Prof. John S. Tatlock -Btsfjop lectures, 1881 STUDIES ENGLISH REFORMATION J. WILLIAMS, D.D. F BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 713 BROADWAY 1881 W5 Copyright, 1881, BY E. P. DUTTON & CO. ^v : ^py^ /":/':/ C/ Press of y. y. Little <&* Co. t 10 Astor Place, N. Y. & Johnland Stereotype Foundry, Suffolk Co. t N. Y. THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES. IN the summer of the year 1880, GEORGE A. JARVIS of Brooklyn, N. Y., moved by his sense of the great good which might thereby accrue to the cause of CHRIST and to the Church, of which he was an ever grateful member, gave to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church certain securities ex- ceeding in value eleven thousand dollars for the founda- tion and maintenance of a Lectureship in said Seminary. Out of love to a former Pastor and enduring friend, the Rt. Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts, he named his Foundation " THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURESHIP." The deed of trust declares that: * ' The subjects of the Lectures shall be such as appertain to the defence of the religion of JESUS CHRIST, as revealed in the Holy Bible and illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer against the varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or professedly religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, Justification and the Inspiration of the Word of God and of such central facts as the Church's Divine Order and Sacraments, her historical Reformation and her rights and powers as a pure and National Church. And other subjects may be chosen if unanimously approved by the Board of Appointment as being both timely and also within the true intent of this Lectureship." M301GQO iv The Bishop Paddock Lectures. Under the appointment of the Board created by the Trust, viz., the Dean of the General Theological Semi- nary and the Bishops respectively of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Long Island, the Rt. Rev. John Wil- liams, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Connecticut, delivered the Lectures for the year 1881 contained in this volume. PREFATORY NOTE. THERE are some things which I very much desire to say in the way of preface to the following lectures. I owe it to myself to state that the request from the Founder of the Lectureship that I would be the first lecturer, and adding the subject which he wished me to take up, came to me before I was, by the terms of the deed of endowment, appointed on,e of those trustees empowered to select a lecturer. I was not concerned in the act of election. Secondly, I must beg to remind any readers I may have, that to one writing in this country on the Eng- lish Reformation original documents are inaccessible. All one can do is to use all care and diligence to obtain information from sources worthy of trust; to "verify references" as far as possible; and to take nothing on any one's unverified assertion. This course is, no doubt, a humbling one, in that it shuts him who adopts it up to a narrow path and leaves little vi Prefatory Note. room for imagination, and still less for originality. But it is the only honest course notwithstanding its lowliness. I have referred, as far as possible,, to books accessible to students of theology. Thirdly, the lectures, printed here as five, were by stress of time and place delivered as four. A good deal therefore which now appears was omitted in the delivery. Lastly, lectures must, unavoidably, contain repeti- tions of facts if not of arguments which would, under other circumstances be inadmissible. I have tried, as far as possible, to avoid them. J. W. April, 1881. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. PAGE The General Call for Reformation Its Causes and possible Methods 9 LECTURE II. Evils to be reformed Agents Principle acted on Sources of Information; and alleged Variations 41 LECTURE III. Abolition of Papal Jurisdiction in England 79 LECTURE IV. Royal Supremacy 125 LECTURE V. Doctrine 175 LECTURE I. THE GENERAL CALL FOR REFORMATION- ITS CAUSES AND POSSIBLE METHODS. STUDIES ON THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. LECTURE I. THE GENERAL CALL FOR REFORMATION ITS CAUSES AND POSSIBLE METHODS. T CANNOT begin the first course of lectures on the excellent foundation established by one whose good deeds to the Church have been manifold, without at least a few words of thank- fulness and congratulation. Such foundations as this have been a real, and, among those who think of such matters at all, a deeply felt need in our Church, especially in her in- stitutions for theological training. The double purpose which they serve, first of inducing stu- dents to give themselves, diligently and care- fully, to special lines of investigation, and, next, of enabling them to give, to the best of their abilities, the results of such special studies to those who may be aided by them, can scarcely be overvalued. While, therefore, 12 The English Reformation. both personally and officially, I venture to ex- press my thankfulness to the founder of this Lecture, I cannot but congratulate the ven- erable Institution with which it is connected, on the possession of an instrumentality which may be made so available to the best interests of careful study in Divinity. The subject which was assigned to me, when I was honored with the appointment that brings me here, was the ENGLISH REFORMATION. I have not supposed that it thus became my duty to attempt to present to you a chronologically arranged sketch of the history of the period which those two words cover. It has seemed to me, that the end intended could be better reached by some examination of the underly- ing principles which, with whatever obscura- tions, from time to time in individual minds, or even in the minds of bodies of men, really shaped the work; by endeavoring to point out the lines and methods on and by which results were attained; by exhibiting the character of some of those results; by attempting to dis- criminate between things that really belong The English Reformation. 13 to the work of reform and those that do not, and to relegate the latter to their proper place; in a word, by a selection of topics rather than a mere consecutive narration of events. And now, without further preface, let me address myself to my work. A question that meets us at the very outset of our inquiries is this: What proof is there of any wide-spread conviction, at the beginning of the sixteenth century and earlier, that a reformation was necessary ? It is said, the mere sudden outbreak of an individual here or there, the mere sudden movement of even a number of persons cannot afford sufficient evidence of such a pervading conviction. Such outbreaks and such movements are not of infrequent oc- currence in the world's history. You can no more judge of the intellectual and moral at- mosphere of a period by them, than you can judge of the atmospheric conditions of a vast country by the storms or tornadoes of isolated districts. A passing tumult on the surface of the ocean is not its groundswell. Without stopping to consider the limitations or modi- T4 The English Reformation. fications with which these statements are to be accepted, it may still be doubted whether the question which gives rise to them has always received the attention it deserves. I believe that its consideration is a condition precedent to the intelligent study of any and all methods of reformation adopted in the sixteenth century. It is fortunate that history gives a direct and unmistakable answer to this question. The very abundance of material is, indeed, a source of embarrassment. To collect it would be to compile volumes. To select from it is not an easy task. The testimony comes from "all sorts and conditions of men;" from the loftiest as well as the lowliest in ecclesiastical place and station. Time and" space forbid me to do more than to call your attention to the long list of names not of querulous and dis- contented doctrinaires, but of men of mark^ and acknowledged power, who, for centuries preceding the sixteenth, demand, in tones that cannot be mistaken, the reformation of the Church. As far back as the twelfth century, St Ber- The English Reformation. 15 nard called the last of the Fathers said, " Who will grant me to see, before I die, the Church of God as it was in the ancient days ? " 1 And this cry had gathered strength and emphasis in the centuries that follo'wed. It was heard in 1409, at Pisa, with its pledge, alas ! unfulfilled, of purification in " Head and members;" at Constance, in 1414, in sermons than which no utterances can be more distinct, in Gerson's catalogue of abuses, and in what we should call a Committee on Reformation, though it was then termed a " Reformation College;" at Basle, in 1431, when propositions for a reformation of the Church were submitted to the then Pontiff by Henry VI., King of England. If we turn from Councils to individual di- vines, we are confronted with a long list of illustrious names. I will only, however, recall to you those of Gerson, the preachers at Con- stance, Contarini, Sadolet and other members of what was known as the "Oratory of Divine Love," on the continent of Europe; and of 1 "Ep. ad Eugen." ccxxxviii. 6. 1 6 The English Reformation. Grostete, 2 Bradwardine, Fitzalph and Colet in England. If I do not mention Jerome of Prague, John Huss, Wickliffe and others, it is only because I would name none to whose testimony those who deny any necessity of a reformation can, on any ground, object. If to those we add the numerous names of theolo- gians and other scholars that come to the notice of one studying the history of the three centuries preceding the Reformation, we have an array of testimony that is simply over- whelming. 3 Bossuet attempts and others have followed him to break the force of this tes- timony by asserting that the conclusion drawn from it "is a manifest deceit." He says, " not one of these doctors even for once thought of changing the faith of the Church, or of cor- recting her worship, which chiefly consisted in the sacrifice of the altar, or of subverting the authority of her prelates, and chiefly that of the Pope." 4 2 See his tremendous indictment of the Roman Court in Perry's "Life of Grostete," c. x. 3 Hardwick on the Articles c. i. sec. i. 4 " Variations," bk. i. 2. The English Reformation. 17 But this, however specious it may be, is the merest perversion of the truth. Practical evils in the Church have, as a rule, their roots in doctrine. How could the shameful sale of indulgences and masses have been reformed without touching doctrinal teaching concern- ing the intermediate state ? How could such a scandal as the offering in one year of nearly a thousand pounds at the altar of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, when during the same period not one penny was offered at the altar of our. Lord how could such a scan- dal have been abated, and yet nothing have been said as to saintly intercession and invo- cation ? I adduce but two instances, where many more might have been presented; but these two are enough to prove that the words of Bossuet are idle words. How idle they are, the very action of the Tridentine Coun- cil shows, where it was agreed " that Faith and Discipline should be treated of simulta- neously." 5 s Buckley's "History of the Council of Trent," part ii. c. iv. Pallavicini, "Hist.," etc. lib. vi. c. vii. 1 8 The English Reformation. As to his further assertion tha!t there was no purpose of touching the papacy and its claims, if that were true what means the pledge at Pisa of purification in the Head and members of the Church ? What mean the words of Gerson, the great chancellor of the University of Paris, when he says, making a strange distinction between the Catholic and the Apostolic Church, that of the former " the Pope cannot be called the head, nor ought to be the head, but only Christ's vicar provided, nevertheless that the keys err^not; and in this Church, and in its faith, every man may be saved, although, in all the world, no Pope should be found " ? Or again, when he says, " There is another called the Apostolic Church, particular and private, included in the Catholic Church, com- posed of the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Prel- ates, and Ecclesiastics. This is wont to be called the Roman Church, of which the Pope is believed to be the head; but the other Ecclesiastics are included in it. This Church can err, can deceive and be deceived, can The English Reformation. fall into schism and heresy, can cease to be"? Or, once more, when he says, "The Pope, as Pope is man, and as man so is he Pope, and as Pope he can sin, and as man he can err " ? 6 The way in which so great a theologian confounds the Ciiria Romana with the Apostolic Church, sad and wretched as it is, is nothing to us here: but who can say, in the face of such declarations, that no reform was thought of which would have touched the papacy ? Let me add, before I leave this matter, that Gerson in 1410 spoke no more strongly than Adrian VI. in 1522. These are his words: "I say first, that if by the Roman Church is understood its head, that is the Pontiff, it is certain that he can err, even in matters pertaining to Faith, in asserting heresy by determination or decretal. For many Roman Pontiffs have been here- tics." 7 How strangely would these words of Pope and Doctor have struck on the ears 6 See the passages, quoted, with many others by Gieseler, Hist. vol. iii. p. 222. Am. Ed. 7 See Hardwick's "Reformation," p. 349, n. 5. First Ed. 2O The English Reformation. of the prelates of the Vatican 1 Council of 1870! How do they shew what "new fash- ions in religion " pervade the Roman Church to-day ! How do they contradict the spe- cious words of Bossuet, words so unworthy of the eagle of Meaux! We are warranted, then, in saying that for more than three cen- turies before the Reformation there was a de- mand for reform in the Western Church so wide-spread as to be virtually universal; and that the demand involved not merely reform in life and discipline, but in doctrine, in wor- ship, and in the constitution of the Church with and under the papacy. Standing, now, on this unquestionable fact, we look two ways. We look back, and ask for the causes of this cry for reformation. We look forward, and inquire for the methods by which its attainment was attempted. First, then, let us look at the causes, and next at the methods. And, just here, in speaking of causes, let me say a word as to the importance in his- torical studies of carefully distinguishing be- The English Reformation. 21 tween causes and occasions. An occasion furnishes the opportunity for action; but the causes of the action always lie further back, and did they not exist the occasion would pass unheeded. There is no error more com- mon, none more disastrous to all true study of history, than this confusion of cause and occasion. As it will be necessary to recur to it again, I content myself with this bare statement here. From the manifold causes which wrought together to produce the demand for refor- mation, I shall select three I believe the three most energetic and far-reaching for examination. This selection must not be re- garded as exhaustive ; I trust it may be suggestive. And first, as to the papacy. No Roman Pontiff ever advanced loftier claims than did Boniface VIII. , when, in 1302, he addressed to the whole Christian world the Bull Unam Sanctam; which (if there can be such a thing), is a cathedral utterance infallible and irreform- able. Not Gregory VII. nor Innocent III., 22 The English Reformation. in their boldest declarations, ever went be- yond the sweeping assertions of that astound- ing document. If words have any meaning, it teaches the subjection of all temporal power to the spiritual as concentrated in the Pope; and the further subjection to him of every human being on pain of damnation. 8 The two centuries that followed that culmin- ating point for the Papacy witnessed its rapid and sure decline. The removal to Avignon took from it the prestige of the eternal city and the tomb of St. Peter. The seventy years' sojourn in that luxurious city brought more clearly to the light of day the corruptions and the cruelties of the papal court, and exhibited the Supreme Pontiff as the puppet of the French king, with some occasional intervention of the 8 See the bull quoted and condensed by Fleury, "Hist. Eccl.," lib. xc. c. xviii. ; and compare his attempted explanations with the remarks of Archbishop Kenrick, in his " Concio habenda at non habita in Concilia Vaticano" This last is printed in Prof. Friedrich's " Documenta ad illustrandum^ etc., I. Abtheilung, p. 189. A good translation of it is given in "An Inside View of the Vatican Council." See also, Hussey, "Rise of the Papal Power," p. 177. The English Reformation. 23 German emperor. The great schism, lasting as it did through forty years, gave a still ruder shock to men's reverence for the papacy. How indeed could it retain in people's eyes the di- vinity with which it had hedged itself, when the scandalous spectacle of rival claimants (numbering at one time three) to the royal- ties and privileges of Peter, was patent to the world, while different sovereigns and nations attached themselves to the different claim- ants ? Just at this moment, too, the nations of modern Europe were consolidating and set- tling their national life; so that this state of things " could not fail to give an impulse, hitherto unknown in calling up the nation- ality of many a western state, in satisfying it that the papal rule was not essential to its welfare, and in thereby adding strength to local jurisdictions." 9 How strong this im- pulse was may be seen in the fact that at the Council of Constance (1417), the vote was not taken by individuals but by nations, namely the English, German, French, and 9 Hard wick. 24 The English Reformation. Italian. That method of voting was the pre- cursor of national reformations. To this must be added the personal character of many of the popes themselves. 10 In this rapid sketch I cannot undertake to name them, nor is it needful. To one who has waded through the details of vileness, the allusion is enough. To one who has not, the statement of the fact may well suffice. The result was that, for a far longer period before the actual reforma- tion than we are apt to think, the illusions that begirt the papacy were disappearing, its pretensions were questioned and sometimes despised, and its powers were limited and checked. It is obvious to name, as a second cause of the demand for reformation, the revival of let- ters and the impulse given by it to human in- tellect. There are, however, certain aspects of this subject which, common-place as the 10 Mr. Blunt says, "For sixty years before the final breach was made, there had not been a pope, except Clement VII., who could be called even a decent Christian" He gives, also, details, "Reformation," p. 242. The English Reformation. 25 subject itself may seem, are worth noticing somewhat in detail. The revival of learning in Italy, "and at that time Italy clearly led in everything," was in its temper and spirit simply pagan. Turn to the Decameron of Boccacio, "saturated from top to toe with the pagan spirit." Listen to an eclogue of Geraldini on the Passion, in which "our Blessed Lord is spoken of under the name of Daphnis; and 'Daphnis in an odoriferous garden/ is the commencement of the Agony in Gethsemane;" while the Jews are made to cry out to Pilate, " Release Ba- rabbas and crucify Daphnis." Go to the court of the Medici, where you find adopted " not merely the externals of the old existence, but the elements, that is preoccupation with the present life, forgetfulness of the future, the appeal to the senses, the renunciation of Christianity." Remember that in Rome, in the time of Leo X., "it was a characteristic of good society to dispute the fundamental principles of Christianity;" that "at court they spoke of the institutions of the Catholic Church, 26 The English Reformation. - j of passages of Holy Scripture, only in a tone of jesting, and that the mysteries of the Faith were held in derision." Hear what Pallavicini, Rome's chosen defender of the Council of Trent, says of this same Pontiff, who has sometimes been thought to have been a veritable pagan. " Scarcely had he issued from his infancy when he was admitted to the supreme senate of the Church, and he failed, thenceforth, in his duty, by neglecting the noblest line of knowledge, and the one most in accord with his profession. He failexjL much more, when, becoming chief of the Church, at the age of thirty-seven years, he not only continued to devote himself to curious researches in profane studies, but made the very palace of religion a rendezvous for men familiar with Greek fables and the charms of poesy. . . . He left the Church what he found it, that is to say almost destitute of great men, who, as the world came forth from so many centuries of barbarism, might have caused a revival of sacred erudition, as well as of that profane learning which was rising into life in every quarter." Well may Dr. Neale exclaim, The English Reformation. 27 " Marvellous was the infatuation which could expend all its zeal and energies in the discov- ery of lost books of Tacitus or Livy, in the production of the purest Ciceronian Latin, in the erection of classical churches, and which could pay for all these pagan amusements and studies by the infamous mission of Tetzel, un- conscious of the approaching earthquake, re- garding the discontent of one German monk as something that might it mattered not whether of the two be hushed at the stake or silenced by the sop of a fat benefice." No wonder that even in Italy itself a reac- tion came; that good and thoughtful men tried " to stay the general corruption of the Church by the revived force of religious conviction." Honest as such attempts were, and hearty as should be the admiration they evoke, they failed, mainly for two reasons. The first is expressed in a saying attributed to Reginald Pole: "That men should content themselves with their own inward convictions, without con- cerning themselves to know if errors and abuses existed in the Church." The second is found 28 The English Reformation. I using the word in a very different sense from that now given to it in the irreformable char- acter of the Roman Court and its influence on the Church. Meantime, it is easy to see how, wholly aside from mere intellectual impulse, this outbreak of paganism at the very centre of civilization must tend to produce a reaction, and help to swell the cry for reformation. I ought not to dismiss this topic without at least a passing reference to the fact that this pagan tendency was always kept in check in England. Be the causes of this what they may and they cannot be considered here- the fact is indisputable. Be it true, that "the marks not only of Italy, but of Boccacio, are stamped upon English letters from Chaucer onward," it is equally true that those marks are only on the surface; that they present the externals of the old existence but not its inner elements. Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, and Surrey may have sought their models and ma- terials in the pagan renaissance, but they never imbibed its moral foulness, the frivolity of its carpe diem, or its scornful unbelief. John Colet, The English Reformation. 29 the memorable Dean of St. Paul's, studied Greek in Italy and came back to lecture on St. Paul's Epistles at Oxford, in I498. 1 The third cause of the cry for a reformation, which I propose to notice, is one that touches depths in human character and life which the two just considered do not reach. It brings before us that ultimate and divinely ordered responsibility which rests on the reason and conscience of individuals in reference to their belief; and that necessity, which equally at- taches to individuals, of personal faith in, and personal communion with our Lord. The other causes of which I have spoken live in the world and share in its movement and life; this dwells apart in the retirement of each man's soul. It has often been observed that while the subtle mind of the East gave itself to the study 1 Not to burden the page with too many references, I may still mention, Pallavicini, "Hist, of Council of Trent," lib. i. c. 2.; Ranke, " Hist, of the Popes," book i. c. 2. ; and book ii. ; Taine's, "Eng. Literature," book ii. c. i. iv.; Neale, "Essays on Litur- giology," xiv.; Mr. Gladstone, "Study on the Reformation," Contemp. Rev. Oct. 1878; Knight, "Life of Colet." 30 The English Reformation. 1 of Theology in its strict signification, the more practical mind of the West turned itself to Anthropology. "The East," says Freeman, "loves rather to meditate on God as He is, and on the facts of Christian doctrine as they- stand in the Creed; the West contemplates more practically the great phenomena of Christian psychology, and the relations of man to God. The East has had its Athan- asius and its Andrew of Crete; the West its Augustine and Leo." 2 Then, besides, it is equally true that "Chris- tian Anthropology ranges itself under two heads objective and subjective. By the for- mer is meant the sacraments and ordinances of the Church, as such; by the latter, the progress of grace in the heart of each one of us." 3 Now it was mainly, or at least very largely, with the former of these heads, the objective view of Christian anthropology, that the med- iaeval divines concerned themselves. I do not 2 Freeman's "Principles of Divine Service, " vol. i. p. 274. s Ffoulkes, "Christendom's Divisions," 40. The English Reformation. 31 forget that from time to time voices were heard inculcating personal earnestness in the religious life; least of all would I forget that noble band of mystical divines, the " Friends of God," as they were called, the precursors of the Reformation, whose mention brings back to our memories the names of Tauler, and Ruysbroek, and Wessel; nor yet do I forget, later on, that " Oratory of Divine Love," which presents to us the names of Contarini, and Sadolet, and Pole. Still it remains true that the objective side of Anthropology, that which concerns itself with the objective grace of the Sacraments, and, therefore, deals especially with man's corporate life as a member of the Church of God, was the side which engaged the thoughts of the mediaeval divines of the West- ern Church. It is easy to see how this view might as- sume proportions which would obscure, if it did not displace, the recognition of the indi- vidual duty and the individual life. More es- pecially would this danger affect the popular 32 The English Reformation. idea and estimate of religion. The well in- structed, the studious, the thoughtful might, and in many cases did, escape it. But with the body of the people such escape was an impossibility. Corporate membership in the Church as all in all, an exaggerated idea of the value of a perfunctory discharge of rou- tine and merely external duties, " the form of godliness without the power," must inevi- tably have been the outcome of all this. And this as much as, perhaps more than, anything else honeycombed the Church with corruption, and brought the social state of Europe to rot- tenness. Possibly nothing short of a passion- ate reclamation against such an overslaughing of personal religion and individual responsi- bUity, so passionate that it disturbed the balance between the two sides of Christian Anthropology in an opposite direction from the one just indicated, could have roused the hearts and consciences of men. And such a reclamation was the real work of Luther. Such a reclamation was not wanting in Eng- land. The English Reformation. 33 Such, then, being the need of reform in the sixteenth century, and such the cry long con- tinued for it, we are next to consider the meth- ods by which reform could be accomplished. The most obvious method, the one which would immediately occur to men's minds in those days, would be the convoking of a Gen- eral Council of Western Christendom. At- tempts in this direction had been made during the previous century, but they had accom- plished nothing. The Councils of Pisa, Con- stance and Basle as has been already said were all summoned in the interests of reform; they had met, discussed, and separated, without appreciable result. It is perfectly true that plans for " constitutional reform" found ut- terance at Constance and Basle; but it is equally true that these plans were perpetually thwarted and brought to nought by papal violence or intrigue; and it is not to be for- gotten that, in 1460, Pius II. forbade any at- tempt "to invoke the aid of councils under pain of damnation." All avenues of hope in that direction might well seem to be forever closed. 