The opinions which those in authority in the reign of Mary desired to crush may be sufficiently illustrated from statements of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and by a few brief extracts from sayings of others who suffered.
1. The changes of belief on the part of Cranmer so far as the end of the reign of Edward VI. have already been shown. It does not appear that there was any material alteration in his opinions during the reign of Mary. About August, 1553, a rumour was widely prevalent that he had authorised the restoration of the Latin Mass in Canterbury Cathedral. This rumour stung him to write a Declaration in which he sharply contrasts the Latin Mass with the recently issued English Prayer Book.
“As the devil, Christ’s ancient adversary, is a liar and the father of lying, even so he hath ever stirred up his servants and members to persecute Christ and His true word and religion, which lying he feareth not to do most earnestly at this present. For whereas a prince of famous memory, King Henry VIII., seeing the great abuses of the Latin Mass, reformed some things therein in time, and after our late sovereign lord Edward VI. took the same wholly away for the manifold errors and abuses thereof, and restored in the place thereof Christ’s Holy Supper according to Christ’s institution and as the Apostles in the primitive Church used the same in the beginning, now goeth the devil about by lying to overthrow the Lord’s Holy Supper again, and to restore his Latin satisfactory Mass, a thing of his own invention and device. And to bring the same more easily to pass, some of his inventors have abused the name of me, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, bruiting abroad that I have set up the Mass again in Canterbury, and that I offered myself to say Mass at the burial of our late sovereign prince King Edward VI., and also that I offered myself to say Mass before the queen’s highness at Paul’s church in London, and I wot not where.… This is to signify to the world that it was not I that did set up the Mass at Canterbury, but it was a false, flattering, and lying monk, with a dozen of his blind adherents, which caused the Mass to be set up there, and that without mine advice or counsel. The Lord reward him in that day. And as for offering myself to say Mass before the queen’s highness at Paul’s, or in any other place, I never did it, as her grace very well knoweth. But if her grace will give me leave, I will and by the might of God shall be ready at all times to prove against all that would say the contrary that all that is said in the Holy Communion set forth by the most innocent and godly prince, King Edward VI., in his Court of Parliament is conformable to that order that our Saviour Christ did both observe and command to be observed, which also His Apostles and primitive Church used many years, whereas the Mass in many things not only hath no foundation of Christ’s Apostles nor the primitive Church, but also is manifestly contrary to the same, and containeth in it many horrible abuses.… Where they boast of the faith of the Church in the olden time these fifteen hundred years, we will join with them in this point that that doctrine and usage is to be followed which was in the Church fifteen hundred years past. And we shall prove that the order of the Church set out in this realm by our said sovereign lord King Edward VI. by Act of Parliament is the same that was used fifteen hundred years past. And so shall they never be able to prove theirs.”
Cranmer intended to place this Declaration on the doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral and of other London churches; but before he had done so, a copy which Scory, the deprived Bishop of Chichester, obtained from him was multiplied, and the Declaration circulated. As a result, he was summoned before the council and was committed to the Tower. Of the different charges brought against him, he received the queen’s pardon for the treason of which he was accused for his share in the attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, but the charge of heresy was persevered in. In March, 1554, he was removed from the Tower to Windsor, and thence to Oxford. In April, 1554, the disputation at Oxford between the representatives of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, already alluded to, took place. The three propositions set out as the basis of discussion have previously been quoted. In brief, they asserted the presence of the natural body of Christ in the Sacrament, the absence of any other substance than that of Christ, and that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice. The details of the disputation, with the sharpness on the one side of accusers acting like cross-examining counsel and the devices on the other side of men fighting for their lives, are unpleasant and unprofitable reading; and the fairest way of showing Cranmer’s position at this point in his history is to quote from a paper which he put in on the first day of the disputation as his statement of his case.
“1. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ at the holy passover, being about to die for our sakes, that He might redeem us from eternal death, forgive us all our sins, and blot out the handwriting which was against us, instituted an abiding memorial of His passion to be celebrated among Christians in bread and wine, to prevent us from ever ungratefully forgetting His death.… Whoever for the sake of a tradition of men deny the cup of the blood to laymen are the open enemies of Christ, forbidding that which Christ commanded to be done.… The sacramental and mystic bread, being broken and distributed after the institution of Christ, and the mystic wine, being in the same way drunk and received, are not only Sacraments of the flesh of Christ which was wounded for us and of His shed blood, but are most certain Sacraments to us and as it were seals of the promises and gifts of God, that is, of our communion with Christ and all His members, of the heavenly nurture by which we are nourished unto eternal life and the thirst of our boiling conscience is quenched, of the ineffable joy by which the hearts of the faithful are filled and are strengthened for all the duties of godliness.… Real bread and real wine remain in the Eucharist until they are consumed by the faithful, that, as signs annexed to the promises of God, they may assure us of the gifts of God. And Christ remains in those who eat His flesh and drink His blood, and they remain in Him.… Christ remains in those who worthily receive the outward Sacrament, and does not depart at once when the Sacrament has been consumed, but remains continually, feeding and nourishing us so long as we remain bodies and members of that Head. I recognise no natural body of Christ that is only spiritual and the subject of mind and not of sense and is not divided into any limbs or parts; but I recognise and worship only that body which was born of the Virgin, which suffered for us, which is visible and palpable, which has all the form and shape and parts of the organic body of man.
