The Crown Of Thorns, by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)

YESTERDAY, we saw how in our common prayer we present to God the life and Passion of Christ, doing upon earth what Christ does evermore in heaven.

On that occasion, we heard from St Anselm, Bishop Andrewes, and Bishop Taylor. Here now is a more recent writer on the same subject, showing movingly the unbroken golden thread of catholic faith that runs through the English Church.

O HOW little have I said of the Passion, when the whole world might be filled with It, when all eternity will be full of It, when, in all eternity, we shall never weary of admiring, thanking, adoring It!

Shall we perhaps know more and more of It throughout eternity and love It more? I cannot but think that we shall, if through Its precious merits we attain thither.

Our’s will be no mere reflection upon It; we shall ever see It: for we shall for ever see the prints of the nails in the glorified Body of Jesus.

Yes, this is an addition to the condescension of His Passion; this is part of the mystery of His love, that the Passion lives on there eternally. Perseverance is our highest conception of love; we are so changeable, so unpersevering! The Passion lives on in Heaven: it lives on upon earth in the Sacraments. [...]

His Presence intercedes; the Wounds, which for us He endured, intercede. He intercedes as our High Priest. How did the High Priest intercede? By presenting the blood of the sacrifice. Jesus intercedes then by presenting Himself.

Yet this is again another condescension of the love of our God. He wills not, that the memory of the contumely and contempt, which He endured for us, should fade or pass away. It is part of the continual outstretched contemplation of the blessed Angels. We know that the prints of the nails, and the spear-pierced Side, are, as they were, in glory.

For the Angel said to the Apostles, that “this Jesus, Who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.”

But He went with those prints of the nails, into which St. Thomas put his fingers, and that wound in the Side into which he was bid to thrust his hand. Well then may we think, that there are the traces of the Crown of thorns, the punctures in the Forehead through which they pierced Him, and perhaps the wales of the scourges.

There they are, but in what glory! All creation, to its utmost bounds, adores the condescension of its God. But the love of that condescension was for us.

The Revd E. B. Pusey (1800-1882). Eleven Addresses During A Retreat Of The Companions Of The Love Of Jesus. Address VI.

Worcester Cathedral

GEORGE Hickes (1642-1715), Dean of Worcester, was profoundly upset by the common phrase of his day, that Christian priests are “not proper priests”, i.e. not proper priests like the Jewish priests with their bloody sacrifices.

Hickes felt it was wrong to distinguish our priests by making them less. Surely they must be more?

We must appreciate, Hickes tells us, that it was not conducting animal sacrifices that made the sons of Aaron and Levi into true priests.

Priesthood is about intercession on behalf of the nation. The animal sacrifices of the Jewish Temple had been empty in themselves, effective in their intercession before God only by their obscure foreshadowing of Christ,

who was as a Priest with his Father before the beginning of the World, and in Virtue of whose meritorious Sacrifice, to be offered at the appointed time, the Jewish Priests, tho’ they knew it not, made Atonement for the Sins of the People.

But Christ’s High Priestly intercession is far more plainly, more knowingly echoed today by the commemorative oblations of Christian priests than by the sacrifices of the Temple. Our liturgical intercessions are more nearly and evidently (cf. Gal 3:1) joined to Christ’s priestly intercession in heaven.

This actually makes our priests the “proper priests”. By their evangelical, memorial oblations that liturgically commemorate Christ’s ancient sacrifice, they are more truly priests than the Jewish priests could ever be by their obscure and shadowy offerings.

IN like manner it belonged to the Apostles, and Presbyters, by Virtue of their sacerdotal Office, and Ministry, to be Advocates, and Intercessors with God, and as such, to pray and entreat God for the People, and by Prayer, to make Atonement for their Sins, and propitiate him, and to ask Favours, and Blessings of him for them. [...]

I need not insist upon their Power, of Baptizing for the Remission of Sins with Fasting, and Prayer, which was a most solemn Act of Expiation for washing away all the past Sins of the Baptized.

