Thomas Jackson was originally a Puritan, but later became a member of the High Church School, gaining preferment under the influence of William Laud (Cross and Livingstone, 1984: 720).  Jackson’s views on the Eucharist are expressed in a treatise of twelve volumes, that he wrote on the Apostles’ Creed, the first volume of which was published in 1613, with nine volumes being published in his lifetime (Dugmore, 1942: 51).  In the treatise he says:

“In the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood there is a propitiation for our sins because He is really present in it, who is the propitiation for sins.  But it in no way hence follows that there is any propitiatory sacrifice for sin in the Sacrament.  He becomes the propitiation for our sins, He actually remits our sins, not directly and immediately by the elements of bread and wine, nor by any other kind of local presence or compresence with these elements than is in Baptism. … Neither of these elements or sensible substances can directly cleanse us from our sins by any virtue communicated unto them or inherent in them, but only as they are pledges or assurances of Christ’s peculiar presence in them, and of our true investiture in Christ by them.  We are not then to receive the elements of bread and wine only in remembrance that Christ died for us, but in remembrance or assurance likewise that His body which was once given for us doth by its everlasting virtue preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life, and that His blood which was but once shed for us doth still cleanse us from all our sins, from which in this life we are cleansed or can hope to be cleansed.  If we then receive remission of sins or purification from our sins in the Sacrament of the Eucharist (as we always do when we receive it worthily), we receive it not immediately by the sole serious remembrance of His death, but by the present efficacy or operation of His body which was given for us, and of His blood which was shed for us. … The present efficacy of Christ’s body and blood upon our souls, or real communication of both, I find as a truth unquestionable amongst the ancient fathers and as a Catholic confession.  The modern Lutheran and modern Romanist have fallen into their several errors concerning Christ’s presence in the Sacrament from a common ignorance; neither of them conceive, nor are they willing to conceive, how Christ’s body and blood should have any real operation upon our souls unless they were so locally present as they might agere per contactum, that is, either so purge our souls by oral manducation as physical medicines do our bodies (which is pretended use of Transubstantiation), or so quicken our souls as sweet odours do the animal spirits, which were the more probable use of the Lutheran Consubstantiation.  Both the Lutherans and Papists avouch the authority of the ancient Church for their opinions, but most injuriously.  For more than we have said, or more than Calvin doth stiffly maintain against Zwinglius and other Sacramentaries, cannot be inferred from any speeches of the truly orthodoxical or ancient fathers.  They all agree that we are immediately cleansed and purified from ours sins by the blood of Christ, that His human nature by the habitations of the deity is made to us the inexhaustible fountain of life.  But about the particular manner how life is derived to us from His human nature, as whether it sends its sweet influence upon our souls only from the heavenly sanctuary wherein it dwells as in its sphere, or whether His blood which was shed for us may have immediate local presence with us, they no way disagree, because they in this kind abhorred curiosity of dispute.  As for Ubiquity and Transubstantiation, they are the two monsters of modern times, brought forth by ignorance and maintained only faction.” (Jackson, Commentaries Upon the Apostles’ Creed, X, lv. 9, 12, in Stone, 1909: II, 295).

Jackson denies any immoderate realist presence or sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist.  At the same time though he asserts a moderate realism in relation to Christ’s presence and sacrifice in the Eucharist.  There is propitiation for sin in the Eucharist because Christ is really present in it (moderate realism), but there is no propitiatory sacrifice or local presence of Christ (immoderate realism).  The receiving of the bread and wine is more than mere remembrance, as in calling a past event to mind, but a memorial remembrance, whereby the communicant is assured in the present of the ‘virtue’ of Christ’s body and blood and its power in the present.  This is an expression of memorial remembrance or anamnesis, whereby the benefits or the effects of Christ’s passion are known in the present in the Eucharist, in a moderate realist sense.  Anamnesis has nothing to do with immoderate realism, that is, a re-iteration of Christ’s once only sacrifice at Calvary, in the Eucharist, but rather a recalling of it as a memorial remembrance.  Jackson emphasises this point by arguing that we receive the benefits of Christ’s passion by the ‘sole serious remembrance of His death’ (the past event at Calvary), but by ‘the present efficacy or operation of His body which was given for us, and of His blood which was shed for us’ (the anamnesis of Christ’s death in the Eucharist).  Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary being efficacious in the present in the Eucharist is anamnesis.

