Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Introduction 21
in their meditative verses. God as human redeems their humanity and allows their words
to be more than symbols on pages, but a reflection of language that has been used by God.
The Word came down from heaven and became flesh; therefore, the flesh can use the
Word to return to heaven.
Much of the discussion regarding the incarnational elements of devotional poetry
has been found in examinations of the Lord’s Supper and the sacramental nature of the
poetry. Examples of recent scholarship discussing the sacramental nature of Early Modern
English devotional verse can be found in writings such as Eleanor J. McNees’s Eucharistic
Poetry and Robert Whalen’s The Poetry of Immanence. 24
The discussion of sacramental
poetics has greatly expanded our understanding of the incarnational focus of much of the
religious poetry of the time, but even in this there is a tendency to try to identify a
Protestant /Catholic divide in the language. While the concept of transubstantiation was
only observed by the Roman Catholic church, the Lutheran idea of consubstantiation is
very close to transubstantiation, so when it comes to the issue of the sacrament of
Communion, despite the arguments over exactly how present Jesus is in the bread and the
wine (if at all), the language used by individual authors can imply support for
transubstantiation to a more memorial understanding of the sacrament without actually
exposing their own position on the matter. The Church of England’s statement in the ‘39
Articles’ regarding Communion is article twenty-eight and it reads
The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of love Christians ought to have
among themselves to one another; but rather it is a sacrament of our redemption by
Christ’s death. Insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily and with faith receive the
24 Eleanor J. McNees, Eucharistic Poetry (London, 1992); Robert Whalen, The Poetry of Immanence
(London, 2002).