34 The English Reformation. Still men did hope, even against! hope. Con- stitutional reform had taken strong hold in France, and vitalized, though it did not origi- nate, the principles that underlaid the Gallican liberties. The accession of Pius III. to the pontifical throne, in 1503, gave a gleam of hope that something might yet be accomplished un- der the leadership of the Pope and the hier- archy. But that gleam expired when, after a reign of six and twenty days, he died. Then when the paganizing Leo X. was succeeded by the " reforming pontiff," Adrian VI., men hoped again. And surely when Adrian boldly as- serted that "many abominations had existed for a long time, even in the holy see, yea, that all things had been grievously altered and perverted," there might well seem to be ground for hope. Be that as it may, Adrian's brief pontificate reforming popes seem to have had short reigns aroused men's hopes only to dash them down when it ended; and " the Roman Curia persisting in its resolu- tion to discountenance all change whatever, manifested no activity, till its slum- The English Reformation. 35 bers were broken by the prospect of a general revolt." * Since, then, the papacy would neither in- stitute measures of reform nor allow them to be instituted, was all thought of reformation to be abandoned, and the Western Church to settle down into a unity of death ? That could not be. The needs were too profound, the stirrings of men's hearts were too thorough, the cry was too universal, to come to such an end. The haunting spectre, which the pontiffs tried to persuade themselves was but a " hor- rible shadow and unreal mockery," would not down. Two and only two methods of reform re- mained after the failures of which I have been speaking. The first of these was a movement, or movements, under the conduct of individ- ual leaders. The other was based upon a recognition of the rights of autonomous na- tional churches; on " the principle of nation- ality as opposed to papal universalism"; and took its form accordingly. The former of 4 See Hardwick's "Reformation," Introduction. 36 The English Reformation. these methods shaped the Reformation in Ger- many and Switzerland, giving to each the name of its especial leader ; the latter was pursued in England, and kept our Anglican Reformation from bearing the impress or the name of any single master. And this national idea had, a century earlier, been recognized, as I have already said, at the Council of Con- stance; where the "four nations," Italian, Ger- man, French, and English were held to pos- sess equal rights, and no subject could be acted on by the Council till it had been accepted by a majority of the " nations." The great John Gerson, also, had asserted the same principle, saying that " The Church may be reformed by parts: that this is neces- sary; and that it may be accomplished by provincial councils." Nor was this an after- thought of that time, or of times that fol- lowed. It was a recurrence to the practice of the "purest ages of the faith." In all time and everywhere national synods had dis- cussed and dealt with the heresies, errors, and evils of national churches, whether such The English Reformation. 37 heresies, errors, and evils had grown up from within, or been thrust in from without. The method was an old one revived, not a new one invented. 5 Let me sum up these thoughts concerning methods of reform, in the wise and weighty words of Archbishop Laud: "It is true, a general council free and entire, would have been the best remedy and most able for a gangrene that had spread so far and eaten so deep into Christianity. But, what ! should we have suffered this gangrene to endanger life and all, rather than be cured in time by a physician of a weaker knowledge and a less able hand ? We live to see since, if we had stayed and expected a general council, what manner of one we should have had, if any; for that at Trent was neither general nor free; 6 and for the errors Rome had contracted, it 5 Hard wick "On the Articles,'' chap. i. sec. 2. Laud against Fisher (Oxf. 1839), PP- 122-129. e Compare Bp. Bull's words, " Tridentina conventio quidvis potius quam generate concilium dicenda sit." "Defens. Fid. Nic. Proemium," 8. 38 The English Reformation. confirmed them, it cured them riot. And yet I much doubt whether even that council (such as it was) would have been called, if some provincial and national synods, under supreme regal power, had not first set upon this great work of reformation; which I heartily wish had been as orderly and happily pursued as the work was right Christian and good in itself." "I make no doubt but that, as the universal Catholic Church would have reformed herself, had she been in all parts freed of the Roman yoke, so, while she was for the most in those western parts under that yoke, the Church of Rome was, if not the only, yet the chief hin- drance of reformation. And then, in this sense, it is more than clear, that if the Roman Church will neither reform nor suffer reformation, it is lawful for any other particular Church to re- form itself, so long as it doth it peaceably and orderly, and keeps itself to the foundation and free from sacrilege." 7 And here I close this preliminary sketch, which, nevertheless, has seemed necessary ' "Conference," ut sup. pp. 127, 129. The English Reformation. 39 that we may intelligently approach the top- ics of which I propose to treat ; the treat- ment of which, though it will by no means be a connected, chronological history of the English Reformation, will, I hope, serve to shew how that reformation has placed within the reach of the Churches in communion with our English mother, " the three great springs of power which have been given sep- arately to others the simplicity of a pure creed, the strength of a continuous organi- zation, and the freedom of personal faith." 8 s Dean Boyle's " Farewell address to his parishioners at Kid- derminster." LECTURE II. EVILS TO BE REFORMED AGENTS PRIN- CIPLE ACTED ON SOURCES OF IN- FORMATION; AND' ALLEGED VARIATIONS. LECTURE II. EVILS TO BE REFORMED AGENTS PRIN- CIPLE ACTED ON SOURCES OF IN- FORMATION; AND ALLEGED VARIATIONS. TN my first lecture I called attention to cer- tain general facts, not specifically con- nected with the Anglican Reformation, which, nevertheless, it was needful to consider in order that we might approach intelligently the topic in hand. Turning now to that topic, I must ask you, at the outset, to go along with me in the endeavor to point out and, so far as may be, to classify, the evils with which reform, if it were to be to any purpose, must necessarily deal. A real refor- mation must concern itself with actually ex- isting evils; and the lines of ita outworking must be settled and determined by such evils. Any other reformation would be so entirely 44 The English Reformation. 1 theoretical and doctrinaire in character, that it would have neither practical effect nor abid- ing life. The grandest exhibition of the dif- ference between such methods which history records was given to the world, when philoso- phers were dreaming over plans for reforming the evils that weighed down the nations and accomplished nothing; and the disciples of Christ's religion grappled with the evils prac- tically, and did the work. Nor could a mere theoretical reformation, however perfect in its arrangements, have commended itself to the convictions or commanded the support of the English people; a people always caring less for logical consistency than for practical result. What then were the ecclesiastical evils, wrongs, perversions of true and good things that were pressing on Englishmen in the six- teenth century; and can they be classified in any intelligent fashion ? Let us go back, just here, to a memorable day, Feb. 6, 1512, when John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, preached the sermon before the Convocation of the province of Canterbury. The English Reformation. 45 I have called the day a memorable one; it was made so by that outspoken sermon. The assembly before which Colet stood was most truly representative. There sat Warham, the Archbishop, the friend of the "new learn- ing," the patron and protector of Erasmus; Fitz-James (promoted for his secular services to Rochester, Chichester, and London suc- cessively), the embodiment of the stiffest and most starched conservatism of the day, and so fierce against all heresy that An- dreas Ammonius writes, in ghastly jesting, to Erasmus, that "wood is scarce and dear in London because so much is used in burning heretics"; Stanley of Ely, a notorious and open profligate; a nameless bishop, who of- fered to Erasmus a benefice and a large sum of money if he would become his tutor for a year; a bishop satirized by More, under the name of Posthumus, as distinguished from other bishops, who were usually selected at random, by the exceptional care exhibited in his, case in selecting a man hopelessly ig- norant and stupid; there were bishops who 46 The English Reformation. owed their rapid translations and promo- tions not at all to successful discharge of episcopal duty, but " whose benefices were the reward of purely secular services, and who, consequently, had hardly a chance of discharging with diligence their spiritual and . pastoral functions"; and, to name no more, there was Wolsey, with all his course before him, just beginning to tread "the ways of glory," and sound "the depths and shoals of honor," destined to find to his sorrow, "How wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors." There were vacant places, also, in that as- sembly, that had their own tale to tell. The sees of Bath and Wells and of Worcester were held in those days by two non-resident Italian prelates, whose main connection with their dioceses seems to have been to receive from them the revenues which they spent at Rome. These instances exhibit the culmination of one line of papal interference, and that a disastrous one, in England; though it is not to be for- The English Reformation. 47 gotten that more than these two prelates then held their sees, in the very teeth of the stat- utes of the realm, by papal provision. 9 Of those who composed the Lower House there were doubtless some whose sympathies went with Colet, not only in the practical matters touched on in his sermon, but also in his dislike of the new theology of the schoolmen, and his desire "to restore the theological studies that were founded upon the Scriptures and the primitive Fathers"; in his opposition to the compulsory celibacy of the clergy; in his objections to the worship of images; in his denunciation of "anxious and frequently repeated confession "; in his 9 This was the case with Sherburn of Chichester, Oldham of Exeter, Mayew or Mayo of Hereford, Smith of Lincoln, etc. The two Italians were Adrian Castello, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Sylvester Gigles, or Gigliis, of Worcester, who suc- ceeded his uncle, an Italian, in the see, and was himself succeeded by another Italian, after an interval of about two years, during which time the see was administered by still another Italian, a Cardinal at Rome. Non-residence was thus the rule at Wor- cester for nearly forty years.. See Le Neve's "Fasti Ecclesice Anglicana" and Seebohm's "Oxford Reformers," pp. 224, ff. 48 The English Reformation. practice of saying mass "only upon Sundays and great festivals"; and in those educa- tional and religious reforms which appear in all the arrangements of his school in London, to which he gave the name of the great apos- tle, whom, to use his own words, he "so dearly loved and admired." 10 But besides these there must have been others probably a much more numerous body than the former to whom such thoughts were, to say nothing of principles and acts, blank and atrocious heresy; men who "hated the pernicious innovation of the Greek tongue," and sneered at Erasmus, as Grceculus iste; to whom the study of the Scriptures was as "the root of all evil"; who accepted the specular tions of the schoolmen, even before they had been petrified at Trent, as articles of faith; and to whom not the successional Church, semper et ubique, but the present Church, under the headship of the Roman pontiff, was the "pillar and ground of the truth." . Before such an assembly the brave Dean 10 "Letters of Erasmus," quoted by Knight. The English Reformation. 49 of St. Paul's stood up and spoke of the need of reformation. He touches, naturally, on evils of practice rather than anything else; but the dealing with those must have brought in its train the dealing with doctrines from which they originated, or with which they were close- ly connected. His beadroll of evils is a most striking one, and contains the justification of many complaints in later years which are now sometimes spoken of as mere pretences and vain shews. But here it is not a layman who speaks to laymen, or a body of laymen which speaks to the sovereign; it is a cleric, high in position and pure in life, who speaks to a body of cler- gymen. When Colet comes to the second part of his noble sermon, he begins by asserting that what is needed to effect reform is not the enactment of new laws (of which he says in words that are not unfitting to our own days there are enough and to spare), but the faithful ap- plication of existing laws; while his line of remark makes it clear that he has specially in mind the ancient canons and the early 50 The English Reformation. , j councils. He denounces, in terse and cogent phrases, rash ordinations of unlearned and evil living priests; promotions not for merit but by favor, so that " instead of elders, boys, in- stead of wise men, fools, instead of good men, evil ones rule and reign"; simony which is a plague and a contagion among priests; non- residence of those having cure of souls with all its train of evils; the secularity of the clergy, and their evil manners; the equal sec- ularity of monks; uncanonical election of bish- ops more concerned with earthly things than with those of Christ; episcopal non-residence with its neglect of preaching and ministering sacraments, and its lack of care for the poor; the squandering of the patrimony of the Church; the corruptions of the ecclesiastical courts with their inventions for getting money and their foul avarice; and the neglect of provincial as well as general councils. 1 Had the sugges- 1 See the Sermon in Knight's Life of Colet, " p. 238 ; Seebohm's "Oxford Reformers" etc., p. 230. I wish we could say that the Reformation extinguished all these ingrained evils, especially those of episcopal and clerical non-residence and pluralities. But the The English Reformation. 51 tions of Colet been acted on, there would have been less occasion for the accusation of the Ordinaries by the Commons in 1532. I have dwelt thus long on the scene and the sermon of Feb. 6, 1512, because they present so distinct a picture of the then present, and afford so clear an indication of the coming fu- ture of the Church of England. They shew what thoughts were in the minds of thought- ful men; what ideas were coming to the front; what collisions of intellectual and religious prin- ciples and forces were impending. They illus- trate the three causes of the cry for reform spoken of in my last lecture. They intimate the method of reform that will be adopted, the action of a National Church in a National Synod. They suggest the appeal, by which that reform will shape itself, to Holy Script- ure and ancient authors. Nor is it difficult to not unfounded complaints of the Puritans at the Hampton Court Conference, in 1604, and the wretched facts of the eighteenth cen- tury shew how rooted these last named evils were. See Cardwell's "Conferences," c. iv.; and Overton and Abbey, "History of the English Church in the Eighteenth Century," vol. ii. c. i. 52 The English Reformation. $ see the foreshadowing of the lines which it will take, and the evils with which it will deal, evils which I will state in the words of Mr. Blunt: " The organic or constitutional abuses, indicated by so many writers, as eating out the heart of the Church; the doctrinal errors which had grown up in mediaeval times; and the supersti- tions with which religion had been burdened;" to use the familiar phraseology of the preface to our own Prayer Book, abuses and corruptions in Discipline, in Doctrine, and in Worship. * But there are still other things to be taken into account before we have completed our proposed view of the lines in which reform will run, and the forces that will be brought to bear upon it. Many misrepresentations of the real character of the Anglican Reforma- tion are due to misconceptions in regard to the matters of which I proceed to speak. It requires no very extended or careful view of the usurpations of the Papacy, to see that they everywhere interfered with the ancient and established rights of rulers, and the rela- 2 Blunt, "Reformation," p. 21. The English Reformation. 53 tions of subjects to the civil government. Such interference enters into the Roman ideal of the practical working of the Church to-day; and it was far less an ideal and more a reality in the sixteenth century. 3 In England, the ancient prerogatives and rights of the Sovereign in regard to the ap- pointment of bishops, the holding of synods, the determining all criminal causes in the courts of the realm, had been seriously inter- 3 It is worth while to compare the claims of Boniface VIII., in the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302, of Paul IV., in the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, as late as 1558, of Gregory XI., Gregory XII., Pius V., and Urban VIII., in the Bull In Ccena Domini, from 1372 to 1627, and of Pius IX., in the Syllabus of 1864, with the Irish Remonstrance of 1661, the Declaration of the Irish Roman Cath- olic Committee in 1757, the Protestation of the entire Roman Communion in England in 1789, the Synodical Declaration of the Irish Bishops in 1810, and the Testimony of Bishop Doyle and others before the Committee of the House of Lords in 1825-26. The comparison will shew that opposition to papal claims which was not formally condemned during the middle ages, and, even down to our own times, is now "judicially extinguished within the papal Church, by the recent decrees of the Vatican Council," in 1870. See Gladstone's "Newest Fashions" etc.; "Janus;" Prof. Friedrich's " Documental 54 The English Reformation. fered with by papal encroachments; and the relations of the subject to the civil government had been equally interfered with by the trial of criminous clerks, and persons claiming bene- fit of clergy, not in the civil but in the eccles- iastical courts with final appeal to Rome. I am now merely mentioning instances, in a gen- eral way, and in illustration of the statement just made. The subject must come up again in more specific detail. How were these wrongs for whether the older 'state of things was, in itself considered, good or bad is nothing to us here; if good the unlawful change only made it bad, if bad the same change did not make it better; how were these wrongs to be righted ? Surely only by that power whose ancient immunities had been attacked, that is by the civil power, vested in the Sovereign and Parliament of England. To that extent then the civil power must par- ticipate in any practical reformation dealing with actual wrongs and evils. But this is not all. The universal theory in Europe and in that word one includes The English Reformation. 55 England in the sixteenth century, was that spiritual sentences and laws could not stand on their spiritual character alone, but must also have the force and penalties of civil law annexed to them. They must be made ef- fective in foro contentioso, by compulsory pen- alties of the state, as well as in foro con- scientiae, by spiritual penalties of the Church. 4 The right or the wrong of this theory is, again, nothing to us just here. All we have to do with is the fact that it existed and had long been in existence in the sixteenth century; that it was universally held; and that it must enter as a factor into any plan of reform. It is needless to add that the civil power is thus again brought prominently forward. The lines, therefore, on which we may ex- pect the Anglican Reformation to move will be constitutional, ritual, and doctrinal. And the forces which will be brought to bear upon the work must, from the necessities of the case and the universal theory of the time, be 4 See Wharton's "Troubles and Trials of Abp. Laud," ed. 1695, p. 309. 56 The English Reformation. ecclesiastical and civil, or, if the phrase is pre- ferred, spiritual and temporal. The compre- hension and application of these plain facts and principles will brush away a good deal of vague and declamatory talk about the Reformed Church of England being a parliamentary Church and a creation of the State; and will justify the terse but exhaustive statement of Archbishop Laud, " In the Reformation, . . our princes had their parts and the clergy theirs." 5 I called attention, in my first lecture, to the important fact that synodical action, as over against individual action, had preserved our Reformed Church from taking on the impress of the mind, or receiving the name of any single leader. The considerations just brought to your notice illustrate the same truth more fully. But something more is necessary to present it in its completeness. Keeping our eyes fixed on England, we find (not forgetting the general causes, already mentioned, of the universal cry for reform), three elements at work which deserve careful attention, s Laud, "Conf. with Fisher," p. 127. The English Reformation. 57 The first of these is that ever increasing opposition to the usurpations of the papacy which was evinced by the great body of the bishops, and which could not but be felt most deeply by the civil power. This opposition, as will appear more Tully in due time, had come to the surface on many occasions an- terior to its final explosion in the sixteenth century. So long, however, as the protracted contest between the sovereign and the barons was going on, with its engrossing interests and its varying fortunes, such an explosion was impossible; while the two great agen- cies of papal encroachments, force and fraud, had " ample room and verge enough " to work in. The second element is found in the im- proved condition of the universities, in the abandonment of mere scholasticism, and the study of Holy Scripture and the Early Fa- thers; and would tell, if not entirely yet, mainly on scholars. The third appears "in the direct influence which was exerted by the circulation in Eng- 58 The English Reformation. ) land,' beginning as early as 1520, of Lu- theran tracts and other publications of a simi- lar character"; and would naturally take up into itself whatever remained of the " earlier Lollard movement, and thus affect the great body of the people." 6 * Here were great possibilities for good, per- haps we may say almost equal possibilities for evil. Had any one of these elements be- come effective, to the exclusion of the other two, we might have seen a reform simply re- "jecting the papal claims and regulating the hierarchy, while doctrine and ritual remained untouched; or one dealing exclusively with doctrine, and putting ritual and the hierarchy to one side; or, lastly, one without guidance or direction, and losing itself in a confusion little short of anarchy. The overruling providence of God averted, in good measure, these several dangers; while from the joint operation of all those " agencies combined, and modified through combination," Hardwick, "Reformation," p. 181, ff. This classification of causes peculiar to England is taken from him. The English Reformation. 59 working on the lines, in the methods, by the forces already indicated, rose the complex structure known as the " Reformed Church of England"; whose eventful history has, therefore, ever since exhibited the working of various elements, instinct with life and spirit; sometimes, indeed, jarring with each other, but never, God be thanked except with some ungoverned spirits destroying unity. 7 M. Guizot, in his History of Civilization, 8 has an observation which seems to me worth quoting at this point. He says, "When we. look at the civilizations which have preceded that of Modern Europe, whether in Asia or elsewhere, including even those of Greece and Rome, it is impossible not to be struck with the unity of character which reigns among them. Each appears as though it had ema- nated from a single fact, a single idea." And then, after shewing how entirely different European civilization is in this regard, in its principles of organization, its sentiments, its 7 Hardwick, "Reformation," pp. 8 Lect. ii. Am. Ed. p. 35 ff. 60 The English Reformation. 1 opinions, its literature, he adds, " While in other civilizations the exclusive domination, or at least the excessive preponderance, of a single principle, of a single form, led to tyr- anny, in modern Europe the diversity of the elements of social order, the incapability of any one to exclude the rest gave birth to the liberty which now prevails." I am aware that comparisons do not, as it is said, go on all fours. They do, however, illustrate. And unless I greatly err, we find in Guizot's striking contrast a very apt illus- tration of the difference between the Early Church on the one side and the Modern Tri- dentine Church on the other, between the results of the Anglican and the Continental Reformations. In the Tridentine Church and the Continental Reformations, such a predom- inance of one idea, such a dependence on one master, such an assertion of one thing as the articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesice, as that when that one master falls, that one idea and article give way, then the tyranny, so en- gendered, passes into utter license. In the The English Reformation. 6 1 Early Church and the Anglican Reformation,, such an absence of a single master, and of one overmastering idea, such a balance and reciprocal influence of elements and factors, as that permanent tyranny becomes well-nigh impossible, and there can be no break down that will involve everything in ruin. We have now reached the point where a question arises as to the principle by which measures of reform were regulated and shaped. This is a most important inquiry. For no intelligent estimate can be formed of any movement, however clearly we may have be- fore our minds agencies, methods, and factors, until we have also an equally clear insight into the principle that underlies and guides it. In the present case this principle is not dif- ficult to find. Colet stated it in advance, when, before the sixteenth century had fairly opened, he wrote to Erasmus of his earnest wish to recall men to " the Scriptures and the primitive Fathers." It was a voice from Ox- ford repeating the cry of Bernard uttered nearly four hundred years before. It was the 62 The English Reformation. ; 1 ; > watchword of our Reformation. It is heard over and over again as the years go by. The fact is too patent to need more than a rapid summary of its proofs. Beginning, then, with the action touching the papal jurisdiction and the royal supremacy from 1531 to 1533, we pass on to the Ten Articles of 1536, The In- stitution of a Christian Man in 1537, The Erudition of a Christian Man in 1543, the Homilies of 1547, The Act Ordering Admin- istration of the Eucharist in both Kinds of 1547, The Preface to the Prayer Book of 1549, The Ordinal of 1550, the Reformatio Legum of 1552, the Act of Supremacy of 1559, the Homilies of 1562, the Canon of Preachers in 1571, and we find, all through, the appeal to Holy Scriptures and the Early Church rec- ognized and applied in synodical or quasi synodical action. So that " in England the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture was maintained, not against a Catholic tradition teaching the same doctrines as Scripture itself, and therefore strictly confirmatory of Script- ure; but against a tradition imagined to con- The English Reformation. 63 vey articles of faith in addition to those which Scripture contained." 9 Around these synodi- cal acts gather a host of Anglican divines, whose names require no mention. The con- sensus of synods and divines is clear, uniform, continuous, and, I may say, unanimous. Nor is there anything new and of the nature of a discovery in all this. It is neither more nor less than the rule of " universality, an- tiquity and consent," laid down by Vincent of Lerins, more than a thousand years before our Reformation. 