Darwell Stone takes the view that Edmund Grindal’s opinions on the Eucharist resembled that of Cranmer and Bucer (Stone, 1909: II, 231).  Grindal distinguishes the sacramental sign from the thing signified, emphasising that the bread and wine remain in their own substances following consecration.  The bread and wine are separate and self-enclosed entities from the body and blood of Christ.  Grindal’s view of the Eucharist seems to be one characterised by nominalism.  The sacrament is not Christ is any realist sense since the body of Christ is in heaven and not on earth.  In a work entitled Fruitful Dialogue between Custom and Verity, Grindal expresses the following views on the Eucharist.

“It is not strange, nor a thing unwont in the Scriptures, to call one thing by another’s name.  So that you can no more of necessity enforce the changing of the bread into Christ’s body in the Sacrament because the words be plain, ‘This is My body’, than the wife’s flesh to be the natural and real body and flesh of the husband because it is written, ‘They are not two, but one flesh’, or the altar of stone to be very God because Moses with evident and plain words pronounced it to be ‘The mighty God of Israel’ … Nothing is done in remembrance of itself.  But the Sacrament is used in the remembrance of Christ.  Therefore the Sacrament is not Christ.  Christ never devoured himself.  Christ did eat the sacrament with His Apostles.  Ergo, the Sacrament is not Christ himself.” (Grindal, Fruitful Dialogue, in Remains, edn. Nicholson, 1843: 41-43).

In the following passage Grindal emphasises that the receiving and taking of the body of Christ must be by faith.  The receiving and taking is a heavenly experience, but the language used in relation to the ‘springing’ up to heaven is very realist sounding, but this hardly seems to be Grindal’s intent.  The communicant is bidden to leave the world below and to ‘creep into his wounds’ and then to ‘suck the blood’ of Christ.  All this is described as ‘spiritual’ but ‘true eating’.  This rising heavenward and eating spiritually is very much similar to the writings of Cranmer and Bucer.  The sacrament is very earthly and the theology of the Eucharist is clearly nominalist, with the eating very heavenly and spiritual and yet strangely realist sounding.

“Whereas I say that Christ’s body must be received and taken with faith, I mean not that you shall pluck down Christ from heaven and put Him in your faith as in a visible place; but that you must with your faith rise and spring up to Him, and leaving this world dwell above in heaven, putting all your trust, comfort, and consolation in Him which suffered grievous bondage to set you at liberty and to make you free, creeping into His wounds, which were so cruelly pierced and dented for your sake.  So shall you feed on the body of Christ; so shall you suck the blood that was poured out and shed for you.  This is the spiritual, the very true, the one eating of Christ’s body.” (Grindal, Fruitful Dialogue, in Remains, edn. Nicholson, 1843: 46).

The sacrament cannot be the body of Christ for Grindal since the body of Christ is in heaven.  As such it can only be in one place, that is heaven, and not on many altars.  The body of Christ is an empirical concept for Grindal, and not seen in any metaphysical or real presence sense in the sacrament.

“Seeing all the old father do constantly agree in one, that the body of Christ is ascended into heaven, and there remaineth at the right hand of the Father, and cannot be in more than one place, I conclude that the Sacrament is not the body of Christ; first, because it is not in heaven, neither sitteth at the Father’s right hand; moreover, because it is in a hundred thousand boxes, whereas Christ’s body filleth but one place; furthermore, if the bread were turned into the body of Christ, then it would necessarily follow that sinners and unpenitent persons receive the body of Christ.” (Grindal, Fruitful Dialogue, in Remains, edn. Nicholson, 1843: 55).

The philosophical assumptions underlying Grindal’s eucharistic theology are those of nominalism.