"They are partakers of the spiritual feast": Waterland against infant Communion

Daniel Waterland's An Inquiry concerning Infant Communion was a response to a posthumous work by Semi-Arian Dissenting theologian James Peirce, An Essay in Favour of the ancient Practice of giving the Eucharist to Children (1728).  Peirce's proposal reflected the Semi-Arian emphasis on 'returning' to what was held to be a 'purer' pre-Nicene Christianity.  Waterland's riposte, however, challenged this depiction of the primitive Church and in doing so defended the Anglican practice of infants not receiving the Eucharist.  This cohered with a wider vision of understanding Anglicanism - in the words of Eamon Duffy - as "Primitive Christianity Revived".

Central to Waterland's contention that there is no necessity for infant Communion is his view of the Sacrament of Baptism.  Precisely because by Baptism the infant is - in the words of the 1662 Baptismal rite - "grafted into the body of Christ's Church", s/he is truly a partaker of Christ:

But what is it which Baptism carries with it? St. Austin has before told us: infants are thereby cleansed from all defilement, purged from all sin, for the time being: they are become regenerate by the Holy Spirit, are of the number of the faithful, are the children of God, have part in Christ, and his passion, and the salutary influences of it; are the temple of the Holy Ghost and of Christ, are members of Christ's body, are incorporate with him, abiding in him, inhabited by him: they have put on Christ, have been dipped in his blood, feasted and satiated with it; yea, they are partakers of his body, and are themselves a part of what is signified, and of what is participated in the Eucharist. What can they want more, during their infant state, to make them partakers of Christ's body and blood, or partakers of the Lord's table? It may be said, perhaps, they are not actually, not literally, communicants: they have not eaten the eucharistical bread, nor drank the consecrated wine: very true: but yet they are partakers of the spiritual feast, and have a part in the mystical banquet; and therefore are, in effect, and in just construction of Gospel-law, companions at the Lord's table ... They have all their Christian privileges entire, have never forfeited any of them. If indeed they had any new sins to answer for; or if they had absented from the communion through any contempt, or wilful neglect; they might then be thought to have impaired their first privileges, or in some degree to have renounced them: but such is not their case. Baptism made them commensales [those who eat at the same table] at once, as admission into a corporation makes a man free of that corporation, and of all the franchises of it, till forfeited by culpable neglect. Therefore baptized infants, during their minority, are communicants in right, as true Christians, and as denizens of the city of God; and they are also communicants in effect, and in real enjoyment, as really partaking of the Christian banquet.

In other words, declaring that infant Communion is necessary detracts from the grace of Holy Baptism.  It implies a denial that baptized infants, by virtue of Baptism, "are partakers of the spiritual feast".  Waterland is here echoing Hooker:

We receive Christ Jesus in baptism ... By baptism therefore we receive Christ Jesus - LEP V.57.6.

Waterland admits that the Primitive Church administered the Eucharist to children younger than was Anglican practice.  This, however, was a matter to be determined by pastoral prudence:

They had their prudential reasons for their practice in their times; and we also have the like prudential reasons for a different practice in ours.

There is a pastoral wisdom in the classical Anglican practice, administering the Eucharist (after Confirmation) to older children as they become aware of their participation in actual sin, and thus needing the grace bestowed in the Eucharist to renew and sustain the gift of Baptism.  In the words of Hooker:

The grace which we have by the holy Eucharist doth not begin but continue life - V.67.1.

Until this point in their lives, we rejoice that infants and children are "a member of Christ" (the Catechism), partaking of Him with us.  As Waterland declares:

infants, in and by Baptism, are partakers of Christ's body and blood, and so, in effect, are communicants without literally receiving the outward communion.

(The picture is of the font in St. Botolph's, Cambridge, with its Laudian canopy. Such ornamental canopies were a means of signifying the grace bestowed in Holy Baptism.)