Nor need I spend much time to prove, that it was their Office to administer the holy Eucharist, in which more especially they exercised the Priest’s Office in making Prayers, and Intercessions at the holy Altar upon the account of the same Sacrifice, that Christ makes continual Intercession in the Presence of God for us.

And to these solemn Prayers, and Intercessions, which the Priests make in the holy Eucharist, the People with all the Powers of their Souls are to say Amen. [...]

It is their Office then to make Atonement most especially at this Sacrifice, which consists in the Celebration of the Sacrifice which Christ made upon the Cross, when they make a most solemn Memorial, and Representation of it unto God upon Earth, correspondent to that, which he daily makes of it before him in Heaven.

The Christian Priesthood Asserted. Chapter II, §§XII-XIII

I’d prefer apply the fruits of rather than make Atonement (see Bramhall). That aside, in extolling the superior virtues of commemorative sacrifice, Hickes is doing something very important for our understanding of priesthood.

St Andrew's Parish Church, Clewer, Berkshire

THOMAS Thelluson Carter (1808-1901) spent most of his working life as Rector of Clewer in Berkshire (pictured), and as a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.

In his treatise on the Christian Priesthood, Carter urged us to recognise the repeated Scriptural emphasis on God’s employment of his creatures in distributing the graces which he has prepared for those whom he chooses to himself.

It is a principle embedded in the very fact of the Incarnation itself.

IT has pleased the Creator thus to limit by certain laws His own operations, and to make the infinite outgoings of His will dependent on the presence and actings of His own creatures. …

“In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” and from Him flow forth all the gifts that God has willed to impart to man. They flow not directly from God, but indirectly through the Manhood of Christ.

This principle is not however confined to Jesus’s own human body. He pointedly uses instruments and agents in all that he does: inanimate clay for a blind man’s eyes (John 9:6), and human assistants to roll away a stone and untie Lazarus before he can be free (John 9:39-44).

Canon Carter then adds our reading at Holy Communion this week (The Seventh Sunday After Trinity), which tells of the miraculous feeding of four thousand people (Mk 8:1-10), one of two recorded occasions on which this happened.

“A Priest” he wrote “is one who, not by any merit, or virtue, or power of his own, but by the will of God, has been made a necessary link in the chainwork of the Divine purposes”. And here we see the principle of a delegated ministerial priesthood at work.

A YET more apposite instance of the truth here sought to be established occurs in the two remarkable miracles of feeding the many thousands with the few loaves. “Jesus took the loaves, and gave thanks;” but they were distributed by “the disciples to them that were set down.” (S. John vi. 11.)

In these cases human instrumentality was employed, not merely, as in the case of the raising of Lazarus, in the accidental accompaniments of the miracle, but in the miracle itself; for while passing through the hands of the Apostles the bread mysteriously grew, and was multiplied according to the need of the recipients.

The miracle was evidently symbolical, and when, immediately afterwards, our Lord spoke of giving His Flesh and Blood for the life of the world, it suggests itself as an inference involved in the type, that this true Bread, His very Body, would pass miraculously through human hands.

The Doctrine Of The Priesthood Of The Church Of England. Chapter IX: The Principle Of Priesthood.

For more on the Revd T. T. Carter, see Wikipedia. On this miracle and priesthood, see also Jesse at Anglican Identity.

Richard Hooker (?1554-1600)

THE Declaration on Kneeling at the close of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer service of Holy Communion tells us:

THE natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ’s natural Body to be at one time in more places than one.

Does this mean Christ himself is absent, that the Eucharist merely illustrates by actions what it teaches in words?

Hardly. In Book V of his Ecclesiastical Polity, Richard Hooker (?1554-1600) complained,

IT greatly offendeth, that some, when they labour to shew the use of the holy Sacraments, assign unto them no end, but only to teach the mind by other senses that which the Word doth teach by hearing.

