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PROGRESS OF REFORMED DOCTRINE.

CHAP. II. nived at the new religion, were imported and read with that eagerness and delight which always compensate the risk of forbidden studies. Wolsey, who had no turn towards persecution, contented himself with ordering heretical writings to be burned, and strictly prohibiting their importation. But to withstand the course of popular opinion is always like a combat against the elements in commotion; nor is it likely that a government far more steady and unanimous than that of Henry VIII. could have effectually prevented the difusion of Protestantism. And the severe punishment of many zealous reformers in the subsequent part of this reign tended, beyond a doubt, to excite a favourable prejudice for men whose manifest sincerity, piety, and constancy in suffering, were as good pledges for the truth of their doctrine, as the people had been always taught to esteem the same qualities in the legends of the early martyrs.

One of the books originally included in the list of proscription among the writings of Luther and the foreign Protestants was a translation of the New Testament into English by Tyndale, printed at Antwerp in 1526. A complete version of the Bible, partly by Tyndale, and partly by Coverdale, appeared, perhaps at Hamburg, in 1535; a second edition, under the name of Matthews, following in 1537; and as Cranmer's influence over the king became greater, and his aversion to the Roman church more inveterate, so material a change was made in the ecclesiastical policy of this reign as to direct the Scriptures in this translation (but with corrections in many places) to be set up in parish churches, and permit them to be publicly sold. This measure had a strong tendency to promote the Reformation, especially among those who were capable of reading; not, surely, that the controverted doctrines of the Romish church are so palpably erroneous as to bear no sort of examination, but because such a promulgation of the Scriptures at that particular time seemed both tacitly to admit the chief point of contest, that they were the exclusive standard of Christian faith, and to lead the people to interpret them with that sort of prejudice which a jury would feel in considering evidence that one party in a cause had attempted to suppress; a danger which those who wish to restrain the course of free discussion without very sure means of success will in all ages do well to reflect upon.

The great change of religious opinions was not so much effected by reasoning on points of theological controversy, upon which some are apt to fancy it turned, as on a persuasion that fraud and corruption pervaded the established church. The pretended miracles, which had so long held the understanding in captivity, were wisely exposed to ridicule and indignation by the government. Plays and interludes were represented in churches, of which the usual subject

was the vices and corruptions of the monks and clergy. These were disapproved of by the graver sort, but no doubt served a useful purpose. The press sent forth its light hosts of libels; and though the catholic party did not fail to try the same means of influence, they had both less liberty to write as they pleased, and fewer readers than their antagonists.

§ 7. In this feverish state of the public mind on the most interesting subject ensued the death of Henry VIII., who had excited and kept it up. More than once, during the latter part of his capricious reign, the popish party, headed by Norfolk and Gardiner, had gained an ascendant, and several persons had been burned for denying transubstantiation. But at the moment of his decease Norfolk was a prisoner attainted of treason, Gardiner in disgrace, and the favour of Cranmer at its height. It is said that Henry had meditated some further changes in religion. Of his executors, the greater part, as their subsequent conduct evinces, were nearly indifferent to the two systems, except so far as more might be gained by innovation. But Somerset, the new protector, appears to have inclined sincerely towards the Reformation, though not wholly uninfluenced by similar motives. His authority readily overcame all opposition in the council; and it was soon perceived that Edward, whose singular precocity gave his opinions in childhood an importance not wholly ridiculous, had imbibed a steady and ardent attachment to the new religion, which probably, had he lived longer, would have led him both to diverge farther from what he thought an idolatrous superstition, and to have treated its adherents with severity. Under his reign, accordingly, a series of alterations in the tenets and homilies of the English church were made, the principal of which I shall point out, without following a chronological order, or adverting to such matters of controversy as did not produce a sensible effect on the people.

§ 8. I. It was obviously among the first steps required in order to introduce a mode of religion at once more reasonable and more earnest than the former, that the public services of the church should be expressed in the mother tongue of the congregation. The Latin ritual had been unchanged ever since the age when it was vernacular; partly through a sluggish dislike of innovation, but partly also because the mysteriousness of an unknown dialect served to impose on the vulgar, and to throw an air of wisdom around the priesthood. Yet what was thus concealed would have borne the light. Our own liturgy, so justly celebrated for its piety, elevation, and simplicity, is in great measure a translation from the catholic services, or more properly from those which had been handed down from a more primitive age; those portions, of course, being omitted which had relation to different principles of worship. In the second year of

ST. C. H. E.

D

50

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

СНАР. ІІ.

Edward's reign, the reformation of the public service was accomplished, and an English liturgy compiled, not essentially different from that in present use.

II. No part of exterior religion was more prominent or more offensive to those who had imbibed a protestant spirit than the worship, or at least veneration, of images, which in remote and barbarous ages had given excessive scandal both in the Greek and Latin churches, though long fully established in the practice of each. The populace in towns where the reformed tenets prevailed began to pull them down in the very first days of Edward's reign; and after a little pretence at distinguishing those which had not been abused, orders were given that all images should be taken away from churches. But this order was executed with a rigour which lovers of art and antiquity have long deplored. Our churches bear witness to the devastation committed in the wantonness of triumphant reform by defacing statues and crosses on the exterior of buildings intended for worship, or windows and monuments within. Missals and other books dedicated to superstition perished in the same manner. Altars were taken down, and a great variety of ceremonies abrogated, such as the use of incense, tapers, and holy water; and though more of these were retained than eager innovators could approve, the whole surface of religious ordinances, all that is palpable to common minds, underwent a surprising transformation.

