What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church

by Gavin Ortlund

But even more basically, apart from the question of how Christ is present in the bread and wine, the Protestants were concerned with all manner of abusive and negligent practices in the administration of the Eucharist in the late medieval Western church. Jewel, for example, railed against the wanton buying and selling of masses, the parading about and venerating of the consecrated host (and the pomp associated with it), the extremely infrequent partaking of the elements by the laity, and the withholding of the wine from the laity and giving of the bread only.24 Such practices, Jewel maintained, amounted to clear departure from patristic precedent and resulted in a starvation of the laity from a regular and full experience of feasting on Christ.