Pusey's 1843 Sermon on the Eucharist: A Rejected Eucharistic Theology

The evening of Saturday, 13 May 1843 was filled with excitement in the city of Oxford. That day’s Oxford Papers publicized that the renowned Dr. Pusey, “The Reverend the Regius Professor of Hebrew,” would be preaching the following day at Christ Church Cathedral.[1] Pusey was a legendary preacher for the content of his sermons and the zeal of his delivery.[2] There was talk all around the town of the impending sermon.[3] Pilgrims from London, students, and townspeople anxiously awaited the arrival of Dr. Pusey, hoping to walk on the same ground as him, to gaze upon him, or to touch his robe.[4] At this much anticipated event, there was standing room only in the cathedral.[5]

Unfortunately, Pusey’s notoriety was temporary; it abruptly fell into disrepute due to unfavorable reactions to his sermon, The Holy Eucharist, A Comfort to the Penitent. His sermon incurred the following allegations: promoting the doctrine of transubstantiation,[6] evoking “carnal notions of presence and sacrifice in the Eucharist”[7] by citing the Caroline Divines “selectively and out of context,” being incongruous with the Caroline Divines,[8] and utilizing the Church Fathers in a distorted way.[9] The Vice-Chancellor banned Pusey from preaching at the university for two years.[10] Even though Pusey denied the allegations made against him, argued here is that his sermon did evoke a carnal, real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

This article aims to understand why a defense of a corporeal, real presence of Christ in the sacrament was problematic in nineteenth-century England. A brief, historical sketch of English eucharistic theology in Pusey’s day is provided. Since the Reformation, Anglican eucharistic theology was entrenched in the Book of Common Prayer; however, there were varied interpretations of these formulas with respect to the Eucharist. Members of the Oxford Movement aimed to restore the interpretations of the Church of England’s doctrines to its Catholic heritage amidst this plurality and amidst societal forces of change. While he aimed to defend an Anglican eucharistic theology aligned with the primitive and universal church, Pusey’s doctrine was perhaps considered too Catholic because it was aligned with the first edition (1549) of the Book of Common Prayer, instead of later editions, attempted to incorporate Scripture together with the Church Fathers and the Caroline Divines, and utilized the method of reasoning. Pusey regarded both “reason as an intellectual activity and the experience of the supernatural working through the created order in a sacramental ontology” as important to religion.[11]

Anglican Eucharistic Theology

A consequence of the English Reformation was that the church became bound to the English Crown. Allegiance to the Crown demanded an oath of allegiance to the formularies of the Church of England; otherwise, one was considered treasonous. However, Anglican eucharistic theology became multifarious, and different interpretations of the formularies existed. The overall historical analysis of this section serves as an interpretative lens for Pusey’s eucharistic theology.

Establishing the Anglican Formularies

Pope Innocent III’s opening statement of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation.[12] The opening statement became known by its first word––Firmiter.[13] The creedal statement Firmiter promulgated the doctrine of transubstantiation, indicating that the bread and wine were transformed into the body and blood by God[14] when the priest proclaimed “hoc est corpus meum.”[15] After the consecration, the priest then elevated the host to present Christ’s body to the congregation. Later in the twelfth century, Alan of Lille suggested that neither the matter nor the substance of the bread remain but only their accidents.[16] Hence, the bread and wine are fully transformed into the body and blood of Christ.

By the sixteenth century, religious life was centered around the Eucharist.[17] With the invention of printing, many groups of people now had access to the Bible and began reading it, thus leading to various interpretations of Scripture, including the words uttered by Jesus at the Last Supper: “My body,” “This do,” and “This is my body.”[18] In 1539, Henry VIII’s Act of the Six Articles affirmed the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament of the Eucharist and that the bread and wine were substantially transformed into Christ’s body and blood.[19] Many English, who were now reading the Bible, were divided over whether the Church of England’s theology should affirm the doctrine of transubstantiation.[20]

