THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND
"It was in the name of faith and religious liberty that, in the
sixteenth century, commenced the movement which, from that epoch,
suspended at times but ever renewed, has been agitating and
exciting the world. The tempest rose first in the human soul: it
struck the Church before it reached the State."--GUIZOT.
In Germany, as we have seen, from a religious and popular, the
Reformation degenerated into a mere scholastic and political movement,
favourable to the pretensions of the ruling and privileged classes,
opposed to the aspirations of the industrial classes, and conducive
neither to moral, social, religious, nor political progress. In England,
on the other hand, it ran a very different course. From a merely
political, it gradually rose to the height of a truly religious and
popular movement, infusing new life into the nation and lifting it into
the very forefront of the van of progress, curbing the insolent
pretensions of king, priest and noble, purifying the minds of the people
of time-honoured but degrading conceptions of the functions of Church
and of State, inspiring and uplifting them with new conceptions of
political freedom, social justice, moral purity and religious
toleration, which, despite temporary periods of reaction, have never
since entirely lost their sway over the hearts nor their influence over
the destinies of the British nation.
For many centuries prior to the Reformation the English people had been
jealous and impatient of all ecclesiastical power, as of all foreign
interference in their national affairs, more especially of the claims
and pretensions of the Papacy. In England, as in Germany and even in
France, the idea of a National Church controlled and administered by
their own countrymen, and freed from the supremacy of the Church and
Court of Rome, was one familiar even to devout Catholics. Moreover, the
teachings of Wyclif had sunk deep into the hearts of the people, and
only awaited a favourable opportunity to yield their fruits: already in
the fourteenth they had paved the way for the Reformation of the
sixteenth century. Hence it was that when Henry the Eighth, from purely
personal and dynastic reasons, became involved in a quarrel with the
Pope, he found his subjects prepared for greater changes in religious
matters than any he contemplated or desired. However, by a series of
legislative enactments, the Church of England, in 1534, was emancipated
from the superiority of the Church of Rome; the papal authority was
wholly abolished within the realm; Henry was legally recognised as the
supreme head of the Church of England; the power of the spiritual
aristocracy was broken and the whole body of the clergy humbled; the
monasteries were suppressed; the great wealth and vast territorial
possessions of the Church became the prey of the Crown, only to be
dissipated in lavish grants to greedy courtiers: and thus the
foundations were laid for greater changes in both Church and State than
those who promoted such measures ever dreamed of.
From its inception the Church of England comprised two opposing and
apparently irreconcilable elements, namely, those whose sympathies and
leanings were toward the forms, dogmas and doctrines of Roman
Catholicism, and those whose sympathies and leanings were toward the
forms, dogmas and doctrines of the German and Swiss Reformers. Of
religious toleration both parties were probably equally intolerant. That
the State was directly concerned with the religious beliefs of the
people, hence was justified in enforcing conformity to the Church as by
law established, seems to have been unquestioningly accepted by both.
The one desired to make use of the temporal power to prevent, the other
to promote, further changes in Church government, worship and doctrine.
The result was a compromise, which, like most compromises, satisfied the
more logical and consistent of neither party. As ultimately
established, in the reign of Elizabeth, the Church of England occupied
a sort of middle position between the Church of Rome and the Reformed
Churches of the Continent; and the attempt to enforce conformity to its
demands resulted in the separation from it of the extremists of both
sections. On the one hand, the English Roman Catholics became a distinct
and persecuted religious body, whose members were generally regarded,
despite repeated evidence to the contrary, as necessarily enemies of
England. On the other, despairing of further changes in the direction
they desired, a large number of the extreme Protestants separated
themselves from the National Church--though by so doing they rendered
themselves liable to be accused not only of heresy, but of high treason,
and to suffer death--and formed themselves into different bodies of
Separatists or Independents, differing on many points among themselves,
but united by a common animosity of all outside ecclesiastical control.
Within the Church the Catholic sentiment crystallised into the
Episcopalian, the Protestant sentiment into the Presbyterian section of
the Church of England. During the reign of Elizabeth the Protestant
element grew steadily stronger, as did also the spirit of political
independence, as manifested in the debates and divisions of the House of
Commons. It is a suggestive and noteworthy fact that during the long
reign of Henry the Eighth the House of Commons only once refused to pass
a Bill recommended by the Crown. During the reigns of Edward the Sixth
and of Mary the spirit of political independence commenced to revive;
and during the reign of Elizabeth the spirit of liberty and sense of
responsibility manifested by the House of Commons were such as
repeatedly to thwart the designs and to alter the policy of this
high-spirited monarch. It was, however, the severity of the policy of
the last of the Tudors and the first two of the Stuart kings against the
dissenting Protestants, that identified the struggle for religious
liberty, for liberty of conscience, with the struggle for political
liberty, and made these men in a special sense the champions of a more
or less qualified religious toleration, and of a constitutional
political freedom.
