*

Chap. I. indispensable to a Church, or that without the Apostolical succession there was no Sacramental grace. Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, whose treatise on Church government was published about the same time as Hooker's, both claims the Apostolic authority for bishops, and also denies the possibility of there being a true Church without them. This doctrine we may suppose to have generally obtained in the Church at the time of the accession of James. Side by side with it was the similar claim of the Presbyterian, that "their discipline is as essential to the true being of the Church as either the preaching of the Word or the administration of the holy sacraments." It is evident, that thus was created a complete opposition between the two parties. For those who held that bishops were against Scripture, and those who maintained that they were fundamentally necessary for any gift of grace, there was scarce any common ground.

The two parties were slower in arriving at a distinct opposition in their theology than in their Opinions on theories of Church government. The framing of, the Predesti- and, to a certain extent, enforcing the Lambeth articles, shows us that the divines of the latter days

narian doc

trines.

*The authority of their first calling liveth yet in their successors."-Bilson quoted by Keble. Preface to Hooker's Eccl. Pol. + Travers quoted by Heylin, Hist. Presbyterians.

"Now, if Rebecca found herself strangely 'affected when twins struggled in her womb, the condition of the English Church must be conceived sad, which at the same time had two disciplines, both of them pleading Scripture and Primitive practice, each striving to support itself and suppress its rival."-Fuller, ix., 2, 2.

of Elizabeth were still much under the influence of Chap. I. the bold speculations of Calvin. The great foreign theologians, and especially Calvin, were men of a more powerful cast of mind than the English fathers of the Reformation; and hence the spell of their genius exercised a fascination, which sober judgments ought to have better resisted and with

stood. Meaner teachers of antinomianism would have been summarily suppressed, but Calvin, who, with a bolder flight, ventured even to impeach the righteousness of the Most High, was accepted with a trembling acquiescence. His system, complete and perfect as it appeared in all its parts; accounting, as it did, for all difficulties by a daring dogmatizing on matters lying far out of the province of the human understanding, challenged and obtained a profound and deferential homage. The Calvinistic theology, however, was not a plant suited for English growth. Soon it began to dwindle and fade before the broad scriptural views of the writers of the seventeenth century. Yet it needed some years before a clergyman of the Anglican Church could be found to pen those noble words, "I am not, nor would be accounted willingly, Arminian, Calvinist, or Lutheran, but a Christian. For my faith was never taught me by the doctrine of men. I am not baptized into the belief, nor assumed by grace into the family of any of them, or of the pope. I will not pin my belief unto any man's sleeve, carry he his head ever so high, not unto St. Augustin or any ancient father, nedum unto men of lower rank. A Christian I am and so

Chap. I. glory to be, only denominated of Christ Jesus my Lord and Master, by whom I never was yet so wronged that I would relinquish willingly that royal title, and exchange it for that of his menial servants. And further yet I do confess that I see no reason why any member of the Church of England, a Church every way so transcendent unto that of Leyden and Geneva, should lowt so low as to denominate himself of any the most excellent among them."* At the beginning of the reign of James it is probable that the tenets of Calvin as to the absolute decrees of God were the popular theology, though not heartily acquiesced in by some of the more learned divines; while, on the subject of the Eucharist, the Church of England held exactly neither with the Reformed nor Lutheran Churches, but had a theology of its own.

Doctrine on

On this important subject there are four principal the Eucharist views which have enlisted large bodies of Christians as their supporters. The first is the doctrine of Transubstantiation. It was held by the Romanist

Nasa

* Montague, Appello Cæsarem. In much the same spirit writes the learned Richard Crakanthorp. "Calvini scripta et Lutheri sic accepimus quomodo olim Cypriani litteras Augustinus ...nos non sic Luthero aut Calvino addicti, Lutherani aut Calvinistæ nec sumus, nec nisi per injuriam vocamar. Christo qui nobis fundamentum est et caput fidei, Christiani, quia fidem quæ verè catholica est, protestamur et amplectimur, Catholici."-Crakanthorpii Def. Eccl. Ang., p. 189, Oxf. ed. And Sir T. Browne-"I condemn not all things in the Council of Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Dost. In brief, where the Scripture is silent the Church is my test; where that speaks 'tis but my comment; where is a joint silence of both I borrow not my religion from Rome or Geneva, but from the dictates of my own reason."-Religio Medici, ii., 6.

This

of the sixteenth century as it is by the Romanist of Chap. I. the nineteenth, that in the Eucharist, after Consecration spoken, there remain only the accidents of bread and wine, such as appearance, taste, smell, &c.; the substance is the human body of Jesus Christ, which was once crucified on the Cross. This doctrine the Church of England, since the Reformation, has never favoured. (2.) The doctrine of the Reformed Church, as taught first by Zuinglius, but considerably modified afterwards by Calvin, goes to the extreme most removed from this. "The Swiss Reformer looked upon the bread and wine in no other light than as the signs and symbols of the absent body and blood of Christ."* doctrine also has never found favour with the English Church, and is specially pointed at and condemned in our Articles. "The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign, &c., but to them who rightly receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ," &c.† (3.) The third doctrine is that of Luther-commonly called Consubstantiation, and thus defined by Mosheim : "Luther maintained that the body and blood of Christ were really, though in a manner far beyond human comprehension, present in the Eucharist, and were exhibited together with the bread and wine." This fanciful view is condemned by Hooker with his accustomed wisdom and depth.

* Mosheim, Cent. XVI., chap. ii., 5. See Lathbury's Hist. Prayer Book, p. 49.

† Article XXVIII. + Mosheim, u. s.

Chap. I.

Of the observance of the Lord's

Day.

If

"The real presence of Christ's most blessed body
and blood is not to be sought for in the Sacrament,
but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament.
on all sides it is confessed that the grace of baptism
is poured into the soul of man, that by water we
receive it, although it be neither seated in the water
nor the water changed into it, what should induce
men to think that the grace of the Eucharist must
needs be in the Eucharist before it can be in us
that receive it?" (4.) This naturally brings us to
the fourth doctrine on the subject, the doctrine of
the real spiritual presence, the presence in the
faithful receiver, not in the elements-the distinc-
tive teaching of the Church of England and the
glory of her theology.† As this doctrine is clearly
set forth both in the Articles made under Eliza-
beth, and the Catechism under James, as it is
defended by Hooker in his great work, we may
assume it to have been the generally accepted view
of the Eucharist in England at the beginning of
the seventeenth century. It seems to have been
more with respect to some special points connected
with the administration of the holy rite, the kneel-
ing posture, the use of private communions, &c.,
that the Puritans differed from the Church than
as to the doctrine of the Sacrament itself.

There is another point which, in taking a rapid glance at the state of religious opinion at the begin*Hooker, Eccl. Pol., b. v., c. 67.

"A real spiritual presence is held by the Church of England in opposition to the Popish doctrine of Transubstantiation on one hand, and the Zuinglian notion of a mere memorial on the other." -Lathbury, Hist. Prayer Book, p. 53.