10 As many persons seem to have taken a crude and unintelligent view of this canon of Vincent, let me, especially be- cause of its connection with our own work of reform, call your attention to the safeguards and limitations under which he sets it forth. First, he " guards carefully against being 9 Palmer, " Treatise of the Church of Christ," vol. i. p. 454. Am. Ed. He quotes the title of a treatise of Dr. Smythe (a papist), "Zte Veritatibus non Scriptis" as shewing the animus of the papal arty. See also J. J. Blunt, "Right Use of the Early Fathers," lect. i. J o " Commonitorium" c. xxvii. ff. 64 The English Reformation. j supposed for one instant" to deny the suffi- ciency of Scripture, or " to put Scripture and Tradition on a par, or to amalgamate them like two equal co-ordinate elements in one Rule of Faith." 1 After saying that it has ever been the custom in the Church to prove the Faith " first by the authority of the Divine Canon, then by the tradition of the Catholic Church," he goes on to explain what he means by this. "Not that the Canon alone is not self- sufficient for all purposes: but because very many persons interpreting the Divine Words according to their own judgment conceive va- rious opinions and errors, and that therefore it is necessary that the understanding of the heavenly Scriptures be directed to the one rule of ecclesiastical meaning; chiefly, however, in those questions on which rest the foundations of the entire Catholic Faith." 2 Thus by anticipation he asserts with us the supremacy and sufficiency of the written Word; and denies beforehand the Roman doctrine of 1 Owen, "Int. to Dogmat. Theol.," p. 35. 2 " Comm." c. xxix. The English Reformation. 65 to-day, that the Word of God is contained " in written books and unwritten traditions;" 3 and would employ what he calls tradition (and what he means by that we shall see imme- diately), only as a help in attaining the mean- ing of Scripture, and, therefore, as entirely subsidiary to it. Secondly, in shewing what he means by this subsidiary tradition and how he would apply it, he says: "And if at any time a part shall have rebelled against universality, novel- ty against antiquity, the dissent of one or a few. . . against the consent of all, or at least by far the majority, ... let them prefer the in- tegrity of the universality to the corruption of the past. In which same universality, let them prefer the religion of antiquity to the profaneness of novelty; and also, in antiquity itself, let them first of all prefer the general decrees, if there be any, of a universal Coun- cil to the temerity of one or of very few; then in the next place, if that does not exist, the sentiments of many and great masters agree- a Trent, Sess. iv. 66 The English Reformation. ing with each other." 4 Thus he refuses to make universality at any one time, without regard to continuousness from the beginning, a test of truth; so holding together the ubique and the semper, and showing that what he means by tradition is not some uncertain unwritten thing declared somehow, by the Church at different times; but the consentient written, documentary testimony of universal Councils and " great masters." And, finally, to shew under what limitations his rule is to be applied, he says: " Which an- cient consent of the Holy Fathers is to be in- vestigated and followed by us with great zeal not in all questions of the Divine Law, but only, at least principally, in the Rule of Faith!' 5 Thus he recognizes room for freedom of opin- ion, while still there is unity in the Faith. The position taken is throughout a prophetic protest against the doctrine of the " Holy Roman Church" in and since the Council of Trent, and a prophetic defence of the English Reformation. After all, this is no more than 4 " Common." c. xxyii. * " Common" c. xxviii. The English Reformation. 67 what appears in the action of the Council of Nicaea touching the creed, and in its well- known sixth canon; and in the rule of Tertul- lian, "The first is true, the later is spurious." 6 It is the more necessary to put this subject clearly and distinctly before the minds of all who may in any way be called on to maintain or defend the position of our Church, because the conditions under which we must do our work are no longer what they were three cen- turies ago. 7 This change of conditions is a radical one; although it only affects the appeal to the transmitted testimony of the Church. At the time of the Reformation Rome asserted, as she asserts now, that God's Word is con- Id esse verum quodcunque primum; id esse adulterum quod- cunque posterius. Adv. Prax. i. 7 Nearly forty years ago, the then Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Kaye, wrote words which now seem prophetic. " If we mistake not the signs of the times, the period is not far distant when the whole controversy between the English and Romish Churches will be revived, and all the points hi dispute again brought under review. Of these points none is more important than the question respect- ing Tradition." Kaye's " Tertullian," p. 281. 68 The English Reformation. ! tained in Holy Scripture and in unwritten tradition and that the former was insufficient without the latter. We, on the contrary, maintained, as we do now, that God's Word is contained in Holy Scripture alone, and that this Divine Canon is entirely sufficient in itself to settle all controversies; but that when the meaning of the Divine Canon is disputed then, as subsidiary and auxiliary to it, we appeal to what may be called tradition if you will, but what might better be termed historic testi- mony. This was, as we have seen, the old Vincentine rule from which Rome had de- parted. Still, the nature of the appeal to tradi- tion or testimony was not at the era of the Reformation a point in dispute, at least not formally. On either side the appeal was to documentary testimony, acts of Councils and writings of Fathers. No doubt there was all along a tendency manifesting itself among Ro- man controversialists to make the conscious- ness of the existing Church, its present theory in doctrine or anything else, the true interpre- The English Reformation. 69 ter of tradition, let documentary testimony be what it might. No doubt, at first, this ten- dency was no more than a tendency, and even Trent asserted, that the tradition "must be preserved by continuous succession in the Cath- olic Church." This tendency has, however, in our day taken definite shape, and become to a large extent a rule; and the old historical appeal is likely to be pretty much abandoned. Indeed it has been lately asserted, permissu superi- orum, that " where a thing is once commonly accepted in the Church, this common testi- mony of the living Church, is an infallible proof that this opinion is contained in tradi- tion and needs no documents of antiquity." When history can thus be manufactured to order, the historical argument becomes less than nugatory. But this universal solvent, the arcanum magnum of Romanism, had not been brought out at the time of our Refor- mation. 8 8 Cardinal Newman has professed his weariness of our anti- quarianism; the Abbe Martin enlarges on the uncertainty of 70 The English Reformation. . j Method, agencies, lines of reform and gov- erning principle reduced to a practical rule, being now set forth, the next question is, where are we to look for results; how are we to be informed correctly as to what our Ref- ormation effected ? This may seem a simple and almost needless question; but I can as- sure you that mistaken or heedless answers to it have been the occasion of very great confusion. And yet it cannot require much or troublesome consideration to decide how it should be answered. Synodal acts, authorita- tive documents, in some cases (for the reasons already given) acts of parliament, and, some- times, the matured views of leaders are the historical estimates of character, as if that had anything to do with documentary testimony as to fact; and so long ago as 1854, a writer hi the Revue des dettx Mondes said, with evident satis- faction, "Le catholique, prenant le dogme tel que le temps Fa fait, est, en un sens, bien plus pres de la grande philosophic que le protestant, qui cherche a venir sans cesse a une pretendue formule primitive du Christianisme." No doubt he is. But sure- ly "dogma such as time has made it," is not quite an equivalent term to the " Faith once [for all] given to the Saints." See Bp. Kaye's excellent remarks in his " Tertullian," pp. 284-86. The English Reformation. 71 only sources of real information as to the re- sults of the Anglican Reformation. Instead of this method of research and appeal, so ob- viously right and trustworthy, how often has some obscure and worthless treatise, some chance expression in a hastily written letter, some crude opinion, uttered without much thought and afterwards retracted, been pressed into prominence as exhibiting such results. Nor is it to be forgotten that the indiscrim- inating antiquarianism of individuals and so- cieties, by raking out of obscurity a mass of material that might better have been left in well-deserved oblivion, has greatly increased this misleading confusion. Let me mention an instance which strikingly illustrates what has just been said. Lord Ma- caulay once asserted that " Cranmer, on one important occasion, plainly avowed his con- viction that, in the primitive times, there was no distinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of hands was altogether superfluous." 9 9 "History of England," vol. i. p. 39. Am. Ed. 72 The English Reformation. 1 Now what Lord Macaulay said, is in the letter, undoubtedly true. But the conclusions drawn from it are as wide of the truth as they well can be. The words quoted from Cranmer occur in a paper drawn up in 1540, and doubt- less express his opinion at that time. But, it must be remembered, he then held that scho- lastic theory in which he had been trained, that there is only a difference in office ^ but none at all in order, between bishops and priests a theory common to Rome and Gen- eva, if, indeed, Geneva did not receive it di- rectly from Rome; and he also must have held, as Eugenius IV. had ruled, that the es- sential thing in ordination was, not the impo- sition of hands, but the porrectio instrumen- torum y the delivery of the sacred vessels, etc. 10 10 See Pearson, " Minor Works," vol. i. pp. 274, 275; Charles Les- lie's "Discourse on Qualifications to administer the Sacraments," Works, vol. ii., p. 731; Bishop Charles Wordsworth's "Discourse on the Scottish Reformation," App. c. vi. The words of Eugenius IV. are, " Sextum Sacramentum est Ordinis, cujus materia est illud per cujus traditionem confertur Ordo; sicut presbyteratus traditur per calicis cum vino et patenae cum pane porrectionem. " Perrone distinctly says, that "almost all the ancient scholastic The English Reformation. 73 Such was the view held (not, as he says, "temerariously"), by Cranmer in 1540. But let us pass over ten years, and those years of most careful and laborious study, 1 and what do we then find as his matured and final opin- ion, expressed, not in a hastily written paper, but in what was to be a Formulary of the Church, the Preface to the Ordinal? Why, that bishops and priests are distinct orders as well as offices in the Church; and also that for conferring those orders imposition of hands must be had. 2 I need hardly ask what is to be said of the propriety of quoting an early and evidently doubtfully-held opinion, as if it were the settled view of the person utter- ing it, in the face of a precisely opposite opin- ion, put forth as solemnly as it was possi- ble it should be, after ten years of* careful theologians, with whom not a few later theologians agree, think that the matter of orders resides as much in the delivery of the in- struments" as hi the imposition of hands, Pralectiones (as abridged), vol. ii., p. 395. See, also, for Cranmer, Jenkyns, "Works of Cranmer," vol. i. pp. 32-36. 1 See Jenkyns, "Works," etc., vol. i. p. 73; iv. p. 147. 2 Compare "Reformatio Legum," in 1552. 74 The English Reformation. \ study. If such a method can be reconciled with the requirements of ordinarily fair deal- ing, then no man's real opinions can ever be ascertained. Again, we are told, and told truly, that in the " Institution of a Christian Man," put forth in 1537 (while there is more or less confusion of statement, arising probably from the med- iaeval theory of orders), the orders of bishops and priests are, on the whole, spoken of as identical; and on this fact is grounded the further assertion that this is the synodical rul- ing of the Church of England. When, how- ever, we remember that the " Institution" was never submitted to Convocation, but was the work of a commission appointed by the crown, consisting of "all the bishops, eight arch- deacons and seventeen other doctors of di- vinity," and printed by royal authority; and when we remember, further, that the Ordinal, which was synodically sanctioned by Convoca- tion in 1552, contains the distinct declaration that there is a difference of order between bishops and priests, it is not difficult to see The English Reformation. 75 where the truth lies and how the error has arisen. 3 These instances, it seems to me, illustrate, better than pages of mere abstract reasoning, the danger of resorting to other sources of in- formation than those which have been indi- cated; and justify the position which was as- sumed in indicating them. But, it majr be said, does not all this admit the existence of variations and inconsistencies in doctrine, to speak of nothing more, which must seriously damage, if it does not utterly imperil, the claim of the Church of England to be an Ecclesia docens, a teaching Church ? The obvious answer to this question is, that, existing corruptions being asserted, and it being further alleged that those corruptions came in by gradual and varying accretions: it must of necessity follow (until it is shewn that such corruptions did not exist, and did not come into existence in the way alleged), that the 3 See J. H. Blunt's " Reformation, " etc., p. 444, f.; Bp. Lloyd's "Formularies," pp. 101-123; Hardwick, "History of the Articles," pp. 108-113. 76 The English Reformation. variations of their gradual removal cannot be in any degree as damaging to the char- acter of a Church as the variations of their gradual accretion. And what other varia- tions, let me ask, than those which necessa- rily inhere in such gradual removal of grad- ually compacted errors, are chargeable on the Church of England ? Has she, like other bodies, which I will not here name, ever added to or taken from the great historic creeds of Christendom ? Has she ever laid a finger on the divine constitution of the Church in the three Orders of the Ministry and the equal and undivided Episcopate ? Has she ever violated that law of worship which re- quires it to be rendered to the Three Persons of the Adorable Trinity and forbids it to be given to any others ? And is not a Church as much an Ecclesia docens when she is teach- ing and propounding the one Faith " whole and undefiled," as if she were giving utterance to all new-fangledness and teaching the latest discoveries in religion ? Is not " the teaching of great Christian writers fifteen hundred years The English Reformation. 77 ago as much part of the living voice of the Church as anything spoken in our day?" 4 Away with such puerilities ! If these charges are to be pressed against our Reformed Church, they will recoil with tenfold force and crush- ing weight upon those who make them. 5 If now I have been able to present to you a reasonable classification of the matters which, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, de- manded reform in the Church of England; to point out the lines which any practical reform must take and the agencies which, from the necessity of the case and the universally ac- cepted theory of 'the time as to the relations of the temporal and the spiritual powers, must be concerned in it; to lay before you the va- rious elements that entered into the complex work and their accompanying dangers; to set forth the great guiding law under which the work was carried on, a law steadfastly adhered to by us but abandoned by the Roman Church; to shew whither we are to go, and whither we 4 Dr. Littledale's " Plain Reasons," etc., p. 16. 5 Palmer "Treatise on the Church," etc., part ii. c. vii. 78 The English Reformation. j are not to go, for authoritative and correct in- formation as to what our Reformation effected; and, in any degree, to vindicate our Reformed Church from the reproach of damaging and even destructive variations in doctrine, disci- pline and worship; then, my purpose in the present lecture is accomplished. LECTURE III. ABOLITION OF PAPAL JURISDICTION IN ENGLAND. LECTURE III. ABOLITION OF PAPAL JURISDICTION IN ENGLAND. TN approaching the subject of my present lecture, I must ask you to bear in mind that we are not entering on the entire ques- tion of the papacy, but only on its relations to the Church and Realm of England. His- toric facts and ecclesiastical law and precedent must, therefore, be the two factors in our ar- gument. Those expositions of Holy Scripture which stand foremost in the discussion of the papal supremacy as such, evidently have no place here. Those wider views of conciliar enactment and ecclesiastical administration which go with such expositions are, for the present, put to one side. No doubt that wider view, that great- er question, should never be forgotten. No doubt, if the papacy is " anything less than it 82 The English Reformation. ! ; \ has asserted itself to be, if it is not in every- thing the divine ordinance of our blessed Lord and Saviour, it is false, a fiction and an imposture." 6 No doubt, if law and pre- scription shew that it has no claim over the Church and Realm of England, that fact must tell strongly against its higher claim, and take an important place in the wider argument. But it is the former, not the latter, that we are concerned with now. I suppose there are multitudes of persons who, were they asked to state their ideas of the English Reformation, would say, that Henry VIII., enraged at Clement VII. because that Pontiff would not grant him a divorce from his queen, Katharine of Aragon, trans- ferred to himself the power of the Pope in England, and, with the help of his parlia- ment, set up a new church of his own. As- suredly this is "a short and easy method" of disposing of the English Reformation and of our Reformed Church; and, therefore, ac- ceptable to those who value Brevity and ease Hussey, "Rise of the Papal Power," p. 209. The English Reformation. 83 more than truth and accuracy; and accepta- ble also to those who, on the one side and the other, desire to make out a case against us. It cannot be necessary that I should enter here on any formal line of argument to dis- prove this preposterous view. It would be an insult to your intelligence should I attempt it. Some mistakes and ir-relevancies are, how- ever, brought out in it which ought not to be passed by in silence. Let me speak of these by way of preface to the special sub- ject of my present lecture. First, then, we have here a striking instance of the fallacy of mistaking occasions for causes which was touched upon in a previous lecture. The complications connected with the King's marriage to Katharine of Aragon gave the occasion for action touching the Papal Su- premacy, the causes of which are to be sought for elsewhere. Those causes were various. Some of them have already been mentioned, others will be considered in due time. They had also been long at work; though their 84 The English Reformation. : j operation had been checked and thwarted by many things, especially by the protracted and long doubtful struggle between the sov- ereign and the barons, which may be said to have terminated with the ending of the wars of the roses and the accession of Henry VII. Cardinal Manning says, most truly, in a work written before he abandoned the Church of England: " If any. man will look down along the line of early English history, he will see a standing contest between the rulers of this land and the Bishops of Rome. The Crown and Church of England with a steady oppo- sition, resisted the entrance and encroach- ment of the secularized ecclesiastical power of the Pope in England. The last rejection of it was no more than a successful effort, after many a failure in struggles of the like kind." 7 During the reign of Henry VII. no occasion presented itself specially calculated to bring the two forces indicated into collision. Nor was there such occasion offered in the earlier 7 "Unity of the Church," p. 36, Am. Ed. The English Reformation. 85 part of the reign of his successor. There are indeed mutterings heard from time to time, during the administration of Wolsey, whose "well known nationalism" could never have been acceptable at Rome. Complaints come from the papal court in 1516 that "the tenth" has been refused to the Pope; that indulgences cannot be sold in England except under con- ditions altogether distasteful to the Curia; and, in 1518, the Pope complains that he hears so little from England. On the other hand the Pope does hear from England, in 1518, that on a state occasion, at court, "little re- spect was shown to the See Apostolic"; and, in 1525, we learn that Wolsey wrote "sharp though affectionate letters" to the Pope, and the hope is expressed that " His Holiness hath taken this sour sauce, sweetly powdered, to his edification." 8 All these things point in one direction; but they must have come to nothing, because Wolsey was all the time acting as legate and representative of the Pope, and could not, therefore, touch that 8 J. H. Blunt's " History," etc. p. 240. See also p. 54. 86 The English Reformation. ,_ 1 which was the fountain and origin of so many evils, especially of those which affected the constitution of the Church, namely " the sec- ularized ecclesiastical power of the Pope." The question as to the lawfulness of the King's marriage simply brought already exist- ing anti-papal influences and tendencies to a focus; and gave the occasion for turning in- effective or partially effective objections and protests into effective action. But this was all it did. It was not, in any proper sense of the term, the cause of the Reformation. Nor does the character of such an occasion determine, or even affect, the character of a movement to which it furnishes the oppor- tunity for action. If reasonable and sufficient causes for the movement exist, if it is directed by those causes and controlled by great and true principles and laws, then its character is to be judged by those causes, principles and laws, and not by a mere incident in its progress. We note the incident, indeed, but then we leave it. It may be very paltry or even vile; its paltriness or vileness leaves no The English Reformation. 87 stain on the movement into the real life of which it does not enter, and with which it has no necessary or inherent connection. Let the question, then, as to the King's marriage be as paltry or vile as one pleases, let there be involved in it what you will of "inordi- nate and sinful affections " on his part, and of infinite servility and cringing on the part of those who acted with him, these are not the things by which we estimate, or ought to estimate, the character of the English Ref- ormation. That character must be determined simply by the necessities which led to it, and the way in which those necessities were met. It ought not, however, to be forgotten, that the two great underlying questions in this matter were neither paltry nor vile. It is customary to speak of Henry's demand for a divorce from his queen. But the real point at issue was, not whether there should be a divorce of parties joined in an undoubtedly lawful marriage, but whether the marriage itself was not unlawful and therefore ipso 88 The English Reformation. facto null and void. Henry had b.een mar- ried, as we all know, to his brother Arthur's widow under a dispensation from Julius II. The question, then, as to the lawfulness of the marriage, clearly brought up two other questions, on the answers to which the main answer must depend; first, Is marriage with a brother's widow forbidden by the law of God ? and -secondly, If it is forbidden, can the Pope dispense with a law of God ? I only state the questions. But it is obvious at a glance that if the first is answered in the affirmative, then a similar answer to the sec- ond involves consequences that are simply appalling. Nor was the question a mere afterthought. It had been agitated at the time of the be- trothal, and Warham, Archbishop of Can- terbury, strongly opposed any application for a dispensation from Rome. There were also, even then, "murmurings of the people" against the match. Later on, the King's anxieties, and possibly superstitious fears, were awakened by ^ the failure of any male issue and the sole The English Reformation. 89 survivorship of the Princess Mary; and the realm was disturbed by the dread of a dis- puted succession to the crown, a dread in- tensified by the remembrances of the wars of the roses. Nor may it be forgotten that in 1527 when " negotiations were in progress with reference to a contemplated marriage between the Princess Mary and one of the two sons of the king of France," the French envoy then a bishop and afterwards a car- dinal "raised an objection against it that the Pope had exceeded his powers in grant- ing a dispensation for the marriage of Henry to Katharine, for that such a union was for- bidden by the law of God, not by the law of the Church only; and that, therefore, the marriage was not in fact valid, nor the Prin- cess Mary a lawful daughter of the King." 9 a J. H. Blunt's "History," etc., pp. 103, 114. Froude's "Hist, of England," vol. i. pp. 114-117. It is safe to say that but for Katharine's dower and the avarice of Henry VII. there would never have been a thought of the marriage. Canon Perry ("Hist, of the English Church," p. 42), asserts that during the negotiations of 1527 Mary's legitimacy was not questioned. On the other hand, Le Grand, the French historian of the di- 90 The English Reformation. j All this shews that there were matters of the most serious import connected with the marriage and its dissolution which ought not to be set aside as paltry or vile; while, at the same time, it must be freely admitted, that, at last, the most sinful desires actuated the King, and that he, and those who acted with him, adopted methods which can only be con- demned. These are undoubtedly great blots on the character of many persons more or less connected with the Reformation, but they have nothing to do with the character of that move- ment in itself considered. 10 vorce, who had the French ambassador's papers as authority, asserts the contrary. This would seem to be conclusive. It would not, however, be right to say as Mr. Froude seems to (vol. i. p. 114, n. I), that this occasioned the earliest intimation of a desire on the King's part for a divorce. The idea had been entertained as early as 1525 (Perry, p. 41, n. 2), and there is quite sufficient evidence that Wolsey had wrought upon Henry, either directly or by the agency of his confessor. Perry, p. 42, n. 2. 10 Nothing is said touching the action of Clement VII. because the history of the divorce is not under consideration. I may, however, say in a foot-note, that there is some reason to believe The English Reformation. 91 Indeed it may be said, once for all, that nothing is to be more deprecated than the fashion of encumbering historical researches, and at the same time making their results unreal and unreliable, by the introduction into them of questions touching individual char- acter and personal motives. That good men may, under the influence of mistakes to which human weakness is always liable, espouse a bad cause, does not make that bad cause good. That bad men may, under the influ- ence of evil purposes which it may be made that the Pope "was actually induced to pronounce the marriage with Katharine invalid (July 23, 1528); though his dread of the Emperor soon afterwards constrained him to repudiate the bull; " and that he did, if documents may be relied on, say to the Bishop of Tarbes, that he wished the King would marry again "either by dispensation of the English Legate, or otherwise, so it was not by his authority, thus diminishing his power as to dispensa- tions," etc.; and did also, in 1530, offer a dispensation for Henry to have two wives. The truth is that Clement's great point all along was to guard, not the purity of marriage, but the papal power; and that he was a mere puppet in the hands of Charles V. or Francis I. as the case might be. See Hardwick's " Reforma- tion," p. 186, n. i; Froude's "History of England," vol. i. p. 244, n. i; p. 375, n. 2. 