'The marvellous work of God is in the feeding': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner' and the wonder of the Sacrament

As Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner (1553), reviews his opponent's critique of his eucharistic theology, he turns to what is perhaps the heart of that critique - that Cranmer denies the mystery of the Sacrament, reducing it to an empty ceremony:

But if it may now be thought seemly for us to be so bold, in so high a mystery to begin to discuss Christ's intent; what should move us to think, that Christ would use so many words, without effectual and real signification, as he rehearsed touching the mystery of this sacrament?

The nature of Cranmer's rebuttal of this accusation is significant. He invokes a series of patristic comments affirming that the Lord termed the bread and wine of the Sacrament His Body and Blood:

I have alleged Irene saying that "Christ confessed bread be his body, and the cup to be his blood." I have cited Tertullian, who saith, in many places, that "Christ called bread his body." I have brought in for the same purpose Cyprian, who saith, that "Christ called such bread as is made of many corns joined together, his body: and such wine he named his blood, as is pressed out of many grapes." I have written the words of Epiphanius, that "Christ speaking of a loaf, which is round in fashion, and can neither see, hear, nor feel, said of it, This is my body." And St. Hierom writing Ad Hedibiam saith, that "Christ called the bread which he brake, his body." And St. Augustine saith, that "Jesus called meat his body, and drink his blood " And Cyril saith more plainly, that "Christ called the pieces of bread his body." And last of all I brought forth Theodorete, whose saying is this, that "when Christ gave the holy mysteries he called bread his body, and the cup mixed with wine and water, he called his blood." All these authors I alleged, to prove that Christ called bread his body, and wine his blood.

This, Cranmer goes on to say, is "the true confession and belief of the universal Church from the beginning". He stands, therefore, with the patristic witnesses, declaring with them that the Lord calls "bread his body, and wine his blood". 

Is this, however, merely a clever debating point? The Fathers may declare that the Lord calls the bread and wine His Body and Blood, but does Cranmer believe that the faithful partake of that Body and Blood in the holy Sacrament? Cranmer here provides a quite wonderful declaration that, after the patristic witnesses, there is a true feeding on the Lord in the Sacrament:

Where you speak of the miraculous working of Christ, to make bread his body, you must first learn, that the bread works is not made really Christ's body, nor the wine his blood, sacramentally. And the miraculous working is not in the bread, but in them that duly eat the bread, and drink that drink. For the marvellous work of God is in the feeding, and it is Christian people that be fed, and not the bread.

In other words, against Gardiner's insistence of a "miraculous working" changing the bread and wine, Cranmer points to a greater, more substantive miracle: "the marvellous work of God is in the feeding". There is, yes, a change in the bread and wine: they become "sacramentally" Christ's Body and Blood - that is, the sign, assurance, and promise to us that we feed on Christ in these Mysteries. And this is the "miraculous working of Christ", that we truly feed on the Lord in what Cranmer terms "this holy sacrament of Christ's body and blood".