I have to acknowledge many communications on various points; of which I have to some extent availed myself in this edition.
APPENDIX A.
OPINIONS OF THE BISHOP OF EXETER ON CERTAIN POINTS OF DOCTRINE.
Having had occasion to receive from the Bishop of Exeter an expression of his views on the subjects discussed in pp. 31-37, I asked and obtained permission to embody it in an Appendix, as his latest and most matured judgment on the matter to which it relates.
The Bishop says:—"I regard the Grace of the Eucharist as the Communion of the Death and Sufferings of our Lord. St. Paul (1 Cor. xi. 24), in his statement of the Revelation made to him from Christ, sitting at the Right Hand of God the Father, seems to me distinctly to affirm this Truth.
"His words τὸ κλώμενον (they should be rendered "which is being broken"), in their literal and plain signification, show that the Lord's Death is one continuous Fact, which lasts and will last till he comes and lays down His Mediatorial Kingdom, subjecting it, and Himself, its King, to the Father.
"I hold that it is, in short, a Sacrament of that continuous Act of our Lord's Suffering once for us on the Cross—the punishment appointed for sin during the days of His Mediation—that our Lord is, in some ineffable manner, present in the Sacrament of His Sufferings, thus communicated to us, by which He pays for us the penalty imposed on our guilt. In such a Presence I do not recognise anything material or local, though I most thankfully rejoice in it as real."
Next as to the point dwelt upon in pp. 66-70, as seeming to prescribe, and to render important, the position of the Celebrant at the Holy Communion: viz. that our Lord's having "given" or "presented" in a mystery, through the Elements, the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood, is the whole secret of their consecration to be that which they represent: and that we, too, must "give," "present," or "offer," the Elements with the same intention, if we would effectually plead the Sacrifice, and receive the Sacrament:—