S1E5: To Be a Christian; Part 2.4 - The Sacraments
To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism
Part II + Believing in Christ
The Sacraments
Question 102: What is a sacrament?
"A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. God gives us the sign as a means whereby we receive that grace, and as a tangible assurance that we do in fact receive it." - To Be a Christian, pg. 30
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Bishop Edmund Guest of Rochester
“ … this word ‘only’ in the aforesaid article did not exclude the presence of Christ’s body from the Sacrament, but only the grossness and sensibleness in the receiving thereof. For I said unto him though he took Christ’s body in his hand, received it with his mouth, and that corporally, naturally, really, substantially, and carnally, as the doctors do write, yet did he not for all that see it, feel it, smell it, nor taste it. And therefore I told him I would speak against him therein, and the rather because the article was of mine own penning. And yet I would not for all that deny anything that I had spoken for the presence. And this was the sum of our talk. And this that I said is so true by all sorts of men that even D. Harding [Catholic writer who was Jewel’s antagonist] writeth the same, as it appears more evidently by his words reported in the Bishop of Salisbury’s [i.e. John Jewell] book, pagina 325, which be these, ‘Then ye may say, in deed; substantially, that is, in substance; and corporally, carnally, and naturally; by the which words is meant that His very body, His very flesh, and His human nature is there, not after corporal, carnal, or natural wise, but invisibly, unspeakably, supernaturally, spiritually, divinely, and by way unto Him only known’.” (Letter of Guest, 1566, in Stone, 1909: II, 210-211).