The growth of extreme Protestantism, more especially perhaps of
Independency, was greatly quickened during the reigns of both Mary and
Elizabeth, by the immigration of many thousands of refugees fleeing from
religious persecutions on the Continent. Amongst these were disciples
and apostles of many sects that were heretics in the eyes of both the
Catholic and the Protestant Churches, and who rejected alike the dogmas
and doctrines of Rome, of Wittenberg, and of Geneva. The one point all
such sects seem to have had in common was the denial of the sanctity and
efficacy of infant baptism: hence their inclusion under the general term
Anabaptists, even though many of them passionately disclaimed any
connection with this hated, proscribed and persecuted sect. As Gerrard
Winstanley, the inspirer of the Digger Movement, seems to us to have
been greatly influenced by the teaching of one of these sects, the
Familists, or Family of Love, it may be well to give here a brief
outline of its history and main doctrines.
The founder of the Family of Love was one David George, or Joris, who
was born at Delft in 1501. In 1530 he was severely punished for
obstructing a Catholic procession in his native town. In 1534 he joined
the Anabaptists, but soon left them to found a sect of his own. He seems
to have interpreted the whole of the Scripture allegorically;[15:1] and
to have maintained that as Moses had taught hope, and Christ had taught
faith, it was his mission to teach love. His teachings were propagated
in Holland by Henry Nicholas, and in England by one Christopher Vittel,
a joiner, who appears to have undertaken a missionary journey throughout
the country about the year 1560. According to Fuller,[16:1] in 1578,
the nineteenth year of the reign of Elizabeth, "The Family of Love began
now to grow so numerous, factious, and dangerous, that the Privy Council
thought fit to endeavour their suppression."
The most lucid account of the doctrines of this sect may be gained from
a beautifully printed little book, entitled _The Displaying of an
Horrible Sect of Gross and Wicked Heretics naming themselves the Family
of Love_, published the same year, 1578, and written by one I. R. (Jn.
Rogers), a bitter but fair-minded opponent of their heresies, a
Protestant, and a zealous defender of the Lutheran dogma of
justification by faith alone. In his Preface the author bewails "the
daily increase of this error," declaring that "in many shires of this
our country there are meetings and conventicles of this Family of Love."
Amongst those who have been converted, he tells us, were many who had
hitherto been "professors of Christ Jesus' gospel according to the
brightness thereof." He denounces Christopher Vittel, the joiner, as
"the only man that hath brought our simple people out of the plain ways
of the Lord our God," and complains how "he driveth the true sense of
the Holy Ghost into allegories," and contendeth that "otherwise to
interpret the Holy Scriptures is to stick to the letter." To the Family
of Love, he tells us, "Christ signifieth anointed." He continues, "I
pray you mark but this one thing in their teachings, how they drive the
true sense of the Holy Ghost into allegories. And when any text of Holy
Scriptures is alleged by any of God's children, they answer that we
little understand what is meant thereby; and then if they be pressed to
expound the place, by and by it is drawn into an allegory. For they take
not the creation of man at the first to be historical (according to the
letter), but mere allegorical: alleging that Adam signifieth the earthly
man ... the Serpent to be within man; applying still the allegory, they
destroy the truth of the history."
The writer's greatest grievance, however, is their rejection of the
Lutheran dogma of justification by faith, and their agreement "with the
Papists in extolling works as efficient causes of salvation." "Amongst
the rest, indeed," he exclaims, "they insinuate a good life, as which
they pretend to follow, which is as the vizard and cloak to hide all the
rest of their gross and absurd doctrines, and the hook and bait whereby
the simple are altogether deceived." He is greatly concerned that "none
but those who are willingly minded to their doctrines can get a sight of
their books";[17:1] and that "they are disinclined to disputations and
conferences with those not inclined to their opinions." He informs his
readers that "it is a maxim in the Family to deny before men all their
doctrines, so that they keep the same secret in their hearts"; that
though they may inwardly reject, yet they will outwardly conform to the
forms of the Church as by law established; that "they have certain
sleights amongst them to answer any question that may be demanded of
them." Thus "they do decree all men to be infants who are under the age
of thirty years. So that if they be demanded whether infants ought to be
baptized, they answer yea; meaning thereby that he is an infant until he
attain to those years at which time they ought to be baptized, and not
before." However, it may be well to mention here that the writer speaks
of the Anabaptists and of the Family of Love as if he recognised them to
be distinct heresies.
From their doctrines as formulated in this pamphlet, based on "A
Confession made by two of the Family of Love before a worthy and
worshipful Justice of the Peace, May 28th, 1561," we take the following:
(_a_) "When any person shall be received into their congregation,
they cause all their brethren to assemble, the Bishop or Elder
doth declare unto the newly-elected brother, that if he will be
content that all his goods shall be in common amongst the rest of
all his brethren, he shall be received."
