III

The study of individual theologians of the reign of Elizabeth shows that the policy of comprehension then adopted met with success in the way of securing the inclusion within the English Church of those who held considerably differing beliefs about the Eucharist. A few instances may be sufficient to illustrate this fact.

Bernard Gilpin was born in 1517. He died in 1584. He was successively Vicar of Norton in Durham, Archdeacon of Durham, and Rector of Houghton-le-Spring. He refused the Bishopric of Carlisle. His attitude towards the Reformation movements and formularies gives special interest to his opinions. Bishop Lightfoot described him as “the true product of the English Reformation,” “the exponent, the noblest exponent, of the teaching of the Reformation”; and wrote of him that “while the Reformers were in power under Edward he still clung to the old. When the Roman reaction set in under Mary he espoused the new.” Because of this special interest of his life and character it is worth while to mention the scanty evidence as to his beliefs in regard to the Eucharist. When accused of false doctrine during the reign of Mary, Bishop Tunstall was obliged to examine him about the Eucharist.

“In Transubstantiation he would not trouble me; only he inquired concerning the real presence, which I granted, and so was freed out of that danger. And as touching the real presence I found not myself fully resolved. I suppose that therein lay hid a mystery above my capacity. Nevertheless my conscience did sometimes chide me for that I had before them yielded in express words to a point which seemed unto me doubtful. But I hoped God would pardon mine ignorance, and in time bring me to a greater light of knowledge.”

After the accession of Elizabeth his “tender conscience,” he says, was “wounded” by a sermon in which Dr. Sandys “seemed utterly to deny a real presence”; he subscribed the Eleven Articles only after much hesitation; and after subscribing them sent to Sandys a “protestation touching those two points which had troubled” him. In 1575 he quoted with apparent approval an opinion ascribed to Dr. Chedsey that the right solution of Eucharistic controversies was to be found by granting “a real presence of Christ in the Sacrament” and in allowing the rejection of “the opinion of Transubstantiation,” used the phrase “the fiction of Transubstantiation,” and showed his dislike of the prevalent enforcement of elaborate formularies by saying that from the time of his ordination he had “resolved to be sworn to no writings but with this exception, so far only as they are agreeable to the word of God”. In 1580 he described Transubstantiation as “a mere fiction without any foundation of Scripture”.

Adrian Saravia was a Flemish pastor who was born in 1530. After ministering in Flanders and Holland, he because persuaded of the divine institution of episcopacy, and was therefore obliged to sever himself from the Protestant religious bodies in those countries. He visited Guernsey early in the reign of Elizabeth, and became domiciled in England in 1588. He was appointed Prebendary of Canterbury in 1595, and of Westminster in 1601. He died in 1612, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. His Latin book, entitled A Treatise on the Holy Eucharist, is dedicated to James I. and was probably presented to that king in 1604 or 1605. Saravia explicitly rejects Transubstantiation and any theory of a natural process by which the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. “The Romanists have wholly transformed into a foul idol the new covenant in the flesh and blood of our Lord”; “the Romanists take away the bread and wine, and leave us empty images of the bread and wine without their substance,” “against the institution of the Lord, the nature of the things themselves, and the judgment of the old fathers, who knew nothing of this monstrous existence of accidents without subject”; “the substance of the wine and the bread is not changed, and the bread remains that which it was before, as also does the wine”; “it is a mistake to make that a change of substance which is one of quality”; that which is effected takes place “not naturally but sacramentally”. He believed that a ground of agreement among Christians could be found in the acceptance of the Confession of Augsburg. His assertions that the consecrated Sacrament is the body and blood of Christ are many and clear; and they are carried out to the conclusions that if the wicked communicate they receive the body of Christ, and that our Lord is to be adored as present in the consecrated species.

“The bread without the body of Christ is not a Sacrament, neither is the body of Christ without the bread. The Sacrament of the Eucharist may be defined thus, that there is under the form of bread and wine the Communion of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ once offered for us on the altar of the cross and of His blood of the new covenant shed for the remission of sins; and there is the commemoration of His death. We have here, as Irenaeus teaches, the two parts which make up the whole nature of the Sacrament, the earthly and the heavenly, namely, the bread and the wine, together with the crucified body of the Lord and His shed blood. The third thing which I wish noted is the remission of sins and eternal life, which is the virtue of the Sacrament, distinct from those two parts of it.”

“Of those who partake of the Eucharist, all eat the same spiritual food, and all drink the same spiritual drink; but it is certain that it has not happened, and does not happen, to all to do this to salvation.… Some eat and drink to salvation, and some to judgment, the same spiritual food, namely, the flesh and blood of Christ.… Those who eat and drink unworthily partake of the real and complete Supper of the Lord.… It seems to me no more absurd that the flesh of Christ be really eaten in the Sacrament by the wicked than that the ark of God could be handled and carried by the wicked sons of Eli, or taken into the temple of Dagon by the Philistines and set there side by side with an idol, or than that the Son of God should be kissed by the traitor Judas and crucified by sinners.”

