THE general character and object of these Catenae is the same: viz. to exhibit the practical working of the system and peculiar temper and principles of our Church upon the minds of the more faithful of her sons, whether acting upon them through the channel of reflection or learning, or through the deference of a single-hearted simplicity. The extent and character of this influence will, however, necessarily vary, according to the nature of the several doctrines, and the degree in which they enter into that system. Doctrines, for instance, are impressed more or less prominently, and in different ways, in her Creeds, or her Prayers, or her Catechism, or her selection of Holy Scripture: some definitely and tangibly, some conveyed in a general tone, which runs throughout, and which may be called the hqoV, or spirit of the Church: some again have been retained by oral tradition, and maintained by her uniform spirit of deference to the early Church, whose hallowed lamp she carries on, and whose handmaid she is. Such, for instance, is her view of the spiritual benefits of absolution and confirmation, or the spiritual gifts in ordination, which are assumed to be great and real, where these ordinances are duly and worthily received; but what they are, is not dogmatically enunciated, being presupposed as already known, through the successive teaching of her Ministers. So in other points, wherein they, who at the time had the deposit of her faith committed to them, were persuaded to withdraw from common use, or to leave hut slight indications of, doctrine, which had recently and might again be abused. This might, by a sort of analogy, as far as relates to the object, be called the "disciplina arcani" of the Anglican Church; only, it was so far a hazardous experiment, in that no provision was made (as in the antient Church) for authoritatively inculcating upon those fit to receive it, the doctrine thus withheld from the unworthy or uninstructed. It was left to tradition, but that tradition was not guarded. One must, also, herein not speak of the wisdom or foresight of individuals, but of the good Providence of God, controlling and guiding the genius of the Church. "Not through our merit but His mercy; not through our foresight but His Providence; not through our own arm but His right hand and His arm were we rescued and delivered." Yet since He "saw some good thing in us," He so directed our Church's reverence for the good old Fathers of the primitive Church" as not indeed to exempt us from "suffering loss" but still with safety of our "lives" as a Church. For "loss" He has ordained all to suffer, who in any way tamper, whether by adding to or taking away from, the Apostolic deposit of sound words; yet since we had in most things been faithful, He chastened us only, and gave us not over unto death.

Of this latter kind--a doctrine, namely, which our Church retains, but one of the most withdrawn from sight, lest it should, at one time, perchance have been misapplied or profaned, is the doctrine of a Sacrifice in the Blessed Eucharist. It is not here intended to speak disparagingly of those of the revisers of our Liturgy, who furthered or consented to the suppression of doctrine visible in the 2d book of Edward VI. They listened or yielded to foreign advisers, who had their minds fixed solely on the "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits," which the Church of Rome had connected with the true doctrine, and who had themselves lost it. Happy, if while guarding against the errors of Rome, they had escaped the opposite danger of fomenting profane indifference or unbelief, which have left their own homes desolate! And the revisers of our own Liturgy, in the latter part of the reign of Edward VI, would have acted with greater wisdom and a firmer faith, had they continued to retain the explicit statements of the Catholic doctrine, and sought other means of averting its abuse, or left the correction to Almighty God, who gave that doctrine. Nor can one doubt that if they could have foreseen, whither this half-suppression of true doctrine would lead, they would have guarded in some other way against any temporary danger which might arise from the association of past errors therewith. There is evidence, as will appear hereafter, that those of the revisers, who were most yielding, themselves held, and were prepared to maintain, the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; one cannot indeed suppose that they felt altogether, even as men might, its great value and privilege: they had been engaged in controverting errors connected with a high view of sacred doctrine; and such errors cannot be controverted without great peril to the delicacy of our own faith, and our refined and affectionate apprehension of it; the office of assault makes the mind rough and rude, and associates jarring thoughts with the doctrine thus approached, (so that the Spirit of love cannot dwell there,) and, again, it almost forces the mind to speak familiarly on high mysteries, thereby injuring the reverence by which they must be apprehended. Then also, the very notion of disguising the expression of any doctrine implies a diminished estimation of it; the debating about it, preparing for it, at last, the overt act of doing it, are so many acts of forfeiture. For he that hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." Whoso watches not jealously over the deposit committed to him shall lose it. Still the revisers in question had the doctrine, and wished, in their way, to keep it, and so would be grieved to find that their mode of acting had nearly forfeited it to the Church. But, further, no doctrine can be lost, or injured singly. We may not indeed maintain any doctrine, or rest its principal importance, upon its connection with or bearings upon some other doctrine, lest we arrogate too much to ourselves, and lose sight of the intrinsic value of the doctrine, which we presume to make thus dependent on another; still it is allowable to point out any additional evils, which departure from that doctrine may have. We know not then how great may be the loss of the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice in itself; undoubtedly much greater than they are aware of, who, while in the flesh, think it the greatest; the loss of this, as a devotional act, may he an unspeakable evil to the whole Church, and intercept much of the favour of the FATHER from us, and of the fulness of His blessings in His SON. And so, on the other hand, we may perhaps look upon the "chain of witnesses" here adduced, not only as having attested and perpetuated the truth, but also, each in their generation (with a multitude of others whom they represent, and who more or less consciously and distinctly performed the same act of devotion and held the same truth) obtaining a measure of favour of GOD for His Church here by pleading thus the merits of their LORD. But apart from this, the highest and most mysterious part of the subject, it may be noticed as a fact, that the way wherein the doctrine of the Communication of the Body and Blood of CHRIST in the Holy Eucharist has been received, has always been proportioned to this of the "commemorative sacrifice." Both were held in high and awful honour in the Primitive Church, both perverted in the later Church of Rome, both depreciated by Ultra-Protestants; and among ourselves, the reverence felt towards the one Mystery has been generally heightened or depressed, according to the several degrees in which the other was received; and not these only, but (since every portion of our faith is indissolubly although invisibly linked with every other portion,) other truths also which people do not readily suspect. It was easy for those, free from the errors of Rome, to see that her doctrine of the sacrifice interfered with that of the one Sacrifice on the Cross; but many overlooked that the belief in that Sacrifice might then only be altogether sound, when the Eucharistic Sacrifice was also reverenced.

It may be well, however, in these days, before going further, to state briefly what that doctrine is, and what the Romanist corruption of it. The doctrine then of the early Church was this; that "in the Eucharist, an oblation or sacrifice was made by the Church to GOD, under the form of His creatures of bread and wine, according to our Blessed LORD'S holy institution, in memory of His Cross and Passion;" and this they believed to be the "pure offering" or sacrifice which the Prophet Malachi foretold that the Gentiles should offer; and that it was enjoined by our LORD in the words "Do this for a memorial of Me;" that it was alluded to when our LORD or St. Paul speak of a Christian "altar" (St. Matt. v. 23. Heb. xiii. 10.), and was typified by the Passover, which was both a sacrifice and a feast upon a sacrifice. For the first passover had been a vicarious sacrifice, the appointed means of saving life, when the first-born of the Egyptians were slain; and like all other vicarious sacrifices, it shadowed out that of our LORD on the Cross; the subsequent Passovers were sacrifices, commemorative of that first sacrifice, and so typical of the Eucharist, as commemorating and shewing forth our LORD'S sacrifice on the Cross. Not that they reasoned so, but they knew it to be thus, because they had been taught it, and incidentally mentioned these circumstances, which people would now call evidence or grounds and reasons. This commemorative oblation or sacrifice they doubted not to be acceptable to God, who had appointed it; and so to be also a means of bringing down GOD'S favour upon the whole Church. And, if we were to analyze their feelings in our way, how should it be otherwise, when they presented to the ALMIGHTY FATHER the symbols and memorials of the meritorious Death and Passion of His Only Begotten and Well-beloved SON, and besought Him by that precious sacrifice to look graciously upon the Church which He had purchased with His own blood--offering the memorials of that same sacrifice which He, our great High-Priest, made once for all, and now being entered within the veil, unceasingly presents before the FATHER, and the representation of which He has commanded us to make? It is, then, to use our technical phraseology, "a commemorative, impetratory sacrifice," which is all one with saying that it is well-pleasing to GOD; for what is well-pleasing to Him, how should it not bring down blessings upon us? They preferred to speak of it in language which, while it guarded against the errors of their days, the confusion with the sacrifices of Jew or Pagan, expressed their reverence for the memorials of their SAVIOUR'S Body and Blood, and named it "the aweful and unbloody sacrifice," or the like, as men would, with a sense of the unfathomable mystery of GOD'S goodness connected therewith. This pleading of our SAVIOUR'S merits, by a sacrifice instituted by Himself, was (they doubted not) regarded graciously by GOD, for the remission of sins; as indeed our LORD had said, "This is My Blood which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins." The Eucharist then, according to them, consisted of two parts, a "commemorative sacrifice" and a "Communion" or Communication; the former obtaining remission of sins for the Church; the Communion "the strengthening and refreshing of the soul," although, inasmuch as it united the believer with CHRIST, it indirectly conveyed remission of sins too. The Communion was (to use a modern phrase) the feast upon the sacrifice thus offered. They first offered to GOD His gifts, in commemoration of that His inestimable gift, and placed them upon His altar here, to be received and presented on the Heavenly Altar by Him, our High-Priest; and then, trusted to receive them back, conveying to them the life-giving Body and Blood. As being, moreover, appointed by their LORD, they believed that the continual oblation of this sacrifice (like the daily sacrifice appointed in the elder Church) was a benefit to the whole Church, independently and over and above the benefit to the individual communicants--that the sacrifices in each branch of the Christian Church were mutually of benefit to every other branch, each to all and all to each: and so also this common interest in the sacrifice of the memorials of their SAVIOUR'S Passion was one visible, yea, and (since GOD for its sake diffused unseen and inestimable blessings through the whole mystical body of His SON) an invisible spiritual bond of the Communion of Saints throughout the whole Body. "There is one JESUS CHRIST," says St. Ignatius, "who is above all: haste ye then all together, as to one Temple of GOD, as to one Altar, as to one CHRIST JESUS, who came forth from One FATHER, and is in One, and to One returned." [Ep. ad Magnes. §. 7] Lastly, since they knew not of our chill separation between those who, being dead in CHRIST, live to CHRIST and with CHRIST, and those who are yet in the flesh, they felt assured that this sacrifice offered by the Church on earth, for the whole Church, conveyed to that portion of the Church, which had passed into the unseen world, such benefits of CHRIST'S death as (their conflicts over, and they in rest) were still applicable to them. For their state, although higher far and purified, was yet necessarily imperfect, since the consummation of all things was not yet; and so they thought, was capable of increased spiritual joys, and fuller disclosures of the Beatific Vision. At all events, it had ever been the received practice of every branch of the Church Catholic, then to remember the "dead in CHRIST," and so whatever might become of their own individual surmises as to the mode, or extent of its efficacy, they comforted themselves, that being according to the will of GOD, it must in some way be of benefit to them. The merits of CHRIST'S death it is, which still keeps in subsistence a sinful world, and retains GOD'S love for the Church; it is in His Son, that the whole Church, notwithstanding her manifold deficiencies and unfaithfulnesses, is still acceptable to Him, and, "in the unity of the Church" and so in CHRIST, all the several members of the one Body: and they who sleep in CHRIST, are in CHRIST. Why then should we take upon ourselves to say that they, who are His members, as well as we, have no interest in this, which is offered as a memorial for all? or why should men think it an unhappiness or imperfection, that they should obtain additional joys and satisfactions thereby?