(_b_) "They may not say God save anything. For they affirm that all
things are ruled by Nature, and not directed by God."
(_c_) "They did prohibit bearing of weapons, but at the length,
perceiving themselves to be noted and marked for the same, they
have allowed the bearing of staves."
(_d_) "When a question is demanded of any of them, they do of order
stay a great while ere they answer, and commonly their words shall
be Surely or So."
(_e_) "They hold that no man should be baptized before he is of the
age of thirty years."
(_f_) "They hold that heaven and hell are present in this world
amongst us, and that there is none other."[18:1]
(_g_) "They hold the Pope's service and this service now used in
the Churches to be naught."
(_h_) "They hold that all men that are not of their congregation,
or that are revolted from them, to be dead."
(_i_) "They hold that they ought to keep silence amongst
themselves, that the liberty they have in the Lord may not be
espied of others."
(_k_) "They hold that no man should be put to death for his
opinion: therefore they condemn Master Cranmer and Master Ridley
for burning Joan of Kent."
We shall have occasion to refer to some of these doctrines again later
on. It may be well, however, to mention here that the views that no
Christian ought to be a magistrate; that magistrates should not meddle
with religion; that no man ought to be compelled to faith, or put to
death for his religion; that war is unlawful to Christians; that their
speech should be yea or nay, without any oath: seem to have been
accepted by Anabaptists generally, as they were by the primitive
Christian communists of the fourteenth century.[18:2]
To return to our immediate subject. To the development of religious and
political thought in England, as to the inevitable struggle due to the
inherent antagonism of Catholic and Protestant ideals and aspirations,
we can refer only very briefly. The former can perhaps best be traced in
the writings of three eminent theological writers, Jewel, Hooker, and
Chillingworth. Though in 1567 we hear of the first instance of actual
punishment of Protestant Dissenters, still during the earlier portion of
the reign of Elizabeth, to the year 1571, there seems to have been a
gradual growth of national sentiment toward a simpler form of worship,
resulting in a modification of those rites and usages disliked by
Protestants of all shades and sects, and against the established policy
of forcible suppression of religious differences. In 1571, a Bill having
been introduced imposing a penalty for not receiving the communion, it
was objected to in the House of Commons on the grounds that "consciences
ought not to be forced." The same Parliament "refused to bind the clergy
to subscription to three articles on the Supremacy, the form of Church
Government, and the power of the Church to ordain rites and ceremonies,
and favoured the project of reforming the Liturgy by the omission of
superstitious practices."[19:1] In 1572, however, the appearance of
Thomas Cartwright's celebrated _Admonition to the Parliament_ stemmed
the course of religious reform, and produced a reaction of which
Elizabeth and her Primates were not slow to avail themselves. The
establishment, in 1583, of the Ecclesiastical Commission as a permanent
body, wielding the almost unlimited powers of the Crown and creating
their own tests of doctrine, put an end to the wise spirit of compromise
which had hitherto characterised Elizabeth's religious policy. The
"superstitious usages" were encouraged; subscription by the clergy of
the Three Articles, which the Parliament of 1571 had refused to enforce
by law, was exacted; and the non-conforming clergy were relentlessly
harried and persecuted: with the result that the Presbyterians within
and the Puritans without the National Church were temporarily united by
the pressure of a common persecution.
It was Cartwright's political rather than his religious views that
alarmed Elizabeth and her Ministers. As against their theory of a
State-controlled Church, he advocated a Church-controlled State. In
fact, the most arrogant and insolent pretensions of the Papacy were
surpassed by this Presbyterian divine. Of course, all his demands were
based on the authority of Scripture and the ways and customs of the
primitive Christian Church. The rule of bishops he denounced as begotten
of the devil; the absolute rule of presbyters he held to be established
by the word of God. All other forms of Church government were ruthlessly
to be suppressed, and heretics were to be punished by death. For the
ministers of the Church he claimed not only all spiritual power and
jurisdiction, the decreeing of doctrines, the ordering of ceremonies,
and so on, but also the supervision of public morals, under which every
branch of human activities was included. In short, the State, as well as
the individual, was to be placed beneath the heel of the Church. The
power of the prince, the secular power, was tolerated only so that it
might "protect and defend the councils of the clergy, to keep the peace,
to see their decrees executed, and to punish the contemners of them."
Such doctrines aroused no responsive echo in the minds of the English
people. The nation whose revolt against the papal supremacy had made the
Reformation possible, were not disposed to accept Presbyterian supremacy
in its place. The national impatience of ecclesiastical power was not
likely suddenly to be removed by any attempt to re-impose it under a new
name and in a new garb. In fact, Cartwright's work almost seems as if
specially written to warn the nation against a possible, if not an
imminent, danger, to warn them, in truth, that--"New Presbyter is but
Old Priest writ large."
