Henry Hammond’s views on the Eucharist are expressed in his works entitled, A Practical Catechism, published in 1644 and Of Fundamentals in a Notion referring to Practice, published in 1654.

In A Practical Catechism, Hammond says:

“This Sacrament, which was after the commemorative Passover, is so conceived a confederation of all Christians one with another, to live piously and charitably, both by commemorating the death of Christ, … and by making His blood, as it was the fashion in the eastern nations, a ceremony of the covenant, mutual betwixt God and us. … The full importance of the words ‘Do this in remembrance of Me’ is, first, a commission to His Apostles to continue the ceremony now used by Him as a holy ceremony or Sacrament in the Church for ever.  Secondly, a direction that for the manner of observing it they should do to other Christians as He had now done to them, that is, ‘take, bless, break this bread, take and bless this cup’, and then give and distribute it to others, settling this on them as part of their office, a branch of the power left them by Him, and by them communicable to whom they should think fit after them.  Thirdly, a specifying of the end to which this designed, a commemoration of the death of Christ, a representing His passion to God, and a coming before Him in His name, first, to offer our sacrifices of supplication and praises in the name of the crucified Jesus (as of old, both among Jews and heathens, all their sacrifices were rites in and by which they supplicated God.  See 1 Sam. xii, 12), and secondly, to commemorate that His daily continual sacrifice or intercession for us at the right hand of His Father now in heaven.” (Hammond, A Practical Catechism, edn. Pocock, 1847-1850: I, 378, 380, 381).

Hammond expresses a moderate realism in the notion of commemorating the death of Christ in the Eucharist.  He does not call the Eucharist a sacrifice as such, other than to say that it is a sacrifice of supplication and praise.  He does however refer to the Eucharist as a commemoration of the continual sacrifice of Christ in heaven.  The Eucharist, following on from the direction received from Christ, is, to use the Old Testament image he employs, a ceremony of the covenant.  This equates with the idea of memorial remembrance or anamnesis and so expresses a moderate realism.  The covenant expressed in Christ’s death is commemorated in the Eucharist.  In so doing Hammond argues that the Eucharist is a representation of the death and passion of Christ to God.  These are expressions of a moderate realism.

Hammond also says in this dialogue between Scholar and Catechist:

“Scholar. … What now is that which is the more substantial difficulty to be explained in those Gospels?

Catechist.  It is to resolve what is the meaning of Christ’s words of institution, ‘This is My body’, etc.

Scholar.  And what is that?

Catechist.  Not that the bread was His body, and the wine His blood, in strict speaking, for He was then in His body when He so spake; and when His disciples distributed it among themselves, He was not bodily in every of their mouths.  And now His body is in heaven, and there to be contained till the day of ‘restitution of all things’, and is not to be corporally brought down in every Sacrament, either to be joined locally with the elements or for the elements to be changed into it; many contradictions and barbarisms would be consequent to such an interpretation.  Every loaf of consecrated bread would be the body of Christ, and so the same thing be two cubits long, and not two cubits long; and many the like contradictory propositions would be all true, which is generally resolved to be impossible even for God, because it would make Him a liar, and be an argument not of power but imperfection.  So, again, every communicant must carnally eat man’s flesh and blood, which is so savage a thing that St. Austin saith that whensoever words of Scripture seem to sound that way, they must be otherwise interpreted.

Scholar.  What sense then may or must be put upon them?

