'They affirm not such a gross presence of Christ's body': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner' and the Lutherans

In his attack on Cranmer's Swiss eucharistic theology, Gardiner turns to sources he otherwise definitively rejected:

Justus Jonas hath translate a Catechism out of Dutch into Latin, taught in the city of Noremberge in Germany, where Hosiander is chief preacher: in which Catechism, they be accounted for no true Christian men that deny the presence of Christ's body in the sacrament. The words "really" and "substantially" be not expressed, as they be in Bucer, but the word "truly" is there: and as Bucer saith, that is substantially ... Philip Melancton, no papist nor priest, writeth a very wise Epistle in this matter to Ecolampadius, and signifying soberly his belief of the presence of Christ's very body in the sacrament.

Invoking the prominent Lutheran theologians Melanchton and Jonas, and Bucer's eirenic eucharistic theology (a via media between Wittenberg and Zurich), Gardiner followed what is now a common, predictable path amongst papalist critics of the Reformed: the Lutherans and Bucer were deployed to critique the Reformed understanding of the Lord's presence in the Supper, with the implication that they stood much closer to the Roman view than to the Swiss.

Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner, had no time for such claims from one whose hatred of Lutherans was well known:

you be fain to flee for succour unto Martin Luther, Bucer, Jonas, Melancthon and Æpinus, whose names before were wont to be so hateful unto you, that you could never with patience abide the hearing of them ... And yet now you be glad to flee to them for succour, whom ye take for God's enemies, and to whom you have ever had a singular hatred.

On the issue of their eucharistic theology, Cranmer does not deny the differences between the Lutherans and the Swiss Reformed. Such differences, however, should not obscure the Lutherans' outright rejection of Roman doctrines:

And yet not one of these new men, whom you allege, do throughly agree with your doctrine, either in transubstantiation, or in carnal eating and drinking of Christ's flesh and blood, or in the sacrifice of Christ in the mass, nor yet thoroughly in the real presence. For they affirm not such a gross presence of Christ's body, as expelleth the substance of bread, and is made by conversion thereof into the substance of Christ's body, and is eaten with the mouth. 

Cranmer's insistence that the Lutherans are much closer to the Swiss, sharing the same rejection of key doctrines, than to the Romans is significant. Indeed, it is rather easy to point to similarities in the thought of Luther and Cranmer. Luther's rejection of transubstantiation as "an absurd and unheard-of juggling with words", a figment of the human mind, for it rests neither on the Scriptures nor on reason" is often echoed by Cranmer. Likewise, Luther's declaration "I have overthrown the devil’s ungodly un-Christian priesthood and also proved that the mass may not be called a sacrifice" could easily have been spoken by Cranmer. As for his view of the Mass as a sacrifice, the same view was found in Cranmer's True and Catholic Doctrine:

I have consoled those whose consciences are weak and have instructed them so that they may know and recognize that there is no sacrifice in the New Testament other than the sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of praise which are mentioned in the Scriptures; so that no one has any cause to doubt that the mass is not a sacrifice - Luther;

Therefore when the old fathers called the mass, or Supper of the Lord, a sacrifice, they meant that it was a sacrifice of lauds and thanksgiving, and so as well the people as the priest do sacrifice; or else that it was a remembrance of the very true sacrifice propitiatory of Christ: but they meant in no wise that it is a very true sacrifice for sin, and applicable by the priest to the quick and dead - Cranmer.

We might also detect in this something of the origins of Jewel's view that the differences between the Lutherans and Swiss on the Sacrament were not fundamental:

And as for those persons, whom they upon spite call Zuinglians and Lutherians, in very deed they of both sides be Christians, good friends and brethren. They vary not betwixt themselves upon the principles and foundations of our religion, nor as touching God, nor Christ, nor the Holy Ghost, nor of the means of justification, nor yet everlasting life, but upon one only question, which is neither weighty nor great.

Gardiner entirely missed the point with his invocation of the Lutherans and Bucer: they stood on the same side of the Reformation divide as the Swiss and Cranmer regarding the sacrifice of the Mass and transubstantiation.

All that said, there is one further point to be made. Cranmer went on to say that even if the Lutherans were to affirm Christ's presence in the Sacrament in the same manner as transubstantiation, this would not alter the position:

And yet if they did, the ancient authors that were next unto Christ's time, whom I have alleged, may not give place unto these new men in this matter, although they were men of excellent learning and judgment, howsoever it liketh you to accept them.

It is a fascinating insight into the significance of patristic thought for Cranmer and for the advocates of Swiss eucharistic theology. As Cranmer stated in his True and Catholic Doctrine, he adhered to the sacramental teaching of "the holy fathers of the old Church".