During the reign of Henry VIII’s son (Edward VI), English Protestants began to contest the Six Articles.[21] By 1848, Archbishop Cranmer of Canterbury solidified his eucharistic theology according to a Zwinglian notion, understanding the sacrament as a remembrance of Christ’s Death and Passion only––the sacrament did not perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice at each mass.[22] In 1550, Cranmer published A Defense of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Savior Christ, which asserted Christ’s spiritual presence only in the Eucharist.[23] To Cranmer and Zwingli, Jesus’s corporeal presence was only in heaven, and only worthy partakers could receive Christ spiritually in the sacrament.[24]

Cranmer emphasized in the formulary of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer that Christ became spiritually present in the believer through his divinity,[25] which was influenced by the centuries-long attack on Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist.[26] This denial of the real presence was aligned with the Calvinist understanding that Christ’s sacrifice occurred only on the cross and not through the celebration of the mass.[27] The Book of Common Prayer was believed to have authority passed down from the apostles; however, this tome was revised and consolidated after the 1549 edition.[28]

High Church Interpretations of the Eucharist

Even with an established Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571), disagreements about the Eucharist ensued into the times of the seventeenth-century English Civil War. Those who promoted the Old High Church principles emphasized unity and purity in the church as they believed had been exemplified by the primitive church and thus objected to dissention or innovation.[29] High Churchmen were disciples of William Laud, an Arminian Caroline Divine. They believed it was “the duty of the state as a divinely ordained … entity, to protect and promote the interests of the Church.”[30] From the seventeenth century, High Churchmen esteemed the Book of Common Prayer as the unrivalled formula for liturgy and doctrine.[31] In general, High Churchmen disagreed with the “Catholic principle of ex opere operato”[32] and instead aimed for a eucharistic piety aligned with the Book of Common Prayer that was distinguished by “performance of daily service, regular observation of the stated festivals and fasts, and frequent eucharistic celebration.”[33]

To the High Churchmen, the Eucharist was a “symbol of visible unity.”[34] Seventeenth-century High Churchmen demanded excommunication and discipline for the following transgressions: 1) committing an infamous crime, 2) involvement in a scandal, 3) or refusal to kneel at communion or attend church. Those who refused to kneel at communion or attend church did so because they rejected the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.[35] Reformers claimed the doctrines of the real presence and of transubstantiation were invalid because they could not be proven from Scripture.[36]

Even with High Churchmen’s efforts to unify the Church of England’s eucharistic beliefs, two interpretations of the Eucharist persisted in the succeeding centuries.[37] The first–virtualism–was promoted by Nonjurors and High Churchmen. Virtualists asserted that the bread and wine were not changed in reality into the body and blood of Christ but “became so in virtue, power, and effect” and that the sacrament was a “propitiatory sacrifice.”[38] This understanding of the Eucharist was promoted by those devoted to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. Virtualism was promoted by Nonjurors into the nineteenth century.[39]

The second interpretation–receptionism–was the main interpretation of the Eucharist in sixteenth-century England. Receptionists asserted that the consecrated bread and wine were merely symbols of Christ’s body and blood.[40] Receptionists asserted that: “the Real Presence was subject to the worthiness of the recipient of the eucharist,” the formularies of the church did not use the term Real Presence, and Christ was only present in the celebration, not in the bread and wine.[41] Even with their differing interpretations, the virtualist and receptionist doctrines both claimed to be aligned with the Book of Common Prayer. Both groups concurred that the natures of the bread and wine do not change when consecrated[42] and that the real presence of Christ is only in heaven.

Pusey was aware of the existing pluralism in Anglican eucharistic theology.[43] Pusey’s eucharistic theology was influenced by his experiences in the Oxford Movement and as a student in Germany, and this theology evokes both Catholic and Protestant eucharistic doctrine. The next section explores these historical contexts in service of understanding the negative reaction to Pusey’s 1843 sermon.

Historical Influences on Pusey’s Eucharistic Theology

Members of the Oxford Movement believed the Church of England had strayed from the purity of the teachings of the High Church Caroline Divines. The Tractarians strictly adhered to and committed themselves to the Anglican formularies, in particular the Book of Common Prayer, in defense of the forces opposing the Church of England doctrine.[44] Härdelin referred to this as the dogmatic principle of the Oxford Movement.[45]

First, the Oxford Movement aimed to defend the Church of England from the powers of liberalism. Nineteenth-century liberalism argued that religious thought is deemed untrue, since its tenets cannot be proven with reason alone. Similarly, the Tractarians objected to Socinianism, which only accepted as truth that which can be observed with the eye.[46] For Pusey, knowledge and validity of doctrine were not limited to what one “learned by sense experience.”[47] Pusey objected to “using the Bible as a form of evidence” because this method rejects any doctrine that cannot be proven with empirical evidence or reason.[48] The Tractarians committed themselves to the dogmatic principle as their strategy to try to overcome liberalism.

