Arthur J. Mason, M.A.: "Thomas Cranmer:" Ch. 6-Cranmer Under Edward VI, ...

The famous story is told by Morice to Foxe of Henry’s 1546 chatter with Cranmer and the French King about a change in the communion service for England and France: “After the banquet was done the first night [DPV, after how much EtOH?], the King was leaning upon the ambassador and upon me. If I should tell what communication was had, concerning the establishment of sincere religion then, a man would hardly have believed it ; nor had I myself thought the King's Highness had been so forward in these matters as then appeared. I may tell you it passed the pulling down of roods, and suppressing the ringing of bells. I take it that few in England would have believed that the King's Majesty and the French King had been at this point, within half a year after to have changed the Mass in both the realms into a Communion, as we now use it. And herein the King's Highness willed me (quoth the Archbishop) to pen a form thereof to be sent to the French King to consider of.” (141). The oft-told story of the 1549 BCP is started. A Lasco, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Fagius, Ochino, Tremellius, were among the more distinguished of the company. One might add Knox. Trent is underway and Cranmer want a pan-Reformational response. “`Our adversaries,’ he wrote to Calvin, "are now holding their Council at Trent for the establishing of errors, and shall we fail to assemble a godly synod to refute errors, and to purify and propagate our doctrines? They, I hear, are making decrees regarding Bread-worship; therefore, we ought to leave no stone unturned, not only to protect others against this idolatry, but also to come to an agreement among ourselves upon the doctrine of this sacrament. With your powers of observation, you cannot but see how much the Church of God is weakened by dissensions and differences of opinion regarding this sacrament of unity. I am anxious for agreement in this doctrine, not only about the subject itself, but also about the very words and forms of expression’” (143). Cranmer wrote Calvin, Melancthon and Bullinger without effect or results. The 1552 BCP story is told including the issue of kneeling, over which Cranmer was obstinate. The 42 Articles are crafted or put forward, an adaptation of the Augsburg Confession. With Vermigli’s help, Cranmer tries canonical reform with the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum in which sounds like a ventriloquism act of a Royal’s commands. “`We will,’ the King is made to say, `that the symbolical bread and wine, if not used for the pious and scriptural purpose of Communion, should be held in no higher esteem than the bread and wine which we daily use.’ The Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist is described as being no less of a quagmire than the Roman. Men are warned against supposing that regenerative force and spiritual grace reside in the baptismal font itself. Yet the orthodoxy of Cranmer condemns severely the opposite error of the Sacramentarians, as in that age they were called. `Great is the rashness of those who reduce the sacraments to bare signs and outward badges by which the religion of Christians may be known from that of others, and who consider not how great wickedness it is to conceive of these holy ordinances of God as though they were empty and hollow things.’ It is `a cruel impiety’ which refuses Baptism to little children. `The children of Christians belong to God and the Church,’ as much as those of the Hebrews, who received circumcision in infancy. It is, however, an impious and superstitious thing to hold that the grace of God is so tied to the sacraments that children dying unbaptized, through no fault of their own, are lost: `We judge,’ says the King, " that the truth is far otherwise’” (149). ßPotent but gets no press much. Cranmer had parted with Lutheran and the Romanists on the sacraments and their efficacy.