Catechist.  In answering this question, I shall first give you an observation taken from the Jewish phrases and customs used in this matter; and it is this, that the lamb that was dressed in the paschal supper, and set upon the table, was wont to be called the body of the Passover, or the body of the paschal lamb; and that Christ seems to allude to this phrase when He saith, ‘This is My body’; as of He should say, The paschal lamb, and the body of it, that is, the presentation of that on the table in the Jewish feast, the memorial of deliverance out of Egypt, and type of My delivering Myself to die for you, I will now have abrogated, and by this bread which I now deliver to you, I give or exhibit to you this other Passover, My own self, who am to be sacrificed (My body which shall presently be delivered to death) for you, that you may hereafter, instead of that other, retain and continue to posterity a memorial and symbol of Me.  This for the words, ‘My body’; but then for the whole phrase or form of speech, ‘This is My body’, it seems to be answerable to, and substituted instead of, the paschal form, ‘this is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in Egypt’, or ‘This is the unleavened bread’, etc., or ‘This is the passover’; not that it is that very identical bread which they then ate, but in that anniversary feast which was then instituted, as when in ordinary speech we say on Good Friday or Easter Day, ‘this day Christ died’, and ‘this day Christ rose’, when we know that it was so many hundred years since He died or rose; which example is adapted to the point in hand as St Austin in his Epistles.  Thus much for the phrase or form of speech; now for the sense or full importance of the words, ‘This is My body’. I shall by the authority of the ancient fathers think myself obliged to acknowledge that the highest sense that will not be subject to those intolerable inconveniences mentioned in the answer to your last question may possible be the sense of them; and that that which most belongs to other places of Scripture speaking of the same matter must in any reason be resolved to be the sense of them.  For the former of these, it is certain that many of the ancient fathers of the Church conceived very high things of this Sacrament, acknowledged the bread and wine to be changed, and to become other than they were, but not so as to be transubstantiate into the body and blood of Christ, to depart from their own substance, figure or form, or to cease to be bread and wine by that change; and that the faithful do receive the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament, which implies not any corporal presence of Christ on the Table, or in the elements, but God’s communicating the crucified Saviour, who is in heaven bodily, and nowhere else, to us sinners on the earth, but this mystically and after an ineffable manner.  And generally they make it a mystery, but descend not to the revealing of the manner of it, leaving it as a matter of faith but not of sense, to be believed but not grossly fancied or described.  I shall leave these then, and apply myself to the latter sort, the other places of Scripture which speak of this matter, resolving that that must be the meaning of the words of Christ, ‘This is My body’, which by examination shall appear to be most agreeable to those other places.  And of this sort of places, you may first take the passages in the Gospels themselves, where Christ saith of the cup (not the drinking), that it is a new covenant in His blood which was shed for us.  Which it seems is all one in sense with that other, ‘This is My blood of the new covenant in His blood which was shed for many’, and in Matthew, ‘This is My blood, that of the new covenant,’ etc.  Which being put together, as parallels to interpret one the other, will conclude that Christ’s blood was truly shed for our benefit, particularly to seal a new covenant betwixt God and us, and that this Sacrament was the exhibiting that covenant to us, as when God saith to Abraham, ‘This is the covenant that I will make with you, every make among you shall be circumcised’; this circumcision is in effect called the covenant, as here the cup is the covenant, that is, not only the sign of the covenant, but a seal of it, and an exhibition of it, a real receiving me into covenant and making me partaker of the benefits of it.  And this you shall more fully see, if you proceed to the places in St. Paul, especially 1 Cor. x. 16. … I conceive the literal notation of the words will bear this observation, that as the word ‘this’ in the latter words signifies not the bread but the whole action or administration, ‘do this’ that is, do you all that I have done in your presence, take bread, break, bless it, give it to others, and so commemorate Me.  So the word, ‘this’ in the former speech, ‘This is My body’, may signify the whole action too, namely, the body of Christ, in what sense you shall see anon. … ‘The cup of blessing which we bless’ or, as the Syriac, ‘the cup of praise’, that is, the chalice of wine which is in the name of the people offered up by the bishop or presbyter to God with lauds and thanksgiving, that is, the whole eucharistical action (and that expressed to be the action of the people as well as the presbyter by their drinking of it) is the communication of the blood of Christ, a service of theirs to Christ, a sacrifice of thanksgiving, commemorative of that great mercy and bounty of Christ in pouring out His blood for them, and in making them – or a means ordained by Christ to make them – partakers of the blood of Christ, not of the guilt of shedding it, but, if they come worthily thither, of the benefits that are purchased by it, namely, ‘the washing away of sin in His blood’; so in like manner the ‘breaking and eating of the bread’ is a communication of the body of Christ, a sacrifice commemorative of Christ offering up his body for us, and a making us partakers, or communicating to us the benefits of that bread of life, strengthening and giving to us grace. … This ‘breaking, taking, eating of the bread’, this whole action, is the real communication of the body of Christ to me; … that, as verily as I eat the bread in my mouth, so verily God in heaven bestows on me, communicates to me, the body of the crucified Saviour. … God’s part is the accepting of this our bounden duty, bestowing the body and blood of Christ upon us, not be sending it down locally for our bodies to feed upon, but really for our souls to be strengthened and refreshed by it, as, when the sun is communicated to us, the whole bulk and body of the sun is not removed out of its sphere, but the rays and beams of it, and with them the light and warmth and influences, are really and verily bestowed or darted out upon us.  And all this is the full importance of ‘This is My body’, or ‘This is the communication of His body’”. (Hammond, A Practical Catechism, edn. Pocock, 1847-1850: I, 382-385, 389, 393-395).