“2. Christ spoke not these words of any uncertain substance, but of the certain substance of bread, … and likewise of the wine.… Ancient writers describe Christ’s way of speech as figurative, tropical, anagogical, allegorical, which they interpret that, although the substance of bread and wine remains and is received by the faithful, yet Christ changed the name and called the bread by the name of flesh and the wine by the name of blood not in reality of fact but in the significance of mystery, that we should consider not what they are but what they signify, and should understand the Sacraments not carnally but spiritually, and that we should not attend to the visible nature of the Sacraments, and should not look down to the bread and cup, and should not think to see with our eyes anything but bread and wine, but should lift up our minds and behold the body of Christ with faith and touch it with the mind and drink it in with the inner man, that, being like eagles in this life, we should fly up with our hearts to heaven itself, where at the right hand of the Father sits that Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, by whose love we are healed, by whose passion we are filled at this Table, whose blood we drink from His divine side and thereby live for ever, and being made the guests of Christ we have Him dwelling in us by the grace and power of His real nature and by the efficacy of His whole passion; and we are no less sure that we are fed spiritually unto eternal life by the crucified flesh and the shed blood of Christ, the necessary food of souls, than that our bodies are fed with food and drink in this life. And the mystic bread and the mystic wine, administered and received according to the institution of Christ at the Table of Christ, are the remembrance, the pledge, the token, the Sacrament, the sign to us of this thing. This is the reason why Christ did not say, ‘This is My body; eat,’ but after commanding to eat added, ‘This is My body, which shall be given for you’. For this is just as if He should have said, ‘In eating this bread, regard it not as common but as mystic; do not look at that which is set before the eyes of your body, but see what feeds you within. Behold My body which was crucified for you; with your minds feed eagerly on it; be ye filled with My death. This is the true food, this is the inebriating drink, whereby being really filled and inebriated ye may live for ever. Those things which are set before your eyes, the bread and the wine, are only tokens of Me; but I Myself am the eternal food. Therefore, when ye see the Sacraments at My Table, look not so much at them as at that which I promise you through them, Myself, the food of eternal life.’
“3. The only offering of Christ, whereby He offered Himself unto death to God the Father once for all on the altar of the cross for our redemption, was of so great efficacy that there is no need of any other sacrifice for the redemption of the whole world; but He took away all the sacrifices of the ancient law, giving in actual fact what they figured and promised. Whoever, therefore, has placed the hope of his salvation in any other sacrifice, falls from the grace of Christ and despises the holy blood of Christ.… Whoever seeketh any other propitiatory sacrifice for sins makes the sacrifice of Christ to be without validity or efficacy. For, if this is sufficient for the remission of sins, there is no need of any other; for the need of another implies the weakness and insufficiency of this. God Almighty grant that we may rightly (vere) lean on the one sacrifice of Christ, and again return to Him our sacrifices,—thanksgiving, praise, the confession of His name, true contrition and repentance, kindness to neighbours, and all other duties of godliness. For by such sacrifices we shall show ourselves neither thankless towards God nor unworthy of the sacrifice of Christ.”
There is much in this statement which theologians of very differing opinions may agree to admire; if it is remembered that it was the nearest approach to the theology of the dominant party which Cranmer could conscientiously make when his life was at stake, there will probably be agreement also that it is not the outcome of any different beliefs than the form of receptionism or virtualism expressed in his treatises of 1550 and 1551.
Under the pressure of fear Cranmer yielded, and signed no fewer than six recantations. In the first three of these, all executed early in 1556, there was simply a general submission to the Catholic Church, and the Pope, and the king and queen. In the fourth, executed on 16th February, 1556, there was an expression of belief “as concerning the Sacraments of the Church” “in all points as the said Catholic Church doth and hath believed from the beginning of Christian religion”. The fifth was much longer, and contained the following sentences about the Eucharist:—
“I anathematise the whole heresy of Luther and Zwingli.… Concerning the Sacraments, I believe and worship in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the real body and blood of Christ most really contained under the species of bread and wine without any trope or figure, the bread and the wine being converted and transubstantiated into the body and blood of the Redeemer by the power of God.”
The sixth recantation was longer even than the fifth. It contained the following passage:—
“I am greatly tortured in mind because I attacked the Sacrament of the Eucharist with so many blasphemies and insults, denying that the body and blood of Christ are really and actually contained under the species of bread and wine; and I published books in which I strove with all my might against the truth; and in this I was not only worse than Saul and the robber, but I was the most wicked of all whom the earth ever bore. O Lord, I have sinned against heaven and against Thee; against heaven, which through me is without so many heavenly inhabitants, and because I most shamefully denied this heavenly gift presented to us; I have sinned also against earth, which so long has miserably lacked this Sacrament, and against the men whom I have drawn away from this supersubstantial food, being the murderer of as many men as have perished from want of it. I have defrauded the souls of the departed of this continual and most splendid sacrifice.”
