[1]

April 1, 1837.

The publishers have great pleasure in offering to the public, the following notices of this work. They feel well assured, that the well known character of the sources from which they come, will secure for them all the attention and credit which can be desired.

Four volumes of this series have appeared, and if we may consider these as a specimen of the work, we congratulate the Christian public on the prospect of being supplied from time to time, with a rich feast of evangelical matter, calculated to give nourishment and refreshment to the spiritual life of believers.

M’Laurin’s Essays is not a recent work, but the lapse of years can never destroy its value. While the observations of the author are strictly orthodox, they are philosophical, and if read with candour and attention, must have a powerful effect in correcting mistakes and expelling prejudices where they have been imbibed, and in enlightening the mind, and invigorating the faith of the sincere Christian. We would strongly recommend the perusal and reperusal of these essays to the young theologian. Too great a proportion of time, we fear, is spent by the young ministers of our day in light reading, which, while it gratifies a prurient curiosity, has no tendency to strengthen the mind. The effect produced is superficial knowledge, and a distaste for deep and solid research. Religious people are now distinguished for bustling activity and a show of benevolence and zeal; but there exists a sad deficiency of profound and systematic knowledge even in those who have enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education.

The whole life and energies of M’Laurin were devoted to the highest good of his fellow men; and this lovely principle beams forth brightly in his works. Originality, truth, and beauty, are prominent characteristics of his writings. * * His elements of thought, from whatever source they are drawn, from external Nature, from the exercises and sentiments of the soul, or from the mysteries of redemption, are formed into complete emblems of the richness and peculiarity of the mind from which they proceed. The advantages of a well balanced mind, of a proper discipline of all the powers, and a nice adjustment of them to each other, is strikingly seen in these essays.

In conclusion, we would say the richness and power of thought, the simplicity and greatness of conception in M’Laurin can be realised only by his readers; and to those who would study the revelation of God to man, in its symmetry, its magnitude, its intrinsic excellence, “its easy, free, and unincumbered plan,” these essays will be a most powerful assistance.—N. Y. Literary and Theological Review.

Library of Christian Knowledge, Vols. 3, 4, 5; Edited by Rev. Herman Hooker. Philadelphia: W. Marshall, 1836.—This series is, as a course of rare and valuable works in the practical department of theology, far in advance of any that has ever been published in the United States. “M’Laurin’s Essays,” and “Goode’s Better Covenant,” the first of the course, are intellectually and evangelically works of such high character, and withal, so little known hitherto to the American public, that Mr. Hooker has already won for his “Library” golden opinions, and the announcement of a new volume of the series, is taken by the reading community as an invitation to a spiritual and intellectual banquet, where “nothing common or unclean” will be presented to the taste. Vols. 3 and 4 contain “Letters Practical and Consolatory; designed to illustrate the nature and Tendency of the Gospel; by the Rev. David Russell, D. D.; with an Introductory Essay, by the Rev. H. A. Boardman, Philadelphia.” The hasty glance which we have had opportunity to bestow on these volumes, has satisfied us that they are worthy successors to those of the series already before the public. This is sufficient praise. The 5th volume contains an essay by the Editor, the Rev. Herman Hooker, A. M. on “Popular Infidelity.” Mr. Hooker is already extensively and favourably known as an author, through his work, entitled “The Portion of the Soul.” We have read his volume on “Popular Infidelity,” much to our pleasure and edification. Mr. Hooker has a clear and philosophical mind, which analyses truth to its simplest elements, and presents it in pure, plain, Saxon English.—Christian Witness, Boston, Aug. 12, 1836.

The Better Covenant.—This work of the Rev. Francis Goode, has recently been published as the second volume of the Library of Christian Knowledge, by Messrs. W. Marshall & Co. of this city. The best characteristic of the work probably is, its faithful development of Scriptural truth, in language entirely appropriate to the importance of the subject, while it is so clear and satisfactory as to be easily understood by the plainest reader. Its character in other respects is well and justly expressed in the letter of Bishop M’Ilvaine contained in the preface.—Episcopal Recorder.

From the N. Y. Christian Intelligencer.

The Better Covenant.—We have read this work, of which we had not previously heard, with great and unmingled pleasure. It has reminded us of Jewell, Hopkins, Leighton, &c. of the church of which he is a member, in generations gone by, as well as Owen, Flava, &c. among the non-conformists, as it unfolded the choicest of matter, of sound evangelical doctrine moulded in the happiest form of experience, and practice. The author is at present lecturer at Clapham, known to many as the residence of Wilberforce, Thornton, and others greatly distinguished by piety and philanthropy, and was formerly lecturer in the mission church in Calcutta. Bishop M’Ilvaine in a recommendatory letter thus speaks of it: “As a book of divinity; divinity as it should be, not cold, and abstract and dead, freezing the affections while it exercises the intellect, but retaining the living beauty, and heart affecting interest of the revelation it proceeds from—divinity adapted to the intellectual wants of the closest students of divine truth, which provides the simplest, and sweetest nourishment for the spiritual necessities of the humblest Christian;—As a book of practical piety, especially in regard to the display it gives of the [8]nothingness of the sinner out of Christ, and the completeness of the believer in Christ, and its tendency to promote a spirit of active, cheerful obedience, by all those motives of thankfulness, love, peace, and joyful hope, which belong to the adoption of sons—I know of no book of the present age more valuable. Students of divinity will find it a book to be studied. Readers of devotional writings will find it full of divine knowledge, of experimental truth, and of excitements to prayer, and praise.” With this strong recommendation of Bishop M’Ilvaine, we feel ourselves willing to accord.

The first volume of the series of the Library of religious knowledge, is M’Laurin’s Essays, a work of acknowledged standard excellence. If the succeeding volumes should be equally valuable with the two already published, the series will have a just claim upon the patronage of our religious public. We have seen it stated that it is designed to introduce into the series, Letters on Religious Subjects, by the Rev. David Russell, of Dundee, Scotland, a work little known to American Christians, but of very sterling merit.

From the Episcopal Recorder.

The Better Covenant Practically Considered.—The above is the title of a work which has recently been published in this city, as the third volume of the Christian Family Library, edited by the Rev. Herman Hooker. The author is the Rev. Francis Goode, of the Church of England, an accomplished scholar, and most devout and godly man. Many excellent treatises upon practical and experimental religion have been issued from the press within the last few years, but none that we have seen is at all to be compared with this. Indeed, we think it decidedly the best book of the kind we have ever read. We know of none in which the glory and excellency of Christ’s salvation is so clearly, fully and delightfully presented to the mind. Throughout, Christ crucified is all in all to the sinner’s soul. Accordingly, as it richly deserves, it is spoken of in the highest of commendation, by both clergy and laity. Some of the former, believing that they could not in any other way more effectually preach the Gospel in all its freeness and richness, have even recommended it from the pulpit to their congregations.

We would wish to see his book in every family in the land. We are deeply persuaded that no Christian could rise from its perusal without more enlarged and affecting views of what his Saviour had done for him, without more humility, penitence and gratitude to God, and without a more fixed determination, or divine aid, to follow on to know the Lord and to be filled with all the fullness of God.

Goode’s Better Covenant.—We have had but little time to examine this book; but have seen enough of it to desire the opportunity of giving it an attentive perusal. It is undoubtedly a good book, written by one who gives strong evidence of his own personal interest in the better Covenant than the covenant of works. He is much of an old fashioned divine for one of modern times, who makes Christ all in all in the sinner’s salvation. The edition of Goode, published by Wm. Marshall, Philadelphia, contains a preface and table of contents, by the Rev. Herman Hooker.—Philadelphian.

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Goode’s Better Covenant.—This volume is made up of Lectures by the Rev. Francis Goode, a clergyman of the Church of England, on portions of the 8th chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, and portions of his Epistle to the Philippians. Mr. Goode is understood to be one of the brightest spiritual lights of the mother Church. The introduction by Mr. Hooker, contains a letter of Bishop M’Ilvaine, in which he expresses great satisfaction in view of the republication of the work in this country, and classes the author with the Bickersteths, Noels, Melvilles and Wilsons of the Church of England. We have not had opportunity to read the book in course, but have formed a high estimate of its intellectual and evangelical excellence from the parts which have fallen under our notice.—Christian Witness.

The author of this work is a clergyman of the Church of England. This book is replete with practical thought and instruction on some of the most important doctrines of Christianity. It is a work which it gives us a pleasure to recommend to readers in every church, and of every class. We have copied an extract from it on the first page of this paper, under the head of “Views of Doctrine.”—So. Religious Telegraph, June 10, 1836.

We have read this book with great pleasure. The author, a clergyman of the Church of England, appears to have learned from the Bible the same great truths of Christianity which strongly mark the writings of John Calvin, Leighton and Owen. Bishop M’Ilvaine says, “I am truly rejoiced, that the theological literature of this country is to be enriched with the addition of so excellent a work.”—Sold at the Bookstores of Messrs. Yale & Wyatt.—So. Religious Telegraph.

Library of Christian Knowledge.—This will undoubtedly prove to be a most valuable series of books. The editor is, at once, a man of genius, taste and erudition, and we are quite sure that no work will bear his name as editor, which is not possessed of sterling merit. Two volumes of this series have already appeared: the first, M’Laurin’s Essays, we noticed some time since as a volume rich in profound and valuable thought; the second, “Goode’s Better Covenant,” is now before us. The writer is a living divine of the Church of England, but the book has nothing in it of a sectarian character. Bishop M’Ilvaine (in a letter to the Editor) says, “As a book of practical piety, I know of no book of the present age more valuable.” This certainly is high praise and comes from a high source: if we do not esteem the work quite as highly as the Bishop, (perhaps because we have not studied it as carefully,) we are fully prepared to pronounce it a most excellent book. We understand that another volume is nearly ready for publication, which is to be followed by an original work on Infidelity from the pen of the accomplished editor.—Boston Traveller.

This volume cannot be read by the pious without sensible profit. It breathes the very spirit of ardent piety, and directs continually to Christ, as the only source of strength and growth in grace. The kind of faith here inculcated, is not a cold rational assent to general [10]propositions, but a cordial, living principle of action, the exercise of which is commonly accompanied with a sweet persuasion of pardon and acceptance. Nothing animates and encourages the pious soul in its spiritual pilgrimage so much, as the smiles of the great Captain of Salvation.—Biblical Repertory, Princeton.

We are much gratified that the theological writings of the Rev. Doctor Russell of Dundee, begin to attract the attention of American readers. The editor could not easily have hit upon a work better adapted to instruct and comfort the pious reader, than these small volumes of letters. They are, we think, the best productions of the gifted author’s pen. They appear to have been written in the course of a real correspondence, which gives them a greater freedom of style than could easily be attained in letters originally intended for the press. Though the letters are practical, and particularly suited to afford rich consolation to the children of sorrow, they are nevertheless eminently instructive. There are few books from which a clearer idea can be obtained of the doctrines of the Christian system than from these Letters. They contain, as do his other writings, the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ. The peculiar excellency of these volumes is, that you have the truth exhibited, not in a controversial or even a systematic form, but in its practical bearings, as a guide both to faith and practice. The style is clear, concise, and easy; and possesses a vivacity which keeps up the interest of the reader.—Biblical Repertory and Theological Review.

Russell’s Letters, Practical and Consolatory, designed to illustrate the nature and tendency of the Gospel, with an introductory Essay by the Rev. H. A. Boardman; forming volumes 3d and 4th of the Library of Christian Knowledge; edited by Rev. Herman Hooker. This work has just been issued by the enterprising publishers, Wm. Marshall & Co. The Introductory Essay is a well written exposition of the characteristics of the work, abounding with specimens of the happy style and temper of the author. He expresses the opinion that no work of recent origin is so worthy to be read and ired by all classes of Christians as these letters of Dr. Russell. The examination which we have given them leaves us with the opinion that this is a just estimate of their value. The Letters are written in a natural, intelligible, and appropriate style. A spirit of ardent, simple, and affectionate piety runs through them, which must win the confidence and awaken the interest of the reader. The author has published several other works, all of which are in high repute; but his Letters have, perhaps, been more popular, and more extensively circulated than any other of his productions.—Commercial Herald.

Russell’s Letters, in two volumes, exhibit, in a chaste and intelligible style, the most important features in the plan of redemption and of Christian duty. The letters were actually addressed to an [11]individual, previous to publication, for this purpose; a circumstance which has been justly thought calculated to ensure for them a peculiarly practical character. Those who desire clear and profitable instruction upon the subject of religion, from an original, but judicious, well balanced and pious mind, will not be disappointed in perusing Russell’s Letters.—Episcopal Recorder.

The Rev. Mr. Boardman thus speaks, in his Introductory Essay, of the author and his works:—“The name of Dr. Russell is familiar to the friends of Christ throughout the united kingdom—and his eminent piety, talents, and usefulness have placed him in the front rank of those celebrated divines, who are justly regarded as an ornament of his country, and an invaluable blessing to the age. His various writings are held in high estimation on the other side of the Atlantic, and it is not a little surprising that the extensive circulation which they have had there, has not led to an earlier republication of them in the United States. This series of Letters is perhaps the most interesting of all his works. Those who may peruse it, will not deem the opinion an extravagant one, that it will hereafter rank with the standard volumes on practical religion, which find a place in every Christian Library.”

When, in our first volume, we took notice of the Rev. Mr. Hooker’s “Portion of the Soul,” we expressed the hope, that, from the golden vein thus opened, we should have other and richer specimens—and we ventured to predict, that, the more it should be worked, the finer would be the ingot. We are proud to record our predictions. In the present volume our most golden dreams are more than realized. It is a book of an age; and we will say of a better age—“specimen melioris ævi.” It shall be taken down, in the dark, from the same shelf on which the writings of South, Taylor, Barrow, Boyle, Bates, and How, repose in glory unsured of earth; and shall be replaced again, when read, by the most ardent lover of them all, as worthy of the high companionship. We know what we have said, and we challenge doubters to the proof.

It is the object of the author to unmask that secret infidelity of the heart, of which St. Paul gives onition, in his epistle to the Hebrews—“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God”—and he has well accomplished it. His pen seems an Ithuriel’s spear, to strip the subtle fraud, which he pursues with singular skill, of all its multiplied disguises. His page teems with illustrations, the rarest, the aptest, and the most beautiful, of his important theme. It is impossible, plain as the truths are which he speaks, to be offended with him, from the pure benevolence which is felt to be his prompter; and, such the vein of keen, but half repressed and silent, humour which pervades the book, that, once taken up, it is impossible to lay it down till it is finished. We began to mark the ages which, for the thought or the expression, struck us, as we read, by turning down the leaf; and the volume lies before us, increased by half its thickness. To review it, as it deserves, is not within the com of our craft. Not to commend it to [12]universal notice, would be to do our readers an unpardonable injustice. There was great want of such a book, which, by its engaging character, should tempt men to become acquainted with themselves—which should expose the vanity and recklessness with which many, “who profess and call themselves Christians,” are running the giddy round of self-delusion and self-dependence—which should bring home the thoughts of men to God and their own hearts; and induce them, in the noise and bustle of this restless age, to commune with themselves, in their own chamber, and be still. Such a book is here furnished—unpretending and artless, yet sagacious, powerful and persuasive—as fearless as the Baptist, yet with the Evangelist’s gentleness and meekness—deep, searching and thorough, yet clear and intelligible to the simplest reader—wearying none with its minuteness or prolixity, offending none with its abruptness or severity, delightful to all for its ease, its perspicuity and its amenity.—Missionary.

It would be far exceeding our limits to expatiate on the character of the age, or to show by an analysis of Mr. Hooker’s work, how skilfully and eloquently he has aimed to arrest its pernicious tendencies. The “Popular Infidelity” as well as the “Portion of the Soul,” is a work eminently adapted to the age; and if we have any fault to find with the author, it is that he does not himself view it in that light; that he writes professedly for a class, instead of challenging attention to the work which he is really accomplishing, of writing for his age, and thus speaking in that loftier tone which the reformer is authorised to assume. Infidelity in its more subtle forms, and such as Mr. Hooker has described, is, we fear, a characteristic of the age: few pens have revealed more clearly than his its philosophy and impiety, and our only regret is, that he has not brought the actors and the actions of the Christian world side by side with the original which he so vividly conceives, and thus given a popular estimate of their deformity.

Again, reminding the reader, that the infidelity of which Mr. Hooker treats is to be found not in the outward ranks of avowed unbelievers, but in the inmost recesses of the hearts of professed Christians, we beg leave earnestly to recommend the work to general perusal. It is written in a pure strain of Christian philosophy, and should find its way to the closets and affections of all those “who profess and call themselves Christians.”—New York Churchman.

In the very first chapter of this work, one finds himself introduced into a new and delightful field. To most readers new emotions and unaccustomed trains of thought spring up in the mind, awakening and enkindling the desire for deeper and fuller insight into the great truths there brought to view; and as one proceeds ideas continually cluster around the mind with all the interest and freshness which novelty and a deep insight into our nature can give them. But here let it not be forgotten, that an imperious call is made upon our own undivided attention. If we expect to enter into the spirit of the book, and fully to grasp the author’s argument in all its relations and bearings, we must make up our minds to more of an intellectual effort than is required in the perusal of most books which issue from the press. [13]There is an originality in the conception of “Popular Infidelity,” an intellectual superiority in the execution to which few books of the present day can lay claim.

On the whole we think the treatise on Popular Infidelity one of the best practical works that has appeared for some time; and we would confidently recommend it to the attention of all who wish to become intimately acquainted with their own character. It is eminently calculated to promote the cause of deep, genuine, and enlightened piety, and will suffer nothing, to say the very least, in a comparison with the popular and useful works of Phillip. We have seldom seen a work which so accurately analyses the feelings and principles of the human heart, lays bare the secret springs of human action, and presents to view one’s real self.—Episcopal Recorder.

Popular Infidelity.—This is the fifth volume of the Library of Christian Knowledge, and a volume on a subject which claims all the attention the author has given to it. It is a prominent part of the merit of his work that he gives a clear diagnosis, an intelligible description of the disease for which religion is a cure. The disease is self-deception in various forms and of various types.

Some of the author’s phraseology relating to doctrines seems to imply belief in certain points concerning which we should differ from him. But his views of human ability, of the use of reason in relation to religion and of spiritual influences, appear to us to be sound and scriptural. Without being able to go into a particular description of the work, we judge from what examination we have made, that it may be safely read, in general for doctrine, and every where for reproof and correction, by Christians of all sects.—Boston Christian .

Popular Infidelity. By the Rev. Herman Hooker, M. A.—This work supplies a desideratum. Popular Infidelity, of which it treats, has been too long permitted to extend its influence, without any direct opposition from the religious press. Those who could, have refrained from defending “the faith once delivered to the Saints;” and Heresy has been permitted to stalk abroad triumphantly, where the principles and doctrines of the Scriptures should have taken precedence. Every Christian—every clergyman at least, who would defend his belief—should fortify himself with this unanswerable volume. —Philadelphia Gazette, Aug. 8, 1836.

Popular Infidelity. By the Rev. Herman Hooker, M. A.—This is the fifth volume of the Library of Christian Knowledge, and is an original work of the accomplished editor of that valuable series. All classes of Christians may find food for reflection in the very important considerations suggested by the author. The work is not, as might be supposed, a defence of the outworks of Christianity against the scepticism of the professed Infidel. But it is a most able and eloquent attack upon the practical infidelity of professed believers. Every kind and degree of unbelief are powerfully assailed. The secret enemies of faith are dragged from their lurking places, stripped of [14]their disguise, and held up to the light in their naked deformities. The extensive reading of this work cannot but promote the cause of religion in the community.—National Gazette, Aug. 6, 1836.

Popular Infidelity. By the Rev. Herman Hooker, belongs to a class of works which are seldom read as extensively as they deserve. Its purpose is to show to what extent a practical disbelief in Christianity exists even among those, who living in a Christian community, and committing no violation of its external ordinances, believe and call themselves Christians. That this adherence to the form, without retaining the substance, is too common among all classes, is a truth which even superficial observation will render manifest, but which Mr. H. illustrates by many well chosen examples. We wish his essay a circulation corresponding to its merits.—Commercial Herald, Aug. 9, 1836.

Popular Infidelity. By the Rev. Herman Hooker, M. A.—We have read this book with no ordinary interest. The subject on which it treats is of vital importance to every class of readers. We have several valuable works upon this subject, but none, that we know of, which occupies the ground taken by our author.

He has descended into the dark arcana of the human soul, and following the intricate winding of the unbelief through all its hidden and unseen influences, has exposed the fallacy of that popular sentimentalism which often es for religion, and shown the contrariety which exists between the professed opinions and conduct of men, to be owing to the latent infidelity of the heart.

It will be difficult to find a book, that so drives us into the contemplation of ourselves; that so accurately analyzes the thoughts and feelings of men, and so vividly exhibits the self-flattery, by which we cheat ourselves into the belief, that we reverence and ire the character of God, when all we ire and reverence, is but the image of ourselves, which we have contrived to ascribe to him.

In a word, it is rich in the most difficult of all knowledge, the knowledge of ourselves. It is full of thought; thought that often surprises, not only by originality of conception, but by the striking and beautiful contrast in which it is presented.

Few persons, we imagine, can read any one chapter of this book, and not wish to read the whole. The style is colloquial, nervous, and animated; the language, in a high degree, Saxon.

The author is peculiarly happy in his citations from the Scriptures. The ages cited, not only illustrate and enforce the sentiments he advances, but the manner of their introduction illustrates and enforces them; so that they are seen to possess a charm, and an extension of application, which the reader had before failed to observe.

We have seldom read a book in which so little could be anticipated. As the reader turns from page to page, he finds his curiosity continually excited by new and unexpected thoughts, presented under a rich variety of beautiful and striking illustration. When he supposes himself at the end of the subject, it comes up in a new light, and new fields of contemplation open before him.—N. Y. Evangelist.

THELIBRARYOFChristian Knowledge. 233h4v

EDITED BY

THE REV. HERMAN HOOKER, M. A.,

AUTHOR OF THE “PORTION OF THE SOUL,” &C.

VOL. VI.

LABORE RELUCENS.

PHILADELPHIA:

WILLIAM MARSHALL AND COMPANY;

MDCCCXXXVII.

SKETCH

OF THE

REFORMATION IN ENGLAND.

BY THE REV. J. J. BLUNT,

FELLOW OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

With an Introductory Letter,

TO THE EDITOR,

BY GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE, D. D.,

BISHOP OF NEW JERSEY.

PAUL’S CROSS.

PHILADELPHIA:

WILLIAM MARSHALL & CO.

1837.

“They that goe downe to the sea in ships, and occupie by the great waters, they see the workes of the Lord, and his wonders in the deepe. For God is marvellous in the surges and tempests of the sea: he is marvellous in the firmament of heaven: but much more marvellous is he in the surges and stormy tempests of his church. Heere may we behold the worke of his hands. This is the shop of his power, of his wisedome, of his light, and truth, and righteousnesse, and patience, and mercy. Heere may we see the children of light, and the children of darknesse: the vessels of honor, and the vessels of shame: the assaults of falshood, and the glorie and victorie of truth. Heere shall we see how God leadeth even into hell, and yet bringeth safely backe: how he killeth, and yet reviveth: how he refuseth the full, and feedeth the hungrie: how he is the ruine of many, and the resurrection of many. Heere may we see the wonderfull waies, and the unsearcheable judgements of God.”

Bishop Jewel, Sermon on Josh. vi. 1.

Philadelphia:
T. K. & P. G. Collins, Printers,
No. 1 Lodge Alley.

[ix]

The Reformation is one of the most remarkable events in our history, whether considered in relation to politics or religion; for its influence was most powerful upon both. My own reading, profession, and taste have led me to regard it in the latter rather than in the former light; and therefore, brief as the following sketch is, it will not be found of the nature of an abridgment of larger histories of the Reformation which have contemplated it in all its many bearings, but a continuous, though succinct , of its rise, progress, and consummation, chiefly considered as a great Revolution of the Church. I have avoided, as far as I could, taking my materials at second hand. I have been governed in my choice of them by a desire to seize upon such as, being characteristic in kind, might not be oppressive in number; and I have worked them up into a whole, with less regard to the line and rule by which others may have wrought already, than to the positions into which they seemed of themselves to fall most naturally. If in my treatment of the many delicate and difficult questions which such a subject stirs, I have former writers with me, it is well. I have not, however, constrained myself to seek out their path and pursue it, though I am too conscious of my own deficiencies, and of the extreme uncertainty of history, to be otherwise than pleased, if I happen to strike into it[x] unawares. If on the same occasions, I have the good fortune to agree with the voice of my own times, it is well too: it is folly to be singular, except for the purpose of being right; but still I have not hearkened out for that voice, and studiously walked by it. I have gone as my facts directed me, taking them as I found them, unpacked. For those facts I have generally given my authorities, that my readers may judge for themselves of the credit due to them; and for the speculations which accompany them, whether doctrinal or practical, I may say that they are meant to serve the cause of truth and equity, not of party; it is for others to say whether they are reasonable, and to let them prevail only so far as they prove so—valeant quantum valent.

St. Mary’s Parsonage,

Conversion of St. Paul, 1837.

