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 
 
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 Copyright, 1881, 
 BY E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
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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 <rod and man. 
 
 As I come to the close of these lectures, I 
 desire to repeat what I said at the beginning. 
 It has not been my plan, nor would it have 
 been in my power, to do more than select 
 from the mass of topics which the English 
 Reformation offers for study, those which bring 
 to view the great principles acted on, the 
 methods adopted, the agents employed, and 
 the dangers incurred; to clear away some mis- 
 leading side issues and irrelevancies; and to 
 
224 The English Reformation. 
 
 correct some popular but unfounded misap- 
 prehensions and misrepresentations. This was 
 all that was hoped for; it is more, perhaps, 
 than has been accomplished. 
 
 And now as I look back on that eventful 
 period, and forward from that period to the 
 present, I stand in reverent awe and thankful 
 adoration before the vision of the overruling 
 and protecting hand of God, and recognize 
 His seal upon the work, His living power in 
 its outcomes. I see our favored Church pre- 
 served from becoming a sect bearing the im- 
 press and the name of any single leader. I 
 see it doing its work on principles that, with 
 whatever failure in individuals or single acts, 
 have stood the tests of time. I see it checked 
 when a check was needed, and the check re- 
 moved when it would have worked to evil. I 
 see it saved from the grasping tyranny of Hen- 
 ry even while it was freed from a foreign usur- 
 pation; held back from the danger of un- 
 settling foundations under his successor, by 
 the accession of Mary; drinking under her the 
 cup of trial and suffering; baptized with the 
 
The English Reformation. 225 
 
 baptism of fire and blood; driven to foreign 
 lands or crushed at home; with the papacy 
 and all which that word implies imposed upon 
 it, and all the previous work, to human seem- 
 ing, utterly undone. 
 
 Then, looking on, I see it restored under 
 Elizabeth with its voice of witness and of wor- 
 ship heard in the land again, and its apos- 
 tolic line continued. I see its exiles hastening 
 home, too many bringing with them alien be- 
 liefs and sympathies, which in coming time 
 will rend the Church within and raise up 
 an unresting enemy without. I see all the 
 strength of the papacy, and all the power of 
 the mightiest realm in Europe hurled against 
 it in the great Armada, which the Lord scat- 
 tered with the breath of His mouth. Looking 
 still onward into another century, I see that 
 other foe striving for the destruction of our 
 Church, and apparently accomplishing its pur- 
 pose. I see its altars overthrown, its churches 
 despoiled, its clergy scattered, its services 
 silenced till they are audible nowhere in the 
 face of day, save in the chapel of the wander- 
 
226 The English Reformation. 
 
 ing Charles's ambassador in Paris. 8 Still look- 
 ing on, I see it restored to its old homes and 
 ancient honors to the reversal of all human ex- 
 pectations. I see it, in still later days, no 
 longer in danger from without, but tried with 
 the greater dangers of coldness, apathy, world- 
 liness, and time serving from within. And 
 then I see it as it is to-day, rising to a nobler, 
 fuller life, stretching out from its isolation in 
 " Britain severed from the world " to every con- 
 tinent and the islands of the sea; speaking a 
 language that seems likely to be to the world 
 in coming days what the Greek was at the 
 Lord's first coming, and yet giving to the na- 
 tions where it goes God's Word and worship 
 in their own several tongues; carrying every - 
 
 8 Evelyn's "Diary," vol. i. p. 337 (Colburn, 1854). He says, 
 "In various controversies both with papists and sectarians, our 
 divines used to argue for the visibility of the Church from his [Sir 
 Thomas Browne's] chapel and congregation." Still he did not 
 lose heart. And later on, in 1685, when things looked dark 
 Romeward, he wrote, "I am most confident that the doctrine of 
 the Church of England will never be extinguished, but remain 
 visible, if not eminent ', to the consummation of the world," vol. 
 ii. p. 239. 
 
The English Reformation. 227 
 
 where the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship; 
 the breaking of bread and the prayers. Is it 
 not God's doing all this ? Could man alone 
 ever have accomplished it ? Do not the pulses 
 throb and the heart swell at all these tokens 
 of God's immediate presence ? Are not cow- 
 ardice, distrust, despondency, rebuked ? Are 
 we not forced to say, whatever may be our 
 anxieties and forebodings concerning present 
 troubles, 
 
 " Therefore will we not fear, though the 
 earth be moved, and though the hills be car- 
 ried into the midst of the sea; 
 
 " Though the waters thereof rage and swell, 
 and though the mountains shake at the temp- 
 est of the same. 
 
 " The rivers of the flood thereof shall make 
 glad the city of God; the holy place of the 
 tabernacle of the Most Highest. 
 
 " God is in the midst of her, therefore shall 
 she not be removed; God shall help her, and 
 that right early." 
 

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