William Law belonged to the second generation of Nonjurors (Dugmore, 1942: 163) with his eucharistic doctrine being very much opposed to that of Benjamin Hoadly, as Hoadly expressed it in his Plain Account of 1735 (see Case Study 2.10).  Law rejected the view that the Eucharist was a mere or bare memory of Christ’s sacrifice and that there was no presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  In a work published in 1735 entitled A Demonstration of the Gross and Fundamental Errors of a Late Book Called a Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, Law made an answer to the claims of Benjamin Hoadly’s Plain Account.  Here Law said:

“When our Saviour says, ‘Do this’, it is the same thing as if He had said, Do these two things appointed in the Sacrament as your act of faith that I am both the atonement for your sins and principle of life to you.  Don’t say bare and outward words when you say, ‘This is My body which is given for you’, and ‘This is My blood which is shed for the remission of sins’; but let faith say them and acknowledge the truth of them.  When you eat My body and drink My blood, don’t let your mouth only eat or perform the outward action, but let faith, which is the true mouth of the inward man, believe that it really partakes of Me, and that I enter in by faith.  And, when you thus by faith perform these two essential parts of the Sacrament, then, and then only, may what you do be said to be done in remembrance of Me, and of what I am to you. … Since our Saviour says, ‘This is My body which is given for you’, ‘This is My blood which is shed for the remission sins’, what He says, that we are to say, and what we say, that we are to believe, and therefore what we are to do is an act or exercise of faith.  And, since in these words He says two things, the one, that He is the atonement of our sins; the other, that this bread and wine are the signification or application of that atonement, or that which we are to take for it; therefore we in doing this are by faith to say and believe these two things; and therefore all that we here do is faith, and faith manifested is this twofold manner.  Again, seeing our Saviour commands us to eat His body and drink His blood, we are to say and believe that His body and blood are there signified and exhibited to us; and that His body and blood may be eaten and drunk as a principle of life to us; and therefore faith is all, or all is faith, in this other essential part of the Sacrament; and we cannot possibly do that which are Saviour commands us to do unless it be done by faith.” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: V, 91-93).

Law’s words here show that he is linking the signs of the sacrament with the signified body and blood of Christ.  When people act in the Eucharist according to Christ’s command then ‘His body and blood are there signified and exhibited’ and ‘His body and blood may be eaten and drunk’.  Faith is the means for this occurring, and therefore immoderate notions of realism are denied.  The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is real and the communicant ‘really partakes’, since he argues against ‘bare and outward words’, and the bread and wine are linked with the body and blood of Christ.  Moderate realism seems to be affirmed therefore, in Law’s argument.  In regard to eucharistic sacrifice, Law expresses this by saying that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are a signification or application of the atonement of Christ.  The benefits of the atonement are received in the Eucharist as ‘a principle of life’.  This again is moderate realism, since the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice are seen to be available in the present.

Law argues more specifically concerning the Eucharist, saying:

“The institution consists of those two essential parts just mentioned; that is, in offering, presenting, and pleading before God by faith the atonement of Christ’s body and blood, and owning Him to be a principle of life to us by our eating His body and blood: that is, the entire, whole institution.” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: V, 94).

Law is saying, using concepts of moderate realism, that in the Eucharist there is an offering, a presentation and a pleading before God.  The bread and wine and the Eucharist itself are clearly linked with the offering, presenting and pleading.  Law clearly distances himself from the views of Hoadly and those who argue that the Eucharist is mere bringing to mind of a past event.  For Law the Eucharist is clearly much more than this.  He says of Hoadly:

“This poor man (for so I must call one so miserably insensible of the greatness of the subject he is upon) can find nothing in the institution, but, first, bread and wine, not placed and offered before God as first signifying and pleading the atonement of His Son’s body and blood, and then eaten and drunk in signification of having our life from Him, but bread and wine set upon a Table to put the people that see it in mind that by and bye they are to exercise an act of memory.  And then, secondly, this same and bread and wine afterwards brought to every one in particular, not for them to know or believe that they are receiving anything of Christ or partaking of anything from Him, but only to let them know that the very instant they take the bread and wine into their mouth is the very time for them actually to excite that act of memory for the exciting of which bread and wine had been before set upon a Table.” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: V, 95).

Law argues that Hoadly’s view of the Eucharist lacks any depth and that the only purpose the Eucharist serves in Hoadly’s view is the exciting of communicants to an act of memory.  The realism of placing bread and wine on the Table for the signifying and offering of a eucharistic sacrifice is not present in Hoadly’s view, but clearly suggested in that of Law.