Jackson also says:

“The truth … is … that Christ by His bloody sacrifice upon the cross was consecrated to be an everlasting priest; and that this consecration was not accomplished until His resurrection from the dead.  For it is not conceivable that He should be an everlasting priest before He became an immortal Man, and by His rising, etc., opened the gate of everlasting life.  After He was thus consecrated by death and by the resurrection from the dead to be an everlasting priest after the order of Melchizedek, He was not to offer any sacrifice; nor do we read that Melchizedek offered any.  Wherein then did Melchizedek’s priesthood consist?  Only in the dignity of authoritative blessing … This exercise of Christ’s spiritual priesthood in the heavenly sanctuary was foreshadowed by sundry services and sacrifices of the Law. … He consecrated the way itself by His bloody sacrifice upon the cross; from the very moment in which the veil did rend asunder the door was opened and the way prepared.  But we must be qualified for walking in this way and for entering into this heavenly sanctuary by the present exercise of His everlasting priesthood, which is the priesthood of blessing not of sacrifice.  And yet He blesseth us by commanding the virtue and efficacy of His everlasting sacrifice unto our souls.  This participation and this blessing by it, the full expiation of our sins, we are to expect from His heavenly sanctuary. … We may consecrate the elements of bread and wine, and administer them so consecrated as undoubted pledges of His body and blood, by which the new covenant was sealed and the general pardon purchased; yet, unless He grant some actual influence of His Spirit, and suffer such virtue to go out from His human nature now placed in His sanctuary as He did once unto the woman that was cured of her issue of blood, unless this virtue do as immediately reach our souls as it did her body, we do not really receive His body and blood with the elements of bread and wine.  We do not receive them as to have our sins remitted or dissolved by them; we do not be receiving them become His flesh and of His bones.  We gain no degree of real union with Him, which is the sole use or fruit of His real presence.  Christ might be locally present as He was with many here on earth, and yet not really present.  But with whomsoever He is virtually present, that is, to whomsoever He communicates the influence of His body and blood by His Spirit, He is really present with them, though locally absent from them. … As many as are healed from their sins, whether by this Sacrament of Baptism or the Eucharist, are healed by faith relatively or instrumentally.  Faith is as the mouth or organ by which we receive the medicine; but it is the virtual influence derived from the body and blood of Christ which properly and efficiently doth cure our souls and dissolve the works of Satan from us. … A matter as easy for the Son of God, or the Man Christ Jesus ‘in whom the Godhead dwelleth bodily’, though still remaining at the right hand of God, to know the hearts and secret thoughts of all such as present themselves at His Table here on earth as well as He knew the secrets thoughts of this woman which came behind Him.  What need then is there of His bodily presence in the Sacrament, or any other presence than the influence or emission of virtue from His heavenly sanctuary into our souls?  He hath left us the consecrated elements of bread and wine to be unto us more than the hem of his garment.  If we but touch and taste them with same faith by which this woman touched the hem of His garment, this our faith shall make us whole.” (Jackson, Commentaries Upon the Apostles’ Creed, X, lvi. 1, 2, 4, in Stone, 1909: II, 295-296).

In this passage Jackson reinforces the moderate realist nature of Christ’s priestly offering in the Eucharist.  The sacrifice of the cross was a bloody sacrifice, and it is by this sacrifice that Christ is a priest for ever.  In the Eucharist there is a ‘present exercise of His everlasting priesthood’ which is a priesthood of ‘blessing’ and not of ‘sacrifice’.  It is the exercise of the priesthood of blessing that communicates ‘the virtue and efficacy of His everlasting sacrifice’ in the Eucharist.  This is anamnesis expressed within a framework of moderate realism. 

