'A conjunction between his Body and the Elements': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and the sacramental union

... in reverence of God, and in due regard of so divine a mystery, and in remembrance of so mystical a union as we are made partakers of, the assembly thinketh good, that the blessed Sacrament be celebrated hereafter, meekly and reverently upon their knees.

For the Articles of Perth, kneeling to receive the Sacrament was testimony to what Cranmer had termed "our humble and grateful acknowledgement of the benefits of Christ therein, given to all worthy Receivers". In his 1621 account of the 1618 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Perth, David Lindsay, Bishop of Brechin (1619-34 and Bishop of Edinburgh 1634-38), highlighted how opponents of the practice placed themselves outside of the Continental Reformed mainstream by dramatically exaggerating the case against kneeling to receive.

Lindsay quotes an opponent who contrasted the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper with signs of God's presence under the Old Covenant, noting how those signs were accompanied by expressions of reverence:

It is true likewise, that God directed his people vnder the Law, to bend and bow themselues towards the Arke, and the Temple wherein the Arke was, and the mountaine whereon the Temple was situate ... The Sacramentall Elements haue neither the like presence, the like promise, nor the like commandement.

For Lindsay, such a statement was straightforwardly a rejection of Reformed eucharistic teaching. Echoing the Second Helvetic Confession's declaration that "we do not disjoin the truth from the signs", Lindsay highlights how arguments of Scottish opponents of kneeling to receive the Sacrament gravely risked denying this sacramental union:

when he saith of the bread, This is my Body, and of the Cup, This is my Blood: doth it not import a coniunction betweene his Body and the Elements, and a spirituall presence of his Body in the Sacrament? And should not his body and blood be as present to the eyes of thy minde, thy knowledge and vnderstanding, and to the hand of thy heart, thy faith and confidence, as are the Elements to thy externall senses, and bodily hand? Haue we not taught our people to this day, and yet should teach them, that in this action, there is an internall and externall receiuer, the hand and the heart: that there is an earthly and spiritual gift, the Elements of the Sacrament, and the body and blood of Christ? 

What is more, such an argument against kneeling to receive also goes against a distinctive Reformed insistence, the application of the extra Calvinisticum to the Saccrament:

And should we not beleeue, that Christ, God, and Man, is as really present in the Sacrament, according to his Diuinity, as we beleeue him to bee bodily present in heauen, giuing and applying the selfe-same bodie which is in heauen, as really to the inward man, as the Pastor is giuing the Elements to the outward? 

To again quote the Second Helvetic Confession:

the Lord is not absent from his Church when she celebrates the Supper. The sun, which is absent from us in the heavens, is notwithstanding effectually present among us. How much more is the Sun of Righteousness, Christ, although in his body he is absent from us in heaven, present with us, not corporeally, but spiritually, by his vivfying operation ...

To suggest, therefore, that the Supper had "neither the like presence, [nor] the like promise" which, under the Old Covenant, was the case with the Ark, was to fundamentally deny Reformed eucharistic teaching:

How dare you then affirme, that the Sacrament hath not such a presence of Chrst, as the Arke, the Propitiatory, and the Cherubins had ...  God called the Arke his foot-stoole, but Christ calleth the sacramentall Elements, his body and blood. Sometime hee called the Arke his face, and glory, because it was a type of his face and glory; but the Sacrament is not a bare type, but a powerfull instrument, whereby Christ is communicate vnto vs, that wee may bee made partakers heere of his grace, and hereafter of his glory.

As Lindsay had stated, to make the Sacrament "a bare type" was blatantly contrary to what "we ... taught our people to this day". Almost certainly, he was here explicitly thinking of the 1560 Scots Confession:

And thus we utterly damn the vanity of those that affirm sacraments to be nothing else but naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are ingrafted in Christ Jesus to be made partakers of his justice, by the which our sins are covered and remitted; and also, that in the Supper, rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us, that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls.

It is, then, not in the opponents of the Articles of Perth, but in those who defended the Articles in the Jacobean Church of Scotland, that we find the fullest expression of the rich Reformed eucharistic theology of the Second Helvetic Confession and the 1560 Scots Confession.

(The first picture is of a late 17th century drawing of Brechin, Lindsay's See.)