The answer has to do with the communicatio idiomatum or “communication of properties”, a doctrine of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, at Chalcedon in AD 451, whereby we may (as Scripture does) misapply characteristics of Christ’s divinity to his humanity, and vice versa.

WHEN the Apostle saith of the Jews, that they crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Cor 2:8), and when the Son of Man, being on earth, affirmeth, that the Son of Man was in Heaven at the same instant (Jn 3:13); there is in these two speeches that mutual circulation before-mentioned. In the one, there is attributed to God, or the Lord of Glory, death, whereof divine nature is not capable; in the other, ubiquity unto man, which human nature admitteth not.

This “communication of properties” works because although Christ has two distinct natures, each with its own peculiar and unchanging properties, he is also one Person, to whom all are referred.

THEREFORE, by the Lord of Glory, we must needs understand the whole Person of Christ, who, being Lord of Glory, was indeed crucified, but not in that nature for which he is termed the Lord of Glory. In like manner, by the Son of Man, the whole Person of Christ must necessarily be meant, who, being man upon earth, filled Heaven with his glorious presence, but not according to that nature for which the title of Man is given him.

When it comes to the universal presence of Christ, the same principle applies. It is true that Christ’s human nature is not corporally present on earth and in heaven at the same time, but we legitimately speak as if it were, because Christ’s One Person is truly and divinely present.

AGAIN, as the manhood of Christ may after a sort be every where said to be present, because that Person is every where present from whose divine substance manhood is no where severed; so the same universality of presence may likewise seem in another respect appliable thereunto, namely, by cooperation with Deity, and that in all things.

So the revisers of the 1662 Book rightly changed the text of the Declaration on Kneeling in the 1552 Book, “no adoration is intended … unto any real or essential Presence” of Christ, to read:

no adoration is intended … unto any Corporal Presence.

Christ’s presence is absolutely real; but his Corporal presence is real only by his Personal presence, and by the loose but actually very Scriptural speech of the “communication of properties”.

So for Hooker, Christ’s incarnate Person – begotten of the Father before all worlds, yet born of the Virgin Mary, a Person divine and yet human – is truly and really present in the Eucharist, and affords as truly present all the merits and fruits of the Passion which he suffered for us in the flesh, bone for bone, sinew for sinew – even as Christ’s human body is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

FOR we take not Baptism, nor the Eucharist, for bare resemblances or memorials of things absent, neither for naked signs and testimonies assuring us of grace received before, but (as they are indeed and in verity) for means effectual, whereby God, when we take the Sacraments, delivereth into our hands that grace available unto eternal life, which grace the Sacraments represent or signify.

Edward Reynolds (1599-1676), Bishop of Norwich

IN our second reading at Evensong today, we hear from St Jude, urging us to keep the Apostolic faith (Jude).

BELOVED, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

We do not simply confess this orthodoxy in words. We also offer this orthodoxy in our liturgical actions. It is the oblation that God gives us, to offer back to him.

A good reason not to maim it, or mingle it with our own weak imaginings.

WE must remember the death of Christ with prayer unto God: for as by faith we apply to ourselves, so by prayer we represent unto God the Father that his death, as the merit and means of reconciliation with him.

As prayer is animated by the death of Christ (which alone is that character, that adds currentness unto them), so is the death of Christ not to be celebrated without prayer, wherein we do with confidence implore God’s acceptance of that sacrifice for us, in which alone he is well pleased.

“Open thine eyes unto the supplication of thy servants, to hearken unto all for which they shall call unto thee,” was the prayer of Solomon in the consecration of the temple.

What, doth God hearken with his eyes unto the prayers of his people? Hath not he that made the ear, an ear himself, but must be fain to make use of another faculty unto a different work? Certainly, unless the eye of God be first open to look on the blood of his Son, and on the persons of his saints, bathed and sprinkled therewith, his ears can never be open unto their prayers.

Prayer doth put God in mind of his covenant, and covenants are not to be presented without seals. Now the seal of our covenant is the blood of Christ: no testament is of force but by the death of the testator.