In another passage Law explains the nature of the relationship with Christ in the Eucharist.  He says:

“If we are in covenant with Christ, and have an interest in Him, as our atonement and life, not because He once said that this was His body and blood given and shed for our sins, or because we once owned it and pleaded it before Him, but because He continues to say the same thing in the Sacrament and to present Himself there to us as our atonement and life, and because we continue to own and apply to Him as such, it necessarily follows that the Sacrament rightly used is the highest means of finishing our salvation, and puts us in the fullest possession of all the benefits of our Saviour, both as He is our atonement and life, that we are then at that time capable of.” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: V, 106-107).

Relationship with Christ is described as a covenant, whereby the communicant has ‘an interest in Him, as our atonement and life’.  This is so not as a past act alone, but because Christ continues to be the offering and pleading in the Eucharist in the present and because those who are communicants continue to experience Christ, as atonement and life, in the Eucharist in the present also.  People therefore ‘own and apply’ Christ in the Eucharist and through him in the Eucharist they have their salvation finished.  Clearly for Law, moderate realism is the underlying concept of his eucharistic theology.  Law’s language here suggests memorial remembrance or anamnesis and indicates that the benefits of Christ’s atonement and life are available in the present in the Eucharist.

For Law the Scriptures provide sufficient evidence to justify the view he takes in regard to the Eucharist.  He says:

“Do not the Scriptures plainly and frequently enough tell us of the benefit of the new birth in Christ, of the putting on Christ, of having Christ formed in us, of Christ being our life, of our having life in Him, of His being the bread from heaven, that bread of life, of which the manna was only a type, of His flesh being meat indeed and His blood drink indeed, of our eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and that without it we have no life in us; and are not all these things so many plain and open declarations of that which we seek to obtain by eating the body and blood of Christ?  For we eat the sacramental body and blood of Christ to show that we want and desire and by faith lay hold of the real spiritual nature and being of Christ; to show that we want and desire the progress of the new birth in Christ; to put on Christ, to have Christ formed and revealed in us, to have Him our life, to partake of Him, our second Adam, in the same fullness and reality as we partake of the nature of the first Adam.  And therefore all that the Scripture says of the benefits and blessings of these things, so much it says of the benefits and blessings that are sought and obtained by the eating the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.  For to eat the body and blood of Christ is neither more nor less than to put on Christ, to receive birth and life and nourishment and growth from Him, as the branch receives its being and life and nourishment and growth from the vine.” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: V, 108-110).

Law uses language here again which shows that his theology of the Eucharist is realist to a moderate degree.  He speaks of eating the sacramental body and drinking the sacramental blood by faith so that the communicant receives the ‘real spiritual nature and being of Christ’.  Clearly what is received is real, but it is also spiritual and it is the ‘nature’ and ‘being’ of Christ (whatever Christ is) that is received in the Eucharist.  It is this ‘nature’ and ‘being’ of Christ that brings all the benefits and blessings of Christ to the person who receives him in the Eucharist.  This description of Christ’s nature and being present in the Eucharist is an expression of the moderate realist notion of instantiation of Christ’s nature as Word or logos.  The actual physical flesh and blood of Christ is not present in or instantiated the Eucharist, but the nature and being of Christ is, in a real and yet spiritual moderate realist manner.

In discussing the idea of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, Law says that:

“The reason why this Sacrament is said in one respect to be a propitiatory or commemorative sacrifice is only this, because you there offer, present, and plead before God such things as are by Christ Himself said to be His body and blood given for you.  But, if that which is thus offered, presented, and pleaded before Him only for this reason, because it signifies and represents both to God and angels and men the great sacrifice for all the world, is there not sufficient reason to consider this service truly a sacrifice?” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: V, 127).

Law here again speaks of the Eucharist as an offering, a presenting and a pleading.  It is for this reason that the Eucharist can therefore be called a propitiatory or commemorative sacrifice since it signifies and represents to God what Christ offered in his sacrifice on the cross.  The sacrifice in the Eucharist is not the same sacrifice as on the cross, however it offers, presents and pleads that sacrifice before God, and can therefore be called a sacrifice as well.  This is moderate realism, where the sign (the offering, presenting and pleading in the Eucharist) is linked with the signified (the offering, presenting and pleading of Christ at Calvary).

