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The Reformation of the church also entailed a reformation of its rites. These conduits to grace, determined by the scholastic theologian Peter Lombard in the twelfth century, consisted of seven sacraments: baptism, the Eucharist, confirmation, ordination, marriage, penance, and extreme unction. By John Wyclif’s day, these were the very essence of medieval salvation. Medieval reformers, in particular Wyclif and Jan Hus, disputed the notion of transubstantiation, but it was Protestants who achieved a more
Chapter 5 The sacrament Socinianized: Benjamin Hoadly and the Eucharist T he Eucharist long exerted centripetal and centrifugal forces on Christianity, and the Church of England’s formularies captured why that was the case. The Thirty-Nine Articles declared that the sacraments were ‘ordained of Christ’ and were ‘not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather … certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God’s good will towards us, by which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and
John Wyclif (d. 1384) was among the leading schoolmen of fourteenth-century Europe. He was an outspoken controversialist and critic of the church, and, in his last days at Oxford, the author of the greatest heresy that England had known. This volume offers translations of a representative selection of his Latin writings on theology, the church and the Christian life. It offers a comprehensive view of the life of this charismatic but irascible medieval theologian, and of the development of the most prominent dissenting mind in pre-Reformation England. This collection will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of medieval history, historical theology and religious heresy, as well as scholars in the field.
author himself.1 The question of Donne’s ecumenicalism may reasonably prompt us to search Donne’s oeuvre for statements that address the question explicitly. Such searches are quite productive. Even focusing specifically on Eucharistic theology (a particularly contentious area of early modern Christianity), one finds several strongly ecumenical statements in Donne’s sermons:2 A peremptory prejudice upon other mens opinions, that no opinion but thine can be true, in the doctrine of the Sacrament, and an uncharitable condemning of other men, or other Churches that may be
is to another place (i.e., to the New Jerusalem). 4 I refer to Gless’s 1994 monograph, Interpretation and Theology. My interpretation of the betrothal/wedding ceremony in canto xii as an allegory of the sacrament of Communion has been anticipated by John King who, in the final sentence of his Spenser Encyclopedia entry under the heading ‘Sacraments’, describes the ceremony as ‘an act that mirrors the union of Christian and Christ in the Communion service’ (624). King has not, however (in so far as I have been able to discover), expanded upon this inspired
and realised over time by the assiduous practice of asceticism and good works. This transformation is at once a participation in Christ and an imitation of the pattern of his own sanctified life. In practical terms, the way in which that participation and imitation come to fruition is through the sacraments of faith. The sacraments of the Incarnation When Bede uses the term
rather than in (often mumbled) Latin as in the Roman Catholic Sarum mass and by administering bread and wine to the laity, too. The Roman Catholic liturgy and doctrine of transubstantiation were maintained during the early years of Reformation under Henry VIII. When Henry’s young son Edward ascended the throne, the English Reformation gained momentum. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and the leading theologian during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, gradually adopted Zwingli’s figurative understanding of the sacraments as the official Anglican position
30 Three kisses—better to her than to me …At Goodramgate church at 10 35/”; Miss W– and I and Thomas staid [for] the sacrament…. The first time I ever joined Miss W– in my prayers—I had prayed that our union might be happy—she had not thought of doing as much for me. 9 A pril 1834 Anne Lister and Ann Walker left York for a tour of Yorkshire; their final stop was to visit the Norcliffes at
type of rhetoric, of course, was scarcely an innovation in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, although, as will be seen, both its prevalence and vehemence was revolutionary. As any historian of the late antique and medieval Church can testify, ecclesiastical sources are full of references to concerns about ritual purity and fears of contamination from an early date. For instance, Irish texts such as the mid-sixth-century Vinnian and mid-seventh-century Cummean penitentials repeatedly display anxiety about the purity of the sacraments and those who handled them
them thither again betimes, lest ye go to the devil with them for company. Wheresoever ye had them, certain am I that ye have them not of the authority of the holy scripture. Christ and his apostles used no such fond coats at the ministration of the sacrament. Christ alloweth no pomp nor pride, but all simplicity and plainness. Therefore plainly