Altar or Table? Sacrifice or Sacrifice of Praise? 

ii) Its [1662 BCP] avoidance of any idea that the Holy Communion or Lord’s Supper is in itself a sacrifice.

The word ‘altar’ is avoided, and it uses the word ‘sacrifice’ carefully. The Book of Common Prayer does not use the word ‘altar’: instead it uses ‘Table’, ‘Holy Table’, ‘Lord’s Table’. It does not use the word ‘altar’ because that would imply a sacrifice. The Book of Common Prayer does not use the word ‘sacrifice’ to refer to the conduct of the service of Holy Communion. The word ‘sacrifice’ is used of the response of praise after receiving communion, and of the offering of our lives to God, but not of offering of bread and wine. Our sacrifice is our response to God’s mercy and God’s feeding of us.

The Book of Common Prayer does not use the word ‘altar’: instead it uses ‘Table’, ‘Holy Table’, ‘Lord’s Table’. It does not use the word ‘altar’ because that would imply a sacrifice.

The [1662] BCP focuses on the complete efficacy and power of Christ’s atonement, completed once for all in his death on the cross. We find this in the first Exhortation:

O Lord and heavenly Father, we thy humble servants entirely desire thy fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant, that by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and all thy whole Church may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion. And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee …

The Book of Common Prayer does not use the word ‘sacrifice’ to refer to the conduct of the service of Holy Communion.

These Reformed truths are obscured today when the presence of Christ in the bread and wine is emphasized, when people call the Holy Table an ‘altar’, when there is emphasis on offering of bread and wine, and when the word ‘Mass’ is used to describe the service."

Peter Adam, The “Very Pure Word of God”: The Book of Common Prayer as a Model of Biblical Liturgy, ed. Mark Burkill and Gerald Bray, Anglican Foundations Series (London: The Latimer Trust, 2012), 30–31.