Several prominent statements
of Eucharistic doctrines helped form Methodist temperance exegesis, beginning
with British Methodist Adam Clarke (1762-1832). His treatise on the Lord's
Supper existed in an American edition from 1812 and was reprinted by the MEC in
1842. Clarke certainly claimed the supper was a memorial, but that was not all.
He also argued that it represented a sacrifice, especially through its
connection to the Jewish Passover, and should be approached in a sacrificial
spirit-though he took pains to distinguish himself from Catholic theology on
this subject: "Though I am far from supposing that the holy Eucharist is
itself a sacrifice, which is a most gross error in the Romish Church, yet I am
as fully convinced that it can never be Scripturally and effectually celebrated
by any but those who consider it as representing a sacrifice, even that of the
life of our blessed Lord, the only available sacrifice for sin." The word
"sacrament," drawn from a Roman term for a solemn oath, emphasized
the covenant nature of the undertaking. As the very term "Holy
Communion" indicated, the sacrament also functioned as real communion with
both Christ and with other believers.
Clarke attacked the doctrine
of transubstantiation on the crucial grounds that it made no common sense; thus
holding it signified ignorance and superstition. He defended early English
Protestants on this count. Using their common sense in defiance of Catholic
superstition, they were persecuted for believing "as Jesus Christ had
taught them" and refusing "to prefer the ignorance of man to the
wisdom and authority of God." Significantly, they had learned this true
doctrine through the agency of their own sense perceptions: "They would
not, because they could not believe, that a little flour and water kneaded
together, and baked in the oven, were the body and blood of the Savior of the
world." The change via transubstantiation of bread and wine into Christ's
actual body and blood was imperceptible by the senses, and therefore
impossible: "Can any man of sense believe, that when Christ took up that
bread and broke it, that it was his own body which he held in his own hands,
and which himself broke to pieces, and which he and his disciples eat?" He
compared the elements to sculpture to point up the nonsense in this:
"Would not any person, of plain common sense, see as great a difference
between the man Jesus Christ, and a piece of bread, as between the block of
marble and the philosopher it represented?" Thus Catholics were absurdly
(and unbiblically) worshipping a physical object and putting "the
signifier in the place of the thing signified." Things seen in the natural
world could represent and convey God's spiritual truth, but they could not
themselves become that truth. For Clarke, Christ's grace came to believers
through the agency of their sense perceptions during the whole Eucharistic service.
He ordered clergy to let "not only the elements, but the whole apparatus,
and even the mode of administering, be such as shall meet and please all the
senses, and through their medium affect and edify the soul."
Although he had harsh words
for any Christians who believed the Eucharist was only to be "spiritually
understood" and not commemorated in "rite" or "form,"
Clarke argued that its most important aspect was not the grace it contained but
the doctrine it proved. Its persistent observation through the centuries
presented physical proof of the truth of Christianity. That proof, like the
action of the elements themselves, was defined in common-sense fashion. Clarke
quoted British theologian and apologist Charles Leslie as to what made a
"matter of fact" incontestable: that it "be such as men's sense,
their eyes and ears may be judges of," that it be done publicly, and that
monuments and observances of it persist through the ages. By these canons, the
Eucharist served as "an incontestable proof" of Christianity's
authenticity.
Because Clarke thought the
Eucharist was a representation of spiritual truth, he desired suitable natural
means for the occasion: "It is of vast importance that the symbols of this
sacrifice speak, as much as possible, to the heart through the medium of the
senses." Thus the bread and wine should be of the best quality, for
"if man's senses be either insulted or tortured by what is recommended to
him as a means of salvation, is it likely that his mind will so co-operate with
the ordinance, as to derive spiritual good from it?” in Clarke’s epistemology,
sense perceptions were translated into spiritual effects. Clarke did not try to
exclude every drop of alcohol (he was both too British and too early). But he
did believe that the “fruit of the vine” referred to by Jesus was most sensibly
the fresh- pressed juice of the grape, not “that medicated and sophisticated
beverage which now goes under that name.” His main concern was that the wine
should be pure, not drugged or adulterated, for “in many places a vile
compound, wickedly denominated wine, not the offspring of the vine, but of the
alder, gooseberry, or currant- tree, and not infrequently the issue of the
sweepings of a grocer’s shop, is substituted for wine in the sacrament of the
lord’s supper!” The general Conference noted this concern in 1860, when it
began its journey toward grape juice by recommending “pure” wine for the
sacrament. (Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic
Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism [Tuscaloosa,
Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 2011], 97-99)
Elsewhere, when discussing “wine” in antiquity, Adam
Clarke wrote:
Wine,
anciently the expressed juice of the grape, without fermentation, Gen. 40:11.
Method adopted by the inhabitants of the East in cooling their wines, Prov.
25:13. How the ancients preserved their wine, Song 2:4. The wines of Egypt,
according to Hasselquist, not the produce of its own vineyards, Isa. 5:2.
Account of the mixed wine of the
ancient Greeks and Romans, Isa. 1:22. Observations on the mode of the treatment
of wines, Isa. 25:6. (Adam
Clarke, The Holy Bible with a Commentary and Critical Notes, New Edition, 6
vols. [Bellingham, Was.: Faithlife Corporation, 2014], 4:864)
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