“I exhort and admonish that we be holy before God both in soul and in body so often as we are about to receive the body and blood of the Lord. God, who is the Creator and Saviour of both parts of man, is to be worshipped and adored by both. There is a fear in the present day, which has never been before, that the bread may be adored if the Eucharist be received kneeling, and people contend that the Sacraments are not to be adored. Whence comes this fear? Who has ever taught that the bread of the Eucharist is to be adored? The Pope’s men themselves, though they adore the bread, teach that it is not the bread which is the object of adoration.… They warn the people that the object of adoration is not the outward forms, which they say are accidents without subject, but that the object of adoration is That which lies hidden under those visible forms. The German theologians, who affirm that the very body of Christ is in the bread, or under the bread, or with the bread, have never said that the bread is to be adored; nor have I ever heard or read that any theologian has so taught, unless, perhaps, some one has said that Christ has taken the nature of bread as He is believed to have taken the nature of flesh. Whence, I ask, comes this fear of adoration? Is it from a desire that the custom of adoration be avoided when the Holy Communion is received? For my own part, I think it should much more be feared that a man should not adore That which is there and then presented for the adoration of the faithful. When some men say that Sacraments are not to be adored, this is to be understood of the outward symbols, which are created things.”

“So great is the majesty of this Sacrament that if a man by faith consider what That is which he holds in his hands and lifts to his mouth when he receives the bread or the cup, namely, that it is the crucified flesh of Christ his Lord, and the shed blood of the new covenant, and therefore the new covenant itself, shall he not be struck by wonder that such things should be, and prostrate his whole self before the throne of God’s grace? What! do we fear to adore here on our knees, lest we seem to adore the material bread, and not rather lest by sitting we seem not to adore Christ the Bread of life? The great theologian Augustine thought otherwise. ‘No one,’ he says, ‘eats that flesh without first adoring.’ In my judgment, where the true doctrine of the Sacraments prevails, there is no room for fearing any excess of reverence either inward of the mind or outward of the body.”

Like the theologians of the middle ages and of the Council of Trent, Saravia distinguishes between the method of the presence of Christ in heaven and that of His presence in the Eucharist, and describes the latter as “divine,” “spiritual,” “heavenly,” “supernatural”. Some passages show a tendency to restrict the sacramental presence within the limits of the Eucharistic service. A characteristic idea is the repeated contention that it is not the glorified but the crucified body and blood which are present in the Sacrament.

“Many discuss the Sacraments of the new covenant as if they were things which had an existence apart from their use, or were compounded of different substances, or were transformed either by one substance being actually transformed into another or by a transition in the first substance going away and another coming in its place; whereas the conjunction of the parts of the Sacrament is one of relation, not of substance, as is the condition of a sign in regard to the thing signified, and of a picture in regard to the thing expressed by drawing and colours. For the bread which is made the Sacrament of the body of Christ has a relation to His body, and the wine to His blood, by the institution of God, so that he who has the bread has certainly and really the body, and he who has the wine has the blood. Not indeed that these are present absolutely and simply as they are now locally and circumscribed in one place in heaven, but in a certain figure by a necessary relation to the body and blood and by sacramental union therewith. There is one manner of presence of the body of Christ in heaven; there is another in the Sacrament. A question is raised concerning the real and actual presence of the body and blood of the Lord in this Sacrament; and it is said that this presence cannot be exhibited at the same time in more places than one, because this would be contrary to the manner and nature of a real body, which is circumscribed locally by its dimensions, and that if you take away these you take away thereby the nature of a body. The answer to this argument is, that it does not show that He who is God, and created all things out of nothing, cannot make Himself present in His body in more places than one, wheresoever He wills, in a supernatural and divine manner. It is certain that this does not happen in the order of nature but by that power of God which is above all the order of nature.… In these thoughts concerning the divine and spiritual and heavenly and supernatural presence of the body of Christ in more places than one without any multiplication or extension of the body I see no impiety to call for rebuke.… Why must he be thought to sin who believes that the Lord from heaven, sitting at the right hand of God the Father, really and actually feeds us here on earth with His crucified flesh and His shed blood by the power of His deity; and that for this purpose there is no need that He place His flesh and His blood locally here on earth at that point of space where the mysteries are celebrated? And, on the other hand, how does another sin who believes that the love of Christ the Lord towards us is so great that He wills to be present in His mysteries with His body, and to enter the roof of our mouth in a divine and spiritual and heavenly and supernatural manner, so that His body thus present may fill the whole man with His deity? If there is any error here, it is a pious error. If it is maintained that it cannot happen, there is no impiety in my judgment in believing that it does happen. The horrible deductions which are drawn about the going down into the belly and to the draught may be urged against the papists; but they are blasphemous calumnies against those who maintain this presence in the action of the mystery only, that is, while the mystery is eaten and drunk, and do not believe or think of any other actual or local presence of the body.”