92 The English Reformation. , j to serve, espouse a good cause, cannot make that good cause bad. Sol non inquinatur a re turpi. Ananias, Sapphira and Simon Ma- gus did not make the Apostolic Church an evil thing. The shortcomings and sins of individ- ual Christians do not change the character of Christianity. And if the vileness and infamies of Alexander VI., Julius II. and Leo X. are not to weigh against the claims of the Roman Church, why should more of weight be given to the alleged ill characters of some of the actors in our English Reformation ? Let strict historic justice be done to each and every in- dividual; let each receive his own due meed of praise, or bear his own due burden of re- proach. But let not such praise or reproach be transferred from individuals to the systems with which they happen to be connected, ex- cept in so far as their characters are the direct results and embodiments of the principles and doctrines which those systems have inculcated. Above all let not our Reformed Church be held responsible for characters which she did not shape, but which are the outcome of a train- The English Reformation. 93 ing and instruction widely different from her own. 1 Meantime we may take comfort in believing that obscurations of historic truth which are caused by exaggerated views of individual character, are likely to be transitory and even ephemeral. It has been well said by one who had a right to say it, "The libellous Foxes and Sanderses, on either side, of the time itself, have been discredited long ago. And the equally perverse crotchetiness of some modern partisans whether it be the love of clever par- adox which whitewashes Henry VIII. and vili- 1 As an instance of the way in which just weights and measures fail to be dealt alike to all, it may be remembered that while, in some quarters, any conceivable amount of obloquy has been poured on Cranmer for his marriage, no notice has been taken of the fact, that unless Wolsey and Campeggio were married they must have lived in concubinage; for the former had a son and a daughter, and a son of the latter was knighted by Henry VIII. See J. H. Blunt's "History," etc., p. 97, n. 4. Still it must be remembered that after compulsory celibacy became the law for the clergy, "lawful marriage was often concealed under the veil of concubinage, the less disreputable alternative according to the ecclesiastical public opinion of the age." Pryce, "Ancient British Church," p. 205. 94 The English Reformation. l fies the Church, or the equally perverse ex- travagance which in the opposite direction delights to blacken Cranmer are mere eccen- tricities that will make no mark." 2 I turn from these topics which have en- grossed more time and space than I intended, but which must have been considered some- where, to the special subject of this lecture, the abrogation of the Papal Jurisdiction in England. In the classification of the neces- sary lines of reformation, constitutional, ritual and doctrinal, this reform stands first. And as it stands first, and everywhere presents itself, so it also lies at the root of all else; for no other reforms could have been success- fully attempted till this wrong had been dealt with. Wolsey's failure, for in spite of any partial results it was a failure, abundantly proves this. On what law then of the Catholic Church, on what venerable prescription carrying a power as potent as canon or enactment, on what con- sent of the realm of England given by the ec- 2 Haddan, "Remains," p. 369. The English Reformation. 95 clesiastical and secular powers, did the papal jurisdiction in England rest; so rest, that it might not be disturbed without violating compacts in the State and causing a schism in the Church ? These are the questions that meet us when we face that " mysterious shape of sovereignty" which holds in one hand the sword of secular power, and in the other the rod of spiritual dominion. The answer to them opens before us a range of time and events of which I can only touch the salient points in attempting to gather up its testimony. It is not till the fifth century that the Brit- ish Church fairly appears as the Church of the nation. There was, no doubt, a Church in Britain before that period; but it was "scanty in numbers and poor in wealth," and it " ap- pears in history as simply following the lead of the Western Church in general, and spe- cially of the Gallic." Nor is it identified with the nation till "a short time before the Saxon invasion." 3 Amid all the uncertain legends and 3 Haddan's "Remains," pp. 232, 235. 96 The English Reformation. \ : traditions of its earlier days, and all the his- tory of its later period, one fact stands prom- inently out. Its testimony is negative rather than positive, but under the circumstances the more valuable for that very reason. The Church of Britain was simply ignorant not merely of any supremacy of the Pope as of divine right, but of any claim on his part as Patriarch of the West. 4 There was not even that deferential affection which a national Church gives back to another to which it owes its origin. Any such feeling is directed toward the Gallic Church. There is no re- corded opposition, because there was nothing to oppose. There was no protest, because there was nothing to protest against. Roman writers are wont to make much of two things claimed for this period; first the 4 The Roman patriarchate included the ten provinces placed civilly under the Vicarius urbis, namely, Italy, south of the Italic Diocese, and the three adjacent islands. Bingham, B. ix. c. i. Sec. 9. ff.; Palmer, "Origines Liturg," vol. ii. p. 260. ff. ; Bright's "Early English Church History," p. 62, n. 2; Fulwood, "Roma Ruit," c. iv. The English Reformation. 97 story of Lucius, a British King, and Eleuth- erus, Bishop of Rome in the latter part of the second century; and secondly, the pres- ence of British bishops at the Council of Sar- dica, in 347. The story about Lucius is, in brief, this. He, being King of Britain, or at least a Brit- ish king, sent to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome, (A. D. 174-186?), asking that he might "by his commission be made a Christian;" and, that missionaries were thereupon sent to Britain, whose mission ended in the conversion of the British nation, and brought its Church under the papal rule. The germ of this tale first appears in the Catalogus Pontificum, in what may be called its second edition, which comes down to 527. It merely mentions a letter from Lucius; this being the first notice of it after more than three centuries from its asserted date. As time went on the story was variously enlarged, and Adorned with circumstances. Bede took it from the Catalogus and introduced it into England. Then, more than three hundred 98 The English Reformation. years after Bede's death, a letter from El- eutherus to Lucius appears "of all the odd places in the world, in a sort of appendix to the Laws of Edward the Confessor." Were this letter genuine it would make strongly against the legend. For in it Lucius is mentioned as demanding not the Christian religion, but the Roman civil law; and the Pope refers him to the Scriptures as the place where he can find sufficing laws, and that on the ground that Lucius is " God's sole vice- gerent" and " vicar" in his own kingdom. But the letter is only a clumsy forgery, unless in- deed Eleutherus was endowed with so won- derful a prophetic gift as to be able to quote prophetically a* work not extant in his day. For " the translations of Holy Scripture found in the letter are translations made by Jerome, who did not exist till nearly two centuries after the Pope who is said to have written the letter." We may safely dismiss the story with the caustic remark of an old writer, that it resembles the dry and mouldly bread of the Gibeonites which was baked The English Reformation. 99 in ovens nearer home than the Israelites imagined. 6 It is also claimed that British bishops hav- ing been present at the Council of Sardica, in 347, and having joined in enacting its can- ons, the British Church was thereby brought under the appellate jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. "In the third canon'' of that coun- cil "it is said, that 'if any bishop thought he had good reason' to appeal from a provincial judgment of his case, and to desire a new trial, he should write to Julius, Bishop of Rome;" and the Bishop of Rome, if he thought fit, might name new judges, or he might order the case to be tried again by the provincial bishops, or send presbyters from his side (aito TOV idiov itXevpov, legates), to .try it. 6 Now without questioning the presence of s Haddan's "Remains," p. 227; Bright's "Early Eng. Ch.," p. 3; Bennett, "Church's Broken Unity," Romanism, i. p. 17. ff. The latest version of the story which I have seen is in the Abbe Darras' "Hist. Gen. de V Eglise," vol. i. p. 137. He tells the tale as calmly as if it were indubitably true. 6 Hussey, "Rise of the Papal Power," p. 4. IOO The English Reformation. ; \ British bishops 7 or the genuineness , of the canons, or pressing the point, urged by Galli- can divines, that this appellate power was given only personally to Julius, and did not pass to his successors, there are still several things to be carefully noted. It is obvious, to begin with, that new pow- ers are conferred by the canons instead of ancient or existing ones being recognized. 8 There is no reference as at Nice to the " an- cient customs," or at Constantinople to pre- vious canons, or at Ephesus to the Canons of the holy Fathers. The legislation does 7 It is doubtful if they were present, or had any other con- nection with the Council than to accept its vindication of Ath- anasius. The letter of the Council makes no mention of Britain. 8 De Marca says, " The words of the Canon prove that the in- stitution of this right was new. If.it please you, says Hosius Bishop of Cordova, who presided over the Council, let us honor the memory of the Apostle Peter. He says not that the ancient tradition was to be confirmed, as was wont to be done in mat- ters which only require the renewal or explanation of an ancient right." Quoted by Allies, "Church of England cleared from the Sin of Schism," p. 76. See also Innet's " Origines Anglicance^ pp. 182-186. The English Reformation. 101 not recognize an existing power, it creates a new one. Its testimony therefore is fatal to any prescriptive jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. But what is the power created ? One which depended entirely on the action of others, and gave the Bishop of Rome no authority to orig- inate action for himself. If a bishop consid- ered himself wronged by his comprovincials he might appeal to Rome, but the Roman bishop had no permission to act till his ac- tion was invoked, and there was not given him authority " to evoke causes to Rome, nor to summon bishops ex-officio, nor to pro- ceed to review and set aside the judgments of Councils." 9 Nor was appeal allowed in any and -all cases, but only in one, " namely, when a bishop was deposed by his comprovincials." 10 All this confers no patriarchal power, and brings no church which was not a part of the Roman patriarchate as the British Church assuredly was not under the patriarchal ju- Hussey, p. 5. w Hefele, " Hist, of Church Councils," vol. ii. p. 125. IO2 The English Reformation. risdiction of the Bishop of Rome. There is, in point of fact, no record of any appeal to Rome in the history of the British Church. The first instance of it is found in Wilfred's first appeal in 678. Moreover, the Council of Sardica is only a provincial council at the utmost, and its de- crees are therefore open to review and re- versal by a General Council. Such review and reversal were made by the second Gen- eral Council, that of Constantinople in 381, which orders that " in each ecclesiastical prov- ince the Provincial Synod shall govern," 1 by which provision, as even Hefele admits, " the appeal to Rome was excluded." 2 There is, then, no evidence that the Pa- pacy acquired any jurisdiction over the Brit- ish Church either by the conversion of the 1 Canon II. Compare also Can. XIX. of Chalcedon. 2 " History of Church Councils,'* vol. ii. 356. On the whole subject, see Hussey, ut sup., pp. 1-12; Hefele, vol. ii. pp. 112-129; Fulwood, c. xix., xi.; Bramhall, "Works," Fol. 1677, p. 267; Guettee, "The Papacy," Am. Ed. pp. 124-128; Pryce, "Ancient British Church," pp. 97-99. The English Reformation. 103 nation or by ecclesiastical enactment; while the circumstances of Augustine's interviews with the British bishops not only shew that no such jurisdiction had been acquired by prescription, by unwritten usage and accepted act, but also that there had been no connec- tion of any sort with the See of Rome. I have dwelt the longer on this matter for a reason which will presently appear in con- nection with the question, often asked, grant- ing all that has been said, did not the Bishop of Rome acquire jurisdiction in England by the mission of Augustine, in 597, and its re- sults ? The answer is perfectly plain on every principle of ecclesiastical law. There was a church in England when Augustine came thither. It had been in fact, it was then in right, the national Church of the land. Trod- den down it may have been by the heathen, pushed into the corners and by-places of the land, if you will into " dens and caves of the earth," yet still the Church of Britain with its canonical rights and immunities, pro- tected in them by that great canon of the IO4 The English Reformation. ; j Council of Ephesus, in 431, which covers with the shield of law our Anglican position, and stamps the papal claims on England as illegal and a usurpation. These are the words of the Canon: " None of the most religious bish- ops shall invade any other province, which has not heretofore from the beginning been under the hand of himself or his predeces- sors. But if any one has so invaded a prov- ince and brought it by force under himself, he shall restore it, that the canons of the Fathers may not be transgressed, nor the pride of secular dominion be privily intro- duced under the appearance of a sacred of- fice, nor we lose, little by little, the freedom which our Lord Jesus Christ, the deliverer of all men, has given us by His own blood." 3 3 Canon VIII. Each metropolitan was allowed " to take a copy of the things transacted for his own security." The Canon, it will be observed, accords with Canons XIV. and XV. of the Council of Antioch, in 341, and not with that of Sardica in 347. Antioch was one of the five local councils, the canons of which, collected into one code, were accepted by the Council of Chal- cedon, and stamped with the authority of that, the fourth, Gen- eral Council. The English Reformation. 105 On this canon, therefore, we take our stand. It justifies every resistance to the usurpations of the papacy from the action in the case of Wilfred in 678 to the final rejection of the pa- pacy in 1534. And more than this, it contains a prophetic foreshadowing of the way in which "little by little . . . the pride of secular domin- ion" was " privily introduced under the appear- ance of a sacred office," and so national church- es lost the freedom which Christ had given them and became subject to papal bondage. It is, then, nothing to the purpose to say that Gregory I. wrote to Augustine * that he committed all the British bishops to his au- thority. This was just what he could not lawfully do, what the British bishops had an entire right under the Ephesine canon to re- sist, and what they did resist. Nor can we believe that Gregory, who had stigmatized the title of universal bishop, and the claims it car- ries with it, as "proud, rash, foolish, wicked, blasphemous, and anti-Christian," 5 could have 4 Ep. xi. 64. 5 Bright, "Early Eng. Church," p. 62, n. 3 and references. . io6 The English Reformation. I undertaken to act on the ground of the uni- versal jurisdiction of the Roman bishop. In all probability British bishops were scarcely in Gregory's thoughts at all. So entire had been the separation of the churches that to him they were little more than shadowy phantoms, to be disposed of as easily as might be. It may still be said, notwithstanding the Ephesine canon, was not some jurisdiction over England gained somehow through the con- version of England by Augustine ? Some and somehow are rather vague terms, but a neg- ative general will, I suppose, cover them. Among all the romances of history there is scarcely one that is greater than the attribu- tion of the conversion of England to the labors of Augustine and his companions, or to the mission from Rome in any way. I content myself with simply quoting the well weighed and true words of Mr. Haddan: " If Augustine is to be the Hengist of the Christian conquest, his merits must be reduced to the proportions assigned by later philosophical historians to The English Reformation. 107 his secular prototype; and the Christianizing as the Teutonizing of the island beyond- the narrow limits of Kent must be assigned to others." To these may be added the equally true words of Mr. Bennett: " For one hundred years or nearly so after the arrival of St. Au- gustine, not a single county north of the Thames, except perhaps Norfolk and Suffolk had received Christianity through the instru- mentality of Rome;" all the rest of Eng- land was converted by the labors "of the Irish Scots; a Church altogether repudiat- ing Roman interference, denying Roman ju- risdiction, and upholding an Apostolic suc- cession." 6 I do not for a moment mean to say that any conversion of a heathen people or any aid extended to an oppressed and suffering Church, or to an oppressed and suffering mi- nority in any Church striving to maintain or to recover the Catholic Faith or Order in the face of heresy at home or usurpation from abroad, can give the Church that converts 6 Haddan, ut sup., pp. 316, 317. Bennett, ut sup., pp. 104, 105. io8 The English Reformation. i or aids lawful jurisdiction over the nation it converts or the body it assists. In the one case, as appears over and over again in the early conversions of peoples and nations, a national and autonomous Church is founded. In the other, as is shewn by abundant illus- trations in the history of Arianism, no juris- diction is acquired from the outside, there is only reintegration and restoration within; in some instances, deliverance from an obtruded and really foreign episcopate. There being, therefore, no jurisdiction of Rome over England acquired by prescription of patriarchal right, by conversion of heathen peoples, or by aid, if there was any, afforded to the ancient national Church of the country; and such jurisdiction being made illegal and void (unless held from the beginning), by the Ephesine canon, it becomes a usurpation to be resisted and rejected. That such resistance was long in becoming rejection only shews how strong were the circumstances, the force, or the fraud, that were to be conquered. That rejection came at last, only proves that The English Reformation. 109 in this, as in many other cases, right was slow in overcoming wrong. And yet there was continuous resistance. It is enough here to mention the case of Wilfred closed in 706, the laws of Edward the Confessor, the various quarrels with Rome touching exemptions from episcopal jurisdic- tion, the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164, the resistance to Otho the papal legate in 1237, ^e parliamentary refusal of tribute in 1365, and the enactments against papal provisions in England by statutes of Edward I., Edward III., Richard II., and Henry V. I name these simply as instances illustrating and proving the statement already quoted "that the Crown and Church of England with a steady opposition, resisted the en-, trance and encroachment of the secularized ecclesiastical po.wer of the Pope in England." 7 We have reached, at last, the reign of Henry 7 See Bramhall's "Just Vindication of the Church of Eng- land, " and his Reply to the Bishop of Chalcedon; Hart's *'Eccl. Records," c. ii.; Stephens's "English Constitution," vol. i. pp. 178-207. no The English Reformation. VIII., and are to consider the steps by which the final rejection of the papal power was effected. In the earlier part of his reign, Henry was the devoted adherent of the Pa- pacy, and for his devotion, as exhibited in his work against Luther, received from Leo X., the title of " Defender of the Faith." How thorough his devotion was appears from the testimony of Sir Thomas More. More had ventured to give the King his opinion that the Pope's authority had been pushed too far in the treatise against Luther, and had re- minded him of the statute of Richard II. The King replied, "We and all Christians are so much bound to the See of Rome that we can- not do it too much honor Whatsoever impediment be to the contrary, we will set forth, for our parts, his authority to the ut- most as it deserved; for from that See we first received our faith and after our imperial crown and sceptre; which," More adds, "till his grace with his own mouth told me, I never heard of before." 8 But this devotion of the King was 8 Wordsworth, "Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. ii., p. 169. The English Reformation. in by no means shared in by other powerful per- sons or by the body of the clergy and people. What More thought we have just seen. Wol- sey's administration was far from favorable to the papal power. As has been said before, there are complaints from Rome at hearing nothing from England; sharp letters go to the Pope; money payments are withheld; indulgences cannot be sold in the realm without royal li- cense; the tenth is refused; and altogether the relations of Rome and England are greatly disturbed. "The jurisdiction of the papal see over the Church of England was already rot- ting away before Henry VIII. laid the axe to its roots; and it was its moral rottenness which made its destruction so comparatively easy." 9 No direct step was taken till more than a year after the avocation of the divorce case to Rome, an act which was nothing less than an " outrageous provocation offered to an inde- pendent sovereign " 10 and to the entire realm. Nor was that step a violent one. In Septem- 9 Blunt, "Reformation," p. 245. 1 Ibid. p. 247. 112 The English Reformation. ; 1 ber, 1530, the King issued a proclamation, ex- pressed substantially in the words of the law of Richard II., forbidding the admission into the kingdom of bulls from Rome. Had Henry listened to More ten years earlier, he might have been saved the mortification of eating his own words. The proclamation, however, neither asserted nor claimed any new power. It simply brought into action an ex- isting law, passed in 1393; violations of which had been connived at, indeed, but had never been lawful. It looked back over a long past and also foreshadowed a rapidly approaching end. The next step, and it deserves careful con- sideration, was taken by Convocation in 1531, in a petition to the Crown. 1 This petition set forth the hardships and vexations which the bishops experienced in being compelled to pay, as the price of the bulls for consecration, "the annates, that is to say, the first fruits 1 The original document is in the British Museum. Blunt gives it at length, "Reformation," p. 250, ff. See also Dixon's " History of the Church of England," etc. vol. i. p. 113, ff. The English Reformation. 113 of their bishoprics." 2 It then asserts that the annates " as touching the temporalities be- longeth of right to the King's Grace, and as touching the spirituality to the Archbishop of Canterbury." It sets forth the temporal alle- giance of bishops to the Crown, and asks for the abolition of the exaction. The pith of the document is in its close, in which the King is requested, in case the Pope should " make any process for retaining these annates," or with- hold the bishops' bulls till they are paid, " to ordain, in this present parliament, that then the obedience of him and the people be with- drawn from the See of Rome" as the King of France had formerly withdrawn his obedience and that of his subjects from Benedict XIII. 2 First fruits, were, in their beginning, a simoniacal contrivance by which foreigners appointed by the Pope to benefices in Eng- land paid him the first year's rent of the benefice, under pretext of carrying on the wars for regaining the Holy Land. But at last they were extended to all persons appointed by the King or his temporal subjects. How great this burden had become, and how it drained the kingdom, may be seen from the estimate that, from 1486, ^45,000 or $225,000 of our money had annually gone in this way. 114 The English Reformation. In accordance with this suggestion Parliament passed an act 3 ordaining that "all payments of first fruits to the court of Rome should be put down and forever restrained." Unwilling, however, to go to extremities, it left the final ordering of the statute to the King, who put it in force by letters patent in 1533.* Following on this beginning came, in 1532-3, the prohibition of Appeals to Rome. I have al- ready spoken of this matter, as it was alleged to affect the early English Church, and shewn that appeals had no place in that Church's polity. Nor, indeed, did they become at all 3 23 Hen. VIII. c. xxxiii. See Stephen's "Eng. Constitution," vol. i. p. 185. 4 Henry, instead of restoring the first fruits to the Church vested them in the Crown. So they continued till 1704, when, at the instance of Queen Anne and to carry out her generous offer of re- linquishing them, Parliament passed a bill vesting them in trustees for the augmentation of poorer livings. This trust is known as "Queen Anne's Bounty.'* Burnet, with his usual fussy and con- ceited self-complacency, takes the credit of the transaction to him- self. " The Queen was pleased to let it be known that the first motion of this matter came from Me." Palin, " Hist, of Ch. of Eng.," etc. p. 253, ff. The English Reformation. 115 an established usage till after the reign of Henry II. 5 There was no warrant for them in the ancient law of the Church, rather that law entirely condemned them; and they in- volved delays, exactions and abuses that were simply intolerable. The preamble of the "Act for Restraining Appeals," is so remarkable, and so distinctly illustrates some of the grounds and principles of the English Reformation, that I shall ven- ture to give it nearly entire. "Whereas, by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly de- clared and expressed that this realm of Eng- land is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and King, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same; unto whom a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees of people, divided in terms and by names of spiritualty and temporalty, be bound and ought to bear, next to God, a natural and humble obedience ; he being also institute 5 Gibson's "Codex," Tit. III. c. Hi. n. g. n6 The English Reformation. and furnished .... with plenary . . . '. power . . . to render and yield justice and final determina- tion to all manner of folk, residents or subjects within this his realm; .... the body spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the law divine happened to come in question . . . f and the law temporal for trial of property of lands and goods, and for the conservation of the people of this realm in unity and peace . . . was and is yet administered .... by sundry judges and ministers of the other part of the body politic called the temporalty." After this striking preamble, the Act appeals to the ancient laws of the realm, recites some of the many grievances of appeals to Rome, abolishes such appeals, and provides that appeals shall lie from the archdeacon's court to the bishop's, and from the bishop's to the archbishop's, where final judgment shall be given. 6 6 In cases affecting the Crown the appeal lay to the Upper House of Convocation. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 12, Gibson's "Codex," Title III. c. Hi. "The Act for Submission of the Clergy" (25 Hen. VIII. c. xix), made no exception as to causes touching the Crown, but allowed, " for all manner of causes," a final appeal The English Reformation. 