either from the pulpit, the platform, or the press, in the face of objections such as now rise up everywhere to confront us. And we may learn, again, not to assume too readily that all who agree with us in the great doctrines of protestant and evangelical truth, agree with us in all our details of exposition, especially on the subject of prophecy. We might cite the author of the foregoing papers in illustration,-an evangelical clergyman, occupying a most important post, yet differing, probably, from the majority of his evangelical brethren on a point of no less interest than the literal restoration of the Jews. In this, however, perhaps, we may be wrong: for when Scott wrote his Commentary, the views which "B." still advocates were all but universal.-EDITOR.]

ON THE OBLATION OF THE BREAD AND WINE IN THE

EUCHARIST.

THE question of the oblation of the elements in the Lord's Supper has acquired fresh interest from the bishop of Exeter's* recent communication to one of his archdeacons on the subject of church rates. We take the liberty of transcribing in italics the more important clauses of the following extract from his lordship's letter:

"In examining the list of strictly necessary charges (on account of which church rates require to be collected), the first particular is at once the largest and most important,-the supplying the elements at the Holy Communion. But this, I hesitate not to say, is most unfit to be made a charge on any man. None but those who actually communicate, ought to be, I will not say compelled, but permitted, to contribute. In the primitive church, to make offerings of bread and wine, out of which the elements were taken, was a privilege from which all but the faithful were strictly excluded. . . . To carry out this principle in consistence with our present object, the simplest and easiest method would probably be, to take the cost of the bread and wine out of the money collected at the offertory; and we need not doubt that devout communicants would offer somewhat more largely in consideration of this charge."

Now, the plan here proposed for providing the bread and wine for the communion is brought forward in such direct and open terms, that churchmen may well feel jealous of the ultimate object. The animus of this proposal-and we doubt not that his lordship, were the question courteously put to him, would at

* See Christian Observer, April 1861, p. 314.

once frankly avow the purpose which he has in view—may be not obscurely gathered from what bishop Philpott says, in his letter to Dr. Lushington, of the rubric which immediately precedes the prayer for the church militant. We first cite the rubric itself::

"And when there is a communion, the priest shall then place upon the table so much bread and wine as he shall think sufficient."

This rubric, as is well known, was introduced into our Prayer-book, for the first time, at the "Last Revision, in 1661—2. The bishop of Exeter says* of it :

:

"The real intention of the rubric was to ENFORCE the church's doctrine of the eucharist in one of its not least important particulars; to enforce an OBLATION of bread and wine, in the thankful acknowledg ment of the Great Author and Giver of all good things (especially of those good things with which he is pleased to appoint that our bodies be strengthened and refreshed), in order that, with the elements thus made sacred by being offered to God and placed on his holy table, which (we know from our Lord's own words) sanctifieth the gifts placed upon it, we may make commemoration of the sacrifice of his death."

In Matt. xxiii. 19, we read these words :-" Whether is greater, the gift, or the altar which sanctifieth the gift?" According, then, to the bishop of Exeter, the communion table in the holy eucharist would seem to be an altar. The first Prayer-book of Edward VI., to which his lordship, in his letter to the archdeacon, appears to wish to bring us back, would perhaps justify this view; for there the rubric directs "the bread and wine to be set upon the altar." Why, then, did our reformers, when they had become better instructed in the letter and the spirit of the New Testament, carefully and deliberately exclude the word altar from the communion rubrics? Surely it was in order to teach Anglican communicants that the piece of church furniture on which the paten with the bread, and the chalice or cup with the wine, are placed at the communion, is a table and not an altar. But this weighty (though inferential) rubrical protest against the notion that the communion table is an altar is, to say the least, by no means favourable to their view who assert that, in the reformed Anglican church, the bread and wine are to be looked upon as oblations in the strict and literal ecclesiastical meaning of that term.

The following fact, brought forward in a layman's letter to the bishop of Exeter, may perhaps make candid high-churchmen, even of the Laudian school, pause before they accept his lordship's assertion, that an oblation of the elements in the eucharist is the peremptory law and doctrine of the church of

We have here also marked in italics the clauses which bear more especially upon the question before us.

England as at present constituted. They may think that it ought to be, and wish that it were so. But this is very different from believing that what they approve and desire is the real and undoubted law and doctrine of our Prayer-book :

“I would again* revert, for an instant, to page 32 of your Lordship's 'Letter to Dr. Lushington,' wherein you state your opinion that the object of the reformers (? revisers) was to establish and set forth the duty of an oblation when placing the bread and wine upon the table. Is your lordship aware that, upon that occasion, when archbishop Sancroft proposed to insert in the rubric the words, 'offer up, and,' by which the rubric would have been in these words:-' And when there is a communion, the priest shall then offer up, and place upon the table so much bread and wine, &c.;' that the proposition to insert the words, 'offer up, and, was deliberately rejected? It would therefore appear that, instead of there being oversight and remissness on the part of those who wished to introduce the oblation of bread and wine, in making arrangements necessary to the due carrying out of such intention, that the proposition itself, though actually made, was overruled by the more faithful members of that commission; by the more consistent and devoted advocates of the reformation."

Sancroft did not become archbishop of Canterbury until 1677, when he succeeded Sheldon in the primacy; the latter was elevated to that dignity in 1663, on the death of Juxon. Sancroft continued in the primacy until 1691, when, refusing to take the oaths to the new sovereigns, William and Mary, he was deprived of the archiepiscopal see.