The paper written by Cranmer a little before his death to be publicly read by him, which is sometimes called the seventh recantation, ended as follows:—
“And now I come to the great thing that so much troubleth my conscience, more than any other thing that ever I did; and that is setting abroad untrue books and writings contrary to the truth of God’s word, which now I renounce and condemn, and refuse them utterly as erroneous, and for none of mine. But you must know also what books they were, that you may beware of them, or else my conscience is not discharged; for they be the books which I wrote against the Sacrament of the altar since the death of King Henry VIII. But, whatsoever I wrote then, now is time and place to say truth: wherefore renouncing all those books, and whatsoever in them is contained, I say and believe that our Saviour Christ Jesu is really and substantially contained in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine.”
These recantations did not save Cranmer from condemnation as a heretic and from sentence of death by burning. At the time of his death he read to the crowd the paper of which the last quotation is the concluding paragraph, but for this paragraph he substituted the following:—
“And now I come to the great thing which so much troubleth my conscience, more than anything that ever I did or said in my whole life; and that is the setting abroad of a writing contrary to the truth, which now here I renounce and refuse as things written with my hand contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be; and that is all such bills and papers which I have written or signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue. And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefore; for, may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him as Christ’s enemy and anti-Christ, with all his false doctrine. And as for the Sacrament, I believe as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of Winchester, the which my book teacheth so true a doctrine of the Sacrament that it shall stand at the Last Day before the Judgment of God, where the papistical doctrine contrary thereto shall be ashamed to show her face.”
Apart from the recantations, then, which were extorted from him through the fear of death, the belief of Cranmer concerning the Eucharist remained the same from the publication of his book in the latter part of the reign of Edward VI. to his death in 1556.
2. It has been mentioned that Cranmer’s abandonment of belief in the doctrine that the consecrated Sacrament is the body and blood of Christ was due in the first instance to Nicolas Ridley. Ridley was born in Northumberland early in the sixteenth century; he became chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer in 1534, Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and chaplain to King Henry VIII. in 1540, Bishop of Rochester in 1547, and Bishop of London in 1550. On the accession of Queen Mary in 1553 he was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of treason for his support of Lady Jane Grey. Though, like others, he was pardoned for this offence, he remained in prison and was eventually condemned to death for heresy; and he was burnt at Oxford on 16th October, 1555. It has been supposed that Ridley first read the treatise of Ratramn on the Eucharist about 1545; and he himself said at Oxford in 1555 that it was this which “first” “pulled me by the ear, and that fast brought me from the common error of the Romish Church”. In the debate in the House of Lords in December, 1548, he appears to have maintained not only that the bread and wine wholly remain after consecration but also that the presence of the body and blood of Christ is a presence by way of grace and power. In a disputation held at Cambridge in June, 1549, he seems to have maintained much the same position. Among his statements then made are the following:—
“By the word of God the thing hath a being that it had not before; and we do consecrate the body that we may receive the grace and power of the body of Christ in heaven by this sacramental body.”
“I grant that there is a mutation of the common bread and wine spiritually into the Lord’s bread and wine by the sanctifying of them in the Lord’s word. But I deny that there is any mutation of the substances; for there is no other change there indeed than there is in us, who, when we do receive the Sacrament worthily, then are we changed into Christ’s body, bones, and blood, not in nature but spiritually and by grace. Much like as Isaiah saw the burning coal, even so we see not there the very simple bread as it was before the consecration; for a union cannot be but of two very things. Wherefore, if we be joined to Christ, receiving the Sacrament, then there is no annihilation of bread.”
“Say what you list, it is but a figurative speech, like to this, ‘If you will receive and understand, he is Elias,’ for a property; for indeed he was not Elias, but John the Baptist. And so in this place Christ calleth it His body when it was very bread. But better than the common bread because it was sanctified by the word of Christ.”
“He was betrayed and crucified in His natural body substantially and really in very deed; but in the Sacrament He is not so, but spiritually and figuratively only.”
“There is no change either of the substances or of the accidents; but in very deed there do come unto the bread other accidents, insomuch that whereas the bread and wine were not sanctified before nor holy, yet afterwards they be sanctified, and so do receive then another sort or kind of virtue which they had not before.”
“Grace is there communicated to us by the benefit of Christ’s body sitting in heaven.… We be not consubstantial with Christ; God forbid that. But we are joined to His mystical body through His Holy Spirit; and the communion of His flesh is communicated to us spiritually, through the benefit of His flesh in heaven.”
“Ye dream of a real presence of Christ’s body in the Sacrament by the force of the words spoken, which the Holy Scripture doth impugn.”
“Christ dwelleth in us by faith, and by faith we receive Christ, both God and Man, both in spirit and flesh; that is, this sacramental eating is the mean whereby we attain to the spiritual eating; and indeed for the strengthening of us to the eating of this spiritual food was this Sacrament ordained. And these words, ‘This is My body,’ are meant thus, By grace it is My true body, but not My fleshly body, as some of you suppose.”
“We are joined to Christ; that is, we are made partakers of His flesh and of immortality. And so in like case is there a union between man and woman; yet there is no transubstantiation of either or both.”
“The flesh indeed is fed with the body and blood of the Lord when our bodies by mortification are made like to His body; and our body is nourished when the virtue and power of the body of Christ doth feed us. The same Tertullian is not afraid to call it flesh and blood, but he meaneth a figure of the same.”
