Stephen Reynolds Theologies of the Eucharist II the Anglican Tradition
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Stephen Reynolds Theologies of the Eucharist II The Anglican Tradition ©Estate of Stephen Reynolds 2013 The Rev'd Dr. Stephen Reynolds 1951-2011 ii Table of Contents Introduction 1. The Founding Liturgies The Mass of the Roman Rite (Sarum Use) 1 The Book of Common Prayer 1549 41 Comparison with the Roman Rite 83 The Book of Common Prayer 1552/1559 89 2. Interpreting the 1559 Liturgy 139 3. Lord’s Table or Altar Stephen Reynolds, “Sacrifices by Resemblance” 194 Peter Heyleyn, A Coal from the Altar 217 Joseph Mede, The Christian Sacrifice 261 4. Renewal and Restoration 313 Scots Book of Common Prayer 1637 333 English Book of Common Prayer 1662 353 5. A Worthy Communion An Homily of the worthy receiving and reverend esteeming of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ (1571) 378 Jeremy Taylor, The Worthy Communicant (1661) 397 Daniel Brevint, The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice (1673) 407 John and Charles Wesley, Hymns for the Lord’s Supper (1745) 417 iii 6. The Usages and Eucharistical Sacrifice Introduction 430 The American Prayer Book 1789 449 7. The Catholic Revival Introduction 466 Isaac Williams, Tract 86 (1839) 477 John Keble, On Eucharistical Adoration (1857) 501 8. Realigning the Consensus Introduction to Charles Gore, The Body of Christ (1902) 544 9. Liturgical Renewal Introduction to Walter Howard Frere 551 Revision of the Book of Common Prayer in Canada (1918-1962) 553 10. Appendix: One Priest’s Meat 572 A Eucharistic Prayer 595 11. General Bibliography 599 iv [This volume and its companion volume, Theologies of the Eucharist I, comprise the final version of lectures and notes composed, printed and handed out to students by Professor Stephen Reynolds in various systematic theology courses taught in the Faculty of Divinity of Trinity College, beginning in 1998 and continuing to the time of his death in 2011. They are here published together by the Faculty of Divinity in honour of the work of a consummate teacher. Professor Reynolds had not completed the final sections of this work, although his overall plan was known and has been followed here, and he would undoubtedly have provided further editorial input for a wider public. These lectures and notes already provide a worthy memorial of his work as a teacher and scholar. David Neelands, Dean of Divinity, Trinity College, Toronto, 2013] v vi Theologies of the Eucharist II The Anglican Tradition 1. The Founding Liturgies The Mass of the Roman Rite according to the Use of Sarum Introduction MAGINE that we are standing on a muddy road and I blinking at two rows of houses aligned on either side of it. These houses are made of timber and mortar, with small windows of leaded glass; one has a slate roof, the rest are thatched. Wood-smoke rises from every chimney, and its smell saturates the atmosphere. So does a peculiarly sulphurous stench, like that of an open cesspool or a broken sewer. A window in one of the houses swings open, and a pair of hands flings the contents of a pot into the road. The same thing happens up and down the street. We suddenly realize that the road itself is the village’s sewer – and the reason for the pervasive stench. We’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore. All of a sudden, a bell begins to ring, and its deep clangour makes the whole landscape vibrate. We try to locate where the sound is coming from; but before our eyes can catch up with our ears, a door nearby creaks on its hinges and we hear the murmur of two voices. A woman emerges; she is dressed in bulky layers, her head covered with a dull (or dingy) white cloth, her skirt ankle-length, and her feet shod in clogs. From other doorways other people step into the road, men as well as women, one with a small child on her left hip and another child walking at her right side. They all trudge up the roadway, moving away from us toward what looks like a church – a building of stone, with a massive tower in front. It is from there that the bell is sounding. There must be a service – which seems odd, because it is (when we last checked) Tuesday, not Sunday, and only just after dawn. Where are we? In our bewilderment we follow the people up to the church. Its doors – or at least, the left-hand section – is plastered with five or six notices. We scan them; most of them appear to be hand-written, but in a script so gnarled and loopy as to be illegible to us. Except for one line in a notice just above eye-level. The line is in something like block-letters and reads KIDTHORPE SAINCTE MARYES. Then we come upon a larger, official-looking notice, a proclamation of some sort. Its print is slightly (but only slightly) less gnarled than the hand-written notice, so that it takes us a while to figure out just the first paragraph. It says, “Henry the VIII, by the grace of God, King of England and of 2 The Founding Liturgies France, Defensor of the Faith, Lord of Ireland, to all and singular our most loving, faithful, and obedient subjects, Greeting.” We skip to the end of the document and read that it had been issued “on the twelfth day of September in the twenty-first year of our reign”. We are in England, and the year is 1529. Two women with three little girls and an infant rustle past us, and go through the open door. We decide to follow them, and enter the church just behind them. The first thing we notice are the burning torches attached to the pillars, and all the lighted candles. That, and the peculiar odour – a mix of human sweat and some sort of smokiness (is it incense?). A wide aisle runs up the length of the nave, the main body of the church, and rows of backless benches stand on either side of it. Some worshippers sit or kneel among these benches, while others kneel before statues or at one or another of the altars which line the walls of the side-aisles. These side-altars are separated from one another by wooden screens, so that each one is like a separate chapel. The same thing is true of the baptismal font to our right, at the back of the church near the entrance, except that its partitioning screens make it a roomier compartment.1 A bell tinkles far away, up at the front. Hardly anyone in the congregation moves; each continues to do whatever she or he was doing, wherever he or she happened to be doing it. A male voice begins to sing a chant, and other male voices (maybe three or four) join in. The sound is oddly distant, as if it were coming from another room. Then we notice some movement. At the front of the nave there is a wall, with an open doorway in the centre. It is through this doorway that we see two figures draw up abreast of one another in front of the altar, fall to one knee, and rise. The shorter figure, wearing a hip-length white garment over black cassock, moves to the right, out of the door-frame. The other figure, 1 “The plan of an English medieval parish church is the result of an attempt to combine into one whole a series of compartments: the nave, the aisles, the chantry chapels with their parclose screens, the transepts, and the long chancels and their aisles separated from the nave by a screen, rood-loft, and tympanum.” G. W. O. Addleshaw and Frederick Etchells, The Archictectural Setting of Anglican Worship. An Inquiry into the arrangements for Public Worship in the Church of England from the Reformation to the present day (London: Faber and Faber, 1948), pp. 13- 14. 3 The Founding Liturgies wearing with a poncho-like red garment over a white gown, steps up to the altar, bends over it, and kisses its surface. That is our guess; for this priest is very far away; the room which we see through the door in the wall is almost as long as the nave. Time passes, and the service proceeds. We cannot make much of it. The priest moves from the centre to one corner of the altar or the other and back again. Every so often, usually while the priest is moving, the choir raises another chant. We still cannot see them, though we have figured out that they must be behind that wall at the front, in the same room with the priest. We catch just enough of the words to realize that they are singing in Latin. As for the priest’s voice, we can barely hear it, even when he turns to face us and say something in our direction. For the rest, we see only his back or, when he moves, his profile. Meanwhile, the people in the congregation carry on with their private devotions. Two of them, a man who looks middle-aged and an elderly woman, seem to be making the rounds of all the statues in the nave, from opposite directions. When the man comes to a statue, he kneels and murmurs a prayer, then rises and moves on to the next statue; the woman prefers to stand before each statue, and says her prayer there in a louder tone. The rest of the congregation, scattered along the benches, also pray aloud in low tones, some to the accompaniment of clacking prayer- beads, each at a different tempo.