117 This enactment cut the tap-root of papal jurisdiction in England, nor, with the excep- tion of the brief reign of Mary, has that juris- diction ever been revived. I pass by here, merely mentioning it, the Act of IS33, 7 abolishing the papal power in the appointment of bishops (because its pro- to "the King in Chancery," who, thereupon, appointed, under the great seal, a Court of Delegates to determine the appeal. Even after this, the King in Council could appoint a Commission of Review. This arrangement continued till the reign of William IV. Then, by Statute 2 and 3 of William IV., the Court of Del- egates was abolished, and the King in Council was to exercise all the powers of that Court; and, also, by statute of 3 and 4 of Wil- liam IV., " the Crown was empowered to remit the hearing of ec- clesiastical appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Coun- cil, who were to report then: opinion thereon to the King in Council." What is called Lord Penzance's Court has, as all know, come recently into existence, and its Judge is put in place of the old Official Principals of the Provincial Courts of the South- ern and Northern Provinces. It is curious, and worth while, to compare the statements of Bishop Gibson, "Codex," Int. p. xxi, with those of Dr. Pusey, "Royal Supremacy," p. 202, and of Mr. Fremantle, "Eccl. Judg. of Privy Council," Introduction. They are condensed in Brooke's "Six Judgments," etc. Int. p. 38 f. 7 25 Henry VIII. c. 20. Ii8 The English Reformation. visions will be better treated of in connection with the Royal Supremacy), and proceed to those enactments by which spiritual jurisdic- tion was transferred from the. Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury. These acts were passed, 8 in 1533-4 and 1536, but as the last was only a sort of " healing act" to cover the case of ecclesiastics who held office from Rome, the first alone is important in our present re- view. Its title is an " Act Concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensations." Peter's Pence were a gift made on occasion of a visit to Rome about 793 by Offa, King of Mercia, for the maintenance of an English school at Rome "for the instruction of illiterate Englishmen who should travel thither." 9 Money payments to Rome are, however, apt to continue, what- ever may become of the purpose for which they are given. The payment went on till 8 25 Henry VIII. c. 21 ; and 28 Henry VIII. c. 16; Gibsons* "Codex." Tit. iii. c. v. 9 Canon Robertson, "History of the Church," vol. iii. p. 181, dissents from this view. But see Dixon's " Church of England," vol. i. p. 1 86, first note. The English Reformation. 119 by this Act it was swept away, and with it the last shred of papal exaction in England. The important part of the Act is found in its earlier portion, and in the three following provisions; that neither sovereign nor subjects shall sue to the Pope, or any of his deputies, for "any Instruments or Writings of what name, kind, nature or quality soever they be of, jr or for any cause; that all such Dispensa- tions, etc., "shall be henceforth granted to the sovereign and his subjects by the Archbishop of Canterbury, only that in case of Dispensa- tions" of a novel kind "a license from the King or Council shall be required; and that all such Dispensations, etc., shall be held good and valid." The Act further declared that it embodied "much the old ancient customs of this realm;" and, most important of all, that it should not be so "interpreted and expounded as if the King his nobles and subjects did in- tend by the same to decline or vary from the Congregation of Christ's Church in any things concerning the very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom, or in any other things I2O The English Reformation. declared by Holy Scripture and the Word of God." 10 With this solemn declaration the series of parliamentary enactments touching the usurped papal jurisdiction is concluded. Those portions of it which it had usurped from the civil power were restored to that power; those which it had taken to itself from the National Church were restored to the authorities of that Church; and whatever else there was came to an end. Side by side with the course of legislation 10 We meet here the word Congregation. Later on Romanists made the use of this word the occasion of an attack on English Versions of the Scriptures. Field, "Of the Church," book i. c. v., at the end, thus meets the attack: "The reason why our translators, in the beginning, did choose rather to use the word Congregation than Church, was not, as the adversary maliciously imagineth, for that they feared the very name of the Church; but because, as by the name of religion and religious men, ordinarily in former times men understood nothing but the professions of monks and friars; so all the ordinary sort, when they heard the name of the Church, understood nothing else thereby but either the material place where men met to worship God, or the clergy ', jurisdictions and temporalities belonging to them. . . . When this error in the conceit and apprehension of men was removed, the former name of Church was more ordinarily used again." The English Reformation. 121 which has been briefly sketched, there appears a series of enactments, touching the Sovereign and the State in their connection with the Church, which I have purposely reserved for separate treatment; believing that by so do- ing the two topics, Papal Jurisdiction and Roy- al Supremacy, might be presented with greater distinctness. One thing, however, must be spo- ken of before I sum up the principles proclaimed and the results attained in these enactments. It could not but happen that, in the years during which these things were engrossing the attention of the " spiritualty and temporalty" of the realm, the theological question as to the spiritual power of the Pope in and over National Churches should come to the surface. It was simply unavoidable. The question did present itself, and the English Convocations of Canterbury and York met it by the defini- tive declaration (in I534), 1 "that the Bishop of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction conferred on him by God, in this Kingdom of England, 1 Canterbury declared on March 5, 1534, and York on May 5 of the same year. 122 The English Reformation. than any other foreign Bishop." That declara- tion, subscribed with wonderful unanimity by " bishops, chapters, monasteries, colleges, and hospitals," completed the work which Convo- cation had begun and which Convocation thus ended. The usurpation was over; and, though for a little while it might revive again, it was never more to find a home in England. And now what principles are apparent, what results are reached in these enactments the detail of which has been but wearisome of Parliament and Convocation ? What light is thrown on the spirit, methods, purposes, of the English Reformation ? 1. The vision of a National autonomous Church, holding the Faith, Orders, and Lit- urgy of the Universal Church, and subject only to a free and lawful General Council, which looms up, indistinctly but unmistak- ably, in the petition of Convocation in 1531, takes on shape and consistency as time ad- vances, till it stands out a living thing in 1534. 2. There is not the smallest thought of sep- arating from the unity of the Catholic Church The English Reformation. 123 of Christ, far less of founding a new Church. The law of historic continuity is all along asserted and acted on. 3. There is no claim of new and before unheard of rights or privileges for Sovereign, Parliament, or Convocation. Nothing is cre- ative, everything is declaratory of rights and privileges once held, since usurped, now re- stored. And the appeal is constantly that of Nicaea to the "ancient customs." 4. The powers and duties of the spiritualty and temporalty are recognized if not defined, and their several jurisdictions are asserted. No doubt the theory was also held for all held it in those days that spiritual power must have added to it the penal force of civil law, and be exercised "'in public courts after a coercive manner." But this does not touch, in principle, the distinction so plainly made. 5. The Pope is acknowledged simply as a Bishop, " the Bishop of Rome, with the juris- diction defined by the ancient canons." 6. There is no impassioned grasping after some vague idea, some unknown right, some 124 The English Reformation. half-developed theory. No single wrong, nor any single doctrine, is pushed into a promi- nence and pressed to an extent that destroys the balance of things, and brings in all those evils which result from distorted and dislo- cated truths. 7. By careful steps and constitutional meth- ods, repellant to those who delight in sur- prises and effects, situations and displays, but welcomed by all who desire well compacted and well adjusted results, the work goes on. The coat was not torn in pieces in hastily stripping off objectionable fringes. Surely these are things to be thankful for. And I hold it to be a most noteworthy and significant feature of this whole dealing with the papal usurpation, that it was begun and concluded by the Clergy of England and not by the King or the Parliament. 2 2 Mr. Blunt has left little for others to do with this subject but to follow in his footsteps and often to use his words. This I have freely done; always however verifying as it turned out need- lessly any references which were made. LECTURE IV. ROYAL SUPREMACY LECTURE IV. ROYAL SUPREMACY. TNTIMATELY connected with the action of the Convocation and Parliament of England touching the Papal Jurisdiction, were the en- actments concerning the relations of the Crown to the Church, called, by a not very felicitous choice of terms, the Royal Supremacy. This is the topic which now claims our attention. There is, I suppose, in the minds of many people, a vague notion that at the period of the Reformation the State, as one party, and the Church of England, as. another party, en- tered into some contract or concordat under which, by some special Act of Parliament, the latter became the Church by law established. Nothing can be further from the .truth. " The Church . of England could not have been established by Act of Parliament, for 128 The English Reformation. I she existed as the established Church of the Country hundreds of years before Parliament came into being. The phrase 'by law estab- lished' is misleading when applied to the Church in the sense of her having been created or constituted by any human law whatsoever, whether promulgated by kingly decree or enacted by Act of Parliament. In no such sense, in any Church or State document where it appears, is it so used, or so intended to be understood. When the Church of England is spoken of as 'by law established/ nothing more is to be understood," because nothing more is meant, "than that her Constitution, Doc- trine, Liturgy and various offices having been drawn up and agreed to by her representatives, received the sanction of the State, and that the observance of them is enforceable by law on those who are her ministers or members; further that she is protected in the enjoyment of her rights, privileges and endowments" as what religious body or civil corporation is not ? "by the law of the land; and that hers is the recognized ecclesiastical organization and form The English Reformation. 129 of worship through which the heads of the State perform all public religious acts." 3 The State never gave the Church its organization nor ordered its government. It would be far more correct to say that the Church in England shaped the State. Indeed the latest historian of the English people does say, that the synods of the Church "led the way by their example to national parliaments; the canons which these synods enacted led the way to a national sys- tem of law." 4 The State, then, never estab- lished the Church by any statute or act. The National Church grew up with the national life, side by side with the civil polity of the nation. The State never endowed the Church of Eng- land as a body. Cathedral churches and bish- ops' sees were endowed by individual gifts to individual sees and cathedrals, gifts fre- quently bestowed by kings and princes. Parish churches, chapels, chantries and even monas- teries were endowed in the same way, and 3 "Englishman's Brief," p. 13. * Green, "Hist, of the Eng. People," vol. i. p. 59. Am. Ed. 130 The English Reformation. . JS " the Norman conquest found the whole land provided with churches," and subdivided into parishes. None of those endowments depended on Acts of Parliament: and while monastic endowments had documentary evidence to offer, parochial endowments rested on custom and prescription. " Domesday Book furnishes direct and unimpeachable testimony on this head." 6 And what is true of these endow- ments is also true of what are known as tithes. Parliament never created these. It recognizes their existence in its legislation; it supervises and regulates them; it solves, or undertakes to solve, difficulties connected with them; but it did not create them. It could not. For whether we regard tithes as dating from the sixth century or from the eighth, " they were payable and were paid to the Church," as a s " Brief," pp. 30-33. It is often supposed that nearly all the endowments of the Church of England ante-date the Reformation. This is a great mistake. The income from endowments, etc., given since the Reformation exceeds that from ante -Reformation endowments, by about ,300,000. See Cutt's "Turning Points in Eng. Ch. History," p. 318. This estimate is as late as 1872. The English Reformation. 131 voluntary rent charge on the land, " long be- fore Parliament existed, or before anything answering to its constitution was even in embryonic being. The payment of tithes is of more ancient date than the Crown of Eng- land, the Constitution of England, or the Par- liament of England." 6 By no Statute of Parliament, then, was the Church of England established or endowed. While, however, the testimony of history puts all this beyond the possibility of doubt, it is equally true that from very early times the English sovereigns had close connections with and intimate relations to the Church. I do not mean to say that from the days of the barbarian conversions, and even from the time of Constantine this was not the case throughout Christendom. I only assert it, spe- cifically, of England. And it may be added, that two things contributed to make these connections and relations especially close and intimate. The first was the mode in which e "Brief," pp. 33-48; Green, "Hist, of Eng. People," vol. i. p. 59. 132 The English Reformation. the English people were converted to the Faith, by the conversion of the Sovereign first and of his subjects afterwards. The second was the intensely national character of the English Church, which has been already spoken of. It is easy to see how these two things would work together in bringing about the closest relations between Church and Sover- eign. The former might operate more directly, but the latter would work not less powerfully; due as it was to "that insular position, that remoteness from the centre of ecclesiastical power, that independent character of its in- habitants, that comparative freedom of its institutions, which gave to national life in England, both civil and ecclesiastical, a com- plexion of its own." 7 I need only cite one of the laws of Edward the Confessor to shew you how the relations of the King of England and the Church of England were regarded in the last half of the eleventh century, and before the Norman con- quest. "The King, who is the Vicar of the 7 Canon Perry, "History" etc., p. I. The English Reformation. 133 Supreme King, is appointed to this end, that he may rule and defend the kingdom and peo- ple of the Lord, and before all the Holy Church, from such as would harm them; and that he may destroy and root out evil doers." The principle embodied in this enactment was rec- ognized, about a century later, in the Consti- tutions of Clarendon, in which' it was enacted that appeals should go from the archdeacon to the bishop, from the bishop to the arch- bishop, " and if the archbishop failed in min- istering justice, resort was to be had finally to the lord King, that by his precept the con- troversy might terminate in the archbishop's court; so that it should go no further without the royal consent." I do not mean to say that either the laws of Edward the Confessor or the Constitutions of Clarendon created the relations which they declare, between the Sovereign and the Church of England. If history can be relied on, those relations are nearly " two centuries older than the revival by Charles the Great of the Ro- man Empire, and more than two centuries 134 The English Reformation. \ older than the recognized kingdom of all England." 8 The enactments are declaratory, not creative. It is no doubt true that Theodore of Tar- sus, the seventh archbishop of Canterbury (who was sent to England in 608 by the then Pope, at the request of the kings of Northum- bria and Kent), 9 did much to bring the island into nearer relations with the Bishop of Rome. He did not, however, whether he intended it or not, subjugate the Church of England to the Pope. "When, for example an attempt was made to enforce the mandates of the Pope as distinguished from his fatherly ad- vice, it met with a vigorous repulse from two successive kings, assisted by their clergy, who s "Church Quarterly Review," Oct. 1876, p. 232. "The union of Church and State dated, in fact, from the very first appearance of the Church in the English realms, and became so blended with the Constitution ijself as to have been com- pared to the mysterious and inseparable connection between the soul and body of an individual man." Brooke's "Six Judg- ments of Privy Council," Int. p. xiv.; Comp. Hook's "Lives of Archbishops," vol. iii., Introd. Bede, "Eccl. Hist," book iii., c. 29. iv. c. I. The English Reformation. 135 thus stand at the head of a line of champions in the cause of English freedom." It is also true that William the Conqueror separated the temporal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and ordered bishops to hold courts of their own, but " the severance was effected by, and the new courts derived their jurisdiction from the Crown with the advice of the Great Coun- cil." 10 I do not know that anything need be added to show you what was the ancient rule as to the Sovereign and the Church in the realm of England. The slightest acquaintance with English his- tory will suffice to convince any man that this rule of relation had been perpetually disturbed, and even broken up, by the long continued and persistent usurpations of the papacy; and that, in any practical reform of the English Church its readjustment must challenge at- tention and action. We need not inquire whether the rule was the best that could be devised or not. The existing evil was pres- 'o Hardwick, "Middle Ages," p. 16, n. I, and Brooke, "Six Judgments," etc., Int. p. xiv. xv. 136 The English Reformation. j= ent and pressing. It had been superinduced upon a former condition of things which had a strong hold upon the memories and the af- fections of Englishmen; and which was special- ly connected with the name of the Confessor, of whom it has been said, " His was the one figure that stood out bright against the dark- ness when England lay trodden underfoot by Norman conquerors; and so dear became his memory that liberty and independence itself seemed incarnate in his name." 1 How strong and lasting this feeling was is proved by the striking fact that from, at least, the time of Edward II., in 1308, till the Revolution of 1688, the sovereigns of England either in the coronation oath or in promises connected with it were pledged to maintain for the realm the laws of Edward the Confessor. 2 What could be more natural than to recur to this an- cient order? What could seem more practi- 1 Green, "History," etc., vol. i. p. 104. 2 Taylor's " Glory of Regality," pp. 329,. ff. 409. William the Conqueror and Henry I. were both compelled to promise the maintenance of these laws. The English Reformation. 137 cal, as all men's thoughts then ran, than to remove the later writing in the palimpsest, and recover the older which it had displaced ? Our present questions, then are these: Was this recurrence made ? In making it was any breach effected with the past in the historic Church of England ? These queries can be answered only by considering what was act- ually done at the period of our Reformation; not, I beg you to observe, what Henry VIII. wished to do; not what he attempted to do by the help of servile ecclesiastics or servile politicians; not what he did, or what others after him have done, by disregard or perver- sion of law; but what was actually done by joint action of Church and State; what,, by such joint action, became the law of the Church and the Realm, whoever might evade it or violate it then, or in time to come. Leaving to one side needless historical de- tails, we shall find our inquiries fastening on four things: the Praemunire of 1529-31, the Submission of the Clergy in 1532, the Statute of the Appointment of Bishops in 1533, and 138 The English Reformation. the Act of Supremacy of 1534. There can, I think, be no doubt that the purposes of Henry all through, were selfishly and out- rageously tyrannical; that he was attacking not merely the usurped jurisdiction of the papacy but the liberties of the Church of England solemnly secured by Magna Charta, 3 and that whenever he could he overrode the limitations of law in favor of his own good pleasure. However, as has just been said, it is not what Henry purposed or did, but what the law was that we are concerned to know. Let it never be forgotten that the Reformed Church of England is in no way responsible for Henry VIII. In 1529, Wolsey had been brought, most unfairly, under the operation of the statute of Praemunire for exercising his legatine of- fice in England. I say unfairly, because the King " had granted him a license under the great seal to use the authority of a legate, a The first provision of Magna Charta, as confirmed by Henry HI. is, that "the Church of England shall be free." Gibson's "Codex," etc., vol i. p. I. The English Reformation. 139 and had allowed the function of legate to be discharged by him for fifteen years." 4 That however was as nothing to Henry. The stat- ute was applied, and the late all-powerful fa- vorite became an outlaw from the royal pro- tection, and incurred the forfeiture of his " lands, tenements, goods and chattels" to the Crown. Nor did the matter end here. The statute of Richard II., under the oper- ation of which Wolsey had been brought, provided that all " abettors, maintainers, fau- tors and counsellors " of one who should vio- late it were to incur the same penalties as the principal. So that the entire clergy and all the laity of the kingdom in other words the whole realm lay at the mercy of the King, and were liable to forfeiture of goods and even life unless he should be moved to pardon them ! A more arbitrary and monstrous proceeding can hardly be imagined. As to the laity, it is enough to say that after servile submission on the part of the commons 4 Dixon, "History," etc. vol. i. p. 46. 140 The English Reformation. and sharp reproof on that of the King, fol- lowed by a brief delay, the pardon was issued and the nation relieved. In the case of the clergy, it was only by the payment of an enormous fine 5 that their release was secured. When the Act, by which its share of this fine was to be guaranteed, came before the Convocation of Canterbury, a new title for the Sovereign was found in its preamble, in the words "The English Church and Clergy, of which he (the King) alone is Protector and Supreme Head." 6 The words were probably introduced by the advice of Thomas Cromwell, and mark the beginning of his injurious inter- meddling with the Church. 1 Be that as it may, 5 About $7,500,000 of our money. 6 Wilkins, "Cone." iii. p. 725. 7 Card. Pole asserts this on what would seem to be sufficient testimony. I do not think Mr. Blunt is quite justified in connect- ing Cranmer's name with this matter, on the ground that in au alleged conversation with Fox and Gardiner concerning the divorce, he spoke of the King as supreme over all causes in the realm to the exclusion of the Pope and all other foreign potentates. He only asserted in this an undeniable historic fact. "Reformation," p. 204. The English Reformation. 141 Convocation refused to pass the preamble with the new title, and thus the title sought for was rejected. Another was then proposed; so that the words should read, "of which he, after God, is the Protector and Supreme Head." This might not have seemed to differ much from, certainly not to go beyond, the words of the laws of Edward the Confessor "the Vicar of the Supreme King." It was, how- ever, rejected; for fear, no doubt, that, under it the Sovereign might claim spiritual power and even authority of ministering in holy things. At this juncture of affairs Archbishop War- ham presented to Convocation a third proposi- tion, namely that the words of the preamble should be, "The English Church and Clergy, of which we recognize his majesty as the sin- gular protector, the sole and supreme ruler, and even, so far as is allowed by the law of Christ, the Supreme Head." And with this form the King was obliged, however unwill- ingly, to content himself. The Convocation of York accepted the pre- 142 The English Reformation. amble with even less readiness than that of Canterbury. Tunstal, Bishop of Durham, 8 who in the vacancy of the archiespiscopal see pre- sided, spoke with great clearness and modera- tion upon the subject; limiting the supremacy to temporal matters; saying, "that, we are all willing to acknowledge"; and adding, "with this explanation the English clergy and par- ticularly myself are willing to go to the ut- most length in the recognition." Still he complained of the ambiguity of the title, and the easy possibility of its perversion. All this brought out explanations from the King. He intended, indeed, to claim power and jurisdiction over ecclesiastical persons as well as civil magistrates; "but he meant no intrusion into the sacerdotal functions. Only so far as spiritual things included prop- erty and justice, whatever power was neces- sary to preserve the peace of society was comprehended in the commission borne by the supreme ruler." 8 Walter Haddon in his epitaph on Tunstal calls him, aureus iste senex. The English Reformation. 143 In all this there is, surely, nothing to ob- ject to. There is almost nothing beyond the power of review which civil courts in our own country and our own time claim. The title itself, as I have already said, does not at all go beyond that given to Edward the Con- fessor; there is really nothing in it but "the strong assertion of an ancient right"; a right which nobody was disposed to deny. 9 It is, therefore, a reassertion of ancient usage, and effects no break with the past of the historic Church of England. Before we leave this matter of the royal title one thing more must be considered. By adopting the preamble of an act in which it was simply mentioned and that only after debate and explanation the King obtained and the Convocations gave an " incidental recognition of the royal supremacy." Possi- bly the chief danger of its abuse lay in this very thing; the lack of definite assertions and limitations. Still, we must remember, the o Dixon, "History," etc., vol. i. pp. 66, 67; Blunt, "His- tory," etc., p. 209. 144 The English Reformation. possibilities covered by this indefiniteness are not all in one direction. If it gives room for usurpation and oppression, it also leaves room for resistance. We have next to see how this incidentally and indefinitely asserted supremacy was de- fined and, as we may say, practically applied. And first I must speak of what is known as " The Submission of the Clergy " in 1 532. This followed on a memorable document addressed by the Commons of England to the King, and known as "The Supplication against the Ordinaries." 10 Some of the complaints in this document were undoubtedly well founded, some were exaggerated, and others had no foundation. It is not at all improbable that the Supplication was due, in the first instance, to royal suggestion. However that may be, the King made it the occasion of immediate ac- tion. He sent to Convocation a demand con- tained in three articles: First, that no consti- tution or ordinance should be enacted by the 10 It should be remembered that the title Ordinary did not imply that its holder should of necessity be a bishop. The English Reformation. 