In his Determination at the close of the disputations Ridley said:—
“This Transubstantiation is clean against the words of the Scripture and consent of the ancient Catholic fathers.… They which say that Christ is carnally present in the Eucharist do take from him the verity of man’s nature.… They that defend Transubstantiation ascribe that to the human nature which only belongeth to the divine nature.… These Scriptures do persuade me to believe that there is no other oblation of Christ, albeit I am not ignorant there are many sacrifices, but that which was once made upon the cross.”
In connection with his Visitation of the diocese of London in 1550, Ridley drew up a paper of reasons why “instead of the multitude of their altars, one decent Table” should be “set up” “in every church”. Of these reasons the first was:—
“The form of a table shall more move the simple from the superstitious opinions of the popish Mass unto the right use of the Lord’s Supper. For the use of an altar is to make sacrifice upon it; the use of a table is to serve for men to eat upon. Now, when we come unto the Lord’s board, what do we come for? To sacrifice Christ again, and to crucify Him again, or to feed upon Him that was once only crucified and offered up for us? If we come to feed upon Him, spiritually to eat His body, and spiritually to drink His blood, which is the true sense of the Lord’s Supper, then no man can deny but the form of a table is more meet for the Lord’s board than the form of an altar.”
The three propositions set forth by Convocation for the disputations at Oxford in April, 1554, asserted the presence of the natural body and blood of our Lord in the Sacrament under the forms of bread and wine; the absence of any other substance than that of the body and blood of Christ; and that the Mass is a propitiatory sacrifice. From the very lengthy discussions around Ridley’s denial of these propositions the following statements made by him are selected:—
“Of Christ’s real presence there may be a double understanding. If you take the real presence of Christ according to the real and corporal substance which He took of the Virgin, that presence being in heaven cannot be on the earth also. But if you mean a real presence secundum rem aliquam quæ ad corpus Christi pertinet, that is, according to something that appertaineth to Christ’s body, certes the ascension and abiding in heaven are no let at all to that presence. Wherefore Christ’s body after that sort is here present to us in the Lord’s Supper, by grace, I say, as Epiphanius speaketh it.”
“I grant that Christ did both, that is, both took up His flesh with Him ascending up, and also did leave the same behind Him with us, but after a diverse manner and respect. For He took His flesh with Him after the true and corporal substance of His body and flesh; again, He left the same in mystery to the faithful in the Supper, to be received after a spiritual communication, and by grace. Neither is the same received in the Supper only, but also at other times, by hearing the Gospel, and by faith.”
“I also worship Christ in the Sacrament, but not because He is included in the Sacrament, like as I worship Christ also in the Scriptures, not because He is really included in them. Notwithstanding I say that the body of Christ is present in the Sacrament, but yet sacramentally and spiritually, according to His grace, giving life, and in that respect really, that is, according to His benediction, giving life. Furthermore, I acknowledge gladly the true body of Christ to be in the Lord’s Supper in such sort as the Church of Christ, which is the spouse of Christ and is taught of the Holy Ghost and guided by God’s word, doth acknowledge the same. But the true Church of Christ doth acknowledge a presence of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper to be communicated to the godly by grace and spiritually, as I have often showed, and by a sacramental signification, but not by the corporal presence of the body of His flesh.”
“There is a deceit in the word adoramus. We worship the symbols when reverently we handle them. We worship Christ where-soever we perceive His benefits; but we understand His benefits to be greatest in the Sacrament.… We adore and worship Christ in the Eucharist. And if you mean the external Sacrament, I say, that also is to be worshipped as a Sacrament.”
“It is His true blood which is in the chalice, I grant, and the same which sprang from the side of Christ. But how? It is blood indeed, but not after the same manner after which manner it sprang from His side. For here is the blood, but by way of a Sacrament. Again, I say, like as the bread of the Sacrament and of thanksgiving is called the body of Christ given for us, so the cup of the Lord is called the blood which sprang from the side of Christ; but that sacramental bread is called the body because it is the Sacrament of His body. Even so likewise the cup is called the blood also which flowed out of Christ’s side because it is the Sacrament of that blood which flowed out of His side, instituted of the Lord Himself for our singular commodity, namely, for our spiritual nourishment, like as Baptism is ordained in water to our spiritual regeneration.”
“The blood of Christ is in the chalice indeed, but not in the real presence, but by grace, and in a Sacrament.”
“That heavenly Lamb is, as I confess, on the Table, but by a spiritual presence by grace, and not after any corporal substance of His flesh taken of the Virgin Mary.”
“We worship, I confess, the same true Lord and Saviour of the world, which the wise men worshipped in the manger; howbeit we do it in a mystery, and in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and that in spiritual liberty, as saith St. Augustine, not in carnal servitude, that is, we do not worship servilely the signs for the things, for that should be, as he also saith, a part of a servile infirmity. But we behold with the eyes of faith Him present after grace, and spiritually set upon the Table; and we worship Him which sitteth above, and is worshipped of the angels.… This assistance and presence of Christ, as in Baptism it is wholly spiritual, and by grace, and not by any corporal substance of the flesh, even so it is here in the Lord’s Supper, being rightly and according to the word of God duly ministered.”
Ridley’s treatise A Brief Declaration of the Lord’s Supper was written while he was in prison about the same time as that of the Disputation in 1554. Its devotional temper, earnest tone, and evident desire for truth give this treatise a high place among the writings of the Reformation period; but the recognition of and emphasis on a common ground does not prevent Ridley from writing with great hostility towards the doctrines held by those who for the time were in authority in the Church of England.