The Romish Church corrupted and marred the Apostolic doctrine in two ways. 1st. By the error of transubstantiation. 2nd. By that of purgatory. And in both there occurs that peculiar corruption of the administrators of the Romish Church, that they countenance so much more of profitable error, than in their abstract system they acknowledge. Thus by combining the doctrine of Transubstantiation with that of the Sacrifice in the Eucharist, the laity were persuaded that not only a commemorative sacrifice, but that CHRIST Himself was again offered; as indeed one of their own writers confesses; "It is true, and impossible to deny, that many theologians of the Romish Church took occasion of the name of sacrifice given to the Eucharist, to tell us of a fresh immolation and death; to attach to it an efficacy of its own [i. e. independent of the one meritorious Sacrifice on the Cross], and an independent merit; to make us place therein a confidence which cannot but be superstitious, whenever it refers not to the Sacrifice of the Cross." [Courayer, Réponse au P. Le Quien, c. xvii. p. 469. Even the excellent Nicole frequently repeats: "The sacrifice of the Mass is the same as that of the Cross; it is substantially the same sacrifice, because it is the same Victim, the same JESUS CHRIST who offers to His FATHER the same Body and Blood upon our altars, as He offered in Calvary." Esprit de M. Nicole, p. 533. M. Nicole a little softens this, but still keeps the main position, "that the sacrifices on the Cross and the Altar were the same, because it is the same JESUS CHRIST who offers Himself in the one as in the other." These writers make the Sacrifice both the same and distinct; through Transubstantiation, the same, and yet, in act, distinct. But for the doctrine of Transubstantiation, Nicole might have a right meaning.] These false notions, in themselves, aggrandized the character of the priesthood, and as such, it was part of the unhappy policy of Rome to countenance them; and while (to take the mildest view) she narrowly observed the erroneous tendencies which were almost unavoidably mixed up in the minds of individuals with the reformed doctrine, she had no sense for her own; she thought no deeds cruel which would remove the motes that threatened to darken her sister's eye, but perceived not the beam in her own. While repressing even by the shedding of blood the slightest approximation to the Reformed doctrine, she rebuked not errors which entrenched on the authority of our LORD. Joined, however, with the doctrine of purgatory, the sacrifice of the Mass gained for them another accession of power, the extent whereof, and of the abuses therewith connected, is not now easily appreciated. For the souls oi almost all, if not all, who passed out of this life, were supposed to go into purgatory; its pains were regarded as intolerable, equal, except in duration, to those of Hell. From these torments the sacrifice of the Mass came to be practically regarded as the only means of deliverance. For when it was believed that CHRIST was "truly and indeed, in respect of His very Body and Blood, offered up to His FATHER under the form of bread and wine, in the daily sacrifice of the Church," [Harding ap. Jewel, Reply, c. xvii. init.] nothing else, however abstractedly it might be allowed to be of use, could in comparison be of any moment. [One illustration of the practical combination of these doctrines may suffice, viz. the way in which even Sir Thomas More writes in a practical and popular work. A book, namely, "the Supplication of Beggars," had been put out, complaining that the charity destined for their relief had been turned aside to pay the priests for saying masses. Against this, Sir Thomas More, "Counsellor to our Sovereign Lord the King, and Chancellor of his duchy of Lancaster," wrote "The Supplication of Soules against the Supplication of Beggars." It thus begins; "In most piteous wise continually calleth and crieth upon your devout charity and most tender pity, for help, comfort, and relief, your late acquaintance, kindred, spouses, companions, play-fellows, and friends, and now your humble and unacquainted and half-forgotten suppliants, poor prisoners of GOD, the silly souls in purgatory, here abiding and enduring the grievous pains and hot cleansing fire, that fretteth and burneth out the rust and filthy spots of our sin, till the mercy of ALMIGHTY GOD, the rather by your good and charitable means, vouchsafe to deliver us hence. From whence, if ye marvel why we more now molest and trouble you with our writing than ever we were wont before, it may like you to wit and understand, that hitherto, tho' we have been with many folk much forgotten of negligence, yet hath alway good folk remembered us, and we have been recommended unto GOD, and eased and holpen, and relieved, both by the priests' prayers, of good virtuous people, and specially by the daily masses, and other ghostly suffrages of priests, religious, and folk of holy Church. But now sith that of late, there are sprung up certain seditious persons, which not only travail and labour to destroy them by whom we be much holpen, but also to sow and set forth such a pestilent opinion against our self, as once received and believed among the people, must need take from us the relief and comfort that ever should come to us by the charitable alms, prayers, and good works of the world; ye may take it for no wonder, tho' we silly souls that have long lien and cried so far from you, that we seldom break your sleep, do now, in this our great fear of our utter loss for ever of your loving remembrance and relief, not yet importunately bereave you of your rest with crying at your ears, at unseasonable time, when ye would (which we do never) repose yourself and take ease," &c. (Works p. 288). In p. 316 they speak of the "pains which will else hold them here with us in fire and torments intolerable, only God knoweth how long."] The corruptions, occasions of avarice, superstition, and profaneness thence ensuing, exceed all bounds. Even the Council of Trent was obliged to address itself to the remedy of them. [In the decree on Purgatory.] The connection then of the doctrine of the sacrifice with the two errors of Transubstantiation and Purgatory, at the Reformation, was of much moment; and of these, the fundamental error was that of Transubstantiation. "St. Cyprian saith," says Bishop Jewell to Harding, [Defence of Apology, P. 2. c. 5. v. fin. p. 140.] we offer our LORD'S cup mixed with wine. But he saith not as you say, 'we offer up the Son of God substantially and really unto the FATHER.' "Take away only this blasphemy, wherewith you have deceived the world, and then talk of mingling the cup and of the sacrifice while ye list." "Do ye take away from the Mass your Trasubstantiation," says Bishop Andrews [Respons. ad Card. Bellarm. c. 8.] to Cardinal Bellarmine, "and we shall not long have any question about the sacrifice." "This kind of oblation," [the Romish] "standeth upon Transubstantiation, his cousin-german," says Bishop Ridley, [Brief declaration of the Lord's Supper p. 16.] "and they do both grow upon one ground." And at the beginning of his book, [Ibid. p. 6.] "As in a man diseased in divers parts, commonly the original cause of such divers diseases, which is spreading abroad in the body, do come from one chief member,--even so all five points aforesaid do chiefly hang upon this one question: What is the matter of the sacrament? Whether is it the natural substance of bread, or the natural substance of CHRIST'S own body?--For if it be CHRIST'S own natural body, born of the Virgin,--then assuredly they must needs grant Transubstantiation, that is, a change of the substance of bread into the substance of CHRIST'S body. Then also they must needs grant the carnal and corporal presence of CHRIST'S body. Then must the sacrament be adored with the honour due to CHRIST Himself, for the unity of the two natures in one person. Then if the priest do offer the Sacrament, he doth offer indeed CHRIST Himself." And again [Ibid p. 17.], "Transubstantiation is the very foundation, whereon all their erroneous doctrine doth stand."

How then did those who revised our Liturgy separate the true doctrine from the false? The doctrine of Purgatory was entirely connected with the private masses, i. e. such as the priest celebrated alone, when there was the sacrifice, but no communion; for these, as being said especially for the deceased, were more costly, and it was profitable to multiply them. ["These monstrous things (that the Mass is a sacrifice for the remission of sins, and that it is applied by the priest to them for whom he saith or singeth, &c.) were never seen or known of the old and primitive Church, nor was there not then in one church many masses every day; but there were then no daily private masses, where every priest received alone, like as until this day there is none in the Greek churches but one common-mass in a day. Nor the holy fathers of the old Church would not have suffered such ungodly and wicked abuses of the Lord's Supper. But these private masses sprung up of late years, partly through the ignorance and superstition of unlearned monks and friars, which knew not what a sacrifice was, but made of the mass a sacrifice propitiatory, to remit both sin and the pain due for the same; but chiefly they spring of lucre and gain, when priests found the means to sell masses to the people; which caused masses so to increase, that every day was sold an infinite number," &c.--Cranmer, Defence of the Catholic Doctrine, &c. b. 5. c. 16.] These our Church laid aside, as contrary to primitive practice; and therewith a main blow was struck at the belief that the sacrifice of the Eucharist benefited souls in purgatory; for the rite, with which this error was associated, was gone. Transubstantiation (as is well known) was not expressed or implied in any of the Liturgies used anywhere in the Church, down to this very period; on the contrary, the very Church of Rome preserved, as a witness against her, her ancient Liturgy in this respect uncorrupted. The Canon of the Mass, or the ancient, peculiar service of the Communion, is, as is well known, thus far wholly pure and catholic, although some other prayers, incidentally blended with it, are not always so.

The revisers of our Liturgy, however, anxious to remove all occasion of stumbling, in the very first instance went further than this. They dropped all which spoke of any benefit of this commemorative sacrifice; they retained the act, as a duty, but omitted all mention of its privileges. Again, they retained the practice of the Church Universal, to "commend to the mercy of GOD all His servants which are departed hence from us, with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the sleep of peace;" but they transposed this prayer, placing it before the oblation, perhaps for fear that it should give any countenance to the Romish error, "that CHRIST was offered for the quick and dead;" and they confined the verbal act of the sacrifice to the single prayer which followed after the consecration. Then also they introduced the mention of another sacrifice, comprehended in that sacrifice, as the "sacrifice of ourselves, our souls and bodies,"--not to lower the character of that commemorative sacrifice, but still to remove men's wrong conceptions of it, as if the sacrifice were something quite independent of the faith and devotion of those who offered it, in like way as the communication of the Body and Blood of our LORD is indeed independent of any intention of the priest.

The form of words which accompanied the oblation, was as follows. After the prayer "for the whole state of Christ's Church," there followed a prayer as well of consecration as of oblation, of which part was subsequently omitted, part retained as the prayer of the consecration, part placed after the actual communion. The prayer began, "O GOD, heavenly Father, which of Thy tender mercy," &c. to "His coming again," hear us, "O merciful Father, we beseech Thee, and with Thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bl + ess and sanc + tify these Thy gifts, and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of Thy most Dearly Beloved SON, JESUS CHRIST, who in the same night," &c. to "in remembrance of Me." "Wherefore, O LORD, and heavenly Father, according to the institution of Thy Dearly Beloved SON, our Saviour JESUS CHRIST, we Thy humble servants do celebrate, and make here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, the memorial which Thy SON hath willed us to make; having in remembrance His blessed Passion, mighty Resurrection, and glorious Ascension, rendering unto Thee most hearty thanks, for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same, entirely desiring Thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving," &c. to "sacrifice unto Thee;" "humbly beseeching Thee, that whosoever shall be partakers of this holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son JESUS CHRIST, and be filled with Thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with Thy Son JESUS CHRIST, that He may dwell in them and they in Him. And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto Thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech Thee to accept this our bounden duty and service, and command these our prayers and supplications by the ministry of Thy holy Angels to be brought up into Thy holy Tabernacle before the sight of Thy Divine Majesty; not weighing our merits, but," &c.

In the subsequent part of the service, as an additional safeguard, is added (in a brief address now omitted,) a Confession, which bears the character of antiquity. "CHRIST our Paschal Lamb is offered up for us, once for all, when He bare our sins on His Body upon the Cross, for He is the only LAMB of GOD, that taketh away the sins of the world; wherefore, let us keep a joyful feast with the LORD."

The remainder of the Service differed not from our present; save that possibly the doctrine of the connection of the actual participation of our LORD in the Communion, with the reception of the Holy Elements, was more distinctly enounced in the prayer, "We do not presume," &c.--in that they prayed that they might "drink His blood in these holy Mysteries;" and again, in the thanksgiving after the Communion (now in consequence of these changes universally omitted,) in like manner, "for that Thou hast vouchsafed to feed us [in these holy Mysteries] with the spiritual food," &c. "and hast assured us [duly receiving the same] of Thy favour and goodness towards us," instead of "for that Thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, which have duly received these holy Mysteries, with," &c.

