Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance 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.
The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.
From the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
I assent thereunto with the usual "but." While I unequivocally reject the Romish dogma of Transubstantiation, and consider the Lateran Synod of 1215 the Rubicon in Rome's departure from Orthodoxy, the Eucharist remains the very Body and Blood of Christ. Hoc est corpus meum cannot mean anything else. Transubstantiation, however, has been a demonstrably divisive and dangerous innovation, having brought low the solemn and serious rites of Holy Week by the mingling of superstition with tradition, destroyed the Divine Office by the multiplication of low Masses and caused universal scandal in the anti-Evangelical prominence given to the Body at the expense of the Blood, and the subsequent denial of the Chalice to the laity for hundreds of years.
This is as much a message to all you renegades, being Romish schismatics, as to the Papists: if you use Romish liturgical books and elevate the Sacrament after the so-called "words of institution," ye are a generation of vipers and sorcerers and you practice witchcraft at Christ's altar. Therefore, think twice before you lift up that wafer before the altar cross, lest your soul be impaled upon it!
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