In a wee reflection on Herbert McCabe’s The New Creation, Peter Leithart offers a good word on why the magisterial reformers were not about the triumph of word over sacraments:

[T]he mainstream Reformers were more sacramental than the Catholic church. For the Reformers, no one was to participate in the life of Christ’s body non-sacramentally. That was simply a contradiction in terms, for the sacraments were the means of participations. Sacramental participation and membership in Christ are completely co-extensive; there’s no spillage or overlap, such that someone (an infant, say!) might be seen as a member of Christ without being marked with Christ’s sacramental sign. The Reformation was not a triumph of word over sacrament; it was a triumph of sacraments.

You can read the rest of the article here. [HT to David Entwistle for drawing my attention to it]

And some of my own thoughts on the Supper can be read here.