III. But this change in ceremonial observances and outward show was trifling when compared to that in the objects of worship, and in the purposes for which they were addressed. Those who have visited some catholic temples, and attended to the current language of devotion, must have perceived, what the writings of apologists or decrees of councils will never enable them to discover, that the saints, but more especially the Virgin, are almost exclusively the popular deities of that religion. All this polytheism was swept away by the reformers; and in this may be deemed to consist the most specific difference of the two systems. Nor did they spare the belief in purgatory, that unknown land which the hierarchy swayed with so absolute a rule, and to which the earth had been rendered a tributary province. Yet in the first liturgy put forth under Edward the prayers for departed souls were retained; whether out of respect to the prejudices of the people or to the immemorial antiquity of the practice. But such prayers, if not necessarily implying the doctrine of purgatory (which yet in the main they appear to do), are at least so closely connected with it that the belief could never be eradicated while they remained. Hence, in the revision of the liturgy, four years afterwards, they were laid aside; and several other changes made, to eradicate the vestiges of the ancient superstition.

IV. Auricular confession, as commonly called, or the private and

special confession of sins to a priest for the purpose of obtaining his absolution, an imperative duty in the church of Rome, and preserved as such in the statute of the six articles, and in the religious codes published by Henry VIII., was left to each man's discretion in the new order; a judicious temperament, which the reformers would have done well to adopt in some other points. And thus, while it has never been condemned in our church, it went without dispute into complete neglect.

V. It has very rarely been the custom of theologians to measure the importance of orthodox opinions by their effect on the lives and hearts of those who adopt them; nor was this predilection for speculative above practical doctrines ever more evident than in the leading controversy of the sixteenth century, that respecting the Lord's Supper. Four principal theories, to say nothing of subordinate varieties, divided Europe at the accession of Edward VI. about the sacrament of the Eucharist. (i.) The church of Rome would not depart a single letter from transubstantiation, or the change at the moment of consecration of the substances of bread and wine into those of Christ's body and blood; the accidents, in school language, or sensible qualities of the former remaining, or becoming inherent in the new substance. (ii.) Luther, partly, as it seems, out of his determination to multiply differences with the church, invented a theory somewhat different, usually called consubstantiation, which was adopted in the confession of Augsburg, and to which, at least down to the middle of the eighteenth century, the divines of that communion were much attached. They imagined the two substances to be united in the sacramental elements, so that they might be termed bread and wine, or the body and blood, with equal propriety. But it must be obvious that there is little more than a metaphysical distinction between this doctrine and that of Rome; though, when it suited the Lutherans to magnify rather than dissemble their deviations from the mother church, it was raised into an important difference. (iii.) A simpler and more rational explication occurred to Zwingle and Ecolampadius, from whom the Helvetian protestants imbibed their faith. Rejecting every notion of a real presence, and divesting the institution of all its mystery, they saw only figurative symbols in the elements which Christ had appointed as a commemoration of his death. But this novel opinion excited as much indignation in Luther as in the Romanists. It was indeed a rock on which the Reformation was nearly shipwrecked; since the violent contests which it occasioned, and the narrow intolerance which one side at least displayed throughout the controversy, not only weakened on several occasions the temporal power of the protestant churches, but disgusted many of those who might have inclined towards espousing their senti

52

MARRIAGE OF PRIESTS.

CHAP. II.

ments. (iv.) Besides these three hypotheses, a fourth was promulgated by Martin Bucer of Strasburg, a man of much acuteness, but prone to metaphysical subtilty, and not, it is said, of a very ingenuous character. Bucer, as I apprehend, though his expressions are unusually confused, did not acknowledge a local presence of Christ's body and blood in the elements after consecration-so far concurring with the Helvetians; while he contended that they were really, and without figure, received by the worthy communicant through faith, so as to preserve the belief of a mysterious union, and of what was sometimes called a real presence. Bucer himself came to England early in the reign of Edward, and had a considerable share in advising the measures of reformation. But Peter Martyr, a disciple of the Swiss school, had also no small influence. In the forty-two articles set forth by authority, the real or corporal presence, using these words as synonymous, is explicitly denied. This clause was omitted on the revision of the articles under Elizabeth.

VI. These various innovations were exceedingly inimical to the influence and interests of the priesthood. But that order obtained a sort of compensation in being released from its obligation to celibacy. This obligation, though unwarranted by Scripture, rested on a most ancient and universal rule of discipline; for though the Greek and Eastern churches have always permitted the ordination of married persons, yet they do not allow those already ordained to take wives. No very good reason, however, could be given for this distinction; and the constrained celibacy of the Latin clergy had given rise to mischiefs, of which their general practice of retaining concubines might be reckoned among the smallest. The German protestants soon rejected this burthen, and encouraged regular as well as secular priests to marry. Cranmer had himself taken a wife in Germany, whom Henry's law of the six articles, one of which made the marriage of priests felony, compelled him to send away. In the reign of Edward this was justly reckoned an indispensable part of the new Reformation. But the bill for that purpose passed the lords with some little difficulty, nine bishops and four peers dissenting; and its preamble cast such an imputation on the practice it allowed, treating the marriage of priests as ignominious and a tolerated evil, that another act was thought necessary a few years afterwards, when the Reformation was better established, to vindicate this right of the protestant church. A great number of the clergy availed themselves of their liberty; which may probably have had as extensive an effect in conciliating the ecclesiastical profession, as the suppression of monasteries had in rendering the gentry favourable to the new order of religion.

5 Stat. 2 & 3 Edw. 6, c. 21; 5 & 6 Edw. 6, c. 12; Burnet, 89.