cases, and not true representatives of the Church of .England? May they
perversion as the Papists now use it) to be a real, natural, and corporal presence of Christ's body and blood under the forms and accidents of bread and wine, that is, because I deny transubstantiation, which is the darling of the devil, and daughter and heir to Antichrist's religion." -- Foxe in loco, vol. iii. p.260.
And so he was burned.
37. But may not these four men who were burned have been isolated cases, and not true representatives of the Church of .England? May they not have been violent fanatics, and unlearned and ignorant men?
Nothing can be further from the truth than these suggestions. The doctrines for which these four men laid down their lives were the doctrines professed by the whole Church of England in the reign of Edward the Sixth. So far from standing alone, their opinions were shared by 280 other persons, who were burned in Queen Mary's reign. As to ignorance and want of learning, Ridley and Rogers were among the most learned men of their day, and to Ridley in particular we are indebted for the foundations of our English Prayer Book.
38. But is it not said that the English Reformers, having just come out of Rome, adopted very extreme and rather defective views of the Lord's Supper? Have not English divines since the Reformation taken up much more moderate and temperate opinions about the doctrine of the Real Presence?
Whosoever says this says what he cannot possibly prove. With very few exceptions, all the greatest, ablest, and most learned English theologians of every school of thought, for three hundred years, have agreed in maintaining that there is no real corporal presence of Christ's natural body and blood in the consecrated bread and wine in the Lord's Supper.
39. What does Bishop Jewell, in his work on the Sacraments, say?
"Let us examine what difference there is between the body of Christ and the Sacrament of His body.