CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER IX.

CROMWELL.—GARDINER.—BONNER.—THE ACT OF THE SIX ARTICLES.—SERMONS OF THOSE DAYS.—PROPOSED DISPOSAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY.—ARTICLES OF 1536.—THE BIBLE IN CHURCHES.—BISHOPS’ BOOK.—KING’S BOOK.

CROMWELL.—GARDINER.—BONNER.—THE ACT OF THE SIX ARTICLES.—SERMONS OF THOSE DAYS.—PROPOSED DISPOSAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY.—ARTICLES OF 1536.—THE BIBLE IN CHURCHES.—BISHOPS’ BOOK.—KING’S BOOK.

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 passing 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’sinfluence 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 Germany. 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 passionately 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 France; and from the letters of that monster (astime-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 France (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.[303]But in truth it must have been a very difficult matter for a minister of those times to have found the right place for the bishop of Winchester, whose talents were such, that it was alike unsafe to use or to refuse them. The character of this double-edged tool the king had learned to appreciate when it was too late; and on making a fresh will shortly before his death, showed no disposition to meddle with it more, by excluding Gardiner from the number of his executors (for in a former will, which was now cancelled, his name was found amongst them), and on being reminded ofthe omission by Sir Anthony Browne, he replied, that he had acted advisedly, seeing that “if he were in his testament he would cumber them all.”[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 members. 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 thespirit 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 support 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 admit, “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.”[305]Soon had Cranmer reason to exclaim of those now admitted into the king’s counsels, “Ye are too hard for me!” for now is past the act of the Six Articles (the whip with six strings as it was called), the death-warrant of so many innocent men, whereby, 1. the doctrine of transubstantiation was established by law; 2. the communion in both kinds excluded; 3. the marriage of priests forbidden; 4. vows of celibacy declared obligatory; 5. private masses for souls in purgatory upheld; and 6. auricular confession pronounced expedient, and necessary to be retained. The penalties annexed to the breach of these decrees being for the first, to be burnt as a heretic, for the others to be hanged as a felon, and in all cases to forfeit lands and goodsto the king as a traitor. Against these sanguinary articles Cranmer lifted up his voice in parliament for three days together in vain. He, on that occasion, was acknowledged by his opponents to have played a noble part; and the king, whose redeeming virtue it was to deal kindly with this single-hearted man, expressed his sense of the zeal, the honesty, and the learning with which he had withstood court and parliament to the face; by commanding the chief lords to dine with the archbishop at Lambeth after the bill was passed, and to “signify unto him that it was the king’s pleasure that all should in his Highness’ behalf cherish, comfort, and animate him.”[306]The king, who understood the beauty of his character, was faithful to his pledge, however faithless were some of his messengers; and within two years after, when two several attempts were made—the one by the clergy, the other by the council, and both probably by Gardiner—to bring the archbishop under the operation of this cruel act, and so to run him down, Henry generously interposed, and casting his sceptre before the pack that was open-mouthed to tear this noble quarry in pieces, called them off, and rescued the victim.[307]It is singular, and characteristic of the man, and of his unsuspicious temperament, that in both instances his sovereign was the first person to apprise him of his danger; in the one case calling him into his barge, as he passed by Lambeth Bridge, and addressing him—“O my chaplain, now I know who is the greatest heretic in Kent,” and thereupon putting him in possession of the charges of his accusers, and giving him directions for vindicating his own innocence, and bringing his enemies to shame; in the other case sending for him out of bed at midnight, and acquainting him that the council had demanded his commitment to the Tower, as being one who sowedheresy and sedition throughout the realm, and that the next day the deed was to be done. What follows is a scene of very touching beauty, whether as given by Fox or Strype; and as the incident is full of dramatic effect, it is happy that Shakspeare has set upon it his own mark, and thereby rescued it from the clownish hand of any ordinary playwright. At the same time it may be remarked, that his characters have their parts allotted to them without any very strict attention to historical fidelity, and sometimes in violation of it. Whether our poet like those of Italy, both ancient and modern, had his own favourites amongst the great of the country, and so doled out his measures of immortality or infamy accordingly—whether the popularity of the reigning queen did not influence the estimation in which the memory of her father’s courtiers was held; or whether, which is the most probable, Shakspeare, with his usual indifference to the minuter matters of his drama, did not put words into the mouths of his speakers somewhat at random, and without much concern as to their being strictly the property of the individual bishop, earl, or duke, who was made to utter them—suffice it to say, in the language of our martyrologists, that when the king had spoke his mind, the archbishop kneeled down and said, “I am content, if it please your Grace, with all my heart to go thither at your Highness’s commandment; and I most humbly thank your Majesty that I may come to my trial; for there be that have in many ways slandered me, and now this way I hope to try myself not worthy of such report.” The king, perceiving the man’s uprightness, joined with such simplicity, said, “Oh Lord! what a man be you! what simplicity is in you! I had thought that you would rather have sued to us to have taken the pains to have heard you and your accusers together for your trial, without any such endurance. Do you know what state you be in with the whole world andhow many great enemies you have? Do you not consider what an easy thing it is to procure three or four false knaves to witness against you? Think you to have better luck that way than your master Christ had!”