ABSTRACT
Stuart divines north and south of Hadrian’s Wall did their sacramental theology – as indeed, all their theology – within the broad parameters of ‘International Calvinism’; they almost all explicitly rejected both the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran sacramental views. Many – such as Hildersham, Downame, Ames and Bruce – simply saw their task as reiterating and qualifying what they understood to be the general Reformed consensus on sacraments. But the consensus which they perceived was in fact a chimera, and concealed many unresolved tensions which were found not only between the different sixteenth-century Reformers, but also even within their individual writings on the subject. These unresolved tensions, giving rise to divergences, can already be seen in the treatment of sacraments by William Perkins and Richard Hooker, each developing certain strands of the Reformed tradition.1 Perkins, like Fenner, was more at ease with the sacramental language of the symbolic memorialism and symbolic parallelism typified by Bullinger, whereas Hooker pursued the symbolic instrumentalist language of Calvin. With the rise in common theological parlance of the covenant of grace, this raised issues for the meaning of baptism. With the Lord’s Supper, it raised questions about presence. Furthermore, while all the Stuart divines rejected what they understood to be the Tridentine concept of the sacrifice of the mass, and agreed that the one sacrifice of the cross was commemorated, they differed on whether this was a manward commemoration, ideally concentrated in visual form in the fraction and libation; or a Godward commemoration articulated in prayer and the eucharistic celebration itself.