“Since this Sacrament is a commemoration of the death and passion of the Lord, it follows that the bread is not related to the flesh simply, such as the flesh is now in glory, but such as it was on the altar of the cross; and in like manner that the wine is related to the blood, not to that which is now in the glorified body of the Lord, but to that which flowed from the wounds of the body of the Lord.”

“The blessed state of glory has nothing in common with the symbols of Christ’s crucified body and shed blood; for in this Sacrament is the showing forth of the death of the Lord, not of His glory and resurrection.”

“In vain is the bread believed to be transubstantiated into the body of Christ glorious and endowed with immortality, to be carried about in processions and reserved in secret places and adored, since the Sacrament is a Sacrament of His death and passion, not of glory and immortality.… It is clear that the spiritual and heavenly part of the Eucharist is not any kind of body of the Lord but the bloody and sacrificed body; and so it is not any blood that is to be understood but so far as it is the blood of the new covenant shed for the remission of sins.”

John Jewel was born in 1522. The date of his ordination is not known. In 1551 he received a preaching licence. About that time, while resident in Oxford, he held the cure of Sunningwell near Abingdon. During the latter part of Mary’s reign he was a refugee at Frankfort, Strasburg, and Zurich. On the accession of Elizabeth he returned to England. In 1560 he was consecrated Bishop of Salisbury. In 1571 he died. His most important writings are his sermon preached at Paul’s Cross in 1560, his Letters to Dr. Cole of the same date; and the Reply unto M. Harding’s Answer, the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, and the Defence of the Apology of the Church of England, all published between 1562 and 1571.

Jewel’s works, like those of his opponent Harding, are marked by unseemly language and a controversial spirit, and, though learned and acute, are painful reading. His teaching concerning the Eucharist closely resembles that of Bucer; and, while denying that the consecrated Sacrament is the body of Christ, he expresses belief in a specific participation of the body of Christ in heaven by faith through the reception of the Sacrament.

“We feed not the people of God with bare signs and figures, but teach them that the Sacraments of Christ be holy mysteries, and that in the ministration thereof Christ is set before us even as He was crucified upon the cross; and that therein we may behold the remission of our sins, and our reconciliation unto God, and, as Chrysostom briefly saith, ‘Christ’s great benefit, and our salvation’. Herein we teach the people, not that a naked sign or token, but that Christ’s body and blood indeed and verily is given unto us; that we verily eat it; that we verily drink it; that we verily be relieved and live by it; that we are bones of His bones, and flesh of His flesh; that Christ dwelleth in us, and we in Him. Yet we say not, either that the substance of the bread or wine is done away; or that Christ’s body is let down from heaven, or made really or fleshly present in the Sacrament. We are taught, according to the doctrine of the old fathers, to lift up our hearts to heaven, and there to feed upon the Lamb of God.… Spiritually and with the mouth of our faith we eat the body of Christ and drink His blood, even as verily as His body was verily broken, and His blood verily shed upon the cross.… The bread that we receive with our bodily mouths is an earthly thing, and therefore a figure, as the water in Baptism is likewise also a figure; but the body of Christ that thereby is represented, and there is offered unto our faith, is the thing itself, and no figure. And in respect of the glory thereof, we have no regard unto the figure.… We put a difference between the sign and the thing itself that is signified.… We seek Christ above in heaven, and imagine not Him to be present bodily upon the earth.… The body of Christ is to be eaten by faith only, and none otherwise.”

“The bread of the Sacrament is one thing.… The flesh of Christ is another. The bread entereth only into the bodily mouth: Christ’s flesh entereth only into the soul. Without eating of that bread of the Sacrament we may be saved: without eating of Christ’s flesh we can never be saved.”

“So great difference is there between the Sacrament and the body of Christ. The Sacrament passeth into the belly: Christ’s body passeth into the soul. The Sacrament is upon earth: Christ’s body is in heaven. The Sacrament is corruptible: Christ’s body is glorious. The Sacrament is the sign: Christ’s body is the thing signified.… This banquet … is not the outward or bare Sacrament, but Christ’s very body and blood, which are represented unto us by the Sacrament.”