Such was the modified form in which the doctrine was expressed; so that one should rather question whether the revisers had not already gone further than they need, and if so, further than they ought, in altering the ancient liturgy of the Church. For, of course, it would be a maxim that, especially in high doctrines, which we do but dimly see, as little change should be made as possible, lest we inadvertently part with that, whose value we do not at the time appreciate. The false doctrine was that ordinary persuasion that "in the Mass, the Priest did offer CHRIST for the quick and dead." The danger to be apprehended, lest it should interfere with "that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction made by the one oblation of CHRIST upon the cross, for all the sins of the whole world." Of this, in the revised liturgy, there was not the remotest trace. It would be difficult to imagine what ground of exception could be taken against what remained, unless one had known whence those exceptions came. There is not the slightest intimation that the English Church dreaded any practical evils from the revised form,--as indeed how should they, when every expression which could, in the remotest way, favour the Romish corruption, was removed? On the contrary, the Act which enforced it "gave offence (only) we are told, [Heylyn, Hist of the Ref. p. 66.] to the Romish party; not that "they could except against it, in regard either of the manner or matter of (which they acknowledged to be consonant to the ancient forms,) but because it was communicated to the people in the "Vulgar Tongue." The general feelings of the Lay portion of the Church might, in those days, be tolerably estimated by those expressed in the two Houses of Parliament; and these [ap. Strype, Eccl. Mem. of Edw. 6, b. 1. c. 11. p. 86. fol.] "gave to the king most hearty and lowly thanks for it, and for his godly travail, in collecting and gathering together the said Archbishop, Bishops, and learned men, and for the godly prayers, orders, rites and ceremonies in the said book; and considered the honour of GOD, and the great goodness which, by the grace of GOD, would ensue upon it; and finally, concluded the book such, that it would give occasion to every honest man most willingly to embrace it." It was also not only confirmed by the two Houses, but "the more material points were disputed and debated in the Convocation, by men of both parties, and might further have been discussed, so long as any Popish Divine had anything reasonably to say." [Dr. G. Abbot against Hill, p. 104. ap. Strype, ib. p. 87. "The religion--drawn out of the fountains of the word of GOD, and from the purest oracles of the primitive Church, was, for the ordinary exercise thereof, collected into the book of Common Prayer, by the pains and labour of many learned men, and of mature judgment." Id. Ib.]

Indeed, persons of the most different views agree in praising the wonderful wisdom of these first revisers of our Common Prayer Book; and, at the time, it was unhesitatingly affirmed to have been done "by aid of the Holy Ghost;" without Whom so blessed a work could not have been accomplished. There seems, then, to have been good hope that all the Romanist Laity would have continued to conform to it, inasmuch as in the Upper House only four of the Laity protested against it. [Strype, ib. p. 86.]

This hope, however, of retaining the Romanist Laity within our Communion, was soon dissipated. The feelings of the Church do not appear to have been altered. When some Bishops had been induced, by the representations of Calvin and the rest, to open the question about the "words used at the giving of the elements, and the different manner of administering the holy sacrament," the lower House of Convocation, to whom the matter was proposed, put off the question until the succeeding session, nor does it appear that they ever acceded to the plan. [Heylyn, p. 107.]

The objections came entirely from without. When this, our genuine English Liturgy, was framed, one foreign reformer only, of any note, (P. Martyr) had arrived in England; à Lasco, whose influence was subsequently most pernicious, and Bucer, came not until the Liturgy was completed. But the kindness wherewith England has made itself the refuge of the oppressed, was in this case also abused. Immediately after the completion of the Liturgy, we find the poor Archbishop unhappily surrounded by foreigners, who had in their own countries rejected Episcopacy, some, the doctrines of the Sacraments also, and left their own countries because they went beyond the foreign reformation. Others were generally unsound.

Of these, the highly-gifted B. Ochinus died an apostate to a low Socinianism; a Lasco, a Polish emigrant nobleman, carried even further than their author, the anti-sacramental doctrines of Calvin3. [See Scriptural views of Holy Baptism (Tracts) Note M. p. 245 seq. The following account is from Strype, principally his "Cranmer," b. 2, c. 22.] Yet he was highly trusted by Cranmer, was, although a Preacher only, invested with a sort of Episcopal authority over the several congregations of foreigners, Germans, Italians, and French, and perhaps Spanish, settled in or near London; and so much wealth was, out of a dissolved Church, settled upon him, that he was enabled to become a patron to all foreigners who should resort thither. [He had become a preacher to a Protestant congregation at Embden, Strype, 1. c.] His having fled from his own country, his position in London, reputation for learning, and strictness of life, gave him considerable influence; and in those unsettled days, the existence of a regular form of doctrine, worship, and government different from that of the Church, was calculated in unstable minds to produce a like desire of novelty. A Lasco himself was of an active, meddling temper; he took upon himself to interfere in the question of episcopal habits, (which was indeed a question between the spirit of the English Church and Geneva,) and from the Arians in his own country also, ultimately from Geneva, had brought in the custom of sitting at the Holy Eucharist, and the antipathy to the scriptural and primitive name of "Altar." [It is characteristic that Peter Martyr, although he accepted a Canonry in our Church, boasts that he never would wear the surplice. Epist. ej. ap. Heylyn, p. 92.]

With these and the like men Cranmer was surrounded; and paid much deference to them, as a man of no decision is wont to do to those who are bent upon carrying a point. It was probably a fruit of this influence, that there came out from the Council in 1550 an ill-omened letter, signed by seven laymen, but by one Bishop only (Ely) besides the Archbishop, commanding the altars to be taken down, and tables to be placed in their room. ["A Swiss Reformer, resident at Oxford, informed Bullinger, in Nov. 1548, that Cranmer had been brought to sounder views of the Lord's Supper by John à Lasco!" Jenkyns's pref. to Cranmer's Works, p. lxxix.] Some of the reasons assigned [Heylyn, p. 96, 97.] are the more remarkable, in that the good ground of Christian antiquity was necessarily abandoned, and arguments are drawn from the partial silence of Holy Scripture; in that "it is not to be found that any of the Apostles did ever use an altar in the ministration;"--the selfsame argument by which the name of the Blessed "Trinity" is proscribed by the Socinian, and the blessing of Infant-baptism by the Anabaptist. It was forgotten that as little is it said that they ever used a table; that in the first three centuries the name "table" but once occurs, that of altar, as sanctioned by Holy Scripture, is the ordinary title. [Johnson, Unbloody Sacrifice, p. 308.] The edict, however, was executed;" the people flew upon the spoil," jewels, hangings, plate, candlesticks, were transferred from the temple of GOD to the houses, tables, or persons of the rich; and sacrilege was an ill augury of what should follow.

The change in doctrine was now actually introduced, and recommended by the authority of Bishop Hooper, who had unhappily, during Henry VIII's reign, taken refuge in Zurich, and become acquainted with Bullinger a friend of Zuingli. [Heylyn, p. 90. The interest which Calvin took in Hooper's success, is instructive. During the demur about the "habits," Calvin wrote to the Protector "to give him a helping hand." Ep. Calv. ap. Heylyn, p. 91] Of the change itself, the less need be said, since the whole doctrine of the Eucharist was then altered. The service indeed was rendered inconsistent; for some of the antient doctrine was retained, although all the alterations went one way, to introduce the Zuinglian view of a simple commemoration for the Catholic doctrine of actual communion. It suffices to characterize and condemn this change, that words, some whereof were ever used by the whole Church, "The Body of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life," were expunged, and instead thereof was invented and substituted the mere exhortation, "Take and eat this, in remembrance," &c.

But it is instructive to observe how this change of doctrine affected (as it must) the value felt for the Holy Eucharist, as appears incidentally in the two liturgies of Edward VI. In the first, we find it said,

"In Cathedral churches or other places, where there is daily Communion, it shall be sufficient to read this exhortation, once in a month. And in parish churches, upon the week-days, it may be left unsaid. And if, upon the Sunday or holy day, the people be negligent to come to the Communion, then shall the Priest earnestly exhort his parishioners, to dispose themselves to the receiving of the holy Communion more diligently."

And, "If in the sermon or homily, the people be not exhorted to the worthy receiving of the holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour CHRIST; then shall the curate give this exhortation to those that be minded to receive the same, "'Dearly beloved in the Lord, ye that mind, &c.'" and

"When the holy Communion is celebrated on the week-day, then may be omitted the Gloria in excelsis, the creed, the homily, [The Communion was then thought of more moment than the sermon.] and the exhortation."

Another regulation implied that it might very probably be celebrated every Wednesday and Friday, and other days; and it is provided that "the priest on the week-day shall forbear to celebrate the Communion, except he have some that will communicate with him;" and provision was made (as far as might be) "that the Minister, having always some to communicate with him, may accordingly celebrate so high and holy Mysteries with all the suffrages and due order appointed for the same."

In the second book, all these notices and this urgent desire of frequent Communion disappear; we find only, "there shall follow this exhortation at certain times, when the curate shall see the people negligent to come to the holy Communion" [the 2d exhortation, now in use, only altered].

Daily communion was altogether dropped; it is implied only that there may be communion on holy days; and that in Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, there should be weekly communion; but, on the other hand, it is provided that "there shall he no celebration of the Lord's supper," not as before, "unless there be some," but "except there be a good number to communicate with the priest, according to his discretion," (a regulation for which now has been substituted, "a convenient number,") as also another still retained, "if there be not above twenty persons in the parish of discretion to receive the Communion; yet there shall be no Communion, except four (or three at the least) communicate with the priest." They were more anxious to rescue the priest from communicating with a few, than the flock from rare communions or losing them well-nigh altogether.

And thus the devout (as is ever the case in these changes) were sacrificed to the undevout; and we have followed out this reformation, thus brought about through the agency of foreign reformers, and have brought down our celebrations of the Communion from weekly to monthly, or quarterly, or three times in the year; (whereby those of our people who can receive it oftenest, receive it only so often as our Church, even in those bad times, thought necessary, at the very least, to retain the spiritual health of any member of CHRIST'S body, and the most cannot receive it even on all these rare occasions;) and we have dropped the Communions of Holy Days, and should oftentimes not think it worth while to administer it (in church) to three or four communicants, and have lost (for the most part) the very sense and feeling, that more frequent communion would be a blessing. It makes, in truth, a man's "eyes gush out with water," to see in these notices, how the glory of our church, the days of her youth, and her first love are departed: and to think what she might have been, had she stood in the old paths. "The virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow."

On the accession of Q. Elizabeth, the worst alteration, that of the words used at the delivery of the holy elements, was modified, so as to restore the old doctrine of a real Communion, for those who were willing to receive it; and with regard to her doctrine of the Sacrifice, the restoration of the Communion table to the place which the altar had formerly occupied, shewed that the Church recognized the doctrine, which some of her heads had before shrunk from avowing in the presence of the foreign reformers, and their disciples.

These restorations were, however, inadequate to replace men's minds in their former state; the confession of the true doctrine had been once half suppressed, and was now not more than half avowed: and it seems annexed as a penalty to all unfaithfulness in guarding the deposit committed to us, that we cannot replace things as they were. The snow which descends from Heaven, cannot, if once polluted, recover its former purity. The purity which God gave, He can restore; yet He does not so to any Church, for any half-efforts, nor unless it be "zealous and repent." (Rev. iii. 19.)

Men's minds also had received a severe shock through the profanations which had been carried on in the name of this second reformation; in taking away the tares, they had uprooted the wheat also; in endeavouring, with a rude hand, to eradicate Romish misbelief, they went hard to introduce unbelief; they had effectually effaced the association between the altar and the Romish sacrifice, but they had loosened men's reverence altogether. "When their table was constituted, (was the well-merited mockery of a Romanist divine) they could never be contented with placing the same, now East, now North; now one way, now another: until it pleased GOD of His goodness to place it quite out of the Church:" "this difference and diversity, (says Heylyn very truly) "although in circumstance only, might draw contempt upon the Sacrament itself, and give great scandal unto many moderate and well-meaning men." [White, Bp. of Lincoln ap. Heylyn, p. 107. Heylyn quotes other mockery, which is very instructive as to the mischief which was done by these vacillations: "The like did Western (Prolocutor of Convocation, 1 Queen Mary) in a disputation held with Latimer, telling him, with reproach and contempt enough, that the Protestants having turned their table, were like a company of apes, that knew not which way to turn their tails; looking one day East, and another day West; one this way, and another that way, as their fancies led them. Thus, finally, one Miles Hubbard, in a book called 'The Display of Protestants,' doth report the business, 'How long were they learning to set their tables to minister the Communion upon? First, they placed it aloft, where the High Altar stood; then must it be removed from the wall, that one might go between; the ministers being in contention, whither part to turn their faces, either toward the West, the North, or South; some would stand Westward, some Northward, some Southward.'"] Then followed the scenes of plunder, each labouring to outdo the other; the king issuing a Commission to restrain the "plundering of the Churches," and to recover what had been stolen, in order--to appropriate it to himself; and this Commission, with all intended expedition, was left behind in the race of sacrilege, and powerful private plunderers, or secret thieves, had got much of the treasure into their own hands, and could not be discovered, or would not disgorge it: "Insomuch that many private men's parlours were hung with altar cloths; their tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpets and coverlids; and many made carousing cups of the sacred chalices, as once Belshazzar celebrated his drunken feast in the sanctified vessels of the temple. It was a sorry house, and not worth the naming, which had not somewhat of this furniture in it, though it were only a fair large cushion made of a cope or altar cloth, to adorn their windows, or make their chairs appear to have somewhat in them of a chair of state. Yet how contemptible were these trappings in comparison of those vast sums of money, which were made of jewels, plate, and cloth of tyssue, either conveyed beyond the seas, or sold at home, and good lands purchased with the money; nothing the more blessed to the posterity of them that bought them, for being purchased with the consecrated treasures of so many temples."--"Thou that abhorrest idols, dost THOU commit sacrilege?" [Heylyn, p. 134.]