“Whosoever receiveth this holy Sacrament thus ordained in remembrance of Christ, he receiveth therewith either death or life. In this, I trust, we do all agree.… The partaking of Christ’s body and of His blood unto the faithful and godly is the partaking or fellowship of life and immortality.… He that eateth and drinketh unworthily thereof [that is, of the bread and the cup] eateth and drinketh his own damnation, because he esteemeth not the Lord’s body; that is, he reverenceth not the Lord’s body with the honour that is due unto Him. And that which was said, that with the receipt of the holy Sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ is received of every one, good or bad, either life or death, it is not meant that they which are dead before God may hereby receive life, or the living before God can hereby receive death. For as none is meet to receive natural food, whereby the natural life is nourished, except he be born and live before, so no man can feed (by the receipt of the holy Sacrament) of the food of eternal life except he be regenerated and born of God before; and on the other side no man here receiveth damnation which is not dead before. Thus hitherto, without all doubt, God is my witness, I say, so far as I know, there is no controversy among them that be learned among the Church in England concerning the matter of this Sacrament; but all do agree, whether they be new or old, and to speak plain, and as some of them do odiously call each other, whether they be Protestants, Pharisees, Papists, or Gospellers. And as all do agree hitherto in the aforesaid doctrine, so all do detest, abhor, and condemn the wicked heresy of the Messalians, which otherwise be called Euchites, which said that the holy Sacrament can neither do good nor harm; and do also condemn those wicked Anabaptists which put no difference between the Lord’s Table and the Lord’s meat and their own.… The controversy (no doubt) which at this day troubleth the Church (wherein any mean learned man, either old or new, doth stand in) is not whether the holy Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ is no better than a piece of common bread, or no; or whether the Lord’s Table is no more to be regarded than the table of any earthly man; or whether it is but a bare sign or figure of Christ and nothing else, or no. For all do grant that St. Paul’s words do require that the bread which we break is the partaking of the body of Christ; and all also do grant him that eateth of that bread or drinketh of that cup unworthily to be guilty of the Lord’s death, and to eat and drink his own damnation, because he esteemeth not the Lord’s body.… Thus then hitherto yet we all agree. But now let us see wherein the dissension doth stand.… In the matter of this Sacrament there be divers points wherein men counted to be learned cannot agree; as, Whether there be any Transubstantiation of the bread, or no; any corporal and carnal presence of Christ’s substance, or no; whether adoration only due unto God is to be done unto the Sacrament, or no; and whether Christ’s body be there offered in deed unto the heavenly Father by the priest, or no; or whether the evil man receiveth the natural body of Christ, or no.… All five aforesaid points do chiefly hang upon this one question, which is, What is the matter of the Sacrament? whether it is the natural substance of bread or the natural substance of Christ’s own body. The truth of this question, truly tried out and agreed upon, no doubt will cease the controversy in all the rest. For if it be Christ’s own natural body born of the Virgin, then … (seeing that all learned men in England, so far as I know, both new and old, grant there to be but one substance) … they must needs grant Transubstantiation, that is, a change of the substance of bread into the substance of Christ’s body; then also they must grant the carnal and corporal presence of Christ’s body; then must the Sacrament be adored with the honour due unto Christ Himself for the unity of the two natures in one Person; then, if the priest do offer the Sacrament, he doth offer indeed Christ Himself; and finally the murderer, the adulterer, or wicked man, receiving the Sacrament, must needs then receive also the natural substance of Christ’s own blessed body, both flesh and blood. Now, on the other side, if, after the truth shall be truly tried out, it be found that the substance of bread is the material substance of the Sacrament; although, for the change of the use, office, and dignity of the bread, the bread indeed sacramentally is changed into the body of Christ, as the water in Baptism is sacramentally changed into the fountain of regeneration, and yet the material substance thereof remaineth all one, as was before; if, I say, the true solution of that former question, whereupon all these controversies do hang, be that the natural substance of bread is the material substance in the Sacrament of Christ’s blessed body; then must it follow of the former proposition (confessed of all that be named to be learned, so far as I do know in England) which is that there is but one material substance in the Sacrament of the body, and one only likewise in the Sacrament of the blood, that there is no such thing indeed and in truth as they call Transubstantiation, for the substance of bread remaineth still in the Sacrament of the body. Then also the natural substance of Christ’s human nature, which He took of the Virgin Mary, is in heaven, where it reigneth now in glory, and not here enclosed under the form of bread. Then that godly honour, which is only due unto God the Creator, may not be done unto the creature without idolatry and sacrilege, is not to be done unto the holy Sacrament. Then also the wicked, I mean the impenitent, murderer, adulterer, or such-like, do not receive the natural substance of the blessed body and blood of Christ. Finally, then doth it follow that Christ’s blessed body and blood, which was once only offered and shed upon the cross, being available for the sins of all the whole world, is offered up no more in the natural substance thereof, neither by the priest nor any other thing. But here, before we go further to search in this matter, and to wade, as it were, to search and try out as we may the truth hereof in the Scripture, it shall do well by the way to know whether they that thus make answer and solution unto the former principal question do take away simply and absolutely the presence of Christ’s body and blood from the Sacrament ordained by Christ and duly ministered according to His holy ordinance and institution of the same. Undoubtedly they do deny that utterly, either so to say or so to mean.… What kind of presence do they grant, and what do they deny? Briefly they deny the presence of Christ’s body in the natural substance of His human and assumed nature, and grant the presence of the same by grace; that is, they affirm and say that the substance of the natural body and blood of Christ is only remaining in heaven, and so shall be unto the latter day, when He shall come again in glory accompanied with the angels of heaven, to judge both the quick and the dead. And the same natural substance of the very body and blood of Christ, because it is united in the divine nature in Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, therefore it hath not only life in itself but is also able to give and doth give life unto so many as be or shall be partakers thereof; that is, to all that do believe on His name, which are not born of blood, as St. John saith, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but are born of God, though the self-same substance abide still in heaven, and they for the time of their pilgrimage dwell here upon earth; by grace I say, that is, by the gift of this life mentioned in John and the properties of the same meet for our pilgrimage here upon earth, the same body of Christ is here present with us. Even as, for example, we say the same sun, which in substance never removeth his place out of the heavens is yet present here by his beams, light, and natural influence where it shineth upon the earth. For God’s word and His Sacraments be as it were the beams of Christ, which is sol justitiae, the Sun of righteousness.”
