'A naked or nude and bare token?': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner'

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And albeit this author would not have them bare tokens, yet and they be only tokens ...

One can almost hear the contempt with which Gardiner, in the above quote, used the word "tokens" with reference to Cranmer's doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Noting Cranmer's denial that the Bread and Wine are "bare tokens", Gardiner suggests that this denial misses the point - the Bread and Wine are still then "only tokens".

Cranmer, however, does not run from the term in his Answer to Gardiner (1551). In fact, he confidently embraces it, affirming that the Bread and Wine in the Supper are indeed "tokens":

Is therefore the whole use of the bread in the whole action and ministration of the Lord's holy Supper but a naked or nude and bare token? Is not one loaf being broken and distributed among faithful people in the Lord's Supper, taken and eaten of them, a token that the body of Christ was broken and crucified for them? and is to them spiritually and effectually given, and of them spiritually and fruitfully taken and eaten, to their spiritual and heavenly comfort, sustentation, and nourishment of their souls, as the bread is of their bodies? And what would you require more? Can there be any greater comfort to a Christian man than this? Is there nothing else but bare tokens?

When Cranmer expounds how the tokens of Bread and Wine in the Holy Communion are "tokens" for our "comfort", we hear an echo of the invitation in his 1549 and 1552 rites - "drawe nere and take this holy Sacrament to your comforte". The word contemptuously used by Gardiner becomes for Cranmer a means of comfort as we approach the Lord's Table: these tokens are the assurance "that Christ died for thee" and that we "feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving".

The Bread and Wine in the Lord's Supper, therefore, are "tokens" but not "only tokens". They are tokens instituted by Christ and accompanied by His gracious promise:

But how can he be taken for a good Christian man, that thinketh that Christ did ordain his sacramental signs and tokens in vain, without effectual grace and operation? ...  And therefore as the bread is outwardly eaten in deed in the Lord's Supper, so is the very body of Christ inwardly by faith eaten in deed of all them that come thereto in such sort as they ought to do, which eating nourisheth them unto everlasting life.

A c.1577 English translation of a sermon on the Supper by Bullinger likewise used this understanding of "tokens", demonstrating how the term could be used in a rich eucharistic theology:

ordeyned for the Churche, by Iesus Christe, our Lord, Redemer, and high Priest, wherby, in setting before vs in this Banquet, the bread and the wine, being mystical tokens and pledges ... moreouer, he representeth or signifieth by these tokens and pledges, reneweth, & as it were setteth before our senses his giftes or benefites, which the faithful receiue.

The fact that Cranmer did not flee from the use of "tokens", but confidently embraced and defended it, is an indication of how the term could have popular resonance in a Reformed eucharistic piety, for these "tokens" are not "bare tokens" or "only tokens", but tokens bearing Christ's promise to us:

as the washing outwardly in water is not a vain token, but teacheth such a washing as God worketh inwardly in them that duly receive the same: so likewise is not the bread a vain token, but showeth and preacheth to the godly receiver, what God worketh in him by his almighty power secretly and invisibly. 

It is worth noting that the post-communion prayer appointed for use in the Church of Ireland BCP 2004 on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity employs the very term here used and defended by Cranmer:

Eternal God, we have received these tokens of your promise. May we who have been nourished with holy things live as faithful heirs of your promised kingdom. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is a reminder that there can be a contemporary use of 'token' which evokes Cranmer's sacramental theology.

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