The Tractarians did not reject rational thought altogether but were opposed to a reliance on reason alone. During two separate visits to Germany throughout 1825–1827, Pusey studied the German language and German theology.[49] He perceived German theology to be over-reliant on rationalism. He drew on the strengths of the German method and sought a middle way between rationalism and experience in his eucharistic methodology.[50] In particular, Pusey was influenced by the German theological scholars Freidrich Schleiermacher and August Tholuck. Pusey interpreted Schleiermacher’s theology to be based on  rationalism and lived experience.[51] Similarly, he respected Tholuck for “his pietism as well as his general disregard for doctrine and ecclesiastical ordinance and his genuine mediating style between orthodoxy, rationalism and enthusiasm.”[52] Pusey underlined “experience, feelings, and sensations” with the supernatural and did not want these intimate ways of knowing the divine to be excluded from scholarship.[53] Pusey concluded that “religious conviction was located neither in formal reason nor affective sentiment but in a faculty which used elements of both”; thus, he became committed to both “the rational and the supernatural” in his theology for the remainder of his life.[54]

Tractarians believed Evangelicalism was another threat to the Church of England’s dogmatic tenets. Evangelicalism emphasized private judgment over the dogmatic principle.[55] On 1 June 1837 at Adam de Brome’s Chapel in St. Mary’s, Oxford, John Henry Newman, a leader of the Oxford Movement, preached:

“The system of doctrine … in which ‘stress is laid rather on the believing than on the Object of belief, on the comfort and persuasiveness of the doctrine rather than on the doctrine itself’; and which thus makes religion ‘to consist in contemplating ourselves instead of Christ; not simply in looking to Christ, but in ascertaining that we look to Christ, not in His Divinity and Atonement, but in our conversion and our faith in those truths.”[56]

Even in his Evangelical days, Newman believed in “the absolute centrality of dogma to religion.”[57] In contrast, Evangelicalism was based on a nominalist theology and a spirit of an inward, subjective religion, which curtailed or rejected universal dogmas. Evangelicalism made the self an idol[58] and thus de-emphasized the doctrine, sacraments, and practices of the Church of England. The Tractarian polemic identified the Evangelicals as Low Churchmen[59] and centered their efforts on defending the Church of England’s dogma and emphasizing a faith centered on Christ.

The next section explores the ways in which Pusey’s 1843 sermon, The Holy Eucharist: A Comfort to the Penitent, suggests a corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. According to Härdelin and Douglas, Pusey denied the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist[60] but an argument can be made for evocations of the corporeal presence in Pusey’s sermon. The next section also considers why a professed belief in the corporeal presence in the Eucharist was problematic in the context of nineteenth-century England.

Pusey’s 1843 Sermon

Like his Oxford Movement comrades, Pusey committed himself to restoring the Church of England to its Catholic heritage. Pusey’s strategy for upholding this claim was to prove that the Anglican formularies were aligned with the Church Fathers.[61] Thus, Pusey aimed to develop a eucharistic theology that acted as a via media between Roman Catholic and Reformed theologies and was in the spirit of the seventeenth-century Caroline Divines. As a reaction to liberal and evangelical tendencies, Pusey also aimed for a via media that incorporated both reason and faith into theology.

Adherence to the dogmas of the Church of England was a mark of not only an Anglican but was also the mark of a true Englishman. Pusey began his sermon with a prayer expressing his faithfulness to his church and country. He prayed for members of the royal family by name, the Vice-Chancellor and other members of the University of Oxford, members of clergy, government leaders, and the deceased.[62] This long list suggests that Pusey did not want to leave anyone out of the prayer. Perhaps he anticipated that the sermon was going to be received unfavorably by some and thought the prayer would alleviate the backlash by including the Crown, members of the university, and secular magistrates in his prayer. The elusive expression of allegiance to these parties in his sermon ultimately did not prevent Pusey from being accused of straying from the doctrines of the Church of England.

