Thomas Deacon was a member of the Nonjuror party.  He was consecrated a Nonjuror bishop in 1747.  Deacon’s beliefs on the Eucharist are found in his Shorter Catechism, which was part of a longer work, entitled A Full, True, and Comprehensive View of Christianity, published in 1747.

Deacon says of the Eucharist:

“The Eucharist is a sacrifice and a Sacrament.  As a sacrifice, it is the offering the representative body and blood of Christ to God the Father; as a Sacrament, it is a feast upon that sacrifice.  It was at the institution of the Eucharist that our Saviour began to offer Himself to His Father for the sins of all men.  The sacrifice which He then offered was His natural body and blood, as separate from each other, because His body was considered as broken, and His blood as shed, for the sins of the world.  But because it would have been unnatural for Him to have broken His own body and shed His own blood, and because He could not as a living High Priest offer Himself when He was dead, therefore, before He was so much as apprehended by His enemies, He offered to the Father His natural body and blood voluntarily and really though mystically under the symbols of bread and wine mixed with water; for which reason He called the bread at the Eucharist His body, which was then broken, given, or offered for the sins of many, and the cup His blood, which was then shed or offered for the sins of many.  All the sacrifices of the old law were figures of this great one of Christ; and the Eucharist or sacrifice of thanksgiving, which we celebrate according to His institution, is a solemn commemorative oblation of it to God the Father, and procures us the virtue of it.” (Deacon. Shorter Catechism, Part II, Lesson xxvii, cited in Stone, 1909: II, 482).

Deacon here present a view of the Eucharist based on moderate realism.  He affirms that the Eucharist is a sacrifice offered representatively to God.  He also affirms that the Eucharist is a feast upon the sacrifice of Christ in the sense that Johnson (see Case Study 2.11) uses, that is, the offering of Christ at the institution of the Lord’s Supper, as opposed to the sacrifice of the cross.  In this sense then, the offering is that of moderate realism, since it is not directly connected to the fleshy sacrifice of the cross, but to the offering to God of Christ himself at the institution.  Clearly for Deacon, the Eucharist is an effectual offering, since he states that it is the continuation of what Christ began to offer (at the institution) for the sins of people.  Deacon also distinguishes between the historic sacrifice of the cross when Christ natural body was broken and blood shed, and the eucharistic sacrifice when the body and blood of Christ was offered mystically under the symbols of bread and wine.  It is for this reason that in the Eucharist the bread and wine can be called the body and blood of Christ, not because of any natural presence of flesh and blood (immoderate) but because of the mystical presence of the body and blood (moderate).  Deacon also affirms memorial remembrance in the Eucharist, calling it a ‘solemn commemorative oblation’.

Another passage similar to the above is also worth quoting since it is more specific in some parts.  Deacon says that the Eucharist is:

“ … both a Sacrament and a Sacrifice.  Our Lord instituted the Sacrifice of the Eucharist when he began to offer Himself for the sins of all men, i.e. immediately after eating His Last Passover.  He did not offer the Sacrifice upon the Cross; it was slain there but was offered at the Institution of the Eucharist.” (Deacon, A Full, True, and Comprehensive View of Christianity, cited in Broxap, 1924: 318).

The offering of the sacrifice of Christ is seen to be at the Last Supper and not on the cross of Calvary.  Christ was slain at Calvary but the offering is separate from the slaying.  This view strongly connects the Eucharist (instituted at the Last Supper) with the offering of the sacrifice, such that the symbols of bread and wine become the authoritative symbols of the sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist.  There is no re-iteration of the slaying of Christ at Calvary, but in the Eucharist, the priest does as Christ did, offering Christ’s body and blood to God.  This is in a moderate realist sense.

Deacon in the following passage explains this as he speaks of the consecration of the Eucharist, saying:

“The consecration of the Eucharist is thus performed.  The priest, after having placed the bread and mixed cup upon the altar, first gives God thanks for all His benefits and mercies conferred upon mankind, especially those of creation and redemption: he then recites how Jesus Christ instituted this Sacrament the night before His passion, and performs His command by doing what He did, he takes the bread into his hands and breaks it, which broken bread represents the dead body of Christ pierced upon the cross: he takes the cup into his hands, which cup, consisting of wine and water, represents the blood and water that flowed from the dead body of Christ upon the cross: he then repeats our Saviour’s powerful words over them, by which the bread and the cup are made authoritative representations or symbols of Christ’s crucified body and offered blood: and being thus in a capacity to be offered to God, he accordingly makes the oblation, which is the highest and most proper act of Christian worship.  After God has accepted of this sacrifice, He is pleased to return it to us again to feast upon, that we may thereby partake of all the benefits of our Saviour’s death and passion; in order to which the priest prays to God the Father to send His Holy Spirit upon the bread and cup offered to Him, that He may enliven those representations of Christ’s dead body and effused blood, and make them His spiritual life-giving body and blood in virtue and power, that the receivers thereof may obtain all the blessings of the institution.  After which he continues his prayer and oblation in behalf of the whole world, particularly of the Church, bishops, clergy, king, and in general of all the faithful, whether living or dead.  Thus we see that by the consecration of the Eucharist the bread and mixed wine are not destroyed, but sanctified; they are changed not in their substance but in their qualities; they are made not the natural but sacramental body and blood of Christ; so that they are both bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ at the same time but not in the same manner.  They are bread and wine by nature, the body and blood of Christ in mystery and signification; they are bread and wine to our senses, the body and blood of Christ in power and effect.  So that whoever eats and drinks them as he ought to do, dwells in Christ and Christ in him, he is one with Christ and Christ with him.” (Deacon. Shorter Catechism, Part II, Lesson xxix, cited in Stone, 1909: II, 482-483).

