laudable Practice

It is not at all original to read Hooker's exposition of the Sacraments in Book V of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity alongside the Consensus Tigurinus (the Consensus of Zurich), the 1549 agreement between the Churches of Zurich and Geneva on the Sacraments. Torrance Kirby , for example, has said that Hooker's teaching on the Sacraments as 'moral instruments' is "demonstrably in agreement with the Consensus Tigurinus". Similarly, Diarmaid MacCulloch regards Hooker's eucharistic views as being at home in "Bullinger's Zurich".  The purpose of this post, therefore, is not to offer any original commentary but to consider how the Consensus Tigurinus is significantly reflected in Hooker. The focus of this post is V.57.3-5 of the Laws . We begin, however, with a passage from the Laws just prior to V.57, as Hooker considers "The union or mutuall participation which is betweene Christ and the Church of Christ in this present worlde". In...

What other text is rest of the there in Scripture that encountereth with these words of Scripture, This is my body, whereby to alter the signification of them? There is no Scripture saith, Christ did not give his body, but the figure of his body ... Gardiner's words, quoted by Cranmer in his Answer to Gardiner  (1551), aptly summarise the core of his critique of Cranmer and, indeed, the core of the Roman and Lutheran critiques of the Swiss eucharistic theologies: "This is my body". The Swiss and their English supporters, it was alleged, pervert the Lord's words, emptying them of content, leaving only an empty figure. Cranmer's response is not to flee from or equivocate on the key affirmations of the Swiss eucharistic theologies, but to robustly reaffirm them: The Scripture is plain, and you confess also, that it was bread that Christ spake of, when he said, This is my body. And what need we any other Scripture to encounter with speech these words, seeing that all ...

In his Answer to Gardiner (1551), Cranmer responds to Gardiner's allegation that he taught, regarding the Sacraments, "there is nothing to be worshipped, for there is nothing present but in figure, and in a sign: which whosever saith, calleth the thing in deed absent". In doing so, Cranmer emphasises that while the water, bread, and wine of the Sacraments do not have within themselves grace, they are yet holy for they are signs of the truth and reality of God's grace: And as concerning the holiness of bread and wine, (whereunto I may add the water in baptism,) how can a dumb or an insensible and lifeless creature receive into itself any food, and feed thereupon? No more is it possible that a spiritless creature should receive any spiritual sanctification or holiness. And yet do I not utterly deprive the outward sacraments of the name of holy things, because of the holy use whereunto they serve, and not because of any holiness that lieth hid in the insensible creature...

Today commences a new series on laudable Practice , as we read through Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner (1551). We begin with an extract from Cranmer's 'A Preface to the Reader', in which he addresses the meaning of his affirmation that "Christ is present in them that worthily receive the sacrament" (words which will, of course, be made famous by Hooker: "The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament", LEP V.67.6): when I say and repeat many times in my book, that the body of Christ is present in them that worthily receive the sacrament, lest any man should mistake my words, and think that I mean, that although Christ be not corporally in the outward visible signs, yet he is corporally in the persons that duly receive them, this is to advertise the reader, that I mean no such thing, but my meaning is, that the force, the grace, the virtue, and be...