Because of Pusey’s 1843 sermon, The Holy Eucharist: A Comfort to the Penitent, The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford accused Pusey’s 1843 sermon of going beyond the virtualist and receptionist understandings of the Eucharist in its understandings of Christ’s carnal presence in the Eucharist and that Christ’s sacrifice is recurrent each time the sacrament is celebrated.[63] In addition, writers James Garbett and Samuel Lee accused Pusey of Romanist transubstantiation and of Romanist predispositions.’[64]

Pusey denied all of these allegations. Yet, he argued that a real presence could be defended from Scripture.[65] In particular, his sermon evoked a carnal, real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. A belief in a carnal presence asserts that there is in reality a bodily, fleshly presence of Christ in the Eucharist in contrast to a belief in solely a spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Pusey declared:

“The Eternal Word so took our flesh into Himself, as to impart to it His own inherent life; so then we, partaking of It, that life is transmitted on to us also, and not to our souls only, but our bodies also, since we become flesh of His flesh, and bone of His bone, and He who is wholly life is imparted to us wholly.”[66]

In this passage, Pusey explicitly preached about not only a spiritual benefit to receiving the Eucharist but a bodily benefit, because the partaker in reality partakes of “it”––the flesh of Christ. Christ took on human flesh in order that one might partake in His flesh.[67]

Pusey made an even more explicit statement evoking a carnal presence: “that sinless Flesh which he united indissolubly with Himself and … through that bread which is His Flesh, finding an entrance to us individually, penetrating us, soul and body, and spirit and irradiating and transforming into His own light and life.”[68] It is clear why this passage would have concerned Pusey’s contemporaries. He stated that the bread is his flesh and that not only Christ’s soul and spirit, but Christ’s body is received in the sacrament. When one partakes in Christ’s flesh, one becomes Christ’s flesh and bone and consumes Christ wholly—soul, body, and spirit. Furthermore, Pusey recalled the Lord’s words in John 6:55: “My flesh is truly meat, My blood is truly drink.”[69] Pusey also quoted St. Augustine: “they ‘are fed from the cross of the Lord, because they eat His Body and Blood.’”[70] Pusey’s emphasis on Christ’s body being consumed wholly likely goes against the common virtualist understanding of the Eucharist, which taught that only a spiritual presence of Christ was contained in the Eucharist. Liberals would have objected to Pusey’s argument, because a real presence could not be affirmed with empirical evidence. However, Pusey used reasoning, like his German influences Schleiermacher and Tholuck, which was based on the content of Scripture and the theologies of the Church Fathers and the Caroline Divines to develop his eucharistic theology. Further, Evangelicals would have been dissatisfied because they rejected the sacraments in general.

Pusey argued that the Eucharist must contain the real presence of Christ’s body in order to have a spiritual benefit for the partaker. He stated:

“Were it only a thankful commemoration of His redeeming love, or only a shewing forth of His Death, or a strengthening only and refreshing of the soul … it would have no direct healing for the sinner. To Him its special joy is that it is His Redeemer’s very broken body, It is His Blood, which was shed for the remission of sins.”[71]

Pusey’s passage rebukes the Zwinglian notion that the Eucharist is merely a memorial service of Christ’s passion and death[72]—an anamnesis alone would not generate healing. The bread and wine are not merely medicine for the soul but are in fact Christ’s “broken body” and “His blood.”

In accordance with a High Church perspective, Pusey advocated in his sermon for participation in frequent communion in the sermon. He declared:

“Often communion of that Body which was broken and that Blood which was shed for the remission of those sins … over which he mourns … the stains which his soul had contracted are more and more effaced, the guilt more and more purged, the wounds more and more healed, the atoning Blood more and more interposed between him and his sins, himself more united with his Lord.”[73]

Pusey again asserted that the bread is the broken body of Christ and that wine is Christ’s shed blood. Frequent communion of this body and blood will transform the communicant and bestow upon them graces of “deeper consciousness of His presence, more sacredness in our ordinary actions … and a greater love for His Passion.”[74] Through the participation in frequent communion, Christ’s corporeal presence washes away partakers’ sins and unites one with Christ. Thus, like Schleirmacher and Tholuck, Pusey advocated for the importance of experiencing the Eucharist to know that it is in really Christ’s body and blood. Further, Pusey did not rely solely on reasoning to make this argument.