It is, perhaps, natural, at the present crisis, that they who duly appreciate the blessings of the protestant reformation should trace the hand of an overruling Providence in the failure and disappointment of Sancroft and his supporters. Had they been content to borrow and partially repeat the language of the rubric which immediately follows the sentences of the offertory, and proposed the second rubric (which immediately precedes the Prayer for the Church Militant) under something like the following form-"And when there is a communion, the priest shall then humbly and reverently present and place upon the holy table so much bread and wine as he shall think sufficient "—they might possibly have been so far successful. And if this had been accomplished, how different would be, at the present time, the power of such prelates as the bishops of Exeter and Oxford! The former could have then triumphantly pointed to the terms "humbly and reverently PRESENT and place the bread and wine," and have in the spirit, (but doubtless then with better

"A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Exeter, in reference to his Lordship's Letter to Dr. Lushington, on his Judgment in the Cause of Westerton v. Liddell (Clerk), by William Peace, a Layman."

ground and warrant,) of archdeacon Denison,* rigorously enforced upon all candidates for ordination in his diocese, on pain of summary rejection, a subscription of their assent and consent to a formal declaration that the oblation of the elements in the eucharist is truly and certainly the law and doctrine of the church of England. His lordship's episcopal brother could, with a plausible exercise of authority, have peremptorily insisted on the erection of credence tables in all the new churches and chapels of the diocese of Oxford. He could also have proceeded more courageously to accomplish a full and entire union between the Anglican church, which certainly does not offer up the eucharistic elements, and the Scottish episcopal church, which does offer them up, and which, a few years ago, held out the right hand of fellowship to English Tractarianism.

An oblation is something which we ourselves provide at our own expense; and that cannot be called our oblation which is provided by others. And one of the rubrics at the end of the communion service would seem especially to set aside the idea of oblation, by directing that that "the bread and wine be provided by the curate and churchwardens at the charges of the parish.'

Again: an oblation is something which we expressly present and offer up to God. Sancroft was aware of this when he wished to add to the new rubric the deliberately rejected words, "offer up, and." All will allow that "the alms and other devotions of the people" have the nature of an oblation ; and the rubric which immediately precedes the sentences that are to be read before the collection of the alms directs the priest to "begin the OFFERTORY (the oblation service) by reading one or more of the sentences following."

And what is the language of the rubric which immediately follows the sentences?

"Whilst these sentences are in reading, the deacons, churchwardens, or other fit person appointed for that purpose, shall receive the alms for the poor, and other devotions of the people, in a decent bason to be provided by the parish for that purpose; and reverently bring it to the priest, who shall humbly present and place it upon the holy table."

And what are the words of the rubric on which the bishop of Exeter lays such stress, as a church-enforcement of the doctrine of the oblation of the elements?

"And when there is a communion, the priest shall then place upon the table so much bread and wine as he shall think sufficient."

*Few acts are, primâ facie, more unjust than archdeacon Denison's apparent breach of trust in endeavouring to enforce, as the bishop's examining chaplain, his own views of the real presence in the eucharist upon candidates for orders. We purposely use the word apparent, for we have ever felt a strong persuasion that the archdeacon could not have pursued such a course without the privity and approbation of his bishop.

It has been pertinently asked by a writer on the subject of the oblation of the elements—

"Of these two directions in our Prayer-book, which is it that conveys more distinctly the idea of an oblation? Most people will think that the oblations, the acceptance of which we supplicate in the prayer immediately following, are not the bread and wine (provided at the charges of the parish) which we are merely directed to place upon the table, but the devout offerings of the communicants themselves, which we are directed humbly to present as well as place. For an oblation, surely, is not merely something that we place, but something that we humbly present,"

This writer might, perhaps, have still further illustrated the intimate connexion between oblation and presentation from a passage (borrowed from Rom. xii. 1) in the post-communion prayer which immediately follows the Lord's Prayer:-

"And here we OFFER and PRESENT unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee."

The writer just quoted comments temperately and judiciously upon the bishop of Exeter's assertion, that "the elements of bread and wine are made sacred by being offered to God, and placed on His holy table."

"Nor can we,' says he, in his letter to the bishop, 'understand to what purpose the elements, as your lordship suggests, should be thus made sacred by being offered to God, and placed on His holy table,' seeing that, in the communion service, a prayer of consecration follows; and therefore, to make them sacred by previous oblation,' seems, to say the least, superfluous.

"Indeed, it can hardly excite surprise if, in these days of just apprehension and suspicion as to every attempted modification and innovation in our church service as usually performed, special alarm should be excited by any proposal to establish a twofold consecration of the elements. For if, when the elements are first placed on the holy table, they are already by that act made sacred, then, what is it that the priest really does to them, when, subsequently, laying his hand on the bread, he says, THIS IS MY BODY; and, laying his hand on the chalice, he says, THIS IS MY BLOOD? What does he THEN? Does he simply consecrate the elements? No! they are consecrated already. They are already made sacred by oblation. Then, WHAT? I will not offend your lordship by giving utterance to that which many will deem the obvious, the only answer. Suffice it, then, to say, it is utterly inconceivable that our church, by which consubstantiation is ignored and transubstantiation repudiated, could really have contemplated a first and second consecration of the bread and the wine."

CLERICUS.

*"The Oblation of the Elements and the Credence Tables, &c. By Rev. Thomas Boys, M.A.”