V

The facts which have been recounted make it possible to attempt a general summary of Eucharistic doctrine in England during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. The doctrine of the Eucharistic presence which for the sake of convenience may be described as that of the Council of Trent, including the affirmation of Transubstantiation either verbally or without the name, is found in the writings of King Henry VIII. and Bishop Fisher, the Six Articles of 1539, and the King’s Book of 1543; in the writing of Bishop Gardiner and others in the reign of Edward VI.; in the official acts of the reign of Mary; and in the proceedings of the Convocation of Canterbury in 1559. Teaching that the consecrated elements are the body and blood of Christ without the assertion of Transubstantiation is found in the Ten Articles of 1536, the Bishops’ Book of 1537, the Thirteen Articles of 1538, the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., and the Scottish Provincial Council of 1559. A receptionist or virtualistic doctrine is suggested by some features in the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI., by the draft Forty-five Articles of 1551, by the Forty-two Articles of 1553, by Poynet’s Catechism of 1553, and by the writings of Ridley, Cranmer, and Latimer. The Prayer Book of Elizabeth is patient of a doctrine that the elements become the body and blood of Christ at consecration, or of a doctrine that the faithful communicants receive the body and blood of Christ without these having been present before reception, though perhaps nearest the former belief. The tendency of the Thirty-eight Articles of 1563 and the Thirty-nine Articles of 1571 and of the Homilies of 1563 is to deny Transubstantiation and Zwinglianism alike, to assert the real reception of the body and blood of Christ, and to leave open whether the body and blood are present at consecration or only at Communion. The writings of individuals in the reign of Elizabeth afford further indications of the toleration of differing beliefs as to the Eucharistic presence. The subject of the Eucharistic sacrifice is less prominent; as a general rule the belief that the consecrated Sacrament is the body and blood of Christ carried with it the recognition of the specifically sacrifical character of the Eucharist, and in proportion as this belief was rejected there was a tendency to deprive the Eucharist of any fuller sacrificial nature than that of a mere memory of the sacrifice of the cross or such as is to be found in all prayer.