Traditional Anglican Sermons: Ridley on the Eucharist

Traditional Anglican Sermons

The Sacrifice And Presence Of Christ In The Holy Communion
Nicholas Ridley (1500-1555)

Nicholas Ridley (1500-1555) was successively Bishop of Rochester and London, and a leading Reformer

In debate with Roman theologians

PIE:— "What say you to that council, where it is said, that the priest doth offer an unbloody sacrifice of the body of Christ?"

Ridley:— "I say, it is well said, if it be rightly understood."

Pie:— "But he offereth an unbloody sacrifice."

Ridley:— "It is called unbloody, and is offered after a certain manner, and in a mystery, and as a representation of that bloody sacrifice; and he doth not lie, who saith Christ to be offered."

Weston:— "I, with one argument, will throw down to the ground your opinion, out of Chysostome, and I will teach, not only a figure, and a sign or Weston grace only, but the very same body, which was here conversant on the earth, to be in the eucharist. We worship the selfsame body in the eucharist which the wise men did worship in the manger. But that was his natural and real body, not spiritual: Ergo, The real body of Christ is in the eucharist. Again, the same Chrysostome saith, 'We have not here the Lord in the manger, but on the altar. Here a woman holdeth him not in her hands, but a priest.'"

Ridley:— "We worship, I confess, the same true Lord and Saviour of the world, which the wise men worshipped in the manger; howbeit we do it in a mystery; and in the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and that in spiritual liberty, as saith St. Augustine, not in carnal servitude; that is, we do not worship servilely the signs for the things: for that should be, as he also saith, a part of a servile infirmity.

"But we behold with the eyes of faith him present after grace, and spiritually set upon the table; and we worship him which sitteth above, and is worshipped of the angels. For Christ is always assistant to his mysteries, as the said Augustine saith.

"And the Divine Majesty, as saith Cyprian, doth never absent itself from the divine mysteries; but this assistance and presence of Christ, as in baptism it is wholly spiritual, and by grace, and not by any corporal substance of the flesh: even so it is here in the Lord's supper, being rightly and according to the word of God duly ministered."

Weston:— "That which the woman did hold in her womb, the same thing holdeth the priest."

Ridley:— "I grant the priest holdeth the same thing, but after another manner. She did hold the natural body; the priest holdeth the mystery of the body."

Acts And Monuments Of John Foxe. Vol. VI. The Disputation At Oxford Between Dr Smith, With His Other Colleagues And Doctors, And Dr Ridley.