We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in thy manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.
But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body,
and our souls washed through his most precious Blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
As I recently meditated on the Prayer of Humble Access, it occurred to me that, at least it my view, it was perhaps this prayer more than any other in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer that encapsulated the theology of the Anglican Eucharist. Coming after the General Confession and the Absolution, the prayer acknowledges–even after confession–our "manifold sins and wickedness" in the sight of the Lord. It is both deeply penitential and sacramental, and it affirms our belief in the real presence as we ask to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ. And as we pray that "our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood," we are declaring the centrality of the Eucharist to our faith and our reliance on grace through Christ for salvation.
The Wikipedia entry on the prayer, citing Commentary on the American Prayer Book by Marion Hatchett, states that it "was not apparently a translation of a pre-existing prayer found in the Sarum liturgy - but was a unique combination of several sources, including phrases or concepts from Mark 7:28, the Liturgy of St Basil, a Gregorian collect, John 6:56, and the writings of Thomas Aquinas." Despite its uniquely Anglican origin, the prayer was retained without alteration in the Eastern Orthodox Church's BCP-based Divine Liturgy of Saint Tikhon, evidencing its broad appeal and catholic theology.
I was surprised to learn, however, that a portion of the prayer does not appear in the Episcopal Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Specifically, the words "that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood" are completely removed from Rite I of the 1979 BCP (the prayer doesn't appear at all in Rite II). What could have motivated this decision? I wondered. Could it have been due to opposition from Low Church or Evangelical Episcopalians? But that didn't seem likely, as the exact words were written by Archbishop Cranmner himself, and they appear in the 1552 BCP.
Ex-Episcopalian blogger Jonathan Mitchican relates his experience of being exposed to these words for the first time in a 1928 BCP service after years of working with the 1979 version. After some research, he learned that the lines were removed because (in the words of Lesley A. Northrup) they "clashed loudly with contemporary values and emerging images of God’s relationship with the faithful, increasingly understood to be a cooperative partnership rather than an authoritarian hegemony."
This insight is fascinating, but it doesn't seem to capture the full truth, for a reasonable and still-orthodox position of cooperative partnership–synergism–would have no issues with this portion of the prayer. In the Byzantine rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church, for example, which upholds the teaching of synergism, a similar prayer is often said directly before the reception of communion by the clergy. Exploring the issue of the revision of the Prayer of Humble Access in his blog post, Mitchican seems to have rightly sensed a deeper problem. He writes:
There are places in [the 1979 BCP]–particularly in the Eucharistic liturgy–in which a do-it-yourself, just-be-good message has infected The Episcopal Church’s presentation of the doctrine of salvation and placed the center of our worship on ourselves rather than on God. If we are all just good folks who only need a bit of encouragement, then it hardly makes sense that we need to have the Eucharist at all, let alone every week.
The Wikipedia entry on the prayer, citing Commentary on the American Prayer Book by Marion Hatchett, states that it "was not apparently a translation of a pre-existing prayer found in the Sarum liturgy - but was a unique combination of several sources, including phrases or concepts from Mark 7:28, the Liturgy of St Basil, a Gregorian collect, John 6:56, and the writings of Thomas Aquinas." Despite its uniquely Anglican origin, the prayer was retained without alteration in the Eastern Orthodox Church's BCP-based Divine Liturgy of Saint Tikhon, evidencing its broad appeal and catholic theology.
I was surprised to learn, however, that a portion of the prayer does not appear in the Episcopal Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Specifically, the words "that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood" are completely removed from Rite I of the 1979 BCP (the prayer doesn't appear at all in Rite II). What could have motivated this decision? I wondered. Could it have been due to opposition from Low Church or Evangelical Episcopalians? But that didn't seem likely, as the exact words were written by Archbishop Cranmner himself, and they appear in the 1552 BCP.
Ex-Episcopalian blogger Jonathan Mitchican relates his experience of being exposed to these words for the first time in a 1928 BCP service after years of working with the 1979 version. After some research, he learned that the lines were removed because (in the words of Lesley A. Northrup) they "clashed loudly with contemporary values and emerging images of God’s relationship with the faithful, increasingly understood to be a cooperative partnership rather than an authoritarian hegemony."
This insight is fascinating, but it doesn't seem to capture the full truth, for a reasonable and still-orthodox position of cooperative partnership–synergism–would have no issues with this portion of the prayer. In the Byzantine rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church, for example, which upholds the teaching of synergism, a similar prayer is often said directly before the reception of communion by the clergy. Exploring the issue of the revision of the Prayer of Humble Access in his blog post, Mitchican seems to have rightly sensed a deeper problem. He writes:
There are places in [the 1979 BCP]–particularly in the Eucharistic liturgy–in which a do-it-yourself, just-be-good message has infected The Episcopal Church’s presentation of the doctrine of salvation and placed the center of our worship on ourselves rather than on God. If we are all just good folks who only need a bit of encouragement, then it hardly makes sense that we need to have the Eucharist at all, let alone every week.
This "do-it-yourself, just-be-good message" Mitchican observed is a natural product of the Pelagianism (Matthew Roberts explains) that flows through liberal theology as its lifeblood. Original sin is erased; instead its proponents proclaim that "The biblical concern is not with what we are but how we choose to live our lives" (Jayne Ozanne, CoE Synod 2017). And as Mitchican rightly asked, what is the purpose of the Eucharist at all if this is our view? The Pelagian adherents of ancient days came to the same conclusion and argued that "The whole human race neither dies through Adam's sin or death, nor rises again through the resurrection of Christ." The Christian faith ceases to be one of grace, redemption, and resurrection and logically concludes as one of motivational teaching and moral improvement.
In 1979, the creeping heresy manifested itself quietly as modifying an integral prayer of the Anglican liturgy in order to diminish its penitential qualities. Today, ascendant, it works incessantly within the Episcopal Church and the Church of England to overthrow scriptural Christian teachings on sexual morality, marriage, and the family. But faithful Anglicans who have retained a traditional Prayer Book must also be vigilant, always quick to extinguish the embers of ancient heresies lest they ignite once more and consume. In the words of C. B. Moss (The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Dogmatic Theology):
[W]e must continue to retain belief in original sin. We are not what God meant us to be, even at the moment of birth; we have a weakness which needs curing by the power bestowed through baptism: that power comes from the death and resurrection of our Lord, without whom we can do nothing that is good, and cannot even start on the road that leads to God.
In 1979, the creeping heresy manifested itself quietly as modifying an integral prayer of the Anglican liturgy in order to diminish its penitential qualities. Today, ascendant, it works incessantly within the Episcopal Church and the Church of England to overthrow scriptural Christian teachings on sexual morality, marriage, and the family. But faithful Anglicans who have retained a traditional Prayer Book must also be vigilant, always quick to extinguish the embers of ancient heresies lest they ignite once more and consume. In the words of C. B. Moss (The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Dogmatic Theology):
[W]e must continue to retain belief in original sin. We are not what God meant us to be, even at the moment of birth; we have a weakness which needs curing by the power bestowed through baptism: that power comes from the death and resurrection of our Lord, without whom we can do nothing that is good, and cannot even start on the road that leads to God.
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