Concerning the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Jackson associates this strongly with the elements of bread and wine.  There is for him some virtue, through the influence of Christ’s Spirit that comes from the heavenly sanctuary to the earthly sanctuary where the Eucharist is celebrated.  Jackson goes so far as to describe the presence of Christ as going out ‘from His human nature now placed in His sanctuary’, and argues that unless this happens the communicant does not really receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  Jackson is therefore confident to say that the body and blood of Christ is ‘with’ the elements of bread and wine, and that unless this happens we do not receive the benefits of Christ’s passion, nor are we joined to him.  All this Jackson clearly distinguishes from any notion of a local presence of Christ.  It is the ‘virtue’ of Christ that makes him present through the action of Christ’s Spirit.  Therefore he says, that Christ is ‘really present’, but ‘locally absent’.  The idea of a real presence is not because of on any local notions of presence but rather faith.  This does not mean however that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is dependent on the faith of the receiver, since Jackson clearly distinguishes a givenness of the presence.  Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and in the bread and wine is real in the moderate realist sense, just as Christ’s presence is at the right hand of God in heaven is also real.  It is hard to know how these points were missed by Cyril Dugmore in his assessment of Jackson found in his otherwise excellent study, Eucharistic Doctrine in England from Hooker to Waterland, published in 1942.  In regard to this passage and in assessment of Jackson in general, Dugmore comments that this passage reveals a pronounced virtualism in Jackson, concluding with the comment that for Jackson, “Christ is present in the soul of the faithful communicant and not in the sacrament.” (Dugmore, 1942: 52).  In view of the passage quoted below, that is, “Christ’s body and blood are so present in the Sacrament that we receive a more special influence from them in use of the Sacrament than without it” (from page 297 below), it seems that Dugmore is presenting a view other than Jackson intends.  It may be that Dugmore has interpreted Jackson’s use of ‘virtue’ as ‘virtualism’ and in so doing taken a meaning contrary to what Jackson seems to mean.  ‘Virtue’ for Jackson, in the passages cited in this case study, appears to mean a moderate realist presence of Christ in the sacrament and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, which says more than the doctrine of virtualism intends.  Virtualism is defined as “a form of eucharistic doctrine according to which, while the bread and wine continue to exist unchanged after consecration, the faithful communicant receives together with the elements the virtue of the power of the body and blood of Christ” (Cross and Livingstone, 1984: 1445).  In view of Jackson’s use of the term ‘real presence’, ‘virtue’ for Jackson seems more likely as an objective presence and givenness, where Christ’s body and blood is present in the Eucharist.  This seems much more than Dugmore’s analysis where he attempts to classify Jackson as a virtualist.

In another place Jackson also says:

“This distillation of life and immortality from His glorified human nature is that which the ancient and orthodoxal Church did mean in their figurative and lofty speeches of Christ’s real presence, or of eating His very flesh and drinking His very blood in the Sacrament.  And the sacramental bread is called His body, and the sacramental wine His blood, as for other reasons so especially for this, that the virtue or influence of His bloody sacrifice is most plentifully and most effectually distilled from heaven unto the worthy receivers of the Eucharist.” (Jackson, Commentaries Upon the Apostles’ Creed, XI, iii. 12, in Stone, 1909: II, 296).

Jackson affirms that the notion of a real presence of Christ in the Eucharis is not something of his invention, but rather that notion which comes from the Fathers of the early Church.  Jackson argues, from their position as he perceives it, that the virtue or the influence of Christ historic sacrifice, is present in the worthy receiver in the Eucharist.  It should be noted that Jackson does not present the idea of the communicant lifting heart and mind to heaven for a heavenly joining to the body and blood of Christ.  Rather he argues that the virtue or influence of Christ and his sacrifice ‘distill’ from heaven to those who receive the Eucharist.

A further quotation states:

