justified in its strong language, "Wherefore the sac"rifices of Masses, in the which it is commonly said "that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and dead "to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous "fables and dangerous deceits."

Such were some of the more important perversions of the Sacramental and Catholic doctrines of the early liturgies, which had resulted from the sacerdotalism of the Middle Ages, and which, with the abuses and superstitions growing out of them, formed one of the subjects that engaged most earnestly the thoughts of the English reformers of the sixteenth century, and was most vehemently discussed between them and their Roman adversaries.

Indeed, next to their opposition to the Papacy, the leaders of the English Reformation directed their efforts chiefly against the medieval conceptions of the Eucharist, and the practical errors and evils which they regarded as essential parts of the doctrine as it was then accepted. The overweening assumption of the priesthood as the disposers, through masses and absolutions, of man's future destiny and present hope, the mechanical conceptions and uses of the Sacrament thus induced and fostered upon every hand, the palsying idea of religion as chiefly a matter of ceremonial and usages and official rites, and the innumerable superstitions and corruptions of the truth which, in the course of centuries, had gathered necessarily around theories so little spiritual in their character, and seemingly so material in both their means and ends, these all were portions of the same one system, and neither in its principles nor its practices had they any Scriptural warrant or primitive authority.

As the theology which had thus become supreme in Western Europe, and the evil results we have been tracing, were everywhere connected with a loss of that Spiritual conception of the Eucharist which had been presented by our Lord, and embodied in the early liturgies, it is evident that the remedy was to be found in a return to the essentials of these ancient offices and the Scriptural truths which were inculcated by them.

Indeed these primitive services were from their authors and the conditions of their origin the highest and best expression, outside the Bible, of the sacred verities with which they were concerned, and were in fact the forms appointed by the Apostolic founders of the Church to be for its continual guidance, pattern and instruction till the end of time.

This was the fundamental principle on which the English reformers acted, and which the Church of England has embodied in her "Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion," and has established in the formulæ of doctrine set forth by her authoritative standards, "The Catechism" and the "Articles of Religion." It is this same Liturgy in its general features, and these same doctrines which are presented to us in the Communion Office and the Standards of the Church in the United States. Accordingly we have in our Liturgy and the teachings of our Articles and Catechism, a restoration of all that is essential, both in form and doctrine, of the original and Catholic conception of the Eucharist. And the attempts of certain individuals of the present day to introduce again into our services the doctrines and ceremonies repudiated by the reformers of the English Church,

and those who followed them in the church in the United States can in no sense be regarded as a restoration of the true Catholic teachings of the Apostolic ages, but only a return to the medieval perversions of the real catholicity of the early forms.

As to the contents of our service, it has all the fundamental elements of the early offices. The bread and wine (called "gifts" in the ancient forms) are "placed on" the "holy table," with a prayer for their acceptance, and with supplications for the Divine blessing on "the Universal Church," and for all the "state of Christ's Church militant." Those who "are minded to receive" are prepared, as of old, by a solemn confession of their sins, and a prayer assuring them of the forgiveness of all who truly come. It presents Christ in "His one oblation of Himself once offered," as a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world." It narrates the words and repeats the acts of our Lord, at the "institution" of the Holy Sacrament, and with the bread and wine thus blessed "we now offer" to the Father "the memorial Christ hath commanded us to make." But neither here nor in the primal forms is the uttering of the words of Christ presented as the real consecration of the Sacrament. In all the Catholic liturgies this was regarded as the operation of the Holy Ghost,' and

1 The English Liturgy is greatly lacking in having no Invocation of the Holy Spirit in its Prayer of Consecration. This very important feature of the early Offices has been providentially restored to our Order, and in this we are much more nearly at one with the early forms than the Church of England. But the whole tenor of the English service as well as the Articles show that she understands and receives this sacrament as essentially a spiritual act, both in its conditions and its effects.

of Him alone, and the means through which His presence and His consecration were obtained was always prayer. So we, too, pray that the "Father" would "vouchsafe to bless and sanctify with His word and Holy Spirit these gifts and creatures of bread and wine," that we who receive them worthily "may be partakers of the most precious body and blood" of "His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ." Nor is there in our Liturgy any sign or hint of worship addressed to Christ as present in bodily person upon the altar, but following the thought, and in almost the very language of the ancient offices, our Prayer regards the chief purpose of the consecration to be that they who in faith "partake of this Holy Communion" may receive the benefits of Christ's death and passion, "and be made one body with Him, that He may dwell in them and they in Him."

While our Office has thus preserved in all its essential features the same Scriptural truths which were embodied in the primitive liturgies, the teachings of the Standards of the American Church upon the nature and significance of this Sacrament are not less clear and strong.

Both in the Catechism and in the Articles there is the most emphatic protest against any mere mechanical operation of the Sacrament, or any expressions that savor of material relations, or imply its power to benefit a man independently of his internal state and spiritual co-operation. In the Catechism we are taught that the "thing signified in the Lord's Supper is the body and "blood of Christ, which are spiritually taken and re"ceived by the faithful." The Twenty-fifth Article de

clares "That the Sacraments were not ordained of Christ "to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we "should duly use them, and in such only as worthily "receive the same they have a wholesome effect or operation." How we must "worthily receive” is told in Article Twenty-eight: "The body of Christ is given, "taken and received in the Supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner, and the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith;" while in denial of the quasi-physical conception of the sacerdotal theory, the Thirty-ninth Article treats "of "the wicked which eat not the body of Christ in the use "of the Lord's Supper," and says, quoting St. Augustine, that, "The wicked and such as be void of a lively faith, "although they do carnally and visibly press with their "teeth the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, "yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ."

With like distinctness, also, "this Church" declares there is but one sacrifice of Christ, and that on the cross of Calvary (Article Thirty-one). "The offering of Christ "once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation "and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, "and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that "alone." Christ hath, indeed, in the words of "the Book of 1549," "left in those holy mysteries, as a "pledge of His love and a continual remembrance of "the same, His own blessed body and precious blood "for us to feed upon spiritually," "for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood." We also do "offer the Holy gifts" to the Father, and in this "make here the memorial Christ hath commanded us to make," but there is no hint here or elsewhere that