Hammond in this exchange between Scholar and Catechist denies any notion of immoderate realism, that is, any fleshy eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood.  Realism expressed is to a moderate degree only.  Hammond presents the position that Christ’s corporal body is in heaven and so cannot be on earth, in the Eucharist, the bread and wine or the receivers of the sacrament in any corporal sense.  Any corporal sense of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is clearly denied, but Hammond argues that there is another sense of the presence.  Using the arguments of the early Fathers he puts the case that bread and wine of the Eucharist is changed following consecration, but that the change is not in any way related to the substance of the bread and wine or to the doctrine of transubstantiation.  Rather he argues for a mystical and ineffable manner of the change so that the communicant receiving the bread and wine, receives the body and blood of Christ, but the bread and wine remain bread and wine in substance.  This Hammond describes as a ‘eucharistical action’ where there is an ‘offering up’ which is said to be in addition to the offering of thanks and praise.  There seems to be for Hammond a notion of offering in the Eucharist which goes beyond the offering of thanks and praise.  It is in this ‘eucharistical action’ that the benefits of Christ’s passion are received and the body of Christ is communicated to the faithful.  The body of Christ that is communicated is clearly not the corporal body (immoderate realism) but the body nonetheless, with all its benefits (moderate realism).  Christ’s body is therefore not sent down ‘locally’ but ‘really’.  The idea of Christ’s body being ‘really’ present and received in the Eucharist, as the rays of the sun are really received on earth without the sun itself being on the earth, fits well with the idea of moderate realism and the nature of Christ being present in the Eucharist.

Hammond also says in A Practical Catechism:

“In that Sacrament God really bestows, and every faithful prepared Christian as really and truly receives, the body and blood of Christ.  As truly as the bishop or the presbyter gives me the sacramental bread and wine, so truly doth God in heaven bestow upon me on earth not be local motion but by real communication, not to our teeth but to our souls, and consequently exhibits, makes over, reaches out unto us all the benefits thereof, all the advantages that flow to us from the death of Christ.” (Hammond, A Practical Catechism, edn. Pocock, 1847-1850: I , 396-397).

Once again Hammond reinforces the idea of a real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  The communion is not in heaven (although it comes from heaven) but on earth by real communication in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  The Eucharist and the elements of bread and wine are said to exhibit the benefits (advantages) of the death of Christ.  Once again this is language of moderate realism in relation to the presence and sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist.

In Of Fundamentals in a Notion referring to Practice, Hammond says in relation to the ways in which the Eucharist may be considered:

“Those which are thus confirmed are thereby supposed to be fit for admission to that other Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, institued in the close of His Last Supper.  And that, whether it be considered, 1.  as an institution of Christ for the solemn commemoration of His death; or 2. as a sacrifice eucharistical performed by the Christian to God; or 3. as the koinonia ’communication’ of the body and blood of Christ, the means of conveying all the benefits of the crucified Saviour unto all that come fitly prepared and qualified for them; or 4. as a Federal Rite betwixt the soul and Christ, eating and drinking at His Table, and thereby engaging our obedience to Him; or lastly, as an Emblem of the most perfect divine charity to be observed among all Christians, in all and every of these respects, I say, it is doubtless an instrument of great virtue that hath a peculiar propriety to engage the receiver to persevere in all piety; and that yet further improved by the frequent iteration and repetition of that Sacrament.