In this passage Deacon associates the bread and wine of the Eucharist with the body and blood of Christ, stating that the bread and wine, broken and poured out, represents ‘the dead body of Christ pierced upon the cross’ and ‘the blood and water that flowed from the dead body of Christ upon the cross’.  The sign and the signified are here clearly linked in a moderate realist sense.  He also associates the benefits of Christ’s death on the cross with the benefits given in the Eucharist.  The benefits of the historic sacrifice and available in the eucharistic sacrifice.  It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that the ‘representations’ (the bread and wine) ‘are enlivened’ and made the ‘spiritual life-giving body and blood’ of Christ.  This is moderate realism, since fleshy notions are denied and the nature of the presence is said to be spiritual, yet real and ‘enlivened’.

Deacon also affirms here that the bread and wine are not changed in substance, but in quality, meaning that they do not become the natural body and blood of Christ but the sacramental body and blood of Christ.  This means that the elements are both bread and wine and the body and blood of Christ at the same time, but not in the same manner.  The distinction then is between nature on the one hand and mystery and signification on the other, between senses in one way and understanding and faith in another.  The body and blood of Christ are therefore present not by nature, but by power and effect.  Immoderate realism is denied and moderate realism is affirmed in a way very similar to the manner of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist described by this project.

Cyril Dugmore raises an issue of some importance in any consideration of the eucharistic views of the Nonjurors and other Caroline High Churchmen.  These will be considered here in the case study of Thomas Deacon, himself a Nonjuror.  Dugmore (1942: 153-154) argues that the Nonjurors, together with the High Churchmen of the Caroline period, were in their writings attempting to express the idea of a spiritual presence and sacrifice of Christ in the elements and in the Eucharist.  Their view was that the presence of Christ was not merely given to the faithful in the act of receiving, but that there was an objective and continuing presence of Christ in the bread and wine, following consecration.  In an attempt to express this view in a way other than by notions of a substance metaphysic, they spoke instead of a spiritual presence and a true Christian sacrifice, through the invocation and the power of the Holy Spirit.  It is when the Holy Spirit is invoked (e.g. in the epiclesis) that it comes down upon the elements and they become the body and blood of Christ in a spiritual and sacramental manner.  This is the ‘true Christian sacrifice’.  This doctrine however, in Dugmore’s opinion, “really left the problem of the sacramental union of Christ with the elements, rather than with the soul of the believer, still unsolved” (Dugmore, 1942: 153).  Problems are also found in the Nonjuror and High Church view of eucharistic sacrifice, since as Dugmore suggests: “It is difficult, for instance, to understand what is denoted by a ‘material sacrifice’ of a ‘spiritual body’, or why a material sacrifice is necessarily more valuable than a spiritual one: and the alleged offering of Christ at the Last Supper of His sacramental body as well as His natural body raises a host of problems with regard to the Atonement.” (Dugmore, 1942: 154).  These are real problems for both the Nonjurors and the High Churchmen and they will be dealt with to some extent in the case study of later writers, such as Daniel Waterland (Case Study 2.24).  The contribution to this debate of instantiation and moderate realism therefore takes an important position.  Moderate realism involves the linking of the signs of the Eucharist with what they signify in a real way, such that there is an instantiation of Christ’s nature as word or logos, in the Eucharist.  Any instantiation of the nature of Christ is not restricted to an instantiation in bread and wine alone, but includes an instantiation in the Eucharist as a whole, in the people gathered to celebrate the Eucharist, in the word proclaimed at the Eucharist and in the priest who presides.  Such an instantiation is concerned with a eucharistic presence and eucharistic sacrifice, in a moderate realist sense, as compared with an historic presence and historic sacrifice, in a fleshy or immoderate sense.  The immoderate sense of presence and sacrifice is not part of the Eucharist, but the moderate sense is, in terms of a real presence of Christ and an anamnesis or memorial remembrance, where the effects of Christ’s sacrifice are available in the present.  This means that the offering of the Eucharist does not depend on any association with the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, but rather with a pleading or instantiation of the sacrifice in the present in the Eucharist.  This in no way limits or prohibits the action of the Holy Spirit, since eucharistic liturgies, typically associated with moderate realist views of presence, include an invocation of the Holy Spirit or epliclesis (e.g. the eucharistic liturgies in A Prayer Book for Australia, 1995).  It is in this sense then that the instantiation of the nature of Christ as word or logos is in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Such an analysis seems in line with the eucharistic theology of Deacon and many other Anglican theologians.

Whereas the theology of the Eucharist expressed by the Nonjurors and the Caroline High Churchmen emphasises moderate realist views of presence and sacrifice, this is done with some problems, as outlined by Dugmore.  One way which works towards resolving these problems is through the philosophical assumptions ofmoderate realism based on the notion of instantiation.