CHAPTER X.

EDWARD VI.—ADVANCE OF THE REFORMATION.—ERASMUS’S PARAPHRASE.—HOMILIES.—CRANMER’S CATECHISM.—OFFICE OF COMMUNION.—BOOK OF COMMON-PRAYER.—TIME OF SERVICE, AND LENGTH.—PRIMER.—ARTICLES OF 1553.—MODERATION OF THE ENGLISH REFORMERS.

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,[347]certainly argues in him a wit beyond his age. Latin he spoke, says Cardan, who seems to have conversed with him in it, as readily as himself; and in many other languages he is said to have been a proficient, stimulated, perhaps, by an apophthegm of Roger Ascham, his sister’s schoolmaster, though not his own, “that as a bird cannot soar unto heaven with one wing, so cannot a man attain unto excellence with onetongue.” Indeed, to a study of tongues, we are told by a correspondent of his own, he had more applied than to any matter either of history or of policy, the holy Scriptures excepted; nevertheless, the pains which were taken to render him in all things an accomplished prince may be seen in the questions (eighty-four in number) submitted to him by the clerk of the council, probably at the desire of the Protector Somerset; and which were intended as food for his private speculations and debates with his friends. They are such as embrace nearly all those principles of government upon which he would be afterwards called to act—“Whether is better for the commonwealth that the power be in the nobility or the people?” “How easily a weak prince with good order may long be maintained; and how soon a mighty prince with little disorder may be destroyed?” “What causeth an inheritor king to lose his realm?” “Whether religion, besides the honour of God, be not also the greatest stay of civil order?” “How dangerous it is to be the author of a new matter?”[348]—with many other problems, well worth the attention of those to whom the education of a sovereign is confided. His heart was as good as his head; and as it is with the latter that we believe, but with the former that we believe unto righteousness, so did its natural dictates rise in arms against those more subtle principles according to which Cranmer had conscientiously persuaded himself, and endeavoured to persuade the king, that the death of Joan of Kent was a duty; and happy would it have been for the memory of that otherwise almost unspotted character, had he submitted his more mature but more sophisticated judgment to the righteous tears of this gifted boy. What he did, however, he did ignorantly; not in any carnal zeal, but after long debate, and as he writes,in bitterness and sorrow of spirit.[349]He did it in the temper in which Sir Matthew Hale condemned the witches of Leostoff, and suffered judgment to be executed upon them; though he represents himself most unaffectedly, and most truly, as having in general such tenderness in cases of life as almost disqualified him for the bench; and though Sir Thomas Brown, who actually wrote against vulgar errors, was in court at the time, and influenced by his voice the verdict of the jury.[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 inthose 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 members 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 matterwhich 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, wasErasmus’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 ofHomilies, 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 respectivelyhandled 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 theHomilieswere 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.[352]It may be noticed, in passing, that on some points, as on that of human corruption for instance, a tone of greater moderation prevails in this book of the Homilies than in the other, which appeared in 1562, preparedby Queen Elizabeth’s bishops, principally, it has been said, by Jewel.[353]Such a volume had been promised in an advertisement affixed to the former one; and many of the subjects actually treated in it are there enumerated, though not all: but the composition, it should seem, was reserved for those who completed the Reformation. In neither case, however, can the several Homilies be assigned to their several authors with any certainty. At the same time in the first volume (for with regard to the second no single Homily of them all has been appropriated,) there is reason to think that the one on “salvation” is Cranmer’s own; as perhaps those on “faith” and “good works;”[354]and internal evidence arising out of certain homely expressions, and peculiar forms of ejaculation, the like to which occur in Latimer’s sermons, pretty clearly betrays the hand of the Bishop of Worcester to have been engaged in the homily against “brawling and contention;” the one against “adultery” may be safely given to Thomas Becon, one of Cranmer’s chaplains, in whose works, published in 1564, it is still to be found; of the rest nothing is known but by the merest conjecture.[355]On the whole, the key to the right understanding of either volume is not the Calvinistic controversy; for amongst all the Homilies, as Bishop Burnet observes, there are none relating to the divine decrees[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 recommendedthemselves 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, theHomiliesmust 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 publishedCranmer’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 Germany 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 theInterim. 