“Bread and wine are holy and heavenly mysteries of the body and blood of Christ, and … by them Christ Himself, being the true Bread of eternal life, is so presently given unto us as that by faith we verily receive His body and His blood.… Christ doth truly and presently give His own self in His Sacraments; in Baptism, that we may put Him on; and in His Supper, that we may eat Him by faith and spirit, and may have everlasting life by His cross and blood.… Christ Himself altogether is so offered and given us in these mysteries that we may certainly know we be flesh of His flesh and bones of His bones, and that Christ continueth in us and we in Him. And therefore in celebrating these mysteries the people are to good purpose exhorted, before they come to receive the Holy Communion, to lift up their hearts, and to direct their minds to heavenward, because He is there by whom we must be full fed and live.”

“The patriarchs and prophets and people of God, which lived before the birth of Christ, did by faith eat His flesh and drink His blood.… Whosoever believed in Christ, they were nourished by Him then, as we are now. They did not see Christ; He was not yet born; He had not yet a natural body; yet did they eat His body; He had not yet any blood; yet did they drink His blood. They believed that it was He in whom the promises should be fulfilled, that He should be that blessed Seed in whom all nations should be blessed. Thus they believed, thus they received and did eat His body.… If they did eat the same meat, if the things, that is, the matter of their Sacraments were all one with ours, if their faith were all one with our faith, what difference is there between their and our eating? As they did eat Christ by faith, and not by the mouth of the body, so we eat Christ by faith, and not by the mouth of our body.… A Sacrament is a figure or token: the body of Christ is figured or tokened. The Sacrament-bread is bread, it is not the body of Christ: the body of Christ is flesh, it is no bread. The bread is beneath: the body is above. The bread is on the Table: the body is in heaven. The bread is in the mouth: the body is in the heart.… The Sacrament is eaten as well of the wicked as of the faithful: the body is only eaten of the faithful.”

In Harding’s Answer to M. Jewel’s Challenge he had distinguished between the presence of Christ in heaven and the presence of Christ in the Mass in the following terms:—

“The body of Christ … according unto His word by His power … is made present in the blessed Sacrament of the altar under the form of bread and wine, wheresoever the same is duly consecrated according to His institution in His holy Supper; and that not after a gross or carnal manner, but spiritually and supernaturally, and yet substantially; not by local but by substantial presence; not by manner of quantity, or filling of a place, or by changing of place, or by leaving His sitting on the right hand of the Father, but in such a manner as God only knoweth, and yet doth us to understand by faith the truth of His very presence, far passing all man’s capacity to comprehend the manner how.… He is verily both in heaven at the right hand of the Father in His visible and corporal form, very God and Man, after which manner He is there and not here; and also in the Sacrament invisibly and spiritually, both God and Man in a mystery; so as the granting of the one may stand without denial of the other, no contradiction found in these beings, but only a distinction in the way and manner of being.”

On this distinction, in which Harding followed the lines of the mediæval theologians and of the Council of Trent, the terms of which resembled Gardiner’s words in his Explication and Assertion of the True Catholic Faith Touching the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, Jewel comments with much scorn and ridicule. It is, he says, “a sweet mist, to carry away the simple in the dark,” “a new-devised difference”; to make it is to “dissemble in dark speeches”; it is “a very toy, only meet to beguile children”; “unless this man were fast asleep, he could never fall into so deep a dream”.

Consistently with his opinion that the consecrated Sacrament is not the body of Christ, Jewel repudiates adoration of the Sacrament or of the body of Christ there present, and limits the adoration of Christ to the adoration of Him in heaven.

“The body of Christ, sitting above all heavens, is worshipped of us, being here beneath in earth.… The eating thereof and the worshipping must join together. But where we eat it, there must we worship it; therefore must we worship it sitting in heaven.… Christ’s body is in heaven; thither therefore must we direct our hearts; there must we feed; there must we refresh ourselves; and there must we worship it.”

“Touching the adoration of the Sacrament, M. Harding is not able to show neither any commandment of Christ nor any word or example of the Apostles or ancient fathers concerning the same.… The matter is great, and cannot be attempted without great danger. To give the honour of God to a creature that is no God, it is manifest idolatry.… The bread of the Sacrament is not that bread of which Christ speaketh in the sixth of St. John, but very material bread indeed.”

“If M. Harding will … demand wherefore we adore not the Sacrament with godly honour, the godly simple man may make him this answer: Because it was ordained reverently to be received, and not to be adored, as a Sacrament, and not as God. For in all the Scriptures and holy fathers we have neither commandment to force us hereto nor example to lead us hereto. We adore the body of Christ, not only for the turning of a hand, while the priest is able to hold up the Sacrament, and that with doubt of ourselves, whether we do well or no; which thing is utterly uncomfortable and dangerous and full of terror to the conscience; but we worship that blessed and glorious body, as that blessed martyr St. Stephen did, being in heaven at the right hand of the power of God, and therefore without doubt and danger, and that at all times and for ever.”