First, as it is the commemorating the death of Christ, so it is the professing ourselves the disciples of the crucified Saviour; and that engageth us to take up His cross and follow Him, and not to fall off from Him for any temptations, or terrors of death itself, but to resist to blood, as Christ did, in our spiritual agwneV, Our Olympics or combats against sin.

Secondly, as it is the Eucharistical Christian Sacrifice, so it is formally the practising of several acts of Christian virtue; 1. of prayer, of thanksgiving, of all kinds of piety towards God; 2. of charity to our brethren, both the spiritual of interceding for all men, for Kings, etc., and corporal in the offertory, for the relief of those that want; and 3. the offering up and so consecrating ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a holy, lively, acceptable sacrifice to God, the devoting ourselves to His service all our days; and this last a large comprehensive act of piety, which contains all particular branches under it, and is again the repeating of the baptismal vow, and the yet closer binding of this engagement on us.

Thirdly, as it is by God designed, an as an institution of His, blessed and consecrated by Him into a Sacrament, a holy rite, a means of conveying and communicating to the worthy receiver the benefits of the Body and Blood of Christ, that pardon of sin and sufficiency of strength and grace which were purchased by His Death and typified and consigned to us by the Sacramental elements, so it is again the ridding us of all our discouraging fears, and the animating and obliging of us to make use of that grace which will carry us, if we do not wilfully betray our succours, victoriously through all difficulties.

Fourthly, as it is a federal rite betwixt us and God, as eating and drinking both among the Jews and heathens was wont to be, so it is on our part the solemn undertaking of the condition required of us to make us capable of the benefit of God’s new evangelical covenant, and that is sincere performance of all duties prescribed the Christian by Christ; and he that doth no longer expect good from God than he performs that condition is ipso facto divested of all those fallacious flattering hopes, which pretended to make purifying unnecessary, and must now either live purely and piously, or else disclaim ever seeing of God.

Lastly, as the Supper of the Lord is a token and engagement of charity among the disciples of Christ, so it is the supplanting of all the most diabolical sins, the filthiness of the spirit, the hatred, variance, emulation, strife, revenge, faction, schism, that have been the tearing and rending of the Church of God, - ofttimes upon pretence of the greatest piety, - but were by Christ of all other things most passionately disclaimed, and cast out of His temple.  And if by the admonitions which this emblem is ready to afford us, we can think ourselves obliged to return to that charity and peaceable-mindedness which Christ so frequently and vehemently recommends to us, we have His own promise that the whole body shall be full of light, that all other Christian virtues will be way of concomitance and annesation accompany or attend them in our hearts.” (Hammond, Of Fundamental, edn. Pocock, 1847-1850: II, 178-180).

In this passage Hammond describes Eucharist in five ways: a solemn commemoration, a sacrifice eucharistical, a communication of the body and blood of Christ with all its benefits, a federal rite between the soul and Christ, and an emblem of Christ’s charity.  The solemn commemoration is moderate realism in relation to memorial remembrance in the Eucharist.  The sacrifice eucharistical relates to the sacrifice of self and praise and thanksgiving.  The communication of Christ’s body and blood is a real presence, not just a bare sign.  The federal rite so unites a person to Christ that they enter into the full benefit of Christ’s death.  The emblem shows a person Christ’s charity and inspires them to live in the same way.

Hammond’s view of the Eucharist is that of moderate realism in relation to both the real presence and sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist.  Any immoderate notion of presence and sacrifice is denied.  The Eucharist is seen to be an effective means of communicating Christ’s body and blood and of making a solemn remembrance of Christ’s passion and death.  Hammond is less keen to apply the term ‘sacrifice’ to the Eucharist, but restricts it to that of praise and thanksgiving.  At the same time, nonetheless, he speaks of an offering apart from that of praise and thanksgiving, which confirms a moderate realist view.