'Every part of the water of baptism, every part of the bread broken': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner' and our partaking of "whole Christ"
In the previous post in this series, we have seen how Gardiner enjoyed invoking the Holy Communion in BCP 1549 against Cranmer. We now come to another example of this:
In the Book of Common Prayer, now at this time set forth in this realm, it is ordered to teach the people, that in each part of the bread consecrate, broken, is the whole body of our Saviour Christ, which is agreeable to the catholic doctrine.
Gardiner is here referring to the rubric at the conclusion of the 1549 Holy Communion, explaining why communicants received a broken rather than unbroken wafer:
For advoyding of all matters and occasyon of dyscencyon, it is mete that the breade prepared for the Communion, bee made, through all thys realme, after one sort and fashion: that is to say, unleavened, and rounde, as it was afore, but without all maner of printe, and somethyng more larger and thicker than it was, so that it may be aptly devided in divers pieces: and every one shall be devided in two pieces, at the leaste, or more, by the discrecion of the minister, and so distributed. And menne muste not thynke lesse to be receyved in parte then in the whole, but in eache of them the whole body of our saviour Jesu Christ.
The purpose of the rubric is clear. There is no less efficacy to Holy Communion because communicants receive part of a wafer rather than a whole wafer: they do not thereby receive 'less' of Christ. Gardiner, of course, interpreted the rubric for his own purposes. He ignored its emphasis upon reception and instead declared that it meant each part of the bread contained Christ:
in the Book of Common Prayer it is truly said, in each part of the bread consecrate broken to be Christ's whole body.
Cranmer, in his Answer to Gardiner (1551), pointed out, as the author of the rubric, that its emphasis was indeed upon reception of the broken bread:
And as for the Book of Common Prayer, although it say that in each part of the bread broken is received the whole body of Christ, yet it saith not so of the parts unbroken ...
It is in receiving in faith the broken bread of the Eucharist that we sacramentally feed on Christ. This is why, as Cranmer points out, the rubric makes no claim for the unbroken bread. We might regard this as a 'low' sacramental claim, an example of the caricature that is described by its opponents as 'mere Receptionism'. This, however, is very different indeed from what Cranmer is claiming. Our partaking of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the broken bread of the Supper is just like our partaking of Christ and the Holy Spirit through the water of the font. In both cases, the fulness of Christ and the Holy Spirit is communicated to us, in the pouring of water from the font, in the broken bread of the Eucharist:
But as in baptism we receive the Holy Ghost, and put Christ upon us, as well if we be christened in one dish full of water taken out of the font, as if we were christened in the whole font or river; so we be as truly fed, refreshed, and comforted by Christ, receiving a piece of the bread at the Lord's holy table, as if we did eat an whole loaf. For as in every part of the water in baptism is whole Christ and the Holy Spirit, sacramentally, so be they in every part of the bread broken, but not corporally and naturally.
Full immersion in the font or a river is no more efficacious than water poured from the font. Consuming the whole loaf - "somethyng more larger and thicker than it was" in the pre-Reformation rite - is no more efficacious than eating a portion of broken bread. Why? Because "every part of the water in baptism is whole Christ and the Holy Spirit", as it is with the "every part of the bread broken". Here the very fullness of Christ in the Holy Spirit is sacramentally communicated to us: "whole Christ and the Holy Spirit".
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