“Neither do we only adore Christ as very God, but also we worship and reverence the Sacrament and holy mystery of Christ’s body; and, as St. Augustine teacheth us, ‘We worship the Baptism of Christ, wheresoever it be’. We worship the word of God, according to this counsel of Anastasius, “Let them diligently hear and faithfully worship the words of God”. Briefly, we worship all other like things in such religious wise unto Christ belonging. But these things we use and reverence as holy, and appointed or commanded by Christ; but we adore them not with godly honour, as Christ Himself.”

Jewel’s doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice is harmonious with his doctrine of the presence. He denies that there is on the altar a sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ. He affirms a remembrance of Christ’s death made to Christians in the Eucharist, and a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

“The priest in the canon … saith that he offereth and presenteth up Christ unto His Father, which is an open blasphemy. For, contrariwise, Christ presenteth up us, and maketh us a sweet oblation in the sight of God His Father.”

“This sacrifice [that is, of Christ on the cross] is revived, and freshly laid out before our eyes in the ministration of the holy mysteries.”

“The ministration of the holy mysteries, in a phrase and manner of speech, is also the same sacrifice; because it layeth forth the death and blood of Christ so plainly and so evidently before our eyes.… Thus may the sacrifice of the Holy Communion be called Christ; to wit, even so as the ministration of the same is called the passion or the death of Christ.”

“We offer up Christ, that is to say, an example, a commemoration, a remembrance of the death of Christ. This kind of sacrifice was never denied; but M. Harding’s real sacrifice was yet never proved.”

“The ministration of the Holy Communion is sometimes of the ancient fathers called an ‘unbloody sacrifice,’ not in respect of any corporal or fleshly presence that is imagined to be there without blood-shedding, but for that it representeth and reporteth unto our minds that one and everlasting sacrifice that Christ made in His body upon the cross.… This remembrance and oblation of praises and rendering of thanks unto God for our redemption in the blood of Christ is called of the old fathers ‘an unbloody sacrifice’.… Our prayers, our praises, our thanksgiving unto God for our salvation in the death of Christ is called an unbloody sacrifice.”

Edmund Grindal was born in 1519. He was ordained in 1544 by the Bishop of Winchester. During the reign of Mary he took refuge at Strasburg and other places abroad. He returned to England in December, 1558. In 1559 he was consecrated Bishop of London. In 1570 he became Archbishop of York, and in 1575 Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1583 he died. His opinions on the Eucharist, as expressed in his Fruitful Dialogue between Custom and Verity, much resembled those of Cranmer, though to some extent marked by the doctrine held by Bucer.

“It is not strange, nor a thing unwont in the Scriptures, to call one thing by another’s name. So that you can no more of necessity enforce the changing of the bread into Christ’s body in the Sacrament because the words be plain, ‘This is My body,’ than the wife’s flesh to be the natural and real body and flesh of the husband because it is written, ‘They are not two, but one flesh,’ or the altar of stone to be very God because Moses with evident and plain words pronounced it to be ‘The mighty God of Israel’. … Nothing is done in remembrance of itself. But the Sacrament is used in the remembrance of Christ. Therefore the Sacrament is not Christ. Christ never devoured Himself. Christ did eat the Sacrament with His Apostles. Ergo, the Sacrament is not Christ Himself.”

“Whereas I say that Christ’s body must be received and taken with faith, I mean not that you shall pluck down Christ from heaven and put Him in your faith as in a visible place; but that you must with your faith rise and spring up to Him, and leaving this world dwell above in heaven, putting all your trust, comfort, and consolation in Him which suffered grievous bondage to set you at liberty and to make you free, creeping into His wounds, which were so cruelly pierced and dented for your sake. So shall you feed on the body of Christ; so shall you suck the blood that was poured out and shed for you. This is the spiritual, the very true, the only eating of Christ’s body.”

“Seeing all the old fathers do constantly agree in one, that the body of Christ is ascended into heaven, and there remaineth at the right hand of the Father, and cannot be in more than one place, I do conclude that the Sacrament is not the body of Christ; first, because it is not in heaven, neither sitteth at the Father’s right hand; moreover, because it is in a hundred thousand boxes, whereas Christ’s body filleth but one place; furthermore, if the bread were turned into the body of Christ, then it would necessarily follow that sinners and unpenitent persons receive the body of Christ.”

Edwin Sandys was born in the same year as Grindal, 1519. In 1553, when Edward VI. died, he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. At the beginning of the reign of Mary he was imprisoned for nearly nine months. On being released, he took refuge abroad. On hearing the news of Queen Mary’s death in 1558, he returned to England. In 1559 he was consecrated Bishop of Worcester. He succeeded Grindal as Bishop of London in 1570, and as Archbishop of York in 1516. The passages in his Sermons treating of the Eucharist contain much the same doctrine as that of Grindal.