My Dear Brother:

When you proposed to me that I should write an Introduction to Mr. Blunt’s “Sketch of the Reformation in England,” included, at my suggestion, in your “Library of Christian Knowledge,” I saw an irable opportunity to invite attention to that great crisis of the Christian world; and I consented. As I meditated on the subject, it deepened in interest, and rose in elevation, and increased in magnitude, till it became absorbing and overwhelming. I felt that an Essay on the English Reformation, that should trace it from its true beginnings, contemplate all its bearings, and carry out its just conclusions, was a work to fill a volume, and to take up years. Is not the “Sketch” itself—I was thus brought to think—which Mr. Blunt has drawn, the very thing best suited to the present purpose? In its design, a bird’s-eye view of that illustrious age in the history of[xii] man; in its execution, rapid, vigorous, picturesque; the manliest conceptions in the raciest words; so intensely interesting that he who takes it up will never lay it down unread, nor read it without the strongest impulse to read more—surely, this is the very result to which I proposed to address myself; and to attract attention to the study of the English Reformation, and to make men in love with its ennobling themes, and to imbue their minds with its instructive lessons, and to possess their hearts with its inspiring influences, and to inflame them with its martyr spirit, the book itself shall be its own best introduction.

Were I to designate, dear Hooker, the branch of study which has fallen into the most unreasonable neglect, and which yet would overpay, with most abundant, and with richest fruits, the utmost cost of prosecution, it should be without a doubt, the study of Church History. “It is not St. Augustine’s nor St. Ambrose’s works,” Lord Bacon well remarks,[3] illustrates well, when he speaks of the “soothing tendency” of the Prayer-book—am I not right when I say, that, as Christians, not only, but as patriots and philosophers, there are no investigations more worthy of us—and do I greatly err in the belief, that already, among the thoughtful and the good, there is a preparation to receive them favourably, and to bestow on those who lead the way that best reward and most distinguished honour, their confidence and acquiescence?

Chiefly, however, to two portions of the ever-flowing stream of history would I, if the permission were but given me, direct the public mind—the history of the Church in the first ages, and the history of the English Reformation. The Church of the first ages were God’s “eye witnesses and ministers of the word.” It is a maxim of the courts, “expositio contemporanea est fortissima.” The first reception is the best. As we owe the integrity of the text to them, so are we their debtors for the certainty of the interpretation. “The contradiction of tongues,” saith Lord Bacon,[6] attested in the everlasting Scriptures; to all the primitive creeds; to the four general councils; to the common judgment of the fathers, for six[xvi] hundred years after Christ, (which we, of our reformation, religiously profess to do;) this man may possibly err in trifles, but he cannot be an heretic.” This is the doctrine of common sense not less than of the Church. It was the departure from it which constituted the necessity of the English Reformation. It is the departure from it which constitutes the danger of our day. It is in the return to it, in standing in the ways, and asking for “the old paths,” that our safety and our hope are to be found. It is a blessed omen for our times, that, through the zealous devotion of Pusey and Keble and Newman, the ancient documents will soon be brought, in their translations of the Fathers, within the common reach.

Of kindred interest, and of scarcely inferior importance, is the study of the English Reformation. For a time, the Church, drunk with too much prosperity, had wandered and grown wanton. For a time, God left her to eat of the fruit of her own ways, and be filled with her own devices. But,

CHAPTER I. 263j2p

BRITISH AND ANGLO-SAXON CHURCHES.—INTERCOURSE WITH ROME.—EARLY CORRUPTIONS.

The Reformation is not to be regarded as a great and sudden event which took the nation by surprise. It was merely the crisis to which things had been tending for some centuries; and if the fire did at last run over the country with wonderful rapidity, it was because the trees were all dry. It is a mistake to suppose that whilst the Roman catholic religion prevailed all was unity. True it is, that the elements of discontent were as yet working for the most part under ground, but they were not on that the less likely to make themselves eventually felt. The strong man armed was keeping the house, and therefore his goods were at peace; but he was in jeopardy long before he was spoiled. Luther was the match that produced the explosion, but the train had been laid by the events of generations before him.

It may not then be the least useful, nor, perhaps, the least interesting portion of a History of the Reformation in England, to trace some of the causes that led to it; some[26] of the incidents that made it practicable, and some of the abuses that rendered it necessary. And here there is no need to conceal the obligations we were under in the first instance to the church of Rome. Neither Gregory himself, nor Augustin his messenger, appears to have been influenced by any other than a truly Christian spirit in seeking the conversion of England, then no very tempting prize; and though there can be no doubt that Christianity had been introduced into this island much earlier, whether by any of the apostles themselves; whether after the persecution on the death of Stephen, by some of the Syrian Christians, “who were scattered abroad, and went every where preaching the word;”[36]

Rome, however, had by this time, corrupted the simplicity of the faith, as it was taught there by St. Paul in his own hired house; and whilst, no doubt, the English pilgrims who returned brought away with them much to civilise and something to edify, they brought away with them, too, much to corrupt the church at home. For Rome was under a temptation to mingle sacred and profane together; it did not, like Constantinople, rise at once a Christian capital. The Gospel was introduced into it, and had to win its way by slow degrees through the ancient sympathies and inveterate habits of the Pagan city. It was a maxim with some of the early promoters of the Christian cause to do as little violence[35] as possible to existing prejudices. They would run the risk of Barnabas being confounded with Jupiter, and Paul with Mercurius. In the transition from Pagan to Papal Rome much of the old material was worked up. The heathen temples became Christian churches; the altars of the gods, altars of the saints; the curtains, incense, tapers, votive tablets, remained the same; the aquaminarium was still the vessel for holy water; St. Peter stood at the gate instead of Cardea; St. Rocque or St. Sebastian in the bed-room, instead of the “Phrygian Penates;” St. Nicholas was the sign of the vessel, instead of Castor and Pollux; the Mater Deûm became the Madonna; alms pro Matre Deûm became alms for the Madonna; the festival of the Mater Deûm, the festival of the Madonna, or Lady Day; the Hostia, or victim, was now the host; the “Lugentes Campi,” or dismal regions, Purgatory;[37] the offerings to the Manes were masses for the dead. The parallel might be drawn out to a far greater extent; indeed, so much of the Roman had been grafted upon the Roman catholic system during the dark ages (as they are called) that the confusion of ideas and of resulting from it forms quite a feature in the writings of the Italian authors who lived at the revival of letters. Images, holy and unholy, are by them crowded together without the smallest regard to decency, though evidently without any intention to offend against it in the parties themselves. Such was the process of deterioration which the Gospel was undergoing at Rome (progressive because profitable) at the time when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were improving their acquaintance with that city by repairing to it for purposes of devotion.

[36]

What were the doctrines and practices which at present prevailed in the Anglo-Saxon church, and how far it was exempt from the errors of later times, it is not easy to determine; more especially as the ecclesiastical history of Bede, and the early Saxon homilies and canons, quoted by his commentators, would often lead us to conflicting conclusions:—

I. With regard to the doctrine of transubstantiation, we read in Bede of the “bread of life,” “the holy bread;”[42]

II. On the subject of image worship, the Anglo-Saxon church does not seem to have been altogether blameless. In the preface to the Laws of Alfred, though the other[37] commandments are enumerated in their order, the second is omitted, only there is added after the rest.—“Thou shalt not make gods of silver or gold.” There must have been a reason for such a change in the positive and relative position of this law; and it is difficult to assign any reason but one.[43]

III. Purgatory was a part of the Anglo-Saxon creed. This, indeed, was established on authority. Drithelme, a famous saint (as he proved) of Northumbria, died and was buried; but he was born to refute the apophthegm that dead men tell no tales, for he returned to life, and gave an of his travels.[46] downwards,[38] availed themselves of these fearful images, conjured up by the morbid imagination of the early monks, and consigned, in their turn,

IV. Purgatory, of course, brought other doctrines in its train—penance for the living, that they might never come into it;[51] till it was pronounced orthodox at the council of Placentia in 1095. The communion, in one kind only, had become customary (from whatever cause,) and the practice received the placet of the church in 1415, at the council of Constance.

V. The Virgin appears to have been held in great, perhaps[39] in idolatrous, honour by the Anglo-Saxon church. It is true that—

was to be seen in the processions of Augustin, and not the Virgin;[54]

VI. But, indeed, the office of intercession was not confined to the Virgin.[62]

Whilst, however, we gather these exploits of the early saints of our country from the pages of Bede, it is only just to the memory of that veracious and single-hearted writer to observe, that numerous as may be the lying wonders which he relates and believes on the testimony of others of his own actual knowledge he does not pretend to one. But wherefore are they touched upon at all? Simply because they are characteristic of the times whereof they are told: they supply a gauge by which we can measure the degree and the progress of those corruptions from which the Reformation finally delivered us. Monstrous as these legends are, they were the faith of the nation; for if Bede receives them as facts, were his countrymen in general, so much less enlightened than himself, likely to reject them as fictions? Moreover, they are curious as specimens of a vast magazine of materials, which supplied poetry when it revived after the barbarous ages with much of its wild as well as ludicrous imagery. Dante worked them up into his Divina Comedia. His Inferno, especially, is the offspring of an imagination that had dieted with these monkish mysteries; and it may be observed by the way, that even our own Paradise Lost may have felt their influence, and that Milton may be indirectly indebted for many of the dark and terrible features of this hell to early hagiography. Romance, if it did not owe its existence, owed much of its furniture to the same common stock. The poets of romance drew from it, either directly or through the chroniclers, the adventures that suited them.[42] Turpin, a fictitious archbishop, is constantly introduced by them with solemn sneers, as a voucher for the most extravagant feats of their favourites, and thus the dishonest fictions of the priesthood were made eventually to recoil upon their own order, and swell the cry for reformation; for these popular writers, without, perhaps, intending it, or caring much about the matter, did, undoubtedly, lend a helping hand to the great cause by laughing at much that was fairly ridiculous in the doctors and doctrines of their day; happy had they known where to stop, and not to rush upon things truly sacred with the temerity of fools.

But one conservative principle there was in the economy of the Anglo-Saxon church that opposed itself to still further corruption of the faith of Christ, and that was, the free use of the word of God. The Scriptures might not, indeed, be very generally read; Bede complains that they were not; but there was no hinderance thrown in the way of reading them, quite the contrary: he himself gave a translation of the Gospel of St. John; one of the Psalter had appeared already; and in the interval that elapsed before the Norman conquest, other portions of Holy Writ were put forth from time to time in the same vernacular language. Virtue, no doubt, went out of these, narrow as might be the limits within which they circulated; and it is no unusual matter to find in the pages of Bede, and in the midst of the legends, relics, visions, and superstitions, of which they are full, occasional glimpses of better things, and some of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity still struggling vigorously for their lives.[63]

In tracing the progress of corruption in the English church and the causes of it, we have hitherto had a trustworthy guide in the venerable Bede; henceforward, to the time of the Normans, there is much in our history that is dark, intricate, and uncertain.[66] not to speak of the wholesale destruction or dispersion of books and papers which accompanied the suppression of the religious houses, and which left to the fell swoop of the puritans but little to do in order to extinguish much of the ancient ecclesiastical annals of England.

However, it was undoubtedly during the interval in question, that a schism arose in the church, which eventually[44] hastened the crisis of the Reformation beyond any one thing else, by dividing the house against itself. The famous Dunstan, who was born in the year 925, was the man to sow the Dragon’s tooth. As yet the different orders of ecclesiastics had lived in harmony. There were secular clergy, and there were regulars; but the latter had not hitherto taken kindly root in England. The great number of churches existing in this kingdom in the middle ages[71] It is probable that the nobles in general took a malicious pleasure in encouraging this exposure of a class of men who were their rivals in wealth, and their superiors in intelligence, and thus widened the breach. Chaucer, who was a courtier as well as a poet, no doubt reflects the feelings of the upper ranks of his day, and he cleaves to the seculars. Meanwhile, neither of these ecclesiastical parties seems to have been aware that by their mutual criminations they were preparing the nation to demand a reformation in the manners of them all; and that each was throwing stones at the other, when the houses of both were made of glass.

But their strife was not merely a strife of tongues; it was their pleasure to thwart one another in deed as well as in word. Whenever the monks got footing in the cathedrals (which in many instances they very soon did,) they proved a perpetual thorn in the side of the bishop, more especially if he happened to have been promoted from the secular clergy himself. Then they carried themselves towards him in a spirit of “untamed reluctance.” They would not have this man to reign over them. The bishops were vexed at thus having to encounter foes in their own households, and sometimes we find them expressing an angry but impotent wish, that England was clear of them; and sometimes we find them by a stretch of power expelling the whole fraternity at once, and filling up their places with canons who were ever wont to be faithful and obedient to their[49] diocesan.[74] for the Norman princes, like some more modern reformers, had the appetite of the dragon of Wantly—“houses and churches were to them geese and turkeys;” but archbishop Lanfranc, the first metropolitan under the Norman dynasty, a good man and a wise, stood in the gap, and saved his church from the tender mercies of a reform, which, being interpreted, would have been a robbery. He, again, had been himself a monk, and probably would on that view the transgressions of the monks with more charity, and, perhaps, be personally less exposed to their malice. And, indeed, if there must needs be this division of seculars and regulars, it was a happy circumstance for the church, and we will add for the country (for with all its gross defects it was the fountain of life and light to the nation in those times), that the dignitaries were taken from both classes, though chiefly, no doubt, from the regulars; and that thus they mutually acted as checks upon those classes, in any momentary ebullitions of party spirit; not to say that those who were removed from the monastery to the mitre would find their past prejudices corrected by a new position and new interests, and by the discovery that men of their own order were not always the most dutiful of their sons. Thus in the working of the system, there were some of those selfcorrecting[50] principles and balances brought into play which in part protected it from itself, and the like to which (though so often overlooked or undervalued) constitute the real worth of many a system which wears an unpromising aspect, and which, in spite of those querulous empirics who assure us that it ought to go intolerably wrong, persists in going tolerably right notwithstanding. This observation is thrown out merely to for the long continuance of a system, containing within itself such active elements of ruin, as, abstractedly considered, might have been expected to put an end to it much sooner.

But this is not all. In our post-mortem examination of the Roman catholic church of England, undertaken with a view to ascertain the complicated disorders which made a way for its final dissolution, another feature presents itself akin to the last. William the Conqueror, who cared as little for the discipline of the church as for the laws of the land, thought proper to exempt a monastery which he had founded (that of St. Martin de Bello) from episcopal jurisdiction altogether. From this moment a mad ambition drove the monks of the principal religious houses to seek for themselves a similar privilege. Baldwin, abbot of St. Edmunds (Bury), at that time one of the finest foundations in England, obtained such exemption from pope Alexander, although, in the deed which conferred it, and which was executed before the year 1073, the pope, as if lending himself to a transaction hitherto unattempted and unheard of, expresses himself with some reserve—“as far as the thing could be done, salvâ primatis obedientiâ,” consistently with obedience to the primate. Lanfranc, however, then archbishop, who watched over the interests of the church (as we have already seen) with a cautious and prophetic eye, took away this dangerous privilege from the abbot, on his return to England, and reduced him to submission.[51] But less resolute men, such as Radulph, William, and Theobald, succeeding him in the primacy, and the liberties of the church of England having been, in the mean while, crippled by the machinations of Rome, the monks took courage, and, feeling their own strength, claimed exemption from the jurisdiction of archbishops as well as bishops, as a matter of right; and, producing certain charters of ancient date (so they pretended), granted to them by popes or princes, carried their suit into the courts of Rome, and got it confirmed. This dispensation, bad in theory, was not better in practice. The monks of Malmesbury, for instance, had lately (about A. D. 1180) elected an abbot. The bishop of Salisbury interdicts the abbot elect from receiving the benediction at any other hands than his own; whereupon the latter goes into Wales, and procures it from the bishop of Landaff (for the Welsh church was still independent of England); on this the archbishop suspends the abbot until he can justify his disobedience by producing his letters of exemption. The abbot presents to the archbishop his charter, which turns out to be faulty in the style, the thread, and the seal, and which savours little of the court of Rome. The bishop asserts it to be spurious, and exhibits many professions of submission on the part of the abbots of Malmesbury, made to him or his predecessors. The abbot is contumacious, declares that he holds himself bound to answer to no superior, whether bishop or archbishop, but to the pope only; and adds, “poor and miserable is the abbot who does not utterly annihilate the jurisdiction of a bishop, when, for a single ounce of gold a year, he may buy full liberty for himself from Rome.” The archbishop, therefore, entreats the pope not to aid and abet this turbulent person; and, at the same time, bitterly laments the injury done, not to the bishops only, but to the whole church, by these papal exemptions—exemptions which had proved[52] ruinous to the peace, discipline, and good order of the monasteries themselves which enjoyed them.[75]

Here, therefore, was a rift in the church, which time only widened, and which unfitted it for sustaining a storm whenever it should come. But the mischief did not end here. Long before the monks had escaped from the eye of their bishop, they had relaxed from the Sabine simplicity of their primitive institutions; now that they were left at liberty to do what seemed good in their own sight, matters went worse. Giraldus Cambrensis, a writer of the twelfth century, tells us, that on his return from abroad (he had been prosecuting his theological studies at Paris) he dined with the monks of Canterbury. Having eaten of their bread, he lifts up his heel against them, and maliciously exposes their bill of fare. It is curious as a picture of the times:—sixteen lordly dishes and upwards, besides a course of herbs, which latter, however, were not in much request; fish of divers kinds—roast and boiled, stewed and fried; omelets, seasoned meats, and sundry provocatives of the palate, prepared by cunning cooks; wines in ample profusion; sicera, piment, claret, must, mede, and moretum (mulberry),—any thing and every thing but ale, the boast of England, and more especially of Kent. “What would Paul the Hermit have said to all this?” thinks the splenetic Giraldus to himself, “or St. Anthony? or St. Benedict, the founder of the order?”[84] Was the piety of the public to be stimulated? Rival relics were set up, and impostures of all kinds multiplied without shame, to the impoverishment of the people, the disgrace of the church, and the scandal of Christianity.

[59]

It is revolting to bear record of these villanies—to see sordid advantage taken of the most sacred feelings of mankind, and religion itself subjected to suspicion through the hypocrisy of its professors. But, however humiliating may be the confession, experience has sanctioned it as a truth, that an indigent church makes a corrupt clergy; that in order to secure a priesthood which shall wear well, a permanent provision must be set aside for their maintenance—such a provision as shall induce men duly qualified, to enter the church, for it is visionary to suppose that temporal motives will not have their weight in this temporal state of things; and it is unreasonable to expect that persons who are excluded by the rules of society from the usual inlets to wealth, the courts, the camp, or the exchange, and who cannot but know or feel, when they are honestly doing their duty, that they are as good commonwealth’s men, to put it upon no higher ground, as any others, and therefore have as good a right to its liberal regards as any others, should be content to waive this right;—such a provision as shall be enough to ensure recruits for the priesthood from all ranks, the highest as well as those below, and so to ensure their easy intercourse with all ranks; for the leaven should leaven the whole lump;—such a provision as should encourage them to speak with all boldness, crouching to no man for their morsel of bread, nor tempted to lick the hand that feeds them;—such a provision as should prevent the meanness of their condition from prejudicing the force of their reasons, or give occasion to a high-minded hearer to accuse their plain speech of unmannerly presumption. Surely, until we can find such a church upon earth, in all her , and in all the successive generations of her , as can be true to the image of our Lord, it is a vision indeed to reject all adventitious , such as her condition may require, and to say with the great puritan poet,[60] that she should be content, as he was, to ride upon an ass.”[85]

It is needless to add, that the friars at length became as rottenness to the bones of the Roman catholic church; that, by the time of Erasmus and Luther, they were the butt at which every dissolute idler, on every tavern bench, discharged his shaft, hitting the establishment, and religion itself, through their sides; that they were exhibited in pot-house pictures as foxes preaching, with the neck of a stolen goose peeping out of the hood behind; as wolves giving absolutions, with a sheep muffled up in their cloaks; as apes sitting by a sick man’s bed, with a crucifix in one hand, and with the other in the sufferer’s fob.[86] Still the disaffection which this ridicule both indicated and promoted, was in some degree neutralised. There was, something, after all, in the constitution of such an order as the friars, which gratified the feelings of the people, and which led to their continued toleration, if not to their aggrandisement. They were, for the most part, men of themselves; they were the democratic portion of the church. It no doubt flattered the vanity of the peasant or mechanic, to see his own flesh and blood bearding the first-born of Egypt with whom he was brought into , or rather collision, in the of the old and orthodox abbeys; nor would it be less grateful perhaps, to an unlettered man to hear the clerk of his own[61] name, and of his own breeding, starting and maintaining with vast pertinacity theological subtleties, which had little other merit, to be sure, than that of being in opposition to received opinions, and an assertion of the right of every man to think for himself, however ill he might be qualified for doing so to advantage.

Then, again the pope was a tower of strength to the mendicant orders. They were the men of his right hand; and it may be observed, that when the Reformation came on, which was, amidst other and nobler interests concerned, a struggle in the first instance between the king and the pope for the mastery, the smaller monasteries (which were those of the friars) were the first confiscated by Henry; for he considered them the barracks from which his most inveterate enemies issued to the contest, prepared to maintain the cause of their sovereign lord the pope against any and every antagonist. Lastly, it is not to be forgotten, that the cloak of the friar was the refuge for a class of men who would now be ed by parish relief, and though in both cases the idle might often be enabled hereby to enter into the labours of others, yet often again assistance would be thus istered to the blameless sufferer, and the load of life on the whole be lightened to the poor.

Such were some of the circumstances that still upheld the mendicants even in the days of their degeneracy, when the spirit was gone that had urged them indeed to enthusiastic extravagances and puerile superstitions, but which was respected because it was thought to be sincere; and when little remained behind but a caput mortuum of unmeaning forms of devotion, and crafty contrivances for gain.

It has been already observed that the distance of England from Italy, which had helped to deliver our borders from the political tyranny of imperial Rome, served also to protect the liberties of our church from the spiritual thraldom of papal Rome. The inhabitants of this island, entirely cut off from the rest of the world, were happily abandoned to their own devices. They were themselves the best judges of their own wants, and of the institutions which were suited to their own habits and circumstances; and though some time might elapse whilst they were thus groping out their way, which might have been saved by accepting foreign guidance, and though some rude traces of their slow and tentative progress towards their end might even afterwards appear in the results of their labours, still it was most desirable in the establishment of a church that it should gradually adapt itself in its growth and formation to the wants, the wishes, and the actual condition of the country. The least of all seeds was then most likely to become the greatest of trees, when it was left to thrive alone (occulto velut arbor ævo); when its roots were quietly suffered to feel for the soil that fed them best, and its branches to stretch out their arms towards the quarter of the heavens which proved the most genial. The spirit of Christianity itself, at its first appearance, invited this forbearance on the part of those amongst whom it came, not meddling[63] bodily with the civil or political rights of the nations it visited, and leaving their laws and forms of government, in their letter at least, just what it found them.

Thus in England the church and state for a long time grew up together, the pope occasionally interfering, though generally on invitation, and scarcely ever in a manner to disturb the harmony of the system. In Saxon times, we find the prelate and the king friends and fellow-workers together—the one teaching the people, the other taking an interest in his office, and making provision for its permanent continuance. The same good understanding which subsisted between the bishop and the sovereign, subsisted also between the priest and the noble: here, again, the one communicated a knowledge of God’s laws to the inhabitants of the manor, the other encouraged the good work, and secured a similar benefit to his estate for ever by a fixed endowment; for in those days there was a belief that the foundations of a state were best laid in religion, and that persons were better subjects and better citizens in proportion as they were better men. Did difficulties present themselves in questions ecclesiastical; were obstacles to be removed, or improvements to be made, or observances to be enforced, the nation had that within itself which usually supplied the remedy. Matters were transacted within the four seas. Civil interpositions, e. g. whether of the king or the great council, protected the persons and estates of the clergy, determined the union or dissolution of dioceses, directed the recovery of tithes; defined and punished sacrilege, prescribed and limited the right of sanctuary, insisted upon the observance of the Sabbath, and fined for the contempt of it.[104] Thus did the establishment suffer both from within and from without: from within, by the decay of all discipline; from without, by the forfeiture of all respect.

Nor was this all. Nothing contributes so much to disgust the public mind with the existing order of things as the faulty istration of justice. Let the people have justice purely, unexpensively, and expeditiously istered, and what chiefly concerns them in the government of a country is obtained. “I crave the law,” is the demand of any stout-hearted nation, and having gained this object, they are at peace. Now the ancient county-court was simple and satisfactory in its practice—it was the natural growth of the soil; suited to the wants of Englishmen, and consecrated by immemorial usage. The judiciary system introduced by the pope, on the other hand, into the diocesan courts, of which rescripts from Rome and (subsequently[70] when the books of the civil law had been discovered) the old Roman jurisprudence were the basis, was tedious, costly, and what was perhaps worse than all, novel.[107] Nor were the grievances touching property more onerous than those which regarded domestic relationship. The regulations of marriage were intricate and vexatious: whilst it was maintained to be in itself a sacrament, and so indissoluble, the prohibited degrees were studiously multiplied, and thereby a pretence was furnished for a dissolution whenever it should be the pope’s pleasure to pronounce it. Thus did he hold in his hands, and determine by his legate, or by the dean of the[71] arches, the legate’s deputy, the legitimacy of children, and the succession of families, separating those whom no man had a right to put asunder, and giving his sanction to unions which nature and Scripture forbade.

The progress of a cause, slow, of necessity by reason of the forms of the court, and the contradictions of the canons, was still further and more seriously impeded by appeals. By these, episcopal decisions were set at nought; and the more effectually as the court of the arches was invested with the power of suspending the process of the ordinary till the pope’s answer should be received, and often no doubt, till one or both of the litigants would be ready to exclaim with King Henry, whose divorce presents, in its seven years’ details, a splendid example of the grievances under which numbers of his subjects were suffering, with more right on their side—

It would be a long labour, and one, perhaps of no great interest to the majority of our readers after all, to follow out this branch of our subject in all its extent. Suffice it, however, not to have ed over in silence so fruitful a source of popular discontent as abuses in the istration of the law—abuses which could fail of alienating multitudes from a church with which they were identified. It is not, perhaps, a circumstance less worthy of notice from being often overlooked, and whilst the more obvious evils which clamorously demanded redress are set forth to the full, one which touched men in their property, their affections—which met them in the affairs of “this working-day world” at every turn—is noticed casually, or not at all.

