LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

MAAS: BARNES AND EARLY ENGLISH LUTHERANISM 85
taken with him. Secondly, both Clebsch and Trueman limit their arguments
to Barnes’s published works. But we can also look to other evidence. We can
look to his last words at the stake, for example, which were recorded by a
bystander and later published in several languages. Here Barnes confesses
unambiguously that Christ’s death was “the sufficient price and ransom for
the sin of all the world” and that “there is no other satisfaction unto the
Father but this his death and passion only”. 36 And finally, a bit of evidence
unknown to both Clebsch and Trueman can now be found in a sermon
preached by Barnes in 1535. There he says that neither our own works nor
those of the saints offer us any aid because “Christ died alone and rose again
alone and went to hell alone, [he] saved us alone”. 37
On the basis of his doctrine of justification, none will dispute that Barnes
stood firmly in the Protestant tradition. The real question is which Protestant
tradition. A brief look at Barnes’s eucharistic theology should sufficiently
narrow the possibilities to one. As with the doctrine of justification, Barnes
first outlines his views on the sacrament in his 1530 Sentences. His position,
as stated in the title of article seventeen, is that “In the sacrament of the altar
is the true body of Christ”. That by “true body” he means not a figurative,
virtual, or spiritual body, but a real, fleshly, corporeal body becomes evident
upon reading the quotations he selects from various early church fathers.
One in particular is graphically striking:
He certainly did not say, this is a figure, but this is my body. Although it
seems to us bread, it is in fact transformed by an ineffable operation. Because
we are weak and loathe to eat raw flesh, especially human flesh, it therefore
appears to be bread; but it is flesh. 38
Barnes’s position became well known in England, partly because it was
radically out of step with that of his fellow Protestants. In 1533 William
Tyndale, who himself disagreed with Barnes on this point, warned John
Frith, an outspoken proponent of a symbolic interpretation of the sacrament,
to comment as little as possible on it. His famous words to Frith are: “Of the
presence of Christ in the sacrament, meddle as little as you can. … [or]
Barnes will be hot against you”. 39 Though Barnes never was “hot against”
Frith (perhaps because Frith was executed only shortly after Tyndale wrote),
he was “hot against” several others who shared his views. In 1535 and again
in 1538 he served on royal commissions to examine those Protestants
36 Miles Coverdale, Remains of Myles Coverdale, ed. G. Pearson (Parker Society, 1846), 352
and 355. Coverdale reprints Barnes’s confession together with a critical reply by John
Standish and his own defence of Barnes.
37 Warwickshire Record Office, DR 801/12, fo. 68r.
38 Barnes, Sentenciae, sig. I7r.
39 LP 6:403.