, and breathing with both lungs

In Section V of The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament (1654), we continue to see Taylor quote extensively from theologians of the Christian East and point to the liturgies of the Eastern Churches.

The opening paragraph of this Section quotes from Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret, to demonstrate the reality of the bread and wine in the Eucharist:

St. Cyril of Alexandria; "called bread his flesh." Theodoret saith that "to the body he gave the name of the symbol, and to the symbol the name of his body.

The pairing is, of course, interesting, as Theodoret challenged Cyril's Christology. This in itself is suggestive of how Taylor generously viewed the Christian East as embracing both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian theologians and churches.

Another extract from Theodoret - "In the exhibition of the mysteries he called bread his body, and the mixture in the chalice he called blood" - appears, as do words from the Byzantine John Maxentius ("The bread which the whole church receives in memory of the passion, is the body of Christ") and Cyril of Jerusalem ("Since our Lord hath declared and said to us of bread, 'This is my body,' who shall dare to doubt it?").  The point of these extracts, Taylor states, is to emphasise how the East made the same crucial affirmation that underpinned the rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation:

For if, of bread, Christ made this affirmation, that it is his body, then it is both bread and Christ's body too, and that is it which we contend for.

Section V also demonstrates Taylor's interest in another significant - and controversial - figure from the Greek tradition: Origen. Three quotations from Origen are found in this section:

this is Christ's body, viz., as Origen's expression is, "typicum symbolicumque corpus" ...  And to the same purpose is that of Origen; "The bread, which is called the eucharist, is to us the symbol of thanksgiving or eucharist to God" ... Origen is brought in proving the reality of Christ's flesh and blood in his incarnation, by this argument: If, as these men say, he be without flesh and blood, "of what body and of what blood did he command the images or figures, giving the bread and cup to his disciples, that by these a remembrance of him should be made?"

We might identify this with what Sarah Hutton has termed the 'Origenist moment in English theology', a moment particularly associated with one of Taylor's friends, George Rust. In 1661 Rust would publish his influential defence of Origen, Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of his Opinions. This was the same year in which he also received episcopal orders from Taylor. Rust's description of "that pious Father of the Church, the learned Origen" captures Taylor's view, as indicated both by the use of Origen in this Section and in Taylor's willingness in Section III to place Origen alongside Athanasius, as one of the great theologians of the Christian East.

Section V also ends with Taylor once again invoking "those churches who use the liturgies of St. James, St. Mark, and St. Chrysostom", indicating both his reverence for these churches and the theologies which formed them, and the extent to which he saw the eucharistic theology of the Church of England as reliant upon and in harmony with the Greek Fathers.