145 clergy or put in execution in the realm, with- out the royal authority and assent. Second, that whereas many of the provincial constitutions were prejudicial to the King's au- thority and onerous to his subjects, a com- mission of thirty-two persons sixteen from the two houses of parliament and sixteen from the clergy should be appointed by the King, who should review these canons and abrogate such of them as they saw fit. Third, that other existing constitutions should stand only when they had received the royal assent. The sweeping character of these demands shews, I think, what the King's purposes were; namely, to abrogate all the existing laws of the Church and to concentrate the entire law- making power in himself. Had this plan been fully carried out, not one law of the Church would have remained from the past, not one could have been enacted for the future, save at the pleasure of the Sovereign. The sub- jugation of the Church to the State would have been complete. It was not carried out, 146 The English Reformation. however, and the danger of a break with all the past was avoided. We have now to see what was done, and in what the action resulted. The third article, which was the really ob- noxious one and contained the demand for complete subjugation was, at all hazards, res- olutely refused. Refusal involved great and unknown personal dangers, but all risks were bravely incurred, and the refusal was absolute. The King yielded, and the article so fraught with evil was virtually withdrawn. What was done, and what settled the rela- tions of Convocation and the Crown, is con- tained in the famous Submission of the Clergy. This Act of Convocation provided that hence- forward that body should enact and promul- gate no canons or constitutions except as it was licensed by the King to meet for business; that all canons thus passed should receive the royal assent before they were executed or put in ure; and, further, that a commission of thirty-two persons should be appointed by the Crown, at the head of which was to be the The English Reformation. 147 King himself, who should review the existing canons and constitutions, and abrogate such as, in the opinions of " the most part," did not stand with " God's laws and the laws of the realm"; provided, that such as " the most part" determined to be accordant with the laws of God and of the land should, under the royal assent, " stand in full strength and power." Thus the firmness of Convocation frustrated the tyrannical purposes of the Sovereign; and the demand which would have swept away all existing canon law, placed all present and future ecclesiastical legislation entirely in the Sovereign's hands, and made the Church the merest creature of the State, was refused. It is one of the many instances, too many to be lightly passed by, in which the overruling providence of God has preserved the Church of England from external attacks or internal evils which threatened her destruction. The commission, I must say in passing, of thirty-two persons to revise the canon law was never appointed in Henry's reign. In 148 The English Reformation* 1551, under Edward VI., a commission of eight persons did revise the ecclesiastical law, and their labors resulted in what is known as the Reformatio Legum. As this code never re- ceived the royal assent, it is only useful for historical appeal as to opinions and princi- ples. It never possessed any legal authority. Following the Submission of the Clergy came, in 1534, the "Act of Supremacy" passed by Parliament alone. This act rec- ognized the right of the Sovereign it did not undertake to create it "to visit, repress, re- dress, reform, order, connect, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, con- tempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed." 1 This statute undoubtedly gave 1 26 Hen. VIII. chap. i. This was followed by another act making it high treason to " attempt to deprive " the King, Queen, or heirs-apparent of "the dignity, title or name of their royal estate, etc." It was a fearful statute, and fearfully used. But it disappeared at the accession of Edward VI. ; and at all events is no part of Church history proper. The English Reformation. 149 the King visitatorial power; but it did not confer new power nor power without limi- tation. It did not confer new power. If any testi- mony on this point can be considered sufficient to establish it, the testimony of Gardiner of Winchester, Tunstal of Durham and Stokes- ley of London must surely suffice. They all agree that " no new thing was introduced when the King was declared to be the Su- preme Head." Bracton, in the thirteenth cen- tury goes quite as far in speaking of the King as the Act of Supremacy does. Coke and Blackstone both assert that power was re- stored to the Crown not conferred upon it. 2 Stephens sums all up by saying that the re- sult of the acts was to enable the Sovereign " to reassume his own authority, and the pre- rogatives of his Crown, from which the kings of 2 Bracton, repeating the words of the laws of Edward the Con- fessor, calls the King " Dei vicarius tarn in spiritualibus quam in temporalibus ." See all the persons referred to, quoted in Blunt, "Reformation," etc., pp. 230, 233. See, also, Brooke's "Six Privy Council Judgments," p. xi. 150 The English Reformation. England had never formally departed, though they had for a century connived at an invasion and usurpation upon them." 3 Not being a new power created, but an old one recognized, neither was it a power with- out limitations. In its own revival, its old limitations must revive also, unless specifically barred out by statutory enactment. While, altogether apart from this important consider- ation, the very wording of the act shows, as has been well said, that the supremacy "is only made a corrective jurisdiction, and noth- ing is said about the directive jurisdiction by which the ordinary functions of the Church, when unaffected by offence or dispute, are discharged." 4 I think I may claim that the two questions asked some time back are now answered; that we are entitled to say that there was a 3 Stephen's "Eng. Constitution," vol. i. p. 193. Article XXXVI. of 1562 XXXVII. of 1571 must also be taken into account. Its testimony is specially to the point because it was passed on account of great perversions of the Supremacy. * Blunt, "Reformation," p. 233. The English Reformation. 151 recurrence to ancient usage in all the action we have been reviewing, and that there was no break with the historic part of the English Church. I know, indeed, that the vague word- ing of the Act of Supremacy left an oppor- tunity for Henry which he was not slow to seize, and of which I shall have occasion al- most immediately to speak. But the abuse of an enactment cannot be taken into account in its rightful interpretation. Nor may it be forgotten that the Act of Supremacy was re- pealed in 1553, and never again revived in its original form. Elizabeth refused the title Su- preme Head, and substituted for it that of " Supreme Governor. ... as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes, as tempo- ral." She also expressly repudiated in an " Admonition to simple men deceived by mali- cious," all idea of challenging " authority and power of ministry of divine service in the Church." And, moreover, in the statute by which the corrective jurisdiction of the Crown was restored, there were " definite limitations which brought it into agreement with the 152 The English Reformation. * . common law." 5 Since Elizabeth's time inter- ferences with the proper legislative and ju- dicial functions of the Church have proceeded from Parliament rather than from the Crown. Let me sum up the matter in the words of Mr. Gladstone: "A supremacy of power in making and administering Church law as well as State law was to vest in the Sovereign; but in making Church laws he was to ratify the acts of the Church represented in Convo- cation, and if there were need of the highest civil sanctions, to have the aid of Parliament also. In administering Church law he was to discharge this function [ecclesiastical courts remained] through the medium of bishops and divines, canonists and civilians, as her own most fully authorized best instructed sons, fol- lowing in each case the analogy of his ordinary procedure as head* of the State." This may not be the best ideal settlement of the rela- tions of the Church and the State. But it was assuredly the only one possible in Eng- 8 I Eliz. c. I. Sec. 17. Injunctions of 1559, in Sparrow's "Col- lections," (1846), p. 12. Blunt, ut sup, p. 234. The English Reformation. 153 land, as men's ideas went, in the sixteenth century; the only one possible if ancient En- glish precedent was to be appealed to, in throwing off the usurped jurisdiction of the papacy. It gave the State, indeed, rights of review, rights of promulgating ecclesiastical laws and "putting them in ure" with the penal sanctions of civil law annexed, to them; but it did not make the State the source of spiritual authority, or yield to it any other than a corrective jurisdiction. Just here the objections may be raised that the appointment of the bishops of the English Church was, by a statute passed in 1533, vest- ed in the Crown, and has so continued ever since 6 ; and that bishops received commissions from the Crown, revocable at the royal pleas- ure, by which they acknowledged themselves to be the officers of the King and nothing more 7 . From these premises the conclusion 6 I do not take into account the temporary abrogation of the conge d' elire in Edward's reign; for the statute by which it was accomplished was not revived under Elizabeth. 7 So Froude asserts, "History," etc. vol. v. p. 23, Am. Ed. 154 The English Reformation. is deduced that the Church became the crea- ture of, and was identified with, the State. Whatever else may be said as to the mode of Episcopal appointment under the Statute of 1533 this at least must be said: No real change from what had been its position all along came upon the Church. The statute itself says of the license issued under the great seal, which authorized election to a vacant see, " as of old time hath been accustomed to proceed to the election of an archbishop or bishop of the see so void." Says Sir William Blackstone, " The very nomination to bishop- rics, that ancient prerogative of the Crown, was wrested from King Henry the First, and after- wards from his successor King John ; and seemingly indeed conferred on the chapters belonging to each see; but by means of the frequent appeals to Rome, through the intri- cacy of the laws which regulated canonical elections, was eventually vested in the Pope." 8 There was, in fact, no real change. The elec- 8 "Commentaries," vol. iv. p. 107, Am. Ed., 1772. Compare Gibson's "Codex," vol. i. p. 121, n. a. The English Reformation. 155 tion by the chapter was a legal fiction before 1533 as well as afterwards. The appointment by the Sovereign leaving out papal interfer- ence was not more a reality after that date than it was before. What is true of the election of bishops is also true of the commissions taken out in the reign of Henry and renewed in that of Edward. These, no doubt, on their face seemed to as- sert that all spiritual jurisdiction as well as temporal flowed from the Sovereign; so that, looking only on the surface, careless or preju- diced readers and writers are very likely to conclude that the bishops made themselves, by this act, only officers of the State. Like many another easily reached conclusion, how- ever, this one will not bear investigation. At the very outset we meet two historic facts which largely modify the conclusion just men- tioned. First, these commissions were taken out by sundry bishops, " Lee, Stokesley, Gard- iner, Longland, and Tunstal," who were all bishops of the " old learning " as it was called, and whose sentiments as to the source of spir- 156 The English Reformation. itual authority are perfectly well known. Next, in the commissions themselves are found such words as these: " to execute all other parts of episcopal authority, beside and beyond those which, by the Holy Writings are recognized as divinely committed unto thee." This ex- press exception of divinely-given powers, proves, beyond a question, that there was believed to be somewhat in the office of a bishop which did not come from the State; while the retention and use, all along, of the rite of the ordination or consecration of a bishop, shows precisely what that was. 9 9 Canon Liddon thinks that Bonner's commission, which is extant, implies that Thomas Cromwell could have held ordina- tions had he not been too much occupied, and that, for this reason alone, they were committed to the Bishop of London. I cannot so read his commission, nor that of Cranmer in the reign of Ed- ward VI. Two things are plainly mentioned; first, ordination, second the finding fit persons to be ordained and instituted to benefices. Now, considering the distinction so clearly made in the "Institu- tion" between power of orders and power of jurisdiction, a dis- tinction so familiar to Bonner, Cranmer, and all others, is it not much more likely that what Cromwell was too busy to attend to was, not ordination involving the potestas ordinis, but the other The English Reformation. 157 Still, it may be asked, What did the com- missions mean ? What power were they sup- posed to convey ? The answer to those ques- tions is not far to seek. I shall venture to present it somewhat in detail, inasmuch as it involves principles, the misapprehension of which has left many well-intentioned persons in an obscurity almost Cimmerian as to the English Reformation. In the year 1537 there appeared the Formu- matters which involved only the pote stas jurisdictionis? Such an explanation is in accord not only with The Institution of 1537, but also with The Erudition of 1543, which says, that "The nomina- tion, election, presentation, or appointing of ecclesiastical ministers is wholly left unto the positive laws or ordinances of every Chris- tian region, provided and made, or to be made, in that behalf with the assent of the prince and ruler; " and at the same time asserts that the power of ordination is given to bishops by the "Word of God." These are the words of that saving clause in the commis- sions, in which Canon Liddon finds it "difficult to think that the power of ordination was included." On the contrary, it is difficult to see to what else they can possibly refer. If we are to guard against what is called " Anglican optimism," let us not forget that there may be such a thing as Anglican pessimism. See Liddon's "Church Troubles," p. xiii. note 4; Dixon's " History," ii. 168; "Formularies of Henry VIII., his Reign," p. 277. 158 The English Reformation. lary known as the " Institution of a Christian Man." It was drawn up by a commission con- sisting of all the bishops and twenty-five other divines, and it is to be specially noted among the bishops are found all those who took out the commissions from the Crown, on which such stress has been laid, in the reign of Henry. Now in that part of the Institution which treats of Holy Orders, the jurisdiction of bishops is discussed at length. Wherefore, inasmuch as the same persons who received commissions of jurisdictions from the Crown here set forth their judgments concerning jurisdiction, we learn from themselves what they understood those commissions to mean; and if there can be such a thing as a decisive contemporaneous exposition, we assuredly ob- tain it here. The discussion begins with the assertions that the " whole power and authority belong- ing unto priests and bishops is divided into two parts, whereof the one is called ppt.estas ordinis [the authority of order], and the other is called potestas jurisdictions [authority of The English Reformation. 159 jurisdiction];" and that "good consent and agreement hath always been in the Church concerning the said first part, and, contrary, much controversy for this other part of juris- diction." Jurisdiction is next declared to con- sist in three things: First, excommunication; in regard to which two limitations are insisted on; namely, that " all punishment which priests or bishops may, by the authority of the gospel, inflict or put to any person, is by word only, and not by any violence or constraint corporal;" and also that such punishment may be forborne if it shall seem desirable for the well-being of the offender or the peace of the Church: Secondly, the power to admit to cure of souls in benefices, to which they have been nominated, persons whom they shall judge worthy; the right of nomination to bishoprics being recognized as resting in the Sovereign, and that of presenting to other benefices as vesting in the patron or founder: Thirdly, the power to make laws and can- ons touching ecclesiastical ministration. 160 The English Reformation. This entire jurisdiction, considered in itself and as a whole, is by the " authority of the gospel" committed to priests and bishops; yet the " particular order, form, and manner req- uisite to the execution of the same," the enum- eration of offences, the organizing of courts for trial, the citation of offenders and of wit- nesses, the processes of procedure, the exe- cution of sentences, are not prescribed in Scripture but are left to the decision of the Church. Such decision was to be expressed in " rules and ordinances to be made by the ministers of the Church, with the consent of the people, before such time as princes were christened, and after they were christened, with the authority and consent of the said princes and their people." Then comes the conclusion. "It is out of all doubt that the priests and bishops never had any authority by the gospel to punish any man by corporal violence; and therefore they were oftentimes moved of necessity to require Christian princes to interpone ' their authority, and by the same to constrain and The English Reformation. 161 reduce inobedient persons unto the obedience and good order of the Church; which the Christian princes .... not only did gladly execute, but did also give unto priests and bishops further power and jurisdiction in cer- tain other temporal and civil matters And therefore it was and shall be always law- ful unto the said kings and princes, and their successors, with the consent of their parlia- ments, to revoke and call again into their own hands, or otherwise to restrain all the power and jurisdiction which was given and assigned unto priests and bishops by the li- cense, consent, sufferance and authority of the said kings and princes, and not by the author- ity of God and His gospel, whensoever they shall have such grounds and causes so to do as shall be necessary, wholesome and expe- dient." 10 w "Formularies of the Reign of Henry VIII.," p. 107, ff., Oxf. 1825. Dixon, "History," vol. ii., p. 167, 168. In 1825, in an examination before a select committee of Parliament, the Irish Roman Bishop Murray testified, that the Pope could exercise temporal power in states only when the right to do so had been " con- ferred on him by the different Christian powers;" and that "the 1 62 The English Reformation. Now, if words have any meaning, these words mean that while authority of jurisdic- tion as well as of orders is originally from God, the right to exercise that jurisdiction in definite places, in exterior courts, with coercive power and legal penalties is not from God but from the State. It is equally clear that it is not the former, but the latter power which the commissions contemplated, and that in this regard the Church of Eng- land stood, in the sixteenth century, on the same ground as any church which allowed ecclesiastical enactments and sentences to be enforced under civil sanctions and penalties. If in such churches ecclesiastical rulers did not, by such allowance, make themselves creatures of the State, no more did they in the Reformed Church of England. 1 Well, in- power which he exercised under that authority, of course passed away, when those temporal princes who granted it chose to with- draw it." See Friedrich's " Documenta" etc., I. Abtheilung, p. 237- i There are passages, too long for insertion, but directly to this point, hi BramhalPs "Just Vindication," Works, pp. 77, 134, Ed. 1677. The English Reformation. 163 deed, would it have been for the Church if, remembering that no power to inflict cor- poral punishments on offenders had been given her from God, she had never sought such power from the State. Well would it have been for her had no such power been given her; no punishments touching life or limb, personal freedom or property, been inflicted by her; no carnal weapons been placed in spiritual hands. But such a thought was in no man's mind in the sixteenth century. While, however, what we have been con- sidering shows that neither by Church nor parliamentary enactment was there any break with the past, but rather a very careful re- currence to the ancient usage of the realm, it is equally true that Henry VIII. perverted or overrode these statutes for his own self- ish and tyrannical purposes. Still, law remains law however much perverted or overridden; and it is by it, and n-ot by any illegal tyr- anny under it, that the English Reforma- tion is to be tested. " Henry's later view of the royal supremacy" no doubt "appears to 164 The English have been that it contained within itself all the rights that had been claimed for the papal supremacy; but such a view was never recognized by any statute," nor by any subsequent practice. Both alike " re- strict it to the restoration of the ancient regal jurisdiction." 2 The King's chief agent in carrying out his purpose of overriding law and concentrating power in himself, was Thomas Cromwell. This man, after a roving life of varied adventure, be- came a member of Wolsey's household, serv- ing that prelate "first as a steward, then as a solicitor, and lastly in that defence before the commons which laid the foundation of his own high fortunes." 3 This is not the place for any detailed account of Wolsey's plans for the reformation of the clergy and laity of England. There are, however, two things that should be noticed because of their connection with the matter now in hand. First in carrying out his purpose of increasing the 2 Blunt, "Reformation," p. 235. 3 Cavendish, "Life of Card. Wolsey," p. 170, note. The Eitglisk Reformation. 165 number of bishoprics in England and estab- lishing colleges and professorships in the uni- versities, Wolsey proposed to provide the req- uisite endowments by suppressing the smaller and some of the larger monasteries, and ap- propriating their revenues. Next, in all his plans whatever may be thought or said of them he wrought first as Papal Legate, and, at last, as Vicar-General of the Pope, a post to which he was ap- pointed in 1527. A person, therefore, occupying as Cromwell did a position of trust and confidence in the Cardinal's household, must have become fa- miliar with the idea of a vicar -generalship, and accustomed to the thought of the sup- pression of monasteries and diversion of their revenues. In entering on the service of Hen- ry after he left that of his former master, with purpose, as he said, "to make or mar," these ideas and thoughts would naturally go with him; and we may, accordingly, without much hesitation, regard the institution of the Vicar- Generalship, and the treatment of the monas- 1 66 The English Reformation. teries as directly due to him and to his train- ing under Wolsey. He became Vicar-General in 1535, and held the office till his fall in 1540. In his hands the hands of an unscrupulous and time-serv- ing man the office became an instrument of oppression and wrong. 4 But whatever it was made and however it was used, it was some- thing thrust upon the Church from without, not developed from within. It was endured like any other affliction, but it was never ac- cepted, nor was the Church, in any proper sense, responsible for it. It lasted for five years till he who held it fell, and it was never renewed. However succeeding sovereigns may have put, as we may say, the supremacy " into commission," no one has ever tried the plan of Henry VIII. His Vicar-General is the only one that England has ever seen. The pass- ing shadow cannot be said to be a part of that on which it merely fell. 4 Pole and Fox in their estimates of Cromwell illustrate the different views it is possible to* take of the same character. The truth, as in most such cases, probably lies between the two. The English Reformation. 167 The great line of practical operation on which the exercise of the vicar -generalship moved, brings up the visitation of the mon- asteries and their subsequent dissolution. Nei- ther the visitation nor the dissolution of these institutions, however, so originated with Crom- well, as to be properly his own. It had long been felt that reformation in this direction was essential. The number of the monasteries was excessive. The evils of multiplying them were recognized at the Lateran Council of 1215; but the papal in- terests, which the monastic and other relig- ious orders served, were so potent, that the increase went on with little or no check. If it be true, as it has been estimated, that there was, at the time of our Reformation in Eng- land, one monastery or religious house to every three thousand souls, Wolsey's policy of diminishing their number is abundantly justified. The enormous wealth, also, of institutions the members of which were under vows of poverty, was discreditable to them while it 1 68 The English Reformation. was injurious to the country. The proportion of Church ownership of land to other owner- ship in England was, according to any esti- mate, astounding, and it was largely in the hands of conventual bodies. The Church prop- erty, according to some writers, comprised more than half of the landed estates of the realm; 5 and the property of monasteries, at the Reformation era, covered from a tenth to a fifth of the soil of England. It surely is not necessary to suppose that all who might object to such an accumulation of wealth in institutions the members of which were to be the " poor of Christ," must neces- sarily have been covetous or seekers after spoil, any more than it is to believe that all this wealth had always been acquired by fraud- ulent and rapacious methods. Again, these institutions were exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishops, whose rights were, to that extent, annihilated; while the rights of the parochial clergy scornfully called 5 Spelman, "Hist, of Sacrilege," Ed. 1853, p. 200. Turner's "Middle Ages," vol. v. p. 169. The English Reformation. 169 by those who arrogated to themselves the title of religious the seculars as well as of the universities were seriously interfered with. A General Council had, indeed, forbidden in terms, such exemption, and had also de- creed that no monastery should be estab- lished in a diocese against the will of the diocesan. 8 Associations, however, which, in their zeal for strict obedience, prefer to obey superiors of their own selection rather than the authorities which " God hath set in the Church," 7 will easily find methods by which canons can be overridden or evaded, as may be most convenient. In this, case they had, also, the backing of the papal power. Beside all this, and after making every al- lowance for malicious slanders and unfounded e Chalcedon, Canons IV. and VIII. 7 I Cor. xii. 28; comp. Eph. ii. 20, and iv. 1 1. These pas- sages taken in connection with our Lord's words in John xv. 16, and xx. 21, together with the facts recorded in the Book of Acts, present the Scripture truth of the origin of the Christian Ministry, as against Dr. Newman's "development" theory on the one side, and the " natural selection" of Independency on the other. 