'Wheresoever the eating is, the effect must be also': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner' and our partaking of Christ

Now, where the author, to exclude the mystery of corporal manducation, bringeth forth of St. Augustine such words as entreat of the effect and operation of the worthy receiving of the sacrament, the handling is not so sincere as this matter requireth.

In his defence of our partaking of Christ in the holy Sacrament was by "corporal manducation", Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, accused Cranmer of deliberately misinterpreting Augustine. Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551), responds by again quoting Augustine, from De Doctrina Christiana, "where he saith, that 'the eating and drinking of Christ's flesh and blood is a figurative speech'" - in other words, that our partaking of Christ is not by corporal manducation.

For Cranmer, corporal manducation was to be rejected not because it made an excessive claim for the Sacrament but, rather, because mere corporal manducation failed to recognise the nature of our spiritual partaking of Christ:

Wherefore the eating of Christ's flesh must needs be otherwise understanded, than after the proper and common eating of other meats with the mouth, which eating after such sort could avail nothing. And therefore St. Augustine in that place declareth the eating of Christ's flesh to be only a figurative speech. And he openeth the figure so, as the eating must be meant with the mind, not with the mouth, that is to say, by chawing and digesting in our minds, to our great consolation and profit, that Christ was crucified and died for us. Thus doth St. Augustine open the figure and meaning of Christ, when he spake of the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. 

Cranmer also emphasised that such partaking of Christ is also a partaking of His divinity, as affirmed by the Council of Ephesus:

And his flesh being thus eaten, it must also be joined unto his Divinity, or else it could not give everlasting life, as Cyril and the Council Ephesine truly decreed. 

This leads to Cranmer's key point. It is not that Winchester is making an excessive claim for the Sacrament. Rather, it is that Winchester - contra Cyprian and Augustine - is minimising the grace and truth of our partaking of Christ, for to feed on Him is to dwell in Him:

But St. Augustine declared the figurative speech of Christ to be in the eating, not in the union. And whereas to shift off the plain words of Christ spoken in the sixth of John, "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him", you say, that dwelling in Christ is not the manducation: you say herein directly against St. Cyprian, who saith, "quod mansio nostra in ipso, sit manducatio," "that our dwelling in him, is the eating". And also against St. Augustine, whose words be  these: "Hoc est ergo manducare escam illam, et illum bibere potum, in Christo manere, et illum manentem in se habere," "This is to eat that meat, and drink that drink, to dwell in Christ, and to have Christ dwelling in him." 

We cannot partake of Christ without also thereby dwelling in Him - such is the saving power of Christ:

And although the eating and drinking of Christ be here defined by the effect, for the very eating is the believing, yet wheresoever the eating is, the effect must be also, if the definition of St. Augustine be truly given. And therefore although good and bad eat carnally with their teeth bread, being the sacrament of Christ's body, yet no man eateth his very flesh, which is spiritually eaten, but he that dwelleth in Christ, and Christ in him.

Winchester's definition of the Sacrament as corporal manducation is not, then, an excessively 'high' understanding. The opposite is the case. It radically understates what it is to partake of Christ. Likewise, Cranmer's insistence that "the very eating is believing" is no 'low' view of the Sacrament. Instead, it recognises that "wheresoever the eating is, the effect must to also". To feed on Christ, to partake of Him, is to be in Him.