general benefit, such as to say ‘God bless you’, but this is not the case
with the Eucharist, which has a particular end in its blessing, namely that
by the Spirit of God, the elements of bread and wine would be changed
into the body and blood of Christ. Sander used as an illustration God’s
blessings of the seas at creation that they might produce an abundance
of fish, and this same would hold true of the chalice: ‘Tell me no more
that Christ willed it to signifie his blood: for I tel you out of the Word of
God, what soever words have bene spoken belonging to any creature by
the way of blessing, they have wrought that which they did signifie.’^68
More importantly for Sander, the language of signification that the
Protestants employed to demonstrate that hoc est corpus meum was
metaphorical withered for lack of this one condition, namely,
consecration:
Bring me no more of those paltry examples: I am a dore, I am a vine,
the rock is Christ, John the Baptist is Elias, the holy Ghost is a dove,
and a numbre more of that sort. I answer in one word to al, that
none of these were spoken by God in the way of blessing. The
scripture saieth not, that Christ blessed any certaine vine, saying:
this is Christ, or: This is my body. He sayd many thinges without
blessing, and he blessed sometymes without speaking.^69Sander than cited St Ambrose that the words of blessing, not merely the
words of institution, were what wrought the change of the sacrament
from what nature had made it into something more: ‘Quantis utimur
exemplis, ut probemus, non hoc esse, quod natura formavit?’ For Sander,
the blessing produced the consecration, for the blessing wrought the
change, not the words of institution. For good measure he then quoted
Chrysostom from his homily on I Corinthians 10 concerning what the
consecration has produced: ‘The same which is in the chalice, is that
which flowed from the side [of Christ], and thereof we are partakers.’^70
Sander did not end his treatment of Jewel there, but considered also
how baptism differed from the Eucharist in such a way as to preclude it
from being an analogy to baptism as regards its intents and ends. He
gives ten reasons and ways how baptism differed from Holy
Communion, and ended the section with his own challenge to Jewel.
Some of his arguments treat accidental matters (time of day, and so on),
but others were substantial. He first noted that the sacrament of baptism
is the name of a washing, and thus an act, whereas the Eucharist is
properly the body and blood of Christ, and thus while the washing is
done once, the Eucharist (that is, the body and blood) remained even
after the priest had completed the rite itself. This arises from baptism’s
THE CATHOLIC REACTION TO JEWEL 147
(^68) Sander, Supper, f. 252b.
(^69) Ibid., ff. 252b–53a.
(^70) Ibid., f. 254a.