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 ofthe 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;[357]absolution, or the authority of the keys, by virtue of which pardon is obtained for sins after baptism; and the holy communion, which administers fresh supplies of grace to the worthy receiver, and enables him to go on from strength to strength. Of the first of these three sacraments it may be remarked, too, that the language is more dogmatical than would have been used by Cranmer a few years later; “those who have heathen parents, and die without baptism,” being said to be “damned everlastingly;”[358]—a phrase, it is true, merely rendered from the Latin; but the translation exercises on some other occasions a discretionary power of abridging; and whilst the former rejects the church of Rome as a church, counting it to be such only in name, and classing it even with the Turks,[359]the latter tempers its zeal with a sounder judgment, and omits altogether so suicidal a statement: the time came when Cranmer would have left these infants to the uncovenanted mercies of God, saying within himself, “What is that to thee? Follow thou me.” Still, this is characteristic of the several stages of opinion through which he had to pass. A similar remark applies to the doctrine of the holy communion, as here explained. It is clearly that of thereal presence; for though a distinction has been taken between some expressions in the Latin catechism (which certainly inculcates the Lutheran tenet), and the corresponding phrases in the English translation, as though the former asserted the body and blood of Christ to bepresentin the sacrament, the latter to bereceivedtherein; still there are many places where such a distinction does not obtain, and where the argument itself does not seem to admit of it.[360]But, after all, why has it been made a matter of reproach against Cranmer, that he was first a Catholic, then a Lutheran, and lastly a Zuinglian in his notions on the Communion; successively a believer in transubstantiation, in the real and in the spiritual presence of the body and blood of Christ? This he was: for, the first opinion he maintained when he argued against Lambert;[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,though of doubtful origin: Strype assigns it expressly to Nowell;[362]but the modern biographer of the Dean of St. Paul’s questions his title to it, and rather gives it to Poinet, afterwards Bishop of Winchester.[363]In any case, Cranmer appears to have reviewed and digested it, not without the able co-operation of Ridley.[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, theOffice 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 admirable judgmentthough 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 admire 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 passages in themselves (it might have been thought) too beautiful to touch; for in the whole compass 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 thecase 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,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;[366]it being important to provide a substitute for the Mass with as little delay as possible. At the end of the same year, however, (1548) the Book of Common Prayer was prepared, and submitted to parliament; and in 1549 it was put forth by authority, and was appointed to supersede every other form. It was drawn up by the same hands,[367]and upon the same principles asthe Office of the Communion; and as the Missal had been laid under contribution for the latter so was the Breviary for the former, and the ancient Liturgies for both. In that of Jerusalem, of St. James as it is called, and of which the reader may find the substance in a popular form in the “Devotions of Bishop Andrews,” many of the elements of our own beautiful Liturgy may be discovered; and the volume of matter which our earlier church prayers in general pour forth, as compared with the more jejune productions of later times, may be in a great measure imputed to the liberal use which our Reformers made of the devotions of generations gone by, and to that modesty which was content to learn from the spirits of just men now made perfect how to pray. But besides these more ancient sources, from which so much of our Prayer Book was derived, a Liturgy recently drawn up by Melancthon and Bucer, for the use of the archbishopric of Cologne, supplied many other hints. This, however, was itself no effusion of the moment, but was constructed (as might have been expected from the scholarship of its authors) out of the treasures which they found in the devotional forms of other days. Calvin had, indeed, produced a Liturgy of his own, preferring to be the author rather than the compiler, which he published at Geneva, as the form of that church, in 1545, but to this our Liturgy, as it first stood in 1549, does not bear the slightestresemblance. Whilst, however, the latter was under revision, previous to its republication in 1552, and in the hands of those foreign divines of whom mention has already been made, the substance of Calvin’s work was printed in London by Valerandus Pollanus, his successor at Strasburg, then a refugee in England, with some additions of his own, and this (as was most natural) was not overlooked by men busily engaged in a similar task, and did probably suggest the introductory sentences, Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, which were then for the first time prefixed to our Daily Prayer. Nor is it doubtful that to the appearance of this same work at that particular moment we are indebted for the supplement to the Communion Service of the Ten Commandments, with the Responses, the latter of which, indeed, are very nearly translations from Pollanus. Still the temper of our Reformers is shown even here, and that middle way observed by them, which often constrains them to quit the guidance of these foreign theologians, and speak for themselves. Both in the Confession (and particularly that in the Communion Service) and in the Absolution, which was taken from Pollanus and not from Calvin, who did not adopt any form of the kind, extreme expressions with regard to human depravity to be met with in the originals are studiously suppressed or qualified in the imitations, as if the morbid anatomy of our nature was not the theme on which they delighted to dwell, satisfied with having at least trampled under foot all pretensions of merit on man’s part, and with having vindicated theexclusiveclaim of our Lord’s cross and passion to the salvation of a race fallen at any rate from a pernicious height.[368]