There may be those, indeed, who think that to dwell at[72] so much length on the secondary and more disgraceful causes of the Reformation, is to detract from the character of that great event, and to tarnish its lustre; but they who regard God’s enemies as his instruments will not so of it. They will see in the course given to those beggarly elements the same superintending hand that wrought the nourishment of Jacob’s household out of the sin of Jacob’s sons; so that whilst they wickedly sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, God mercifully made it for good, sending him before them, by this means, to preserve them a posterity in the earth, and to save their lives by a great deliverance. They will see in it the same power at work that shaped the cruel decree of Pharaoh for the children to be cast into the river into an easy provision for bringing up Moses in the royal household, and thus fitting him to be the teacher and leader of Israel, by introducing him into all the wisdom of the Egyptians. They will see in it the same that achieved the salvation of the world itself, by Caiphas who declared that it was expedient for one man to die for the people, and by the wretches that cried, “Crucify him! crucify him!”

With the causes already enumerated as those which worked the downfall of the Roman Catholic church, there conspired the ignorance and immoral lives of the clergy. A system of celibacy upon compulsion was sure to produce a system of profligacy. Yet the disgusting catalogue of offences alleged against the regulars, by the visiters of the monasteries, ought, perhaps, to be received with some caution. The commissioners were not unprejudiced judges. They knew full well, that the king, their master, was determined on the dissolution of the religious houses, and that, at all events, a quarrel was to be picked. Bad enough those houses probably were, but had they been better, their doom was sealed. The preamble of the act for dissolving the smaller ones on pretence of their corruption, proclaims that the greater were spared as being regular, devout, and praiseworthy; yet we know what followed.[147] and yet were reckoned acts that would be ed to the parties for righteousness: and, whilst no man brought his gift to the altar of his Saviour in Canterbury cathedral throughout a whole year, offerings were made at the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in the same place, and during the same period, to the amount of nearly a thousand pounds.

No wonder that in these ages of darkness doctrines not found in the word of God, but of which we have seen that the germ existed even in the Saxon church, should have shot up with vigour like the gourd of Jonah in the night; or that, in the absence of Scripture to speak for itself, the religion of Rome (as Latimer observes) should have ed for it.[148]

EARLY REFORMERS.—WALDENSES.—WICKLIFFE.—LOLLARDS.

Meanwhile a little leaven was at work, which served still to keep a better faith alive; a little salt of the earth which prevented the great carcase of human nature from offending the nostrils of its Creator. The Almighty has been ever wont to make such provision for the continuance of sound doctrine. Whilst all flesh was corrupting its way, still a household or two were left to keep his name from perishing, and to rally the true religion again—an Enos, an Enoch, or a Noah. When idolatry had once more spread itself over the world, almost to the extinction of the knowledge of the Most High, a few chosen vessels were left to the preservation of it still—an Abraham, a Lot, a Melchizedec, a Job. Generations rolled on, and God thought fit to act on a greater scale, but still on the same principle; and the Israelites were separated from mankind as a peculiar people, as the depositaries of the creed of man; and their fortunes were so shaped as to occasion their dispersion amongst the Gentiles, with the Bible in their hearts, and hands; and thus were they made the channels through which the will and works of God were communicated to those who would otherwise have sat in darkness; and to this origin, perhaps, rather than to be unassisted efforts of natural reason, is to be referred the more sublime part of the philosophy of the heathens.[149]

[86]

So it was, in a degree, during the times of papal ignorance; for though to the question, which the Romanists taught every priest that could scarce read his breviary to ask, “Where was the religion of protestants before Luther?” it was sufficient to say, as it was said, “In the Bible;” still even in the darkest times, it had many faithful witnesses to produce besides, and both in individuals and in whole congregations might even then be read the eloquent chapters of the good man’s life. Thus, whilst the pope was grasping at universal power, and the monks were busy in seconding his efforts, and councils were giving authority to abuses both doctrinal and practical, on which his usurpation was grafting itself, and wars were waged between the several ecclesiastical orders, to the ruin of that which is the keystone of the gospel, charity, and ignorance was becoming more dense, and manners more profligate, there was abiding amongst the recesses of the Alps a race of hardy mountaineers, who held (as they still hold after ages of poverty and oppression) the essential articles of the reformed faith, and to whom it had been apparently derived from the apostles themselves:—Vaudois, Valenses, or Waldenses, was the name of this primitive people, dwelling as they did in the valleys of the Cottian Alps—a name which, though at first like that of Albigenses and Romanists, having a reference to the local habitation of the persons who bore it, eventually embraced a large and widely scattered sect which professed certain religious opinions, and on more occasions than one sealed them with their blood. For that they took their title or origin from Peter Waldo, the heretic of Lyons, as the catholics pretend, is not to be itted. He was excommunicated by the archbishop of that place, in 1172, and is not mentioned before the year 1160, whereas there is evidence that the Vaudois existed as a distinct society at least half a century earlier; and it is probable that[87] the Subalpini, and Paterines, a more ancient name still, men who worshipped the God of their fathers after a manner which the church of Rome called heresy, were but the same Waldenses, under a prior designation. Certain it is, that no shadow of proof exists of Peter Waldo having ever set foot in Piedmont, and a substantial difference may be descried between his followers and the church of the Alps, that whilst the former assumed the functions of the clerical office without hesitation, the latter constantly and scrupulously insisted upon a regular call to the priesthood, and imposition of hands.[155] Mr. Wordsworth, whose “Ecclesiastical Sketches” are in general scarcely more remarkable for their poetry than for their historical accuracy, points at this connection in his Sonnet on the Waldenses:—

Some, again, of the same persecuted race repaired to Provence and Languedoc, where they were known by the name of Albigenses, or heretics of Albi (perhaps the parent stock of the present protestants in the south of ); and on being driven thence, as they were driven thither by the inquisition and the sword, sought shelter in the neighbouring district of Guienne, then in possession of the English, and thus possibly found a way for themselves or their tenets, or both, into Britain by another channel. But, in truth, such opinions as those entertained by the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Bohemians, and the Lollards (for by this latter name the disciples of Wickliffe were distinguished—a name probably given to them as being tares, lolium, amongst the wheat,) had quietly diffused themselves over a great part of Christendom, in spite of the unrighteous pains taken by the church of Rome to put down all overt expression of them. Springing up in various and distant spots of Europe, they gradually became (so to speak) confluent. Nor is it impossible to trace the means by which this might be effected. The intercourse of mankind was considerable in those days; greater, perhaps, than we are apt to imagine, in this age of stage-coaches, canals, railroads, and steam-boats. Pilgrimages promoted travelling to an extent now almost incredible;—every country took care to be provided with some bait or other for the holy palmer, and the more distant the journey the more meritorious the service. Vessels were regularly freighted with pilgrims. Licenses were granted by King[91] Henry VI. in one year for the exportation of 2433 pilgrims to St. James of Compostella.[156] The wife of Bath

Rome indeed, the heart as it were of Christendom, was perpetually receiving and expelling a current of idle or devout dwellers in every region under heaven, and was thus circulating, intelligence of all kinds through all lands. The home circuit was still more trodden; 100,000 pilgrims, we are told, visited St. Thomas à Becket in a single year.[162] The moment was peculiarly propitious to the extension of Wickliffe’s opinions. The schism in the papacy occurred a few years before his death; and the spectacle of two infallible heads of the church anathematising one another, could not fail to open the eyes of Christendom to the unwarranted pretensions of both. To this circumstance, probably, Wickliffe was indebted for permission to end his turbulent life in peace, in his own parish, and in his own bed; since the disposition of Rome towards this arch-heretic was sufficiently testified, when, forty-one years afterwards, the council of Constance, in impotent rage, condemned his bones to be exhumed, burned, and cast into the brook. But the Swift (such is its name) bore them to the Avon, that to the Severn, the Severn to the sea, to be dispersed unto all lands; which things are an allegory.

[94]

Of this great reformer himself, who so raised the waters not of this country only, but of Europe at large, that Luther came in with the next wave, it is difficult to speak. A most effectual weapon he undoubtedly was for the pulling down of strong holds; but we may ire the wisdom of God in adjusting his instruments to the work which he has for them to do, when he raised up first a Wickliffe, and afterwards a Cranmer. Had they changed places, Cranmer’s meek and gentle spirit would have been overborne by the almost irresistible torrent of corruption of the times of Edward; and, on the other hand, Wickliffe’s daring and impetuous temper, and his hasty views of ecclesiastical polity, would have urged him to go all lengths with Henry—and whilst he would have demolished a church of Rome, he would have left few or no materials for erecting a church of England. Cranmer and his colleagues have been pronounced by our great puritan poet, “time serving and halting prelates;” happily, in one sense, they were so. Wickliffe would have been a man more after Milton’s heart; but “the wisdom which is from above,” we read, “is gentle:” and if there be one thing more than another that fixes the attention of sober-minded and considerate men when contemplating the progress of the Reformation, it is the calmness, the temper, the prudence, the presence of mind, with which Cranmer endeavoured to direct (like a good and guardian angel) the tempest on which he rode; and whilst he felt how much the fierce element was imperatively commissioned to destroy, he never for a moment forgot the still nobler part, how much it was permitted to spare: he steered the ark of his church with wonderful dexterity through a sea of troubles, avoiding the scattered Cyclades, when it is probable that, had his great predecessor been the pilot, he would have run it aground, and left it a wreck. Wickliffe, as a sincere believer, was naturally vexed at the scandals by which he[95] saw Christ’s religion brought into contempt; as a secular churchman and a champion of the seculars, he hated the friars with a cordial hatred, and took pleasure in exposing their covetousness and frauds; as an academician, he could not tolerate their encroachments on the rights and privileges of the universities, and their surreptitious abduction of four fifths of the students;[181] They would hide the forbidden treasure under the floors of[102] their houses, and put their lives in peril, rather than forego the book they desired; they would sit up all night, their doors being shut for fear of surprise, reading or hearing others read the word of God; they would bury themselves in the woods, and there converse with it in solitude; they would tend their herds in the fields, and still steal an hour for drinking in the good tidings of great joy:—thus was the angel come down to trouble the water, and there was only wanted some providential crisis to put the nation into it, that it might be made whole.

LUTHER.—ERASMUS.—SIR T. MORE.—NEW TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.—DEMAND FOR IT.

Such was the condition of England in the fifteenth century: the minds of men generally alienated from the church of Rome by reason of its corruption; their religious knowledge improved, and improving daily, by the wider diffusion of the Scriptures in the mother-tongue, to which the art of printing now so effectually contributed; and a sect, neither few in numbers, nor wanting in activity or courage, in the heart of the kingdom, ready to profit by any occasion which might offer of opening the eyes of their countrymen. Providence, having now sufficiently prepared the world for the reception of such a character, raised up a great reformer, whose labours, though immediately confined to , still made themselves felt throughout Europe, and more especially in this island.

Martin Luther, the son of a working miner in Saxony, was born at Isleben on the 10th of November, 1483, a day much to be ed. He was a man for the times; qualified by the force of his character for giving them a wrench. In his early years he took on himself the vows of an Augustin monk, and, to use his own words, was a “most mad Papist.” Various circumstances concurred to disabuse him of his bigotry; they have been severally advanced with more or less emphasis according to the respective views of the writers who have treated this subject—the secular historian tracing his conversion to secondary causes, the devout, ascribing it wholly to the grace of God. Both may be right; it was probably the effect of accident, of reflection, and of[104] time, God working by means of such instruments. At the age of three and twenty the business of his monastery carried him to Rome. He saw there more than was expedient. He was surprised to find, on near inspection, that the image which he had been taught to believe fallen from Jupiter, wore many appearances of having been made by the craftsman. He was too sincere himself not to feel disgust at the symptoms of hollow faith which forced themselves upon his notice in the capital of Christendom and he returned to Saxony from his mission “with thoughts arising in his heart.” He betook himself to the study of the Scriptures, with Erasmus for his help; with whose system of interpretation, however, he does not seem to have been entirely satisfied. He felt an increasing dislike of the schoolmen and soon entertained a suspicion, which, by degrees, ripened into a conviction, of the truth of that doctrine which proved afterwards the burden of his preaching—justification by faith in Christ only.[210]

There was too much hazard in it, and the sacrifice of too many early associations, principles, and prejudices, for gray hairs. Time, however, that gentle innovator, settled these differences. At the period when the papal power was put down in England, nearly twenty years had elapsed since Luther first took up his parable against papal abuses. In this interval, a generation of aged defenders of the ancient faith had been gathered to their fathers, and had given place to such as had grown up under the influence of a better star. The press had been active, of which the wonderful influence was first made known upon this great question. The pure doctrines and heroic deeds of the German reformers circulated throughout England. Luther was in every mouth—ballads sung of him. His writings, together with those of Huss, of Zuingle, and of many anonymous authors whom the times evoked, were clandestinely dispersed. Tracts, with popular titles, such as “A booke of the Olde God and New,” “The burying of the Masse;” “A, B, C, against[114] the Clergy,” made their appeals to the people. The confessions of some of the more eminent Lollards, and expositions of particular chapters of Scripture, which were thought to militate the most strongly against the errors of Rome, were industriously scattered abroad. Above all, Tindall’s translation of the New Testament was now in the hands of many; for the price, as compared with that of Wickliffe’s a century before, was just forty-fold less[216] But measures like these were only calculated to defeat the object which they were intended to promote.

Strong public feeling, when matured in its growth and righteous in its principle, cannot be effectually suppressed—check it, and it rages impatiently; whilst, if its fair course be not hindered, it may only make sweet music.

CRANMER.—THE DIVORCE.—THE SUPREMACY.

We have now touched upon a few of the many elements which were secretly at work preparing England for a reformation of religion, and without some regard to which it would be impossible to for the rapid pace at which it was consummated: let us but shut our eyes to this undercurrent of events—take our stand at the accession of Henry the Eighth—and endeavour to guess at the future; and what could seem to us more improbable, than that a reign so begun was destined to effect the extinction of the papal power in England? Henry mounted the throne with a treasury full to overflowing, the fruits of a revenue improved by the wisdom of his father’s laws, by the care with which that sagacious monarch husbanded the nation’s purse, and, it must be added, by the rapacity of Dudley and Empson, his fiscal officers; who then would conjecture that an exhausted exchequer was to drive him to the plunder of the church, in order to continue the profusion which its affluence had taught him?—He had mounted the throne a zealous papist and a learned, having been himself intended, it was said, for the see of Canterbury, had not the death of his elder brother put the crown upon his head instead of the mitre; ambitious, moreover, of papal distinctions, and eventually able to procure them by entering the lists with Luther as a volunteer champion of the ancient creed; who would then conjecture that the title of “Defender of the Faith,” in the sense in which it was conferred upon him, was the very last to which he was to have a just claim?—He mounted the throne, having Katherine, his brother’s widow, for his wife[117] by a dispensation from the Pope, who counted it the ratification of his own authority in England, that her very princes were thenceforth to derive their title to the crown from the validity of this his bull; who then would conjecture that this stroke of policy, as it was thought, for which a point had been strained at Rome, was to be precisely the ruin of the politician, and that the subversion of papal usurpation in England would be actually effected by the very measure which was to have confirmed it? Amongst the distinctive marks by which God’s hand may be perceived regulating human affairs, this, says Barrow, in his noble sermon on a special Providence,[223]—that St. Paul, therefore, pronounced the Mosaical law, in these particulars, still to stand good.

On the other side, it was replied, that the Levitical precept must be understood, of not taking a brother’s wife whilst he was living, for that the brother was actually ened to take the brother’s widow, he having died childless and to raise up seed unto his brother;[225]

To this it was reed,—that the exception in the general law proved only that God might dispense with his own ordinances for his own ends, and that the end in this case was, the preservation of a family in Israel, and care for the protection of the genealogy of the future Messiah, objects now accomplished, and the means thereto now superseded;—that in Herod’s affair, it cannot be with certainty affirmed that when he married Herodias, Philip was living, that she certainly deserted her former husband, but that she was probably divorced from him; and that for aught which appears to the contrary, Josephus who condemns her conduct as an infraction of the law, understands, when he does so, her marriage with her husband’s brother, he not having left[120] her childless;[226]—that the case of the Corinthian does not it of the interpretation that he took his father’s wife before his father’s death, for that the seventh commandment alone was provision enough against such an abuse, and that the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus, in which this and similar abominations are forbidden, and to which St. Paul has here an eye, must have contemplated something distinct from adultery, and does in fact contemplate the case of incestuous alliance.

Much more was said. But the question was not debated upon scriptural grounds only. The fathers, the schoolmen, and the Pope’s decretals were all brought into the controversy, and a case under no circumstances very simple became immeasurably complicated. It was at this period, about the year 1529, that the King being upon a journey, chanced to a night at Waltham-Cross; on this occasion it fell to the lot of two of his servants, to sleep at the house of one Mr. Cressy, of Waltham, where the conversation at the supper-table happened to turn upon the great topic of the day—the royal divorce. Of the party, was a fellow of Jesus’ College, Cambridge, whom the plague had driven from the University, and who had taken up his quarters meanwhile at Mr. Cressy’s house, being a relation of his wife, and the tutor of his children; his opinion was asked, he being a learned academician,—it went to this, that the question was one concerning the meaning of Scripture and nothing else; and that of this, men of learning, and the Universities more especially, would be the fittest judges; for “that the Bishop of Rome had no such authority as whereby he might dispense with the word of God.” Here were some great principles involved; Scripture set up as the rule of action; the interpretation of it asserted to be matter of private right; and the Pope himself declared not to be above[121] it. The sentiment was reported to the King, already wearied with his “infinite cause,” as he called it; and the author of it, much against his own will, was sent for to court—it was Cranmer.

“How far God fetches his purposes about!” is the contemplation of Bishop Hall on the manner of Saul’s call to the kingly office. “The asses of Kish, Saul’s father, are strayed away; what is that to the news of a kingdom? But God lays these small accidents for the ground of greater designs.”[228] Escaped from the schools, he betook himself to the writings of Erasmus, for whom he seems ever to have entertained a strong personal regard, perhaps as being the author who first opened his eyes. Luther absorbed him in his turn; and now the controversy between that reformer and his opponents being serious, agitating matters no less than the fundamentals of the Christian faith (agitur de vita et sanguine), the appeal moreover being made to Scripture alone, Cranmer set himself resolutely to the examination of the word of God, that he might qualify himself for exercising a sound judgment on these high arguments; and of the patience, the learning, the discrimination, with which he did this, the Liturgy of our church (were there no other) would be an everlasting monument, in which, whoever will be at the pains of taking a prayer or a clause to pieces, will find occasion to wonder at the masterly knowledge of the Bible which the selection even of some single expression often betrays, so that having pursued happily, as he thinks, some intricate point of theology through windings manifold, and having arrived at a conclusion which he almost fancies his very own, he will be surprised to find that our reformer has been beforehand with him even in this, and has given some unobtrusive indication of his being in possession of the secret[123] by a word in season dropped out of his abundance as he es on his way.

Such was the man whom the accidents we have recounted introduced to King Henry. Henry commanded him to digest in writing the substance of what he had uttered on the question of the divorce, and committed him to the hospitality of the Earl of Wiltshire, the most accomplished nobleman of the day, the father of Ann Bullen, where that friendship was formed between the future archbishop and the future queen, which still further promoted the cause of the Reformation, and disposed the latter to be in heart, as well as in principle, a nursing mother to the infant church.

Meanwhile the King’s cause, which had been submitted in an early stage of it to the Pope’s decision, had made small progress. Cardinal Campejus had been united in a commission with Wolsey to try it in England, but there was no serious intention of ever giving judgment. Whatever hand Wolsey might have had in stirring the question at first, he soon found that he should not be able to substitute for Katharine a queen of his own; and though not a cordial churchman, nor caring about giving offence to churchmen, nor very nice upon the sin of sacrilege (for his example was afterwards quoted in the dissolution of the abbeys), still he was not desirous of exchanging even the most rigorous Romanist for a Lutheran, and he therefore was lukewarm in the prosecution of the suit. His colleague had his private instructions and private interests too. The affair was embarrassing to the Pope: he could not decide without exasperating an Emperor of or a King of England, and he seems to have halted between the two, hoping perhaps that some propitious accident of death or disaster might intervene to release him from his unpleasant dilemma. Accordingly, the judgment of the commissioners is expected from day to day; the court meets, deliberates,[124] examines witnesses, and determines nothing. It was for the credit of the King that matters should not seem to be done in heat or haste. The Queen was to be cited; on her non-appearance, to be pronounced contumacious; a fresh citation to be issued; a reservation to be made of some collateral question for the Pope’s own decision; the sittings of the court to follow the rules of the Consistory of Rome, of which it was but a branch, and the cause to be suspended during the vacations at Rome; finally, the commission was to be closed, and the whole process to be transferred to the hearing of the Pontiff himself, and the King and Queen to appear before him in person or by proxy. But this last was an alternative to which the King had too high a stomach to submit, who pleaded the prerogative of his crown, which did not allow of being subjected to foreign jurisdiction, and the liberties of his people, which demanded that questions of marriage should be tried at home and by their own church.[229] Thus ed away six long years in fruitless negotiations, till Henry, having now secured the opinion of nearly all the universities at home and abroad in his favour, a measure which Cranmer, whom he had sent upon the Continent as his champion for this purpose, had been very instrumental in accomplishing, as well as the verdict of the most distinguished individuals amongst the divines and scholars of Europe, gave proof that the “strong blood” of the Plantagenets was in his veins, took the law into his own hands, married Ann Bullen probably on the 14th November, 1532, and set the Pope at defiance.

On reviewing the question of the divorce (as by a misnomer it has been called), there can be little doubt, we suppose, that the marriage was in the first instance unlawful. The authorities which declared it so preponderated at the[125] time of the discussion; many, and amongst others Archbishop Warham, had protested against the match when it was originally proposed; and when the canon of prohibited degrees was afterwards adjusted by Archbishop Parker, it was expressly determined that a man may not marry his brother’s wife. If, therefore, the conduct of Henry had been such in other respects as to give token of a scrupulous conscience, it might have been credited that in this instance he was sincere in his professions of uneasiness; and that believing Katharine and himself to be ed together otherwise than God’s word doth allow, he sought for relief in the dissolution of the contract. But that contract was entered into with deliberation; it was made when the King was a minor—it was repeated and ratified when he was of just age; the objections, whatever they were, were not new; they had been raised and over-ruled, when Katharine was to be the bride, when she had youth to plead for her, and a dower of unparalleled magnitude, the first fruits of the trans-Atlantic treasures of Spain: it was only when these advocates were no more, her blossom faded, and her golden fruit gathered and gone, that the objections (valid in themselves) became fatal. Her lot in life was indeed hard; but her grave at least has been strewed with immortal flowers; and “the meek sorrows and virtuous distress of Katharine have furnished some scenes (says no mean critic) which may be justly reckoned amongst the greatest efforts of tragedy.”

And now, Archbishop Warham being sick unto death, the King intimates to Cranmer, who was engaged in his service on the Continent, his intention of promoting him to the primacy. There are some men who seek honours, and some who have honours thrust upon them: Cranmer belonged to the latter class; he was not prepared for so great and sudden an elevation. Under pretence that the[126] King’s affairs still required his presence abroad, he tarried six months longer, in the hope that Henry might consign the crosier to some other hand.[237]

[131]

On the 30th March, 1533, Cranmer was consecrated by the Bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, and St. Asaph; and in the May following (the convocation having declared the King’s marriage with Katharine unlawful) he publicly pronounced the sentence of their separation; and about the same time confirmed by another judgment, the match with Ann Bullen. Thus was he now fairly embarked in the same boat with the King, and the part he took in the transactions of these days was faithfully treasured up in the memory of Mary, and served at length (though not in the scriptural sense of the expression) to heap coals of fire upon his head. But however important such measures were in fact, they were doubly so in principle. The Pope had ed a King and Queen together as lawful man and wife; his right to do this is not only disputed, but denied; and the church of England, assuming an attitude of independence, rescinds his decision, and sets his authority at nought. This could not be ed over. Rome threatens the King with excommunication; and as the last ounce it is that breaks the camel’s back, so here the menace proved enough to try the question of papal claims upon England, and to effect the rejection of them for ever.

The grounds of such a decision were many and various; in the first place, St. Peter himself, on whose transmitted authority the popes pretended to found their own, was not at all superior to the other apostles:—“Thou art Peter,” said indeed our Lord to him, “and on this rock will I build my church;” but he only built it upon him as he built it upon James or John. Of the church of Ephesus, it was expressly declared that it was built “upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,[132] Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.”[239] But further, even had St. Peter been all that the church of Rome pretended, his superiority would still have been of person, not of place, and could not attach to Rome more than to Antioch; nor so much, if Rome, as some even of the earliest interpreters of Scripture affirmed, was Babylon. Moreover, whilst the commission given by our Lord to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” (which was a text put in the fore-front of the controversy by the Romanists) could be interpreted to mean the whole world was to be the Pope’s diocese, there was nothing which Scripture might not be made to mean; besides, if the Pope was St. Peter’s successor, wherein, it was asked, did the succession consist? What one thing had St. Peter like the Pope, or the Pope like St. Peter? Did St. Peter take away the keys of the kingdom of heaven; hide the treasures of God’s word; consign souls to purgatory, or release them from it at his pleasure for silver or gold; pray in an unknown tongue; carry about the sacrament with lights and bells; sell jubilees, graces, palls,[133] bulls, pardons, indulgences? Did he call himself the head of the church, the bishop of bishops, and usurp dominion over all God’s creatures? Did he exempt himself from the power of civil government; maintain wars; set princes at variance; or sit in a chair with a purple gown and regal sceptre and diadem of gold and precious stones, and set his feet on kings’ necks? Did St. Peter, it was asked in conclusion, leave these affairs and others like them in charge to his successors from hand to hand?

