'To the worthy receivers Christ himself': Cranmer's 'Answer to Gardiner' and BCP 1549 as a Reformed text

Heare us (O merciful father) we besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to blesse and sanctifie these thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christe.

This invocation from BCP 1549 provided another opportunity for Gardiner to mischievously use the text of Cranmer's liturgy to argue against its author's eucharistic theology. According to Gardiner:

The body of Christ is by God's omnipotency, who so worketh in his word, made present unto us at such time as the Church prayeth it may please him so to do, which prayer is ordered to be made in the Book of Common Prayer now set forth. Wherein we require of God the creatures of bread and wine to be sanctified, and to be to us the body and blood of Christ, which they cannot be, unless God worketh it, and make them so to be ... by the conversion of the substance of bread into his precious body.

One can imagine Cranmer's disdain for this use of his liturgy, a liturgy which enshrined a key understanding and practice of the Swiss eucharistic theologies - "without any elevacion, or shewing the Sacrament to the people". In countering Gardiner's argument, Cranmer - in his Answer to Gardiner (1551) - after importantly reiterating that the Lord is always present with His Church, emphasises that the invocation is a blessing of the Bread and Wine unto our use:

Christ is present whensoever the Church prayeth unto him, and is gathered together in his name; and the bread and wine be made unto us the body and blood of Christ, (as it is in the Book of Common Prayer,) but not by changing the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ's natural body and blood, but that in the godly using of them they be unto the receivers Christ's body and blood ...

Cranmer goes on to emphasise that the key phrase in the invocation is 'that they may be unto us':

so is the water in baptism, and the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, to the worthy receivers Christ himself and eternal life, and to the unworthy receivers everlasting death and damnation; not by conversion of one substance into another, but by godly or ungodly use thereof. And therefore in the Book of the holy communion, we do not pray absolutely that the bread and wine maybe made the body and blood of Christ, but that unto us in that holy mystery they may be so; that is to say, that we may so worthily receive the same, that we may be partakers of Christ's body and blood, and that therewith in spirit and in truth we may be spiritually nourished.

The invocation is not for "conversion of one substance into another" but, rather, that by the blessing of Word and Spirit the use of the Bread and Wine would be changed, making them sacramental signs to those who receive them in faith. The petition, therefore, was not at all inconsistent with the Swiss eucharistic theologies. As Zwingli had declared in An Exposition of the Faith:

The bread is no longer common, but consecrated. It is called bread, but it is also called the body of Christ. Indeed, it is in fact the body of Christ, but only in name and signification, or, as we now say, sacramentally.

Likewise, the Consensus Tigurinus affirmed "that the bread and wine are said to be that which they signify".

1549's invocation, then, provided Gardiner with nothing more, as Diarmaid MacCulloch has famously declared, than "theological fools' gold". That said, Gardiner's mischief-making clearly had consequences. In the 1552 rite, the invocation was very significantly reformed:

Heare us O mercyefull father wee beeseche thee; and graunt that wee, receyving these thy creatures of bread and wyne, accordinge to thy sonne our Savioure Jesus Christ's holy institucion, in remembraunce of his death and passion, maye be partakers of his most blessed body and bloud ...

This fundamental revision of the invocation ensured that the sight of even fools' gold disappeared. That said, the structure of the invocation remains. The petition is addressed to God the Father, who works by His Word and Spirit; it concerns our receiving of the Bread and Wine; that through this reception of the Bread and Wine, we might partake of the Lord's Body and Blood. The removal of the phrase 'that they may be unto us' was not necessarily an outright rejection of the phrase in itself but, rather, of its misinterpretation. This is clear from Bucer's commentary on the invocation in his Censura: 

the words are wrested ... for the purpose of confirming and retaining fearful superstitions ... we know that this prayer is still, at this day, wrested ... to the retaining and confirming of that dogma of infinite impiety and contumely against God, the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. 

Indeed, the revised text Bucer himself proposes for the invocation is explicit about our partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood in the Sacrament:

Hear us, O merciful God (our) Father, and bless us, and sanctify us by Thy word and Spirit, that we may receive the body and blood of Thy Son from His own hand in these mysteries by a true faith for the meat and drink of eternal life ...

The transition from the 1549 to the 1552 invocation was not a turn to a 'lower' sacramental theology. The same eucharistic theology, articulated by Cranmer, defined both invocations. The absence in 1552 of the phrase 'that they may be unto us' allowed for a greater clarity in how the Bread and Wine are unto us the Lord's Body and Blood. It did not alter the truth that "the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper" is "to the worthy receivers Christ himself and eternal life".