On this statement of the case, Ridley gives his judgment that the second of the two sets of alternative answers to the five questions is true, since on the main question which governs the five he determines—
“the natural substance of bread and wine is the true material substance of the holy Sacrament of the blessed body and blood of our Saviour Christ.… Christ did take bread and called it His body for that He would thereby institute a perpetual remembrance of His body, specially of that singular benefit of our redemption which He would then procure and purchase unto us by His body upon the cross. But bread, retaining still its own very natural substance, may be thus by grace and in a sacramental signification His body, whereas else the very bread which He took, brake, and gave them could not be in any wise His natural body, for that were confusion of substances. And therefore the very words of Christ, joined with the next sentence following, both enforce us to confess the very bread to remain still, and also open unto us how that bread may be and is thus by His divine power His body which was given for us.”
At Ridley’s last examination before the commissioners on 30th September, 1555, he spoke as follows about the Eucharist:—
“In a sense the first article is true, and in a sense it is false; for if you take really for vere, for spiritually by grace and efficacy, then it is true that the natural body and blood of Christ is in the Sacrament vere et realiter, indeed and really; but if you take these terms so grossly that you would conclude thereby a natural body having motion to be contained under the forms of bread and wine vere et realiter, then really is not the body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament no more than the Holy Ghost is in the element of water in our Baptism.”
“Both you and I agree herein, that in the Sacrament is the very true and natural body and blood of Christ, even that which was born of the Virgin Mary, which ascended into heaven, which sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, which shall come from thence to judge the quick and the dead; only we differ in modo, in the way and manner of being: we confess all one thing to be in the Sacrament, and dissent in the manner of being there. I, being fully by God’s word thereunto persuaded, confess Christ’s natural body to be in the Sacrament indeed by spirit and grace, because that whosoever receiveth worthily that bread and wine receiveth effectually Christ’s body and drinketh His blood, that is, he is made effectually partaker of His passion; and you make a grosser kind of being, enclosing a natural, a lively, and a moving body under the shape or form of bread and wine. Now this difference considered, to the question thus I answer, that in the Sacrament of the altar is the natural body and blood of Christ vere et realiter, indeed and really, for spiritually by grace and efficacy; for so every worthy receiver receiveth the very true body of Christ. But if you mean really and indeed so that thereby you would include a lively and a movable body under the forms of bread and wine, then in that sense is not Christ’s body in the Sacrament really and indeed.… In the Sacrament is a certain change in that that bread, which was before common bread, is now made a lively presentation of Christ’s body, and not only a figure but effectually representeth His body; that even as the mortal body was nourished by that visible bread, so is the internal soul fed with the heavenly food of Christ’s body, which the eyes of faith see, as the bodily eyes see only bread. Such a sacramental mutation I grant to be in the bread and wine, which truly is no small change, but such a change as no mortal man can make, but only the omnipotency of Christ’s word.… The true substance and nature of bread and wine remaineth, with the which the body is in like sort nourished as the soul is by grace and Spirit with the body of Christ. Even so in Baptism the body is washed with the visible water, and the soul is cleansed from all filth by the invisible Holy Ghost, and yet the water ceaseth not to be water but keepeth the nature of water still; in like sort in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the bread ceaseth not to be bread.”
“Christ, as St. Paul writeth, made one perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, neither can any man reiterate that sacrifice of His, and yet is the Communion an acceptable sacrifice to God of praise and thanksgiving. But to say that thereby sins are taken away (which wholly and perfectly was done by Christ’s passion, of the which the Communion is only a memory) that is a great derogation of the merits of Christ’s passion; for the Sacrament was instituted that we, receiving it, and thereby recognising and remembering His passion, should be partakers of the merits of the same. For otherwise doth this Sacrament take upon it the office of Christ’s passion, whereby it might follow that Christ died in vain.”