“In this Sacrament there are two things, a visible sign and an invisible grace: there is a visible sacramental sign of bread and wine, and there is the thing and matter signified, namely, the body and blood of Christ: there is an earthly matter and an heavenly matter. The outward sacramental sign is common to all, as well the bad as the good. Judas received the Lord’s bread, but not that bread which is the Lord to the faithful receiver. The spiritual part, that which feedeth the soul, only the faithful do receive. For he cannot be partaker of the body of Christ which is no member of Christ’s body. This food offered us at the Lord’s Table is to feed our souls withal; it is meat for the mind, and not for the belly. Out souls, being spiritual, can neither receive nor digest that which is corporal; they feed only upon spiritual food. It is the spiritual eating that giveth life. ‘The flesh,’ saith Christ, ‘doth nothing profit.’ We must lift up ourselves from these external and earthly signs, and like eagles fly up and soar aloft, there to feed on Christ, which sitteth on the right hand of His Father, whom the heavens shall keep until the latter day. From thence and from no other altar shall He come in His natural body to judge both quick and dead. His natural body is local, for else it were not a natural body: His body is there, therefore not here: for a natural body doth not occupy sundry places at once. Here we have a Sacrament, a sign, a memorial, a commemoration, a representation, a figure effectual, of the body and blood of Christ.… Seeing then that Christ in His natural body is absent from hence, seeing He is risen and is not here, seeing He hath left the world and is gone to His Father, ‘How shall I,’ saith St. Augustine, ‘lay hold on Him which is absent? How shall I put my hand into heaven? Send up thy faith, and thou hast taken hold’; ‘Why preparest thou thy teeth? Believe, and thou Mast eaten.’ Thy teeth shall not do Him violence, neither thy stomach contain His glorious body. Thy faith must reach up into heaven. By faith He is seen, by faith He is touched, by faith He is digested. Spiritually by faith we feed upon Christ, when we steadfastly believe that His body was broken, and His blood shed for us, upon the cross, by which sacrifice, offered once for all, as sufficient for all, our sins were freely remitted, blotted out, and washed away. This is our heavenly bread, our spiritual food. This doth strengthen our souls and cheer our hearts. Sweeter it is unto us than honey when we are certified by this outward Sacrament of the inward grace given unto us through His death, when in Him we are assured of remission of sins and eternal life.… Time will not suffer me to let you see the absurdities of the popish unsavoury opinions in this matter, neither to confute their vain allegations and false collections, abusing the Scriptures, dreaming evermore with the gross Capernaites of a carnal and a fleshly eating. Behold the one part of this Sacrament consecrated is termed bread, the other a cup, by the Apostle himself.”

“In the Eucharist or Supper of the Lord our corporal tasting of the visible elements bread and wine showeth the heavenly nourishing of our souls unto life by the mystical participation of the glorious body and blood of Christ. For inasmuch as He saith of one of these sacred elements, ‘This is My body which is given for you,’ and of the other, ‘This is My blood,’ He giveth us plainly to understand that all the graces which may flow from the body and blood of Christ Jesus are in a mystery here not represented only but presented unto us. So then, although we see nothing, feel and taste nothing, but bread and wine, nevertheless let us not doubt at all but that He spiritually performeth that which He doth declare and promise by His visible and outward signs; that is to say, that in this Sacrament there is offered unto the Church that very true and heavenly bread which feedeth and nourisheth us unto life eternal, that sacred blood which will cleanse us from sin and make us pure in the day of trial. Again, in that He saith, ‘Take, eat: drink ye all of this,’ He evidently declareth that His body and blood are by this Sacrament assured to be no less ours than His, He being incorporate into us, and as it were made one with us. That He became Man, it was for our sake: for our behoof and benefit He suffered: for us He rose again: for us He ascended into heaven; and finally for us He will come again in judgment. And thus hath He made Himself all ours; ours His passions, ours His merits, ours His victory, ours His glory; and therefore He giveth Himself and all His in this Sacrament wholly unto us. The reason and course whereof is this. In His word He hath promised and certified us of remission of sins, in His death; of righteousness, in His merits; of life, in His resurrection; and in His ascension, of heavenly and everlasting glory. This promise we take hold of by faith, which is the instrument of our salvation; but because our faith is weak and staggering through the frailty of our mortal flesh, He hath given us this visible Sacrament as a seal and sure pledge of His irrevocable promise, for the more assurance and confirmation of our feeble faith.… To bear with our infirmity, and to make us more secure of His promise, to His writing and word He added these outward signs and seals, to establish our faith, and to certify us that His promise is most certain. He giveth us therefore these holy and visible signs of bread and wine, and saith, ‘Take and eat, this is My body and blood,’ giving unto the signs the names which are proper to the things signified by them; as we use to do even in common speech, when the sign is a lively representation and image of the thing.”

