Gary W. Jenkins - John Jewel And The English National Church The Dilemmas Of An Erastian Reformer

now, that Christes body by his nativity dwelleth really, substantially,

and fleshly in our bodies, and certeinly our bodies dwell in many

places: therefor you are against your own doctrine.^63

Later in his rebuttal, Sander picked up on this when dealing with Jewel’s
treatment of what fleshly union entails, in it not being ‘fantastical’:

how construe you these wordes of St Paul? All the fulness of the

Godhead dwelleth corporally in Christ: is it only to say, it dwelleth

truly in Christ? Well: but it may dwell truly in Christ, though Christ

be not man: therefore by your exposition a phrase is found, whereby

the truth of Christes body may be wiped away, whensoever it

pleaseth the Protestants.

First published in Zurich in 1549, though not published in England until
1587, Bullinger’s Sermonum Decades had already reified Sander’s
warning that such notions would vitiate the Incarnation when the Zurich
Reformer posited that not only were the words of institution, hoc est
corpus meumto be seen as symbolic language, but so too were the
apostle John’s ‘the Word became flesh’, since the divine nature is
immutable and could not become flesh.^64 For the Catholics apologists, a
correct understanding of the Eucharist was inseparable from a right
apprehension of Christology.
The Catholics damned Jewel’s sacramental theology as well in regard
to his notion of Eucharistic consecration. Bishop Scot of Chester had
first raised this issue among the Elizabethans during debate of the bill of
uniformity, that the Protestant Communion service had no notion of
consecration, and that as such had no notion of either grace attendant to
the sacrament, or a doctrine of presence. Scot based his argument upon
Cranmer’s assertions that consecration was nothing more than
separating a thing from its common use to a use in a sacred manner. The
thing itself experienced neither change nor increase nor alteration, nor is
anything necessarily added to it.

Consecration is the separation of any thing from a profane and

worldly use unto a spiritual and godly use.

And therefore when usual and common water is taken from other

uses, and put to the use of baptism, in the name of the Father etc.,

then it may rightly be called consecrated water, that is to say, water

put to an holy use.

Even so when common bread and wine be taken and severed

from other bread and wine, to the use of the holy communion, that

portion of bread and wine, although it be of the same substance that

THE CATHOLIC REACTION TO JEWEL 145

(^63) Ibid., f. 389a.
(^64) Decades, V.9. p. 436. Cf. Rorem, ‘Calvin and Bullinger’, part II, p. 381, fn 181/76.
The endnotes for this two-part essay are confused, as in the text they run consecutively
over the two parts, but the numeration of the notes in the second part in the text of the
notes begins again at 1.