One would gladly have turned from these sickening scenes, whereby and by the like, religion was, for the time, made "a gainful occupation," (1 Tim. vi. 5) and GOD'S holy name was blasphemed; bad men supplanting one another, and Bishops scarcely lifting up one warning voice against the sacrilege, but submitting to enforce it; (so that the days of Q. Mary come as a relief, wherein those of our reformation suffered, not sinned) but that through the profaneness which these acts entailed, they must have had much effect in changing religious doctrine, and preventing its restoration. [Ridley, although we have no doubt unwillingly, as Bishop of London, enforced the mandate addressed to him, for pulling down the altars, which was accompanied with so much profaneness and sacrilege. (Heylyn, p. 90, seq.) Day, Bp. of Chichester, was deposed for not pulling down the altars in his diocese. (Strype, Cranmer, b. 2, c. 20.) A specimen of what then passed in men's minds is the report of the times (whether true or mistaken, matters not) "what Cheke told him (P. Martyr) did not a little refresh him, viz. That if they themselves (the Revisers of the Liturgy) would not change what ought to be changed, the king would do it himself; and when they came to a Parliament, the king would interpose His Majesty's own authority." Strype, Cranmer, b. 2, c. 18.]

[Ridley (it appears from his Life, p. 325) issued an injunction for the setting up of Tables in the Churches throughout his Diocese, and taking down of Altars, before the order in council, and probably obtained that order in consequence of the "great opposition and censure" this injunction met with, as "contrary to the present order of Common Prayer, and the King's proceedings." It is stated also in the "Letter from the Council," (as far as this may be taken as any authority, and not rather as asserting what they wished,) that "the Altars within the more part of the Churches were" already "taken down." It appears too that Ridley, though using the common-place ultra-Protestant statements, persuaded himself that he was acting in conformity to "primitive practice." He argued that "Christ instituted His last Supper at a Table and not upon an Altar. Nor did either the Apostles or the Primitive Church, as we read of, ever use an Altar in the Ministration of the Communion. Therefore a Table, as more agreeing with Christ's institution and primitive practice, is rather to be used than an Altar." The fact stated is indeed wholly untrue, arising, as it appears, from the confusion of the titles qusiasthrion and bwmoV. (See Mede and Johnson, &c.) On which ground the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of Ely "urged against Day, Bishop of Chichester, before the Council," (when he refused to comply with its order,) "that 'twas clear by Origen against Celsus, that the Christians had no Altars when this Father lived." Though "they owned at the same time that the Lord's Table was called an Altar by ancient writers." (Collier.) Origen, and other early Christians, allowed that they had no Altars whereon to offer bloody Sacrifices, as the Jews and Heathens; but continually, and indeed uniformly, spoke among themselves of their having an Altar and a Sacrifice, as the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of Ely admitted. It may be recollected also, in excuse, that the Catholic doctrine of the "Communion" was obscured, or nearly effaced, by the corrupt practice of Masses without Communion, and Ridley may have thought the Altars, as they then existed, were an impediment to its restoration, and hoped that the new "God's board" might also be considered as an "Altar," (though not in the Romish sense,) as, in the true Catholic view, the Altar is also the Table of the Lord. By taking an active part, however, with the more violent, though smaller, ultra-Protestant party, Ridley unhappily gave much occasion for immediate profaneness, and for the ultimate suspension of doctrine, which he still held. So narrow is the path of Catholic Truth, and so much danger is there in disturbing any truth, which men hold, or the way in which they hold it, or any rites or forms, in connection wherewith it has been handed down, as also in using such a wayward and ungoverned instrument as popular feeling, in things holy.]

After these scenes of rapid legislation and confusion, decree following decree, spoliation upon spoliation, liturgy upon liturgy, (men's minds unsettled by the frequent changes, by the consultations with men of a different reformation, and by the state's violent interference and lawless deeds) a large body of our clergy fled abroad, mistrusted by the Lutherans on account of their consultations with à Lasco, and settling in the birth-place of the unsoundest part of the reformation, Zurich, Geneva, and other cities connected with them.

Here such as were left (Ridley, the great upholder of Catholic truth, having received his martyr's crown) divided into two parties; only, as is ordinarily the case, evil principles are more rapidly developed than good, and so we find what was subsequently the Puritan party most developed, and engaged in turbulent, ambitious, schismatic measures. They also had the Zuingli-Calvinist reformation close at hand, to which they joined themselves without scruple, and so they were already arrived at the first stage of that Reformation, opposed to the Church, but not as yet opposed to the Scriptures; the other was gradually recovering from the influences, under which it had been brought during the reign of Edward VI; but we find this difference, that, while the principles of the Puritans or Nonconformists were already developed, that of the genius of the English Church did not unfold itself altogether, until some years afterwards, in the seventeenth century, and then was again cast out. At the accession of Queen Elizabeth, they either did not see their way clearly (as was natural) or "the sons of Zeruiah were too hard for them;" the body of the English Church, not having been infected with foreign notions, was yet sound, and desired no foreign inventions; but when an innovating party is decided, and the sound party engaged on the defensive only, the innovators will ever have the advantage, and the quiet body of the Church is sacrificed. Concessions, involving the sacrifice of principle, are made, if only to avoid the imputation of obstinacy or stiffness in refusing. As an instance, some idea there was of restoring (as the Queen herself wished) the genuine English service book (Edward VI's first book): how this was prevented, we know not; the Church generally desired it: perhaps the hope of conciliating those who afterwards overturned our Church and nation, prevailed; mediating measures were adopted; and the Church lost the distinct and tranquil enunciation of doctrine, which was the best and only antidote to further evil.

The amalgamating measures of Queen Elizabeth's divines produced just their natural effect, viz. an amalgamation of doctrine; of which, however, unhappily, the lower doctrine naturally dragged down the higher (since men will always in the end subside into the lower of two views proposed to them), and was, from its own nature, the more conspicuous.

Should this sketch to any appear distressing, let him rather contemplate the immense fermentation, which was likely to arise in the endeavour to separate off the impurities of the Church of Rome; the influence which, in any such troubled times, bad men and bad passions must naturally obtain; and instead of wondering that the lees did not settle down until the next century, rather let him thank GOD (and he has abundant reason to thank Him) that, while He allowed them to float up and down in the vast ferment, He did not yet permit them to spoil the "good wine," but has "kept it until now." Even our Articles, as well as our Liturgy and Catechism (blessed be His Holy Name), were preserved free from the errors into which the foreign Reformers fell, and expressed the truth fully on all points necessary to salvation, and, in the case in question, though maimed, and not with the simple unreservedness of primitive days, still, sufficiently to preserve the agreement with the primitive Church. Besides, she not only did not exclude, but directed her true sons to, the teaching of the Church Catholic; she did not form a system of faith, which should exclude whatever lay beyond it, but only secured (as far as she could) certain prominent points, on which error had existed. But these, as a particular church, she laid down only in dependence upon, and subordination to, not to supersede the Church Catholic.

Cranmer himself shared, in a great degree, the difficulty which men of those days must have had, in arriving at any definite or ascertained results at all: one who has been even compelled to part with a portion of his belief, has shaken the hold of the remainder: and even though the needle should be endued with a power, not its own, to fix at last on the centre where it should rest, yet, should it have been necessary once violently to shake it, it will not be until after much vehement vibration to the right and to the left, that it will at last tremblingly fix itself. It is not in the midst of conflict, while men are struggling for their footing and for life, that we are to expect a calm survey of the nature of the ground whereon they stand. All the Reformers (as was to be expected) vacillated, English and foreign (save, perhaps, Ridley, who was most imbued with the doctrines of the early Church, and had therein a firm resting place); and they who ventured to systematize most, as Calvin, went most astray; others, as Luther, in whatever proportion they did so. Their province was, to clear the building of its untempered mortar; it was to be the task of others to point the edges, which, in this rough handling, were of necessity injured, and to restore the fair harmony and finish of the goodly building. It is difficult, at any time, to oppose even an error broadly, without impairing some neighbouring truth out of which it was corrupted, or to which it is akin; this has been miserably evidenced again and again in individual controversy with heretics; the insulated defender of truth against heresy, himself steps on the other side beyond the Catholic verities, and becomes a heretic: every error, almost, in these latter divided times, is the depository of some kindred truth, and rough censures of what is untrue fail not to include what is true also; thus, in refuting men who depreciated the ordained sacraments, men, in their turn, came to depreciate or deny unquestionable (although mis-stated) Divine agency, and explain GOD'S miraculous workings in the conversion of a single soul, or the refreshing of His Church, by mere secondary causes: on the other hand, in correcting false notions of the Sacraments, they lost the true; in refuting Transsubstantiation, they fell short of the truth of the real mystical, spiritual presence of CHRIST in the Eucharist; the mind, intent upon the one side of removing injurious error, misses or forgets to establish, or does not discriminate, the positive truth. The Divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had different offices; in the sixteenth, we are to look for strong broad statements of truths, which had been obscured by Popery, but often without the modifications which they require and receive from other portions of the Gospel; in the seventeenth, we have the calmer, deeper statements of men, to whom God had given peace from the first conflict, yet suffered not their arms to rust, having "left" certain of "the nations to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known the wars of Canaan" (Judges iii. 1). Yet their office was to maintain, not to win, and so was a calmer duty; and they, however exercised by troubles, still breathed freely amid the "arva serena," which their fathers had won with their own blood. They had not to rise and take possession of the land, while

"blood and fire ran in mingled stream," [Christian Year.]

but "to keep the watch of the LORD by His holy temple and by the altar, every man with his weapon in his hand." (2 Chron. xxiii.) There is then no occasion to institute any comparison between the relative value of these several "vessels meet for the Master's use" in the House of GOD; between those who here first laboured, and those who, when these were at rest, entered into their labours. Each had their several offices, and were severally qualified for them; and they only risk disparaging the Reformers of the sixteenth century who would look to them for that which was not their office, viz. a well-proportioned and equable exhibition of the several parts of the Catholic faith, which was, in the appointed order of things, rather reserved for the seventeenth.

It was, then, natural that Cranmer should vacillate, and that, the more as to the doctrine of the Eucharist, since he had arrived at the Catholic views, through the aid of Ridley, and contrary perhaps to his own bias. We blame him then not for this, rather should one abstain from rudely blaming those, who vacillated most, and even for a while, or altogether, returned to Rome. It was not necessarily for interest that men so vacillated; the excesses of many foreign Protestants must needs have startled many of the gentler sort, who yet wished to be freed from the grosser corruptions of Rome, as they do at this day: and if Cranmer, pledged as he was, could recant, and retracted not, while there was yet hope, one need not impute worse motives than undue fear of man to others. GOD, for His own name's sake, rescued His servant Cranmer, and gave him the crown of martyrdom; Jewel's recantation was blotted out only by bitter tears, and a life of fasting and humiliation: why then ascribe sordid motives to others, who, halting between two opinions, were dissatisfied perhaps both with the corruptions of Rome and those of the Reformation under Edward VI., and so took part with neither, but held a middle course, leaning first on the one side, then on the other? Such persons are not to be hastily blamed: unless indeed they put themselves in the office of leaders of the LORD'S host, for which they are not fitted; to the people, it was wont to be proclaimed in the wars of the Lord, "What man is fearful and faint hearted? let him go and return unto his house!" (Deut. xx. 8.) Stirring times must be times of fear.

