ELEMENTS

The materials used in the sacraments, appointed for that purpose by our Lord himself. Thus water is the element of baptism, and bread and wine are the elements of the eucharist. With respect to the elements of the eucharist, it is ordered by the Church of England that, “when there is a communion, the priest shall then place upon the table so much bread and wine as he shall think sufficient;” Then , that is, after the offertory, and after presenting the basin with the alms. This rubric being added to our liturgy at the last review, at the same time with the word “oblations,” in the prayer following, it is clearly evident, as Bishop Patrick has observed, that by that word are to be understood the elements of bread and wine, which the priest is to offer solemnly to God as an acknowledgment of his sovereignty over his creatures, and that from henceforth they might become properly and peculiarly his. For in all the Jewish sacrifices, of which the people were partakers, the viands or materials of the feast were first made God’s by a solemn oblation, and then afterwards eaten by the communicants, not as man’s, but as God’s provisions, who by thus entertaining them at his own table, declared himself reconciled, and again in covenant with them. And therefore our ble ed Saviour , when he instituted the new sacrament of his own body and blood, first gave thanks and ble ed the elements; that is, offered them up to God as Lord of the creatures, as the most ancient Fathers expound that pa age; who for that reason, whenever they celebrated the holy eucharist, always offered the bread and wine for the communion to God upon the altar by this or some short ejaculation: “ Lord , we offer thee thine own out of what thou hast bountifully given us.” After which they received them into the sacred banquet of the body and blood of his dear Son. In the ancient Church they had generally a side table, or prothesis , near the altar, upon which the elements were laid till the first part of the communion service was over. Now, though we have not always a side table, and there is no expre provision for one made in the Church of England, yet in the first Common Prayer Book of King Edward VI., the priest himself was ordered, in this place, to set both bread and wine upon the altar; but at the review in 1551, this and several other pious usages were thrown out, in condescension to ultra-Protestant superstition. (See Credence .) After which the Scotch liturgy was the first wherein we find it restored; and Mr. Mede having observed our liturgy to be defective in this particular, was probably the occasion, that, in the review of it after the Restoration, this primitive practice was restored, and the bread and wine ordered by the rubric to be set solemnly on the table by the priest himself. It appears, indeed, that the traditional practice of the immediately preceding times maintained its ground in many places after the alteration of the rubric; (see Hicke’s Treatises , i. 127–129, 322–324;) but the history of the change gives so marked a character to our present rubric, that a neglect of it is clearly a violation of the priest’s obligation to conformity. If the priest thus offends the consciences of the more enlightened members of a congregation, they should point out to him his mistake, which can only proceed from traditional negligence. In the coronation service of Queen Victoria, after the reading of the sentences in the Offertory, this rubric occurs. “And first the Queen offers bread and wine for the communion, which being brought out of King Edward’s chapel, and delivered into her hands, the bread upon the paten by the bishop who read the Epistle, and the wine in the chalice by the bishop that read the Gospel, are by the archbishop received from the Queen, and reverently placed upon the altar, and decently covered with a fair linen cloth, the archbishop first saying this prayer,” . (See Oblation and Offertory .)—See Wheatly .