'In this breaking we know there is a mystery': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and the Fraction
So said an opponent of the Articles of Perth, which had introduced kneeling to receive the Sacrament in the Church of Scotland: kneeling to receive prevented seated communicants from breaking the Bread among themselves. The response of David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), in his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth, is significant because he invoked, in support of kneeling to receive, the continental Reformed tradition's emphasis on the Fraction in the Lord's Supper.
In Reformed-Lutheran disputes of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the Fraction had become a distinctive Reformed act, the characteristic sign of a Reformed eucharistic understanding. As to how the Fraction was performed, we have a 1613 description from a Lutheran pastor commenting on a Reformed celebration in the Elector's chapel in Saxony, amidst the intense Lutheran-Reformed conflict in that jurisdiction:
On the table lay a long cake, already cut, so that [the officiating minister] could easily break off one piece after another and place it into the hands of each communicant.
Immediately, in other words, we can see that this continental Reformed practice of the Fraction involved the pastor breaking the Bread and delivering it to communicants - not the practice urged by the opponents of the Articles of Perth.
As to the meaning of the Fraction, the Lutheran commentator continued, with obvious hostility:
it is the Calvinists' own invention when they claim that the bread has to be broken to symbolize the crucifixion of Christ's sacrificial body.
Bryan Spinks points to how this conflict over the Fraction became a defining feature of Lutheran-Reformed debates and practice:
It became an important element in Reformed eucharistic rites and was interpreted as indicating that the sacrament was an analogy or commemoration of the cross and passion and did not entail the bodily presence in the elements ... The Fraction thus became a sign of whether one believed the Lutheran bodily presence or the Reformed personal presence.
This lets us see the importance of Lindsay invoking the Fraction to defend kneeling to receive the Sacrament. Sitting around the Table, with communicants each breaking off a piece of the Bread - as the opponents of the Articles of Perth urged against kneeling to receive - obscured the Fraction. Against this, Linsday provided a profoundly Reformed account of the meaning and importance of the Fraction:
Now in this breaking we know there is a mysterie, which signifies the breaking of the Lords Body; which is an act, as is before made euident, that onely appertaines to Christ, both in the veritie, when he did offer himselfe on the Crosse and in the mysterie, when he did represent his oblation, or the breaking of his body, by the breaking of the bread: and therefore is such an act, as ought onely to be performed by him, who in the Sacrament acteth the part of Christ, and represents him sacrificing himselfe.
The fact, then, that kneeling to receive the Sacrament facilitated the Fraction, against the practice of those in Scotland who urged sitting around the Table, placed those defending the Articles of Perth firmly within the mainstream of continental Reformed thought, particularly on this distinctive aspect of Reformed practice.
The learned Musculus in his common places, De coena Domini, speaking of this purpose saith ... Christ Iesus brake, and gaue to his Disciples: hee brake the bread with his owne hand, and when it was broken he gaue it to his Disciples: he gaue it not whole vnto them, to be broken by them, but he gaue them that which he had broken: he gaue it not to them to be distributed by them, but that they should take it being distributed by him, and eate it. The Apostles were in that Supper not as dispensers of the mysteries of God, but as Guests, as the faithfull, as Disciples, and as Communicants: but Christ was as the maker of the Feast, as the Master, at one time both instituting and dispensing with his owne hand the Sacrament of his grace.
Against those opposed to the Articles of Perth, therefore, stood "the learned Musculus". The practice of each communicant breaking a piece of the Bread while sitting at the Table not only obscured the Fraction, it was also contrary to the pattern of our Lord at the Last Supper, for "he gave them that which he had broken". After Musculus, therefore, Lindsay claims that as Christ broke and distributed the Bread, so should the administration of the Supper in the Church follow this pattern:
Here you see, that Christ is the breaker, the giuer, the distributer of the Bread, and not the Disciples: And so the Pastor is now the breaker, the giuer, the distributer, and not the people. Let the judicious Reader consider, whether the iudgement of this learned man doth better agree with the Institution, or the opinion of the Pamphlet penner: And whether the Pastor, who according to the Institution breakes the bread, and giues it with his owne hands to the people, or they, who giue the bread to the people in whole schaues to bee broken, and distributed by themselues, comes neerer to Christs appointment.
When it comes to the administration of the Cup, Lindsay notes that there is no equivalent to the Fraction: "In distribution of the Cuppe there is no such mysterie". This, however, does not mean that a fitting symbolism is lacking when it comes the minister delivering the Cup to kneeling communicants, rather than communicants passing it amongst themselves around the Table:
if the Pastor may commodiously by himselfe make the deliuery, it is most agreeable to the person which hee carries in that holy action, who represents our Sauiour, first, willingly vndergoing death for vs, then, most bountifully applying it to vs with his owne hand.
Linsday's words echo Musculus' emphasis regarding the pattern of the Lord's institution of the Supper:
Christ was as the maker of the Feast, as the Master, at one time both instituting and dispensing with his owne hand the Sacrament of his grace.
Again this pattern is more closely followed when the minister delivers the Cup to communicants - as required when communicants knelt to receive, as directed by the Articles of Perth - rather than communicants passing the Cup to each other.
In the past few posts in this series, I have suggested that the Articles of Perth placed the Jacobean Church of Scotland in that arc of episcopal, national Churches of the Northern Ireland Kingdoms. Lindsay's invocation of Musculus is a reminder that, for the Churches of the Three Kingdoms, this arc was not to be understood in any way as standing aloof from the Continental Reformed tradition. Hence, for example, James sending a British delegation to the Synod of Dort - with instructions not to widen divisions between the Reformed and the Lutherans. Indeed, as W.B. Patterson has suggested, James' decision to participate in the Synod of Dort was "a significant part of his larger plan for religious and political pacification". James' irenic vision, therefore, was as much a rejection of Lutheran intransigence towards the Reformed, as Reformed intransigence towards the Lutherans.
By invoking "the learned Musculus", Lindsay was demonstrating how the Jacobean vision for Protestant Christendom most certainly incorporated the Continental Reformed. We can, however, also say more. The eucharistic theologies of the Churches of the Three Kingdoms were quite clearly Reformed. While James urged irenic eucharistic formulations which would satisfy Lutherans who sought unity with the Reformed, those formulations would have to be compatible with fundamental Reformed convictions, for such was the eucharistic understanding of the Churches of the Three Kingdoms. Musculus' rich teaching on the "mystical Supper" (and Eric Parker has highlighted a wonderful example of that teaching) exemplified the eucharistic theology and piety that James sought to uphold in the Churches of the Three Kingdoms.
Lindsay's use of Musculus' sacramental theology, and affirmation of the significance of the Fraction (following Continental Reformed thought), brings us again to see how the Jacobean Church of Scotland - episcopally ordered, with a developing liturgy, its practices defined by the Articles of Perth, and with a Reformed theology reflecting what Diarmaid MacCulloch has described, in another Reformed context, as "more varied and cosmopolitan origins" - offered a deeply attractive expression of the wider Jacobean ecclesial vision.
(The first picture is of a late 17th century drawing of Brechin, Lindsay's See.)
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