Nor, in transferring the supremacy from the Pope to the King, did the church of England act unadvisedly, however it was objected to her that civil princes should confine themselves to civil matters. Certainly, nothing could be more inexpedient, whether for the good government of the country, or its spiritual improvement, than that there should be in it two sovereign heads, each desirous to have the pre-eminence, and a struggle be thus perpetuated between politics and religion; such a mingling of hot blood with sacrifice could never be acceptable to a God of order and peace; and how was the inconvenience to be avoided except by making one and the same person in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, supreme? Neither was this a new thing under the sun: God had of old time commissioned kings to execute many holy offices.—Isaiah had spoken of them as nursing fathers of the church;[242]

Neither does it seem to be unmeet that they who are themselves the “ministers of God,” (as St. Paul expressly calls the supreme magistrates) the “powers ordained of God,” the men to whom “every soul,” without any reservation of ecclesiastics, is to be subject “because they are of God,” should have some voice in the approval of the servants of God’s church, and some control over them; more especially when it is ed that it is the duty of a king to rule well, and that it would be difficult for him to rule at all, with a body of men within his realm and out of his own reach, who must always possess, so long as the concerns of a world beyond the grave can touch mankind,[135] a very powerful lever in their hands, which, however honestly it may be, and is in general applied, is nevertheless capable of misapplication, as the history of every nation can testify, and none more than our own.[243] And without any reference to extreme cases, to the danger, for instance, of religious meetings becoming, in critical seasons, schools of sedition, and of the divine resolving himself into the demagogue; a danger, however, by no means chimerical when there is nothing to connect the system of religious instruction with the office of the civil magistrate; even in ordinary times it would be found, and it has been found, that the spirit of the independent congregation and that of the government under which it exists, but to which it owes nothing, coincide but little—and that the state is apt to feel its energies crippled by the positive opposition, or at least the non-co-operation of these, its , in their religious capacity.

It may be added, in defence of the consolidation of the supremacy, both civil and ecclesiastical, in the king, that the Romanists themselves could not deny that the early councils (the decrees of which are recognised by the church of Rome to this day) were summoned by the magistrate, and not by the Bishop of Rome; the council of Nice; for example, by Constantine, “who called together a synod (they are the words of Sozomen), and wrote letters to those who were set over the churches, in every place to attend on a certain day—and there were present (he adds) at this assembly, from the apostolic see, Macarius of Jerusalem, Eustathius, the President of the church of Antioch, (who is reported by Theodoret, it may be observed, as the leader of the council, and the orator who opened it by an address to[136] the emperor,) Alexander of Alexandria, Biton and Bicentius, presbyters of the church of Rome, Julius the bishop being absent, and in all, of bishops about three hundred and twenty, and of presbyters and deacons who attended them no small number.”[244]

Thus do we find Scripture lending its sanction to such an alliance between church and state, as the identification of the king with the supreme head of the church implies—early ecclesiastical history declaratory of the authority by which councils were at first summoned, giving it the approbation of primitive usage—and the necessity of one mind actuating every member of the body politic, both civil and sacred, dictating its expediency.

DISSOLUTION OF THE ABBEYS.—CHURCH PROPERTY.—IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF THE DISSOLUTION.

Henry had by this time fairly ed the Rubicon. After a long pause and much anxiety for the event, he had ventured upon an act which was a declaration of war against the Pope, and he must now carry on. The strength of the Pontiff lay, as we have seen, in the monastic orders, and in the Mendicants above all. The secular clergy were better subjects, and acknowledged a less divided allegiance. But the monks were so powerful a body in England that the monarch, even in times when he wore far from the semblance of a kingly crown, could scarcely balance them. Grievances are alleged against them without end in the “Supplication of Beggars;” “But what remedy?” says the author of this singular address to the King. “Make laws against them? I am in doubt whether ye be able. Are they not stronger in your own parliament-house than yourself? What a number of bishops, abbots, and priors are lords of your parliament![247] Accordingly, he began with the lesser monasteries, of which the income did not exceed 200l., or the inmates twelve in number. There were many reasons for making them his first victims. They were the houses of the the friars, the most faithful of all the Pope’s servants, and the earliest to lift up their voice against the King’s supremacy whilst the question of the divorce was in progress. The friars did not stay at home like the easy and well-conditioned monks, but had to forage for a living. “Go not from house to house,” though a text uttered, as it might seem, with almost a prophetic reference to them, they found it convenient to overlook. Whatever opinions, therefore, they entertained, they had the power of putting in extensive circulation; now that they were disaffected, this facility became doubly dangerous. Then they were the most vulnerable of the orders; their corruptions[139] were the grossest. Their vagrant habits threw them amongst temptations, whilst they at the same time withdrew them from wholesome restraints. Abroad they were notorious for intrigues in the hospitable families of the peasants and artisans who received them; and at home they had a treasury of lies, very profitable to themselves whilst their credit was good, but more profitable to their enemies when the fictitious nature of the capital with which they traded was exposed. The Rood of Grace, which would hang its lip when silver was offered to it, and shake its beard merrily when the offering was of gold, was for a time an exchequer; but when the profane hand of a Thomas Cromwell had once opened the figure at Paul’s Cross, and displayed to the good citizens of London the wires by which it had been worked, indignation took the place of credulity, and the craftsmen, to whom it had brought no small gain, were justly scandalised. Moreover, the destruction of these lesser houses did not touch in a very tender place the powerful and privileged classes of society. Younger brothers were provided for in the wealthy abbey, but not in the friar’s hostel. It was a war upon the weak (so far as property was concerned,) and at a time when commerce and manufactures had not taught the weak but the many their value and their strength; and therefore it was a step attended with less danger. Lastly, it was a measure that served very well as a feeler for one still greater which was behind, but which was as yet studiously disavowed, the suppression of all the monasteries and convents great and small; it was the bristle which made a way for the thread.

Thus the year 1536, saw the downfall of 376 smaller abbeys, and the transfer of the buildings themselves, and of the estates attached thereto, to the King. Here, Henry appears for a little while to have paused, partly, perhaps, waiting to see the effect of his first blow, and partly engaged by domestic[140] matters and the judicial destruction of Ann; but he was now too deeply embarked in the work of spoliation to stop long. The greater monasteries had taken the alarm, many of them had already divested themselves of whatever they could detach and turn into money; fines were ed to the detriment of the rent-roll, and furniture and plate sold to the dismantling of the house; so that upon the whole, the personal property of these greater houses was not found to be near so rich a booty as that of the less, on which the storm had burst unawares. Besides, what had been as yet done was enough to irritate, but not enough to disarm the regulars; Henry had made them implacable without making them impotent; and a rebellion which they were understood secretly to have fomented in various parts of England, and especially in the north (the quarter whence some of the most serious of the English rebellions have issued,) was sufficient to attest at once their spirit and their strength. Once more, therefore, the visiters were put in motion. Their commission was made out to examine and report the state of the religious societies yet subsisting; and as the inquiry embraced the purity, the sincerity, and what was more questionable still, the loyalty of the parties, a verdict of guilty, as might be anticipated, was soon returned. In many cases, indeed, the inquisitors were spared their investigation, and some parties feeling their approaching condemnation to be just, and more feeling it to be inevitable, determined to take their sea of troubles at half-tide and make at once a confession and a surrender. To induce this, however, much machinery was set to work by the commissioners themselves; for it was with a heavy heart, and a strong sense of the injustice of the demand, that the honest head of a religious house resigned that, which “was not his to geve,” (as the prior of Henton wrote to his brother, reflecting herein a very general feeling,) “being[141] dedicate to Allmyghtye Gode for service to be done to hys honoure continuallye, with other many goode deeds off daylye charite to christen neybors.”[250]

Amidst the strife of tongues, which those tempestuous times called forth, it is almost hopeless to come at the exact truth. On the one hand, the visiters are charged with inordinate rapacity, with private embezzlement of the vast property lying at their mercy, and even with abusing the opportunities which their commission gave them, and corrupting the nuns. They, on the other hand, retaliated by presenting to the eyes of the people a most revolting picture of the interior of these whited sepulchres (for such they were described to be) fair on the outside, but within full of dead men’s bones, and all uncleanness, of spurious relics and sensual sins, and the foulness of the picture helped to relieve the King from the odium of destroying it.

[142]

Yet, bad as the monasteries were reported to be, and bad in many instances they probably were, (for the system was in some respects radically pernicious,) the event proved that they had their redeeming qualities too; and as we know not, says the proverb, what the well is worth till it is dry, so was it found after the dissolution, that, with all their faults, the monasteries had been the refuge for the destitute who were now driven to frightful extremities throughout the country, the effect of the suppression being with respect to them the same as would now follow from the sudden abolition of the poor laws; they had been the alms-houses, where the aged dependants of more opulent families, the decrepid servant, the decayed artificer, retired as to a home neither uncomfortable nor humiliating; that they had been the county infirmaries and dispensaries, a knowledge of medicine and of the virtues of herbs being a department of monkish learning (as ages in the old dramatic writers sometimes indicate,) and a hospital, and, perhaps, a laboratory, being component parts of a monkish establishment; that they had been foundling asylums, relieving the state of many orphan and outcast children, and ministering to their necessities, God’s ravens in the wilderness, (neither so black as they had been represented,) bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening;[251] that they had been inns for the way-faring man, who heard from afar the sound of the vesper bell, at once inviting him to repose and devotion, and who might sing his matins with the morning star, and go on his way rejoicing; that they filled up the gap in which the public libraries have since stood, and if their inmates were not very desirous to eat of the tree of knowledge themselves, they had at least the merit of cherishing and preserving it alive for others. Thus do we find in the monastic system[143] a provision made for many of those wants of society which public institutions are now designed to meet perhaps more effectually; and it is not uninteresting to remark, how the great wants of nature still make themselves known, whatever convulsions a nation may undergo, and still conduct it to something like the same course as before, though not, perhaps, under the same name; and when the flood subsides that has covered the earth, to see how Ararat rears his head as he did at the first, and Pihon returns into his wonted channel to water the garden. Well would it be for the peace of the world if this consideration had its due influence that should paralyse, but that should moderate; if men would not subject society to needless confusion, whilst they attempt to expel nature by a fork, sure as it is to recoil and recover itself; if they would spare themselves and others the inconvenience of a struggle, where they fight as one beating the air.

The convulsion felt throughout the country on this memorable occasion was probably more violent than any which it has experienced either before or since. The ts of society were thoroughly loosed; a vast proportion of the population was turned adrift upon the wide world, their employment gone, their relief gone too. Seventy-two thousand persons are said to have perished by the hand of the executioner in the reign of King Henry, some made desperate by want, and some made bold by the lawless license of the times. Cromwell, who was the the King’s political adviser throughout this great measure, felt the state rocking under him, and suggested the sale of the abbey lands and tithes at easy prices to the nobles and gentry, that by this means the leading persons in every county might be pledged to the new order of things, and be tied by the tooth. Thus popish lands, as it was said, made protestant landlords, and thus the lay impropriator,[144] a character hitherto almost or altogether unknown, took his beginning. How far the country was a gainer by the exchange of ecclesiastical for other landlords may be questioned. The monks were accused of covetousness; yet it is singular that no legal provision for the poor was wanted so long as the property was in their hands, and that it had scarcely left their hands before it was found necessary to make such a provision; the statute of the 5th of Elizabeth being the first direct one of the kind.[265] and the application of the funds to the erection and endowment of his colleges at Oxford and Ipswich; and, indeed, generally, by the diversion of estates from one ecclesiastical use to another, a process perpetually going on, often effected rather for individual advantage than for the public good, and often under circumstances of collusion and contrivance discreditable to all the parties concerned, a feeling of respect for the possessions of the church as exclusive and inalienable was weakened. The tendency of such a traffic (however confined to a privileged order) was to make the article itself looked upon in the light of merchandise, and to invite towards it the itching[149] palms of the profane. And even, now amongst other advantages not, to be sure, unalloyed, which the law against simony in some degree secures—such as the less frequent purchase of livings at high prices, for which interest of money would be sought by an exaction of dues to the uttermost farthing, to the sure destruction of the pastoral character—such as the better chance hereby offered to meritorious men without influence, of finding a patron when the temptation he would be otherwise under to sell rather than give, is partly taken out of his way;—besides these advantages there is another, and not the least, in the skreen which it interposes between the church, and the market, and the total confusion which it prevents between the things of men and the things of God.

Henry proved himself an apt scholar in the lessons which the incautious, not to say unlawful, practice of the church of Rome taught him. And so successfully had he overcome all primitive notions of the honour due to sacred things, that even before the dissolution, he seems to have converted many monasteries into stables; a scandal of which honest Latimer did not fail to remind him publicly; conceiving it a monstrous thing; that “abbeys, which were ordained for the comfort of the poor,” should be kept for the king’s horses; nor convinced of the contrary by the nobleman (who seems to have been ripe to become an impropriator, as very likely he did) who said to him, “What hast thou to do with the king’s horses?—horses be the maintenance and part of a king’s honour and also of his realm; wherefore, in speaking against them, ye are speaking against the king’s honour.”[266]

Cranmer was not (as may be well believed) an unconcerned spectator of this great revolution in the possessions[150] of the church; but though he agreed with Cromwell in the desire of the dissolution, he differed from him with regard to the application of the proceeds. Indeed, the views they respectively took of the nature of ecclesiastical property do not appear to have coincided. The one was rather acting in a political, the other in a religious spirit. Cromwell was concerned to right the monarchy, Cranmer to save a church. The former was for the suppression of the religious houses, because the supremacy of the crown could not be otherwise secured; the latter had this for his object too, but still more the annihilation of the abuses of purgatory, masses for the dead, saint-worship, and pilgrimage, of all which the abbeys were the incorrigible patrons. So far, therefore, they went hand in hand. But in the disposal of the vast fund which accrued from the confiscation of the church estates, Cranmer did not, like Cromwell and the parliament, regard it as a matter for the king to take his pastime with, according to his own mere will and motion.[273] But might overcomes right—

And accordingly the council of Cromwell prevailed with the king and the courtiers, and Cranmer and Latimer had nothing to do but to submit and make the most of such resources as were left. Indeed, the whole aspect of the Reformation exhibits marks of the conflict of principles, under which it was brought about. The best and the worst men were busy in promoting it, each party with a purpose of their own; and its graces and imperfections alike testify that the hands which were concerned in it were not of one fashion; that its walls, like those of the second Jerusalem, arose amidst fightings from without, “the builders every one having his sword girded by his side, and so building.”[274] Happy, indeed, it was that such master-builders were to be found: had not this wise and conservative party been at hand, a party intent upon what could be spared as well as what must be sacrificed—what could be restored, as well as[154] what must be destroyed utterly—the vulgar handlers of axe and hammer would have cast all to the ground, and the country would have risen from its paroxysm, rid indeed of superstition, but with nothing for a substitute, and the latter state of the nation would have been worse than the first. As it was, the troubled fountain of the Reformation sent forth streams, the one of sweet, the other of bitter waters, and as the principles of the blessed martyrs, who acted in it their immortal parts, issued out in the establishment of a church of apostolic doctrines, so did other principles, now stirred, find their consummation (if indeed they found it then) in the eventual subversion of that church, and with it, of the throne.

The progress of the Reformation was attended (as all great national convulsions are) with many and sad excesses. The work of destruction, when long continued, is in itself a thing which hardens the heart and the Reformation was full of it. Monk and nun turned out of house and home, pensioned indeed, but (except in the case of superiors, who were treated with more lenity) pensioned with a miserable equivalent; their dwelling-places, beautiful as many of them were, laid low, that all hope of return might be cut off, their cells surrendered to the bats and owls; their chapels made a portion for foxes, the mosaic pavements torn up, the painted windows dashed in pieces, the bells gambled for, or sold into Russia and other countries,[285]

Meanwhile, and in the midst of this general relaxation of morals, the fanatic was abroad: it was the very field for him; the standing corn of the Philistines was not better fitted for the foxes and firebrands. There were Predestinarians,[157] who preached that the elect could not sin, nor the regenerate fall from grace. Their religion, says a chaplain of Cranmer, “consisted in words and disputations; in Christian acts and goodly deeds nothing at all.”[291] There were Libertines, of whose precise tenets we are not informed, together with other sects, some of native, some of exotic growth, but all combining a little sedition with not a little conceit.

Here, then, were the beginnings of sorrows laid up in store for the hapless Charles, and the church of which he was the head, and, in his later and more sobered years, the ornament. Now was the nation fly-blown; and it was only wanted that the days should be fulfilled when the hornets would take wing, and sting it into madness. So true it is that the sin of a government, like that of an individual, does eventually find it out. Long it may tarry before it manifests[158] itself in its effects, but a century in the life of a nation is but a span; and he who destroyed the Amalekites in the time of Saul for the transgression of the Amalekites in the time of Moses, suffering his wrath to sleep four hundred years, and then to burst out, is still the God of the nations, and deals with them still after the same fashion, though the natural consequences of the offence may serve Him for the ministers of his tardy vengeance. For what had the church under its new discipline and organisation to oppose to these restless and inquisitive spirits? Could it not meet the evil, and extinguish it, whilst it was yet done in the green tree? Alas! its clergy were unfit for so delicate and difficult a work. The Reformation, owing to the violence which had attended and disgraced a noble cause, had depressed them as a body; doubtless there were of their number many most able men; none greater than some of them have been since born of woman; but with the generality it was very far otherwise. The impropriation system now began to tell its tale. The universities and schools had been comparatively deserted. It was with extreme difficulty that men could now be found to preach at Paul’s Cross, once the object of so much clerical ambition. About the year 1544, Bonner writes to Parker, then master of Corpus, importuning him to send him help from Cambridge, and expressing his surprise that candidates should be lacking for such an office.[297] Were these the men to uphold church and state, and in critical times too? or rather were they not the men to render both contemptible in any times?

The rising party of the Puritans, an active minority, busy rather than powerful in the Scriptures, given to subtle and unprofitable questions, would scoff at such preachers, and teach their hearers to scoff at them too, and this they not only could do, but did; and with the more mischievous effect, because (as it has been already said) the districts best peopled and most intelligent, the towns, were precisely the very poorest livings in the kingdom, and were, therefore, the very worst supplied with ministers;[300] It required the Augustan age of our divines—the age of a Hall, an Andrews, a Hammond, a Sanderson, a Taylor, a Barrow a South—to interpose itself, in order that public opinion, viewing the Church of England through such a medium, might be compelled to do it tardy justice, and at length to reverence an establishment which had given birth to so much piety, so much learning, so much genius, so much wisdom, and so much wit.

Nor was it merely the ignorance of churchmen that gave the rising sectaries such advantage;—there was treachery in the camp. Many of the old clergy, conforming to the innovations that had been made, (indeed, during Henry’s reign, those in doctrine were not very considerable,) still occupied the pulpits, but without any love for their present position. On the contrary, it was naturally not unpleasant to them to see the elements of discord let loose, and like the “anarch old,” to watch the strife in silence, by which they might themselves hope in the end again to reign. Homilies were provided, that sound, and at any rate harmless, doctrine[161] might be propounded to the people. They were, however, often but “homely handled,” to speak in Latimer’s vein;[302]

These are miserable and disgusting details; but if they are so to write and read, what must they have been to Cranmer and his colleagues to witness! How must their righteous souls have been vexed! Those persons who give to our reformers credit for the courage which they displayed in the flames, and regard their sufferings as confined to their martyrdom, do them poor justice. To jostle with so many offensive obstacles for so many long years; to persevere unto the end in the midst of so much to thwart, to disappoint, to irritate; to feel themselves earnest, sincere, and single-hearted, and to have to encounter so much hypocrisy, double-dealing, and pretence; to work their weary way through a sordid and mercenary generation, who had a zeal for God’s[162] service on their tongues, but who in their hearts ired nothing of heaven save the riches of its pavement; to see the goodly fruits of all their labours likely to perish through sectarian divisions, which might very probably have been healed by timely precaution, and the adoption (at some cost to be sure) of measures which they were the first to recommend; these were trials by that slow fire of temptation which it requires a stout heart and a high principle to sustain, and though there might be many (as Milton ungenerously and ungratefully puts it) who would give their bodies to be burned, if the occasion demanded it, yet there would be few, who, so tried, would find themselves so unweary in well-doing.

They, however, have their reward; and it was a noble prize for which they struggled. They are themselves gone to heaven in their chariot of fire, and to their country they have bequeathed as a mantle, a free use of the Bible, a reasonable faith, a pure ritual, principles of toleration, liberty of conscience, and that virtue which goeth out of all these things, whereby a nation is made to put forth its otherwise dormant strength in the prosecution of commerce of manufactures, of agriculture, of science, and of whatever else belongs to inextinguishable enterprise.

The two great measures of the supremacy, and the suppression of the abbeys had been carried, but with haste and no small violence; and now came the recoil. It pertained to the king’s prerogative that the pope should be deposed, and to his exchequer that the monasteries should be despoiled; so far, therefore, Henry was a cordial reformer. Churchwork is said in general to go up on crutches, and to come down post; and the present case furnishes no exception to the proverb: for now the king well nigh deserted the cause in which he had been so actively engaged; and having undone so much of the old religion, was disposed to do nothing for the new; but, betaking himself to catholic advisers, surrendered himself for the most part into their hands during the remainder of his reign. For though we shall have occasion to notice some acts of grace towards the reformed faith, they are few and feeble, suggested by a ing wish to preserve something of consistency, by momentary caprice, or by the force of conflicting parties, which, causing him to fall into a place where two seas met, constrained him at least to be still.

The abbeys had scarcely been disposed of, when Cromwell, the political agent of the reformation, and the individual who had succeeded to the greatest share of Wolsey’s[164] influence over the king, fell into disgrace. After the untimely death of Jane Seymour, he had ventured (a measure requiring as much personal courage as the suppression of the monasteries) to negotiate a match for his capricious master; a match which, it was thought, would bind Henry still more closely with the Protestant cause, by connecting him with the Lutheran princes of . But Cromwell’s good genius had here forsaken him; Anne of Cleves was not found to answer to the agreeable portrait which Holbein had painted of her; on the contrary, she was illfavoured; moreover she spoke Dutch, a language of which the king was ignorant; and had never learned music, of which he was ionately fond. Henry became disgusted, and Cromwell’s position became precarious. Other ostensible causes were of course put forward to justify the ruin of this minister; treason and heresy were the stalking-horses, but the marriage was the snare—“The weight that pulled him down was there.” That Henry gave him an earldom after this period, is true enough; it might be to throw dust in the eyes of the suspicious; it certainly proved but a garland to deck the victim for the altar. And now Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, “that fox” who had been long upon the watch to supplant him, saw that his opportunity was come, and profited by it. Gardiner and Cromwell had known each other from early years, having been brought up together, and of nearly the same standing in the household of cardinal Wolsey; but there was not room upon the stage for both of them at a time; and Cromwell having soon on his part declared for the Reformation, had the king with him; and whilst this was the case, the churchman lay by. Cromwell seems to have owed him no good-will, and to have taken no pains to disguise his sentiments. Having the king’s ear, he sent Bonner to supersede him as ambassador in ; and from the letters of that monster (as[165] time-serving then as he was afterwards bloody-minded), and which are all meant to play up to the known tastes or prejudices of his patron, it is plain enough that Gardiner was disliked and distrusted by Cromwell, whom he in his turn was as studious to affront by the insults which he heaped upon this his mean-spirited vassal, and the savage ill-humour with which he resigned to him his office. He returned, however, to England; and as a man changes his latitude, but not his temper, who crosses the seas, Gardiner still continued to be a thorn in Cromwell’s side; and on a comparison of dates, it will be seen that he had scarcely set foot in England before a change began to manifest itself in the counsels of the king, and Cromwell’s influence, even long before he was attainted, to decline. What, indeed, could induce the latter to be instrumental to his recall from (as Fox implies he was), and thereby to put his enemy in a situation where he could do him more mischief, it is vain at this time of day to inquire; but it seems probable that Gardiner was thought to be playing a game of his own in his master’s service; and to be accommodating the foreign relations of his country to a policy that suited himself, or at least the cause which he had at heart.[304]

Gardiner, however, once dominant, maintained the ascendency of the Romish party and principles to the last of Henry’s reign. He had, indeed, powerful coadjutors. The Howards were devoted to the same cause; and the natural influence of that distinguished house was then accidentally increased by the alliance which the king was about to form with one of its . Then, again, he strengthened himself by the king’s fears. If he found him making any demonstrations of a nearer approach to the Reformers, he could threaten him with the displeasure of the emperor, and picture to him the jealousy with which he was already regarded by the European powers, as the royal ringleader of heresy. The expectation too of a general council shortly to be held for the settlement of religious differences, and which finally fixed itself at Trent, threw its weight into the same scale. Henry might think it his policy not to commit himself farther with the faithful sons of the church till the storm was overpast. Not was it a slight matter in favour of Gardiner, that the king, in a rash hour, had become an author; that his sentiments on the leading doctrines of the Reformers were put upon irrevocable record; and that now to flinch from his positions would be to resign the laurels which his reputed scholarship had won for him; and, what was still less to his taste, would be to pronounce that in matters of opinion even he himself was not infallible. No man was better qualified to take advantage of these or any other incidents which might make for his object than Gardiner, the most astute politician of his time; while Cranmer, on the other hand, had nothing to oppose to him but the[167] spirit of an Israelite indeed, alike unfit for contriving plots himself, or for discovering them in another; for of him it might have been said; as it was said of one of his most conspicuous successors in the see of Canterbury (though a character upon the whole very different from his), that “too secure in a good conscience, and most sincere worthy intention, with which no man was ever more plentifully replenished, he thought he could manage and discharge the place and office of the greatest minister in the court without any other friendship or than what the splendour of a pious life and his accomplished integrity would reconcile to him; which was an unskilful measure,” adds the great historian, whose experience it is presumptuous to question, yet whose conclusion it is painful to it, “in a licentious age, and may deceive a good man in the best of times that shall succeed; which exposed him to such a torrent of adversity and misery, as we shall have too natural an occasion to lament in the following discourse, in which it will be more reasonable to enlarge of his singular abilities and immense virtue.”[308]

With these and other words to the same effect, the king gave him his ring, which in case of extremity he might produce at the council, and by virtue of it appeal to Cæsar. He did so, and thus Cranmer escaped out of their hands. But all had not the same friend, nor therefore the same fortune; for it is to be observed, that the commissioners appointed to carry the Six Articles into execution did not confine their investigations to offences coming directly under the act, but, erecting themselves into a kind of inquisition-general, they took cognisance of all that was done after a manner which they called heresy, whatever it might be; and neglect of confession in Lent, absence from church, forbearing to creep to the cross on Good Friday, neglecting the use of the rosary, eating meat at interdicted seasons, and the like, were all misdemeanors fetched within the com of this cruel dragnet of the Six Articles. Accordingly, the prisons of London were gorged with culprits;[310]—these are some of the silent horrors of those dreadful days, of which it is impossible to read, without thankfulness to Providence that our lot has been cast on times of greater charity; and without confessing that, grievous as the evil is of capricious division upon religious questions, it is far less than that of barbarous coercion to unanimity; and bad as the spirit is, wherever it exists, which would preach Christ only of envy and strife, it is after all better than that which would make a way for his reception by fire from heaven.