In one of his farewell letters, written between his condemnation on 1st October, 1555, and his death on 16th October, Ridley wrote:—
“In the stead of the Lord’s Table they give the people, with much solemn disguising, a thing which they call their Mass, but … I may call it a crafty juggling, whereby these false thieves and jugglers have bewitched the minds of the simple people, that they have brought them from the true worship of God into pernicious idolatry, and make them to believe that to be Christ our Lord and Saviour which indeed is neither God nor man, nor hath any life in itself, but in substance is the creature of bread and wine, and in use of the Lord’s Table is the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood; and for this holy use, for the which the Lord hath ordained them in His Table to represent unto us His blessed body torn upon the cross for us and His blood there shed, it pleased Him to call them His body and blood.”
In the course of a rhetorical address to the see of London, which forms part of the same letter, Ridley exclaims:—
“O thou now wicked and bloody see, why dost thou set up again many altars of idolatry which by the word of God were justly taken away? O why hast thou overthrown the Lord’s Table? Why dost thou daily delude the people, masking in thy Masses in the stead of the Lord’s holy Supper, which ought to be common as well … to the people as to the priest? How darest thou deny to the people of Christ, contrary to His express commandment in the Gospel, His holy cup?… Thy god, which is the work of thy hands and whom thou sayest thou hast power to make, that thy deaf and dumb god, I say, will not indeed nor cannot, although thou art not ashamed to call him thy maker, make thee to escape the avenging hand of the high and Almighty God.”
To ascertain Ridley’s exact meaning in many passages of his writings is by no means an easy task. The ambiguity of the word “natural” in connection with the body of our Lord, and the possibility of interpreting it either as descriptive of our Lord’s body being in a natural state or as denoting that His body in the Eucharist is the same body as that of His natural life on earth, is a constantly disturbing factor in the attempt to reach his thought. Possibly, he was not always consistent. But a comparison of his statements about the Eucharist with one another, and an examination of his teaching as a whole, lead to the conclusion that the doctrine which he rejected was not simply some carnal notion which the divines at Trent would have themselves repudiated, but the belief that the consecrated Sacrament is by the power of God made to be the risen and ascended and glorified body and blood of our Lord; and that the doctrine which he held was not in principle different from the later teaching of Cranmer that the presence of the body of Christ in the Eucharist is a presence of power and of grace proceeding from the body not the presence of the body itself. From this position would naturally follow, as he himself saw, the rejection of Transubstantiation, of Eucharistic adoration, of belief in the reception of the body of Christ by those who receive the Sacrament unworthily, of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist as the oblation of the body and blood of Christ.
3. Hugh Latimer was born in Leicestershire in the fifteenth century; he became Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1509; after attaining some fame as a preacher and being a royal chaplain, he was appointed Bishop of Worcester in 1535; he resigned his bishopric in 1539 in consequence of the passing of the Statute of the Six Articles, and lived in the country till 1540, when he was imprisoned in the Tower. On the accession of Edward VI. in 1547 he was released; and during Edward’s reign he preached frequently at Paul’s Cross. When Mary came to the throne in 1553, he was summoned before the council, and was committed to the Tower for seditious behaviour. Eventually he was charged with heresy, moved to Oxford, tried there, and burnt at the same time as Ridley on 16th October, 1555.
In his sermon on the parable of the marriage feast preached in 1552 Latimer explained the food at the feast to be the body and blood of Christ spiritually received.
“What manner of meat was prepared at this great feast?… What was the feast dish? Marry, it was the bridegroom Himself; for the Father, the feast-maker, prepared none other manner of meat for the guests but the body and blood of His own natural Son. And this is the chiefest dish at this banquet; which truly is a marvellous thing, that the Father offereth His Son to be eaten. Verily, I think that no man hath heard the like. And truly there was never such kind of feasting as this is, where the Father will have His Son to be eaten and His blood to be drunk.… The Almighty God, which prepared this feast for all the world, for all those that will come unto it, He offereth His only Son to be eaten, and His blood to be drunken.… Our Saviour, the Bridegroom, offereth Himself at His Last Supper which He had with His disciples His body to be eaten and His blood to be drunk. And to the intent that it should be done to our great comfort, and then again to take away all cruelty, irksomeness, and horribleness, He showeth unto us how we shall eat Him, in what manner and form, namely, spiritually, to our great comfort, so that whosoever eateth the mystical bread and drinketh the mystical wine worthily according to the ordinance of Christ, he receiveth surely the very body and blood of Christ spiritually, as it shall be most comfortable unto his soul.… To be short: whosoever believeth in Christ putteth his hope, trust, and confidence in Him, he eateth and drinketh Him; for the spiritual eating is the right eating to everlasting life, not the corporal eating, as the Capernaites understood it. For that same corporal eating on which they set their minds hath no commodities at all; it is a spiritual meat that feedeth our souls.… It was ordained for our help, to help our memory withal, to put us in mind of the great goodness of God in redeeming us from everlasting death by the blood of our Saviour Christ, yea, and to signify unto us that His body and blood is our meat and drink for our souls, to feed them to everlasting life.… To the intent that we might better keep it in memory, and to remedy this our slothfulness, our Saviour hath ordained this His Supper for us, whereby we should remember His great goodness, His bitter passion and death, and so strengthen our faith, so that He instituted this Supper for our sake, to make us to keep in fresh memory His inestimable benefits.… Our Saviour, knowing our weakness and forgetfulness, ordained this Supper to the augmentation of our faith, and to put us in remembrance of His benefits.”