What, however, is to be blamed in Cranmer, is that one, from his own yieldingness unfitted for the task, should have undertaken so mighty a work as that of uniting the discordant elements of Protestantism in one Episcopal body. A splendid conception truly; but not to be encompassed by such an instrument! No great principles put forward; private and discordant opinions not repressed by an appeal to the agreement of Catholic antiquity, which had been the Anglican touchstone in Romish controversy; the peculiar advantages of the Anglican reformation abandoned; and instead thereof, a mere attempt at comprehension by the use of vague and indistinct terms, "which might be taken in a larger acceptation," but which, as Melanchthon saw, were but a source of increased contention to posterity. [Cranmer wished to unite the reformations of England, Germany, France, Geneva, and Zurich, i. e. the Fathers, Luther, Beza, Calvin, and Zuingli, in one. Melanchthon approved Cranmer's plan generally, "to publish a true and clear confession of the whole body of Christian doctrine, according to the judgment of learned men, whose names should be subscribed thereto. He thought this confession should be much of the nature of their confession at Augsburg; only that some few points in controversy might be in plainer words delivered, than was in that" (Ep. 66. L. 1. ap. Strype Cranmer, b 3. c. 24). This last admission is the more remarkable, in that it was the policy of his followers in Germany to render that Confession more ambiguous, so that it might comprehend persons yet more at variance with one another, instead of guiding them in one way. They went on, veiling differences of opinion under ambiguity of expression, until it proved their destruction. As people came to look upon Articles as a test, instead of a guide, they first sacrificed their primary use as "a confession of faith," and then dreaded their effects, for the very purpose to which they had turned them, and wished to relax them and make them more indefinite (thus destroying their use in teaching), for fear that, as tests, they should be too restricted. P. Martyr agreed with Melanchthon, but on the opposite, the Zuinglian, side; so that here, for this plan of union, there were already two opposed parties, wishing their own views to be fully and precisely expressed. This was impossible; but Bucer and Cranmer took a line equally impracticable, to conciliate parties by "using more dark and ambiguous forms of speech, that might be taken in a larger acceptation" (Strype, ib. p. 408). This was in 1548. Edward VIth's Articles (1552) which seem to have been carried through by the Archbishop in connection with the State, in conjunction perhaps with some selected Commission, but which were never submitted to the Church at large (Strype's Cranmer, 11, 27, 34. Heylyn, p. 121)--these Articles are a fruit of this policy, and have two faces, one to be presented to those abroad, who could not as yet come up to the high doctrine; the other to be followed out at home, with reference to the teaching of the Church Catholic. Unhappily, but as was natural, they have been too often followed out into Zuinglianism, which they were intended to bring over to the Church. (On this negotiation with Melanchthon and Calvin, see Strype's Cranmer, b. 3, c. 24 and 25. Of Calvin's strong interference with our reformation, Heylyn speaks, p. 80, 107.)] Cranmer thus aggravated the difficulties of his own waveringness; and entailed upon himself trials, which God had not annexed to his office, fell into a snare and brought the elements of confusion into our Church. As also he began the design, not in unison with the Church, but in concert with foreigners or the state alone, so it seems to have continued it single-handed; the body of the clergy do not appear even to have been consulted about it; the other Commissioners were (although nothing is known certainly) very probably joined in this office of revision, but the majority unquestionably misliked it: as the scheme of comprehension was Cranmer's only, so the responsibility of veiling or lowering the doctrine is only his. And again, in the articles of Edward VI, of which he acknowledged himself the writer, and which were composed about the same time, there is, in those relating to the Sacraments, the like tendency to Zuinglianism, and the like use of ambiguous or inadequate expressions.

Cranmer's views on the Sacrifice of the Eucharist must, of course, have been lowered by his intimacy with reformers, who had imbibed the Zuinglian errors. Yet even in the book, which betrays much Zuinglian language and illustration, and contains passages scarcely reconcileable with any sound doctrine on the Sacraments, (his "Defence of the true and Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour CHRIST, 1550") on the doctrine of the Sacrifice, he directs himself against statements either wholly Romish and erroneous, or which could most obviously be understood in a Romish sense, as though the priest sacrificed CHRIST, or the sacrifice benefited those who partook not of it, or as if there could be priest or sacrifice distinct from the priesthood or sacrifice of CHRIST, or (and that mainly) as if the sacrifice could be applied by the priest to whom he willed; on the other hand, there occur passages, which express so far at least the true doctrine, that the author could hardly have needed any further alteration of the Liturgy for his own sake.

It is remarkable in this and many other instances how the respect for the old Fathers, which was characteristic of our Anglican church, upheld those, who had otherwise, in all likelihood, lapsed into Ultra-Protestantism. On the principles of our Church, they could not but defer to the authority of the "old primitive and apostolick Church," and so were checked, even after they had half adopted views at variance with them. An Ultra-Protestant would consistently reject the doctrine of the sacrifice, (as he would the rite of Infant Baptism) because there is no explicit authority for it in Holy Scripture, no statement of it totidem verbis; the Anglican Divine must receive it, as the doctrine of the Church Catholic, coinciding with hints of Holy Scripture. It is just in this way, through reference to the Fathers, that Cranmer retains his statement of the doctrine. "Therefore when the old fathers called the mass or supper of the Lord, a sacrifice, they meant that it was a sacrifice of lauds and thanksgiving, and so as well the people as the priest do sacrifice, or else that it was a remembrance [memorial] of the very true sacrifice propitiatory of Christ; but they meant in no wise that it is a very true sacrifice for sin, and applicable by the priest [at his pleasure] to the quick and dead. For the priest may well minister CHRIST'S words and sacraments to all men both good and bad, but he can apply the benefit of CHRIST'S passion to no man, being of age and discretion, but only to such as do, by their own faith, apply it to themselves," &c. [Defence of the Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. B. v. c. 16. t. 2. p. 461. ed. Jenkyns.]

This was but two years before the unhappy change of the service in compliance with the Zuinglian view; and after this time it is not even supposed that Cranmer's views were further changed; and yet even thus late Cranmer thus speaks of the first service-book; "Thanks be to the eternal GOD, the manner of the Holy Communion, which is now set forth within this realm, is agreeable with the institution of Christ, with St. Paul, and the old primitive and Apostolic Church, with the right faith of the sacrifice of CHRIST upon the cross for our redemption, and with the true "doctrine of our salvation, justification, and remission of all our sins by that only sacrifice." [Ib. c. ult. p. 463.]

Cranmer's views then were unchanged, even while with a false scheme of comprehension, he suppressed such as were too high for the foreign reformers; it was partial suppression, not falsification, which the English Church suffered. Even the Articles, although they naturally suffered most from this policy of Cranmer (in that they were to be the media of comprehension) and retain in parts the character so impressed upon them, still have sufficient indications of the true doctrine, and are upheld by the liturgy, which, as being mostly antient, could be less affected by the expedients of the times.

In the liturgy, the most serious alterations affected, not the doctrine of the sacrifice, but the privileges of the communion, although, in order to understand the spirit in which they were made, it has been necessary to speak of the whole subject. For the abolition of words, which had expressed the doctrine of the whole Church, "The Body of our Lord JESUS CHRIST," &c. and the substitution of a lower formula, expressing only modern notions, went nigh to an apostacy and betrayal of the trust reposed in us as a Church.

The suppressions in the article of the "sacrifice" were not entire; only it must be borne in mind, that much had been already suppressed, other parts expressed, according to Cranmer's policy, with perhaps a studied ambiguity, so that the land-marks of true doctrine were both diminished and obscured.

The actual omissions were, 1st, That of the direction of the Rubric, that "the minister should take so much Bread and Wine, as shall suffice for the persons appointed to receive the Holy Communion, laying the Bread upon the corporas, or else in the paten, or in some other comely thing, prepared for that purpose: and putting the Wine into the chalice or else into some fair or convenient cup, prepared for that use (if the chalice will not serve), putting thereto a little pure and clean water; and setting both the bread and wine upon the Altar." This was the act of oblation. The very circumstantiality of these directions betokens men's reverence. The reformed liturgy gives directions how "the devotion (i. e. in their sense, alms) of the people should be collected, and that the due and accustomed offering should be paid to the Curate on offering days," but leaves the bread and wine to be placed on the Altar any how, (as too many do now,) studiously omitting all mention of it. In the prayer for the Church militant, it is there inserted for the first time "to accept our alms" as if to exclude any other oblation. 2dly, The omission, throughout, of the word "Altar." This title is, in our first reformation, used as unhesitatingly as any other, and has its appropriate place: that, whereon the "commemorative sacrifice" is offered, is an "Altar" in respect of that sacrifice; but, in respect to those who communicate, it is "GOD'S table" or God's board, in that God invites us to feast on that sacrifice, to a heavenly feast at a table which He prepares for us in the wilderness; and accordingly, wherever, in our own reformation, the words "Lord's table" were used, it was in reference to our "coming thither;" "we do not presume to come to this Thy table," &c. but the bread and wine were said to be "set upon the Altar:" twice only it is said, "the priest standing at GOD'S board," the most frequent name is the "Altar." [It is used five times.] 3dly, All the beginning of the form of oblation was omitted, viz. "Wherefore, O Lord and heavenly Father, according to the institution of Thy dearly beloved Son our Saviour JESUS CHRIST, we, Thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, the memorial which thy SON hath willed us to make; having in remembrance His blessed Passion, mighty Resurrection, and glorious Ascension, rendering unto Thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits promised unto us by the same." The remainder, "entirely desiring," &c. was placed (mutatis mutandis) after the delivery of the elements, and consequently when their presence could no longer sanction in any mind the idea of the actual offering up of CHRIST.

Of these alterations, Bucer's criticism extends only to the words, "And command these our prayers and supplications, by the ministry of Thy holy Angels, to be brought up into Thy holy Tabernacle before the sight of Thy Divine Majesty, not weighing our merits," &c. On which he says, "It is clear enough that the authors of the book wished here somewhat to defer to the language received of old, wherein frequent mention is made of oblations and sacrifices."--"We know to what the Papists have distorted these words; so on that account only, they are to be avoided rather than imitated." [Opp. Anglic. p. 473.]

Here, then, as in other parts of these criticisms by Bucer, we have the general principle avowed, (which Hooker so blessedly withstood,) that whatever has been abused by the Church of Rome should be avoided. It is not a little remarkable, that the very passage of the Roman Liturgy from which this prayer is taken, is an actual difficulty to the Romanists. [See Assem. Cod. Liturg. t. 4. p. 164. n. 4.] In the original the words are "jube haec preferri." The difficulty to the Romanist is, "What is meant by these things;" for, since this prayer is subsequent to the consecration, according to their error, the bread and wine must be then the essential Body and Blood of CHRIST; yet, "how shall the Body of CHRIST be conveyed to heaven, since it is always there!" asks St. Thomas. Yet if that which is on the altar, be not then the Body and Blood of CHRIST, Transsubstantiation is overthrown. The Romanists, then, fell on the gloss, which the revisers of the Prayer Book adopted, that under "haec" were meant "prayers and supplications." But this, though less distinctly opposed to the Romish doctrine, than if the plain words of the antient Liturgy had been retained, still in no degree countenanced it. The consideration, however, of the objection of Bucer and his fellows, was part of Cranmer's plan; and so, whatever this criticism applied to, was altered.

Once more, then, it must be observed, that there was no change of doctrine as to the Christian sacrifice, involved in the alterations and omissions made in Edward the Sixth's second book, but only a suppression and timidity as to their statement. This is expressly stated in the name of the English Church, in the Preamble to the Act of Parliament, which confirmed the altered form. It was there set forth, that, 1st, "There was nothing contained in the said first book, but what was agreeable to the Word of GOD, and the primitive Church, very comfortable to all good people, desiring to live in Christian conversation, and most profitable to the estate of this realm." 2dly. "That such doubts as had been raised, in the use and exercise thereof, proceeded rather from the curiosity of the minister and mistakers, than of any other worthy cause." [Ap. Heylin, p. 107, 8.]