But though many of the reformers thus kept their opinions to themselves, or only communicated them to their confidential companions, and when the doors were shut; there were others of a more intrepid spirit, who saved the commissioners the necessity of resorting to force or fraud for their conviction by publicly contending for the faith, and even carrying the war into the enemy’s borders. A martyr of this kind was Dr. Barnes; he preached openly at Paul’s Cross, where he upheld the doctrine of justification by faith[172] only, (a tenet that seems to have been almost as unpalatable to the Roman catholics as a renunciation of transubstantiation itself,) and challenged Gardiner to the controversy, against whom indeed this sermon was directed, in reply to one which he had delivered from the same popular pulpit shortly before. There is a age in his discourse very expressive of the rude style of preaching which in those days prevailed, and which the friars in Italy, and probably elsewhere, have not yet entirely abandoned. Barnes calls upon Stephen Gardiner by name to answer him; alluding in “a pleasaunt allegory” (as John Fox expresses it—an opinion to which the priests in Spanish America would still subscribe) to a cock-fight, wherein he likens Gardiner to a fighting cock, and himself to another, and reproaches his antagonist with lacking good spurs, as being a garden-cock; then shifting his joke, he taxes him with being a bad gardener, as having set evil herbs in the garden of God’s Scriptures; and once more changing his weapon, he accuses him of a want of logic and grammar-rules; alleging, in reference to the act of the Six Articles, that if he had expressed himself in the schools as he had done at the Cross, he would have given him six stripes.[317] Something again, is to be referred to the connection which subsisted in Roman Catholic times between the church and the stage. The Bible histories were dramatised; a generation which had not the Scriptures to read, and could not have read them if they had, were[176] taught by theatrical representation. It was upon this principle that the use of images was defended: they were said to be the poor man’s books; and miracle plays were actually performed in the churches. This ill-omened union, however, without exalting the theatre, debased theology, and constantly justified the apprehensions which Andrew Marvel expressed in the particular instance of Paradise Lost, lest the poet

or lest,

Lastly, much of this coarseness and levity, which, according to our present notions, seems to border on the profane, was to be put to the of the friars. They were the popular preachers of their day. Their Lent sermons attracted multitudes; and as their order had its very foundations laid in the taste of the many, its daily bread depending upon the mites which were cast into the treasury, and the amount of such contributions (individually so small) resulting altogether from their number, no pains were spared to minister to the vulgar appetite, on every occasion, such viands as were most palatable; and the subtleties of the school doctors and their operose learning gave way before the language, allusions, and illustrations of common life; and the homely story and the broad joke mingled themselves with subjects the most sacred. But whatever the cause might be, the style of the Roman Catholic preacher was[177] extremely familiar; and this fashion, we have seen, had not entirely worn itself out in the first century after the Reformation.

But to return to the thread of our narrative. Out of the examinations and convictions that took place under the Six Articles one good at least issued—that Cranmer appears to have been hereby led to re-consider his opinion on transubstantiation. Hitherto it had been strictly conformable to the doctrine of the church of Rome: he now saw many intelligent men, powerful in the Scriptures, brought up as offenders against this cardinal dogma, and heard them vindicate their heterodoxy in a manner to make an impression upon a candid mind like his own; so that by the end of the reign of Henry, his belief on this article had undergone a change, and one of his earliest acts under Edward was to avow and proceed upon it.

It has been said, that from the date of the dissolution of the religious houses, the Reformation laboured in its progress. Even Henry seems to have been appalled at the violent reaction which followed, and to have held his hand. But those wise and good men whose object it had been all along to save what they could of the wreck, out of which to construct another ark, were still on the watch to promote the great cause in which they were embarked, both by permanent institutions and present instruction. Accordingly, whoever might be the advisers of the measure, out of the spoils of the monasteries six new bishoprics were now founded—those of Westminster (since suppressed), Chester, Gloucester, Peterborough, Oxford, and Bristol, together with deaneries and prebends respectively annexed, all slenderly endowed, and upon the whole a sad falling off from the splendid expectations which the king had originally held forth of eighteen new sees, together with a proportional[178] number of suffragrans—expectations which the act of suppression had encouraged, and by which many were reconciled to the confiscation of the church property, as hoping that it was only to be fused and cast into a better mould. Its authors, however, “liked not that paying again; it was a double trouble.” Accordingly they compounded with the creditor, and the dividend (with the addition of funds for the endowment of some of the metropolitan hospitals, a few professorships in either university, and a college in Cambridge,) was what we have seen. The cathedrals fared better than the monasteries; having been hitherto in the hands of the regulars, they were now put upon the same footing as the new institutions of the like kind, and their revenues appropriated to the maintenance of secular dignitaries. Here, however, the plan proposed by Cranmer, owing probably to the opposition of the Roman Catholic party, was not adopted. In the settling down of the establishment once more, it was his wish that the cathedrals should be converted into theological colleges; that readers of divinity, of Hebrew, and of Greek should be attached to them; that a body of students should be maintained in them, out of whom the bishops might always find clerical recruits duly qualified for the pastoral office; that here, in short, should be realised a second time the institution which Samuel (the great reformer of his own church) established throughout all the land of Israel, “schools of the prophets,” and that thus might be filled up most effectually the gap which had been occasioned in the system of public instruction by the extinction of the religious orders. What might have been the effect of such a measure, which would have completed the Reformation in an important particular where it was left greatly defective, it may now be in vain to conjecture. Whether such establishments might not have contributed to stave[179] off the crisis which was at hand from the puritans—a party then beginning to take a shape, and which owed its rapid development to the ineffectual opposition presented to it by a feeble and ignorant clergy—whether much schism and separation of a more recent date might not have been escaped by the aspect which these conspicuous pillars of orthodoxy would have presented in different districts, and to which public opinion might have looked, as to light-houses, for a guidance—whether, fertile as our church has been in great divines, the harvest might not have proved still more abundant when a regular theological education, comprising a sound knowledge of Hebrew, of the Fathers, of whatever else might conduce to the formation of the instructed scribe, fell systematically to the lot of all who were intended for the ministry;—whether a cheap education like this would not have afforded opportunities for youths of promise amongst the poorer classes to emerge from obscurity, and to enter a profession for which nature had fitted them, but accident had shut to the door; whether the church would not have been a gainer by the additional talent which would thus have been called forth in her service, when the “yeoman’s sons,” by whom, according to Latimer, “the faith in Christ had been hitherto maintained chiefly,” and “the husbandman’s children,” who are often endowed (as Cranmer strenuously argues upon this very subject) with singular gifts, would have sent in their contribution to the public stock;—and whether that same cause of attachment which bound the common people to the friars, and through them to the church itself, namely, the feeling that they had a personal interest and relationship in many of its ministers, would not have been hereby more effectually perpetuated:—or, on the other hand, whether such institutions might not have withdrawn the clergy too much from all secular intercourse,[180] and prevented those connections of private friendship or private tuition from being formed, to which our schools and universities give occasion;—whether the alliance between church and state is not principally continued by such interlacements, and would not be greatly weakened by their disruption;—whether, again, the provision which our cathedrals (on their present footing) offer to the younger sons of powerful families (as the monasteries once did) does not pledge those families more deeply to the maintenance of the establishment;—whether the rewards, again, which they enable the church occasionally to confer on those who have done her good service as men of letters may not contribute to create a learned clergy, by furnishing the means of learned leisure—is altogether a problem which it is much more easy to state than to solve.

Nor had the Reformers only to watch their opportunity for the foundation of permanent institutions by which religion might be then and for ever promoted; but whenever a favourable moment was afforded for putting forth sound instruction to the people, they had to seize upon it. During the reign of Henry this could only be done by being instant in season, the season too being generally short, and always precarious; liable to be affected by the character of a marriage, and the duration of it; by a continental treaty; by a vote in parliament satisfactory or the contrary; in short by the humour of a prince at once in the highest degree capricious and resolute. Something, however, was done; and we shall now gather up a few dropped stitches which we have intentionally ed in this chapter, in order that our subject might meet with no interruption.

The vulgar work of destruction did not prevail; even under Henry, to the total exclusion of every other. In 1536, certain articles were set forth by the convocation, and[181] with the king’s authority, which had for their title, “Articles devised by the Kinge’s Highness’ Majestie to stablyshe Christen quietnes,” &c., much diversity of opinion having sprung up in the country, as the preamble informs us, both upon the essentials and ceremonials of which they treat. They are ten in number, and rather indicate that a reformation was abroad, than that it was achieved. They allow the use of images, but endeavour to guard against their abuse; sanction prayers to the saints, but with a caution against superstition; defend the doctrine of purgatory, though with some hesitation, and with a positive rejection of pope’s pardons and masses of scala cœli; assert the sacraments of penance, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper; maintaining, with regard to the two latter, that infants dying before baptism perish everlastingly, and that the real body and blood of our Lord is present in the elements; but justification on the ground of merit they disclaim altogether, giving to Christ, and to Him only, the praise; and the faith of a Christian they consider to be comprehended in the canonical Scriptures, and the three creeds alone. It may be well to observe, inasmuch as the observation throws some light upon the spirit in which the formularies of our church were conceived, even at this remote period of the Reformation, that Melancthon is with reason believed to have had a voice in the Articles of 1536. So early as 1534 he was pressed to come to England and assist in completing the regeneration of the church; and invitations to the like effect continued to be forwarded to him. In 1535 we find him suggesting, by letter to Henry, the necessity of issuing a simple form of doctrine, such as might be agreed upon by learned men; and at the same time adding, that Dr. Barnes, whom he calls Antonius (afterwards the martyr but then Henry’s ambassador in ,) had been “very carefully discussing with him certain articles, to whom he[182] had given his opinion upon them in writing.” Certain it is that in the very next year these of King Henry came out, and that the definition of justification contained in one of them is a translation from the “Loci Theologici” of this Lutheran reformer.[318]

Nor was this all: the measure which was dealt out to the degenerate Jews by Antiochus and his servants had, in a lower degree, long obtained amongst the ecclesiastical powers in England. “When they had rent in pieces the book of the law which they found, they burnt them with fire; and wheresoever was found with any the book of the testament ... the command was, that they should put him to death. Thus did they by their authority unto the Israelites every month, to as many as they found in their cities.”[322]

The same year was distinguished by another work, calculated to advance the Reformation a step farther. “The Institution of a Christian Man,” or the Bishops’ Book, as it was called in popular language, from the quality of those who were chiefly concerned in composing it. It consists of an exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, the Seven Sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Pater-noster, the Ave Maria; to which are annexed the two articles on Justification and Purgatory (as they were published in 1536), the others having been inserted in the body of the work under their respective heads. The mere index of contents is enough to show that much still remained for the reformers to do; still much was herein done. The corruption of man was strongly asserted, his faculties as well as his appetites, his reason no less than his will,[327]

In 1543 another work appeared, under the sanction of the king and the convocation:[342]

In addition to the scanty means of instruction in a better faith which were thus extorted from the king in his last years like drops of blood, he was prevailed upon by Cranmer to issue orders for the destruction of some favourite images, of which the superstitious abuse was the most notorious[345] and to permit, moreover, the use of occasional prayers, for the supply of temporary wants, or the removal of temporary calamities—for rain or for fair weather—that thus the hearts of the congregation might be enlisted in their devotions, and the lukewarmness be counteracted, which was fast alienating them from public worship, conducted, as it was, in a language of[188] which they were ignorant, though with errors of which they were aware.

Meanwhile, the same vigilant prelate supplied, as far as he had the opportunity, the livings in his gift with men devoted to the cause which he had at heart, and encouraged the more frequent delivery of sermons; whereby, though much violent collision of doctrine was produced amongst the preachers, still sparks of truth were elicited, and light, though not without heat, was dispersed.[346]

Thus stood the Reformation, when Henry, who had now done all the work which such an instrument was fit for, died, pressing in his last moments the hand of Cranmer, to whom, and to whom only, through evil report and through good report, he had ever been faithful and true. To him he bequeathed a church which was little but a ruinous heap; its revenues dissipated, its ministers divided, its doctrines unsettled, its laws obsolete, impracticable, and unadapted to the great change it had sustained.

It remains for us to trace the re-construction of these shattered materials—to watch the wise master-builders as they pursued their difficult task to its accomplishment; and beholding the pains, the perseverance, the study, the time which it cost them, to distrust the wild suggestions of an age of crude experiment and superficial knowledge—an age which would rush in without knowing why, upon forms and institutions which the sagest heads have grown gray in devising and perfecting; and rather listen, as far as regards our church, to the advice of the ancient, unpretending though it be—“Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna.”

The accession of Edward, the Josiah of his country, as he was commonly called in his own day, reanimated the Reformation; and during his short reign it was that the church of England was constructed, in the main, such as we now see it. The young prince, who was brought up a protestant, was himself eminently calculated to recommend the cause. His own character, both mental and moral, was a most persuasive advocate of the system which had nurtured it. Cardan, who was called into England to prescribe for the Archbishop of St. Andrews, then sick of a dropsy, and was introduced to the king, now in his fifteenth year, relates the particulars of a short conversation which he had with him on the subject of comets, which won the heart of the philosopher, and, like a journal which has come down to us written in his own hand,[350] But in this case, Cranmer seems to have thought that the honour of Christ himself, which was blasphemed, required an example to be made; and, weak and wicked as it is now allowed to be to condemn to the flames for matters of speculative opinion, which do not directly interfere with the morals of society, and therefore do not demand the interposition of the secular magistrate, it was the dogma of the church in which Cranmer had been born and bred: from which even yet he had not wholly emancipated himself; but to which Edward, happily for himself and his country, had never been enslaved. The case of Van Paris the Dutchman is usually coupled with this of Joan Bocher; but there is no sufficient proof that Cranmer was here a party actively engaged, or that any blame is due to him, unless it be that he did not intercede for his life. It is singular, and characteristic of the force of early prejudice, that in the touching confession which Cranmer made before he went to the stake, no allusion is found to the case of this poor fanatic.

Such was the child to whose hand Providence committed the sceptre of England for a short season, “Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata;” and accordingly the church had rest in[192] those days. The Roman Catholic party, which had so effectually clogged the wheels of the Reformation in the latter years of Henry, did not resign their power without a struggle under Edward. From amongst the guardians of the king, who were also to be the governors of the kingdom during the minority, the Earl of Hertford, afterwards Duke of Somerset, the king’s maternal uncle, and a friend of the Reformation, was chosen head of the regency, under the title of Protector; whilst Wriothesley, the lord chancellor, a Catholic, and the leader of his sect, who opposed the elevation of Somerset, hoping that, if all the were equal in authority, the substantial power would be his own, was deposed from his office, and deprived of the seals. Cranmer was in his own right, as primate, a member of this commission; and finding a cordial coadjutor in the Protector, he now felt himself released from the vexatious restrictions which had hitherto cramped him, and began for the first time to breathe freely. Now, therefore, his plans for restoring the national church rapidly develope themselves, and to the consideration of these our attention must for the present be directed.

It would be easy to take a more extensive sweep of contemporary history, as others have done, and to adorn our narrative with the spoils—for the stirring times here treated of, supply abundant materials for such a purpose; but it is better, perhaps, to follow our subject closely up, putting aside many collateral incidents, not, indeed, as without their influence on the Reformation, but as holding a very subordinate place in it; and thus to keep our eye single, neither distracting it by too much diversity, nor perplexing it by too much detail. For, in general, the most profitable method of treating a complicated subject, perhaps, is, not to open up every particular, great and small, which may bear upon it in its degree; but rather to filter the rush of matter[193] which presents itself, and, striving to make a small book, which is a hard thing, instead of a large one, which is most easy, to place the reader in possession of such events only as served to stamp the times to which they belonged, or serve now to characterise them, and then to leave him to his own reflection or to his own study to fill up the picture.

The first of those successive publications, by the circulation of which Cranmer built up the faith of his country, was Erasmus’s Paraphrase of the New Testament, translated into English, a copy of which, as well as of the Bible, was to be set up in every parish church; the next, a volume of Homilies, twelve in number. The paraphrase Cranmer himself did not maintain to be perfect; but it was the best upon which he could lay his hand; moreover, as executed by a member of the church of Rome, (from whose eyes, however, the scales were fast falling,) it was calculated, he might think (and an expression which drops from him confirms this),[351] for a church in a state of transition like our own; Gardiner offered many captious objections to it; others, which might have been urged with more show of reason, he was not, perhaps, the man to discover or propound. Had he compared it with similar writings of some other of the reformers, he would have found that, in making such a choice, Cranmer, so far from intending to irritate, could only be led by a desire to conciliate the Catholics as much as might be without a compromise. Had he compared, for instance, Erasmus’s paraphrase of the Galatians with the commentary of Luther on the same epistle—had he contrasted the caution of the one interpreter with the intrepidity, not to say hardihood, of the other; the different degrees of animation with which the great evangelical doctrines, and those the most obnoxious to the Roman catholics, are respectively[194] handled by them; the different degrees of keenness they discover in the detection of those doctrines under the same texts; the more or less reserved sense in which the works of the law are understood as affecting justification; not to speak of the direct fulminations against the church of Rome, which Luther takes every occasion to launch, and Erasmus to withhold;—if he had thus done, probably Luther’s most powerful treatise would not, indeed, have made him a convert to his opinions; Cranmer himself most likely would have disavowed, or at least tempered, several of them; but it would have at any rate satisfied him that the archbishop had far more offensive weapons in his armoury than those which he thought proper on this occasion to produce.

The objections which Gardiner directed against the Homilies were many of them just enough in logic, though feeble in themselves, for it was alleged, that the doctrines of the Homilies and of the King’s Book did not always agree; nor did they: but this only served to show (what was the truth) that, when the latter was published, Cranmer was counteracted by other influence; or else (what was equally the truth) that his own opinions had in the interval undergone considerable revision. Justification by faith only, a doctrine which in the King’s Book had been greatly qualified, is made a leading principle in the Homilies; and certain superstitions of the church of Rome, which in the former were tolerated, if not encouraged, in the latter were absolutely forbidden.[356]—but the horror of papal abuses, which drove the compilers into some hearty expressions in contradiction to them, particularly in those for the Nativity and Whitsunday—expressions which would rather have recommended[196] themselves to the honest extravagance of a Latimer than to the caution of a Cranmer, and which have accordingly given occasion to many doubtful disputations both in metaphysics and theology. Still, the Homilies must have been most wholesome lessons for those times, when minor differences were merged in the broad distinction between Romanists and men of the new learning, and in the one great struggle for the liberties temporal and spiritual of the church of England.

Soon after this, in the year 1548, was published Cranmer’s Catechism, as it was called, it being said in the title-page to be “set forth” by him; a circumstance which led Burnet into the mistake, subsequently corrected at the suggestion of Strype, that it was composed by the archbishop. The truth is, that it was originally written in German, and was probably one of the many catechisms to which Luther’s own gave rise, and by which the Reformation in was forwarded. It was translated into Latin by Justus Jonas, the father most likely (for there were two), the intimate friend of Luther; and might have been brought into England by the son, a less conspicuous character among the reformers, who came to this country in 1548, driven from his home, like many more, by the religious ordinance of Charles V. known by the name of the Interim. From the Latin it was turned into English, faithfully for the most part, by some hand of Cranmer’s own choosing, perhaps by Rowland Taylor the martyr, of glorious memory, then one of his chaplains. It is drawn up on the same plan as the Bishops’ Book and the King’s Book, which had preceded it; being an exposition of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sacraments. As Cranmer prefixed to the work his own name, it must be considered to express his own opinions at the time; and its history is here traced with the more care, because it presents another picture of[197] the progressive workings of his mind towards the point at which he finally reposed, and another proof of the slow and painful process through which he arrived at what he conceived to be the truth. Accordingly, in his Catechism we still find the Commandments arranged after the Roman Catholic usage, the second omitted, or consolidated with the first, and the tenth divided into two. We find three sacraments still insisted upon, though four others had been withdrawn—baptism, the bath of regeneration, or instrument of the second birth;[361] the second, when he published his Catechism; the last, when he wrote his book upon the sacrament. Gardiner might take advantage of such changes, as in fact he did, and have his sneer; but nothing could be more natural than that a sincere man, only intent on following out truth, lead where it might, should have arrived at it by degrees, and by precisely such degrees as these—that he should see men as trees walking, before he saw them as men; and nothing can argue more strongly the sound and sober principles upon which the Reformation proceeded, than this its gradual advance. It was not, we find, without patient investigation, and the successive abandonment of every false position, as it proved itself to be such, that it ultimately attained the strong ground from which it has never since been dislodged.

This catechism (it may be remarked) has been sometimes confounded with the short form contained in our Prayer Book. The latter, however, was of genuine English growth,[199] though of doubtful origin: Strype assigns it expressly to Nowell;[364] It made a part of the Liturgy of King Edward, of which more will be said in its proper place, being inserted in the Office for Confirmation. Nor has any material change been since introduced into it, except that the explanation of the Sacraments was added in the reign of James I., the original Catechism having ended with the Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer.

The same year, 1548, came out another work, by which the cause of the Reformation was still more essentially served, and the structure of the church advanced, the Office of the Communion. It was compiled chiefly out of the Roman missal, of which it is often a literal translation, by “sundry of his Majesty’s most grave and well-learned prelates and other learned men in the Scriptures,” and in its first shape retained (so it was afterwards thought) some particulars of its original, which would have been better modified or suppressed. It underwent like the other Offices of which more will be said presently, a rigid revision by Martyr and Bucer before its re-appearance in 1552, for the benefit of whose remarks the whole was turned into Latin (so pains-taking were the founders of our Church); and prayer for the dead, the invocation of the Holy Ghost upon the elements, and a certain bias, or what might have been mistaken for such, towards the real presence, were corrected, but with a delicate hand and irable judgment[200] though they were still in after-times those amongst the non-jurors who maintained that the changes were not to its advantage; and even Laud, it has been observed, in the composition of his Liturgy for the episcopalian church of Scotland, has in some things shown a preference to the first over the amended form.[365]

Here again have we to remark and ire the moderation of the Reformers: they did not unmannerly reject those Offices of the Church which, however corrupted, lost themselves in a fathomless abyss of years, and might even have partaken of something of the spirit of an apostolic age; for though the Clementine liturgy, to which the Missal, like many other liturgies of various countries and dates, owes many of its elements, is found in a work, not indeed of the antiquity to which its title pretends, the Apostolical Constitutions; still it is a work of very great antiquity, perhaps antecedent to the Council of Nice; and therefore it is not visionary to suppose that this primitive Office contained in it breathes the language of very early times indeed, and that some of the prayers which for three centuries of persecution might have lived rather by tradition than in writing, may be here more or less faithfully preserved. These helps which our Reformers did not disdain, they showed themselves able to improve, correcting what was objectionable in doctrine, removing what was offensive in taste, and often communicating by some happy expression even an additional glow of devotion to ages in themselves (it might have been thought) too beautiful to touch; for in the whole com of English literature, many as are the excellent versions of ancient writings which it can boast, it would be in vain to look for any specimens of translation (merely to put the[201] case thus) so vigorous, so simple, so close, and yet so free from all constraint, as are afforded by the Offices of our Church. An example taken at random may suffice to acquit us of all charge of declamation. It shall be one of the Prefaces; that for Easter. Thus it runs in the Missal:—

“Verè dignum et justum est, æquum et salutare, Te quidem, Domine, omni tempore, sed in hoc potissimùm gloriosius prædicare, cùm Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus. Ipse enim verus est Agnus, qui abstulit peccata mundi; qui mortem nostram moriendo destruxit, et vitam resurgendo reparavit. Et ideo cum Angelis et Archangelis, cum Thronis et Dominationibus, cumque omni militiâ cœlestis exercitûs, hymnum gloriæ tuæ canimus, sine fine dicentes, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloriâ tuâ, Hosanna in Excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis.”