Law’s other work where he expresses his eucharistic doctrine is entitled An Appeal to All that Doubt or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel, whether they be Deists, Arians, Socinians, or Nominal Christians, and was published in 1742.  In this work Law speaks of the “heavenly flesh and blood” veiled under Christ’s “outward flesh and blood” and that this heavenly flesh and blood is the gift given in the Eucharist.  He says:

“Our Blessed Lord … had not only that outward flesh and blood which He received from the Virgin Mary, and which died upon the cross, but … also a holy humanity of heavenly flesh and blood veiled under it, which was appointed by God to quicken, generate and bring forth from itself such a holy offering of immortal flesh and blood as Adam the first should have brought forth before the Fall. … Our Blessed Lord had a heavenly humanity, which clothed itself with the flesh and blood of this world in the womb of the Virgin; and from that heavenly humanity or life-giving blood it is that our first heavenly immortal flesh and blood is generated and formed in us again; and therefore His blood is truly the atonement, the ransom, the redemption, the life of the world, because it brings forth and generates from itself the paradisical immortal flesh and blood as certainly, as really, as the blood of fallen Adam brings forth and generates from itself the sinful vile corruptible flesh and blood of this life.  Would you farther know what blood it is that has this atoning life-giving quality in it?  It is the blood which is to be received in the Holy Sacrament. … There is but one redeeming, sanctifying, life-giving blood of Christ, and it is that which gave and shed itself under the veil of that outward flesh and blood that was sacrificed upon the cross; it is that holy and heavenly flesh and blood which Adam had before the Fall, of which blood if we had drank, that is, if we had been born of it, we had not wanted a Saviour, but had had such flesh and blood as could have entered into the kingdom of heaven. … Does not the Holy Sacrament undeniably prove to us that He had a heavenly flesh entirely different from that which was seen nailed to the cross, and which was to be a heavenly substantial food to us; that He had a blood entirely different from that which was seen to run out of His mortal body, which blood we are to drink of, and live for ever? …Here therefore is plainly discovered to us the true nature, necessity, and benefit of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, both why, and how, and for what end we must of all necessity eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ.  No figurative meaning of the words is here to be sought for, we must eat Christ’s flesh and drink His blood in the same reality as He took upon Him the real flesh and blood of the Blessed Virgin; we can have no real relation to Christ, can be no true members of His mystical body, but by being real partakers of that same kind of flesh and blood which was truly His, and was His for this very end, that through Him the same might be brought forth in us. … What flesh and blood are we to eat and drink?  Not such as we have already, not such as any offspring of Adam hath, not such as can have its life and death by and from the elements of this world; and therefore not that outward visible mortal flesh and blood of Christ which He took from the Virgin Mary and was seen on the cross, but a heavenly immortal flesh and blood, which came down from heaven, which hath the nature, qualities, and life of heaven in it. …Thus is this great Sacrament, which is a continual part of our Christian worship, a continual communication to us of all the benefits of our Second Adam; for in and by the body and blood of Christ, to which the divine nature is united, we receive all that life, immortality, and redemption which Christ, as living, suffering, dying, rising from the deal, and ascending into heaven, brought to human nature, so that this great mystery is that in which all the blessing of our redemption and new life in Christ are centred.  And they that a Sacrament short of this reality of the true body and blood of Jesus Christ cannot be said to hold that Sacrament of eternal life which was instituted by our Blessed Lord and Saviour.” (Law, Works, 1762/1892-1893: VI, 202-214).

Law here is suggesting that not only did Christ have an outward flesh and blood (physical human body) but that he also had a heavenly flesh and blood veiled under the outward form.  It was this veiled heavenly flesh and blood which brought forth all the benefits of Christ.  This veiled form Law describes as ‘a heavenly humanity’.  It seems he means by this, not so much that there were two human forms of Christ, an outward and a heavenly, although he certainly suggests this by his words, but that he is searching for some way to distinguish the fleshy realism of Christ from another realist form of Christ, known both on earth and in the sacrament of the Eucharist.  The danger he faces, is that the dualism he sets up, between the outward and the heavenly humanity, is not fully resolved.  Are there for example, two human Christs?  This creates a difficulty for orthodox Christian theology which speaks in of Christ, both human and divine, and not of Christ both in an earthy and heavenly human form.  Nonetheless, Law has made a creative attempt at addressing the issue of how Christ is present and how the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice are available in the present in the Eucharist, whilst at the same time avoiding immoderate realism.  Law does this through speaking of two forms of Christ’s humanity, one present in the Eucharist (the heavenly) and one not (the earthly or outward).  The presence and sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist is therefore, by Law’s analysis, both real and effectual, although the means of expressing the eucharistic presence and sacrifice, has some difficulties.  Cyril Dugmore comments that Law’s idea of both a heavenly and earthy humanity of Christ was too eclectic to meet with any general acceptance (Dugmore, 1942: 167) and Law’s idea does not seem to have been much pursued in later Christian theology.  Despite this his work does contain several important aspects of eucharistic theology, including connecting the Eucharist and the atonement and the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist expressed in moderate realist terms.  Law’s idea of the nature and being of Christ being found in the sacrament and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist represents a developed example the notion of instantiation as realism to a moderate degree in Anglican eucharistic theology.

Overall Law’s theology of the Eucharist can be classified as moderate realism.  He connects the sign with the signified in his discussion of eucharistic presence and eucharistic sacrifice and denies any form of immoderate realism in the Eucharist.