The time of day at which the offices of the Prayer Book, thus completed, were performed, is not easily determined;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 thematinsof the Roman Catholic church, as the Litany and Communion did to theHigh-Mass;[369]and it would, therefore, be very likely that the hours in either case would also correspond. Moreover, in all the early Common Prayer Books, even in the very first, there is a Rubric, which directs such as intend to partake of the Communion “to signify their names to the curate over night, or else in the morning before the beginning of Morning Prayeror immediately after;”[370]a phrase which argues some interval between the two services, such as might suffice for considering the qualifications of the candidates, and for providing elements proportioned to the numbers who would attend. Neither is there wanting some internal evidence of the Morning Prayer being at first said betimes—“O God, who hast safely brought us to thebeginningof this day, defend us in the same,” being a phrase scarcely pertinent to any other prayers than orisons.[371]On the contrary, there are reasons still more satisfactory for thinking that the Litanywas succeeded by the Communion Service without any pause whatever. In the injunctions of King Edward, put forth in 1547, there is one to this effect, that “immediately beforeHigh Mass, the priests, with other of the quire shall kneel in the midst of the church, and sing or say plainly and distinctly theLitanywhich is set forth in English with the suffrages following.”[372]There is every reason to believe that this was in substance the Litany still in use, for it had already appeared in Henry’s Primer; but however that might be, the union which it exhibits between such Litany whatever it was, and the High Mass, prepares us to suppose that a similar arrangement was likely to ensue with regard to the same or any new Litany and the Communion Service. And that such did ensue is made still more manifest by the injunctions of Queen Elizabeth in the first year of her reign; in one of which the very same clause again occurs word for word, except that for “High Mass” there is actually substituted “the time ofcommunion of the sacrament.”[373]Indeed the Communion Service could scarcely fail of being annexed to the Litany, since it soon came to pass that the former was seldom read throughout, the sacrament ceasing to be administered weekly, as was at first contemplated, and recurring at least in country churches, as at present only five or six times a year.[374]Nor is this all: in the first Common Prayer Book of Edward VI. it was ordered, that “upon Wednesdays and Fridays, though there were none to communicate with the priest, yet,after the Litany ended, the priest should put upon him a plain alb or surplice with a cope, and say all things at the altar appointed to be said at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper until after the offertory.” Whence it is clear, that when there were persons to communicate(which the rubric seems to presume would always be the case on Sundays,) the Litany and Communion service went together; and that when there were none such, still the Litany was immediately followed by the Communion Service as far as to the end of the prayer for the whole state of Christ’s church militant. How long this arrangement continued does not appear; but whether from the difficulty of gathering together a congregation at break of day, discipline being now relaxed, or from whatever other cause, within the first century after the Reformation the Church seems to have lapsed into the present practice, and to have combined its services into one. Bishop Hall in his contemplations makes the incident mentioned in the first Book of Samuel—that “they of Ashdod aroseearlyon the morrow to visit Dagon”—a vehicle for reproof of the lukewarmness of his own times, saying, “The morning is fittest for devotion; then do the Philistines flock to the temple of their god;” and adding, “what a shame it isfor us to come late to ours!”[375]as though in his day, and he died in 1656, at the age of eighty-two, there were generally matins no longer. And Herbert, in describing categorically the Sunday duties of his Country Parson, expresses himself to the same effect:—“Having read divine service,” says he, “twice fully, and preached in the morning and catechised in the afternoon, he thinks he hath, in some measure, according to poor and frail man, discharged the public duties of the congregation.”[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, forthose 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;”[377]and who pronounced concerning this very Book of Common Prayer, “that no man could mislike that godly book that had any godliness in him joined with knowledge;”[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 whowere, 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, pass 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,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 pass 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, remembering themselves to be thy tenants,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, remembering the short continuance of their life, may be content with that is sufficient, and not join 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 remainedstill to be done, and to that we must now advert, the composition of a set ofArticleswhich 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;[381]for he seems to have entered into a correspondence on the subject with some of the leading foreign Protestants; and Calvin’s own letters (for to him he had written amongst others) bear testimony to the comprehensive views of our archbishop upon this great question.