170 The English Reformation. exaggeration, the frightful corruption of morals in many of the monasteries must be admitted. I cannot quote the words of Nicolas de Cle- manges and of Gerson, the one Rector and the other Chancellor of the University of Paris; 1 but they are as severe as any words of Cromwell's agents. And when the Bishop of Worcester could write to Wolsey that he had " often been struck with the need in which monasteries stood of reformation, and that great care would be required in dealing with nunneries, as great abuses would be found in them"; 9 when Wolsey, writing to the King, could say that there were " exile [poor] and small monasteries wherein neither God is served nor religion kept," 10 we can surely reach only one conclusion. More, perhaps, than all else, the monastic system was, at best, merely a human insti- tution; and, even if no question is raised s See Hardwick's " Middle Ages," p. 367. DeGigliis: quoted by Blunt, p. 56. w "Three Chapters of Letters," etc. (Camden Society publica- tions), p. i. The English Reformation. 171 as there well may be touching the principles on which it was founded, there is sure to come "a point at which the best of human institutions cease to be a benefit to society, at least in the form in which they were originally founded." 1 So it was in this in- stance. The system was out of joint with the entire condition of things in the six- teenth century. Nor were precedents for suppression lacking. To say nothing of what Wolsey had done dur- ing his administration, the Knights Templars had been suppressed as far back as 1307, and a number of " alien priories" had shared the same fate in 1416. When, however, from the abundant reasons for reformation and even suppression, we pass to what was actually done by Henry, acting through his Vicar-General, we can only con- demn his methods and their results. I know that the Crown had, by English law, a right to all unowned or confiscated lands. I know that when possessions had been given to a i Blunt, p. 280. 172 The English Reformation. religious house, on certain defined conditions, then if those conditions ceased to be fulfilled, such possessions reverted to the donors or their heirs. I know that under those laws of the realm, part of the monastic property might have gone fairly to the Crown, and other por- tions to the families of founders. It is also true that, out of the spoils, six bishoprics were founded, five of which remain; that some mon- asteries became collegiate churches; that at least two hospitals were reserved for the poor; that many abbey churches became par- ish churches; and that some grammar schools were founded. 2 Let all those abatements be made, and it still remains true that the methods of visita- tion and the acts of suppression were tyranni- cally cruel; that the disastrous appropriations of parochial revenues to monasteries (which 2 Perry, "Eng. Ch. History," pp. 137, 138. In the thirty years preceding the Reformation more grammar schools were founded hi England than in three previous centuries; afterwards they increased even more rapidly. Knight, "Life of Colet," pp. 90, 91. The English Reformation. 173 made so many appropriated parishes sinks of neglect and sin), went unreformed, because the appropriation was chiefly made over to the Crown; and that Henry seized for him- self and his minions what had been given mistakenly no doubt in many cases, but still given to the service of God. In the words of Burke, " the lion having sucked the blood of the prey, threw the carcass to the jackal in waiting." 3 But all this, I beg you to observe, did not touch the constitution of the historic Church of England. All this was done by men trained under other influences than those of the Re- formed Church of England, and for whose characters I repeat what has been said before that Church is not responsible. And what was true then, let me say in closing, is true now. The sharpest and most sweeping con- fiscations of Church property which our own age has seen, in France, in Spain, in Italy, on this Western Continent, have been made in countries where for generations previous the 3 Letter to a noble Lord. 174 The English Reformation. Roman Church held undisputed sway. The property of that Church is to-day safest from attack in lands like England and the United States, where she has neither trained the peo- ple nor shaped the laws. LECTURE V. DOCTRINE. LECTURE V. DOCTRINE. T HAVE now considered, with perhaps more minuteness of detail than may be deemed necessary, the constitutional reform of the Church of England in the sixteenth century. My reason for this minuteness is, that the charges against the English Church of hav- ing broken the line of her historic continuity and violently separated herself from the past, and, consequently, of being a new organization dating only from the reign of Henry VIII., and not organically connected with that liv- ing and self-perpetuating organism which the Church of Christ is and must be, are mainly sustained by mistakes or misrepresentations touching this constitutional reform. It is not difficult, I think, to see why this is so. A Church which holds firmly the great historic creeds, without mutilation or addition, is un- 178 The English Reformation. assailable in regard to doctrine, except on the ground that " the faith once given to the Saints " is not a deposit to be kept, but a germ to be developed. A Church whose offices of worship are linked by manifold ties with those of the far-off ages, retaining and repro- ducing original and essential elements and re- moving manifold incrustations, can hardly be attacked on that score without attacking, also, a good many other things which might better not be assailed. But if a break can be shewn to have been made in the historic continuity, of the Church, involving an essential change in its constitution, then it may well be thought that every point has been gained. Moreover, " glittering generalities" of assertion in this re- gard, can only be met by those careful histori- cal examinations and discriminations of which the majority of men are not over-patient 4 ; 4 Dr. Newman, in his "Apologia" (App. p. 26), spoke with a good deal of contempt of "antiquarian arguments;" and afterwards (in a letter dated Aug. 5. 1868), explained himself thus: "On giving myself to consider the question [of Anglican Orders], I never have been able to arrive at anything higher than a probable conclusion, which is most unsatisfactory except to The English Reformation. 179 which it is easy to sneer at as a mere piece of antiquarianism; and in which, as I have inti- mated, it is equally easy to make mistakes and misrepresentations do the work of historic fact and logical argument. So, on the one side, those whose purpose is to convict the Church of England of the guilt of schism from the continuous Church of Christ, and, on the other, those who desire to do away with all idea of the Church as a continuous and per- petuated organism, agree in asserting such a break with the past, and agree also in selecting the constitutional reforms of the sixteenth century as their chief points of attack. 5 And antiquarians, who delight in researches unto the past for their own sake." What Dr. Newman here pleases to call the antiquarian, is really nothing but^he historical argument. If moral certainty based on such argument is not probable enough to be accepted, then surely human belief is shaken to its foundations and in a fair way to be destroyed. This, however, is only one out of many proofs of Dr. Newman's sceptical turn of mind. See, for the letter, Lee's "Orders of the Church of England," App. xx. 5 " Cranmer and his coadjutors aimed at nothing more earnestly than the preservation of the continuity of the Church. Shallow people now regard them as the conscious founders of a new sect." Haddan, " Remains," p. 382. 180 The English Reformation. this, over and above the consideration that these reforms necessarily came first in time, is the reason why they have been dealt with so much at length. Two other topics, indicated at the outset, remain; namely, Doctrine and Worship. The exigencies, however, of time and place permit me to deal only with the former; or at least with the latter only so far as it enters into the consideration of the former. Were it my pur- pose, as it is not, to present a historical view of the Anglican Reformation, such an omission would not be permissible. Since, however, my purpose has been to treat of principles and topics, selection among those becomes a ne- cessity. And I select doctrine rather than worship, not only because of its intrinsic im- portance, but also for the reason that in- formation on the last named subject is so abundant, and so easily accessible, that its omission makes what must, of necessity, be incomplete, less glaringly so than it would be were the alternative course adopted. The omission must not be understood as intimating The English Reformation. 181 that our reform in worship is any less defen- sible than the reform in doctrine. Far from it. I believe it can be proved to what is tan- tamount to a demonstration, that (to say nothing of the Liturgy proper), " Rome has cast away her ancient offices while England alone has retained hers;" and that "with our- selves alone, at this day, there survives a pub- lic form which retains the characteristic out- lines and essential organization of the ancient offices." 6 The consolidation of these offices, taking the place of such an accumulation of them as that the earliest ones for the morn- ing might be said overnight; the digesting of various uses into one uniform use for the whole realm; the clearing them of doctrinal errors; the omitting from them ceremonial us- ages, the multiplication of which obscured and made uncertain the central and essential act; the removal from them of " uncertain stones and legends," thereby making room for the con- tinuous reading of the Scriptures; the transla- tion of them into the vernacular English from 6 Burgon's "Letters from Rome," Letters x. xi. and xxv. 1 82 The English Reformation^ the Latin, into which tongue Liturgies had been translated because their original Greek was no longer " understanded of the people;" these things affect neither their structure nor their inherent character. And this is, in brief, what was done with them in the sixteenth century. With these few words, which, never- theless, set forth what I believe to be a fair summary of the Anglican reform in worship, and, also, indicate its great results, I turn to the special topic now before us. The first question that meets us is this: What was the condition of things in England in regard to doctrine, at the time when our Reformation began to assert itself? And the immediate answer to the question is one for which we may well be thankful; the Catholic Faith as expressed in the historic creeds re- mained intact, at least in" form. The Apostles' Creed stood as it stands to-day. The Confes- sion of Nicaea had nothing, expressly and in form, added to it. It begun and ended as we begin and end it now. There was appended to it nothing in the shape of those twelve arti- The English Reformation. 183 cles which were added, under the authority of the Council of Trent and Pius IV., after 1564. The Athanasian Symbol, contained "in the Psalm Quicunque vult^ remained unchanged. So far no reform was needed, and so far no reform was attempted. It was no part of the purposes of our reformers " to decline or vary from the congregation of Christ's Church in anything concerning the very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom." 8 It seems to me that the unvarying persist- ency with which this position has been main- tained by our Reformed Church has not been sufficiently emphasized and insisted on. Per- haps one reason has been, for half the trou- bles in the world of human thought arise from not distinguishing things that differ, that writers, forgetting to discriminate among the matters handled during the progress of the Reformation, have laid down arbitrary periods as covering the entire work which really only cover certain distinct parts of it. The aboli- tion of the papal jurisdiction was, indeed, com- 7 Art. I. of 1536. s 25 Henry VIII., c. 21. 1 84 The English Reformation. pleted in the reign of Henry VIII. But the questions connected with the royal supremacy were not finally adjusted till the reign of Eliz- abeth. 9 The same thing holds true of doctrine; which came to its settlement in the same reign. While as to the worship of the Church, our view must be extended over a much wider range, even to the Prayer Book of i662. 10 And 9 It is quite beside my purpose to speak of any after unsettle- ment of the Elizabethan settlement. Any such unsettlement has come rather from changes in the relations of Parliament and the Church than from any change in the relation of the Sovereign. So long as Hooker's celebrated dictum remained true, "there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England," par- liamentary legislation for the~Church might well enough be re- garded as the act of a lay synod of the Church. But the moment this ceased to be true, then exclusion of subjects from parliament because they were not members of the English Church would cer- tainly appear to be an invasion of their civil rights. And when this wrong was righted and they were admitted to parliament, then to subject the Church to the legislation of a body so constituted would as certainly appear to be an invasion of the Church's rights. It is a wretched process to right one wrong by creating another. 10 I am speaking, of course, only of the English Church. For America we come down to 1789. The English Reformation. 185 yet, " the great theological documents of Hen- ry's reign." which " only mark a stage in the progress of opinion, and a stage which under- went subsequently much modification," have sometimes been quoted as if they were of ulti- mate and conclusive authority for doctrine. And in the same way, "the precise stage of opinion and practice that happened to be reached during the half-dozen years of the un- settled reign of Edward VI.," are accepted as a standard, and even termed our " rightful in- heritance"; whereas they only record the ten- ets of a transition period, and can no more be accepted as a standard, than " the precise point reached in the earlier reign." 1 In the matter of doctrine, we begin our survey, indeed, in the reign of Henry, but we reach our conclusions only in that of Elizabeth, and in the year 1571. This is the period which I have in mind in speaking of the persistency with which our re- formers kept always in the forefront of all doc- trinal declarations, "the very articles of the Catholic Faith of Christendom." i Haddan's "Remains," pp. 372, 373. 1 86 The English Reformation. There appeared in the reign of Henry VIII. three doctrinal formularies with which the Church was directly concerned, and one which is really due to the King and Par- liament only. 2 To this last I shall have oc- casion to refer hereafter. The Ten Articles of 1536, contain the first doctrinal utterances of the English Church after the abolition of the papal jurisdiction. They were put forth in consequence of representations, made by the Lower House in Convocation, touching errors " publicly preached, printed and professed"; while the detail of these errors shews that there were extreme opinions coming into prominence on the reforming side that re- quired to be looked after as well as mediaeval corruptions. Thus early are indications given of that double contest in which our Church 2 I have not taken into account the XIII Articles of 1538 which exhibit the result of the Lutheran conferences of that year. Their chief historical interest centres in the fact that whatever passed from the Augsburg Confession into the Articles of 1552, passed through the medium of those Articles and not directly. See Hard wick, "Hist, of Articles," c. iv., and App. ii. The English Reformation. 187 has all along been compelled to engage, that "double witness" which it has always been her duty to bear. People have called her position in this re- gard a Via Media, as if she had taken up a process of paltering, trimming and dodging between two opposing parties. There is no truth in this view, and, therefore, the phrase is as unmeaning as it is misleading. It may declare a result, but it certainly does not in- dicate the process by which the result was reached. The principle adopted was that the Faith was to be kept "whole and undefiled"; whole as against subtractions, undefiled as against additions. But this, surely, is a posi- tive ground, and not a plan of compromise. Besides, what a strange sort of compromise would that be which should bring on a joint attack that has lasted for three centuries from the very parties it was intended to conciliate! Such a notion may be the high- est to which a political historian is able, to rise, but it falls, very far short of the truth. 1 88 The English Reformation. Nor is the process which was really adopted, the line along which our reformers moved, open to the objection that it is merely nega- tive. That is, surely, a very positive process by which attempted subtractions from the Faith are resisted. While the correction of additions and accretions is negative only in form and not at all in result. Those were wise words which Archbishop Laud spoke to his Jesuit opponent: "It is a mere calumny that we profess only a negative religion. True it is, and we must thank Rome for it, our confes- sion must needs contain some negatives. .... And in a corrupt time or place it is as nec- essary in religion to deny falsehood as to assert and vindicate truth; indeed this lat- ter can hardly be well and sufficiently done but by the former; an affirmative verity be- ing ever included in the negative to a false- hood:' 3 To return to the Ten Articles. They were drawn up, as I have stated, by Convocation, 3 Laud's " Conference with Fisher," p. 128. The English Reformation. 189 on the representations of the Lower House, and by the royal command. And the point to which I desire here to call special atten- tion is, that the first article declares, that "the chief and principal articles of our faith" are " comprehended in the whole body and canon of the Bible and also in the three creeds or symbols;" and that those creeds are to be interpreted "according to the self- same sentence and interpretation, which the words of the self-same creeds or symbols do purport, and the holy approved doctors do entreat and defend the same." There is a reference also, not only to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, but to those of Ephesus and Chalcedon, "and all others sith that time in any point consonant to the same!' In these last words, you will observe, there is expressed a very important limitation of any action of councils subsequent to the four expressly named. These words, and therefore the Article it- self, clearly contain, by direct assertion or unquestionable implication, the following prop- igo The English Reformation. ositions. First, that all things necessary to be believed are contained in Holy Scripture; secondly, that these fundamental verities are summed up in the historic creeds, which are, therefore, capable of being "proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture;" 4 thirdly, that the creeds are to be interpreted in a natural and not a non-natural sense, in other words, that their meaning must come out from them and not be imported into them; and fourthly, that the testimony of the "approved doctors of the Church" must sustain any af- firmed interpretation. Now, under these rules, questions of detail may, no doubt, arise. It may be asked, what books make up the Canon of Script- ure ? What is the proper wording of the creeds ? What is the true signification of such and such phrases ? But these, and many other possible questions, relate only to de- tails, and leave the principles announced quite untouched. Nor have those principles (what- ever changes in some details there may have * Article VIII. of the Thirty-nine. The English Reformation. 191 been), been changed among us for more than three centuries and a half. 6 5 The story of the publication of these Articles is curious. It il- lustrates the King's estimate of his own powers as a theologian and the way in which he tried to arrogate everything to himself. Crom- well, as Vicar-General and the royal mouth-piece, informed Convo- cation that though his majesty "by his excellent learning knoweth these controversies well enough, yet he will suffer no common alter- ation but by the consent of you and of his whole parliament.*' One can imagine the Vicar-General uttering this precious bit of brag- gadocio. When, however, it comes to appear in the preface to the Articles, as published, it is softened down into a much more modest statement. " We have not only in our own person at many times taken great pains, study, labors and travails, but have also caused our bishops and other the most discreet and learned men of our clergy of this our whole realm, to be assembled hi Convocation, for the full debasement and quiet determination of the same." Then again, the title of the Articles as they left Convocation the MS. is in the British Museum was, "Articles about religion set out by the Convocation and published by the King's author- ity." But Henry garbled the title in the printing to read, "Arti- cles devised by the King's Majesty," etc. He left, however, in the preface the above-quoted passage which convicts his self-made title of falsehood. The simple truth is that Convocation drew up the Articles, and they were then published by royal authority. They are no more the King's, even if he suggested some changes before final action, than the decrees of Nice are Constantine's. Lloyd's "Formularies," pp. xvi. 4. Jenkyns's "Cranmer," vol. i. p. xiv. ff. Hardwick's " Articles," etc., c. iii. 192 The English Reformation. "The Institution of a Christian Man," drawn up by a Commission of bishops and other di- vines appointed by the Crown, and published in 1537, and "The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man," which was the work of Convocation in 1543, follow in the same line and begin with an exposition of the Apostles' Creed; thus continuing the prominent position given to the one historic Faith. These are the Formularies of Henry's reign. In none of them, however, does the prom- inence come out so distinctly, in none of them is the Catholic Faith set forth with such fulness, as in the XLII Articles of 1552 and the XXXIX of 1562 and I5/I. 6 The last named of these formularies is more complete than the former, because it contains an Arti- 6 In the XI Articles, set forth by the Archbishops and Bish- ops in 1559, the first contains a profession of belief in the Holy Trinity, and the formulary falls, so far, into line with the other formularies mentioned. It was never, however, acted on synodi- cally, and was merely an ad interim. In Ireland it continued in use till 1615. The English Reformation. 193 cle concerning the Holy Ghost which did not appear in the formulary of 1552. In the first five Articles of 1562 not only are the defi- nitions of Nicaea and Constantinople set forth, but those also of Ephesus and Chalcedon; and they contain, standing at the forefront of all else, a clear, balanced and exhaustive dogmatic statement touching the Trinity in Unity in its substance and its persons, and the person and natures of our Lord, His incar- nation, passion and resurrection. The Church of England refused to consider any theologi- cal question from any other than that stand- point. " Before all things the Catholic Faith." So speaks our English Reformation. Just here, let me say a word as to the Con- fessions and Formularies put forth, during this period, on the continent of Europe. There is a marked difference, in the characteristic now under consideration, between the Formularies of the Saxon school of Reformers and those of the Swiss school; a difference not without significancy. The former, largely shaped by Luther, the Augsburg and Saxon Confessions 194 The English Reformation. much more nearly resemble our Formularies than the latter the Helvetic and the Belgic, which bear the impress of the mind of Cal- vin. The Augsburg is, indeed, fuller and more distinct than the Saxon Confession ; yet it thrusts in between its declaration of the doc- trine of the Trinity and its setting forth of the person and natures of our Lord, a view of original sin and its consequences, thus mar- ring, so far, the unity and coherence of its statement of the Faith. 7 On the other hand the Helvetic Confession relegates its continu- ous statement of the Faith to its preface, (where it quotes the Decree of Gratian Val- entinian and Theodosius, and the Creed of Damasus), touches the doctrine of the Trinity only in its third article, and is silent as to the eternal generation of the Son, and the person and natures of Christ, till its eleventh article is reached. The Belgic Confession begins with a simple declaration of the existence and unity of God, proceeds to discuss various questions concerning Holy Scripture and our knowledge 7 The same peculiarity is observable in the XIII Articles of 1538. The English Reformation. 195 of God, and has nothing to say about the Faith before its eighth article. 8 Two things, then, are very observable in all these Formularies; the first, about which no more need be said than has been said already that the whole Faith, in its due order and completeness, is not made, as it was by our Reformers, the one unvarying standpoint from which all questions then under discussion were approached; the second, that these fundamen- tal and settled verities are mixed up with questions and discussions of the hour, and are not kept in that position, not of prominence only, but of separation also, which is their due. From all this only one result can follow. The time of its coming may be longer or shorter as circumstances may hasten or re- tard it. But sooner or later it assuredly will come, and will bring with it confusion and disaster. The Faith degraded to the level of human speculations, reasonings and con- clusions, may be made, for a time, to give 8 See " Sylloge Confessionum" Oxford, 1804, and Augusti's, "Corpus Librorum Symbolicorum" etc. 196 The English Reformation. to them at least apparently and in men's apprehension somewhat of its own estab- lished certainty and changelessness. But this unnatural condition will never last. In time this action will be reversed. Men will cease to attribute the assured certainty of the set- tled Faith to these speculations, reasonings and conclusions. Nor will they stop there. They will carry back the uncertainties of these last named things to the Faith itself, they can do nothing else. And then, when the congeries of human opinions collapses and breaks up, how can it be otherwise than that the Faith should be involved in the common ruin ? What can the result be but a " swept and garnished" house, ready to become the abode of those demons of denial and unbe- lief whose "name is Legion"? The story of human belief and unbelief is full of examples that illustrate this position. Look at England for the fifteen years preceding 1660. Look at France to-day, where ultramontanism identify- ing itself, and all the loads it has laid upon the Faith, with Christianity, has carried Chris- I The English Reformation. 197 tianity;with itself in its downfall, and brought so many persons to the conviction that if a man is not an ultramontane he must needs be an atheist. What, indeed, may not be in store for a Church which has overladen the Faith with such vast systems of belief, and taught people "that to believe in Christ" involves all such belief as well ? Why should not the downfall of such systems of belief, a down- fall which must come if ever truth is to tri- umph, " bury in its ruins the belief in Jesus " also? 9 There is always a tendency in the human mind to separate one doctrine of the Faith, or one matter of opinion from its proper posi- tion and relations, to push it into undue prom- inence, and fill with it the field of vision. Ques- tions as to God's sovereignty, or man's free-will, or human depravity, or Baptism, or the Eu- charist, have thus been made, exclusively, topics for study and instruction. Other things have been passed by. And, therefore, even if the teaching has, in itself, been true as it i> Pusey's " Eirenicon," p. 242, ff. 198 The English Reformation. has not always been it has still been dis- astrous, -because it has violated, completely and shamefully, the great and divinely sanc- tioned law that we are to teach " according to the analogy of the Faith." 