Let any man attempt to express this sublime appeal to God in his mother-tongue for himself, and then he will know how to appreciate the ease with which it is effected by those gifted men, to the worth of whose labours our own generation is not, perhaps, sufficiently alive, in the following manner:—

“It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should, at all times and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty Everlasting God. But chiefly are we bound to praise thee for the glorious resurrection of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the very Paschal Lamb which was offered for us, and hath taken away the sin of the world; who by his death hath destroyed death, and by his rising to life again hath restored to us everlasting life. Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee, and saying, Holy,[202] Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts; heaven and earth are full of thy glory: glory be to thee, O Lord, most High.”

Nothing can go beyond this, unless it be some of our Collects, very many of which are almost literal versions of those of the Missal; and were more wanted for occasional purposes; and possibly some might be added to our Liturgy with advantage; more might be found in this same exhaustless mine. Here, again; let us to the testimony. The collect for Palm Sunday is this:—

“Omnipotens, sempiterne Deus, qui humano generi ad imitandum humilitatis exemplum, Salvatorem nostrum, carnem sumere et crucem subire fecisti: concede propitius, ut et patientiæ ipsius habere documenta, et resurrectionis consortia mereamur per eundem Dominum.” How free, yet how faithful, is the copy:—

“Almighty, everlasting God, who of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind might follow the example of his great humility: mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Office of the Communion though soon combined with the other Offices, appears at first to have been published by itself, and before any other service;[368]

The time of day at which the offices of the Prayer Book, thus completed, were performed, is not easily determined;[205] and peremptorily as some have asserted that our morning service for Sundays consists of three entire services intended for three several hours of prayer, and extravagantly long, merely owing to this clumsy consolidation of them all, it would not be easy to prove that such division did ever in fact obtain. Two services probably are united: the Morning Prayer strictly so called, being one; the Litany and Communion the other;—but that the two latter again were ever separated seems very doubtful, or, indeed, that the first continued for any great while after the Reformation to be severed from the rest. That such was the case originally there are many reasons for believing. It naturally succeeded to the matins of the Roman Catholic church, as the Litany and Communion did to the High-Mass;[376]

The length of our church service, therefore, of which we now hear so much, and the repetitions it contains, are evils, if evils they be, which have been practically existing almost from its first formation; which a Hammond, a Sanderson, and a Taylor could tolerate without a complaint but too happy; (as were then their congregations also, for[208] those were not fastidious days,) if they were permitted in their secret assemblies to give utterance to these burning words with which the great Reformers had furnished them; nor scrupulously counting how often they were taught to pour forth the Lord’s Prayer; as they counted not how often they were taught to cry out in the self-same phrase for the Lord to have mercy upon them; as David counted not how often he exclaimed “My son, my son;” or as these critics themselves, it is presumed, would not count their own iterations when they were suing earnestly for their lives. Such are not vain repetitions; and it is to be hoped, that an age so little fitted for the task as this by any theological attainments, will pause before it attempts to improve upon the labours of a Cranmer, who, according to the testimony of one of the ripest scholars of his time, Peter Martyr, nor he, by any means a creature of the archbishop, “had diligently noted with his own hand every one of the fathers; had digested into particular chapters, with a view to the controversies of his day, councils, canons, and popes’ decrees pertaining thereto, with a toil, and diligence, and exactness, which would seem incredible to any but an eye-witness; who both publicly and privately, and by a marvellous strength of learning, quickness of wit, and dexterity of management, had asserted what he held to be true from the thorny and intricate cavils of sophisters;”[378]—Moreover that an age, which for a long time, unchastened by any national calamity, has suffered much of that spirit of devotion to escape which animated the holy men of old, who were ever compelled to walk with their lives in their hand, and who[209] were, in fact, called upon at length to lay them down, will not be allowed to communicate its narcotic influence to our Liturgy, and quench in any degree the ashes of the martyrs. In truth, it is impossible to contemplate the projects of our Liturgical Reformers without something of alarm, lest, whilst with the best intentions in the world they “dandle the kid,” they should clumsily kill him nevertheless.

If, however, changes there must be after all—if old things must here, too, away, and all things become new—be the conditions those proposed by the sagacious South, and all apprehensions will be hushed. “Let us but have our Liturgy continued to us, as it is, till the persons are born who shall be able to mend it, or make a better; and we desire no greater security against either the altering this, or introducing another.”[379]

Besides providing these various forms of public devotion, our Reformers extended their care to those of the closet and household; and in “The Primer, or Book of Private Prayer, needful to be used of all Christians” (for so its title runs), and of which numerous editions appeared from the dawn of the Reformation under Henry down to the accession of Mary, successively portraying its progress by their improvements upon one another, scriptural petitions are contained suitable to all sorts and conditions of men, and almost to every state of body or mind to which they are liable. Here are graces before meat—addresses to God “both when we wake and when we seek his gift of sleep;”—when we are “very sick,” and when our health is recovered—for such as have an unquiet conscience, or an injured name—for such as are in poverty or affluence—for kings and judges, gentlemen and merchants, lawyers and labourers, parents and children,[210] husbands and wives, masters and servants—significant all, of the manner in which the Reformers laboured to introduce a religious principle into all the relations and transactions of life whatsoever; to extend its influence over the whole of society, so that like Elisha stretched upon the dead child (to use an illustration of Jeremy Taylor’s), it might give life and animation to every part of the body politic. There is much simplicity and beauty in the following prayers “for Landlords,” and “for Householders,” which are extracted as specimens of a work now but little known, having been overlaid by the extempore effusions of the days of Cromwell, and never having recovered itself, like the Book of Common Prayer, since.—[380]

“FOR LANDLORDS.

“The earth is thine, O Lord, and all that is contained therein, notwithstanding thou hast given the possession thereof to the children of men, to over the time of their short pilgrimage in this vale of misery. We heartily pray thee to send thy Holy Spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwelling-places of the earth; that they, ing themselves to be thy tenants,[211] may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands; nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes; after the manner of covetous worldlings; but so let them out to other, that the inhabitants thereof may be able both to pay the rents, and also honestly to live to nourish their family, and to relieve the poor. Give them grace also to consider that they are but strangers and pilgrims in this world, having here no dwelling-place, but seeking one to come; that they, ing the short continuance of their life, may be content with that is sufficient, and not house to house, nor couple land to land, to the impoverishment of others; but so behave themselves in letting out their tenements, lands, and pastures, that after this life they may be received into everlasting dwelling-places through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

“FOR HOUSEHOLDERS.

“To have children and servants is thy blessing, O Lord! but not to order them according to thy word deserveth thy dreadful curse; grant, therefore, that as thou hast blessed me with an household, so I may diligently watch, that nothing may be committed of the same that may offend thy fatherly goodness, and be an occasion of turning thy blessing into a curse; but that so many as thou hast committed to my charge may eschew all vice; embrace all virtue; live in thy fear; call upon thy holy name; learn thy blessed commandments; hear thy holy word; and avoiding idleness, diligently exercise themselves every one in his office, according to their vocation and calling, unto the glory of thy most honourable name.”

Thus far have we accompanied our Reformers in their attempt to raise up a Church of England, and to establish its doctrines. One important work more under this head remained[212] still to be done, and to that we must now advert, the composition of a set of Articles which should speak with authority the opinions of the church, and secure uniformity amongst its teachers. Cranmer had entertained this difficult project in his thoughts long before he executed it; and the spirit in which he buckled himself to the work may be collected from some demonstrations which he had previously made. The natural effect of the Reformation had been to put in motion various conflicting opinions upon matters of faith and practice; every man challenging to himself the right of private judgment, and many, no doubt, abusing it; for any principle, however good, may be misapplied. It was, accordingly, the devout wish of many of the leading Reformers, both on the Continent and in this country, that some general creed should be drawn up by a congress of learned men of all nations, which should bind the whole Protestant church together, and put an end to these mischievous divisions of heart. Melancthon appears especially to have pressed such a scheme upon Cranmer, whom, in his turn, he found nothing loth to pursue it;[384]

It is of great importance to the right understanding of those which he at length drew up, to consider the spirit in which they were framed. Originating in the manner we have said, the principle which dictated them could scarcely have been one of exclusion, but was rather intended to allow a latitude, within certain limits to a conscientious difference of opinion, and to make the fiery scorpion of bigotry draw in its claws; and concede a just portion of the heavens to other pretensions besides its own. That the spirit of our Articles was thus catholic, became apparent in the actual working of them; and accordingly, when the exclusive doctrines of Calvin triumphed for a season in this country, and the Westminster divines were called upon to remodel the church, one of their first acts was to review the Articles, (a task which they did not complete, probably finding it a business of too much moderation to suit their present temper,) with the express design of rendering them “more determinate in favour of Calvinism[386] sufficient testimonies these, that the exclusionists did, in fact, feel the Articles (however they may have laid violent claim to them as their own) to be conceived in a temper inconveniently liberal, and the net of Cranmer and his coadjutors to have been cast, in this instance, too wide to meet their approbation.

Nor will a closer examination of the history of their actual composition lead to any other result. For the model upon which those of Cranmer of 1553 were formed was the Confession of Augsburg, which was strictly a Lutheran Confession, Melancthon himself having drawn it up; and it is a curious fact, and like another to which allusion has already been made (the frequent invitations sent to this great Reformer to repair to England and take part in building up her church), a fact indicating the influence which his character and opinions exercised on the ecclesiastical proceedings of this country at that time, that the divinity professorship in Cambridge, which was vacated by Bucer’s death, in 1551, was not filled up for two years, apparently in the hope that Melancthon (for whom it was intended) would be persuaded to come over and occupy it;[392] from an original manuscript in the Chapter-house at Westminster, the Archbishop, speaking of the seditious conduct of one Sir Thomas Baschurch, a priest, writes, “At April next coming it shall be three years since the said Sir Thomas fell into despair, and thereby into a sickness, so that he was in peril of death. Of this sickness, within a quarter of a year after, he recovered, but saith he is assured that he shall be perpetually damned. My chaplains and divers other learned men have reasoned with him, but no man can bring him to other opinion but that he, like unto Esau, was created unto damnation; and hath, divers times and sundry ways, attempted to kill himself; but by diligent looking unto he hath hitherto been preserved.”

Moreover, the selection which Cranmer made of Erasmus’s Paraphrase, as the exposition of Scripture of which every church was to have a copy, argues no Calvinistic prejudices, but the very reverse.

The true key, indeed, to the right understanding of the articles (as was already observed with regard to the homilies) is not so much the doctrine of Calvin as of the schoolmen; the controversy lying chiefly between the Protestant and Catholic, and in its paramount interest and importance absorbing for a season every other. Thus the article of “Original Sin” is urged with a reference to the scholastic dogma, that original sin was a mere defect of original righteousness, the latter being a quality superinduced, and not[217] “the fault and corruption of the nature of every man;”—the article of “Works before Justification,” with a similar view to another theory of the subtle doctors, that by a certain meritorious meetness, a priori, for the reception of God’s grace, the party claimed it as a right de congruo, and that having once received it, he then claimed its further extension as a right, de condigno.[394] an object which was not likely to be obtained by the decided adoption of any party views, be that party what it might; and, therefore, King James, according to his declaration prefixed to the Articles, “took comfort that all clergymen within his realm had always most willingly subscribed to the Articles established, which is an argument (he adds) that they all agree in the true usual literal meaning of the said Articles, and that even in those curious points in which the present differences lie, men of[218] all sorts take the Articles of the church of England to be for them.” Yet nothing can be more certain than that in the time of James the divisions of opinion upon speculative points of theology were both wide and numerous; high and low church principles (as they are called) never having been more violently opposed to each other than then. Here, therefore, as in all other of their measures, did the Reformers make their moderation known unto all men, not hoping or desiring to confine religious opinion so closely as thereby to prejudice religious sincerity, nor expecting that the pyramid of a national Church would stand firm when set upon an apex instead of a base.

On a review of these several works by which the Church of England was restored, it can scarcely fail to be matter of iration and wonder, that so fair a fabric should have risen under the hands of the Reformers out of such disorder, almost at once; that in the very agony of a first attempt they should have thrown off a comprehensive scheme of doctrine and devotion which scarcely called for any subsequent revision; that they should not only have hewn out such irable materials, but have brought them, too, in so short a season, to so excellent a work. In this our day (overcast and troubled as it is) we can, perhaps, scarcely transfer ourselves, even in imagination, to the tumultuous age of a Cranmer and a Ridley, or fully appreciate the sagacity which, under God’s blessing, conducted them through such conflicting elements with such signal triumph. Yet so it was; and with the gorgeous ceremonies of the church they had grown up in soliciting their senses on the one hand, endeared, too, by all the holy recollections of their youth and even manhood; and contempt for all decency of apparel and ritual, the natural reaction of former abuses, assailing them on the other; these judicious men yielded themselves to neither extreme, but adopting the middle way, (alas! that Milton should bestow upon them[219] no better title for this than that of halting prelates,[396] she declares it generally necessary to salvation; that whilst she teaches the absolute need of a Saviour and of a Spirit, to restore in us that image of God which was greviously defaced by the fall, and imputes such restoration to the merits of a Saviour and the influence of the Spirit, she thinks it of inferior consequence to determine how far gone from original righteousness we may be, resting satisfied with the assertion (to the truth of which every one who knows his own heart must subscribe) that we are at any rate “very far gone,” “quam longissime,” as far as it is possible, consistently with the possession of a moral nature at all, and responsibility for our actions; that whilst she does not allow marriage to be a sacrament, as ing, that it is no ratified means of grace, still less does she regard it as a civil contract, as ing, also, that in it is signified the spiritual[220] marriage and unity of Christ and his church, and that male and female God ed together; that whilst she does not enforce, on pain of damnation, confession to the priest, or hold the act to be essential to the forgiveness of the sin, she, nevertheless, solemnly exhorts such persons as have a troubled conscience, and know not how to quiet it, to go to a minister of God and open to him their grief, that they may receive from him the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice.

With such discretion did our Reformers retain the good which was in the Church of Rome whilst they rejected the evil, putting the one in vessels to be kept, and casting the other away; with such temper did they refuse to be scared by the abuses of past times, or the scrupulosities of their own, into narrowing needlessly that ground on which they invited a nation to take its stand, and which they well knew must be broad to it of it. And so it came about, that a form of faith and worship was conceived which recommended itself to the piety and good sense of the people; to which they reverted with gladness of heart when evil times afterwards compelled them to abjure it for a season; towards which, those who have since dissented and withdrawn from it have so often seen occasion (or if not they, their children, after them,) to retrace their steps, and tacitly to acknowledge that whilst they sought meat for their lust, they had rejected angels’ food.

God grant that a church which has now for nearly three centuries, amidst every extravagance of doctrine and discipline which has spent itself around her, still carried herself as the mediator, chastening the zealot by words of soberness, and animating the lukewarm by words that burn—that a church which has been found on experience to have successfully promoted a quiet and unobtrusive and practical piety amongst the people, such as comes not of observation, but[221] is seen in the conscientious discharge of all those duties of imperfect obligation which are the bonds of peace, but which laws cannot reach—that such a church may live through these troubled times to train up our children in the fear of God, when we are in our graves; and that no strong delusion sent amongst us may prevail to her overthrow, and to the eventual discomfiture (as they would find too late to their cost) of many who have thoughtlessly and ungratefully lifted up their heel against her!

HOOPER.—PURITANS.—EXPECTATIONS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.—EDWARD’S DEATH.—LADY JANE GREY.

But though the leading Reformers were men of moderation, there was a party now growing up in the church of another temper, and a more rigid mould. Hooper, the type of it at that time, had resided for some years amongst the foreign Protestants of and Switzerland, where the promulgation of the Interim, a half measure, uniting something of Popish forms with something of Protestant principles; had put men upon considering the question concerning the use of things indifferent. He took the side of the more rigorous casuists; and, accordingly, when the bishopric of Gloucester was offered him, (for he was one of the most sharp and searching preachers of his day, and of a conscience above fear or favour, sometimes, perhaps, above reason too,) he alleged certain scruples, in which he was seconded by John à Lasco, and the churches of the strangers in England, chiefly touching the episcopal habits, which then consisted, besides the rochet of white linen as still worn, of a chimere or robe, to which the lawn sleeves are attached, of scarlet silk; the latter gorgeous article of dress, which was not superseded by the black satin at present worn, till the reign of Elizabeth, seems to have been the chief offence to Hooper, who accordingly for a while declined the mitre. Here was the beginning of those troubles which; however respectable in their origin, were soon destined to make havoc of the Church’s peace; and Hooper is[223] one of the few bishops (for a bishop he eventually became) on whom the Puritans of every age, not excepting even Neal himself, have looked with an eye of favour. It seems a strange thing to us, that men should have been ever found ready to make shipwreck of charity, and to risk the Reformation altogether (for the Roman Catholics were on the alert to profit by the divisions) upon matters so unimportant in themselves as the colour or material of a coat; or that such precisians should have been met with as expected, and required the actual warrant of Scripture for every trivial matter which they did throughout the day, to the utter extinction of Christian liberty:[398] to stave off the crisis; it came with the rebellion nevertheless, when a morbid conscience gave place, as it often does, to fanaticism or hypocrisy, and the substantial fruits of the Spirit were lost in real or pretended paroxysms. Surely the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. St. Paul in all his epistles deals boldly with such beggarly elements; nor does the example of our Lord himself sanction scruples merely fastidious. He did not listen to the accusations against his disciples that they had plucked the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, or that they had eaten with unwashen hands; and it is remarkable[224] that, though according to the strict letter of the Levitical law the over was to be partaken of with loins girded, and shoes on the feet, and a staff in the hand, and in haste, Jesus appears to have acquiesced in a custom long established, and to have sat down with his disciples, and to have conversed with them at his leisure, one of them leaning upon his bosom.

An attempt has been made by some to claim Cranmer as belonging to the same party in his heart, howbeit restrained by force of circumstances from fully declaring himself. They would persuade us that he was prepared to have gone much further in his Book of Common Prayer, (such, say they, was the report amongst the English exiles at Frankfort,)[404] A character of this complexion, moderation the leading feature of it, was not the one to win upon a patron, himself prepared to rush into the extremes of the Puritans.

But the reign of a minor, which was favourable to the growth of that party, indeed Edward had himself, perhaps, a leaning to their opinions, was not unfriendly to the further pillage of the church. Here, therefore, Cranmer had again to interpose, that in this instance he might protect the temporalities, as in the other he had protected the doctrines, of the Establishment. The division of the abbey-lands amongst the nobles seems to have begot a general taste[228] amongst the upper classes for expense, and consequent appetite for spoil—it grew by what it fed on. Rents were raised to an extravagant height; the farm for which Latimer’s father paid from three to four pounds a year; and which enabled him to send a man and horse to the King’s service, and to portion his daughters with five pounds a-piece, was, in Latimer’s own time, let for sixteen pounds or more, to the utter impoverishment of the occupier.[413] But the spirits of the Romanists were not to be thus broken down. For the three last years of Edward’s reign their confidence was perpetually on the increase. The life of the Princess was seen to be of fairer promise than the King’s, and an eye to the character of the next in the succession is a striking political feature of the times of which we are treating, when the balance between contending factions was as yet scarcely struck either way. The nobles who espoused the cause of the Reformers were at strife amongst themselves; Somerset contending with his brother, the iral, even to the death; himself beheaded in his turn, and succeeded as Protector by the Earl of Warwick, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, a man unpopular and suspected. The adversaries of the Reformation were not slow to take advantage of the disorder. Whilst the government was united, many leading persons amongst them had recanted, and even Bonner and Gardiner “began to condescend,” as Fox expresses it, “to good conformity;” but they now took heart, turned about, and braved a persecution which was likely to be short, and which was sure to recommend them to the future sovereign.

On the other hand, the friends of the Reformation, reading[232] these prognostics the other way, had fearful forebodings of evils to come, and were naturally cast down. The feverish condition of the public mind is seen in the restless solicitude with which they treasured such omens up. The execution of the Protector; the death of the Duke of Suffolk and his brother by the sweating sickness, the sons of a father who was Cranmer’s good friend, and themselves children of great hope; the loss of Fagius and Bucer at a critical moment, were all ed harbingers of ill.[418] But if we acquit Northumberland of treason, it is not so easy to acquit him of treachery; for that the dying prince should have made a will, not merely withholding the crown from its rightful owner, the Princess Mary, (for considering the hearty desire he entertained for the maintenance of the Protestant cause this might have been his own act and deed,) but from his sister Elizabeth, herself a Protestant, and to settle it upon a cousin who happened to be the duke’s daughter-in-law, this looks like the machination of another head than his own. This will Cranmer long refused to subscribe; but at last, over-persuaded by the authority of the judges, all of whom except Judge Hales, concurred in it, and above all, by the entreaties of Edward himself, who represented the hopeless condition to which the Reformation would be reduced by acquiescing in the natural descent of the crown, (as if the wrath of man was to work the righteousness of God,) in an evil hour he took the pen and signed the document and what was tantamount to his own death-warrant together.

And now Edward, having finished his short but saintly course, his sixteenth year not yet completed, commended his people to God, especially beseeching him that he[234] “would defend his realm from papistry;” and then as he sunk in the arms of Sir Henry Sidney, he exclaimed, “I am faint; Lord, have mercy on me; and receive my spirit;” and so he departed. Thus ended this reign of mercy: for ill as the principle of toleration was in those days understood, violently as it had been outraged by Henry, who preceded, and as it was destined to be by Mary, who followed him, during the six years that Edward sat upon the throne, neither in Smithfield, nor in any other quarter of the realm did any man suffer for religious opinion, whether Catholic or Protestant, save the two of whom mention has been made already—the Dutchman and Joan of Kent.[420] It is obvious that such a principle, generally acknowledged and acted upon, would have ended in leaving the country without any government at all; for if the old statutes should prove inapplicable to an unforseen emergency, and there were no authority adequate to supply the defect, anarchy must ensue. It is true that advantage was sometimes taken of overt acts of non-conformity on which to prosecute, because where[235] there might be moral, there might not be legal, evidence of disaffection, the offence being difficult of proof; still here the gravamen no doubt lay of many of the charges preferred against the Roman Catholic dignitaries, and of the penalties inflicted on them in the reign of Edward; and the necessity which lay upon the council of seeing that the commonwealth took no damage at their hands in those dangerous times, may be thought to excuse proceedings which, however, were attended by some aggravating circumstances of rigour but too common in those days.

It is impossible to contemplate the death of Edward without feeling for Cranmer and his colleagues in the Reformation. Their hearts might well sink within them in that hour. They had gone boldly forward in their great enterprise, beholding the danger before their eyes, for they could not be blind to it, but determined to do their duty and fear not; exasperating the Catholic party, headed as it was by a most bigoted princess, then the presumptive, now the actual, possessor of the throne, nor shrinking from incurring her personal displeasure, where the interests of religion required the risk, by the honest counsel they gave with respect to the concessions due to her, or the privileges which it was fitting to deny or to resume. Now they were in a situation which they must have long foreseen was likely to be their lot—at the mercy of an implacable foe. And the days and nights of anxiety which they must have spent at this crisis waiting for the policy of Mary to disclose itself, must be carried to the of those silent sufferings which formed no small part of the purchase-money paid for the church they bequeathed to us, and which were more inable, perhaps, however less imposing, than the fire and the faggot itself.

MARY.—SUPPRESSION OF THE REFORMATION.—PERSECUTION OF THE REFORMERS.—FOX’S ACTS AND MONUMENTS.

That God seeth not as man seeth, is a truth which he, who reads history aright, must soon be taught. Cranmer, overcome by his apprehensions for the safety of the reformed church under a Catholic queen, had acted from a principle of expediency, and placed, as far as an individual could, the Lady Jane Grey on a throne which did not belong to her. Had the event turned out as he hoped, had her seat been established, and Mary been set aside forever, it is probable that the Protestant cause, the very object which this act of injustice was meant to serve, would never have been so successful as it proved; for it would have been still fur-stripped of its temporal s, and it would not have been consecrated by the blood of the martyr. God therefore ordained for it the fiery trial; and the Lady Jane was deposed almost as soon as she was proclaimed, to make way for her sincere but narrow-minded successor.

Cranmer has fallen upon evil tongues, both in his life and in his memory. A report was spread that he had declared for the mass; and, indeed, that it had been actually restored, under his sanction, in his own cathedral at Canterbury; a charge which he repelled in the most indignant, saying, that it was not he that set it up there, but “a false, flattering, lying, and dissembling monk,” one Dr. Thornden; whilst at the same time he challenged the adversaries of the Reformation to a public discussion of its principles, the soundness of which he undertook to maintain. Yet Neal,[237] who was not ignorant of these facts, ungenerously keeps them back till he has indulged in the repetition of the slander;[430] Fuller, who has no love for the Bishop of Winchester in general, makes grateful mention of an act of mercy done by him to his own maternal great-grandmother, one Mrs. Clark, who having ministered to the wants of the bishop when threatened with consumption and living in retirement for a while at Farnham Castle, at that time her residence, was allowed to abide in her heresy (for she held the reformed faith), with his connivance, and was even protected from the violence of others by his authority. It is pleasant to be able to produce any redeeming incident in these days of horror; for

Isaac Walton exhorts his fisherman, when baiting with a frog, “to put his hook through the mouth and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk to sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming wire of the hook, and in so doing to use him as though he loved him.” And in the like comionate spirit was it required “in the bowels of the Lord Jesus Christ,” of those whose office it[244] was to burn men alive, “that the execution and punishment might be so moderated that the rigour thereof might not be too extreme;”[431] besides which it was the Queen’s particular desire that, both in London and elsewhere, there should be “good sermons” preached at the time of carrying the sentence into effect; so that whatever might be said of the act itself, there was nothing to offend the most fastidious philanthropy in the ceremonial.