[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 compass of this cruel dragnet of the Six Articles. Accordingly, the prisons of London were gorged with culprits;[309]for now an opportunity was afforded of raking up old suspicions, and putting all upon their purgation. Many are the affecting stories of those days which have come down to us; glimpses of the domestic troubles of an age called so loudly to bear the cross. The meetings by stealth amongst the friends of the common cause, amongst the brethren (as they named themselves, after the manner of the early Christians); a fraternity, for instance, of students at Oxford, not, like Wesley’s little society in the same place, taking joyfully the persecution of a tolerant age, which conferred distinction at an easy rate; but adopting every precaution to walk unseen, and all notenough; trusting their lives to each other’s hands; abetting the escape; supplying the disguise; recommending the fugitive to some distant and less suspected brother; kneeling with him before he went his way, to beg God’s blessing upon his enterprise, bidding him farewell with sorrowful heart and sad foreboding that they should see his face in the flesh no more; baffling the inquiry of the pursuer; risking the character and fate of an accomplice; braving the rack rather than betray the innocent blood; dying by inches in the dungeon, the feet in the stocks, or the neck and legs trussed together by some devilish engine (“the devil on the neck”) which contracted with the writhings of the sufferer, till his frame was crushed within its iron grasp;[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 faithonly, (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 passage 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 agarden-cock; then shifting his joke, he taxes him with being a badgardener, 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.[311]Latimer’s sermons, almost the only complete specimens we have of the pulpit oratory of that time, are full of the same familiar, not to say mean, images,—tales of Robin Hood, or of the Godwin Sands, or of an execution at Oxford, or of the woman going to church at St. Thomas of Acres, because she could not get a wink of sleep in any other place—mixed up with puns the most idle and similes the most unsavoury.[312]Two other sermons we have seen of the same date, by one Thomas Lewer, amaster of St John’s College, Cambridge, preached the one at Paul’s Cross, the other before the king, and both in the year 1550, and these are not much less conversational in their tone than those of Latimer. The coarse material of hortatory theology at the Reformation and before it, imparts its character in a degree to our Homilies, which, however full of sound doctrine and wholesome advice, would often not a little shock the sense of ears polite, were they to be faithfully delivered in our churches. And later still, Fuller tells us, in his History of the University of Cambridge, of a country parson in his time who preached at St. Mary’s on the words, “God hathdealtto every one the measure of faith” (Rom. xii. 3.;) when, in a fond imitation, as he says, of Latimer’s famous card sermons, he followed out the metaphor ofdealing; that men should playabove-board, or avoid dissimulation; notpocketthe cards, or improve their gifts;follow suit, that is, wear the surplice, and conform to ceremonies.[313]Jeremy Taylor sometimes narrowly escapes the like extravagance. South approaches it still more frequently, and almost with as little ceremony as would have been used a century earlier; and even in the majestic and sober Barrow, expressions, if not figures, occasionally startle us, as below the dignity of the pulpit and the gravity of the Christian teacher. Even he does not scruple to talk of “time rendering God’s goodness more precious, as it doth gold and wine,”—of the difficulty of curing a wounded reputation, and “spreading the plaster so far as the sore hath reached,”—of “the fox who said that the grapes were sour, because he could not reach them; and that the hare was dry meat because he could not catch it,”—of the man who would have his sickle in another’s corn, or an oar in another’s boat, being in no condition towonder if his fingers be rapped,”—of “liberality being the most beneficial traffic that can be, seeing that it is bringing our wares to the best market, and letting out our money to the best hands; God repaying us with vast usury, an hundred to one being the rate he allows at present, and above a hundred millions to one the rate he will render hereafter, so that if we will be merchants this way, we shall be sure to thrive.”[314]Soon after this time pulpit oratory began to go upon stilts; and, becoming more remote from the conceptions and phraseology of the vulgar, lost much of its interest with them, and influence over them, and at length made way for the field preacher, who spoke to them once again, as it were, in the Hebrew tongue, to which they gave the more silence. Whilst, however, we may regret the want of the nervous asperity of style and profusion of matter of the days of Barrow, we may congratulate ourselves upon our escape from the old-wives’ tales of the days of Latimer. They had their origin in a very different state of society, and a very different condition of the church. Something must be ascribed to the general rudeness of an age when bear-baiting was the amusement which a queen provided for the foreign ambassadors, and of which herself and her court were willing spectators;—when a fool was a part of the establishment even of the most refined households, and his uncouth jokes were paid for by the year;—when the martyr in prison could in all sober sadness address words of comfort to his fellow-sufferer, “Green,” as a dainty dish for the Lord’s own tooth; or toPhilpot, as “a pot filled with the most precious liquor;”—and when at the stake, not think it out of character, or out of season, to crack a jest upon his own dress or his own corpulence. Something, again, must be imputed to thecircumstances under which a preacher before the Reformation, and indeed for many years subsequent to it, delivered his sermon. It was very frequently in the open air that he spake—from the steps of a cross, as at Paul’s Cross, the most famous of the day; the congregation assembling around it, and only adjourning to the “shrouds” (as some of the vaults of the church were called) when the weather was unfavourable. Latimer’s sermons before Edward VI. were preached in a garden of the palace of Westminster, the people having admission, and the king hearing them from one of his windows.[315]The effect of such an arrangement was, to divest sermons of all form; to render them vernacular and colloquial: they were, in fact, what their name indicates—not harangues, nor orations, but unwritten discourses, or at most from notes,[316]and partook of all the characteristics of ordinary discourse; the preaching from “bosom sermons,” or from writing, being considered a lifeless practice before the Reformation, and a fit subject of reproach; and the origin of it was, perhaps, no other than an apprehension of the preacher in those days of jealousy, lest he should be caught in his words, and misrepresented to those in power, which induced him to commit his thoughts to paper; or a determination of his superiors that he should be held to whatever he uttered from the pulpit, which compelled him to do so.[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, weretaught 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