There is no speech here, about what moderns have been so fond of upholding, viz. the gradualness of the reformation; how the light burst not at once upon men, but was gradually restored to them; or rather, that they (for so it is spoken of) saw more clearly into the genius of Christianity, or into the errors of the faith in which they had been educated; and so that our first reformation was not enough reformed;--the very theory upon which Rationalism justified itself. Doubtless, persons who made their own insight into Holy Scripture the rule of their faith, would be exposed to this temptation of gradually unravelling the articles of their belief, dropping them one by one, until they had brought them down to what they thought a scriptural standard. For such persons, having no definite rule to go by, but their own frail judgment, must be exposed to the constant unsteadiness and waveringness to which private judgment must necessarily be subject. Such, blessed be GOD! was not the case with our Anglican Church. For, having seized hold of a fixed standard for scriptural interpretation and for doctrine, in this agreement of Catholic antiquity, she had no longer need to toss up and down in the fluctuations of human opinion, but was at once arrived in her haven. Felices nimium, sua si bona norint! Thrice happy, had she never, by compromise or foreign alliances, risked the blessings which the LORD her GOD had given her above all people!

These and other changes, then, although happily without effect, were intended to unite us with bodies, from which the miserable history of the last eighty years more especially, has shewn it to be our privilege to be separate,--the foreign Protestants, with whom and whose theology we have never had any large commerce, without injuring our own, overlooking how the peculiarity of our reformation corresponded with the place assigned to us by GOD'S Providence, as an island-people, and both with GOD'S blessing; "This people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations."

This character of the change, whereof Cranmer was the instrument and furtherer, has much influence on the subsequent history of the doctrine. For when a change is introduced by one individual, or by a few, not in compliance with, but rather against the feelings of the body of the Church, it will work but slowly through the body. People, for a time, will continue their old habits of thought, and their doctrines and devotions, under the new form, as long, at least, as any witnesses of the old doctrine remain; as "Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua," (Josh. xxiv. 31,) until perhaps that generation or the next have passed away; and then, perhaps, the tradition having nothing or but little outward to lean to, becomes gradually weaker, and at last lurks only here and there, in the caves of the earth, which are less exposed to the variations of the external atmosphere. They "hid themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits," (1 Sam. xiii. 6,) where the Philistines, who overspread the open land, could not reach them.

Thus, even after the alterations now introduced, as far as the old prayers and rites remained, they who had been accustomed to them before, would attach the same meaning to them now as then. Even Edward the Sixth's second service book would be a very different book, and bear very different meanings, in the hands and hearts of those who had been accustomed to the ancient worship, and to one who should take it up now, with ultra-Protestant notions. For instance, although all directions about placing the bread and wine upon the altar, or the act of oblation, were now omitted, they who had been accustomed so to regard it, would not cease at once to do as they had been wont; they would lay the elements upon the place appointed, with the same reverence as before; they would not at once (at least the right-minded among them) leave it to sextons or clerks; and, placing them there, they would do it with the same feelings as before, mentally offering them to Almighty GOD, on whose altar and before whom they placed them, and from whom they looked again to receive them. So again, a king's edict ordering the altars to be pulled down, and tables to be placed in their room, and their goodly decorations and vessels of silver and gold to be melted down or turned to common use, would not prevent those of constant mind from looking on the new board, (since it was still GOD'S board, and in GOD'S house,) and the single chalice which they were allowed to retain, as the altar of their GOD and its furniture. It was but as the "single ewe lamb" left, but still on that account, at first, prized the more. They would look on the lessened glories of this house with a reverent and respectful sorrow. 3. Then also, in the prayer of consecration, the preamble, which implied the sacrifice, still remained; for (as it was said) Cranmer's object was not to efface the doctrine, but to remove captious offence; this, then, was left as now; our LORD (it was said in prayer to GOD) "did institute and in His holy Gospel command us to continue a perpetual memory of that His precious Death, until His coming again." What followed upon this preface was now omitted; but they who had been accustomed to the antient form must have supplied it, viz. that we did as we were enjoined; as indeed even now, those who have well nigh lost the Church's doctrine, must, of course, (even if half unconsciously) mentally supply something of this kind; since we cannot rehearse our LORD'S direction "to make this memorial of Him," and not do what He bade us. Then also, for a time, the word "memory" would help to perpetuate the doctrine, as being the received word,--not, as many now use it, for "our own remembrance of His death," but--for the "making a public memorial or commemoration," which the Church, by the Priest, is directed to make: "Do this for a memorial of ME." Still more, at the time, the recent omission of the latter part of the prayer of consecration, manifestly could not affect the sense of the former which was retained; although when deprived of the light thrown upon it by the explicit statement in the latter part, the force of the preamble might gradually be obscured. 4. The same may be said with regard to the remaining indication of the doctrine of the sacrifice, that portion, namely, of the prayer of consecration, which has been transposed and placed after the actual communion: the sense must remain the same, although its meaning is less visible, on account of its being disconnected from the actual visible elements, (except so far as a portion of the consecrated elements still remains upon the altar) whence it is recorded, that Bishop Overall used it before the participation, as it was at first. And perhaps his so doing implies that it had always been so done in that portion of the Church, and the rubric not received in that Church as yet. However, whether before or after, the same prayer must have the same meaning; and so it still remained a portion of the oblation or sacrifice to GOD. It is also, probably, a remnant of the antient tradition, that the prayer of oblation, thus transposed, is even now universally ued, although the ancient thanksgiving after the Communion, "Almighty and ever-living GOD, we most heartily thank Thee," &c. is thus lost; our second reformation having only given us the choice which of the two we should use, not permitting both. In this state things remained during the reign of Queen Elizabeth: the revisers of the Service being then contented with the most essential restoration, that of the words accompanying the delivery of the Bread and Wine,--"The Body of our LORD JESUS CHRIST," &c. The doctrine of the Commemorative Sacrifice was committed rather to the faithfulness of individual Ministers, than to the explicit teaching of the Church. A decided step towards the recovery of the avowal of this truth, was gained after the Hampton Court Conference, at the beginning of the reign of James I. For then, there being no hope of gaining the Puritans, the Church avowed more fully some of her doctrines, in the Appendix to the Catechism on the Sacraments. Here, namely, was introduced, for this express purpose, the question, "Why was the Sacrament of the LORD'S Supper ordained?" A person who should examine this Catechism with modern notions, would be surprised at the occurrence of this question at all, and especially at this place, in the Catechism. For the Catechism, he would observe, proceeds regularly, stating the number of the Sacraments, the meaning of the word, the parts therein, (first, the outward, then the inward,) then the requisites for partakers; and that this order is observed as to each Sacrament. Whence then is it, that before the mention of these two parts of the LORD'S Supper, and the requisites thereto, there is intercalated, as it were, this question? The benefits of our own actual communion are mentioned afterwards, as in the case of Baptism, in a distinct answer, viz. "the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of CHRIST." They who confound the public act of the holy Eucharist with its benefits to the souls of individual believers,--the Sacrifice with the Communion,--must needs think this question out of place; and so, by their very perplexity, shew that the construction which they put upon the words is wrong. Besides this, the opinion of the writer of this part of our Catechism, Bishop Overall, is well known. The meaning of the answer, "For a continual remembrance" (i. e. continually to make a memorial, dyayuvijirie) "of the Sacrifice of the Death of CHRIST, and of the benefits which we receive thereby," was then obvious. It was herein declared that the holy Eucharist, besides being a sacrament, was for the continual setting forth of the Sacrifice of the Death of CHRIST; or, in the language of the old Church, "a sacrifice commemorative of the Sacrifice." The Catechism and the prayer of Consecration throw mutual light upon each other, and belong to the same system; and Convocation, by sanctioning this part of the Catechism, restored to our Church the formal recognition of the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

After the close of the great rebellion, this recognition was again brought into the Liturgy itself, although with a gentle hand. The Savoy Conference had shown the hopelessness of gaining the Ultra-Protestant party by any concession which could be made. The Church, therefore, seemed the freer to act with reference only to herself. Accordingly a rubric, which had remained expunged since the adoption of Edward the Sixth's second bookj was restored; and it was enjoined that "when there is a communion, the Priest shall then" (i. e. after he has placed the alms upon the holy table) "place upon the Table so much Bread and Wine as he shall think convenient." Thus the antient act of the irpoixpapa or oblation was formally directed to be made. And to mark the meaning of the act the rather, then, for the first time, after the words "to receive these our alms" was added, "and oblations," in the same order as each had been presented on the altar; first, "the alms," then "the oblations." And these are distinguished from each other in the marginal rubric, which says, "if there be no alms or oblations," &c. i. e. if there be neither collections for the poor, nor elements offered to ALMIGHTY GOD (for the collections were made each Lord's day, adhering so far to the Apostolic custom even when there was no Communion, and consequently no oblations or offerings). Moreover, the word oblation is the received word for this peculiar offering or sacrifice to ALMIGHTY GOD.

This was the last restoration, and such as our branch of the Anglican Church was then fixed, it still in theory remains. The chain of witnesses was kept up in the Church; and we at this day have sufficient evidence both to maintain the character of our whole Church, as not having altogether in this respect departed from the primitive model, and for our own guidance in following that model in this most aweful part of our devotions. Two other changes, however, ought to be mentioned, which took place in other branches of the Anglican Church, the Scotch and American; the one as having been designed ultimately to influence our own Church, had the miserable violence of the times permitted, and doubtless having tacitly done so; that of the American (as a daughter Church) indicating the then state of doctrine among us. The revisers of the Scotch Liturgy (for they were Scottish Divines, and it may be called a revision, since the first Reformers of Scotland adopted the English Liturgy [Preface to Scotch Common Prayer-book. 1637.]) went back in most things to that their first Liturgy, and so restored the doctrine of the Communion and Sacrifice according to our genuine English Reformation. The invocation of the Blessed Trinity to sanctify the elements, was restored, verbatim, out of Edward the Sixth's Liturgy, as was the subsequent prayer, now called distinctly the "memorial or prayer of oblation;" except that the words, "and sacrifice," were added after "a perpetual memory of that His precious death," and those "command these our prayers and supplications, by the ministry of Thy holy Angels," &c. were omitted. The prayer of oblation was of course restored to its original place before the Communion, whereby the thanksgiving after the Communion came again into use. The antient words used at the delivery of the Elements were also restored, to the exclusion of the later addition of the Zuinglian school. Other lesser alterations were made tending to the same end. Sentences from Holy Scripture were introduced into the offertory, having reference to oblations made to GOD under the old law, and to the sacrifice of Abel (referred to in some antient liturgies); the Presbyter was directed to "offer up and place the bread and wine prepared for the sacrament upon the LORD'S table;" the table itself was (besides "a carpet and fine white linen cloth") to have "other decent furniture meet for the high mysteries there to be celebrated," and the Collect for the inspiration of GOD'S Holy Spirit was said to be "for due preparation;" things slight in themselves, but still tending to inspire more reverence into men's minds, or to obtain it from GOD.