In a report published in 1556 of conferences which took place between Latimer and Ridley when they were in prison, Latimer is represented as saying:—
“I have read over of late the New Testament three or four times deliberately; yet can I not find there neither the popish consecration, nor yet their Transubstantiation, nor their oblation, nor their adoration, which be the very sinews and marrow-bones of the Mass.”
At the disputation at Oxford in April, 1554, with the representatives of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Latimer put in a written paper in which he gave his answer to the three propositions of the presence of the natural body of Christ in the Eucharist, the absence of the substance of bread and wine, and the propitiatory character of the Eucharistic sacrifice. On the first proposition he said that “there is none other presence of Christ required than a spiritual presence”; that “the same presence may be called a real presence because to the faithful believer there is the real or spiritual body of Christ”. The second proposition he explicitly rejected as having “no stay nor ground of God’s holy word,” and as being “a thing invented and found out by man, and therefore to be reputed and had as false”. In rejecting the third proposition, he referred at some length to the perfection of the sacrifice of the cross; and spoke of the studies of the New Testament by Cranmer, Ridley, Bradford, and himself when prisoners in the Tower in these terms:—
“We could find in the testament of Christ’s body and blood no other presence but a spiritual presence, nor that the Mass was any sacrifice for sins; but in that heavenly book it appeared that the sacrifice which Christ Jesus our Redeemer did upon the cross was perfect, holy, and good, that God the heavenly Father did require none other, nor that never to be done again, but was pacified with that only omnisufficient and most painful sacrifice of that sweet slain Lamb Christ our Lord for our sins.”
In his examination before the commissioners in September, 1555, Latimer said:—
“I do not deny … that in the Sacrament by spirit and grace is the very body and blood of Christ, because that every man by receiving bodily that bread and wine spiritually receiveth the body and blood of Christ, and is made partaker thereby of the merits of Christ’s passion. But I deny that the body and blood is in such sort in the Sacrament as you would have it.”
After this statement Latimer replied to the inquiry of White the Bishop of Lincoln whether he acknowledged his rejection of the presence of the natural body of Christ in the Eucharist—
“Yes, if you mean of that gross and carnal being which you do take.”
On the subject of Transubstantiation, he said:—
“There is … a change in the bread and wine, and such a change as no power but the omnipotency of God can make, in that that which before was bread should now have the dignity to exhibit Christ’s body; and yet the bread is still bread, and the wine still wine. For the change is not in the nature but in the dignity, because now that which was common bread hath the dignity to exhibit Christ’s body; for, whereas it was common bread, it is now no more common bread, neither ought it to be so taken, but as holy bread sanctified by God’s word.”
On the subject of the sacrifice, he said:—
“Christ made one perfect sacrifice for all the whole world, neither can any man offer Him again, neither can the priest offer up Christ again for the sins of man which He took away by offering Himself once for all … upon the cross, neither is there any propitiation for our sins saving His cross only.”
It is not much easier to estimate Latimer’s belief about the Eucharist than it is to ascertain that of Ridley. Some of his sayings could be interpreted to be a rejection only of a carnal presence; some of them could be understood to be laying stress, like many of the mediæval writers, on the spiritual character of the body of Christ and on the spiritual manner of His presence in the Eucharist. But, when all his language is weighed, and when it is considered in relation to the circumstances in which it was uttered, the probability appears to be that he, like Ridley, had reached the acceptance of the same doctrinal position as that of Cranmer in his later years.
4. It may be convenient to quote a few instances of statements about the Eucharist made by less well-known persons who were put to death during the reign of Mary. Richard Woodman, who was burnt with nine others in June, 1557, expressed his belief about the Eucharist as follows:—
“I do believe that when I come to receive the Sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, if it be truly ministered according to Christ’s institution, I coming in faith, as I trust in God I will, whensoever I come to receive it, I believing that Christ was born for me, and that He suffered death for the remission of my sins, and that I shall be saved by His death and bloodshedding, and so receive the Sacrament of bread and wine in that remembrance, that then I do receive whole Christ, God and Man, mystically by faith.”
Thomas Spurdance, who was burnt in November, 1557, spoke thus:—
“It is no sacrifice; for St. Paul saith that Christ made one sacrifice once for all; and I do believe in none other sacrifice but only in that one sacrifice that our Lord Jesus Christ made once for all.… I believe that, if I come rightly and worthily, as God hath commanded me, to the Holy Supper of the Lord, I receive Him by faith by believing in Him. But the bread, being received, is not God; nor the bread that is yonder in the pyx is not God.… You do very evil to cause the people to kneel down and worship the bread; for God did never bid you hold it above your heads, neither had the Apostles such use.”
Elizabeth Young was examined nine times in 1558, and was severely rebuked for her statements:—
“I believe that in the holy Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, which He did institute and ordain, and left among His disciples that night before He was betrayed, when I do receive the Sacrament in faith and spirit, I do receive Christ.… These words, ‘really’ and ‘corporally,’ I understand not; as for ‘substantially,’ I take it ye mean I should believe that I should receive His human body, which is upon the right hand of God, and can occupy no more places at once; and that believe not I.”
Eventually she was released after stating:—
“When I receive, I believe that through faith I do receive Christ.… I believe that He is there, and by faith I do receive Him.… I believe Christ not to be absent from His own Sacrament.”