'Truly to be adored': Andrewes, James VI/I, and adoration of Christ in the holy Sacrament

Nor do we eat the flesh, without first adoring, with Augustine. And yet none of us adore the Sacrament.

The words of Lancelot Andrewes, referring to Augustine's homily on Psalm 98 - "no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped" - were invoked by Pusey to defend a Tractarian understanding of adoring Christ in the consecrated Bread and Wine of the holy Sacrament. Pusey also pointed to further words from Andrewes:

Christ Himself ... in and with the Sacrament, out of and without the

Sacrament, wheresoever He is, is to be adored.

In The Teaching of the Anglican Divines in the Time of King James I and King Charles I on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (1858), Henry Charles Groves - a clergyman of the Church of Ireland - pointed to the fundamental weakness in Pusey's reading of Andrewes. Pusey had to demonstrate that Andrewes understood adoration, and the reference to Augustine on Psalm 98, in a manner different from the other divines of the reformed Church of England:

Dr. Pusey must prove that Andrewes did not mean that the Adoration was to be directed with a sursum corda; that he held that it might be directed to any sensible object; that he held that Christ was present to any but the duly prepared, and to them otherwise than at the very act of reception. When these things are proved, we may believe that Andrewes meant here to depart from the regular current of Anglican doctrine.

In the extracts Groves provides from the works of Andrewes, we see two key Reformed eucharistic motifs shaping . Firstly, the significance of the sursum corda:

In every respect do Andrewes' assertions agree with those of other divines whose views, given more at large, are irreconcileable with any Adoration being directed towards the elements. And this passage also shews where he thought that Adoration should be directed; "In this action we are not only carried up to Christ (sursum corda)" - it was to Christ at the right hand of the Father in heavenly places.

The fuller quote from Andrewes further illustrates this:

And we are in this action not only carried up to Christ, (sursum corda,) but we are also carried back to Christ as He was at the very instant and in the very act of His offering ... By the incomprehensible power of His eternal Spirit, not He alone, but He, as at the very act of His offering, is made present to us, and we incorporate into His death, and invested in the benefits of it.

Secondly, Andrewes employs the characteristic Reformed comparison of the Supper with Baptism:

We believe in a true presence ... Of the mode of that presence we define nothing rashly; neither, I add, do we anxiously inquire; no more than how, in our baptism, the blood of Christ cleanses us.

This sets the context for understanding what Andrewes means by us adoring Christ "in and with the Sacrament". Our hearts our lifted up to adore Christ Crucified. We are to no more adore Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist than we would Christ in the water of Baptism.

Grove then turns to another vital point. There was nothing at all unusual about Andrewes' use of Augustine's words in the exposition of Psalm 98:

How the expression of St. Augustine was received by him, we find him explaining in his answer to Perron. It was one often used by Anglican divines. Cranmer saw no harm in it, interpreted according to the true meaning of Augustine and the true Catholic doctrine. Jewel could honestly use it. Bishop Morton saw in it nothing opposed to the doctrine which he taught. Bishop Taylor used it, though he pronounced any Adoration paid to Christ supposed under the elements to be idolatry. 

Adoration of Christ in the holy Sacrament, after Augustine, was a conventional and routine affirmation by divines of the Reformed Church of England. And, indeed, as Andrewes stated, there was another divine of the Church of England - no less than the Supreme Governor, James I/VI - who likewise proclaimed such adoration:

But the king laid down that Christ truly present in the Eucharist, was truly also to be adored.

Andrewes' understanding of the adoration of Christ in the holy Sacrament is explained by James and the divines of his Reformed Church, not by Dr. Pusey.