We find, accordingly, that both the Puritan party and the Church in England, had their eyes turned to this restored service-book, although it was to Scotland that it was restored. The feelings of the Puritans may be judged of from the title of a work written by a Scotchman, but published in England, wherein the reformed Liturgy was paralleled with the Mass-book, and it was contended that no abomination of the Romish mass could be refused by those who embraced it. [The title is "A parallel or brief comparison of the Liturgy with the Mass-Book, the Breviary, the Ceremonial, and other Romish Rituals. Wherein is clearly and shortly demonstrated, not only that the Liturgy is taken for the most part word by word out of these Anti-Christian writs; but also that not one of the most abominable passages of the Mass can in reason be refused by any who cordially embrace the Liturgy as now it stands and is commented by the prime of our Clergy. All made good from the testimonies of the most famous and learned Liturgic writers both Romish and English." By R. B. K. [Robert Bailie, a well-known controversialist of the day.] London. 1641. The work is done with care and pains. "Had not that Hydra of the Scottish Liturgy," say the authors of the [English] "Common Prayer-Book unmasked," "lost all the heads and had the brains dashed against the stones, they made no question but that all the power of head and tail should have room enough to domineer in England. But, blessed be GOD, who brake the head of that young Dragon in our neighbour nation, and we hope will by you [the Parliament] crush out all the blood of the old one here [the English Liturgy], who was the mother of that, and the Mass-book the mother of both." p. 3.] The writer was one of those who held that "the far most part, if not simply all, the godly of the Isle, are longing with great expectation, and greater desires to see that instrument (the English Liturgy), after all the evil they have suffered by it, to be broken in pieces," and to whom it sufficed for its condemnation that any of the sentences, yea, that the very prayer of our LORD, should occupy the same position as in the antient, though corrupted, Liturgy of Rome. [Preface to Parallel, p. 7.] These are not the excesses of an individual, but the characteristics of a body, and of a portion of the age. And so, in like way, one may look upon the Scotch Liturgy as expressing the sentiments of the Church in that age, although not as yet ventured upon the nation which shortly after fell into hands which persecuted the Church, and proscribed the Liturgy. It was in truth the English Liturgy which was thus attacked under the name of the Scotch. It is meantime a singular confession, which herein occurs (such as is now made for the baptismal service), that it was only by "a benign interpretation that many passages could be drawn to a Protestant [an ultra-Protestant] sense." The Scotch Liturgy fixed that sense; and it was a decided gain for primitive doctrine, that that sense was somewhere, even though for one branch only of the Anglican Church, now authoritatively determined. The sense of the English Church was carried out, where it might be; and so her sons might the more take courage that that exposition was the right one. The Church in Scotland, although soon cast out, and in later times hunted up and down on the mountains, was still a standing memorial of the meaning of that in England, and had its influence even in times when one should have little expected it, as in those of Bishop Horsley. The Liturgy "drawn up by Bishop Taylor for the English Royalists, when Parliament forbade the use of that provided by the Church," that of the Non-Jurors, and finally that of our daughter-Church in America, may be regarded as the result of the same spirit, which produced this courageous, although ill-received avowal of the truth; and this facilitated doubtless the partial restoration, which, though less fully expressed, still fixed the meaning of the English Liturgy.

The effects of the restoration in the American Liturgy are mostly perhaps yet future; but no fearless avowal of truth by any Church can be without its effect on that Church, and others related to it. For the time, the parent has delivered over to her daughter, to bring out into open day, the treasure which she was obliged as yet to keep half-concealed. The American Liturgy embodied, it may be concluded, the doctrine of the whole Anglican Church (had she been at liberty to express it) in her form of oblation taken from the then Scotch Liturgy. "We Thy humble servants do celebrate and make here, before Thy Divine Majesty, with these Thy holy gifts, which we now offer before Thee, the memorial Thy Son hath commanded us to make, having in remembrance," &c.

A doctrine, however, left so long to tradition and sustained by mere hints in the service itself, could not but lose ground in the mass of the Church, especially in the remarkable circumstances of our Church, placed as the single guardian of Catholic truth of the West, and so deriving no support from without, but the contrary; and it may be, that it lost much in the very period which preceded its formal restoration, the unhappy confusion of the Rebellion, in which so much besides of instructive traditionary rite perished; as, on the other hand, no formal restoration can be of any avail, if the vividness of the belief be waxing fainter. The violent convulsion of 1688, and the subsequent ingratitude of the State, casting out some of our best bishops, who had most resisted Popish tyranny, and 400 of our Clergy, introduced a new character into the Church. During the following age, the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice mostly found refuge among the Non-Jurors and our brethren of the Scotch Church. Bad however as were the times which followed for the English Church, in which she had to contend "pro aris et focis," for the holiest truths of the faith, and was corrupted from high places, lest she should be too powerful, and those who would defend her, again lost sight of the source of her great strength, and grasped to the right hand and to the left, again to foreign help, to the Calvinistic or Arminian divines of Holland, Witsius, or Grotius, or Episcopius--they could not probably have been so much affected by external circumstances, had not the evil times of the Great Rebellion, while they purified the few, injured the many. So far, however, from looking to any fuller restoration of doctrine of any sort, in the track of the Restorers of the 17th century, it was by the great mercy of GOD that they who stood in the breach, preserved any doctrine at all.

The history of the doctrine of the "Commemorative Sacrifice" is however in this way a warning. Satisfactory as is the "chain of witnesses" in the Church, still it must be admitted, that the number of those who retained this doctrine, over the whole face of the Church, was very possibly by no means so great as in the case of doctrines more definitely announced.

The chain of witnesses for the doctrine of the "Eucharistic sacrifice" is as large and venerable as that e. g. for "baptismal regeneration." [See Catena, No. 2--Tracts for the Times, No. 76] Still it is certain that it had not such deep root as those doctrines more prominently expressed in our Liturgy; as one may judge from the relative degree in which the two doctrines are apparently held in this day. They both had the same opponents--those educated in the Zuingli-Calvinist school, but the one has been uniformly the recognized doctrine of our Church, and held, until these latter days, by almost all her members, and is still probably the prevailing belief; and they who hold it not, are necessarily to a degree uncomfortable about their departure from the plain meaning of the Church services, and are obliged to feel about for excuses to themselves for so doing; and the very contradictoriness of their explanations, and their necessary unsatisfactoriness, opens the way of return to the more candid of them, whenever Catholic truth is set in its fulness before them. The other is held probably by far more than we deem, but still out of sight as it were, in the secret sanctuary of men's hearts, and is not handed down in any very distinct and authoritative way. People are under no uneasiness for not holding it; it is enough for them that it is not sufficiently explained, for them without pains to understand it; and so those who will not be at any pains, think they may the more readily dispense with thinking about it, or deny its existence. It is as a stranger and wayfarer in the Church, which was once its home, and brings with it indeed the blessing of receiving strangers, "whereby some have entertained angels unawares." The mere holding of a doctrine may suffice for the existence of a Church, but not for the well-being, whether of a Church or an individual, unless, when occasion requires, it be avowed distinctly and courageously. Suppression of the truth may become equivalent to, and in a favoured Church, involve the penalty of disavowal or apostasy. Had e. g, the proposals in the last century to remove the Athanasian Creed been acceded to, our Church might now very probably have become Sabellian or Socinian. While then we gather up thankfully the "fragments which remain," and praise GOD that He so restrained the minds of the Bishops and Pastors of His flock, that while abandoning the public expression of this doctrine, they still hid, as it were in the temple, this good deposit, where they who seek might find it, the history of this doctrine may be a warning to us. Had, for instance, as was proposed, those parts of the Baptismal service, which most distinctly confess the doctrine of Baptismal regeneration, been, on some plea of charity, erased, we may, in the fate of the one doctrine, read what would have been that of the other--cherished by the few, who trod faithfully in the old paths, declaimed against by the more vehement, and forgotten by the many. With regard to the writers, whose belief on this subject has been preserved, not a little perplexity may be caused to a superficial observer by the ambiguity of the language, and the variety of senses in which the terms are used. Thus, the words "sacrifice," "proper sacrifice," "real and true sacrifice," and even "propitiatory or expiatory sacrifice," will be severally used in a good or a bad sense by the several writers, the one understanding thereby the Romish error, the other, the Catholic truth; and so, meaning the same thing, they will yet maintain or censure, as it may be, the same words. Thus the writer of one of our Homilies uses the simple word "sacrifice" in the Popish sense, and employs that of "the memory" for what antiently was designated by "sacrifice." He says in popular language, alluding throughout to Romish errors, "we must then take heed lest of the memory, it be made a sacrifice; lest of a communion it be made a "private eating; lest of two parts we have but one; lest applying it for the dead, we lose the fruit that be alive." [Homily concerning the Sacrament, pt. 1.] And yet a French writer quotes this very homily, as an instance in which the writers of our Church maintain the old Catholic doctrine of the sacrifice. And rightly; since this author separates "the memory," or commemoration, from the "Communion," and so means thereby something distinct from this; then his "memory" is the anamnhsiV of antiquity. Again, the same French writer observes, that "Jewell, Bishop of Salisbury, is, of the first writers of the Reformation, one of the most opposed to the [Roman] Catholics, and who has spoken as much and as loudly as any one, both against the mass and the sacrifice. [Courayer, Défense de la Dissert, sur la Validité des Ordinations Anglaises, L. 4, c. 6. He quotes a free translation, "which brings out the meaning of the passage, "cavendum, ne sacrificium commemorationis convertat in sacrificium proprium et materiale."] But when he explains himself, he admits all which we [the Gallican Church?] admit ourselves. He throughout holds a mystical offering and sacrifice of CHRIST. 'As2 CHRIST was slain at the Table, so was He sacrificed at the Table. But He was not slain at the Table verily and indeed, but only in a mystery: therefore he was not sacrificed at the Table really and indeed, but only in a mystery.' [Reply to Harding, Art. 17. div. 6. p. 417. Bishop Jewell is here answering Harding's proof of the real, substantial, sacrifice of CHRIST in the Eucharist, drawn from His own sacrifice of Himself at His Supper. The preceding words in Bishop Jewell are, "We deny not but it may well be said, Christ at His last supper offered up Himself unto His Father; albeit, not really and indeed, but, according to M. Harding's own distinction, in a figure or in a mystery; in such sort, as we say, CHRIST was offered in the sacrifices of the old law: and as St. John says, The Lamb was slain from the beginning of the world. As CHRIST was slain," &c. The meaning is the same, for as that first "offering of Himself to His Father" is understood, so will be the oblation of the Eucharist.] 'The sacrifice [after the order of Melchisedek] which is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, is only JESUS CHRIST the Son of GOD upon the Cross. And the ministration of the holy Mysteries, in a phrase or manner of speech, is also the same sacrifice, because it layeth forth the death and blood of CHRIST so plainly and so evidently before our eyes.' [Ib. div. 10. p. 422.] 'We offer4 up CHRIST, i. e. an example, a commemoration, a remembrance of the Death of CHRIST. [ib. div. 12, p. 424. This is Bishop Jewell's comment on the passage of St. Chrysostom in Ep. ad Hebr. Hom. 17. adduced by Harding.] This kind of sacrifice was never denied. [Bishop Jewell, to the words, "This kind of sacrifice was never denied," subjoins, "but M. Harding's real sacrifice was never yet proved."] What then does he deny? That JESUS CHRIST was really sacrificed, that he offers anew His own life, and again sheds His own blood, as Harding very ill expresses himself, [Ap. Jewell, 146 [1. c. p. 417.]] that 'CHRIST sacrificed Himself at two sundry times, and that He twice really shed His blood, first at the Table, and afterwards upon the Cross.' This it was which Jewell combated, this the doctrine which he attributed to the [Roman] Catholics, and which the inaccuracy of Harding gave him occasion to attack. In truth, all his answers to the arguments and authorities adduced by his opponent, come to this; viz, that they do not prove that JESUS CHRIST was really sacrificed, and that consequently there is no sacrifice (doubtless in the sense in which he supposed the [Roman] Catholics to hold it). M. Harding's real sacrifice was never yet proved.' "