For a history of that noble army of martyrs of whom it now becomes our duty to speak, we are indebted to John Fox, himself an exile in Mary’s reign, and like most of those who then lived abroad, a friend of the Puritan principles at home. He had access to the archives and s of the bishops; Grindal, who was himself a great collector of such materials, amongst others supplying him with what he knew; and in many instances to the letters of the martyrs themselves;[441] The man who could write thus can scarcely lay claim to our credence; for his prejudice has evidently stifled in him every sense by which a regard for truth can be guaranteed.

It is not thought out of place to introduce here this brief vindication of a book, which, so far as it is a contemporary history, has been, both of old, and of late an object of unfair depreciation, but from which no right-hearted Protestant can rise, without being at once a sadder and better man;—a book, out of which we shall now fearlessly draw our information,[249] whilst we offer to our readers a few examples of those terrible sufferings which it is at once humiliating to think that man could inflict, and animating to think that man could so nobly bear.

The first called to take up his cross was John Rogers. He had been brought up in Cambridge, and afterwards became chaplain of the factory at Antwerp, where he fell into the company of Tindall and Coverdale, and helped them to produce that translation of the Bible, which goes by the name of Matthew’s translation. He thence removed to Wittenberg, where he had the charge of a congregation for many years, till Edward’s accession having rendered it safe for those who held his opinions to return to their native land, he repaired thither with his wife and children (for he was married), and was soon preferred by Ridley to a prebend of St. Paul’s and to the divinity lectureship in that cathedral. Thus was he in a situation to attract the attention of Mary, and to be smitten by her evil eye. Accordingly, he was soon brought before the council to answer for his doctrine; and having been first confined to his house, where he remained half a year, and from which he took no pains to escape, he was afterwards, by the tender mercies of Bonner committed to Newgate, and lodged amongst the common desperadoes of a gaol for twelve months more. In his examinations before Gardiner and the council he played his part with the intrepidity of one who felt strong in the righteousness of his cause, and with a force of reasoning which it required the scoffs and brutal laughter of his judges to smother, for answer it they could not. Kneeling on his knees, he reminded them of their own acquiescence in the laws of Henry and Edward; one amongst them, and he, the chief, having been the open advocate of the King’s supremacy as opposed to that of the Pope. He defended his own marriage, as being originally contracted in a country where[250] marriage was permitted to priests; and said that neither did he bring his wife into England till the laws of England permitted it too. With regard to service in an unknown tongue, and the doctrine of the mass, he stayed himself upon Scripture. Gardiner exclaiming against him, that “he could prove nothing by the Scripture, for that Scripture was dead, and must needs have a lively expositor.” But all was in vain, for they were bent to have his life, and having been on several successive days brought before his judges, that some semblance of justice might not be wanting, he was at last condemned; and on the 4th of February, in the year 1555, being Monday, in the morning, he was warned suddenly by the keeper’s wife of Newgate to prepare himself for the fire. He had been sound asleep; but being at length awakened, and bid to make haste—“then,” said he, “if it be so I need not to tye my points;” and so was he had down to Bonner to be degraded, of whom he craved one petition, that he might talk a few words with his wife before his burning; but this poor consolation was denied him; and being led to Smithfield by the sheriffs, singing the Miserere as he went, his wife, and eleven children, one at the breast, meeting him by the way, his pardon still offered him at the stake, on condition of his recantation, he bore himself through this most cruel temptation of all with a stout heart, and bravely washing his hands in the flame as he was burning, gave up his spirit to God. Notwithstanding the care which had been taken to remove his writings, during his confinement in prison, he had contrived to evade the vigilance of his keepers; and it was supposed, that when he wished to have a word with his wife before he was put to death it was to tell her where they were secreted. If so, however, it proved needless; for when she and her son afterwards visited his cell, and were on the point of going away, the latter chanced to cast his eye toward a dark corner under a[251] pair of stairs, and there perceived a black packet of papers, which on examination turned out to be an of his trial, written in his own hand, wherein was contained, as well many of the details already given, as a very touching prayer, begging of God to sustain him, and all others, in the like case, through their great need, and importuning all “to be good to his poor and most honest wife, being a poor stranger; and all his little souls, hers and his children; whom (he adds,) with all the whole faithful and true catholic congregation of Christ, the Lord of life and death save, keep, and defend, in all the troubles and assaults of this vain world, and bring at the last to everlasting salvation, the true and sure inheritance of all crossed Christians. Amen, Amen.” So perished the first champion of the reformed church; and it has been observed, in reference to their leader, that of those who underwent the same fiery trial, married men, and the parents of many children, met their deaths the most courageously.

On the 9th of February, five days after Rogers, died one who had been with him in prison, and stood beside him at the same judgment-seat—Hooper. He had escaped from the Six Acts in Henry’s time, to the Continent, and returning when Edward reigned in the room of his father, was promoted to the see of Gloucester. Of his scruples respecting the habits and oath mention has been made already; scruples, which his residence abroad had strengthened, and which his own uncompromising temperament made him slow to abandon. He would have found little difficulty in securing his safety by flight a second time, but having now put his hand fairly to the plough, having been the zealous preacher of the new doctrines, and a bishop under the new establishment, he felt, that to withdraw from the trial, severe as it was likely to prove, would be a dereliction of duty, and he determined to brave the danger, come what might.[252] He ran the gauntlet of the inquisitional council, as Rogers had done before him, being tried by the same questions, and taunted by the same scoffs, only, it is remarkable, that Tonstall, Bishop of Durham, is said to have called him “beast,” in consideration of his marriage; a reproach which, as it was scarcely consistent with Tonstall’s general deportment to cast in his teeth, he being a good man, and a foe to persecution, scarcely allowing it to enter his own diocese, may be probably assigned to the humane motive, which Fuller suggests, that he wished to bark the more, in order that he might be at liberty to bite the less;[442] and by affecting rudeness of speech, qualify himself for being merciful without suspicion. Hooper, however, was not to be saved. He was married—he would not separate himself from his wife; and he did not believe in the corporal presence in the sacrament; for these heresies he was deprived and condemned. It was necessary to remove him from the Clink, a prison not far from the church of St. Mary Overies, where sentence was ed upon him, to Newgate, one of the worst of the bad prisons of those times; and the precautions observed show the extreme unpopularity of these sanguinary measures, and the blindness of a government which could adopt them. He was kept till dark, and then led by a sheriff, attended by bills and weapons, through the city, the sergeants going forward to put out the candles of the costermongers, who in those days sat in the streets; the people, nevertheless came in spite of these precautions to their doors with lights to salute him as he ed, and to strengthen his resolution by their cordial prayers. On the night after Rogers’ martyrdom in Smithfield, he was informed by his keeper that he was himself shortly about to die, not in Smithfield, however, but at Gloucester, amongst the people over whom he[253] had been pastor. At this he rejoiced greatly; and sending for his boots, spurs, and cloak, that he might be in readiness for the morrow, prepared himself to set out with his guard before break of day for the scene of his sufferings. There he arrived on the third evening after his departure from London, amidst the tears and salutations of a multitude of persons, who came out to meet him by the way. The evening before his execution he retired early to rest, and having slept one sleep soundly, ed the remainder of the night in prayer. The morrow was market-day—the country people flocked in; the boughs of an elm tree, near which the stake was fixed, were loaded with spectators; and over the college gate, which commanded a view of the spot, stood a company of priests. He had scarcely kneeled down to recommend his soul to God, for the last time on earth, when, by a refinement of cruelty common in those bloody days, a box was brought and laid before him on a stool, containing his pardon if he would still turn in the eleventh hour. But, he crying out again and again, “If you love my soul, away with it,” there remained, it was said, no remedy but to despatch him quickly. Then did he strip himself to the shirt; and a pound of gunpowder being placed between his legs, and another under either arm, he mounted upon a high bench, himself tall, and being bound to the stake by an iron hoop round his middle, he awaited his end. But the faggots were green, and kindled slowly; and the wind, which was high, drove the flame from him, so that he was scorched only, till dry wood was brought, but still in small quantities; and for a long while nothing but the lower extremities was consumed; and he cried out in his protracted agony, “For God’s sake, good people, let me have more fire!” It was not till a third fire had been lighted that the gunpowder exploded: but neither did this end his suffering; for he still continued to pray in a loud voice, “Lord Jesus, have mercy[254] upon me!” At length his tongue became swollen so that he could not articulate; and one of his arms dropped off; and after he had thus lingered three quarters of an hour, in all the bitterness of the bitterest of deaths, he bowed forwards and yielded up his life.

None of all the martyrs appear to have died so hardly as Hooper; none, perhaps, to have left a stronger impression upon the minds of their hearers; to which the austerity of his doctrines and severity of his death alike contributed. His scruples and his tenets seem to have been scattered far and wide over the dioceses of Gloucester and Bristol, to come again after many days; for when Cheny some years afterwards was appointed to these sees, he being, as was supposed, a Lutheran, and being certainly a lover of ceremonial, found it impossible to reconcile the sentiments of his clergy with his own; and, fretted by constant conflict, became desirous to resign a charge, of which, indeed, he was eventually deprived by the archbishop, and to return to a life of more privacy and peace.[443]

But of the many beautiful histories in which Fox abounds, none is more beautiful than that of Rowland Taylor, rector of Hadley. Though a mere country parson, (for he had quitted the household of Cranmer, to whom he was chaplain; in order to reside upon his benefice,)—possessed, however, of a high spirit and popular talents—he seems to have taken a lead in his own country; and following in the wake of Bilney, who had preached in the same quarters, contributed to render Suffolk what we have already described it—the soil in which the Reformation took the kindliest root. The collateral effect of his influence and example may be thought, perhaps, to be discovered in a circumstance which comes out quite incidentally in the annals[255] of that period; that one Dr. Drakes, who was afterwards burnt at Smithfield, and one Yeomans at Norwich, had both, we find, been connected with Rowland Taylor; the former having been made deacon through his means,[445] We will not enter into all the details of this thrice-told tale of sorrow—his pastoral faithfulness—his successful teaching, so that his parish was remarkable for its knowledge of the Word of God—his efforts to introduce to each other rich and poor, by taking with him in his visits to the latter some of the more wealthy cloth-makers, that they might become acquainted with their neighbours’ wants, and thus be led to minister to their relief—his bold defiance of the Catholic priest whom he found in possession of his church, surrounded by armed men, and saying mass—his reply to John Hull, the old servant who accompanied him to London when he was summoned there before Gardiner, and who would fain have persuaded him to fly—his frank and fearless carriage before his judges—his mirth at the ludicrous apprehensions he inspired into Bonner’s chaplain, who cautioned the bishop, when performing the ceremony of his degradation, not to strike him on the breast with his crosier staff, seeing that he would sure strike again—his charge to his little boy, when he supped with him in prison before his removal to Hadley, not to forsake his mother when she waxed old, but to see that she lacked nothing; for which God would bless him, and give him long life on earth and prosperity—his coming forth by night to set out upon his last journey; his wife, daughter, and an orphan foster-child watching all night in St. Botolph’s church-porch, to catch a sight of him as he ed—their cries when they heard his company approach, it being very dark; his touching[256] farewell to them, and his wife’s promise to meet him again at Hadley—his taking his boy before him on the horse on which he rode, John Hull lifting him up in his arms—his blessing the child; and delivering him again to John Hull, saying, “Farewell! John Hull, the faithfullest servant that man ever had;”—the pleasantries, partaking, indeed, of the homely simplicity of the times, with which he occasionally beguiled the way—the joy he expressed at hearing that he was to through Hadley, and see yet once before he died the flock whom, God knew, he had most heartily loved and truly taught—his encounter with the poor man who waited for him at the foot of the bridge with five small children, crying “God help and succour thee! as thou hast many a time succoured me and mine;”—his inquiry, when he came to the last of the alms-houses, after the blind man and woman that dwelt there; and his throwing his glove through the window for them with what money in it he had left—his calling one Soyce to him out of the crowd on Aldham Common, to pull off his boots and take them for his labour, seeing that “he had long looked for them;”—his exclaiming last of all with a loud voice, as though the moral of his life was conveyed in those parting words, “Good people, I have taught you nothing but God’s Holy Word, and those lessons that I have taken out of God’s blessed book, the Holy Bible; and I am come hither this day to seal it with my blood;”—these, and other incidents of the same story, combine so many touches of tenderness with so much firmness of purpose—so many domestic charities with so much heroism—such cheerfulness with such disaster, that if there is any character calculated to call forth all the sympathies of our nature, it is that of Rowland Taylor. God’s blessing is still generally seen on the third and fourth generation of them that love him; and if Rowland could have beheld the illustrious descendant which[257] Providence was preparing for him in Jeremy Taylor, the antagonist of the Church of Rome, able after his own heart’s content—the first and best advocate of toleration—the greatest promoter of practical piety that has ever, perhaps, lived amongst us—he might have humbly imagined that God had not forgotten this his gracious dispensation in his own case; and had approved his martyrdom, by raising from his ashes a spirit more than worthy of his name.

The fate and fortunes of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were so closely united that their history is a common one. Of Cranmer’s rise and advancement mention has been made already. Ridley was well born coming of a good stock in Northumberland; his reputation was great in Cambridge, where he was first a student and then the Master of Pembroke College. Henry promoted him to the see of Rochester; and Edward translated him to that of London. He was a man of vast reading, ready memory, wise of counsel, deep of wit, and very politic in all his proceedings. Though abundantly kind to his kinsfolks, he declared even to his brother and sister, that doing evil they should look for nothing at his hand; such was his integrity; and when the mother of Bonner was his near neighbour at Fulham, he gave her a welcome to his table (an attention which was afterwards but ill returned by her son), asg to her a chair of her own; so that even when the king’s council dined with him, he did not suffer her to be removed, saying, “By your Lordships’ favour, this place, by right of custom, is for my mother Bonner;” such was his tenderness. His life, which is probably a picture of that of the higher ecclesiastics of his time, was conducted with great regularity. Every morning, as soon as he had put on his clothes, he prayed in his chamber for half an hour; thence to business or to study till ten; after which he assembled his household for family prayers; dinner came next, which, with[258] chess, engaged him for an hour; when, if there were no suitors, or matters to be transacted abroad, he returned to his study till five; evening prayers followed, then supper and his favourite chess; again his books till eleven o’clock, and so his private devotions performed as in the morning, he ended his peaceful day. Of the chapters which he selected for the instruction of his own people (of whom, says Fox, he was marvellous careful), the 13th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the 101st Psalm, were the most often in his mouth. In his public character Ridley was, doubtless, one of the brightest lights of the Reformation, yet not such as to extinguish Cranmer,[446] though some have so ed him, contrary to his own modest testimony to the superior knowledge of the Archbishop, “who ed him,” said he, “no less than the learned master the young scholar,” and in spite of the numerous acknowledged productions of Cranmer, and the little we know of Ridley beyond his Examinations, Treatises, and Letters (all most able indeed), preserved in the pages of Fox.

Latimer was a man of more humble birth than the two former, being a small farmer’s son at Thurcaston, in Leicestershire, a condition in life which qualified him, perhaps, so eminently for spreading the doctrines of the Reformation amongst the people, whose tastes and phraseology, as well as their failings and faults, he, of all the leading Reformers, seems to have best understood; and he was accordingly honoured by the title of the Apostle of England. Fastidious hearers would indeed find much to shock them in the homely speech and extravagant jokes of Latimer, though probably in this he did but follow an example which the friars[259] had set him; but the earnest sincerity of the man overcame all obstacles, and recommended him to the court, as well as to the country, for an engine of the Reformation powerful beyond most others. The see of Worcester, to which he was elected by Henry, he took the first opportunity of reg; an opportunity given him by the Act of the Six Articles, and when he might have resumed it he held back, living with Cranmer at Lambeth, as a private individual, accessible to suitors, whose cases he forwarded to the primate; greeted by the people still with the title of Lord, for they rejoiced to pay him honour; and the favourite even of the boys in the streets, who cheered him as he approached his ever popular pulpit with some hearty word of encouragement to say on. Still there was something in Latimer (even in those times, when it was not much the practice of the preacher to go bridle in hand,) which seems to have stamped him as a humourist amongst his unrefined contemporaries; and a few words of advice which Cranmer gives him in a letter written when he was about to make his first essay as a preacher at court—a situation to which the archbishop had himself introduced him—indicate that he looked upon the experiment not without some little apprehension for the result. “Over or omit,” says the discreet adviser, “all manner of speech either apertly or suspiciously sounding against any special man’s facts, manners, or sayings, to the intent your audience have none occasion thereby, namely, to slander your adversaries, which would seem to many that you were void of charity, and so much the more unworthy to occupy that room. Nevertheless, if such occasion be given by the word of God, let none offence or suspicion be unreprehended, especially if it be generally spoken, without affection. Furthermore, I would that you should so study to comprehend your matter, that in any condition you stand no longer in the pulpit than an hour or an hour and half at[260] the most, for by long expense of time, the King and the Queen (Anne Bullen) shall peradventure wax so weary at the beginning that they shall have small delight to continue throughout with you to the end.”[447]

Ridley and Latimer, like Cranmer, had favoured the usurpation of the Lady Jane; and, accordingly, were also sent to the Tower on the accession of Mary. The charge against them, however, was commuted (as we have seen was the case with the archbishop), and they were proceeded against as heretics. The tower being full—for the prisons were then the chambers of the prophets—the three friends, together with Bradford, were thrust into the same room, where they read over the New Testament, and confirmed each other in the faith for which they were to die. Here they remained about six months, during which time disputations (such as they were) were held in the convocation on some of the controverted points; from which, however, the reformers in prison, who were the most learned of the body, were excluded: whilst the few of that persuasion who were present, and who dared to advocate their principles, were clamoured down, till at length the Romanists, awakened to some sense of shame at the scandal of a victory which they won by confining or silencing their opponents, agreed to transfer the debate to Oxford; there to be conducted by the ex-bishops on the one hand, and certain commissioners from both universities on the other; and for Oxford, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer set out from the Tower, on the 8th of March, 1554. Here they were consigned to a prison called Bocardo—a building which it is matter of regret it should have been needful to pull down not more than about sixty years ago; and, on the 14th of April,[261] they were brought out together to St. Mary’s church, when the questions submitted to them were these:—

1. Whether the natural body of Christ was really in the sacrament?

2. Whether any other substance did remain after the words of consecration, than the body of Christ?

3. Whether in the mass there was a sacrifice and propitiation for the sins of quick and dead?

The dispute was then fixed for Cranmer on the 16th, for Ridley on the 17th, and for Latimer on the 18th of the same month.

In the management of this famous argument, which was conducted by syllogism and in the schools, we have an excellent example of the ratiocinations of those days. Certainly, the Roman Catholic doctors displayed no lack either of policy or acuteness; but it was the policy of men aware of their weakness, and therefore slow to measure their strength; and the acuteness of sophists whose object it was rather to perplex the adversary, than to unravel the truth; it was one of those cowardly conflicts, “ubi tu cædis, ego vapulo tantum;” where one strikes and the other must be content to be smitten—the popish disputants putting objections to the reformers, but refusing to appoint a second meeting in which the reformers might retaliate, so Cranmer complains to the council—where a single defendant is assailed by a multitude of discordant voices, lifted up against him together—and where, at intervals, the partial prolocutor would translate into English, after a fashion of his own, for the benefit of the unlearned spectators, some age in the dialogue which served as a signal for hisses, peals of laughter, and shouts of “Vicit veritas!” to the extinction of all fair argument, and the confusion of all modest men. “I have but one tongue,” cries Ridley, “I cannot answer at once to you all.” “O what unright dealing is this!” he again exclaims,[262] on hearing the perverted quotations which he was not permitted to expose. Whilst poor Latimer, faint, and afraid to drink for vomiting; making an appeal moreover to Weston, enough to touch a stone; “Good master, I pray be good to an old man: you may, if it please God, be once as old as I am; you may come to this age and this debility,” is subjected to clamour still more inhuman; for he disputed in English, and was therefore better understood. “Although,” says he, “I have spoken in my time before two kings more than once, two or three hours together without interruption, now (that I may speak the truth by your leave) I cannot be suffered to declare my mind before you; no, not by the space of a quarter of an hour, without snatches, revilings, checks, rebukes, taunts, such as I have not felt the like in such an audience all my life long.”

The glory of this contest (as we find it detailed in Fox)[448] certainly rests with Ridley, rather than with Cranmer, who had probably less nerve, or Latimer who had less learning. He adheres to one line of argument—that of explaining all the authorities advanced against him of the spiritual presence only; and this he does with a knowledge of his subject, as well as a readiness in applying it; such as argue an extent of reading, a tenacity of memory, and a presence of mind, quite wonderful. Be they ages from Scripture, from fathers, or from the canons of councils, with which he is plied, they appear to be the last things which he had examined, so that a false reading, or a false gloss, or a packed quotation, never escapes him; and either a minute knowledge[263] of an author’s text, or (what is often quite as certain a proof of scholarship) an accurate perception of the general spirit which influences him, enables him to wrest the weapon from the hands of his adversaries, and to turn it against themselves. “If there was an Arian,” exclaimed one of them, in the bitterness of defeat, “which had that subtle wit that you have, he might soon shift off the authority of the Scriptures and fathers.” All, however, was to little purpose before judges who, like Virgil’s Rhadamanthus, were bent upon punishing first and convicting afterwards. Sentence was ed in St. Mary’s Church, where Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were convened; in the course of it, they were asked by the commissioners whether they would turn or no; but they bade them “read on in the name of God, for that they were not minded to turn; and so were they condemned all three.”

It was intended to act the same scene over again at Cambridge, where Hooper, Bradford, Taylor, Philpot, and some others not yet put to death, were to be baited; but they had received timely information of the treatment of their companions at the sister university, and refused to dispute, except in writing, or before the Queen, or either house of parliament, and, accordingly, the tyrannous scheme was in this instance abortive.

But though condemnation of heresy was now ed upon these three leaders of the Reformation, the execution of the sentence was suspended, in the case of Ridley and Latimer till the October of the year following, a period of eighteen months; and in the case of Cranmer, for five months longer still; the two former being committed to the custody of private individuals, the latter being still kept in Bocardo. The interval, however, was a busy one; the sentence was to be confirmed by the Queen in council; but the law itself was not determinate; and the old penal statutes (as we have[264] said) were restored. Probably this measure would have been recommended by such advisers as Mary had about her under any circumstances; but her marriage with Philip, which was now concluded, blew up the flames; and the bloody acts were ed and carried into effect, it was understood, with the greater severity, from a superstitious opinion entertained by the Queen, who now fancied herself pregnant, that her safe delivery could not be effected so long as a heretic was suffered to live. But, trying as must have been the suspense to these brave spirits in prison, it was not without its benefit to the cause for which they were content to suffer; for now it was that they had leisure to write those numerous letters of counsel, of encouragement, and of comfort, (like St. Paul in his bonds,) to the faithful brethren both individuals and societies, which are said to have forwarded the Reformation beyond most other things: a fact at which none will be surprised who will peruse those which Fox has preserved to us; and above all Ridley’s Letter, entitled his last farewell to all his true and faithful friends in God, which has been ever esteemed one of the most pathetic pieces of writing contained in our language.

“As a man minding to take a far journey,” says he, “and to depart from his familiar friends; commonly and naturally hath a desire to bid his friends farewell before his departure; so likewise now, I, looking daily when I should be called to depart hence from you, bid you all, my dear brethren and sisters in Christ, that dwell upon the earth, after such manner as I can, farewell.

“Farewell, my dear brother, George Shipside, whom I have ever found faithful, trusty, and loving in all states and conditions, and now in the time of my cross, over all other to me most friendly and steadfast, and that which he liked me best over all things, in God’s cause ever hearty.

“Farewell, my dear Sister Alice, his wife. I am glad[265] to hear of thee, that thou dost take Christ’s Cross, which is laid now (blessed be God!) both on thy back and mine, in good part. Thank thou God that hath given thee a godly and loving husband: see thou honour and obey him according to God’s law. Honour thy mother-in-law, his mother and all those that pertain unto him, being ready to do them good, as it shall lie in thy power.

“Farewell, my clearly beloved brother John Ridley, of the Waltown, and you my gentle and loving sister Elizabeth, whom, besides the natural league of amity, your tender love which you were said ever to bear towards me above the rest of your brethren, both bind me to love. My mind was to have acknowledged this your loving affection, and to have acquitted it with deeds, and not with words alone. Your daughter Elizabeth I bid farewell, whom I love for the meek and gentle spirit that God hath given her, which is a precious thing in the sight of God.

“Farewell, my beloved sister of Unthank, with all your children, nephews, and nieces. Since the departing of my brother Hugh, my mind was to have been unto them instead of their father; but the Lord God must and will be their Father, if they would love and fear him, and live in the trade of his law.”