Whensoever therefore we present unto God the truth of his own free covenant in our prayers, let us not forget to show him his own seal too, by which we are confirmed in our hope therein.

Thus are we to celebrate the death of Christ, and in these regards is this holy work called by the ancients “an unbloody sacrifice,” in a mystical and spiritual sense, — because, in this work, is a confluence of all such holy duties, as are in the Scripture called “spiritual sacrifices.”

And in the same sense, was the Lord’s table ofttimes by them called an “altar,” as that was which the Reubenites erected on the other side of Jordan, not for any proper sacrifice, but to be a pattern and memorial of that, whereon sacrifice was offered (Josh 22:10-29).

Edward Reyonds (1599-1676), Bishop of Norwich. Meditations On The Holy Sacrament. Chapter XVI.

More by Edward Reynolds.

The High Altar at Peterborough Cathedral. © Dave Hitchborne, Geograph. Used under licence.

YESTERDAY’S post on Baptism saw Christopher Wordsworth speak of the divine life “infused into the heart of man by means of the Holy Sacrament”.

He was drawing on words from Thomas Jackson (1579-1640), Dean of Peterborough, who spoke in the same terms of both Baptismal regeneration and also the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is an infusion of divine life, which is not separated from his incarnation among us: it is, says Jackson carefully, to this day Christ’s glorified human nature, standing beside the throne of God, that “distils” his divine life like dew into our hearts.

THE spirit of life, whereby our adoption and election is sealed unto us, is the real participation of Christ’s body, which was broken, and of Christ’s blood, which was shed for us.

This is the true and punctual meaning of our apostle’s speech, 1 Cor. xv. 45: The first man Adam was made a living soul, or, as the Syriac hath it, animate corpus — “an enlivened body;” but the last Adam was made a quickening spirit; and immediately becometh such to all those which as truly bear his image by the spirit of regeneration, which issues from him, as they have borne the image of the first Adam by natural propagation.

And this again is the true and punctual meaning of our Saviour’s words, John vi. 63: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

For so he had said in the verses before, to such as were offended at his words, What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? The implication contained in the connexion between these two verses and the precedent is this — That Christ’s virtual presence, or the influence of life, which his human nature was to distil from his heavenly throne, should be more profitable to such as were capable of it, than his bodily presence, than the bodily eating of his flesh and blood could be, although it had been convertible into their bodily substance.

This distillation of life and immortality from his glorified human nature, is that which the ancient and orthodoxal church did mean in their figurative and lofty speeches of Christ’s real presence, or of eating his very flesh, and drinking his very blood in the sacrament.

And the sacramental bread is called his body, and the sacramental wine his blood, as for other reasons, so especially for this, that the virtue or influence of his bloody sacrifice is most plentifully and most effectually distilled from heaven unto the worthy receivers of the eucharist.

Commentaries On The Creed. Bk XI. Chap. III. §12

See more on the Real Presence, and by Thomas Jackson.

Daniel Waterland (1683-1740), Dean of St George's, Windsor

DANIEL WATERLAND (1683-1740), Dean of St George’s Chapel in Windsor, engaged in a long-running dispute with the Revd Dr Samuel Clarke, a philosopher of Unitarian tendencies.

Clarke saw the sacraments simply as rehearsals of the death of Christ, which stir up a saving faith and charity in the Christian. Consequently, his focus was on our response to what is signified by Baptism and the Eucharist, and the virtues which that response then prompts in our breast.

Waterland felt that this was just part of the story. The sacraments are actually justifying and sanctifying ordinances in themselves. So far are our virtues from having any power to save us, that they are not the product of receiving the sacraments, but the condition of it.

THIS is expressive of something more than bare means to moral virtue. Faith and repentance are previous qualifications to the Sacraments; they are conditions of pardon, but pardon comes after.

In other words, the sacraments do not simply inspire bad people to be better. They do not simply prompt elect people to belief. By them, God makes dead people alive.