Even though evidence from the sermon suggests that Pusey’s eucharistic theology evoked a corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Pusey denied that he taught a corporeal presence.[75] Dr. Brian Douglas, an Anglican priest who has studied the multifarious nature of Anglican eucharistic theology, cites instances where Pusey claims that Christ is received spiritually only in the sacrament. For example, Douglas claims that Pusey argued that the bread and wine “become, truly and really, yet spiritually and in an ineffable way, Christ’s body and blood,” that the “elements remain in their ‘natural substances,’” and that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist was spiritual only and not corporal.[76] Further, Douglas argues that Pusey defended a moderate realist understanding of the Eucharist only, associating “sacramental signs in a real way to what they effectively signify and as the means by which sacramental grace is conveyed” without affirming a “fleshy realism” of Christ’s body in the Eucharist.[77] However, Douglas mainly cites the preface to the sermon in order to defend this thesis.[78] Pusey wrote the preface after the allegations were made against him; thus, the argument can still be made that the sermon itself evokes a carnal presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

In the preface, Pusey declared that he aimed to understand how the Caroline Divines–Andrewes (Bishop of Winchester) and Bramhall (Bishop of Armagh)–understood Christ’s words: “This is My body.”[79] Pusey regarded their teachings as “the type of the teaching of the church” and claimed his own views were a reflection of the Fathers and the Caroline Divines.[80] Pusey claimed:

“With the Fathers then, and our own great Divines, (explaining, as I believe, the true meaning of our Church), I could not but speak of the consecrated elements, as being, what, since He has so called them, I believe them to become, His Body and Blood; and I feared not, that, using their language, I should when speaking of Divine and ‘spiritual’ things, be thought to mean otherwise than ‘spiritually.’”[81]

In this passage, it appears that Pusey was arguing that the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood only spiritually. Additionally, he made explicit that he believed the teachings of the Fathers and the Divines to be orthodox. He then quoted the twenty-eighth article of the Thirty-nine Articles (“the Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper, only after a spiritual and heavenly manner”)[82] and claimed the Rubric rejects the corporeal presence of Christ in the consecrated elements.[83] Pusey was defending himself by trying to make it clear that he intended to indicate nothing more than Christ’s spiritual presence in the Eucharist and by affirming his allegiance to the Fathers and Divines.

The Eucharist was paramount for Pusey. He argued that daily communion brings about a life “so different from this our common-place ordinary tenor,”­–it brings about a life of “daily heaven.”[84] Pusey taught: “His Flesh and Blood in the sacrament shall give life … they are the very Flesh and Blood which were given and shed for the life of the world.”[85] Like the High Churchmen of the sixteenth century, Pusey prayed for Anglicans to be united with one another in the Eucharist.[86] He rebuked those who advocated for less frequent communion.[87] In contrast, Evangelicals de-emphasized the sacraments. Pusey’s sermon was a defense of the need for the sacrament of the eucharist and this defense was grounded in an argument for a corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Conclusion

With allusions to a corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Pusey’s sermon was bound to displease many in the nineteenth-century English context. The common milieu (virtualists and receptionists) would have disapproved of the suggestion of a change of the bread and wine into a corporeal, real presence in the Eucharist. High Churchmen would have objected to the seemingly papist ideas in the sermon. Even though Catholic Emancipation in England had been achieved in 1829, anti-Catholicism was still rampant throughout the British Isles. Liberals also would have objected to the sermon’s seemingly unsubstantiated claims about the Eucharist. Evangelicals would have been perturbed by a call for frequent communion in the sermon. With widespread disapproval of the sermon, it is perhaps not surprising that Pusey was prohibited from preaching at Oxford for two years.