He then goes on to take leave of other kindred more distantly related to him, and to declare the duty which compelled him to lay down his life. He next reviews and defends the acts of Edward’s Reformation, to which he had been a party; laments that the wild boar should have rooted them all up; contrasts the present with the past; and returning once more to his sorrowful leave-taking, “To whom,” says he, with feelings far more to be envied than those of Gibbon or Gray, “to whom, after my kinsfolk, should I offer farewell, before the University of Cambridge, where I have dwelt longer, found more faithful and hearty[266] friends, received more benefits (the benefits of my natural parents only excepted,) than ever I did in mine own native country wherein I was born?

“Farewell, therefore, Cambridge, my loving mother and tender nurse! If I should not acknowledge thy manifold benefits, yea, if I should not for thy benefits at least love thee again, truly I were to be counted too ungrateful and unkind. What benefits hadst thou ever, that thou usest to give and bestow upon thy best beloved children, that thou thoughtest too good for me?... First to be scholar, then to be fellow, and after my departure from thee, thou calledst me again to a mastership of a right worshipful college. I thank thee, my loving mother, for all this thy kindness; and I pray God that his laws, and the sincere Gospel of Christ, may ever be truly taught and faithfully learned in thee.

“Farewell, Pembroke Hall, of late mine own college, my care and my charge! What case thou art now in, God knoweth; I know not well. Thou wast ever named since I knew thee, which is now thirty years ago, to be studious, well learned, and a great setter forth of Christ’s Gospel, and of God’s true word: so I found thee, and, blessed be God, so I left thee indeed. Woe is me for thee, mine own dear college, if ever thou suffer thyself by any means to be brought from that trade. In thy orchard (the walls, buts, and trees, if they could speak, would bear me witness) I learned without book almost all Paul’s Epistles; yea, and I ween all the Canonical Epistles, save only the Apocalypse. Of which study, although in time a great part did depart from me, yet the sweet smell thereof I trust I shall carry with me into heaven; for the profit thereof I think I have felt in all my lifetime ever after; and I ween of late (whether they abide now or no, I cannot tell) there was that did the like. The Lord grant that this zeal and love[267] toward that part of God’s word, which is a key and true commentary to all the Holy Scripture, may ever abide in that college as long as the world shall endure!”

He then bids farewell to Herne, his parish in Kent, charging himself with being its debtor for the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper; God not having at that time revealed it to him.

Then he turns to London, lately his own see, the faithful city now become an harlot, and exhorts to repentance the lords of the land; reminding them, that if they had listened to him in times past, when he preached before the prince and parliament, much more should they now, when, being appointed to die, he could have no desire of worldly gain, and no other expectation but shortly to stand before the seat of his eternal Judge.

Long it was not, before his summons arrived. At the end of September came down the fatal commissioners from Cardinal Pole, legate and archbishop elect, authorised to accept the recantation of Ridley and Latimer, or else to confirm their sentence and pronounce their degradation. The latter office they were speedily called upon to discharge, for the future martyrs were not men to flinch from the flames; and so “were they committed to the secular powers,” (for the words of these ecclesiastical death-warrants were smoother than oil) “of them to receive due punishment according to the tenor of the temporal laws.”

“The night before Ridley suffered, his beard was washed, and his legs; as he sat at supper the same night at master Irish’s (who was his keeper), he bade his hostess, and the rest at the board, to his marriage: ‘For,’ saith he, ‘to-morrow I must be married;’ and so showed himself to be as merry as ever he was at any time before; and wishing his sister at his marriage, he asked his brother, sitting at the table, whether she should find in her heart to be there[268] or no; and he answered, ‘Yea, I dare say, with all her heart;’ at which word he said he was glad to hear of her so much therein. So at this talk mistress Irish wept; but master Ridley comforted her, and said, ‘O, mistress Irish, you love me not now, I see well enough; for in that you weep it doth appear you will not be at my marriage, neither are content therewith. Indeed, you be not so much my friend as I thought you had been: but quiet yourself; though my breakfast shall be somewhat sharp and painful, yet I am sure my supper shall be more pleasant and sweet.’ When they arose from the table, his brother offered him to watch all night with him; but he said, ‘No, no, that you shall not; for I mind, God willing, to go to bed, and to sleep as quietly to night as ever I did in my life.’ So his brother departed, exhorting him to be of good cheer, and to take his cross quietly, for the reward was great.”

The place appointed for the execution was the ditch on the north side of the town, over against Baliol College, and the Lord Williams was instructed by the Queen’s letters to marshal the householders, and to see that no tumult was made. Then came out Ridley in his black furred gown and velvet cap, walking between the mayor and an alderman. As he ed Bocardo he looked up, hoping to see Cranmer, but he, says Fox, was then engaged in dispute with one Friar Soto; others, however, whom Heylyn and Burnet follow, assert that he beheld the whole sorrowful spectacle from the roof of his prison, and upon his knees begged God to strengthen his companions in their agony, and to prepare him for his own. When Latimer came up, (for the poor old man made what speed he could, but by reason of his years was slow,) Ridley ran to him and kissed him, saying, “Be of good heart, brother; for God will either assuage the fury of the flame, or else strengthen us to abide it.” Then they kneeled down both of them, and[269] prayed very earnestly; and when they had risen and talked together awhile, Dr. Smith, one of those who had recanted in Edward’s time, and was now, therefore, the more zealous, preached before them, having the feeling to choose for his text, “Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” After a while being commanded to make ready, Ridley gave away his apparel, a new groat, some nutmegs, rases of ginger, a dial, and such other things as he had about him, the bystanders but too happy to get “any rag of him;” and Latimer, who had left it to his keeper to strip him, now stood in his shroud no longer the withered and decrepit old man he seemed, but bolt upright, “as comely a father as one might lightly behold.” Then did Ridley move the Lord Williams to intercede that the leases which he had made as Bishop of London might be confirmed; and when he had relieved his conscience of this his only worldly care, a kindled faggot was laid at his feet; Latimer, who was fastened to the same stake, exclaiming at the instant, in words that have become memorable, “Be of good comfort, master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Latimer’s sufferings were short: he received the flame as if he were embracing it; and after he had stroked his face with his hands and bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died as it appeared, without pain. Not so Ridley; the faggots were piled up about him so that there was no vent for the flame, which, burning underneath, consumed all his lower extremities, he piteously desiring of the people, for Christ’s sake, to let the fire come unto him. His brother-in-law, who meant it in mercy, heaped upon him still more fuel, till nothing could be seen of him, only he was perceived to be leaping up and down under the faggots, often crying[270] out, “I cannot burn;” at last one of the spectators, pulling off the wood from above, made a way for the flame to escape, towards which Ridley leaned himself as towards a welcome executioner, when the gunpowder with which he was furnished, exploded, and he fell down dead at Latimer’s feet.

If it was not Gardiner’s jealousy of Pole, who was to succeed Cranmer in the primacy, which was the occasion of the archbishop’s respite,[449] the plan of the persecution was arranged with consummate sagacity. Ridley and Latimer were men of greater animal courage than Cranmer; and would probably have sustained the insidious temptations under which he sunk, or at any rate would have imparted their own constancy to him, had they all suffered together. They, therefore were taken, and he was left; for though the same legal form which served for the despatch of the two former would not have sufficed for the archbishop—it being reserved for the pope himself to take cognizance of a metropolitan—yet inasmuch as all the parties had been prisoners so long; ample time had been allowed for making the two processes run together, and thereby bringing the three bishops together to the stake. Cranmer, however, was assailed by a separate commission which issued from the pope, as the other issued from the legate, and since a part of the form consisted of a citation to appear at Rome within eighty days, the final sentence was suspended till that period should have expired. The citation itself was an affair of mere mockery, compliance with it being impossible, for Cranmer was still detained a close prisoner. The eighty days at an end, and he “having taken no care to appear at Rome” (as the papal instrument had the modesty to word it), the pope pronounces him guilty of heresy; and appoints Bonner Bishop of London, and Thirlby Bishop of Ely,[271] commissioners to see the same executed. His degradation having been effected, attended by every aggravation of insult which the ruthless Bonner could devise, he was delivered over to the secular power, (the church, forsooth, shrinking from the office of shedding blood,) to be put to death. One attempt more, however, was yet to be made to shake the resolution of the martyr; and Cranmer became the guest of the Dean of Christ Church, and delicate fare was provided for him; and he played at bowls; and walked at his pleasure; and wily men distilled their venom into his ear, that the King and Queen desired his conversion above all things; that the council bore him good will; that it was but a small thing to set his name to a few words on a little leaf of paper; that he was not so old but that many years yet remained of lusty age; that his notable learning, which might profit so many, should not be extinguished before its time; that if desire of life were nothing, yet that death is grievous, and especially such a death; till Cranmer, who had stoutly withstood the judgment-hall and prison-house, the scoffs and gibes of merciless men, and all the terrible artillery of persecution in its most angry shape, was not proof against these crafts and subtleties which the devil or man wrought against him, and so signed his recantation. “To conceal this fault,” may we say as Fuller does on the subscription of Jewel, “had been partiality; to excuse it, flattery; to defend it, impiety; to insult over him, cruelty; to pity him, charity; to be wary of ourselves in any like occasion, Christian discretion.” His enemies now had him in the toils; and, to add to his humiliation, a series of recantations is exacted of him, each rising above the other in its demands; some perhaps, of his own dictating; the longest and most abject, apparently, the wordy composition of Cole; and whilst these very instruments were in preparation, with a duplicity which is a fit consummation of the whole, secret orders were given[272] by the Queen to Dr. Cole, provost of Eton College, to prepare the sermon; and it was not till the day before his execution, or even, perhaps, the very morning of it, when Cole visited him in prison, and furnished him with fifteen crowns to give to the poor—a dole not unfrequent at funerals in those times—that the eyes of Cranmer were quite opened to the situation in which he stood, and he found himself, after all the delusive hopes which had been held out to him, within a few hours of a dreadful end. Better faith might have been kept with him, and still a thirst for his blood been gratified; for, had he been spared, Cranmer was not the man to have borne for any long time the upbraidings of his own conscience, and, like Bilney, he would have been soon driven to find relief from sufferings worse than death, by a voluntary surrender of himself to the flames; as it was, the wisdom of the serpent, for which the church of Rome was so famous, forsook his persecutors, and by drawing their bow once too much, they snapped it in their hands;—“Qui nimis emungit elecit sanguinem.” Cranmer was now brought to St. Mary’s church, preceded by the mayor and aldermen, and with a friar on either side, who alternately repeated certain Psalms as the procession advanced; and being placed on a stage over against the pulpit, he was there made to listen to Cole’s address. This ended, all the congregation ed with him in prayer, and “never,” says a spectator, “was there such a number so earnestly praying together; Cranmer himself an image of sorrow, the dolour of his heart bursting out at his eyes in plenty of tears,” but in other respects retaining “the quiet and grave behaviour which was natural to him.”

Being exhorted to make a public confession, that all suspicion of heresy might be removed from him, “I will do it,” said the Archbishop, “and that with a good will;” whereupon he rose up and addressed to the people some words of exhortaion,[273] and then a summary of his faith. “And now,” he continued, “I come to the great thing that so much troubleth my conscience, more than any thing that ever I did or said in my whole life:” then he revoked his former recantation: “and forasmuch,” he added, “as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefor; for may I come to the fire, it shall be first burned.” So saying, he was soon plucked down from the platform on which he stood, and was led away to punishment. He did not tarry long at his prayers; but putting off his garments, all but his shirt, which reached to the ground, his feet bare, his head bald, so that not one hair could be seen upon it, his beard, long and thick, covering his face with marvellous gravity, he presented a spectacle to move the heart both of friend and foe; at once the martyr and the penitent. As soon as the fire began to burn, he stretched forth his right arm, and thrust his hand into the flame, as he had said, holding it there till it was consumed, and oftentimes repeating, “This unworthy right hand;” and as if ashamed of his weakness, and resolved to atone for it now by an heroic contempt of pain, he took his death with singular courage, seeming to move no more than the stake to which he was bound.

From John Rogers, the first of the martyrs, who suffered on the 4th of February, 1555, to the five who were burned at Canterbury on the 10th of November, 1558, and were the last, two hundred and twenty-seven persons according to some computations, two hundred and eighty-four according to others, and two hundred and eighty-eight according to a third authority, perished in the flames.[456] the moderate revolted from a religion which spake of peace, but had shed blood upon the earth like water; and all parties weary of a reign of terror under which every man’s safety, to whatever party he belonged, was only upon sufferance.

Such was the great agony through which the Reformation was doomed to . But that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die, and so it proved in this instance. The reign of Mary was the grave of the cause for a short season, and that of Elizabeth was now to be its triumphant resurrection. It will not, however, be necessary to pursue our subject much further, which, from a History of the Reformation, would soon run into a History of Puritanism, the extreme to which it degenerated for a while. Into this question it is not our intention to enter. For the present, little remained to be done, but to repeal the several laws by which Mary had superseded the acts of Henry and Edward, and to resume the use of those services and rituals which the martyrs had provided, and of which the nature and number have been already told. But Elizabeth proceeded warily. Well as her religious sentiments were understood, none but the most attentive observer could have at first detected them in her conduct. A figure of Truth greets her with a translation of the Bible in its hand; she takes the book and reverently kisses it. A court buffoon beseeches her to restore to freedom four prisoners long bound in fetters, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John; she answers that she must first endeavour to know[277] the minds of the prisoners themselves. At her coronation in Westminster Abbey, she partakes of the mass;[460] Still Elizabeth was working her way underground, and by measures which[278] whilst they did not provoke notice, would not fail to produce fruits. Thus, though she would not exclude Roman Catholics from her privy council, she would yoke them with such colleagues as were friendly to the Reformation, and were at the same time of talents so extraordinary as would readily obtain the mastery in debate. Though she would not weed out of the commission of the peace Roman Catholic magistrates, she would regulate her new appointments with a view to serving the cause she had secretly at heart. She would not compel, or attempt to compel, a Roman Catholic parliament by force to make the laws she desired, but she would take care to influence the elections in such a manner as to secure the return of who would do so. Her first object appears to have been to soothe the country: to maintain the authority of the law, be it as yet what it might; to establish her own position as monarch; and thus to possess herself of a basis on which she might proceed to build, at her leisure, the permanent prosperity of her realm.

Her parliament assembled, and never did a parliament meet under circumstances more imperative: to its wisdom it was left to order and settle all things upon the best and surest foundations; and accordingly it ed the two great acts by which the alliance between church and state was established, those of Supremacy and Uniformity; neither of them, indeed, now enacted for the first time, but both statutes of Henry or Edward, with certain amendments, revived.

Against the Act of Supremacy some objections were urged in the parliament, and some scruples out of it; both, no doubt, proceeding from the same quarter. It was a scandal to place a woman at the head of the church, whose voice was not to be heard in it; yet the principle (it was argued) was acknowledged in a degree by the Catholics themselves, who had no difficulty in recognising the authority of[279] an abbess, though of a nature in many respects much more strictly ecclesiastical, than that with which it was proposed to invest the queen.[472]

The two important statutes of which we have spoken were followed up in the same year by injunctions of the Queen, after the manner of those of her brother. They are expressed, indeed, so far as the case its, in the very same words as those of Edward twelve years before. Wherever, therefore, a change is introduced, there must have been a reason for it, and an index is thus obtained of the progress of opinion, the more satisfactory because quite incidental.[476] of the condition of the clergy under King Edward must have prepared us to expect. The Reformation was still too recent an event, and had been effected by means too violent, for the great good that was in it to have developed itself. The fountain had been thoroughly troubled, and time was wanting for it to defecate, as well as an infusion, perhaps, of some fresh elements that should expedite the process of precipitation. These Cranmer would have supplied[286] had he been allowed to complete his own idea. But his untimely death, and the selfish ions of men too strong for him, thwarting him whilst he lived, scanted the Reformation of much that should have belonged to it, and consigned it to posterity a noble but still an unfinished work—a work in which there is every thing to ire, and yet something to desiderate.

Thus it has been said that the Reformation left the church without discipline; a defect which our commination-service confesses and laments; but it was one from which the Roman catholic church itself was not exempt, for the rivalry which existed between the secular and regular clergy, and again between the several orders of the latter, was, as we have seen, fatal to discipline. Still, whatever the defect was, it was not the fault of the reformers that it was suffered to remain. The canon laws were, indeed, no longer strictly applicable to the church, constructed as it now was: but an attempt was made to accommodate them, or to substitute for them such as were thought better. A code, which he called Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, was drawn up by Cranmer, consisting of fifty-one titles, with an appendix, after the manner of the Digest of Justinian. It underwent many revisions in private during the reigns of Henry and Edward, but was not produced. It was revived, with a view to its legal enactment, by the Puritans in the lower house of parliament under Elizabeth; but the Queen thought it trenched upon her supremacy, and would not hear of it. It was reprinted, and no more under Charles I., and was suggested once again to public notice by Bishop Burnet.[480] yet the theory itself, re-asserted after so long an interval, and by such an advocate, is enough to prove that Cranmer was rather in advance of his generation than behind it; and that he is still to be regarded as the reformer, and not as the bigot.

But there is reason to think that the capital penalties even of his code would have been mitigated, had he ever actually presented it to the legislature. Cranmer was becoming daily more tolerant, as he gradually fell under the influence of a more charitable faith. He had been shocked, it is said, by the solemn manner in which Edward made him responsible before God for the life of Joan of Kent; he expressed himself shortly afterwards of Gardiner in significant of a repugnance to severities;[481] and he was one of those who advised connivance at the use of the mass by the Princess Mary. With these tokens of temper before us, it seems fair to infer, that however greatly Cranmer coveted the establishment of discipline, he would scarcely have bought it at the price of blood; and that his own character, by nature one of the most gentle, was asserting itself more and more[289] even in matters calculated to put it most of all to the proof. But if discipline, properly so called, be lacking, so much the rather should those ecclesiastical regulations which are of imperfect obligation perhaps (and there are many such) be diligently observed by the clergy, both towards those set over them, and towards those committed to their charge; the respect or neglect of which is just that which constitutes the decency or disorder of a church; a distinction not easy to describe in detail, yet sufficiently intelligible in itself; nor is it unreasonable to expect that the laity on their part should see the advantage of such rules, which cannot be onerous, and cordially co-operate with the clergy to the maintenance of them.

Another particular in which the Reformation was left incomplete, was in a provision for the sufficient education of the people. The demand, indeed, for education had not hitherto been great; few boys but such as were intended for ecclesiastics were made scholars; so that even Latimer reckons the sons of great laymen or esquires, as he calls them, interlopers in the universities.[487] The chantry lands would have furnished a considerable, perhaps a sufficient, fund for the purpose, and Edward did so apply them in part, and would gladly have done so more extensively; but they were devoured by the nobles, and the moment for royal endowments went by. Happy would it have been, had it been otherwise. Such grammar schools as he would have planted over England would have been found “seminaries of sound[292] learning,” and (what was the first consideration of the founder) “of religious education.” They might have raised up a more literate clergy. They might have checked, perhaps, the rising extravagances of the Puritans. They might have sustained the church by the direction they would have given to public opinion; and dispersed the storm which already threatened, by conducting, quietly and not unfruitfully, to the earth, the fierce elements with which the political and religious atmosphere was already so heavily charged. For they would have been the natural feeders of the church of England; the visitor, probably one of its prelates; the teachers, its more learned ministers; the prayers, those of its services; the catechism, its manual of doctrines—that which Dean Nowell composed in Latin, and which was afterwards translated into Greek by Dr. Whitaker, his nephew, for the express use of such schools, having been approved in convocation, and been acknowledged to speak the authorised language of the reformers. A few such schools King Edward did establish, as we have said; but in numbers quite inadequate to the demands of the nation, which must have been abandoned to gross ignorance, and to the delusions of every theological empiric (which was in a great degree the case after all), but for the many private foundations, still however very insufficient, by which the reign of Elizabeth, who incorporated them, was distinguished. For these, the country was indebted to the generous efforts not of ecclesiastics only, but also of opulent yeomen and tradesmen, the last of whom, having made an ample fortune, generally in London, the first-fruits of the commerce of England, often retired to spend it in the place which had given them birth, and of which they piously endeavoured to relieve the intellectual and religious wants by erecting a school, connecting it with the universities by scholarships,[293] and with the church by the qualifications of its masters. In these institutions, whether of royal or private foundation, most of our yeomen, shopkeepers, and small householders who resided within reach of them, besides many of a higher rank, were heretofore educated; a class of persons which both the recollection of living men, and still more the records of our domestic history, lead us to think not less sound in knowledge, nor less sage and sober in sentiments, not less loyal subjects or less virtuous citizens, than the more enlightened generation, as it has been called, which has succeeded them, the sons of our commercial schools. Whilst by means of those same institutions a way has been commonly opened to youths of promise, though it may be of humble parentage, into the two great seats of learning, of which they have often become the brightest ornaments; and into the church, of which they have no less frequently proved themselves the most conspicuous and valuable ministers. Perhaps it may be added, that in either capacity, whether as nurseries of our laymen or of our clergy, such schools, productive as they have been of men duly qualified to serve God and their country, would have been far more so, had the principles upon which they were first founded been more rigorously observed in times past (for the error has been discovered, and some pains are now taken to remove it); had religion in general, its evidences and substance, entered still more largely into their regular studies; and that particular form of it established in this kingdom been made a theme of their more habitual instruction and parental concern.

Another defect imputed to the Reformation is the inadequate it provided for the lower orders of the clergy. Four thousand livings, and upwards, of less than one hundred[294] and fifty pounds a year each, many very far less, with no parsonage houses whatever, or with such as the most Sabine economist would pronounce unfit for a clergyman to occupy;—this is the forlorn condition, as to temporals, in which the church has stood for a long season; a condition to which it could not have been reduced, had even a portion of the vast revenues dispersed at the Reformation been husbanded, and applied to the legitimate purpose of bettering the situation of the inferior clergy. This, Cranmer most earnestly desired; but his entreaties and regrets were alike unavailing. The evil continued, and Jewel took up the subject in his turn; and pressed the redress of it upon Elizabeth and her nobles, in his sermons at Paul’s Cross (very curious pictures of the times); but the spoil was then divided, and restitution was looked for in vain.[489] when they had learned in the day of suffering the value of their church, and in the moment of joy at its re-establishment welcomed it with gifts,—if that spirit would stir in them also; if they would re-annex, as was then done so commonly, to these their own livings (we ask no more), some portion, however small, of the tithes which they enjoy, and which were all wrung from the church; a sacrifice which, from its amount, would scarcely be felt by many patrons, and which would not, in fact, be an alienation of so much property, but rather a regulation of the course in which it should run; a reduction, perhaps, of fifty or a hundred pounds a year from an elder brother’s rent-roll, to the augmentation to the like amount of a younger brother’s benefice;—if the patron and impropriator could be persuaded thus to act, the necessity for non-residence and pluralities would be still more rapidly diminished, and the national church would soon be placed in a more impregnable position than she has ever assumed in this particular, either since the Reformation or before it. And without urging higher motives, without urging even the feudal nature of all property in one sense, held, under God, the Lord of all, on condition of suit and service to be done, and not as an absolute possession to be dealt with altogether according to the pleasure of the occupant—without pressing this consideration (which is nevertheless a sound one), we shall be borne out in saying, that the possessor of property best secures the permanent enjoyment of it by securing a righteous population to his country; that the respect or contempt of the laws of the land in our parishes, and particularly in our rural parishes, is not a little dependent[297] on the presence or absence of the village pastor; that to insure the local benefit of his residence, therefore, may be worth the while of any man who has a stake to lose; and that, though it may entail upon him the relinquishment of a trifle which he may strictly call his own; and with which he may certainly do what he will; still, it may be for his consideration whether there is not that scattereth and yet increaseth, and whether there is not that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth unto poverty.

Such is our sketch of this great religious revolution: for which, that it came when it did, we have surely, in these days, reason to give God hearty thanks. For to the Reformation we owe it, that a knowledge of religion has kept pace in the country with other knowledge; and that, in the general advance of science, and the general appetite for enquiry, this paramount principle of all has been placed in a position to require nothing but a fair field and no favour, in order to assert its just pretensions. We are here embarrassed by no dogmas of corrupt and unenlightened times, still riveted upon our reluctant acceptance by an idea of papal or synodical infallibility; but stand with the Bible in our hands, prepared to abide by the doctrines we can discover in it, because furnished with evidences for its truth (thanks to the Reformation for this also!) which appeal to the understanding, and to the understanding only; so that no man competently acquainted with them need shrink from the encounter of the infidel; or feel, for a moment, that his faith is put to shame by his philosophy. Infidelity there may be in the country, for there will ever be men who will not trouble themselves to examine the grounds of their religion, and men who will not dare to do it; but how far more intense would it have been, and more dangerous, had the spirit of the times been, in other respects, what it is, and the Reformation yet to come, religion yet to be exonerated of weights which sunk it[298] heretofore in this country, and still sink it in countries around us; enquiry to be resisted in an age of curiosity; opinions to be bolstered up (for they may not be retracted) in an age of incredulity; and pageants to be addressed to the senses, instead of arguments to the reason, in an age which, at least, calls itself profound. As it is, we have nothing to conceal; nothing to evade; nothing to impose; the reasonableness, as well as righteousness, of our reformed faith recommends it; and whatever may be the shocks it may have to sustain from scoffs, and doubts, and clamour, and licentiousness, and seditious tongues, and an abused press, it will itself, we doubt not, prevail against them all, and save, too (as we trust), the nation which has cherished it, from the terrible evils, both moral, social, and political, that come of a heart of unbelief.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.