THE two Sacraments, besides their being productive of virtue, and parts of Christian piety, are further also the instituted ordinary means and instruments of applying the benefit of the great atonement to every worthy receiver. In this view, they have a nearer and more immediate influence upon our justification and salvation, than any of our best works can have. …

The worthy receiving of the holy Communion is so far from being a means only to moral virtues, that it is directly a means of salvation; and that it goes beyond and surpasses moral virtues as to its immediate influence in applying and sealing to us that pardon which the best of human virtues want, and cannot claim, and without which no man can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

On this account, I observed in the Remarks, that “the Sacraments are additional improvements upon virtuous practices, and are of nearer and more immediate efficacy for the uniting us to God and Christ. They supply where moral virtues fall short; they relieve where moral virtues cannot; they finish what the other but begin, our justification and salvation.”

The Sacraments do this; that is to say, God does it by them. These are his appointed means, his holy ordinances, in and by which he applies Christ’s merits and atonement to the worthy receiver, and seals their pardon. I suppose it might be with a view to these inestimable benefits that Ignatius, (who was St. John’s disciple,) speaking of the bread broken in the Eucharist, calls it “the medicine of immortality, our antidote, that we should not die, but live for ever in Christ Jesus.”

The Christian Sacraments. Chapter V. §3.

More by Daniel Waterland.

An English chasuble (rear), 14th century

THE Prayer Book of 1552 dourly directed,

THE minister at the time of the communion and at all other times in his ministration shall use neither albe, vestment, nor cope, that being a priest or deacon he shall have and wear a surplice only.

Queen Elizabeth I personally intervened to repeal this in 1559, restoring the status quo ante of “the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth” (r. 1547-1553).

Defiantly, senior clergy sympathetic to Geneva proceeded to drive coach and horses through this order. No civil or ecclesiastical power could restore these “superstitious ceremonies”.

But Bishop William Van Mildert (1765-1836) was surely right to decry this attitude.

TOO many are still wont to depreciate Judaism, as a system unimportant to us, both in its moral and religious purpose; and even as inculcating a spirit diametrically opposite to that of the Christian Religion. Because the Gospel superseded the use of the Jewish Ritual, they are led to regard all external ordinances as mere beggarly elements of Religion, unworthy of the evangelical and spiritualized believer.

Unfazed by the Geneva party’s stubborn defiance, the Prayer Book of 1662 repeated Elizabeth’s directive. Strip away the years of compromise and dissent, and these could still be the authorised vestments of the English Church.

FIRST. He putteth on the amice, which as touching the mystery, signifies the veil, with which the Jews covered the face of Christ, when they buffeted him in time of his passion: and, as touching the minister, it signifies faith, which is the head, ground, and foundation of all virtues; and therefore, he puts that upon his head first.

Secondly. He puts upon him the albe, which as touching the mystery, signifieth the white garment, wherewith Herod clothed Christ, in mockery, when he sent him to Pilate. And as touching the minister, it signifies the pureness of conscience, and innocency he ought to have, especially when he sings the mass.

The girdle, as touching the mystery, signifies the scourge with which Christ was scourged. And as touching the minister, it signifies the continent and chaste living, or else the close mind which he ought to have at prayers, when he celebrates.

The stole, as touching the mystery, signifieth the ropes or bands that Christ was bound with to the pillar, when he was scourged. And as touching the minister, it signifieth the yoke of patience; which he must bear as the servant of God; in token whereof he puts also the phanon [i.e. maniple] on his arm, which admonisheth him of ghostly strength, and godly patience, that he ought to have, to vanquish and overcome all carnal infirmity.

The overvesture, or chesible, as touching the mystery, signifies the purple mantle that Pilate’s soldiers put upon Christ, after that they had scourged him. And as touching the minister, it signifies charity, a virtue excellent above all other.

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556). Ceremonies to be used in the Church of England (1541).

See also Vestments.

St Mary's Church, Dalham. © Bob Jones, Geograph. Used under licence.