“In the time of the Gospel the Apostles had, and at this day also Christians have, their sacrifices, which, being faithfully offered, are graciously accepted in the sight of God. Sacrificing is a voluntary action whereby we worship God, offering Him somewhat in token that we acknowledge Him to be the Lord, and ourselves His servants.… In the Scriptures I find a threefold priesthood allowed of God,—a Levitical priesthood such as that of Aaron and his sons, a royal priesthood figured in Melchizedek and verified in Christ, a spiritual priesthood belonging generally to all Christians.… Where the popish priesthood taketh footing, in what ground the foundation thereof is laid, I cannot find in the Scriptures. Antichrist is the author of that priesthood: to him they sacrifice, him they serve.… There remaineth no other sacrifice to be daily offered but the sacrifice of ‘righteousness’ which we must all offer. At the hands of the minister it is required that he feed the flock committed unto his charge; this is righteousness in him, it is his sacrifice.… Let magistrates … execute justice without fear or favour when need requireth, and so shall they offer up the sacrifice.… We must all sacrifice unto the Lord with our goods, with our minds, and with our bodies.… Let us … offer Him sacrifice, as of our bodies, so likewise of our minds, repentance and praise.… The other sacrifice of the mind is praise, which consisteth in thanksgiving and petition.… The second part of this our sacrifice of praise is to pour out requests and supplications.”

Sandys thus affirms, like Cranmer, that faithful communicants receive the grace and virtue of the body of Christ. He appears to have held, like Bucer, that they are so uplifted by faith in the reception of the sacrament as to have actual participation of the body of Christ in heaven. He leaves no room for a sacrifice in the Eucharist other than such as there may be in all good actions, repentance, praise, thanksgiving, and prayer.

Thomas Becon supplies a representative of the most extreme type of the English Reformers. He was born in 1511 or 1512; he was ordained about 1538; he became Vicar of Brensett in Kent. On the accession of Edward VI. he was appointed Rector of St. Stephen, Walbrook, and Archbishop Cranmer made him one of his chaplains and one of the six preachers of Canterbury Cathedral. When Mary became queen, he was deprived of his benefice and was imprisoned as a seditious preacher. After seven months’ imprisonment he was released, and took refuge at Strasburg. On the death of Queen Mary he returned to England, and was re-instated in his preferments; and afterwards became Rector of Buckland in Hertfordshire, Vicar of Christ Church, Newgate Street, and Rector of St. Dionis Backchurch. He died about 1570. Most of his writings belong to the reign of Elizabeth.

The violence of Becon’s language, and its frequently unseemly and sometimes indecent character, have tended to discredit his works. Yet he was a man of learning and ability, and his writings, painful reading as they are, are well worth study as illustrating lines of thought of his day. His repudiation of the sacrifice of the Mass included a rejection of any “proper” or “propitiatory” or “satisfactory” or “expiatory” sacrifice in the Eucharist; as to the Eucharistic presence, he appears to have wavered between Virtualism, such as that held by Cranmer, and the Zwinglian opinion that the Sacrament is merely symbolical of Christ.

“The papists cannot be content with this doctrine, that the Supper of the Lord (which they more gladly term ‘the Mass’) should be a memorial or remembrance of that sacrifice which Christ Himself offered on the cross; but they will have it the self-same sacrifice, of the same virtue, strength, efficacy, might, and power, to save the souls both of the quick and dead.… They say that they offer up Christ the Son of God unto His heavenly Father, for a sacrifice both for the sins of the quick and of the dead.… To stablish a new sacrifice to take away sin is nothing else than to affirm and grant that the old sacrifice (I mean the death of Christ) is either of no force or else it is imperfect. For if the death of Christ be of full force and sufficiently perfect, yea, and to the uttermost able to take away the sins of the whole world (as it is indeed), what need we the Missal sacrifice lately brought in by the devil and antichrist?… Forasmuch as the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a certain representative image of the passion of Christ, which is the alone true sacrifice, therefore the holy fathers many times call the Lord’s Supper a sacrifice. Now, if the Lord’s Supper be not properly a sacrifice, but only a memorial of the true sacrifice, which is the passion and death of Christ, how can the Massing priests brag that their Mass (in the which many things are done contrary to the institution of Christ) is a propitiatory, satisfactory, and expiatory sacrifice for the sins of the quick and of the dead?… The Lord’s Supper, although an holy institution or ordinance of Christ, is not a sacrifice to put away sin, but a memorial of that one and alone true sacrifice which Christ Himself offered on the cross for the abolishing of the world’s sin; and … the Mass, which is but the invention of man, and containeth in it many absurdities, abuses, and errors, is no propitiatory, expiatory, or satisfactory sacrifice, as the adversaries brag, to put away the sins of the quick and of the dead, or, as some write, necessary ad salutem.”