"It is thus that he answers the passage of St. Cyprian, that of the supposed Areopagite, those of St. Irenaeus and St. Ambrose and others; which Harding had paraded in his work. ' The place of St. Cyprian [P. 149 [422.]] [as it] not once toucheth the real sacrificing of CHRIST unto His Father,' &c.--'Here Dionysius [P. 147 [419. Bishop Jewell had just before said, "Dionysius hath no token or inkling of any sacrificing of the Son of GOD unto His Father. But clearly and in most plain wise, he sheweth the difference that is between the sacrifice of the Cross, and the sacrifice of the Holy Communion." Such a sacrifice then Bishop Jewell believed.]] calleth not the ministration of the holy Mysteries the sacrificing of CHRIST unto His Father, [as M. Harding would force us to believe, but a figurative sacrifice, that is, a figure or a sign of that great sacrifice]'--'That Irenaeus [P. 148 [424. Bishop Jewell begins the paragraph, "Here, at last, M. Harding has found out the name of a sacrifice, that was not denied him. But the sacrifice, that he hath so long sought for, and hath so assuredly promised to find, hitherto he hath not found. For Irenaeus not once nameth the Mass, nor this real oblation of the Son of GOD unto His Father."]] meant not any such real sacrifice of the Son of GOD, nor may not in any wise so be taken, it is evident by the plain words that follow, touching the same.'--'Even so, St. Ambrose saith, CHRIST is offered here in the earth (not really and indeed, as M. Harding saith, but) in like sort and sense as St. John saith, 'The Lamb was slain from the beginning of the world, that is, not substantially or in real manner, but in signification in mystery and in a figure.' Read through all that this author says "on the subject, and you will find that it comes back to these two points, 1st, That JESUS CHRIST does not really offer Himself in the Eucharist. 2d, That there is no 'proper sacrifice [The term of the Council of Trent] where there is no real immolation. On the first of these, which is that which Jewell attacks, we are agreed. The second comes to a mere question of names, i. e. whether one ought to give the name of "proper sacrifice" to an action wherein there is no real immolation. All antiquity decides in favour of the [Roman] Catholic Church. But of what use to the acknowledgment of the doctrine is a dispute about the word sacrifice, which these authors will only give to a real and actual immolation, when they confess that the death of JESUS CHRIST is represented in the Eucharist, that a continual memorial is there made of Him, and that there is therein a mystical oblation of His sacrifice, which applies its benefits to us. 'We offer up CHRIST, i. e. an example, a commemoration, a remembrance of the death of CHRIST.' It is not then our doctrine which he attacks, but an imaginary sacrifice which we do not admit, and which yet is the only one that he imputes to us. 'Therefore this new article of faith, of the real sacrificing and shedding of CHRIST'S Blood at the Table, neither being true in itself, nor hitherto by M. Harding, nor any way proved--to say, that any mortal man hath power and authority, really and indeed to sacrifice the Son of GOD, it is a manifest and wicked blasphemy." [P. 144 [p. 414,5.]]

With Courayer's endeavours to extricate himself and his Church from the decrees of the Council of Trent, which fixed this language, we have nothing to do: certainly, the language of the Council on the Sacrifice, is in itself capable of a good interpretation, were it not that terms employed in it must be explained with reference to that Church's acknowledged doctrines of Transsubstantiation and Purgatory. And THE DOCTRINE OF THE SACRIFICE CANNOT BE THE SAME, WHERE TRANSSUBSTANTIATION is HELD AND WHERE IT IS NOT. This long extract, however, may be of much use in setting vividly before the mind, not merely the opinions of Bishop Jewell, but whereon the controversy really turned, viz. on the doctrine of Transsubstantiation. And it is the difficulty of fixing language, with regard to this or any point, which creates the difficulty; if e. g. by "true and proper sacrifice" the Tridentine decree means an actual immolation of the real and substantial Body and Blood of CHRIST," an Anglican must reject it; if, on the other hand, it could have meant only "a real oblation, commemorative of the One Sacrifice of our LORD, and pleading and applying its merits," the phrase in itself would have nothing objectionable: in a word, if "true and proper" means "physical, corporeal, substantial," i. e. implies "Transsubstantiation," we reject it; if it were opposed only to any ultra-Protestant notion of "figurative" (as opposed to "true"), "unreal," "in a figure of speech," and the like, it may have a good sense, and serve to uphold sound doctrine.

In like manner, Cranmer, although he did not come up to the old Catholic Fathers in his statement of the truth, yet addressed his mind to the word "propitiatory," in itself objectionable, as probably conveying popularly the notion of an intrinsic merit and value in propitiating the Father. "The greatest blasphemy and injury that can be against CHRIST, and yet universally used through the Popish kingdom, is this, that the Priests make their mass a service propitiatory, to remit the sins as well of themselves as of others, both quick and dead, to whom they list to apply the same. Thus, under pretence of holiness, the papistical priests have taken upon them to be CHRIST'S successors, and to make such an oblation and sacrifice as never creature made but CHRIST alone, neither He made the same any more times than once, and that was by His death upon the Cross." [Defence, &c. b. 5. c. 1. t. 2. p. 447. ed. Jenkyns.] Yet, as we saw above, he held in some sense the doctrine, and in one place, even in a later work, he parallels [Defence &c. b. 5. c. 5. p. 451.] the sacraments with the sacrifices of the old Law, which implies altogether the high view, and is the language of the Fathers. "The true reconciliation and forgiveness of sin before GOD neither the fathers of the old Law, nor we yet have, but only in the sacrifice of CHRIST, made in the mount of Calvary. And the sacrifices of the old Law mere prognostications and figures of the same then to come, as our sacraments be figures and demonstrations of the same now passed." He contends throughout against the Romish sacrifice, and though (as happens to people in controversy, especially when under the influence of the class to whom he listened) he even appears to lower the true view for fear of approximating to the Romish error, still it is apparent to the attentive, that even in his controversy he has regard to this only. Thus in answer to Gardiner, who quoted the phrase, aqutwV quesqai, as applied to the sacrifice of the Eucharist, he says, "In saying that CHRIST is sacrificed of the priest not like a sacrifice, or after the manner of a sacrifice, the Council in these words signified a difference between the sacrifice of the priest and the sacrifice of CHRIST, Which upon the Cross offered Himself to be sacrificed after the manner of a very sacrifice, that is to say, unto death, for the sins of the world. CHRIST made a bloody sacrifice, which took away sin; the priests with the Church make a commemoration thereof with lauds and thanksgiving, offering also themselves obedient to GOD unto death. And yet this our sacrifice taketh not away "our sins, nor is not accepted but by His sacrifice." Wherein Cranmer expresses himself as strongly as need be wished, especially in that he distinguishes the "sacrifice" as a "memorial," from the "oblation of ourselves." [Answer, &c. b. 5. t. 3. p. 534.] And again, upon the very word "propitiatory." "You speak according to the Papists, that the priests in their masses make a sacrifice propitiatory. [Ibid. p. 544.] I call a sacrifice propitiatory, according to the Scripture, such a sacrifice as pacifieth GOD'S indignation against us, obtaining mercy and forgiveness of all our sins, and is our ransom and redemption from everlasting damnation. And, on the other side, I call a sacrifice 'gratificatory,' or the sacrifice of the Church, such a sacrifice as doth not reconcile us to GOD, but is made of them that be reconciled, to testify their duties, and to show themselves thankful unto Him. And these sacrifices in Scripture be not called propitiatory, but sacrifices of justice [righteousness], of laud, praise, and thanksgiving. But you confound the words, and call one by another's name, calling that propitiatory which the Scripture calleth but of justice, laud, and thanking. And all is nothing else but to defend your propitiatory sacrifice of the priests in their masses, whereby they may remit sin, and redeem souls out of purgatory."

In like manner, Ridley, in answering the Romish corruption of the doctrine, sets himself entirely to oppose such statements of the doctrine as would any way interfere with the one sacrifice of the Cross, or ascribe to the commemorative sacrifice any intrinsic merit, and objects to the word "propitiable," only if it involved that meaning. The proposition which he opposed was: "In the mass is the lively sacrifice of the Church, propitiable and available for the sins as well of quick as of the dead." "I answer," he says, "that being taken in such sense as the words seem to import, it is not only erroneous, but withal so much to the derogation and defacing of the Death and Passion of CHRIST, that I judge it may and ought most worthily to be counted wicked and blasphemous against the most precious blood of our Saviour CHRIST. Concerning the Romish Mass which is used at this day, or the lively sacrifice thereof propitiatory and available for the sins of the quick and the dead, the Holy Scripture hath not so much as one syllable.--Touching these words, 'the lively Sacrifice of CHRIST,' there is doubt whether they are to be understood figuratively and sacramentally for the Sacrament of the lively Sacrifice (after which sort we deny it not to be in the Lord's Supper), or properly and without any figure; of the which manner there was but one only sacrifice, and that once offered, namely, on the Cross. There is also a doubt in the word 'propitiable,' whether it signify here that which taketh away sin, or that which may be made available for the taking away of sin; that is to say, whether it is to be taken in the active or in the passive signification. Now the falseness of the Proposition, after the meaning of the Schoolmen and the Romish Church, and impiety in that sense, which the words seem to import, is this; that they, leaning to the foundation of their fond Transubstantiation, would make the quick and lively body of CHRIST'S flesh (united and knit to the Divinity) to lie hid under the accidents and outward show of Bread and Wine. Which is very false, as I have said before; and they, building upon this foundation, do hold that the same body is offered unto GOD, by the priest in his daily massings, to put away the sins of the quick and the dead; whereas by the Apostle to the Hebrews it is evident that there is but one Oblation, and one true and lively Sacrifice of the Church offered upon the Altar of the Cross, which was, is, and shall be for ever, the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and where there is remission of the same, there is, saith the Apostle, no more offering for sin.--In the Mass the Passion of CHRIST is not in verity, but in a mystery representing the same; yea even there when the Lord's Supper is duly ministered. But where CHRIST suffereth not, there is He not offered in verity; for the Apostle saith, Not that He might offer up Himself oftentimes (for then must He have suffered oftentimes since the beginning of the world). Now when CHRIST is not offered, there is no propitiatory sacrifice. Ergo. In the Mass there is no Propitiatory Sacrifice. For CHRIST, &c. Heb. ix. 28.--I know that all these places of the Scripture are avoided by two manner of subtle shifts; the one is, by the distinction of the bloody and unbloody Sacrifice; as though our unbloody Sacrifice of the Church were any other than the Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving, than a commemoration, a showing forth, and a Sacramental Representation of that one only bloody Sacrifice, offered up once for all. The other is, by depraving and wresting the sayings of the ancient Fathers unto such a strange kind of sense, as the Fathers themselves indeed never meant. For what the meaning of the Fathers was, is evident by that which St. Augustine writeth in his Epistle to Boniface, and in the 83rd Chapter of his Ninth Book against Faustus the Manichee, besides many other places; likewise by Eusebius Emissenus, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Fulgentius, Bertram, and others who do wholly concord and agree together in this unity in the LORD, that the Redemption, once made in Verity for the Salvation of Man, continued in full effect for ever, and worketh without ceasing unto the end of the world; that the Sacrifice once offered cannot be consumed; that the LORD'S Death and Passion is as effectual, the virtue of that Blood once shed, as fresh at this day, for the washing away of sins, as it was, even the same day that it flowed out of the blessed side of our SAVIOUR: and finally, that the whole substance of our Sacrifice, which is frequented of the Church in the Lord's Supper, consisteth in Prayers, Praise, and giving of Thanks, and in remembering, and in showing forth of that Sacrifice once offered upon the Altar of the Cross; that the same might continually be had in reverence by Mystery, which once only and no more, was offered for the Price of our Redemption." [Answer to the three propositions proposed to him in the disputation at Oxford, April 12, 1554. Prop. 3]

The doctrine itself the Romanists certainly did confound, but the word "propitiatory" was afterwards adopted in no other sense than Cranmer above calls "gratificatory" (a word as foreign to Scripture as "propitiatory") sc. "such a sacrifice as doth not reconcile us to GOD, but is made of them as be reconciled." And they adopted it as expressing more accurately that we approach GOD herein, not simply with something of our own, our "prayers and thanksgivings," but with something altogether out of ourselves, and which "He has provided" for us, even the memorials of the Blessed Death and Passion of His SON. So that a learned man [Waterland, Doctrine of the Eucharist, c. xii. t. 7, p. 344, 5. Ed. Van Mildert.], not from his own habits of mind or those of his day disposed to any high doctrine of the Sacrifice, yet says (on this very word) speaking of a moderate and learned Lutheran Divine, "He allows that the antients, by oblation and sacrifice meant more than prayer, and that it is even ludicrous to pretend the contrary. He acknowledges that they speak of an oblation of Bread and Wine, and that the Eucharist is a sacrifice of praise, and propitiatory also in a sober qualified sense." "In short, he seems," adds Waterland, "almost to yield up every thing which Dr. Grabe had contended for, except only the point of a proper or material sacrifice; and he looke