Even though a pluralism of eucharistic theologies existed in the nineteenth century, not just any eucharistic theology was accepted. Virtualist and receptionist theologies were accepted as orthodox, but Pusey’s sermon transcended these theologies by venturing into the doctrine of a corporeal presence. He evoked a corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist perhaps inadvertently, or denied that he had done so, in order to protect himself against these accusations. Pusey utilized the Book of Common Prayer, Church Fathers (e.g., St. Ambrose, St. Cyril, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, etc.), Anglican Divines, and Scripture to develop his sermon, because he was committed to the Oxford Movement’s dogmatic principle. Because he relied on these sources, it is possible that Pusey thought it was impossible for him to construct a eucharistic theology in the sermon that was misaligned with what was accepted as orthodox doctrine. His sermon may have been written with fidelity to these sources, but in doing so, the sermon reads as if Pusey was advocating “Romanist” beliefs about the Eucharist. Further, Pusey was committed to the utilization of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. Not all of those committed to the dogmatic principle were committed to this edition of the Book of Common Prayer alone. Hence, Pusey’s analysis of the Book of Common Prayer could easily have differed from eucharistic analyses relying on later editions of the Book of Common Prayer.

The fact that Pusey drew on these multiple sources is compelling. If together these sources suggest a corporeal, real presence, then this is strong support against the Reformed tradition’s assertion that the Eucharist was merely a sign of Christ’s sacrifice or that Christ’s presence was only spiritual. However, even if each of these sources evoked an understanding of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist, their intentions could have differed. Further scholarship could determine whether the individual intentions of each of these sources was to evoke a literal, spiritual, or symbolic understanding of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is possible that these sources used the same language to demonstrate different understandings of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Instead of an abrupt denunciation of the sermon by Pusey’s contemporaries, it would have been prudent for them to analyze the sources that Pusey used to see if they reached the same conclusions. However, it might be difficult to analyze the texts in an unbiased way (i.e., without looking for a literal, spiritual, or symbolic meaning of the corporeal presence only in the texts). It also would have been prudent for Pusey to more clearly articulate whether his allusions to a corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist were meant to be literal, spiritual, or symbolic or an amalgamation of a subset of these interpretations. However, Pusey’s intention was to produce a theology aligned with the Book of Common Prayer (1549), Anglican Divines, and Scripture and not to produce an eucharistic theology that engendered a specific interpretation of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Hence, this might be the reason why the sermon does not clearly articulate whether the corporeal presence is meant to be interpreted literally, spiritually, or symbolically. The sermon’s intention was to deliver to the congregation what the Book of Common Prayer (1549), the Anglican Divines, and Scripture tell us about the Eucharist. If Pusey would have more clearly demarcated how he understood corporeal presence based on his analyses of these sources in the initial delivery of his sermon, then perhaps this would have averted the negative reactions to the sermon.

[1] “Dr. Pusey, of Oxford, and His Famous Sermon,” The Leeds Times (Leeds, West Yorkshire, England), 10 June 10 1843.

[2] Brian Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey: Sources, Context, and Doctrine within the Oxford Movement and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 42.

[3] “Dr. Pusey, of Oxford,” The Leeds Times, 10 June 1843.

[4] “Dr. Pusey, of Oxford,” The Leeds Times, 10 June 1843.

[5] “Dr. Pusey, of Oxford,” The Leeds Times, 10 June 1843.

[6] “Dr. Pusey, of Oxford,” The Leeds Times, 10 June 1843. Peter Nockles claims that Pusey was never accused of promoting the doctrine of transubstantiation by any High Churchmen. Peter B. Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760-1857 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 240.

[7] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 65.

[8] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 239–40.

[9] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 240.

[10] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 43.

[11] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 19.

[12] Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20–21.

[13] Ian Christopher Levy, John Wyclif’s Theology of the Eucharist in Its Medieval Context: Revised and Expanded Edition of Scriptural Logic, Real Presence, and the Parameters of Orthodoxy (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2014), 186.

[14] Levy, John Wyclif’s Theology of the Eucharist, 187.

[15] Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 23.

[16] Levy, John Wyclif’s Theology of the Eucharist, 173.

[17] Amanda Wrenn Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England: Thomas Cranmer, Stephen Gardiner and the English Reformation (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018), 1.

[18] Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 46-47.

[19] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 17, 19. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 in England gave King Henry VIII the title and authority as the Head of the Church of England.

[20] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 1.

[21] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 34.