[382]It failed, however, as the same correspondence indicates; whether from the troubles at that time prevailing both at home and abroad; whether from the difficulty which must have been anticipated of constructing any single form which should be acceptable to so many parties holding so many opinions; or whether from the intrigues of theCouncil of Trent, then sitting, which, taking alarm at the projected unanimity of their adversaries, and acting upon the old policy of divide and conquer, despatched their emissaries to the proper quarters, who, feigning themselves zealous for the Reformation, and preaching those extravagant doctrines of the Anabaptists, which all sober-minded men lamented and condemned, scattered apples of discord amongst their enemies, and dissolved them as a body.[383]But, however this might be, the scheme was discovered to be impracticable, and Cranmer then contracted his views, and confined himself to the preparation of Articles for the Church of England only.[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[385],” and a similar attackappears to have been meditated upon them by the same party at the Savoy conference after the Restoration;[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;[387]the interval being precisely that in which the Articles were concocted. Nor may it be impertinent to remark, that on their revision under Archbishop Parker, previous to 1562, care was taken to draw from the same, or at least a similar, fountain for what was wanting; the additions and emendations bearing token, both in their matter and language, of having been derived from the Confession of Wirtemberg; a Confession composed in 1551, and exhibited at the Council of Trent the followingyear, and which, like that of Augsburg, was not Calvinistic, nor Zuinglian, but Lutheran.[388]Indeed, nothing can be more erroneous than to measure the contemporary by the posthumous influence of a great name. Milton is not mentioned by Lord Clarendon (who forgets nobody that stamped his own times), nor yet by Baxter, whose writings are voluminous, and by whom it was to be expected that he would be had in honour. And in like manner, splendid as eventually became the fame of Calvin, it was comparatively inconsiderable when our church was in building, being eclipsed by the burning and shining light of Luther’s name; so that whilst a sermon of the latter is advertised in England in 1547, as a work “of the famous clerk ofworthy memory, Dr. Martin Luther,” a treatise of Calvin is sent forth in 1549 (two years later), as “written by Master John Calvin, a man ofright excellent learning and no less conversation,” as though his fame as yet required the help of a herald;[389]neither, it may be observed, does the term Calvinist find a place in the pages of Fox. And though a body of men there was in the times of our first Reformers, and by them certainly accounted schismatics, to whom the name ofFree-Willerswas given, (and a singular instance of the predominance of the intellectual over the mere animal part of our nature it is, that the metaphysical questions to which the name points should have disturbed the prison-house of persons who were about to die, perhaps, on the morrow, at the stake[390],) still the tenets of these men were not such as were afterwards called Arminian, but were strictly Pelagian, being in gross disparagement of a Redeemer’s merits, and of aSanctifier’s help, and as such were stoutly combated by the founders of our Church.[391]That the freedom of the will was not, in itself, a doctrine offensive to Cranmer, but the contrary, is certain; and in a Letter to Cromwell, recently published[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“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 rightde congruo, and that having once received it, he then claimed its further extension as a right,de condigno.[393]These opinions, so calculated to puff up by making man the originator of his own justification, our Reformers would not tolerate, and framed their confessions accordingly. It would not fall within the plan of a work like the present to enter more minutely into these investigations, which, after all, are as an hedge of thorns; suffice it to have pointed out the general principle which should not be lost sight of in forming our judgment of the articles. Thus considered they will be scarcely thought to determine, or to be intended to determine, the peculiar points of Calvinistic controversy either way: they will be rather thought to be composed simply for the purpose assigned in the title prefixed to the original articles, “for theavoiding of controversyin opinions, and the establishment of agodly concordin certain matters of religion;”[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 ofall 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 admiration 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 admirable 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 themiddle way, (alas! that Milton should bestow upon themno better title for this than that of halting prelates,[395]) left us a church alike removed from ostentation and meanness, from admiration of ornament and disdain of it; a church retaining so much reverence for ancient customs, and ancient forms, as not rashly to abolish them, and only so much as not to adopt them blindly. Under the guidance of this principle it was brought to pass that though this same church was not made to discover the material flesh and blood of our Lord in the communion, it was taught to discover (whatever Bishop Hoadley may say to the contrary) more than mere commemorative emblems; that while she does not presume to limit the regenerating influence of the Holy Ghost to the single mode of baptism, and exclude from all possible admission into heaven every soul of man which has not partaken of that rite, for “the Spirit which works by means may be not tied to means,”[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 remembering, that it is no ratified means of grace, still less does she regard it as a civil contract, as remembering, also, that in it is signified the spiritualmarriage and unity of Christ and his church, and that male and female God joined 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 admit 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, butis 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!

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