“The Massmonger is become so impudent and without shame that he feareth nothing most ungodly and wickedly to affirm, teach, and hold that Christ by His death did only put away original sin; and as for all other sins, saith he, they must be purged, cleansed, and put away by the sacrifice of the Mass: which is so great a blasphemy against the Son of God, against His one and alone everlasting sacrifice, against His passion, death, and blood, whereby alone we are for ever and ever sanctified, made holy, and sealed up unto everlasting life, that none of Satan himself can be devised or imagined greater or more heinous.”

“The Lord’s Supper … after the definition of St. Paul … is the partaking of the body and blood of Christ.… The Lord’s Supper is an holy and heavenly banquet, in the which the faithful Christians, besides the corporal eating of the bread and the outward drinking of the wine, do spiritually through faith both eat the body of Christ and drink His blood, unto the confirmation of their faith, the comfort of their conscience, and the salvation of their souls.… The Supper … is a spiritual food, in which Christ Jesus the Son of God witnesses that He is the living Bread, wherewith our souls are fed unto everlasting life.… The Supper of the Lord is an Holy Sacrament instituted of the Lord Jesu, to be a commemoration and a perpetual remembrance of His body-breaking and blood-shedding, yea, of His passion and death on the altar of the cross, that the faithful communicants, eating and receiving those holy mysteries (I mean the bread and wine sanctified in the body and blood of Christ), should earnestly set before their eyes the death of Christ and all the benefits which they have received through the same; that is to say, the grace, favour, and mercy of God, remission of sins, quietness of conscience, freedom from the captivity of Satan, from the curse of the law, from the sting of death, and from everlasting damnation, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and assurance of eternal life; and that by this means they should be provoked and stirred up to magnify and praise our heavenly Father, for this His unoutspeakable kindness and exceeding great love. Or on this wise briefly: The Supper of the Lord is a memorial of Christ’s death.”

“The doctrine of Transubstantiation … is a papistical, wicked, and devilish error.… As the doctrine of Transubstantiation is vain and false … so likewise the doctrine of Christ’s corporal presence in the Sacrament is most vain, false, and erroneous.… Forasmuch as the body of Christ, although immortal and glorified, is, remaineth, and abideth still a creature, and is not swallowed up, as I may so speak, of the divine nature, but, being joined to the divine nature, abideth still a creature, and very Man, it therefore followeth most certainly that Christ’s body, taken up into heaven, neither is, neither can be, both in heaven and in earth at once.… As touching His bodily presence, Christ is in heaven, yea, in heaven only.”

“Christ calleth the bread His body, not that it is His natural body indeed but because it representeth, signifieth, declareth, preacheth, and setteth forth His body unto us; and hath also, as I may so speak, certain properties with the body of Christ. For as the bread is broken of the faithful in the action of the Lord’s Supper, so was Christ’s body broken on the altar of the cross. And as the bread nourisheth, preserveth, and comforteth the body, when it is eaten, so likewise the body of Christ nourisheth, preserveth, and comforteth both the body and the soul of the faithful communicants.… The Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood is called the body and blood of Christ, not that they be the things themselves, but they be so called because they be the figures, Sacraments, and representations of the things which they signify, and whereof they bear the names.”

“Christ is truly present at the holy banquet of His most holy body and blood, not in His humanity but in His divinity, not corporally but spiritually, not in quality and quantity but in virtue and majesty.… Christ … is none otherwise eaten and received of the godly communicants than after a spiritual and divine manner.… The true eating of the body of Christ, and the drinking of His blood in the Sacrament, is not corporal but spiritual, not done with the mouth of the body but with the faith of the soul.”

“The Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood is not the very self real and natural body and blood of Christ, but an holy sign, figure, and token of His blessed body and precious blood. For this word ‘Sacrament’ is as much to say as a sign of a holy thing. Now that which is the sign of a thing cannot be the thing itself. And though Thy Son called the bread His body, and the wine His blood, because the disciples should the better remember the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood (as He likewise called Himself a vine, a door, a rock, when notwithstanding He was neither natural vine, material door, or stony rock, but only likened unto them for certain properties which He hath with the vine, door, and rock), yet is neither the bread His natural body nor the wine His natural blood, as divers of the ancient doctors do declare and prove, but only a figure of His body and blood. The bread is called Christ’s body because it visibly preacheth and bringeth to our remembrance the breaking of Christ’s body. The wine also is called Christ’s blood because it putteth us in remembrance of the shedding of Christ’s blood.”