the other is from the which it is severed, yet it is now called
consecrated or holy bread and holy wine.
Not that the bread and wine have or can have any holiness in
them, but that they be used to an holy work, and represent holy and
godly things. And therefore St. Dionyse called the bread holy bread,
and the cup an holy cup, as soon as they be set upon the altar to the
use of the holy communion.
But specially they may be called holy and consecrated, when they
be separated to that holy use by Christ’s own words, which he spake
for that purpose, sayin of the bread, This is my body; and of the
wine,This is my blood.
So that commonly the authors, before those words be spoken, do
take the bread and wine but as other common bread and wine; but
after those words ... they take them for consecrated and holy bread
and wine.^65E.C. Ratcliff points out that for Cranmer the words of institution, far
from being what they were in the canon of the Mass, part of the rite
whereby the elements were changed into the body and blood of Christ,
now have only an intentional value, for the real referent is the
congregation. All mention of Christ having blessed the elements prior to
hoc estwhich was in the 1549 Prayer Book was removed from the 1552
edition, not to be restored in the Elizabethan one. For Cranmer, the use
of the elements in their respective rites, whether water or bread and
wine, constituted their consecration.^66
In answering Jewel’s Challenge Harding employed bishop Scot’s
arguments before the House of Lords in 1559 that the Church of
England lacked a true Eucharist for it lacked consecration.^67 Yet Jewel
was hardly happy to respond with Cranmer’s idea of a mere separation
toward an end appointed distinct from the elements of the Eucharist
itself. Jewel claimed that consecration, as Cranmer had said, was still
analogous to baptism, but that the words are now said with reference to
the elements. Jewel distinguished consecration from use in a way
Cranmer had not, for whom consecration was to a specific purpose.
Jewel made consecration the preparatory element necessary for use.
Regardless of how Jewel parsed the rite, it was still dependent on the
analogy Cranmer had made between the Communion and baptism,
predicated on the tenuous and dubious use of St Augustine as an
authority. It became great fodder for Harding’s compeers.
Sander struck at Jewel by attacking first the notion that the
Protestants of England had a consecration. A general blessing grants a
146 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^65) Cranmer, True and Catholik, pp. 181–82.
(^66) E.C. Ratcliff, Liturgical Studies, A.H. Couratin and D.H. Tripp, eds. (London, 1976),
pp. 203–13.
(^67) Cardwell,A history of Conferences, 1558 etc.pp. 105–17, especially 112 ff. Ratcliff
cites Scot from Strype, Annals.
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