Edwin Sandys was a contemporary of Edmund Grindal and in fact succeeded Grindal as Bishop of London in 1570, before becoming Archbishop of York in 1576.  In his Sermons he speaks of the Eucharist, expressing much the same doctrine as Grindal (Stone, 1909: II, 232).

The following passages will serve to illustrate Sandys theology of the Eucharist.

“In this Sacrament there are two things, a visible sign and an invisible grace: there is a visible sacramental sign of bread and wine, and there is the thing and matter signified, namely, the body and blood of Christ: there is an earthly matter and an heavenly matter.  The outward sacramental sign is common to all, as well the bad as the good.  Judas received the Lord’s bread, but not that bread which is the Lord to the faithful receiver.  The spiritual part, that which feedeth the soul, only the faithful do receive.  For he cannot be partaker of the body of Christ which is no member of Christ’s body.  This food offered at the Lord’s Table is to feed our souls withal; it is meat for the mind, and not for the belly.  Our souls, being spiritual, can neither receive nor digest that which is corporal; they feed only upon spiritual food.  It is the spiritual eating that giveth life.  ‘The flesh’, saith Christ, ‘doth nothing profit’.  We must life up ourselves from these external and earthly signs, and life eagles fly up and soar aloft, there to feed on Christ, which sitteth on the right hand of His Father, whom the heavens shall keep until the latter day.  From thence and from no other altar shall He come in His natural body to judge both the quick and dead.  His natural body is local, for else it were not a natural body: His body is there, therefore not here: for a natural body doth no occupy sundry places at once.  Here we have a Sacrament, a sign, a memorial, a commemoration, a representation, a figure effectual, of the body and blood of Christ. … Seeing then that Christ in His natural body is absent from hence, seeing He is risen and is not here, seeing He hath left the world and is gone to His Father, ‘How shall I’, saith St Augustine, ‘lay hold on Him which is absent?  How shall I put my hand into heaven?  Send up they faith, and thou hast taken hold’; ‘Why preparest thou thy teeth?  Believe, and thou hast eaten’.  Thy teeth shall not do Him violence, neither they stomach contain His glorious body.  Thy faith must reach up into heaven.  By faith He is seen, by faith He is touched, by faith He is digested.  Spiritually by faith we feed upon Christ, when we steadfastly believe that His body was broken, and His blood shed for us, upon the cross, by which sacrifice, offered once for all, as sufficient for all, our sins were freely remitted, blotted out, and washed away.  This is our heavenly bread, our spiritual food.  This doth strengthen our souls and cheer our hearts.  Sweet it is unto us than honey when we are certified by this outward Sacrament of the inward grace given unto us through His death, when in Him we are assured of mission of sins and eternal life. (Sandys, Sermons, edn. Ayre, 1841: 88-89).

“In the Eucharist or Supper of the Lord our corporal tasting of the visible elements bread and wine showeth the heavenly nourishing of our souls unto life by the mystical participation of the glorious body and blood of Christ.  For inasmuch as He saith of one of these sacred elements, ‘This is My body which is given for you’, and of the other, ‘This is my blood’, He giveth us plainly to understand that all the graces which may flow from the body and blood of Christ Jesus are in a mystery here not represented only but presented unto us.  So then, although we see nothing, feel and taste nothing, but bread and wine, nevertheless let us not doubt at all that He spiritually performeth that which He doth declare and promise by His visible and outward signs; that is to say, that in this Sacrament there is offered unto the Church that very true and heavenly bread which feedeth and nourisheth us unto life eternal, that sacred blood which will cleanse us from sin and make us pure in the day of trial.  Again, in that He saith, ‘Take, eat: drink ye all of this’, He evidently declareth that His body and blood are by this Sacrament assured to be no less ours than His, He being incorporate into us, and as it were made one with us.  That He became Man, it was for our sake: for our behoof and benefit He suffered: for us He rose again: for us He ascended into heaven; and finally He will come again in judgment.  And thus hath He made Himself all ours; ours His passions, ours His merits, our His victory, ours His glory; and therefore He giveth Himself and all His in this Sacrament wholly unto us.  The reason and course whereof is this.  In His word He hath promised and certified us of remission of sins, in His death; of righteousness, in His merits; of life, in His resurrection; and in His ascension, of heavenly and everlasting glory.  This promise we take hold of by faith, which is the instrument of our salvation; but because our faith is weak and staggering through the frailty of our mortal flesh, He hath given us this visible Sacrament as a seal and sure pledge of His irrevocable promise, for more assurance and confirmation of our feeble faith. … To bear our infirmity, and to make us more secure of His promise, to His writing and word He added these outward signs and seals, to establish our faith, and to certify us that His promise is most certain.  He giveth us therefore these holy and visible signs of bread and wine, and saith, ‘Take and eat, this is My body and blood’, giving unto the signs the names which are proper to the things signified by them; as we use to do even in common speech, when the sign is a lively representation and image of the thing.” (Sandys, Sermons, edn. Ayre, 1841: 302-304).

Sandys clearly in the first quotation distinguishes between the earthly and the heavenly things of the Eucharist.  The thing or matter signified is distinguished from the sign.  The thing or matter signified, that is, the body and blood of Christ is in heaven, and the sign, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, are on earth.  This distinction seems to mark Sandys as a nominalist.  He also speaks of the lifting by faith to heaven where the body and blood of Christ is to be found.  There is no sense of the body and blood of Christ being instantiated in the bread and wine of the Eucharist in any realist sense, since Christ is absent from the Eucharist.  Spiritual feeding consists of the communicant believing in a past event, that is, the death of Christ on the cross and the once and for all sacrifice.  It is this act of faith that is the heavenly bread and spiritual feeding.

In the second quotation however, Sandys speaks in more realist terms of ‘the mystical participation of the body and blood of Christ’.  It is the corporal tasting of the bread and wine that shows the heavenly nourishment of the soul by this mystical participation.  He goes on to say that the grace of Christ’s body and blood are mysteriously not only represented but presented.  The ‘presentation’ however, does not appear to be in the bread and wine, since they serve the function of assuring the faithful that Christ’s body and blood are incorporate in them.  The presentation is in the incorporation of the faithful into Christ and he in them.  ‘Participation’ appears to mean that Christ participates in the faithful and that they participate in him, but that this a spiritual experience through faith.  There is no sense in which ‘participation’ means that the body and blood of Christ, in the strict or immoderate sense, or the nature of Christ, in a looser or moderate sense, participate in the bread and wine of the Eucharist as an instantiation.  The Eucharist is therefore an assurance of this incorporation into Christ.  The Eucharist itself is a visible seal and pledge of Christ’s promise to the faithful.  The signs can therefore only have the names body and blood attached to them in the sense that they represent or are an image of the thing, that is, Christ’s body and blood.  As such the bread and wine cannot be or instantiate the nature of Christ.

Concerning the signs and the signified Sandys is therefore nominalist since he speaks of the signs being separate entities from the signified, however there are realist aspects in his theology concerning the presence of Christ in the faithful.