The Reformers' Doctrine of Holy Communion

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_066_2_SydneyCarter.pdf

[Churchman] 30 Oct 2009--“We will have the Sacrament to hang over the high altar, there to be worshipped and only to be delivered to the lay people at Easter, and then only in one kind.” “We will have the Mass in Latin, as was before, and celebrated by the priest without any man or woman communicating with him.”1

These were the demands of the ‘Rebels in the West’ to Cranmer in 1549, and they illustrate clearly the medieval practice and teaching concerning the Eucharist which our Reformers strongly condemned. They also prove that the doctrine of the Holy Communion centred round two closely related questions. Are the Body and Blood of Christ literally present in,under or with the consecrated elements, or only present to faith? The Reformers definitely declared that they were ‘only present to faith’. Is the Lord’s Supper the commemoration of a finished sacrifice or is it itself a propitiatory material sacrifice? The Reformers taught the former and denied the latter.

Cranmer’s direct answer to these ‘Rebels’ was that in Apostolic times the bread had never been ‘reserved’ or ‘worshipped’ (i.e. made to “hang over the high altar”), but used by the faithful as a divinely appointed means of fellowship and communion. Instead of being delivered to the lay people only at Easter, which was their demand, Cranmer declared that “all learned and godly men have exhorted Christian people often to receive the Communion”, and that in the Apostles’ time people received it every day, and afterwards three or four times a week, and ‘commonly everywhere once a week’”.2 We find confirmation of this statement in Acts xx.7 in connection with St. Paul’s visit to Troas, that “upon the first day of the week the disciples gathered together to break bread”. And the Didache, at the end of the first
century, enjoins that “on the Lord’s day” all Christians should “come together and break bread”;3 although some scholars now hold that this refers to a Jewish fellowship meal rather than to the Lord’s Supper. In Justin’s Apology, a weekly celebration of the Eucharist is carefully described. We then get a gap in records for about two centuries, and it is from this latter period that Cranmer’s further remarks probably apply, when he adds: “When the Spirit of God began to wax more cold in men’s hearts, then their desire was not so hot to receive the Communion as before. And as the world waxed more wicked, the more people withdrew themselves from the Holy Communion. But to them that live godly it is the greatest comfort that in this world can be imagined”.4 And he also reminds them of an early decree ordering
that all Christians “must receive the Communion at least three times a year, at Easter,Whitsun, and Christmas”.