[22] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 64.

[23] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 2, 61.

[24] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 65, 87.

[25] Allen, The Eucharistic Debate in Tudor England, 94.

[26] Ratramnus, of the ninth century, denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the transformation of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood. Charles M. Radding and Francis Newton, Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, 1078-1079: Alberic of Monte Cassino Against Berengar of Tours (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 5.

[27] Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation, 159, 165.

[28] Alf Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist (Uppsala, Sweden: Almquist & Wiksells, 1965), 52, 123–24.

[29] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 25; Richard Sharp, “‘The Communion of the Primitive Church’? High Churchmen in England c. 1710–1760,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, ed. Stewart J. Brown, Peter B. Nockles, and James Pereiro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 28.

[30] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 26.

[31] Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 49, 52.

[32] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 26.

[33] Sharp, “‘The Communion of the Primitive Church’?,” 27.

[34] Sharp, “‘The Communion of the Primitive Church’?,” 29.

[35] Sharp, “‘The Communion of the Primitive Church’?,” 29.

[36] Michael Allen, “Sacraments in the Reformed and Anglican Reformation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 291–92. The twenty-eighth article of the final 1571 edition of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion asserted that transubstantiation could not be proven from Scripture. James T. O’Connor, The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 151.

[37] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 236.

[38] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 237.

[39] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 237.

[40] Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 125.

[41] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 237–38.

[42] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 238.

[43] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 52, 70.

[44] Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 49. According to Härdelin, when the Tractarians spoke of the Anglican formularies, they were referring to the Book of Common Prayer.

[45] Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 27.

[46] George Westhaver, “Mysticism and Sacramentalism in the Oxford Movement,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, ed. Stewart J. Brown, Peter B. Nockles, and James Pereiro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 257.

[47] Westhaver, “Mysticism and Sacramentalism,” 257.

[48] Westhaver, “Mysticism and Sacramentalism,” 265.

[49] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 17–21; Henry Parry Liddon, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893), 70.

[50] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 41.

[51] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 19.

[52] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 20.

[53] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 17.

[54] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 21.

[55] Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 29.

[56] Newman, AW (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1957), 141.

[57] Sheridan Gilley, “Keble, Froude, Newman, and Pusey,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, ed. Stewart J. Brown, Peter B. Nockles, and James Pereiro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 100.

[58] Newman, Autobiographical Writings, 142.

[59] Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context, 32.

[60] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 65; Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 127–28. Härdelin claims Pusey’s starting point for his Tractarian understanding of the Eucharist was based on what he learned as a child from his mother. Pusey’s eucharistic theology was also influenced by Palmer’s Origenes Liturgicae.

[61] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 44.

[62] “Dr. Pusey, of Oxford,” The Leeds Times, June 10, 1843.

[63] Brian Douglas, “Pusey and Transubstantiation: An Exploration of His Thinking and Ecumenical Implications,” New Black Friars 101, no. 1091 (2018): 87.

[64] Douglas, “Pusey and Transubstantiation,” 87.

[65] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 43.

[66] Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Holy Eucharist A Comfort to the Penitent (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), 11.

[67] St. Justin Martyr asserted that the bread and wine one partakes in at mass is in reality Jesus’s flesh and blood. St. Justin stated: “For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. St. Justin Martyr. “The First Apology,” Chapter 66.

[68] Emphasis added. Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 11–12.

[69] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 13.

[70] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 18–19.

[71] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 18.

[72] Zwinglian doctrine was pervasive at the beginning of the Oxford Movement and was taught by Thomas Arnold, Richard Whately, and contemporary Evangelicals. Härdelin, The Tractarian Understanding of the Eucharist, 127.

[73] Emphasis added. Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 27.

[74] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 31.

[75] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 96.

[76] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 97–98.

[77] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 8, 65.

[78] Douglas, The Eucharistic Theology of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 97–98.

[79] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, iv–v.

[80] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, iv–v.

[81] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, v.

[82] Rev. B. J. Kidd, The Thirty-nine Articles: Their History and Explanation, vol. 2 (London: Rivingtons, 1901), 236.

[83] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, v (footnote c).

[84] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 28.

[85] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 20.

[86] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 32.

[87] Pusey, The Holy Eucharist, 29.