'If we confound the actions of the pastor and the people': the Articles of Perth, the Jacobean Church of Scotland, and the administration of Bread and Cup
This was contrary to those who opponents of the Articles of Perth who defended sitting to receive the Sacrament as more appropriate, enabling communicants to break the Bread for each other and pass the Cup to each other. In the words of an opponent quoted by Lindsay, "The sacramental Supper should carry the resemblance of a Supper, in the formes and fashions thereof, or else it cannot rightly be called a Supper".
Lindsay, however, points out that the means and reality of our partaking of Christ in the Sacrament requires a quite contrary understanding:
Wee breake, and giue the bread one to another: that wee haue shewed to be against the Institution; yee drinke one to another, but we ought not to drinke one to another, as the giuer and propiner drinkes to the receiuer: for our Sauiour onely, who is represented by the Pastor, is the giuer and propiner of the Cuppe externally, and of his owne bloud internally; and all the people are but receiuers, not giuers or propiners in any wise. And as to our Communion amongst our selues, it standeth not in this, That wee haue any fellowship in dispensation of the sacred mysteries, but it standeth in the participation alonely ...
Our partaking of Christ in the Supper is symbolised not by passing Bread and Cup to one another, but by receiving the Bread and Cup from the minister:
not in this, that we take the bread, breake, and giue it to one another: but in this, that we all receiue the same bread, which is broken by the Pastor, and the same flesh which our Sauiour did breake vpon the Crosse: such like not in that we take the Cup, drinke, and giue it one to another; but in this, that we drinke all of the same Cup, which the Pastor giues after thankesgiuing; and the same bloud which our Sauiour shed for the sinnes of many; otherwise, if wee confound the actions of the Pastor and the people, wee breake and violate the Institution, and disturbe the whole action, making the people not only act their owne part, but also take vpon them the part of Christ, and the Pastor. We must not therefore seeke the resemblance of the Supper in these things, that are manifestly repugnant to the Institution, but in such things, as are contained therein.
Lindsay is here invoking a significant stream of Continental Reformed sacramental understanding and practice. Consider the Second Helvetic Confession:
And the same consecration or blessing still remains among all those who celebrate no other but that very Supper which the Lord instituted, and at which they repeat the words of the Lord's Supper, and in all things look to the one Christ by a true faith, from whose hands they receive, as it were, what they receive through the ministry of the ministers of the Church ...
And this is visibly represented by this sacrament outwardly through the ministers, and, as it were, presented to our eyes to be seen, which is invisibly wrought by the Holy Spirit inwardly in the soul. Bread is outwardly offered by the minister, and the words of the Lord are heard: "Take, eat; this is my body"; and, "Take and divide among you. Drink of it, all of you; this is my blood." Therefore the faithful receive what is given by the ministers of the Lord, and they eat the bread of the Lord and drink of the Lord's cup.
That communicants receive the Bread and Cup from ordained ministers symbolises that we receive by faith what is given to us in the Sacrament, the Lord's Body and Blood. We come to the Supper not to dispense but only to receive. A similar understanding is found in the Heidelberg Catechism:
He feeds and nourishes my soul to everlasting life, with His crucified body and shed blood, as assuredly as I receive from the hands of the minister, and taste with my mouth the bread and cup of the Lord, as certain signs of the body and blood of Christ.
This is the practice which BCP 1559 upheld, its rubrics stating that the minister "delivereth the breade ... delivereth the cuppe". What is more, the 1559 words of administration, precisely because they combined the 1549 and 1552 words of administration, significantly emphasise this: the 1549 words proclaiming the gift, with 1552 then declaring that this gift is received, "take and eate this ... feede on him ... drinke this ... and be thankeful".
The 1559 rubric, of course, also stated "the people in their handes kneling". Kneeling to receive the Sacrament, as directed by the Articles of Perth, served this understanding of the Lord's Supper. As the Articles of Perth stated:
there is no part of divine worship more heavenly and spiritual, than is the holy receiving of the blessed body and blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
This echoed Hooker's defence of kneeling to receive as a sign of us "comming as receivers of inestimable grace at the hands of God" (LEP V.68.3).
While kneeling to receive was not, of course, a Continental Reformed practice, Lindsay's defence of it was firmly, definitively rooted in Continental Reformed sacramental thought. As such, it enables us to see how this was also the case with the practice in the Book of Common Prayer: "And when he delivereth the breade, he shall saye ... And the minister that delivereth the cuppe shall saye". This delivery of the Sacrament by the minister is after the example of our Lord's institution of the Supper, in which Bread and Cup were given by the Lord. By contrast, as Lindsay states, to have communicants pass the Bread and Cup to each other does "violate the Institution, and disturbe the whole action", making us those who give, rather than those who only can receive in the Supper (as in Baptism).
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