Cartwright's narrow-minded dogmatism was crushingly answered in Richard
Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_, the first volume of which appeared in
1594. This remarkable book forms, indeed, an important landmark in the
history of English political and religious thought. Its forcible
exposition of the basic principles of constitutional civil government
makes many portions of it even to-day most attractive and instructive
reading. For the first time in the history of religious controversy,
reason is extolled above any and every authority, and accepted as
supreme judge and arbiter of spiritual, as well as of temporal, affairs.
Though Hooker thought it fit that the reason of the individual should
yield to that of the Church, he did not hesitate to declare "that
authority should prevail with man either against or above reason, is no
part of our belief. Companies of learned men, be they never so great and
reverend, are to yield unto reason." As Buckle well points out,[21:1] if
we compare this work with Jewel's _Apology for the Church of England_,
written some thirty years previously,--and ordered, together with the
Bible and Fox's _Martyrs_, "to be fixed in all parish churches and read
to the people,"--"we shall at once be struck by the different methods
these eminent writers employ.... Jewel inculcates the importance of
faith; Hooker insists on the exercise of reason.... In the same opposite
spirit do these great writers conduct their defence of their own Church.
Jewel thinks to settle the whole dispute by crowding together texts from
the Bible, with the opinions of the commentators upon them.... Hooker's
defence rests neither upon tradition, nor upon commentators, nor even
upon revelation; but he is content that the pretensions of the hostile
parties shall be decided by their applicability to the great exigencies
of society, and by the ease with which they adapt themselves to the
general purposes of ordinary life."
The celebrated work by Chillingworth, _The Religion of Protestants, a
Safe Way to Salvation_, published in 1637, and of which two editions
were issued within less than five months, also deserves special mention
here. His fundamental position may be well summarised in one of his own
sentences--"I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore that man
ought not to require any more of any man than this, to believe the
Scriptures to be God's word, to endeavour to find the true sense of it,
and to live according to it." Even more fully than Hooker,
Chillingworth accepts reason as the all-sufficient guide of human
conduct, and admits no reservations that might limit the sacred right of
private judgement. The essential difference between these three eminent
writers is admirably summarised by Buckle in the following
words:[21:2]{2} "These three great men represent the three distinct
epochs of the three successive generations in which they respectively
lived. In Jewel, reason is, if I may so say, the superstructure of the
system; but authority is the basis upon which the superstructure is
built. In Hooker, authority is only the superstructure, and reason is
the basis. But in Chillingworth, whose writings were harbingers of the
coming storm, authority entirely disappears, and the whole fabric of
religion is made to rest upon the way in which the unaided reason of man
shall interpret the decrees of an omnipotent God."
In fact, Chillingworth's great work may well be regarded as the last
word of the Protestant Reformation in England.
FOOTNOTES:
[15:1] According to Beard, _The Hibbert Lectures_, 1883, p. 119, "It was
a mediæval maxim, which no one thought of questioning, that the language
of the Bible had four senses--the literal, the allegorical, the
tropological, and the anagogical, of which the last three were mystical
or spiritual, in contradistinction to the first." The learned Erasmus,
who lived and died a devout Roman Catholic, seems to have accepted this
allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. Of interpreters of the
Holy Scriptures, he recommends those "who depart as far as possible from
the letter." Erasmus, _Opp._ (_Enchiridion_), v. 29, B, C, D. Quoted by
Beard, p. 120.
[16:1] _Church History_, vol. iv. p. 407.
[17:1] When occasion arose, they do not seem to have been averse to
giving publicity to their opinions. In 1656 a London publisher, Giles
Calvert, to whom we shall have occasion to refer again, republished _A
Discourse on the Family of Love, originally presented to the High Court
of Parliament in the time of Queen Elizabeth_. This Giles Calvert was
the printer and publisher of nearly all Winstanley's pamphlets, and also
one of the first authorised printers and publishers for the Children of
Light, as the Quakers, or Society of Friends, originally styled
themselves. We have reason to believe that Calvert, as well as many
other of Winstanley's disciples, joined the Quakers about the time of
the republication of this pamphlet.
[18:1] "There is no other flame in which the sinner is plagued, and no
other punishment of hell, than the perpetual anguish of mind which
accompanies habitual sin."--Erasmus, _Enchiridion_. Quoted by Beard.
[18:2] See _Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation_,
by Karl Kautsky, more especially p. 79.
[19:1] Green's _Short History of the English People_, p. 457.
[21:1] _History of Civilisation in England_, vol. i. p. 340.
[21:2] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 351.