AGNES PREST: TRANSUBSTANTIATION - A sword to fall on

Transubstantiation was especially offensive to 16th century Protestants because the Roman Catholic dogma stands opposed to what the Bible teaches. Protestants knew that, to uphold transubstantiation, they also would have to construct a view of clergy and dress them up as sacrificing priests in the exalted Old Testament sense, and to view that Christ is re-sacrificed in every mass.

Reformation Anglicans knew that Jesus was the one and only Great High Priest (Hebrews 4-5), and the only mediator between God and his people (1 Timothy 2:5). They knew that he was sacrificed once-and-for-all for our sins, a death that doesn’t in any sense needs to be repeated because it is completely sufficient to cover the sins of the world (Hebrews 7:25-27).

And most offensive of all to the 16th century English reformers, transubstantiation taught that what was in their mouths at Communion was the very same flesh that walked with the disciples those thirty years, who hung on the cross, and who now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

Transubstantiation taught that, following the consecration prayer, “there remaineth neither bread to be eaten, nor wine to be drunken” (Cranmer, The True and Catholic Doctrine). Protestants felt that this is a small view and that transubstantiation limits God and God’s power to make his real presence known to God’s people.

Many Anglicans are confused about this today, holding to a functionally Roman view of “real presence” while studiously avoiding the term transubstantiation. Some suddenly turn “Lutheran” when it is convenient, or refer back to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer to justify their privately held views. Our Anglican formularies couldn’t be clearer: Christ’s body and blood are not automatically forced on anyone apart from faith, and “real presence” is not objectively in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, but spiritually in the hearts and affections of those who receive the grace of the sacrament by faith with thanksgiving.

“Transubstantiation (or the change of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions” (Thirty-nine Articles, XXVIII).

“They say, that Christ is received in the mouth, and entereth in with the bread and wine: we say, that he is received in the heart, and entereth in by faith” (Thomas Cranmer, On the True and Catholic Doctrine and Use of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, 1550)

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AGNES PREST: TRANSUBSTANTIATION – A sword to fall on

By Chuck Collins
www.virtueonline.org
August 15, 2024

“They being dead yet speak” is engraved on the monument (below) that marks where Agnes Prest was killed, August 15, 1557. According to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, she was martyred in Queen Mary’s reign for refusing to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation. Prest was burned at the stake in Southernhay, Exeter at the age of 54.

She was a poor Cornish peasant who, although illiterate, reportedly knew the Bible by heart. She was married to a devout Catholic with many children when she was kicked out of her home because of her Protestant views. When she went back to see her children, she was arrested and finally killed because “she would not bow down and worship a piece of bread” (Foxe).