laudable Practice

And albeit this author would not have them bare tokens, yet and they be only tokens ... One can almost hear the contempt with which Gardiner, in the above quote, used the word "tokens" with reference to Cranmer's doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Noting Cranmer's denial that the Bread and Wine are "bare tokens", Gardiner suggests that this denial misses the point - the Bread and Wine are still then "only tokens". Cranmer, however, does not run from the term in his Answer to Gardiner (1551). In fact, he confidently embraces it, affirming that the Bread and Wine in the Supper are indeed "tokens": Is therefore the whole use of the bread in the whole action and ministration of the Lord's holy Supper but a naked or nude and bare token? Is not one loaf being broken and distributed among faithful people in the Lord's Supper, taken and eaten of them, a token that the body of Christ was broken and crucified for them? and is to them spiri...

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...