Justification and the Lord’s Supper
John Stott comments on the teaching of the English Reformers, and their determination that their doctrines of justification and of the Lord’s Supper should be compatible with one another:-
They strenuously denied transubstantiation (‘the change is not the nature, but the dignity’ – Latimer), the real presence of Christ in the elements (‘his true body is truly present to them that truly receive him, but spiritually’ – Cranmer), and the notion that the mass could be a propitiatory sacrifice (for then ‘doth this sacrament take upon it the office of Christ’s passion, whereby it might follow that Christ died in vain’ – Ridley). They were also consistent (as we should be) in their vocabulary, believing that the presbyter is a minister serving a sacramental super from a table, not a priest offering a sacrifice on an altar.
Foreword to Masters of the English Reformation (Loane), pxiv.