laudable Practice

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...

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 piec...

In his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd places the 1662 words of administration in the context of patristic usage: In the primitive Church the Priest pronounced these words, "The Body of Christ, or the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ," and the communicant answered "Amen." Afterwards the priests said, " The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ preserve thy soul unto eternal life," as appears from the Sacramentary of Gregory. The latter was, of course, preserved in the first reformed English liturgy of 1549, as Shepherd notes: The forms in Edward's first book, were "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life." And when the cup was presented, "The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life."  Once again, Shepherd - decades before 1833 - understands th...