10 So men's im- aginations get mixed up with fundamental ver- ities, and even truths are dislocated and dis- torted till they take on somewhat of the same character. To use the words of Bishop An- drewes, spoken, indeed, of a period later than the Reformation, but true then and true in our own time: "This is the disease of our age and the just complaint we make of it; that there hath been a good riddance of im- ages; but for imaginations, they be daily stamped in great number, and instead of the old images, set up, deified and worshipped." Against all such ill-doing, the continuous * Rom. xii. 6, "that is," says the Bp. of Lincoln, "according to the general symmetry and harmony of the whole body of Christian Doctrine and according to the relation or proportion (dvaXoyia) of each special doctrine preached to that entire body of doctrine." See, also, Hooker, book iii. i. 5; and Bp. Andrewes, " Sermon on Worshipping Imaginations." The English Reformation. 199 action of our Reformers from 1536 to 1571 is a continuous protest. It has given to the Church of England with the National Churches founded 'by her and in communion with her, the glorious position of holding, and " holding forth," the " entire Faith such as our Lord left it with the Apostles, to evangelize the world." Some of her sons may have abandoned her po- sition and their own plain line of duty. If they have, they have simply been unfaithful to their privileges and responsibilities. There may have been, there have been, those who were " suckled at her breast," and who yet "have written concerning her even as men might write that were hired to make a case against her, and by an adverse instinct in the selection of evidence, and a severity of con- struction such as no history of the deeds of man can bear, have often, too often in these last years, put her to an open shame." Faith- less and froward children, we must remem- ber, are no unwonted spectacles in families or churches. But oh ! how many have there been in generations past, how many are there 2OO The English Reformation. now, who understand the full richness of this precious heritage; who comprehend the full glory of the position in which the Reforma- tion placed the Church three centuries ago, a position which shall bring powers for ser- vice in ^the future that will overpass all pos- sibilities of service in the past; and who, be- cause "of all this, are ready " unshrinkingly to devote themselves to defending within her borders the full and whole doctrine of the Cross, with that mystic symbol gleaming down on them from Heaven, now as ever showing forth its inscription, * In this sign shalt thou conquer.'" 1 When we turn from this prominent exhi- bition of the one Catholic Faith which, thus far, we have been considering, to doctrines and opinions which were special topics for examination and discussion in the sixteenth century, we shall find the formularies of our reformation remarkable for their moderation. Archbishop Bramhall takes special note of this characteristic and presses it with ear- i Gladstone, "On the Supremacy," p. 86, ff. The English Reformation. 201 nestness and cogency. He makes " three con- ditions of a lawful reformation just grounds, due moderation, and sufficient authority." And he says of the Romanists, " They fear our mod- eration more than the violent opposition of others." 2 Possibly moderation is not a word much in favor in our day. And, no doubt, it may be used to designate tempers and methods that are the reverse of commendable. When it is made the synonym of indifference, careless- ness, lukewarmness, cowardice, time-serving, or suchlike things, it can only be condemned. When, however, it is used to signify that tem- per of forbearance, that " reasonableness of dealing, wherein not strictness of legal right but consideration for one another is the rule of practice," that looking at a debatable ques- tion on all its sides, that willingness to modify "the unhuman absolute "of a relentless logic by the manifold limitations and conditions which that refuses to consider, then we reach the iTtietneti of St. Paul, of which he says, 2 "Works," pp. 216, 957; Dublin, 1677. 2O2 The English Reformation. "Let your moderation be known unto all men." 3 There are, of course, large classes of persons who, influenced by various causes, will refuse to consider the distinctions here insisted on, and will reject any and all ideas of moderation in reform as unworthy and even contemptible. It is hardly worth while to attempt to enu- merate these classes, or to go into a statement of the processes by which they reach their conclusions. However they may differ in oth- er matters there are two things in which they agree. They always seek for the truth in one or the other of two extremes, and that by inferring " conclusion from conclusion, and projecting assumptions as if they were prem- ises"; 4 and they are always ready to shelter themselves under the cover of that modera- tion the benefit of which they refuse to others and against which they so passionately pro- 3 The word is not from eiKG), to yield, but from iixod, that which is becoming. See Alford and Wordsworth on Phil. iv. 5, and I Tim. iii. 3. 4 Liddon's " Speech on the late Bishop of Brechin." The English Reformation. 203 test. What was commended by such men as Hooker, Saravia, Bramhall, Hammond, and Sanderson can, however, hardly be treated as a cowardly devise of self-seeking time-servers. 5 This moderation appears in a very striking form when we contrast the Decrees of Trent with our Articles of Religion. In the former all canons of doctrine, in which so many med- iaeval speculations are solidified, end with an Anathema. Of these there are no less than one hundred and forty-one ! And they reach down even to those who question the canoni- calness of the Apocrypha or print works that have not been duly examined and approved. One may be pardoned for involuntarily recall- ing the words of the Psalmist, " He clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment." 6 On the other hand, in our Articles, whether s See the passages, with many others, in Puller's "Moderation of the Church of England," c. xvi. 6 "Whoever incurs an anathema, is cut off from the commun- ion of the faithful; is regarded as outside the way of salvation and in a state of damnation; nor may any of the faithful have any intercourse with him," Bergier, "Dictionaire de Theologie" 2O4 The English Reformation. those of 1552 or of 1562 and '71, there is but one anathema; and that one is taken from Holy Scripture. It is an echo of St. Paul's words in the Epistle to the Galatians, where he says of man or angel who shall preach a Gospel different from that which he has preached (resting salvation on " works of law " and not on the grace of God in Jesus Christ), "let him be anathema." 7 The XVIIIth Ar- ticle, in which this single anathema occurs, deals with the same utter subversion of the Gospel which St. Paul condemns, and simply repeats his words. 8 i Gal. i. 8, 9. 8 The careful wording of the Article deserves notice. It does not at all assert, absolutely, that no man can or will be saved in "the law or sect which he professeth," but that he cannot be saved by what he does in it, without regard to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This was the error which, in regard to the Mosaic Law, the false teachers enforced upon the Galatians. It may be further observed, that the moderation of the English Church appears in later formularies; in the Convocation Book, where the strongest condemnation is expressed in the words " he doth greatly err," and in the Canons of 1603-4, fifteen of which (out of the one hundred and forty-one) impose, indeed, excommunication; but there is nowhere any anathema. The English Reformation. 205 Besides this general moderation in temper, there is also a noticeable moderation in state- ment touching points in controversy in the sixteenth century. There are two documents, one belonging to the reign of Henry VIII. and another which appeared late in the reign of Elizabeth, that very strikingly, though by contrast, illustrate this assertion. The former of these documents was drawn up in the in- terests of what we should now call Romanism, the other in the interests of Calvinism. Both are worth examining. They indicate the two great disturbing elements in the English Ref- ormation. There must, of course, from the beginning, have been those who opposed reform in Eng- land. They may be roughly, but I think sufficiently, classified as follows: those who deprecated any change whatever, those who accepted the abolition of the papal jurisdiction but would have stopped with that, and those who acquiesced in the Ten Articles and the Institution, but would have gone no further. Here, obviously, is the nucleus, perhaps even 206 The English Reformation. more, of a reactionary party. Various things and events contributed to swell the numbers of such a party and increase its power. The anarchical teachings of anabaptists and other sectaries, the jealousies occasioned by the con- ferences with continental reformers, especially the visit of the " German orators" in 1538, the dissolution of the monasteries, sympathy for Katharine of Aragon and the Princess Mary, the passing of the Act of Succession and the executions of More and Fisher; these, and oth- er things that need not be mentioned, helped to build up a party of reaction. Henry must have given it his sympathy; for the document in which reaction culminated is said to have been carried through Parliament by the per- sonal presence and influence of the King him- self. The Act was passed in 1539, and was known as the Six Articles, or, more familiarly the Six- stringed Whip. These are due to the King and the Parliament. They were not drawn up by Convocation,* and only received from that body a formal sanction. " It was a new The English Reformation. 207 Heresy Act, proceeding not from the Church, though sanctioned as to doctrine by the South- ern Convocation; but from Parliament, at the commandment of the King, and on the in- stance of a layman." 9 9 Dixon, " History," etc. vol. ii. p. 122. The history of the Act is not a little perplexed. It would seem that in April 1539, the Lord Chancellor, Audley, stated to Parliament the King's de- sire that "diversity of religious opinions should be banished from his dominions," together with a proposal that a committee of the Upper House should be appointed "to examine opinions and to report their decisions to the whole Parliament." This Committee was appointed on May 5th, and consisted of the Vicar-General, and twelve or eight bishops accounts differ. The Vicar- General left the discussion to the prelates, who came to no agreement in regard to the six questions submitted to them; which were drawn up by the King himself, and undoubtedly contained the embryon if not the matter of the Six Articles. After ten days' delay, the disagreement of the prelates was announced, and the Duke of Norfolk laid the six questions before the House of Lords, with the mot d* ordre, "Let the matters in dispute be determined openly and freely in full Parliament; and let a penal statute be passed," etc. A debate followed: on the third day of which the King ap- peared in person, and took part in the discussion in favor of the proposed Act. Then, on May 23d, a Committee of the bishops was appointed to confer with the King and yielded to him at last. Upon this, two committees were appointed to draw up two forms of a statute, one of which should be passed by Parliament. The 208 The English Reformation. The " ferocious penalties " inflicted by the act I need not state, because I am not writ- ing its history, but calling attention to the King, however, appears to have finally drawn up the statute him- self ; and it was passed, after some additions by the Commons, in June. "Meanwhile," says Mr. Blunt, "the six questions had been submitted, on June 2d, to a pro forma meeting of Convocation [the Southern] , in which the prolocutor was the only member of the Lower House present ', and they were all answered in the affir- mative." On the other hand Canon Perry asserts, that "the Convocation of Canterbury was consulted on the six points, and answered them all affirmatively: Bishops Latimer and Shaxton, Doctors Crome and Tailour being dissentient." Whichever of these accounts is correct, Convocation, and there- fore the Church, is not responsible for the matter or the form of the Six Articles. If it acted only pro forma, as Mr. Blunt says, it did not really act at all. If it did formally accept foregone con- clusions and definitions, they were only forced upon it, and did not proceed from it. Mr. Blunt thinks that Cranmer voted for the Act. " Reforma- tion," p. 475. Dr. Hook takes the same view. "Lives," etc. New Series, vol. ii. p. 46. But it is worth while to compare Todd's statements in his "Life of Cranmer," vol. i. p. 272, ff; and what Cranmer himself said to the Devonshire rebels, and in his answer to Gardiner, Jenkyns's " Remains, " vol. ii. p. 212; iii. p. 366. The Act was mitigated in 1543, and finally repealed in the first year of Edward VI. The English Reformation. 209 immoderate and excessive form of its state- ments. Its six provisions embraced the anni- hilation of the elements in the Eucharist; the sufficiency, by the law of God, of communion in one kind; the forbidding by the same law y of marriage to priests; the obligation of vows by the same law\ private masses to be con- tinued as agreeable to God's law; auricular confession to be retained as expedient and necessary. A balder, harsher, more extreme statement of the doctrines maintained with the exception, perhaps, of the last cannot be imagined. There is an unrelenting exact- ness in it which may commend itself to those who clamor for definitions of everything, but which is an outrage on Scripture, antiquity, and right reason itself. So much for the first document, let me now speak of the second; the one put forth in the interests of Calvinism, fifty-six years later on, the Lambeth Articles of 1595. Its history is an important one, and it requires something in the way of preface. There is not the smallest evidence that 2io The English Reformation. those five opinions mostly metaphysical spec- ulations which are known as the Five points of Calvinism, had attracted any special at- tention in England when the " Ten Articles" of 1536 and the "Institution" of 1537 ap- peared. They could not have been much in men's minds, for Calvin's "Institutes" were not published till 1536, and time enough had not elapsed before the above-named formu- laries were issued for his speculations to have gained much influence. In neither formulary do we find any trace of them. Predestination and reprobation are not so much as mentioned, and all the other parts of Calvin's system are dis- tinctly contradicted. The Six Articles of 1539 are, indeed, not unlike Calvin's five, in severity of temper and excess of definition, but the two formularies have nothing else in common. When we come, however, to the " Necessary Erudition," in 1543, it becomes obvious that those who drew up that Formulary had Cal- vin's system in their minds; and it is equally obvious that they intended to reject it. I can- not quote passages at length. But no man can The English Reformation. 211 read that work, and not see that the severest and most repulsive doctrines of Calvin are de- nied in it, and denied not only pointedly, but with a certain degree of sharpness. This brings us to the Forty-two Articles of 1552, and the Thirty-nine of 1562 and '71. Lord Chatham's thread-bare jest which speaks more for his skill as an epigrammatist than for his knowledge of Theology that "the Church of England had a Popish liturgy, a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy," has, probably, shaped a good many peoples' opinions con- cerning these Articles. And we must admit, that if articles drawn up principally by four persons, 10 not one of whom was a Calvinist; articles which distinctly deny or pointedly omit every point of Calvinism, unless we ex- cept the single one of election to life; which state that one point in language that is not Calvinistic, accompanying it with two cautions 10 Cranmer, Latimer, Hooper and Ridley. See Hard wick's "History of the Articles," c. v. As for Hooper, See Bishop Bull's "Harmonia Apostolica," Works, vol. iv. pp. 448, 453, 454, 457- 212 The English Reformation. which no Calvinist can accept, and two canons of interpretation which dismiss the Calvinistic theory to the regions of abstract, presumptu- ous and profitless speculation; that if such arti- cles can fairly be called Calvinistic, then those we are considering can. But they can be so termed on no other grounds and in no other way. So matters stood at the death of Ed- ward VI. The accession of Mary drove many of the reforming party to the Continent. When these returned, in the reign of Elizabeth, many of them had abandoned the principles and doc- trines of the English Reformation, and imbibed the views of the reformers of the Continent touching the Constitution the Doctrine and the worship of the Church, and more especially the theories of Calvin, that Protestant scho- lasticism which took the place of the medi- aeval scholasticism in so many minds. Things came to a head when two members of the University of Cambridge preached against this foreign importation, and defended the plain as- sertions of the Articles of Religion. From the The English Reformation. 213 controversy that ensued, came forth the Lam- beth Articles of 1595, bristling all over with the freshly burnished points of Calvinism, " like quills upon the fretful porcupine;" a Formu- lary, concerning the statements of which Arch- deacon Hardwick says, "We must despair of connecting them with the authorized Articles of Religion by any of the ordinary processes of thought." Frigid and cruel as arctic cold, that Formulary never acquired any synodical or other authority in the English Church. But it remains an instructive witness to that itch for definition which, even more than the itch of disputation is the veritable Scabies Eccle- sice. 1 While, however, this system, as a sys- tem, was rejected, we must not forget the moderation that was shewn in dealing with the great underlying truths which it attempted to deal with metaphysically ; the truths of God's Sovereignty in grace on the one side, and man's free-will on the other. " The Eru- dition" of 1543 sums up the matter in words 1 "Pruritus disputandi" said Sir Henry Wotton .Stefov Ecclesia. 214 The English Reformation. of golden wisdom which do not seem to have been forgotten: " All men be also to be mon- ished, and chiefly preachers, that in this high matter, they, looking on both sides, so at- temper and moderate themselves, that neither they so preach 'the grace of God that they take away free-will, nor, on the other side, so extol free-will that injury be done to the grace of God." * Chrysostom or Augustine need have asked no more than this. Let me now call attention to an instance which shows that this moderation, of which I have been speaking, was in no way incom- patible with the clearest assertion of a truth which was believed to have been invaded in a way that had disturbed what we may call the balance of doctrine. In the years 1550 and 1551 there was a controversy between Arch- bishop Cranmer and Gardiner, Bishop of Win- chester, touching the Holy Eucharist. In the 2 The style of " The Institution " has often been remarked upon. Froude says: " In point of language it was beyond question the most beautiful composition which had yet appeared in English prose." "History," vol. iii. p. 229, Am. Ed. The English Reformation. 215 . i course of it Cranmer continually accuses his adversary of depraving the doctrine of Bap- tism and lowering the grace conveyed by it. No one can read Cranmer's final answer to Gardiner without seeing how he constantly recurs to and presses this charge. "This your saying is jno small derogation to Baptism; .... You diminish here the effect of Bap- tism; .... blasphemous words against the Sacrament of Baptism;" in such expressions Cranmer reiterates his accusation that the primitive doctrine of Baptism had been de- praved and derogated from in the interests of transubstantiation. Turn now to the Baptismal Office of 1552, and fix your eye on the exhortation and thanksgiving that immediately follow the bap- tismal act. They appear then for the first time. You will not find them in the Book of 1549. And, I doubt not, they were inserted because of that "diminishing of the effect of Baptism " to which the advocates of transub- stantiation have ever been prone, and as a protest against the exaltation of one sacrament 216 The English Reformation. at the expense of the other. Strange that in our day words so inserted, and with such ob- vious purpose, should have been condemned as essentially and hopelessly Romish ! 3 I find my final illustration of the character- istic of our Reformation in its treatment of questions connected with the other sacrament, the Holy Eucharist. 4 The moment we ap- 3 One of the earliest instances of the confusion of regeneration with conversion is found in the Council of Trent ! In the Decree concerning Original Sin passed at the fifth Session in 1546 it is said: "This concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again" etc. In the debates preceding the decree, Ber- tano asserted that the words born again were used purposely in- stead of baptized, because a person might be baptized without being really born again. Pallavicini, "History," etc. book vii., c. ix.; compare Jarvis, "Answer to Milner." The Socinian For- mulary, known as the Racovian Catechism (published in 1609), asserts that " regeneration is nothing but the transformation of our mind and will and composure of them to the doctrine of our Sa- viour Christ, as the very word doth intimate." J. J. Blunt, " Right Use of the Early Fathers," p. 427. 4 To those familiar with the work it is needless to mention my indebtedness, in what follows, to Archdeacon Freeman's "Princi- ples of Divine Service," vol. ii. part i. The English Reformation. 217 proach that great mystery of our religion, we find ourselves in the presence of two truths, about which for eight centuries at least probably for a longer period there was almost no controversy in the Church. The one truth is that the Bread as blessed broken and taken is, in some way, the Body of the Lord broken, and the Wine, over which thanks were given, is, in some way the Blood of the Lord shed, in sacri- fice. The other truth is that the Bread and Wine remain in their own proper nature as Bread and Wine. Now this assertion of two truths to be held together, and possibly without the power of solving the mystery of their connection, is not something which is peculiar to the Eu- charist. To say nothing of instances that might be adduced from the laws and phe- nomena of our own physical and spiritual being, we find two to name no more which are precisely parallel in revelation. We find asserted, on the one side, the Unity of the Godhead in its essence, and, on the 218 The English Reformation. other, the Trinity of Persons. And again, we find asserted, on the one side, the sov- ereignty of God in grace as well as nature, and, on the other, the free-will of man. The parallelism of these instances with that of the Eucharist is apparent from their state- ment. Now, under these circumstances, three courses of procedure are open to us. We may content ourselves with simply holding both truths with- out attempting to reconcile, or bring them into one, by any processes of human reasoning; and then we follow the implied counsel of the He- brew lawgiver, "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us." 5 We may drop one of the two truths and retain the other; so Tritheism did when it dropped the truth of the Oneness of the Divine Nature, and so Sabellianism did, when it dropped the truth of the Tripersonality. Or, lastly, we may set ourselves about the task, beyond the power of human reason, of constructing a theory 5 Deut. xxix. 29. The English Reformation, 219 that shall reconcile to our understandings the two truths which we have not been bidden to reconcile but only to hold; so Calvinism set itself to reconcile, by metaphysical pro- cesses, God's sovereignty and man's free-will, and ended by practically denying the latter. The same attempted reconciliation of two co- existent truths has been the originating cause of almost all the controversies about the Eu- charist; which have largely ended, as all such controversies are likely to end, in the denial of one truth or the other; in the "grosser forms or subtler refinements of the Papal solution" on the one hand, or the " cold naturalism of the Zwinglian theory" on the other. 6 We must not, however, forget that while neither of the two truths thus revealed can de- stroy the other, "each does, nevertheless, of necessity affect, in a negative way, the manner in which the other exists or has place." The Unity of the Godhead holds back, so to speak, 6 See Bishop Wilberforce's "Charge," in 1854, p. 55; "Words of Counsel," xvii. 220 The English Reformation'. the Tripersonality from becoming Tritheism. The Trinity of persons holds back the Unity of the Godhead from becoming a denial of the Tripersonality. The grace of God to re- cur to the other instance cited must not take away the free-will of man, nor the free-will of man do injury to the grace of God. In other words two such truths, and therefore the two touching the Eucharist, must be held in balance. Now, this balance was just what the cen- turies-long controversy concerning the Eu- charist had disturbed, by the attempt to ex- plain and define to the satisfaction of human reason what God's Word had not explained, and the early Church had not defined. What- ever result was reached by this attempt, the process was essentially a rationalistic one. The speculations which end in transubstan- tiation are just as rationalistic in their char- acter as those which issue in the Zwinglian theory. And the wisest and truest Reforma- tion is to put things back to where they were before those disastrous speculative processes The English Reformation. 221 had begun. And this, I contend, was what our Reformation did, not all at once but by "just degrees." 7 That the balance shook and trembled somewhat before it settled is not wonderful, nor is it to the purpose. Nor are we specially concerned with the varying opin- ions of individuals. The result is what we ask for. Not many words will be needed in stat- ing it. I turn first to the words used in the delivery, of the elements. We find in the Prayer Book of 1549, the first half only of our present form- ula. This embodies the first of the two truths above named and might not fairly be con- sidered as excluding the second. We find, again, in the Book of 1552, the last half only of our present formula, embodying the second truth, by making the "reception of the Body and Blood of Christ, not ordinary and physical but spiritual and heavenly." And this might 7 "It was the speech of a wise Bishop, concerning too sudden a convert, * I do not well like a man that tells me so presently he hath changed a whole religion at once.'" Puller, "Moderation of the Church of England," p. 274. 222 The English Reformation. be regarded not fairly again as excluding the first truth. But in the Book of 1559, we find both formulas combined as we have them now, and so the two truths are brought together. Men may call this a compromise if they will: as, indeed, those who plant themselves within the narrow limits of mere partisanship will be sure to do. Those, however, who will not be content to echo, the words of some single master, and can rise to the higher wisdom of a wise humility will see more than a mere compromise; will see the determination to bring two settled truths together in a balanced un- ion, and a refusal to divorce them in separated assertions. In precise accordance with this settlement, this restoration of a disturbed bal- ance, are the words of the XXVIIIth Article of Religion; which against the rationalism of Transubstantiation condemned also in terms assert that "the Body of Christ is given, taken and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner; " and against the rationalism of Zwinglianism declare, " that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, re- The English Reformation. 223 ceive. . . the Bread which we break is a partak- ing of the Body of Christ, and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ." Thus the two truths are asserted, and left where they were left by the early and undivided Church. I claim, therefore, for our English Reforma- tion what the great Bramhall claimed; the three conditions of "just grounds, sufficient authority, due moderation." No human work indeed is perfect. But the results of that work have stood the test of time, and are, in their old age, bringing forth more and nobler fruits for