“Should ruin (for he saw him strong)The sacred truths to fable and old song;”—

“Should ruin (for he saw him strong)The sacred truths to fable and old song;”—

“Should ruin (for he saw him strong)The sacred truths to fable and old song;”—

“Should ruin (for he saw him strong)

The sacred truths to fable and old song;”—

or lest,

——“if a work so infinite be spann’d,Jealous he was that some less skilful hand(Such as disquiet always what is well,And by ill imitating would excel)Might hence presume the whole creation’s day,To change in scenes, and show it in a play.”

——“if a work so infinite be spann’d,Jealous he was that some less skilful hand(Such as disquiet always what is well,And by ill imitating would excel)Might hence presume the whole creation’s day,To change in scenes, and show it in a play.”

——“if a work so infinite be spann’d,Jealous he was that some less skilful hand(Such as disquiet always what is well,And by ill imitating would excel)Might hence presume the whole creation’s day,To change in scenes, and show it in a play.”

——“if a work so infinite be spann’d,

Jealous he was that some less skilful hand

(Such as disquiet always what is well,

And by ill imitating would excel)

Might hence presume the whole creation’s day,

To change in scenes, and show it in a play.”

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 account 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 wasextremely 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 proportionalnumber 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 staveoff 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,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 passed 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, andwith 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 ofscala 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 Germany,) had been “very carefully discussing with himcertain articles, to whom hehad 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.”[319]But in the year 1537, the whole Bible translated into English by Tindall, Rogers, and perhaps by Coverdale[320](the staple of all future editions,) bearing, however, at first the title of Matthew’s Bible, the better to recommend it, Tindall having recently died in the full odour of heresy, was published in England; and by the influence of Cranmer and Cromwell, the king’s license was procured that it should be freely bought and sold, and his command issued that a copy of it should be set up in every church. This was a day of rejoicing to the Archbishop Cranmer, greater, says he, “than had there been given him a thousand pounds.”[321]Nor to him only; the people, long thirsty for the word, now rushed to the waters of life and drank freely: whosoever had the means bought the volume; where the cost was too great for an individual, neighbours and fellow-apprenticeswould unite purses and buy in common; a man would be seen at the lower end of his church on a Sunday reading it aloud, whilst numbers flocked about him to listen and learn; and the one great topic of the time made its way even into taverns and alehouses, where it seems to have been often the subject of vehement and angry debate.[322]

The same year was distinguished by another work, calculated to advance the Reformation a step farther. “The Institution of a Christian Man,” or theBishops’ 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,[323]contrary to the doctrine of the schools, which had limited its effects to the latter and lower half of our nature;[324]the virtues of redemption were consequently vindicated, and were placed in a position from which the dogma of merit had depressed them. The superstitious attention to trifles of ceremonial, whilst the great moral duties were disregarded, was rebuked—the dread, for instance, of eating an egg on Friday, as contrasted with the indifference felt for a breach of the most fundamentallaws of charity.[325]The dishonest substitution, in sermons, of fables and inventions of men, for the Scriptures, was reproved, together with all wilful misrepresentation of the doctrines contained in the same.[326]On the whole, this was the culminating point of the Reformation, during the reign of Henry: henceforward, that is, from the year 1538, with few intermissions, it ostensibly, though perhaps not in reality, declined.[327]