“All that are partakers of this Sacrament eat Christ’s body and drink His blood sacramentally, that is, they eat that bread which sacramentally is His body, and drink that cup which sacramentally is His blood, whether they eat or drink faithfully or unfaithfully. … May we say then that Christ is really present in the Sacrament as well to the unworthy as to the faithful receivers?  Yes, this must we grant; yet must we add withal that He is really present with them in quite contrary manner, really present He is, because virtually present to us both, because the operation or efficacy of His body and blood is not metaphorical but real in both.  Thus the bodily sun, though locally distant from its substance, is really present by its light and heat as well to sore eyes as to clear sights, but really present to both by a contrary real operation; and by contrary operation it is really present to clay and to wax, it really hardeneth the one, and really softeneth the other.  So doth Christ’s blood by the invisible but real influence mollify the hearts of such as come to the Sacrament with due preparation, but harden such as unworthily receive the consecrated elements. … When we say that Christ is really present in the Sacrament, our meaning is that as God He is present in an extraordinary manner, after such a manner as He was present before His incarnation in His sanctuary; … and by the power of His Godhead thus extraordinarily present He diffuseth the virtue or operation of His human nature either to the vivification or hardening of their hearts who receive the sacramental pledges. … No man can spiritually eat Christ but by believing His death and passion; yet sacramental eating adds somewhat to spiritual eating, how quick and lively soever our faith be whilst we eat Him only spiritually.  But though  our faith were in both the same as for degree as quality, yet the object of our faith is not altogether the same in sacramental and in spiritual eating.  Christ’s body and blood are so present in the Sacrament that we receive a more special influence from them in use of the Sacrament than without it, so we receive it worthily or with hearts prepared by spiritual eating precedent, that is, by serious meditation of Christ’s death and passion.” (Jackson, Commentaries Upon the Apostles’ Creed, XI, iv. 5, 10, in Stone, 1909: II, 297).

Jackson in the above passage affirms again that Christ’s body and blood is present sacramentally in the Eucharist.  He thereby again states a position of moderate realism.  In distinct opposition to many of the early Reformers he puts the case that all who receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist, partake of the body and blood of Christ, whether or not they be worthy or unworthy.  This is so, he argues, because Christ is present in the sacrament, not metaphorically, but really, through the power and operation of his Spirit.  This means that there is a givenness of presence or an objective nature of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, according to Jackson, and the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not dependent on the faith of the receiver.  The givenness of the presence is not a local presence, but the type of presence Christ had with people before his incarnation.  As God, he is present in an extraordinary manner and it is in this manner that he gives life to the worthy.  The unworthy though, receiving the givenness of Christ’s body and blood, do not receive life as the worthy receiver receives, but hardening of heart, due to their lack of worthy preparation.  All this is through the power of God and the virtue and operation of Christ’s human nature in the Eucharist.  Jackson does not deny that sacramental eating and drinking involve faith, yet he distinguishes the objective nature of sacramental eating from that of spiritual eating.  This is quite contrary to the views of many of the early Reformers, such as Thomas Cranmer.  Cranmer denied that there was any sacramental presence of Christ’s body and blood and therefore any participation of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  Rather he saw spiritual and sacramental eating and drinking as the same thing and something that occurred in heaven as the communicant lifted the heart and mind heavenward to join with Christ’s body and blood there.  Christ was only present in the receiver in the use or ministration of the sacrament and never in the bread and wine.  Jackson expresses quite the contrary view, arguing that there is a difference between the spiritual and sacramental forms of eating and drinking, that there is a givenness or objective nature of Christ’s presence in the bread and wine not dependent on the degree of faith in the receiver, and that his givenness is by the virtue and operation of Christ’s Spirit, and that there is an earthy feeding with the body and blood of Christ.  This does not deny the role of faith in spiritual feeding, but makes the point that there is more involved in the Eucharist than spiritual feeding by faith alone.  Whereas Cranmer argued that the benefits of Christ’s passion are available to people through meditation and through preaching, just as effectively as they were in Eucharist, Jackson argues that there is ‘a more special influence from them’ (i.e. Christ’s body and blood), ‘in use of the Sacrament than without it’.  Spiritual eating, for Jackson, in the form of ‘serious meditation of Christ’s death and passion’, precedes the receiving of the sacrament, and serves as a form of preparation for it.  This places the receiving of the sacrament at a higher level than spiritual eating by meditation.  Cyril Dugmore comments on this passage from Jackson, saying this explanation of ‘spiritual eating’ shows that Jackson was a more able theologian than Laud, and more able to explain how the real presence is related to the ‘sacramental eating’ (Dugmore, 1942: 53).

Thomas Jackson, in his treatise on the Apostles’ Creed, has also presented his views on the Eucharist.  He presents a view of the Eucharist which involves moderate realism in relation to both Christ’s presence and sacrifice in the Eucharist.  He specifically excludes any immoderate notions of both presence and sacrifice and makes no mention of any change in the elements, but at the same argues a case for an objective real presence of Christ and for the anamnesis of Christ’s sacrifice, in the Eucharist in the present.