WE, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. (2 Pet 3)

Traditional Anglicanism holds out the hope of heaven, and let it be said also the fear of hell, as a real and powerful motivation to repentance and amendment of life.

AND to have this our Redeemer ever before our eyes, and the liveliest sense and freshest remembrance of that dying, bleeding love still upon our souls! How will it fill our souls with perpetual joy, to think, that in the streams of this blood we have swam through the violence of the world, the snares of Satan, the seducements of flesh, the curse of the law, the wrath of an offended God, the accusations of a guilty conscience, and the vexing doubts and fears of an unbelieving heart, and are arrived safe at the presence of God!

Richard Baxter (1615-1691)

Of this heavenly life we have a mystic anticipation in our liturgy. We have left the earth; we are suddenly found really present with Christ, before God’s own altar in heaven.

SO saith St Hierom, “Let us go up with the Lord” (into heaven) “into that great parlour, spread and clean: and let us receive of him above the cup of the new testament.” …

Let us die with Christ; let us be crucified unto the world. Let us be holy eagles, and soar above. Let us go up into the great parlour, and receive of our Lord the cup of the new testament.

There let us behold the body that was crucified for us, and the blood which was shed for us. There let us say, This is the ransom of the world: this was once offered, and hath made perfect for ever all them that believe: this entered once into the holy place, and obtained everlasting redemption for us: this standeth always in the presence of God, and maketh intercession for us: this is the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world:” by this body I am now no more earth and ashes: by this, I am now not a bondman, but made free.

This body hath broken the gates of hell, and hath opened heaven. In this are all the treasures of God’s mercy: by this the prince of darkness is cast forth: in this body shall he come again to judge the quick and the dead.

Bishop John Jewel (1522-1571)

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth (Edgar Bainton).

AND I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
(See Rev 21:1-4)

A Collection Plate

OUR reading at Mattins today (Acts 4:32-5:16) is a reminder that the proper sphere for voluntary Christian charity (see Charity) had from ancient times always been the parish.

NEITHER was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

The framers of the Prayer Book sought to recapture the spirit of antiquity, by making the presentation of alms into a much more prominent part of our Eucharistic sacrifice. Bishop Anthony Sparrow (1612-1685) wrote,

THEODORET tells us, “that it was the ancient custom, before the receiving of the holy Sacrament, to come up into the choir and offer at the holy table.” And surely it becomes not us to be empty-handed when God comes to us full-handed, as in that sacrament He does.

Almsgiving is therefore made part of the Offertory in the Prayer Book, and no fewer than twenty Sentences are provided for the time of giving.

It is in no way “low church” to make almsgiving such a pronounced feature of the Offertory, as if it detracted from the Eucharistic sacrifice. Bishop Brian Duppa (1588-1662) was a protege of William Laud, and persecuted under the Interregnum, yet he could say,

IN the primitive Church the Offertory was a considerable part in the administering and receiving the Sacrament and was for a double end, the one in relation to the Sacrament in the offering of bread and wine, the other for the use of the poor. And these oblations were called a Sacrifice.

Cornelius’s generous almsgiving came up “for a memorial before God” (Acts 10:4), where “memorial” is anamnesis, the same word used by Jesus of offering the Christian Passover commemoration “in remembrance of me”. Alms have always constituted an honourable part of our memorial sacrifices.

We might turn the “collection” into more than a whip-round by following the recommendation of Charles Wheatly (1686-1742).

IN most places, especially here in town, they go to the several seats and pews of the congregation. Though in other places they collect at the entrance into the chancel, where the people make their offerings as they draw towards the Altar. This last way seems the most conformable to the practice of the primitive church, which, in pursuance of a text delivered by our Saviour (Mt 5:23), ordered that the people should come up to the rails of the Altar, and there make their offerings to the Priest.

Even so, the revisers of the 1662 Book separated the bringing of the “alms” from the bringing of the “oblations” of bread and wine, which were to be distinct actions. Alms are brought to the altar by a deacon or church-warden, but the offertory of the bread and wine is reserved with due solemnity to the priest alone.