In 1543 another work appeared, under the sanction of the king and the convocation:[328]it had for its title, “A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man,” and was vulgarly called “theKing’s Book.”[329]It was, in fact, theBishops’ Bookrevised, with some additional matter touching free will, good works, justification, predestination, purgatory—subjects which now began to be discussed with great warmth and difference of opinion. On comparing it with its prototype, it will be seen how far from progression the Reformation had been during the interval. It came out, indeed, whilst the act of the Six Articles was in force, and Gardiner in power. The wonder, therefore, is, rather that it says so much, than that it does not say more. Thetruth, however, seems to be, that it was an act of compromise; a boon granted to the reformers (rendered equivocal, indeed, by an infusion into it of the spirit of the Bishop of Winchester),[330]in consideration of the sacrifice that was about to be required of them; for the Bible in the vulgar tongue was now to be once more withdrawn. To those “whose office it was to teach other, the having, reading, and studying of Holy Scripture (it seems) was not only convenient, but also necessary; but for the other part of the church ordained to be taught, it ought to be deemed, certainly, that the reading of the Old and New Testament was not so necessary for all those folks.” For them it was enough to hear; and that nothing might be wanting to convince, Scripture itself was quoted in support of this sentiment—“Blessed are they thathearthe word of God, and keep it;” where it is insinuated, for it would have been too bad to affirm it, that the blessing attaches to those whohear, not to those who read.[331]But if we meet with a stumbling-block on the threshold of this new publication—for the passages alluded to are in the preface—on further acquaintance with it we shall find our suspicions, that Gardiner’s hand had been busy in it, strengthened. The depravity of our nature, so stoutly insisted upon in the Bishops’ Book, is nearly overlooked in the parallel passage of the King’s Book,[332]and the good offices of our Lord for the recovery of man are set forth in a much less lively manner in the latter than in the former place; where the one has enlarged upon the sufferings of Christ chiefly as propitiatory, the other, though not disclaiming this consideration, rather descants upon them as exemplary;[333]whilst the one declares the condemnationof every man to be sufficiently established, even though he were to be tried by the tenth commandment alone, the other evades the humiliating confession;[334]when the one denies even martyrdom to be ameritoriouscause of salvation, and ascribes it altogether to the grace of God through Christ, the other gives a different turn to the commentary, and escapes the avowal:[335]in the one, the sacrament of matrimony is explained as that which God commands to some, leaves free to all; in the other, a clause is inserted, excepting from its provisions priests and others under vows of celibacy:[336]in the one, the exposition of the second commandment begins thus—“By these words we are utterly forbidden to make or to have any similitude or image, to the intent to bow down to it, or to worship it;” in the other—“By these words we benotforbidden to make or to have similitudes or images, but only we be forbidden to make or to have them to the intent to do godly honour unto them, as it appeareth in the xxvith chapter of Leviticus.”[337]It is true that the ulterior interpretation of the commandment in the two cases does not differ so materially as might be expected from the respective introductions; still the introductions are sufficient to show that the spirit in which the commentaries were made was not, in both instances, quite the same. Other examples of a similar declension in the principles of the Reformation might be gathered from a close comparison of these documents; at the same time, it would afford some minute indications that a better knowledge of the Scriptures had been meanwhile diffusing itself over the country, and that the six years privilege of consulting them had not been altogether lost. Thus, it may be remarked, that in the Bishops’ Book we read of “onePontius Pilate being thechief judge in Jerusalem;”[338]whereas in the King’s Book the same individual is called “Pontius Pilate,” &c.,[339]as though he were a character with which the people were more familiar: again, in the former, the legend of binding “Christ fast to a pillar,” and so crowning and scourging him, is inserted in the details of his passion;[340]in the latter, this incident is omitted, and the scriptural account is strictly followed.[341]It is singular, too, that, in the one, the escape of “Lot and histhreedaughters” is spoken of; a mistake which the other corrects, his “twodaughters” being here the reading.[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[343]—those of our Lady of Walsingham, our Lady of Ipswich, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and St. Ann of Buxton, being the chief;[344]to sanction the introduction into the churches of certain prayers or suffrages—the litany which we still use, except that some objectionable clauses have been since omitted, being of the number;[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 ofwhich 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.”

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